Camera Roll Quotes

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We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others. We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
It's amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency." —George W. Bush, June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling.
George W. Bush
The work you put in when no one is watching will matter far more than the work you do when the cameras are rolling.
Leslie Odom Jr. (Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher, and Never Stop Learning)
I pushed myself forward and rose cautiously to my feet. A draft from the aft signaled that my dressing gown was open, but I didn't care. The nurses could take shots with their camera phones and upload them to their Flickr stream for all I cared, just so long as my face wasn't in it. A wave of dizziness rolled over me when I took a step, but it was one of those gentle rocking swells and not a thirty-foot-tall fist of Poseidon. I could do this. I shuffled over carefully and leaned against the nightstand for support as I opened the drawer. Then I nearly fell over when Granuaile spoke from behind me. "Nom nom nom!" she said. I looked around for the cookies she must be referring to and then realized, belatedly, that the room was bereft of delicious baked goods. The only thing on display was my backside, and apparently she thought it looked tasty.
Kevin Hearne (Tricked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #4))
A car whipped past, the driver eating and a passenger clicking a camera. Moving without going anywhere, taking a trip instead of making one. I laughed at the absurdity of the photographs and then realized I, too, was rolling effortlessly along, turning the windshield into a movie screen in which I, the viewer, did the moving while the subject held still. That was the temptation of the American highway, of the American vacation (from the Latin vacare, "to be empty").
William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways)
Emanuel barks back as we continue rolling the camera for editing shots. “I’m fully medicated!
Sharyl Attkisson (Stonewalled: One Reporter's Fight for Truth in Obama's Washington)
Since then he had taken these photos out too many times to count, but each time he looked into the face of this woman he had felt something growing inside him. It took him a long time to realize what it was. Only recently had his wounded synapses allowed him to name it. He had been falling in love all over again. He didn't understand how two people who were married, who saw each other every day, could forget what each other looked like, but if he had had to name what had happened- this was it. And the last two photos in the roll provided the key. He had come home from work- I remember trying to keep my mother's attention as Holiday barked when he had heard the car pull into the garage. 'He'll come out,' I said. 'Stay still.' And she did. Part of what I loved about photography was the power it gave me over the people on the other side of the camera, even my own parents. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father walk through the side door into the yard. He carried his slim briefcase, which, years before, Lindsey and I had heatedly investigated only to find very little of interest to us. As he set it down I snapped the last solitary photo of my mother. Already her eyes had begun to seem distracted and anxious, diving under and up into a mask somehow. In the next photo, the mast was almost, but not quite, in place and in the final photo, where my father was leaning slightly down to give her a kiss on the cheek- there it was. 'Did I do that to you?' he asked her image as he stared at the pictures of my mother, lined up in a row. 'How did that happen?' ~pgs 239-240; Mr. Salmon dealing with the three c's (for families of addicts)- Cause (you didn't cause it), Control (you can't control it), and Cure (you can't cure it)
Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
A few months earlier, when a state official named Bud Dwyer was similarly accused of corruption, he called a press conference, pulled out a gun and, as cameras rolled, blew his brains out. This led to an excellent local joke.
Bill Bryson (The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Bryson Book 12))
Here's a list of the things you'll need. I jotted it down in the parking lot." Keri unfolded the paper and read the list twice, trying to get a sense of what she was in for. BRING: Bug spray; jeans;T-shirts; several sweatshirts,at least one with a hood; one flannel shirt(mandatory); pajamas(optional); underwear(also optional); bathing suit(preferably skimpy); more bug spray; sneakers; waterproof boots; good socks; sunscreen; two rolls of quarters. DO NOT BRING: Cell phone; blackberry; laptop; camera,either still or video; alarm clock; voice recorder, or any other kind of electronic anything. She had no clue what it meant, other than Joe wanting her half naked and unable to text for help.
Shannon Stacey (Exclusively Yours (Kowalski Family, #1))
She sank with an enormous sigh that carried all rigidity like a mythical fluid from her, down next to him; so weak she couldn't help him undress her; it took him 20 minutes, rolling, arranging her this way and that, as if she thought, he were some scaled-up, short-haired, poker-faced little girl with a Barbie doll. She may have fallen asleep once or twice. She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she'd come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera's already moving. Outside a fugue of guitars had begun, and she counted each electronic voice as it came in, till she reached six or so and recalled only three of the Paranoids played guitars; so others must be plugging in.
Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)
True giving is not what goes on when the cameras are rolling-but what goes on in the heart.
Charmaine J. Forde
It’s the places in our government where the cameras never roll that you have to worry about most.
Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
Even after Shirakawa has left, our point of view remains in the lavatory, and, as a stationary camera, continues to capture the dark mirror. Shirakawa’s reflection is still there in the mirror. Shirakawa—or perhaps we should say his image—is looking in this direction from within the mirror. It does not move or change expression. It simply stares straight ahead. Eventually, however, as though giving up, it relaxes, takes a deep breath, and rolls its head. Then it brings its hand to its face and rubs its cheek a few times, as if checking for the touch of flesh.
Haruki Murakami (After Dark)
The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.
Margaret Atwood (Morning In The Burned House: Poems)
It's one thing to put on your nation's uniform to give your life for your country. But to dress up in black-market khakis and head into battle in a borrowed bush hat, armed only with a Nikon camera, 10 rolls of film and notebook, is definitely another thing.
Peter Arnett (Flash! The Associated Press Covers the World)
He braced his elbows on the desk,his brow on his fists. "She came shrieking across the court.I'd just hit a line drive,barely missed beaning her. Cameras rolling, and there I am trying to look my sixth-generational-hotelier best, the athletic yet intelligent, the world-traveled yet dedicated, the dashing yet concerned heir to the Templeton name." "You'd be good at that," Margo murmured, hoping to placate him. He didn't even look at her. "Suddenly I've got my arms full of this half-naked, spitting, swearing, clawing mass who's screaming that my sister, her lesbian companion, and my whore attacked her." He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping to relieve some pressure. "I figured out right away who my sister was. Though I didn't appreciate the term,I deduced you must be my whore.The lesbian companion might have stumped me,but for process of elimination." He lifted his head. "I was tempted to belt her,but I was too busy trying to keep her from ripping off my face." "It's such a nice face too." Hoping to soothe, she walked around the desk and sat on his lap. "I'm sorry she took it out on you." "She sratched me." He turned his head to show her the trio of angry welts on the side of his throat. Dutifully, Margo kissed them. "What am I going to do with you?" he asked wearily and rested his cheek on her head. Then he chuckled. "How the hell did you stuff her into one of those skinny lockers?" "It wasn't easy but it was fun." He narrowed his eyes. "You're not going to do it again,no matter what the provocation-unless you sedate her first." "Deal." Since the crisis seemed to have passed, she slipped a hand under his shirt, stroked it over his chest, watched his brow lift. "I've been waxed and polished.If you're interested." "Well,just so the day isn't a complete loss." He picked her up and carried her to the bed.
Nora Roberts (Daring to Dream (Dream Trilogy, #1))
mouth to continue, Haymitch plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious. He’s disgusting, but I’m grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on him, I have just enough time to release the small, choked sound in my throat and compose myself. I put my hands behind my back and stare into the distance. I can see the hills I climbed this morning with Gale. For a moment, I yearn for something . . . the idea of us leaving the district . . . making our way in the woods . . . but I know I was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Prim? Haymitch is whisked away on a stretcher, and Effie Trinket is trying to get the ball rolling again. “What an
Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
Did you forget the dressing room at the mall?” Forget? I have wet dreams involving that day. “That’s not my fault. You asked how you looked in those jeans.” “Good would have sufficed. Attempting to take them off wasn’t necessary.” “They did look good. Good enough that I wanted to touch, and then I wanted to touch more.” Echo laughs, and the sound warms my heart. “They have security cameras. People go to jail over stuff like that.” I roll onto my side and drape my leg over hers. “I had you covered from sight. Very covered.” Backed her up against the wall and covered her body with every inch of mine. That siren smile that I love so much crosses her face. Her fingers reach up and trace the line of my jaw. "You are the most impossible person I know.” “Damn straight.
Katie McGarry (Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5))
When Mantle faced the cameras for the last time a month before his death, he was a husk of a man, shrunken by cancer. The stiff brim of his 1995 All-Star Game cap dwarfed his brow. There was no Mantle Roll. He looked straight into the cameras and told us all, 'Don't be like me.' The transformation of The Mick parallels the transformation of American culture from willful innocence to knowing cynicism. To tell his story is to tell ours.
Jane Leavy (The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood)
Sophie stopped the taxi at an imposing gate that blocked the bank’s driveway—a cement-lined ramp that descended beneath the building. A video camera overhead was aimed directly at them, and Langdon had the feeling that this camera, unlike those at the Louvre, was authentic. Sophie rolled down the window and surveyed the electronic podium on the driver’s side. An LCD screen provided directions in seven languages. Topping the list was English.
Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2))
He opened the back of the Polaroid and slid in the roll of film while his family arranged themselves on the Argent sofa. The upholstery was the color of faded mint, a fine setting for their brown skin, but the camera only took black-and-white photos. John on Elizabeth’s lap, May beside them. May didn’t know how to smile yet—all instructions to do so summoned an unsettling, gum-heavy display that would not have been out of place on a Bowery bum sleeping it off in a vestibule. “Sit still,” Elizabeth said.
