I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

by Jason Pargin

what you fear above all is humiliation at the hands of the unfamiliar.

you generally didn’t want to tangle with a firefighter; they had muscles from hauling gear and bad attitudes from breathing toxic chemicals and remembering the screams of burning children.

This is America, taking a road trip without a gun is like putting a sign on the rear windshield that says, FREE CAR WITH DOCILE POTENTIAL SEX SLAVE AT THE WHEEL.”

He was summoning a dark force that, once unleashed, no man or government could contain. But he could see no other options. Zeke was going to take this problem to the hive mind at Reddit, the sprawling message board of mostly young males armed with a vast arsenal of shallow knowledge and free time, humming with a relentless desire to assuage their boredom by continually ingesting and digesting new morsels of information.

her half of the fridge was currently full of raw vegetables that, as far as Zeke could tell, robbed her soul of joy at a much greater rate than they made her body healthier.

“I don’t miss my phone because I’m addicted, I miss it because I’ve lost my ability to communicate or transact with everyone in my life and have severed my conduit to all human knowledge and world events.

“Do I need an attorney?” The answer to this question is actually yes, every time, regardless of whether you’re being interviewed as a suspect or a witness, as law enforcement absolutely does not have to tell you which one you are.

aggrieved narcissism, a total inability to put personal affronts into perspective.

aggrieved narcissists, people willing to raze civilization because they feel personally humiliated.

“There was an actress who came out recently, talking about how her previous husband had emotionally abused her. He never hit her, but played mind games, undermined her, humiliated her, made her feel worthless. She said it was just as bad as physical abuse. Maybe worse, because there was technically no crime committed and nothing to report. I personally agree with her.”

The USA had sprouted from soil so saturated with blood that the wells tasted of copper, less a “melting pot” than a meat grinder.

People who had rough childhoods, guys like you and me, you grow up scared of being happy. It don’t feel right. You find yourself sabotaging it, because you’re so scared that you’re gonna lose it that you’d rather just trash it yourself, so at least you can say it was your choice. So, you go hunting for grievances, to give yourself an excuse.”

finally ordering from a Taco Bell drive-thru. “Keep going this way,” instructed Ether, two bags of dystopian Mexican food on her lap.

There’s an old saying that a child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.

Miles’s wife had moved out, taking the dogs with her, begging him to get help, to please see someone about his depression, to get medication. As if somebody makes a pill that un-fucks reality.