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 Ice
Cube 
 "It's
a tried and true way of dealing with people or nations that the
ruling elite finds troublesome or inconvenient -- whoever gets in
our way. They're simply lumped into the enemy pile. "
 "You
need gas money and a car that works. Of course, my preference is
to do it in the middle of the night! Leave them little presents,
you know what I'm saying? Like the Easter bunny." "Gregory
La Cava is probably the greatest classic Hollywood director still
in need of rediscovery. The man W. C. Fields called the best comedy
mind in Hollywood is virtually forgotten today."
 "The
surreal-ists wouldn't know what to do with Harvey Birdman. Its ingenious brand of adult animation owes as much to absurdists like Ionesco and Duchamp as it does to Bugs Bunny."  "There
is no one thing to know in Lord of the Rings more important
than the fact that everything is disappearing, and disappearing
fast."
 "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support
to our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be
laden with explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed,
peace be upon him." "There
was some-thing truly visceral about Cube's voice that made his ever-present snarl that much more serious. As he barked on Death Certificate and Amerikkka's, he was the nigga you love to hate as well as the wrong one to fuck with."  "I
really don't want to entertain you. I want to make you uncomfortable,
I want to make myself uncomfortable. Unless, of course, the
goal is to entertain you. There are different movies for different
needs."
 "It
is often that we find a corp-orate-controlled president who widens the gap between rich and poor and is involved in nefarious military adventures abroad in the White House, but this goofball is off the scale."  "
I think art and politics are directly related to each other,
and people that deny the cross-influence are kidding themselves."
 "I
wouldn't call it con-fidence or command, more like an overwhelming desire or drive to perform. Because I am a performer, I think, first and foremost. I am a teller of tales, and I want other people to hear."  "What
you're asking is, are there die-hard Star Trek fans?
Yes, there are. A lot of people out there still watch Star
Trek and like me for it. And this latest series is having
an effect. It's all good." "So
suck it up, level-headed liberals. The cut and squeeze conservatives are the real wolves in the forest. And it's time for us to knock hard on grandma's door and show our fellow Americans what sharp teeth they have."  "I'm
just being Zen about it. If I worried about keeping the
element of surprise, I wouldn’t have been able to make The
Sixth Sense."  "'I
should have known you'd like the action shot, honey,' he
said with a wink."  "Carbs
are the new terrorists. Bread is the new Bin Laden. I can't
wait to order a low-carb veggie Whopper. People are pathetic."
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by Ross Levine With profuse and profound apologies to Jonathan Swift. . . It is a melancholy object to those who travel through this great country, when they see the retirement villages, assisted-living communities, the dining establishments of Florida and Arizona with their early-bird specials, crowded with individuals of an advanced age, all in expectation of receiving their monthly stipend from the federal government. These citizens, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to accept a dole pilfered from the hard labor of their juniors, who as they themselves grow to maturity, face an uncertain financial future robbed of prosperity by those whose time is measured in months, not decades. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of old people on the backs, or (given the impending tsunami of boomer retirements) at the heels of those younger ones, is in the present deplorable state of the nation a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these old ones sound, useful members of the democracy, would deserve so well of the public as to have his or her statue set up as a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for seniors presently on social security; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of generations at a certain age who are born of parents whom in effect they will soon enough have to support, as the blood of the explorer sustains the leeches of the stream. As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, a 65-year-old just added to the social security rolls may not necessarily bankrupt the entire system, but will eventually help drag it toward its end; and it is exactly at age 75 that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their children or society, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their now much-lengthened lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the material health and intellectual progression of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent an overabundance of assisted suicides, and that horrid practice of heirs murdering their prodigal benefactors, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent elderly I suspect more to cauterize the latter’s hemorrhaging expenses than to mitigate their own shame of caring for a loved one of advanced age, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this republic being usually reckoned a bit short of 300 million, of these I calculate there may be about 25 million whose arteries are hardened with seven and a half decades of existence; from which number I subtract perhaps 5 million or so financially independent souls, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the democracy; but this being granted, there will remain 30 million federal old age pensioners. I again subtract a few hundred thousand for those who immediately meet their not-so-premature demise, and die by accident or pathology within a year of their seventy-fifth orbiting of the sun. There thus remains more than 19 million of these post 75ers on social security.
