“
Serving” is assisting your fellow man, the how-to, practical way to thrust your life into the spiritual wall to make the
tunnel bigger. Will God suddenly appear? Does
washing stacks of pots and pans bring salvation?
Can pulling weeds reclaim your brain? Will mopping the floor make you equal to the richest of men?
”
”
Tom Hillman (Digging for God)
“
You’re too good for me.”
He laughed. “Are we talking about the same person? The selfish fucker who curses and yells, blows up cars and beats up people, because he has a temper he can’t control? You know, the one who drinks like a fish and fries his brain with drugs? That person is too good for you?”
She shook her head. “I’m talking about the boy who shared his chocolate bar with me when he probably never shared anything before, who gave me his mama’s favourite book, because he thought I deserved to read. The one who seems to be constantly fixing me up when I get hurt. I’m talking about the boy who treats me like I’m a regular girl, the one who desperately needs his bedroom cleaned and laundry washed but chooses to live in a mess and wear dirty clothes, because he’s too polite to ask the girl he kisses for help.”
“Wow,” Carmine said. “I’d like to meet that motherfucker.
”
”
J.M. Darhower (Sempre (Sempre, #1))
“
Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric's eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. "I knew I'd get on top of you somehow," he said.
Are you trying to make me mad so I'll forget how scared I am?"
No, I'm just opportunistic."
I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, "Oh, do that again. It felt great.
”
”
Charlaine Harris (Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2))
“
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
“
I didn't wash today. I wasn't dirty. If I'm not dirty, I don't wash. Some weeks I don't have to shower at all. I just groom my three basic areas: teeth, hair, and asshole. And to save time, I use the same brush.
”
”
George Carlin (Brain Droppings)
“
You don't know what you want Livvie, and what you think you want, you've been brain-washed into wanting
”
”
C.J. Roberts (Seduced in the Dark (The Dark Duet, #2))
“
Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night. It keeps the old brain limber. It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.
Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors. And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.
”
”
Joyce Cary (The Horse's Mouth)
“
I believe it is customary to get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted-- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than did.
”
”
Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)
“
If someone can change your mind, he has won you over without raising his hand against you. This is the future of warfare.
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
“
Information is controlled because the free flow of truth is not always expedient for those wishing to maintain control.
”
”
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
“
If you aren't destroying your enemies, it's because you have been conquered and assimilated, you do not even have an idea of who your enemies are. You have been brainwashed into believing you are your own enemy, and you are set against yourself. The enemy is laughing at you as you tear yourself to pieces. That is the most effective warfare an enemy can launch on his foes: confounding them.
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
if I wasn't a decent woman I'd heist a leg and pee in your ear until it washed out that stinking pile of crap you call brains.
”
”
Jim Thompson (Pop. 1280 (Crime Masterworks))
“
Break your shackles and reach out to your freedom. Break to pieces whatever indoctrination and programming that holds you hostage. The world is yours. Get possession of it.
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
Brain-washing starts in the cradle.
”
”
Arthur Koestler
“
In sum, doubling is the psychological means by which one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in the self nor foreign to it. To live out the doubling and call forth the evil is a moral choice for which one is responsible, whatever the level of consciousness involved.
”
”
Robert Jay Lifton (Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China)
“
In the end he became as fragmentary as the poems of Sappho he never succeeded in restoring, and finally one morning he looked up into the face of the woman who’d been the greatest love of his life and failed to recognize her. And then there was another kind of blow inside his head; blood pooled in his brain for the last time, washing even the last fragments of his self away.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
“
You can spread an ideology only by bombs. Either by real bombs or love bombs (manipulation).
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
Beware of "don'ts", "thou shalt" and the like. These are signals of programming attempts at your brain.
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
Nick sat on the stairs, completely comatose. He stared straight ahead as if he'd been frozen in place.
"Nick? You all right?"
He didn't respond.
Kyrian moved around him until he stood in front of him. He snapped his fingers in front of Nick's face. "Kid?"
Nick blinked before he met Kyrian's gaze. "I'm not worthy," he said in a breathless tone.
Baffled by his comment, Kyrian stared at him. "What?"
Nick gestured towards his cars. "Dude that's a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, and a Bentley. And I'm not talking the cheap models. Those are the top of the top of the top of the line, fully loaded. I swear, that's real gold trim in the Bugatti. There's more money in metal in here than my brain can even tabulate. Oh my God! I shouldn't even be breathing the same air."
Kyrian laughed at his awed tone. "It's all right, Nick. I need you to clean them."
"Are you out of your ever-loving mind? What if I scratch them?"
"You won't"
"Nah I might. Those aren't cars, Kyrian. Those are works of art. I'm talking serious modes of transportation."
"I know, and I drive them all the time."
"No, no, no, no, no. I can't touch something so fine. I can't"
Kyrian cuffed him on the shoulder. "Yes, you can. They don't bite, and they need to be washed.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Invincible (Chronicles of Nick, #2))
“
I enjoy sitting at home eating a whole pizza, washing it down with a six pack of Budweiser and watching Anime on a Friday evening, can I realistically expect that hot fitness instructor at the gym to come on over and genuinely want to fuck my brains out?
”
”
Rollo Tomassi (The Rational Male)
“
A big seizure just kind of grabs the inside of your skull and squeezes. It feels as if it's twisting and turning your brain all up and down and inside out. Have you ever heard a washing machine suddenly flip into that bang-bang-bang sound when it gets out of balance, or a chain saw when the chain breaks and gets caught up in the gears, or an animal like a cat, screeching in pain? Those are what seizures felt like when I was little.
”
”
Terry Trueman (Stuck in Neutral)
“
I suggest to wash tongues and heads with soap for some people. But I'm not sure that it would help; so you should just try to THINK.
”
”
LS.
“
But there is yet time to change our ways. Give up all those old discussions, old fights about things which are meaningless, which are nonsensical in their very nature. Think of the last six hundred or seven hundred years of degradation when grown-up men by hundreds have been discussing for years whether we should drink a glass of water with the right hand or the left, whether the hand should be washed three times or four times, whether we should gargle five or six times. What can you expect from men who pass their lives in discussing such momentous questions as these and writing most learned philosophies on them! There is a danger of our religion getting into the kitchen. We are neither Vedantists, most of us now, nor Pauranics, nor Tantrics. We are just "Don't-touchists". Our religion is in the kitchen. Our God is the cooking-pot, and our religion is, "Don't touch me, I am holy". If this goes on for another century, every one of us will be in a lunatic asylum. It is a sure sign of softening of the brain when the mind cannot grasp the higher problems of life; all originality is lost, the mind has lost all its strength, its activity, and its power of thought, and just tries to go round and round the smallest curve it can find.
”
”
Vivekananda (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Volume 3)
“
I want to talk about creating your life. There’s a quote I love, from the poet Mary Oliver, that goes:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I so clearly remember what it was like, being young and always in the grip of some big fat daydream. I wanted to be a writer always, but more than that, I wanted to have an extraordinary life. I’m sure I dreamed it a million different ways, and that plenty of them were ridiculous, but I think the daydreams were training for writing, and I also think they spurred me to pursue my dreams for real.
Daydreaming, however awesome it is, is passive. It happens in your head. Learning to make dreams real is another matter, and I think it should be the work of your life. Everyone’s life, whatever their dream (unless their dream is to be an axe murderer or something.)
It took me a while to finish a book. Too long. And you know, it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are unless you finish what you start! I think this is the hardest part for most people who want to write. I was in my mid-30s before I figured it out. The brain plays tricks. You can be convinced you’re following your dream, or that you’re going to start tomorrow, and years can pass like that. Years.
The thing is, there will be pressure to adjust your expectations, always shrinking them, shrinking, shrinking, until they fit in your pocket like a folded slip of paper, and you know what happens to folded slips of paper in your pocket. They go through the wash and get ruined. Don’t ever put your dream in your pocket. If you have to put it somewhere, get one of those holsters for your belt, like my dad has for his phone, so you can whip it out at any moment.
Hello there, dream.
Also, don’t be realistic. The word “realistic” is poison. Who decides?
And “backup plan” is code for, “Give up on your dreams,” and everyone I know who put any energy into a backup plan is now living that backup plan instead of their dream. Put all your energy into your dream. That’s the only way it will ever become real.
The world at large has this attitude, “What makes you so special that you think you deserve an extraordinary life?”
Personally, I think the passion for an extraordinary life, and the courage to pursue it, is what makes us special. And I don’t even think of it as an “extraordinary life” anymore so much as simple happiness. It’s rarer than it should be, and I believe it comes from creating a life that fits you perfectly, not taking what’s already there, but making your own from scratch.
You can let life happen to you, or you can happen to life. It’s harder, but so much better.
”
”
Laini Taylor
“
The western world now obeys the percepts of commerce.A bloody demanding religion,if you ask me.The do's and don'ts change every season and your "everyone" doesn't want to be left out,so they rush headlong to comply.That continuous change has a function,a single aim.Maximum consumption.They want to go on milking you.From the cradle to the grave.Face it:You're a brain washed ,walking purse,a robot,the fuel multinationals run on.
”
”
Esther Verhoef (Close-up)
“
God, but the coast here was painfully beautiful, the dark lush greens of the fir trees piercing his brain, the half-raging sky and sea, the surge of salt water against the rocks twinned to the urgent wash of blood through his arteries as he waited for her to kill him or hear him out. Seditious thoughts: there would be nothing too terrible about dying out here, about becoming part of all of this.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach, #2))
“
A son who will never be older than his motherland - neither older nor younger. There shall be two heads – but you will only see one – there will be knees and a nose, a nose and knees. Newspaper praises him, two mothers raise him! Bicycles love him – but crowds will shove him! Sisters will weep, cobras will creep… Washing will hide him – voices will guide him! Friends will mutilate him – blood will betray him! Spittoons will brain him – doctors will drain him – jungle will claim him – wizards reclaim him! Soldiers will try him – tyrants will fry him… He will have sons without having sons! He will be old before he is old! And he will die before he is dead!
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
“
During the 1980s, a remote viewing project called Stargate was done at Fort Meade. It used binaural beat tones, transmitted through earphones, that altered brain waves. A hemi-sync that device played two different frequencies into each ear was found to produce altered states of consciousness. Perhaps this technology was derived from these experiments done in the 1960s on MKULTRA subjects.
”
”
Alison Miller (Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control)
“
I woke up horribly early the next morning to the sound of some sadistic bastard operating an electric hedge-trimmer just outside the window. I lay for a while hoping this prat would be struck by lightning or washed away in a bizarre flash flood. Neither happened, so I groaned and rolled out of bed.
My skull had shrunk so that my brain was in imminent danger of being squeezed out of my ears, my teeth seemed to be covered in wool and my tongue was far too big for my mouth.
”
”
Danielle Hawkins (Dinner at Rose's)
“
It isn't what you will do for your children that makes you a great mother or father. It is what you do for God that isn't self serving, which sets the stage for children to learn to care about something other than what is expected.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Screw you! I’m not going to tell you what I was going to say because I’m a decent woman. But if I wasn’t, you know what I’d say? You know what I’d do to you, you rotten son-of-a-bitch? I’d heist a leg and pee in your ear until it washed out that stinking pile of crap you call brains!
”
”
Jim Thompson (Pop. 1280)
“
Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea- water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don't you see? And what have you to say?
”
”
Jack London (The Sea Wolf)
“
All he needed was a locked room, ink, and sheets of virgin paper. This was his anchor, and he embedded it with the few scraps of energy he had left. He instinctively knew that memory and imagination share the same ghost quarters of the brain, that they are like impressions in loose sand, footfalls in snow. Memory normally weighed more, but not here, where the forest washed it away, smoothing out every contour of its vital meaning. Here, he would use imagination to stamp out a lasting foundation that refused the insidious erosions buffeting around him. He would dream his way back to life with impossible facts.
”
”
B. Catling (The Vorrh (The Vorrh Trilogy, #1))
“
The Author To Her Book
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
”
”
Anne Bradstreet (The Works of Anne Bradstreet (John Harvard Library))
“
I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else -- just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe -- beyond the universe -- because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being -- of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night -- and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance.
”
”
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
“
People who make use of all their senses in trying times are no less patriotic than those whose restraint is lost, whose senses are dimmed and whose brains are washed. This is also the time for the patriot to say: Enough.
”
”
Gideon Levy (The Punishment of Gaza)
“
The modern world, which denies personal guilt and admits only social crimes, which has no place for personal repentance but only public reforms, has divorced Christ from His Cross; the Bridegroom and Bride have been pulled apart. What God hath joined together, men have torn asunder. As a result, to the left is the Cross; to the right is Christ. Each has awaited new partners who will pick them up in a kind of second and adulterous union. Communism comes along and picks up the meaningless Cross; Western post-Christian civilization chooses the unscarred Christ.
Communism has chosen the Cross in the sense that it has brought back to an egotistic world a sense of discipline, self-abnegation, surrender, hard work, study, and dedication to supra-individual goals. But the Cross without Christ is sacrifice without love. Hence, Communism has produced a society that is authoritarian, cruel, oppressive of human freedom, filled with concentration camps, firing squads, and brain-washings.
The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, feminized, colourless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.
”
”
Fulton J. Sheen (Life of Christ)
“
The lamp hummed:
'Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
”
”
T.S. Eliot
“
Margery," I blurted out in a passion of frustration. "I don't know what to make of you!"
Nor I you, Mary. Frankly, I cannot begin to comprehend the motives of a person who dedicates a large portion of her life to the contemplation of a God in whom she only marginally believes."
I felt stunned, as if she had struck me in the diaphragm. She looked down at me, trying to measure the effect of her words.
Mary, you believe in the power that the idea of God has on the human mind. You believe in the way human beings talk about the unknowable, reach for the unattainable, pattern their imperfect lives and offer their paltry best up to the beingless being that created the universe and powers its continuation. What you balk as it believing the evidence of your eyes, that God can reach out and touch a single human life in a concrete way." She smiled a sad, sad smile. "You mustn't be so cold, Mary. If you are, all you will see is a cold God, cold friends, cold love. God is not cold-never cold. God sears with heat, not ice, the heat of a thousand suns, heat that inflames but does not consume. You need warmth, Mary-you, Mary, need it. You fear it, you flirt with it, you imagine that you can stand in its rays and retain your cold intellectual attitude towards it. You imagine that you can love with your brain. Mary, oh my dear Mary, you sit in the hall and listen to me like some wild beast staring at a campfire, unable to leave, fearful of losing your freedom if you come any closer. It won't consume you; I won't capture you. Love does not do either. It only brings life. Please, Mary, don't let yourself be tied up by the bonds of cold academia."
Her words, the power of her conviction, broke over me like a great wave, inundating me, robbing me of breath, and, as they receded in the room, they pulled hard at me to folllow. I struggled to keep my footing against the wash of Margery's vision, and only when it began to lose its strength, dissipated against the silence in the room, was I seized by a sudden terror at the nearness of my escape.
”
”
Laurie R. King (A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #2))
“
If you want people to believe you, appeal to their hearts not to their brains
”
”
Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
“
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it. —THOMAS JEFFERSON
”
”
David Perlmutter, (Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness)
“
Marriage is brainwashing. Not necessarily a bad thing. Your brain could do with a wash.
”
”
Iris Murdoch (The Sea, the Sea)
“
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
“
If only there was mouthwash for the brain. Brain wash. They could make a fortune on that stuff.
