[sample: Day of the Dead, dir. George Romero, 1985]

We don't believe in what you're doing here, Sarah. Hey, you know what they keep down here in this cave? Man, they got the books and the records of the top 100 companies. They got the Defense Department budget down here. And they got the negatives for all your favorite movies. They got microfilm with tax return and newspaper stories. They got immigration records, census reports, and they got the accounts of all the wars and plane crashes and volcano eruptions and earthquakes and fires and floods and all the other disasters that interrupted the flow of things in the good ole U.S. of A. Now what does it matter, Sarah darling? All this filing and record keeping? We ever gonna give a shit? We even gonna get a chance to see it all? This is a great, big 14 mile TOMBSTONE! with an epitaph on it that nobody gonna bother to read. Now, here you come. Here you come with a whole new set of charts and graphs and records. What you gonna do? Bury them down here with all the other relics of what... once... was? Let me tell you what else. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you what else. You ain't never gonna figure it out, just like they never figured out why the stars are where they're at. It ain't mankind's job to figure that stuff out. So what you're doing is a waste of time, Sarah. And time is all we got left, you know. [Sarah: What I'm doing is all there's left to do.] Shame on you. There's plenty to do. Plenty to do, so long as there's you and me and maybe some other people. We could start over, start fresh, get some babies and teach 'em, Sarah, teach 'em never to come over here and dig these records out. You want to put some kind of explanation down here before you leave? Here's one as good as any you're likely to find. We've been punished by the Creator. He visited a curse on us. So we might get a look at... what hell was like. Maybe didn't want to see us blow ourselves up and put a big hole in the sky... maybe He just wanted to show us He was still the bossman. Maybe He figured we was getting too big for our britches... trying to figure His shit out.

[spoken word: fran]

i'm so sick
of white fatalism
in response to the climate crisis their parents created
i'm so sick
to my own bastard c section death i was born
upside down i was born bruised i was born
twisted
and i made it here, now, made it on the edge of my own
serrated blade and my teeth and my teeth and my teeth and my teeth
& you're giving up now?
over a little smoke and mirrors?
no. no. no. no. you made this bed, now come lay in it with me.
don't be scared, no, don't be scared,
didn't your mother want this for you? she did, didn't she, otherwise why didn't she stop them?
why didn't your father stop digging in the skin of the earth,
why didn't he quit coring the body that birthed him?
you're giving up now?
you wanna give up?

watch me take my long way home singing:

o death
o death
o death
won't you spare me over another year?
well what is this that i can see, with ice cold hands taking hold of me?
o death
my name is death, none can excel, i open the doors to heaven or hell
o death
my name is death and the end is near.

no, come back, come back, come back, come back,
i can't stand the sight of you, come back. come back,
i can't stand you, come here, i don't wanna die alone, you hear?
come hold my hand now with the hands that crush and kill and core,
your father's hands! you have your father's hands––
make them soft for me now, here, in the dusk of your world,
hold me, let me know i'm not alone & i'll smother you come daylight
and make this land my land again, make my body mine again,
take death, take birth, take life, take earth, everything, everything,
give it all back now! open your father's hands
or i swear to god
i will cut them open.