Basket Case Quotes

Normally I hate people who whine all the time, but in your case, it would be okay to complain. Be selfish, say what you want once in a while. It's okay to let yourself be sad." -Kyo talking to Tohru

I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them, "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.

Before, my anxiety was singing solo. Now all this weird anticipation and jumbled excitement has added some strange harmonies into the mix. I’m a barbershop quartet basket case.

The thought of seeing him had left her a tangled jumble of basket case, complete with a straight jacket for accessory.

I see how it is,” I snapped. “You were all in favor of me breaking the tattoo and thinking on my own—but that’s only okay if it’s convenient for you, huh? Just like your ‘loving from afar’ only works if you don’t have an opportunity to get your hands all over me. And your lips. And . . . stuff.” Adrian rarely got mad, and I wouldn’t quite say he was now. But he was definitely exasperated. “Are you seriously in this much self-denial, Sydney? Like do you actually believe yourself when you say you don’t feel anything? Especially after what’s been happening between us?” “Nothing’s happening between us,” I said automatically. “Physical attraction isn’t the same as love. You of all people should know that.” “Ouch,” he said. His expression hadn’t changed, but I saw hurt in his eyes. I’d wounded him. “Is that what bothers you? My past? That maybe I’m an expert in an area you aren’t?” “One I’m sure you’d just love to educate me in. One more girl to add to your list of conquests.” He was speechless for a few moments and then held up one finger. “First, I don’t have a list.” Another finger, “Second, if I did have a list, I could find someone a hell of lot less frustrating to add to it.” For the third finger, he leaned toward me. “And finally, I know that you know you’re no conquest, so don’t act like you seriously think that. You and I have been through too much together. We’re too close, too connected. I wasn’t that crazy on spirit when I said you’re my flame in the dark. We chase away the shadows around each other. Our backgrounds don’t matter. What we have is bigger than that. I love you, and beneath all that logic, calculation, and superstition, I know you love me too. Running away and fleeing all your problems isn’t going to change that. You’re just going to end up scared and confused.” “I already feel that way,” I said quietly. Adrian moved back and leaned into his seat, looking tired. “Well, that’s the most accurate thing you’ve said so far.” I grabbed the basket and jerked open the car door. Without another word, I stormed off, refusing to look back in case he saw the tears that had inexplicably appeared in my eyes. Only, I wasn’t sure exactly which part of our conversation I was most upset about.

To understand Russia today, you must understand the trauma of the nineties. Everything we had, everything we had been told, was swept away. We went from superpower to basket case overnight.

I sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. Afraid of intimacy? Cultivate aloofness. Feel invisible? Laugh loud and often. Drink too much? Play the gregarious basket case. Hate your body? Slash and burn others so you can climb up the pile. We construct elaborate palaces to hide our vulnerabilities, often growing into caricatures of what we fear. The goal is to move through the world without anyone knowing quite where to dig a thumb. It’s a survival instinct. When people know how to hurt you, they know how to control you. But

What was it like to live in a time when one's fate was not war, when one was not led by the craven and the corrupt, when one's country was not a basket case kept alive only through the intravenous drip of American aid?

The Master said, The case is like that of someone raising a mound. If he stops working, the fact that it perhaps needed only one more basketful makes no difference; I stay where I am. Whereas even if he has not got beyond leveling the ground, but is still at work, the fact that he has only tilted one basketful of earth makes no difference. I go to help him.

I'm a basket case, I thought. Who gets emotional over two letters? But then I remembered that "no" also only has two letters. Almost everyone in the world has cried over those.

The truth is, we are never just one thing. We all have many titles and many labels, but far too often, we get trapped inside a single definition. The Teacher's Pet, the Rule Follower, the Cheerleader, the Athlete, the Princess, the Basket Case, the Criminal... the Rock Star's Girlfriend. Whether we wrote that definition or it was given to us, it somehow becomes our only identity. We get so lost in it that we forget about all the other pieces that make up who we are.

Ayame: In fact, perhaps it would be easier if we just discussed me instead. Yuki: What would be the point in that? Ayame: Oh, in that case, I should be prepared to talk about why I chose this lyrical professional overflowing with fantasy! It's because I wanted to create something. Even I, who have a charisma that wafts of noble refinement, have times when I lose confidence! Ans so I had this uncontrollable urge to try making something. Anything, it didn't matter what. It just so happened that dress-making suited me best.... I just wanted to make sure that I had the power to make something. Maybe I wanted to know if I could create something with my own hands. If there could be something that couldn't exist without me.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed—he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

From the pancake house I drive directly to the county morgue. The contrast is not especially striking.

It was obvious why humans weren’t supposed to know when they were going to die. They became basket cases.

Top herself?’ Duncan shouts, ‘Yeah, I do. She’s been acting funny since we arrived, hasn’t she? Clearly a bit of a basket case. Wouldn’t put it past her to have done something stup—

Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others? In just the same way, those who have never philosophized correctly have various opinions in their minds which they have begun to store up since childhood, and which they therefore have reason to believe may in many cases be false. They then attempt to separate the false beliefs from the others, so as to prevent their contaminating the rest and making the whole lot uncertain. Now the best way they can accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all uncertain and false. They can then go over each belief in turn and re-adopt only those which they recognize to be true and indubitable.

I was about to reach in the basket to take one when a horse that had been grazing nearby suddenly charged at another horse. Kaden grabbed me and pulled me out of its path. We stumbled back, unable to regain our footing, and both tumbled to the ground. He rolled over me in a protective motion, hovering in case the horse came closer, but it was already gone. The world snapped to silence. The tall grass waved above us, hiding us from view. He gazed down at me, his elbows straddling my sides, his chest brushing mine, his face inches away. I saw the look in his eyes. My heart pounded against my ribs. “Are you all right?” His voice was low and husky. “Yes,” I whispered. His face hovered closer to mine. I was going to push away, look away, do something, but I didn’t, and before I knew what was happening, the space between us disappeared. His lips were warm and gentle against mine, and his breath thrummed in my ears. Heat raced through me. It was just as I had imagined that night with Pauline back in Terravin so long ago. Before— I pushed him away. “Lia—” I got to my feet, my chest heaving, busying myself with a loose button on my shirt. “Let’s forget that happened, Kaden.” He had jumped to his feet too. He grabbed my hand so I had to look at him. “You wanted to kiss me.” I shook my head, denying it, but it was true. I had wanted to kiss him.

We are like The Breakfast Club: An army jock, a pretty girl, a basket case, and a nerd. Except, imagine the Breakfast Club covered in dirt and zombie guts, sporting bruises like they’re this summer’s latest fashion trend.

I also find it helpful to remind myself that every human is a mess on the inside. It’s easy to assume the good-looking and well-spoken person in front of you has it all together and is therefore your superior. The reality is that everyone is a basket case on the inside. Some people just hide it better. Find me a normal person and I’ll show you someone you don’t know that well. It helps to remind yourself that your own flaws aren’t that bad compared with everyone else’s. I

She tossed the ball into the wastepaper basket. She never missed. Sometimes the basket moved in order to ensure that this was the case.

I’m a high-functioning basket case.

And look at me now. Seriously. Look at what all that action and adventure has done to me. I'm a frickin' basket case. - Valkyrie

She is the sun that shines on my path, chasing away any shadows. She is the laughter that fills up the gaping holes, without which I would be a basket case. She is the reason why I love my job. The best part of my day is drinking a coffee, eating a chocolate treat and listening to great music, while sitting with Genevieve Cain. She appreciates life, she grasps it and makes it what she wants. Sure, she's hit a few bumps recently, what with her loser ex, but Gen's a survivor. And not just any survivor, she's a survivor with dignity and pride.

Her beauty was like Switzerland itself—stunning, but sterile—and her Teutonic stoicism made the people around her seem like emotional libertines or, to use a more psychiatric term, total fucking basket cases.

I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

What was it like to live in a time when one’s fate was not war, when one was not led by the craven and the corrupt, when one’s country was not a basket case kept alive only through the intravenous drip of American aid?

It is you who are the basket cases. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. Your self torture.

you ask me, she just had bad taste in men,” one confidante said. “Duke was reckless, Hugh was stupid, Andrew had always had health issues, and Roddy was a [expletive] basket case. I see where it looks bad, but I promise you, that woman was a saint.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere.

The fact is, since America’s “War on Poverty” was launched a little over fifty years ago, the poverty rate in America is exactly where it was then. The main difference is that today, even poverty isn’t as dire for most people as it was fifty years ago. Michael Tennant, writing in The New American, said: “Fifteen trillion dollars: That’s how much American taxpayers have forked over in the name of helping the poor since 1964. And what do we have to show for it? A poverty rate that has barely budged, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a population—like that of Greece and Portugal, two welfare-state basket cases—increasingly dependent on government handouts.

Remember me mentioning I was two nuts short of a full bag? Well, that’s a part of it. Not all of it, of course, but hey, you can’t live for one hundred and eighty years without some bumps in the road. And one of those bumps is the fact I wake up a sweaty, basket case pretty much every night. Visions are a bitch, what can I say?

I’m euphoric with dopamine when I think of you. My infatuation with the memory of your face has flooded my neurons with Serotonin. My restless need to be with you has thrown in some norepinephrine. I’m a chemical basket case. But since I refuse to blame you, I’ve decided to blame my brain. Maybe if I believe I’ve reversed cause and effect I’ll get better.

For now, there's nothing to do but strap on an attitude and act like I'm having a ball.

American pop culture – supposedly the most powerful and influential force on the planet – has just surrendered to a one-man psycho-state economic basket-case that starves its own population.

You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain... Andrew Clark: ...and an athlete... Allison Reynolds: ...and a basket case... Claire Standish: ...a princess... John Bender: ...and a criminal... Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

special case of this rule of thumb is what might be called the “1/n” heuristic: “When faced with ‘n’ options, divide assets evenly across the options.”3 Put the same number of eggs in each basket.

Shhh, don’t cry. A gentle wave of warm energy came through the bond at the same time that Nikolas’s fingers closed around mine. Then you better hurry up and get better, because I’m a bit of a basket case right now. His lips twitched slightly at one corner. I’d heal a lot faster if I could hold my mate. He didn’t have to ask me twice. I climbed in beside him and curled against his side with my cheek resting above his heart so I could hear every precious beat.

There are so many hammocks to catch you if you fall, so many laws to keep you from experience. All these cities I have been in the last few weeks make me fully understand the cozy, stifling state in which most people pass through life. I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.

I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth anyone's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

the split-strike conversion strategy. Option traders often referred to it as a “collar” or “bull spread.” Basically, it involved buying a basket of stocks, in Madoff’s case 30 to 35 blue-chip stocks that correlated very closely to the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 100-stock index, and then protecting the stocks with put options. By bracketing an investment with puts and calls, you limit your potential profit if the market rises sharply; but in return you’ve protected yourself against devastating losses should the market drop. The calls created a ceiling on his gains when the market went up; the puts provided a floor to cut his losses when the market went down.

The truth is, the path to skid row isn't always laced in crystal meth - there is no concrete path that leads to insanity. Crazy is really just you or me and one bad day that leads to several more bad days. It's those of us who were forgotten about. Those of us who couldn't get help in time. Those of us with a disease that was misdiagnosed.

There is one thing in this life you can never hide, and that’s love. When you’re in love, you can’t disguise that. No one I’ve known can conceal it, so far as I could tell. It’s like that old saying about trying to hide your light under a bushel basket, except in this case all that happens is you get this very shiny basket that glows with a light people can see from miles away.

Future Europe’s problems are many, but four stand out. The first is energy: The Europeans are more dependent upon energy imports than the Asians, and no two major European countries think that problem can be solved the same way. The Germans fear that not having a deal with the Russians means war. The Poles want a deal with anyone but Russia. The Spanish know the only solution is in the Western Hemisphere. The Italians fear they must occupy Libya. The French want to force a deal on Algeria. The Brits are eyeing West Africa. Everyone is right. Everyone is wrong. The second is demographic: The European countries long ago aged past the point of even theoretical repopulation, meaning that the European Union is now functionally an export union. Without the American-led Order, the Europeans lose any possibility of exporting goods, which eliminates the possibility of maintaining European society in its current form. The third is economic preference: Perhaps it is mostly subconscious these days, but the Europeans are aware of their bloody history. A large number of conscious decisions were made by European leaders to remodel their systems with a socialist bent so their populations would be vested within their collective systems. This worked. This worked well. But only in the context of the Order with the Americans paying for the bulk of defense costs and enabling growth that the Europeans could have never fostered themselves. Deglobalize and Europe’s demographics and lack of global reach suggest that permanent recession is among the better interpretations of the geopolitical tea leaves. I do not see a path forward in which the core of the European socialist-democratic model can survive. The fourth and final problem: Not all European states are created equal. For every British heavyweight, there is a Greek basket case. For every insulated France, there is a vulnerable Latvia. Some countries are secure or rich or have a tradition of power projection. Others are vulnerable or poor or are little more than historical doormats. Perhaps worst of all, the biggest economic player (Germany) is the one with no options but to be the center weight of everything, while the two countries with the greatest capacity to go solo (France and the United Kingdom) hedged their bets and never really integrated with the rest of Europe. There’s little reason to expect the French to use their reach to benefit Europe, and there’s no reason to expect assistance from the British, who formally seceded from the European Union in 2020. History,

Let us suppose that such is the case, that somewhere in the world each of us has a partner who once formed part of our body. Tomas's other part is the young woman he dreamed about. The trouble is, man does not find the other part of himself. Instead, he is sent a Tereza in a bulrush basket. But what happens if he nevertheless later meets the one who was meant for him, the other part of himself? Whom is he to prefer? The woman from the bulrush basket or the woman from Plato's myth?