”
”
Theresa Paolo ([Never] Again (Again, #1))
“
وعلى هذا النحو، يصير التاريخ سجلاً لأعمال الأفراد من القادة والحكام، ويتوارى ذكر البشر والجماعات، بل يتم تهميشهم لصالح إجلاء صورة الحاكمين، فيكون الوعي العام المعاصر مهيأً لحشر الناس في الهامش لصالح أصحاب المصالح، على اعتبار أن تلك هي طبيعة الأشياء، والعبرة التي يؤكدها التاريخ
”
”
يوسف زيدان (دوامات التدين)
“
I believe it is customary to get get one's washing over first in baths and bask afterwards; personally, I bask first. I have discovered that the first few minutes are the best and not to be wasted--- my brain always seethes with ideas and life suddenly looks much better than it did...So I bask first, wash second and then read as long as the hot water holds out. The last stage of a bath, when the water is cooling and there is nothing to look forward to, can be pretty disillusioning.
”
”
Dodie Smith
“
One of the things that happens is that during sleep, your brain cleans itself of waste that has accumulated during the day. “During slow-wave sleep, your cerebral spinal fluid channels open up more and remove metabolic waste from your brain,” Roxanne explained to me. Every night, when you go to sleep, your brain is rinsed with a watery fluid. This cerebrospinal fluid washes through your brain, flushing out toxic proteins and carrying them down to your liver to get rid of them. “So when I’m talking to college students, I call this brain-cell poop. If you can’t focus well, it might be you have too much brain-cell poop circulating.” That can explain why, when you are tired, “you get a hung-over sort of feeling”—you are literally clogged up with toxins. This positive kind of brainwashing can only happen when you are asleep.
”
”
Johann Hari (Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again)
“
If you think you are going to be brain washed, then let me shock you, I was brain washed too and I became a multi millionaire. The question is, wouldn't you rather join the league of the brainwashed or stay put?
”
”
Olawale Daniel
“
To see himself without illusions would not be so difficult for the individual, were he not constantly exposed to being brain-washed and deprived of the faculty of critical thinking. He is made to think and feel things that he would not feel or think, were it not for uninterrupted suggestions and elaborate methods of conditioning.
”
”
Erich Fromm (The Art of Being)
“
...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.
See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.
The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.
And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.
”
”
Catherynne M. Valente
“
Cade: Baby, why are you blushing? Willa: Because I swear people are looking at me like I just got my brains fucked out. Cade: You did. Willa: I think these panties are ruined. Cade: I’ll wash them for you. And then shove them in your mouth again the next time you say something rude. Willa: Fuck off. Cade: Careful. They haven’t even been washed yet.
”
”
Elsie Silver (Heartless (Chestnut Springs, #2))
“
The only shame George Webber felt was that at one time in his life, for however short a period, he broke bread and sat at the same table with any man when the living warmth of friendship was not there; or that he ever traded upon the toil of his brain and the blood of his heart to get the body of a scented whore that might have been better got in a brothel for some greasy coins. This was the only shame he felt. And this shame was so great in him that he wondered if all his life thereafter would be long enough to wash out of his brain and blood the last pollution of its loathsome taint.
”
”
Thomas Wolfe (You Can't Go Home Again)
“
How great it would be if our bad memories could be stored in our skin rather than our brains, and we could lather than up, scrubbing incessantly until they sloughed off the surface, gathering at the drain of the tun, completely washed away.
”
”
Brooklyn James
“
From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed at night, I was unbearably miserable and seemingly incapable of any kind of joy or enthusiasm. Everything--every thought, word, movement--was an effort. Everything that once was sparkling now was flat. I seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab. I doubted, completely, my ability to do anything well.....
And always, everything was an effort. Washing my hair took hours to do, and it drained me for hours afterward; filling the ice-cute tray was beyond my capacity, and I occasionally slept in the same clothes I had worn during the day because I was too exhausted to undress.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“
An apple a day might have kept the doctor away prior to the industrialization of food growing and
preparation. But, according to research compiled by the United States Drug Administration (USDA) today’s apple contains residue of eleven different neurotoxins—azinphos, methyl chloripyrifos, diazinon, dimethoate, ethion, omthoate, parathion, parathion methyl, phosalone, and phosmet — and the USDA was testing for only one category of chemicals known as organophosphate insecticides. That doesn’t sound too appetizing does it? The average apple is sprayed with pesticides seventeen times before it is harvested.
”
”
Michelle Schoffro Cook (The Brain Wash: A Powerful, All-Natural Program to Protect Your Brain Against Alzheimer's, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Depression, Parkinson's, and Other Diseases)
“
When the wounded mouse finally died, I held his little body. I rubbed the top of his head, and I thought of it as a blessing, a baptism. Whenever I fed the mice or weighed them for the lever-press task, I always thought of Jesus in the upper room, washing his disciples' feet. This moment of servitude, of being quite literally brought low, always reminded me that I needed these mice just as much as they needed me. More. What would I know about the brain without them? How could I perform my work, find answers to my questions? The collaboration that the mice and I have going in this lab is, if not holy, then at least sacrosanct. I have never, will never, tell anyone that I sometimes think this way, because I'm aware that the Christians in my life would find it blasphemous and the scientists would find it embarrassing, but the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we.
”
”
Yaa Gyasi (Transcendent Kingdom)
“
After blearily looking at the internet a little, then peeing and brushing his teeth and washing his face, he lay in darkness on his mattress, finally allowing the simple insistence of the opioid, like an unending chord progression with a consistently unexpected and pleasing manner of postponing resolution, to accumulate and expand, until his brain and heart and the rest of him were contained within the same songlike beating—of another, larger, protective heart—inside of which, temporarily safe from the outside world, he would shrink into the lunar city of himself and feel and remember strange and forgotten things, mostly from his childhood.
”
”
Tao Lin (Taipei)
“
The idea that a dysfunctional thought could take root in a vacuum, the individual anonymous and wraithlike, unknowable because, especially at first, he or she had no interaction with other people. Because more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach, #2))
“
Prior to her reading of the poem, light tears washed over him. He seemed to be leaking out moments that were, as far as he could tell, stored in physical parts of his body – in his shoulders, his back, his stomach. His body remembered things that his brain ignored.
”
”
U.L. Harper (The Flesh Statue)
“
Anyone who can read history with both hemispheres of the brain knows that a world comes to an end every instant--the waves of time leave washed up behind themselves only dry memories of a closed & petrified past--imperfect memory, itself already dying & autumnal. And every instant also gives birth to a world--despite the cavillings of philosophers & scientists whose bodies have grown numb--a present in which all impossibilities are renewed, where regret & premonition fade to nothing in one presential hologrammatical psychomantric gesture.
”
”
Hakim Bey
“
He said the difference between the male and female modes of thought were easily illustrated by the thoughts of a boy and girl, sitting on a park bench, looking at the full moon. The boy thinks of the universe, its immensity and mystery; the girl thinks, "I must wash my hair." When I read this I was frantically upset; I had to put the magazine down. It was clear to me at once that I was not thinking as a girl thought; the full moon would never as long as I lived remind me to wash my hair. I knew if I showed it to my mother she would say, "Oh it is just that maddening male nonsense, women have no brains." That would not convince me; surely a New York psychiatrist must know. And women like my mother were in the minority, I could see that. Moreover I did not want to be like my mother, with her virginal brusqueness, her innocence. I wanted men to love me, and I wanted to think of the universe when I looked at the moon. I felt trapped, stranded; it seemed there had to be a choice where there couldn't be a choice.
”
”
Alice Munro (Lives of Girls and Women)
“
They were in a trench sliding through a forest of corn. Machine stood over the rows, black girders that arced in the sky like the proscenium above a stage. The thought occurred to Wayne that those machines were sprayers, full of poison. They would drench the corn in a lethal rain to keep it from being eaten by invasive species. Those exact words - "invasive species" - rang through his brain. Later the corn would be lightly washed and people would eat it.
”
”
Joe Hill (NOS4A2)
“
Rebuffed from his fine feelings, Milkman matched her cold tone. "You loved those white folks that much?"
"Love?" she asked. "Love?"
"Well, what are you taking care of their dogs for?"
"Do you know why she killed herself? She couldn't stand to see the place go to ruin. She couldn't live without servants and money and what it could buy. Every cent was gone and the taxes took whatever came in. She had to let the upstairs maids go, then the cook, then the dog trainer, then the yardman, then the chauffeur, then the car, then the woman who washed once a week. Then she started selling bits and pieces––land, jewels, furniture. The last few years we ate out of the garden. Finally she couldn't take it anymore. The thought of having no help, no money––well, she couldn't take that. She had to let everything go."
"But she didn't let you go." Milkman had no trouble letting his words snarl.
"No, she didn't let me go. She killed herself."
"And you still loyal."
"You don't listen to people. Your ear is on your head, but it's not connected to your brain. I said she killed herself rather than do the work I'd been doing all my life!" Circe stood up, and the dogs too. "Do you hear me? She saw the work I did all her days and died, you hear me, died rather than live like me. Now, what do you suppose she thought I was! If the way I lived and the work I did was so hateful to her she killed herself to keep from having to do it, and you think I stay on here because I loved her, then you have about as much sense as a fart!
”
”
Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)
“
23 Two centuries later, the task appears less simple and such expressions as “brain-washing” and “reeducation” camps have chilling overtones in the light of history, though that has not stopped indoctrination efforts in American schools and colleges, led by those who still have the vision of the anointed today.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy)
“
When I was doing the Mademoiselle application my husband would peer over my shoulder and say, "What are you doing competing with the best brains in the country? Why don't you just wash the dishes?" When the telegram came from Mademoiselle, I ran outside and shouted, "Guess who has the best brains in the country?
”
”
Elizabeth Winder (Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953)
“
Regarding beliefs and belief systems: We argue what and how we feel, rather than what we - actually - know or assume to be facts or factual evidence. Thus, it is justifiably prudent to challenge that which has been adopted or enforced by tradition. If such examination is discouraged by fearful tactics - we must not shy away from soulful searching.
”
”
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
“
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. —MARCUS AURELIUS
”
”
David Perlmutter, (Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness)
“
The latest science suggests that dream sleep resets our brain chemicals by washing them in cerebrospinal fluid and tidies up the thoughts and emotions of the day by consolidating them.
”
”
Jess Lourey (The Reaping (Steinbeck and Reed, #2))
“
Long distance running is meditation. When I finish a long run, it’s like my brain has been washed. All the stress and negative thoughts are left somewhere on those long kilometers. At the end, the illusions of the past and future are removed from my mind, and it is set back to zero, so I feel I am totally in the present moment, reset, and ready to restart my life afresh.
”
”
Robert Black
“
God, when did Elli go from cute to hot? I mean, I've sensed it coming for a while, but all at once, here she is. Trouble on two legs. Two very nice legs.
And now I need to go home and wash my brain out with soap.
”
”
Ingrid Paulson
“
A recent publication of secret reports on German public opinion during the war (from 1939 to 1944), issued by the Security Service of the SS (Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den Geheimen Lage berichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939-1944, edited by Heinz Boberach, Neuwied & Berlin, 1965), is very revealing in this respect. It shows, first, that the population was remarkably well informed about all so-called secrets-massacres of Jews in Poland, preparation of the attack on Russia, etc.-and, second, the "extent to which the victims of propaganda had remained able to form independent opinions" (pp. XVIII-XIX). However, the point of the matter is that this did not in the least weaken the general support of the Hitler regime. It is quite obvious that mass support for totalitarianism comes neither from ignorance nor from brain washing.
”
”
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
“
Do you hear me? Is it ever time for you to understand. I meant I meant that for I never thought you could think you were low. Were lost at the moment when they cut you off. Cut your head out heart brain. It is not I know was not that but to me it was to me. Like I could have seen you in the bright of day. Like the light could have come up from the sea and take you over. Me over. Is there. Forgive that. Forgive that me that I was fallen down. That I was under the weather under the same sky and did not. Not yet. If I took. If I had taken your good right hand I might have pulled you. Up. Pulled the black sea out of us. Saw you. Left you. Is there some truth in that? I went out to the cold. Thought I'd know what to do. Bring you with me. Bring you with. Sad and sad and sad fool me slipping down. Slope hill mountainside. Muck and stones on me. On my feet and rain in my hair. I thought about it but I could not stop. Pushed it further in. Needle and syringe. This will take me out of that. Like it could. As though it might do in any way. Forgive me. Forgive me that that I didn't see. Look out my eyes. That I didn't know what I was doing though I did though I did. Oh do you love me. Can you love me. Do you love me still. My sins. My grievous. Woe my wrong. I went out to him and said do what you will if you want. If you're able will you save me from that. I put a pillow on my face on your face and I said suffocate. It could have been. It could have been that. If I chose if I didn't. If I knew what to do. I don't so by the way I'm telling you. I'm warning now what a monster I have become. Soap in my mouth my eyes my hair turning bitter at the smallest drop. Of the rain give me the rain and all that. Wash oh yes wash that's it wash away. My. Sin.
”
”
Eimear McBride (A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing)
“
People are always afraid of TV. They are thinking, they will be brain washed and what they don’t know is that social media is worse than TV and they are always glued on it. They spend more hours on social media than anything .
Use social media with caution. Social media feeds on your evil traits. It brings the worse out of you. It targets your inner darker side. It will brain wash you, if you are not careful. They will use it to control you.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
He felt — washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a place where he could be himself, without hiding anything, without pretending even to himself. He felt, thinking his way back up the beach, as if his brain had just woken up from some long sleep, and it wanted to run along beside the waves, to see how far and fast it could go.
”
”
Cynthia Voigt (A Solitary Blue (Tillerman Family, #3))
“
You may be surprised to learn that simply being awake creates toxic products in your brain. During sleep, your cells shrink, causing a striking increase in the space between your cells. This is equivalent to turning on a faucet—it allows fluid to wash past and push the toxins out.23 This nightly housecleaning is part of what keeps your brain healthy. When you get too little sleep, the buildup of these toxic products is believed to explain why you can’t think very clearly. (Too
”
”
Barbara Oakley (A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra))
“
Let’s imagine a running washing machine. Let’s imagine the dirty clothes in the machine and how the liquid detergent is getting the dirt out of clothes and draining it to the waste outlet. Now imagine brain surrounded by a large pool of cleaning fluid called CSF (cerebrospinal fluid). Imagine CSF pulling the wastes from inside the brain and draining it into the blood, which routes it to the waste outlets. CSF clears waste many times faster in sleeping brain than in the waking brain.
”
”
Pawan Mishra
“
Night must fall. It fell hard tonight in Downtown Oakland, like a lead blanket. Started to sink in. What happened today. Slowly at first, like a dull ache. Then like a midnight jackhammer excavating my brain. That ordeal with the cops was a distraction that insulated me. Numbed me to the cold reality. But when I hit San Pablo driving past Phil’s place, a sensation started welling up from my gut—washing over me—pea-green nausea topped with a dollop of white rage. I gripped the wheel, composed myself.
”
”
Kurt McGill (Night Pictures)
“
It’s a girl!” Cecelia cried. The elephant evaporated, the squeezing stopped, and Julia was herself again. Mostly herself, anyway. She realized that she was most certainly a mammal and had the ability to shake the world apart and create a human when she unleashed her power. She was a mother. This identity shuddered through her, welcome like water to a dry riverbed. It felt so elemental and true that Julia must have unknowingly been a mother all along, simply waiting to be joined by her child. Julia had never felt like this before. Her brain was a gleaming engine, and her resources felt immense. She was clarity. Julia held the baby for what felt like only a few seconds before the nurse whisked the infant to the nursery to be washed and wrapped in a blanket. Cecelia left the room to tell the others the news. Julia shook her head, in disbelief and joy. She couldn’t believe how fast her mind was moving, but perhaps these truths had been inside her all along and were accessible now because she’d given birth. She saw everything so clearly.
