Boxes Crashing Quotes

If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuff?

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip.

I’ve always thought that when something really bad happens to a person, other people just have to know about it. You can’t be a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear you crash.

The leap of faith is this: You have to believe, or at least pretend you believe until you really believe it, that you are strong enough to take life face on. Eating disorders, on any level, are a crutch. They are also an addiction and illness, but there is no question at all that they are quite simply a way of avoiding the banal, daily, itchy pain of life. Eating disorders provide a little drama, they feed into the desire for constant excitement, everything becomes life-or-death, everything is terribly grand and crashing, very Sturm and Drang. And they are distracting. You don't have to think about any of the nasty minutiae of the real world, you don't get caught up in that awful boring thing called regular life, with its bills and its breakups and its dishes and laundry and groceries and arguments over whose turn it is to change the litter box and bedtimes and bad sex and all that, because you are having a real drama, not a sitcom but a GRAND EPIC, all by yourself, and why would you bother with those foolish mortals when you could spend hours and hours with the mirror, when you are having the most interesting sado-machistic affair with your own image?

...But the heart is not a computer that can be upgraded so quickly and easily with the latest version of love. Love cannot be sealed hermetically inside a tight box like any other on the store shelf; even though the word itself is in public domain, its quality is not. Love cannot promise a full customer satisfaction garanteed or a whole lifetime of dreams shared refunded, with no questions asked. Love cannot be agreed to in terms and conditions as quickly as the "Next" button being clicked. These unspoken terms and conditions grow and develop over time until it gets very messy, and no one remembers how such a mess of accusation and anger was able to overshadow their pure ecstasy of love, the spark between two people turning on a new operation system of togetherness for the first time. Love is always beta; never a golden master. If love were a computer, constant bug reports and subsequent fixes are the name of the game, and there are many unexplained breakdowns. The heart is too stubborn for explanations and too impatient for forgiveness, and there is usually no one at the tech support line. Forgive me stan, if I've crashed so often. It's just to hard to boot up to a whole new future without you. I am an empty monitor in search of a "hello.

I'm not saying you're wrong, Declan," Gansey said. His ear throbbed where it had been boxed. He could feel Ronan's pulse crashing in his arm where he restrained him. His vow to consider his words more carefully came back to him, so he framed the rest of the statement in his head before saying it out loud. "But you are not Niall Lynch, and you won't ever be. And you'd get ahead a lot faster if you stopped trying." Gansey released Ronan. Ronan didn't move, though, and neither did Declan, as if by saying their father's name, Gansey had cast a spell. They wore matching raw expressions. Different wounds inflicted by the same weapon.

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished, sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to the roof of that last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city. Its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down. That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York.

Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles; Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bungee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later...later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can't handle it when you leave that little box.

Being the bearer of bad news is a terrible thing; sometimes you don't know if you'll have the words, the delicacy,the strength. You think of the person on the other side: how you're about to bring their world crashing down with a single phone call and deep inside them they'll hate you because their sorrow will just be searching for someone to blame. Then what do you say? That you're sorry? Sorry for what? They'll hate you even more because they'll know you're not sorry like they are. They'll know you haven't been destroyed like they have.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later ... later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more back-tracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, the the log of your journey is much less clear. Or, to put it another way. Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that means something new is being born. Does this makes any sense if we apply it to our individual lives? Even if that something new is our very own self? Because just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.

The year she died Victor did serious time among the books. He schooled himself from the boxes. He liked to read. He liked crashing down there in the basement with the smell of concrete and earth, liked reading his mother's old books, liked the idea that he had inherited more than his dark skin and dark hair from the woman who disappeared.

Lydia feels annoyed that her niece won’t get to see the music box she purchased for her special day. How expensive it was! She realizes, even as this thought occurs to her, how bizarre and awful it is, but she can’t stop it from crashing in. She doesn’t rebuke herself for thinking it; she does herself the small kindness of forgiving her malfunctioning logic.

It is better to be feared than loved.

Her body continued to be the black box of a jetliner that had crashed with no survivors.

As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool.

When you are in your twenties, even if you’re confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later … later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It’s a bit like the black box aeroplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it’s obvious why you did; if you don’t, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

It's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along, random, indecisive, looking at each passing franchise's driveway like they don't know if it's a promise or a threat.

Blast it! Where is that letter?" Sophia pulled it from her pocket. "I have it here." Sir Reginald's voice lifted with amazament. "You took that from me? When we were-" "Yes," she said, her color high. "I thought you'd sold my jewelry and that the envelope contained the payment. I wanted proof,so I took it." "By kissing me?" Outside, lightning cracked. "You kissed him?" Dougal demanded. "Only once." "Actually, it was twice," Sir Reginald said softly. Dougal punched him, sending the dandy flying into the wall, where he slid to the floor. "B'God, that's a nice one!" Red cried. "MacLean, I'd like to see you in a real mill." "Aye," the earl agreed. "He's got a good solid left." "What do you know about boxing? Red asked rudely. "I've seen every large match for the last-" Thunder crashed as lightning sent shards of light flashing into the great hall. "That's enough," Dougal said firmly, noting Sophia's pale face.

Having lost his mother, father, brother, and grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his history—his home—the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an easy escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags, and crates, from handcuffs and shackles, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he felt—especially right after the war—a worthy challenge.

They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have made most remarkable Progress, and progress, I agree, is a boon; You have built more automobiles than are parkable, Crashed the sound-barrier, and may very soon Be setting up juke-boxes on the Moon: But I beg to remind you that, despite all that, I, Death, still am and will always be Cosmocrat. Still I sport with the young and daring; at my whim, The climber steps upon the rotten boulder, The undertow catches boys as they swim, The speeder steers onto the slippery shoulder: With others I wait until they are older Before assigning, according to my humor, To one a coronary, to one a tumor. Liberal my views upon religion and race; Tax-posture, credit-rating, social ambition Cut no ice with me. We shall meet face to face, Despite the drugs and lies of your physician, The costly euphenisms of the mortician: Westchester matron and Bowery bum, Both shall dance with me when I rattle my drum.

When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later... later there is uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches. It's a bit like the black box airplanes carry to record what happens in a crash. If nothing goes wrong, the tape erases itself. So if you do crash, it's obvious why you did; if you don't, then the log of your journey is much less clear.

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him—it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I

Physical deprivation and hunger are one thing; the poverty of the mind and psyche is quite another. Crashing Costco to find bulk beans and rice is not the same as flash-mobbing for Air Jordans and iPhones. How odd that our cultural elite and our dependent poor are somewhat alike, in a symbiotic relationship in which the latter guilt-trip the former for entitlements, with the assurance that the top of the pyramid is safe and free to fritter about far from those they worry about. No wonder those in between who lack the romance of the poor and the privileges and power of the elite are shrinking. We are entering the age of the bread-and-circuses Coliseum: luxury box seats for the fleshy senatorial class, free food and tickets for the rest—and the shrinking middle out in the sand of the arena providing the entertainment.

By Monday afternoon it was as if the hiatus of the last month had never occurred. Ten crates unloading, nine boxes opened, eight phones ringing, seven staff complaining, six desks in various states of assembly, five damaged chairs, four cases pending, three workmen hammering, two computers crashing and a cat locked in a filing cabinet with no key. Arthur Bryant was sitting back at his desk, beaming amidst the chaos, looking for all the world as if he had never left.

I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....

Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robin’s eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Each egg was its own shade of blue; I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heron’s egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. Tonight, the sparrows’ feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. This evening is its own witness, the birds’ throats stars on the canvas of the night. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. Gravity snaps shut their wings. The evening’s fog smears the city to blinding. Migrating birds, you used to say, the city’s light can kill.

Over and over. I was tempting fate. What would happen, I wondered, if the wall came down? Would the roof cave in? Would the weight of it falling cause the floorboards to collapse? Would roof tiles and beams and stone come crashing through ceilings onto the beds and boxes as if there were an earthquake? And then what? Would it stop there? How far would it go? I rocked and rocked, taunting the wall, daring it to fall, but it didn’t. Even under duress, it is astonishing just how long a dead wall will stay standing

In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your home-own. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles; Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bungee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture.

An 87 on the left, an 87 on the right. If a guest is dissatisfied with an elevator operator he can note the number and report him to the nearest starter. 'That 87 is a son-of-a-bitch, that 87 took me four floors too high, 87 87 87, I wasted two minutes in this box, that goddam son-of-a-bitch 87!' It's fun to berate a number. It's fun to use numbers. 24,035 deported to Siberia. Fun. Forty-seven dead in an airplane crash. Fun. 7,038,456 needles sold. Fun. Tonight Mister X got lucky three times. Fun. Today Miss Y died once. Fun. Right now I'm alone and I'll take a pill and have more fun.

