Lexicon

going! Jesus!”
    He walked back to the emergency room. He got close enough to see shapes against the dark glass. He knew what they were. There had to be two or three dozen corpses jammed up against the glass. And they were just the ones he could see. He wondered if it was airtight in there. The air could be toxic. It could actually kill him. He jogged back to the car.
    “Fuck!” said Eliot.
    “Hang on one second,” Wil said. “I just want to ask this. Are we sure we want to open this box? Because what’s inside, you know, it killed a lot of people. We are talking about something incredibly dangerous. It’s striking me as kind of stupid to walk on in there and try to pick it up. That seems like a big risk. You know? You say I’m immune, but do you know that for sure? What if I just avoided it somehow the last time? I lay in a ditch and it passed over my head? I’m just saying, that emergency room, it’s wall-to-wall dead people, Eliot. It’s wall-to-wall. And there’s, I don’t know, something about a room full of corpses that makes me think about whether I want to go in there. Don’t look at me like that. I know. I know.” He shook his head. “I’ll go in. I will. It’s just . . . you’re asking me to maybe die, Eliot. Give me a second. Give me one . . . I know you’re hurting. I’m going. But appreciate what I’m doing. That’s all I want. I want you to acknowledge . . . for one second . . . the simple fact that I’m about to die. All right? I’m probably about to die. I’m happy to do it. I’m going. It’s fine. I only wanted . . .”
    He turned away. He walked. The glass was so dark. His feet scuffed. He reached the emergency room doors. His fingers touched the door plate. It was warm. Like there was a beating heart inside. It wasn’t that. It was just the sun. Everything here was warm. He looked back at the Valiant but couldn’t see it behind the paramedic van.
    “If I don’t come out, Eliot,” he shouted, “fuck you!” His voice shook. He pushed open the door.

[III]

    And I, methinks, am gone astray
In trackless wastes and lone.
    — CHARLOTTE BRONTË “
Apostasy”

From: http://mediawatch.corporateoppression.com/community/tags/fox
    I just think it’s missing the point to get upset about bias in Fox News or MSNBC or whoever. I see this all the time: I mention to someone that I watch Fox and it’s like I just slaughtered a baby. They ask how can I watch that, it’s just propaganda, etc etc. And they know this not because they’ve ever sat down and spent any time with it but because
their
favorite news channel, i.e. a Fox competitor, sometimes plays a clip from a Fox show and it makes Fox look really stupid.
    Well, you know what, Fox does that, too. If I only watched Fox, I’d think you must be really stupid, watching that other show I see clips from on Fox sometimes.
    But I don’t just watch Fox, because the way to beat biased reporting isn’t to find the least biased one and put all your trust in that. First of all, they’re all biased, from the language they use and the framing down to the choices they make about which stories to report. The gap between the most biased news show and the least is pretty small, all things considered.
    But more importantly, relying on a single source of information means you can’t critically evaluate it. It’s like you’re locked in a room and every day I come in and tell you what’s happening outside. It’s very easy for me to make you believe whatever I want. Even if I don’t lie, I can just tell you the facts that support me and leave out the ones that don’t.
    That’s what’s happening if you’re getting all your news from one place. If you stop listening to someone the second you hear a word or phrase you’ve been taught belongs to the enemy, like “environment” or “job creators,” that’s what you’re doing. You might be an intelligent person, but once you let someone else filter the world for you, you have no way to critically analyze what you’re hearing. At best, absolute best case scenario, if they blatantly contradict themselves, you can spot that. But if they take basic care to maintain an internal logical consistency, which they all do, you’ve got nothing. You’ve delegated the ability to make up your mind.

[ONE]
    She tried to catch Harry at inconvenient moments. When he was stepping into the shower, or just after he closed his eyes at night, or reaching for the car door, late for work. “Do you