”
”
Ann Napolitano (Hello Beautiful)
“
They made you believe you had power; they hammered at your brain over the barracks loudspeakers; they commanded you in the name of your country; and they gave you your share of guilt so you could not wash your hands of it but would be forever bound by ties of blood.
”
”
Isabel Allende (Of Love and Shadows)
“
There are little wisps of jelly in a living brain. Deagle knows this well: neurons, transmitting signals - and the soul, so to speak, is somewhere in those flashes. He heard once on a science program that the spindle cell - present in humans, whales, some apes, elephants - may be at the heart of what we call our "selves."
What we recognize in the mirror - that thread we follow through time that we call "me"? It's just a diatom, a paramecium, a bit of ganglia that branches and shudders assertively. A brief brain orgasm, like lightning.
In short, it's all chemicals. You can regiment it easily enough: fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, escitalopram, citalopram - the brain can be washed clean, and you can reset yourself, Ctrl+Alt+Del. You don't have to be a prisoner of your memories and emotions.
”
”
Dan Chaon (Stay Awake)
“
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall.
”
”
Alice Walker (Everyday Use)
“
This is the worst story I think you’ve ever told me, and I’ve heard quite a few humdingers.” I went to the sink and washed my hands, then I stuck my head under the faucet and gargled. What I really wanted to do was boil myself and electroshock my brain to unhear that tale.
”
”
Barbra Annino (Obsidian Curse (A Stacy Justice Mystery, #6))
“
The brain’s habit of literalizing metaphors—the tendency to regard people as having “warmer” personalities when you happen to be holding a mug of coffee, the Bicamerals’ use of hand-washing to mitigate feelings of guilt and uncertainty—is also an established neurological fact.
”
”
Peter Watts (Echopraxia (Firefall, #2))
“
Winter's last rain and a light I don't recognize
through the trees and I come back in my mind
to the man who made me suck his cock
when I was seven, in sunlight, between boxcars.
I thought I could leave him standing there
in the years, half smile on his lips,
small hands curled into small fists,
but after he finished, he held my hand in his
as if astonished, until the houses were visible
just beyond the railyard. He held my hand
but before that he slapped me hard on the face
when I would not open my mouth for him.
I do not want to say his whole hips
slammed into me, but they did, and a black wave
washed over my brain, changing me
so I could not move among my people in the old way.
On my way home I stopped in the churchyard
to try to find a way to stay alive.
In the branches a red-wing flitted, warning me.
In the rectory, Father prepared
the body and the blood for mass
but God could not save me from a mouthful of cum.
That afternoon some lives turned away from the light.
He taught me how to move my tongue around.
In his hands he held my head like a lover.
Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.
”
”
Bruce Weigl
“
Oh please. Please, please. Please suck my cock, Ann. I’ll do anything. Anything you want. Want your car washed? Hair washed? Daily screws? Me dancing around in a tutu? Fucking anything. Please, Ann.” Ann had to take a moment to stare in confusion, a smile taking over her lips. Carwash? Tutu? She’d broken his brain.
”
”
K.F. Breene (Charles (Darkness, #8))
“
Tanaghrisson stepped up to where Jumonville lay. “Tu n’es pas encore mort, mon père,” he said; Thou art not yet dead, my father. He raised his hatchet and sank it in the ensign’s head, striking until he had shattered the cranium. Then he reached into the skull, pulled out a handful of viscous tissue, and washed his hands in Jumonville’s brain.
”
”
Fred Anderson (Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766)
“
Then one night a report about breast cancer came on the news, all about mammograms and early detection, women talking about finding a lump in their breast. We were making dinner. We always turned the television off when we sat down to eat but we could watch it while we were cooking. That was the rule. “I have one of those,” she said to the television set. “You had a mammogram?” She shook her head. She wasn’t looking at me. “A lump.” I had been cutting up a head of broccoli and I put down the knife and washed my hands. “What did you do about it?” “I didn’t do anything about it.” “What did the doctor say?” She looked at me then. “The whole thing scared me to death.” “So what happened?” My brain insisted on hearing it in the past tense, I had a lump in my breast once. I couldn’t understand that this was something that was happening. “I thought I’d wait for you to come home,” she said. “You’re always so good at figuring things out.” “I’ve been home three months.” But she had found the lump a year before, and taped a gauze square over it when it started to leak. When I looked at her again I could actually see a disruption in the pattern of her dress. That’s how big it was. Once we started making the hopeless rounds of oncologist appointments, the past broke away. All the things I’d thought about myself before—I am an actress, I am not an actress, I was in love, I was betrayed—disintegrated into nothing. I made bowls of Cream of Wheat she wouldn’t eat and then scraped them into the trash once they turned cold. I managed the schedule of people who wanted to come and see her, her two sons and two daughters—one of those daughters my mother—my father, my brothers, all my cousins, all her friends. I made sure no one stayed too long. I sat by her bed and read to her.
”
”
Ann Patchett (Tom Lake)
“
Watson didn’t know what hit him. The last thing he sent through his BrainPal channel was a wash of emotion that could best be described as disoriented puzzlement, the mild surprise of someone who knows he’s seeing something he wasn’t expecting but hasn’t figured out what it is. Then his connection was cut off, like a data feed suddenly unexpectedly shut down.
”
”
John Scalzi (Old Man's War (Old Man's War, #1))
“
You agency people are living testaments to justice. Frankly, your sparkle mesmerizes me. The Decay of the Angel's plan is the true embodiment of evil. That's what makes it worth assisting in! It's time to break out of this prison! The inherent brain-washing we call morality! I seek freedom for my soul more than any kind of joy!! So listen to the screams of my own free will!
”
”
Kafka Asagiri (文豪ストレイドッグス 14 [Bungō Stray Dogs 14])
“
Whether blatant or subtle, brainwashing has become a major, time-consuming activity in American education at all levels. Some zealots have not hesitated to use the traditional brain-washing technique of emotional trauma in the classroom to soften up children for their message. Gruesome and graphic movies on nuclear war, for example, have reduced some school children to tears—after which the teacher makes a pitch for whatever movement claims to reduce such dangers. Another technique is the ambush shock: A seventh-grade teacher in Manhattan, for example, innocently asked her students to discuss their future plans—after which she said: “Haven’t any of you realized that in this world with nuclear weapons no one in this class will be alive in the year 2000?”75 These
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Inside American Education)
“
Sheila and Hugh Resting in arms Testing your charms Repeating a ritualized “I love you” Sharing a fight Or a kiss in the night Shrugging when friends ask “What’s new?” After the wedding Her hips started spreading His hair line began to recede They remained together Out of habit now And not out of any great need He’ll show up from work Showing signs of strain While her day was spent cleaning Letting the soap operas wash her brain . . . He reads the evening paper She calls him in to eat They share their meal silently She’s bored, he’s just beat Then they climb the stairs Multiplying the monotony With each step they take The hours spent sleeping They find more satisfying Than those spent awake He removes his work clothes She puts on her curlers and cream Hoping the sheets will protect them From the demon of daily routine Then he clicks off the lamp And the darkness holds no noise For in the dark you can be anyone Housewives will be girls And businessmen boys . . . “I love you, Sheila” I love you, Hugh” But she’s deciding on dishes And his thoughts are all askew And the sheets supply refuge For this perpetual pair Neither really knowing anymore Why the other one is there
”
”
Carrie Fisher (The Princess Diarist)
“
Elaborate schemes they dream and instill
Young minds, washed brains designed to kill... for real
Cold hearted, shit startin', cussin' and insane fussin'
Saggin' and braggin' about pettiness and frontin'... but it's nothin'
Irrelevant but sellin' it to lost souls and tricks
Who knows the wind blows 'til the gods' come crushin'
Better recognize 'cause it won't be televised... the reckoning
”
”
T.F. Hodge
“
The beauty we've created is not even skin-deep. It washes off in the shower.
That which is objectively true or honestly authentic—especially on Earth or in the heavens—tends to possess a beauty of its own that transcends time, place, and culture. Sunsets remain mesmerizing, even though you get one every day. Beautiful as they are, we also know all about the thermonuclear energy sources in the Sun's core. We know about the tortuous journey of its photons as they climb out of the Sun. We know of their swift journey across space, until they refract through Earth's atmosphere, en route to my eye's retina. The brain then processes and "sees" the image of a sunset. These added facts—these scientific truths—have the power to deepen whatever meaning we may otherwise ascribe to nature's beauty.
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization)
“
High and mighty guzzlers, and you, O all you precious pox-ridden—while you have the leisure and I have nothing else more important to do, let me ask you a question: why does everybody say, as if it were proverbially true, that the world is no longer flat? Understand, please, that "flat" here means "without zest, unsalted, insipid, washed-out": taking it metaphorically, it signifies "crazy, foolish, senseless, rot-brained." Would you argue, as indeed one might logically infer, that if we say that the world has been flat, now we have to say that it's become wise? What was it that made it flat? Why was it flat? Why should it be wise? What do you think ancient stupidity was? What do you think constitutes our present wisdom? What made it flat? What has made it wise? Are there more lovers of flatness or more lovers of wisdom? Just exactly when was it flat? Just exactly when was it wise? Who's responsible for that earlier flatness? Who's responsible for that later wisdom? Why did that ancient flatness end right now, and not at some other time? Why did our present wisdom begin right now, and not sooner? What harm did our earlier flatness do us? What good is this new wisdom? How did we get rid of our ancient flatness? How was our present wisdom brought about?
”
”
François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel)
“
Offence Punishment Laughing and talking 6 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails Talking in wash-house 6 lashes; rawhide Threatening to knock convict’s brains out 24 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails Talking to Keepers on matters not related to their work 6 lashes; cat-o’-nine-tails Finding fault with rations when required by guards to sit down 6 lashes; rawhide, and bread and water Staring about and inattentive at breakfast table Bread and water
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
“
There was nothing they could do to dim the supernovae exploding inside my brain, an endless chain of incranial firecrackers that made me think that I was once and for all going, and I told myself – as I’ve told myself before – that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn’t slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
[...]
What happens when the boundaries dissolve? Yout borders mean nothing. What lives at the limits of loss? Of hate? What terrible place is that? Look at me. I have been. I know. Do not come to this place where everything is fanged and singed and whimpering.
[...]
No one deserves de horror that has washed my life. I do not matter. This country does not matter, not to me, not in this hour. Keep indifference out of you. [...]
You will hear my yowls in the night, I who am a dog. When the darkness hoards the day, you will hear my yowls and you will remember this sadness. This sadness without boundary, born from loss, born from the dissolving of all the borerlines that made a world make sense,. My howls, the howls of this dog you see before you, they will penetrate the soft edges of your brain while you sleep, and for a moment, as your dream turns sideways, we will not be separate. We will be as one.
”
”
Nina MacLaughlin (Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung)
“
How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very blessings of civilisation. What is you excuse? it is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time.
There is truth in what you say—I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1886; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by the law to possess her own property; and that in 1919—which is a whole nine years ago—she was given a vote? May I also remind you that most of the professions have been open to you for close to ten years now? When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and the fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning over five hundred a year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good. Moreover, the economists are telling us that Mrs. Seton has had too many children. You must, of course, go on bearing children, but, so they say, in twos and threes, not in tens and twelves.
Thus, with some time on your hands and with some book learning in your brains—you have had enough of the other kind, and are sent to college partly, I suspect, to be uneducated—surely you should embark upon another stage of your very long, very laborious and highly obscure career. A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and what effect you will have. My own suggestion is a little fantastic, I admit; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
“
He was a marvel, shaft after shaft flying from him, spears that he wrenched easily from broken bodies on the ground to toss at new targets. Again and again I saw his wrist twist, exposing its pale underside, those flute-like bones thrusting elegantly forward. My spear sagged forgotten to the ground as I watched. I could not even see the ugliness of the deaths anymore, the brains, the shattered bones that later I would wash from my skin and hair. All I saw was his beauty, his singing limbs, the quick flickering of his feet.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job. Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.
The boy sat tottering. The man watched him that he not topple into the flames. He kicked holes in the sand for the boy's hips and shoulders where he would sleep and he sat holding him while he tousled his hair before the fire to dry it. All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
“
Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.
The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard
Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15).
Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change.
Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge.
[Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own.
We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us.
The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution.
We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time.
The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts.
We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence.
We are indeed in relationship to all that is.
”
”
George Leonard
“
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keep them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink-
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!
He cannot think-he only sees!
'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read,
And read and read, and then proceed
To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!...
Oh books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall...
...They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something good to read.
And once they start-oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did...
”
”
Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1))
“
Then Simi had to call in a favor from her police boyfriend to track the vehicle..."
Police boyfriend? Your brain sticks on those two words, and you don't hear anything else.
"What police boyfriend?"
"Shhh." Simi strokes your forehead. "The ambulance is coming."
You shake your head, concentrate on not passing out from the pain of the damage to your rapidly thawing body. "How long?"
"About twenty-four hours," she says.
"That's it?" You try to push yourself up, but your arms still aren't listening to the messages from your brain. "You moved on in less than a day?"
"It's not what you think," she says. "Garcia and I..."
"Garcia? Not Detective Garcia? You're now on a last-name basis?" You don't care about your broken body or the necklace or the hench people. You don't even care if they've captured Mr. X or killed him. You care about Simi in a way you've never cared about anyone before. You love her.
You love her and she dumped you in less than a day for someone far more worthy than you. A good guy. A man in uniform who doesn't live a life of secrets and lies.
Pain washes over you. You close your eyes and let the words settle in your throat.
Police boyfriend.
Death. Come for me now.
”
”
Sara Desai (To Have and to Heist (Simi Chopra, #1))
“
Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her — one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink.
There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me.
Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other.
”
”
Chris Lester (Huntress (Metamor City, #2))
“
Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-32 had a visitor. He jogged up the road past the firehouse and into the tunnel. It was four flights up to cellblock F. "Visitor," he said to Walton, who let him into his cell. He kept his white shirt prepared for visits. It was dusty. He washed his face and combed his hair with water. "Don't take nuttin but a handkerchief," said the guard. "I know, I know, I know...." Down he went to the door of the visitor's room, where he was frisked. Through the glass he saw that his visitor was Marcia.
There were no bars in the visitor's room, but the glass windows were chicken-wired and open only at the top. A skinny cat couldn't get in or out, but the sounds of the prison moved in freely on the breeze. She would, he knew, have passed three sets of bars - clang, clang, clang - and waited in an anteroom where there were pews or benches, soft-drink engines and a display of the convict's art with prices stuck in the frames. None of the cons could paint, but you could always count on some wet-brain to buy a vase of roses or a marine sunset if he had been told that the artist was a lifer. There were no pictures on the walls of the visitor's room but there were four signs that said: NO SMOKING, NO WRITING, NO EXCHANGE OF OBJECTS, VISITORS ARE ALLOWED ONE KISS.
”
”
John Cheever (Falconer)
“
Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel’s clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite’s wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle.
“Where is Arin?” Cheat said.
“In the mountains.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground.”
Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. “Does it bother you, being a traitor?”
“I don’t see how I am.”
“You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you.”
“It’s hardly worth thanking me,” she said. “Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here.”
A flush began to build under Cheat’s skin. He said, “My feet are dusty.”
Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that.
“Wash them,” he said.
“What?”
He took off his boots, stretched out his legs, and leaned back against the bench.
Kestrel, who had been quite still, became stone.
“It’s Herrani custom for the lady of the house to wash the feet of special guests,” said Cheat.