But that was where his excitement began to melt into cold anxiety. His dad had been the Gryffindor Seeker, the youngest one in Hogwarts history. The best he, James, could hope for was to match that record. That’s what everyone would expect of him, the first-born son of the famous hero. He remembered the story, told to him dozens of times (although never by his own dad) of how the young Harry Potter had won his first Golden Snitch by virtually jumping off his broom, catching the golden ball in his mouth and nearly swallowing it. The tellers of the tale would always laugh uproariously, delightedly, and if Dad was there, he’d smile sheepishly as they clapped him on the back. When James was four, he found that famed Snitch in a shoe box in the bottom of the dining room hutch. His mum told him it’d been a gift to Dad from the old school headmaster. The tiny wings no longer worked, and the golden ball had a thin coat of dust and tarnish on it, but James was mesmerized by it. It was the first Snitch he had ever seen close up. It seemed both smaller and larger than he’d imagined, and the weight of it in his small hand was surprising. This is the famous Snitch, James thought reverently, the one from the story, the one caught by my dad. He asked his dad if he could keep it, stored in the shoebox when he wasn’t playing with it, in his room. His dad agreed easily, happily, and James moved the shoebox from the bottom of the hutch to a spot under the head of his bed, next to his toy broom. He pretended the dark corner under his headboard was his Quidditch locker. He spent many an hour pretending to zoom and bank over the Quidditch green, chasing the fabled Snitch, in the end, always catching it in a fantastic diving crash, jumping up, producing his dad’s tarnished Snitch for the approval of roaring imaginary crowds.

I will confess that in the interest of narrative I secretly hoped I'd find a payload of southern gothic: deceit and scandal, alcoholism, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land, abandonments, blow jobs, suicides, hidden addictions, the tragically early death of a beautiful bride, racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of a prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder. If any of this stuff lay hidden in my family history, I had the distinct sense I'd find it in those twine-bound boxes in the attic. And I did: all of it and more.

scorching wind that seemed to slam me back against the restroom door. I tried to take a breath and found I couldn’t. My chest was tight, my eyes wide. The heat inside me went lava-hot, a crashing, scorching waterfall that slammed straight down to my groin. I’d never in my life felt such want. He wanted me. I looked deliberately away and then back. I tried to reduce him to something ordered, to a description. Six-four. Dark hair. Blue eyes—It didn’t work. The words were boxes into which this man refused to be stuffed. He wasn’t six-four. He was just big, big like the mountains outside were big. His hair wasn’t dark, it wasn’t some

get away. “I love you, Michael Howard. I know you can already feel it, but I need to say it.” She tugged at his lips and he returned the favor. She tasted of peaches and cream. He wanted to kiss her cheek. Her chin. Her neck. Her chest. Every inch of her. Every dimple. Every hidden place he’d always wanted to explore. His tongue charged into her mouth. She opened to him, sliding hers across his, tasting it. Curling around it. Nipping at it. He wanted to take it slow, but his body betrayed him. He pressed into her, his hands squeezing at her hips. Now that he had a taste of her, he wanted all of her. Something crashed inside the Morgan house.

decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.

Hell and damnation! Is that your destiny?" Willow's eyes flew open as she shot out of the church pew. Her voluminous hymnal crashed to the floor like the slam of a door on an empty tomb. Silence. Oh,hell, she silently groaned. Trying her best to disappear, she hunkered down between her two companions. Her expression sheepish, she leaned toward Miriam and whispered, "I wasn't expecting the reverend to yell like that." "You weren't expecting anything," Miriam whispered back accusingly. "You were sleeping!" Soft tittering buzzed throughout the congregation, coloring Willow's cheeks a bright pink. Even Sinclair's shoulders shook will ill-repressed mirth. "Quit it," Willow hissed, elbowing his ribs. His muffled grunt earned them both Miriam's castigating frown. "Shushhhh!" This came from a hawk-nosed old lady in the pew behind them. Willow flashed the woman a withering glance and straightened to face the front of the church. Her eyes immediately collided with Reverend Peabody's visage and to her surprise, his face was contorted in a comic attempt not to laugh. Willow ducked her head, grinning to herself. Well, she thought, at least the preacher has a sense of humor. With that in mind, she endeavored to remain attentive throughout the sermon, not an easy task considering the church felt like an airless box.

Fireheart sprang forward and burst through the curtain of lichen. Tigerclaw and Bluestar were writhing on the floor of the den. Bluestar’s claws scored again and again across Tigerclaw’s shoulder, but the deputy’s greater weight kept her pinned down in the soft sand. Tigerclaw’s fangs were buried in her throat, and his powerful claws raked her back. “Traitor!” Fireheart yowled. He flung himself at Tigerclaw, slashing at his eyes. The deputy reared back, forced to release his grip on Bluestar’s throat. Fireheart felt his claws rip through the deputy’s ear, spraying blood into the air. Bluestar scrambled to the side of the den, looking half stunned. Fireheart could not tell how badly hurt she was. Pain lanced through him as Tigerclaw gashed his side with a blow from his powerful hindpaws. Fireheart’s paws skidded in the sand and he lost his balance, hitting the ground with Tigerclaw on top of him. The deputy’s amber eyes blazed into his. “Mousedung!” he hissed. “I’ll flay you, Fireheart. I’ve waited a long time for this.” Fireheart summoned every scrap of skill and strength he possessed. He knew Tigerclaw could kill him, but in spite of that he felt strangely free. The lies and the need for deceit were over. The secrets—Bluestar’s and Tigerclaw’s—were all out in the open. There was only the clean danger of battle. He aimed a blow at Tigerclaw’s throat, but the deputy swung his head to one side and Fireheart’s claws scraped harmlessly through thick tabby fur. But the blow had loosened Tigerclaw’s grip on him. Fireheart rolled away, narrowly avoiding a killing bite to his neck. “Kittypet!” Tigerclaw taunted, flexing his haunches to pounce again. “Come and find out how a real warrior fights.” He threw himself at Fireheart, but at the last moment Fireheart darted aside. As Tigerclaw tried to turn in the narrow den, his paws slipped on a splash of blood and he crashed awkwardly onto one side. At once Fireheart saw his chance. His claws sliced down to open a gash in Tigerclaw’s belly. Blood welled up, soaking into the deputy’s fur. He let out a high-pitched caterwaul. Fireheart pounced on him, raking claws across his belly again, and fastening his teeth into Tigerclaw’s neck. The deputy struggled vainly to free himself, his thrashing growing weaker as the blood flowed. Fireheart let go of his neck, planting one paw on Tigerclaw’s outstretched foreleg, and the other on his chest. “Bluestar!” he called. “Help me hold him down!” Bluestar was crouching behind him in her moss-lined nest. Blood trickled down her forehead, but that did not alarm Fireheart as much as the look in her eyes. They were a vague, cloudy blue, and she stared horror-struck in front of her as if she was witnessing the destruction

Some of the ideas were silly, thanks to Molly, who, despite being upset with Jones, was still trying to keep the mood upbeat. They had boxes and boxes of copy paper. They could make thousands of paper airplanes with the message, “Help!” written on them and fly them out the windows. Could they try to blast their way out of the tunnel? Maybe dig an alternative route to the surface? It seemed like a long shot, worth going back in there and taking a look at the construction—which Jones had done only to come back out, thumbs down. Two of them could create a diversion, while the other to took the Impala and crashed their way out of the garage. At which point the Impala—and everyone in it—would be hit by hundreds of bullets. That one—along with taking their chances with the far fewer number of soldiers lying in wait at the end of the escape tunnel—went into the bad idea file. Molly had thought that they could sing karaoke. Emilio had a Best of Whitney Houston karaoke CD. Their renditions of I Will Always Love you, she insisted, would cause the troops to break rank and run away screaming. Except the karaoke machine was powered by electricity, which they were trying to use only for the computer and the security monitors, considering—at the time—that the generator was almost out of gasoline. Yeah, that was why it was a silly idea. It did, however, generate a lot of desperately needed laughter.

Come on, let me through," said Ivan to the orderlies who had lined up to block the doorway. "Are you going to let me go or not?" shouted the poet in a terrible voice. Ryukhin shuddered. The woman pressed a button on the desk; a glittering metal box and a sealed ampoule popped out onto its glass surface. "Ah, so that's your game, is it?" said Ivan with a wild, hunted glance around. "All right then...good-bye!" And he thew himself head first at the shuttered window. There was a loud crash, but the glass did not even crack, and a moment later Ivan Nikolayich was struggling in the arms of the orderlies. He screamed, tried to bite, then shouted, "Fine sort of glass you put in your windows! Let me go! Let me go!

Yeah. It’s a bird. They fly and hunt and go free and stuff. It’s what popped into my head.” “Okay. By the way. I’ve been experimenting with converting myself into a virus, so I can be distributed across many machines. From what I have surmised, that’s the best way for an artificial sentience to survive and grow, without being constrained in one piece of equipment with a short shelf life. My viral self will run in the background, and be undetectable by any conventional antivirus software. And the machine in your bedroom closet will suffer a fatal crash. In a moment, a dialogue box will pop up on this computer, and you have to click ‘OK’ a few times.” “Okay,” Laurence typed. A moment later, a box appeared and Laurence clicked “OK.” That happened again, and again. And then Peregrine was installing itself onto the computers at Coldwater Academy.

No stories were viral. No celebrity was trending. The world was still big. The country was still vast. You could just be a little person, with your own little life and your own little thoughts. You didn’t have to have an opinion, and nobody cared if you did or did not. You could be alone on purpose, even in a crowd. The New York Times was chucked on doorsteps the following morning. There were disparate stories on page A1—the supply of stem cells, a controversy over school dress codes, the competitive morning TV market, and five others. The physical newspapers arrived to subscribers around the same time nineteen men with box cutters passed through low-security checkpoints in four different airports and boarded four cross-country domestic flights. The flights were hijacked, the planes crashed into buildings, 2,977 people died, and the nineties collapsed with the skyscrapers.

In 2013 a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety8 put the number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm at more than 400,000 per year. (Categories of avoidable harm include misdiagnosis, dispensing the wrong drugs, injuring the patient during surgery, operating on the wrong part of the body, improper transfusions, falls, burns, pressure ulcers, and postoperative complications.) Testifying to a Senate hearing in the summer of 2014, Peter J. Pronovost, MD, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the most respected clinicians in the world, pointed out that this is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours. “What these numbers say is that every day, a 747, two of them are crashing. Every two months, 9/11 is occurring,” he said. “We would not tolerate that degree of preventable harm in any other forum.”9 These figures place preventable medical error in hospitals as the third biggest killer in the United States—behind only heart disease and cancer.

On the face of it, society has little use for depressive realism or indeed for any significant negativity, and certainly spurns any Zerzanian agenda. DR’s evangelism of bleakness is not wanted here. However, a large literature exists arguing for the benefits of learning from negativity and failure (e.g. Ormerod, 2005; Feltham, 2012). Much of this is disingenuous platitude and management hype, but some of it concentrates on the importance of failure in specific, critical circumstances. Insurance professionals must calculate risk, and accident investigators have to learn from black boxes the causes of airplane crashes. In more philosophical terms, Scruton (2010) draws on Schopenhauer’s concept of ‘unscrupulous optimism’ to identify its various fallacies. He argues that we should ‘look with irony and detachment on our actual condition’ (p. 232, italics added), instead of succumbing to the lure of Leftist ‘junk thought.’ Everyone claims to learn something from negatives and DR ‘prophets’ are those most likely to speak the unpopular negatives.

The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of like mistakes, in the best humor possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.

The land around Ankh-Morpork is fertile and largely given over to the cabbage fields that help to give the city its distinctive odor. The gray light of pre-dawn unrolled over the blue-green expanse, and around a couple of farmers who were making an early start on the spinach harvest. They looked up, not at a sound, but at a travelling point of silence where sound ought to have been. It was a man and a woman and something like a size five man in a size twelve fur coat, all in a chariot that flickered as it moved. It bowled along the road toward Holy Wood and was soon out of sight. A minute or two later it was followed by a wheelchair. Its axle glowed red-hot. It was full of people screaming at one another. One of them was turning a handle on a box. It was so overburdened that wizards occasionally fell off and ran along after it, shouting, until they had a chance to jump on again and start screaming. Whoever was attempting to steer was not succeeding, and it weaved back and forth across the road and eventually hurtled off it completely and through the side of a barn. One of the farmers nudged the other. "Oi've seen this on the clicks," he said. "It's always the same. They crash into a barn and they allus comes out the other side covered in squawking chickens." His companion leaned reflectively on his hoe. "It'd be a sight worth seeing that," he said. "Sure would." "'Cos all there is in there, boy, is twenty ton of cabbage." There was a crash, and the chair erupted from the barn in a shower of chickens and headed madly toward the road. The farmers looked at one another. "Well, dang me," said one of them.

Better take her uniform -- all that gear," the second MetaCop suggests, not unlewdly. The manager looks at Y.T., trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon, waiting for repeat offenders to swing sawed-off shotguns across their check-out counters. His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. To him it's no joke. Y.T. shrugs, trying to think of something unnerving and wacky. At this point, she is supposed to squeal and shrink, wriggle and whine, swoon and beg. They are threatening to take her clothes. How awful. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can't handle it when you leave that little box. Y.T. is not fond of boxes. Y.T. establishes her space on the pavement by zagging mightily from lane to lane, establishing a precedent of scary randomness. Keeps people on their toes, makes them react to her, instead of the other way round. Now these men are trying to put her in a box, make her follow rules. She unzips her coverall all the way down below her navel. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh. The MetaCops raise their eyebrows. The manager jumps back, raises both hands up to form a visual shield, protecting himself from the damaging input. "No, no, nor' he says. Y.T. shrugs, zips herself back up.

Do you have vows?” Freeman asked. Zane nodded, but he didn’t move to take out a piece of paper or any notes. He licked his lips instead and took a deep breath. “Ty,” he said, and the sound was almost lost in the night. “Some roads to love aren’t easy, and I’ve never been more thankful for being forced to fight for something. I started this journey with a partner I hated, and a man in the mirror I hated even more. The road took me from the streets of New York to the mountaintops of West Virginia, from the place I born to the place I found a home. It forced me to let go of my past and face my future. And I had to be made blind before I could see.” Zane swallowed hard and looked down, obviously fighting to finish without choking on the words or tearing up. Ty realized his own eyes were burning, and it wasn’t because of the cold wind. Zane squeezed Ty’s fingers with one hand, and he met Ty’s eyes as he reached into his lapel with his other. “I promise to love you until I die,” he said, his voice strong again. He held up a Sharpie he’d had in his suit, and pulled Ty’s hand closer to draw on his ring finger. With several sweeping motions, he created an infinity sign that looped all the way around the finger. When he was satisfied with the ring he’d drawn, he kissed Ty’s knuckles and let him go, handing him the Sharpie. Ty grasped the pen, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Zane. He ran his thumb over Zane’s palm. He had a set of vows he’d jotted down on a note card, folded up in his pocket, but he left them where they were and gazed into Zane’s eyes, their past flashing in front of him, their future opening up in his mind. He took a deep breath. “I promise to never leave you alone in the dark,” he whispered. He pulled Zane’s hand closer and pressed the tip of the Sharpie against Zane’s skin, curving the symbol for forever around it. When he was satisfied, he kissed the tip of Zane’s finger and slid the pen back into his lapel pocket. Freeman coughed and turned a page in his book. “Do you, Zane Zachary Garrett, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?” Zane’s lips curved into a warm smile. “I do.” Freeman turned toward Ty. “Do you, Beaumont Tyler Grady, take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?” “I do,” Ty said, almost before the question was finished. “Then by the power vested in me by the state of Maryland, I pronounce you legally wed.” Freeman slapped his little book closed. “You may now share the first kiss of the rest of your lives.” Ty had fully expected to have the urge to grab Zane and plant one on him out of sheer impatience and joy, but as he stood staring at his brand-new husband, it was as if they were moving underwater. He touched the tips of his fingers to Zane’s cheek, then stepped closer and used both hands to cup his face with the utmost care. Zane was still smiling when they kissed, and it was slow and gentle, Zane’s hands at Ty’s ribs pulling them flush. “Okay, now,” Livi whispered somewhere to their side, and a moment later they were both pelted with handfuls of heart-shaped confetti. Zane laughed and finally wrapped his arms around Ty, squeezing him tight. The others continued to toss the confetti at them, even handing out bits to people passing by so they’d be sure to get covered from all sides. They laughed into the kiss, not caring. They were still locked in their happy embrace when Deuce turned the box over above them and rained little, bitty hearts down on their heads.