I dial her mum's number, then sit down cross-legged, facing the wall. When she comes on the line, she sounds uncertain, hesitant. 'Hey! Guess where I am?' I ask, my voice loud with false cheer. 'Rami told me. The Wellesly Hospital in Worthing. What's it like?' 'For a loony-bin it's actually quite decent,' I reply. 'I don't have Sky or an en-suite, and the menu isn't exactly à la carte, but you know...' I tail off. There is a silence. 'Do you have your own room?' Jenna asks, 'Oh yeah, yeah. I have a lovely view of the sea between the bars of my window.' She doesn't laugh. 'Have you started' -there is a pause as she searches for the right word -'threatment?' 'Yeah, yeah. We had group therapy today. Tomorrow we'll probably have art therapy - maybe I'll draw you a hourse and a garden. I know, perhaps they'll teach us to make baskets! Isn't that why they call us basket cases?' 'Flynn, stop,' Jennah softly implores. 'And we'll probably have music therapy the day after. Maybe I'll get to play the tambourine. Or the triangle. I've always wanted to play the triangle!' 'Flynn-' 'No, I'm serious! I'll ask for some manuscript paper and see if I can write a composition for tambourine and triangle. Then I can post if off to you to hand in for my next composition assignment.' 'Flynn, listen-' 'Hold on, hold on! I'm making a note to myself now: Find fellow insane musician and start composing the Flynn Laukonen Sonata for Tambourine and Triangle.' 'Flynn-' 'And then, when they let me out, if they ever let me out, perhaps you could pull a few strigns and organize for me and my tambourine buddy to give a recital. I'm not sure where though -how about the subway at Marble Arch tube? Nice and central, good acoustics-' 'What are the other people like?' Jennah cuts in, an edge to her voice. I notice she doesn't use the word patients. Clever Jennah. For a moment there you almost made me forget I was locked up in a mental institution. 'Round the bend, just like me,' I reply. 'I'm in excellent company. We'll be swapping suicide tips in no time at all!' I give a harsh laugh.

We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night ; we come to wish for—or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle—thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose." I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist."—"I know—let's get on!") Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known—and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be. How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law !

You want to talk pigs, come down to the office, take a look through my In basket any morning of the week, I’ll show you pigs! The things that other men do—and get away with! And with never a second thought! To inflict a wound upon a defenseless person makes them smile, for Christ’s sake, gives a little lift to their day! The lying, the scheming, the bribing, the thieving—the larceny, Doctor, conducted without batting an eye. The indifference! The total moral indifference! They don’t come down from the crimes they commit with so much as a case of indigestion!

Not long ago, Malthusian thinking was revived with a vengeance. In 1967 William and Paul Paddock wrote Famine 1975!, and in 1968 the biologist Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, in which he proclaimed that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over” and predicted that by the 1980s sixty-five million Americans and four billion other people would starve to death. New York Times Magazine readers were introduced to the battlefield term triage (the emergency practice of separating wounded soldiers into the savable and the doomed) and to philosophy-seminar arguments about whether it is morally permissible to throw someone overboard from a crowded lifeboat to prevent it from capsizing and drowning everyone.10 Ehrlich and other environmentalists argued for cutting off food aid to countries they deemed basket cases.11 Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981, discouraged financing of health care “unless it was very strictly related to population control, because usually health facilities contributed to the decline of the death rate, and thereby to the population explosion.” Population-control programs in India and China (especially under China’s one-child policy) coerced women into sterilizations, abortions, and being implanted with painful and septic IUDs.12

The boats were filled mostly with steerage passengers who lived in Trebizond or were visiting relations there, and the women carried great bundles and sacks full of things, but the men carried suit-cases with sharp, square corners, which helped them very much in the struggle to get on and stay on the boats, for this was very violent and intense. More than one woman got shoved overboard into the sea during the struggle, and had to be dragged out by husbands and acquaintances, but one sank too deep and had to be left, for the boat-hooks could not reach her; all we saw were the apples out of her basket bobbing on the waves. I thought that women would not stand much chance in a shipwreck, and in the struggle for the boats many might fall in the sea and be forgotten, but the children would be saved all right, for Turks love their children, even the girls.

We each took a cup as we passed and drank the sweet chilled beverage- it was refreshing and tasted like ginger ale with a swirl of summer peaches. Then Peaseblossom waved us through the open door. "Wow," said Henry. We stepped into an enchanted culinary forest. The walls had been painted to look like a thicket of trees, and the ceiling resembled the summer sky in the woods, complete with overhanging branches. There were topiaries and baskets overflowing with wildflowers. The tables were grouped to one side, still draped in their shimmering coverings. Dreamy music floated through the air, and piney, herby scents wafted on gentle currents. Butterflies flitted around and landed on people's heads and shoulders. And everywhere we looked, there were trays of baked goods- most of them, I realized, straight from the pages of Puffy Fay's cookbook. The pastry case and the counter near it were hidden behind curtains that looked like a wall of evergreens.

[I]f we objected to any blanket statements that would portray Black people in a certain way, or statements that insinuate that any Muslim is potentially violent or a terrorist, or that queer people are pedophiles, why aren’t we using the same basic critical tool to reject the assumption that being white necessarily makes one privileged or racist? Why are we not using another basic critical tool by asking yet another important question: what percentage of white people is extremely wealthy and privileged, and how/why it is problematic to put all whites in one basket as it would be if we do to any other group of people? Anyone who has traveled through the poor parts of white America, places like West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and many others that I have personally visited and observed, will know that there is a big percentage of white people who are, in some cases, as poor as newly arrived undocumented immigrants. [From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]

Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed—he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

The store smells of roasted chicken and freshly ground coffee, raw meat and ripening stone fruit, the lemon detergent they use to scrub the old sheet-linoleum floors. I inhale and feel the smile form on my face. It's been so long since I've been inside any market other than Fred Meyer, which smells of plastic and the thousands of people who pass through every day. By instinct, I head for the produce section. There, the close quarters of slim Ichiban eggplant, baby bok choy, brilliant red chard, chartreuse-and-purple asparagus, sends me into paroxysms of delight. I'm glad the store is nearly empty; I'm oohing and aahing with produce lust at the colors, the smooth, shiny textures set against frilly leaves. I fondle the palm-size plums, the soft fuzz of the peaches. And the berries! It's berry season, and seven varieties spill from green cardboard containers: the ubiquitous Oregon marionberry, red raspberry, and blackberry, of course, but next to them are blueberries, loganberries, and gorgeous golden raspberries. I pluck one from a container, fat and slightly past firm, and pop it into my mouth. The sweet explosion of flavor so familiar, but like something too long forgotten. I load two pints into my basket. The asparagus has me intrigued. Maybe I could roast it with olive oil and fresh herbs, like the sprigs of rosemary and oregano poking out of the salad display, and some good sea salt. And salad. Baby greens tossed with lemon-infused olive oil and a sprinkle of vinegar. Why haven't I eaten a salad in so long? I'll choose a soft, mild French cheese from the deli case, have it for an hors d'oeuvre with a beautiful glass of sparkling Prosecco, say, then roast a tiny chunk of spring lamb that I'm sure the nice sister will cut for me, and complement it with a crusty baguette and roasted asparagus, followed by the salad. Followed by more cheese and berries for dessert. And a fruity Willamette Valley Pinot Noir to wash it all down. My idea of eating heaven, a French-influenced feast that reminds me of the way I always thought my life would be.

