Rob

“Halfway home I stopped at a deli and had soup and a sandwich and coffee. There was a bizarre story in the Post. Two neighbors in Queens had been arguing for months because of a dog that barked in its owner’s absence. The previous night, the owner was walking the dog when the animal relieved itself on a tree in front of the neighbor’s house. The neighbor happened to be watching and shot at the dog from an upstairs window with a bow and arrow. The dog’s owner ran back into his house and came out with a Walther P-38, a World War II souvenir. The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow, and the dog’s owner shot him dead. The neighbor was eighty-one, the dog’s owner was sixty-two, and the two men had lived side by side in Little Neck for over twenty years. The dog’s age wasn’t given, but there was a picture of him in the paper, straining against a leash in the hands of a uniformed police officer.”
― Lawrence Block, Eight Million Ways to Die

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“But Walker, ah, there’s a very different kettle of shrimp. He’s high in the John Birch Society—” “Those Jew-hating fascists!” “—and I can see a day, not long hence, when he may run it. Once he has the confidence and approval of the other right-wing nut groups, he may even run for office again . . . but this time not for governor of Texas. I suspect he has his sights aimed higher. The Senate? Perhaps. Even the White House?” “That could never happen.” But Lee sounded unsure. “It’s unlikely to happen,” de Mohrenschildt corrected. “But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. Or the power of television. Without TV, Kennedy would never have beaten Nixon.” “Kennedy and his iron fist,” Lee said. His approval of the current president seemed to have gone the way of blue suede shoes. “He won’t never rest as long as Fidel’s shitting in Batista’s commode.” “And never underestimate the terror white America feels at the idea of a society in which racial equality has become the law of the land.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“5. Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations