116
" Globe-trotting is just the chance to feel bored more places, faster. A boring breakfast in Bali. A predictable lunch in Paris. A tedious dinner in New York, and falling asleep, drunk, during just another blow job in L.A. Too many peak experiences, too close together. “Like the Getty Museum,” Inky says. “Lather, rinse, and repeat,” says the Global Airlines wino. In the boring new world of everyone in the upper-middle class, Inky says, nothing helps you enjoy your bidet like peeing in the street for a few hours. Give up bathing until you stink, and just a hot shower feels as good as a trip to Sonoma for a detoxifying mud enema. “Think of it,” Inky says, “as a kind of poverty sorbet, a nice little window of misery that helps you enjoy your real life. "
― Chuck Palahniuk , Haunted
117
" He'd say, "let's get the big, big surprise over and done with."
The earth, he'd say, is just a big machine, A big processing plant. A factory. That's your big answer. The big truth.
Thing of a rock polisher, one of those drums, goes round and round, rolls twenty-four/seven, full of water and rocks and gravel. Grinding it all up. Round and round. Polishing those ugly rocks into gemstones. That's the earth. Why it it goes around. We're the rocks. And what happens to us - the drama and pain and joy and war and sickness and abuse - why, that's just the water and sand to erode us. Grind us down. To polish us up, nice and bright.
That's what Mr. Whittier would tell you.
Smooth as glass, that's our Mr. Whittier. Buffer by pain. Polished and shining.
That's why we love conflict, he says. We love to hate. To stop a war, we declare war on it. We must wipe our poverty. We must fight hunger. We campaign and challenge and defeat and destroy.
As human beings, our first commandment is:
Something needs to happen. "
― Chuck Palahniuk , Haunted