The last time I saw Collin was in 1917, at the foot of Mort-Homme. Before the great slaughter, Collin’d been an avid angler. On that day, he was standing at the hole, watching maggots swarm among blow flies on two boys that we couldn’t retrieve for burial without putting our own lives at risk. And there, at the loop hole, he thought of his bamboo rods, his flies and the new reel he hadn’t even tried out yet. Collin was imaging himself on the riverbank, wine cooling in the current his stash of worms in a little metal box and a maggot on his hook, writhing like… Holy shit. Were the corpses getting to him? Collin. The poor guy didn’t even have time to sort out his thoughts. In that split second, he was turned into a slab of bloody meat. A white hot hook drilled right through him and churned through his guts, which spilled out of a hole in his belly. He was cleared out of the first aid station. The major did triage. Stomach wounds weren’t worth the trouble. There were all going to die anyway, and besides, he wasn’t equipped to deal with them. Behind the aid station, next to a pile of wood crosses, there was a heap of body parts and shapeless, oozing human debris laid out on stretchers, stirred only be passing rats and clusters of large white maggots. But on their last run, the stretcher bearers carried him out after all… Old Collin was still alive. From the aid station to the ambulance and from the ambulance to the hospital, all he could remember was his fall into that pit, with maggots swarming over the open wound he had become from head to toe… Come to think of it, where was his head? And what about his feet? In the ambulance, the bumps were so awful and the pain so intense that it would have been a relief to pass out. But he didn’t. He was still alive, writhing on his hook. They carved up old Collin good. They fixed him as best they could, but his hands and legs were gone. So much for fishing. Later, they pinned a medal on him, right there in that putrid recovery room. And later still, they explained to him about gangrene and bandages packed with larvae that feed on death tissue. He owed them his life. From one amputation and operation to the next – thirty-eight in all – the docs finally got him “back on his feet”. But by then, the war was long over.

That was the whole trouble with police work. You come plunging in. a jagged Stone Age knife, to probe the delicate tissues of people's relationships, and of course you destroy far more than you discover. And even what you discover will never be the same as it was before you came; the nubbly scars of your passage will remain. At the very least. you have asked questions that expose to the destroying air fibers that can only exist and fulfill their function in coddling darkness. Cousin Amy, now, mousing about in back passages or trilling with feverish shyness at sherry parties—was she really made all the way through of dust and fluff and unused ends of cotton and rusty needles and unmatching buttons and all the detritus at the bottom of God's sewing basket? Or did He put a machine in there to tick away and keep her will stern and her back straight as she picks out of a vase of brown-at-the-edges dahlias the few blooms that have another day's life in them? Or another machine, one of His chemistry sets, that slowly mixes itself into an apparently uncaused explosion, poof!, and there the survivors are sitting covered with plaster dust among the rubble of their lives. It's always been the explosion by the time the police come stamping in with ignorant heels on the last unbroken bit of Bristol glass; with luck they can trace the explosion back to harmless little Amy, but as to what set her off—what were the ingredients of the chemistry set and what joggled them together—it was like trying to reconstruct a civilization from three broken pots and a seven-inch lump of baked clay which might, if you looked at its swellings and hollows the right way, have been the Great Earth Mother. What's more. people who've always lived together think that they are still the same—oh, older of course and a bit more snappish, but underneath still the same laughing lad of thirty years gone by. "My Jim couldn't have done that." they say. "I know him. Course he's been a bit depressed lately, funny like. but he sometimes goes that way for a bit and then it passes off. But setting fire to the lingerie department at the Army and Navy, Inspector—such a thought wouldn't enter into my Jim's head. I know him." Tears diminishing into hiccuping snivels as doubt spreads like a coffee stain across the threadbare warp of decades. A different Jim? Different as a Martian, growing inside the ever-shedding skin? A whole lot of different Jims. a new one every seven years? "Course not. I'm the same. aren't I, same as I always was—that holiday we took hiking in the Peak District in August thirty-eight—the same inside?" Pibble sighed and shook himself. You couldn't build a court case out of delicate tissues. Facts were the one foundation.

First came the flower girls, pretty little lasses in summery frocks, skipping down the aisle, tossing handfuls of petals and, in one case, the basket when it was empty. Next came the bridesmaids, Luna, strutting in her gown and heels, a challenging dare in her eyes that begged someone to make a remark about the girly getup she was forced to wear. Next came Reba and Zena, giggling and prancing, loving the attention. This time, Leo wasn’t thrown by Teena’s appearance, nor was he fooled. How could he have mistaken her for his Vex? While similar outwardly, Meena’s twin lacked the same confident grin, and the way she moved, with a delicate grace, did not resemble his bold woman at all. How unlike they seemed. Until Teena tripped, flailed her arms, and took out part of a row before she could recover! Yup, they were sisters all right. With a heavy sigh, and pink cheeks, Teena managed to walk the rest of the red carpet, high heels in hand— one of which seemed short a heel. With all the wedding party more or less safely arrived, there was only one person of import left. However, she didn’t walk alone. Despite his qualms, which Leo heard over the keg they’d shared the previous night, Peter appeared ready to give his daughter away. Ready, though, didn’t mean he looked happy about it. The seams of the suit his soon-to-be father-in-law wore strained, the rented tux not the best fit, but Leo doubted that was why he looked less than pleased. Leo figured there were two reasons for Peter’s grumpy countenance. The first was the fact that he had to give his little girl away. The second probably had to do with the snickers and the repetition of a certain rumor, “I hear he lost an arm-wrestling bet and had to wear a tie.” For those curious, Leo had won that wager, and thus did his new father-in-law wear the, “gods-damned-noose” around his neck. However, who cared about that sore loser when upon his arm rested a vision of beauty. Meena’s long hair tumbled in golden waves over her shoulders, the ends curled into fat ringlets that tickled her cleavage. At her temples, ivory combs swept the sides up and away, revealing the creamy line of her neck. The strapless gown made her appear as a goddess. The bust, tight and low cut, displayed her fantastic breasts so well that Leo found himself growling. He didn’t like the appreciative eyes in the crowd. Yet, at the same time, he felt a certain pride. His bride was beautiful, and it was only right she be admired. From her impressive breasts, the gown cinched in before flaring out. The filmy white fabric of the skirt billowed as she walked. He noted she wore flats. Reba’s suggestion so she wouldn’t get a heel stuck. Her gown didn’t quite touch the ground. Zena’s idea to ensure she wouldn’t trip on the hem. They’d taken all kinds of precautions to ensure her the smoothest chance of success. She might lack the feline grace of other ladies. She might have stumbled a time or two and been kept upright only by the smooth actions of her father, but dammit, in his eyes, she was the daintiest, most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. And she is mine.

