Attachment Is Not A Joke Quotes

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks: 1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one‘s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, "They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourty-three?" Yes, these are tall orders but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

Death would be an extremely bad thing like most of us paint it, if being dead were painful.

I peered at her, leaning in a if to medically inspect her. "You do appear a bit pale, Miss Prescott. Does your soul feel attached to your person?

THE FIRST BOY I fell in love with used to regale me with stories about kings and queens and war and peace, and how he hoped to one day be somebody’s knight in shining armor. I lived vicariously through his late night adventures, watching the way he swung his hands animatedly as he told his stories, and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes. He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the pain one feels at the loss of someone that you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to teach me was how to deal with the way my chest squeezed after he broke the ghost of what heart I had left. I’d always wondered if it had been a missed lesson. Now I wonder if maybe he’d been trying to figure it out for himself, or if he just never felt anything at all.

It Hurts To Be Alive and Obsolete: Often when men are attracted to me, they feel ashamed and conceal it. They act as if it were ridiculous. If they do become involved, they are still ashamed and may refuse to appear publicly with me. Their fear of mockery is enormous. There is no prestige attached to having sex with me. Since we are all far more various sexually than we are supposed to be, often, in fact, younger men become aware of me sexually. Their response is similar to what it is when they find themselves feeling attracted to a homosexual: they turn those feelings into hostility and put me down. Listen to me! Think what it is like to have most of your life ahead and be told you are obsolete! Think what it is like to feel attraction, desire, affection towards others, to want to tell them about yourself, to feel that assumption on which self-respect is based, that you are worth something, and that if you like someone, surely he will be pleased to know that. To be, in other words, still a living woman, and to be told that every day that you are not a woman but a tired object that should disappear. That you are not a person but a joke. Well, I am a bitter joke. I am bitter and frustrated and wasted, but don’t you pretend for a minute as you look at me, forty-three, fat, and looking exactly my age, that I am not as alive as you are and that I do not suffer from the category into which you are forcing me.

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?) Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

I pray where I am, sitting by the window, looking out through the curtain at the empty garden. I don't even close my eyes. Out there or inside my head, it's an equal darkness. Or light. My God. Who Art in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within. I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean. But You will do as well as anything. I wish I knew what You were up to. But whatever it is, help me to get through it, please. Though maybe it's not our doing: I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant. I have enough daily bread, so I won't waste time on that. It isn't the main problem. The problem is getting it down without choking on it. Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves. I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy. Temptation comes next. At the Center, temptation was anything much more than eating and sleeping. Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you, Aunt Lydia used to say. Maybe I don't really want to know what's going on. Maybe I'd rather not know. Maybe I couldn't bear to know. The Fall was a fall from innocence to knowledge. I think about the chandelier too much, though it's gone now. But you could use a hook, in the closet. I've considered the possibilities. All you'd have to do, after attaching yourself, would be to lean your weight forward and not fight. Deliver us from evil. Then there's Kingdom, power, and glory. It takes a lot to believe in those right now. But I'll try it anyway. In Hope, as they say on the gravestones. You must feel pretty ripped off. I guess it's not the first time. If I were You I'd be fed up. I'd really be sick of it. I guess that's the difference between us. I feel very unreal talking to You like this. I fee as if I'm talking to a wall. I wish You'd answer. I feel so alone. All alone by the telephone. Except that I can't use the telephone. And if I could, who could I call? Oh God. It's no joke. Oh God oh God. How can I keep on living.

Ask a pig, sometime, about the trouble predicting the future from the past." "I stared at him, trying to decide if he was joking. "I've been short on prognosticating pigs." "Life is perfect for a pig," Ruc said. "Plenty of slops. A shed to keep off the rain. A good wallow. Every day for months a pig wakes up to the same perfect life. Sometimes for years. Then someone ties his hind legs together and cuts his throat while he squeals... The fact that my head's still attached at my neck doesn't mean no one's sharpening a knife.

episode, I’d had a sense of déjà-vu, a sense of having read this article, or one very like it, at least once before. Oh, a dead parachutist: one of those. Everyone can recognize and understand that situation. Before I’d ever heard of Vanuatans, the first joke I learnt to tell as a child was about a classified ad for a used parachute, “no strings attached.” To the anthropologist, as I explained before, it’s generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as significant, not singular ones. To the anthropologist, there’s no such thing as a singular episode, a singular phenomenon—only a set of variations on generic ones; the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype.

