Beard Guy Quotes

I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

have you ever seen someone and thought to yourself, Whoa, he’s hot! I’d like to screw his brains out. And then, you talk to the guy and realize someone already has?

Not that my regularly scheduled life was so great, but it beat getting judged unworthy by twelve bearded guys named Erik.

Tom," said Douglas, "just promise me one thing, okay?" "It's a promise. What?" "You may be my brother and maybe I hate you sometimes, but stick around, all right?" "You mean you'll let me follow you and the older guys when you go on hikes?" "Well . . . sure . . . even that. What I mean is, don't go away, huh? Don't let any cars run over you or fall of a cliff." "I should say not! Whatta you think I am, anyway?" "'Cause if worst comes to worst, and both of us are real old--say forty or forty-five some day-- we can own a gold mine out West and sit there smoking corn silk and growing bears." "Growing beards! Boy!" "Like I say, you stick around and don't let nothing happen." "You can depend on me," said Tom. "It's not you I worry about," said Douglas. "It's the way God runs the world." Tom thought about this for a moment. "He's all right, Doug," said Tom. "He tries.

In my experience, the ex-military guys came in two types. The first grew long hair, sprouted beards, and indulged in all the things they hadn't been able do while they'd been in the armed forces. The second did their best to pretend they never got out.

Did the bearded lady get excited when cute guys came to her freak show?

Because when a guy sees a car he likes, all he can think about is getting under the hood or taking her for a ride.

I learned that one person hurting another really is like a hand curling into a fist to smash the foot. And that all that really matters is family and other people. And that the purpose of life is to find the Light of God, but not the light from some old guy with a beard sitting up there judging us. The light is the love we give each other on our way back home. And that God wouldn’t mind if we spent a little less time telling him how great he is and a little more time loving each other, and not just the people we’re supposed to love, but everyone.

Guys, gray in the beard is sexy. Leave it alone. Thank you,-Grown Ass Women

If you had told Gus even a week ago that a bow tie worn by a bearded guy who could pull off a man bun, for fuck’s sake, would be the beginning of his downfall, most likely he would have glowered at you until you returned to the pit from which you had crawled with the sole purpose of saying something ridiculous.

...to go to a dance with a guy who has all the personality of a serial killer mixed with a sponge.

...an old guy with a Hemingway beard and the build of a girl.

Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, don’t call anyone. I guessed talking with the guy would amount to doing something, which would contravene the don’t do anything part of the command. But then, breathing was doing something, technically. So was metabolizing. My hair was growing, my beard was growing, all twenty of my nails were growing, I was losing weight. It was impossible not to do anything. So I decided that component of the order was purely rhetorical.

In fact, there was an ancient bearded guy in the corner who looked like he'd probably palled around with Mary Shelley.

Falconer was wearing his street clothes—jeans, a black turtleneck and an empty shoulder holster under his armpit. Cowboy boots. Little bit of beard stubble. John wondered if the guy would walk from one end of the street to the other without winding up covered in bitches.

The other shoppers were too well behaved to stare at the green-headed stoner and the tear-streaked lady zigzagging up the aisles with a chubby bearded guy scurrying behind them picking up the things they dropped.

he thought a bit about God, and whether He might be some kind of universal digital computer, subject to the occasional bug or hack. Was it possible that politicians and hedge-fund operators were some kind of garbled cosmic computer code? That the Opponent, instead of having horns and a forked tail, was a fat bearded guy drinking Big Gulps and eating anchovy pizzas and writing viruses down in a hellish basement? That prayers weren’t answered because Satan was running denial-of-service attacks?

Can I admit I’m a little freaked out that Socrates only has one name? I know that’s how it was done in those days, but it bugs me. I can’t tell if it’s his last name or his first name or what. And it can’t be shortened—except to Sock, which is completely stupid. I want him to have a more familiar name—something laid back and modern, so I can relate to him better. So I stare at the picture in my book of the curly-bearded guy with the pug nose, and by the end of study hall, I name him Frank. Frank Socrates. Makes him more huggable.

In the morning After taking cold shower —-what a mistake—- I look at the mirror. There, a funny guy, Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin, —-what a pity—- Poor, dirty, old man, He is not me, absolutely not. Land and life Fishing in the ocean Sleeping in the desert with stars Building a shelter in the mountains Farming the ancient way Singing with coyotes Singing against nuclear war— I’ll never be tired of life. Now I’m seventeen years old, Very charming young man. I sit quietly in lotus position, Meditating, meditating for nothing. Suddenly a voice comes to me: “To stay young, To save the world, Break the mirror.

The two guys who ran the place, always in Williamsburg hipster uniforms of short-sleeved shirts and neatly trimmed beards that looked stuck on with spirit gum, paid, as ever, no attention to anything but the food and the money. Tallow imagined that every night they counted their money and prided themselves on having not made eye contact with anything human.

You mean like in Archon? For the C64?" "Um. Right." Lisa scowled even a little more. A bearded guy at the back rolled his eyes, as if in disbelief at what a loser I was; he was wearing a jester's hat. It had come to this.

As a dad, you are Vice President. You are part of the Executive Branch of the family, but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children’s eyes, you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza. I’m never the first choice. My kids don’t even mask it, which I respect them for. “Let’s see, the crabby guy with the scratchy beard or that warm soft lady that tells us stories for eight hours?” It’s not even close.

Remember how I said nothing changes everything? I think I was wrong about that. I'm starting to think that maybe everything changes everything. That we never know what's going to happen next and we're not even supposed to. Maybe 'Z' is the shape of everyone's life. You're going along in what feels like a straight line, headed for one horizon, the only one as far as you know, and then something happens, maybe something good, maybe something terrible, or maybe just something like seeing a guy picking out a cantelope at the store, something that feels like nothing, and all of a sudden you're headed at another horizon altogether. Good things can happen that you did nothing to deserve. Bad things can happen that aren't anyone's fault. And it's sad how, if you let yourself, it's so much easier to think about what you've lost instead of what you have left. I'm not saying everything's okay, because it's not. We will never, ever be the same without you. We have our good days and bad days as a family, and you will always be the invisible center of both. But love is this really powerful thing that everyone's got if they'd just learn how to accept it. I mean, come on. If it's something we all have to give, and it's something we all want, doesn't that mean there's exactly enough to go around?

He wasn’t a pretty boy, his nose was crooked and his grin lopsided, but he had that square-jawed, salt-of-the-earth handsome look that made a girl think of loose-hipped cowboys and demanding Scottish Lairds. And speaking of Scottish Lairds, old mate was a redhead. Usually gingers weren’t her scene but this guy’s hair was the rich coppery-auburn of a fox's pelt. It gleamed like rose gold under the floodlights, his short beard the exact colour as the stuff on his head. Big Red was doing it for her. Big time. And apparently, the feeling was mutual.

His cellphone alarm beeped. Now. Who would he nail? A single target tonight. So, a single bullet in the gun. David put the crosshairs on one of the guys walking out of the Quick Trip. Tall man, longish hair, scruffy beard. The guy pulled keys from his pocket and the crosshairs settled on his face. What was next? David pulled the trigger. The back of the guy’s head exploded. A massive wound. The guy’s friend looked around. The pregnant woman screamed. The black guy ran. The girls hugged each other. David pulled the trunk lid back down. Clicked and locked. A gentle walkway wound around the mall. Sol slowly drove away. David’s breaths came fast, almost pants. He then took his black pants off and removed his soiled underwear. He reached in the plastic bag for the fresh pair. Changing in the trunk of a dark and hot and moving car was difficult. Just part of the job now. When he pulled the trigger, he orgasmed. Always did. David slowed his breathing. Taylor series for ex = 1 + x + X2 / 2! + X3 / 3! etc. Yes, that was better. He closed his eyes and let go of the rope and let the rifle roll to one side. That guy’s head exploded. They drove away, below the speed limit. Didn’t want to attract attention. No need to, in no hurry.

He already thought she was a weirdo, and this was just going to make her seem that much weirder. Did the bearded lady get excited when cute guys came to her freak show?

When a guy sees a car he likes, all he can think about is getting under the hood or taking her for a ride.

Nothing good comes from dating a bearded guy. If they’re devious enough to hide their chins, they could be hiding anything ...

Closing down an event with Confederate reenactors is never really easy for a black guy. Let’s face it, the Confederates lost the War Between the States, but they won a different type of war.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn’t think he’d be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put me to sleep.

But as soon as he came through the door, it was clear Che was no ordinary man. He looked exactly like the hundreds of photographs that had appeared in the newspapers: he was dressed in a military uniform with a cigar in his mouth. His long hair and beard gave him a wild and leonine look. What was most impressive about him was his gaze. There was a ferocity and an energy in his eyes that exceeded his mere presence. The guy was boiling inside.

I mean, do you believe in God or what? “ “Not the name-brand God they serve here.” Tim said. “That old guy with the beard, granting wishes out of the clouds to whoever says the most rosaries. That’s bullshit. I believe in everything.

described approached so nigh as to receive some interruption from the warders, he dashed his dusky green turban from his head, showed that his beard and eyebrows were shaved like those of a professed buffoon, and that the expression of his fantastic and writhen features, as well as of his little black eyes, which glittered like jet, was that of a crazed imagination. "Dance, marabout," cried the soldiers, acquainted with the manners of these wandering enthusiasts, "dance, or we will scourge thee with our bow-strings till thou spin as never top did under schoolboy's lash." Thus shouted the reckless warders, as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a child when he catches a butterfly, or a schoolboy upon discovering a bird's nest. The marabout, as if happy to do their behests, bounded from the earth, and spun his giddy round before them with singular agility, which, when contrasted with his slight and wasted figure, and

Ladies and gentlemen, when you paint your lips, eyes, nails, hair, side-beards, or whatever, to look beautiful or handsome, don't forget your up stairs, if you don't go up there to put things in order, then, consider the former attributes null and void.

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster. All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who preceded me and is tied for first with 10/10. The two brothers are the only entrants even near my age; both got scores of 9/10 and are now appraising me coolly from identical prep-school-slouch positions against the starboard rail. The Greek NCOs seem extremely bored. I am handed the heavy gun and told to "be bracing a hip" against the aft rail and then to place the stock of the weapon against, no, not the shoulder of my hold-the-gun arm but the shoulder of my pull-the-trigger arm. (My initial error in this latter regard results in a severely distorted aim that makes the Greek by the catapult do a rather neat drop-and-roll.) Let's not spend a lot of time drawing this whole incident out. Let me simply say that, yes, my own trapshooting score was noticeably lower than the other entrants' scores, then simply make a few disinterested observations for the benefit of any novice contemplating trapshooting from a 7NC Megaship, and then we'll move on: (1) A certain level of displayed ineptitude with a firearm will cause everyone who knows anything about firearms to converge on you all at the same time with cautions and advice and handy tips. (2) A lot of the advice in (1) boils down to exhortations to "lead" the launched pigeon, but nobody explains whether this means that the gun's barrel should move across the sky with the pigeon or should instead sort of lie in static ambush along some point in the pigeon's projected path. (3) Whatever a "hair trigger" is, a shotgun does not have one. (4) If you've never fired a gun before, the urge to close your eyes at the precise moment of concussion is, for all practical purposes, irresistible. (5) The well-known "kick" of a fired shotgun is no misnomer; it knocks you back several steps with your arms pinwheeling wildly for balance, which when you're holding a still-loaded gun results in mass screaming and ducking and then on the next shot a conspicuous thinning of the crowd in the 9-Aft gallery above. Finally, (6), know that an unshot discus's movement against the vast lapis lazuli dome of the open ocean's sky is sun-like -- i.e., orange and parabolic and right-to-left -- and that its disappearance into the sea is edge-first and splashless and sad.

Congratulations, Jethro. Happy for you.” “Thanks, Drew.” The two men stared at each other and something passed between them, an understanding of some sort. “Oh great, now Drew and Jethro can mind-meld. I’m getting out of here.” I turned from the group and their chuckles. “Come on, Cletus. Stick around. I’ll gaze longingly into your eyes. Us single guys need to stick together,” Beau called after me.

When you hear the word dog you picture that animal in your mind, but what do you see when you say the word God? Most people I know deny they see Michelangelo's white-bearded, big-handed guy; now it's a concept, usually it's Love - God is Love, most nonbelievers say - but if God is Love, then we don't need the word God, do we? We could just say, I hope to Love you get better. I pray to Love you are healed. Love, please heal my sister, Madeline.

Glass struck the map with the back of his hand. 'You been around it yet?' Leonard, still not trusting himself to avoid more of his 'Well, actually, no,' shook his head. 'I've just been reading this report. One of the things it says, and this is just anyone's guess, but what they say is that between five and ten thousand individuals in this city are working in intelligence. That's not counting backup. That's guys on the ground. Spies.' He tilted his head and pointed his beard at Leonard until he was satisfied with the response. 'Most of them are free-lancers, part-timers, kids, Hundert Mark Jungen who hang around the bars. They'll sell you a story for the price of a few beers. They also buy. You been over to the Café Prag?' 'No, not yet.' Glass was striding back to his desk. He had had no real need of the map after all. 'It's the Chicago futures market down there. You should take a look.

The planet was filling up with good-looking young worldlings built entirely of opposites, canceling themselves out and- speaking as a bloke- leaving nothing you'd honestly want to go for a drink with. This new species of guys paired city shoes with backwoods beards. They played in bands but they worked in offices. They hated the rich but they bought lottery tickets, they laughed at comedies about the shittiness of lives that were based quite pointedly on their own, and worst of all they were so endlessly bloody gossipy. Every single thing they did, from unboxing a phone through to sleeping with his athlese, they had this compulsion to stick it online and see what everyone else thought. Their lives were a howling vacuum that sucked in attention. He didn't see how Zoe could ever find love with this new breed of men with cyclonic souls that sucked like Dysons and never needed their bag changed in order to keep on and on sucking.

I’m convinced that her obsession with Jesus was far more romantic than spiritual. I think she was actually attracted to him. I sincerely thought that one day while out on a grocery run, she would find some skinny, bearded, out-of-work Foote guy on the side of the road and, convinced that he was our anorexic Son of God, rescue him and head for some unincorporated Christian town in the middle of Illinois with a bingo hall and lots of roadside crucifixes, never to return.

Unchecked imagination is lunacy. Take someone with an imagination and they can think of almost anything. But do we really want our world polluted with everything? Think about it. Someone imagined the gun and then they coughed it into existence. If you guys had something like Brilliance, it would have taken that idea, absorbed it, and glowed brighter. Desire, that’s what Brilliance represents. The desire to do better. The desire to dream bigger. Nuclear weapons. There was another real winner you guys thought up.

I'm sorry about...everything. And that." I pointed to her neck.               The small smile had more than one meaning. It had my inner guy perking to attention. "Girls don't generally complain about beard burn, do they? Isn't it supposed to be a way for guys to mark girls, claim them, be all romantic in a Neanderthal kinda way, like hickies?"               I arched an eyebrow at her. Oh, is that right. She blushed, furiously and adorably, and backtracked.               "I didn't mean you were trying to mark me, I just meant you didn't have to apologize."               I couldn't help myself. I leaned in, putting my hand on the wall behind her head. "How many hickies have you had?"               She licked her bottom lip. Again. "None," she breathed. She put a hand on my chest to keep me from coming closer.               I pursed my lips in approval. "That's a good answer."               "Why do you care?" she asked. It wasn't a demand that she know, it was more like she was genuinely interested. Why did I?               I

form of a child. He points it out to John, who thinks he’s nuts, because the person on the shore isn’t a child but a handsome young man. They go to investigate, and although one sees an old, bald man, the other sees a young guy with a beard.” Reverend Justus frowned. “I can quote the Gospel of John forward and backward,” he said, “and that’s not in there.” Fletcher smiled. “I never said it was from the Gospel of John. I said it was from a gospel. A Gnostic one, called the Acts of John.” “There’s no Acts of John in the Bible,

I'm serious!" the bearded guy said. With his eyes bright like that, Nicky saw that he wasn't as old as he had seemed at first. She wasn't used to seeing young guys with beards. "I know it was ego too, and they didn't think of it like that, exactly - but that's the beautiful thing about it. It was all accidental, kinda. And to get to your question, the traditional graf scene died out with the flashing technology. 'Cause it was super hard to get paint, and even if you did get a piece up it'd be flashed off in a second. There were a few writers who got into flash pieces-

Marathon In 490 B.C., a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles, from Marathon to Athens, to bring the senate news of a battle. He died from exhaustion, but his memory lives on thanks to the “marathon,” a twenty-six-mile footrace named in his honor. I thought it would be neat to bring Pheidippides to a modern-day marathon and talk to him about his awesome legacy.   ME: So, Pheidippides: What was it like to run the first “marathon”? PHEIDIPPIDES: It was the worst experience of my life. ME: How did it come about? PHEIDIPPIDES: My general gave the order. I begged him, “Please, don’t make me do this.” But he hardened his heart and told me, “You must.” And so I ran the distance, and it caused my death. ME: How did you feel when you finally reached your destination? PHEIDIPPIDES: I was already on the brink of death when I entered the senate hall. I could actually feel my life slipping away. So I recited my simple message, and then, with my final breath, I prayed to the gods that no human being, be he Greek or Persian, would ever again have to experience so horrible an ordeal. ME: Hey, here come the runners! Wooooh! PHEIDIPPIDES: Who are these people? Where are they going? ME: From one end of New York to the other. It’s a twenty-six-mile distance. Sound familiar? PHEIDIPPIDES: What message do they carry…and to whom? ME: Oh, they’re not messengers. PHEIDIPPIDES: But then…who has forced them to do this? ME: No one. It’s like, you know, a way of testing yourself. PHEIDIPPIDES: But surely, a general or king has said to them, “You must do this. Do this or you will be killed.” ME: No, they just signed up. Hey, look at that old guy with the beard! Pretty inspiring, huh? Still shuffling around after all these years. PHEIDIPPIDES: We must rescue that man. We must save his life. ME: Oh, he knows what he’s doing. He probably runs this thing every year. PHEIDIPPIDES: Is he…under a curse? ME: No.

