"And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass"
- Ezra Pound, 'And the days are not full enough'
Good poems/rap verses/book excerpts (do not troll)
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"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"
- Rudyard Kipling, 'If'
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@Username
“And an unbridgeable chasm divides you! You cannot cry out to them, nor weep over them, nor shake them by the shoulder:after all, you are a disembodied spirit, you are ghost, and they are material bodies.
And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open---and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herring are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one’s legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet---and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy. So what’s this about unwiped feet? And what’s this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all it’s riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory---property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life---don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart---and prize above all else in the world those who love you and wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know; it might be your last second before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory.”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Gulag Archipelago)
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@Username
"Here's freedom to them who would read;
Here's freedom to them who would write;
None ever feared that the truth should be heard,
But them that the truth would indict."
-Robert Burns
Now there he goes in Dre's studio, cuppin' his ballsScreamin' the wood off the panelin', cussin' the paint off the wallsSpewin' his hate to these haters, showin' no love for these broadsHe ain't givin' them shit, he says he'll pinch a penny so hardHe'll leave a bruise on the bronze so dark you can see the markWith the scars, 'til Abraham Lincoln is screamin' out, "Ahh!"These metaphors and similes ain't similar to them, not at allIf they don't like it, they can all get fuckedInstead of suckin' him offThey can go get a belt or a neck tie to hang themselves byLike David Carradine, they can go fuck themselves and just dieAnd eat shit while they at it, he's fuckin' had itHe's mad at the whole worldSo go to hell and build a snowman, girlThe bullies become bullied, and pussies get pushedThen they better pull me, take me back to 9th grade to school me'Cause I ain't lookin' back, only forward, this whole spot blowin'Who coulda known he'd grow to be a poet and not know it?And while I'm bein' poetic, let me get it stoic and raise the barHigher than my opinion of these women's been loweredSo bear witness to some biblical shit, there's a cold wind blowin'This world ain't gonna know what hit itHe did it, he made it, he's finally famous
"The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough."
- Ezra Pound, 'In a Station of the Metro'
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@RationalMadman
@Sum1hugme
Movie quotes are also okay, provided they are not from traditional, mainstream etc. blockbuster films.
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
- William Ernest Henley, 'Invictus'
Bitches in the back looking righteous
In a tight dress, I think I might just
Hit her with a little biggie 101, how to tote a gun
And have fun with Jamaican rum
-The Notorious B.I.G.
I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me. And I am lothing their little warm tricks. And lothing their mean cosy turns. And all the greedy gushes out through their small souls. And all the lazy leaks down over their brash bodies. How small it's all! And me letting on to meself always. And lilting on all the time.
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
So I wasn't supposed to think! To hell with him. Just a flunkey, a northern redneck, a Yankee cracker! I mixed the paint thoroughly, then brushed it smoothly on one of the pieces of board, careful that the brush strokes were uniform.
Struggling to remove an especially difficult cover, I wondered if the same Liberty paint was used on the campus, or if this "Optic White" was something made exclusively for the government. Perhaps it was of a better quality, a special mix. And in my mind I could see the brightly trimmed and freshly decorated campus buildings as they appeared on spring mornings -- after the fall painting and the light winter snows, with a cloud riding over and a darting bird above -- framed by the trees and encircling vines. The buildings had always seemed more impressive because they were the only buildings to receive regular paintings; usually, the nearby houses and cabins were left untouched to become the dull grained gray of weathered wood. AndI remembered how the splinters in some of the boards were raised from thegrain by the wind, the sun and the rain until the clapboards shone with a satiny, silvery, silver-fish sheen. Like Trueblood's cabin, or the Golden Day . .. The Golden Day had once been painted white; now its paint was flaking away with the years, the scratch of a finger being enough to send it showering down. Damn that Golden Day! But it was strange how life connected up; because I had carried Mr. Norton to the old rundown building with rotting paint, I was here. If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a sequence in a feverish dream . . . I was so deep in reverie that I failed to hear Kimbro approa
ch.
"How's it coming?" he said, standing with hands on hips.
"All right, sir."
"Let's see," he said, selecting a sample and running his thumb across the board. "That's it, as white as George Washington's Sunday-go-to-meetin' wig and as sound as the all-mighty dollar! That's paint!" he said proudly.
"That's paint that'll cover just about anything!"