“Even if such a custom existed, it died ten years ago. And I’m not the lady of the house.”
“No, you’re a slave. You’ll do as I command.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
You call me but I can't hear. I speak a language you don't know. The body falling by the side of the bed. Eyes closed contemplating the night. I conjugate language that doesn't exist. The imaginary and its child the failurative. I speak stiff, the language she didn't teach me before she left. I speakstiff with all my stiffened body. I want to come back to you but I can't. Because of the red liqueur which is spreading in my blood. Because of the red liqueur which paralyses my brain. I can't come back to you. I'm slipping out to sea as I look back at the harbour. You're holding my hand but you're only holding on to wood. You're speaking to me but I hear only the walls. You're smiling but I'm on the other side of the mirror. The woman in mauve is carrying me off to her castle. And the silent coachman accompanies her.
”
”
Jeanne Hyvrard (Waterweed in the Wash-houses: A Novel)
“
Women judging other women. It’s been on my heart for a while. It’s something I’ve tried to wrap my brain around fully so I could put it into words. I see it all around me in so many different ways, and that poor, tired mama on the flight to Chicago reminded me of what I want to say. What I want to say is that we all judge each other, but even though we all do it, that’s not an excuse. Judging is still one of the most hurtful, spiteful impulses we own, and our judgments keep us from building a stronger tribe . . . or from having a tribe in the first place. Our judgment prohibits us from beautiful, life-affirming friendships. Our judgment keeps us from connecting in deeper, richer ways because we’re too stuck on the surface-level assumptions we’ve made. Ladies, our judging has to stop. So does our compulsion to compete with everyone around us.
”
”
Rachel Hollis (Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be (Girl, Wash Your Face Series))
“
He glanced at me, glanced at his wife, then looked back at his kids, which was where his heart obviously lay. He was a thin man - almost painfully thin, as if he had just begun to recover from a serious illness - and his hair had started to recede. His wife touched his shoulder tentatively with one of her red, wash-swollen hands. He didn't look at it or reach up to touch it, and after a moment she took it back. It occurred to me, fleetingly, that they looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife - he'd gotten the brains, she'd gotten the looks, but neither of them had escaped some underlying resemblance, a heredity that could never be escaped. Later, going home, I realized they didn't look alike at all; what made them seem to was the aftermath of stress and the lingering of sorrow. It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.
”
”
Stephen King (The Green Mile: An iconic chiller from the No. 1 bestseller)
“
Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops
after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French leather
while lying on Nandita's bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's
fresh China-rose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of
Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your
violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me
like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished
with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending in to your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all in to pieces for the sake of Art
There isn't any other way out for Poetry except suicide
Shubha
Let me enter in to the immemorial incontinence of your labia majora
In to the absurdity of woeless effort
In the golden chlorophyll of the drunken heart
Why wasn't I lost in my mother's urethra?
Why wasn't I driven away in my father's urine after his self-coition?
Why wasn't I mixed in the ovum -flux or in the phlegm?
With her eyes shut supine beneath me
I felt terribly distressed when I saw comfort seize S
”
”
Malay Roy Choudhury (Selected Poems)
“
History Eraser
I got drunk and fell asleep atop the sheets but luckily i left the heater on.
And in my dreams i wrote the best song that i've ever written...can't remember how it goes.
I stayed drunk and fell awake and i was cycling on a plane and far away i heard you say you liked me.
We drifted to a party -- cool. The people went to arty school. They made their paints by mixing acid wash and lemonade
In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name
I found an ezra pound and made a bet that if i found a cigarette i'd drop it all and marry you.
Just then a song comes on: "you can't always get what you want" -- the rolling stones, oh woe is we, the irony!
The stones became the moss and once all inhibitions lost, the hipsters made a mission to the farm.
We drove by tractor there, the yellow straw replaced our hair, we laced the dairy river with the cream of sweet vermouth.
In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name
You said "we only live once" so we touched a little tongue, and instantly i wanted to...
I lost my train of thought and jumped aboard the Epping as the doors were slowly closing on the world.
I touched on and off and rubbed my arm up against yours and still the inspector inspected me.
The lady in the roof was living proof that nothing really ever is exactly as it seems.
In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name
We caught the river boat downstream and ended up beside a team of angry footballers.
I fed the ducks some krill then we were sucked against our will into the welcome doors of the casino.
We drank green margaritas, danced with sweet senoritas, and we all went home as winners of a kind.
You said "i guarantee we'll have more fun, drink till the moon becomes the sun, and in the taxi home i'll sing you a triffids song!"
In my brain I re-arrange the letters on the page to spell your name
”
”
Courtney Barnett
“
You Are What You Eat
Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.
Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.
Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.
An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)
”
”
Christopher Ryan
“
I don't pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman's body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else—just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe—beyond the universe—because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being—of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night—and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism.
”
”
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
“
There are Californians who waiver in their allegiance to the climate of California. Sometimes the climate of San Francisco has made me cross. Sometimes I have thought that the winds in summer were too cold, that the fogs in summer were too thick. But whenever I have crossed the continent—when I have emerged from New York at ninety-five degrees, and entered Chicago at one hundred degrees—when I have been breathing the dust of alkali deserts and the fiery air of sagebrush plains—these are the times when I have always been buoyed up by the anticipation of inhaling the salt air of San Francisco Bay.
If ever a summer wanderer is glad to get back to his native land, it is I, returning to my native fog. Like the prodigal youth who returned to his home and filled himself with husks, so I always yearn in summer to return to mine, and fill myself up with fog. Not a thin, insignificant mist, but a fog—a thick fog—one of those rich pea-soup August fogs that blow in from the Pacific Ocean over San Francisco.
When I leave the heated capitals of other lands and get back to California uncooked, I always offer up a thank-offering to Santa Niebla, Our Lady of the Fogs. Out near the Presidio, where Don Joaquin de Arillaga, the old comandante, revisits the glimpses of the moon, clad in rusty armor, with his Spanish spindle-shanks thrust into tall leathern boots—there some day I shall erect a chapel to Santa Niebla. And I have vowed to her as an ex-voto a silver fog-horn, which horn will be wound by the winds of the broad Pacific, and will ceaselessly sound through the centuries the litany of Our Lady of the Fogs.
Every Californian has good reason to be loyal to his native land. If even the Swiss villagers, born in the high Alps, long to return to their birthplace, how much more does the exiled Californian yearn to return to the land which bore him. There are other, richer, and more populous lands, but to the Californian born, California is the only place in which to live. And to the returning Californian, particularly if he be native-born, the love of his birthplace is only intensified by visits to other lands.
Why do men so love their native soil? It is perhaps a phase of human love for the mother. For we are compact of the soil. Out of the crumbling granite eroded from the ribs of California’s Sierras by California’s mountain streams—out of earth washed into California’s great valleys by her mighty rivers—out of this the sons of California are made, brain, and muscle, and bone. Why then should they not love their mother, even as the mountaineers of Montenegro, of Switzerland, of Savoy, lover their mountain birth-place? Why should not exiled Californians yearn to return? And we sons of California always do return; we are always brought back by the potent charm of our native land—back to the soil which gave us birth—and at the last back to Earth, the great mother, from whom we sprung, and on whose bosom we repose our tired bodies when our work is done.
”
”
Jerome Hart (Argonaut Letters)
“
Drake’s dead,” Astrid said. “Dead people don’t come back. Let’s not be ridiculous.”
Howard made a derisive snort. “Okay. That’s as far as I go with you on this, Sammy boy.” He made a hand-washing gesture.
Astrid slammed her palm on the table, surprising even herself. “Somebody better tell me what all these back-and-forth looks are about.”
“Brittney,” Howard said, spitting the name out like it was poison. “She came back. Sam had her and stuck her with Brianna, and told me not to talk about it.”
“Brittney?” Astrid said, confused.
Howard said, “Yeah. You know, like dead-girl Brittney? Way dead? Dead a long time and buried a long time and suddenly she’s sitting in my house chatting? That Brittney.”
“I’m still not…”
“Well, Astrid,” Howard said, “I guess we just found the limits of your big old genius brain. Point is that someone who was very seriously dead is suddenly not so dead anymore.”
“But…,” Astrid started. “But Drake…”
“As dead as Brittney,” Howard said. “Which might be a slight problem, since Brittney isn’t exactly dead herself.
”
”
Michael Grant (Lies (Gone, #3))
“
Physically, Manya was both appealing and aristocratic in her bearing. It wasn't her copious white hair that attracted men, her flawless white skin, her billowing breasts, but the innate womanliness that emanated from her. Even when she wore her cooking clothes- a mammoth Hoover apron that she slipped on over her head and tied around a baggy dress or her cardigan sweater, a dull brown thing appropriate for shopping- she exuded a sympathetic femininity.
Many didn't give much thought to her appearance. More often than not she washed her face and body with the brown kosher soap that contained no fat from forbidden animals, and wrapped her hair in a haphazard bun held together with several large imitation-turquoise hairpins. Her cooking shoes were splattered with chicken and goose fat, bits and oddments of duck, salmon roe, even calves' brains. Because she had been raised on the Black Sea, she loved caviar, so every now and then a glistening bead would fall upon her well-fed shoes. The smell of food on her body made her no less alluring.
”
”
Eleanor Widmer (Up from Orchard Street)
“
In June, twenty-five of the country’s senior doctors signed a letter to The Times expressing their support for women doctors after Henry Maudsley published an article in the Fortnightly Review saying that it is well known among doctors that women become hysterical unless they have rest and seclusion during menstruation and therefore that simple biology prevents them following any kind of profession. Any kind except the oldest, May had said when Ally showed her this missive, and washing his clothes and cooking his meals. Even the most reasonable woman, he wrote and Fortnightly Review printed, is not sane for one week in every four, and in any case recent research has established once and for all that women’s brains are smaller than men’s, their intellectual capacities confined in the most elementary way. (And the gorilla, Miss Johnson wrote to the editor, has brains bigger than Dr Maudsley’s, not to speak of the elephant and the whale; in any case it is not widely observed that the men with the most capacious skulls are the cleverest. But her letter was not published.)
”
”
Sarah Moss (Bodies of Light)
“
In your own mind, what do you usually think about at the end of the day? The fifty things that went right, or the one that went wrong? Such as the driver who cut you off in traffic, or the one thing on your To Do list that didn’t get done . . . In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades implicit memory—your underlying feelings, expectations, beliefs, inclinations, and mood—in an increasingly negative direction. Which is not fair, since most of the facts in your life are probably positive or at least neutral. Besides the injustice of it, the growing pile of negative experiences in implicit memory naturally makes a person more anxious, irritable, and blue—plus it gets harder to be patient and giving toward others. But you don’t have to accept this bias! By tilting toward the good—toward that which brings more happiness and benefit to oneself and others—you merely level the playing field. Then, instead of positive experiences washing through you like water through a sieve, they’ll collect in implicit memory deep down in your brain.
”
”
Rick Hanson (Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time)
“
He started for the companion stairs, but turned his head for a final word. "Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea- water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don't you see? And what have you to say?
”
”
Jack London (The Sea Wolf By Jack London)
“
When she was finished with the mailbox, Lisey trudged back down the driveway with her buckets in the long evening light. Breakfast had been coffee and oatmeal, lunch little more than a scoop of tuna and mayo on a scrap of lettuce, and dead cat or no dead cat, she was starved. She decided to put off her call to Woodbody until she had some food in her belly. The thought of calling the Sheriff's Office—anyone in a blue uniform, for that matter—hadn't yet returned to her.
She washed her hands for three minutes, using very hot water and making sure any speck of blood was gone from under her nails. Then she found the Tupperware dish containing the leftover Cheeseburger Pie, scraped it onto a plate, and blasted it in the microwave. While she waited for the chime, she hunted a Pepsi out of the fridge. She remembered thinking she'd never finish the Hamburger Helper stuff once her initial lust for it had been slaked. You could add that to the bottom of the long, long list of Things in Life Lisey Has Been Wrong About, but so what? Big diddly, as Cantata had been fond of saying in her teenage years.
"I never claimed to be the brains of the outfit," Lisey told the empty kitchen, and the microwave bleeped as if to second that.
The reheated gloop was almost too hot to eat but Lisey gobbled it anyway, cooling her mouth with fizzy mouthfuls of cold Pepsi. As she was finishing the last bite, she remembered the low whispering sound the cat's fur had made against the tin sleeve of the mailbox, and the weird pulling sensation she'd felt as the body began, reluctantly, to come forward. He must have really crammed it in there, she thought, and Dick Powell once more came to mind, black-and-white Dick Powell, this time saying And have some stuffing!
She was up and rushing for the sink so fast she knocked her chair over, sure she was going to vomit everything she'd just eaten, she was going to blow her groceries, toss her cookies, throw her heels, donate her lunch. She hung over the sink, eyes closed, mouth open, midsection locked and straining. After a pregnant five-second pause, she produced one monstrous cola-burp that buzzed like a cicada. She leaned there a moment longer, wanting to make absolutely sure that was all. When she was, she rinsed her mouth, spat, and pulled "Zack McCool"'s letter from her jeans pocket. It was time to call Joseph Woodbody.
”
”
Stephen King (Lisey's Story)
“
In August 1977 Canadians reacted with horror and revulsion when they learned that in the 1950s and early 1960s, one of the most eminent psychiatrists in the country had used his vulnerable patients as unwitting guinea pigs in brainwashing experiments funded by the CIA and the Canadian government.
Behind the doors of the so-called sleep room on Wards 2 South, Dr. Ewen Cameron, the director of Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute, exposed dozens of his own patients to barbaric treatments from which some never fully recovered. Operating under the belief that he could wipe brains clean of "bad behavior" and program in new behaviour, Cameron kept patients in a chemical sleep for weeks and months at a time exposing them to massive amounts of electro-shock and drugs such as LSD, and forced them to listen to tape-recorded messages repeated endlessly through headphones.
Cameron was not alone in his desire to reprogram the human brain. The U.S. intelligence establishment found in him an eager collaborator, and funded his work substantially and covertly. Eventually, after years of stonewalling by the CIA, nine of the dozens of victims were at last given a chance to claim restitution for Cameron’s “treatments” by taking the powerful U.S. intelligence agency to court.
”
”
Anne Collins (In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada)
“
At the time that he had seriously begun to consolidate his organization, Parker was working in a custom photo lab. The reader who is not much taken by audiovisual pastimes may have a deficient picture of that place where Parker was employed; or perhaps not so much a deficient picture--the dyes faded, shoddily spotted, brutishly burned in and doltishly dodged by subhuman technicians under the glare of the enlargers--as an image which had been misfiled in the archives of the memory, representing instead one of those bleak Photo Drive-Ups and Presto Printses located nowadays on the corner of almost every large parking lot, in which the clerks wait sadly behind their glass counters, but no one comes in, and the air becomes darker and darker over the course of the morning as a result of exhaust fumes (there goes another brain cell; ping! - THAT thought will never be completed now); and the pink chubby tots smiling at your from the walls in sample enlargements become steadily more grimy, and by the lunch break they are brown; and the day ticks off on the loud digital clock; and then finally a car creeps into the lot, and a popeyed couple locks that vehicle doors listlessly; they request a reprint of a washed-out snapshot of their son who was killed in the Indian Wars, and they go away; and after a long time here comes a slick-haired teenager who once took a few pix of his girlfriend holding a balloon at the zoo in front of the monkey cage on a dirty overcast day, and the clerk can tell just by looking at this customer that they won’t come out, because the guy’s a loser if the clerk knows anything at all about losers and in fact he knows a hell of a lot about losers because why else would he be stuck with this job?
”
”
William T. Vollmann (You Bright and Risen Angels (Contemporary American Fiction))
“
For millennia, sages have proclaimed how outer beauty reflects inner goodness. While we may no longer openly claim that, beauty-is-good still holds sway unconsciously; attractive people are judged to be more honest, intelligent, and competent; are more likely to be elected or hired, and with higher salaries; are less likely to be convicted of crimes, then getting shorter sentences. Jeez, can’t the brain distinguish beauty from goodness? Not especially. In three different studies, subjects in brain scanners alternated between rating the beauty of something (e.g., faces) or the goodness of some behavior. Both types of assessments activated the same region (the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC); the more beautiful or good, the more OFC activation (and the less insula activation). It’s as if irrelevant emotions about beauty gum up cerebral contemplation of the scales of justice. Which was shown in another study—moral judgments were no longer colored by aesthetics after temporary inhibition of a part of the PFC that funnels information about emotions into the frontal cortex.[*] “Interesting,” the subject is told. “Last week, you sent that other person to prison for life. But just now, when looking at this other person who had done the same thing, you voted for them for Congress—how come?” And the answer isn’t “Murder is definitely bad, but OMG, those eyes are like deep, limpid pools.” Where did the intent behind the decision come from? The fact that the brain hasn’t had enough time yet to evolve separate circuits for evaluating morality and aesthetics.[6] Next, want to make someone more likely to choose to clean their hands? Have them describe something crummy and unethical they’ve done. Afterward, they’re more likely to wash their hands or reach for hand sanitizer than if they’d been recounting something ethically neutral they’d done. Subjects instructed to lie about something rate cleansing (but not noncleansing) products as more desirable than do those instructed to be honest. Another study showed remarkable somatic specificity, where lying orally (via voice mail) increased the desire for mouthwash, while lying by hand (via email) made hand sanitizers more desirable. One neuroimaging study showed that when lying by voice mail boosts preference for mouthwash, a different part of the sensory cortex activates than when lying by email boosts the appeal of hand sanitizers. Neurons believing, literally, that your mouth or hand, respectively, is dirty.
”
”
Robert M. Sapolsky (Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will)
“
With the relief of knowing I had passed through a crisis, I sighed because there was nothing to hold me back. It was no time for fear or pretense, because it could never be this way with anyone else. All the barriers were gone. I had unwound the string she had given me, and found my way out of the labyrinth to where she was waiting. I loved her with more than my body. I don’t pretend to understand the mystery of love, but this time it was more than sex, more than using a woman’s body. It was being lifted off the earth, outside fear and torment, being part of something greater than myself. I was lifted out of the dark cell of my own mind, to become part of someone else—just as I had experienced it that day on the couch in therapy. It was the first step outward to the universe—beyond the universe—because in it and with it we merged to recreate and perpetuate the human spirit. Expanding and bursting outward, and contracting and forming inward, it was the rhythm of being—of breathing, of heartbeat, of day and night—and the rhythm of our bodies set off an echo in my mind. It was the way it had been back there in that strange vision. The gray murk lifted from my mind, and through it the light pierced into my brain (how strange that light should blind!), and my body was absorbed back into a great sea of space, washed under in a strange baptism. My body shuddered with giving, and her body shuddered its acceptance. This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day. And as I lay there with her I could see how important physical love was, how necessary it was for us to be in each other’s arms, giving and taking. The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other—child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death. But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other’s hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing. And in the moment before I fell off into sleep, I remembered the way it had been between Fay and myself, and I smiled. No wonder that had been easy. It had been only physical. This with Alice was a mystery. I leaned over and kissed her eyes. Alice knows everything about me now, and accepts the fact that we can be together for only a short while. She has agreed to go away when I tell her to go. It’s painful to think about that, but what we have, I suspect, is more than most people find in a lifetime.
”
”
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
“
Stark Electric Jesus
Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of shedding the last drops
after urination
Haven't had to learn to go and lie beside Shubha in the darkness
Have not had to learn the usage of French leather
while lying on Nandita's bosom
Though I wanted the healthy spirit of Aleya's
fresh China-rose matrix
Yet I submitted to the refuge of my brain's cataclysm
I am failing to understand why I still want to live
I am thinking of my debauched Sabarna-Choudhury ancestors
I'll have to do something different and new
Let me sleep for the last time on a bed soft as the skin of
Shubha's bosom
I remember now the sharp-edged radiance of the moment I was born
I want to see my own death before passing away
The world had nothing to do with Malay Roychoudhury
Shubha let me sleep for a few moments in your
violent silvery uterus
Give me peace, Shubha, let me have peace
Let my sin-driven skeleton be washed anew in your seasonal bloodstream
Let me create myself in your womb with my own sperm
Would I have been like this if I had different parents?
Was Malay alias me possible from an absolutely different sperm?
Would I have been Malay in the womb of other women of my father?
Would I have made a professional gentleman of me
like my dead brother without Shubha?
Oh, answer, let somebody answer these
Shubha, ah Shubha
Let me see the earth through your cellophane hymen
Come back on the green mattress again
As cathode rays are sucked up with the warmth of a magnet's brilliance
I remember the letter of the final decision of 1956
The surroundings of your clitoris were being embellished
with coon at that time
Fine rib-smashing roots were descending in to your bosom
Stupid relationship inflated in the bypass of senseless neglect
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
I do not know whether I am going to die
Squandering was roaring within heart's exhaustive impatience
I'll disrupt and destroy
I'll split all in to pieces for the sake of Art
There isn't any other way out for Poetry except suicide
”
”
Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury (The Hungryalists)
“
(The very next day)
'I am enduring will standing alone bare and yes, I am completely naked to the world outside. So, unprotected by the atmosphere above and around me, so unlike- the day, I was born into this hellish world.'
'My life was not always like this! Still as of now, I stand trembling on top of this cruel land, which I call my hereditary land or my home-town.'
'Some still call me by my name, and that is 'Nevaeh May Natalie.'
'Some of the others, like the kids I go to school within this land, have other titles for me.'
'However, you can identify me by the name of 'Nevaeh.' That is if you want to.'
'I do not think that even matters to you, my name is… it has been replaced and it is not significant anymore. Nor does my name matter to anyone out there for miles around. At least that is the way it seems to me, standing here now as I see the bus come to take me there.'
'Names or not said to me, 'I feel alone!' I whispered to myself.'
'It is like I am living a dream. I didn't think my nightmare of orgasmic, tragic, and drizzling emotions pouring in my mind would last this long.'
('Class, faces, names, done.')
'It like a thunderstorm pounding in my brain, as it is today outside. I have come home from yet another day of hell that would be called- school to you.'
'I don't even go into the house until I have this restricting schoolgirl uniform torn off my body. I feel like my skin is crawling with bugs when it is on my figure.'
(Outside in the fields, next to the tracks)
'It's the middle- September and I am standing in the rain. It is so cold, so lonely, and so loveless! Additionally, this is not usual for me, I am always bare around my house, I have my reason you'll see.'
'The rain has been falling on me like knives ever since the moment, I got off the yellow bus.'
'A thunderbolt clattered, more resonant than anything ever heard previously.'
'All the rain is matting my long brown hair on me as it lies on my backside longer than most girls. Yet I am okay with that at last, I am free.'
(I have freedom)
'To a point! I still feel so trapped by all of them.'
'Ten or twenty minutes have now passed; I am still in the same very spot. Just letting water follow me down. I'm drenched!'
'I can feel the wetness as it lingers in my hair for a while, so unforgivably soaking my body even more as if sinking within me washing me clean.'
'Counting my sanctions, I feel satisfied in a way when I do feel it dropping offends my hair, as if 'God' is still in control of my life, even if I was sent to and damned to hell.'
'Like it is wiping away everything that happened to me today, away from the day of the past too.'
'The wetness is still running down the small of my back thirty minutes must have passed, and it is like my mind is off.'
'Currently, it follows the center point on my back. Then down in-between my petite butt cheeks. Water and bloodstream off my butt to the ground near the heels of my feet. I can feel as if that part of me is washed clean from the day that I had to go through.'
'Some of this shower is cascading off my little face, and it slowly collects on my little boobs, where it beads up and separates into two different watercourses down to my belly button.'
'I eyeball this, as it goes all the way down the front of me. It trickles down on me, to where it turns the color of light pink off my 'Girly Parts.' As they would never be the same.
”
”
Marcel Ray Duriez
“
Jiang Yudui of the pro-Beijing China Civic Education Promotion Association of Hong Kong [who suggested that] ‘[a] brain needs washing if there is a problem, just as clothes need washing if they’re dirty, and a kidney needs washing if it’s sick’”.
”
”
Andreas Fulda (The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong: Sharp Power and its Discontents (China Policy Series))
“
So Shower Heads, You Take a Shower, the Water Doesn’t Come Out. You Wanna Wash Your Hands, the Water Doesn’t Come Out…Dishwashers, You Didn’t Have Any Water…In Most Places of the Country, Water Is Not a Problem. They Don’t Know What Do With It. It’s Called Rain
”
”
Donald J. Trump
“
Wash your gullet with wine for the Dog Star returns
with the hear of summer searing a thirsting earth.
Cicadas cry softy under high leaves, and pour down
shrill song incessantly from under their wings.
The artichoke blooms, and women are warm and wanton—
but men turn lean and limp for the burning Dog Star
parches their brains and knees.
”
”
Alcaeus
“
Nitrogen can be a knight Monroe can be a man rowing Washington can be by a washing machine Armstrong can be by a strong arm The main idea behind word substitution is coming up with a picture (or series of linked pictures) that sounds similar enough to remind you of the original word.
”
”
Jim Kwik (Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life)
“
Grain Brain and Brain Wash Dr. David Perlmutter) to manage my metabolism—at least until the TAME trial is completed!
”
”
Sergey Young (The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs that Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . and What You Can Do Right Now)
“
Simply put, you cannot force someone to believe something they absolutely do not on any level want to believe by using some set of evil techniques to “wash” their brain.
”
”
Amanda Montell (Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism—Understanding the Social Science of Cult Influence)
“
Cade: Baby, why are you blushing? Willa: Because I swear people are looking at me like I just got my brains fucked out. Cade: You did. Willa: I think these panties are ruined. Cade: I’ll wash them for you. And then shove them in your mouth again the next time you say something rude.
”
”
Elsie Silver (Heartless (Chestnut Springs, #2))
“
When Odie’s brain starts working again, she finds herself in her bedroom with no memory of how she got there. Her ears ring, and her legs feel boneless and jiggly, washed out in the aftermath of another epic tantrum. She kind of likes the way she feels brand new after one—wobbly, like a newborn baby. But with it comes the icky feeling that everyone hates her,
”
”
Chandler Baker (Big Bad)
“
I’m sorry,' [Marty] said unexpectedly.
“Huh?”
“That we never got to perform that duet together. Don’t you remember? For the Spring Concert?”
“Oh, yeah. What was that song we were going to sing?” I asked.
She placed her right hand on her hip and mock-pouted at me. “James Garraty, don’t tell me you forgot.”
I gave her an impish who, me look. When she smiled, I said in a more serious tone: “‘Somewhere,’ from West Side Story.” I hummed the song’s first measure; it sounded a half-octave off key.
Marty frowned. “You haven’t practiced lately,” she said disapprovingly.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, and as I said it waves of melancholy washed over me like a cold dark tide. Marty saw my expression change; she walked up to me and placed her arm around my shoulder comfortingly.
“I know,” she said softly, “how much you were looking forward to it, Jim. I was looking forward to singing that duet with you, too.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Really. You’re a terrific singer. Who wouldn’t want to sing a duet with you?”
“I bet,” I said, “you say that to all the boys.”
She laughed. My heart jumped as it usually did when she laughed. A thought clicked in my brain: What was it I’d written just a while ago? You are the one person who has the ability to brighten up a sour day. You have always managed to make me return a smile to someone else.
”
”
Alex Diaz-Granados (Reunion: A Story: A Novella)
“
He turned to his side, with the kind of creepily glazed look our eyeballs make when we’re alone in a room, brushing our teeth, chewing, or wiping our ass. His blanket was still wet with warm semen. He thought about his father. Then he remembered he needed to wash the clothes in the laundromat. His semen dripped and he thought about bird feeding. There was one bird who loved his safflower seeds. He ground his teeth and imagined what it was like to be born in Africa. He reflected on his most recent online English tutor lesson learning from a native speaker. He was fluent, but it paid to feel like you had a friend somewhere. Then he thought of peanut butter. The thoughts of the human mind transition so quickly that it only ever seems strange when we say it aloud to someone else. Otherwise, we’re all secretly freaks with our mouths shut. He laid there ugly.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
[...]
What happens when the boundaries dissolve? Your borders mean nothing. What lives at the limits of loss? Of hate? What terrible place is that? Look at me. I have been. I know. Do not come to this place where everything is fanged and singed and whimpering.
[...]
No one deserves de horror that has washed my life. I do not matter. This country does not matter, not to me, not in this hour. Keep indifference out of you. [...]
You will hear my yowls in the night, I who am a dog. When the darkness hoards the day, you will hear my yowls and you will remember this sadness. This sadness without boundary, born from loss, born from the dissolving of all the borerlines that made a world make sense,. My howls, the howls of this dog you see before you, they will penetrate the soft edges of your brain while you sleep, and for a moment, as your dream turns sideways, we will not be separate. We will be as one.
”
”
Nina MacLaughlin (Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung)
“
Give yourself some pleasure: wash your hands in warm water, eat an apple, or listen to music. Pleasure releases natural opioids that soothe and settle the brain’s stress machinery. Think of things you feel grateful for or glad about, things that bring a little smile. Connect with someone you like, either directly or in your imagination.
”
”
Rick Hanson (Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness)
“
These words: if classes were in session, today is the day Nathaniel would have done his lecture on the pheromones of trees. It’s a way of catching the attention of the undergraduates for a minute with the counterintuitive news the trees, so silent and so still, have ways of reaching out to one another, lines of communication, systems of warning. There is something satisfying in it, that the plain reality of the universe reads to us like magic. Henry might go further. He would point out how much our brains are limited by what we believe already - how once, when people expected to see ghosts, ghosts were what they saw.
Henry’s presence in the house, and in these words, triggers a second longing, too, a profound need for his daughter to be here, and not just as she is now - a grown woman in San Francisco, whom he calls on the phone to say yes, yes, it really is amazing - but also as she was once: a six-year-old girl in blue butterfly barrettes , trailing behind him and Henry, as she did on so many evenings back then, out in these same woods, reciting the names of the trees like catechism, ponderosa, manzanita, white oak, her pockets bulging with pinecones.
His daughter, as she is now, the grown woman in San Francisco, does not seem to understand what he is trying to tell her on the phone. “He’s cured?” She says. “How is that possible?” She has a lot of questions that he does not want to consider.
A rush of anger comes over him, washing everything else away.
“Just leave it,” he says to her. “Just leave it alone.
”
”
Karen Thompson Walker (The Dreamers)
“
My throat starts to dry up right after and I feel my heart racing and that stupid lump forming in my throat again, the one I always have to swallow. And besides that, there's so much guilt; it's like a tsunami that washes over the shore and when it recedes, you're left with nothing at all. It's not fair, I want to shout. It's not fair that I have to feel so horrible and I can't even feel horrible because my brain tells me it's wrong and I'm selfish and I feel disgusting.
