How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) or (Feed Chatter #.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"There was this one time? And I was flying along at night and I shined the light down at the ground, to look at the tops of all the suburb pods? And all over the top of them, it looked like it was moving, like there was a black goo? So I turned up the brightness, and I went down, and I shined it more bright, and it turned out the black moving goo was all these hordes of cockroaches. There were miles of them, running all over the tops of the domes. They kept on trying to get out of the light, so wherever you shined it, there would be this—" (22.24)
Feel free to read the plague of cockroaches as a symbol for the moral and ethical decay that's rampant in the near-future America that Anderson envisions. We certainly look at it that way.
Quote #5
Now that SchoolTM is run by the corporations, it's pretty brag, because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feeds. Also, it's good because that way we know that the big corps are made up of real human beings, and not just jerks out for money, because taking care of children, they care about America's future. It's an investment in tomorrow. When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what's the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom. (25.4)
Titus chatters away here about a very real concern in American society of today: the education crisis and the push from some sectors of society to dismantle the public school system and to make everything private. Sound good to you? Not in Anderson's view. All the right catchphrases are here—love that "investment in tomorrow"—but all the corporations really care about is investing in themselves.
Quote #6
"... what the President meant in the intercepted chat. This was, uh, nothing but a routine translation problem. It has to be understood, that... It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a 'big s***head,' what he was trying to convey was, uh--this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister's head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow. It really was a compliment. We should say again that any attempt to withdraw the Alliance's diplomatic presence from American soil will be taken as a sign of ill will, and, uh, we are likely to respond with the most stringent..." (FeedChatter5.1)
Looks like the President was busy running his mouth, and he insulted the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance. Note how he falls all over himself to give the absolutely ridiculous explanation that "big s***head" could actually really be a compliment. A for effort, but really, this is just one more of Feed's examples of American arrogance