We all know that 97% of the money in the world doesn't exist and that's thanks to Fractional Reserve Banking, or should I say fictional reserve banking." He grinned at his own joke, his smile partly hidden by his hair, "Money is no longer attached to the Gold Standard, therefore, it isn't based on anything. So when it says, 'I promise to pay the bearer on demand ten pounds,' I have to ask, ten pounds of what?" Silence. "The world is owned by the rich shareholder, the rich superstar, the rich industrialist, the rich aristocracy." He was now marching around the stage, "It doesn't matter who or what they are, if they're rich then they own a part of the world, but they only own it because they've got lots of money. Which means they own part of the 97% of the world’s fictional money, the pretend money that only exists on a computer." He stopped abruptly and stared out at the audience, "Which means that if they cashed in their fictional nonexistent money they'd get something like this ten pound note offering to pay the bearer the sum of ten pounds of nothing." He held the note aloft, "Which means the rich have managed to buy the entire world with paper nothing that has a value of nothing and we've let them do it.

One model I met through Jerry had been a Playboy playmate. She was tall and gorgeous. Every girl in the world, looking at her, would have been jealous. However, she thought she was too tall. When she would come into a room, she’d be half stooped over. I tried to teach her, when she was posing, to please stand up, because she was so elegant and striking. I finally talked her into that. Then she had another worry: she’s got “dents” near her groin. I have to get out a book of anatomy to show her that it’s the attachment of the muscles to the ilium, and to explain to her that you can’t see these dents on everybody; to see them, everything must be just right, in perfect proportion, like she was. I learned from her that every woman is worried about her looks, no matter how beautiful she is.

There is a joke in which Satan is talking with one of his fallen angels while looking at the foibles of humans on the earth. “What should we do?” implores the helper. “See there, a human has gotten hold of a piece of truth!” Unperturbed, the Prince of Darkness replies, “Don’t worry, these humans will try to institutionalize it, and then it will belong to us again.” By midlife your identity is the institutionalization of your past. You have good reason to be attached to it, but it is not all of who you are meant to be. By reflexively living in the past you miss the fullness of the present. The movement of energy into structure (having an ego) is necessary for life to cohere. We need form, yet we are best served when the conscious personality is capable of ongoing course correction through dialogue with the dynamic unconscious.

Being crazy was the conclusion of the joke Humboldt tried to make out of his great disappointment. He was so intensely disappointed. All a man of that sort really asks for is a chance to work his heart out at some high work. People like Humboldt – they express a sense of life, they declare the feelings of their times or they discover meanings or find out the truths of nature, using the opportunities their time offers. When those opportunities are great, then there’s love and friendship between all who are in the same enterprise. As you can see in Haydn’s praise for Mozart. When the opportunities are smaller, there’s spite and rage, insanity. I’ve been attached to Humboldt for nearly forty years. It’s been an ecstatic connection. The hope of having poetry – the joy of knowing the kind of man that created poetry. You know? There’s the most extraordinary, unheard-of poetry buried in America, but none of the conventional means known to culture can even begin to extract it. But now this is true of the world as a whole. The agony is too deep, the disorder too big for art enterprises undertaken in the old way.

I have made all manner of acquaintance but have yet to meet with any society. I do not know what it is that attracts people to me; so many like me and attach themselves to me, and then it hurts me to find that we are travelling the same stretch for only a short way. If you ask how the people are here I have to answer: just as they are everywhere! The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. What a thing our human destiny is! But the folk are of a very fine kind! When at times I forget myself and, together with them, enjoy the pleasures that are still available to mankind, such as sitting round a crowded table joking in innocent, open-hearted warmth, or taking a ride or dancing when one feels like it, or such things, it has a very good effect on me; but then I must be certain not to think of those many other powers lying dormant in me, mouldering in disuse, which I must needs keep carefully concealed. Ah, it trammels the whole heart so. - And still! to be misunderstood is my fate.