”
”
Loridee De Villa (How to Be the Best Third Wheel)
“
For example, it is only in the past few years that scientists have discovered how the brain gets rid of its waste. In other parts of the body, waste is removed in several ways, including via the lymphatic system, a system of vessels that run in parallel to the blood circulatory system. The lymphatic system picks up waste, broken-down cells, and invaders like viruses, bacteria, and fungi and carries them to the lymph glands, where the immune-system cells deal with them. Despite our well-established understanding of this process, we really didn’t know how the brain accomplished the same feat because the lymphatic system had not yet been discovered in the brain. One of the coolest studies I’ve seen in a long time was released last year by Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, co-director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.21 Nedergaard’s team showed that during sleep, the size of the neurons in the brain is reduced by up to 60%. This creates a lot of space between brain cells. Then, still during sleep, a microscopic network of lymphatic vessels—the glymphatic system—clears the metabolic waste from these spaces between the neurons. This research shows that you can literally wash your brain of waste products and damage each night, if you sleep well.22 Dr. Jeffrey Iliff, who works in the same lab as Dr. Nedergaard, has shown that more than half of the amyloid beta, a protein that accumulates in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, is washed out of the brain each night via the glymphatic system. This is important because waste buildup in the brain occurs in nearly all people with neurodegenerative diseases, and this buildup may kill neurons, ultimately leading to cognitive diseases and mental deterioration. (Dr. Iliff’s TED Talk “One More Reason to Get a Good Night’s Sleep” is a great watch.)
”
”
Greg Wells (The Ripple Effect: Sleep Better, Eat Better, Move Better, Think Better)
“
Because we manage most of our “work-in-process” in our head, as soon as we finish the project and step away from our desks, all that valuable knowledge we worked so hard to acquire dissolves from our memory like a sandcastle washed away by the ocean waves.
”
”
Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
“
The Root of Chinese Qigong — The Secrets of Qigong Training 2. Muscle/Tendon Changing and Marrow/Brain Washing Qigong — The Secret of Youth (Yi Jin Jing and Xi Sui Jing)() 3. Chinese Qigong Massage — Qigong Tui Na and Cavity Press for Healing (Qigong An Mo and Qigong Dian Xue)() 4. Qigong and Health — For Healing and Maintaining Health 5. Qigong and Martial Arts — The Key to Advanced Martial Arts Skill (Shaolin, Wudang, Emei, and others) 6. Buddhist Qigong — Chan, The Root of Zen() 7. Daoist Qigong (Dan Ding Dao Gong)() 8. Tibetan Qigong (Mi Zang Shen Gong)()
”
”
Yang Jwing-Ming (The Root of Chinese Qigong 2nd. Ed.: Secrets of Health, Longevity, & Enlightenment (Qigong Foundation))
“
And here’s the real key: to maximize the process of the brain being washed properly and HGH being produced excellently so you expand your creativity, productivity, vitality and longevity, you need five complete ninety-minute sleep cycles. That’s what the scientific studies are now confirming. That’s seven and a half hours of sleep each night. You also should know that research proves that it’s not only sleep-deprivation that kills. Over-sleep, nine or more hours, also has been shown to shorten life.
”
”
Robin Sharma (The 5AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life.)
“
The level of our happiness is said to decrease when we have more than seven free hours in a day.
Serotonin is inert in the brains of people who suffer from depression.
A person with strong willpower isn't tempted in the first place. Your willpower will be lost if you give in to negative emotions like uncertainty or doubt. When that happens, the brain takes instinctive action and tells you to try to grab the reward in front of you. As a result you may eat or drink too much or lose the motivation to do anything. Then, later, you regret those actions and feel more stress.
45% of our actions are habits rather than decisions made on the spot.
To dye a dirty cloth, you must first wash it. ( a teaching of Ayurveda )
There is value to anything if you take it seriously.
You often become susceptible to addictions if the rewards come quickly.
People who are unable to clean up or part with their things will sometimes feel anger towards minimalists and I believe it's because some part of them is anxious about their own actions.
Our present identities shouldn't constrain our future actions.
The time after you get up is the time when you can concentrate the best. As the day goes by, unexpected things and distractions will happen and build up so it's best to do what you want to do in the morning. Waking up early is a must and if you lose that first battle, you will lose in all the battles.
Realize that enthusiasm won't occur before you do something. You won't feel motivated unless you start acting.
Amazon rules over the buying habits of so many people because its hurdles are extremely low.
People's motivation will easily go away when faced with a simple hurdle.
When you quit something, it's easier to quit it completely. With acquiring a habit, it's the opposite, easier to do it every day.
A plan relieves you of the torment of choice.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. The result will be burnout if you only have a target.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. Mark Twain
To have a sense of self-efficacy is to believe "I can do this!". It's the belief that you can change, grow, learn and overcome new challenges.
Talking about someone's talent can wait until you've exceeded the effort that that person has made.
If we changed houses periodically, we would have the joy of exploring our new environment each time and there would also be the joy of gaining control over each new environment, This instinct is probably what drives curiosity and the desire for self-development.
If we don't cultivate our own opportunities for development, we'll only be able to find joy in modern society's "ready-made" fun. Activities structured so that we have to "Enjoy this in this way", where the way to have fun is already decided, will eventually bore us. And then, someday, we'll be bored with ourselves.
Making it a habit to seek unique opportunities for development and gaining the sense that we're always doing something new: these are things that satisfy human instinct.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. The Dhammapada, The Sayings of the Buddha
Something that you thought was your personality can change with a simple habit.
People are instinctively inclined to get bored of what they have now and pursue new things. So no matter how successful they become, they will worry and find reasons to feel uncertain. They will get used to any environment and they will get bored with it.
Training in Buddhism: when cleaning is part of the training, you're taught to thoroughly eliminate rationalizations such as " this is already clean, so it doesn't have to be cleaned.
”
”
Fumio Sasaki (Hello, Habits: A Minimalist's Guide to a Better Life)
“
I also made my bed every day, fixed my hair, applied my makeup, and washed the dishes. The result of being faithful in these small things was the restoration of my sense of worth and dignity. And proper placement restores order to one’s surroundings, which in turn restores order to some of the brain’s clutter.
”
”
Patsy Clairmont (I Grew Up Little: Finding Hope in a Big God)
“
And so the government tore the tiyospaye apart and forced the Sioux into the kind of relationship now called the “nuclear family"—forced upon each couple their individually owned allotment of land, trying to teach them “the benefits of wholesome selfishness without which higher civilization is impossible.” At least that is how one secretary of the interior put it. So the great brainwashing began, those who did not like to have their brains washed being pushed farther and farther into the back country into isolation and starvation.
”
”
Mary Crow Dog (Lakota Woman)
“
The Whitmore and Miranda rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court — ending certain police practices once ubiquitous here and still widely practiced elsewhere — resulted from evidence that quite ordinary people, not guilty of any crimes, will in many cases confess to anything the police charge, if they cannot communicate with attorneys or anyone else except the police officers who are holding them. (Isolation begins any brain-washing process. See my Prometheus Rising (1983) for further details.)
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World)
“
Who are we, the people who have ADHD? We are the problem kid who drives his parents crazy by being totally disorganized, unable to follow through on anything, incapable of cleaning up a room, or washing dishes, or performing just about any assigned task; the one who is forever interrupting, making excuses for work not done, and generally functioning far below potential in most areas. We are the kid who gets daily lectures on how we’re squandering our talent, wasting the golden opportunity that our innate ability gives us to do well, and failing to make good use of all that our parents have provided. We are also sometimes the talented executive who keeps falling short due to missed deadlines, forgotten obligations, social faux pas, and blown opportunities. Too often we are the addicts, the misfits, the unemployed, and the criminals who are just one diagnosis and treatment plan away from turning it all around. We are the people Marlon Brando spoke for in the classic 1954 film On the Waterfront when he said, “I coulda been a contender.” So many of us coulda been contenders, and shoulda been for sure. But then, we can also make good. Can we ever! We are the seemingly tuned-out meeting participant who comes out of nowhere to provide the fresh idea that saves the day. Frequently, we are the “underachieving” child whose talent blooms with the right kind of help and finds incredible success after a checkered educational record. We are the contenders and the winners. We are also imaginative and dynamic teachers, preachers, circus clowns, and stand-up comics, Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, inventors, tinkerers, and trend setters. Among us there are self-made millionaires and billionaires; Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners; Academy, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy award winners; topflight trial attorneys, brain surgeons, traders on the commodities exchange, and investment bankers. And we are often entrepreneurs. We are entrepreneurs ourselves, and the great majority of the adult patients we see for ADHD are or aspire to be entrepreneurs too. The owner and operator of an entrepreneurial support company called Strategic Coach, a man named Dan Sullivan (who also has ADHD!), estimates that at least 50 percent of his clients have ADHD as well.
”
”
Edward M. Hallowell (ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies)
“
Her momma finds her stray hair still left in the bathroom sink.
Where she combed out her ratty do for what seemed like forever. Staring at herself in the mirror and pulling and teasing and shaping all that her stingy god would give her and nothing ever more. She’d contemplate her face there. Her flat wide nose and dark eyes and the combinations. She’d test her looks to see how she looked when she kissed. She'd extend her tongue as far out of her mouth as she could to check out how long it was and if she had anything extra special to offer. And what she'd have to do to serve it up.
Momma grabs a kleenex and cleans around the deep rust stains in the sink. Does she throw away the old dry hairs crumbled in her hand under the tissue or keep such sad memories. Does she store them in a drawer or is she just being silly. Should she cherish this precious angel manna or try and just fucking get over it. Not give into it. Could she even possibly throw them away into the garbage without bawling uncontrollably. Can she possibly change the urge over from utter despair. When she sees her child getting brutally raped and hammered into, her baby's baby fingers digging into the rocks and dirt she can pass by daily. A dilapidated pit that crumbles in the middle of all their continuing lives and remains standing out of sheer old bull-headed promise and well organized planning. The forefathers of this neighborhood didn't count on the incredibly heavy weight of the public’s filthy laziness.
My poor baby. My poor baby.
She has to seek help. This nameless faceless mother. She can’t deal with this all alone. She can’t quit these imaginings from her old yellowed eyes and ears and off her cleaning washing working fingertips and the very constant edges of her smaller brain. The sickness that slipped thick repetitive blobs of useless male sperm and thin streams of rust washed metal stripping toxins bleeding down her daughter’s black throat may or may not be only one in a great number of difficult dreams and attempts but she just can’t find a polite perspective anymore.
She can’t live like this any longer. She should have offered her child more than a dirty smudged mirror in a peeling and running bathroom when she got home from a dirty hot school every damn day. Where were the cops? And the doctors who were supposed to save her? And the fucking psychiatrists who could have done some trepanning into that evil dog's motherfucking bursting crack head before he was let out on the streets with his glass dick and his screaming pussy hunting cock.
Dogs don't need help. They need to be put down.
”
”
Peter Sotos (Tick)
“
I never had a choice?” “You brought one thing out of the Dust. Just one thing that didn’t wash off or get burned with the rest of your rags. The corner of a page of a book. You’re not going to destroy the library or let it be destroyed. Right or wrong—and fuck knows which it is—it’s not going to happen. So, best just admit it, and start working out how to sell the decision to your brain.
”
”
Mark Lawrence (The Book That Broke the World (The Library Trilogy, #2))
“
We are Taught to, Work, Get married, and have Kids, pay your taxes, and then Retire and Get a Nice Grave. But why do That? You have a life to live, What you should do is, Make your own company, Get married, have Kids, and pay your taxes like it was just a ant you just stepped on, and Retire with Money to spare. So live your life prosperously and be kind to one another.
”
”
Jonathan Vilagi
“
It is not enough just to study the Bible. We must meditate upon it. In a very real sense we are giving our brain a bath; we are washing it in the purifying solution of God’s Word.
”
”
John F. MacArthur Jr. (The MacArthur Study Bible, ESV)
“
Well start talking because if you can’t convince me that he’s not some kind of sex pestering, brain washing, secret keeping, dirty old pervert then I’m gonna fucking burn his balls off right here and now.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Shadow Princess (Zodiac Academy, #4))
“
A Ignorant is full of Pride and Brain-washed, no matter how many times you answer his silly questions, he will never accept it nor will let you finish answering his questions sometimes too.
”
”
Abdul Bari Abdul Ghafoor
“
Maccoby’s conclusion is that there is some kind of “prenatal hormonal priming” that predisposes boys and girls to respond differently to different kinds of social stimuli. That is, the male hormones that have washed the brains of boys in the womb produce a different style of play in boys three years later.
”
”
Michael Thompson (It's a Boy!: Your Son's Development from Birth to Age 18)
“
The storm is here and now. The rains come and water floods our lives. Nothing last forever and the rainbow always appears.
”
”
Michaelson Williams (Trainwashing: The Secrets of Positive Brain Washing)
“
Intriguingly, several studies indicate that lowering concerns about the risk of infection—for example, by vaccinating subjects—can effectively shut down the behavioral immune system, suppressing prejudicial feelings that would otherwise arise when the threat of contagious disease is made salient. In one notable experiment, being allowed to use an antibacterial wipe to disinfect hands when reminded that the flu was going around decreased negative attitudes toward a variety of perceived outgroups, including illegal immigrants, Muslims, the obese, and the disabled—and the reduction was most dramatic in the germaphobic. Ackerman, one of the experimenters, aptly refers to this phenomenon as “washing away prejudice.” Political
”
”
Kathleen McAuliffe (This Is Your Brain On Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society)
“
Eve was talking to the horse in low, earnest tones, and the horse gave every appearance of listening raptly. An image of Mildred Staines flashed in Deene’s mind. He’d seen her riding in the park on a pretty bay mare just a few days previous. Mildred sat a horse competently, but there was nothing pretty about the picture. Her habit was fashionable, her horse tidily turned out, her appointments all coordinated for a smart impression, but… Eve was still wearing Deene’s coat, her skirts were rumpled, her boots dusty, and she sported a few wisps of straw in her hair. She stopped to turn the horse the other direction, pausing to pet the beast on his solid shoulder. I could marry her. The thought appeared in Deene’s brain between one instant and the next, complete and compelling. It rapidly began sprouting roots into his common sense. She was wellborn enough. She was pretty enough. She was passionate enough. She was—he forced himself to list this consideration—well dowered enough. And she charmed King William effortlessly. Why not? Little leaves of possibility began twining upward into Deene’s imagination. He knew her family thoroughly and wouldn’t have to deal with any aunts secreted away in Cumbria. He was friends with her brothers, who did not leave bastards all over the shire. The Windham hadn’t been born who lost control when gambling. And Eve Windham was a delightful kisser. Why the hell not? The longer he thought about it, the more patently right the idea became. Eve
”
”
Grace Burrowes (Lady Eve's Indiscretion (The Duke's Daughters, #4; Windham, #7))
“
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!
”
”
Mark Cahill (Ten Questions from the King)
“
But then his tongue moved over me and started to lick the whipped cream over my sex, making my legs fall open, swiping the creamy coolness down and over my cleft, making a long, ragged moan escape me, dragging a rumbling sound from his chest that made another rush of wet pool as his mouth closed over my clit and sucked hard.
Then he devoured me, drove me up fast and unrelenting until the orgasm started to crest, seeming to start at the base of my spine and exploding outward until it took over whole body, making me cry out his name as he took possession of my clit and sucked it in pulses as the waves washed over me, dragging it out, intensifying everything.
As soon as the waves lessened, he released me and licked a line back upward, taking the whipped cream off my breasts then pressing up to balance over me, wicked look in his eyes.
"Tell me."
"Tell you what?" I asked, brain nothing but sparking misfirings right then.
