The Rundown: Quotable edition

Fuck yeah grammarpunk

I love quotes and everything to do with them and so it seems fitting to base this edition of The Rundown on telling passages that sum things up perfectly. Like so:

* "Ethnographic studies have found that, during possession, ‘spirits’ may offer opinions or solutions to moral crises and may protect the individual from trauma and despair during times of violence." Mozambique's plague of spirit possessions.

* "If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away."

Running away from slavery was once considered a diagnosable mental illness.

* "There's stories of property owners who have court orders demanding their properties be left alone and they come in and demolish them" In Montgomery, the city government is using a local blight ordinance to target low-income homes — some in the middle of renovation or construction — for demolition. The owners are often billed for the cost and, when they can't pay (now being homeless) the city seizes the property for resale. Governments used to be at least more blunt about their intentions.

* "For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine." John Adams trash talks Thomas Paine. Epically.

* "There is a transexual prostitute on every floor, to satisfy customer requests" An interesting photo series on the quasi-legal Turkish brothels.

* "Each time your heart beats, your body moves..." A beautiful video on the zen of firing a gun.

Everyone Forever Now - "Shooting a Gun" from Everynone on Vimeo.