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e96d5b6
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Yes, heaven forbid I not be protected from tanks.
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cars
sarcasm
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Stephenie Meyer |
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da991b8
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Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week...That's ridiculous.
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appalachian-trail
transporation
hiking
cars
walking
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Bill Bryson |
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f455775
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The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn't really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the sub rosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on. As a result of which the American woman has become cold and and undersexed; she has projected her libido on to the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own. Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.
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sex
love
cars
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William Faulkner |
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de1c914
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"You're innocent until proven guilty," Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones... but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be... maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. "We wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed." The 1960's and 1970's were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend's house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn't exist... she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn't fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought... she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles... she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other... the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now. Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light."
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earth
grief
loss
death
convenient
old-school
reporter
taxi
retro
cape-breton
nova-scotia
stuck
moving
digital
medications
leaving-home
environment
canada
cars
stop
crying
gone
misery
trapped
lonely
sad
crazy
insane
dying
mental-illness
nostalgia
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Rebecca McNutt |
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d2495c5
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Bloomberg does not support the measure to silence the useless and maddening car alarm: he would rather impose himself on people than on mechanical devices.
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big-government
car-alarms
mayoralty-of-michael-bloomberg
michael-bloomberg
pettiness
cars
law
tyranny
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Christopher Hitchens |
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2e61010
|
"Life is more than great sex and a nice car." "Well, yeah. But not a lot more."
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sex
life
meaning-of-life
cars
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Jennifer Crusie |
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cf9d9a3
|
Zach finally acknowledges me when my elbow smacks against his side as I shove my way between him and Rachel. He straightens and mumbles so only I can hear, I mutter. Zach smirks. Rachel asks. I say. She blinks as if she just woke up. I step aside so Rachel can exit the driver's seat. Because Rachel is every guy's fantasy, Zach begs her to stay: she should see the engine, she can ride in his car, she can drive his car. Each of his attempts to lure her to stay causes me to think of one more way to hide the body parts after I kill him.
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lure
rachel-young
back-off
isaiah
hard-on
stay
zach
beg
cars
kill
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Katie McGarry |
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79ddf77
|
A black Mercedes Benz 450 SL pulled up. It was your classic hood auto beloved of terrorists, pimps and African dictators.
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mercedes-benz
pimps
terrorists
cars
car
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Adrian McKinty |
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febc086
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I may add here that one of the secrets of my happy life is that i have never made the mistake of learning to drive a car. I have never lacked people, usually women, longing to drive me withersoever I wanted. Why keep bitches and bark yourself?
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women
cars
driving
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Iris Murdoch |
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6037b67
|
Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry... Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.
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war
poetry
british-overseas-territories
cars
cavalry
churchill
englishness
german-army
german-empire
infantry
kaiser
kaiser-wilhelm-ii
silesia
sylvia-plath
upper-silesia
wrocław
british-empire
germany
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Christopher Hitchens |