Todd

“She keeps scrolling. A woman looking at the camera explaining how the LA Ripper is a myth, a story to keep women in their place. She scrolls. A video of a sandwich dripping cheese and meat and juices. She scrolls. An AI animation of Jesus on the cross, smiling, his third eye open. She scrolls, on and on and on. She thinks about how we only put up with it because it's wireless. If we could see the cords and tubes running from the machine to our brains delivering our little doses, administering our little shocks, we'd all start screaming yanking them loose.

Or maybe we wouldn't.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

“It might sound like an unhappy ending, but only if you forget how many times during this story we've told you that someone laughed. How many really good now's is that?”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Surely taking life for granted is the whole point of being here, because what else are we doing? We're a bunch of lonely apes on a rock in the universe, our breath consists of eighty percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen, and one hundred percent anxiety. The *only* thing we can take for granted is that everyone we have ever met and everyone we have ever known and everyone we have ever loved will die. So how great must our imaginations be for us to even summon up the enthusiasm to get out of bed each morning? Endless! Imagination is the only thing that stops us from thinking about death every second. And when we *aren't* thinking? Oh, those are all our very best moments, when we're wasting our lives. It's an act of magnificent rebellion to do meaningless things, to waste time, to swim and drink soda and sleep late. To be silly and frivolous, to laugh at stupid little jokes and tell stupid little stories. Or to paint big paintings, the biggest you can manage, and try to learn to whisper in color. To look for a way to show other people: this was me, these were my humans ... These were our bodies, and they were small, far too small, because they could contain all our love. That's all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn't think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward, you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person's breath against your neck. That's the only courageous thing a person can do.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“She drives home in a trance, lets the stranger in her skull navigate her home. She looks at all the chain restaurants and closed-down big-box stores. She thinks about how everything we've built feels like the inside of a drugstore. Everything is emptied out; everything is locked down and full of bad light; everything is polluted by artificial flavors, artificial voices, artificial thoughts. Everything you buy is wrapped in thick plastic, with no way to open it, so you have to attack packages with scissors or your teeth, and then you better recycle that plastic or somehow the whole burning world is your fault. Everything feels haunted. Haunted by the past, haunted by the present we won't let ourselves see. Our phones cursed with AI images and robot calls and nameless texts. Our minds possessed by some rising intensity we cannot name, cannot face. So we raise our own plastic shields, lock ourselves down, in the name of loss prevention.”
― Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece