When Toilet Paper Is Nowhere To Be Found

[SteveMR200]

The bench, beside a modern-looking drinks machine,
was exceedingly comfortable. Joshua Valiente was
not used to softness these days. Not used to the
fluffy feeling of being inside a building, where
the furnishings and the carpets imposed a kind
of quiet on the world.

Beside the luxurious bench was a pile of glossy
magazines, but Joshua was not particularly good
at shiny paper either.

Books? Books were fine. Joshua liked books,
particularly paperback books: light and easy to
carry, and if you didn't want to read them again,
well, there was always a use for reasonably thin
soft paper.

--Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
_The Long Earth_ [2012], Chapter 2

--
Steve

[SteveMR200]

On Wed, 06 May 2020 07:41:14 -0800, SteveMR200 wrote in message:
<pim5bf90apnsuc54l...@4ax.com>:

>Books? Books were fine. Joshua liked books,
>particularly paperback books: light and easy to
>carry, and if you didn't want to read them again,
>well, there was always a use for reasonably thin
>soft paper.
> --Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
> _The Long Earth_ [2012], Chapter 2

Don Juan looked at me for a moment and did not
seem at all surprised to see me, even though
it had been more than two years since I last
visited him.

He put his hand on my shoulder and smiled
gently and said that I looked different,
that I was getting fat and soft.

I had brought him a copy of my book. Without
any preliminaries I took it out of my brief
case and handed it to him. "It's a book about
you, don Juan," I said.

He took it and flipped through the pages as
if they were a deck of cards. He liked the
green color on the dust jacket and the height
of the book.

He felt the cover with his palms, turned it
around a couple of times and then handed it
back to me. I felt a great surge of pride.

"I want you to keep it," I said.

He shook his head with a silent laugh.
"I better not," he said, and then added
with a broad smile: "You know what we do
with paper in Mexico."

--Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998)
_A Separate Reality_ [1971]; Part 1, Chapter 1

--
Steve

[SteveMR200]

On Wed, 06 May 2020 07:41:14 -0800, SteveMR200 wrote in message:
<pim5bf90apnsuc54l...@4ax.com>:

>Books? Books were fine. Joshua liked books,
>particularly paperback books: light and easy to
>carry, and if you didn't want to read them again,
>well, there was always a use for reasonably thin
>soft paper.
>
> --Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
> _The Long Earth_ [2012], Chapter 2

The solution to the banality of evil is, for
better or worse, the banality of good.

A low-grade, consistent and often quite
irritating insistence that we, and all
the institutions we create, treat every
individual equitably, in all things.

Boring, right? Kindergarten stuff, and
why should we do it when all those
[fill in the blank] aren't doing it?
What are we, saps?

No. We are warriors, battling the most
dangerous horseman, the one who would
take peace from the Earth and cause
men to slay one another--with sword,
with famine, with plague and with the
wild beasts of the earth including,
at times, ourselves.

That guy we can stop. And we'd best
do it right quick, because if you think
the toilet paper shortages were bad
during the early days of the pandemic,
you do not want to see what happens
during those years of Tribulation.

--Mary McNamara
_Los Angeles Times_ [September 2, 2020],
"I Thought The Apocalypse Would Involve Fewer
Zoom Meetings And More Lava. Lessons Of 2020"

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-09-02/covid-19-racism-inequality-2020-feels-like-apocalypse

--
Steve