Colson Whitehead (Harlem Shuffle (Ray Carney, #1))
On a movie set, the cry is 'Back to one!' to alert the cast and extras to reset to their original positions before the camera is rolled for the next take. Whenever I arrived at a place where the film business felt uncomfortable or downright unsafe for me, the place I often returned to was the theater. Onstage, we trust the material works, we assume all the actors are genuinely talented, and the work itself is the focus, unencumbered by the bullshit that often interferes with moviemaking. Back to one indeed.
Alec Baldwin (Nevertheless)
Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly, and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning. When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. on November 8, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Do come in.” Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old-world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leaped to his feet. The television cameras rolled. What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.
Ben Macintyre (A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal)
On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!" We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in. "Get down! Get down!" he barked. "Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!" Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble. Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners. Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
The retaliation came in all varieties. One variety came largely from the Soviet soldiers. When they entered East Prussia in January, their propaganda officers hung up huge banners: ‘Soldier, you are now entering the lair of the fascist beast!’ The village of Nemmersdorf (now Mayakovskoya) was taken by the 2nd Red Army Guard, a few days later German troops launched a counteroffensive and entered the town again. They found bodies everywhere: refugees crushed under tanks, children shot in their gardens, raped women nailed to barn doors. The cameras rolled, the images were shown all over Germany: this is what happens when the Russians come in.
Geert Mak (In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century)
Everything old people say about time is true. For starters, it flies. As a kid living through semi-eternal summer vacations, this is hard to believe. But as an adult? Get married. Have children. And then sit back, stunned, watching an absolute roar of gorgeous moments and hilarious moments and exhausting moments disappear—quickly and in tragedy or marching off at the traditional pace, but disappear they must. Snap a photo or two. Read verses about futility. Watching one’s small humans age and grow up packs a serious punch. It’s like being stuck in a dream unable to speak, like being a ghost that can see but not touch, like standing on a huge grate while a storm rains oiled diamonds, like collecting feathers in a storm. Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace. No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold.
N.D. Wilson (Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent)
In the multi-camera TV room, one of the cameras zoomed on Vaishali. A confident Vaishali, with a determined face looked straight into the camera and said, “First let me clear up this misconception. I am not here to defend my father.” She paused for the message to sink in. It did. Everyone now looked at her with renewed interest. What was she here for? She continued, “I’m outraged. No doubt. Not because the media is vilifying him, but because he—my father—is vile. She, the nurse, must be what? My age? Or, a couple years older than me. And he molested her? That too, when my mother was sick and fighting for life in the next room. Chi! Nauseating.” She turned her face away from the camera as tears rolled down her eyes.
Hariharan Iyer (Surpanakha)
I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.
Claire Kohda (Woman, Eating)
I saw Mr. Prospero constantly, and always in distress; now soaked to the skin pathetically grinding the handle of his camera in an impenetrable pall of rain; now prostrate under the bare feet of a stampeding mob, like a football in a rugger scrum, now lamed, now groaning with indigestion, now shuddering in high fever. He became a figure from classic tragedy, inexorably hunted by hostile fates. After we had been in Addis Ababa some time a copy of a poster arrived from America advertising his news reel. It represented a young man of military appearance and more than military intrepidity standing calmly behind his camera while bombs burst overhead and naked warriors rolled interlocked about his knees. In vast letters across this scene of carnage was printed : " O.K., BOYS, YOU CAN START THE WAR NOW PROSPERO IS THERE.
Evelyn Waugh (Waugh in Abyssinia (From Our Own Correspondent))
Hoping to settle the wheelchair matter once and for all, Graham dragged his chief of construction, his chief of architecture, and a film crew out to Dulles Airport, whose escalators were approximately the same width as those planned for Metro. There he produced a variety of braces and crutches. As the cameras rolled, Graham rode up and down the escalators using one aid after another, climaxing by riding both directions in a wheelchair, facing up each time. Graham clearly believed he had proved beyond doubt that 'it is entirely possible, easily and safely, for wheelchair travelers to use escalators.' His aides watched in disbelief; a fit and fearless major general in his fifties hardly represented the disabled population, whatever braces he strapped to his legs. All he had proved, concluded the WMATA architect Sprague Thresher, was that 'if everybody who had to use a wheelchair was Jack Graham, we wouldn't need elevators.
Zachary M. Schrag (The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Creating the North American Landscape))
What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!
Edward Abbey
Stay,” Pauline said. Her eyes were almost feverishly bright, and Mia wanted to rise and fold Pauline into her arms. But Pauline waved her to sit and held up her camera. “Please,” she said. “I want to take both of you.” She took a whole roll, one exposure after another, and then Mal came out with a pot of tea and a shawl for Pauline’s shoulders, and Pauline put the camera away. By the time Mia boarded the plane back to San Francisco that evening, Pearl in her arms, she had forgotten all about it. “Do what it takes,” Pauline had said to her as she had hugged her good-bye. For the first time, she had kissed Mia on the cheek. “I’m expecting great things from you.” Her use of the present tense—as if this were just an ordinary good-bye, as if she, Pauline, had every expectation of watching Mia’s career unfurl before her over decades—penned Mia’s voice in her throat. She had pulled Pauline close and breathed her in, her particular scent of lavender and eucalyptus, and turned away again before Pauline could see her cry.
Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere)
Spill-what’s the deal with Hottie McDreamMan?” “Sage?” I laughed. “No, I mean Minister Sanders.” She threw a pillow at me. “Of course I mean Sage! He’s the one, right? The guy from your dreams. Oh my God-he’s real and he’s hot! Does he kiss as well in real life as he did in your dreams?” “I wouldn’t know,” I admitted. “We haven’t kissed.” “What are you waiting for?” “So the whole randomly-popping-up-in-pictures thing doesn’t bother you?” “Nope.” “The whole strange-cultists-chasing-after-him? That doesn’t bother you either?” “Nobody’s perfect, Clea.” “How about if I told you he might be a serial killer? Would that bother you?” “Debatable. Elaborate.” I told her about the nightmares and about what I’d seen in his house. As I unrolled the story, her expression went from flip and giddy to openmouthed and riveted. “Oh my God, Clea.” “Crazy, right? And I still have no idea how he got into all those pictures.” “That part’s easy.” “Really?” “Of course,” she said. “You’re soulmates. “Rayna…” “Fine, I know, you don’t like that word. But you can’t possibly deny that you have a deep, powerful soul connection. By definition you have that. You said yourself, he found you in four different countries and four different times. Out of all the people in the world at any given time, he found you. The only possible way he could have done that is if your souls were connected. He’s a soul-seeking missile.” “But he told me he wasn’t there for any of the pictures.” “Yes, he was! Don’t you get it, Clea? Your souls are connected-he’s always with you, whether he’s there physically or not. And you’re the one who told me about cameras capturing people’s souls, right? So that’s what it’s doing-capturing the soul that’s always with you, because you’re always connected. It’s very romantic.” I thought about what she said, ignoring the last sentence because I knew by now that everything was very romantic to Rayna. “Okay,” I ceded, “I’ll give you the connection. But what about the serial killer thing? What fi we’re connected because he tracks these women down, acts like he loves them, and then kills them?” “Kills you. You’re them.” “Yeah, thanks, that’s a much nicer way to put it,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Hilary Duff (Elixir (Elixir, #1))
After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all. Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass. Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags. Someone has to drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone has to glaze a window, rehang a door. Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war. We’ll need the bridges back, and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up. Someone, broom in hand, still recalls the way it was. Someone else listens and nods with unsevered head. But already there are those nearby starting to mill about who will find it dull. From out of the bushes sometimes someone still unearths rusted-out arguments and carries them to the garbage pile. Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing. In the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds.
Wislawa Symborsky
A chair down the row from mine shifted and my mouth watered from the aroma of hot cinnamon rolls. I snuck a peek and noticed red, silky, curly hair. I knew her. Echo Emerson. Not a cinnamon roll in sight, but damn if she didn’t smell like one. We had several of our main courses together and last semester one of our free periods. I didn’t know much about her other than she kept to herself, she was smart, a redhead and she had big tits. She wore large, long-sleeved shirts that hung off her shoulders and tank tops underneath that revealed just enough to get the fantasies flowing. Like always, she stared straight ahead as if I didn’t exist. Hell, I probably didn’t exist in her mind. People like Echo Emerson irritated the crap out of me. “You’ve got a f*cked-up name,” I mumbled. I didn’t know why I wanted to rattle her, I just did. “Shouldn’t you be getting high in the bathroom?” So she did know me. “They installed security cameras. We do it in the parking lot now.” “My bad.” Her foot rocked frantically back and forth. Good, I’d succeeded in getting under that perfect facade. “Echo … echo … echo …” Her foot stopped rocking and red curls bounced furiously as she turned to face me. “How original. I’ve never heard that before.” She swept up her backpack and left the office. Her tight ass swayed side to side as she marched down the hallway.