The question therefore is how this group, in ever-increasing numbers, shall be housed, fed and essentially provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible to sustain very long into the future by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; they neither build their own houses nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood, now that their senses are failing, although I confess they don't necessarily forget everything, and have some modicum of insight to offer humanity, though they can be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in Laguna Woods, California, formerly Leisure World, who, as postmaster there, protested to me that more federal dollars were passing through his hands than were being diverted to that burgeoning democracy in Iraq. I am assured by our merchants, that a man or a woman beyond 75 years of age is, at the present time, given our so-called humanitarian laws, no profitably salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not, again -- at this time, re-referencing the present “moral” climate -- yield any monetary value that might turn to account, either to their children or nation, the charge of nutriment and clothing, at prices ever soaring in value. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing Texan of my acquaintance in Crawford, a certain brush-clearing aristocrat, that an old, healthy retiree is at 75 years, an excellent candidate for recycling, in not just one but a whole manner of capacities, including, but not limited to, as a source of nourishment, as long as the select morsels are prepared at sufficient length to ameliorate any stringiness associated with too much time at pasture; and I make no doubt that he or she will equally serve in many other functions of re-use, such as to provide a quality of leather suitable for footwear, clothing and furnishings, as well as a resource for scientific and anatomical research, and, in some cases, organ transplantation, and even perhaps as expendable participants in military training exercises. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the 19 million elders already computed, 500,000 may be reserved for gerontological investigation en vivo, in equal parts male and female, lest any visitor from foreign nations or universes misconstrue our policies as a campaign to enforce a national standard of eternal youth, and that the remaining 18 and a half million may, between the ages of seventy-five and six, be offered in the sale to relatively young persons of sound stock investments and other indications of business acumen, who will then prepare them for market distribution, always advising the caretakers of these potential profit-makers to let them dine plentifully in the last month or so, so as to render them plump and hale for whatever their appointed purpose. Even a 90-year-old may contribute a component or two that may fulfill a need of friends, family or community, and may even have one or two parts well enough preserved to permit its reallocation to the body of a much younger individual with the ill luck to have debilitated his own. Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern that vast number of aged people, now and to be in the very near future the wards of our working taxpayers, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts on what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day unable to survive any more than at subsistence level on the money their present social security provides, and thus they as well as the country will be, in the end, happily delivered under my scheme from the burden their limited allowance inflicts upon them, and they thus inflict upon us. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.
For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of those fools who, having been indoctrinated into an earlier era, are not driven exclusively by greed, and still possess a modicum of desire to contribute to the public welfare, and don’t necessarily consider all taxes an evil forced upon them by the infamy of government. Secondly, the poorer among us, who have not been wont to respect and honor their parents, may now see them as a potential resource, and treat them more kindly until they have come of age, at which point they can profit from their filial dedication via the proceeds from the above-described recycling procedures. Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of 19 million elderly, from 75 years-old and upward, cannot be computed at less than $15,000 per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased a breathtaking $285 billion per annum, beside the profit of new commodities introduced to the marketplace for all gentlepersons in the land who have the refinement to recognize them, not to mention the health, financial and scientific advantages that will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture -- of us ourselves, so to speak. Fourthly, those with parents, stepparents and other variations on this theme, beside the revenue generated by the sale of each of these elders, will be rid of any additional charge of maintaining them after the 75th year, and will also be in improved position to collect their inheritance more promptly. Fifthly, this resource would likewise bring great fortune to its exploiters; where the truly entrepreneurial will certainly be so clever as to design the best recipes for converting these parasitic cast-offs into a panoply of valuable products and materials. Sixthly, this would be a great boon to family life and cohesion, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of children toward their mothers and fathers, when they were sure of a little pre-retirement settlement of their own in the profitable disposal of said parents, and would thus make them as fond of their parents in advanced age as they of them in childhood, not ever deigning to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of damaging this component of their nest egg. Many other advantages might be enumerated, but suffice to say that with the thousand of families in each city across the land, there would be constant customers for these “pre-owned" bodies which, in all certainty, would increase in value as, once we’ve moved beyond the ripening of the baby boomers, the supply became more scarce. I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the nation. This I freely own, and 'twas indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculate my above remedy for this one nation, the United States, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our citizens seventy-five cents to the dollar, to pay for Medicare and long-term care above and beyond the mere monthly incomes afforded by social security; of allowing the continuance of our ever-expanding trade deficit, which might be ameliorated with this new repository of domestically grown materiel; of seeing no good reason to introduce a vein of parsimony, prudence and sensibility to our treatment of the old and infirm. Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these proposals to rescue social security 'till he hath at least some glimpse of hope, that there will be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging the Administration. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, nor delayed usage, as ancient flesh is of too delicate a consistency to admit a long continuance in salt, though perhaps I could name a political party which, under any conditions and timetable, would be glad to eat up our entire nation, if such exploitation were allowed.
That said, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual for curing social security of its ills. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for 19 million useless mouths and backs? And secondly, there being a round 275 million of relatively “young” creatures in human figure throughout this nation, the great majority of whom are so subsumed in their own survival that to commit any portion of their wages to the survival of those who’ve already had their opportunity to leave a mark upon this Earth would leave them in an even greater state of penury; and so I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the elderly individuals today attempting to live on naught but their social security, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for parts at 75 years old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, or the indignities of confinement at a so-named “retirement home,” where, abandoned by family and society alike, they are left to live out their days like barnacles left high and dry on the rocks. I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by replenishing our resources, and relieving the social security system of its looming crisis. Personally, I have no elders by which I can propose to get a single penny, save for my own self, yet decades away from my own patriotic recycling. 15 February 05 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is. 
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