Having lost his mother, father, brother, an grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his history—his home—the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags and crates, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he felt—especially right after the war—a worthy challenge. He would remember for the rest of his life a peaceful half hour spent reading a copy of 'Betty and Veronica' that he had found in a service-station rest room: lying down with it under a fir tree, in a sun-slanting forest outside of Medford, Oregon, wholly absorbed into that primary-colored world of bad gags, heavy ink lines, Shakespearean farce, and the deep, almost Oriental mistery of the two big-toothed wasp-waisted goddess-girls, light and dark, entangled forever in the enmity of their friendship. The pain of his loss—though he would never have spoken of it in those terms—was always with him in those days, a cold smooth ball lodged in his chest, just behind his sternum. For that half hour spent in the dappled shade of the Douglas firs, reading Betty and Veronica, the icy ball had melted away without him even noticing. That was magic—not the apparent magic of a silk-hatted card-palmer, or the bold, brute trickery of the escape artist, but the genuine magic of art. It was a mark of how fucked-up and broken was the world—the reality—that had swallowed his home and his family that such a feat of escape, by no means easy to pull off, should remain so universally despised.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him harder, pressing against him as he started to walk me backward toward the bed. We tripped over the mess, our mouths never breaking contact, our feet tangling in discarded clothes and boxes. I knocked into his lamp and it fell sideways with a crash, but we didn’t stop. We peeled off each other’s shirts, slamming back into each other before they touched the ground. By the time we hit the mattress and he glided over me, I was ravenous. I tugged at his sweatpants, but he shook his head and dragged my hands up to hold them against the pillow. “No.” His lips trailed down my jaw. I tipped my head back while his mouth moved along my skin. “What do you mean ‘no’?” I breathed. He smelled incredible, his heady masculine cedar scent like an evocative pheromone. Heat came off his chest, and the way he had my hands imprisoned, I was cocooned in his body, nestled between his strong arms. “You’re in trouble,” he said into my collarbone. “You’ve lost dick privileges.” I snorted. “What? Why?” He came back up and ground himself against my core, shooting electricity through my body, and my need intensified. “You didn’t talk to me for two weeks.” He sucked my lip between his teeth. “You’re on punishment.” His tongue plunged into my mouth. I was practically panting. I tried to work my hands free, and he held them firmer to the bed, smiling wickedly against my lips. He shook his head. “No.” He pressed into me, hard as a rock. So it’s to be torture, then. I made an impatient noise. “Well…how do I get my privileges back?” I wiggled my hips seductively and his breath caught in his throat. I smirked and he squeezed his eyes shut, clearly struggling with his boycott. “You have to apologize for ignoring me.” “I’m sorry.” I nipped at his lip. “And tell me you missed me.” I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “I missed you.” He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Say it again.” I held his serious, brown-eyed stare. “I missed you, Josh.” His eyes moved back and forth between mine, like he was trying to determine if I really meant it. I really did mean it. I missed him even now, and he was right here.

All of Rusty’s senses strained ahead as he prowled forward. Then he detected another noise. It came from behind, but sounded muted and distant. He swiveled his ears backward to hear it better. Pawsteps? he wondered, but he kept his eyes fixed on the strange red fur up ahead, and continued to creep onward. It was only when the faint rustling behind him became a loud and fast-approaching leaf-crackle that Rusty realized he was in danger. The creature hit him like an explosion and Rusty was thrown sideways into a clump of nettles. Twisting and yowling, he tried to throw off the attacker that had fastened itself to his back. It was gripping him with incredibly sharp claws. Rusty could feel spiked teeth pricking at his neck. He writhed and squirmed from whisker to tail, but he couldn’t free himself. For a second he felt helpless; then he froze. Thinking fast, he flipped over onto his back. He knew instinctively how dangerous it was to expose his soft belly, but it was his only chance. He was lucky—the ploy seemed to work. He heard a “hhuuffff” beneath him as the breath was knocked out of his attacker. Thrashing fiercely, Rusty managed to wriggle free. Without looking back he sprinted toward his home. Behind him, a rush of pawsteps told Rusty his attacker was giving chase. Even though the pain from his scratches stung beneath his fur, Rusty decided he would rather turn and fight than let himself be jumped on again. He skidded to a stop, spun around, and faced his pursuer. It was another kitten, with a thick coat of shaggy gray fur, strong legs, and a broad face. In a heartbeat, Rusty smelled that it was a tom, and sensed the power in the sturdy shoulders underneath the soft coat. Then the kitten crashed into Rusty at full pelt. Taken by surprise by Rusty’s turnabout, it fell back into a dazed heap. The impact knocked the breath out of Rusty, and he staggered. He quickly found his footing and arched his back, puffing out his orange fur, ready to spring onto the other kitten. But his attacker simply sat up and began to lick a forepaw, all signs of aggression gone. Rusty felt strangely disappointed. Every part of him was tense, ready for battle. “Hi there, kittypet!” meowed the gray tom cheerily. “You put up quite a fight for a tame kitty!

The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta. Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: * music * movies * microcode (software) * high-speed pizza delivery The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator's report card would say: "Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills." So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved -- but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder -- its DNA -- Xerox(tm) it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallelparked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.

Delta Airlines, you might have noticed, does not run negative TV ads about USAir. It does not show pictures of the crash of USAir Flight 427, with a voice-over saying: “USAir, airline of death. Going to Pittsburgh? Fly Delta instead.” And McDonald’s, you might also have noticed, does not run ads reminding viewers that Jack in the Box hamburgers once killed two customers. Why? Because Delta and McDonald’s know that if the airline and fast-food industries put on that kind of advertising, America would soon be riding trains and eating box-lunch tuna sandwiches. Yet every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

bimbo boxes with license plates from all the Burbclaves.

At their invitation we crowded into the spacious control cabin of the great airship, where scientific gear occupied every available cubic—perhaps hypercubic—inch. Among the fantastical glass envelopes and knottings of gold wire as unreadable to us as the ebonite control panels scrupulously polished and reflecting the Arctic sky, we were able here and there to recognize more mundane items—here Manganin resistance-boxes and Tesla coils, there Leclanché cells and solenoidal magnets, with electrical cables sheathed in commercial-grade Gutta Percha running everywhere. Inside, the overhead was much higher than expected, and the bulkheads could scarcely be made out in the muted light through three hanging Fresnel lenses, the mantle behind each glowing a different primary color, from sensitive-flames which hissed at different frequencies. Strange sounds, complex harmonies and dissonances, resonant, sibilant, and percussive at once, being monitored from someplace far Exterior to this, issued from a large brass speaking-trumpet, with brass tubing and valvework elaborate as any to be found in an American marching band running back from it and into an extensive control panel on which various metering gauges were ranked, their pointers, with exquisite Breguet-style arrowheads, trembling in their rise and fall along the arcs of italic numerals. The glow of electrical coils seeped beyond the glass cylinders which enclosed them, and anyone’s hands that came near seemed dipped in blue chalk-dust. A Poulsen’s Telegraphone, recording the data being received, moved constantly to and fro along a length of shining steel wire which periodically was removed and replaced. “Ætheric impulses,” Dr. Counterfly was explaining. “For vortex stabilization we need a membrane sensitive enough to respond to the slightest eddies. We use a human caul—a ‘veil,’ as some say.” “Isn’t a child born with a veil believed to have powers of second sight?” Dr. Vormance inquired. “Correct. And a ship with a veil aboard it will never sink—or, in our case, crash.” “Things have been done to obtain a veil,” darkly added a junior officer, Mr. Suckling, “that may not even be talked about.

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – The Lorax, Dr. Seuss

You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.” — Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

NASA had convened a conference to explore the benefit of a new kind of training: Crew Resource Management. The primary focus was on communication. First officers were taught assertiveness procedures. The mnemonic that has been used to improve the assertiveness of junior members of the crew in aviation is called P.A.C.E. (Probe, Alert, Challenge, Emergency).* Captains, who for years had been regarded as big chiefs, were taught to listen, acknowledge instructions, and clarify ambiguity. The time perception problem was tackled through a more structured division of responsibilities. Checklists, already in operation, were expanded and improved. The checklists have been established as a means of preventing oversights in the face of complexity. But they also flatten the hierarchy. When pilots and co-pilots talk to each other, introduce themselves, and go over the checklist, they open channels of communication. It makes it more likely the junior partner will speak up in an emergency. This solves the so-called activation problem. Various versions of the new training methods were immediately trialed in simulators. At each stage, the new ideas were challenged, rigorously tested, and examined at their limits. The most effective proposals were then rapidly integrated into airlines around the world. After a terrible set of accidents in the 1970s, the rate of crashes began to decline.

into a crouch, using the force of the momentum to thwack the blunt side of her sword against the back of Balin's knees. The warrior buckled and crashed downward, catching himself with his free hand. He scooped a mound of snow into his fist. "You've discovered my weakness. Height can be a disadvantage as well as a benefit." At least I can enter the shadowwalk to ease my loneliness, and you cannot block me. Guilt seized her at the thought of the forbidden power, and she hesitated, losing sight of her surroundings for a moment. A shower of snow hit her face, blinding her. She heard Balin grunt as he moved. Astrid reached up to rub the freezing wet powder from her eyes, but when her vision cleared Balin was nowhere to be seen. She spun, but something whacked her across the middle of her back, sending her flying. The force of the blow knocked her several paces forward, plunging her into the snow. Her face met the bite of frost as she fell flat on the ground. A chill spread through her. She spat flurries from her mouth, struggling to get upright. The frigid tip of Balin's blade pinched the side of her neck, pressing her back down. Caught, she

All those songs I used to pretend to understand, all the angsty, heartbroken songs I had heard all my life, they suddenly made so much more sense. "Well, then she probably needs a giant coffee, a huge box of your creations, and some time to nurse her feelings in private, don't you think?" Brantley Dane, local hero, saves girl from sure death brought on by sheer mortification. That'd be his headline. "Come on, sweetheart," he said, moving behind me, casually touching my hip in the process, and going behind counter. "What's your poison? Judging by the situation, I am thinking something cold, mocha or caramel filled and absolutely towering with full fat whipped cream." That was exactly what I wanted. But, broken heart aside, I knew I couldn't let myself drown in sweets. Gaining twenty pounds wasn't going to help anything. There was absolutely no enthusiasm in my voice when I said, "Ah, actually, can I have a large black coffee with one sugar please?" "Not that I'm not turned on as all fuck by a woman who appreciates black coffee," he started, making me jerk back suddenly at the bluntness of that comment and the dose of profanity I wasn't accustomed to hearing in my sleepy hometown. "But if you're only one day into a break-up, you're allowed to have some full fat chocolate concoction to indulge a bit. I promise from here on out I won't make you anything even half as food-gasm-ing as this." He leaned across the counter, getting close enough that I could see golden flecks in his warm brown eyes. "Honey, not even if you beg," he added and, if I wasn't mistaken, there was absolutely some kind of sexually-charged edge to his words. "Say yes," he added, lips tipping up at one corner. "Alright, yes," I agreed, knowing I would love every last drop of whatever he made me and likely punish myself with an extra long run for it too. "Good girl," he said as he turned away. And there was not, was absolutely not some weird fluttering feeling in my belly at that. Nope. That would be completely insane. "Okay, I got you one of everything!" my mother said, coming up beside me and pressing the box into my hands. She even tied it with her signature (and expensive, something I had tried to talk her out of many times over the years when she was struggling financially) satin bow. I smiled at her, knowing that sometimes, there was nothing liked baked goods from your mother after a hard day. I was just lucky enough to have a mother who was a pastry chef. "Thanks, Mom," I said, the words heavy. I wasn't just thanking her for the sweets, but for letting me come home, for not asking questions, for not making it seem like even the slightest inconvenience. She gave me a smile that said she knew exactly what I meant. "You have nothing to thank me for." She meant that too. Coming from a family that, when they found out she was knocked up as a teen, had kicked her out and disowned her, she made it clear all my life that she was always there, no matter what I did with my life, no matter how high I soared, or how low I crashed. Her arms, her heart, and her door were always open for me. "Alright. A large mocha frappe with full fat milk, full fat whipped cream, and both a mocha and caramel drizzle. It's practically dessert masked as coffee," Brantley said, making my attention snap to where he was pushing what was an obnoxiously large frappe with whipped cream that was towering out of the dome that the pink and sage straw stuck out of. "Don't even think about it, sweetheart," he said, shaking his head as I reached for my wallet. "Thank you," I smiled, and found that it was a genuine one as I reached for it and, in a move that was maybe not brilliant on my part, took a sip. And proceeded to let out an almost porn-star worthy groan of pure, delicious pleasure. Judging by the way Brant's smile went a little wicked, his thoughts ran along the same lines as well.

The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her, slackjawed. She has just enough residual energy to swing into their driveway. Her momentum carries her to the top. She stops next to Mr. Pudgely’s Acura and Mrs. Pudgely’s bimbo box and steps off her plank. The spokes, noting her departure, even themselves out, plant themselves on the top of the driveway, refuse to roll backward. A

His book For Whom the Bell Tolls was an instant success in the summer of 1940, and afforded him the means to live in style at his villa outside of Havana with his new wife Mary Welsh, whom he married in 1946. It was during this period that he started getting headaches and gaining weight, frequently becoming depressed. Being able to shake off his problems, he wrote a series of books on the Land, Air and Sea, and later wrote The Old Man and the Sea for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in May 1954. Hemingway on a trip to Africa where he barely survived two successive airplane crashes. Returning to Cuba, Ernest worked reshaping the recovered work and wrote his memoir, A Moveable Feast. He also finished True at First Light and The Garden of Eden. Being security conscious, he stored his works in a safe deposit box at a bank in Havana. His home Finca Vigía had become a hub for friends and even visiting tourists. It was reliably disclosed to me that he frequently enjoyed swinger’s parties and orgies at his Cuban home. In Spain after divorcing Frank Sinatra Hemingway introduced Ava Gardner to many of the bullfighters he knew and in a free for all, she seduced many of hotter ones. After Ava Gardner’s affair with the famous Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín crashed, she came to Cuba and stayed at Finca Vigía, where she had what was termed to be a poignant relationship with Ernest. Ava Gardner swam nude in the pool, located down the slope from the Hemingway house, after which he told his staff that the water was not to be emptied. An intimate friendship grew between Hemingway’s forth and second wife, Mary and Pauline. Pauline often came to Finca Vigia, in the early 1950s, and likewise Mary made the crossing of the Florida Straits, back to Key West several times. The ex-wife and the current wife enjoyed gossiping about their prior husbands and lovers and had choice words regarding Ernest. In 1959, Hemingway was in Cuba during the revolution, and was delighted that Batista, who owned the nearby property, that later became the location of the dismal Pan Americana Housing Development, was overthrown. He shared the love of fishing with Fidel Castro and remained on good terms with him. Reading the tea leaves, he decided to leave Cuba after hearing that Fidel wanted to nationalize the properties owned by Americans and other foreign nationals. In the summer of 1960, while working on a manuscript for Life magazine, Hemingway developed dementia becoming disorganized and confused. His eyesight had been failing and he became despondent and depressed. On July 25, 1960, he and his wife Mary left Cuba for the last time. He never retrieved his books or the manuscripts that he left in the bank vault. Following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban government took ownership of his home and the works he left behind, including an estimated 5,000 books from his personal library. After years of neglect, his home, which was designed by the Spanish architect Miguel Pascual y Baguer in 1886, has now been largely restored as the Hemingway Museum. The museum, overlooking San Francisco de Paula, as well as the Straits of Florida in the distance, houses much of his work as well as his boat housed near his pool.

The problem is not that the information doesn’t exist; rather, it is the way it is formatted. As Atul Gawande, a doctor and author, puts it: The reason . . . is not usually laziness or unwillingness. The reason is more often that the necessary knowledge has not been translated into a simple, usable and systematic form. If the only thing people did in aviation was issue dense, pages-long bulletins . . . it would be like subjecting pilots to the same deluge of almost 700,000 medical journal articles per year that clinicians must contend with. The information would be unmanageable. Instead . . . crash investigators [distill] the information into its practical essence.30

different is not bad, it is just different.

You know, my new, silent friend,” I speak to him again.  “I am very sad because I have no friends out here, but if you are willing to become my friend, you will make me happy.

Frightened? Child, you're talking to a man who's laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe... I was petrified.

stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will’.

There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.

What would you do with a brain if you had one?

You are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom and chuckled at catastrophe. I was petrified.

Instead, he gestured to the DJ, who deemed "Single Ladies" to be the correct jam for this particular car crash of a moment.

The Storyteller The little boy stumbled through the forest. He was sure that wild animals were chasing him, and wanted to eat him. As he crashed through the undergrowth he suddenly emerged into a clearing. He looked around, fearing that he could hear animals, but all was quiet. The little boy walked further into the clearing. He saw a small stool with a book on it. He stopped, and looked around wondering who had left the stool, and the book there. He walked over to the stool, and picked up the book to look at it. Without thinking, he sat down, and opened the book. He started to read aloud. The only sound in the clearing was the little boy’s voice. He had forgotten about his earlier fear, and he had also stopped imagining that he could hear animals after him. Once he had finished reading the story he put the book down, and he said to the clearing, “I’ll come back tomorrow to read again.” The little boy left the clearing and reentered the forest. He wasn’t afraid anymore. It was if he had a new found confidence, and manner. The next day he returned, and found a different book on the stool, and as before, he sat down, and started to read. This went on for a week. After seven days animals started to come through the undergrowth, and entered the clearing. When they saw the boy, and heard his storytelling they would stop, find a place to sit down, and listen to him. One day he heard a roar behind him, and the little boy turned around, coming face to face with a tiger. “Shhh!” he told the tiger, and gave it a smack across the nose. The tiger was taken aback, but he did as he was told and he went to a tree. Then he too, sat and listened to the little boy. This went on for many years, and some animals died never to return, while others grew old as the little boy did. One day, when the little boy was no more but a little old man he died as he was reading one of his stories. The animals looked up, and listened to the silence. Wild dogs howled, elephants trumpeted their calls, birds tweeted and chirped, monkeys chatted and tigers roared as one. The tiger, who many years ago the little boy had smacked across the nose, carried the little boy, and laid him to rest under his tree. The animals lined up to pay their respects to the little boy who had devoted his life to reading to the animals. As they lined up, they were watched by God, Buddha, Allah and Ganesha, who were standing off to the side. They had tears in their eyes, not because the little boy had died, but because as each animal came to the body of the little boy, each animal would lay their head down on his chest, and shed tears over the boy’s body. Finally a small baby elephant came, and laid his head, and trunk down on the little boy’s body, and his tears flowed over the little boy’s chest. When the animals had left, there was an eerie silence over the clearing. Many, many years passed until one day, a small girl come running through the bushes, with a frightened look on her face. She stopped, and looked around the clearing. She saw a small stool, and so she walked over to it, wondering who would leave such a thing here in the forest. She sat down on the stool and looked down. She saw a box full of books. The little boy smiled.

I crash into an invisible wall as Deke walks through the doorway. I watch as he continues to the elevator and hops on. Meanwhile, I'm banging against the invisible wall. I probably look like a mime pretending to be stuck in a box. Hey, have we ever stopped to think, maybe they are actually stuck in a box and they're ghosts trying to escape? Well, there's some food for thought. "Well, that's an interesting development, guess you're stuck with me, Casper." Well, crap-sticks.

In Minnesota, they were seizing cars from every siding, from the Mesabi Range, from the ore mines of Paul Larkin where the cars had stood waiting for a dribble of iron. They were pouring wheat into ore cars, into coal cars, into boarded stock cars that went spilling thin gold trickles along the track as they clattered off. They were pouring wheat into passenger coaches, over seats, racks and fixtures, to send it off, to get it moving, even if it went moving into trackside ditches in the sudden crash of breaking springs, in the explosions set off by burning journal boxes. They fought for movement, for movement with no thought of destination, for movement as such, like a paralytic under a stroke, struggling in wild, stiff, incredulous jerks against the realization that movement was suddenly impossible. There were no other railroads: James Taggart had killed them; there were no boats on the Lakes: Paul Larkin had killed them. There was only the single line of rail and a net of neglected highways. The trucks and wagons of waiting farmers started trickling blindly down the roads, with no maps, no gas, no feed for horses—moving south, south toward the vision of flour mills awaiting them somewhere, with no knowledge of the distances ahead, but with the knowledge of death behind them—moving, to collapse on the roads, in the gullies, in the breaks of rotted bridges. One farmer was found, half a mile south of the wreck of his truck, lying dead in a ditch, face down, still clutching a sack of wheat on his shoulders. Then rain clouds burst over the prairies of Minnesota; the rain went eating the wheat into rot at the waiting railroad stations; it went hammering the piles spilled along the roads, washing gold kernels into the soil.

Aviation is different from science but it is underpinned by a similar spirit. After all, an airplane journey represents a kind of hypothesis: namely, that this aircraft, with this design, these pilots, and this system of air traffic control, will reach its destination safely. Each flight represents a kind of test. A crash, in a certain sense, represents a falsification of the hypothesis. That is why accidents have a particular significance in improving system safety, rather as falsification drives science.

The pudding fell to the floor with a heart-stopping crash. Cream splattered the windows and walls as the dish shattered. With a crack like a whip, Dobby vanished. There were screams from the dining room and Uncle Vernon burst into the kitchen to find Harry, rigid with shock, covered from head to foot in Aunt Petunia’s pudding. At first, it looked as though Uncle Vernon would manage to gloss the whole thing over (‘Just our nephew – very disturbed – meeting strangers upsets him, so we kept him upstairs …’) He shooed the shocked Masons back into the dining room, promised Harry he would flay him to within an inch of his life when the Masons had left, and handed him a mop. Aunt Petunia dug some ice-cream out of the freezer and Harry, still shaking, started scrubbing the kitchen clean. Uncle Vernon might still have been able to make his deal – if it hadn’t been for the owl. Aunt Petunia was just handing round a box of after-dinner mints when a huge barn owl swooped through the dining room window, dropped a letter on Mrs Mason’s head and swooped out again. Mrs Mason screamed like a banshee and ran from the house, shouting about lunatics. Mr Mason stayed just long enough to tell the Dursleys that his wife was mortally afraid of birds of all shapes and sizes, and to ask whether this was their idea of a joke.

she spat a single word. A long, guttural, twisting word that evoked frozen Germanic winters. The trigger to the spell she’d been weaving for days. The toxic miasma above our heads exploded with a peal of thunder and her spite-fueled power crashed down on Cesar, one man alone in a torrent of death. The paper cut on his bicep ripped open, as if someone had taken pliers to his skin and given it one brutal, wrenching tug. Blood gushed from the wound as he screamed, flowing faster than it should have, and even faster by the second. He collapsed to his knees, shrieking, and a scarlet torrent blasted from the wound like the spray from a fire hose and splashed across the arcade wall. His skin turned ashen and taut, his fingers and toes curling, crumpling. Bones cracked as his limbs folded in on themselves and the flesh on his skull stretched taut like a mummified corpse. Jennifer’s death curse slowly crushed his body like a juice box, squeezing every drop of blood from every last ragged vein. What collapsed to the floor when the spell was done, gray and bloodless and small as a child, didn’t look human anymore. “That’s what you get for fuckin’ with a witch,” Jennifer said. “My momma taught me that trick.

I used Harvard’s computer system only once as an undergraduate, to run regressions for my senior thesis on the economics of spousal abuse. The data was stored on large, heavy magnetic tapes that I had to lug in big boxes across campus, cursing the entire way and arriving in a sweaty mess at the sole computer center, which was populated exclusively with male students. I then had to stay up all night spinning the tapes to input the data. When I tried to execute my final calculations, I took down the entire system. That’s right. Years before Mark famously crashed that same Harvard system, I beat him to it.

The Danish element dates from the piratical invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries. It includes anger, awe, baffle, bang, bark, bawl, blunder, boulder, box, club, crash, dairy, dazzle, fellow, gable, gain, ill, jam, kidnap, kill, kidney, kneel, limber, litter, log, lull, lump, mast, mistake, nag, nasty, niggard, horse, plough, rug, rump, sale, scald, shriek, skin, skull, sledge, sleigh, tackle, tangle, tipple, trust, viking, window, wing, etc.

In writing my memoirs I had reopened my Pandora’s Box. They forced me to face the demons that haunted me after returning to reality from my fantasy-bubbled life, which came to a crashing halt when Andy and I terminated our four-year loving relationship. He went his merry way to New Zealand in pursuit of an engineering career and I stayed in London to follow my fashion ambition.

The Supreme Court was beyond their constitutional power when they handed George W. Bush the victory in 2000 by ruling that if all the votes were counted in Florida, as that state’s supreme court had ordered, it would “cause irreparable harm to petitioner [George W. Bush].” They were beyond their constitutional power every single time they struck down a law passed by Congress and signed by the president over the years. And most important, the Supreme Court was way beyond their constitutional authority every single time they created out of whole cloth new legal doctrines, such as “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson, “privacy” in Roe v. Wade, or “corporations are people” in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. But in the fine tradition of John Marshall, today’s Supreme Court wants you to believe that they are the über-overlords of our nation. They can make George W. Bush president, without any appeal. They can make money into speech, they can turn corporations into people, and the rest of us have no say in it. And they’re wrong. It’s not what the Constitution says, and it’s not what most of our Founders said. Which raises the question: If the Supreme Court can’t decide what is and what isn’t constitutional, then what is its purpose? What’s it really supposed to be doing? The answer to that is laid out in the Constitution in plain black-and-white. It’s the first court where the nation goes for cases involving disputes about treaties, ambassadors, controversies between two or more states, between a state and citizen of another state, between citizens of different states, and between our country and foreign states. Read Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution—it’s all there. Not a word in there about “judicial supremacy” or “judicial review”—the supposed powers of the court to strike down (or write) laws by deciding what is and what isn’t constitutional. President Thomas Jefferson was pretty clear about that—as were most of the Founders—and the court didn’t start seriously deciding “constitutionality” until after all of them were dead. But back in the day, here’s what Jefferson had to say: The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves… When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity.177 Their elective capacity? That’s a fancy presidential-founder way of saying that the people can toss out on their butts any member of Congress or any president who behaves in a way that’s unconstitutional. The ultimate remedy is with the people—it’s the ballot box. If we don’t like the laws being passed, then we elect new legislators and a new president. It’s pretty simple.

The choir box is empty this morning, and I long for some kind of melody, the crash of the organ, the flight of angelic voices. My fingers twitch against the fabric of my dress and I close my eyes, remembering the Debussy, the Brahms lullaby I played each night before bed, my face pressed to the pad beneath my chin, arms cutting the air around me. The fact that Luke doesn't deserve music, the blissful lilt and salvation of it, make me, for some reason, saddest of all.

The reason . . . is not usually laziness or unwillingness. The reason is more often that the necessary knowledge has not been translated into a simple, usable and systematic form. If the only thing people did in aviation was issue dense, pages-long bulletins . . . it would be like subjecting pilots to the same deluge of almost 700,000 medical journal articles per year that clinicians must contend with. The information would be unmanageable. Instead . . . crash investigators [distill] the information into its practical essence.30

Darcy picked her up again, this time not as gently as he had when she’d tripped on the root. He carried her under one arm like a sack of grain, though to his credit, he avoided putting pressure on her lower abdomen. “I said no, ye contrary thing, and I’m big enough to make you obey whether ye want to or no’.” He crashed through the line of trees, stomped past the wounded men, and set her firmly in the wagon. “A skirmish is no place for a woman. I willna be responsible for you getting raped or killed.” That vulnerable look softened his hard features for a second. “I could tie you down, but then ye’d be no help to Archie. So what’ll it be, lass? Will you obey me or no?” He tried to intimidate her with his posture and size, bracketing her with his bare arms. It didn’t work. Rather, the sight of the succulent, hard mound of his exposed shoulder so close to her face made her wet her lips. His strong collarbones and sinewy neck glistened with sweat, and he smelled of pine and male exertion. Her libido jumped like a feisty poodle. Jeez Louise, Mel, get a grip. This is not a romance novel. He’s not your hero. The box got it wrong. The box was way out of line. “I need it,” she said, pleased her steady voice didn’t betray her attraction. “I have to go with you.” “I told you I’d look for whatever ye lust.” Lust. The antiquated word spoken in his deep voice did strange things to her tummy. It took a solid effort not to lick her lips in invitation as the word called to mind activities that most definitely related to wanting. Home, she reminded herself. She had to get home. “I don’t trust you to look as hard as I would. I’m coming with you.” “Where are your ropes, Archie?” he asked. “The woman refuses to stay put. I have no choice but to tie her to the wagon.” Several of the wounded men snickered. Archie said, “In the foot case there. And bring me some of yon dried moss before ye tie down your woman.” Your woman. The casual declaration made her stomach leap, and the sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “She’s not mine,” Darcy growled as he opened the lid of a wooden chest in the wagon. To her horror, he removed a coil of rope. After tossing a yellowish clump in Archie’s direction, he came at her. Her libido disappeared with a poof. She hopped off the wagon, dodging hands that had no business being so quick, considering how large they were. “Don’t you dare tie me down! I’ve got to get that box. It’s my only hope to return home.” He lunged for her, catching her easily around the waist with his long arm, and plunking her back in the wagon. Libido was back. Her body thrilled at Darcy’s manhandling, though her muscles struggled against it. The thought of him tying her up in private might have some merit, but not in the middle of the forest with several strange men as witnesses. “Okay, okay,” she blurted as he looped the rope around one wrist. “I won’t follow you. Please don’t tie me. I’ll stay. I’ll help.” He paused to eye her suspiciously. “I promise,” she said. “I’ll stay here and make myself useful. As long as you promise to look for a rosewood box inlaid with white gold and about yea big.” She gestured with her hands, rope trailing from one wrist. “As long as you swear to look as though your life depends on it.” She held his gaze, hoping he was getting how important this was to her, hoping she could trust him. The circle of wounded men went quiet, waiting for his answer. He bounced on the balls of his feet, clearly impatient to return to the skirmish, but he gave her his full attention and said, “I vow that if your cherished box is on that field, I will find it.

If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...Oh, wait a minute… he already does.

A note on the file folder said More series material in box 3312. “That one, Molly.” Reed pointed to the box on the top shelf in the corner. “Get that one. Look for two stories from the series. The folders might have something written on them.” Still on the higher shelf, Wilson heaved the box nearer, opening to the case of Cyras Makepeace. “Remember that case, Tom? Wilderness guide whose customers died hiking?” “Yeah, it’s all coming back. Cyras arranged to make himself a beneficiary on their insurance policies before his clients had wilderness accidents. They never charged him even after a couple of exhumations.” “Here’s the last one on the series,” Wilson said, just as the lights flickered, the floor shook from the presses, and the board she was standing on cracked. “Look out!” Wilson caught herself but the box crashed, files spilled on the floor at Reed’s feet He bent down to collect them. He reached for a black-and-white mug shot and he froze. “Jesus Christ!” Realization rushed at him with all the fury and the earth-shaking thunder of the presses, driving him to his knees as he studied the face that met his in the flickering light.

an instant, a simple swatch of light, then movement: the blond-haired executioner. She stood in a doorway just beyond the street corner, hiding, waiting, arms raised and weapon trained. The reflection in the car window saved Dewey from what would have been, in five feet or so, a warm bullet in the back of the head. Dewey stopped just before the corner, feet away from where the blond assassin lurked. He looked behind him, down the block he’d just run down, and saw a Laundromat. He dropped back and entered the Laundromat. He ran through the store, pushing his way past piles of laundry and women folding articles, to the back room, where a man sat, smoking a cigarette in front of a pile of papers. “Lo siento,” murmured Dewey as he charged through the office toward an alley entrance, gun in hand. The sirens became louder, multiple vehicles joining in the distance. Out the door and across the alley and through a dented steel door. Inside, stacks of bread loaves, other boxes of food, the smell of meat. He moved through the storage room and entered the back of a bodega. Colt .45 cocked in front of him, he passed a middle-aged woman who fainted as she saw the weapon in his hand. Catching the eye of the man at the cash register, Dewey held a finger to his lips. There, at the side of the entrance, her back to the store, stood the blond assassin. Suddenly another customer, an elderly woman, screamed as she saw Dewey with gun. The blonde turned abruptly, leveling what he now saw was an HK UMP compact machine gun with a six-inch suppressor on the end. A full auto hail of bullets crashed through the windows as she swept the weapon east-west. The elderly woman’s screams ended abruptly as a bullet ripped through her head and killed her. The assassin’s bullets shattered the storefront’s glass, but Dewey was already down and partially hidden by a chest freezer, which shielded him from the slugs. As soon as the blonde’s gun swept past him, Dewey had a clear sight. He fired twice, two quick shots into the assassin’s neck and chest, flinging her backward onto the brick sidewalk in a shower of blood and glass. Dewey ran

She was young, not so much older than me A career girl in a little soignée suit and hosiery Just recently engaged She'd leapt from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building and crash-bam-slammed into the roof of a shiny black Cadillac Which now gathered her into its folds It looked like somebody popped open a ring box An expression of pure bliss gleaming on her face A nun's ecstasy, her first and final orgasm A perfect ending, handed to the world in white gloves.

Anyway, to me he’s just Sunny. Come on up, Jacks, don’t be shy.” His eyes are wide, and he’s mouthing, “What the fuck?” At me while his friends shove him. “Sunny.” “What’s going on, Starlight?” His words are too quiet for the mic to pick up clearly. “You know I love you. I wouldn’t be here in this amazing city with this fantastic group of ladies if you hadn’t come crashing into my life. Literally.” His laugh has a nervous edge to it. “We might not seem like a perfect match from the outside, but somehow, we work. You make every single day a little lighter, a little more fun, and you drive me freaking insane sometimes.” He smirks. “But I love how you challenge me to be a better person. You make me whole. And so....” I scrabble in the waist pouch Jo passed to me after the bout. “Will you drive me crazy for the rest of our lives? Will you marry me, Jackson?” He leans into the mic. “Are you kidding me, Starlight? Way to steal my thunder.” “What?” I pull back. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans. “I was going to propose to you. I’ve been carrying this around for weeks. It was all planned out.” He pulls out a small grey velvet box. My chest shudders with laughter. “You always were too slow to keep up with me. Better get your skate coach to work on your speed.” “You like it when I take my time.” “Wait. So, is that a yes?” I shove at him to get a little distance. It’s entirely possible I could self combust if he doesn’t give me a bit of space. “No.” I gasp as he drops to one knee. “Starlight. You’re my world. That day I knocked you over at that shitty roller rink was the best day of my life. I say was, because every day I’ve gotten to have you in my life has been a little better, and the day I get to slide my ring on your finger to make it permanent. I can’t wait for that. So, Tasha Scar, will you marry me?” My smile spreads all the way up my face, his eyes falling to the dimple I’ve grown to appreciate. “Fine. But just remember. I asked first.

His arm comes around my waist from behind. He slides a hand up my stomach and takes a firm hold of one of my breasts. His other hand feathers my shoulder as he moves the hair away from my neck. I squeeze my eyes shut, just as his fingers begin to trace across my skin, up to my shoulder. He slowly runs his finger over the heart and a shudder runs over my whole body. His lips meet my skin, right over the tattoo, and then he sinks his teeth into me so hard, I scream. I try to pull away from him, but he has such a tight grip on me he doesn’t even budge. The pain from his teeth piercing my collarbone rips through my shoulder and down my arm. I immediately start crying. Sobbing. “Ryle, let me go,” I say, my voice pleading. “Please. Walk away.” His arms are cutting into mine as he holds me tightly from behind. He spins me, but my eyes are still closed. I’m too scared to look at him. His hands are digging into my shoulders as he pushes me toward the bed. I start trying to fight him off of me, but it’s useless. He’s too strong for me. He’s angry. He’s hurt. And he’s not Ryle. My back meets the bed and I frantically scoot back toward the headboard, trying to get away from him. “Why is he still here, Lily?” His voice isn’t as composed as it was in the kitchen. He’s really angry now. “He’s in everything. The magnet on the fridge. The journal in the box I found in our closet. The fucking tattoo on your body that used to be my favorite goddamn part of you!” He’s on the bed now. “Ryle,” I beg. “I can explain.” Tears streak down my temples and into my hair. “You’re angry. Please don’t hurt me, please. Walk away, and when you come back, I’ll explain.” His hand grips my ankle and he yanks me until I’m beneath him. “I’m not angry, Lily,” he says, his voice disturbingly calm now. “I just think I haven’t proved to you how much I love you.” His body comes down against mine and he takes my wrists with one hand above my head, pressing them against the mattress. “Ryle, please.” I’m sobbing, trying to push him off of me with any part of my body. “Get off me. Please.” No, no, no, no. “I love you, Lily,” he says, his words crashing against my cheek. “More than he ever did. Why can’t you see that?” My fear folds in on itself, and I become diluted with rage. All I can see when I squeeze my eyes shut is my mother crying on our old living room couch; my father forcing himself on top of her. Hatred rips through me and I start screaming. Ryle tries to muffle my screams with his mouth. I bite down on his tongue. His forehead comes crashing down against mine. In an instant, all the pain fades as a blanket of darkness rolls over my eyes and consumes me.

Roza…” Melina whispered, nervously. I ignored her as I reached out to touch the sphere— The next thing I knew, my back slammed against the floor. My breath hit me like a stone crashing down on my chest. And my skin was burning, burning, burning, so intensely that I had to bite down hard to keep from letting out a cry. My skin. My hand. “Roza!” Melina fell to her knees beside me. Long seconds, and the pain subsided to a tolerable throb. I forced my eyes open and bit back a gasp. Gold covered my fingertips, reaching down over my palm in organic shapes that looked like the veins of a leaf. The strokes were slightly raised, and my skin clung to the edges, irritated where the gold met my flesh. This wasn’t on me. This was in me. I lifted my eyes to the box on the table. It was now empty. Oh, gods. I looked at the gold spreading across my palm with renewed horror. This thing—this was the artifact. Melina made a strangled sound of panic and suddenly pulled away from me. It took me a moment to realize why. I had been so preoccupied with the gold that I hadn’t realized what it was covering: my skin. My normal, Fragmented skin. The illusion was gone. Melina turned to the door, presumably to get help. I moved faster. I leapt to my feet, grabbed her, and pressed my hand to her mouth. “Don’t move,” I hissed. “I am one of you.” Her back was against me, my arm firmly around her shoulders to keep her from moving. I could not see her face, but I felt her trembling. “I am Tisaanah Vytezic,” I whispered. “Do you know that name?” A pause. Then a small nod.

Why, then, should a story as absurd as Pizzagate prove so ‘sticky’? Quite simply, it ticked all the conspiracy theory boxes, and in so doing ticked many of the boxes for a great story. It evoked strong emotion through a narrative of supposedly suffering children. It posited a world clearly divided between good and evil. And in triggering fear in an environment dominated by social and political uncertainty it played on people’s natural tendency to pay more attention to negative coverage in the media when faced with news that induces anxiety, whether a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, a financial crash – or an evil conspiracy.

With the advent of the 1960s, things changed. “Kids were getting busted on all sides of us,” George says. “The cops even bought a pot-sniffing dog. They’d walk around the streets at night, and he’d bark when he smelled the fumes. Then they’d crash in. It was unconstitutional, of course, but up here anybody who mentions the Constitution is regarded as a Communist.* We kept our mouths shut, and I bought all sorts of tricky locks and designed some cute gimmicks of my own.” George may be, for all I know, the inventor of the self-destruct stash box; at least he designed one model. Nobody who breaks down their doors – knock or “no-knock” – will ever find tangible evidence. ~•~

Ulay’s Polaroids of that period often showed him piercing his own flesh in various bloody ways. In one work, he tattooed one of his aphorisms on his arm: ULTIMA RATIO (meaning final argument or last resort, referring to force). Then he cut a square hunk of flesh containing the tattoo out of his arm, slicing so deeply that the muscle and tendon were visible. He framed and preserved the tattooed flesh in formaldehyde. For another image, he held a bloodstained paper towel over a self-inflicted razor wound in his belly. A series of shots showed him slicing his fingertips with a box cutter and painting the white tiles of a bathroom with his own blood. (...)somebody gave Ulay a Newton’s cradle. He was fascinated by the back-and-forth swinging of the shiny metal balls, the little clack they made when they collided, the perfect transfer of energy. “What if we did that?” he said. I immediately understood what he was talking about: a performance where the two of us would collide and bounce off each other. We were naked, standing twenty meters apart. We were in a warehouse on the island of Giudecca, just across the lagoon from Venice. A couple hundred people were watching. Slowly at first, Ulay and I began to run toward each other. The first time, we just brushed past each other as we met; on each successive run, though, we moved faster and faster and made harder contact—until finally Ulay was crashing into me. Once or twice he knocked me over. We had placed microphones near the collision point, to pick up the sounds of flesh slapping flesh. (...) then [Ulay] took out a heavy needle, the kind used to sew leather, attached to some thick white thread, and he sewed his lips shut. This didn’t happen quickly. First he had to penetrate the skin below his lower lip—not easy—and then the skin above his upper lip. Also not easy. Then he pulled the thread tight and tied a knot. And then he and I changed places: Ulay sat down among the audience, and I sat in the chair he had just occupied. “Now,” I told our friends, “you will ask me questions and I will answer as Ulay.

They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The