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Beginning With Santa Claus As A Cognitive Exercise, A Child Is Encouraged To Share The Same Idea Of Reality As His Peers. Even If That Reality Is Patently Invented And Ludicrous, Belief Is Encouraged With Gifts That Support And Promote The Common Cultural Lies. The Greatest Consensus In Modern Society Is Our Traffic Systems. The Way A Flood Of Strangers Can Interact, Sharing A Path, Almost All Of Them Traveling Without Incident. It Only Takes One Dissenting Driver To Create Anarchy.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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Beginning With Santa Claus

Chuck Palahniuk

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Beginning With Santa Claus As A Cognitive Exercise, A Child Is Encouraged To Share The Same Idea Of Reality As His Peers. Even If That Reality Is Patently Invented And Ludicrous, Belief Is Encouraged With Gifts That Support And Promote The Common Cultural Lies. The Greatest Consensus In Modern Society Is Our Traffic Systems. The Way A Flood Of Strangers Can Interact, Sharing A Path, Almost All Of Them Traveling Without Incident. It Only Takes One Dissenting Driver To Create Anarchy.

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She's Not Wearing Makeup So Her Face Just Looks Like Skin.

If Death Meant Just Leaving The Stage Long Enough To Change Costume And Come Back As A New Character, Would You Slow Down? Or Speed Up?

It’s A Fun Playtime. Please, Don’t Kill It With Big Words.

That Guy Behind Me On The Airplane? He's Been Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me. He's Kicking My Seat Because He Hates Me And I'm Gonna Kill Him. When We Get Off This Plane, I'm Gonna Make Eye Contact. I'm Gonna Kill That Guy. And All Of That Is Just Stuff In My Head, But It's Good To Get Rid Of That Stuff.

We've Spent So Much Time Judging What Other People Created That We've Created Very, Very Little Of Our Own.

I Don't Want To Die Without Any Scars.

I'm Not Sure What We're Running From. Nobody. Or The Future. Fate. Growing Up. Getting Old. Picking Up The Pieces. As If Running We Won't Have To Get On With Our Lives.

I Am Nothing, And Not Even That.

Nothing Happened, And Nothing Kept Happening.

If You're Not Drunk And Half Naked By This Point, You're Not Paying Attention.

Almost All The Time, You Tell Yourself You're Loving Somebody When You're Just Using Them. This Only Looks Like Love.

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Some Writers Research In Order To Write. I Write In Order To Research Topics That Interest Me. Especially If I Can Meet With Other People, In Forums From Illness Support Groups To Phone-sex Hotlines, And Learn What Other People Know Best.

We're All Going Overnight Express Delivery Straight To Hell.

There's A Big Difference Between "not Caring" Or Being "nihilistic" About A Topic And Simply Not Being Enrolled By The Drama Presented By Other People. Just Because My Characters Choose Not To React In Standard, Socially-appropriate Ways - That Does Not Mean They Don't Care. They Just Reject Ordinary Dramas.

I Might Be A Touch Of A Sadist And A Little Bit Jejune... But At Least I'm Not A Victim, Not Any Longer. I Hope. I Hope, Therefore I Am.

Men Are Destroyed For Being Rebellious, And Women Destroy Themselves By Failing To Be Rebellious. Unless You Can Make That Next Jump To Either Getting Along With People Or Resisting People, You Are Ultimately Destroying Yourself.

You Think Maybe If You Just Work Harder And Faster, You Can Hold Off The Chaos, But Then One Day You’re Changing A Patio Light Bulb With A Five-year Life Span And You Realize How You’ll Only Be Changing This Light Maybe Ten More Times Before You’ll Be Dead.

Everything You See Is Based On Fact Of A Event Thats Already Happen, Even Light Only Travels So Fast.

Find Out What You're Afraid Of And Go Live There.

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You Can't Teach God Anything.

Fight Club Book

I Don't Care What They Do With My Book So Long As The Flippin Check Clears.

Only In Death Will We Have Our Own Names Since Only In Death Are We No Longer Part Of The Effort. In Death We Become Heroes.

"getting Fired," Tyler Says, "is The Best Thing That Could Happen To Any Of Us. That Way, We’d Quit Treading Water And Do Something With Our Lives."

Anybody's True Nature Is Bullshit. There Is No Human Soul. Emotion Is Bullshit. Love Is Bullshit.

If It Comes Down To A Choice Between Being Unloved And Being Vulnerable And Sensitive And Emotional, Then You Can Just Keep Your Love.

Angel Says That Rich People Don't Like To Tolerate Much. Money Gives You Permission To Just Walk Away From Everything That Isn't Pretty And Perfect. You Can't Put Up With Anything Less Than Lovely. You Spend Your Life Running, Avoiding, Escaping.

I Spend Most Of My Life Just Listening To People.

You Can Tell A More Over-the-top Incredible Story If You Use A Nonfiction Form.

What People Forget Is A Journey To Nowhere Starts With A Single Step, Too.

I'm Always Identifying Some Fallacy In My Own Life. I'm Sort Of Making Fun Of Myself By Exploring And Unpacking Just Why I'm Sort Of Automatically Thrown To Be A Certain Way.

Some Soap Opera, You Know, Real People Pretending To Be Fake People With Made-up Problems Being Watched By Real People To Forget Their Real Problems.

I Figure If Eve Could Get Us Into This Mess, I Could Get Us Out. After All, God Really Likes To See A Go-getter.

Skin, Bones, Blood And Organs Transplant From Person To Person. Even What’s Inside You Already, The Colonies Of Microbes And Bugs That Eat Your Food For You, Without Them You’d Die. Nothing Of You Is All-the-way Yours. All Of You Is Inherited. Whatever You’re Thinking, A Million Other Folks Are Thinking. Whatever You Do, They’re Doing, And None Of You Is Responsible. All Of You Is A Cooperative Effort.

I Could Imagine Myself Becoming One Of Marla's Stories.

The Moment The World Declares A Person To Be Immortal, At That Moment The Person Will Strive To Prove The World Wrong. In The Face Of Glowing Press Releases And Reviews The Most Heralded Women Starve Themselves Or Cut Themselves Or Poison Themselves. Or They Find A Man Who's Happy To Do That For Him.

Disaster Is A Natural Part Of My Evolution Toward Tragedy And Dissolution.

I Am An Invisible Monster, And I Am Incapable Of Loving Anybody. You Don't Know Which Is Worse.

I Am The Cause Of All My Upsets. I Am My Worst Enemy.

I Try To Tell A Story The Way Someone Would Tell You A Story In A Bar, With The Same Kind Of Timing And Pacing.

You Can Make Mean Anything.

We Want You, Not Your Money. As Long As You're At Fight Club, You're Not How Much Money You've Got In The Bank. You're Not Your Job. You're Not Your Family, And You're Not Who You Tell Yourself. You're Not Your Name. You're Not Your Problems. You're Not Your Age. You Are Not Your Hopes. You Will Not Be Saved. We Are All Going To Die, Someday.

These Flowers Will Be Rotten In A Couple Hours. Birds Will Crap On Them. The Smoke Here Will Make Them Stink, And Tomorrow A Bulldozer Will Probably Run Over Them, But For Right Now They Are So Beautiful.

You Ever Wonder If Adam And Eve Were Just The Puppies God Dumped Because They Wouldn't House-train?

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We Come From A Generation Of People Who Need Their Tv Or Stereo Playing All The Time. These People So Scared Of Silence. These Soundaholics, These Quietophobics.

No Matter How Much You Think You Love Somebody, You'll Step Back When The Pool Of Their Blood Edges Up Too Close.

Hysteria Is Impossible Without An Audience. Panicking By Yourself Is The Same As Laughing Alone In An Empty Room. You Feel Really Silly.

