When I saw him for the first time, he reminded me of a Ken doll. His skin was like thick rubber. His face had been sculpted, distorted to some surgeon's concept of perfection. It wasn't just the plasticity that bothered me, though, there was a meanness in his eye that his fake smile couldn't hide. An ugliness inside.

At the end of the night, with all the make up sweated out he's not nearly half as pretty. He's drunk and he's loud and he tells you that he will invest in interstellar trade, that you are petty and ungrateful, that you should learn how to shake the hand of a man. He tops it off by telling you that in ten years time, it will be 2015.

We don't really care. We laugh some times, others we shrug our shoulders. He's our boss and he's not worth the trouble. Serve him another drink, make it a double and make it strong. Call it bartenders' revenge, with a smile.

(Fight Club)

By Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber

A Hungarian lady receiving us at her house for dinner, telling us an anecdote of her time as a university physics professor. The English is fluent, but there's an accent to it, more Latin than Hungarian. The story went:



I used to work in labs a lot, I was doing my research. I had two assistants, and one day they walk into the lab carrying some stuff, it's early in the morning and they don't notice I'm in my office, just next door. I heard that they were talking and knew that they didn't know I was there, but I let them talk and I listend.



One of them was saying,

"Oh my god, I can't stand all these immigrants, coming over here, taking over, stealing our jobs, keeping our money. Last week a new abasto (a groceery store) opened outside my house."



And the other one says,

"Don't say that. I have an abasto outside my house too. Have you ever observed these Portuguese? Really watched them carefully?"



And the first one says, "No, why should I?"



And he says "Well I have. At 5am, their lights are on. At 7.30 they open for business. At one they close for lunch but don't even leave their shop, they just clean up. At two they open and stay open until 8. At 10 they're still in."



And the assisstant asked: "So?" because he couldn't get where the other was getting at.



"So, the other assistant says, "So you think any Venezuelan would be that stupid to work that much?"



She delivers the punchline masterfully and everybody laughs.

William Kentridge

"I'll be dead but never dying and I say that with a smile. It's just my way of trying to be alive." - Frank Turner, Vital Signs

‘You know, a minute ago I was telling you your job must be the best one in the world. I mean, you were getting to take out three girls for the night. Now it’s only getting better: they’re actually offering to pay for your drinks,’ Suzanne said.

‘Come now, this is a one-off, it’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing. It probably won’t happen again any time soon. It’s not really part of my job.’

‘Ha, come off it, won’t it be the same again tomorrow?’

I didn’t answer that. I couldn’t. Mostly because it was true.

So now it's official. After the ironic end of a permanent vacation, the Gallery has signed me up for what seems to be the best job in town.

Alex Supertramp, Ramblin' boy.

"I just felt so sorry for his mother. How could he do that to her?"

"You can't think like that, Pri" - a man, after all, must be his own self before he is anybody's son.

"Nobody gained anything from it. He didn't die for a cause, he died running away from society. Alex should have accepted that we live in a society."

"Society's not unescapable. It can't be: that's our very last hope."

"But still, he died."

"Maybe, but when he did he was perfectly free."

You see, some men will sail on until the day the seas dry up.