Z Pack Quotes

The staircase that was revealed was lit with a soft red glow. I feel like I'm walking down into a porn movie," V muttered as they took the steps with care. Wouldn't that require more black candles for you," Zsadist cracked. At the bottom of the landing, they looked left and right down a corridor carved out of stone, seeing row after row of...black candles with ruby color flames. I take that back," Z said, eyeing the display. We start hearing chick-a-wow-wow shit," V cut in, "can I start calling you Z-packed?" Not if you want to keep breathing.

My brother betrayed me and our people. If I were as cold as I'd like to be, his hide would be on the floor so everyone could walk on him. Unfortunately, my other brothers were a little disturbed by that so we compromised with the wall." "Understood," Ash said. "Where's the rest of the pack?" "In the back.We're staying out of it. We don't like to kill our own." Zarek snorted at that."Unless it's your brother." Dante approached Zarek and the two of them had a mutual sneer-off."Law of the jungle.The betrayee gets to eat the betrayer." Zarek gave him a droll stare."Law of my jungle. Kill them all and let Hades sort them out." Dante actually laughed at that. "I like this one, Ash. He understands us." "Gee, Z," Ash said jokingly. "I think you may have found a new friend after all. That should make Astrid happy.

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt. Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z can, from a certain perspective, appear anally wired. On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates have chosen to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it’s the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup. Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I’ve not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill… Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust. A Z is slick, quick, arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance separates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place. In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I, or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, were Z a woman, she would be a femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.

If at 1st you don't succeed, stretch out on your La-Z-Boy with a six-pack and a porn flick. Y' still won't succeed, but you sure as hell won't give a shift.

Yet what bothers Maher most is a less tangible harm: the insult of seeing the clothes his company makes sell for prices that show just how little they are valued. 'Generation Z and millennials are really demanding ethical products,' he said. 'But when you buy a fast-fashion T-shirt for four dollars, or two dollars, you never ask, 'How could this have landed in Berlin or London or Montreal for this price? How does the cotton get grown, ginned, spun, woven, dyed, printed, sewn, packed, shipped, all for four dollars?' You've never realized how many lives you are touching, all because your payment doesn't pay for their wages.

PROLOGUE   Zoey “Wow, Z, this is a seriously awesome turnout. There are more humans here than fleas on an old dog!” Stevie Rae shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked around at the newly lit-up campus. Dallas was a total jerk, but we all admitted that the twinkling lights he’d wrapped around the trunks and limbs of the old oaks gave the entire campus a magickal, fairy-like glow. “That is one of your more disgusting bumpkin analogies,” Aphrodite said. “Though it’s accurate. Especially since there are a bunch of city politicians here. Total parasites.” “Try to be nice,” I said. “Or at least try to be quiet.” “Does that mean your daddy, the mayor, is here?” Stevie Rae’s already gawking eyes got even wider. “I suppose it does. I caught a glimpse of Cruella De Vil, a.k.a. She Who Bore Me, not long ago.” Aphrodite paused and her brows went up. “We should probably keep an eye on the Street Cats kittens. I saw some cute little black and white ones with especially fluffy fur.” Stevie Rae sucked air. “Ohmygoodness, your mamma wouldn’t really make a kitten fur coat, would she?” “Faster than you can say Bubba’s drinkin’ and drivin’ again,” Aphrodite mimicked Stevie Rae’s Okie twang. “Stevie Rae—she’s kidding. Tell her the truth,” I nudged Aphrodite. “Fine. She doesn’t skin kittens. Or puppies. Just baby seals and democrats.” Stevie Rae’s brow furrowed. “See, everything is fine. Plus, Damien’s at the Street Cats booth, and you know he’d never let one little kitten whisker be hurt—let alone a whole coat,” I assured my BFF, refusing to let Aphrodite mess up our good mood. “Actually, everything is more than fine. Check out what we managed to pull off in a little over a week.” I sighed in relief at the success of our event and let my gaze wander around the packed school grounds. Stevie Rae, Shaylin, Shaunee, Aphrodite, and I were manning the bake sale booth (while Stevie Rae’s mom and a bunch of her PTA friends moved through the crowd with samples of the chocolate chip cookies we were selling, like, zillions of). From our position near Nyx’s statue, we had a great view of the whole campus. I could see a long line at Grandma’s lavender booth. That made me smile. Not far from Grandma, Thanatos had set up a job application area, and there were a bunch of humans filling out paperwork there. In the center of the grounds there were two huge silver and white tents draped with more of Dallas’s twinkling lights. In one tent Stark and Darius and the Sons of Erebus Warriors were demonstrating weaponry. I watched as Stark was showing a young boy how to hold a bow. Stark’s gaze lifted from the kid and met mine. We shared a quick, intimate smile

Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, “Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check. “I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the encephalographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads—all the tests I had to go through under Government medical officers before my nomination for presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?” Ford nodded. “And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum.” Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white. “Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford. “Yeah.” “But have you any idea who? Or why?” “Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.” “You know? How do you know?” “Because they left their initials burned into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.” Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl. “Initials? Burned into your brain?” “Yeah.” “Well, what were they, for God’s sake?” Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away. “Z.B.,” he said quietly. At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber. “I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

Walking back through the mall to the exit nearest our part of the parking lot, we passed one shop which sold computers, printers, software, and games. It was packed with teenagers, the kind who wear wire rims and know what the new world is about. The clerks were indulgent, letting them program the computers. Two hundred yards away, near the six movie houses, a different kind of teenager shoved quarters into the space-war games, tensing over the triggers, releasing the eerie sounds of extraterrestrial combat. Any kid back in the computer store could have told the combatants that because there is no atmosphere in space, there is absolutely no sound at all. Perfect distribution: the future managers and the future managed ones. Twenty in the computer store, two hundred in the arcade. The future managers have run on past us into the thickets of CP/M, M-Basic, Cobal, Fortran, Z-80, Apples, and Worms. Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us preprogrammed units for each household which will provide entertainment, print out news, purvey mail-order goods, pay bills, balance accounts, keep track of expenses, and compute taxes. But by then the future managers will be over on the far side of the thickets, dealing with bubble memories, machines that design machines, projects so esoteric our pedestrian minds cannot comprehend them. It will be the biggest revolution of all, bigger than the wheel, bigger than Franklin’s kite, bigger than paper towels.

Sugar, granulated white, 1 cup = 1 cup superfine sugar = 1 cup turbinado sugar = 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar = 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted = ¾ cup honey or 1 ¼ cups molasses and reduce other liquid in recipe by ¼ cup; or add ¼ cup flour if no other liquid is called for = 1 cup corn syrup, but never replace more than half the amount of sugar this way; and reduce other liquid in the recipe by ¼ cup for each 2 cups sugar substituted this way

Ten minutes,” Butch whispered into Marissa’s ear. “Can I have ten minutes with you before you go? Please, baby…” V rolled his eyes and was relieved to be annoyed at the lovey-dovey routine. At least all the testosterone in him hadn’t dried up. “Baby…please?” V took a pull on his mug. “Marissa, throw the sap bastard a bone, would you? The simpering wears on my nerves.” “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Marissa packed up her papers with a laugh and shot Butch a look. “Ten minutes. And you’d better make them count.” Butch was up out of that chair like the thing was on fire. “Don’t I always?” “Mmm…yes.” As the two locked lips, V snorted. “Have fun, kiddies. Somewhere else.” They’d just left when Zsadist came in at a dead run. “Shit. Shit…shit…” “What’s doing, my brother?” “I’m teaching and I’m late.” Zsadist grabbed a sleeve of bagels, a turkey leg out of the refridg and a quart of ice cream from the freezer. “Shit.” “That’s your breakfast?” “Shut up. It’s almost a turkey sandwich.” “Rocky Road don’t count as mayo, my brother.” “Whatever.” He beelined back for the door. “Oh, by the way, Phury’s here again, and he brought that Chosen with him. Figured you’d want to know in case you see a random female ghosting around here.” Whoa. Surprise. “How’s he doing?” Zsadist paused. “I don’t know. He’s pretty tight about shit. Not real talkative. The bastard.” “Oh, and you’re a candidate for The View?” “Right back at you, Bahbwa.” “Touché.” V shook his head. “Man, I owe him.” “Yeah, you do. We all do.” “Hold up, Z.” V tossed the spoon he’d used to sugar his coffee across the room. “You’re going to want this, true.” Z caught the thing on the fly. “Ah, would have spaced that. Thanks. Man, I got Bella on the brain all’a time, feel me?” The butler’s door flapped shut.