He looked as though I had expressed a doubt and I hurried to say, "It's certainly white all right."
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man
Ever since the middle night the great assault had gone on. The drums rolled.To the north and to the south company upon company of the enemy pressed to thewalls. There came great beasts, like moving houses in the red and fitful light,the mûmakil of the Haraddragging through the lanes amid the fires huge towers and engines. Yet theirCaptain cared not greatly what they did or how many might be slain: theirpurpose was only to test the strength of the defence and to keep the men ofGondor busy in many places. It was against the Gate that he would throw hisheaviest weight. Very strong it might be, wrought of steel and iron, and guardedwith towers and bastions of indomitable stone, yet it was the key, the weakestpoint in all that high and impenetrable wall.
The drums rolled louder. Fires leaped up. Great engines crawled across thefield; and in the midst was a huge ram, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet inlength, swinging on mighty chains. Long had it been forging in the dark smithiesof Mordor, and its hideous head, founded of black steel, was shaped in thelikeness of a ravening wolf; on it spells of ruin lay. Grond they named it, inmemory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old. Great beasts drew it, Orcssurrounded it, and behind walked mountain-trolls to wield it.
But about the Gate resistance still was stout, and there the knights of DolAmroth and the hardiest of the garrison stood at bay. Shot and dart fell thick;siege-towers crashed or blazed suddenly like torches. All before the walls oneither side of the Gate the ground was choked with wreck and with bodies of theslain; yet still driven as by a madness more and more came up.
Grond crawled on. Upon its housing no fire would catch; and though now andagain some great beast that hauled it would go mad and spread stamping ruinamong the orcs innumerable that guarded it, their bodies were cast aside fromits path and others took their place.
Grond crawled on. The drums rolled wildly. Over the hills of slain a hideousshape appeared: a horseman, tall, hooded, cloaked in black. Slowly, tramplingthe fallen, he rode forth, heeding no longer any dart. He halted and held up along pale sword. And as he did so a great fear fell on all, defender and foealike; and the hands of men drooped to their sides, and no bow sang. For amoment all was still.
The drums rolled and rattled. With a vast rush Grond was hurled forward byhuge hands. It reached the Gate. It swung. A deep boom rumbled through the Citylike thunder running in the clouds. But the doors of iron and posts of steelwithstood the stroke.
Then the Black Captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadfulvoice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend bothheart and stone.
Thrice he cried. Thrice the great ram boomed. And suddenly upon the laststroke the Gate of Gondor broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burstasunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in rivenfragments to the ground.
In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the firesbeyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of theNazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, andall fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate,sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of theearth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image inRath Dínen.
‘You cannot enter here,’ said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. ‘Goback to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness thatawaits you and your Master. Go!’
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; andyet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and themantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadlylaughter.
‘Old fool!’ he said. ‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Deathwhen you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’ And with that he lifted high hissword and flames ran down the blade.
Gandalf did not move. And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyardof the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing ofwizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above theshadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns,horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the Northwildly blowing.
Rohan had come at last.
-JRR Tolkein, The Return of the King
"Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous."
"Hark ye yet again- the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn- living, breathing pictures painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards- the unrecking and unworshipping things, that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a whetstone. Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, but speak!- Aye, aye! thy silence, then, that voices thee. (Aside) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion."
"God keep me!- keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.
-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV scene iii
"A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden (no man ferre)
As wel in Cristendom as hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesse.
At Alisaundre he was, whan it was wonne;
Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce.
In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce,
No Cristen man so ofte of his degree.
In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be
Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye.
At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye,
Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See
At many a noble aryve hadde he be.
At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene,
And foughten for our feith at Tramissene
In listes thryes, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilke worthy knight had been also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye,
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, un-to no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight.
But for to tellen yow of his array,
His hors were gode, but he was nat gay.
Of fustian he wered a gipoun
Al bismotered with his habergeoun;
For he was late y-come from his viage,
And wente for to doon his pilgrimage."
- Geoffrey Chaucer, From The Canterbury Tales
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@oromagi
Thought I'd see you here.
