#collapse

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatter than the other?” asked Bell Pepper. The Drippy Man realized Bell Pepper was not looking at his sandwich but towards the inconsistency of his leg sizes. “You always get your kicks pointing out defects?” retorted The Drippy Man. “Just curious. Never seen anything like it before.” “I was raised not to feel shame and hide my legs in baggy pants.” “So you flaunt your deformity by wearing short shorts?” “Like you flaunt your pockmarks by not wearing a mask?” Bell Pepper backed away, kicking wide the screen door, making an exit to a porch over hanging a dune of sand that curved into a jagged upward jab of rock. “He is quite sensitive,” commented The Dry Advisor. “Who is he?” “A fellow who once manipulated the money in your wallet but now curses the fellow who does. ↗

— Jeff Phillips

#authors #books #conspiracy #dubai #dystopia

Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#dependent #easily #mechanisms #our #precarious

A couple of flop plays, a death in the family, and it could all collapse. ↗

— Patrick Marber

#could #couple #death #family #flop

A matter that seems to be very clear in terms of the alternative view, is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems, where people are poor, subject to repeat infections and all of that. Surely you would expect their immune systems to collapse. ↗

— Thabo Mbeki

#alternative #clear #collapse #expect #happen

Historians will likely give Obama credit for steering the country away from the brink of economic collapse in 2009. ↗

— Ron Fournier

#brink #collapse #country #credit #economic

If we have built on the fragile cornerstones of human wisdom, pride, and conditional love, things may look good for a while, but a weak foundation causes collapse when storms hit. ↗

— Charles Stanley

#causes #collapse #conditional #conditional love #cornerstones

It's almost sickening now that the regulators 'on the beat' while the biggest credit collapse in modern financial history unfolded are now patting themselves on the back for their 'brave' stance on short-selling! ↗

— James Chanos

#back #beat #biggest #brave #collapse

I usually point out that most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry. ↗

— Charles Francis Richter

#been #brick #collapse #due #i

I'd like to issue a call to realism for those of us in so-called developed industrial nations, who indulge in great horror at the gradual collapse of our own pathologically unsustainable mode of existence while ignoring the reality of the majority of this planet’s residents, who do not in fact share the same dread or anxiety about losing what most of them, frankly, never had to squander in the first place. ↗

— Brian Awehali

#climate-change #collapse #ecology #change

Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. ↗

— Arnold J. Toynbee

#civilizations #collapsed #history #moral #nineteen