Marlboro Man’s call woke me up the next morning. It was almost eleven. “Hey,” he said. “What’s up?” I hopped out of bed, blinking and stumbling around my room. “Who me? Oh, nothing.” I felt like I’d been drugged. “Were you asleep?” he said. “Who, me?” I said again, trying to snap out of my stupor. I was stalling, trying my darnedest to get my bearings. “Yes. You,” he said, chuckling. “I can’t believe you were asleep!” “I wasn’t asleep! I was…I just…” I was a loser. A pathetic, late-sleeping loser. “You’re a real go-getter in the mornings, aren’t you?” I loved it when he played along with me. I rubbed my eyes and pinched my own cheek, trying to wake up. “Yep. Kinda,” I answered. Then, changing the subject: “So…what are you up to today?” “Oh, I had to run to the city early this morning,” he said. “Really?” I interrupted. The city was over two hours from his house. “You got an early start!” I would never understand these early mornings. When does anyone ever sleep out there? Marlboro Man continued, undaunted. “Oh, and by the way…I’m pulling into your driveway right now.” Huh? I ran to my bathroom mirror and looked at myself. I shuddered at the sight: puffy eyes, matted hair, pillow mark on my left cheek. Loose, faded pajamas. Bag lady material. Sleeping till eleven had not been good for my appearance. “No. No you’re not,” I begged. “Yep. I am,” he answered. “No you’re not,” I repeated. “Yes. I am,” he said. I slammed my bathroom door and hit the lock. Please, Lord, please, I prayed, grabbing my toothbrush. Please let him be joking. I brushed my teeth like a crazed lunatic as I examined myself in the mirror. Why couldn’t I look the women in commercials who wake up in a bed with ironed sheets and a dewy complexion with their hair perfectly tousled? I wasn’t fit for human eyes, let alone the piercing eyes of the sexy, magnetic Marlboro Man, who by now was walking up the stairs to my bedroom. I could hear the clomping of his boots. The boots were in my bedroom by now, and so was the gravelly voice attached to them. “Hey,” I heard him say. I patted an ice-cold washcloth on my face and said ten Hail Marys, incredulous that I would yet again find myself trapped in the prison of a bathroom with Marlboro Man, my cowboy love, on the other side of the door. What in the world was he doing there? Didn’t he have some cows to wrangle? Some fence to fix? It was broad daylight; didn’t he have a ranch to run? I needed to speak to him about his work ethic. “Oh, hello,” I responded through the door, ransacking the hamper in my bathroom for something, anything better than the sacrilege that adorned my body. Didn’t I have any respect for myself? I heard Marlboro Man laugh quietly. “What’re you doing in there?” I found my favorite pair of faded, soft jeans. “Hiding,” I replied, stepping into them and buttoning the waist. “Well, c’mere,” he said softly.

There she is,” he said. I scanned the room for Mason’s current love interest. “Where?” “Pink top, brown ponytail.” “She’s cute. But a little too innocent for your taste.” “Looks can be deceiving.” He grinned. “How did a girl like me end up with a man-whore like you for a best friend?” “I’m the one who should be asking how a guy like me ended up with a prude like you.” “Hey, I’m not a prude. Well, at least I don’t think I am. Who knows?” “I already volunteered my services. Telling you, once you’re devirginized you’re gonna go wild. Might as well get it out of the way.” I hushed him and looked around. “Someone will hear you.” “A guy who likes sex and a girl who’s a virgin. Yeah, that’s something no one’s ever seen before.” He shrugged. “I’m just trying to do you a favor.” I laughed. “Your thoughtfulness amazes me.” “No-strings-attached sex is very generous. You laugh now but one day you’ll come around.” “No thanks. I know where you’ve been.” “Good point.” He glanced back at the girl. “And you know where I’m going.” I rolled my eyes. “Go. It’s fine.” “That’s okay. I’ll find her later. I promised not to abandon you.” “Go. Seriously. I’m fine. I’ll practice blending in with the walls.” “Now I really can’t leave you.” He shifted his weight and stared at me. “It was a joke. Anyway, I see a girl from one of my classes. I’ll go say hi.” I walked away and glanced back. With a shooing motion, I said, “Go.” He shrugged and went to find his brunette. I hadn’t really seen a friend but Mason came to have fun. I didn’t want to be his party paperweight.

For most people, having company for more than three of four days is a serious mistake, the equivalent to sawing a large hole in the roof and leaving all the doors and windows open in the middle of winter. Out of a desire to be helpful or the need to be kind, they let themselves in for prolonged spells of entertaining, forfeit their privacy and their easy understanding, knowing that the result will be an estrangement―however temporary―between husband and wife, and that nothing proportionate to this is to be gained by the giving up of beds, the endless succession of heavy meals, the afternoon drives. Either the human race is incurably hospitable or else people forget from one time to the next, as women forget the pains of labor, how weeks and months are lost that can never be recovered. The guest also loses―even the so-called easy guest who makes her own bed, helps with the dishes and doesn't require entertaining. She sees things no outsider should see, overhears whispered conversations about herself from two rooms away, finds old letters in books, and is sooner or later the cause of and witness to scenes that because of her presence do not clear the air. When she has left, she expects to go on being a part of the family she has stayed with so happily and for so long; she expects to be remembered; instead of which, her letters, full of intimate references and family jokes, go unanswered. She sends beautiful presents to the children at a time when she really cannot afford any extravagance and the presents also go unacknowledged. In the end her feelings are hurt, and she begins to doubt―quite unjustly―the genuineness of the family's attachment to her.

Fifty Ways to Love Your Partner 1. Love yourself first. 2. Start each day with a hug. 3. Serve breakfast in bed. 4. Say “I love you” every time you part ways. 5. Compliment freely and often. 6. Appreciate—and celebrate—your differences. 7. Live each day as if it’s your last. 8. Write unexpected love letters. 9. Plant a seed together and nurture it to maturity. 10. Go on a date once every week. 11. Send flowers for no reason. 12. Accept and love each others’ family and friends. 13. Make little signs that say “I love you” and post them all over the house. 14. Stop and smell the roses. 15. Kiss unexpectedly. 16. Seek out beautiful sunsets together. 17. Apologize sincerely. 18. Be forgiving. 19. Remember the day you fell in love—and recreate it. 20. Hold hands. 21. Say “I love you” with your eyes. 22. Let her cry in your arms. 23. Tell him you understand. 24. Drink toasts of love and commitment. 25. Do something arousing. 26. Let her give you directions when you’re lost. 27. Laugh at his jokes. 28. Appreciate her inner beauty. 29. Do the other person’s chores for a day. 30. Encourage wonderful dreams. 31. Commit a public display of affection. 32. Give loving massages with no strings attached. 33. Start a love journal and record your special moments. 34. Calm each others’ fears. 35. Walk barefoot on the beach together. 36. Ask her to marry you again. 37. Say yes. 38. Respect each other. 39. Be your partner’s biggest fan. 40. Give the love your partner wants to receive. 41. Give the love you want to receive. 42. Show interest in the other’s work. 43. Work on a project together. 44. Build a fort with blankets. 45. Swing as high as you can on a swing set by moonlight. 46. Have a picnic indoors on a rainy day. 47. Never go to bed mad. 48. Put your partner first in your prayers. 49. Kiss each other goodnight. 50. Sleep like spoons. Mark and Chrissy Donnelly

Pagans were not impressed by the torture of Christians merely because it showed that they honestly held their opinion; they knew that millions of people honestly held all sorts of opinions. The point of such extreme martyrdom is much more subtle. It is that it gives an appearance of a man having something quite specially strong to back him up, of his drawing upon some power. And this can only be proved when all his physical contentment is destroyed; when all the current of his bodily being is reversed and turned to pain. If a man is seen to be roaring with laughter all the time that he is skinned alive, it would not be unreasonable to deduce that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he had thought of a rather good joke. Similarly, if men smiled and sang (as they did) while they were being boiled or torn in pieces, the spectators felt the presence of something more than mere mental honesty: they felt the presence of some new and unintelligible kind of pleasure, which, presumably, came from somewhere. It might be a strength of madness, or a lying spirit from Hell; but it was something quite positive and extraordinary; as positive as brandy and as extraordinary as conjuring. The Pagan said to himself: "If Christianity makes a man happy while his legs are being eaten by a lion, might it not make me happy while my legs are still attached to me and walking down the street?" The Secularists laboriously explain that martyrdoms do not prove a faith to be true, as if anybody was ever such a fool as to suppose that they did. What they did prove, or, rather, strongly suggest, was that something had entered human psychology which was stronger than strong pain. If a young girl, scourged and bleeding to death, saw nothing but a crown descending on her from God, the first mental step was not that her philosophy was correct, but that she was certainly feeding on something.

I’m not certain of the etiquette, but it doesn’t seem proper. He’s an unmarried gentleman, and this is a household of young women who have only me as a chaperone. If I were ten years older and had an established reputation, it might be different, but as things are…” “I’m a member of the household,” West protested. “Doesn’t that make the situation more respectable?” Kathleen looked at him. “You’re joking, aren’t you?” West rolled his eyes. “My point is, if anyone were to try and attach some improper meaning to Winterborne’s gift, the fact that I’m here would--” He stopped as he heard a choking sound from Helen, who had turned very red. “Helen?” Kathleen asked in concern, but the girl had turned away, her shoulders shaking. Kathleen sent West an alarmed glance. “Helen,” he said quietly, striding forward and taking her upper arms in an urgent grasp. “Sweetheart, are you ill? What--” He paused as she shook her head violently and gasped out something, one of her hands flailing in the direction behind them. West looked up alertly. His face changed, and he began to laugh. “What is the matter with you two?” Kathleen demanded. Glancing around the entrance hall, she realized the crate was no longer in the corner. The twins must have raced downstairs the moment it had been mentioned. Clutching it on either side, they lugged it furtively toward the receiving room. “Girls,” Kathleen said sharply, “bring that back here at once!” But it was too late. The receiving room’s double doors closed, accompanied by the click of a key turning in the lock. Kathleen stopped short, her jaw slackening. West and Helen staggered together, overcome with hilarity. “I’ll have you know,” Mrs. Church said in amazement, “it took our two stoutest footmen to bring that crate into the house. How did two young ladies manage to carry it away so quickly?” “Sh-sheer determination,” Helen wheezed. “All I want in this life,” West told Kathleen, “is to see you try to pry that crate away from those two.” “I wouldn’t dare,” she replied, giving up. “They would do me bodily harm.

There are three categories of criteria that an individual must meet in order to be diagnosed with ASD. The categories are listed below along with the typical traits, which may indicate whether the individual needs further assessment: 1.Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays: lack of friends and social life friends often much older or younger mumbling and not completing sentences issues with social rules (such as staring at other people) inability to understand jokes and the benefit of ‘small talk’ introverted (shy) and socially awkward inability to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings uncomfortable in large crowds and noisy places detached and emotionally inexpressive. 2.Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities: obsession with ‘special interests’ collecting objects (such as stamps and coins) attachment to routines and rituals ability to focus on a single task for long periods eccentric or unorthodox behaviour non-conformist and distrusting of authority difficulty following illogical conventions attracted to foreign cultures affinity with nature and animals support for victims of injustice, underdogs and scapegoats. 3.Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities: inappropriate emotional responses victimised or bullied at school, work and home overthinking and constant logical analysis spending much time alone strange laugh or cackle inability to make direct eye contact when talking highly sensitive to light, sound, taste, smell and touch uncoordinated and clumsy with poor posture difficulty coping with change adept at abstract thinking ability to process data sets logically and notice patterns or trends truthful, naïve and often gullible slow mental processing and vulnerable to mental exhaustion intellectual and ungrounded rather than intuitive and instinctive problems with anxiety and sleeping visual memory.

the most fun people to play games with are people who play sincerely. They take the game seriously enough to be fully engaged in the experience, but not so seriously that they become fixated on winning or losing. They’re able to laugh and joke around, to make light of their mistakes, and to enjoy the company of their friends without becoming overly attached to winning (or the rules).