At the concrete building marked: ENTRY, the Presteign entourage stopped before a sign that read: YOU ARE ENDANGERING YOUR LIFE IF YOU ENTER THESE PREMISES UNLAWFULLY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! Visitor badges were distributed to the party, and even Presteign of Presteign received a badge. He dutifully pinned it on for he well knew what the result of entry without such a protective badge would be. The entourage continued, winding its way through pits until it arrived at O-3 where the pit-mouth was decorated with bunting in the Presteign colors, and a small grandstand had been erected.
Presteign was welcomed and, in turn, greeted his various officials. The Presteign band struck up tie clan song, bright and brassy, but one of the instruments appeared to have gone insane. It struck a brazen note that blared louder and louder until it engulfed the entire band and the surprised exclamations. Only then did Presteign realize that it was not an instrument sounding, but the shipyard alarm.
An intruder was in the yard, someone not wearing an identification or visitor's badge. The radar field of the protection system was tripped and the alarm sounded. Through the raucous bellow of the alarm, Presteign could hear a multitude of 'Pops' as the yard guards jaunted from the grandstand and took positions around the square mile of concrete field. His own Jaunte-Watch closed in around him, looking wary and alert.
A voice began blaring on the P.A., co-ordinating defense.
'UNKNOWN IN YARD. UNKNOWN IN YARD AT E FOR EDWARD NINE. B FOR EDWARD NINE MOVING WEST ON FOOT.'
'Someone must have broken in,' Black Rod shouted.
'I'm aware of that,' Presteign answered calmly.
'He must be a stranger if he's not jaunting in here.'
'I am aware of that also.'
'UNKNOWN APPROACHING D FOR DAVID FIVE. D FOR DAVID FIVE. STILL ON FOOT. D FOR DAVID FIVE ALERT.'
'What in God's name is he up to?' Black Rod exclaimed.
'You are aware of my rule, sir,' Presteign said coldly. 'No associate of the Presteign clan may take the name of the Divinity in vain. You forget yourself.'
'UNKNOWN NOW APPROACHING C FOR CHARLEY FIVE. NOW APPROACHING C FOR CHARLEY FIVE.'
Black Rod touched Presteign's arm. 'He's coming this way, Presteign. Will you take cover, please?'
'I will not.'
'Presteign, there have been assassination attempts before. Three of them. If -'
'How do I get to the top of this stand?'
'Presteign!'
'Help me up.' Aided by Black Rod, still protesting hysterically, Presteign climbed to the top of the grandstand to watch the power of the Presteign clan in action against danger. Below he could see workmen in white jumpers swarming out of the pits to watch the excitement. Guards were appearing as they jaunted from distant sectors towards the focal point of the action.
'UNKNOWN MOVING SOUTH TOWARDS B FOR BARER THREE. B FOR BARER THREE.'
Presteign watched the B-3 pit. A figure appeared, dashing swiftly towards the pit, veering, dodging, bulling forward. It was a giant man in hospital blues with a wild thatch of black hair and a distorted face that appeared, in the distance, to be painted in livid colors. His clothes were streaming smoke as the protective induction field of the defense system heated him to burning, and the bright glimmer of flames appeared at his neck, elbows and knees.
'B FOR BARER THREE ALERT. B FOB BARER THREE CLOSE IN.' There were shouts and a distant rattle of shots; the pneumatic whine of scope guns. Half a dozen workmen in white leaped for the intruder. He scattered them like nine-pins and drove on and on towards B-3 where the nose of Vorga showed. His clothes burst into flame and he was a firebrand driving through workmen and guards, pivoting, bludgeoning, boring forward implacably.
Suddenly he stopped, reached inside his flaming jacket and withdrew a black canister. With the convulsive gesture of an animal writhing in death-throes, he bit the end of the canister and hurled it, straight and true on a high arc towards Vorga. The next instant he was struck down.
'EXPLOSIVE. TAKE COVER. EXPLOSIVE. TAKE COVER. COVER.'
'Presteign!' Black Rod squawked.
Presteign shook him off and watched the canister curve up and then down towards the nose of Vorga, spinning and glinting in the cold sunlight. At the edge of the pit it was caught by the anti-grav beam and flicked upwards as by a giant invisible thumbnail. Up and up it whirled, fifty, seventy, a hundred feet. Then there was a blinding flash, and an instant later a titanic clap of thunder that smote ears and jarred teeth and bone.
Presteign picked himself up and descended the grandstand to the launching podium. He placed his finger on the launching button of the Presteign Princess.
'Bring me that man, if he's still alive,' he said to Black Rod. He pressed the button. 'I christen thee . . . the Presteign Power,' he called in triumph.
-Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
And where else did he have to go then, except home?
The breeze pressed softly against his cheek and then died.
He struck another match and dropped it. It landed in a small pool of gasoline
and the gas caught. The flames were blue. They spread out delicately, a kind of
corona with the burned match stub at its center. Trashcan watched for a moment,
paralyzed with fascination, and then he stepped quickly to the stairs that circled
around the tank to the bottom, looking back over his shoulder. He could see the
pumping machinery through a heat haze now, flickering back and forth like a
mirage. The blue flames, no more than two inches high, spread toward the
machinery and toward the open pipe in a widening semicircle. The bug’s
struggles had ended. It was nothing but a blackened husk.
I could let that happen to me.
But he didn’t seem to want to. It seemed, vaguely, that there might be another
purpose in his life now, something very grand and great. So he felt a touch of
fear and he began to descend the steps on the run, his shoes clanging, his hand
slipping quickly over the steep, rust-pitted railing.
Down and down, circling, wondering how long until the vapor hanging
around the mouth of the outflow pipe would catch, how long before heat great
enough for ignition would rush down the pipe’s throat and into the tank’s belly.
Hair flying back from his forehead, a terrified grin pasted to his face, the wind
roaring in his ears, he rushed down. Now he was halfway, racing past the letters
CH, letters twenty feet high and lime green against the white of the tank. Down
and down, and if his flying feet stuttered or caught on anything, he would tumble
like the gascan had tumbled, his bones breaking like dead branches.
The ground came closer, the white gravel circles around the tanks, the green
grass beyond the gravel. The cars in the parking lot began to regain their normal
size. And still he seemed to be floating, floating in a dream, and he would never
reach the bottom, only run and run and get nowhere. He was next to a bomb and
the fuse was lit.
From far overhead there came a sudden bang, like a five-inch Fourth of July
firecracker. There was a dim clang, and then something whirred past him. It was
part of the outflow pipe, he saw with a sharp and almost delicious fear. It was
totally black and twisted into a new and excitingly senseless shape by the heat.
He placed one hand on the railing and vaulted over, hearing something snap in
his wrist. Sickening pain flowed up his arm to the elbow. He dropped the last
twenty-five feet, landed on the gravel, and went sprawling. The gravel scraped
skin from his forearms, but he hardly felt it. He was full of moaning, grinning
panic now, and the day seemed very bright.
Trashcan Man scrambled up, craning his head around and back, sending his
gaze up even as he began to run again. The top of this middle tank had grown
yellow hair, and the hair was growing at an amazing rate. The whole thing could
blow at any second.
He ran, his right hand flopping on its broken wrist. He leaped over the parking
lot curb, and his feet slapped on asphalt. Now he was across the parking lot, his
shadow trailing at his feet, and now he was running straight down the wide
gravel access road and bolting through the half-open gate and back onto
Highway 130. He ran straight across it and flung himself into the ditch on the far
side, landing on a soft bed of dead leaves and wet moss, his arms wrapped
around his head, the breath tearing in and out of his lungs like stabbing
jackknives.
The oiltank blew. Not
WHAMM!
but
KA-WHAP!,
a sound so huge, yet at the
same time so short and guttural, that he felt his eardrums actually press in and
his eyeballs press out as the air somehow changed. A second explosion followed,
then a third, and Trashcan writhed on the dead leaves and grinned and screamed
soundlessly. He sat up, holding his hands over his ears, and sudden wind struck
him and slapped him flat with such power that he might have been no more than
a piece of litter.
The young saplings behind him bent over backward and their leaves made a
frantic whirring sound, like the pennants over a used car lot on a windy day. One
or two snapped with small cracking sounds, as if someone was shooting a target
pistol. Burning pieces of the tank started to fall on the other side of the road,
some actually on the road. They hit with a clanging noise, the rivets still hanging
in some of the chunks of metal, twisted and black, as the outflow pipe had been.
KA-WHAMMM!
