Bits And Bobs Quotes

I fell in love with you a little bit, in that stupid way where you completely make up a fictional version of the person you’re looking at and fall in love with that person.

What are you doing?” “Helping my wife.” My throat bobs. “You’re growing a bit too comfortable with that nickname for my liking.” “I use it to remind you of your place.” “And what’s that?” “Mine.

Australians are very unfair in this way. They spend half of any conversation insisting that the country's dangers are vastly overrated and that there's nothing to worry about, and the other half telling you how six months ago their Uncle Bob was driving to Mudgee when a tiger snake slid out from under the dashboard and bit him on the groin, but that it's okay now because he's off the life support machine and they've discovered he can communicate with eye blinks.

Um.” Her jaw bobbed like a fish out of water for a second before her brain engaged. “What are you doing here?” His face was every bit as shocked, but he managed to look ruggedly handsome instead of like a suffocating tuna.

The first thing I did when I got inside was turn on the kitchen light. Then I moved to the table, putting my dad's iPod on the speaker dock, and a Bob Dylan song came on, the notes familiar. I went into the living room, hitting the switch there, then down the hallway to my room, where I did the same. It was amazing what a little noise and brightness could do to a house and a life, how much the smallest bit of each could change everything. After all these years of just passing through, I was beginning to finally feel at home.

To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole; but ever since the painting had vanished from under me I’d felt drowned and extinguished by vastness—not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm’s reach of each other, and with a swell of vertigo I thought of all the places I’d been and all the places I hadn’t, a world lost and vast and unknowable, dingy maze of cities and alleyways, far-drifting ash and hostile immensities, connections missed, things lost and never found, and my painting swept away on that powerful current and drifting out there somewhere: a tiny fragment of spirit, faint spark bobbing on a dark sea.

preferably where I keep all my bits and bobs as they are.

All of this cuteness, it was one of nature's great bait and switches, because... that wasn't all there was to Zuzana Nováková. Not even a little bit. Deciding to take her on was akin to a fish deciding idly to gobble up that pretty light bobbing in the shadows and then--OH GOD THE TEETH THE HORROR!--meeting the anglerfish on the other side.

I fell in love with you a little bit, in that stupid way where you completely make up a fictional version of the person you’re looking at and fall in love with that person. But still, I think there was something there.

And I imagined that if I were in some other, better universe, there'd be someone who could tell me, it's okay, or you'll get 'em next time, tiger. Someone would tell me that all the stupid things I'd done, all my mistakes, they didn't matter. This someone would say that, no matter what, she was proud of me, that I filled her heart with warmth, and that that's really the most you could hope for in life - to just for an instant make somebody else just a little bit happier. She would tell me that - guess what, - everything was going to be all right.

NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system: Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). Once Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea. The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

Roth,” muttered Zayne. He sounded closer, but I didn’t want to take my eyes off the Alphas to check. “You might want to chill out a bit.” The Crown Prince smirked. “Nah. You want to know why? The Alphas could end me, but they’re not going to.” Across from us, the Alpha who had spoken stiffened but didn’t interrupt. “You see, I am the favorite Crown Prince,” Roth continued, his smirk spreading. “They take me out when I haven’t done anything to warrant it and they’ll have the Boss to contend with. They don’t want that.” Surprise flickered through me. They couldn’t just end Roth because of who he was? I’d always thought they could simply do as they pleased. The Alpha who had been silent up to this point spoke. “There are rules for a reason. It does not mean we have to like them, so I’d suggest you do not push your luck, Prince.” Then Roth did the unthinkable. He raised his hand and extended his middle finger. “Does this count as pushing it, Bob?” Crap on a cracker, he’d flipped off an Alpha! And he’d called the Alpha Bob! Who did that? Seriously?

You're supposed to be a spirit of intellect. I don't understand why you're obsessed with sex." Bob's voice got defensive. "It's an academic interest, Harry." "Oh yeah? Well maybe I don't think it's fair to let your academia go peeping in other people's houses." "Wait a minute. My academia doesn't just peep -" I held up a hand. "Save it. I don't want to hear it." He grunted. "You're trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You're insulting my masculinity." "Bob," I said, "you're a skull . You don't have any masculinity to insult." "Oh yeah?" Bob challenged me. "Pot kettle black, Harry! Have you gotten a date yet? Huh? Most men have something better to do in the middle of the night than play with their chemistry sets.

Lucky bit on to Bob’s robe and dragged him onward. “Ah! Your pet is trying to run me to death.

B-but, Mr Jimson, I w-want to be an artist.' 'Of course you do,' I said, 'everybody does once. But they get over it, thank God, like the measles and the chickenpox. Go home and go to bed and take some hot lemonade and put on three blankets and sweat it out.' 'But Mr J-Jimson, there must be artists.' 'Yes, and lunatics and lepers, but why go and live in an asylum before you're sent for? If you find life a bit dull at home,' I said, 'and want to amuse yourself, put a stick of dynamite in the kitchen fire, or shoot a policeman. Volunteer for a test pilot, or dive off Tower Bridge with five bob's worth of roman candles in each pocket. You'd get twice the fun at about one-tenth of the risk.

There's no Coastguard in France. They let the French Navy do it. They have to give them something to do. It's not good for national pride to have to disband it so they turned it into a Coastguard. I think it does a few other bits and bobs too.

He’s visitin’ an old friend,” supplied Eragon, dropping his voice into a thick accent. “I’m along t’ make sure he don’t get lost, if y’ get m’meaning. He ain’t as young as he used to be—had a bit too much sun when he was young’r. Touch o’ the brain fever, y’ know.” Brom bobbed his head pleasantly. “Right. Go on through,” said the guard, waving his hand and dropping the pike. “Just make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble.” “Oh, he won’t,” promised Eragon. He urged Cadoc forward, and they rode into Teirm. The cobblestone street clacked under the horses’ hooves. Once they were away from the guards, Brom sat up and growled, “Touch of brain fever, eh?” “I couldn’t let you have all the fun,” teased Eragon. Brom harrumphed and looked away.

Teo propped his chin in his hand. "The Quetzlan priests always made me hot chocolate when I couldn't sleep. We're just feeling a bit homesick, is all." He lifted his shoulder in a shrug and sighed theatrically. Dulce's eyebrows tipped with concern and she clasped her hands. "Aren't we?" He turned to give Niya and Xio a pointed look. "Oh yes, very homesick," Niya agreed, bobbing her head enthusiastically. It took Xio a moment to catch on, but then he nodded, too.

The days I’d passed with my mom before she died were still there, it seemed, seared into the corners of my heart. The atmosphere of the station brought it all back. I could see myself running to the hospital, glad to be seeing my mother again. You never know you’re happy until later. Because physical sensations like smells and exhaustion don’t figure into our memories, I guess. Only the good bits bob up into view. I was always startled by the snatches of memory that I saw as happy, how they came. This time, it was the feeling I got when I stepped out onto the platform. The sense of what it had been like to be on my way to see my mom, for her still to be alive, if only for the time being, if only for that day. The happiness of that knowledge had come back to life inside me. And the loneliness of that moment. The helplessness.

Okay, look,” I explained, pointing up at the front of the bus. “Look at Rodeo up there. There’s plenty of reasons anyone might love him if they could get past that greasy doormat he calls hair: He’s kind to everyone, he helps strangers, he’s a gold-medal listener. That’s all great stuff, right? But that’s different than why I love him.” Lester snorted. “Then why do you love him?” I thought for a moment. “I love Rodeo because if tomorrow I spit in his face and threw all his favorite books out the window and called him all the worst words I could think of, he wouldn’t love me one little bit less.” The bus rocked and swayed underneath us. I kept my eyes on Rodeo, on the back of his shaggy head bobbing to the music. “I love Rodeo because on the worst day of my life he held me and held me and held me and held me and didn’t let me go.” I tried to clear my throat but kinda failed,

The only things that moved in the neighbourhood were bits and bobs of bafflingly pointless machinery, whittling the hours busily doing nothing. Waiting to be freed from flesh. It was an oppressive reality come home to roost. This house here contained dead people. And that one, and that one there. The same all the way down the block, horrible, inexplicable, and so quiet.

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

Today it’s just “the Sun.” Familiarity is the enemy of awe, and for the most part people walk the busy streets with no upward glance. In fact, one of the common bits of advice about the Sun is that we shouldn’t look at it.

Having studied art history, as opposed to political history, I tend to incorporate found objects into my books. Just as Pablo Picasso glued a fragment of furniture onto the canvas of Still Life with Chair Caning, I like to use whatever's lying around to paint pictures of the past--traditional pigment like archival documents but also the added texture of whatever bits and bobs I learn from looking out bus windows or chatting up people I bump into on the road.

There were parts of the book that made me cringe – the stuff about his family and how much he loved his wife was all a bit saccharine for my tastes. Some of the writing was overly flowery. But I think possibly Australians are a bit more reserved with this stuff (a bit more British) than Americans and what makes us cringe might well seem quite endearing in the US. 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 텔 - KrTop "코리아탑" 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 All the same, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a candidate for US President did not have to declare themselves Christian to have any hope of being elected? As a nation that has had at least one Agnostic Prime Minister (Bob Hawke – although, as the joke went, that was only because Bob wasn’t sure if he was God or not) it seems insane the obsession that religion is in American politics. For a country that likes a personal relationship with God the US certainly does like that personal relationship to be as public as possible.

I do know what my songs are about. Playboy: And what’s that? Dylan: Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve. Playboy: Can’t you be a bit more informative? Dylan: Nope.

One keeps looking out for innovation in IPL, but of late it hasn't been all that obvious. Lionel Richie as an opening act? Johnny Mathis must have been busy. Matthew Hayden's Mongoose? Looks a bit like Bob Willis' bat with the "flow-through holes"; Saint Peter batting mitts are surely overdue a revival. The only genuinely intriguing step this year, bringing the IPL to YouTube, was forced on Modi by the collapse of Setanta; otherwise what Modi presents as 'innovation' is merely expansion by another name, in the number of franchises and the number of games.

Don't fall into the habit of bringing work home, Rick. It indicates a lack of planning, and you would eventually find yourself stuck indoors every night. Teaching is like having a bank account. You can happily draw on it while it is well supplied with new funds; otherwise you're in difficulties. Every teacher should have a fund of ready information on which to draw; he should keep that fund supplied regularly by new experiences, new thoughts and discoveries, by reading and moving around among people from whom he can acquire such things." "Not much chance of social movement for me, I'm afraid." "Nonsense, Rick, you're settled in a job now, so there's no need to worry about that; but you must get out and meet more people. I'm sure you'll find lots of nice people about who are not foolishly concerned with prejudice." "That's all right, Dad; I'm quite happy to stay at home with you and Mom." "Nice to hear you say that, but we're old and getting a bit stuffy. You need the company of younger people like yourself. It's even time he had a girl, don't you think, Jess?" Mom smiled across at me. "Ah, leave him alone, Bob, there's plenty of time for that." We went on to chat about other things, but I never forgot what Dad Belmont had said, and never again did I take notebooks home for marking. I would check the work in progress by moving about the class, helping here, correcting there; and I very soon discovered that in this way errors were pin-pointed while they were still fresh in the child's mind.

COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!” In the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees.

We go in and sit on the sofa by the fire to dry out, and she plays her favourite records, lots of Rickie Lee Jones and Led Zeppelin and Donovan and Bob Dylan - even though she was sixteen in 1982, there's definitely something very 1971 about Alice. I watch as she jumps around the room to 'Crosstown Traffic' by Jimi Hendrix, then when she's out of breath and tired of changing records every three minutes she puts a crackly old Ella Fitzgerald LP on, and we lie on the sofa and read our books, and steal glances at each other every now and then, like that bit between Michael York and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, and talk only when we feel like it.

That we have iodine in our thyroid glands proves that our bodies were fashioned from supernova material. The iron in our blood came from the cores of two previous star generations. The Sun gives off a bit of peculiar yellow light from fluorescing sodium vapor, an element inherited from its father, the type O or B blue star.

Look, Bob, what part of this don't you understand, eh? It's a matter of style, okay? A proper brawl doesn't just happen. You don't just pile in, not anymore. Now, Oyster Dave here--put your helmet back on, Dave--will be the enemy in front, and Basalt, who, as we know, don't need a helmet, he'll be the enemy coming up behind you. Okay, it's well past knuckles time, let's say Gravy there has done his thing with the Bench Swipe, there's a bit of knife play, we've done the whole Chandelier Swing number, blah blah blah, then Second Chair--that's you, Bob--you step smartly between their Number Five man and a Bottler, swing the chair back over your head, like this--sorry, Pointy--and then swing it right back onto Number Five, bang, crash, and there's a cushy six points in your pocket. If they're playing a dwarf at Number Five, then a chair won't even slow him down, but don't fret, hang on to the bits that stay in your hand, pause one moment as he comes at you, and then belt him across both ears. They hate that, as Stronginthearm here will tell you. Another three points. It's probably going to be freestyle after that but I want all of you, including Mucky Mick and Crispo, to try for a Double Andrew when it gets down to the fist-fighting again. Remember? You back into each other, turn around to give the other guy a thumping, cue moment of humorous recognition, then link arms, swing round and see to the other fellow's attacker, foot or fist, it's your choice. Fifteen points right there if you get it to flow just right. Oh, and remember we'll have an Igor standing by, so if your arm gets taken off do pick it up and hit the other bugger with it, it gets a laugh and twenty points. On that subject, do remember what I said about getting everything tattooed with your name, all right? Igors do their best, but you'll be on your feet much quicker if you make life easier for him and, what's more, it's your feet you'll be on. Okay, positions, everyone, let's run through it again...

Yet Jesus continues to select broken and splattered people not just as followers, but as participants. He called people like me who can't even figure out which way to turn a screw to tighten it or even stack a cake correctly the ones who would build a kingdom. And then, if we're willing, He serves us up—rocks, small bits of asphalt, and all.

when Twitter announced the number of permissible characters in a single tweet was being doubled from 140 to 280, Trump told Porter he thought the change made sense on one level. Now he would be able to flesh out his thoughts and add more depth. “It’s a good thing,” Trump said, “but it’s a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

The time capsule is a characteristically twentieth-century invention: a tragicomic time machine. It lacks an engine, goes nowhere, sits and waits. It sends our cultural bits and bobs traveling into the future at snail's pace. At our pace, that is. They travel through time in parallel with the rest of us, at our standard velocity of one second per second, one day per day... Builders of time capsules are projecting something forward into the future, but it's mainly their own imaginations. Like people who buy lottery tickets for the momentary dreams of riches, they get to dream of a time to come when, though long dead, they will be the cynosure of all eyes... Clear the airwaves: Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, Oglethorpe University, AD 1936, has something to say.

People like to make up stories about things they don’t understand, so there are over a thousand myths about the moon. One legend claims that on the surface is everything that was wasted here on Earth: misspent time, squandered wealth, broken vows, unanswered prayers, useless tears, all the leftover bits and pieces of countless shattered lives. If you believe in that sort of thing.

Sometimes Raymond wonders what it is like to be a duck: What is it like to have a facial expression so frozen that no one, not even another duck, can tell if you are in pain? It must be safe in one way, but then sooner or later the hunters come along and say to each other:"Hey, look at those birds out there, bobbing on the pond. We can shoot them because they can't feel emotion." But that's not true, Raymond thinks. Not even a little bit.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

You’re so bright, Trav, and so intuitive about people. And you have … the gift of tenderness. And sympathy. You could be almost anything.” “Of course!” I said, springing to my feet and beginning to pace back and forth through the lounge. “Why didn’t I think of that! Here I am, wasting the golden years on this lousy barge, getting all mixed up with lame-duck women when I could be out there seeking and striving. Who am I to keep from putting my shoulder to the wheel? Why am I not thinking about an estate and how to protect it? Gad, woman, I could be writing a million dollars a year in life insurance. I should be pulling a big oar in the flagship of life. Maybe it isn’t too late yet! Find the little woman, and go for the whole bit. Kiwanis, P.T.A., fund drives, cookouts, a clean desk, and vote the straight ticket, yessiree bob. Then when I become a senior citizen, I can look back upon …” I stopped when I heard the small sound she was making. She sat with her head bowed. I went over and put my fingertips under her chin. I tilted her head up and looked down into her streaming eyes. “Please, don’t,” she whispered. “You’re beginning to bring out the worst in me, woman.” “It was none of my business.” “I will not dispute you.” “But … who did this to you?” “I’ll never know you well enough to try to tell you, Lois.” She tried to smile. “I guess it can’t be any plainer than that.” “And I’m not a tragic figure, no matter how hard you try to make me into one. I’m delighted with myself, woman.” “And you wouldn’t say it that way if you were.” “Spare me the cute insights.

I was raised as a churchgoer but I wasn't a practising Christian. I wasn't an agnostic or atheist either. My view is that we should all take a bit from every religion and philosophy. I'm not a Buddhist but I like Buddhist philosophies, in particular. They give you a very good structure that you can build your life around. For instance, I definitely believe in karma, the idea that what goes around, comes around. I wondered whether Bob was my reward for having done something good, somewhere in my troubled life. - Chapter 21

This may be a bit controversial, but I’m not so sure compensation scales are a “moral” issue, at least once you exceed the very bottom of the range. If I create a business model that works only if I pay animators half the going rate in Hollywood, and we find it impossible to hire competent animators at that rate, I know my business model is invalid. It won’t work. On the other hand, if enough animators turn up willing to work for that pay scale, the business model may be valid. Turnover will undoubtedly be on the high side, as many of the better animators will move on to higher-paying work, but if we can build turnover into our business model, the business still works.

Carter told you he loves you, didn’t he?” Wide-eyed, Emily turned from the mirror. “How did you know?” “You nearly floated into the house when you came home. And now your face switches from joy to terror in seconds.” Grandma Kate smiled, the wrinkles crinkling around her eyes. “And what did you say?” Heat infusing her cheeks, Emily licked her lips. “Ah, he didn’t let you answer. Smart boy.” “Grandma!” The older woman waddled to the door. “It’s good to make him wait a bit for your declaration. You should pray about it before you say anything. Affairs of the heart need to be placed in the hands of the Lover of our souls. Only God knows what is best.” She tilted her head to the side to take in both ear bobs. “He’s a good man, Emily. Don’t be afraid.

He makes a face and tosses the flower at me. It lands on my cheek, and I pick it up and twirl it between my fingers. I could lie out here all day, not moving an inch, feeling the sun above and the grass below. With a contented sigh, I stretch my arms wide, raking the grass with my fingers—and find myself brushing Aladdin’s hand with my own. I pull it away quickly, my cheeks warming. He laughs a little. “Sometimes,” he says, “I forget you’re supposed to be four thousand years old. You act as shy as a girl of sixteen.” “I do not!” I sit up and glare at him. He grins and shrugs, sliding his hands under his head. There are bits of grass stuck in his hair, and after a moment’s hesitation, I reach over and flick them away. Aladdin watches me silently, his throat bobbing as he swallows. I drop my gaze.

The tweets were not incidental to his presidency. They were central. He ordered printouts of his recent tweets that had received a high number of likes, 200,000 or more. He studied them to find the common themes in the most successful. He seemed to want to become more strategic, find out whether success was tied to the subject, the language or simply the surprise that the president was weighing in. The most effective tweets were often the most shocking. Later, when Twitter announced the number of permissible characters in a single tweet was being doubled from 140 to 280, Trump told Porter he thought the change made sense on one level. Now he would be able to flesh out his thoughts and add more depth. “It’s a good thing,” Trump said, “but it’s a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

Waste of what?” “Of you! It seems degrading. Forgive me for saying that. I’ve seen those African movies. The lion makes a kill and then clever animals come in and grab something and run. You’re so bright, Trav, and so intuitive about people. And you have … the gift of tenderness. And sympathy. You could be almost anything.” “Of course!” I said, springing to my feet and beginning to pace back and forth through the lounge. “Why didn’t I think of that! Here I am, wasting the golden years on this lousy barge, getting all mixed up with lame-duck women when I could be out there seeking and striving. Who am I to keep from putting my shoulder to the wheel? Why am I not thinking about an estate and how to protect it? Gad, woman, I could be writing a million dollars a year in life insurance. I should be pulling a big oar in the flagship of life. Maybe it isn’t too late yet! Find the little woman, and go for the whole bit. Kiwanis, P.T.A., fund drives, cookouts, a clean desk, and vote the straight ticket, yessiree bob. Then when I become a senior citizen, I can look back upon …

Nesta scanned the shelves while we walked, and I read the titles- a bit more slowly, still needing a little time to process what was instinct for my sister. 'I didn't know you couldn't really read,' Nesta said as she paused before a nondescript section, noticing the way I silently sounded out the words of a title. 'I didn't know where you were in your lessons- when it all happened. I assumed you could read as easily as us.' 'Well, I couldn't.' 'Why didn't you ask us to teach you?' I trailed a finger over the neat row of spines. 'Because I doubted you would agree to help.' Nesta stiffened like I'd hit her, coldness blooming in those eyes. She tugged a book from a shelf. 'Amren said Rhysand taught you to read.' My cheeks heated. 'He did.' And there, deep beneath the world, with only darkness for company, I asked, 'Why do you push everyone away but Elain?' Why have you always pushed me away? Some emotion guttered in her eyes. Her throat bobbed. Nesta shut her eyes for a moment, breathing in sharply. 'Because-' The words stopped. I felt it at the same moment she did. The ripple and tremor. Like... like some piece of the world shifted, like some off-kilter chord had been plucked.

You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that,” Ezmia said. “Perhaps this will humble you.” Ezmia placed the glass jar she had been carrying on a small table close to Charlotte’s cage. Charlotte was horrifed to see a miniature ghostly version of the Fairy Godmother trapped inside. “That’s my… my… grandmother!” Charlotte said, almost forgetting she was still pretending to be her own daughter. “What have you done to her?” A smile appeared on Ezmia’s face, matching the satisfaction in her eyes. “I captured her soul,” she said. The thought almost made Charlotte sick. She’d had no idea such a thing was possible, even in the fairy-tale world. “What do you want with her soul?” Charlotte asked. “It’s a bit of a hobby of mine, actually,” Ezmia said and walked to her fireplace. Displayed proudly on the mantel were five other turquoise jars, each containing a ghostly substance. “You’re a soul collector?” Charlotte asked. “Is it to make up for being soulless?” “What a clever play on words,” Ezmia said mockingly. “You know that phrase forgive and forget? Well, I always disagreed with it—I found it impossible, actually. People would do me wrong and then forget about me, as if their actions didn’t matter—because I didn’t matter. How was I supposed to forgive people like that?” “So you imprisoned their souls instead of forgiving?” Charlotte said. “Precisely,” Ezmia said. “I found taking away their life force to be much more appealing than simply forgiving. To forgive would be to allow them to continue living their lives, free of consequence. But by taking their souls and preventing them from all future happiness, I could heal and find peace.” Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Do you honestly expect anyone to sympathize with that?” Charlotte asked her. Ezmia stared into the fire at the burning skulls, almost in a trance. “I don’t want the world to understand; I want it to grovel,” she said. The confession made Charlotte’s heart heavier. She wondered if she would ever escape the clutches of a person who thought like this. But thinking about her children, Bob, and the life she had been stolen from gave Charlotte the strength to survive the Enchantress’s imprisonment. “I find it hard to believe that the Fairy Godmother, who is known for her generosity, would harm you in any way,” Charlotte said. “Sometimes help can be just as destructive as harm,” Ezmia said. “But I imagine someone who helps for a

I see a man.” Rose bit back a sigh. Of course she did. She seemed to see a man in every cup. And here she’d actually hoped that Sadie Moon might be as unusually talented as her appearance suggested. “He hides himself. A mask. He keeps to the shadows.” Rose’s heart rolled over her chest. “What else?” “You want him,” Sadie said, turning the cup in her palms. “You do not understand what you feel for him, or why he pushes you away.” “No.” Rose was breathless. “I don’t.” Those fey eyes locked with hers. “Because he loves you enough to give you up. He is all about duty and honor, but he is ruled by fear.” She was on the very edge of her seat now. “Yes. He’s afraid of coming out of the shadows.” Sadie shook her head, the feathers on her hat bobbing. “That’s only part of it. He’s afraid for you.” “For me?” Rose’s teeth clicked together. “Why?” The fortune teller shrugged. “For that answer, you will have to go to him. You have many men in your cup, Lady Rose.” Disappointed, Rose sagged a little. “For all the good it does me.” A bright grin flashed beneath that amazing hat. “The man who wants you but will not take you. Another who would take everything you offer and give what he can of himself-but it will not be enough. Another who wants nothing from you at all.” Grey. Kellan? And probably Archer.

I know High Ladies are probably supposed to wear a new dress every day,' I mused, smiling at the gown, 'but I'm rather attached to this one.' He ran his hand down my thigh. 'I'm glad.' 'You never told me where you got it- where you got all my favourite dresses.' Rhys arched a dark brow. 'You never figured it out?' I shook my head. For a moment, he said nothing, his head dipping to study the dress. 'My mother made them.' I went still.' Rhys smiled sadly at the shimmering gown. 'She was a seamstress, back at the camp where she'd been raised. She didn't just do the work because she was ordered to. She did it because she loved it. And when she mated my father, she continued.' I grazed a reverent hand down my sleeve. 'I- I had no idea. His eyes were star-bright. 'Long ago, when I was still a boy, she made them- all your gowns. A trousseau for my future bride.' His throat bobbed. 'Every piece... Every piece I have ever given you to wear, she made them. For you.' My eyes stung as I breathed. 'Why didn't you tell me?' 'He shrugged with one shoulder. 'I thought you might be... disturbed to wear gowns made by a female who died centuries ago.' I put a hand over my heart. 'I am honoured, Rhys. Beyond words.' His mouth trembled a bit. 'She would have loved you.' It was as great a gift as any I'd been given. I leaned down until our brows touched. I would have loved her. I felt his gratitude without him saying a word as we remained there, breathing each other in for long minutes.

BEEKEEPER’S GRANOLA 32 ounces Bob’s Red Mill GF Old Fashioned Rolled Oats ½ cup pumpkin seeds 1 cup sliced almonds ½ cup honey ½ cup canola oil Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Spray a large baking sheet (21 x 15 inches) with cooking spray. In a large bowl combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, and almonds. Pour the honey and oil over the mixture and toss lightly, making sure the oat mixture is covered. Spread on baking sheet and bake for 90 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Granola keeps for several weeks in a sealed container. CRANACHAN (Serves 4) 1¼ cups granola, divided ½ cup bourbon, plus 2 teaspoons, divided 3 cups raspberries, plus 8 whole berries for garnish 1 teaspoon honey, divided 2 cups heavy cream 4 parfait glasses or martini glasses Combine ¾ cup granola and ½ cup bourbon and let sit for several hours before assembling dessert. The granola will absorb the alcohol and become soft but not mushy. Meanwhile, chill a mixing bowl. Lightly crush raspberries with a fork, add ½ teaspoon honey and 1 teaspoon bourbon. Toss to combine. You want a puree texture. In a chilled bowl, start whipping the heavy cream. When it begins to thicken, add remaining ½ teaspoon honey and remaining 1 teaspoon bourbon. Continue whipping cream until it is slightly firm. Fold soaked granola into the cream. To assemble, sprinkle a bit of the reserved granola into each glass. Spoon a layer of the cream mixture over granola and then add a layer of the raspberry mixture. Repeat until you have a few layers, finishing with a layer of the cream.

BEEKEEPER’S GRANOLA 32 ounces Bob’s Red Mill GF Old Fashioned Rolled Oats ½ cup pumpkin seeds 1 cup sliced almonds ½ cup honey ½ cup canola oil Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Spray a large baking sheet (21 x 15 inches) with cooking spray. In a large bowl combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, and almonds. Pour the honey and oil over the mixture and toss lightly, making sure the oat mixture is covered. Spread on baking sheet and bake for 90 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Granola keeps for several weeks in a sealed container. CRANACHAN (Serves 4) 1¼ cups granola, divided ½ cup bourbon, plus 2 teaspoons, divided 3 cups raspberries, plus 8 whole berries for garnish 1 teaspoon honey, divided 2 cups heavy cream 4 parfait glasses or martini glasses Combine ¾ cup granola and ½ cup bourbon and let sit for several hours before assembling dessert. The granola will absorb the alcohol and become soft but not mushy. Meanwhile, chill a mixing bowl. Lightly crush raspberries with a fork, add ½ teaspoon honey and 1 teaspoon bourbon. Toss to combine. You want a puree texture. In a chilled bowl, start whipping the heavy cream. When it begins to thicken, add remaining ½ teaspoon honey and remaining 1 teaspoon bourbon. Continue whipping cream until it is slightly firm. Fold soaked granola into the cream. To assemble, sprinkle a bit of the reserved granola into each glass. Spoon a layer of the cream mixture over granola and then add a layer of the raspberry mixture. Repeat until you have a few layers, finishing with a layer of the cream. Sprinkle remaining granola and a couple of whole raspberries on top. QUEEN BEE COCKTAIL 1½ teaspoons honey simple syrup (recipe on this page) Club soda 1½ ounces bourbon 1 teaspoon lime juice Sliced lime, for garnish Fill