Henry has an attachment disorder. He doesn’t even like it when I cut my hair. If my mom had allowed it, he would be the biggest pack rat in the world. But hoarding and blindness don’t mix. Everything has to be in its place or the house becomes a landmine. So he wears the same clothes until they’re threadbare, won’t cut his hair, still sleeps with his Dragon Ball Z sheets he got for his eighth birthday, and has every toy he has ever been given stored in plastic bins in the basement. I don’t think he’ll go through with the hair cut. He’s only let Robin cut it twice since my mom died, and both times he cried the entire time, and she had to put the clippings in a Ziplock bag and let him keep them, just to get him to calm down.” I was slightly repulsed, and I was glad Millie couldn’t see my expression. “So he has bags of hair in his room?” “I’m assuming he does though he won’t tell me where. I pay my next-door neighbor to come in and clean once a week, and she hasn’t found it either

Henny started to check things over—cables, speedometer, tire pressure, mirror adjustment—and then he sprayed the chain with WD40. He always does this, even if he’s going two blocks to the grocery. “Almost ready,” he said, when I thought he was all done. “I’m going to fill the water bottle and throw a bag of dried fruit into the seat pack.” Then he made one more trip for a bandage, just in case. When we finally got going, it was the hottest part of the day. I didn’t want to know how hot it was, but I knew Henny was going to tell me. “Did you check the thermometer?” he called up to me at the first intersection. “A hundred and five in the shade. It’s hot enough to uncurl your hair. We’ll die of heat exhaustion out here on the high-way. Can’t we go in something air-conditioned?” Henny never does anything without a few complaints. He has terrible things to say about trumpet lessons but he likes to play the trumpet. And then there are book reports. Henny reads the long, nonfiction books, the Yellow Pages, everything. Just don’t ask him to write up a report, because he will complain about it forever, and then turn in thirty pages.

I have one A–Z alphabetical physical filing system for general reference, not multiple ones. My e-mail reference folders are also organized this way. People have a tendency to want to use their files as a personal management system, and therefore they attempt to organize them in groupings by projects or areas of focus. This magnifies geometrically the number of places something isn’t when you forget where you filed it. Once you have filtered all the reminders for actions into your next-action lists, this kind of data is simply the content of your personal library. You should have the freedom to be as much of a pack rat as you wish. The only issue you need to deal with is how much room you have for storage, and how accessible the information is when you need it. One simple alpha system files everything by topic, person, project, or company, so it can be in only three or four places if you forget exactly where you put it. You can usually put at least one subset of topics on each label, like “Gardening—pots” and “Gardening—ideas.” These would be filed under G.

If you love me and I’m feeling sad, please buy me paper towels, preferably Bounty in a six-pack or greater. Having a cabinet full of paper towels gives me a feeling of abundance, so please do this for me if you love me. Won’t you? Paper towels equals happy Weird Girl.

If you love me and I’m feeling sad, please buy me paper towels, preferably Bounty in a six-pack or greater. Having a cabinet full of paper towels gives me a feeling of abundance, so please do this for me if you love me. Won’t you? Paper towels equals happy Weird Girl.