Guesses based on guesses are of no value. - Tim Powers

He felt as if someone far away below in the darkness was chipping away at the pillars of his mind, and the steady crack...crack...crack of it was the only sound in the universe.

In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they’d been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he’d tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog’s leg.

“This fruit syrup stuff is no good for smoking; it’s only fit for impressing ignorant girls.”
Tyler shrugged, as if to say that that was reason enough to smoke it right there.