Bearded, disheveled, and loud, Zizek looks like central casting's pick for the role of Eastern European Intellectual. Newspapers are lowered and conversations stop as a skittish waiter shows us to a small table in the far corner of the room. Barely pausing to sit down, Zizek launches into a monologue so learned and amusing that it could very well appear–verbatim–in one of the many books he has written about the obscene rules that sustain our supposedly civilized social practices. With lightning speed , he moves from the decline of British culture ("They took perfectly good tea, added milk, and made it look like filthy dishwater!") to Hollywood ("Brad Pitt's Seven Years in Tibet–a terrible movie!") to the Tibetan legal system ("a process of formalized bribery where opposing parties bid against each other in a ritualized auction–I absolutely love this!").

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.