adam

- jg ballard

i was traveling with the intolerable kid on the nova lark -we were on the nod after a rumble in the crab galaxy involving this two-way time stock; when you come to the end of a biologic film just run it back and start over - nobody knows the difference - like nobody there before the film. so they start to run it back and the projector blew up and we lammed out of there on the blast - holed up in those cool blue mountains the liquid air in our spines listening to a little high-fi junk note fixes you right to metal and you nod out a thousand years. just sitting there in a slate house wrapped in orange flesh robes, the blue mist drifting around us when we get the call - and as soon as I set foot on podunk earth i can smell it that burnt metal reek of nova. "already set off the charge," i said to i&i (immovable and irresistible) - "this is a burning planet - any minute now the whole fucking shit house goes up."

- william burroughs

great chicago glowed red before our eyes. we were suddenly on madison street among hordes of hobos, some of them sprawled out on the street with their feet on the curb, hundreds of others milling in the doorways of saloons and alleys ... we let out the hobos on this street and proceeded to downtown chicago. screeching trolleys, newsboys, gals cutting by, the smell of fried food and beer in the air, neons winking - 'we're in the big town, sal! whooee!' first thing to do was park the cadillac in a good dark spot and wash up and dress for the night. across the street from the ymca we found a redbrick alley between buildings, where we stashed the cadillac with her snout pointed to the street and ready to go, then followed the college boys up to the y, where they got a room and allowed us to use their facilities for an hour. dean and i shaved and showered. i dropped my wallet in the hall. dean found it and was about to sneak it in his shirt when he realized it was ours and was right disappointed ... but we forgot that and headed straight for north clark street, after a spin in the loop, to see the hootchy-kootchy joints and hear the bop. and what a night it was. 'oh, man,' said dean to me as we stood in front of a bar, 'dig the street of life, the chinamen that cut by in chicago. what a weird town - wow, and that woman in that window up there, just looking down with her big breasts hanging from her nightgown, big wide eyes. whee. sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.'

- jack kerouac

the menace is loose again, the hell's angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches ... like genghis khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know ... ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on ... little jesus, the gimp, chocolate george, buzzard, zorro, hambone, clean cut, tiny, terry the tramp, frenchy, mouldy marvin, mother miles, dirty ed, chuck the duck, fat freddy, filthy phil, crazy cross, puff, magoo, animal and at least a hundred more ... tense for the action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down harleys flashing chrome as traffic on 101 moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder.

- hunter s thompson