Scientific Proof

"Nobody here need scientific proof that insects be the last living things. They already pretty close. We dying all the time, these roaches still climbing the walls and coming out the cracks."
(DeLillo. "Underworld")

Isä

machine*n. 1. an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task...... 3. a person who acts with the mechanical efficiency of a machine.

Opium Eater

"Some of these rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater is too happy to observe the motion of time." (De Quincy. "Confessions of an Opium Eater")

Kaamos

Kaamos is the time of year when people in northern Finland live in a dim blue twilight. There are only four hours of light during the day.
(outdoors.fi)

Erg

ERG. noun. The unit of work or energy in the centimeter-gram-second system. (A.Word.A.Day)

Blue Note

blue note*n. Music a minor interval where a major would be expected, used especially in jazz. (Oxford)

flickery jumping

"...this is the art that can't stand still, it climbs across your eyeballs night and day, the flickery jumping art of the slums and dumpsters, flashing those colours in your face - like I'm your movie, motherfucker." (DeLillo, "Underworld")

Glimpse

"He is pondering, he is thinking,
How to live or how survive
In this dismal hiding place,
In this narrowest of dwellings
Where he never saw the moon,
Never got a glimpse of sunlight."
(Kalevala)

My, My, My

My, my, my don't tell lies,
Keep fidelity in your head.
My, my, my, don't tell lies.
When you're done you should go to bed.
Don't say Hi like the spider to a fly.
Jump right ahead and you're dead.
(M. Jagger and K. Richards)

The Rose of the World

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? (Yeats)

Civilization

"Civilization did not rise and flourish as men hammered out hunting scenes on bronze gates and whispered philosophy under the stars, with garbage as a noisome offshoot, swept away and forgotten. No, garbage rose first, inciting people to build a civilization in response, in self-defense." (Delillo, "Underworld)

The Game

Men passing in and out of the toilets, men zipping their flies as they turn from the trough and other men approaching the long receptacle, thinking where they want to stand and next to whom and not next to whom, and the old ballpark's reek and mold are consolidated here, generational tides of beer and shit and cigarettes and peanut shells and disinfectants and pisses in the untold millions, and they are thinking in the ordinary way that helps a person glide through a life, thinking thoughts unconnected to events, the dusty hum of who you are, men shouldering through the traffic in the men's room as the game goes on, the coming and going, the lifting out of dicks and the meditative pissing. (DeLillo, "Underworld")