What I'm Reading

“All these people,” said Japhy, “they all got white-tiled toilets and take big dirty craps like bears in the mountains, but it’s all washed away to convenient supervised sewers and nobody thinks of crap anymore or realizes that their origin is shit and civet and scum of the sea. They spend all day washing their hands with creamy soaps they secretly wanta eat in the bathroom.”

And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it’s such a sweet trap.

…

And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not a punishment.

McGowen [speaking about Faith McGowen, Ty Waner’s girlfriend and informal business partner], tall and lean and with somewhat unruly red hair, was friendly as she shushed her two large dogs and finished making a meal-replacement smoothie. Her home was a museum to her time with Ty Warner, and she seemed to live in a state of suspended reality–surrounded by her memories, waiting for the day when Warner would come back to her, just as the most optimistic speculators hope that Beanie Babies themselves will soon make a comeback.

*This was a really fascinating book about the dark underbelly of Ty Inc. And anyone in the technology industry today might glean something from the story of a popped bubble. 

I had felt that if I lived a life based on respect rather than abuse, my example might be followed by those in authority.

ANARCHY!!!