In addition to Linda and me, there's a brother, a strange little guy named Bradley, obsessed with his own cowboy boots. He paces areound and around the house, staring at his feet and humming the G. I. Joe song from the television commmercial. He is the ringleader of a neighborhood gang of tiny boys, four-year olds, who throw dirt and beat each other with sticks all day long. In the evenings he comes to dinner with an imaginnary friend named Charcoal. 'Charcoal really needs a bath', my mother says, spooning Spaghettios onto his plate. His hands are perfectly clean right up to the wrists and the center of his face is cleared so we can see what he looks like. The rest of him is dirt.

The light collapses. The figure smashes into focus, becoming physical. It's a real human. A skinny twenty-something: scruffy, uncut hair and a sketchy beard. He is shirtless, and there is a deep, black pit in his clavicle, a hole where he has clearly been very badly wounded. Blood has run down his chest, soaked his jeans and forearms, and dried black. Fresh blood is still coming, building up thick layers, which shouldn't be possible. Wheeler doesn't spot the second hole in his gut, obscured by too much blood. Wheeler is trying to keep his expression neutral, but he knows it isn't working. He can feel his left hand, his bad hand, starting to shake. A part of him still wants to ask the guy why. But there is no possible answer. "This is what the human race really is," the man explains, spreading his hands to gesture at the whole world. "We lied to ourselves that we could be better, for thousands of years. But this is it. This is what we've always been. We've never been anything else.

Hey," she whispered to Malachi. "When are Irin considered adults?" He was following what looked to be a quiet argument between Sari and Mala. "Full adults? Around sixty to seventy-five years. When we're finished with our training. Why?" She flushed. Wow. "So, you're quite the cradle robber, aren't you?" Malachi turned to her abruptly. "What? No, I'm not." "I'm not even thirty. That's like... a teenager to you guys." She could see the flush crawl up his neck, even behind the beard. "You're human. You mature differently." "But I'm not really human." His shoulders were stiff and his posture screamed his discomfort. It was really a shame Ava found teasing him to be so amusing. "I mean, what would your mom say if she found out you were mated-and I mean well and thoroughly mated- to what she would basically consider a kid?" He wiped a hand over his forehead. "Heaven above, please stop talking." "So are we going to stop fooling around now?" He groaned. "Ava." "I'm just yanking your chain." "You're going to have to speak up, because the mental lecture my mother's memory is giving me right now is rather loud.

Remind yourself where you come from. I spent the majority of my life running away from Utah, from the life I led there, from the memories I associated with those early years. It felt very someone-else-ago to me. London changed me profoundly. When we were dancing on DWTS together, Jennifer Grey called me one night. She was having trouble with her back and wanted to see a physiotherapist. “Can you come with me?” she asked. She drove us through a residential section of Beverly Hills. We pulled into a house with a shed out back. Oddly, it didn’t look like a doctor’s office. There was a couch and incense burning. An Australian guy with a white beard came in : “Hey, mates.” I looked at Jen and she winked at me. This was no physical therapy. She’d signed us up for some bizarre couples therapy! The guy spoke to us for a while, then he asked Jennifer if she wouldn’t mind leaving us to chat. I thought the whole thing was pretty out there, but I didn’t think I could make a run for it. “So, Derek,” he said. “Tell me about your childhood.” I laid it all out for him--I talked for almost two hours--and he nodded. “You can go pick him up now.” I raised an eyebrow. “Pick who up?” The therapist smiled. “That younger boy, that self you left in Utah. You left him there while you’ve been on a mission moving forward so vigorously. Now you can go get him back.” I sat there, utterly stunned and speechless. It was beyond powerful and enlightening. Had I really left that part of me behind? Had I lost that fun-loving, wide-eyed kid and all his creative exuberance? When I came out of my therapy session, Jennifer was waiting for me. “If I’d told you this was where we were going, you wouldn’t have come,” she said. She was right. She had to blindside me to get me to grapple with this. She’s a very spiritual person, and she saw how I was struggling, how I seemed to be in some kind of emotional rut. Just visualizing myself taking the old Derek by the hand was an incredible exercise. I think we often tuck our younger selves away for safekeeping. In my case, I associated my early years with painful memories. I wanted to keep young Derek at a distance. But what I forgot was all the good I experienced with him as well: the joy, the hope, the excitement, the wonder. I forgot what a great kid Derek was. I gave myself permission to reconnect with that little boy, to see the world through his eyes again. It was the kick in the butt I needed. Jennifer would say, “Told ya so.

I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlmann, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph. I don't feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie's face when you pass on the pate. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards. Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice- again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet. I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Idk. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend. Spicy isn't so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily's sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn't admit to liking. I'm allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I'm never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado's bland oiliness, okra's slickery slime, and don't even get me started on runny eggs. I know. It's mortifying.

Where do you even start with Cinderella? Let's ignore Cinderella's victim status and total lack of self-determination and head straight for the prince who was, let's face it, a bit of a jerk. Despite being captivated by Cinderella's radiant beauty for half the night, come the cold light of day he has completely forgotten what she looks like and only has her shoe size to go on. Either he was suffering from some sort of early onset Alzheimer's disease or else he was completely off his face during the big ball. the end result is that he goes trawling through the kingdom in some sort of perverted foot-fetish style quest for someone, anyone, who fits the glass slipper. Just how superficial is this guy? What if Cinderella had turned up at the ball looking exactly like she did only with a mole on her face and that had a couple of twelve-centimetre hairs sticking out of it? What if a bearded troll just happened to have the same shoe size as Cinderella? 'Ah, well. Pucker up, bushy cheeks, it's snog time.' And no one ever bothers to question the sheer impracticality of Cinderella's footwear. Glass might be good for many things but it's not exactly malleable in its cooled state. If everyone turned and gaped when Cinderella made her big entrance into the ball, it's only because she'd have come staggering in like a drunken giraffe on rollerblades. Bit of a head turner.

Ricky Marigold was his name up at the commune. He was seventeen, had run away from home in Pacoima and was a righteous grasshead. He wasn't a bad kid, just fucked up. He was for: love, truth, gentleness, getting high, staying high, good sounds, pleasant weather, funky clothes and rapping with his friends. He was against: Viet Nam, the Laws with their riot sticks, violence, bigotry, random hatred, nine-to-five jobs, squares who tried to get you to conform, grass full of seeds and stems, and bringdowns in general. He met Jack Gardiner on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Sunset, across from Schwab's where the starlets went to show off their asses. He saw Jack Gardiner as a little too old to be making the scene, but the guy looked flaky enough: lumberjack shirt, good beard, bright eyes; and he seemed to be friendly enough. So Ricky invited him to come along. They walked up Laurel Canyon, hunching along next to the curb on the sidewalkless street. "Gonna be a quiet scene," Ricky said. "Just a buncha beautiful people groovin' on themselves, maybe turning on, you know." The older man nodded; his hands were deep in his pants pockets. They walked quite a while, finally turning up Stone Canyon Road. A mile up the twisting road. Jack Gardiner slipped a step behind Ricky Marigold and pulled out the blade. Ricky had started to turn, just as Connie's father drove the shaft into Ricky's back, near the base of the spine. Ricky was instantly paralyzed, though not dead. He slipped to the street, and Jack Gardiner dragged him into the high weeds and junk of an empty lot. He left him there to die. Unable to speak, unable to move, Ricky Marigold found all the love draining out of him. Slowly, for six hours, through the small of his back.