Trashcan sat up again and saw a gigantic firetree beyond the Cheery Oil
parking lot. Black smoke was billowing from its top, rising straight to an
amazing height before the wind could disrupt it and rafter it away. You couldn’t
look at it without squinting your eyes almost shut and now there was radiant heat
baking across the road at him, tightening his skin, making it feel shiny. His eyes
were gushing water in protest. Another burning chunk of metal, this one better
than seven feet across at its widest and shaped like a diamond, fell out of the sky,
landed in the ditch twenty feet to his left, and the dry leaves on top of the wet
moss were instantly ablaze.
KA-WHAMM-KA-WHAMM!
If he stayed here he would go up in a jigging, screaming blaze of spontaneous
combustion. He scrambled to his feet and began to run along the shoulder of the
highway in the direction of Gary, the breath getting hotter and hotter in his lungs.
The air had begun to taste like heavy metal. Presently he began to feel his hair to
see if he had started burning. The sweet stench of gasoline filled the air, seeming
to coat him. Hot wind ripped his clothes. He felt like something trying to escape
from a microwave oven. The road doubled before his watering eyes, then
trebled.
There was another coughing roar as rising air pressure caused the Cheery Oil
Company office building to implode. Scimitars of glass whickered through the
air. Chunks of concrete and cinderblock rained out of the sky and hailed on the
road. A whizzing piece of steel about the size of a quarter and the thickness of a
Mars Bar sliced through Trashcan’s shirtsleeve and made a thin scrape on his
skin. A piece big enough to have turned his head to guava jelly struck in front of
his feet and then bounded away, leaving a good-sized crater behind. Then he was
beyond the fallout zone, still running, the blood beating in his head as if his very
brain had been sprayed with #2 heating oil and then set ablaze.
KA-WHAMM!
That was another one of the tanks, and the air resistance in front of him
seemed to disappear and a large warm hand pushed him firmly from behind, a
hand that fitted every contour of his body from heels to head; it shoved him
forward with his toes barely touching the road, and now his face bore the
terrified, pants-wetting grin of someone who has been attached to the world’s
biggest kite in a high cap of wind and let loose to fly, fly, baby, up into the sky
until the wind goes somewhere else, leaving him to scream all the way down in a
helpless power-dive.
From behind a perfect fusillade of explosions, God’s ammunition dump going
up in the flames of righteousness, Satan storming heaven, his artillery captain a
fiercely grinning fool with red, flayed cheeks, Trashcan Man by name, never to
be Donald Merwin Elbert again.
Sights jittering by: cars wrecked off the road, Mr. Strang’s blue mailbox with
the flag up, a dead dog with its legs up, a powerline down in a cornfield.
The hand was not pushing him quite so hard now. Resistance had come back
in front. Trash risked a glance back over his shoulder and saw that the knoll
where the oil tanks had stood was a mass of fire. Everything was burning. The
road itself seemed to be on fire back there, and he could see the summer trees
going up like torches.
He ran another quarter mile, then dropped into a puffing, blowing, shambling
walk. A mile farther on he rested, looking back, smelling the glad smell of
burning. With no firetrucks and firefighters to put it out, it would go whatever
way the wind took it. It might burn for months. Powtanville would go and the
fireline would march south, destroying houses, villages, farms, crops, meadows,
forests. It might get as far south as Terre Haute, and it would burn that place he
had been in. It might burn farther! In fact—
His eyes turned north again, toward Gary. He could see the town now, its great
stacks standing quiet and blameless, like strokes of chalk on a light blue
blackboard. Chicago beyond that. How many oil tanks? How many gas stations?
How many trains standing silent on sidings, full of lp gas and flammable
fertilizer? How many slums, as dry as kindling? How many cities beyond Gary
and Chicago?
There was a whole country ripe for burning under the summer sun.
Grinning, Trashcan Man got to his feet and began to walk. His skin was
already going lobster red. He didn’t feel it, although that night it would keep him
awake in a kind of exaltation. There were bigger and better fires ahead. His eyes
were soft and joyful and utterly crazy. They were the eyes of a man who has
discovered the great axle of his destiny and has laid his hands upon it.
-Stephen King, The Stand
You are what you do when it counts.
Armor
Not an excerpt, but an essay: https://drszellitessays.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/kafkas-metamorphosis/
Kafka's Metamorphosis is a very famous story and a very funny one. I always knew what it was about, but this is the first good write-up I've ever found on it. I read Nabokov's interpretation years ago and I'm sure it was complete nonsense. Or too secretive about it all perhaps, I'm not sure. Either way, I went years without. I hope you enjoy.
