I've made my best notes sitting outside cafes on busy streets, or in murky bars in foreign cities. I sorted out a big series of problems in the novel… - Michael Marshall Smith

Fashion makes me furious. It always has. This summer we're all going to be wearing vermilion, are we? Says who? When we see a bikini made of squares of brightly colored plastic, why do we pretend anyone will wear it? Because, I snarled at Nina, this is what capitalism does to show off. It's our culture flopping out its dick. "Hey, you shadows in the non-English-speaking choas — just look at our surplus capacity. If we can piss all this time and effort away on such vacant crap, just imagine the gold and guns and grain we must have stashed away, how well fed and happy the citizens of Our World, Inc., must be." Except they aren't happy, and some of them aren't even very well fed — but nobody knows or cares what happens back behind these billboards for a better way of life, because life for the people who matter just keeps getting better. The whole country is turning into a muffin-padded panic room where MBAs and soccer moms sit reading books on how to love themselves more, as if that could even be remotely possible. They've turned smoky, cool coffee shops into places where the perky go to iBook the novel that will prove just how sensitive they are; made fuggy, scary bars into places that feel like Employee Relaxation Facilities of forward-thinking megacorporations. I was in a bar recently and it smelled of incense — how fucked up is that? Not smelling of cigarettes is bad enough , but spice lavender? Inside is not supposed to be fresher than outside, can't they see that? You can't stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn't there.<p>Part of the problem, I went on — my voice now easily as obnoxious as any around us — is that I could remember a world in which nobody ran. Now running is the new giving to charity. Running is wisdom. Running is the absolute good, our ritual walkway to the gods' approval and beneficence. Run and all will be well. If we were in charge of the Catholic Church, sainthood would be conferred according to the time the candidate spent wearing Nikes. "Sure, Father Brian did good works and saved lives and stuff, but what were his splits on the mile? Fater Nate? Forget it. That guy never ran a half-marathon in his life." We have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of what is reasonable or sane, while around the world the countries that don't have the time or luxury for this bullshit are getting ever more pissed at us for behaving like we own the whole playground. But who cares, right? A great new diet is racing up the charts! J-Lo got herself some new bling — just look how pretty she is! Who gives a crap what's happening in dusty shit-holes where they don't even speak American? Life's great! Crack open a decaf Zinfandel!

It was all a matter of hard work and luck, and Ryan didn't mind either of those. No, the stuff that wore you down was the parts where no amount or work seemed to make the difference, where luck simply wasn't there and wasn't coming and you couldn't seem to explain that to someone who had their heart set on the world being the way it was supposed to be, instead of the way it was.

Death is real. Death changes things. Everything else is filler, merely a message from our sponsor.