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
I thought about the aftermath of the 1862 war, when thirty-eight hastily condemned warriors had been hung in Mankato, in the country's largest-ever mass execution. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves and then dug up for study by local doctors, including Dr. Mayo, who kept the body of Cut Nose for his personal examination. I thought about my father losing his teaching job, about his struggle with depression and drinking. About how angry he was that our history was not taught in schools. Instead, we had to battle sports mascots and stereotypes. Movie actors in brownface. Tourists with cameras. Welfare lines. Alcoholism. 'After stealing everything,' he would rage, 'now they want to blame us for it, too.' Social services broke up Native families, sending children like me to white foster parents. Every week, the newspapers ran stories about Indians who rolled their cars while drunk or the rise of crack cocaine on the reservations or somebody's arrest for gang-related crimes. No wonder so many Native kids were committing suicide. But there was so much more to the story of the run. What people didn't see because they chose never to look. Unlike the stone monument in New Ulm, built to memorialize the settlers' loss with angry pride, the Dakhota had created a living, breathing memorial that found healing in prayer and ceremony. What the two monuments shared, however, was remembering. We were all trying to find a way through grief.
Diane Wilson (The Seed Keeper)
But if you, like poor old Rolling Stone’s nonprofessional, have come to a point on the Trail where you’ve started fearing your own cynicism every bit as much as you fear your credulity and the salesmen who feed on it, you’re apt to find your thoughts returning again and again to a certain dark and box-sized cell in a certain Hilton half a world and three careers away, to the torture and fear and offer of reprieve and a certain Young Voter named McCain’s refusal to violate a Code. There were no techs’ cameras in that box, no aides or consultants, no paradoxes or gray areas; nothing to sell. There was just one guy and whatever in his character sustained him. This is a huge deal. In your mind, that Hoa Lo box becomes sort of a dressing room with a star on the door, the private place behind the stage where one imagines “the real John McCain” still lives. And but now the paradox here is that this box that makes McCain “real” is: impenetrable. Nobody gets in or out. That’s why, however many behind-the-scenes pencils get put on the case, be apprised that a “profile” of John McCain is going to be just that: one side, exterior, split and diffracted by so many lenses there’s way more than one man to see. Salesman or leader or neither or both: the final paradox—the really tiny central one, way down deep inside all the other campaign puzzles’ spinning cubes and squares and boxes that layer McCain—is that whether he’s “for real” depends now less on what’s in his heart than on what might be in yours. Try to stay awake.
David Foster Wallace (Up, Simba!)
Gina flopped back on her cot, arm up over her eyes. “Oh, my God, Molly, what am I going to do? The fact that he came here tonight at all is . . . He’s clearly interested, but that’s probably just because he thinks I’m a total perv.” “Whoa,” Molly said. “Wait. You lost me there.” Gina sat up, a mix of earnestness, horror, and amusement on her pretty face. “I didn’t tell you this, but after I first spoke to Lucy’s sister—we were in the shower tent so no one would see us—I let her leave first and then I waited, like, a minute, thinking we shouldn’t be seen leaving the tent together. And before I go, he came in.” He. “Leslie Pollard?” Molly clarified. Gina nodded. “I freaked out when I saw him coming, and it’s stupid, I know, but I hid. And I should have just waited until I heard the shower go on, but God, maybe he wouldn’t have pulled the curtain, because he obviously thought he was in there alone . . .” Molly started to laugh. “Oh my.” “Yeah,” Gina said. “Oh my. So I decide to run for it, only he’s not in one of the changing booths, he’s over by the bench, you know?” Molly nodded. The bench in the main part of the room. “In only his underwear,” Gina finished, with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, my God.” “Really? Molly asked. Apparently Jones was taking his change of identity very seriously. He hated wearing underwear of any kind, but obviously he thought it wouldn’t be in character for Leslie Pollard to go commando. “Boxers or briefs?” Gina gave her a look, but she was starting to laugh now, too, thank goodness. “Briefs. Very brief briefs.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, my God, Molly, he was . . . I think he showers at noon because he knows no one else will be in there, so he can, you know, have an intimate visit with Mr. Hand.” Oh, dear. “And now I know, and he knows I know, and he also probably thinks I lurk in the men’s shower,” Gina continued. “And the fact that he actually came to tea tonight, instead of hiding from me, in his tent, forever, means . . . something awful, don’t you think? Did I mention he has, like, an incredible body?” Molly shook her head. Oh dear. “No.” “Yes,” Gina said just a little too grimly, considering the topic. “Who would’ve guessed that underneath those awful shirts he’s a total god? And maybe that’s what’s freaking out the most.” “You mean because . . . you’re attracted to him?” Molly asked. “No!” Gina said. “God! Because I’m not. I felt nothing. I’m standing there and he’s . . . You know how I said he reminds me of Hugh Grant?” Molly nodded, too relieved to speak. “Well, I got the wrong Hugh. This guy is built like Hugh Jackman. And beneath the hats and sunblock and glasses, he’s actually got cheekbones and a jaw line, too. I’m talking total hottie. And, yes, I can definitely appreciate that on one level, but . . .” She glanced over at the desk, at her digital camera. She’d gotten it out of her trunk earlier today. Which, Molly had learned, meant that she’d spent more time this afternoon looking at her saved pictures. Which included at least a few of Max. Molly’s relief over not having to deal with the complications of Gina having a crush on Leslie felt a whole lot less good. She wished someone would just go ahead and steal Gina’s camera already. Maybe that would help her move on.
Suzanne Brockmann (Breaking Point (Troubleshooters, #9))
It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.
Alyson Noel (Fated (Soul Seekers, #1))
The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.
Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
Clingmans Dome in the middle of the park. Then, it’s downhill to Virginia, and people have told me Virginia is a cakewalk. I’ll learn soon enough that “easy” trail beyond the Smoky Mountains is as much a fantasy as my dream lunch with pizza…uh, I mean Juli, but for now I’ve convinced myself all will be well once I get through the Smokies. I leave Tray Mountain Shelter at 1:00 with ten miles to go. I’ve eaten the remainder of my food. I’ve been hiking roughly two miles per hour. Downhill is slower due to my sore knee. I need to get to Hiawassee by 6:00 p.m., the check-in deadline at Blueberry Patch Hostel, where my mail drop is waiting.5 I have little margin, so I decide to push for a while. I down a couple of Advil and “open it up” for the first time this trip. In the next hour I cover 3.5 miles. Another 1.5 miles and I am out of water, since I skipped all the side trails leading to streams. Five miles to go, and I’m running out of steam. Half the strands of muscle in my legs have taken the rest of the day off, leaving the other half to do all the work. My throat is dry. Less than a mile to go, a widening stream parallels the trail. It is nearing 6:00, but I can handle the thirst no longer. There is a five-foot drop down an embankment to the stream. Hurriedly I drop my pack and camera case, which I have clipped over the belt of my pack. The camera starts rolling down the embankment, headed for the stream. I lunge for it and miss. It stops on its own in the nook of a tree root. I have to be more careful. I’m already paranoid about losing or breaking gear. Every time I resume hiking after a rest, I stop a few steps down the trail and look back for anything I may have left behind. There’s nothing in my pack that I don’t need. Finally, I’m
David Miller (AWOL on the Appalachian Trail)
So before you pass judgment on this cake, maybe take a look at yourself and what's going on in your own screwed-up life that's given you a warped perspective on an innocent, beautiful, phenomenal in every way----" I lay a hand on Benny's shoulder and when he turns toward me, his mouth falls open in a perfect circle, dark eyebrows wrinkling his forehead under his cap. He is flushed and startled and so, so handsome. It's the first time I've looked at his face since we were on a city sidewalk and I was walking away from him and goodness, I've missed it. "Sounds like a pretty good cake," I manage with a soft smile. "The best," he breathes. I step closer still, just a few inches from him now. "I'm a little sweeter on the baker, to be honest." His eyes close and his chin tips down for just a moment, and he exhales on a laugh before looking at me with so much warmth and intensity. "You have no idea how it is to hear that," he murmurs, and then he's kissing me hard, one hand in my hair and the other wrapping around my waist to pull me to him. I bring my arms up around his shoulders, barely registering the cheers and applause in the packed kitchen before I pull the cap off Benny's head. I hold it up to cover our faces from the camera, as our kiss goes on much longer than I'd ever want my mama to see. When we break apart, Benny whispers, "I love you, Reese. And I'm sorry for not making that totally clear before now. I want to be with you, and support you, and fight for you----" "I love you, Benny." I hadn't said it out loud before, for fear that this would end and I'd be heartbroken. But it appears that will not be the case. And I'm so, so certain that I love him. "Woo!" he shouts, lifting me by the waist and twirling me around. Then, since the camera is still rolling---perhaps a sense of "what do we really have to lose at this point?" on Charlie's part---he yells, "I LOVE REESE CAMDEN! Who wants cake?