Dear Peter K, First of all I refuse to call you Kavinsky. You think you’re so cool, going by your last name all of a sudden. Just so you know, Kavinsky sounds like the name of an old man with a long white beard. Did you know that when you kissed me, I would come to love you? Sometimes I think yes. Definitely yes. You know why? Because you think EVERYONE loves you, Peter. That’s what I hate about you. Because everyone does love you. Including me. I did. Not anymore. Here are all your worst qualities: You burp and you don’t say excuse me. You just assume everyone else will find it charming. And if they don’t, who cares, right? Wrong! You do care. You care a lot about what people think of you. You always take the last piece of pizza. You never ask if anyone else wants it. That’s rude. You’re so good at everything. Too good. You could’ve given other guys a chance to be good, but you never did. You kissed me for no reason. Even though I knew you liked Gen, and you knew you liked Gen, and Gen knew you liked Gen. But you still did it. Just because you could. I really want to know: Why would you do that to me? My first kiss was supposed to be something special. I’ve read about it, what it’s supposed to feel like00fireworks and lightning bolts and the sound of waves crashing in your ears. I didn’t have any of that. Thanks to you it was as unspecial as a kiss could be. The worst part of it is, that stupid nothing kiss is what made me start liking you. I never did before. I never even thought about you before. Gen has always said that you are the best-looking boy in our grade, and I agreed, because sure, you are. But I still didn’t see the allure of you. Plenty of people are good-looking. That doesn’t make them interesting or intriguing or cool. Maybe that’s why you kissed me. To do mind control on me, to make me see you that way. It worked. Your little trick worked. From then on, I saw you. Up close, your face wasn’t so much handsome as beautiful. How many beautiful boys have you ever seen? For me it was just one. You. I think it’s a lot to do with your lashes. You have really long lashes. Unfairly long. Even though you don’t deserve it, fine, I’ll go into all the things I like(d) about you: One time in science, nobody wanted to be partners with Jeffrey Suttleman because he has BO, and you volunteered like it was no big deal. Suddenly everybody thought Jeffrey wasn’t so bad. You’re still in chorus, even though all the other boys take band and orchestra now. You even sing solos. And you dance, and you’re not embarrassed. You were the last boy to get tall. And now you’re the tallest, but it’s like you earned it. Also, when you were short, no one even cared that you were short--the girls still liked you and the boys still picked you first for basketball in gym. After you kissed me, I liked you for the rest of seventh grade and most of eighth. It hasn’t been easy, watching you with Gen, holding hands and making out at the bus stop. You probably make her feel very special. Because that’s your talent, right? You’re good at making people feel special. Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don’t have to suffer through those kinds of things. It was easier after Gen moved and we stopped being friends. At least then I didn’t have to hear about it. And now that the year is almost over, I know for sure that I am also over you. I’m immune to you now, Peter. I’m really proud to say that I’m the only girl in this school who has been immunized to the charms of Peter Kavinsky. All because I had a really bad dose of you in seventh grade and most of eighth. Now I never ever have to worry about catching you again. What a relief! I bet if I did ever kiss you again, I would definitely catch something, and it wouldn’t be love. It would be an STD! Lara Jean Song

Albert is my name,” the old man said, offering his hand. Ezra took it carefully, mindful of old bones and thin skin, but Albert’s hand was steady, strong, and as dry and hard as a block of sanded wood. “And Ezra’s mine,” Ezra said. “Say, I’m lookin for someone. Maybe you might have seen him here in the park, sometime or another. He’s an older guy, maybe in his eighties, maybe even older than that. Strange clothes, looks like a costume. Long beard.” Ezra held a hand down at his waist to illustrate. “Long white hair.” Albert smiled. “You mean Owen! You’re looking for Owen?” Ezra nodded. That was way too easy, he thought. “Well let me tell you something, friend,” Albert said, tossing his butt. “You don’t go looking for the old man in the mountain. You can only find him.” “The hell’s that mean?” Ezra said with a grin. “Take it how you want it,” Albert said. “I’ve seen Owen from time to time, but never if I was looking for him. When I was a child, he used to tell stories to the children of the neighborhood. Right over there he did, under that old chestnut tree.” “When YOU were a kid?” Ezra said. “Owen’s older than you think, you see. A lot older. And he is a far traveler. Seen all of the world there is to see, Owen has- and some of it that should not be seen by anyone. But he’s no street person. You won’t find him among the great unwashed over by the war memorial, or in the institutions, or at a shelter. You will not find him at all, in fact-“ “If I’m lookin for him,” Ezra finished.

He wasn't like some of the hippies in England, where the qualification to rebel is planted by the guilt raised from being a spoilt child with a good education. He was a real hippy born from being forced to kill for his army until he was twenty one. He had long hair because the army made him shave his head. The army made him shave every day too. Now he had a beard. His face for a long time was not his own. When this guy said he was all about peace he wasn't talking about peace because his mum never got him the horse he wanted for his eighteenth birthday, he was talking about peace because he’d seen war. He talked about love because he knew hate: hate for those above him, hate for those he had served with, hate for enemies not born his but who became so and, lastly, hate for himself for how his mind had been controlled.

It’s getting-up time,” Alessandro declares. “Today is the day.” “What day?” “The release date.” “What are we talking about?” “Daa-add. The new XBOX game. Hunting Old Sammie.” Armand opens his eyes. He looks at his son looking at him. The boy’s eyes are only inches away. “You’re kidding.” “It’s the newest best game. You hunt down terrorists and kill them.” Lifting his voice, “‘Deploy teams of Black Berets into the ancient mountains of Tora Bora. Track implacable terrorists to their cavernous lairs. Rain withering fire down on the homicidal masterminds who planned the horror of September eleven, two-thousand-and-one.’” The kid’s memory is canny. Armand lifts Alex off his chest and sits up. “Who invented it?” “I’m telling you, dad. It’s an XBOX game.” “We can get it today?” “No,” Leah says. “Absolutely not. The last thing he needs is another violent video game.” “Mahhuum!” “How bad can it be?” says Armand. “How would you know? A minute ago you hadn’t heard of it.” “And you had?” “I saw a promo. Helicopter gunships with giant machine guns. Soldiers with flamethrowers, turning bearded men into candles.” “Sounds great.” “Armand, really. How old are you?” “I don’t see what my age has to do with it.” “Dad, it’s totally cool. ‘Uncover mountain strongholds with thermal imaging technology. Call in air-strikes by F-16s. Destroy terrorist cells with laser weaponry. Wage pitched battles against mujahideen. Capture bin Laden alive or kill him on the spot. March down Fifth Avenue with jihadists’ heads on pikes. Make the world safe for democracy.’” Safe for Dick Cheney’s profits, Armand thinks, knowing all about it from his former life, but says nothing. It’s pretty much impossible to explain the complexity of how things work within the greater systemic dysfunction. Instead, he asks the one question that matters. “How much does it cost?” Alessandro’s mouth minces sideways. He holds up fingers, then realizes he needs more than two hands. Armand can see the kid doesn’t want to say. “C’mon. ’Fess up.” Alex sighs. “A one with two zeros.” “One hundred dollars.” Alex’s eyes slide away. Rapid nods, face averted. “Yeah.” “For a video game, Alex.” “Yhep.” “No way.” “Daa-add! It’s the greatest game ever!” The boy is beginning to whine. “Don’t whine,” Armand tells him. “On TV it’s awesome. The army guys are flaming a cave and when the terror guys try to escape, they shoot them.” “Neat.” “Their turbans are on fire.” “Even better.” “Armand,” Leah says. “Dad,” says Alessandro. He will not admit it but Armand is hooked. It would be deeply satisfying in the second-most intimate way imaginable to kill al Qaida terrorists holed up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border—something the actual U.S. military cannot or will not completely do. But a hundred bucks. It isn’t really the money, although living on interest income Armand has become more frugal. He can boost the C-note but what message would it send? Hunting virtual terrorists in cyberspace is all well and good. But plunking down $100 for a toy seems irresponsible and possibly wrong in a country where tens of thousands are homeless and millions have no health insurance and children continue, incredibly, to go hungry. Fifty million Americans live in poverty and he’s looking to play games.