The fight spilled out into the press. Allen blasted the censors. “They are a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. Their conferences are meetings of men who can do nothing but collectively agree that nothing can be done.” The thin-skinned network reacted again, cutting Allen off in the middle of a barb. Now other comics joined the fray. That week Red Skelton said on his show that he’d have to be careful not to ad-lib something that might wound the dignity of some NBC vice president. “Did you hear they cut Fred Allen off on Sunday?” That’s as far as he got—the network cut him off. But Skelton went right on talking, for the studio audience. “You know what NBC means, don’t you? Nothing but cuts. Nothing but confusion. Nobody certain.” When the network put him back on the air, Skelton said, “Well, we have now joined the parade of stars.” Bob Hope, on his program, was cut off the air for this joke: “Vegas is the only town in the world where you can get tanned and faded at the same time. Of course, Fred Allen can be faded anytime.” Allen told the press that NBC had a vice president who was in charge of “program ends.” When a show ran overtime, this individual wrote down the time he had saved by cutting it off: eventually he amassed enough time for a two-week vacation. Dennis Day took the last shot. “I’m listening to the radio,” he said to his girlfriend Mildred on his Wednesday night NBC sitcom. “I don’t hear anything,” said Mildred. “I know,” said Dennis: “Fred Allen’s on.” On that note, the network gave up the fight, announcing that its comedians were free to say whatever they wanted. It didn’t matter, said Radio Life: “They all were anyway.” Allen took a major ratings dive in 1948. Some

As I tried various restaurants, certain preconceptions came crashing down. I realized not all Japanese food consisted of carefully carved vegetables, sliced fish, and clear soups served on black lacquerware in a highly restrained manner. Tasting okonomiyaki (literally, "cook what you like"), for example, revealed one way the Japanese let their chopsticks fly. Often called "Japanese pizza," okonomiyaki more resembles a pancake filled with chopped vegetables and your choice of meat, chicken, or seafood. The dish evolved in Osaka after World War II, as a thrifty way to cobble together a meal from table scraps. A college classmate living in Kyoto took me to my first okonomiyaki restaurant where, in a casual room swirling with conversation and aromatic smoke, we ordered chicken-shrimp okonomiyaki. A waitress oiled the small griddle in the center of our table, then set down a pitcher filled with a mixture of flour, egg, and grated Japanese mountain yam made all lumpy with chopped cabbage, carrots, scallions, bean sprouts, shrimp, and bits of chicken. When a drip of green tea skated across the surface of the hot meal, we poured out a huge gob of batter. It sputtered and heaved. With a metal spatula and chopsticks, we pushed and nagged the massive pancake until it became firm and golden on both sides. Our Japanese neighbors were doing the same. After cutting the doughy disc into wedges, we buried our portions under a mass of mayonnaise, juicy strands of red pickled ginger, green seaweed powder, smoky fish flakes, and a sweet Worcestershire-flavored sauce. The pancake was crispy on the outside, soft and savory inside- the epitome of Japanese comfort food. Another day, one of Bob's roommates, Theresa, took me to a donburi restaurant, as ubiquitous in Japan as McDonald's are in America. Named after the bowl in which the dish is served, donburi consists of sticky white rice smothered with your choice of meat, vegetables, and other goodies. Theresa recommended the oyako, or "parent and child," donburi, a medley of soft nuggets of chicken and feathery cooked egg heaped over rice, along with chopped scallions and a rich sweet bouillon. Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food.

Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she’d plagued him-by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he’d finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she’d ruined everything. She’d gone and changed her dress. Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin. She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief. Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Therefore, he knew he ought to look away. He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn’t clapped eyes in decades. And all this Herculean effort resulting in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds’ delay in the inevitable. He looked at her again. Desire swept through his body with starling intensity. And beneath that hot surge of lust, a deeper emotion swelled. It wasn’t something Gray wished to examine. He preferred to let it sink back into the murky depths of his being. An unnamed creature of the deep, let for a more intrepid adventurer to catalog. Instead, he examined Miss Turner’s new frock. The fabric was of fine quality, the sprig pattern evenly stamped, without variations in shape or hue. The dressmaker had taken great pains to match the pattern at the seams. The sleeves of the frock fit perfectly square with her shoulders, in a moment of calm, the skirt’s single flounce lapped the laces of her boots. Unlike that gray serge abomination, this dress was expensive, and it had been fashioned for her alone. But it no longer fit. As she turned, Gray noted how the neckline gaped slightly, and the column of her skirt that ought to have skimmed the swell of her hip instead caught on nothing but air. He frowned. And in that instant, she turned to face him. Their gazes caught and held. Her own smile faded to a quizzical expression. And because Gray didn’t know how to answer the unspoken question in her eyes, and because he hated the fact that he’d banished the giddy delight from her face, he gave her a curt nod and a churlish, “Good morning.” And then he walked away.

I saw a pretty shop across the Sidra the other day. It sold what looked to be lots of lacy little things. Am I allowed to buy that on your credit, too, or does that come out of my personal funds?' Those violet eyes again drifted to me. 'I'm not in the mood.' There was no humour, no mischief. I could go warm myself by a fire inside, but... He had stayed. And fought for me. Week after week, he'd fought for me, even when I had no reaction, even when I had barely been able to speak or bring myself to care if I lived or died or ate or starved. I couldn't leave him to his own dark thoughts, his own guilt. He'd shouldered them alone long enough. So I held his gaze. 'I never knew Illyrians were such morose drunks.' 'I'm not drunk- I'm drinking,' he said, his teeth flashing a bit. 'Again semantics,' I leaned back in my seat, wishing I'd brought my coat. 'Maybe you should have slept with Cresseida after all- so you could both be sad and lonely together.' 'So you're entitled to have as many bad days as you want, but I can't get a few hours?' 'Oh, take however long you want to mope. I was going to invite you to come shopping with me for said lacy little unmentionables, but... sit up here forever, if you have to.' He didn't respond. I went on, 'Maybe I'll send a few to Tarquin- with an offer to wear them for him if he forgives us. Maybe he'll take those blood rubies right back.' His mouth barely, barely tugged up at the corners. 'He'd see that as a taunt.' 'I gave him a few smiles and he handed over a family heirloom. I bet he'd give me the keys to his territory if I showed up wearing those undergarments.' 'Someone thinks mighty highly of herself.' 'Why shouldn't I? You seem to have difficulty not staring at me day and night.' There it was - a kernel of truth and a question. 'Am I supposed to deny,' he drawled, but something sparked in those eyes, 'That I find you attractive?' 'You've never said it.' 'I've told you many times, and quite frequently, how attractive I find you.' I shrugged, even as I thought of all those times- when I'd dismissed them as teasing compliments, nothing more. 'Well, maybe you should do a better job of it.' The gleam in his eyes turned into something predatory. A thrill went through me as he braced his powerful arms on the table and purred, 'Is that a challenge, Feyre?' I held that predator's gaze- the gaze of the most powerful male in Prythian. 'Is it?' His pupils flared. Gone was the quiet sadness, the isolated guilt. Only that lethal force- on me. On my mouth. On the bob of my throat as I tried to keep my breathing even. He said, slow and soft, 'Why don't we go down to that store right now, Feyre, so you can try on those lacy little things- so I can help you pick which ones to send to Tarquin.' My toes curled inside my fleece-lined slippers. Such a dangerous line we walked together.

Claudette Colbert was not Hollywood’s greatest beauty, but her trim little figure, round, kitten-like face, and obviously intelligent good humor made her a bit of a sex symbol, much to her own surprise. By 1934 she’d adopted the hairstyle she kept for life: a short, auburn bob with a fringe of bangs. Although a partygoer and social animal, Claudette was also known as a tough-as-nails professional, overseeing her lighting and camera angles. Her right profile was known as “the dark side of the moon,” and scenes had to be staged so as not to show it. She was also self-conscious about her short neck—directing her in a 1956 TV show, Noël Coward reportedly snapped, “If only Claudette Colbert had a neck, I’d wring it!” “When it comes to details, I’m a horror,” she admitted cheerfully, though downplaying the profile story. “Why not have your good side showing?

I was and still am a big Dylan fan and admirer, so I asked Bob Johnston if there was any way he could let me play on just one session. Sessions in Nashville are scheduled so you can fit four into a day: 10: 00 a.m., 2: 00 p.m., 6: 00 p.m., and 10: 00 p.m. As it happened, the guitar player they had scheduled for the 6: 00 p.m. session couldn’t make it and wouldn’t show up until the 10: 00 p.m. session, so Bob fit me in for 6: 00 p.m. I was the hungriest musician in the studio. I hung on every note that Bob Dylan sang and played on his guitar and did my best to interpret his music with feeling and passion. When the session was over, I was packing up my guitars to head to my club gig, and Bob Dylan asked Bob Johnston, “Where is Charlie going?” Bob told him I was leaving and that he had another guitar player coming in. Then Bob Dylan said nine little words that would affect my life from that moment on. He said, “I don’t want another guitar player. I want him.” And there it was. After all the put downs, condescension, and snide remarks, after all the times I’d driven to the hill above my house and shook my fist at Nashville and said, “You will not beat me.” After all that rejection, none other than the legendary Bob Dylan was saying that I might be worth something after all. It’s bits of encouragement like that that keep you going. Once in a while something just lights you up and you say, “Yeah, I can do this.

Cooshay avec ma sirswar!’ said Jenny. ‘That’s French.’ ‘What?’ ‘Cooshay – avec – ’ repeated Jenny slowly, ‘ma – sirswar.’ ‘What does that mean, Jen?’ asked Prunella. ‘That means “Where are you goin’, deary?” – or “Hullo, darling” – or somethin’ like that.’ ‘No it don’t,’ said Bob. ‘Yes it do,’ said Jenny. ‘That’s what it means. “Where are you goin’, deary?”’ ‘No,’ said Bob, ‘not literally.’ ‘Well, what do it mean, then?’ ‘It means “Sleep with me to-night,”’ said Bob, ‘literally.’ ‘Well, that’s the same, ain’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ said Bob, ‘I suppose it is.’ ‘Only a bit more business-like,’ said Prunella. And the matter was dropped.

He grunted. “You’re trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You’re insulting my masculinity.” “Bob,” I said, “you’re a skull. You don’t have any masculinity to insult.

It's a good thing," Trump said, "but it's a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

It’s a good thing,” Trump said, “but it’s a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

Oh,” he said, stopping in the doorway. “I should probably warn you. Your beds might take a little getting used to.” “Why?” Tesla asked. “What’s wrong with them?” When Uncle Newt had shown them their room earlier, the beds had looked normal enough. Not that Nick and Tesla had paid much attention to them. They’d been distracted—and horrified—by the posters haphazardly stapled to the wall: Teletubbies, Elmo, Smurfs, Albert Einstein, and the periodic table. (Nick and Tesla had quickly agreed that the first three would “fall down” and “accidentally” “get ripped” at the first opportunity.) “There’s nothing wrong with your beds, and everything right!” Uncle Newt declared. “I’m telling you, kids. You haven’t slept till you’ve slept on compost!” “What?” Nick and Tesla said together. Even Uncle Newt couldn’t miss the disgust on their faces. “Maybe I’d better come up and explain,” he said. Uncle Newt pulled the comforter off Nick’s bed and revealed something that didn’t look like a bed at all. It was more like a lumpy black sleeping bag with tubes and wires poking out of one end. “Behold!” Uncle Newt said. “The biomass thermal conversion station!” Nick reluctantly gave it a test-sit. It felt like he was lowering himself onto a garbage bag stuffed with rotten old food. Because he was. “As you sleep,” Uncle Newt explained, “your body heat will help decompose food scraps pumped into the unit, which will in turn produce more heat that the convertor will turn into electricity. So, by the time you wake up in the morning, you’ll have enough power to—ta da!” Uncle Newt waved his hands at a coffeemaker sitting on the floor nearby. “Brew coffee?” Tesla said. Uncle Newt gave her a gleeful nod. “We don’t drink coffee,” said Nick. “Then you can have a hot cup of invigorating fresh-brewed water.” “Great,” Nick said. He experimented with a little bounce on his “bed.” He could feel slimy things squishing and squashing beneath his butt. “Comfy?” Uncle Newt asked. “Uhh … kind of,” Nick said. Uncle Newt beamed at his invention. “Patent pending,” he said. Uncle Newt was a gangly man with graying hair, but at that moment he looked like a five-year-old thinking about Christmas. Tesla gave the room a tentative sniff. “Shouldn’t the compost stink?” “Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Each biomass thermal conversion station is completely airtight!” Uncle Newt’s smile wavered just the teeniest bit. “In theory.” Nick opened his mouth to ask another question, but Uncle Newt didn’t seem to notice. “Well,” he said, slapping his hands together, “I guess you two should wash your teeth and brush your faces and all that. Good night!

Of course, problems come in threes, or at least twos. Rarely onesies. Major Truman Preston could hear the First Family screaming at each other and could care less. What worried him was that the White House was in lockdown, the president seemed a bit off his rocker, and he couldn’t get an outside line on his Department of Defense–issue cell phone. He needed to check in with his supervisor at the Pentagon, but neither cell nor landlines were working. So he sat on the second floor of the Residence, tucked away in a corner, a position he was more than used to, and held the football on his lap. Forty-five pounds of deadweight, with the emphasis on the dead. The surface of the case was dinged and battered and bruised from years of traveling. The damn case was older than he was. You’d think someone would have made the decision to swap the old thing out for a new case. Although the interior was updated with the latest electronics, never the outside. Tradition mattered, even in apparently trivial ways. Despite the turmoil raging and the lack of communication, Preston was his usual calm self

That evening he put me up at the Glasshouse Mountains Motel, a few miles from the zoo. Steve was very chivalrous. I met his parents and had dinner with the whole family. I also got my first taste of Australian humor. That night at dinner, I poured myself what I thought was a nice glass of juice. The entire Irwin family sat quiet and straight-faced. As I took a big swig, it nearly choked me. That’s when I learned about cordial, which is supposed to be mixed with water. I had poured it full strength. We all had a good laugh. The next night Steve and I went to dinner in Caloundra, a nearby town. He took me to a resort that featured an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner--seafood banquet, my favorite. I loaded my plate high with prawns, crab, oysters, and everything I loved. I didn’t know it then, but Steve was a bit worried that I was going to eat more than he did. At one point a little piece of crab flicked onto the crook of my arm. I deftly reached down with my tongue and managed to grab it off my elbow and eat it. Suddenly I felt self-conscious. Steve was staring at me. He looked at me with such love in his eyes, and I thought, He’s going to say something wonderful. Steve leaned forward and said affectionately, “ Gosh, you aren’t ladylike at all.” I burst out laughing. Apparently I’d done the right thing. I reflected back on my dad’s advice: No matter what, always be yourself. And it sure had worked. As we left the restaurant, Steve said, “You know, I smell ducks.” We walked outside, and sure enough, there was a flock of beautiful ducks bobbing around on a pond. “Steve, you are the most amazing bushman I’ve ever met,” I said. Of course, the resort and the pond had been there for years, and Steve had known about the ducks for just as long. “I smell ducks” was a Crocodile Dundee trick that had nevertheless worked its magic on this naïve American girl. And then, suddenly, the weekend was over. Steve drove me back down to Brisbane. I had the biggest ache in my heart. I had fallen hard. As we said good-bye, he put his arms around me for the first time, and I felt all his strength and warmth in that embrace. But it was over. I was going back to my side of the world. I had no idea if I would ever see Steve Irwin again.

He was a little monster,” Bob said, laughing, about Steve as a child. The main difficulty wasn’t unruly behavior. It was Steve’s insatiable curiosity about the bush and the wildlife in it. “For the first few months, when he was a baby, I could put Steve down and he would stay where I put him,” Lyn told me. “But after he started to get around on his own, it was all over. I would find him either on the roof or up in some tree.” When the family headed off on a trip, usually to North Queensland on wildlife jaunts, Steve could always be counted on to be elsewhere when they were ready to go. They would find him next to the nearest stream, snagging yabbies or turning over bits of wood to see what was hidden underneath. “He was never where we wanted him to be,” Lyn recalled with a laugh. Steve’s childhood was “family, wildlife, and sport,” he told me. He played rugby league for the Caloundra Sharks in high school and was picked to play rugby for the Queensland Schoolboys and represent the state, but he chose to go on a field trip with his dad to catch reptiles instead. Sometimes sport and wildlife mixed in unexpected ways. Both was an expert badminton player, and a preteen Steve decided to layout a badminton court in the family’s backyard one day. He had a brolga as a friend, a large bird that he called Brolly. Brolly objected to Steve rearranging her territory. She waited until his back was turned and then attacked. Wham! A brolga’s beak is a fearsome weapon, and Brolly’s slammed into the back of little Stevo’s head. His bird friend knocked him out cold. “Go ahead, feel it,” Steve said after regaling me with this story. He bent his head. I could still feel a knot of scar tissue, a souvenir of the brolga attack years earlier.

The next morning, Steve took his boat out and saw what had happened. The big male had triggered the trap and was snared in the mesh--sort of. Even though the rectangular-shaped net was the biggest he had, the croc’s tail and back leg stuck out. But the black ghost had finally been caught. At Steve’s approach, the animal thrashed wildly, smashing apart mangrove trees on either side of the trap. Steve tried to top-jaw-rope the croc, but it was fighting too violently. Normally Chilli acted as a distraction, giving Steve the chance to secure the croc. But the dog wanted no part of this. She cowered on the floor of the dinghy, unwilling to face this monstrously large croc. Steve was truly on his own. He finally secured a top-jaw rope and tied the other end to a tree. With a massive “death roll”--a defensive maneuver in which the reptile spins its enormous body--the big croc smashed the tree flat and snapped it off. Steve tried again; the croc thrashed, growling and roaring in protest at the trapper in khaki, lunging again and again to tear Steve apart. Finally, the giant croc death-rolled so violently that he came off the bank and landed in the boat, which immediately sank. Chilli had jumped out and was swimming for shore as Steve worked against time. With the croc underwater, Steve lashed the croc, trap and all, in the dinghy. But moving the waterlogged boat and a ton of crocodile was simply too much. Steve sprinted several miles in the tropical heat to reach a cane farm, where he hoped to get help. The cane farmers were a bit hesitant to lend a hand, so Steve promised them a case of beer, and a deal was made. With a sturdy fishing boat secured to each side of Steve’s dinghy, they managed to tow it downriver where they could winch croc and boat onto dry land to get him into a crate. By this time, a crowd of spectators had gathered. When Steve told me the story of the capture, I got the sense that he felt sorry he had to catch the crocodile at all. “It seemed wrong to remove the king of the river,” Steve said. “That croc had lasted in his territory for decades. Here I was taking him out of it. The local people just seemed relieved, and a couple even joked about how many boots he’d make.” Steve was very clever to include the local people and soon won them over to see just how special this crocodile really was. Just as he was dragged into his crate, the old croc attempted a final act of defiance, a death roll that forced Steve to pin him again. “I whispered to him to calm him down,” Steve said. “What did you say to him?” I asked. “Please don’t die.” The black crocodile didn’t die. Steve brought him back to Beerwah, named him Acco, and gave him a beautiful big pond that Bob had prepared, with plenty of places to hide. We were in the Crocodile Environmental Park at the zoo when Steve first told me the story of Acco’s capture. I just had to revisit him after hearing his story. There he was, the black ghost himself, magnificently sunning on the bank of his billabong.

I immediately packed up Bindi and went to catch the next plane home. The family was in free fall. Steve was in shock, and Bob was even worse off. Lyn had always acted as the matriarch, the one who kept everything together. She was such a strong figure, a leader. Her death didn’t seem real. I sat on that plane and looked down at Bindi. Life is changed forever now, I thought. As we arrived home, I didn’t know what to expect. I had never dealt with grief like this before. Lyn was only in her fifties, and it seemed cruel to have her life cut short, as she was on the brink of a dream she had held in her heart forever. These were going to be her golden years. She and Bob could embark on the life they had worked so hard to achieve. They would be together, near their family, where they could take care of the land and enjoy the wildlife they loved. I couldn’t imagine what Steve, his dad, and his sisters were going through. My heart was broken. Bindi’s gran was gone just when they had most looked forward to spending time together. The aftermath of Lyn’s death was every bit as awful as I could have imagined. Steve was absolutely inconsolable, and Bob was very obviously unable to cope. Joy and Mandy were trying to keep things together, but they were distraught and heartbroken. Everyone at the zoo was somber. I felt I needed to do something, yet I felt helpless, sad, and lost. Steve’s younger sister Mandy performed the mournful task of sifting through the smashed items from the truck. One of the objects Lyn had packed was Bob’s teapot. There was nothing Bob enjoyed more than a cup of tea. As Mandy went to wash out the teapot, she noticed movement. Inside was Sharon, the bird-eating spider, the sole survivor of the accident. Although her tank had been smashed to bits, she had managed to crawl into the teapot to hide. After the funeral, time appeared to slow down and then stop entirely. Steve talked about moving out to Ironback Station. He couldn’t seem to order his thoughts. He no longer saw a reason for going on with all the projects on which we had worked so hard. Bindi was upset but didn’t have the understanding to know why. She was too young to get her head around what had happened. She simply cried when she saw her daddy crying. It would be a long time before life returned to anything like normalcy. Lyn’s death was something that Steve would never truly overcome. His connection with his mum, like that of so many mothers and sons, was unusually close. Lyn Irwin was a pioneer in wildlife rehabilitation work. She had given her son a great legacy, and eventually that gift would win out over death. But in the wake of her accident, all we could see was loss. Steve headed out into the bush alone, with just Sui and his swag. He reverted to his youth, to his solitary formative years. But grief trailed him. My heart broke for my husband. I was not sure he would ever find his way back.

Her cadre cracked up, and Jerry, who was a bit of a ringer for Bob Denver, rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

He knelt quickly, bit her hard on the ass, then bobbed back up as she yelped and straightened in surprise. He pressed a hand between her legs from behind. She lifted her right leg completely free of her pants as he turned his hand palm down and slid two fingers inside her. She was swamp-wet and feverishly hot. His middle finger curled over her pubic bone and found the faint rough patch of her G

We’ll be done in a bit,” I said to Magnus as I shifted enough so he could see my very thick, very ready cock as it bobbed in front of Caterer Guy’s face. I snagged my fingers in the guy’s hair and forced his attention to me. I looked at him long enough to say, “Finish me off. Our friend here was just leaving.” I shifted my eyes back to Magnus and said, “Unless he wants to join us.” I

Funny though… and many of you know this… given a bit of slack, I’ll wander all over the place when telling a story.

While this signifier can be difficult to pin down with precision, it can clearly be heard in the records of Duane Eddy and many other guitarists of the period. It usually involves a relatively nondistorted electric guitar timbre articulated with a strong attack and a melody played on the lower strings. Reverberation is ubiquitous, and almost equally common were echo, amplifier tremolo, and use of the guitar’s vibrato bar. This overall guitar sound is often called a Fender sound, but that is a bit misleading, since Gretsch guitars were equally specialized for the purpose, and many other brands were also used. What makes the twang guitar interesting in topical terms is that it not only signified the western topic but also was key to a linked set of genres that intersect one another in complex ways: western, spy, and surf. Because these were all signified by overlapping musical features and in turn resemble one another in some of their broader connotations, we could speak of a twang guitar continuum: a range of topics that coalesced only shortly before psychedelia and were cognate with it in a variety of ways. Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida point out that the twang guitar, often in a minor mode with a flat seventh, was a common factor between spaghetti western and Bond/spy scores in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I would add surf guitar to the list, with its sonic experimentation and general relationship to fun, escape, and exoticism: “[The twang guitar] probably owes some of its immediate success as a spy sound to its similarity with various pre-rock ‘Viennese intrigue’ sounds like Anton Karas’s Third Man zither licks (1949). But in the 1962–64 period that produced The Virginian (1962), Dr. No (1963) and Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), steely Fender guitar was well on its way to becoming an all-purpose excitement/adventure timbre” (Tagg and Clarida 2003, 367).

Pixie-Bob ruffled his hair. "If only you were a bit older, and straight..." she sighed. Izuku laughed, "I'm sure the right man for you is just around the corner." The blonde smiled, "Right back at you.

The theme of music making the dancer dance turns up everywhere in Astaire’s work. It is his most fundamental creative impulse. Following this theme also helps connect Astaire to trends in popular music and jazz, highlighting his desire to meet the changing tastes of his audience. His comic partner dance with Marjorie Reynolds to the Irving Berlin song “I Can’t Tell a Lie” in Holiday Inn (1942) provides a revealing example. Performed in eighteenth-century costumes and wigs for a Washington’s birthday–themed floor show, the dance is built around abrupt musical shifts between the light classical sound of flute, strings, and harpsichord and four contrasting popular music styles played on the soundtrack by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, a popular dance band. Moderate swing, a bluesy trumpet shuffle, hot flag-waving swing, and the Conga take turns interrupting what would have been a graceful, if effete, gavotte. The script supervisor heard these contrasts on the set during filming to playback. In her notes, she used commonplace musical terms to describe the action: “going through routine to La Conga music, then music changing back and forth from minuet to jazz—cutting as he holds her hand and she whirls doing minuet.”13 Astaire and Reynolds play professional dancers who are expected to respond correctly and instantaneously to the musical cues being given by the band. In an era when variety was a hallmark of popular music, different dance rhythms and tempos cued different dances. Competency on the dance floor meant a working knowledge of different dance styles and the ability to match these moves to the shifting musical program of the bands that played in ballrooms large and small. The constant stylistic shifts in “I Can’t Tell a Lie” are all to the popular music point. The joke isn’t only that the classical-sounding music that matches the couple’s costumes keeps being interrupted by pop sounds; it’s that the interruptions reference real varieties of popular music heard everywhere outside the movie theaters where Holiday Inn first played to capacity audiences. The routine runs through a veritable catalog of popular dance music circa 1942. The brief bit of Conga was a particularly poignant joke at the time. A huge hit in the late 1930s, the Conga during the war became an invitation to controlled mayhem, a crazy release of energy in a time of crisis when the dance floor was an important place of escape. A regular feature at servicemen’s canteens, the Conga was an old novelty dance everybody knew, so its intrusion into “I Can’t Tell a Lie” can perhaps be imagined as something like hearing the mid-1990s hit “Macarena” after the 2001 terrorist attacks—old party music echoing from a less complicated time.14 If today we miss these finer points, in 1942 audiences—who flocked to this movie—certainly got them all. “I Can’t Tell a Lie” was funnier then, and for specifically musical reasons that had everything to do with the larger world of popular music and dance. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, many such musical jokes or references can be recovered by listening to Astaire’s films in the context of the popular music marketplace.

This year, Merida saw rashers, poached eggs in a fragrant sauce, canceled wedding buns spread with a bit of dripping butter, boar meat made into warm, onion-scented drinking broth. Tarts golden and fragrant with cheese and scraps of pastry, mushrooms simmered in broth and browned with leeks in goose fat. Preserved pears in bowls, figs soaked in whisky, even little biscuits with rabbits stamped on them. Their private feast was always all the bits and bobs and failed experiments left over from preparing the public one. If this was the odd-ends, Merida could only imagine what the proper feast would be like later. Cranky Aileen was a wonder.

JAKE known as Crook-fingered Jake: Congratulations! At 14 Ginger Street there were some people on the second floor. We had to smoke them out. BOB known as Bob the Saw: Congratulations! A copper got done in the Strand. MAC: Amateurs. NED: We did all we could, but three people in the West End were past saving. Congratulations! MAC: Amateurs and bunglers. JIMMY: An old gent got hurt a bit, but I don’t think it’s anything serious. Congratulations. MAC: My orders were: avoid bloodshed. It makes me sick to think of it. You’ll never make business men! Cannibals, perhaps, but not business men! WALTER known as Dreary Walt: Congratulations. Only half an hour ago, Madam, that harpsichord belonged to the Duchess of Somerset.

Kilgore Trout once wrote a story called "This Means You." It was set in the Hawaiian Islands, the place where the lucky winners of Dwayne Hoover’s contest in Midland City were supposed to go. Every bit of land on the islands was owned by only about forty people, and, in the story, Trout had those people decide to exercise their property rights to the full. They put up no trespassing signs on everything. This created terrible problems for the million other people on the islands. The law of gravity required that they stick somewhere on the surface. Either that, or they could go out into the water and bob offshore. But then the Federal Government came through with an emergency program. It gave a big balloon full of helium to every man, woman and child who didn’t own property.

The out-of-the-box California physicists beat their heads against this problem for years, but by the early 1980s, it became apparent that there is no way to send a signal via entanglement alone. For one thing, if you force one of a pair of entangled particles into a certain state, the entanglement with the other particle will be broken, so it will not “send” information about its state to its twin. You are limited to performing measurements of a particle’s uncertain value, which compels it to make up its mind about the (previously uncertain) state it is in. In that case, you can be sure its entangled twin will make the same choice, but then some additional information channel needs to be available to let your distant partner know what measurement you performed and what result you got. The latter part of the problem has an analogy in basic semantics. For a piece of information to be meaningful, it needs to be reliably paired with another piece of information that gives it context or serves as its cipher. If I say “yes” to my wife, it can only be meaningless noise, a random word, unless my utterance was produced in the context of a question, like “Are you going to the store later?” Without knowing exactly how the physicist on Earth measured her particle, Alice, and what result she got, the change in Alice’s entangled partner Bob four light years away in that lab orbiting Alpha Centauri cannot be meaningful, even if it is information. The Earth physicist needs to send some slower-than-light signal to inform her distant colleague about her measurement and its outcome … which defeats the whole purpose of using entanglement to carry a message.47 This is also the problem with the metaphor of the universe as a computer. No matter how much computation the universe can perform, its outputs can be little more than out-of-context yesses and nos, addressed to no one in particular. If there is no “outside” to the system, there is nothing to compare it to and no one to give all those bit flips meaning. In fact, it is a lot like the planetary supercomputer “Deep Thought” in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: When, after millions of years of computation, it finally utters its output, “42,” no one knows what it means, because the question the computer had been programmed to answer has long been forgotten. We are now perhaps in a better position to understand how the behavior of atoms, photons, and subatomic particles could carry information about their future—tons of information—without any of it being meaningful to us, and why we would naturally (mis)construe it as randomness: It is noise to our ears, stuck as we are in the Now with no way of interpreting it. It is like the future constantly sending back strings of yesses and nos without us knowing the questions.

The out-of-the-box California physicists beat their heads against this problem for years, but by the early 1980s, it became apparent that there is no way to send a signal via entanglement alone. For one thing, if you force one of a pair of entangled particles into a certain state, the entanglement with the other particle will be broken, so it will not “send” information about its state to its twin. You are limited to performing measurements of a particle’s uncertain value, which compels it to make up its mind about the (previously uncertain) state it is in. In that case, you can be sure its entangled twin will make the same choice, but then some additional information channel needs to be available to let your distant partner know what measurement you performed and what result you got. The latter part of the problem has an analogy in basic semantics. For a piece of information to be meaningful, it needs to be reliably paired with another piece of information that gives it context or serves as its cipher. If I say “yes” to my wife, it can only be meaningless noise, a random word, unless my utterance was produced in the context of a question, like “Are you going to the store later?” Without knowing exactly how the physicist on Earth measured her particle, Alice, and what result she got, the change in Alice’s entangled partner Bob four light years away in that lab orbiting Alpha Centauri cannot be meaningful, even if it is information. The Earth physicist needs to send some slower-than-light signal to inform her distant colleague about her measurement and its outcome … which defeats the whole purpose of using entanglement to carry a message.47 This is also the problem with the metaphor of the universe as a computer. No matter how much computation the universe can perform, its outputs can be little more than out-of-context yesses and nos, addressed to no one in particular. If there is no “outside” to the system, there is nothing to compare it to and no one to give all those bit flips meaning. In fact, it is a lot like the planetary supercomputer “Deep Thought” in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: When, after millions of years of computation, it finally utters its output, “42,” no one knows what it means, because the question the computer had been programmed to answer has long been forgotten. We are now perhaps in a better position to understand how the behavior of atoms, photons, and subatomic particles could carry information about their future—tons of information—without any of it being meaningful to us, and why we would naturally (mis)construe it as randomness: It is noise to our ears, stuck as we are in the Now with no way of interpreting it. It is like the future constantly sending back strings of yesses and nos without us knowing the questions. We are only now realizing that there may indeed be words in all that noise—it’s not just gibberish. But how to decode them?

are you doing?” “Helping my wife.” My throat bobs. “You’re growing a bit too comfortable with that nickname for my liking.” “I use it to remind you of your place.” “And what’s that?” “Mine.

Bob wouldn’t believe this.” “Who’s Bob?” I asked, feeling a bit bad for the guy who we were leading into a place that clearly terrified him. “My husband. He died many, many years ago. We were only married a year before the accident.” He cleared his throat. “I never really got over that.

How remarkable,” Amelia said casually. “There’s still something left of you.” Plucking a handkerchief from her sleeve, she strode forward and tenderly wiped sweat and a smear of blood from his cheeks. Noticing his unfocused gaze, she said, “I’m the one in the middle, dear.” “Ah. There you are.” Leo’s head bobbed up and down like a string puppet’s. He glanced at Merripen, who was providing far more support than Leo’s own legs were. “My sister,” he said. “Terrifying girl.” “Before Merripen puts you in the carriage,” Amelia said, “are you going to cast up your accounts, Leo?” “Certainly not,” came the unhesitating reply. “Hathaways always hold their liquor.” Amelia stroked aside the dirty brown locks that dangled like strands of yarn over his eyes. “It would be nice if you would try to hold a bit less of it in the future, dear.” “Ah, but sis…” As Leo looked down at her, she saw a flash of his old self, a spark in the vacant eyes, and then it was gone. “I have such a powerful thirst.” Amelia felt the smart of tears at the corners of her eyes, tasted salt at the back of her throat. Swallowing it back, she said in a steady voice, “For the next few days, Leo, your thirst will be slaked exclusively by water or tea. Into the carriage with him, Merripen.” Leo twisted to glance at the man who held him steady. “For God’s sake, you’re not going to put me in her custody, are you?” “Would you rather dry out in the care of a Bow Street gaolkeeper?” Merripen asked politely. “He would be a damn sight more merciful.” Grumbling, Leo lurched toward the carriage with Merripen’s assistance.

His eyes never leave me. He’s tall enough to see over the heads of most of the other guys in the room, and as we twist and twirl and bob and bow, he never stops watching me. And instead of feeling gawky and clumsy, it gives me the strangest boost of confidence. I am flooded with adrenaline and energy. It runs up and down my arms and legs, and I want to grab his hand, gather my skirts in my free hand, and run away from the crowds so I can be with him. But I know it wouldn’t be proper, and so we simply dance. With every twist and dip, my smile grows. This must have been how Emily felt at the last dance. The reason she was glowing. And yet my brain keeps battling with my emotions, willing me to tell him who I am, to unload the truth. I know the clock is ticking. I know at any moment I can have everything yanked from me--yet another way I’m like Cinderella. Every time we stand closely, every time he’s looking at me, I try to tell him. I try to say I’m not Rebecca, try to say that I need to talk to him in private, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth. The song changes. The dance changes. But we don’t leave the floor. We dance through three songs. It must be at least an hour’s worth of dancing. I give up on the idea of telling him anything tonight. It can wait. It has waited thirty days; it can wait another. I’ll find him in the morning, before Rebecca arrives. I’ll explain it all. It’s not until I’m entirely too short of breath and dizzy--I blame it on the corset--that I have to bow out. Alex tries to follow me, but he is quickly swarmed by girls in fancy dresses and thick gemstones, and I can’t help but smirk at the look on his face. I’m starting to think he doesn’t want to be a duke at all, even if he doesn’t say it out loud. There are whispers as I leave the floor. All eyes are on me. I need fresh air, so I leave the room and find the courtyard, where several ladies are milling about. Emily is one of them. “I was beginning to think you’d simply keep dancing until the guests had all gone home.” I laugh. “I was a bit short of breath.” “I’m sure the young ladies in attendance thank you.” “Was it that obvious?” “His Grace would not have noticed if the ceiling had fallen in.” I know I should be embarrassed, but I just keep grinning. “I’m sure he was just being polite.” “A single dance would have sufficed. Three means he’s taken an interest. Tongues will wag. You, my dear, have just become the belle of the ball.” “Oh, I didn’t mean to steal your--” Emily laughs. “Not at all. I owe my engagement to you. You may take all the attention you want.” I smile at her and try not to notice that what she’s saying is true. People are watching us. She’s so sweet not to care that I’m stealing her limelight. She’s just that kind of person.

Bob leaned back and straightened his red paisley power tie. His smile was a bit lopsided and more than a bit suggestive. “In my experience, older women have very definite ideas about what they want—ideas that don’t include wheezing, potbellied, middle-aged guys with receding hairlines.” He chuckled and smoothed his flaxen tresses once more. She drummed her fingernails on the white tablecloth and looked for the waitress. That made six times so far this insolent pup had used the term “older women.” He gave her the once-over. “Nowadays, older women are so—” God help him if he says... “—well preserved.” Lina briefly closed her eyes. It was going to be a long evening.

Lanie sipped her glass of red wine. The majestic Hotel Negresco filled the view from her small balcony at the Soho Hotel that faced the busy Promenade des Anglais. She noticed the familiar silhouette of the Negresco even before taking in the curve of the brilliantly blue Mediterranean as it outlined the dramatic stretch of umbrella-dotted beach. To be sure, she thought, the view must be every bit as remarkable from the Negresco—that grand dame of luxury and British superiority. But, as she’d asked Bob last spring when they’d booked the tour: would you rather stay in a landmark or gaze upon it? 

I was raised as a churchgoer but I wasn't a practising Christian. I wasn't an agnostic or atheist either. My view is that we should all take a bit from every religion and philosophy. I'm not a Buddhist but I like Buddhist philosophies, in particular. They give you a very good structure that you can build your life around. For instance, I definitely believe in karma, the idea that what goes around, comes around. I wondered whether Bob was my reward for having done something good, somewhere in my troubled life.

Let the hips and torso lead the way. This should feel a bit like falling forward; you’ll need to move the feet quickly under your hips to catch yourself, with each foot landing below—and not ahead of—your vertical body. (A

Theo, she’s a living twenty-four-seven hormone production plant. The conveyor belts keep delivering more oestrogen n’ all kinds of female knicks ‘n knacks and bits ‘n bobs in all their knickerbocker glory. She’s got nowhere to put it all, Theo, but the conveyor belts keep on comin’, keep on a-chuggin’ – even on Christmas Day… and we all remember last Christmas Day, right?

You good?” “Yeah. Okay. Good.” “Now, I’m going to be right here to tell you what to do, and I’ll help you steer if you start running us off the road.” I revved the gas pedal and then placed her foot on it and let her do the same. I could tell she was trying not to bail off of my lap—her body was practically vibrating with nerves—but she didn’t. She stayed, listening intently. I gave her basic instructions, and then I helped her ease onto the road, going about five miles per hour. She didn’t move her hands from two and ten o’clock, and I had to tug at the wheel slightly to straighten us out. And then we picked up speed, just a bit. “How does that feel?” “Like falling,” she whispered, her body rigid, her arms locked on the wheel. “Relax. Falling is easier if you don’t fight it.” “And driving?” “That too. Everything is easier if you don’t fight it.” “What if someone sees us?” “Then I’ll tell you when to wave." She giggled and relaxed slightly against me. I kissed her temple where it rested against my cheek, and she was immediately stiff as a board once more. Shit. I hadn’t thought. I’d just reacted. “I would have patted you on the back, but your forehead was closer,” I drawled. “You’re doin’ it. You’re drivin’.” “How fast are we going?” she said breathlessly. I hoped it was fear and not that kiss. “Oh you’re flyin’, baby. Eight miles an hour. At this rate, we will reach Salt Lake in two days, my legs will be numb, and Henry will want a turn. Give it a little gas. Let’s see if we can push it up to ten.” She pressed her foot down suddenly and we shot forward with a lurch. “Whoa!” I cried, my arms shooting up to brace hers on the wheel. I saw Henry stir from the corner of my eye. “Danika Patrick is the first female NASCAR driver to ever win a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series pole,” he said woodenly, before slumping back down in his seat. I spared him a quick glance, only to see his eyes were closed once more. Millie obviously heard him and she hooted and pressed the gas pedal down a little harder. “Henry just compared you to Danika Patrick. And he obviously isn’t alarmed that you’re driving because he’s already asleep again.” “That’s because Henry knows I’m badass.” “Oh yeah. Badass, Silly Millie. ‘Goin’ ninety miles an hour down a dead-end street,’” I sang a little Bob Dylan, enjoying myself thoroughly.

You were playing the song we like...” “That was the song?” A smile lit his face. “Yes. What was it?” I asked “Bob Dylan.” “What?!” I wailed. “I thought it was going to be Beethoven or something. Now I know I'm white trash.” Wilson bopped me on the head with his bow. “It's called 'Make You Feel my Love.' It's one of my favorite songs. I embellish it a bit, but it's all Dylan, definitely not Mozart. The lyrics are brilliant. Listen.” Wilson sang softly as he played. His voice was as rich as the moaning cello . “Of course,” I said sourly. “What?” Wilson stopped, startled. “You can sing. You have a beautiful voice. I can't even pretend that you suck. Why can't you suck at something? It's so unfair.” “You clearly haven't seen me try to carve something intricate and beautiful out of a tree stump,” Wilson said dryly, and started playing again.

Even in a dress-down gray sweater, Bob Iger looks a bit mechanical. His mouth is almost geometrically straight, his face constructed of some cool alloy. His hair, of course, is perfect.

I’ve been thinking . . .” He stared into his cup as if he could read his next words on the dark, shifting surface. Frank’s low laughter drifted in from the parlor. My feet longed to run to him, to hear what childish antic had brought amusement, but I stayed in my seat. Henry pulled a paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and slid it across the table. “What’s this?” I unfolded it, and my breath caught at the words. “A Texas Ranger.” He nodded, pride shining in his eyes. “It’s all because of you, Rebekah.” “Me?” I bit my lip to hold back the tears. Henry would get to live his dream. “I’d have never tried if you hadn’t encouraged me.” I reached across the table and squeezed his hand before I realized what I’d done. I let go as fast as if I’d touched a frozen water pump handle barehanded. But he held on. “I love you, Rebekah. I think I have since the moment I caught you on the train platform.” I held my breath, wishing I didn’t have to disappoint this man. “Come with me. Marry me.” His eyes radiated hope. I remembered the driving lesson—and the dinner at Irene’s. Henry Jeffries had adventuresome dreams, but he wanted a safe wife. Someone to be coddled and cared for, like Clara Gresham. I wasn’t sure I could be that, just as I could never seem to be the docile daughter Mama longed for. I reclaimed my hand, wishing I could soften the hurtful words. “I can’t.” He sat back as if I’d struck at him. “We aren’t right for each other, Henry. We’d come to despise each other, I think. Eventually.” His head shook. “We wouldn’t, Rebekah. I’d do whatever you wanted, be whatever you wanted.” Such the opposite of Arthur. Humble. Caring. Saying he loved me. “That’s the problem, Henry. You shouldn’t have to change for me.” Why couldn’t I return his affection? Why did the Lord doom my heart to care for those who didn’t care for me? “Everything all right?” Frank poked his head into the kitchen, his eyes meeting mine. Those blue eyes, deep with passion and love for his family. I pushed away from the table and ran out the door, all the way to the barn. I groped through the dark interior, hearing Dandy and Tom and Huck gallivanting in the corral, Ol’ Bob mooing from her stall. I lifted my skirts, charged up the ladder and into the hayloft, and wept, wondering if I’d just turned down my very last chance at love.

I was born in Berwyn, Illinois. At the time, the doctors declared, with deadpan gravitas, “Boy, six pounds, eight ounces.” I was circumcised and remain so, unable or unwilling to grow a fresh foreskin in the years since. Unable, actually, as I have tried—I’ve used creams and pills and all manner of massage, but it’s no use. Fresh foreskin forsakes me, it foils me, it fails to flower on the face of my glans. And that’s the final bit of poetry in this book.

a collection that included, among other items, an Allen wrench set, some pliers, a power drill, several clamps, some hacksaws, an impact-wrench set, a brace of cold-tolerant bungie cords, assorted files and rasps and planes, a crescent-wrench set, a crimper, five hammers, some hemostats, three hydraulic jacks, a bellows, several sets of screwdrivers, drills and bits, a portable compressed gas cylinder, a box of plastic explosives and shape charges, a tape measure, a giant Swiss Army knife, tin snips, tongs, tweezers, three vises, a wire stripper, X-acto knives, a pick, a bunch of mallets, a nut driver set, hose clamps, a set of end mills, a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers, a magnifying glass, all kinds of tape, a plumber’s bob and ream, a sewing kit, scissors, sieves, a lathe, levels of all sizes, long-nosed pliers, vise-grip pliers, a tap-and-die set, three shovels, a compressor, a generator, a welding-and-cutting set, a wheelbarrow— and so on. And

The hour-and-a-half flight had given Nada time to get through his shock and realize this wasn’t the brightest idea, being a pod-test dummy. But it was a bit too late for that. Actually, he didn’t care much one way or the other. If he splatted in, so be it.

I’ve had one rather insistent fantasy over the course of this beautiful Maine afternoon,” he said, hearing the rough edge come back into his voice, his hunger for her making his mouth go as dry as Cameroo in April. Her lips curved upward, and that gleaming light flickered to life in her eyes. “Does it involve pillaging?” “Aye,” he said, a bit of the pirate back in his voice. Het let the blanket slide from his fingers, then put his palms on her hips, wrapping his fingers around her so the tips pressed gently into the firm curve at the top end of her bum. His thumbs rubbed over her hip bones, pressing against the tight wrap of her dress. He felt a little shudder go through her and had to dig deep for what little restraint he had left. He kept his gaze tipped up and on hers. “I stood by the rail as you steered this big beast through that maze of bobbing boats in the harbor and imagined what it would be like if I walked over to stand behind you, to wrap my hands around your hips.” He did sink his fingertips into her softness a bit then, and was rewarded with a little gasp from her. Her parted lips called to him like a siren, but he remained where he was. “I wanted to slide them up, cup your breasts, find out if they’d fit as perfectly in my hands as I’ve imagined.” His actions mirrored his words, and he felt her intake of breath as he slid his palms up, over her rib cage. She didn’t stop him, and his gaze shifted to his hands as he slowly circled her breasts, all pushed up and bound tightly within her dress…and, indeed, perfectly shaped for his hands. Her body twitched under his hands as he rain his palms up and over her nipples, and she let out a little moan. He could feel them grow harder, pushing at the silky, gathered fabric, pushing against his hands. “I wanted to slide my fingertips under the top edge, here,” he said, curling his fingers until they slid under the inside edge of her bodice, “and tug it down, slowly, so the soft, silky fabric would rub over your nipples, making them stand up, full and pink and hard, just for me.” She took a swift intake of breath as he began to do what he’d described. He kept his attention focused solely on what he was doing, wondering why in the hell he thought torturing himself further was a good idea. By the time he got rid of her clothes, he might not be able to get his own off, or ever father children, but then he glanced up, saw her eyes were lit like the fire of glittering emeralds, but decided he’d gnaw his clothes off if necessary.

The song turns to a slow one, and Skip pulls me close to him. His hands encircle my waist and slip beneath my shirt to touch my naked skin. I pull his questing fingers out. Suddenly, Skip is gone, and he’s lying on the floor. I look up to find Bob staring down at me, his chest heaving. “What the fuck are you doing, Madison?” “Well, I was dancing.” “It looked more like he was trying to fuck you on the dance floor.” I snort. “I hate to be the one to tell you, Bob, but fucking is a bit different from that.” I tilt my head at him. “You want me to get you a book on the subject? Because it seems like you are woefully misguided.” “I don’t need a book,” he mutters. “Why are you here with him?” He jerks a thumb toward Skip, who is being helped up off the floor. Skip taps Bob on the shoulder, like he wants to repay the favor, and Bob turns his head just enough to growl at him through his clenched teeth. Skip’s face goes white and he backs up, holding up two hands. “No problem, buddy. Didn’t know you called dibs.” Skip turns and walks off the dance floor. “He didn’t call dibs!” I yell to Skip, but he doesn’t come back. “I did call dibs. I do call dibs. I will call dibs.” He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the exit. “I don’t accept your dibs!” I cry. I dig my heels in and he turns back to face me. Suddenly, he upends me over his shoulder, his arm clamped across the backs of my thighs. I beat on his back, but he pays me no mind. I bend close to him and bite the only thing I can get my teeth into, which just happens to be the tender skin just over his left butt cheek. “I like it rough, sweetheart,” he says. This time, I put some heat behind my teeth and really nail him. His butt flinches. “Rough enough for you, sweetheart?” I ask between bounces of my body.

Sid’s tan throat bobbed as he swallowed roughly. “Because when you first arrived, you reminded me of a puddle: still and gloomy. You can never tell how deep or shallow a puddle is just by looking at it. All it takes is a bit more rain and the puddle becomes a pond, then a lake. It grows when everything else drowns.

Turns out there are as many stories in the bits and bobs as there are in the books but those ones...those are the kind of stories that need to be shared while drinking lemonade and eating sugar & spice cookies

It ain't all lavender, Don't you think it is. What with the crowded houses, the fish and the cord'roy trousers- It ain't all lavender, It makes you warm a bit; You'd better a-paid a bob to go down in the pit-for just an hour or two.