Sometimes The Past Seems Too Big For The Present To Hold.

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Only After Disaster Can We Be Resurrected.

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Masochism Is A Valuable Job Skill.

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More Than One Side? You're Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Jackass!

Inspiration Needs Disease, Injury, Madness.

The World Is The Cradle And Your Trap.

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I'm In Love. So Kill Me.

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I Don't Remember The Hotel Rooms Or The Airports But I Always Remember The Events.

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Make Me Into Anything, But Just Love Me.

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I Haven't Shoplifted Since I Was 13.

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Fight Club Book

Where Every Day Doesn't Start With An Alarm Clock And End With The Television.

I Think Standardization Is Really The First Step To Something Being Commodified.

Find Value In What We've Been Taught Is Worthless.

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I Wanted To Destroy Everything Beautiful I'd Never Have. Burn The Amazon Rain Forests. Pump Chlorofluorocarbons Straight Up To Gobble The Ozone. Open The Dump Valves On Supertankers And Uncap Offshore Oil Wells. I Wanted To Kill All The Fish I Couldn't Afford To Eat, And Smother The French Beaches I'd Never See. I Wanted The Whole World To Hit Bottom.

We All Have Some Proper Noun To Blame.

Because I Can't Hit Bottom, I Can't Be Saved.

You Become Smart When You Don't Need To Quote Someone Anymore." I Am Still Stupid: I Quoted Chuck Palahiniuk

Maybe It's Our Sins That Give God Consolation When He Finally Has To Give Us Cancer.

Kids Grow Up Connected To Nothing These Days, Plugged In And Living Lives Boosted To Them From Other People.

I Spent My Life Attacking Everything Because I Was Too Afraid To Risk Creating Anything.

We'll Never Be As Young As We Are Tonight.

Honest Is How I Want To Look. The Truth Doesn't Glitter And Shine.

We're Consumers. We Are By-products Of A Lifestyle Obsession. Murder, Crime, Poverty, These Things Don't Concern Me. What Concerns Me Are Celebrity Magazines, Television With 500 Channels, Some Guy's Name On My Underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...

It's Exhausting, The Energy It Takes To Unknow A Truth.

Any Time Some Well-meaning Person Forces You To Demonstrate You Have No Talent And Rubs Your Nose In The Fact You're A Failure At The Only Dream You Ever Had, Take Another Drink.

Waiters Will Always Pee In Soup, People Will Always Fall In Love.

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Every Generation Wants To Be The Last.

Without Access To True Chaos, We'll Never Have True Peace. Unless Everything Can Get Worse, It Won't Get Any Better.

I Suppose It’s Comfort, Perhaps A Sense Of Self-control, Doing Worse Things To Yourself Than The World Will Ever Dare Inflict.

Am I Sleeping? Have I Slept At All? This Is Insomnia.

You Are Permanent, But This Life Is Not.

I'm Fascinated By The Whole Issue Of Arousal Addiction, Which Seems To Be Mostly A Problem For Young Men.

Language, She Said, Was Just Our Way To Explain Away The Wonder And Glory Of The World. To Deconstruct. To Dismiss. She Said People Can't Deal With How Beautiful The World Really Is. How It Can't Be Explained And Understood.

Tyler's Words Coming Out Of My Mouth. I Used To Be Such A Nice Person.

Portland In Particular Is A Cheap Enough Place To Live That You Can Still Develop Your Passion - Painting, Writing, Music. People Seem Less Status-conscious. Even Wealthy People Buy Second-hand Clothes And Look A Little Bit Homeless.

Me With Nothing Left To Lose, Plotting My Big Revenge In The Spotlight. Give Me Violent Revenge Fantasies As A Coping Mechanism.

Coping Mechanisms

You Love Me. You Ignore Me. You Save My Life, Then You Cook My Mother Into Soap.

On A Long Enough Time Line, The Survival Rate For Everyone Drops To Zero.