Wheeler was the kind of guy I’d be wary to have in my section. His arms were covered with tattoos, and he wore a sleeveless shirt to show them off. No smile touched his face behind the facial hair that surrounded his mouth but didn’t extend up to his ears in a full beard. His scruffy brown hair was styled shorter on the sides and fell all over the place on top. He had a morose expression as he leaned on the table and sipped his whiskey, sliding his bright eyes up to mine without saying a word. Dark, Dannika (2014-07-27). Five Weeks (Seven Series #3) (p. 63). . Kindle Edition.

He was vegan, animal rights activists, environmentalists who believe in conscious and compassionate living just like me. He listened to almost every bands that i listen to and more importantly he reads books. He was the person that i could talk to about almost everything that exists in this planet. He was just so close to perfection. Only thing that was missing out was long hair and beard. If only had he had hair and beard. The kind which makes guys look cool and hot at the same time. How can people look cool and hot the same time? what the fuck is wrong with me?

Trying to convince the kids that it’s a viable holiday — it’s hard," the Daily Show host says. "My wife is Catholic, so they also know the fat guy with the beard is coming with toys. Try to compete with that with some potato pancakes. We’re getting crushed on all fronts. What do you eat for Passover? Matzo. What do you eat for Easter? Chocolate eggs. You’re 10 — what do you want to do?

I’m never the first choice. My kids don’t even mask it, which I respect them for. “Let’s see, the crabby guy with the scratchy beard or that warm soft lady that tells us stories for eight hours?” It’s not even close.

Or should I say, she’s why we’re out here.” Connell refused to give his friend the satisfaction of an answer. “Word’s going around town that she got the best of two big men last night. Jimmy Neil and another strong man, who happens to be standing in the middle of Main Street, ogling at her—” “I’m not ogling at her.” Connell looked far off to the south, to the puffs of black smoke billowing in the air, the distant signal that the train—a branch of the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad—would make its daily appearance in Harrison. “And she didn’t get the best of me.” Stuart slugged him in the arm. The point of Stuart’s middle knuckle jabbed Connell hard enough to throw him off balance. Stuart wasn’t a big man. In fact, everything about him was thin. His face was a narrow oval covered with a scraggly beard. His arms and legs were as skinny as the branches of a sapling. If Connell hadn’t witnessed the man’s enormous appetite on occasion, he would have guessed Stuart wasn’t getting enough to eat. “Sounds like she’s got quite the spirit if she can get the best of you.” “I was rescuing her from Jimmy, and she fell on top of me.” “Rescuing?” Stuart gave a snort. “From the way I heard it, she did a pretty good job taking care of herself.” “No telling what could have happened to her if I hadn’t stepped in when I did.” Stuart laughed. “Okay, big guy. Whatever you say.

I know you’ve probably been too busy to think about my problem, but I’d appreciate your advice,” she said, stirring the tea. “Which problem would that be?” I assumed she meant Jackson James, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. That guy . . . what a little shit. The more I thought about him approaching Jennifer while she was on a date with Billy, the more I wanted to step up my armadillo infestation plans. Or maybe just beat the tar out of him. Granted, her date with Billy had been fake, but Jackson was ignorant of that fact. Consequently, he was a shit.

wrathful old guy with a long white beard who was big on testing

When he was twenty-four he made it to the top of Mount Everest. There’s this huge blown-up picture of him in our living room. Well, there was. My mom took it down. Since we found them on the couch right underneath it and all. He’d taken his oxygen mask and his goggles off so you could see it was him. He had one of those suits on that make you look like you’re in outer space. And he had all this ice in his beard. He had a beard back then. And his skin was all red. My mom would always look at that picture with me and tell me my dad was this really brave guy. This heroic guy. Now I look back and all I can think about is how I was born while he was gone, and he missed it. He’d been planning the thing for a year, and he wouldn’t reschedule. He left my mom seven months pregnant to go on this expedition. I think at the time the odds were something like one in seven of dying on Everest. Out of all the people who moved up from base camp, for every six who summited, one died. It changes from year to year. But he left my mom home alone to have me and maybe even raise me. Some hero. “And

I’m sure the one about the vampire mom—written, of all people, by a guy with a beard—should give me a good laugh. I

They’re looking now. He’s at the far side of the hall with a hulking group of football players, and all heads are turned his way. I’ve always thought Baylor was big and tall, but one of the guys next to him looks like he eats screaming villagers for breakfast. A linebacker, if I had to guess. He even has a beard, full and bushy. Hagrid’s younger brother maybe.

Hell, the Kindle app on my iPhone was filled with free ebooks and .99 cent ebooks that I had snagged in a buying frenzy a few days ago. Now, all I needed to do was to find the time to read them. I’m sure the one about the vampire mom—written, of all people, by a guy with a beard—should give me a good laugh.

Valkyrie had never noticed this before, but walking was really, incredibly boring. She'd watched those Lord of the Rings films where they all went walking up and down mountains and it seemed so adventurous and purposeful, and they didn't look too tired and no one really complained and that Aragorn guy looked really sexy with his stubble and his long hair and what had she just been thinking about? Beards? Lord of the Rings? Walking, that was it. Walking and boredom. God, she was bored. "I'm bored," she said. "We know," said Skulduggery. "This looked a lot more fun on Lord of the Rings." "So you've said.

Personally, I think that the concept of an old white guy with a beard in a red coat coming down a chimney in the middle of the night or a fairy with a tooth fetish sliding things under my pillow while I sleep would be way freakier, but no, for kids it’s monsters. Monsters

heresies are not like clothing styles or beards, my lord, to go in and out of fashion by the season or the year.” Alixana

Nice beard. The flannel’s a good touch. Very authentic. What do they call those guys, lumbersexuals?" "Men, they’re called men.

Meanwhile, I feel like almost every guy I meet here plays in some terrible band, reads Rilke, drinks Brooklyn microbrews, and has a bad beard. Yet I still manage to convince myself I really like them! Lack of good option does this to you.

I see rather than hear a guy in a suit and tie knocking on my door.  I wave him in, he opens the door and starts strolling toward my desk, he’s followed by two long haired, bearded, overweight, scruffy looking assholes both wearing glasses, short sleeved white shirts with their shirt breast pocket full of pens and little ruler looking things, complete with pocket protectors.       He’s wearing a really cheap looking blue suit, that’s been worn shiny slick and had to be right out of the 50’s.  The suit is adorned with a greasy looking; really wide tie that had more soup stains than Campbell’s.  To complete his ensemble he’s chosen a pair of shit brown shoes that hadn’t seen polish since they were new, which had to be a long time ago.  To top it all off, he’s sporting the most massive “Comb Over” on his head I’ve ever seen.  On the left side of his head was a “Tuft” of very thin gray hair.  He’d allowed this to grow until he could comb it all the way over the top of his bald head and down to his right ear.  I couldn’t help but stare.      Marines are first impression people and if you present a poor one, they generally will turn you off immediately. 

I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.

No answer. At least not in the form of the clouds parting and a bearded guy telling me to get my shit together, deal with the consequences, and trust him.

Hopefully, once they’d spoken to Grace, she’d have more to ask and the calls would necessitate themselves.  Roper turned into the street with the shelter on it and pulled the handbrake up without pressing the button. It clicked angrily and Jamie resisted the urge to tell him that it wasn’t good for the car. They got out and she breathed through her nose again.  The air was marginally fresher.  Her watch told her it was half past twelve and the smell of soup coming out of the shelter, as well as the growing line of homeless people, told her that it was nearly lunchtime.  The door was closed and another piece of paper had been stuck over the last one. It read ‘Hot food for all. 1pm.’  The people outside were lined up neatly, hugging the right-hand rail and stretching down onto the pavement and along the street. Jamie did a quick headcount down and got to twenty-two before Roper moved in front of her and she lost the number.  He looked back, dipped his head towards the door, and she went after him.  A guy with a shaggy beard and a lined face wearing two coats opened his mouth to tell them there was a line, and then had his sixth-sense tweaked and clammed up.  Roper gave him a glance and then pulled the door open and headed inside.  The room was much the same as it was before — except it was now empty of bodies and a dozen or so folding chairs had been set out for people to sit and eat. The camp table at the back that the coffee still had been on was now mostly filled by a big soup heater. It looked like it was older than Jamie was and the caked droplets of a thousand broths stained the side.