I couldn’t read it for its perversity. The human mind isn’t complicated enough.–Albert Einstein, after returning a Kafka novel loaned to him by Thomas Mann.
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@badger
Personally, my take on Kafka's Metamorphosis, is that it's a novel about a man suffering from a serious mental illness, and his families inability to cope with it effectively.
How limited medicine and society has been in the past for mental illness, the toll it takes on family, the tragedy, sadness, and horror of the situation.
Sad story.
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@Lemming
It's too strange to be sad.
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@badger
'Too strange to be sad?
Well it 'is a Kafka.
Though it was not too strange to be sad, for myself.
"that's an awfully hot coffee pot"
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me! It would get all around that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was ever to see anybody from that town again I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman’s nigger that hadn’t ever done me no harm, and now was showing me there’s One that’s always on the lookout, and ain’t a-going to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further, I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me kept saying, “There was the Sunday-school, you could a gone to it; and if you’d a done it they’d a learnt you there that people that acts as I’d been acting about that nigger goes to everlasting fire.”
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray, and see if I couldn’t try to quit being the kind of a boy I was and be better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn’t come. Why wouldn’t they? It warn’t no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me, neither. I knowed very well why they wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger’s owner and tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.
So I was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn’t know what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the letter—and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way I felt as light as a feather right straight off, and my troubles all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and excited, and set down and wrote:
Miss Watson, your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile below Pikesville, and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for the reward if you send.Huck Finn.
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ’stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.
-Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
[Verse 2: K-Rino]Eventually I begin to see, all of the wickedness in the industryFell in love with the premise of getting it independentlyHad the tendency to miss signals that God was sending meBut even though I suffered some losses it didn't hinder meWitnessed many crazy dynamics be in an artistSome said my lyrics were hard but thought that my beats were garbageEven when I started getting popular still I was starvingCars passing by me playing my music while I was walkingRap not paying the bills, you're scared to open the mailPeople wishing you success but inside hoping you failYou've got a goal in mind with no means of achievingIt's lonely chasing a dream that only you seem to believe in[Hook: Ronetta Spencer]I have a hard time, chasing my dreamsI have to have a strong mind, when the water got deepI had to go the whole nine, a lot of nights no sleepI love it when it feels like, I'm on my own two feetYeahhh[Verse 3: K-Rino]It's not many people who know, how truly deep it can goStill receiving indecent proposals for features and showsThe cheapest promoters leach on the most seasoned of prosAnd thoughts of leaving, I can list plenty reasons for thoseKeeping composure is the secret we should imposeI heated that when the payout frequency slowedI beat up the road seeking more music seeds I can sowAnd it wasn't always available when I needed some doughI'm still learning long as I've been in this, it switches up fastYou might ask how could I love something so vicious and badAll I can say is when you find your gift stay on your noteIf you master a situation you can shape the result
Robot SPD 13 was near enough to be seen in detail now. His graceful, streamlined body threw out blazing highlights as he loped with easy speed across the broken ground. His name was derived from his serial initials, of course, but it was apt, nevertheless, for the SPD models were among the fastest robots turned out by the United States Robot & Mechanical Men Corp.
“Hey, Speedy,” howled Donovan, and waved a frantic hand.
“Speedy!” shouted Powell. “Come here!”
The distance between the men and the errant robot was being cut down momentarily — more bythe efforts of Speedy than the slow plodding of the fifty-year-old antique mounts of Donovan and Powell.
They were close enough now to notice that Speedy’s gait included a peculiar rolling stagger, a noticeable side-to-side lurch — and then, as Powell waved his hand again and sent maximum juice into his compact headset radio sender, in preparation for another shout, Speedy looked up and saw them.
Speedy hopped to a halt and remained standing for a moment with just a tiny, unsteady weave, as though he were swaying in a light wind.
Powell yelled: “All right, Speedy. Come here, boy.”
Whereupon Speedy’s robot voice sounded in Powell’s earphones for the first time.
It said: “Hot dog, let’s play games. You catch me and I catch you; no love can cut our knife in two.
For I’m Little Buttercup, sweet Little Buttercup. Whoops!” Turning on his heel, he sped off in the direction from which he had come, with a speed and fury that kicked up gouts of baked dust. And his last words as he receded into the distance were, “There grew a little flower ‘neath a great oak tree,” followed by a curious metallic clicking that might have been a robotic equivalent of a hiccup.