Did Perpetual Happiness In The Garden Of Eden Maybe Get So Boring That Eating The Apple Was Justified?

As A Lower-class Kid, I Was Raised To Think Success Would Be Owning Stuff. Having That Great Job, Too. Now I Find My Parents' Dream Was Wrong. You Never Really Own Anything. And You're Never Really Finished As A Person.

As The Child Outlives The Father,so Must The Character Bury The Author.

My Point Is, That If I'm Honest, My Life Is All About Me.

You Know, The Condom Is The Glass Slipper Of Our Generation. You Slip It On When You Meet A Stranger. You Dance All Night, Then You Throw It Away.

I've Been Choking To Death For Years. By Now This Should Be Easy.

The Liberator Who Destroys My Property Is Fighting To Save My Spirit. The Teacher Who Clears All Possessions From My Path Will Set Me Free.

Maybe This Is Why Misty Loved Him. Loved You. Because You Believed In Her So Much More Than She Did. You Expected More From Her Than She Did From Herself.

During The First World War, I Told Her, Hitler Had Been A Runner, Delivering Messages Between The German Trenches, And He Was Disgusted By Seeing His Fellow Soldiers Visit French Brothels. To Keep The Aryan Bloodlines Pure,and Prevent The Spread Of Venereal Disease, He Commissioned An Inflatable Doll That Nazi Troops Could Take Into Battle. Hitler Himself Designed The Dolls To Have Blond Hair And Large Breasts. The Allied Firebombing Of Dresden Destroyed The Factory Before The Dolls Could Ever Go Into Wide Distribution.

I Used To Work In A Funeral Home To Feel Good About Myself, Just The Fact That I Was Breathing.

Be Famous. Be A Big Social Experiment In Getting What You Don't Want. Find Value In What We've Been Taught Is Worthless. Find Good In What The World Says Is Evil. I'm Giving You My Life Because I Want The Whole World To Know You. I Wish The Whole World Would Embrace What It Hates. Find What You're Afraid Of Most And Go Live There.

The Worst Part Of Writing Fiction Is The Fear Of Wasting Your Life Behind A Keyboard. The Idea That, Dying, You'll Realize You Only Lived On Paper. Your Only Adventures Were Make-believe, And While The World Fought And Kissed, You Sat In Some Dark Room Masturbating And Making Money.

I Remember Selling My First Short Story And Thinking, Oh My God, I Sold Something For Fifty Dollars! That Gives Me The Authority To Say I'm A Writer And To Actually Write More Things! It Legitimized The Activity.

If You Can Change The Way People Think. The Way They See Themselves. The Way They See The World. If You Do That, You Can Change The Way People Live Their Lives. That's The Only Lasting Thing You Can Create.

Just For The Record, The Weather Today Is Increasing Turmoil With A Possible Physical And Emotional Breakdown.

I Am A Writer And The Greatest Compliment I Can Get Is To Know That I've Contributed Language To The Culture, That I've Defined Something, Given It A Name. So I Think That Is One Of The Great Things A Writer Can Do.

All Object Printed: Love Me. Look Me. Million Speaking Objects,begging. Crown American Consumer With Power Of King, To Rescue Choose And Give Home Or Abandon Here For Expire.

The Truth Is, Wherever You Choose To Be, It's The Wrong Place.

You're A Product Of Our Language, And How Our Laws Are And How We Believe Our God Wants Us. Every Bitty Molecule About You Has Already Been Thought Out By Some Million People Before You. Anything You Can Do Is Boring And Old And Perfectly Okay. You're Safe Because You're So Trapped Inside Your Culture. Anything You Can Conceive Of Is Fine Because You Can Conceive Of It. You Can't Imagine Any Way To Escape. There's No Way You Can Get Out.the World Is Your Cradle And Your Trap.

Ever Since College, I Make Friends. They Get Married. I Lose Friends.

The Trick To Forgetting The Big Picture Is To Look At Everything Close-up. The Shortcut To Closing A Door Is To Bury Yourself In The Details. This Is How We Must Look To God. As If Everything's Fine.

I Wanted To Write About The Moment When Your Addictions No Longer Hide The Truth From You. When Your Whole Life Breaks Down. That's The Moment When You Have To Somehow Choose What Your Life Is Going To Be About.

And It's Funny How When Somebody Saves You, The First Thing You Want To Do Is Save Other People. All Other People. Everybody. The Kid Never Knew The Man's Name. But He Never Forgot That Smile. "hero" Isn't The First Word, But It's The First Word That Comes To Mind.

The Same As Real Life, There Is No Happily Ever After.

The Only Difference Between Suicide And Martyrdom Is Press Coverage.

It Only Takes One Mistake,' The Dan Banyan Guy Says, 'and Nothing Else You Ever Do Will Matter.' With His Empty Hand, He Takes One Of My Hands. His Fingers Feel Hot, Fever-hot, And Pounding With His Heartbeats. He Turns My Hand Palm-up Saying, 'no Matter How Hard You Work Or How Smart You Become, You'll Always Be Known For That One Poor Choice.' He Sets The Blue Pill On My Palm, Saying, 'do That One Wrong Thing- And You'll Be Dead For The Rest Of Your Life.

Your Past Is Just A Story. And Once You Realize This It Has No Power Over You.

Griping Isn't The Same As Creating Something. Rebelling Isn't Rebuilding. Ridiculing Isn't Replacing. We've Taken The World Apart But We Have No Idea What To Do With The Pieces.

Give Me Lust, Baby. Flash. Give Me Malice. Flash. Give Me Detached Existentialist Ennui. Flash. Give Me Rampant Intellectualism As A Coping Mechanism. Flash.

Coping Mechanisms

Your Being Born Makes Your Parents God. You Owe Them Your Life, And They Can Control You. Then Puberty Makes You Satan, Just Because You Want Something Better.

Invisible Monsters

Cults Make People Sing So Hard For So Long - Because It Over-oxygenates The Blood And Sets Them Up To Faint.

Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God.

You Can’t Fool People Into Loving You.

You Can Only Hold A Smile For So Long, After That It's Just Teeth.

I'm Not So Much A Good Friend As I'm The Savior Who Wants You To Worship Him Forever.

Besides, It Happens Fast For Some People And Slow For Some, Accidents Or Gravity, But We All End Up Mutilated.

The World Can Be A Lot Better Than We Settle For. All You Have To Do Is Ask.

Because Tanning And Steroids Are Only A Problem If You Plan To Live A Long Time.

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I Know That When A Supersexy Older Girl With Hips And Breasts And Nice Hair Wants To Take Off Your Glasses And To Paint You A Smoky Eye She's Merely Trying To Enroll You In A Beauty Contest She's Already Won. It's A Kind Of Slummy, Condescending Gesture, Like When Rich People Ask Poor People Where They Summer. To Me, This Smacks Of A Blatant, Insensitive "let Them Eat Cake" Type Of Chauvinism.

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If Emotion Can Create A Physical Action, Then Duplicating The Physical Action Can Re-create The Emotion.

There's No Escaping Fate, It Just Keeps Going. Day And Night, The Future Just Keeps Coming At You.

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Every Time I Write Something, I Think, This Is The Most Offensive Thing I Will Ever Write. But No. I Always Surprise Myself.

The World Will Always Punish The Few People With Special Talents The Rest Of Us Don’t Recognize As Real.

No Matter How Much I Try And Hide This, Bit By Bit, I Start To Fall Apart.

Because Everything Up To Now Is A Story And Everything After Now Is A Story.

I Want My Whole Life Lined With A Topical Anesthetic.

Without True Chaos, We Can Never Have True Peace.

The World Of American Politics Is More Contentious Than It Has Ever Been In My Lifetime.

The Only Reason Why We Ask Other People How Their Weekend Was Is So We Can Tell Them About Our Own Weekend.

I Feel My Heart Ache, But I've Forgotten What That Feeling Means.

A Certain Number Of People Have To Live Their Lives Outdoors Between 8 A.m. And 8 P.m., And A Certain Number Of People Can Only Leave Their Homes Between 8 P.m. And 8 A.m. So Basically, Public Life Has To Be Lived In These Shifts, In Order For Everyone To Fit On The Streets Because There's Just No More Room For Any More Infrastructure, Any More Highways. So It Polarizes The Community Into Day People And Night People, And It Becomes Sort Of A Metaphor For Racism And Classism.

I See So Many Tattoos Of My Stuff On People - Tattoos Of My Book Covers, Tattoos Of Quotes . . . It's Kind Of Daunting Sometimes.

Where Would Jesus Be If No One Had Written The Gospels?

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The Girl Traced The Outline Of Her Lover's Shadow So She Would Always Have A Record Of How He Looked.

Marla Tells Me How In The Wild You Don't See Old Animals Because As Soon As They Age, Animals Die. If They Get Sick Or Slow Down, Something Stronger Kills Them. Animals Aren't Meant To Get Old. Marla Lies Down On Her Bed And Undoes The Tie On Her Bathrobe, And Says Our Culture Has Made Death Something Wrong. Old Animals Should Be An Unnatural Exception. Freaks.

It Takes A Lot To Get People Talking In Airplanes. But Once They Start Talking, You Just Can't Shut Them Up.

Everyone Wants To Be Tested And Challenged. Everyone Would Like A Good, Honest Fight To Exhaust Their Frustrations.

The Truth Is . . . You Think What People Want You To Think.

The Answer Is There Is No Answer.

We’d Turn Our Lives Into A Terrible Adventure. A True-life Horror Story With A Happy Ending. A Trial We’d Survive To Talk About.

Part Of Her Doing Suicide Intervention Is My Caseworker Has To Mix Me Another Gin And Tonic.

Just Keep Asking Yourself: What Would Jesus Not Do?

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The Greatest Weapon Any Warrior Can Carry Into Battle Is Absolute Certainty Of Her Eternal Soul.

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I Would Say Any Behavior That Is Not The Status Quo Is Interpreted As Insanity, When, In Fact, It Might Actually Be Enlightenment. Insanity Is Sorta In The Eye Of The Beholder.

Everyone Is Equal And Everyone Is Forced To Participate; You Can't Just Be A Spectator.

Everyone Is Equal

We're All Of Us Haunted And Haunting.

Sex Pretty Much Cures Everything.

All God Does Is Watch Us And Kill Us When We Get Boring. We Must Never, Ever Be Boring.

If You Don't Know What You Want, You End Up With A Lot You Don't.

Reality Means You Live Until You Die. The Real Truth Is Nobody Wants Reality.

If There’s Any Trick To Doing A Job You Hate . . . Mrs. Clark Says It’s To Find A Job You Hate Even More.

Years Of Living In The Hope That What You'll Get Will Be Better Than What You Have. Years Of Looking And Feeling Worse In The Hope That You Might Look Better.

The First Time We Meet Another Person An Insidious Little Voice In Our Heads Says, "i Might Wear Eyeglasses Or Be Chunky Around The Hips Or A Girl, But At Least I'm Not Gay Or Black Or A Jew." Meaning: I May Be Me- But At Least I Have The Good Sense Not To Be You.

Everyone Thinks Their Whole Life Should Be At Least As Much Fun As Masturbation.

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My Life Has Been About Living Like A Monk And Looking Like A Priest So That People Will Come Up To Me And Tell Me Their Most Appalling Stories. They Have To Make Their Confession To Somebody, And It Might As Well Be Me.

My Inventory Of People Who Can Save Me Is Down To Just Me.

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