Dan

“Jane snorted out in disgust. "Okay, the good news is spotting the saurus just got a hell of a lot
easier. Plus we've got a ton of free bait."
"The bad news?" Taggart asked.
"Smart boy. Cookie for knowing that there's bad news." Jane eased her SUV across the worn
divided line to drive along the berm. "Bad news, Pittsburgh beef cows are the meanest son-of-abitches."
"So, we have to dodge several tons of pissed off sirloin while filming one hungry dinosaur?"
"Welcome to Pittsburgh.”
― Wen Spencer, Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden

“Taggart finally broke the pattern. "Can you at least explain why?"
Jane growled. God, she hated being outnumbered. This was like riding herd on her little
brothers, only worse because "I'll beat you if you do" wasn't an acceptable answer. "First rule of
shooting a show on Elfhome." She grabbed Hal and made him face each of the two newbies so
there was no way they could miss the mask of dark purple bruises across Hal's face. "Avoid
getting 'The Face' damaged. Viewers don't like raccoon boys. Hal is out of production until the
bruising can be covered with makeup. We've got fifty days and a grocery list of face-chewing
monsters to film. We have to think about damage control."
"Second rule!" She let Hal go and held up two fingers. "Get as much footage as possible of the
monster before you kill it. People don't like looking at dead monsters if you don't give them lots
of time seeing it alive. Right now we have got something dark moving at night in water. No one
has ever seen this before, so we can't use stock footage to pad. We blow the whistle and it will
come out of the water and try to rip your face off – violating rule one – and then we'll have to kill
it and thus break rule two."
"Sounds reasonable," Taggart said.
"Would we really have to kill it?" Nigel's tone suggested he equated it to torturing kittens.
"If it's trying its damnest to eat you? Yes!" Jane cried.”
― Wen Spencer, Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden

“Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a slippery slope of cruelty doomed to end in failure.”
― Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist

“Literature is humanity talking to itself.”
― Norman Rush