Quotes from a night spent Christmas shopping

"...the power of genuine art to transmit vitality. Just think all these different voices, these stories, these lives, available to us in books as gifts, for less than the price of a tank of gas."
- maureen corrigan, book review on 'fresh air,' 12.12.07

"You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise,
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life,
And they got no right."
- 'sleeping lessons,' the shins

"Where's the Mariah Carey?"
- fellow Target shoppers, looking at Christmas music

a strange kind of relief

...when one is watching Lou Dobbs on a large flat-screen television in a fast food restaurant and is starting to feel a certain knowing knotting in the stomach when words about the nation essentially committing suicide if it continues on the same path...

...and then breathing a lot easier when she realizes that it's Pat Buchanan who's being quoted.