Moreover, Kissinger and Nixon deeply distrusted each other. Kissinger was sometimes contemptuous (behind Nixon's back) of the President. He called Nixon "our drunken friend," a "basket case," or "meatball mind." Kissinger was also given to fits of temper. After one of these tantrums Nixon confided that he might have to fire Kissinger unless he got psychological help.

Indeed, in the 1970s the British model ceased to be the object of envy and emulation and came to be seen as the European basket case, the home of an adversarial kind of politics that prevented effective policy-making and brought the country to its knees.

sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. Afraid of intimacy? Cultivate aloofness. Feel invisible? Laugh loud and often. Drink too much? Play the gregarious basket case. Hate your body? Slash and burn others so you can climb up the pile. We construct elaborate palaces to hide our vulnerabilities, often growing into caricatures of what we fear. The goal is to move through the world without anyone knowing quite where to dig a thumb. It’s a survival instinct. When people know how to hurt you, they know how to control you.

This morning, outside Nordic Fisheries a couple of delivery guys are unloading lobsters and crabs by the case, pausing in between loads to sip coffee from Styrofoam cups. Across the street, on Penn Avenue, the green grocers are busy stacking crates of vegetables and fruits, arranging them into a still life to showcase their most beautiful produce: heads of red romaine, their tender spines heavy with the weight of lush, purple-tinged leaves; a basket of delicate mâche, dark green, almost black, and smelling like a hothouse garden; sugar pumpkins of burnished gold; new Brussels sprouts, their tender petals open like flowers. At this hour the world belongs to those noble souls who devote their lives to food. Cook, grocer, butcher, baker, sunrises are ours. It's a time to gather your materials, to prepare your mise en place, to breathe uninterrupted before the day begins.

Ellis dutifully opens the top half of the bisected lid... and there's Jimmy Stoma. All things considered, he looks pretty darn spiffy. Better, in fact, than he did on some of his album covers. He's so lean and fit, you wouldn't guess he once outweighed Meat Loaf.

A brief snapshot of Race Maggad III: rangy and blond, with a smooth plump-looking chin, narrow green eyes and a tan as smooth as peanut butter. His long aquiline nose has a permanent hump where he once whacked himself accidentally with a polo mallet. Twice weekly his fingernails are professionally polished to a porcelain sheen, and the tooth whitener of his preference is imported at no small expense from Marseille. He calls his wife 'Casey-Coo' and they own four neutered Golden Retrievers, in lieu of children. They tend homes in Wellington, Florida; East Hampton, Long Island; and San Diego, California, where Maggad-Feist has its corporate headquarters. The man of the house loves sports cars, particularly those of German pedigree. Recently he turned forty-one, the same age at which Bebe the bottle-nosed dolphin (one of seven who played Flipper on TV) passed away.

Burnout is common because of the long hours, the crummy pay and the depressing nature of so much of what we write. As the saying goes, they never send us to the airport when the plane lands safely.

Up until a few years ago, I'd never had any doubts about newspaper work, never thought I'd made the wrong choice. I went into the business not because I was looking to get beat up or training to be a novelist, because I wanted to be Bob Woodward or Sy Hersh, kicking butt on the front page. Reality slowly set in and I realized that I wasn't destined for Washington or New York or even Miami, but still there were good stories; good days when I brought grief and misery and the occasional felony indictment on lowlifes such as Orrin Van Gelder. I believed the job was important, a public service, and as a bonus it was unfailingly entertaining. Every new story was a fresh education in human guile and gullibility. The headlines made a large splash in a small pond, but the ripples didn't last long. That didn't bother me either, because usually I was already caught up in something new. It's the best job in the business, chasing crooks in Florida, because the well never runs dry.

Nobody with a living brain cell goes into the newspaper business for the money. They're in it because digging up the truth is interesting and consequential work, and for sheer entertainment it beats the hell out of humping product for GE or Microsoft.

He said wouldn't it be brilliant to have a food emporium on the ground floor of Fenton's, like Harrods, but have everything organic and locally grown." Diana paused to let the idea sink in. "I said not the ground floor of course, Fenton's isn't a supermarket, but the basement has been a dead zone for years. A whole floor dedicated to stationery when no one writes letters anymore." "A food emporium," Cassie repeated. "Fresh fish caught in the bay, oysters, crab when it's in season. Counters of vegetables you only find in the farmers market, those cheeses they make in Sonoma that smell so bad they taste good. Wines from Napa Valley, Ghirardelli chocolates, sourdough bread, sauces made by Michael Mina and Thomas Keller. Everything locally produced. And maybe a long counter with stools so you could sample bread and cheese, cut fruit, sliced vegetables. Not a true cafe because we'd keep the one on the fourth floor. It would have more the feel of a food bazaar, with the salespeople wearing aprons and white caps." Cassie closed her eyes and saw large baskets of vegetables, glass cases filled with goat cheese and baguettes, stands brimming with chocolate-covered strawberries.

I sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. Afraid of intimacy? Cultivate aloofness. Feel invisible? Laugh loud and often. Drink too much? Play the gregarious basket case. Hate your body? Slash and burn others so you can climb up the pile. We construct elaborate palaces to hide our vulnerabilities, often growing into caricatures of what we fear. The goal is to move through the world without anyone knowing quite where to dig a thumb. It’s a survival instinct. When people know how to hurt you, they know how to control you. But when you're a fat person, you can't hide your vulnerability, because you are it and it is you. Being fat is like walking around with a sandwich board that says, "HERE'S WHERE TO HURT ME!" That's why reclaiming fatness--living visibly, declaring, "I'm fat and I am not ashamed"--is a social tool so revolutionary, so liberating, it saves lives.