Kaitlyn Hill (Love from Scratch)
Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7
Robert Spencer (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades))
When I finally calmed down, I saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt. I decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through. “Maybe it’s not that bad,” I said. (I think I was trying to cheer myself up as much as I was trying to console Chip.) “If we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water, at least maybe then we can turn around, sell it, and get our money back.” Over the course of the next hour or so, I really started to come around. I took another walk through the boat and started to picture how we could make it livable--maybe even kind of cool. After all, we’d conquered worse. We tore a few things apart right then and there, and I grabbed some paper and sketched out a new layout for the tiny kitchen. I talked to him about potentially finishing an accent wall with shiplap--a kind of rough-textured pine paneling that fans of our show now know all too well. “Shiplap?” Chip laughed. “That seems a little ironic to use on a ship, doesn’t it?” “Ha-ha,” I replied. I was still not in the mood for his jokes, but this is how Chip backs me off the ledge--with his humor. Then I asked him to help me lift something on the deck, and he said, “Aye, aye, matey!” in his best pirate voice, and slowly but surely I came around. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but by the end of that afternoon I was actually a little bit excited about taking on such a big challenge. Chip was still deflated that he’d allowed himself to get duped, but he put his arm around me as we started walking back to the truck. I put my head on his shoulder. And the camera captured the whole thing--just an average, roller-coaster afternoon in the lives of Chip and Joanna Gaines. The head cameraman came jogging over to us before we drove away. Chip rolled down his window and said sarcastically, “How’s that for reality TV?” We were both feeling embarrassed that this is how we had spent our last day of trying to get this stinkin’ television show. “Well,” the guy said, breaking into a great big smile, “if I do my job, you two just landed yourself a reality TV show.” What? We were floored. We couldn’t believe it. How was that a show? But lo and behold, he was right. That rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
When I approached him a second time with the cameras rolling, Munson grabbed the microphone and suggested I perform a physical impossibility.
Jim Bouton (Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics))
Abruptly the drumbeat softens into heartbeat. The camera becomes his eye. This was what had summoned him—a human heart beating from within a ripped-off, rolled-up tiny piece of cloth. A discarded newborn. Black. A useless, half-dead, famished, thrown-away boy. The madwoman’s? No, she’s beyond childbearing years. He approaches, his steps making no sound at all. When he reaches down to turn it over, the thing quivers. Suddenly Milo’s brain fills with a soft cascade of men and women’s voices from the past in French and English, German and Dutch, Cree and Gaelic. They gurgle and babble and blend as he stares at the unwanted infant. Is it breathing? Yes,
Nancy Huston (Black Dance)
This was like when you went tubing on the river and you drifted along, eyes closed, face turned up toward the sun, relaxed, warm and cold at the same time, aware of every sensation, fingers trailing behind in the murky water. Like each moment mattered, time caught in a mental camera roll, captured in sparkling perfection, time slow and easy, yet disappearing faster than you could have ever imagined.
Erin MacCarthy
A surprise isn't a surprise if you blow it ahead of time." She shook her head. "That sounds a lot like 'a wish won't come true unless you say it out loud.'" The words were out of her mouth before she could bit them back. The last thing she needed was for either of them to be thinking about their real-life kiss in this land of make-believe. With a hint of a grin, Trent lifted her chin with his fingers and smoothed the pad of his thumb across her lips. "And look how well that worked out for me." Cyn's heart surged, her pulse rushing like the water over the falls. Was he going to kiss her again? Trent pulled her close, anchoring her against him on the slippery rocks. He threaded his fingers through her hair, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her lightly, tentatively. Cyn tensed a moment, then relaxed as she gave in and pressed her palms to his pecs, grasping handfuls of firm muscle. The camera was rolling, after all, but it wouldn't capture the sparks firing through her. She'd replayed the wish-upon-a-star kiss in her mind so many times, thinking how incredible it was with Trent - that elusive chemistry she hadn't found with anyone else. But as the weeks had passed, she'd wondered if she imagined it. This kiss made her believe that she hadn't. The softness of his lips. The sensual sweep of his tongue. The pressure of his hand at the small of her back. His skin was warm and wet against hers. She was nearly dizzy with sensation as he trailed light kisses along her jawline and whispered in her ear. "Even better than last time.
Tracy March (The Marriage Match (Suddenly Smitten, #3))
Would we be tormenting ourselves over the Kennedy assassination today if fifty cameras had been rolling, instead of just poor Abraham Zapruder’s?
David Brin (The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us To Choose Between Privacy And Freedom?)
One day a fellow countryman from Valencia, Jorge Esteban, arrived to stay with the sisters. He had a travel agency back home and was driving around West Africa collecting materials for a tourist brochure. Jorge was a cheerful, merry, energetic man, naturally convivial. He felt at home everywhere, at ease with everyone. He spent only one day with us. He paid no heed to the scorching sun; the heat only seemed to energize him. He unpacked a bag full of cameras, lenses, filters, rolls of film, and began walking around the street, chatting with people, joking, making various sorts of promises. That done, he placed his Canon on a tripod, took out a loud referee’s whistle, and blew it. I was looking out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. Instantly, the street filled with people. In a matter of seconds they formed a large circle and began to dance. I don’t know where the children came from. They had empty cans, which they beat rhythmically. Everyone was keeping the rhythm, clapping their hands and stomping their feet. People woke up, the blood flowed again through their veins, they became animated. Their pleasure in this dance, their happiness in finding themselves alive again, was palpable. Something started to happen in this street, around them, within them. The walls of the houses moved, the shadows stirred. More and more people joined the ring of dancers, which grew, swelled, and accelerated. The crowd of onlookers was also dancing, the whole street, everyone. Colorful bou-bous, white djellabahs, blue turbans, all were swaying. There is no asphalt or pavement here, so billows of dust soon began to rise above the dancers, dark, thick, hot, choking, and these clouds, just like ones from a raging fire, drew more people still from the surrounding areas. Before long the entire neighborhood was shimmying, shaking, partying—right in the middle of the worst, most debilitating and unbearable noontime heat. Partying? No, this was something different, something bigger, something loftier and more important. You had only to look at the faces of the dancers. They were attentive, listening intently to the loud rhythm the children beat on their tin cans, concentrating, so that the sliding of their feet, the swaying of their hips, the turns of their arms, and the bobbing of their heads corresponded to it. And they looked determined, decisive, alive to the significance of this moment in which they were able to express themselves, participate, prove their presence. Idle and superfluous all day long, all at once they had become visible, needed, and important. They existed. They created.
Ryszard Kapuściński (The Shadow of the Sun)
No garden can aspire to be named An Old-fashioned Garden unless it contains that beautiful plant the Garden Valerian, known throughout New England to-day as Garden Heliotrope; as Setwall it grew in every old garden, as it was in every pharmacopœia. It was termed "drink-quickening Setuale" by Spenser, from the universal use of its flowers to flavor various enticing drinks. Its lovely blossoms are pinkish in bud and open to pure white; its curiously penetrating vanilla-like fragrance is disliked by many who are not cats. I find it rather pleasing of scent when growing in the garden, and not at all like the extremely nasty-smelling medicine which is made from it, and which has been used for centuries for "histerrick fits," and is still constantly prescribed to-day for that unsympathized-with malady. Dr. Holmes calls it, "Valerian, calmer of hysteric squirms." It is a stately plant when in tall flower in June; my sister had great clumps of bloom like the ones shown above, but alas! the cats caught them before the photographer did. The cats did not have to watch the wind and sun and rain, to pick out plates and pack plate-holders, and gather ray-fillers and cloth and lens, and adjust the tripod, and fix the camera and focus, and think, and focus, and think, and then wait—till the wind ceased blowing. So when they found it, they broke down every slender stalk and rolled in it till the ground was tamped down as hard as if one of our lazy road-menders had been at it. Valerian has in England as an appropriate folk name, "Cats'-fancy.
Alice Morse Earle (Old-Time Gardens Newly Set Forth)
March 8: Love Happy is released. Marilyn’s total screen time is thirty-eight seconds—long enough for Groucho to respond to her slinking into his detective agency office with the question, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He promptly responds, “What a ridiculous statement.” Marilyn tells him that men keep following her and sways out of camera range as Groucho comments, “Really? I can’t understand why.” Marilyn later recalled, “There were three girls there and Groucho had us each walk away from him. . . . I was the only one he asked to do it twice. Then he whispered in my ear, ‘You have the prettiest ass in the business.’ I’m sure he meant it in the nicest way.” Groucho later said Marilyn was “Mae West, Theda Bara and Bo Peep rolled into one.” Marilyn received $500 for her appearance and another three hundred to pose for promotional photographs. Marilyn is sent on a promotional tour for a fee of one hundred dollars a week. She meets dress manufacturer Henry Rosenfeld in New York City, and they become lifelong friends. During this period she also does her famous Jones Beach photo sessions with Andre de Dienes. The tour takes her to Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Rockford, Illinois. Marilyn attends a party at the Chicago nightclub Ricketts with Roddy McDowell. Marilyn appears in print advertisement for Kyron diet pills, with accompanying text: “If you want slim youthful lines like Miss Monroe and other stars, start the KYRON Way to slenderness—today!
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
Moreover, not unlike presidential candidates who hold babies up in the air as soon as the cameras are rolling, male chimps vying for power develop a sudden interest in infants, which they hold and tickle in order
Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)
Almost as soon as we got our baby home, we packed her up to leave. Bindi was six days old when she embarked on her first film shoot (actually, her second, if you count filming her birth). Steve, Bindi, and I headed off for the United States, with a stop first at Australia’s Double Island to film turtles. We drove through the Double Island sand dunes, spending a day filming on the area’s spectacular beaches. Bindi did marvelously. Some of the four-wheel driving was a bit rough, so I would lean over her capsule in the back of the four-wheel drive, helping to hold her head, so that the bouncing of the truck wouldn’t jostle her around too much. Once we arrived on location, she was absolutely content. Fraser, one of the assistants on the shoot, stayed with Bindi while Steve and I filmed. Then we’d walk around behind the camera to hug and kiss her, and I could feed her. She didn’t squeak or squawk. I swear she seemed to keep quiet when John called out “Rolling!
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
We left the beach to track Tasmanian snakes inland. Steve was feeling particularly protective of me. “Whatever you do, don’t grab any of these snakes,” he said. “They are all venomous here in Tasmania. You are pregnant and you’ve got to be careful.” “No problem,” I said. But it did turn out to be difficult just to watch. Over and over again, Steve got to wrangle a gorgeous venomous snake as the crew filmed. I wanted some of the action! After a few days of this, we tramped through the bush and encountered a great big tiger snake. It glistened in the sun at the edge of a stream. Steve turned around and motioned to the cameraman to start rolling. We made minimal movements and whispered, even though snakes have no ears and can’t hear (instead they sense vibrations). We approached the tiger snake as it drank in the stream. It raised its head slightly. It knew we were there. My heart started pounding, but I had made a decision. I knew we had one take with this snake. Once we disturbed it, it would never go back to drinking, and the shot would be lost. I moved forward, waddling my pregnant body in behind the snake, and tailed him. He was a huge snake, but slow and gentle, just as I had anticipated. I told the camera all about tigers, how they could give birth to thirty young at once, and how the Tasmanian tiger snakes are special, tolerating some of the coldest weather in the country. As I let the snake go, I looked sheepishly back at Steve. His eyes had grown large, and he didn’t say a word. I’m not entirely sure if he was angry with me. I think he realized that I was still the same old Terri, even though I was pregnant.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Along with John and Judi, we took a big risk and started filming on the movie before we had a contract signed with MGM. There didn’t seem to be any choice. I imagined all the insurance underwriters across the world reacting to the phrase “live crocodiles.” Those two words would be enough to blow them right out of their cubicles. So we began shooting with our zoo crocodiles, but without signatures on the dotted line for the movie. A particular scene in the script--and a good example of an insurance man’s nightmare--had a crocodile trying to lunge into a boat. Only Steve’s expertise could make this happen, since the action called for Steve and me to be in the boat at the time. If the lunging crocodile happened to hook his head over the edge of the boat, he would tip us both into the water. That would be a one-way trip. “How are you going to work it?” I asked Steve. “Get the crocs accustomed to the dinghy first,” he said. “Then I’ll see if I can get them interacting with me while I’m in the boat.” First he tried Agro, one of our biggest male crocs. Agro was too wary of the boat. He’s a smart crocodile. I think he remembered back when he was captured. He didn’t want any of it. We decided to try with our friend Charlie. Charlie had been very close to ending up at a farm, his skin turned into boots, bags, and belts. He definitely had attitude. He spent a lot of his time trying to kill everything within range. Steve felt good about the possibility of Charlie having a go. Because he was filming a movie and not shooting a documentary, John had a more complex setup than usual, utilizing three thirty-five-millimeter cameras. Each one would film in staggered succession, so that the film magazine changes would never happen all at once. There would never be a time when film was not rolling. We couldn’t very well ask a crocodile to wait while a fresh mag was loaded into a camera. “You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Because he was filming a movie and not shooting a documentary, John had a more complex setup than usual, utilizing three thirty-five-millimeter cameras. Each one would film in staggered succession, so that the film magazine changes would never happen all at once. There would never be a time when film was not rolling. We couldn’t very well ask a crocodile to wait while a fresh mag was loaded into a camera.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
One evening Steve and I didn’t feel like cooking, and we had ordered a pizza. I noticed that I was a bit leaky, but when you are enormously pregnant, all kinds of weird things happen with your body. I didn’t pay any particular attention. The next day I called the hospital. “You should come right in,” the nurse told me over the phone. Steve was fairly nearby, on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, filming bull sharks. I won’t bother him, I thought. I’ll just go in for a quick checkup. “If everything checks out okay,” I told them at the hospital, “I’ll just head back.” The nurse looked to see if I was serious. She laughed. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “You’re having a baby.” I called Steve. He came up from the Gold Coast as quickly as he could, after losing his car keys, not remembering where he parked, and forgetting which way home was in his excitement. When he arrived at the hospital, I saw that he had brought the whole camera crew with him. John was just as flustered as anyone but suggested we film the event. “It’s okay with me,” Steve said. I was in no mood to argue. I didn’t care if a spaceship landed on the hospital. Each contraction took every bit of my attention. When they finally wheeled me into the delivery room at about eight o’clock that night, I was so tired I didn’t know how I could go on. Steve proved to be a great coach. He encouraged me as though it were a footy game. “You can do it, babe,” he yelled. “Come on, push!” At 9:46 p.m., a little head appeared. Steve was beside himself with excitement. I was in a fog, but I clearly remember the joy on his face. He helped turn and lift the baby out. I heard both Steve and doctor announce simultaneously, “It’s a girl.” Six pounds and two ounces of little baby girl. She was early but she was fine. All pink and perfect. Steve cut the umbilical cord and cradled her, gazing down at his newborn daughter. “Look, she’s our little Bindi.” She was named after a crocodile at the zoo, and it also fit that the word “bindi” was Aboriginal for “young girl.” Here was our own young girl, our little Bindi. I smiled up at Steve. “Bindi Sue,” I said, after his beloved dog, Sui. Steve gently handed her to me. We both looked down at her in utter amazement. He suddenly scooped her up in the towels and blankets and bolted off. “I’ve got a baby girl!” he yelled, as he headed down the hall. The doctor and midwives were still attending to me. After a while, one of the midwives said nervously, “So, is he coming back?” I just laughed. I knew what Steve was doing. He was showing off his beautiful baby girl to the whole maternity ward, even though each and every new parent had their own bundle of joy. Steve was such a proud parent. He came back and laid Bindi beside me. I said, “I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t been here.” “Yes, you could have.” “No, I really needed you here.” Once again, I had that overwhelming feeling that as long as we were together, everything would be safe and wonderful. I watched Bindi as she stared intently at her daddy with dark, piercing eyes. He gazed back at her and smiled, tears rolling down his cheeks, with such great love for his new daughter. The world had a brand-new wildlife warrior.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Quattro" Only for a piece of broken glass I will be there waiting For it Always Taken to another place Where I see it happen Bear witness to a spectacular Spectacle One day we'll be up as gods on high That praise the beats of undeniable bliss And kiss the stars of harmony gone blind But all of this could be averted All of this could be unearthed We could go get gowns, spread loss And force invisible lines and flaws Take our time, and hurry up to die Save it all or try, try, try To be free, to be us To be something real to us Catered affairs, daytime nightmares Standing on chairs three nights straight County fairs, I said "who cares?" And what he wears ain't that great Freight train antics, slick camera tricks Forty licks and I'm alright Late night comics, black and white flicks White trash hicks on TV tonight, alright Living with weak CD compilations Driving downtown again Pop culture confrontations Eye rolling people spend Forgotten dates, old dinner plates Rush the gates and we'll let you in What she hates is how he waits And fifty states are wrong again Limousine got no time for you Limousine got no time for you Dollar bills soaked up red wine for you Dollar bills soaked up red, white and blue Living with weak CD compilations Driving downtown again Pop culture confrontations Eye rolling people spend Forgotten dates, old dinner plates Rush the gates and we'll let you in What she hates is how he waits And fifty states are wrong again
Born Ruffians
While Prowse, given his penchant for revealing secrets, was kept in the dark, Hamill was debriefed by Lucas and then Kershner, who called over the actor not long before cameras rolled: “I met with Mark, and said, ‘Uh, you know that Darth Vader’s your father.’ ‘Wha—?’ ‘David Prowse will be saying stuff that doesn’t count, forget it. Use your own rhythm compared to what he’s doing.’ ” “They took me aside and said, ‘This is what he’s going to say,’ ” Hamill says. “ ‘You don’t know the truth, Obi-Wan killed your father.’ ” “I told Mark, ‘Don’t tell anybody—especially don’t tell David Prowse—but I want you to be able to know, to be able to act appropriately,’ ” Lucas says. “And then Kersh worked the scene with him.” “I love when Darth Vader says, ‘The only way you’ll ever beat me is with hate,’ ” Kershner says. “It’s a lie and the kids know it. The last thing Ben says is, ‘Remember, don’t use hate.’ It’s the most important thing in the film.
J.W. Rinzler (The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition))
Every once in a while goannas sauntered right through camp. As I chopped vegetables that first night, a big lacey showed up. “Grab it,” Steve said to me. I dropped what I was doing and picked up the lizard. John and his crew went into action. I told the camera everything I knew about lace monitors. “Lace monitors are excellent tree climbers,” I said. “They can grow up to seven feet long, but this guy looks to be between four and five feet.” I spoke about the lizard’s predatory nature and diet. Meanwhile, the star of the show flicked his forked tongue in and out. After we got some footage, I put the huge lizard down, and Steve leaned his head into the camera frame to have a last word. “And they’ve also got teeth like a tiger shark, mate,” he said with relish. “They can tear you to ribbons!” “Thanks a lot,” I said, laughing, after John stopped filming. “You should have told me that before I picked the bloody thing up!” It was a brave new world that I found myself in. At night I would hear the sounds of the fruit bats as they came into the trees. Also in the mix were the strange, far-off grunts of the koalas as they sang out their mating calls. Herds of wild pigs passed right behind the tent. Venturing outside in the middle of the night with my dunny roll to go use a bush was a daunting experience.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
It was a brave new world that I found myself in. At night I would hear the sounds of the fruit bats as they came into the trees. Also in the mix were the strange, far-off grunts of the koalas as they sang out their mating calls. Herds of wild pigs passed right behind the tent. Venturing outside in the middle of the night with my dunny roll to go use a bush was a daunting experience. Steve was a natural in front of the camera. John had to give him only one important piece of advice. “Stevo,” John instructed, “there are three people in this documentary. There’s you, Terri, and the camera. Treat the camera just like another person.” Steve’s energy and enthusiasm took over. He completely relaxed, and he managed to just be himself--which was true of his entire career. This wasn’t just a film trip, it was also our honeymoon. Steve would sometimes escape the camera crew and take us up a tributary to be alone. We watched the fireflies come out. I’d never seen fireflies in Oregon. The magical little insects glowed everywhere, in the bushes and in the air. The darker it got, the brighter their blue lights burned on and off. I had arrived in a fairyland.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Watching Steve around the camp was witnessing a man at one with his environment. Steve had spent all his life perfecting his bush skills, first learning them at his father’s side when he was a boy. He hero-worshiped Bob and finally became like his dad and then some. Steve took all the knowledge he’d acquired over the years and added his own experience. Nothing seemed to daunt him, from green ants, mozzies, sand flies, and leeches, to constant wet weather. On Cape York we faced the obvious wildlife hazards, including feral pigs, venomous snakes, and huge crocodiles. I never saw Steve afraid of anything, except the chance of harm coming to someone he loved. He learned how to take care of himself over the years he spent alone in the bush. But as his life took a sharp turn, into the unknown territory of celebrity-naturalist, he suddenly found himself with a whole film crew to watch out for. Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t--these were all areas of John’s clear expertise. But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth. Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens. “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.” Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t--these were all areas of John’s clear expertise. But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth. Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens. “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.” Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra. On all of our documentary trips, Steve packed the food, set up camp, fed the crew. He knew to take the extra tires, the extra fuel, the water, the gear. He anticipated the needs of six adults and two kids on every film shoot we ever went on. As I watched him at Lakefield, the situation was no different. Our croc crew came and went, and the park rangers came and went, and Steve wound up organizing anywhere from twenty to thirty people. Everyone did their part to help. But the first night, I watched while one of the crew put up tarps to cover the kitchen area. After a day or two, the tarps slipped, the ropes came undone, and water poured off into our camp kitchen. After a full day of croc capture, Steve came back into camp that evening. He made no big deal about it. He saw what was going on. I watched him wordlessly shimmy up a tree, retie the knots, and resecure the tarps. What was once a collection of saggy, baggy tarps had been transformed into a well-secured roof. Steve had the smooth and steady movements of someone who was self-assured after years of practice. He’d get into the boat, fire up the engine, and start immediately. There was never any hesitation. His physical strength was unsurpassed. He could chop wood, gather water, and build many things with an ease that was awkwardly obvious when anybody else (myself, for example) tried to struggle with the same task. But when I think of all his bush skills, I treasured most his way of delivering up the natural world. On that croc research trip in the winter of 2006, Steve presented me with a series of memories more valuable than any piece of jewelry.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
LUCAS WATCHED THE GATE roll back and caught the two clear lenses, and two black glassy spots, one of each on the stone gate pillars, on either side of the driveway. Camera lenses and infrared alarm sensors. The security would be excellent. And the hard drives on the security cameras could be gotten with a search warrant: something to know.
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
Brennan stayed in character, even when the cameras were not rolling on My Darling Clementine. “Don’t whip me, Pappy, please!” the actors pleaded. John Ireland, who appears as one of Clanton’s sons, said that off-screen Brennan was like the character he played. Walter Brennan, on-screen and off, almost always knew his own mind, an attribute that sometimes resulted in an inability to appreciate other points of view. He simply shut them out, like the single-minded Ike Clanton.
Carl Rollyson (A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan (Hollywood Legends))
February 17: Andre de Dienes publishes a color photograph of Norma Jeane on the cover of Parade. He shoots her from her left side. She is wearing a green sweater and yellow-gold slacks in a strongly diagonal shot that shows her posed against a mountainside, her right and left hands touching a rock face, her right knee bent as though she is climbing. She is smiling and looking directly at the camera. Her sleeves are rolled up, and on her left arm is a lady’s watch. The photograph was taken in Death Valley in 1945.
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
Fighting wildfires is the most visible thing the USDA does. It’s the places in our government where the cameras never roll that you have to worry about most.
Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
As a boy, I was fascinated by speed, the wild range of speeds in the world around me. People moved at different speeds; animals much more so. The wings of insects moved too fast to see, though one could judge their frequency by the tone they emitted—a hateful noise, a high E, with mosquitoes, or a lovely bass hum with the fat bumblebees that flew around the hollyhocks each summer. Our pet tortoise, which could take an entire day to cross the lawn, seemed to live in a different time frame altogether. But what then of the movement of plants? I would come down to the garden in the morning and find the hollyhocks a little higher, the roses more entwined around their trellis, but, however patient I was, I could never catch them moving. Experiences like this played a part in turning me to photography, which allowed me to alter the rate of motion, speed it up, slow it down, so I could see, adjusted to a human perceptual rate, details of movement or change otherwise beyond the power of the eye to register. Being fond of microscopes and telescopes (my older brothers, medical students and bird-watchers, kept theirs in the house), I thought of the slowing down or the speeding up of motion as a sort of temporal equivalent: slow motion as an enlargement, a microscopy of time, and speeded-up motion as a foreshortening, a telescopy of time. I experimented with photographing plants. Ferns, in particular, had many attractions for me, not least in their tightly wound crosiers or fiddleheads, tense with contained time, like watch springs, with the future all rolled up in them. So I would set my camera on a tripod in the garden and take photographs of fiddleheads at hourly intervals; I would develop the negatives, print them up, and bind a dozen or so prints together in a little flickbook. And then, as if by magic, I could see the fiddleheads unfurl like the curled-up paper trumpets one blew into at parties, taking a second or two for what, in real time, took a couple of days.
Oliver Sacks (The River of Consciousness)
I stop to change my film. Without the camera to shield my eyes, I start to feel weak. Queasy. The room tilts. I see the heart lying there, inert and cold. I see the women shoving it back inside the chest cavity... I picture the cavity behind my eyes, and instead of a brain I imagine an enormous roll of film, winding maniacally inside a bloodless metallic skull. A simple recording device, nothing more.
Deborah Copaken Kogan (Shutterbabe)
When Chen Guangcheng was released in September 2009, he had served his full term. There were no more charges against him. And yet he returned to Dongshigu village to find that the local government had prepared for his arrival. They had installed steel shutters on the windows of his house, floodlights around the dirt yard, and cameras to keep an eye on the place twenty-four hours a day. They formed a revolving crew of guards to work in shifts. At one point, Cohen and Chen did their best to estimate the cost of the guards, meals, and other expenses required to keep the blind lawyer isolated from the world around him, and it came to seven million dollars. But as far as Chen was concerned, most of the punishment was mental: now and then, the guards would carry every object from the house out into the courtyard and leave them there for him and his family to bring back in. The guards confiscated his phone and computer and bent the prongs of the television plug so that it was unusable. At one point, Chen managed to smuggle out a short video describing his conditions, but when that was discovered, the guards punished him by rolling him in a blanket and beating him.
Evan Osnos (Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)
John grows up normally, but doesn't talk, and this drives his parents to distraction. When he is about 16, at last, one teatime, he says: 'I'd like a little sugar. ' His mother is staggered and asks, 'But John, why have you never said anything up to now?' 'Up to now, everything was perfect.' If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection. 'I desire you' is obscene. 'You make me feel very good' is more subtle - the other is here the subject of pleasure, not the object of desire. Desire wants only orgasm; pleasure seeks to please. There can't be any desire to please - 'pleasing' is implacable. In days gone by, pleasing occupied the place of desire - today, desire discharges us from the need to please. Even age may function as a 'natural' perversion. Women are not so much in search of their fathers as of the simple mystery of another generation, closer to death, but also to a previous life. B.B. - My understudy has had an operation for appendicitis. - You're not going to sleep with the whole world. That's impossible, it's rape. - I have a real understanding for wild animals who are hunted, by camera lenses, by machine-guns. - A white Rolls and a black chauffeur. Woman to the power of woman.
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
After the cameras stopped rolling, Bush says Trump remarked “Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That’s it. They just do.
Brian Stelter (Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth)
Time out. Serenity 101: Progress, Not Perfection. The glamorous lifestyle gurus who have advised us through books, magazines, and television shows starting in the 1980s and have crescendoed in popularity via the blogs, Instagrams, and photo sharing sites we all see now haven’t really been honest with us. They have full-time professionals working for them, including stylists—stylists who wave magic paintbrushes dipped in burnt sienna over mud smears on terra-cotta potagers before the flash pops or the camera rolls.
Sarah Ban Breathnach (Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life)
You'll be fine," she said to Rico when they got back, because he was still studying her and trying to make sense of her bizarre swings. "Cooking eggs is a standard test of basic cooking skill." "I know I'll be fine," he said, the full blast of his focus mapping her relief. The emeralds in his eyes were too bright. The way they had been that first time they'd met under the bleachers. The need to see what no one else cared to see inside her, intense and naked. It had disarmed her then. Today, it infuriated her. Made her brain forget the camera. Made her hands fly. She broke the eggs in a clean one-handed crack, whipped them ruthlessly into a thick froth, chopped the onions, cilantro, and green chilies in an unrelentingly brutal rhythm. All without breaking a sweat or sparing him a glance. With minutes to spare from the mere twenty they were given, she turned out a fluffy and perfectly moist omelet with garlic-infused oil rolled into a crisp, flaky paratha. Until they stood in front of the judges, she had forgotten where she was, who she was with. The only place the livid energy inside her seemed to have manifested itself was in what the judges declared "abject underseasoning." This made Ashna smile. When she looked at Rico, he was having the same reaction. For one quick meeting of their eyes, the ridiculously overdramatic statement joined them together with shared humor. His lips tilted up on one side. For the first time since they'd lined up to hear the challenge, she took a full breath.
Sonali Dev (Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2))
When ovation drowns. When the klieg lights fade. When the drum beats stop. The real you stares you in the face as you dialogue with your soul. In this moment of solitude, you are forced to ask yourself, “who was that guy that just drew a huge applause, that kept the television cameras rolling and that sent the drummers into a frenzy?” If that guy is a stranger to you, then you know you have the arduous task of reconciling the real and the imaginary you, or forever forego your happiness.
Abiodun Fijabi
But the Fairfax County Police kept the cameras in place and kept them rolling “to collect data”. Fairfax was the only Northern Virginia jurisdiction to require pictures for a weapons permit. The Fairfax police demanded it and they got it. In 1996, the cop photographed applicants “so that they could more easily identify physical attributes” a police spokesman
Gunnar Daid (Out of Control. An Informal History of the Fairfax County Police.)
Gus was just about finished with the chutney for the salmon cakes when Carmen leaned in. "Let's experiment," she whispered, as Porter cued them back on air. "Gus and I were just talking and we've decided to mix it up a bit," Carmen said to the camera while Gus used all her energies to prevent a scowl from forming. With a flick of the wrist, Carmen had ramped up the seasonings- a little more cilantro, some cayenne, and finally a touch of mint- and then put a clean spoon in to taste. But instead of bringing it to her mouth, she held it out to Gus. "Mmmm," said Gus, in a practiced voice, not actually paying attention. Tasting the food, after all, was the money shot in the world of food television. Then she actually felt the flavors hit her tongue: the heat of the cayenne, the fresh bite of the mint. "This is divine," she exclaimed spontaneously. And, like a stampede of seven-year-olds waiting for goodies at a birthday party, Troy, Aimee, and Sabrina rushed over immediately. "Let me try!" "Oh, this is delicious!" "I chopped the fruit that went into this, you know. I did it." Although the plating was a little- okay, a lot- sloppy, the group had set out a buffet of salmon cakes, fries, and Kobe beef sliders on toasty rolls by the end of the program.
Kate Jacobs (Comfort Food)
Can we pause the bickering for more important matters, please? Look. There’s a time-out on the court.” Which meant more Coach Romano camera time. The three women focused on the TV. “OMG,” Sarah said, the slang usage obviously for Nic’s benefit. On the screen, the man in question had slipped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and he was holding a basketball in a one-handed grip. “Look at the size of those hands.” Sage fanned her face. “Think of what he could do with them.” “At the risk of sounding crude, this is the first time in my life my boobs ever wished they were a basketball,” Nic observed. Out in the hallway, something heavy thumped to the floor. Nic recognized the voice that muttered the epithet that immediately followed. Gabe Callahan. She glanced in the wall mirror and smoothed her flyaway hair, catching Sarah’s knowing smirk as she did so. She stuck out her tongue at her best friend and sent up a little prayer that his hearing wasn’t all that sharp. “Gabe?” Sarah called out. “Everything all right?” Footsteps approached and he came into sight, pausing in the doorway. He wore a blue-and-gray plaid flannel shirt tucked into a snug pair of faded Levi’s. He had a stained and scruffy pair of lined leather work gloves tucked into a back pocket of his jeans, and his steel-toed boots showed plenty of wear. He might be stopping for dinner at the Bristlecone most nights these days, but he still hadn’t managed to find his way to the barbershop. His hair brushed his shoulders now, curling slightly on the ends. And dang it, her fingers itched to play with those thick silken strands. Until he turned a wickedly amused gaze her way and dashed her hopes about his hearing. “Sorry about the noise. That piece of lumber slipped right out of my hands. You know …” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I have to tell you that, while men are often accused of thinking with body parts other than their brains, this is the first time I’ve ever heard women admit they have parts that think for themselves, too.” He heard, all right. Nic closed her eyes and flushed with embarrassment. They not only think for themselves, they blush. Sage saved her by laughing. “You like basketball, Gabe?” “Not the same way you ladies do, apparently.
Emily March (Angel's Rest (Eternity Springs, #1))
table, a chest of drawers, a window seat, a color television with a working remote, and a closet with a light that came on automatically when he opened it. He went to the closet, pulled out a briefcase and opened it on the bed. Inside was a monocular, a cassette recorder with a phone clip, and a Polaroid Spectra camera with a half-dozen rolls of film. Excellent. He closed the briefcase, made a quick trip to the bathroom, and rode back down to the street. A bellhop, loitering in the phone-booth-sized lobby, said, “Cab, Mr. Davenport?” “No. I’ve got a car coming,” he said. Outside, he hurried down the street to a breakfast bar, got a pint of orange juice in a wax carton, and went back outside. After leaving Fell the night before, he’d gone to Lily’s apartment and given her the key impressions. Lily knew an intelligence officer
John Sandford (Silent Prey (Lucas Davenport, #4))
As we stood in the red room waiting for our scores, the operation was put in motion. Earlier I’d given the ring to the show’s production assistant, Tracy. She discreetly handed the ring to Sharna behind her back. I was waiting for my signal. Sharna hit me on the back with the ring in her hand and I reached back and grabbed it. I turned to Jamie. “You’ve been so supportive,” I said, “I love you so much, Jamie, and there’s no better place I’d rather do this than right here.” And I went down to one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes and hugged me. Erin Andrews, who had no idea, said, “Oh my gosh! Jamie, did you say yes?” Jamie replied, “Oh, heck yes!” Everyone in the room was crying and cheering. It was amazing. After the cameras stopped rolling to cut to commercial, Erin pretty much collapsed into a chair and said, “Oh my God, Noah, you could have told me! I almost cried on national television.
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
I wonder if we would ever switch back to old photo albums we got printed from photography shops. A Kodak KB10 camera with 36 photos worth of film roll, waiting for it to complete before sending the photos for developing. Nothing was instant, it would sometimes take months to compete a film and weeks to get the prints. The joy of seeing the photos, the disappointment to find a ruined image due to shaky hands. Even after having lots of camera and GBs of memory cards will never bring the same feeling.
Crestless Wave
I think the case is so strong that I can tell you the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body.
David H. Souter
Launching REM state... I N I T I A T E I ask myself: Which me am I now? But before I can figure out Oh -- we're rolling. Lights, Camera, Action!
Jaay Vanmeer (...dark thoughts // they come in the light of day...)
In the middle of the shower, she’d dozed off and started snoring. Crick had taken footage on his camera, and Deacon had been in the middle of telling him to knock that shit off when she’d farted, choked on a snore, and rolled out of the recliner and onto all fours, screaming, “I’m up, Parry, I’m on my way!
Amy Lane (Forever Promised (Promises, #4))
Senses impaired, I knew I was there for a cover shoot but felt unfazed when I saw the wardrobe rack full of bras, panties, and nothing else... after having just come from a party full of naked people, with me in my skivvies, and still coming down from rolling, I wasn’t feeling like my more modest self... The shoot began with pics of me half-naked in bed—first, with a white sheet concealing just my breasts, which is the shot that made the cover, and then with my legs open to the camera but the private stuff covered... [the next shot] turned out to be my favorite picture from the day. I’m leaning forward, tits heaving, on a set of stairs.
Melissa Joan Hart (Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life)
I couldn’t hear from over there,’ she explained. ‘We’re not allowed to move or make a sound when the camera is rolling. The director, Mr Vincent, gets terribly angry if so much as a pin drops.
Karen Baugh Menuhin (Death in Damascus (Heathcliff Lennox, #4))
She ran away from home at age seventeen and hooked up with three outlaw bikers who gang-raped her on the way to Sturgis. She had an abortion in Memphis and spent three months in jail for soliciting at a truck stop on I-40. The next two stops were Big D and New Orleans and runway gigs with a G-string and pasties, then Acapulco and Vegas with oilmen who could buy Third World countries with their credit cards. Miami was even more lucrative. She went to work for a former CIA agent turned political operative who set up cameras in hotel rooms and blackmailed corporate executives and Washington insiders. She helped destroy careers and lives and woke up one morning next to the corpse of a married man who died from an overdose in his sleep and whose family she had to face at the police station. One week later, she swallowed half a bottle of downers, turned on the gas in the oven, and stuck her head in. Three weeks later, she slashed her wrists. One month after that, she helped a pimp roll a blind man. It’s not the kind of personal history you forget.
James Lee Burke (A Private Cathedral (Dave Robicheaux #23))
I jolted out of my sleep or so I thought with tunneling sparking flashing light. For a second when I look around the room everything seems soft, unclear, and slightly distorted, I am in my bed naked like I am every day when I get up and hug my stuffed bunny for the last time, as I snap on the lamp on my nightstand. I have to hide my bunny when the girls come over. Ray used to just throw him off the bed onto the floor. That was not cool! I don’t think Marcel would mind my cuddly stuffed bunny, with the cute floppy ears. My alarm has been blaring and Beep- Beeping for five minutes. It's from seven-o to six am. I smash and rub my face in my soft pillow for the last time. I look around the room I am sweating. I wipe my forehead, saying wow, I have had a dream that I’m falling- but never like this. ‘Damn that was a crazy dream!’ So- I start my morning retain- you know grabbing for what inside my Pringles can buy my bed before all hell comes busting through my door. I sit up in bed slightly and I turn on my laptop, might as well live record what going to do on cam, why not. So, push the quilt away, I look down at my unclothed body with my toy in hand, and I see my toes wiggling with nail polish, and my almost smooth legs and everything in-between. Thinking I just shaved and looked at all this stubble, growing here already… don’t you hate that, I sure do? It’s like all you can see and feel. Now I’m covered with sweat even though my room is frigid cold. My throat is dry, my heart is racing, and I’m desperate for a drink, yet I am almost there, my sighing is getting loud, I can feel it building up, I can stop it feeling so good and the tips are just rolling in for the boys that tune into my show. The camera is right there, whoosh- and I feel on top of the world. Yet after I hit a low with having to start my day, running away from me away from who I am, I’ve just been running a long way. My floral sheets are stocked with everything rushing out, and so is my keyboard, yet the boys love it and love me for it, so that is good enough for me. Yet after I do that it’s like I get an embarrassing feeling, I pull it out, then close the lid of my lap, to cover up fast. It’s like I get a rush from it, and then the guilt comes after in my mind saying- ‘That was the wrong missy, yet I can’t stop. Jenny and my girls give me that same rush, always doing something that feels so good yet maybe wrong.
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh Dreaming of you Play with Me)
The cameras roll on in black-and-white, and the silvery expanse of the Sound flashes and flickers, as if the scenes, its players - and the year at its close - have been rinsed in a wide, New World light.
Alison MacLeod (Tenderness)
those in the body of the hall danced. There seemed to be thousands of them. Littlejohn had never seen anything like it. From his viewpoint it looked as if you couldn’t throw a penny between any pair. Shuffling languidly, many hardly moving, but just rolling and swaying, others with heads askew and buried deep in their shoulders and with hindquarters rhythmically rotating, this great amorphous mass looked like the contents of a drop of pond water viewed under a microscope. Twirling, wriggling, revolving or oozing dreamily. A shot from a René Clair camera, showing heads going round and round.
George Bellairs (He'd Rather Be Dead (Chief Inspector Littlejohn #8))
She was okay,” I say. Ryot roars. “You’re such a goddamn liar.” I shrug. “I mean, yeah, she had a nice eyeball.” Ryot throws a towel at me from his locker, still laughing. “Fuck you. A nice eyeball. Just one of her eyeballs is nice?” “If I hit the ball tonight, it’s because of her right eyeball. Really got my juices flowing,” I deadpan. “You’re such a shithead.” “Nah, if I hit the ball tonight, it’s for one reason and one reason alone—because I worked my ass off in the cages today.” Ryot rolls his eyes. “Always so fucking serious. Why don’t you romanticize your story a bit? Think about the media coverage you could get.” Ryot steals my bat, holds it up to his mouth like a microphone, and then clears his throat. “Walker Rockwell, you went three for four today with a homerun and three RBIs. What can you attribute to your success today?” He turns his hat around and scratches his jaw. Is that supposed to be me? “Her name is Kate, and her right eyeball enticed me so much, I found myself inspired to find my bat again. Shout-out to Kate Chapman and her spherical sense receptor for vision.” He winks and then shoots a gun at the “camera.” “Now that’s a story.” I stare at him blankly. Blink. Shake my head. “You need fucking help.” I turn toward my locker, where I start mentally preparing for the game.
Meghan Quinn (The Perfect Catch (The Brentwood Boys, #8))
So I should probably just tell you I'm about as green as these pistachios when it comes to macaroons. I've never even eaten one, let alone made---" I begin self-consciously, but Benny cuts me off. "Macarrrons," he says, throwing his hands up emphatically and rolling the r for longer than seems necessary. Not macaroons. Important distinction, Reese's Pieces. Two different cookies." I shake my head on an exhale, trying hard to keep my composure. "Right, well. Painful as it was to admit it the first time, I'll repeat that I've still never had a macaron, so you've gotta, like, tell me what to do." Benny grins at me, then looks directly into the camera. "It would be my honor." He shuffles around more bowls and I mock-whisper to the imaginary audience, "Apologies in advance to, well, feminism as a whole." "Did you say something?" Benny teases, pushing the pistachios toward me with finality. "There are just so many recipes, so much knowledge in my head that sometimes it's hard to hear anything outside it, you know?" "Keep it up, Benjamin," I say in the warning tone that my mamaw would use to tell my papaw that he should very much not keep it up.
Kaitlyn Hill (Love from Scratch)
I finish processing the pistachio paste with the lid fully on, and Benny starts piping his batter onto a cookie sheet in neat little circles, giving me further instruction as he goes. The rest of the prep goes off pretty smoothly. He supervises cream production while the cookie parts of the macaron bake, and both finish almost simultaneously. While the cookies are cooling, the camera keeps rolling. Margie and Charlie are talking with each other and not really paying attention, so Benny and I both relax a bit. We use the time to pick at the cookies with air bubbles that cracked while baking, popping little bites in our mouths. They are light, sweet, and delicious.
Kaitlyn Hill (Love from Scratch)
Recently, Filipino politics kinda looks a lot like the United States,” he continued, rolling his eyes and gesturing with his hands. “You’ve got a president who was Trump before Trump was Trump, and you have relationships with people close to him with SCL and Cambridge Analytica. And you had a lot of data being collected—the second largest amount of data after the United States being collected in the Philippines. Also if you look at how SCL and Cambridge Analytica operated in a lot of countries . . . one of the things they talk about is that they use . . . they don’t go into a country as Cambridge Analytica. They don’t go into a country as SCL Group because it’s too obvious. So you use local partners—” “Proxies,” I clarified. “You use proxies,” he continued. “. . . They’re on camera admitting this. They go into countries, set up bullshit companies that are just fronts and they send in staff. It makes it very difficult for regulators or opposition parties to actually identify what’s happening. And as they also have admitted, once an election is done, they just get out. So they’re in. They’re out. They’ve got their guy in, and then you know they can come back and ask for favors.” “Okay,” I interrupted, “Alexander Nix [the Cambridge Analytica president] came to the Philippines at the end of 2015 before the campaigns began, and there was a photo of him—”13 “Yeah, he met with people there,” said Chris. “—the staff of Duterte,” I finished. “Yeah! What do you think he was doing there?” Chris asked.14
Maria Ressa (How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future)
And that wicked smile he sends me when the cameras stop rolling? The one promising more? Yup. I see it. Oh man, I’m in trouble.
Lauren Asher (Throttled (Dirty Air, #1))
Nowadays, queer teens have no idea how good they have it, with their lesbian-outfit Instagram accounts and their dreary homophobia movies and their JoJo Siwas. Back in my day (2003), finding something gay to be horny over was like navigating the Oregon Trail. You'd have to run home from school and sit in front of the TV for hours waiting for the "Me Against the Music" video to play on MTV, just so you could get a sliver of gay, and that would be your only shot at seeing gay that whole day. No quietly streaming Netflix on your laptop in your room, no saving photos of Cara Delevingne and Selena Gomez showering together to camera roll, no "every Jamie and Dani scene in The Haunting of Bly Manor" compilation video on YouTube. Just a single queerbait moment of the day with absolutely no idea when it would come or ability to plan for it. Just sit and wait for Britney and Madonna to flirt. Oh, you have to go to the bathroom? What if you miss it? No, you'll be fine, just go. You missed it. The flash of a moment where Britney pins Madonna against the wall and they almost kiss is gone. Sorry you ate too many SunChips and got diarrhea and blew past the only possible lesbianism you could find today. You died of dysentery. You missed the gay; try again tomorrow.
Jill Gutowitz (Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays)