Alternative Rock Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Alternative Rock. Here they are! All 100 of them:

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
Maybe we should have this conversation in an alternate universe where Alternate Indy gives a shit what Alternate Lee wants her to wear.
Kristen Ashley (Rock Chick (Rock Chick, #1))
A Short Alternative Medical Dictionary Definitions courtesy of Dr Lemuel Pillmeister (also known as Lemmy) Addiction - When you can give up something any time, as long as it's next Tuesday. Cocaine - Peruvian Marching Powder. A stimulant that has the extraordinary effect that the more you do, the more you laugh out of context. Depression - When everything you laugh at is miserable and you can't seem to stop. Heroin - A drug that helps you to escape reality, while making it much harder to cope when you are recaptured. Psychosis - When everybody turns into tiny dolls and they have needles in their mouths and they hate you and you don't care because you have THE KNIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
Creativity is the catalyst to the future.
Ann Marie Frohoff
I had to soften him up because, for whatever reason, all the Rock Chicks had an alternate Hot Bunch guy, Indy's was Eddie. Roxie's was Vance. Jules was Luke. Ava's was Lee. Mine was Mace.
Kristen Ashley (Rock Chick Reckoning (Rock Chick, #6))
It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos. What it's going to be, I don't know. Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And maybe knowing isn't the point. Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
Finally, she took him in, all wet and sexy beneath her. Every breath and groan echoed over the water. She alternated her gaze from the stars in heaven to the rock star that was currently her heaven.
Lisa Gillis (Weathering Jack Storm (Silver Strings G, #2))
The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
Let heartbreak be alternative to coffe break, five midmorning minutes devoted to emotion.
Thylias Moss (Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky)
She wondered what it said about her spiritual fitness that her clearest messages from the Almighty seemed to come from the alternative rock station.
Julia Spencer-Fleming (All Mortal Flesh (The Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries #5))
I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house. I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped.
Gayle Forman (Where She Went (If I Stay, #2))
You all know I’m queer, but I still have to play the cool hijabi[…] The not too religious hijabi, the hijabi who can rock it with the alternative crowd, who won’t judge you, who will be accepting and tolerant, the Good Muslim. I’m in full on silent rant mode now. Unlike those Bad Muslims, the religious ones, the ones who are inconvenient in their practice, the ones you have to pause for as they break their fasts, the ones who have to step out to pray. The marginalized ones you would fight for, organize for, protest for, but would never be friends with, who you would studiously avoid at a brunch. I’m the cool hijabi only because you’re projecting your xenophobic narrow-mindedness, your lack of imagination of Muslims into me. You’re still projecting them. Your prejudices are still in the room.
Lamya H. (Hijab Butch Blues)
The waves smash against rocks, boulder thunders upon bolder. Granite men grind one another, leaving their clean sand to floor the ocean. The alternative would be for the republic to breed up a race of men who could work together without growing violent: men more interested in getting somewhere than having their own way." Haniel Long: Homestead 1892: Pittsburgh Memoranda.
Haniel Long (Pittsburgh Memoranda)
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Alexander Pope (An Essay On Criticism)
In broad strokes, punk happened after arena rock like Jimmy Carter happened after Watergate: there was enough revulsion to momentarily contemplate an alternative, but then the underlying conservative dynamic reasserted itself.
Eric Weisbard
It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of our time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos. What it's going to be, I don't know. Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And maybe knowing isn't the point. Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
The highest goodness is like water. Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.
J.C. Cooper
Punk is not just the sound, the music, punk is a lifestyle.
Billie Joe Armstrong (American Idiot)
Gabriel had never given up on anything in his life. When obstacles appeared, he found an alternate route.
Nalini Singh (Rock Hard (Rock Kiss, #2))
The trend toward narcissistic flair has been responsible in large part for smiting rock with the superstar virus, which revolves around the substituting of attitudes and flamboyant trappings, into which the audience can project their fantasies, for the simple desire to make music, get loose, knock the folks out or get ‘em up dancin.’ It’s not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is figure a way of getting yourself associated in the audience’s mind with their pieties and their sense of “community,” i.e., ram it home that you’re one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth.
Lester Bangs (Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung)
We tend to make big changes only when tragedy strikes. We tend to look for alternative paths only when we feel we've hit rock bottom. We tend to ask existential questions about happiness only when we are at our most miserable.
Shivya Nath (The Shooting Star)
I haven't heard anything new that I've liked on the show. A lot of the bands we play with are just bad, especially those alternative rock bands. They can do it in the studio but they can't play live... I see the audience applauding while they're playing, and I wonder if it's just because they're fans of the band and don't care, or out of spite. Because it certainly isn't because they sound good. Branford Marsalis on the musical acts booked on The Tonight Show.
Branford Marsalis (Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness)
...a condemned man who, at the hour of death, says or thinks that if the alternative were offered him of existing somewhere, on a height of rock or some narrow elevation, where only his two feet could stand, and round about him the ocean, perpetual gloom, perpetual solitude, perpetual storm, to remain there standing on a yard of surface for a lifetime, a thousand years, eternity! - rather would he live thus than die at once? Only live, live, live! - no matter how, only live!
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)
It has been Anita’s style as a geologist to begin with an outcrop and address herself to history from there—to begin with what she can touch, and then to reason her way back through time as far as she can go. A river conglomerate, as tangible rock, unarguably presents the river. The river speaks of higher ground. The volume of sediment that the river has carried can imply a range of mountains. To find Precambrian jaspers in the beds of younger rivers means that the Precambrian, the so-called basement rock, was lifted to form the mountains. These are sensible inferences drawn cleanly through an absence of alternatives. To go back in this way, retrospectively, from scene to shifting scene, is to go down the rock column, groping toward the beginning of the world. There is firm ground some of the way. Eventually, there comes a point where inference will shade into conjecture. In recesses even more remote, conjecture may usurp the original franchise of God.
John McPhee (Annals of the Former World)
It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily - a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest. 'Here we go, baby!' he shouts, teeth bared. 'Now I'm going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain!...' There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock - and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage. ("Jane Browns Body")
Cornell Woolrich (The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich (Alternatives SF Series))
So many ruins bear witness to good intentions which went astray, good intentions unenlightened by any glimmer of wisdom. To bring religion to the people is a fine and necessary undertaking, but this is not a situation in which the proposed end can be said to justify the means. The further people have drifted from the truth, the greater is the temptation to water down the truth, glossing over its less palatable aspects and, in short, allowing a policy of compromise to become one of adulteration. In this way it is hoped that the common man – if he can be found – will be encouraged to find a small corner in his busy life for religion without having to change his ways or to grapple with disturbing thoughts. It is a forlorn hope. Standing, as it were, at the pavement’s edge with his tray of goods, the priest reduces the price until he is offering his wares for nothing: divine judgement is a myth, hell a wicked superstition, prayer less important than decent behaviour, and God himself dispensable in the last resort; and still the passers-by go their way, sorry over having to ignore such a nice man but with more important matters demanding their attention. And yet these matters with which they are most urgently concerned are, for so many of them, quicksands in which they feel themselves trapped. Had they been offered a real alternative, a rock firm-planted from the beginning of time, they might have been prepared to pay a high price.
Charles Le Gai Eaton (King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World (Islamic Texts Society))
Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism – on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
I bet the people living in the timeline where Hillary is president are laughing at us. They’re probably sipping lattes and giggling: “Imagine if Trump had won! Can you even imagine what that clusterfuck would look like?” But even in their wildest dreams they wouldn’t come up with the unimaginable clusterfuck that our timeline is.
Oliver Markus Malloy (Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes (Malloy Rocks Comics Book 1))
He was moving in the chair. Imperceptibly. Tiny violent movements, from side to side. Like he was fighting two alternating opponents, one on his left, one on his right. Like he knew he had to tell me where he had been, but like he knew he couldn’t. He was jumping around like the absolute flesh-and-blood definition of a rock and a hard place.
Lee Child (The Enemy (Jack Reacher, #8))
This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock ’n’ roll. You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything—no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself.
Joe Clifford (Junkie Love)
I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
Textbooks could present American Indian religions from a perspective that takes them seriously as attractive and persuasive belief systems.64 The anthropologist Frederick Turner has pointed out that when whites remark upon the fact that Indians perceive a spirit in every animal or rock, they are simultaneously admitting their own loss of a deep spiritual relationship with the earth. Native Americans are “part of the total living universe,” wrote Turner; “spiritual health is to be had only by accepting this condition and by attempting to live in accordance with it.” Turner contends that this life view is healthier than European alternatives: “Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive.”65 Thus, Turner shows that taking Native American religions seriously might require reexamination of the Judeo-Christian tradition. No textbook would suggest such a controversial idea.
James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong)
Holy crap!” I clenched the wad of hair and looked at Gertie, alternating between scared and hacked that I was scared over something as stupid as hair. “What do I do?” She handed me a brush. “Brush that top piece over it. See if it covers.” I lifted the straightened piece that I’d flopped over her head and brushed it back, but no dice. “Her hair is too thin for it to cover.” Gertie felt the stump of burned hair. “This is hard as a rock. It’s going to push that straight fine hair out like a tent.” I reached into my pocket. “Is anyone looking?
Jana Deleon (Lethal Bayou Beauty (Miss Fortune Mystery, #2))
We are at stake to each other...We are all lichens, so we can be scraped off the rocks by the Furies, who still erupt to avenge crimes against the Earth. Alternatively, we can join in the metabolic transformations between and among rocks and critters, for living and dying well. "Do you realize," the phytolinguists will say to the aesthetic critic, "that once upon a time, they couldn't even read eggplant?" And they will smile at our ignorance, as they pick up their rucksacks and hike on up to read the newly deciphered lyrics of the lichen on the north face of Pike's Peak.
Donna Haraway, "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene" (Chapter 2)
Having read this short history of the lawn, when you now come to plan your dream house you might think twice about having a lawn in the front yard. You are of course still free to do it. But you are also free to shake off the cultural cargo bequeathed to you by European dukes, capitalist moguls and the Simpsons – and imagine for yourself a Japanese rock garden, or some altogether new creation. This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom – we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
Thought Control * Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth * Adopt the group’s “map of reality” as reality * Instill black and white thinking * Decide between good versus evil * Organize people into us versus them (insiders versus outsiders) * Change a person’s name and identity * Use loaded language and clichés to constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts, and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzzwords * Encourage only “good and proper” thoughts * Use hypnotic techniques to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking, and even to age-regress the member to childhood states * Manipulate memories to create false ones * Teach thought stopping techniques that shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts. These techniques include: * Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking * Chanting * Meditating * Praying * Speaking in tongues * Singing or humming * Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism * Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy * Label alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful * Instill new “map of reality” Emotional Control * Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings—some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong, or selfish * Teach emotion stopping techniques to block feelings of hopelessness, anger, or doubt * Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault * Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as: * Identity guilt * You are not living up to your potential * Your family is deficient * Your past is suspect * Your affiliations are unwise * Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish * Social guilt * Historical guilt * Instill fear, such as fear of: * Thinking independently * The outside world * Enemies * Losing one’s salvation * Leaving * Orchestrate emotional highs and lows through love bombing and by offering praise one moment, and then declaring a person is a horrible sinner * Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins * Phobia indoctrination: inculcate irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority * No happiness or fulfillment possible outside the group * Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc. * Shun those who leave and inspire fear of being rejected by friends and family * Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll * Threaten harm to ex-member and family (threats of cutting off friends/family)
Steven Hassan
Reach out to the younger generation—not to advise them but to learn from them, gain energy from them, and support them on their way. Erik Erikson called this kind of reaching out “generativity,” an alternative to the “stagnation” of age that sooner or later leads to despair. 2. Move toward whatever you fear, not away from it. I try to remember the advice I was given on an Outward Bound course when I was frozen with fear on a rock face in the middle of a 100-foot rappel: “If you can’t get out of it, get into it!” If, for example, you fear “the other,” get into his or her story face-to-face, and watch your fear shrink as your empathy expands. 3. Spend time in the natural world, as much time as you can. Nature constantly reminds me that everything has a place, that nothing need be excluded. That “mess” on the forest floor—like the messes in my own life— has an amazing integrity and harmony to it.
Parker J. Palmer (On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, & Getting Old)
A five-foot rattlesnake was sunning on another flat rock fifty feet away. It raised its mean wedge-shaped head and studied him. As a boy, he had killed scores of rattlers in these hills. He withdrew the gun from the backpack and rose from the rock. He took a couple of steps toward the snake. The rattler rose farther off the ground and stared intensely. Travis took another step, another, and assumed a shooter's stance, with both hands on the gun. The rattler began to coil. Soon it would realize that it could not strike at such a distance, and would attempt to retreat. Although Travis was certain his shot was clear and easy, he was surprised to discover that he could not squeeze the trig ger. He had come to these foothills not merely to attempt to recall a time when he had been glad to be alive, but also to kill snakes if he saw any. Lately, alternately depressed and angered by the loneliness and sheer pointlessness of his life, he had been wound as tight as a crossbow spring. He needed to release that tension through violent action, and the killing of a few snakes-no loss to anyone-seemed the perfect prescription for his distress. However, as he stared at this rattler, he realized that its existence was less pointless than his own: it filled an ecological niche, and it probably took more pleasure in life than he had in a long time.
Dean Koontz (Watchers)
«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»
Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons. A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
Silvanus, the camp prefect, took a step forward. I heard his voice every morning after parade, but had never listened to the tones of it as I did now. He was not afraid, that much was clear; he was angry. "Pathetic. I should cashier you all now and destroy your Eagles." Silvanus spoke quietly; we had to strain to hear his voice. You could have heard the stars slide across the sky, we were so still and so silent. "If General Corbulo were here, he would destroy you. He dismissed half of the Fifth and the Tenth and sent them home. The rest are billeted in tents in the Armenian highlands with barley meal for fodder. He intends to make an army of them, to meet Vologases when he comes. I intend the same and therefore you will be treated the same as your betters in better legions. You will be proficient by the spring, or you will be dead." His gaze raked us, and we wondered which of us might die that night for the crime of being ineffectual. His voice rocked us. "To that end, you will spend the next three months in tents in the Mountains of the Hawk that lie between us and the sea. One hundred paces above the snow line, each century will determine an area suitable for three months’ stay and build its own base camp. You will alternate along the mountains’ length so that each century of the Fourth has a century of the Twelfth to either side, and vice versa. Each century will defend and maintain its own stocks against the men of the opposing legion; you are encouraged to avail yourselves of what you can. You may not remove stocks from camps belonging to other centuries of your own legion, and equally you may not aid in defending them against raiding parties from the opposing men. So that you may tell each other apart, the Twelfth legion will wear" – did I hear a note of distaste there? – "red cloth tied about their left arms at all times. The Fourth will wear blue. You will be provided with raw fleece with which to wrap your weapons that they might strike but not bite. A man who is careless enough to be captured by the other side will be flogged and returned to his unit. Any man who kills another will be flogged until dead and any man who wounds another will be staked out beyond the boundary of his camp for two days and nights; if he lives, he will be returned to his unit. Any man who dies of hunger, cold or fright, or who falls off the mountain, will be deemed to have died by his own hand. You have until the next watch to make ready. You are dismissed.
M.C. Scott (Rome: The Eagle of the Twelfth (Rome, #3))
The heart of rock will always remain a primal world of action. The music revives itself over and over again in that form, primitive rockabilly, punk, hard soul and early rap. Integrating the world of thought and reflection with the world of primitive action is *not* a necessary skill for making great rock 'n' roll. Many of the music's most glorious moments feel as though they were birthed in an explosion of raw talent and creative instinct (some of them even were!). But ... if you want to burn bright, hard *and* long, you will need to depend on more than your initial instincts. You will need to develop some craft and a creative intelligence that will lead you *farther* when things get dicey. That's what'll help you make crucial sense and powerful music as time passes, giving you the skills that may also keep you alive, creatively and physically. The failure of so many of rock's artists to outlive their expiration date of a few years, make more than a few great albums and avoid treading water, or worse, I felt was due to the misfit nature of those drawn to the profession. These were strong, addictive personalities, fired by compulsion, narcissism, license, passion and an inbred entitlement, all slammed over a world of fear, hunger and insecurity. That's a Molotov cocktail of confusion that can leave you unable to make, or resistant to making, the lead of consciousness a life in the field demands. After first contact knocks you on your ass, you'd better have a plan, for some preparedness and personal development will be required if you expect to hang around any longer than your fifteen minutes. Now, some guys' five minutes are worth other guys' fifty years, and while burning out in one brilliant supernova will send record sales through the roof, leave you living fast, dying young, leaving a beautiful corpse, there *is* something to be said for living. Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and *here*. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando—they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways. Plus, to those you've received so much from, so much joy, knowledge and inspiration, you wish life, happiness and peace. These aren't easy to come by.
Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.
Neil Gaiman (American Gods)
Do you often overlook the alternatives? Forget about the rock and the hard place, and open your eyes to the other, superior alternatives.
Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
When she was a girl, Eleanor had completely believed the tale. That Zephyr brought her back from Africa with him, a pearl that he'd swallowed, that had remained hidden deep within his jaw when he was shot, skinned, sold, and shipped, during the decades his pelt was put on proud display at the big house and through his subsequent repair to reduced circumstances at the Lake House. It was there, one day, when the tiger's head was tilted just so, that the pearl rolled out of his lifeless mouth and became lost in the long weave of the library carpet. It was trodden on, bypassed, and all but forgotten, until one dark night, while the household slept, it was found by fairies on a mission of theft. They took the pearl deep into the woods, where it was laid on a bed of leaves, studied and pondered and tentatively stroked, before being stolen by a bird, who mistook it for an egg. High in the treetops, the pearl began to grow and grow and grow, until the bird became frightened that her own eggs would be crushed and she rolled the argent orb back down the side of the tree, where it landed with a soft thud on a bed of leaf fall. There, in the light of the full moon, surrounded by curious fairy folk, the egg began to hatch and a baby emerged. The fairies gathered nectar to feed her and took turns rocking the babe to sleep, but soon no amount of nectar was enough, and even fairy magic could not keep the child content. A meeting was held and it was decided the woods were no place for a human child and she must be returned to the house, laid on the doorstep in a wrap of woven leaves. As far as Eleanor was concerned, it explained everything: why she felt such an affinity with the woods, why she'd always been able to glimpse the fairies in the meadows where other people saw only grass, why birds had gathered on the ledge outside the nursery window when she was an infant. It also explained the fierce tiger rage that welled up inside her at times, that made her spit and scream and stomp, so that Nanny Bruen hissed and told her she'd come to no good if she didn't learn to control herself. Mr. Llewellyn, on the other hand, said there were worse things in life than a temper, that it only proved one had an opinion. And a pulse, he added, the alternative to which was dire! He said a girl like Eleanor would do well to keep the coals of her impudence warm, for society would seek to cool them soon enough.
Kate Morton (The Lake House)
Back in the eighties, the journalist Richard Rhodes nailed the place with just two words: Cupcake Land. To the irritation of local leaders, the nickname has stuck. Cupcake Land is a metropolis built entirely according to the developer's plan, without the interference of angry proles or ethnic pols as in nearby Kansas City. Cupcake Land encourages no culture but that which increases property values; supports no learning but that which burnishes the brand; hears no opinions but those that will further fatten the cupcake elite; tolerates no rebellion but that expressed in haircuts and piercings and alternative rock. You know what it's like even though you haven't been there. Smooth jazz. Hallmark cards. Applebees. Corporate Woods. (49)
Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America)
First Lieutenant Haskell of Gibbon’s staff remembered the exultation of that heady moment. “The Rebel cry has ceased, and the men of the Union begin to shout there, under the smoke, and their lines to advance. See the Rebels are breaking! They are in confusion in all our front!—The wave has rolled upon the rock, and the rock has smashed it. Let us shout too!”33
Peter G. Tsouras (Gettysburg: An Alternate History)
in this moment of orangutans, wolves, and scavengers, of high heat redesigning the north & south poles and the wanderings of new tribes in limousines, with the confirmations of liars, thieves, and get-over artists, in the wilderness of pennsylvania avenue, standing rock, misspelled executive orders on yellow paper with crooked signatures. where are the kind language makers among us? at a time of extreme climate damage, deciphering fake news, alternative truths, and me-ism you saw the twenty-first century and left us not on your own accord or permission. you have fought and fought most of the twentieth century creating an army of poets who learned and loved language and stories of complicated rivers, seas, and oceans. where is the kind green nourishment of kale and wheatgrass? you thought, wrote, and lived poetry, knew that terror is also language based on denial, first-ism, and rich cowards. you were honey and yes to us, never ran from Black as in bones, Africa, blood and questioning yesterdays and tomorrows. we never saw you dance but you had rhythm, you were a warrior before the war, creating earth language, uncommon signs and melodies, and did not sing the songs of career slaves. keenly aware of tubman, douglass, wells-barnett, du bois, and the oversized consciousness and commitment of never-quit people religiously taking note of the bloodlust enemies of kindness we hear your last words: america if you see me as your enemy you have no friends.
Haki R. Madhubuti
We” was a sprawling cooperative of fanzines, underground and college radio stations, local cable access shows, mom-and-pop record stores, independent distributors and record labels, tip sheets, nightclubs and alternative venues, booking agents, bands, and fans that had been thriving for more than a decade before the mainstream took notice. Beneath the radar of the corporate behemoths, these enterprising, frankly entrepreneurial people had built an effective shadow distribution, communications, and promotion network—a cultural underground railroad. “In an age of big entertainment conglomerates/big management/big media, touring the lowest-rent rock clubs of America in an Econoline is the equivalent of fighting a ground war strategy in an age of strategic nuclear forces,
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
Compared to all this, Ronstadt and Browne were still trying to graduate from the kids' table. Ronstadt had released her first album for Geffen, Don't Cry Now, in September 1973. Browne followed a few weeks later, in October, with his second album, For Everyman. Both albums sold respectably, but neither cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard album chart. And while Geffen had great expectations for both artists, in early 1974 each was still building an audience. Their tour itinerary reflected their transitional position. It brought them to big venues in Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, but also took them far from the bright lights to small community theaters and college campuses in Oxnard, San Luis Obispo, New Haven, and Cortland, New York. At either end, there wasn't much glamour in the experience. They had moved up from the lowest rung on the touring ladder, when they had lugged their gear in and out of station wagons, but had progressed only to a Continental Trailways bus without beds that both bands crammed into for the late-night drives between shows. "The first thing that happened is we were driving all night, and the next morning we were exhausted," Browne remembered. "Like, no one slept a wink. We were sitting up all night on a bus."' "Touring was misery," Ronstadt said, looking back. "Touring is just hard. You don't get to meet anybody. You are always in a bubble . . . You saw the world outside the bus window, and you did the sound check every day."9 The performances were uneven, too. "While Browne is much more assured and confident on stage than he was a year or two ago, he's still very much like a smart kid with a grown-up gift for songwriting," sniffed Judith Sims of Rolling Stone. She treated Ronstadt even more dismissively, describing her as peddling "country schmaltz."' The young rock journalist Cameron Crowe, catching the tour a few days later in Berkeley, described Browne's set as "painfully mediocre."" But Ronstadt and Browne found their footing as they progressed, each alternating lead billing depending on who had sold more records in each market. By the time the cavalcade rolled into Carnegie Hall, the reception for Browne and Ronstadt was strong enough that the promoters added a second show. In February 1974, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt were still at the edge of the stardom they would soon achieve.
Ronald Brownstein (Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics)
punk rock as an alternative,” he says, “a real attempt to change the social order of the world.
Michael Azerrad (Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991)
Human rights claims begin conversations that connect struggles and inform practices internationally. Claims documenting state-perpetrated human rights violations at Standing Rock were addressed to, and circulated among, activists in Puerto Rico, Ferguson and Palestine (and vice versa). They crossed territories and called into question states’ claims to sovereignty and legitimacy. They were starting points to share strategies of survival, resistance and imagination. As gateways, organisational human rights claims are part of blueprints for alternative futures, which will always be made in particular and historical sites of contestation.
Benjamin P. Davis (Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Contemporary Continental Ethics))
Yet despite his differences with Barfield, Lewis credits him with bringing about two fundamental changes in his own thinking. The first of these was the demolition of Lewis’s “chronological snobbery,” which Lewis defined as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”[235] The second change related to Lewis’s way of thinking about reality. Lewis, like most of that age, tended to assume that “the universe revealed by the senses” constituted “rock-bottom reality.” For Lewis, this was the most economical and commonsense way of thinking about things, which he took to be thoroughly scientific. “I wanted Nature to be quite independent of our observation; something other, indifferent, self-existing.”[236] But what of human moral judgements? Or feelings of joy? Or the experience of beauty? How did such subjective ways of thinking and experiencing fit into this? It was no idle thought. As an undergraduate at Oxford, Lewis had been influenced by what he styled the “New Look,” a rationalist way of thinking which led him to believe that he must abandon any notion that his fleeting experiences of “Joy” were clues to the deeper meaning of life.[237] Lewis went with the flow, immersing himself in this then-fashionable way of thinking. He came to believe that his boyhood desires, longings, and experience had been exposed as meaningless. Lewis decided that he was “done with all that.” He had “‘seen through’ them.” He was “never going to be taken in again.”[238] Yet Barfield persuaded Lewis that these lines of argument were inconsistent. Lewis was relying on precisely the same inner patterns of thought that he had dismissed in order to secure his knowledge of an allegedly “objective” world. The consistent outcome of believing only in “the universe revealed by the senses” was to adopt “a Behaviouristic theory of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.” Yet Lewis regarded such a theory as unbelievable. There was an alternative, which gave full weight to the importance of human moral and aesthetic intuitions and did not discount or dismiss them. For Lewis, this led to only one conclusion: “Our logic was participation in a cosmic Logos.”[239] And where might that line of thought take him?
Alister E. McGrath (C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet)
Before the time of Allan and Delair, Comyns Beaumont reviewed the work of Establishment geologists, Charles Lyell, Louis Agassiz and James Geikie. He exposed their scientific palaver for the nonsense it is, and wrote of the Ice Age theory in these words: What! No Ice Age which came and went, spreading over hundreds of thousands of years as all good geologists proclaim? No smothering ice sheets which enveloped the British Isles and much of the northern parts of the continent, changed the climate to Arctic conditions – although, strangely enough, much of our fauna and flora survived despite it – and compelled all the survivors to flee? No lengthy periods of ice alternated with warm and even sub-tropical climatic interludes? No. Nothing of the sort. There was admittedly a tremendous convulsion of nature, which had the most direful effect upon the inhabitants of Scandinavia, the British Isles, and those in Northern Asia. It resulted in giving us, it is true, bitter cold, tremendous floods, and cruel dampness. That it affected the climate in the north adversely and permanently cannot be denied. It did other things as well. But no Ice Age – (Riddle of Prehistoric Britain) It was an event…sudden, rapid, devastating, and appalling in its magnitude, and destructiveness. It was a celestial impact of an immense cometary body…It rained or distributed rocks, stones, boulder clay, till, gravel, sand, and other material over great areas, utterly obliterating certain parts, elevating others, and entirely missing some regions. It created islands, drowned others, caused immense tidal waves which swallowed up coastal lands, consumed huge spaces with electric waves, set up volcanoes, and swept away cities and largely populated districts almost in a flash
Michael Tsarion (Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation)
What exactly was grunge? That’s a question any person who’s thought about early ‘90s rock music has asked themselves at one point or another. Was it a scene or a musical style? A fashion category? A marketing ploy? A political bent? An ethos? Is the word synonymous with “alternative,” the other descriptor regularly applied to early ‘90s rock?
Kevin Craft (Grunge, Nerds, and Gastropubs: A Mass Culture Odyssey (Kindle Single))
A woman sat on a bench across from Jeanne for an extended period of time, folding leaves in her hands like a nervous tick. The woman looked up from her hands and laughed. She looked back down at her hands and looked sad again. Jeanne felt the urge to ask the woman why she looked down at the leaves and felt sad. Maybe, Jeanne speculated, she felt sad for the leaves that were in pieces all around her. Maybe the woman felt sad for herself because she was sitting on a bench alone and feeling ner- vous. Perhaps the woman felt guilty because she was laughing while killing something. Jeanne watched the woman as she looked up at middle space and alternated her expression from smiling to sad. Jeanne thought about wanting to kiss the woman’s face when it looked sad. Jeanne wanted to catch her mouth right in the in-be- tween before she smiled. Jeanne wanted the kiss to be sad and slow but hopeful as children laughed and threw rocks with her ex-lovers names into the river. Jeanne sat on the bench in the park and did nothing. She could feel her heart beating inside of her left shoulder blade. Jeanne wanted to throw rocks into the river like a child and kiss. Jeanne thought, “Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss,” but she continued to sit. She didn’t throw rocks. She didn’t kiss anyone.
Gabby Bess (Alone with Other People)
Jeanne continued to drive until she reached a small state park. She parked her car and walked over to a bench parallel to the lake. Jeanne stared out at the lake and thought about carving all of her ex-lovers names onto the large stones that sat in the grass and spending her entire life waiting for them to be eroded by the wind and the rain. In the park there were also children dropping medium sized rocks with both hands into a stream. They fell heavily into the water and sunk down with the sound of small giggles. The children shouted something to their mothers. Something like, “Look mom we’re skip- ping rocks!” The mothers didn’t look but they shouted something back like, “Wow good job honey!” The “wow” was drawn out long and slow, more pronounced than any of the other words in the sentence. The children seemed pleased with this response and continued to laugh and throw stones into the river. A woman sat on a bench across from Jeanne for an extended period of time, folding leaves in her hands like a nervous tick. The woman looked up from her hands and laughed. She looked back down at her hands and looked sad again. Jeanne felt the urge to ask the woman why she looked down at the leaves and felt sad. Maybe, Jeanne speculated, she felt sad for the leaves that were in pieces all around her. Maybe the woman felt sad for herself because she was sitting on a bench alone and feeling ner- vous. Perhaps the woman felt guilty because she was laughing while killing something. Jeanne watched the woman as she looked up at middle space and alternated her expression from smiling to sad. Jeanne thought about wanting to kiss the woman’s face when it looked sad. Jeanne wanted to catch her mouth right in the in-be- tween before she smiled. Jeanne wanted the kiss to be sad and slow but hopeful as children laughed and threw rocks with her ex-lovers names into the river. Jeanne sat on the bench in the park and did nothing. She could feel her heart beating inside of her left shoulder blade. Jeanne wanted to throw rocks into the river like a child and kiss. Jeanne thought, “Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss,” but she continued to sit. She didn’t throw rocks. She didn’t kiss anyone.
Gabby Bess (Alone with Other People)
Rather than pretending that we can solve the climate crisis without rocking the economic boat, Anderson and Bows-Larkin argue, the time has come to tell the truth, to “liberate the science from the economics, finance and astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable . . . we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.”53
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
We’ve got to turn around. Whoever’s out there, is trying to kill us with RPG’s,” “You have permission to turn this bucket of bolts around. I’ll have to call my superiors for an alternate plan.” the leader said, as the carrier was rocked by an explosion, but didn’t affect their retreat.
Cliff Ball (Times of Trial: Christian End Times Thriller (The End Times Saga Book 3))
Ice Age 2,588 million years ago, at the start of the Pleistocene, the Earth entered an Ice Age. It followed 50 million years of climatic downturn, and was the first full-blown ice age for a quarter of a billion years. Cooler, arid conditions alternated with warm, wet conditions as ice sheets ebbed and flowed in higher latitudes. The ice sheets alternately locked up vast amounts of fresh water, then released it again as temperatures rose. This alternation between a cooler and a warmer climate has continued right up to the present day. The cold spells are often referred to as ‘ice ages’. In particular the end of the most recent glacial period 11,600 years ago, is popularly known as the end of the last Ice Age. In fact the warm spells – interglacial periods – are no more than breaks in an on-going ice age. The current Holocene epoch, that followed the last glacial period, is such a break. In theory, glacial conditions will one day return, though the effects of anthropogenic (human caused) global warming make this uncertain. Glacial periods are not necessarily periods of unremitting cold, but alternate between colder and warmer intervals known respectively as stadials and interstadials. The idea that there were periods when glaciers extended beyond their present-day limits gradually emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century. Geologists sought to explain such phenomena as rock scouring and scratching, the cutting of valleys, the existence of whale-shaped hills known as drumlins and the presence of erratic boulders and ridges of rocky debris known as moraines. The term Eiszeit (‘ice age’) was coined in 1837 by the German botanist Karl Friedrich Schimper.
Christopher Seddon (Humans: from the beginning: From the first apes to the first cities)
Saw-Scaled Viper     Alternative Names: Echis, Carpet viper, Little Indian viper Where in the world? Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Indian subcontinent Habitat: Desert, fields, towns and cities Common prey: Lizards, frogs, scorpions, centipedes and large insects Size: 40 to 60 cm (15 to 23 inches) Lifespan: 25 to 30 years Conservation status: Not classified   Description: The saw-scaled viper or carpet viper may be a small snake, only able to grow as long as 60 centimeters or a little less than two feet, but it is considered one of the deadliest snakes in the world. In fact, some scientists say that wherever this snake is found, it is responsible for about 80% of human deaths from snake bites.   There are three main reasons why the saw-scaled viper is so deadly. Firstly it is the saw-scaled viper’s aggressive behavior. It has a nasty temper and is easily provoked.   Secondly, it has a very quick strike, which when combined with a very defensive attitude, can be lethal to humans living nearby. The saw-scaled viper strikes so quickly that even the distinctive sawing sound it makes with its scales when agitated is not warning enough.   Thirdly, the saw-scaled viper’s venom is highly toxic to humans, with the venom from the females being two times more toxic than the venom from the male snakes. Its venom destroys red blood cells and the walls of the arteries, so within 24 hours, the victim can die of heart failure. There is an anti-venom available, and as long as this is administered very shortly after the bite, the victim can be saved.   Like other snakes, the saw-scaled viper’s diet consists of small animals like mice and lizards, as well as large insects. It hunts at night, hiding behind rocks and when it sees its prey, it coils and launches itself quickly and with accuracy, often biting its prey at the first attempt. The bite kills the prey within seconds, making it easy for the viper to drag it away or eat it on the spot.   Visit IPFactly.com to see footage of the saw scaled viper in action (Be Aware: your method of reading this kindle book may not support video)
I.C. Wildlife (25 Most Deadly Animals in the World! Animal Facts, Photos and Video Links. (25 Amazing Animals Series Book 7))
In high water, fish migrate to the banks to stay out of the fast currents and to take advantage of the worms, beetles, ants, and other terrestrials being swept into the river by the floodwaters. If the water is very dirty, they position themselves right next to the bank, a rock, or the bottom in order to keep their equilibrium. In warm water, they move to the deeper cooler waters or place themselves near a cool spring or tributary. Alternately, they could be under the fastest turbulent cascades where there is more dissolved oxygen.
Yvon Chouinard (Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel)
Tonight the President will bury himself, perhaps, in two volumes Mrs. Lodge has just sent him for review: Gissing’s Charles Dickens, A Critical Study, and The Greek View of Life, by Lowes Dickinson. He will be struck, as he peruses the latter, by interesting parallels between the Periclean attitude toward women and that of present-day Japan, and will make a mental note to write to Mrs. Lodge about it.122 He may also read, with alternate approval and disapproval, two articles on Mormonism in the latest issue of Outlook. A five-thousand-word essay on “The Ancient Irish Sagas” in this month’s Century magazine will not detain him long, since he is himself the author.123 His method of reading periodicals is somewhat unusual: each page, as he comes to the end of it, is torn out and thrown onto the floor.124 When both magazines have been thus reduced to a pile of crumpled paper, Roosevelt will leap from his rocking-chair and march down the corridor. Slowing his pace at the door of the presidential suite, he will tiptoe in, brush the famous teeth with only a moderate amount of noise, and pull on his blue-striped pajamas. Beside his pillow he will deposit a large, precautionary revolver.125 His last act, after turning down the lamp and climbing into bed, will be to unclip his pince-nez and rub the reddened bridge of his nose. Then, there being nothing further to do, Theodore Roosevelt will energetically fall asleep.
Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt)
Remember, rock stars become rock stars because they are inveterate insecure attention-seeking babies and you may have written a couple of half-decent couplets and memorable tunes, amidst the doggerel and mud, and you really should be grateful that the public bought a couple of your songs in droves, but here’s the thing: you do not have to feel guilty, you do not have a higher calling, you just have too much time on your hands. Make more than one album every eight years, try a bit of acting. Alternately you could just remember you are a rock star and shut the fuck up, and please spare us your political insight.
Luke Haines (Post Everything: Outsider Rock and Roll)
You lubed up before you came in here?” Tom was throbbing inside of him as his own cock stayed half-hard. “I’m a good planner.” Tom rocked his hips against Prophet, his balls touching Prophet’s ass. Prophet ground against him, like he could get the man deeper, but Tom chuckled and pulled back, obviously planning a hot, slow ride. All of Tommy’s focus was on him. His hands alternately held Prophet down and then caressed his skin, then held him down again. The touches were proprietary. Possessive. They’d leave some marks. That was usually Tom’s kink, but right about now, Prophet was understanding the benefits of feeling Tom long after they were finished with their grind. This
S.E. Jakes (Daylight Again (Hell or High Water, #3))
He wasn’t even sure; his own head was probably spinning as hard as the man he held. He hadn’t noticed Michaels had taken his hands off the wall until he felt them pulling at his belt, quickly unbuckling it and pulling at the button on his leathers. He should’ve stopped him, but something beyond his comprehension held him back from doing so. Michaels may be drunk and doped up on rage, but he was focused on what he wanted. The way those fingers were working, he wanted Judge’s dick… now. With one hand he worked to free Judge and with his other hand he pulled the back of his jeans and briefs down, revealing a pale, round, furry ass to Judge’s already hazy vision. Oh my god. With his forehead on Michaels’ shoulder he watched his zipper get pulled down and his cock yanked free. Damn if the warmth from Michaels’ calloused palm didn’t make him stagger. They both moaned in ecstasy while he fought to regain control, pushing forward again, flushing them back against the wall. Michaels didn’t stroke Judge’s cock for long, but what he did to him next made his eyes cross. Michaels arched his back and nestled Judge’s hard, pulsing length in the crack of his ass and rocked back and forth, aggressively grinding him extremely close to orgasm while he alternated thrusting his cock into Judge’s palm. Strong arms snaked behind his head, clasping around his neck, using him as leverage. How
A.E. Via (Don't Judge (Nothing Special, #4))
Many people are surviving within multi-income households, losing valuable time with their family. Others are looking for extra earning potential due to the current economic climate.  The network marketing profession can provide an incredible alternative for those looking to supplement their income around the commitments of their family. You don’t have to go back to school or take on another full-time job. Network marketing allows you to choose a dream life over a dream job! All the while, you can be fully present in your family’s life.   2.      Financial
Sarah Robbins (Rock Your Network Marketing Business: How to Become a Network Marketing Rock Star)
Many people are surviving within multi-income households, losing valuable time with their family. Others are looking for extra earning potential due to the current economic climate.  The network marketing profession can provide an incredible alternative for those looking to supplement their income around the commitments of their family. You don’t have to go back to school or take on another full-time job. Network marketing allows you to choose a dream life over a dream job! All the while, you can be fully present in your family’s life.
Sarah Robbins (Rock Your Network Marketing Business: How to Become a Network Marketing Rock Star)
We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system.
Noah Levine (Dharma Punx: A Memoir)
If you looking for rock and roll weddings, contact us and get right proposal for rock and roll wedding ideas, to have spectacular wedding day.
LornaLoveCraft
Except for bread, which was rationed and available, everything else was scarce and if available, people stood in line for hours, sometimes days. The bread was baked from a mixture of grains and maize and the cobs ground in. A kilo bread (over two pounds) was a small loaf, heavy as a rock. You could not bite the bread, only gnaw. Nobody would eat that in normal times, but there was no alternative. Father suffered so, he could not digest it. We were hungry most of the time. If clothes or shoes were available, one had to stand in line for days. We didn't. We made do with whatever we still possessed. That summer, I wore a pair of hand made sandals. The top was crocheted of thin string and attached to a sole. The hand made front of the sandals was tied to the ankles with shoe laces.
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
He is, I believe, a kind of “test case” for a philosophy of life that has become the default alternative to the bland “normality” he did everything he could to outrage. It is a philosophy and ethic that, for sake of a better term, I call “liberationist.” Its message is that if we can only rid ourselves of all repression, all inhibitions, all hang-ups, all authority, then the Golden Age will miraculously appear. It is an antinomian philosophy (“against the norms”) that reaches for some ethos “beyond good and evil.
Gary Lachman (Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World)
Along the bank there are various other people, but why they come or go, with the slowest of idle steps, or remain seated on their haunches embracing their knees, or keep on gazing at nothing in particular, no one can guess. The days here drowse all their twelve hours in the sun, and silently sleep away the other twelve, wrapped in the mantle of darkness. The only thing you want to do in a place like this is to gaze and gaze on the landscape, swinging your fancies to and fro, alternately humming a tune and nodding dreamily, as the mother on a winter's noonday, her back to the sun, rocks and croons her baby to sleep.
Rabindranath Tagore (Glimpses of Bengal)
Department of the Army Alternate Command Element (DACE), a plan whereby the branch’s leadership would be reconstituted by the faculty and staff at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, just outside Harrisburg. DACE, known on campus under its cover name, the Operations Group, and overseen by the school’s commandant, hosted a permanent staff of about twenty soldiers and officers in several on-campus buildings, though it didn’t have hardened facilities. The Air Force had a similar program set up at the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. •  •  • As
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
and departments planned to operate with even fewer staff: The National Mediation Board only had slots for its chair and an alternate; only a dozen staff of the Export-Import Bank were designated to survive Armageddon, as were nine from the Farm Credit Administration, and just seven from NASA were to be sheltered at Mount Weather while another seven were to report to NASA’s relocation facility in Olney. As for where all the relocated employees would live, Postal
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
Evacuees in the shelters would sleep alternating head-to-toe, “the best position for sleep, in that it decreases the spread of respiratory ailments,” explained FEMA’s comprehensive 1981 guide, How to Manage Congregate Lodging Facilities and Fallout Shelters.
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
If your child can't resist throwing gravel in the park, in spite of your efforts to offer tempting alternatives, you can say, "I'm taking you home now. I don't want anyone to get hit by a rock, even a little one." If your child wants to help put pancake batter in the pan, but despite friendly reminders you can't convince him not to jump around at the stove, you can say, "I can't cook with you now. I'm too worried about burns.” If your child refuses to get in his carseat, "I can see the seat belt is uncomfortable. You feel freer without it. I can't take you to your friend's house without the belt buckled." Or, "I don't want to be late for work. I'm buckling you in. I know how much you hate it!
Joanna Faber (How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7 (The How To Talk Series))
Alaska, the push for greater command survivability revived one of SAC’s earliest 1960s-era plans for an alternate command post (ALCOP), a rail-mounted facility.
Garrett M. Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die)
Music you love is imprinted on all that is you, a tattoo of sorts that fades too deep into the skin to see but remains against the bone, a memory of youth or an important era of your life.
Scott Thompson (Lost in ‘96)
BayFestSD.com hosts the San Diego Bayfest and Mission Bayfest, premier music festivals in San Diego known for featuring top reggae and alternative rock artists. Held at scenic venues like Waterfront Park, these festivals showcase renowned acts such as Sublime, Atmosphere, and Goldfinger. Our mission is to create unforgettable experiences through well-organized events, VIP offerings, diverse food vendors, and exclusive merchandise, enriching San Diego’s cultural landscape with live music.
Bayfest San Diego
Women get it wrong when they complain about media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot's breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis's neck, or Felicity Kendall's bottom, and we don't mind at all. Obviously we'd take Kim Basinger over Hattie Jacques, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Bernard Manning, but it's not the body that's important, it's the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don't ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case I'm not at all sure that it ever did. I'm beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I spend my life with, I think (or at least, I'm beginning to get used to the idea that I'm so miserable without her that it's not worth thinking about alternatives). But it's much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of negligées and candlelit dinners at home and long, smouldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That's what women ought to get all steamed up about; that's why we can't function properly in a relationship. It's not the cellulite or the crows feet. It's the... the... the disrespect.
Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)
The bottom line: If you have trouble making a decision, remember that the choices are broader than “no surgery” or “highly risky surgery.” Forget about the rock and the hard place, and open your eyes to the other, superior alternatives.
Rolf Dobelli (The Art of Thinking Clearly)
The first campsite is at mile 7.0 (6,180), but it is small and does not have a nearby water source. The trail continues climbing, following a series of switchbacks until reaching a bench known as Lenny’s Rest in honor of Eagle Scout Leonard Southwell, at mile 7.9 (6,543). There is an intersection here with Indian Creek Trail #800, a single-track sometimes used as an alternate to Waterton Canyon. The trail then descends, crossing Bear Creek at mile 8.7 (6,177). This is the last reliable water source until the end of Segment 1 at the South Platte River. There are several good campsites in this area. At mile 9.8 (6,689) the CT begins to parallel and then occasionally cross West Bear Creek. There is a good, dry campsite at mile 11.8 (7,309) near leaning rocks. The trail continues climbing to a ridge at mile 12.6 (7,517), the segment’s highest point. From here, the CT descends 4 miles before reaching a gentle, grassy slope on a hillside with possible campsites at mile 16.6 (6,240) offering the convenience of river water a short distance below. Travel another 0.2 mile before reaching Douglas County Rd 97 and the South Platte River Trailhead, the end of Segment 1, at mile 16.8 (6,117). From here, the trail continues over the river on the Gudy Gaskill Bridge, the last water for over 10 miles. Due to private property, there is no camping along the river.