She knew it too well, that terrible empty feeling that stemmed from loneliness. That desperate desire to be close to something--- someone. Someone who understood you. Someone who allowed you to be yourself without any strings attached. Perhaps, all along, it hadn't been freedom or adventure they'd truly craved that night in the graveyard, she thought suddenly. Perhaps it had been connection. She looked up, realizing Jack's face was near hers. He gave her a timid smile, reaching out to brush a lock of yarn from her eyes. Sally felt her leaves swirl, and her first instinct was to jerk away, laugh, break from the moment and make it all a joke. But no. That was the coward's way out. She needed to face her fears. To be the Sally she so desperately wanted to be. The Sally she saw reflected in Jack's dark eyes. "Jack..." she whispered. His name felt like a prayer on her lips. "Oh, Jack." "Sally..." Jack closed his eyes. Tilted his head. Began to lean closer.

Just remember what happened the last time you went after an unavailable woman.” As if Mitch could forget. He spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s not like that.” Charlie shrugged. “It’s close enough to be cousins.” A hot poker of anger jabbed in his stomach. “It’s not remotely the same.” “You have a thing for unavailable women,” Charlie said, his expression as flat as his tone. “And Maddie, as cute as she is, fits the bill.” “I don’t have a thing for unavailable women,” Mitch insisted. Charlie’s mouth firmed into a hard line. “Do I need to give you a list?” A completely irrational, stubborn defiance had Mitch clenching his beer bottle hard enough to shatter. “I know who I’ve slept with, and this isn’t the same. Maddie’s not married.” “A technicality,” Charlie said. “I know what I’m doing.” What a joke. He didn’t have a clue. Charlie put his own bottle down and rested his hand on the counter. “The last time you knew what you were doing, you went down in a blaze.” The reminder was like an uppercut to the jaw. This wasn’t the same. Besides, he had nothing left to lose. He leveled Charlie with a hard-eyed stare. “Do you really want to start comparing fuck-ups?” Their mutual history covered a lot of sordid ground. “Hey,” Gracie said sharply before Charlie could answer. “Let’s not start rehashing the past. We like Maddie. We just don’t want to you to get hurt.” “Don’t be dramatic. It’s a couple days.” How much damage could she do? It wasn’t like he was getting attached. He just wanted to keep her for a little while. Was that so wrong? Sam sat forward, resting his elbows on the worn table. “Save your breath, he’s a goner.” “I am not,” Mitch said. “And why is this any of your business?” Charlie’s expression darkened, his mouth firming into a hard line. Mitch ground out, “Leave it. Alone.” Charlie gave him the look he used to intimidate criminals, and Mitch took a sip of beer with a laziness he didn’t even come close to feeling. “Stop it,” Gracie said, poking her friend-with-benefits in the ribs. “He’s being an idiot,” Charlie said, and the stubborn set of his jaw made Mitch want to take a swing at him. He put down the bottle and cracked his knuckles. Actually, violence sounded damned good. Gracie’s

My ideal type of lover? A person who is completely into me. It's fine even if the person is so into me that it's a bit strange. Doesn't spend time with friends, and doesn't go out, but instead is unconditionally attached to me. I'm not joking. I really want someone like that. The one to make my heart flutter.

A book about a lady knight with purple eyes and a passion for justice—one of her few treasured possessions—lay near the window. So far she’d paid Amanda at the Green Inn twice to read it to her. It was that precious. With her mind made up to leave Vaneis, she packed the three dresses she owned, the scarf, the book, some herbs for soap mix, and thirty shillings for the road in her satchel. The next morning, she made sure to pay the innkeeper five shillings for her month's rent. She filled a small rucksack full of food for her journey and left the inn with a smile on her face. Once outside, Ciardis squinted, looking up and down the caravan line. There were six wagons attached to huraks – large, ponderous beasts that looked like oxen with claws. The huraks were all clearly anxious to go as they snorted and pawed the fresh snow with the three dagger-shaped claws on each foot. You and me both, friend. She clutched her two cloth bags and stared around for Lady Serena, trying not to seem too obvious. "All riders up!" rang the call down the line. Ciardis gave up her nonchalant look in favor of panic and began to search frantically. She didn't see Lady Serena anywhere. What if it had all been a cruel joke?