Without moving apart, Zev moaned and whispered into Jonah’s mouth, “Damn, Blondie, you’re a great kisser.” Jonah moved his arms up to Zev’s back, wrapping the young man in his embrace and stroking his smooth, firm skin. “You’re not so bad yourself, Hassick. You been practicing this with someone without me knowing?” Zev snickered. “You jealous?” Jonah didn’t return the smile. He looked into Zev’s eyes and answered without any guile, “Yeah. I’m jealous of anyone who got to touch you.” Instead of looking freaked out, as Jonah had half expected, Zev remained completely calm. He gazed into Jonah’s eyes with such powerful emotion that Jonah’s heart raced and his breath hitched. “Unless you can manage being jealous of yourself, you don’t have to worry. Like I told you yesterday, I haven’t ever thought about anyone else—girls or guys—let alone touched anyone else. It’s just you, Blondie. It’s always been you.” Zev let his words sink in, then he reversed the tables on the discussion. “What about you? Been hiding out behind the bleachers sneaking kisses with cheerleaders?” Jonah snorted more than laughed. “Uh, Zev, I was teasing about the whole not-so-smart thing earlier, but now I’m thinking I may have been on to something. That hardness you feel against your stomach isn’t a banana. That’s me happy to see you, or feel you, in this case. And you’re a guy. With that background in place, we can add two and two together here and even someone with your limited math skills can come up with the correct answer. I’m gay. I’ve got no deep dark cheerleader secrets in my past.” Zev was amazed at how easily Jonah said the words. He admired how his friend so completely accepted this part of himself. No shame, no hesitation. Just a matter-of-fact statement. In that moment, Zev decided he’d take the same approach. He knew it’d shock his parents. Hell, it’d rock his whole community. But he was attracted to a man. He had a male mate. That meant he was gay. Zev Hassick was a gay shifter. The pack would just have to find a way to deal with that truth even though they’d always believed it to be impossible. “And in case you’re wondering,” Jonah continued, his hand still rubbing Zev’s back but now moving lower, skating over his ass, “I don’t have any deep dark football player secrets, either. I’ve had a crush on one guy for as long as I can remember and I kinda put all my eggs in that basket.” Zev took another kiss, slow, soft and sweet this time. “I better be the egg-basket guy in that story, Blondie, or the tickles are coming back in full force.

About the "don't put all your eggs in one basket'' quote and someone saying "but I like this basket!" In a culture that often advises you to have a backup plan just in case your dreams don't work out, it is counterintuitive to put all your eggs in one basket. But in planning for the "just in case" scenario, sometimes you spread yourself too thin and don't put enough energy (eggs) into the one dream (basket) you really want. Too many baskets can water down your efforts and keep you from engaging in any one endeavor. It is often fear that keeps you from committing yourself fully to the thing you want most. Whether it is a relationship, a job, or a business venture, anything worth having is worth giving your all. In the event that you put all your eggs in one basket and that basket is lost, trust that you have the ability and faith to use the wisdom gained to rebuild and start again. You are resilient. And if you have to start over, you can do it.

The feature of programs, that they are defined purely formally or syntactically, is fatal to the view that mental processes and program processes are identical. And the reason can be stated quite simply. There is more to having a mind then having formal or syntactical processes. Our internal mental states, by definition, have certain sorts of contents. If I am thinking about Kansas City or wishing that I had a cold beer to drink, in both cases my mental state has certain mental content in addition to whatever formal features it might have. That is, even if my thoughts occur to me in strings of symbols, there must be more to the thoughts then the abstract strings, because strings by themselves can't have any meaning. If my thoughts are to be about anything, then the strings must have a meaning which makes the thoughts about those things. In a word, the mind has more than syntax, it has semantics. The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is simply syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content. To illustrate this point, I have designed a thought experiment. Imagine a bunch of computer programmers have written a program that will enable a computer to simulate the understanding of Chinese. So for example, if the computer is given a question in chinese, it will match the question against its memory or data base, and produce appropriate answers to the questions in chinese. Suppose for the sake of argument that the computer's answers are as good as those of a native Chinese speaker. Now then, does the computer on the basis of this literally understand Chinese, in the way that Chinese speakers understand Chinese? Imagine you are locked in a room, and this room has several baskets full of chinese symbols. imagine that you don't understand a word of chinese, but that you are given a rule book in english for manipulating these chinese symbols. The rules specify the manipulations of the symbols purely formally, in terms of syntax, not semantics. So the rule might say: take a squiggle out of basket 1 and put it next to a squoggle from basket 2. Suppose that some other chinese symbols are passed into the room, and you are given futhter rules for passing chinese symbols out the room. Suppose, unknown to you, the symbols passed into the room are called 'questions' and your responses are called answers, by people outside the room. Soon, your responses are indistinguishable from native chinese speakers. there you are locked in your room shuffling symbols and giving answers. On the basis of the situation as it parallels computers, there is no way you could learn chinese simply by manipulating these formal symbols. Now the point of the story is simply this: by virtue of implementing a formal computer from the point of view of an outside observer, you behave exactly as if you understood chinese, but you understand nothing in reality. But if going through the appropriate computer program for understanding CHinese is not enough, then it is not enough to give any other computer an understanding of chinese. Again, the reason for this can be stated simply: a computer has a syntax, but no semantics.

Sam was a BASKET CASE!!!

I’m euphoric with dopamine when I think of you. My infatuation with the memory of your face has flooded my neurons with Serotonin. My restless need to be with you has thrown in some norepinephrine. I’m a chemical basket case. But since I refuse to blame you, I’ve decided to blame my brain. Maybe if I believe I’ve reversed cause and effect I’ll get better.

I pop into Barrett's, ducking beneath the bright-red awning into the tiny shop, which is packed with fresh cuts of everything, from delicate lamb chops to meaty pork roasts covered in thick layers of fat. Mountains of fat sausages beckon from within the glass case, in more varieties than I could ever imagine---wild boar and apple, venison, chicken and sage, beef and garlic. A musty funk fills the store, giving the place an air of rustic authenticity. I order three Cornish hens (or, as the British call them, poussin) and then head back toward Pomona, the small food shop I visited this morning, remembering the fresh, crusty loaves of bread on their shelves. I grab a loaf of challah, its braided crust shiny and golden brown, along with some celery, an onion, some mushrooms, and a few spices. Before I pay, I also throw a bunch of speckled bananas, a pot of Greek yogurt, and some flour and sugar into my basket. The ingredients are slightly different here than they are back home---"self-raising flour," "caster sugar"---but I'm sure I can re-create the banana bread I developed for a famous morning-show host back in Chicago. It's one of my most popular recipes to date, and I'm sure it would taste great with a cup of tea.

Wall Street’s troubles instantaneously infected the City of London. Thus the Anglosphere went from financial supremacy to global basket case. Officials in Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin rejoiced, confident that the “Anglos,” who had been lecturing them regarding the flimsiness of Europe’s monetary union and social market model, had got their comeuppance. Until, that is, they realized that Germany’s and France’s banks were in a state worse than Lehman’s, with their asset books weighed down with US-sourced derivatives that had lost 99 percent of their value.

Years later, our scepticism has been vindicated. All this land grab did not improve our lot’s mundane lives. Our people continue to live a life of abject poverty and penury. They are still living a life of subsistence. A once feted jewel of Africa nation is now a basket case. One can’t help but ask: Aaah land reform, what was that all about? What was the point really?

Three beers is not drinking, Jack.” He has counted the bottles on the floor. “Three beers is sulking.

land, and often dressed from top to toe in white, the color of surrender. Her blond hair was as fine as dandelion dander and looked like it might fly off her head in a stiff breeze. She had a gap between her two front teeth, but none of the easy charm that usually came with it, and her pale blue eyes were of the penetrating, cult-leader variety. She turned heads wherever she went, including the heads of infants and dogs. Her beauty was like Switzerland itself-stunning, but sterile-and her Teutonic stoicism made the people around her seem like emotional libertines or, to use a more psychiatric term, total fucking basket cases.