He smiled at that, either delighted with his prowess or glad to torture me more. Or, more likely, both.
I grabbed the can of whipped cream as I moved to straddle him, watching as his eyes went knowing just a second before I started making a line down his stomach with the cream, then down the little happy trail, over his balls, and then up the underside of his cock until there was a large amount on the swollen head.
Then I tossed the can to the side and gave him a smile before ducking my head and starting my path down, deciding that while foreplay was always good, it was infinitely better with food involved as my tongue licked the cream off his balls then his shaft before closing my lips around the head and licking it off from there as well, making Brant let out a deep, primal groan that spurred me on, made me work him faster, deeper.
"Maddy..." he warned, but I didn't need a warning. I wanted to make him come. I wanted to give him the selfless orgasm he gave me.
"Fuck," he growled, his hand crushing into the back of my head as he came down my throat.
I worked him for a long moment before letting him slide away, looking up at him to find an intense weight in his gaze.
"From now on, we only ever eat dessert off of each other," he said a second later, his hand going under my chin and pulling me until I moved to straddle him, bringing my face close to his.
"I can get behind that plan," I agreed with a smile before he yanked me forward and our lips crashed together.
It wasn't a slow, sweet, post-orgasm kiss.
It was still wild, hungry, primal.
It said we weren't done.
"Come on," he said when he pulled away, a little out of breath. "Let's go take a shower. That was hot as fuck but we're both sticky now."
Thank God. I didn't want to complain, but every time I moved, my skin got stuck to his skin and it was weird and decidedly unsexy.
I went to move off him, but his arms went to slip around my lower back, holding me to him as he stood and started walking around the house. Then up the stairs.
I was generally not the kind of girl who got carried around. I was fit, sure, but I was tall and leggy and most guys wanted to carry around the short, lithe little women.
But since Brant was a huge wall of muscle, he didn't seem bothered by my height and less than dainty limbs.
He set me on my feet outside the shower and reached in to put the water on, water I knew would take a couple of minutes to warm up. But he stepped in regardless, cursing at the cold spray.
"Yeah, I think not," I said when he looked at me expectantly.
I should have known to step away. I really should have.
But I didn't and the next thing I knew, he was yanking me in with him, making me let out a string of incredibly unladylike curses before I felt the water get warmer against my back.
”
”
Jessica Gadziala
“
Babies who are born via Cesarean section have a higher risk of developing ADHD, but why? Understanding the links in the chain give credence to the importance of healthy gut bacteria to sustain intestinal health and overall wellness. When a baby passes through the birth canal naturally, billions of healthy bacteria wash over the child, thereby inoculating the newborn with appropriate probiotics whose pro-health effects remain for life. If a child is born via C-section, however, he or she misses out on this shower of sorts, and this sets the stage for bowel inflammation and, therefore, an increased risk of sensitivity to gluten and ADHD later in life.12
”
”
David Perlmutter (Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers)
“
firm, nonslip blanket, yoga mat, beach towel, or exercise or camping mat can be used to lie on. A thin (one- to three-inch) cushion or pillow can support your head and maintain the neck’s natural arch. Be careful: a thick pillow easily creates tension in the neck and this is to be avoided. An eye pillow, wash cloth, or scarf can cover your eyes. Even though your eyes will be closed, the extra darkness and weight of the eye cover enhances relaxation significantly. It calms the brain and reduces restlessness by preventing unnecessary eye movements. Do not cover your nose. Firm bolsters or pillows can be used to support your back and legs. Cover up with a cozy blanket to keep warm. Your body temperature is likely to drop during deep relaxation. Getting cold is a nuisance.
”
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Julie T. Lusk (Yoga Nidra for Complete Relaxation and Stress Relief)
“
I'm immigrant. I'm democrat but I'm politically incorrect. We living in a colorblind society who been brained washed from liberals. I'm sorry but refuse to accept when a black person says is trapped in a white person body, or a white person says is trapped in a blacks person body. I just refused to call a gray color black or the yellow color white, unless I'm color blind.
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach #2))
“
One of my most favored day fancies creates a fool drama that goes something like this: It is evening. We have had our supper and the dishes have been washed and put away. Ima Dean and Romey are in chairs in the sitting room reading books. Though there is candy in the sack on the table they have remembered we cannot afford trips to the dentist and are munching fruit. The pages which so absorb them are taking them to faraway borders and on the way they are being introduced to great men and great women. They have come around to my way of thinking. We do not need television. It’s fare is pretty dull and slovenly compared to the excitement and order there is to be found in the written word.
I go to my room and open the door and look in. The sewing machine is gone. During our day’s absence somebody has come and swiped it. I go back to the sitting room and make my spooky announcement. “The sewing machine is gone. Somebody has swiped it.”
“I’m glad,” says Ima Dean, throwing her legs over the arm of her chair. “Old no-account hunk of garbage. Mrs. Connell knew it was on its last legs when she gave it to us for five dollars. I thank whoever took it. The only thing makes me mad is it didn’t happen sooner. Nobody should have to drive themselves crazy learning how to sew after they’ve worked all day at making a living. Don’t fret, Mary Call. I don’t need any new dresses. When I start to school again if people don’t like the way I look in my old ones they can look the other way. We don’t owe anybody anything and this is a free country. If I went to school in a gunnysack wouldn’t be anybody’s business but yours and mine. Clothes aren’t important, it’s brains that count. My, this is a good book. When I grow up I think I’m going to be a medical missionary and go somewheres far off and work. I don’t want to waste my life. I want it to count for something and be of some good to humanity.”
“I have decided either to become an explorer or an archaeologist,” says Romey. “I haven’t settled on which yet but either way I won’t be wasting my life either. I’ll be working for the good of humanity too. You are raising Ima Dean and me right, Mary Call, and we will always be grateful to you for the way you have sacrificed yourself for us.”
End of dream. The sewing machine has not been swiped. Ima Dean and Romey have not forgotten we don’t have television. They don’t give a whoop or a holler about the great men and great women in our history. Or about humanity or what sacrifices I might be making for their good. Distant shores do not beckon them. They spend their evenings wrangling with each other and listening to radio music. Sometimes, when they feel kind toward each other, they dance.
I love these two but can hardly stand them.
”
”
Vera Cleaver (Trial Valley)
“
A stink. A stench. A foulness in her mind, dreadful and unforgiving. A compost of horrible ideas and rotted thoughts that made her want to take our her brain and wash it.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld, #38; Tiffany Aching, #4))
“
We are all of us, to some degree or another, brain-washed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes. There is nothing much we can do about this except to remember that it is so. Every one of us is part of the great comforting illusions, and part illusions, which every society uses to keep up its confidence in itself. These
”
”
Doris Lessing (Prisons We Choose to Live Inside)
“
If you’re stuck without lab-tested coffee, here is how to reduce your risks of getting mold toxins in your coffee. First, look for single-estate coffee. That means the beans come from one place, so if you’re lucky enough to get mold-free beans, you don’t have to worry about them being mixed with other moldy beans. This is why blends of coffee are a bad idea, even if they taste good. Second, look for washed coffee, because washed coffee is better than natural-process coffee. Steer clear of natural process entirely. The third thing to do is to look for Central American coffee, which is often better than coffee from other regions. The fourth thing to do is to look for high elevation, as that can reduce mold problems by making stronger plants. Remember, an “organic” label means nothing—most of the best coffees come from small plantations that could never afford an organic certification because the paperwork cost would put them out of business. Plus, organic coffee can sit in dirty water and grow mold toxins just like conventional coffee can.
”
”
Dave Asprey (Head Strong: The Bulletproof Plan to Activate Untapped Brain Energy to Work Smarter and Think Faster-in Just Two Weeks)
“
At the end of his visit, Mr. Peterson's doctor wrote out a complicated list of dietary recommendations for Bett, which included meat, meat, and meat, and also plenty of butter and cream. He said she was lacking animal proteins, what Bett called 'grr.' Now instead of washing and ironing all morning, their mother spent that time preparing meals- 'A carnivore's delight!' Twiss said- for Bett. She'd fry ground beef, bake it, or boil it until it was hard and gray.
"Look!" Twiss said on boiled meat days. "A brain!
”
”
Rebecca Rasmussen (The Bird Sisters)
“
The eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin sense the world around us, and in some cases perform preliminary information processing on the incoming data. But by and large, we do not experience sensation — we experience the outcome of perception — the total package that the brain puts together from the pieces that it receives through our senses and that the brain creates for us to experience. When we look out of the window at a view of countryside, or when we look at the face of a beautiful woman, we don’t just see a mess of colors and shapes — we see, instead, an image of a countryside or an image of a woman. The importance of a science is that it describes and explains each phenomenon in natural and rational way, if it can do this, and never attempts to use impossible illusion and irrationality, if it cannot. When science cannot clarify, religion covers empty space for a while. For instance, most of the mystical hallucinations of vision is the result of a so-called synesthesia — an experience in which one sensation (e.g. hearing a sound) creates experiences in another (e.g. vision). Most people do not experience synesthesia, but those who experience this phenomenon associate varoious perceptions in unusual ways, for instance, when they taste a particular food they can also percieve some colors or when they see certain objects they can clearly hear some sounds. Not knowing what is going on in the brain and sense organs, religion can easily connect this phenomenon with divine intervention, employing incredible myths around it for its benefit. It's true that science cannot explain everything and there is a high probability that it cannot do this forever, but it will never allow someone to wash human brain and keep it under control.
”
”
Elmar Hussein
“
brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach #2))
“
The idea that a dysfunctional thought could take root in a vacuum, the individual anonymous and wraithlike, unknowable because, especially at first, he or she had no interaction with other people. Because more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck. Almost anything could happen now, and did. The government could not investigate every farmer’s purchase of fertilizer and fireworks—could not self-police every deviant brain within its own ranks.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach #2))
“
Your sister tells you
You're stinky as hell
Because you don't shower
Your mom tells you
You're only good
Being a disappointment
Your brother thinks
You're only gloomy
Because you don't care
They don't know
It takes forever to heal,
Sometimes,
When the wound is deep
It takes you forever to get up,
Forever to walk,
Forever plus one to decide
If it's worth it if you eat,
And what to eat
And how to pick the dishes
From the kitchen's cabinet,
And that it takes a strength
Of walking a marathon
To wash them right after
They don't know
You stopped being you
You stopped looking in a mirror
That doesn't recognize you
To search for a reflection
The physics laws have no
Dominance when it's your brain
That's shut down
Fragments of reality getting
Forgotten in a dense black hole
In your neurons
Because for you,
Time has frozen,
And it's the only physics law
That works
For you
All of them don't know
That a corpse doesn’t shower
A corpse doesn't hear her mom's tears
A corpse doesn't care
A corpse is living in darkness
Because she's buried since a long
Long time
A corpse ceases to exist
It just is
And everyone knows it just is,
It's just there
Even
If it's a breathing one
”
”
Nesrine BENAHMED (Metanoia: Different shades of life)
“
I’m T. Thorne Rose and I did it hard
Til I wound up dyin in the Zen schoolyard
Can’t you see it’s more important here to use your brain
Than to poison up your body killin other people’s pain
Yes, it’s Other People’s Pain,
That’s a trick you might have missed
So let your Sister Rosie hip you to this little twist
The news, the Blues, the pain, the strain,
the lies we’ve heard since birth
Are only true if we, ourselves, think that’s what life is worth
But when you realize that we are all Queens and Kings
You’ll drop the death, take a deep breath,
and hear life when it sings
Don’t get lost and washed away like a teardrop in the rain
No abuse of any kind has ever come to any gain
Sister T. Thorn Rose from the group Goldensealed
”
”
Doug "Ten" Rose
“
Anything I run across can light up the circuitry of my brain, and set me on an adventure. To research strains of yeast; hiccup fetishists; the proper use of inverse, obverse, converse and reverse; the ratio of main narrative to tangent, of forward action to aside. What else do we do but quest, pursue meaning in the information wash? Where does that storm sewer opening from the river into the city’s underneath go to, anyhow? I grab a headlamp and head in. It’s long and low and dark and stinks and extends for miles. Underneath the city is another city. The one above begins to disappear. That’s what we’re after, isn’t it? To disappear? To venture into darkness, to let what we know or think we know recede for an hour, a day, a novel’s length, and see what meaning can be made of what remains?
”
”
Ander Monson
“
Journal Entry – April 17, 2013/May 10, 2013
Hollow. Numb. Empty. Nothingness. Are these feelings? Or are they just words in the English language? I ask these questions, because these words best describe how I feel right now as I sit here in my hospital room. The waiting game. My mind and thoughts swishing around my head, and my eyes burn feeling as if I am going to cry at any moment. Breakfast has come and gone. Vitals have been taken. And the five to ten minute check in with my assigned morning nurse has occurred. It has been three hours since I woke up, and I have twelve to thirteen hours to survive before I can go to sleep for the night. My day will be made up of one education group, lunch, dinner, and the remainder of the day and evening doing nothing but laying on the bed curled up in a ball depressed waiting for the time to pass looking at the clock hanging on the wall periodically wishing the time would move faster… on the flip side…a few days later…Writing in an attempt to keep my mind and head out of the skies. My heart feels as though it will beat outside of my chest, and my brain is on its own axis within my skull. I feel like I am on top of the world. I feel like I could do anything. I feel like I could write forever. I feel like my mind is on the spin cycle of a washing machine. Or, like I am hooked onto a pair of windshield wipers stuck on a speed mode. Although, my brain has spun faster than this and I feel that the meds are keeping the jerks at bay, I still feel that all too familiar whirling feeling. It is indescribable. It is hard to pinpoint. Some of it must be anxiety. Some of it must be that I am locked up like a caged animal ready to pounce. Then again, some of it must be nature. My brain misfiring and backfiring and causing itself to spin in every which direction at all sorts of speeds none of which are consistent or in the same direction. Inconsistency. Slow, fast, in between. A complete blur. I have trouble tracking. I have trouble focusing. I have trouble remembering…My mind is obsessing. I try to stop my mind from racing. I try to stop my eyes from darting across the page. I try to stop my legs from jittering. To no avail. It all starts again. My internal engine drives the show. It is as if I have a compulsion to move and dart and jerk. It is uncomfortable. My thoughts are scattered. My thoughts do not make sense. I find I have to edit my own thoughts or at least dig through the mess. I must navigate the thoughts to find the ones that fit together all in time before the memory loses focus and the tracking loses hold and “poof” the statement or thought is gone forever. Frustrating. I am intelligent. I feel stupid. My mind is in 5th gear and climbing at an unprecedented rate of speed. It is magical and amazing, but terrifying and exhausting. How to remain “normal” – is it possible? Is there a possibility of the insanity to stop? Is it possible for the cycle of speed to come to an end? I like the productivity, but the wreckage is too much to take. I just want a break. I want to be normal. I don’t want to be manic.
”
”
Justin Schleifer (Fractures)
“
Friends, the ancient word is dead; the ancient books are dead; our speech with holes like worn-out shoes is dead; our poems have gone sour; women's hair and nights have gone sour; my grieved nation, in a flash, you turned me from a poet writing for love and tenderness to a poet writing with a knife; our shouting is louder than our actions; our swords are taller than us; friends, smash the doors; wash your brains; grow words, pomegranates and grapes; sail to countries of fog and snow; nobody knows you exit in your caves; friends, we run wildly through streets; dragging people with ropes; smashing windows and locks; we praise like frogs; turn midgets into heroes; in mosques, we crouch idly; write poems and proverbs; and pray God for victory.
”
”
Tarek Osman (Egypt on the Brink: From the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak)
“
Don't wash your brain with dettol, something useful may be lost.
