Beat the Reaper

Ah, youth. It's like heroin you've smoked instead of snorted. Gone so fast you can't believe you still have to pay for it.

When God is truly angry, He will not send vengeful angels. He will send Magdalena. Then take her away.

It's a weird curse, when you think about it. We're built for thought, and civilization, more than any other creature we've found. And all we really want to be is killers.

what a fascinating mix a hospital can be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way.

Calling a tongue piecing 'cosmetic' is a bit of a stretch, since you don't get one because it makes you look better. You get one because you're so desperate for affection that you're willing to gruesomely harm yourself to advertise how well you suck dick.

If you're going to be soulless, you should at least consider outsourcing your conscience to someone else.

So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!

The journey from shame to resentment is the shortest on there is.

The fucking beef industry and the fucking HMO industry,' Friendly says. 'Al-Cowda and HMOsama.

But rituals turn us all into fucking idiots. Like those birds that sleep with their heads facing backwards because their ancestors slept with their heads under their wings. Plutarch says carrying new wives across thresholds is stupid because we don't remember that it refers to the rape of the Sabine women - and that's fucking Plutarch, two thousand years ago. We still draw the Reaper with a scythe. We should draw him driving a John Deere for Archer Daniels Midland.

that look you get after every bone in your face has been broken at least once and then allowed to set without medical attention

Deliverance' is The Godfather for crackers.

My medical students. Two cups of human misery in short white coats. One is male and the other one female, and they both have names. That's all I can ever remember about them.

Llamar "intervención estética" a un piercing en la lengua es un poco elástico, habida cuenta de que no se lo ha hecho para estar más guapa. Se lo ha hecho porque está tan falta de cariño que no duda en causarse un grave perjuicio a sí misma para anunciar lo bien que chupa la polla.

So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me! Naturally there's a gun. He comes up behind me and sticks it into the base of my skull. It’s cold, and it actually feels sort of good, in an acupressure kind of way. “Take it easy, Doc,” he says.

I should say here that being chronically sleep-deprived is so demonstrably similar to being drunk that hospitals often feel like giant, ceaseless office Christmas parties. Except that at a Christmas party the schmuck standing next to you isn't about to fillet your pancreas with something called a “hot knife.

Camino del parque me pregunta Mershawn cómo sabía que el tío tenía enfisema, y le enumero los síntomas visibles que mostraba. Luego le digo: - Lección de hoy, Mershawn. ¿Quiénes silban? - ¿Los gilipollas? - Vale. ¿Quién más? Mershawn reflexiona un instante. - La genet que está pensando en algo y que, de manera subliminal, lo asocia a una canción. Como cuando examinas un nervio del undécimo par craneal y empiezas a silbar "Mantén la cabeza erguida". - Bien - apruebo -. Pero mucha gente también silba porque subconscientemente intenta incrementar la presión de aire en los pulmones, para hacer que pase más oxígeno entre los tejidos. - No joda. - Sin joder. ¿Te acuerdas de los enanitos de Blancanieves, que trabajan en la mina? - Sí, vale. - Si tienes silicosis, también te dejas el culo silbando. - La hostia. - Eso. Hasta llegar a la esquina me siento como el Profesor Marmoset.