Donovan said weakly: “Where did he pick up the Gilbert and Sullivan?
Say, Greg, he... he’s drunk or something.”
“If you hadn’t told me,” was the bitter response, “I’d never realize it. Let’s get back to the cliff. I’m roasting.”
It was Powell who broke the desperate silence.
“In the first place,” he said, “Speedy isn’t drunk — not in the human sense — because he’s a robot, and robots don’t get drunk. However, there’s something wrong with him which is the robotic equivalent of drunkenness”
“To me, he’s drunk,” stated Donovan, emphatically, “and all I know is that he thinks we’re playing games. And we’re not. It’s a matter of life and very gruesome death.”
“All right. Don’t hurry me. A robot’s only a robot. Once we find out what’s wrong with him, we can fix it and go on.”
“Once,” said Donovan, sourly.
Powell ignored him. “Speedy is perfectly adapted to normal Mercurian environment. But this region” — and his arm swept wide — “is definitely abnormal. There’s our clue. Now where do these crystals come from? They might have formed from a slowly cooling liquid; but where would you get liquid so hot that it would cool in Mercury’s sun?”
“Volcanic action,” suggested Donovan, instantly, and Powell’s body tensed.
“Out of the mouths of sucklings,” he said in a small, strange voice and remained very still for five minutes.
Then, he said, “Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?”
Donovan was taken aback. “Well damn it — I don’t know. I just told him to get it.”
“Yes, I know, but how? Try to remember the exact words.”
“I said... uh... I said: ‘Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it — that’s all. What more did you want me to say?”
“You didn’t put any urgency into the order, did you?”
“What for? It was pure routine.”
Powell sighed. “Well, it can’t be helped now— but we’re in a fine fix.” He had dismounted from his robot, and was sitting, back against the cliff. Donovan joined him and they linked arms: In the distance the burning sunlight seemed to wait cat-and-mouse for them, and just next them, the two giant robots w ere invisible but for the dull red of their photoelectric eyes that stared down at them, unblinking, unwavering and unconcerned.
Unconcerned! As was all this poisonous Mercury, as large in jinx as it was small in size.
Powell’s radio voice was tense in Donovan’s ear: “Now, look, let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics— the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot’s positronic brain.” In the darkness, his gloved fingers ticked off each point.
“We have: One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“Right!”
“Two,” continued Powell, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”
“Right”
“And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”
“Right! Now where are we?”
“Exactly at the explanation. The conflict between the various rules is ironed out by the different positronic potentials in the brain. We’ll say that a robot is walking into danger and knows it. The automatic potential that Rule 3 sets up turns him back. But suppose you order him to walk into that danger. In that case, Rule 2 sets up a counterpotential higher than the previous one and the robot follows orders at the risk of existence.”
“Well, I know that. What about it?”
“Let’s take Speedy’s case. Speedy is one of the latest models, extremely specialized, and as expensive as a battleship. It’s not a thing to be lightly destroyed”
“So?”
“So Rule 3 has been strengthened — that was specifically mentioned, by the way, in the advance notices on the SPD models — so that his allergy to danger is unusually high.
At the same time, when you sent him out after the selenium, you gave him his order casually and without special emphasis, so that the Rule 2 potential set-up was rather weak. Now, hold on; I’m just stating facts.”
“All right, go ahead. I think I get it.”
“You see how it works, don’t you? There’s some sort of danger centering at the selenium pool. It increases as he approaches, and at a certain distance from it the Rule 3 potential, unusually high to start with, exactly balances the Rule 2 potential, unusually low to start with.”
Donovan rose to his feet in excitement. “ And it strikes an equilibrium. I see. Rule 3 drives himback and Rule 2 drives him forward –”
“So he follows a circle around the selenium pool, staying on the locus of all points of potential equilibrium. And unless we do something about it, he’ll stay on that circle forever, giving us the good old runaround.” Then, more thoughtfully: “And that, by the way, is what makes him drunk. At potential equilibrium, half the positronic paths of his brain are out of kilter. I’m not a robot specialist, but that seems obvious. Probably he’s lost control of just those parts of his voluntary mechanism that a human drunk has. Ve-e-ery pretty.”
“But what’s the danger? If we knew what he was running from –”?