”
”
Vishal Salgotra
“
All of the combined sounds of the various instruments knitted together into beautiful strains that washed over me and made my brain and body hum with a gentle peacefulness. This was why I loved playing in the orchestra. Making music on my own was wonderful, but working together with so many others to create something with so much depth and so many layers, that was something else altogether.
”
”
Sarah Fox (Dead Ringer (Music Lover's Mystery, #1))
“
There isn't anything bad in eating an white ice cream it really doesn't matter is it in a pail or in a cornet. (You are now thinking... oh, oh, oh an ice cream, I can do one for you. I have loads of just come to "Where I live" and I can fill you with a lot of ice cream. You won't want to go home...). The banana eating, what's bad?? To go in a public and to eat one normal banana,... I'm talking about the fruit called banana which is yellow as an a colour... (O..., o..., (off I hate this moment as far as now when everything in your head is about sex and you just connect it), "I'm sure that you like it", I have one in my home and it's one large you will like it and in the end there is little suprise for the people with patience)...
What's bad or awful to eat an a cucumber???? OFFF, OFF, OFF you just again did this you connected it with this... what's bad of choosing sour cream or milk? Off, off, again and again all the time with this pornography it's like it's planted in your mind, like a bomb and in replace of the time you connect everything with pussy and dick. One moment with your dick sperm making it as an a milk, sour cream, ice cream so many faces… Then you connect it and with banana because in reality the banana is kind of fruit which can be sucked so you put replace of banana, your dick... even when you write "woman eating banana" in the google engine it will show some kind a pornography. But why do you connect it??
Even with the pussy which cums, how woman touches it... WOW, WOW!
”
”
Deyth Banger
“
I wish there were a way to run my brain through the washing machine.
”
”
Ophelia Julien (Dead Voices - A Bridgeton Park Cemetery Book: #2)
“
Only one research team followed up this work, some ten years later.Sidney Goldring and James L. O'Leary, neuropsychiatrists at the Wash-ington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, recorded the same DC potentials from the human scalp, from the exposed brain during surgery, and from the brains of monkeys and rabbits. As noted before,the potentials varied in regular cycles several minutes long, like a basso continuo under the EEG. In fact, Goldring and O'Leary found waves within waves: "Written upon the slow major swings were lesser voltage changes." These were weak potentials, measured in microvolts (millionths of a volt) and varying in waves of 2 to 30 cycles per minute, sort of a pianissimo "inner voice" in a three-part electrical fugue.
”
”
Robert O. Becker (The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life)
“
Cemetery Nights V
Wheel of memory, wheel of forgetting, bitter
taste in the mouth--those who have been dead longest
group together in the center of the graveyard
facing inward. The sooner they become dust the better.
They pick at their flesh and watch it crumble,
they chip at their bones and watch them dissolve.
Do they have memories? Just shadows in the mind
like a hand passing between a candle and a wall.
Those who have been dead a lesser time stand
closer to the fence, but already they have started
turning away. Maybe they still have some sadness.
And what are their thoughts? Colors mostly,
sunset, sunrise, a burning house, someone waving
from the flames. Those who have recently died
line up against the fence facing outward,
watching the mailman, deliverymen, the children
returning from school, listening to the church bells
dealing out the hours of the living day.
So arranged, the dead form a great spoked wheel--
such is the fiery wheel that rolls through heaven.
For the rats, nothing is more ridiculous
than the recently dead as they press against
the railing with their arms stuck between the bars.
Occassionally, one sees a friend, even a loved one.
Then what a shouting takes place as the dead
tries to catch the eye of the living. One actually
sees his wife waiting for a bus and reaches out
so close that he nearly touches her yellow hair.
During life they were great lovers. Maybe
he should throw a finger at her, something
to attract her attention. Like a scarecrow
in a stiff wind, the dead husband waves his arms.
Is she aware of anything? Perhaps a slight breeze
on an otherwise still day, perhaps a smell of earth.
And what does she remember? Sometimes, when
she sits in his favorite chair or drinks a wine
that he liked, she will recall his face but
much faded, like a favorite dress washed too often.
And her husband, what does he think? As a piece
of crumpled paper burns within a fire,
so the thought of her burns within his brain.
And where is she going? These days she has taken
a new lover and she's going to his apartment. Even
as she waits, she sees herself sitting on his bed
as he unfastens the buttons of her blouse.
He will cup her breasts in his hands. A sudden
breeze will invade the room, making the dust
motes dance and sparkle as if each bright
spot were a single sharp eyed intelligence,
as if the vast legion of the dead had come
with their unbearable jumble of envy and regret
to watch the man as he drops his head
presses his mouth to the erect nipple.
”
”
Stephen Dobyns
“
There are probably more of us. If we’re all zombies, then
there’s got to be more. I say we go up to the cemetery and find out.”
“Can we get soda on the way?”
Nothing washes down brains better than a can of Coca Cola and a little shameless product placement. (Hey, the undead do have an image problem.)
“Soda and cemeteries! Soda and cemeteries!” they chanted. “And braaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiins!”
“Hey Bernie, you’re getting pretty good at that.”
“Okay, you try.”
“Braaa—” the zombie belched, ”—aiiinsss.”
Earl heaved the coroner’s body out of the way. They headed off for the cemetery, each trying furiously to perfect their own, unique and personal call for brains like an undead choir, out of tune.
“Braaaaiiiiins!” “Braaiiiiiiiinns!” “Braaaaaaaaaains!” “Bray-uns.”
“That was just awful.” ...Away into the night.
”
”
Daniel Younger (Zen and the Art of Cannibalism: A Zomedy)
“
I want to start everything in New, what's the bad point??
I don't want to have problems with people which we can be friends or nothing, but not argue as before. What's the purpose what did you gain???
Points??
Money??
PS3???
Xbox???
Nothing just useless and making troubles with people, if we must discuss something let's to be about the fucking Bulgarian Schools, talk about them, I hate them as much as you hate them, I hate the Bulgarian as much as you hate them, I hate the fucking teachers in the fucking schools with which just have fucking problems. How can somebody joke with your spelling or with your mistakes for months????
...
What more to tell you???
That I'm sorry that I'm a Bulgarian guy, because I'm sorry, I can't live with this fucking people, what do they created???
Nothing just staying home and jerkoff non-stop, very creative!
And guest what happened???
Here come the "?" people which are terrorists in france and have killed a lot of people and here will be planed the same....,what more only the thought that somebody has graduated from the best school existed in Bulgaria and to have fails with the writing
like making so easy mistakes that nobody will make ever, to make mess on the sheets and many other things and this on very important day. A day in which you choose the president or the pre-minister or some kind like this, which is important.
I'm very sorry that I'm Bulgarian guy, I don't want to be the cases are this, I want to be an American or a guy from Great Britain, but whatever to be, but to know this language. All people use it, and we are the only people which or some others as one User said that France and Germany are also with the worst English in case that Germany words are like English, but little fucked like spelled and written different like
Sänger - singer
songster
schreiben
WOw, this is really fucked just look how arae spelled how are written little like joking with English, aren't they???
If they aren't okay, that's your opinion _ I don't have something against it!
If there was chance to be other race no matter what American guy or whatever ot to change my country ot my native language I will do it. If there is chance to and learn English, I go and learnt it without giving and shit about the fucking Bulgarian, I won't call my parents, friends and everything, just everything will be mainly for learning English the best way as possible. I fill fucked there are people which can't read, english, to don't talk about bulgarian, all day I'm seeing how mass media brain washes. I don't see how can be improved Bulgaria it's a fail I know why Adolf Hitler wanted to destroyed it and why Churchill Wanted also, I'm not sure about Churchill, but for HItler I'm sure that he wanted to kill us because of that, whatever you understand me what level we are as nation.
I hate the fucking Bulgarian people what to learn from them to joke with people badly???
Very Creative???
To jerkoff all time and to don't give a damn shit about the things around the world??
Or to be with friends which can't think or people which are so much stupid that I'm sorry about them...
Whatever, read it if you want if you don't want don't read it, but first check it before you block me.
Thank you I appreciate your reading!
”
”
Deyth Banger
“
I saw Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in the front window of a Filipino laundromat. He was sitting in his wheelchair with closed eyes staring out the window.
There was a tranquil expression on his face. He almost looked human. He had probably fallen asleep while he was having his brains washed in one of the machines.
(from "The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren", page 47)
”
”
Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar)
“
I heard many people saying "There is no God, its government's propaganda to brain washed people" So if there is no God, than why some elite people worship the Devil ?
”
”
Zybejta (Beta) Metani' Marashi
“
Many people believe that the most frequently washed body part in 2020-21 was the hands, but in reality; it was BRAIN.
”
”
Bhushan Mahadani
“
She is quiet, pretty in a washed-out way. She is, I think, devoted to her husband. She has something that Arlena Marshall did not have."
"What is that?"
"Brains.
”
”
Agatha Christie (Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot, #24))
“
Because more and more in the modern Internet era you came across isolated instances of a mind virus or worm: brains that self-washed, bathed in received ideologies that came down from on high, ideologies that could remain dormant or hidden for years, silent as death until they struck.
”
”
Jeff Vandermeer (Authority (Southern Reach #2))
“
Tap your heart, for heart is the tap,
Torrents of which will wash all hate away.
Map your brain, for brain is the map,
That'll direct us in the biasless way.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World)
“
For her, one gained freedom less by way of making demands than by quietly affirming oneself. For her, the only obstacles to the affirmation of one's freedom, to pleasure, to inventing one's life were those that one imagined or created for oneself.
Saint John's Day, which for me is still the most beautiful and magical day of the year, the mystery of the beginning of summer: every year, on 24 June, I celebrate within myself a holiday as solemn as Christmas or Easter, but much more secret.
A great part of her life had been spent rejecting that which the students of Paris and other Western capitals were revolting against in 1968: the civilization of "Take the subway-work all day- and hit the hay", of "the station wagon and the washing machine", of equating possessions with success.
Roaming the world to find out of reality resembled what she had imagined.
Between the immense heart of Asia and the inexhaustible African womb, Europe has the function of a brain.
The Asiatic dream of nonresistance to force, which is no more than an admission of being powerless to appropriate that force.
”
”
Josyane Savigneau (Marguerite Yourcenar, l'invention d'une vie)
“
Sitting at The Well allows us to move into our logical, emotionally regulating brain, and to receive His love, letting it wash over us, allowing us to feel calmer. The calmer we feel, the more we can focus on who He really is. The more we focus on who He really is, reminding ourselves of His truths, the calmer we are. The more we sit with Him, breathing in all of who He was and is, the less fear and shame we feel. We are free to focus on the truth that there is no guilt or shame that is bigger than the cross. His death covered all that has happened
”
”
Jeanne Brooks (Crisis Intervention: The Neurobiology of Crisis)
“
She’d seen his mother. Buddy set Dil on his mother’s bed, which she hadn’t used since he’d slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was watching an old Sean Connery movie twenty months before. She had only been living with him for six weeks then, but it had been six weeks too long. When he’d agreed to care for her, he’d had no idea what he was taking on. He’d figured a bit more cooking, cleaning, ironing, that kind of stuff. The reality was she pissed her bed every night, which meant he had to wash her linens and shower her each morning. Then he’d get home from work only to find she’d pissed herself again, often shitting herself too. Another shower, more laundry. Come dinner he didn’t get a break because the stroke, which had paralyzed much of her body, prevented her from feeding herself. So he’d have to pound her dinner into mush and spoon it into her mouth. In the evening she might signal she needed to use the bathroom instead of letting loose in her diaper. Nevertheless, getting her undressed, on the toilet, cleaning her up—fuck, it was easier to let her soil herself and hose her down in the shower. Needless to say, caring for her simply became too much. But killing her wasn’t the answer. Buddy knew that right after she took her last, agonized breath. Flooded with guilt at what he’d done, he began talking to her, apologizing to her, changing her, bathing her, all the old routines. When her stench became overpowering, he removed her lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, and brain, and treated her body with salt for forty days until no moisture remained. Then he filled the cavities with sawdust from a local
”
”
Jeremy Bates (The Midnight Book Club Super Box Set)
“
Disconnecting the call before Mimi could lambaste her further, she tossed the phone on the bed and darted for the bathroom. Her toe caught on the bedpost, sending a shot of pain through her foot and up her leg. Howling with righteous indignation, she called the bed a few choice names as she hobbled her way to the tub. Performing the world’s fastest strip down, she jumped into the shower and nearly slipped. “Holy fright,” she barked, catching herself on the handrail. Her brain was still groggy with sleep, her toe ached like a mofo, and she’d almost head-butted herself with the shower. This was clearly not her day. Like, at all. She needed a strong cup of coffee, STAT. And better karma. And apparently, a new alarm clock. Lathering the shampoo into her long, unruly curls, Evangeline replayed her evening. She had read for an hour before turning off the bedside lamp, and she distinctly remembered flipping the alarm to the on position. Having purchased the alarm clock radio at a secondhand store in what she thought was a great deal, she now figured it was past its prime, and she’d need to buy a new one when she got paid on Friday. Because who wouldn’t love to spend what little she earned on a new small appliance? After playing the lather-and-rinse game with the conditioner, she washed her body before carefully stepping from the shower to grab a towel. The last thing she needed was to do the splits across the linoleum floor. Her dang toe still throbbed to the tempo of an agitated mariachi band. After a quick towel drying that left her hair dripping rivulets down her back, she chose a blousy blue top, black gaucho pants, and a pair of ballet flats, which she managed to slip into without ripping, breaking, or slipping on anything.
”
”
Andris Bear (Enter the Witch: A Cozy Paranormal Mystery (Witches of Whisper Grove Book 1))
“
there.” Disconnecting the call before Mimi could lambaste her further, she tossed the phone on the bed and darted for the bathroom. Her toe caught on the bedpost, sending a shot of pain through her foot and up her leg. Howling with righteous indignation, she called the bed a few choice names as she hobbled her way to the tub. Performing the world’s fastest strip down, she jumped into the shower and nearly slipped. “Holy fright,” she barked, catching herself on the handrail. Her brain was still groggy with sleep, her toe ached like a mofo, and she’d almost head-butted herself with the shower. This was clearly not her day. Like, at all. She needed a strong cup of coffee, STAT. And better karma. And apparently, a new alarm clock. Lathering the shampoo into her long, unruly curls, Evangeline replayed her evening. She had read for an hour before turning off the bedside lamp, and she distinctly remembered flipping the alarm to the on position. Having purchased the alarm clock radio at a secondhand store in what she thought was a great deal, she now figured it was past its prime, and she’d need to buy a new one when she got paid on Friday. Because who wouldn’t love to spend what little she earned on a new small appliance? After playing the lather-and-rinse game with the conditioner, she washed her body before carefully stepping from the shower to grab a towel. The last thing she needed was to do the splits across the linoleum floor. Her dang toe still throbbed to the tempo of an agitated mariachi band. After a quick towel drying that left her hair dripping rivulets down her back, she chose a blousy blue top, black gaucho pants, and a pair of ballet flats, which she managed to slip into without ripping, breaking, or slipping on anything.
”
”
Andris Bear (Enter the Witch: A Cozy Paranormal Mystery (Witches of Whisper Grove Book 1))
“
He wouldn’t actually…” I pause. “Try anything, would he?” Images of Haze’s lips colliding with mine flash through my mind. I push the thought aside, trying to ignore the conflicted feelings washing over me. I need to sanitize my brain for thinking that.
”
”
Eliah Greenwood (Unwritten Rules (Rules #1))