A C I D 

I hate all the people I know. I work in a library and hate all librarians and people who use libraries. I hate people who are near the library, or hang around outside  the library and then come in. I dislike everyone else, wherever they are.The closer they get, the more I dislike them. I think the same is true  of anyone who works anywhere or has regular intercourse with people in the office or in the home or anywhere else. Poking around the farmer's  market or meeting people on the street or having a rendez-vous in a public place or in a private place. This is true of everyone you know. They hate you. Do you know them? Then they hate you. They run into you and say pleasant things. But if you were to collapse and die right there, in  front of them, they would be shocked, initially, then inconvenienced, but ultimately they would be thrilled. It would be a tonic. It would add  two weeks to their lives. It would have the same effect on them as a month at a lovely spa. 
What causes people to grow happy, if not the casual near fatality? Or words to that effect?    

My secret, like that of Elizabeth M.'s, is what keeps me going. Secretly I am sane. No one must know. 

Elizabth sends him an email:
Ha ha well thanks for your letter I'll read it when I get time. Just thought I'd write. 
As usual, a great deal of stuff about what she was doing. 
She vanishes into the net. Employed at a Company in Woolworth, really no more than two hundred kilometres from here, but as far away as anyplace, if one wished it so.

No, my dear, I aim to pleasure you with words. Now hold still while I read this.

L O P E Z
James was renting his house to some people who could really use the space, a woman and her starter husband, while he himself retained the use of the shed as his own quarters. He explained the deal to them. If they needed a shed, they would have to build one, and ruin the bituminous splendour of his garden. They had no reponse to that, and he lived there peacefully, keeping his usual hours. If I passed by his house of an evening I would look down the alley to see if there were a light on in his shed, my signal to drop in for a visit.
On one such occasion J. introduced me to Lopez, an old and cranky man he unearthed one autumn morning from the midden at the bottom of his garden. 
“Lopez!”
“Yeh?”
I had wanted to ask him something of his past, but J.'s expression was so neutral that I had to say:
“Lopez! Where do you see yourself in ten years' time?”
“Oh. I don't see why I can't look forward to the nice little house with a painted fence, a dog, couple kids. Nuttin fancy.” 
“Wife?”
“Wife! I have one, hee hee hee!” 
Laughing like a peasant at something dismal. But he seemed to have all his principle teeth. 

J.'s shed. 
A container of bullshit? 
Going around introducing Lopez as his son. Since Lopez was obviously a good twenty years older than J., the effect was difficult to assess.

Almost every book ever written is an affront. Or would be, if people read books. But no one does. 
A girls' night out. No woman can say, No, this is boring, I don't want to hang out with these other terrible people. 

It would be so simple for you to not alienate people and it wouldn't cost you anything, either. All you have to do is ... stop ... talking. Right now.

At that moment it was time for me to unmute the television and turn to Allo Police, a weekly show about true crime which you can see almost every night of the week, thanks to a network deal. I have to admit I enjoy watching crimes by other people. I drink lysol in the evenings and at the weekend and reflect on how fucked people are. 
On death row: if they cut him up and ate him alive it wouldn't horrify me more. Actually, I think it could help them start a new religion. 
What are they going to do about their two thousand guys who have been killed in Qublistan? Are they going to avenge their deaths? No, that's a  freebie. Besides, they're partly responsible for that themselves. 
From what I can see, it's a big ball of dirt. Okay, a huge ball of dirt. It's so big that I can hardly conceive of it.  

A T  A N  I D I O T ‘ S  F U N E R AL

J., who was perhaps my closest friend, amused me once by talking about.  

It's as if she has claimed Ahmet, because people who don't know diddly think she discovered her. 

Oh, wow, the secret aluminium briefcase with the mysterious stacks of cash in it, a hundred thousand, half a million, and who knows whose money  it is? And the secret information of the incestuous abuse that ties the two characters together, or the half-forgotten murder that happened a  long time ago and has come back to haunt them. Or who could have known these people were connected? Had almost shared a cab once? 

My great dream as a youth was to eventually earn slightly more than I actually needed. To be able to make the rent, pay the bills, buy some  food, and have, let us say, ten dollars over. Don't laugh. Everyone has to have a dream. 

That's why poeple are so interested in space flight. They want to leave all this stuff behind. They have judged their life here and want to  start off with a brand new planet, which, of course they can ruin in an entirely personal way, their way.  

He goes out to buy some oregano and ends up with marijuana

Which was actually a plan to kill the leaders of Qublistan and replace them with their own people What an original idea, it's only been  tried in virtually every country in the world several times. 

Well, you should take credit for the things you do, good or bad. Because otherwise, what are you? You're like a person that doesn't exist, has  no presence in the world. So you should only do things you feel comfortable taking credit for.

Ultimately, I have to tell somebody about my crime. No matter how big, or how small it is.
So what did you think, that there would be a final answer in the final chapter?
He's got the brain of a hamster! No. Something stupider than that, obviously. Because hamsters are inquisitive. 

After ten thousand people have looked at you and said “Entertain me, or I die!”, it must be hard to look at people the same way. That ten thousandth face, alone yet indistinct, pleading and demanding a celebration it already knows and anticipates -- in fact, the performer might say: What am I doing here?

To believe in something principally because it annoys other people. 
There was no other explanation than that she was consciously trying to turn the child into a moron and a retard. 
But he was a being a nice asshole, which is very difficult..