Then he thought about what Bill himself might want. It was easy to guess. ‘Bill,’ he said, ‘I like you so much, and I am such a big shot in the Universe, that I will make your three biggest wishes come true.’ He opened the door of the cage, something Bill couldn’t have done in a thousand years.
Bill flew over to a windowsill. He put his little shoulder against the glass. There was just one layer of glass between Bill and the great out-of-doors. Although Trout was in the storm window business, he had no storm windows on his own abode.
‘Your second wish is about to come true,’ said Trout, and he again did something which Bill could never have done. He opened the window. But the opening of the window was such an alarming business to the parakeet that he flew back to his cage and hopped inside.
Trout closed the door of the cage and latched it. ‘That’s the most intelligent use of three wishes I ever heard of,’ he told the bird. ‘You made sure you’d still have something worth wishing for—to get out of the cage.’
Logic - All i Do
This is elevator music, all we do is ride around and get high to it.
Have you ever noticed how horrifying those smiley french fries are in groups?
they’re like
you’re burning us alive
our insides are melting
hELP US
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had a terrible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and posture. They carried their reputations.
When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate of an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote.
We must live, I’m afraid, with the shadows of imperfection.