MONDAY On Monday morning I gathered my platoon together outside the barracks at the edge of town. “Right guys,” I said, “today we’re going to go hunting for skeletons. Apparently there’s a load of them in the forest, and if they pose a threat to the village we have to give them a whupping.” “Skeletons?” said Snipe, giving me a confused look. “Don’t them only come out at night?” “The forest to the south is pretty dark,” I said. “Plus, they might have an underground base there, to protect them from the sunlight. Either way, we need to investigate.” Ok, so I guess I should tell you a bit about my platoon? Mayor Birchwood set up a New Diamond City army, with volunteers who serve for a few days each month and then go back to their regular jobs for the rest of the month. I train those guys, but I also have my own team of soldiers who are the best of the best: The ones who can kick the most butt. There’s Captain Snipe, my second in command. He’s a bit moody, but he’s great with a crossbow. Then there’s Berian. He’s awesome with a sword, and a friendly guy. He has a beard, which is cool. Sometimes I wish that I could grow a beard. Shade is my stealth guy. He can sneak into anywhere. I always tell him he would have made a good ninja. Rainbow’s real name is Over the Rainbow (I’m not sure what his parents were thinking), but everyone just calls him Rainbow for short. He has a pet wolf named Malia, who does cool wolfy things for us, like sniffing out stuff and biting bad guys.

I’ll have to throw these jeans away and get new ones,” Luca said. “Unless you want these to make a pair of cut-offs?” “Your jeans would be way too big on me,” she said, not looking up from the bowl of ingredients she was mixing. “But there’s something in them for you.” She chuckled. “I bet there is.” “Naughty girl,” he said. “I mean there’s something in the pocket for you. Do you want it?” She walked over to him and held out her hand. “Sure. Whatever.” He placed a tiny charm in the palm of her hand. A heart. “It’s all yours now,” he said. “Even if you drop it, and step on it, and bend it out of shape, it’s still yours. I don’t want it back.” “You had this in your pocket?” “I’ve had it in my pocket every day for the last three months. Except one day when I thought I lost it in the washing machine, but then I found it in the filter. Don’t worry. It’s clean.” She stared at the heart and thought about all the times she’d taken the alley to work, or ducked into a store to avoid seeing Luca on the street. All the times she’d missed her chance to get Luca’s heart back. “I can understand if you don’t want my stupid heart,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t take me back either, because I’m not always a fan of Luca Lowell. He doesn’t always do the right thing.” “Don’t say that.” “It’s true. If I hadn’t gotten backed into by a truck last night and hadn’t gone to the hospital, I don’t know if you ever would have brought me back to your house. Back into your life.” “My tiny house, and my tiny life.” He shrugged. “It’s big enough for me.” He stretched out on the sectional. “You’ll have a hard time kicking me out again.” “Luca, I can’t make you any promises.” “Yes, you can. You can promise to give me a second chance the next time I screw up.” “You didn’t screw up. I did. I’m the one who kicked you out.” “Then I’ll give you a second chance. I won’t be a chicken and take the alley to work so I don’t run into you.” “You did that?” “Only for about a week, until your sister busted me sneaking through the alley like a burglar, and tore me a new one.” He rubbed his beard. “You know, now that I’m thinking over my conversations with her, it’s all making sense. She must have thought Chris’s wife was my girlfriend. The two of them stop by the garage a lot, but not always together. I thought your sister was being—well, you know how she is—but now I think I understand what was really going on.” Tina looked down at the heart in her palm then at Luca. She closed her fingers around the charm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to drop it again.” There was a scratch at the door. Luca rolled himself along the couch, reached out with one long arm, and opened the door. Muffins strolled in like he owned the place. Luca exclaimed, “Kitty!” Muffins jumped up on the couch and started sniffing Luca’s cast. Then he meowed about dinner. Luca picked the cat up gently and held him like a baby. “You are a cutie patootie,” he said, then he cleared his throat and said gruffly, “Yes, uh. This is a healthy cat specimen. A strong hunter. I can tell by his, uh, ample midsection.” Tina said, “That’s some pretty impressive baby talk for a big, tough guy like you.” “Big, tough guys have feelings, too,” Luca said. “And they like cats.

was a child. When someone needed a ride and didn’t have a boat available, they called Dick. He charged twenty bucks, a twelve-pack of beer, or a fifth of vodka. Cate paid cash. His thirty-year-old son, Adam, accompanied him these days and stared at Cate in a way that gave her the creeps. She stared back, and Adam finally had the grace to look away. Cate decided she’d never ride with Adam when he took over for his father in the future. “I brought over Dr. Powers,” answered Dick. “He’s the one who said to call the FBI. Kurt Olson from the sheriff’s office and a new deputy, Bruce Taylor, were already there.” Dick glanced over his shoulder at Cate. “You met Bruce or Dr. Powers yet?” “No.” She only knew Kurt. He’d been a deputy on Widow’s Island forever. “Bruce is young. Only been here a few months. From southern Oregon. Haven’t made up my mind about him yet,” Dick said, pulling at his beard. “Dr. Powers is a good guy. We’ve needed a doctor on the island since Dr. Hardy died three years ago. Tessa Black from the sheriff’s department shared his ride. Didn’t you two run around together when you were young? You know she’s a county deputy now, right?” “Yes.” Tessa had been like a sister to Cate while growing up. After nearly ten years of being a Seattle police officer and detective, Tessa had returned to Widow’s Island about a year and a half ago and joined the sheriff’s office. Cate had been back on the island for five days and still hadn’t contacted her good friend. Her grandmother had repeatedly pushed her to call Tessa, but Cate had dragged her feet, stating she needed more rest, and had firmly ordered her grandmother to keep this visit to the island under her hat. Cate wasn’t ready to face people. But tonight’s discovery gave her no choice. Trespassing teenage lovebirds had found the bones. The coroner—the new Dr. Powers—believed they belonged to a teenage female. Two years ago the FBI had conducted an investigation of a missing local girl, Becca Conan, with no results. Fourteen-year-old Becca was the daughter of Rex Conan, sole resident and current owner of Ruby’s Island. Now the FBI—meaning

They believe in a virgin birth, a resurrection, walking on water and some old guy with a white beard floating in the sky and running the world, but this they find unbelievable?” Gamache was quiet for a moment, then nodded. “It is interesting,” he agreed, “what people choose to believe.” And what they’d do in the name of that faith.

I can totally understand why someone in Paris or London or Berlin might not like the president; I don't like the president, either. But don't those people read the newspaper? It's not like Bush ran unopposed. Over 57 million people voted against him. Moreover, half of this country doesn't vote at all; they just happen to live here. So if someone hates the entire concept of America—or even if someone likes the concept of America—based solely on his or her disapproval (or support) of some specific US policy, that person doesn't know much about how the world works. It would be no different that someone in Idaho hating all of Brazil, simply because their girlfriend slept with some dude who happened to speak Portuguese. In the days following the election, I kept seeing links to websites like www(dot)sorryeverybody(dot)com, which offered a photo of a bearded idiot holding up a piece of paper that apologized to the rest of the planet for the election of George W. Bush. I realize the person who designed this website was probably doing so to be clever, and I suspect his motivations were either (a) mostly good or (b) mostly self-serving. But all I could think when I saw it was, This is so pathetic. It's like this guy on this website is actually afraid some anonymous stranger in Tokyo might not unconditionally love him (and for reasons that have nothing to do with either of them)...now I am not saying that I'm somehow happy when people in other countries blindly dislike America. It's just that I'm not happy if they love us, either. I don't think it matters. The kind of European who hates the United States in totality is exactly like the kind of American who hates Europe in totality; both people are unsophisticated, and their opinions aren't valid. But our society will never get over this fear; there will always be people in this country who are devastated by the premise of foreigners hating Americans in a macro sense. And I'm starting to think that's because too many Americans are dangerously obsessed with being liked.

One of those guys once mistook me for a native Vietnamese woman and kept trying to seduce me in Vietnamese. He had a huge red beard, John Lennon glasses, and looked like he had spent his whole life eating and smelling like Fritos while writing a fantasy novel that he would never finish about queens and dragons.