Nobody says when they’re little, “Hey you know what, I think I’d like to be a basket case when I get older.” Nobody sits down as a kid and hopes they can grow up to be a bitter, fall-down drunk or an agoraphobic doormat when they grow up. Everyone wants to be normal. But sometimes we don’t have a choice.

The "hot money" flowed into Europe and today once rich and powerful nations like Ireland, Greece, Italy, and Spain are financial basket cases that may not recover.

The problem with sanctions is that they are just too convenient. They are what you do when you cannot or will not do anything else. They offer a good feeling that a crisis is being handled, but in reality they are blunt instruments with a questionable track record.26 When they work, they hurt the economy and state institutions of the country they target—along with its civilian populace—but do they reshape the bad policy behaviors that cause them to be applied in the first place? Sanctions impoverished Iraq and cost the lives of vulnerable Iraqis (including tens of thousands of children), but Saddam Hussein stayed in power and remained a hazard. Indeed, it could be argued that sanctions boomeranged on the United States because the Iraq that U.S. forces conquered and were then responsible for putting back on its feet had been left such a basket case.

Can you forgive me? Men are complete idiots when a woman cries.” He gave her the smile he’d reserved for old ladies in the jury box. She nibbled on her lower lip, looking pensive and wary. The bluebird in his grandma’s cuckoo clock sprang from its door and chirped, breaking the silence. Maddie jumped, pressing her hand to her chest as though trying to keep her heart from jumping out. As the clock struck, he cursed himself for making her uncomfortable. How could he have made such a tactical error? From what he’d discerned, she might as well be a virgin. He’d simply forgotten himself. Lost in her charm and good-girl complex, he’d said the first teasing thing that sprang to mind. And since he was a guy, it had been sexual. He took two cautious steps toward her, hoping she wouldn’t bolt upstairs. “That wasn’t the best thing to say when I’m trying to get you out of your clothes.” Auburn brows drew together in what he could only suspect was disapproval. He shook his head. What the hell was wrong with him? This wasn’t the time to mention seeing her naked. Shit, it was like he had no experience with women. She still said nothing, just stared at him with those uncanny green eyes. And damn if it wasn’t making him a bit unsettled. It had been so long since he’d been anything but cool and detached, even before his troubles in Chicago. The knowledge caused a stirring of unease. “I swear, I didn’t mean it.” He was starting to sound like a sixteen-year-old apologizing for trying to get to second base. Quietly, she toyed with the fabric of her dress, picking at one of the sparkly beads. At a loss for how to make the situation right, he offered the one thing he wanted to avoid, but was guaranteed to put her at ease. “Do you want me to call my neighbor, Gracie, to come help you out of your dress? She eats shit like this up, so you’ll make her day.” Maddie shifted on the balls of her feet. He narrowed his eyes. No matter how hard he peered at her, she remained a mystery. He sweetened the offer. “She’s a baker, so I bet she even has some cupcakes or cookies lying around.” Maddie placed her hand on her stomach. Why wouldn’t she speak? He raked a hand through his hair. “Princess, take pity on me here. I can’t begin to guess what you’re thinking. Did I scare you away forever?” She blinked, her face clearing as though she’d suddenly come out of a trance. “I’m sorry. Other than being an emotional basket case, I’m fine.” This

too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

Don't ever, ever give up. Moses was once a basket case.

feel like a basket case sometimes." "I love who you are, and I love every single thing about you, good or bad. I know you've been through some hard shit, and I wish I could take away the pain you've carried. I would take it on myself if I could. But I wouldn't change anything about you. Our pain and mistakes and faults are an integral part of us. They make our joy and successes and qualities all the more significant.

Pulling the covering from her basket decorated with pink-and-white polka-dotted ribbon, she withdrew her journal, a pencil, and some cheese. Jesus Christ She formed the letters of His name with careful script. Points of Merit: • Will never leave me • Nothing can separate me from His love • Took my sins upon himself • Forgave me • Turns my darkness into light • Cares about everything I do, even knows how many hairs are on my head. Drawbacks: She took a bite of cheese, then tapped the top of her pencil against her lips. • Can’t see Him, touch Him, or hear Him with my physical body Yes, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. • Is always right about everything True. But if you depend on me and trust me, I will take care of you. • Expects absolute obedience I have warned man that it is better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered woman. It’s in Proverbs, in case you’ve forgotten. She took another bite of cheese and suppressed a smile. • Has a droll sense of humor A feeling of shared warmth and amusement washed over her. She giggled. Wrapping her arms around herself, she basked in the warmth of His love. It was more fulfilling than she had ever thought possible. She knew, of course, that she would still go through difficult times. But she also knew she would not be alone. Smiling, she closed the journal and bowed her head before partaking of her meal. She thanked the Lord for her daily bread, for blessing the bicycle club and, most of all, for being her One and Only.

Jack,” she said, snuggled up against him. “I hate that I hurt you.” He buried his face in her hair and inhaled the sweet scent. “Let’s not talk about that anymore. It’s behind us. We have a lot in front of us.” “Would it be a good idea for me to go to Joey for a little while? Give you some space? Try to get my head together?” He rose over her and looked into her eyes. “Don’t, Mel. Don’t run just because we hit a rough patch. We’ll work through this.” “You sure?” “Mel,” he said hoarsely, his voice a mere whisper, “you have my baby inside you. I have to be a part of that. Come on…” She fought the tears that threatened. “I know it must be hard to deal with an emotional basket case like me.” He smiled at her and said, “I’ve heard that pregnant women get like that.” “I think I’m just like that, period.” “Marry me,” he said. She touched his beautiful face. “You don’t have to.” “Melinda, six months ago we were two people without attachments. Two people who had accepted we would never have any—and that we’d never have families. Now we have it all. We have each other and a baby. A baby we both want. Let’s not screw this up.” “Are you sure?” “I’ve never been more sure about anything. I want this. If you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere you want to go.” “But Jack, you love it here!” “Don’t you realize I love you more? I need you in my life. You and our baby. God, Mel—I don’t care where that happens. As long as it happens.” “Jack,” she said in a whisper. “What if you change your mind? What if something happens? You have to remember, I never thought anything terrible would happen to—” He put a finger on her lips, stopping her. He didn’t want to hear his name. Not now. “Shh,” he said. “I want you to trust me. You know you’re safe with me.” *

Celebrate to Celebrate Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. —PSALM 107:1     I’ve often been accused of celebrating just to celebrate. I guess that’s correct, because I’ve built a ministry on telling women how to develop a close-knit family. My experience has shown that healthy families love to celebrate—you name it; they celebrate. Make celebrations a tradition in your family! Why not? Life is for living, and in the living there’s always something to celebrate. Celebrate everything—good days, bad days that are finally over, birthdays, and even half birthdays. Get your children involved preparing for a dinner celebration. Make it special. Let them make place cards, set the table, help you cook, create a centerpiece. Our children were always assigned to greet our guests at the door—a wonderful opportunity for teaching hospitality and manners. Let your sharing extend beyond your family. Several times a year, create a “love basket” filled with food for a family in need. Try spending part of your holidays helping out at a shelter or a mission. This has been one of our most rewarding celebrations. Present your own version of a You Are Special plate to a special guest, and have her use it for her meal. Let the recipient know that she is special and is loved by all. Go around the table and tell that special person why she is so special. Have a box of Kleenex ready—the tears will flow. In some cases it will be the first time she has been told that she is special and loved at the same time. Don’t be limited. Look for ways to celebrate life and those you love! Prayer: Father God, there are a lot of reasons to celebrate today. Let me be a helper for those who want to celebrate but don’t know how. Amen.   Action: Plan a celebration for someone you love.  

He left here thinking he had one type of girl and he’s going to come home to me being a complete basket case. Who comes over to their boyfriend’s place so they can sniff his shit and hug his pillow?

Others, however, perhaps overwhelmed by what they read, say Africa should be written off, that it’s beyond repair. My experiences so far say we should put it in perspective. For instance, a new nation that has just won its independence from a colonial power struggles with internal graft and corruption, civil war and economic turbulence—more developed nations see it as a basket-case. Yet 200+ years later it emerges as the world’s sole superpower. Yes, America.

We all experience times when we feel oppressed and beaten down. During difficult times, we may remember the cliché that “God helps those who help themselves.” But the truth is that God wants us to be dependent on him. He urges us to demonstrate our faith by calling out to him in times of trouble. Even if we don’t see immediate relief, we can be sure that God has already set a plan in motion. There’s no reason for our circumstances to make us a basket case when we have God’s promise to rescue us.

which a drawing imported into a text document can no longer be altered, but must be changed in the original graphics program and reintroduced into the text document.) Out of the box the Star was multilingual, offering typefaces and keyboard configurations that could be implemented in the blink of an eye for writing in Russian, French, Spanish, and Swedish through the use of “virtual keyboards”—graphic representations of keyboards that appeared on screen to show the user where to find the unique characters in whatever language he or she was using. In 1982 an internal library of 6,000 Japanese kanji characters was added; eventually Star users were able to draft documents in almost every modern language, from Arabic and Bengali to Amharic and Cambodian. As the term implied, the user’s view of the screen resembled the surface of a desk. Thumbnail-sized icons representing documents were lined up on one side of the screen and those representing peripheral devices—printers, file servers, e-mail boxes—on the other. The display image could be infinitely personalized to be tidy or cluttered, obsessively organized or hopelessly confused, alphabetized or random, as dictated by the user’s personality and taste. The icons themselves had been painstakingly drafted and redrafted so they would be instantaneously recognized by the user as document pages (with a distinctive dog-eared upper right corner), file folders, in and out baskets, a clock, and a wastebasket. Thanks to the system’s object-oriented software, the Star’s user could launch any application simply by clicking on the pertinent icon; the machine automatically “knew” that a text document required it to launch a text editor or a drawing to launch a graphics program. No system has ever equaled the consistency of the Star’s set of generic commands, in which “move,” “copy,” and “delete” performed similar operations across the entire spectrum of software applications. The Star was the epitome of PARC’s user-friendly machine. No secretary had to learn about programming or code to use the machine, any more than she had to understand the servomechanism driving the dancing golf ball to type on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Changing a font, or a margin, or the space between typed lines in most cases required a keystroke or two or a couple of intuitive mouse clicks. The user understood what was happening entirely from watching the icons or documents move or change on the screen. This was no accident: “When everything in a computer system is visible on the screen,” wrote David Smith, a designer of the Star interface, “the display becomes reality. Objects and actions can be understood purely in terms of their effects on the display.

I’m really sorry about this. I promise I’m not a giant basket case. I’m just a little one.

If I didn’t compartmentalize, I’d never be able to function! It’s the only way I can survive without being a total basket case.

Maybe that was the real Long Island Compromise, that you can be successful on your own steam or you can be a basket case, and whichever you are is determined by the circumstances into which you were born. Your poverty will create a great drive in your children. Or your wealth will doom them into the veal that Jenny described at her science fair, people who are raised to never be able to support a life so that when they’re finally allowed to wander outside their cages for the first time on their way to their slaughter, they can’t even stand up on their own legs. But the people who rise to success on their own never stop feeling the fear at the door, and the people lucky enough to be born into comfort and safety never become fully realized people in the first place. And who is to say which is better? No matter which way it is for you, it is a system that fucks you in the ass over and over, in perpetuity, and who is to say which is better?

Not that I wanted to fuck him, but for some reason his rejection makes me feel worse. Clearly, I’m a goddamn basket case at this point.

I make her as jittery as a gerbil in a cobra pit.

These men developed a kind of Freudian-Marxism, or “Freudo-Marxism,” integrating the extraordinarily bad but influential twentieth-century ideas of Sigmund Freud with the extraordinarily bad but influential nineteenth-century teachings of Karl Marx. This was no match made in heaven. The noxious Marx had conjured up the most toxic ideas of the nineteenth century, whereas the neurotic Freud had cooked up the most infantile ideas of the twentieth century. Swirling the insipid ideas of those two ideological-psychological basket cases into a single malevolent witch’s brew was bound to uncork a barrel of mischief. The Frankfurt School was the laboratory and the distillery for their concoction, and the children of the 1960s would be their twitching guinea pigs and guzzling alcoholics. The flower-children, the hippies, the Yippies, the Woodstock generation, the Haight-Asbury LSD dancers, the sex-lib kids would all drink deep from the magic chalice, intoxicated by lofty dreams (more like hallucinations and bad acid-trips) of fundamental transformation of the culture, country, and world. And a generation or two still later, they would become the nutty professors who mixed the Kool-Aid for the millennials who would merrily redefine everything from marriage to sexuality to gender, wittingly or not serving the Frankenstein monster of cultural Marxism by doing so.

For ADELARD TOOK, for his VERY OWN, from Bilbo; on an umbrella. Adelard had carried off many unlabelled ones. For DORA BAGGINS in memory of a LONG correspondence, with love from Bilbo; on a large waste-paper basket. Dora was Drogo’s sister and the eldest surviving female relative of Bilbo and Frodo; she was ninety-nine, and had written reams of good advice for more than half a century. For MILO BURROWS, hoping it will be useful, from B.B.; on a gold pen and ink-bottle. Milo never answered letters. For ANGELICA’S use, from Uncle Bilbo; on a round convex mirror. She was a young Baggins, and too obviously considered her face shapely. For the collection of HUGO BRACEGIRDLE, from a contributor; on an (empty) book-case. Hugo was a great borrower of books, and worse than usual at returning them. For LOBELIA SACKVILLE-BAGGINS, as a PRESENT; on a case of silver spoons. Bilbo believed that she had acquired a good many of his spoons, while he was away on his former journey. Lobelia knew that quite well. When she arrived later in the day, she took the point at once, but she also took the spoons.