“You suggested it. Volcanic action. Somewhere right above the selenium pool is a seepage of gas from the bowels of Mercury. Sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide — and carbon monoxide. Lots of it and at this temperature.”
Donovan gulped audibly. “Carbon monoxide plus iron gives the volatile iron carbonyl.”
“And a robot,” added Powell, “is essentially iron.” Then, grimly: “There’s nothing like deduction. We’ve determined everything about our problem but the solution. We can’t get the selenium ourselves. It’s still too far. We can’t send these robot horses, because they can’t go themselves, and they can’t carry us fast enough to keep us from crisping. And we can’t catch Speedy, because the dope thinks we’re playing games, and he can run sixty miles to our four.”
“If one of us goes,” began Donovan, tentatively, “and comes back cooked, there’ll still be the other.”
“Yes,” came the sarcastic reply, “it would be a most tender sacrifice — except that a person would be in no condition to give orders before he ever reached the pool, and I don’t think the robots would ever turn back to the cliff without orders. Figure it out! We’re two or three miles from the pool — call it two —the robot travels at four miles an hour; and we can last twenty minutes in our suits. It isn’t only the heat, remember. Solar radiation out here in the ultraviolet and below is poison.”
“Um-m-m,” said Donovan, “ten minutes short.”
“As good as an eternity. And another thing, in order for Rule 3 potential to have stopped Speedy where it did, there must be an appreciable amount of carbon monoxide in the metal-vapor atmosphere—and there must be an appreciable corrosive action therefore. He’s been out hoursnow — and how do we know when a knee joint, for instance, won’t be thrown out of kilter and keel him over. It’s not only a question of thinking — we’ve got to think fast!”
Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence!
Donovan broke it, voice trembling in an effort to keep itself emotionless. He said: “As long as we can’t increase Rule 2 potential by giving further orders, how about working the other way? If we increase the danger, we increase Rule 3 potential and drive him backward.”
Powell’s visiplate had turned toward him in a silent question.
“You see,” came the cautious explanation, “all we need to do to drive him out of his rut is to increase the concentration of carbon monoxide in his vi cinity. Well, back at the Station there’s a complete analytical laboratory.”
“Naturally,” assented Powell. “It’s a Mining Station.”
“All right. There must be pounds of oxalic acid for calcium precipitations.”
“Holy space! Mike, you’re a genius.”
Issac Asimov, I, Robot
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@oromagi
Nice one.
I always liked the story, Reason, in I, Robot.
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@Lemming
It's the first time Asimov really lays out the 3 laws which then frames so many future great deduction scenes in the Robot series
[Hook]Back up, you too close you need to back upWe've been rolling up the backwoodsThis blunt is not filled with tobaccoChop the top on that da capoPress the button watch it act upI'm the one that other rappersLet them also make a master[Verse 1]But pussy don't make you the manNeither does poppin' the bandsOr talking follows on the gramI know they sleeping, if I see another kid napping then I'll make them get in the vanMaybe sedan, uh, maybe someday, you wake up drunk in the trunk of a wraithHollywood Boulevard bumping the bassI love it just look at the look on my faceThey got me jogging in placeI'm bout to run out of patienceI see you running my placeOoh, that's a cute imitationThis is a new simulationNo longer stuck in the matrixI do not fuck with the playlist, fuck all the radio stations[Hook]Back up, you too close you need to back upWe've been rolling up the backwoodsThis blunt is not filled with tobacco[Verse 2]Yeah, I need more negative feedbackYeah, I wanna read thatThis is debate, I want the hate, I really mean that, bring me the beat backOkay it took me a minute to see that's how you getting to sell out arenasShooting my shot at a Bella Hadid, and you do not get a rebuttal or read backI must admit I've been getting notedI book up Gigi I didn't know herI know the devil he on my shoulder500 horses they in the motorHottest tamales in CaliforniaColder than Yachty in MinnesotaI get to pick them in any orderNo I do not spend a penny on themI'm the one saving my dividendsI'm trying to upgrade the residenceI need the Franklin's, I need my Reagan'sMan to be honest I don't know my presidentsThat doesn't mean that I'm giving inYou and the bitches are synonymDon't give a fuck about what your opinion is[Bridge]Ah, you got the hitsYou are no man, why are you selling your 6You do not call me a check, now Imma get richCall on label and tell them to suck on my dick