The front garden looks like a location shoot, littered with open metal boxes full of camera equipment, and hefty bearded guys muttering into their phones. The garden offers a safe haven; neither public nor press can touch them here. Two uniformed officers are guarding the gate, and a section of the street and park have been cordoned off with fresh plastic tape. The media have been forced back and are pushing against the tape like paparazzi waiting for a celebrity to emerge from the house

guys started setting up lights, cameras, and microphones everywhere. Ms. Beard walked around looking us over like a general inspecting the troops. “Oh, this is going to be fabulous!” she said. “It will be the first reality show that takes place in a school. The ratings are going to go through the roof!” “Are we going to be famous like that Snookie lady?” asked Andrea. “That depends on what happens, baby,”2 said Ms. Beard. “This is reality

Have you been crying?” She glanced away. “I’m sorry. I had one of those days.” He put his thumb and forefinger on her chin and pulled her eyes back to his. “What’s up?” he asked softly. “Need to talk about it?” “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know you don’t want to—” “It’s okay. What made you cry? Homesick? Lonesome?” She took a deep breath. “It was a year ago today. Snuck up on me, I guess.” “Ah,” he said. He put his big arms around her. “That would make some tears, I guess. I’m sorry, Marcie. I’m sure it still hurts sometimes.” “That’s just it—it doesn’t exactly hurt. It’s just that I feel so useless.” She leaned against him. “Sometimes I feel all alone. I have lots of people in my life and can still feel so alone without Bobby.” She laughed softly. “And God knows, he wasn’t much company.” He tightened his embrace. “I think I understand.” Yeah, she thought, he might. Here was a guy who was around people regularly, yet completely unconnected to them. She pulled away and asked, “Why did you do this?” “I thought I could clean up a little and take you somewhere.” “Wait. You didn’t think I needed you to do this for me, did you? Because of Erin?” He laughed, and she could actually see the emotion on his face, given the absence of wild beard. “Actually, if you’d asked me to, I probably wouldn’t have. You really think you can match me for stubborn? Probably not. I kept the beard because of the scar,” he said, leaning his left cheek toward her. “That, and maybe a bit of attitude of who cares?” She gently fingered the beard apart to reveal a barely noticeable scar. “It’s hardly there at all. Ian, it’s only a thin line. You don’t have to cover it. You’re not disfigured.” She smiled at him. “You’re handsome.” “Memories from the scar, probably. Anyway, tonight is the truckers’ Christmas parade. A bunch of eighteen-wheelers in the area dress up their rigs and parade down the freeway. I see it every year—fantastic. You think you’re up to it? With it being that anniversary?” “Maybe it’s a good idea,” she said. “Getting out, changing the mood.” “We’ll eat out and—” “What’s all this?” she asked, looking at the bags and boxes. “Snow’s forecast. It’s just what you do up here. Be ready. But this time I got some different things, in case you’re sick of stew. And I never do this—but you’re a girl, so I bought some fresh greens. And fresh eggs. Just enough to last a couple of days. No fridge; and they’ll freeze if we leave ’em in the shed.” “Ian, what about the bathroom? What will we do about the bathroom if there’s a heavy snow?” He laughed at her. “No problem. We’ll tromp out there fine—but I’ll shovel a path. And I’ll plow out to the road, but it’s slow going and if the snow keeps coming, it’s going to be even slower.” “Wow. Is it safe to leave tonight? For the parade? Will we get back in?” “We don’t have blizzards, Marcie. Snow falls slow, but steady. Now, I’m thinking bath day. How about you?” She put her hands on her hips and looked up at him with a glare. “All right, be very careful here. I’ve had my bath. And a hair wash. I’m wearing makeup, Ian. Jesus. You wanna try to clean me up?” His eyes grew large for a moment. Then he said. “Bath day for me, I meant. I knew. You look great.” His thumb ran along her cheek under one eye. “Just a couple of tear marks, but you can take care of that. Let me put this stuff away and get my water ready. You have something to read? Or are you looking for the thrill of your life?” “I have something to read,” she said. And, she thought, at the end of the day, they all turn out to be just men. *

These guys could actually tempt her to into a game of Good cop, bad cop. Or would it be Hot cop, hotter cop? Seasoned cop, youthful cop?

Bburke used to, whenever he went to the city to catch a Yankees game, throw his money around to every homeless man on the street, feeling it was the right thing to do; except one time he did that and he got to the stadium and realized he didn’t have enough money for the Bud Light tall boy he always got during the third inning. And in him he felt an unyielding rise of contempt for the himself of only hours ago, that he was something and now is something and that they aren’t the same somethings. But that the change was Barmecidal and it was just him, this moneyless and beerless man in the bleachers. Man made in God’s image, yet some men are homeless and some are beerless, and there must be this big bearded guy miles and miles in the sky who doesn’t have a home and can’t even catch a buzz.

In scores of cities all over the United States, when the Communists were simultaneously meeting at their various headquarters on New Year’s Day of 1920, Mr. Palmer’s agents and police and voluntary aides fell upon them—fell upon everybody, in fact, who was in the hall, regardless of whether he was a Communist or not (how could one tell?)—and bundled them off to jail, with or without warrant. Every conceivable bit of evidence—literature, membership lists, books, papers, pictures on the wall, everything—was seized, with or without a search warrant. On this and succeeding nights other Communists and suspected Communists were seized in their homes. Over six thousand men were arrested in all, and thrust summarily behind the bars for days or weeks—often without any chance to learn what was the explicit charge against them. At least one American citizen, not a Communist, was jailed for days through some mistake—probably a confusion of names—and barely escaped deportation. In Detroit, over a hundred men were herded into a bull-pen measuring twenty-four by thirty feet and kept there for a week under conditions which the mayor of the city called intolerable. In Hartford, while the suspects were in jail the authorities took the further precaution of arresting and incarcerating all visitors who came to see them, a friendly call being regarded as prima facie evidence of affiliation with the Communist party. Ultimately a considerable proportion of the prisoners were released for want of sufficient evidence that they were Communists. Ultimately, too, it was divulged that in the whole country-wide raid upon these dangerous men—supposedly armed to the teeth—exactly three pistols were found, and no explosives at all. But at the time the newspapers were full of reports from Mr. Palmer’s office that new evidence of a gigantic plot against the safety of the country had been unearthed; and although the steel strike was failing, the coal strike was failing, and any danger of a socialist régime, to say nothing of a revolution, was daily fading, nevertheless to the great mass of the American people the Bolshevist bogey became more terrifying than ever. Mr. Palmer was in full cry. In public statements he was reminding the twenty million owners of Liberty bonds and the nine million farm-owners and the eleven million owners of savings accounts, that the Reds proposed to take away all they had. He was distributing boilerplate propaganda to the press, containing pictures of horrid-looking Bolsheviks with bristling beards, and asking if such as these should rule over America. Politicians were quoting the suggestion of Guy Empey that the proper implements for dealing with the Reds could be “found in any hardware store,” or proclaiming, “My motto for the Reds is S. O. S.—ship or shoot. I believe we should place them all on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping-place should be hell.” College graduates were calling for the dismissal of professors suspected of radicalism; school-teachers were being made to sign oaths of allegiance; business men with unorthodox political or economic ideas were learning to hold their tongues if they wanted to hold their jobs. Hysteria had reached its height.

The DFL headquarters was a low white-brick building in a St. Paul business park across the Mississippi from downtown that possibly looked hip for fifteen minutes after it was built but no longer did. Lucas talked to a receptionist, who made a call. Schariff came out and got him, and said, “We’re down in the conference room.” “Who’s we?” Lucas asked. “Me and Daryl Larson, our attorney,” Schariff said. He was a stocky, dark-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and dark-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with a couple of pens in a plastic pocket protector. In any other circumstance, Lucas would have been willing to arrest him on the basis of the pocket protector alone. “I asked, and everybody said when you’re talking to a cop . . . especially one investigating the Grant-Smalls fight . . .” “Okay,” Lucas said. Larson was a tall, thin man whom Lucas knew through Weather’s association with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Larson raised money for the orchestra, usually by wheedling rich wives; it’d worked with Weather. When Lucas stepped into the room, Larson put down the paper he’d been reading and stood to shake hands. “Lucas, nice to see you. How’s Weather?” “Broke. She’s broke. She’s got no money left. She’s wondering how we’re going to feed the kids.” “Hate to hear that,” Larson said, with a toothy smile. “I’ll call her with my condolences.” The pleasantries out of the way, they settled into the conference chairs and Lucas outlined some of what he knew and believed about Tubbs’s disappearance. He finished by saying, “You guys are probably not going to want to talk about this, because when the media puts Tubbs’s disappearance together with the porn trick . . . it’s gonna look bad.

It’s not like Levi was going to be impressed by her fanfiction; entertained wasn’t the same as impressed. He already thought she was a weirdo, and this was just going to make her seem that much weirder. Did the bearded lady get excited when cute guys came to her freak show?

This really was a Twilight Zone episode. A hot guy who was also capable? Does not compute.

Have you seen what happened in Portugal? Drug-related deaths down by 90%. Who is the real bad guy? The drug dealer? Or the government that profits from making them a crime?

Guys and girls *can* be friends, you know. It happens." "Only if there's no attraction either way," Sam says. "Otherwise, it's usually friendship with some hopefulness attached to it." I swallow hard. It's easy to say that Weston and I are just friends. It's harder to say that I'm not attracted to him. Id' be crazy not to notice how handsome my best friend is. Tall and board-shouldered with caramel eyes and dark hair. I even like his beard, which is just the right length for kissing without giving your face an unwanted microdermabrasion. NOT that I've thought about kissing him. (I totally have.) And his thoughtfulness, sense of fun, and quirky sense of humor, and Weston is a catch some girl should have snapped up already. I gave up a dream of that girl being me years ago. "Nope. No attraction." "Really? Huh." She looks thoughtful. "Guess I was wrong." Sam is dangling bait in front of me. I know it's bait, but I still can't resist nibbling.

I'd given up on the NGK dominee's God a while back. But when I listened to people talking about their HP (Higher Power), I realised God may not be a big, bossy guy with a white beard. She might be a quiet inner voice.

A flower clock?" "Yeah. Mum was... is a florist, so I'm using her books on flowers to try to re-create or, well, create Carl Linnaeus's flower clock. He was a guy from the eighteenth century. Basically, each flower in the clock opens at a different time of day." "Its petals open?" "Yeah, so flowers have circadian rhythms," Ben says. He's blushing. "I don't know. Sounds stupid now I'm saying it. And it hasn't actually worked yet either. I thought, though, that with climate change and everything, the flowers will start opening at weird times, so it kind of goes beyond everything with, you know... my mum. It'll be, like, the more we damage the world, the more we damage the clock, and time, and, yeah, the future." "That sounds beautiful, Ben," I say. "Yeah, I don't know. I mean, what am I going to do with it? What's the point of it, really? Will it go in a gallery and then be, like, sold as prints of photographs of it or something? And then the time element of it will be gone." "Hmm." "Sorry," Ben says, and he shakes his head. "I guess I'm in a bit of a crap mood." He looks at me sideways, and nervously laughs to himself. "I mean, I don't know why I just told you all that." I shake my head. "It's fine. So, what flower's time is it now?" I ask. Ben looks at his phone. "Ugh, yeah, so that's the other thing. There actually doesn't seem to be a flower for each hour, which is kind of problematic. But the closest to now is the meadow goat's beard. It opens at three." "Oh, cool," I say. "So right now doesn't exist in flower time?" "Yeah, I guess it doesn't. I've never thought of it like that.

When I say that you can hear God in ‘One Man Guy’ by Rufus Wainwright, I do not mean to suggest that there is an old chap with a beard – a divine Willie Nelson, if you will – warbling along with them.

but I have a hard time believing they’d shave their goatees off to work for a merc outfit. Most of those guys keep them for life—it’s practically a religion. Kinda like how the console jockeys all grow scraggly-ass beards after they get their separation papers and move back into their moms’ basements.

My dream, someday, is to be that deep guy who always says the right thing to everybody. I have my beard planned out and everything. So I stood slowly and, my voice dripping with wisdom, clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “Being patient is the most important part of being a gentleman.” “You are a submarine sandwich,” he said, and walked out of the cafeteria.

Orion threw a grin back at me as headed to the bar, ducking behind it. “What would madam like?” he asked in a formal tone which was a damn good impression of the Acruxes' butler. I giggled hurrying over to take a stool in front of the bar and placing my clutch down, relishing the cool breeze against my burning neck. “Hmm...a Manhattan?” I teased and he cocked his head. “I'm afraid we're fresh out of bullshit, how about a white wine spritzer with a tiny umbrella in it?” I laughed, nodding eagerly as he made up my drink then poured himself a measure of bourbon. He held it out for me and I leaned across the bar to take it. As I took hold of the glass, he didn't let go and I gazed up at him under my lashes questioning why. “Have I told you have exceptionally beautiful you look tonight, Darcy?” Darcy. He'd said my name. For the first time ever. And why did it sound like so much more than a name when he spoke it? It was like he'd fired an arrow and it had punctured a flesh wound in me at the exact same moment. Hell. I needed to get over this guy. Why was I so caught up on him? Unavailable, that's what it was. We always want what we can't have and Professor Orion was off limits. Simple as that. And those muscles. And the beard. And the dark eyes. And the dimple. But that was it. “That's the first I've heard of it, Professor,” I whispered, unable to make my voice rise any louder. “Don't do that,” he grunted, releasing the drink. I eyed him curiously as he walked around the bar with his bourbon in hand. He took the stool beside mine, his arm butting up against me. “Do what?” I asked, swivelling around to face the pool and taking a sip of my spritzer. It fizzed on my tongue and sent a deep kick of heat through my chest. “You know what.” “You're very presumptuous, Orion. You think I'm far more aware of your chaotic way of thinking than I really am.” I sipped my drink again, spying on him from the corner of my eye. He took a swig of his own drink and the familiar waft of bourbon drifted over me, tingling my senses. It was becoming a trigger, like the moment I walked into his office and he uncorked a bottle, it made me want to taste it on his mouth. And then that led to me wondering whether his fangs would brush my tongue when we kissed, and that always led to me mentally undressing him, then me conjuring an image of what those muscles looked like beneath that shirt... “I have something for you,” he said and I turned, blinking out of my dark fantasy. “You do?” He nodded, reaching into his inside pocket and taking out my coil of blue hair. My heart combusted and a choked noise escaped me. I reached for it and he slid it onto my wrist. He kept my hand in his, his eyes downcast as they remained on the band of hair. “I want you to know, I believe you would have gotten this back yourself when you were ready. But I took a lot of pleasure in retrieving it for you all the same.” I stared at him in complete shock, unsure what to say, my tongue tied in knots. “But Fae don't fight battles for other Fae,” I blurted, completely astonished that his actions that day had been to take this back from Seth. For me. And nothing else. He finished his drink and planted the glass on the bar, rising to his feet. He didn't reply to what I'd said and I barely even remembered what it was as he started pulling his clothes off. “Err, what are you doing?” I half laughed as he shed his jacket and kicked off his shoes, pulling off his socks. Oh my god. “I hate parties, but I like swimming.” He started undoing the buttons of his shirt and thought his back was to me, I was still captivated as he dropped it to the floor like a silken sheet. My eyes scraped down his skin to where his muscles etched an upside down v into his lower back, disappearing beneath his waistband. His shoulders were tanned and heavenly broad, making me long to explore all of those muscles with my hands.(Darcy)

His shining skin drew my attention and I became enslaved to the need to explore every inch of his flesh. His body brought on an ache in me I hadn't known for a long time. Since my ex had dumped me after I'd given him my virginity, I hadn't done more than fool around with guys. The desire to go further had never really risen again. Not until Orion. And I had never, in all my life, wanted anyone like I wanted him. His beard had been trimmed even shorter for the party, revealing the powerful cut of his jaw and that divine dimple in his cheek. He'd brought me here, alone, cordoning me off from the world. And the blazing intensity in his gaze made me hope that maybe he was about to drop the teacher act for one night and admit he was drawn to me too. He glanced above us and his brow furrowed heavily. “Up there are a thousand reasons why we can't be together.” I swallowed thickly, goosebumps rushing along my skin in response to his words. I pressed my back to the cool tiles of the pool and the goosebumps spread deeper, evoking a shiver across my body. “I'm bound by so many rules I could waste the rest of your evening telling you them,” he said. “Skip them then, sir.” A smile played around my mouth as a thrill danced in my chest. He moved closer and rested his hands either side of me on the wall. “I think the time for sirs and professors is over, don't you?” No answer came from my lips, but my body gave it to him as I reached out and did the one thing I'd dreamed about the most since this all-consuming crush had first started. I brushed my fingers across the stubble on his jaw, resting my thumb over the dimple in his cheek, feeling the tiny rivet in his skin. The distance parting us suddenly felt like too much; the air was racing over my exposed flesh, chilling me to the core. I needed the heat of his hands, the red hot press of his stomach and chest. “Lance,” I breathed and his pupils dilated as I met his gaze. He devoured the space between us and I experienced pure sin as his mouth crushed against mine. It was gunpowder meeting fire and the result was an all-consuming blaze which burned me up from the inside out. A desperate noise escaped me that would have made me blush if I’d had any scrap of self-awareness left. But that was all it took for him to slam into me full force, hitching my legs up around his waist so fast it made my head spin. My hands finally got their deepest wish and roamed down the plains of all that gloriously golden skin. But it wasn't enough just to feel the flex of his muscles, I needed more and I took it by scratching against his beautiful shell, wanting to break beneath flesh and bone and burrow my way deeper. I need more. (Darcy)