Colorado Trail Foundation (The Colorado Trail)
Look more closely at these prosperous ideopolises and the picture becomes even more familiar. The symbolic embodiment of all this innovative postindustrial economic activity was none other than Frederick Dutton’s countercultural hero, hymned now as the very embodiment of the New Economy. Youth radicalism became the language in which the winners assured us that they cared about our individuality and that all their fine new digital products were designed strictly to liberate the world. Remember? “Burn down business-as-usual,” screamed a typical management text of the year 2000 called The Cluetrain Manifesto. Set up barricades. Cripple the tanks. Topple the statues of heroes too long dead into the street.… Sound familiar? You bet it does. And the message has been the same all along, from Paris in ’68 to the Berlin Wall, from Warsaw to Tiananmen Square: Let the kids rock and roll!3 The connection between counterculture and corporate power was a typical assertion of the New Economy era, and what it implied was that rebellion was not about overturning elites, it was about encouraging business enterprise. I myself mocked this idea in voluminous detail at the time. But it did not wane with the dot-com crash; indeed, it has never retreated at all. From Burning Man to Apple’s TV commercials, it is all over the place today. Think of the rock stars who showed up for Facebook billionaire Sean Parker’s wedding in Big Sur, or the rock ’n’ roll museum founded by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen in Seattle, or the transformation of San Francisco, hometown of the counterculture, into an upscale suburb of Silicon Valley. Wherever you once found alternative and even adversarial culture, today you find people of merit and money and status. And, of course, you also find Democrats.
Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)
Make your vacation luxurious and memorable. Luxury Camping in Rishikesh is the greatest alternative for those who seek "Adventure with Luxury," that is, luxurious facilities and services in the camping site. Beach camps and jungle camps are not the same as luxury camps. These are located in a specific place that is around 1.5 kilometres from the river and jungle. These are built differently than the other camping areas. These can be found in the bush or along a river, but never on a river's bank. A luxurious camp is built on a good frame with a nylon basic structure and textiles (safari tents). Wildlife and adventure enthusiasts flock to Rishikesh for luxury camping.from all over the world. Rishikesh Luxury Camping not only gives sufficient possibilities for wildlife and nature lovers, but also allows visitors to participate in recreational activities. In the heart of the jungle, luxury camping in Rishikesh provides all of the comforts of home. Luxury camps include an attached bathroom, handheld shower, continuous running water, room service, a mirror in the tent, luxurious Swiss tents with carpeted floors, music, a toe chair, and one table inside the tent, and luxury Swiss tents with carpeted floors, bonfires, and one table inside the tent. Rishikesh offers luxury camping as well as rappelling, trekking, bird watching, rock climbing, and a variety of other activities. Wildlife excursions can also be enjoyed, making the journey even more enjoyable and bringing you closer to nature.
Anukriti Thakur
BACH FLOWER REMEDIES Flower essence therapy can also help with behavior modification. These herbal remedies are made from plants, trees and bushes. The essences are said to carry the imprint of the plant’s energy, so the patient’s body somehow “recognizes” this image, which wakes up the system so it can heal itself. In a percentage of cases, flower essence therapies work extraordinarily well. The most familiar products are Bach Flowers composed of 38 individual remedies. Each benefits a different emotional state, and is sometimes used in combination with others for greater effect. Rescue Remedy, for instance, is a premixed combination of the essences Impatiens, Star of Bethlehem, Cherry Plum, Rock Rose and Clematis, recommended for any kind of stress. Most health food stores carry Bach Flower remedies. They’re safe to use alongside other medical treatments, and choosing the “wrong” essence won’t cause harm. Once you’ve chosen your flower essences, here’s how to put them to work. · Maintain the original undiluted bottle as your stock bottle. It should last a very long time. ·           To create a treatment strength mixture, place two drops of the undiluted remedy in a one-ounce glass dropper bottle, and then fill the bottle three-quarters full with spring water, and shake 100 times. Don’t use tap water or distilled water—they go stale too quickly. Refrigerate the mixture. It lasts up to two weeks.  ·           Give the pet four drops four times a day from the treatment bottle until the behavior changes. This could be anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks. It can be given straight from the treatment bottle dropper into the pet’s mouth or on his nose if this doesn’t stress him out too much. Don’t touch the dropper to the pet or that could contaminate the bottle. ·           Alternatively, add drops to a treat, like a teaspoonful of plain yogurt, or add several drops of the remedy to the drinking water for all the pets to sip.
Amy Shojai (ComPETability: Solving Behavior Problems in Your Multi-Cat Household)
Cassian. I forgot you can mind-speak. Her laugh sounded. I can't decide whether I should be insulted or not. Perhaps I should be using the daemati gifts more often. She paused before saying, Are you all right? I should be asking you that. Rhys overreacted. He completely and utterly overreacted. Cassian shook his head, though Feyre couldn't see it. I'm sorry you had to learn of it. I'm not. I'm furious with all of you. I understand why you didn't tell me, but I'm furious. Well, we're furious with Nesta. She had the courage to tell me the truth. She told you the truth to hurt you. Perhaps. But she was the only one who said anything. Cassian sighed through his nose. She... He thought it over. I think she saw the parallels between your situations and, in her own way, decide to avenge both of you. That's my feeling, too. Rhys disagrees. I wish you'd found out a different way. Well, I didn't. But we'll face it together. All of us. How can you be so calm about this? The alternative is fear and panic. I will not let my son feel those things. I will fight for him, for us, until I no longer can. Cassian's throat tightened. We'll fight for you, too. I know. Feyre paused again. Rhys had no right to chase you from the city, or to threaten Nesta. He has realised that, and apologised. I want you to come back home. Both of you. Where did you even head off to? The wilderness. Cassian looked over a shoulder, to where Nesta had been asleep for the past few hours, curled into a tight ball against the wall of rock. I think we'll stay out here for a few days. We're going to hike. Nesta has never been on a hike in her life. I guarantee she will hate it. Then tell Rhys this is her punishment. Because Rhys, despite apologising for his threats, would still be furious. Tell him that Nesta and I are going to hike, and she's going to hate it, but she comes home when I decide she's ready to come home. Feyre was quiet for a long moment. He says that he knows he's supposed to say that's unnecessary, but to tell you he's secretly delighted. Good. I am secretly glad to hear that. Feyre laughed, and the sound was proof that she might have been hurt, startled by the news, but she was indeed adapting to it. Would not let it make her cower and cry. He didn't know why he'd expected any less of her. Feyre said, Please take care of her, Cassian. And yourself. Cassian glanced to the sleeping female nearly hidden in the shadows of the rock. I will.
Sarah J. Maas (A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4))
Dostoievsky says somewhere that if in the last moment before being executed, a man, however brave, were given the alternative of spending the rest of his days on the top of a bare rock with only enough space to sit on it, he would choose it with relief. There is indeed a Kafkaesque horror attached to an execution, which goes beyond the mere fear of death or pain or indignity. It is connected not with the brutality but with the macabre, cold-blooded politeness of the ceremony, in which the person whose neck is going to be broken is supposed to collaborate in a nice, sensible manner, as if it were a matter of a minor surgical operation. It is symbolized in the ceremonial handshake with the executioner; it is present in the delinquent’s knowledge that in the embarrassed stares of the officials he is already mirrored as a dead man with a blue face and ruptured vertebrae; and that what for him is the final, violent termination of life is for them merely an unpleasant duty, followed by a sigh of relief and a plate of bacon and eggs.
Arthur Koestler (Hanged by the Neck)
It is my position that this perception has been created to remove critical focus from the spinning ball model.  That is the model that postulates we are on a rock spinning 1,040 mph and going around the sun at over 60,000 mph, while shooting through the galaxy at over 500,000 mph.  This all happens in a remote part of the universe that was created when nothing exploded and created everything.