Girls’ Night Out Two female friends had gone out drinking, just the girls, and had made excessively close friends with a large but uncertain number of cocktails. Walking home feeling no pain at all, they suddenly both realized they needed to pee. There was no toilet in sight and no open restaurants or anything, but they were passing by a graveyard and one of them suggested they flush their systems there, so they did, fertilizing some unknown person’s final resting place. Of course they had no toilet paper, this fact having slipped their minds in their inebriation. The first woman took off her panties, used them to wipe herself, and tossed them aside. Her friend didn’t want to do the same because she was wearing some fancy underwear and didn’t want to ruin it, but she was lucky enough to find a wreath on a grave with a big ribbon attached and wiped herself with that (after all, the intended recipient had no use for it, or for anything else). After finishing, they made their unsteady way home. The next day one woman’s husband phoned the other husband and said, “You know, we have to talk to our wives about these damned girls’ nights out. When my wife came home last night her panties were missing. I have no idea what she was up to, but it can’t be anything good!” “You think that’s bad,” said the other husband. “My wife came back with a card stuck between the cheeks of her butt that said, ‘From all of the firemen at the fire station, in heartfelt appreciation.

Whenever WebFence caught a dirty joke, it inevitably originated from a guy in Advertising. Salespeople.

My ideal type of person? A person who is completely into me. It's fine even if he's so into me that it's a bit strange. He doesn't spend time with friends, he doesn't go out, but instead is unconditionally attached to me. I'm not joking. I really want someone like that.

I peered at her, leaning in as if to medically inspect her. "You do appear a bit pale, Miss Prescott. Does your soul feel attached to your person?

On the thirty-first, Richard listened, over a loudspeaker in the court holding cell he despised so much, as the hearing to poll the jury took place. Clark reiterated the defense’s position. Yochelson stood for the people, saying Ms. Singletary’s murder had happened two weeks earlier. It made no sense to rehash the tragedy and stir things up—after they apparently had been able to put it behind them. Tynan said he thought letting the defense question the jury about Singletary’s death would be a fatal mistake, and he denied the motion. In his cell, pacing back and forth, Richard cursed the judge and told his jailers the trial was a joke; he spit and he cursed and kicked the bars. Daniel told the court, Richard refused also to attend a second motion to be heard on September 5. The judge said it would be all right, but he would have to sign another waiver. Deputy Warden asked to speak to the judge at a sidebar and told Tynan that Richard was cursing and yelling and had stated he’d fight before he allowed deputies to bring him into court. Tynan announced that for security reasons, the defendant would sign the waiver on September 5. The jury’s deliberations moved on. On September 5, when Ramirez was led into court, he was subdued. Doreen was in her usual place, her eyes riveted to him. There was not an empty seat in the house. Ramirez signed the waiver form and was taken to the holding pen. The defense had decided to seek a mistrial based on several points: one, the death of Singletary, the other, that the juror who had replaced her, Mary Herrera, had two brothers in law enforcement who’d been shot to death, which she had failed to mention on her initial questionnaire. The judge refused to grant a new trial, court was recessed, and the jury continued its deliberations. On September 14, court was convened because of Arturo Hernandez. He had been ordered to call the court daily but had failed to do so on the sixth through the fourteenth. Judge Tynan found him in contempt and issued a body attachment with $5000 bail. On the eighteenth, Arturo showed up in court. Tynan bawled him out for not calling in as he had agreed to. He didn’t want to hear any excuses, he just wanted to know how Arturo pled. The lawyer said he was guilty. Tynan fined him $2400 or twenty-four days in jail. He gave him until September 24 to come up with the money. The judge then had Arturo remanded to do a day in jail for a September 1 contempt charge.

She would scroll, sometimes, through the contacts on her terminal and realize she had forgotten who the majority of them even were. All that remained attached to some of the names was a gesture, a joke at a bar, a haircut. The rest of it was smeared away by … what? By indifference. These people had all seemed present in the now, but she had always lived in the future, a step past them, making plans that were six months, a year, five years ahead, while they laughed over the lipstick-smeared edges of their pint glasses and actually lived their lives.

Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN

Chapter One Outside Buchanan School. 7:50 AM. Stupid ideas don’t seem so stupid when you’re about to go through with the stupid idea. Really stupid ideas shine brighter the second they enter your brain. Like, “Hey, man, you prob’ly shouldn’t do what you’re about to do!” I like to think of a field of kittens when that happens… makes it easier to ignore my common sense. Ahhhhh… field kittens. My name is Max… and I was about to do something really stupid. The air smelled of freshly cut grass as birds chirped from trees full of leaves. I took a deep breath as I stalled, hoping a meteor would crash into the planet so I wouldn’t have to go through with the thing. Kids just getting to school lined the sidewalk, curious about what was happening. I squeezed the handlebars of my bike, listening to the sound of tightening rubber under my fingers. “Max, you okay?” Beck, my best friend, said from somewhere. I didn’t know where exactly since fear was making everything blurry. I shook my head to clear the fog. “Never been better,” I said. “Are… are the thrusters working?” It took him a second to answer. “I’unno. I never tested ‘em.” I nodded bravely like a hero who was about to meet his maker. “Nice.” It became blazingly obvious that the world wasn’t going to end anytime over the next few seconds, which meant I was gonna have to perform the stunt that everyone was waiting to see. The stunt wasn’t anything crazy – just a kid jumping his bike over the bike rack filled with other bikes. In front of the bike rack was a cement lip that curved at the bottom, making a nice little ramp that everyone joked about jumping their bike off of. I was about to be the kid that did it. Easy enough, right? Well, my buddy, Beck, thought it’d be epic if I attached some thrusters to the back of my bike. No rocket fuel or flames – just a couple of cans of ultra-compressed air that would fire when I flipped the switch. It was a rig he built himself – that was kind of Beck’s specialty. Jumping the rack was a stunt that I’d been working on for weeks. I knew I wanted to do it because of all the kids who hadn’t done it before. And I was gonna nail it, and the whole school – no, the whole school district – no… the whole city was gonna talk about it when it was done.

If you can’t fit your house in an airplane, you could try putting it on one. That’s how NASA transported the Space Shuttles across the country using a specialized Boeing 747 which carried the Shuttle on its back. To carry the Space Shuttle orbiter, the carrier aircraft has a special mount that protrudes from the top of the fuselage. This mount fits into a socket in the belly of the Shuttle orbiter. Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN

As an adult, when you're with your siblings, part of you is always a child, attached to childhood patterns of behavior and associations. All the jokes and gestures, affections and resentments.

The team repeated the prerelease protocol with John and Judy, but this time, they held the pair in an acclimation pen for six months. They also built a fixed-position telemetry antenna receiver on a 110-foot-high fire tower on the island. This freed them from needing to use the jeep to tail the wolves, which Carley feared may have proved too intrusive. The fixed-position antenna held a ten-mile range. Carley attached a portable telemetry antenna to an eighteen-foot speed boat in case they needed to pursue the animals across the inlets or open water - a possibility that Margie had proven likely. As a joke, Carley also posed by John and Judy’s kennel box with a long sheet of paper, from which he read aloud while a colleague snapped photos. “Since the animals seem to understand more than they let on, we did another thing differently” the second time around, Carley quipped while showing the photo in a public presentation. “We read them The Plan.

What did the stamp say to the letter? A: I’ve become attached to you!

animatedly as he told his stories, and loving the way his green eyes twinkled when I laughed at his jokes. He taught me what it feels like to be touched and thoroughly kissed. Later, he taught me the pain one feels at the loss of someone that you’ve grown attached to. The one thing he forgot to

To carry the Space Shuttle orbiter, the carrier aircraft has a special mount that protrudes from the top of the fuselage. This mount fits into a socket in the belly of the Shuttle orbiter. Next to the mount is an instructional plaque, which features the single best joke in the history of the aerospace industry: ATTACH ORBITER HERE NOTE: BLACK SIDE DOWN