Matt Long (The House that Jesus Built: The Biblical Shape of the Earth, An Intelligent Alternative Design)
One of the many musical distinctions of my lifetime that used to seem important and now is completely forgotten is the difference between “alternative” and “indie” rock.
Steven Hyden (Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation)
Row, Row, Row Your Boat Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream. Preparation and Instructions: Sit on the floor with your legs crossed. Have the child sit in your lap with his back to your front. Put your arms around the child, holding him snugly. The child is now sitting inside a wonderful, cozy “boat.” The Game: Rock side to side or back and forth as you sing the song. After you sing the song once, say to the child, “Oh, my gosh, a storm is coming. I have to hold you tight so you won’t fall out of the boat.” At this point, begin to roll around from side to side as if the boat were in stormy waters, holding the child closer and closer. Sing the song again in a loud, stormy voice. After you sing the song one time in stormy seas, say, “The storm is over, the sea is calm.” Return to your gentle rocking side to side and back and forth, singing the song once again in a calm, soothing voice. Variations: My grandfather used to play this game with me.* During the storm part, he would say, “Oh no, we have hit a rock. We are going down. I will save you.” Then he would lift me up and put me on his shoulders to save me from drowning in the sea. From here he would carry me to the dinner table or to bed. Snuggle Up Preparation and Instructions: A “safe place” is an alternative to time out.
Becky A. Bailey (I Love You Rituals)
lack of community activities as alternatives to crime, the growing influence of gangs and drug trafficking, too few officers, too few resources, too much territory to cover.
Anne Hillerman (Rock with Wings (Leaphorn & Chee #20))
Early on, advocates of big bang cosmology realized that the universe is evolutionary. In the words of one famous cosmologist, George Gamov, “We conclude that the relative abundances of atomic species represent the most ancient archaeological document pertaining to the history of the universe.” In other words, the periodic table is evidence of the evolution of matter, and atoms can testify to the history of the cosmos. But early versions of big bang cosmology held that all the elements of the universe were fused in one fell swoop. As Gamov puts it, “These abundances …” meaning the ratio of the elements (heaps of hydrogen, hardly any gold—that kind of thing), “… must have been established during the earliest stages of expansion, when the temperature of the primordial matter was still sufficiently high to permit nuclear transformations to run through the entire range of chemical elements.” It was a neat idea, but very wrong. Only hydrogen, helium, and a dash of lithium could have formed in the big bang. All of the elements heavier than lithium were made much later, by being fused in evolving and exploding stars. How do we know this? Because at the same time some scholars were working on the big bang theory, others were trying to ditch the big bang altogether. Its association with thermonuclear devices made it seem hasty, and its implied mysterious origins tainted it with creationism. And so, a rival camp of cosmologists developed an alternate theory: the Steady State. The Steady State held that the universe had always existed. And always will. Matter is created out of the vacuum of space itself. Steady State theorists, working against the big bang and its flaws, were obliged to wonder where in the cosmos the chemical elements might have been cooked up, if not in the first few minutes of the universe. Their answer: in the furnaces of the very stars themselves. They found a series of nuclear chain reactions at work in the stars. First, they discovered how fusion had made elements heavier than carbon. Then, they detailed eight fusion reactions through which stars convert light elements into heavy ones, to be recycled into space through stellar winds and supernovae. And so, it’s the inside of stars where the alchemist’s dream comes true. Every gram of gold began billions of years ago, forged out of the inside of an exploding star in a supernova. The gold particles lost into space from the explosion mixed with rocks and dust to form part of the early Earth. They’ve been lying in wait ever since.
Mark Brake (The Science of Harry Potter: The Spellbinding Science Behind the Magic, Gadgets, Potions, and More!)
The harpy at the other end of the hallway acted as if he were some revolting creature that crawled out from under a damp rock. The woman drove him nuts. Hugh alternated between wanting to strangle her and trying not to laugh as she fought off his verbal jabs. Making her snarl in frustration was the only thing that made the situation tolerable.
Ilona Andrews (Iron and Magic (The Iron Covenant, #1))
...while riot grrrl is part of the punk rock/alternative rock feminism of the 1990s, it's by no means the majority of it. Despite the slogan, not every girl was a riot grrrl, and there's a huge swath of awesome women in '90s music who aren't riot grrrls. In no particular order: L7, Hole, PJ Harvey, Belly, Throwing Muses, Seven Year Bitch, Babes in Toyland, Liz Phair, Bjork, Juliana Hatfield, Gwen Stefani/No Doubt, Shirley Manson/Garbage, the Breeders, Luscious Jackson, Elastica, Sleater-Kinney, and may more women were part of either the alternative or indie rock music scene. Beyond that, the decade was pretty amazing for singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Fiona Apple, Alanis Morissette, Tracy Chapman, and Melissa Etheridge; for the R&B and hip-hop artists like Salt-n-Peppa, Queen Latifah, TLC, En Vogue, and Missy Elliott; and, at the tail end of the decade, all the pop you could ever want with the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Destiny's Child. So, if you read this book, then run to Spotify to listen to riot grrrl bands, and find they're not for you, remember: there's more than one way to be a girl, and there's more than one kind of music to power you to your goals. What you listen to will never be as important as what you do.
Elizabeth Keenan (Rebel Girls)
Be obsessed about results. Combine passion, commitment and a hard work ethic with thinking fast, creating alternatives and marshaling resources to achieve results.
Jim Knight (Leadership That Rocks)
The Happiest Story about a Kid Dying of Cancer I’ve Ever Seen.” Upworthy watched the “feedback” pour in, monitoring both the percentage of people who clicked each headline and the number who shared it with their friends. It was a perfect, dispassionate science experiment, where the feedback could show Upworthy editors exactly which packaging would have the biggest impact—before they released it to the rest of the world. In moments, the results became clear: people clicked on the third headline 20 percent more often than the original. But that wasn’t the end of the test. Upworthy wrote alternate versions of the winning headline and sent it out to several other groups. It repeated the process a ruthless 18 times, for a total of 75 variations in all. Here are a few of the contenders: Headline % Lift We Lost This Kid 80 Years Too Early. I’m Glad He Went Out with a Bang 0% I Cried Through This Entire Video. That’s OK Though, Because This Kid’s Life Was Wonderful + 9% The Happiest Story about a Kid Dying of Cancer I’ve Ever Seen + 28% RIP Amazing Rock Star Teenager Who Punched Cancer in the Face with Love on the Way Out + 65% Cancer Wasn’t a Death Sentence for This Kid. It Was a Wake Up Call. -22% Her Parents Asked, “Would You Date Him If He Didn’t Have Cancer?” So There Ya Go. + 75% This Kid Just Died. What He Left Behind Is Wonderful. + 96% In the end, Upworthy tweaked the winning headline one more time: Headline % Lift This Kid Just Died. What He Left Behind Is Wondtacular. + 116%
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
She was aware, as perhaps never before, that alternative deaths might be available, that one might progress to a cheerful and inconvenient old age somewhere in the sun, instead of putting up with that resigned half light. Old people in the south, good wine assisting, relied more on being obstreperous than on being polite. She had seen ancient women in Italy, in Spain, in Greece, their legs bowed, their faces deeply wrinkled, rocking along sun-struck streets with a sort of gaiety, raising their sticks in greeting, laughing at babies in their new innocence, babies themselves in the immediacy of their sensations. These people too lived modestly, making do with small rooms, with pensions, having happily divested themselves of most of their worldly goods. They were returning to nature, which was perhaps a lesson worth learning. The revelation—for it was nothing less—was that one did not have to sit down and wait to be transformed. One could, and should, go out to meet nature half way.
Anita Brookner (Visitors)
By fusing sexual desire with masculinity andfemininity, sexual desire becomes gendered and gender becomes sexualized.
Mimi Schippers (Rockin' out of the Box:Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock)