“
Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD.
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter in the Dark (Dexter, #3))
“
Tayla cursed under her breath. "I was just explaining to Eidolon that Sin is a Smurfette."
Wraith swung his big body around to study Sin with blue eyes that were very different from Shade's, E's. and Lore's. Sin's, too. "Nah. Smurfette is way hotter."
"What the fuck is a Smurfette?" Eidolon was seriously getting annoyed now.
"There's this cartoon called The Smurfs," Tayla explained, slowly, as though Eidolon were the child here.
"They're these little blue people, and they're all male. But one day a female shows up. She shouldn't exist, but she does."
Eidolon considered that for a second. "How did she get there?"
"An evil wizard named Gargamel made her," Tayla said. "In a lab or something."
"So you're suggesting that an evil wizard made Sin?"
"Of course not, silly. I'm just saying she's a Smurfette. A lone female amongst males."
Eidolon frowned. "Did the Smurfette mate with the males?"
"Dude." Wraith grimaced. "It's a cartoon.
”
”
Larissa Ione (Ecstasy Unveiled (Demonica, #4))
“
Shall we go?' he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.
”
”
Jon Ronson (The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry)
“
...normally I consider nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn´t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can´t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox news. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory-in Appalachia in particular-of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep who, if he ever did go up to Rocky Top in real life, would never come down again.
”
”
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
“
She was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late - that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
”
”
J.D. Salinger
“
I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers’ boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school.” (p.137)
”
”
Stephen Clarke (A Year in the Merde)
“
Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly refuses to show the Muslim cartoons on The O’Reilly Factor, saying he doesn’t want to offend anyone’s religion. Someone should tell him those endless interviews with prostitutes from the Bunny Ranch and porn stars aren’t high on Christians’ list of enjoyable viewing either.
”
”
Ann Coulter (If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans)
“
Early on in my tenure, I was given a cartoon that circulated widely at the UN. The cartoon showed dozens of people listening to a speech. In the first panel, the speaker asks, “Who wants change?” and all audience members enthusiastically raise their hands. In the second panel, the speaker refines his question, asking, “Who wants to change?” This time, each audience member looks toward the ground, demurring.
”
”
Samantha Power (The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir)
“
They're trying to breed a nation of techno-peasants. Educated just enough to keep things going, but not enough to ask tough questions. They encourage any meme that downplays thoughtful analysis or encourages docility or self indulgence or uniformity. In what other society do people use "smart" and "wise" as insults? We tell people "don't get smart." Those who try, those who really like to learn, we call "nerds." Look at television or the press or the trivia that passes for political debate. When a candidate DOES try to talk about the issues, the newspapers talk about his sex life. Look at Saturday morning cartoon shows. Peasants, whether they're tilling fields or stuffing circuit boards, are easier to manipulate. Don't question; just believe. Turn off your computer and Trust the Force.
Or turn your computer on and treat it like the Oracle of Delphi.
That's right. They've made education superficial and specialized. Science classes for art majors? Forget it! And how many business or engineering students get a really good grounding in the humanities? When did universities become little more than white collar vocational schools?
”
”
Michael Flynn (In the Country of the Blind)
“
Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their responsibilities? Were there not more important ambitions to be met before Death showed himself on the horizon in his hooded black cloak, his scythe slung over his shoulder?
”
”
Alain de Botton (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work)
“
regard him as a cross between a game show host and a cartoon yeti
”
”
Mick Herron (Slough House (Slough House, #7))
“
Stories had a way of doing that, in Grillo’s experience. It was his belief that nothing, but nothing, could stay secret, however powerful the forces with interests vested in silence. Conspirators might conspire and thugs attempt to gag but the truth, or an approximation of same, would show itself sooner or later, very often in the unlikeliest form. It was seldom hard facts that revealed the life behind the life. It was rumour, graffiti, strip cartoons and love songs.
”
”
Clive Barker (The Great And Secret Show (Book of the Art #1))
“
In books, political cartoons, films, and TV shows, fat bodies make up the failings of America, capitalism, beauty standards, excess, and consumerism. Fat bodies represent at once the poorest of the poor and the pinnacle of unchecked power, consumption, and decay. Our bodies have borne the blame for so much. Whole artistic worlds are built on the premise that bodies like mine are monstrous, repulsive, and—worst of all—contagious. From individuals to institutions, academia to the evening news, fat people are made bogeymen. And that spills into daily experiences of abuse, driven by intentions both good and ill, but always with the same outcome: an intense shame for simply daring to exist in the bodies many of us have always had.
”
”
Aubrey Gordon (What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat)
“
A Jeff Danziger cartoon shows a company president announcing to his staff, “Gentlemen, this year the trick is honesty.” From one side of the conference table, a vice president gasps, “Brilliant.” Across the table, another VP mutters, “But so risky.
”
”
John C. Maxwell (Developing the Leader Within You)
“
Sometimes, however, possibly when my Muse was being capricious, I set aside my paints and drew cartoons. One of them I still have. It shows a cavernous view of the mouth of a man being attended by this dentist. The man's tongue is a simple, U.S. Treasury hundred dollar bill, and the dentist is saying, in French, "I think we can save the molar, but I'm afraid that tongue will have to come out.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (Nine Stories)
“
The verb gerrymander comes from a nineteenth-century American cartoon showing a political district that had been crafted by a Governor Elbridge Gerry into a tortuous shape resembling a salamander in an effort to concentrate his opponent’s voters into a single seat.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature)
“
Since my earliest memory, I imagined I would be a chef one day. When other kids were watching Saturday morning cartoons or music videos on YouTube, I was watching Iron Chef,The Great British Baking Show, and old Anthony Bourdain shows and taking notes. Like, actual notes in the Notes app on my phone. I have long lists of ideas for recipes that I can modify or make my own. This self-appointed class is the only one I've ever studied well for.
I started playing around with the staples of the house: rice, beans, plantains, and chicken. But 'Buela let me expand to the different things I saw on TV. Soufflés, shepherd's pie, gizzards. When other kids were saving up their lunch money to buy the latest Jordans, I was saving up mine so I could buy the best ingredients. Fish we'd never heard of that I had to get from a special market down by Penn's Landing. Sausages that I watched Italian abuelitas in South Philly make by hand. I even saved up a whole month's worth of allowance when I was in seventh grade so I could make 'Buela a special birthday dinner of filet mignon.
”
”
Elizabeth Acevedo (With the Fire on High)
“
Now normally I consider nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn’t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can’t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox News. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory—in Appalachia in particular—of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire
”
”
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
“
Michael Leunig cartoon showing a tiny sad-eyed man with a noose around his neck. The rope was curled over a beam with a large bucket tied to the other end. As the man cried, his tears filled the bucket and lifted him higher and higher off the ground. Evie is that figure, standing on her tiptoes, filling a bucket with
”
”
Michael Robotham (Good Girl, Bad Girl (Cyrus Haven, #1))
“
My husband is a man who watches cartoons with his son; whose favourite show is Nashville; and who cried when Buffy’s mum died.
”
”
Iain Rob Wright (M is for Matty-Bob (A-Z of Horror, #13))
“
When Ben arrived, he was having a bad hair day. He looked like Francine from those Arthur cartoons on PBS, and yet I was still very attracted to him.
”
”
Courtney Robertson (I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends: Confessions of a Reality Show Villain)
“
He grinned the grin of a presenter on some educational show with a cartoon dog, as if to say, “Come with me if you want to learn.
”
”
Maureen Johnson (Truly Devious (Truly Devious, #1))
“
My dad was a shooter, or submission wrestler, and he loved to stretch anyone who dared to show up at his door. I remember him stretching the daylights out of Father Roberts, the Catholic priest who baptized all the Hart kids. Father Roberts got closer to God in my father’s basement dungeon than he felt comfortable with. But Stu was non-denominational; he stretched a rabbi once too.
”
”
Bret Hart (Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling)
“
Many moral advances have taken the form of a shift in sensibilities that made an action seem more ridiculous than sinful, such as dueling, bullfighting, and jingoistic war. And many effective social critics, such as Swift, Johnson, Voltaire, Twain, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Tom Lehrer, and George Carlin have been smart-ass comedians rather than thundering prophets. What in our psychology allows the joke to be mightier than the sword?
Humor works by confronting an audience with an incongruity, which may be resolved by switching to another frame of reference. And in that alternative frame of reference, the butt of the joke occupies a lowly or undignified status. ...
Humor with a political or moral agenda can stealthily challenge a relational model that is second nature to an audience by forcing them to see that it leads to consequences that the rest of their minds recognize as absurd. ...
According to the 18th-century writer Mary Wortley Montagu, 'Satire should, like a polished razor keen / Wound with touch that's scarcely felt or seen.' But satire is seldom polished that keenly, and the butts of a joke may be all too aware of the subversive power of humor. They may react with a rage that is stoked by the intentional insult to a sacred value, the deflation of their dignity, and a realization that laughter indicates common knowledge of both. The lethal riots in 2005 provoked by the editorial cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten (for example, one showing Muhammad in heaven greeting newly arrived suicide bombers with 'Stop, we have run out of virgins!') show that when it comes to the deliberate undermining of a sacred relational model, humor is no laughing matter. (pp. 633-634)
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
“
People give Jon shit and claim he breeds cynicism. He’s the opposite of cynical. He really cares. And people who watch his show care about politics. That’s why you watch it, and that’s why you’re not watching a Yogi Bear cartoon.
”
”
Chris Smith (The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests)
“
All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late—that’s bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
“
Next, Lucas began inserting his names and places into a short narrative, not much more than a story fragment, called “The Journal of the Whills.” He envisioned borrowing a storytelling device from the old Disney cartoons, showing a storybook—in this case the Journal of the Whills—“falling
”
”
Brian Jay Jones (George Lucas: A Life)
“
A flat screen television lowered into view. It showed an animated Islamic documentary that focused mostly on the importance of wearing the proper attire. The final prophet was quoted often, yet absent from the feature.
“If this Mohammed guy is so great, why wouldn’t they put him in the cartoon?” Kira wondered.
”
”
Magnus Wilton (Pomegranate Juice: Sacrilegious Tales of Dark Abrahamic Horror)
“
Thomas Nast published an election cartoon entitled “Victory!” that showed Grant mounted on a white horse, waving a flag bedecked with the words “Union” and “Equal Rights,” as he thrust his sword into the throat of Horatio Seymour, who sat astride a black horse with the initials “K.K.K.” branded ominously on its flank.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Grant)
“
This fact about human psychology may also be worth keeping in mind when others show a reflexively negative reaction toward us: they are not really reacting to us, but rather to their own negatively charged and unconsciously formed representation of us, which may indeed be an unpleasant cartoon figure to have to struggle with; a phantom struggle that merits both correction and compassion.
”
”
Magnus Vinding (Reasoned Politics)
“
continued. “The solution to almost every problem imaginable can be found in the outcome of a fairy tale. Fairy tales are life lessons disguised with colorful characters and situations. “‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf ’ teaches us the value of a good reputation and the power of honesty. ‘Cinderella’ shows us the rewards of having a good heart. ‘The Ugly Duckling’ teaches us the meaning of inner beauty.” Alex’s eyes were wide, and she nodded in agreement. She was a pretty girl with bright blue eyes and short strawberry-blonde hair that was always kept neatly out of her face with a headband. The way the other students stared at their teacher, as if the lesson being taught were in another language, was something Mrs. Peters had never grown accustomed to. So, Mrs. Peters would often direct entire lessons to the front row, where Alex sat. Mrs. Peters was a tall, thin woman who always wore dresses that resembled old, patterned sofas. Her hair was dark and curly and sat perfectly on the top of her head like a hat (and her students often thought it was). Through a pair of thick glasses, her eyes were permanently squinted from all the judgmental looks she had given her classes over the years. “Sadly, these timeless tales are no longer relevant in our society,” Mrs. Peters said. “We have traded their brilliant teachings for small-minded entertainment like television and video games. Parents now let obnoxious cartoons and violent movies influence their children. “The only exposure to the tales some children acquire are versions bastardized by film companies. Fairy
”
”
Chris Colfer (The Wishing Spell (The Land of Stories, #1))
“
If we suggest that it is okay to make fun of everything except certain aspects of Islam because Muslims are much more sensitive than the rest of the population, isn’t that discrimination? Shouldn’t we treat the second largest religion in France exactly as we treat the first? It’s time to put an end to the revolting paternalism of the white, middle-class, “leftist” intellectual trying to coexist with these “poor, subliterate wretches.” “'I’m educated; obviously I get that 'Charlie Hebdo' is a humor newspaper because, first, I’m very intelligent, and second, it’s my culture. But you—well, you haven’t quite mastered nuanced thinking yet, so I’ll express my solidarity by fulminating against Islamaphobic cartoons and pretending not to understand them. I will lower myself to your level to show you that I like you. And if I need to convert to Islam to get even closer to you, I’ll do it!” These pathetic demagogues just have a ravenous need for recognition and a formidable domination fantasy to fulfill.
”
”
Charb (Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression)
“
ROOSEVELT’S SUDDEN INTEREST in modern art, on a day when he could have stayed home and read accounts of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, caused much editorial hilarity. A cartoon by Kemble90 in the Baltimore Evening Sun showed the new President contemplating a portrait of his toothy predecessor in the Oval Office and musing, “I wonder if that’s a futurist? It can’t be a cubist.” The New York World argued that the “Square Deal”91 of 1903 had been a proto-Cubist conceit, doing to the Constitution what Braque and Picasso would do to color and form ten years later.
”
”
Edmund Morris (Colonel Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt Series Book 3))
“
AT THE VOIR dire the judge asks all the potential jurors to swear that even if they regularly watch CSI, Law & Order, Cold Case Files, or any other television show featuring forensic science and criminal justice, that they have a firm grasp on the difference between television—even reality television—and reality itself, in which we are presumably now mired. One potential juror with several small children says that won’t be a problem for her, because she mostly watches the Cartoon Network; the judge quips that an afternoon spent with the Cartoon Network provides as much or more information about the criminal justice system as a full season of Law & Order.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial)
“
Deacon met my glare with an impish grin. “Anyway, did you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you were slumming with the mortals?”
I blinked. “Not really. Why?”
Aiden snorted and then disappeared into one of the rooms.
“Follow me,” Deacon said. “You’re going to love this. I just know it.”
I followed him down the dimly-lit corridor that was sparsely decorated. We passed several closed doors and a spiral staircase. Deacon went through an archway and stopped, reaching along the wall. Light flooded the room. It was a typical sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, wicker furniture, and colorful plants.
Deacon stopped by a small potted plant sitting on a ceramic coffee table. It looked like a miniature pine tree that was missing several limbs. Half the needles were scattered in and around the pot. One red Christmas bulb hung from the very top branch, causing the tree to tilt to the right.
“What do you think?” Deacon asked.
“Um… well, that’s a really different Christmas tree, but I’m not sure what that has to do with Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s sad,” Aiden said, strolling into the room. “It’s actually embarrassing to look at. What kind of tree is it, Deacon?”
He beamed. “It’s called a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.”
Aiden rolled his eyes. “Deacon digs this thing out every year. The pine isn’t even real. And he leaves it up from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Which thank the gods is the day after tomorrow. That means he’ll be taking it down.”
I ran my fingers over the plastic needles. “I’ve seen the cartoon.”
Deacon sprayed something from an aerosol can. “It’s my MHT tree.”
“MHT tree?” I questioned.
“Mortal Holiday Tree,” Deacon explained, and smiled. “It covers the three major holidays. During Thanksgiving it gets a brown bulb, a green one for Christmas, and a red one for Valentine’s Day.”
“What about New Year’s Eve?”
He lowered his chin. “Now, is that really a holiday?”
“The mortals think so.” I folded my arms.
“But they’re wrong. The New Year is during the summer solstice,” Deacon said. “Their math is completely off, like most of their customs. For example, did you know that Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually about love until Geoffrey Chaucer did his whole courtly love thing in the High Middle Ages?”
“You guys are so weird.” I grinned at the brothers.
“That we are,” Aiden replied. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”
“Hey Alex,” Deacon called. “We’re making cookies tomorrow, since it’s Valentine’s Eve.”
Making cookies on Valentine’s Eve? I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as Valentine’s Eve. I laughed as I followed Aiden out of the room. “You two really are opposites.”
“I’m cooler!” Deacon yelled from his Mortal Holiday Tree room
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Deity (Covenant, #3))
“
Anyway how are you doing, crybaby? You’re fifteen now right? Crazy huh? How is school going? If you ask someone out, don’t make her kiss you right away. Also, don’t make her keep it a secret. It will make her feel bad. Are you still watching too many cartoons? What do you do in your free time? Jake does karate. I think it’s very manly. Not like someone like me needs protecting, but it’s nice to know he could, you know? My teachers say I’m good at English. My aunt thinks I should be a writer, like her of course. What do they even do? I miss you. I haven’t had a friend as good as you. Remember how scared you were I would lose your address? I showed you. Well I don’t have anything else to say. I love you. Yours, Nicole
”
”
Opal Mellon (To Be with You (Sunset, #1))
“
I know what this is," he whispers, his voice faint above the music. I've known it from that first night I saw you at the show, but now there's no doubt in my mind."
My gaze is entwined with his. Our eyes are locked and the key is gone. My heart feels full in my chest, heavy but in a good way.
"It's love," he says, letting the words slip freely from his mouth. And when they do, they fill the air and multiply like musical notes in a cartoon.
"Love," I say as the record crackles and skips.
"Love," he whispers back, weaving his fingers in mine.
And when I set my head on his pillow, and our bodies become one, for the first time in my life I feel as if everything in this crazy, complicated world makes complete and utter sense.
”
”
Sarah Jio (Always)
“
Brady! You can’t watch that!”
He looked up at me, his eyebrows furrowed, from his place on the floor. The remote was far away from him, next to the screen, so he couldn’t have changed the channel. I snatched it up and hit the information button. “What the hell is a YoGabbaGabba?” I looked back over at Brady and frowned. “Uh, never mind. Go ahead.”
Walking with purpose back into the kitchen, I whispered into the receiver. “Okay. No joke, there is a talking, dancing, bright red, studded dildo on the screen. There are other ones that look like him, and I swear to God one is wearing a condom on his head. That’s a kids’ show?” I looked back into the living room. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned cartoons? Don’t they have good shit like Animaniacs anymore?
”
”
Amber L. Johnson (Eight Days a Week)
“
Bruce Wayne Carmody had been unhappy for so long that it had stopped being a state he paid attention to. Sometimes Wayne felt that the world had been sliding apart beneath his feet for years. He was still waiting for it to pull him down, to bury him at last. His mother had been crazy for a while, had believed that the phone was ringing when it wasn’t, had conversations with dead children who weren’t there. Sometimes he felt she had talked more with dead children than she ever had with him. She had burned down their house. She spent a month in a psychiatric hospital, skipped out on a court appearance, and dropped out of Wayne’s life for almost two years. She spent a while on book tour, visiting bookstores in the morning and local bars at night. She hung out in L.A. for six months, working on a cartoon version of Search Engine that never got off the ground and a cocaine habit that did. She spent a while drawing covered bridges for a gallery show that no one went to. Wayne’s father got sick of Vic’s drinking, Vic’s wandering, and Vic’s crazy, and he took up with the lady who had done most of his tattoos, a girl named Carol who had big hair and dressed like it was still the eighties. Only Carol had another boyfriend, and they stole Lou’s identity and ran off to California, where they racked up a ten-thousand-dollar debt in Lou’s name. Lou was still dealing with creditors. Bruce Wayne Carmody wanted to love and enjoy his parents, and occasionally he did. But they made it hard. Which was why the papers in his back pocket felt like nitroglycerin, a bomb that hadn’t exploded yet.
”
”
Joe Hill (NOS4A2)
“
After three weeks of lectures and receptions in New York, Einstein paid a visit to Washington. For reasons fathomable only by those who live in that capital, the Senate decided to debate the theory of relativity. Among the leaders asserting that it was incomprehensible were Pennsylvania Republican Boies Penrose, famous for once uttering that “public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” and Mississippi Democrat John Sharp Williams, who retired a year later, saying, “I’d rather be a dog and bay at the moon than stay in the Senate another six years.” On the House side of the Capitol, Representative J. J. Kindred of New York proposed placing an explanation of Einstein’s theories in the Congressional Record. David Walsh of Massachusetts rose to object. Did Kindred understand the theory? “I have been earnestly busy with this theory for three weeks,” he replied, “and am beginning to see some light.” But what relevance, he was asked, did it have to the business of Congress? “It may bear upon the legislation of the future as to general relations with the cosmos.” Such discourse made it inevitable that, when Einstein went with a group to the White House on April 25, President Warren G. Harding would be faced with the question of whether he understood relativity. As the group posed for cameras, President Harding smiled and confessed that he did not comprehend the theory at all. The Washington Post carried a cartoon showing him puzzling over a paper titled “Theory of Relativity” while Einstein puzzled over one on the “Theory of Normalcy,” which was the name Harding gave to his governing philosophy. The New York Times ran a page 1 headline: “Einstein Idea Puzzles Harding, He Admits.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
“
I shoot up out of my chair. “It’s Bree. Hide the board!”
Everyone hops out of their chairs and starts scrambling around and bumping into each other like a classic cartoon. We hear the door shut behind her, and the whiteboard is still standing in the middle of the kitchen like a lit-up marquee. I hiss at Jamal, “Get rid of it!”
His eyes are wide orbs, head whipping around in all directions. “Where? In the utensil drawer? Up my shirt?! There’s nowhere! That thing is huge!”
“LADY IN THE HOUSE!” Bree shouts from the entryway. The sound of her tennis shoes getting kicked off echoes around the room, and my heart races up my throat.
Her name is pasted all over that whiteboard along with phrases like “first kiss—keep it light” and “entwined hand-holding” and “dirty talk about her hair”.
Yeah…I’m not sure about that last one, but we’ll see. Basically, it’s all laid out there—the most incriminating board in the world. If Bree sees this thing, it’s all over for me.
“Erase it!” Price whispers frantically.
“No, we didn’t write it down anywhere else! We’ll lose all the ideas.”
I can hear Bree’s footsteps getting closer. “Nathan? Are you home?”
“Uh—yeah! In the kitchen.”
Jamal tosses me a look like I’m an idiot for announcing our location, but what am I supposed to do? Stand very still and pretend we’re not all huddled in here having a Baby-Sitter’s Club re-enactment? She would find us, and that would look even worse after keeping quiet.
“Just flip it over!” I tell anyone who’s not running in a circle chasing his tail.
As Lawrence flips the whiteboard, Price tells us all to act natural. So of course, the second Bree rounds the corner, I hop up on the table, Jamal rests his elbow on the wall and leans his head on his hand, and Lawrence just plops down on the floor and pretends to stretch. Derek can’t decide what to do so he’s caught mid-circle. We all have fake smiles plastered on. Our acting is shit.
Bree freezes, blinking at the sight of each of us not acting at all natural. “Whatcha guys doing?”
Her hair is a cute messy bun of curls on the top of her head and she’s wearing her favorite joggers with one of my old LA Sharks hoodies, which she stole from my closet a long time ago. It swallows her whole, but since she just came from the studio, I know there is a tight leotard under it. I can barely find her in all that material, and yet she’s still the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. Just her presence in this room feels like finally getting hooked up to oxygen after days of not being able to breathe deeply.
We all respond to Bree’s question at the same time but with different answers. It’s highly suspicious and likely what makes her eyes dart to the whiteboard. Sweat gathers on my spine.
“What’s with the whiteboard?” she asks, taking a step toward it.
I hop off the table and get in her path. “Huh? Oh, it’s…nothing.”
She laughs and tries to look around me. I pretend to stretch so she can’t see. “It doesn’t look like nothing. What? Are you guys drawing boobies on that board or something? You look so guilty.”
“Ah—you caught us! Lots of illustrated boobs drawn on that board. You don’t want to see it.”
She pauses, a fading smile hovering on her lips, and her eyes look up to meet mine. “For real—what’s going on? Why can’t I see it?” She doesn’t believe my boob explanation. I guess we should take that as a compliment?
My eyes catch over Bree’s shoulder as Price puts himself out of her line of sight and begins miming the action of getting his phone out and taking a picture of the whiteboard. This little show is directed at Derek, who is standing somewhere behind me.
Bree sees me watching Price and whips her head around to catch him. He freezes—hands extended looking like he’s holding an imaginary camera. He then transforms that into a forearm stretch. “So tight after our workout today.”
Her eyes narrow.
”
”
Sarah Adams (The Cheat Sheet (The Cheat Sheet, #1))
“
Cornelius Vanderbilt and his fellow tycoon John D. Rockefeller were often called 'robber barons'. Newspapers said they were evil, and ran cartoons showing Vanderbilt as a leech sucking the blood of the poor. Rockefeller was depicted as a snake. What the newspapers printed stuck--we still think of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller as 'robber barons'. But it was a lie. They were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't robbers, because they didn't steal from anyone, and they weren't barons--they were born poor.
Vanderbilt got rich by pleasing people. He invented ways to make travel and shipping things cheaper. He used bigger ships, faster ships, served food onboard. People liked that. And the extra volume of business he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York--Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That gave consumers more than any 'consumer group' ever has.
It's telling that the 'robber baron' name-calling didn't come from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained, and persuaded the media to join in.
Rockefeller got rich selling oil. First competitors and then the government called him a monopolist, but he wasn't--he had competitors. No one was forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller enticed people to buy it by selling it for less. That's what his competitors hated. He found cheaper ways to get oil from the ground to the gas pump. This made life better for millions. Working-class people, who used to go to bed when it got dark, could suddenly afford fuel for their lanterns, so they could stay up and read at night.
Rockefeller's greed might have even saved the whales, because when he lowered the price of kerosene and gasoline, he eliminated the need for whale oil. The mass slaughter of whales suddenly stopped. Bet your kids won't read 'Rockefeller saved the whales' in environmental studies class.
Vanderbilt's and Rockefeller's goal might have been just to get rich. But to achieve that, they had to give us what we wanted.
”
”
John Stossel (Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...)
“
Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does exactly what the ghost is supposed to do: review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, like the impression that our visual fields are rich in detail from edge to edge. The brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulate cortex, which can push the buttons of behavior and override habits and urges. But those systems are gadgets with specific quirks and limitations; they are not implementations of the rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or the self.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature)
“
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”
”
Alice Walker
“
I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay’s couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem.
“Look, I know he’s your brother and he’s my uncle, but he’s not the kind of worker we need to have,” I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression.
I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn’t have Si sleeping on the job!
“Don’t touch Si,” Phil told me. “You leave him alone. He’s making reeds and that’s the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he’s good at it. Si is fine.”
Amazingly enough, in the ten years I’ve been running Duck Commander, we’ve never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn’t sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn’t perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si’s desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than he really did. He’s said before that he killed three ducks with one shot! We were watching patterns hitting the water, and Si started claiming the ducks like he always does and going off on one of his long tangents. After we recorded him, we ran the DVD back and showed it to him. I think Si saw that he was actually pretty funny and entertaining if he acted like himself. We started putting Si on the DVDs and he got more and more popular. Now he’s the star of Duck Dynasty!
”
”
Willie Robertson (The Duck Commander Family)
“
Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind)
“
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”
”
Robertharker
“
On the trip to lunch, Mom and Demi chatted constantly, while Star and I sat in the back seat – in total silence! In the restaurant, things continued much the same, until in a moment of unexpected meanness, Star tips her glass of juice into my lap. I squeal as the cold liquid hits my thighs. Finally Mom and Demi stop talking. They both grab some napkins and start to try and soak up the mess. The waiter comes over too and helps clean up the juice. He even replaces Star’s drink. Star keeps saying that she is sorry. I know she doesn’t mean it. Mom says, “Don’t worry dear, accidents happen.” Star gives me her best fake smile and winks at me. I feel like tipping my juice over Star’s head but show some restraint and decide to wait for a better chance for revenge. The meals arrive, Star and I both have nachos with little side dishes of sour cream and chilli sauce. The chilli sauce is in a bottle that looks like a soda bottle. Star announces that she needs to go to the bathroom and I see my chance. As the waiter goes past I ask if I can I swap my chilli sauce for extra hot chilli sauce. I think he feels sorry for me and rushes off to change the sauce bottles. I quickly swap it with the bottle next to Star’s plate. Star returns and grabs the extra hot sauce bottle and dumps the whole lot over her nachos. She must be hungry, as she quickly scoffs two large mouthfuls of food into her mouth. Suddenly her eyes widen and she starts to cough. I guess that the extra hot chilli sauce is starting to take effect. While she is distracted I hand her the second bottle of chilli sauce, she thinks it is her soft drink and takes a large gulp. Her eyes bulge like some type of wild cartoon character and she explodes. A mouthful of sauce and nachos flies across the table. A bit hits Mom, but most of it splashes onto Demi. Needless to say, after that, lunch is over. The ride home is pretty quiet, except for me munching my nachos and Star’s occasional coughing and whimpering that her mouth is on fire. The waiter put my nachos in a take-away container and with a wink said, “Careful with that sauce.” Demi and Star head off in their car as soon as we got home. Mom gave me a stern look and asked if I had anything to do with what happened at lunch. I just smiled and replied, “I think those nachos had a dash of karma.
”
”
Bill Campbell (Meet Maddi - Ooops! (Diary of an Almost Cool Girl #1))
“
Star Wars is more likely as "Yup, grown up… I can't watch animations or cartoons… because in front of others I am going to look as screw up… person…"… "That's why I am going to watch Star Wars… it's kinda of animation or cartoon TV Show but for grown ups.
”
”
Deyth Banger (Jokes From A (BJ's Life #2))
“
We had wanted to use a final sample to finish the twelve-inch track off, “That’s All Folks!” from the Warner Brothers cartoons. But we were quoted $30,000 for one use. And we were on their label. Just shows you . . . no favouritism.
”
”
Peter Hook (Substance: Inside New Order)
“
Aging hipsters are a hillary clinton cartoon become a nightmare real life dumb and dumber. A new renaissance emerged built like a boogeyman from the bones of social media, 4Chan, and Ferguson, Missouri.
”
”
Karlos Rene Ayala (I'll Show You Who's Boss Even If You Suffer And I Get In Trouble)
“
Deborah answered in person on the first knock. She looked at me with such a hard, stony face that she must have set the expression in place well before now, so it would be properly congealed when I saw it. She said nothing at all, letting her face do all the talking. Behind her, I could see a dim purple glow from her living room, and hear the sounds of a cartoon show. I recognized one of the voices—it was the only show Cody and Astor could agree on watching, and it involved a platypus, as I recalled.
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter Is Dead (Dexter, #8))
“
In my work,” Everett says, “in mergers and amalgamations, we’re seeing a real boom. LBOs are still the cornerstone of the business, obviously, but the increase in global capital flows is translating to even more revenue. It’s an exciting time. And there’s real security there. We work hard, and there’s a measurable gain, or, yes, occasionally, a loss, but at the end of the day, win or lose, we can all look at the same numbers and acknowledge we’ve accomplished something. It’s real, you know what I mean?”
I nod vigorously, to show her I agree, but honestly, Everett’s world doesn’t sound like a more measurable one than mine at all, and the closest I can come to picturing what she’s talking about is imagining numbers dancing around gaily on a computer screen while giant piles of cartoon cash rain down from the ceiling at the end of each day. My mind began to wander somewhere around “LBOs.
”
”
Lauren Graham (Someday, Someday, Maybe)
“
Fat is able to exit your cells primarily through the actions of three enzymes called hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), monoglyceride lipase (MGL), and adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL). Each of these enzymes are like little ushers that help move fat out of your cellular theater after the show is over. Again, without them, the fat would just stay seated in the cell taking up space. Now, the head usher responsible for the mobilization of free fatty acids from adipose tissue (i.e., lipolysis) is considered to be HSL. It’s more easily acted upon by hormones we can influence (thus the name hormone-sensitive), so, for our enzymatic fat loss communication, that’s where we’re going to put our focus. HSL is an intracellular lipase that has broad substrate specificity (meaning it can break down all kinds of fat). If you watched the cartoon Scooby-Doo when you were younger, you probably remember a time or twenty that someone in the crew had a “skeleton key” that was able to unlock any random door they wanted to get into. While other enzymes are like specialized keys that can break down one type of fat, HSL is like a skeleton key that can open the door to break down many types of fat.
”
”
Shawn Stevenson (Eat Smarter: Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your Life)
“
He cooks from his heart. From his soul." A pause, where I took in his words. "That is, when he is not drawing."
That was a surprise. "Drawing?"
"He draws little comics," the bartender said. He disappeared down below the bar again. This time when he popped up, he was holding what looked like an old menu. "Look."
I took the menu and flipped through. Yes, it listed various dishes and their prices. But the artist---Luke---had doodled all over it, tiny pictures of the food, wavy lines of steam rising over bowls of rice specks and eggs, and slightly larger pictures of the people enjoying them as elaborate anime characters: their eyes enormous, little strings of drool slipping from the corners of mouth slashes, frizzled lines of movement showing their frenzy as they dove through the menu categories looking for more food.
"This is adorable," I said with some surprise. I hadn't pictured Luke, with his posh accent that slipped out when he wasn't paying attention and his buttoned-up fancy restaurants, drawing cartoons.
"Yes," the bartender said. "Adorable.
”
”
Amanda Elliot (Sadie on a Plate)
“
There is a popular cartoon that shows a mother talking to her child. “Honey,” she says, “when you’re older, I want you to be confident, assertive, and independent. But right now I want you to be compliant, quiet, and obedient.” Most parents know the feeling: The very same qualities that we want for our children as adults can make life challenging when they’re young.
”
”
Jane Nelsen (Positive Discipline: The First Three Years: From Infant to Toddler--Laying the Foundation for Raising a Capable, Confident Child)
“
was going to play Star Wars, Dragonball Z, Sky landers, watch movies, catch up on all my fav cartoons and TV shows, overdose on Minecraft and eat chocolate and ice-cream straight from the container. Man it was going to be an insanely cool holiday.
”
”
Kate Cullen (GAME ON BOYS : Minecraft Superhero (Game on Boys Series Book 4))
“
First, I was going to put my bean bag in front of the TV and superglue my big fat bum to it from the moment the sun came up until the moment it went down. I was going to play Star Wars, Dragonball Z, Sky landers, watch movies, catch up on all my fav cartoons and TV shows, overdose on Minecraft and eat chocolate and ice-cream straight from the container. Man it was going to be an insanely cool holiday.
”
”
Kate Cullen (GAME ON BOYS : Minecraft Superhero (Game on Boys Series Book 4))
“
Books took me to places I could never go otherwise. They shared the confessions of people I'd never met and lives I'd never witnessed. The emotions I could never feel, and the events I hadn't experienced could all be found in those volumes. They were completely different by nature from TV shows or movies. The worlds of movies, soap operas, or cartoons were already so meticulous that there were no blanks left for me to fill in.
”
”
Sohn Won-Pyung (Almond)
“
We’ll know better after this next series. The Baltimore Orioles are in town. Which reminds me of a cartoon I once saw. It showed a little boy forlornly carrying a glove and a bat over his shoulder. “How’d you do, son?” his father asks. “I had a no-hitter going until the big kids got out of school,” the kid says.
”
”
Jim Bouton (Ball Four)
“
a cartoon showing John Foster Dulles on the toilet, with the caption: “The only man in Washington who knows what he is doing.
”
”
Donald E. Westlake (Under an English Heaven: The Remarkable True Story of the 1969 British Invasion of Anguilla)
“
Cartoon Network dot com, the shows are stupid, but at least they're entertaining and keep her calm.
”
”
David Archer (The Grave Man (Sam Prichard #1))
“
More recently, a publicity campaign for a late-night cartoon show backfired
when it aroused fears of a terrorist attack and temporarily shut down the city of
Boston. The “guerrilla marketing” effort consisted of 1-foot-tall blinking electronic
signs with hanging wires and batteries that marketers used to promote the Cartoon
Network TV show Aqua Teen Hunger Force (a surreal series about a talking milkshake, a box of fries, and a meatball). The signs were placed on bridges and in other
high-profile spots in several U.S. cities. Most depicted a boxy, cartoon character giving passersby the finger. The bomb squads and other police personnel required to
investigate the mysterious boxes cost the city of Boston more than $500,000—and a
lot of frayed nerves.
99
”
”
Michael R. Solomon (Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being)
“
Ethan slumped on the bench in the change room, ignoring the ribald behavior around him after yet another foregone win.
A hard slap on the rear of his head roused him and he whirled, his lip curled back as he growled menacingly.
“Don’t you dare show me your teeth,” Javier warned with a dark look.
He ran his hand through hair, already tousled and sweaty from the match.
“What the fuck happened out there? I passed you the perfect shot, and instead of grabbing it and scoring, you crashed into the g**damn arena glass. What are you, a rookie? Been watching too many Bugs Bunny cartoons?”
Heat burned Ethan’s cheeks in remembrance of his mishap before dejection— along with a large dose of disbelief— quickly set back in.
“I missed. It happens and besides, it’s not like we needed the point to win.”
“Of course we didn’t,” Javier replied with a scoffing snort. “But it’s the point of it. What the hell distracted you so much? And, why do you look like your best friend died, which, I might add, is an impossibility given I’m standing right beside you.” Javier grinned.
“I think I found my mate,” Ethan muttered.
A true beauty with light skin, a perfect oval face framed by long, brown hair and the most perfect set of rosebud lips.
Javier’s face expressed shock, then glee. “Congrats, dude.” Javier slapped him hard on the back, and while the blow might have killed a human or a smaller species, it didn’t even budge Ethan.
“I know you’ve been pining to settle down with someone of the fairer sex. You must be ecstatic.”
“Not really.” Although he should have been.
Finding one’s mate was a one in a zillion chance given how shifters were scattered across the globe. Most never even came close to finding the one fate deemed their perfect match.
His friend’s jovial grin subsided. “What’s wrong? Was she, like, butt ugly? Humongous? Old? Surely she can’t be that bad?”
“No, she appears perfect. Or did.”
Ethan groaned as banged his head off the locker door. “I am so screwed.”
A frown creased Javier’s face. “I don’t get it. I thought you wanted to find the one, you sick bastard. Settle down and pop out cubs.”
Ethan looked up in time to see Javier’s mock shudder.
“Me, I prefer to share my love among as many women as possible.” Javier mimed slapping an ass then humping it with a leering grin.
Ethan didn’t smile at Javier’s attempt at humor even if it happened to be the truth. Javier certainly enjoyed variety where the other sex was concerned. Heck, on many an occasion he’d shared with Ethan. Tag team sessions where they both scored. Best friends who did just about everything together.
Blowing out a long sigh, Ethan answered him. “I do want to find my mate, actually, I’m pretty sure I already have, but I don’t think I made a great impression. She’s the one they took out on the stretcher after the ball I missed hit her in the face.”
Javier winced. “Ouch. Sucks to be you, my friend. Don’t worry, though. I’m sure she’ll forgive you in, like, fifty years.”
Ethan groaned and dropped his head back into his hands.
Now that I’ve found her, how do I discover who she is so I can beg her forgiveness? And even worse, how the hell do I act the part of suitor?
Raised in the Alaskan wilds by a father who wasn’t all there after the death of Ethan’s mother, his education in social niceties was sadly lacking.
He tended to speak with his fists more often than not.
Lucky for him, when it came to women, he didn’t usually have to do a thing. Females tended to approach him for sex so they could brag afterward that they’d ridden the Kodiak and survived.
Not that Ethan would ever hurt a female, even if his idea of flirty conversation usually consisted of “Suck me harder” and “Bend over.”
If I add “darling” on the end, will she count it as sweet talk?
”
”
Eve Langlais (Delicate Freakn' Flower (Freakn' Shifters, #1))
“
Our favorite example of meaning comes from a “Peanuts” cartoon strip. Lucy asks Schroeder—Schroeder playing the piano, of course, and ignoring Lucy—if he knows what love is. Schroeder stands at attention and intones, “Love: a noun, referring to a deep, intense, ineffable feeling toward another person or persons.” He then sits down and returns to his piano. The last caption shows Lucy looking off in the distance, balefully saying, “On paper, he’s great.” Most mission statements suffer that same fate: On paper, they’re great.
”
”
Warren Bennis (Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge (Collins Business Essentials))
“
A clearing of a gravelly throat pulled him from his thoughts. He turned and looked at Thomas, the boat captain, who was seventy if he was a day.
“I think that’s your party there,” the older man said, nodding toward the gravel lot at the end of the dock. If he seemed a bit uncomfortable, Cooper chalked it up to the rather taciturn older man being thrust into what, based on the bits and pieces of the conversations Cooper had overheard while eating breakfast at the café that morning, was the biggest gossip story to hit the Cove in ages. Maybe the boat captain had been secretly hoping Kerry wouldn’t show and he’d be excused from chaperoning duties.
Cooper was too relieved that Kerry had come to get distracted by what the captain was thinking or feeling. He turned around, a welcoming grin on his face, then went completely, utterly still. Even his heart seemed to have stuttered to a stop. Holy jumping mother of--what in the hell was she wearing? He’d just been hoping she’d show at all and assumed he’d have to cajole her out of being annoyed with him for his high-handedness. Again. Only she sure didn’t look annoyed.
She looked…like an edible tray of ripe, luscious fruit. With him being the only guest invited to the bountiful buffet. Sweet Jesus. How was he supposed to keep his hands to himself with her wearing nothing more than a glorified bandana?
She drew closer, and her smile turned a shade smug. She was clearly enjoying his all but cartoon character worthy, goggling reaction. And well, hell, what did she expect? He was a red-blooded male whose bed had remained strikingly empty since her departure. Since long before then, truth be told.
“Hi, Thomas,” she called to the boat captain as she closed the remaining distance between them, still smiling brightly. If she was uncomfortable in her little getup in front of the older man--a man, Cooper supposed, she had to know, given everybody knew everyone in such a small village--she didn’t show it. Instead, she said, “Did they rook you into being our captain today?”
The old man’s cheeks were beet red in a way that had nothing to do with decades of harsh weather. He nodded somewhat tensely. “Did indeed, Miss Kerry. Good to, uh, good to see ya,” he managed to choke out, trying to look anywhere but at the expanse of bare leg and curvy cleavage.
Cooper would have felt sorry for the man, but he was too busy trying to get his own voice back.
”
”
Donna Kauffman (Starfish Moon (Brides of Blueberry Cove, #3))
“
Lex, Bone could have been just some idiot kid with no respect for library property, with nothing to distinguish him or garner any mention in a book. It’s probably not even his real name.”
Lex frowned. “That’s true.”
“Plus, what makes him a bandit? And why is he sick?” He shook his head. “It’s like he wrote the signature using Mad Libs. He may as well have signed it Spleen, the toasty orange tugboat.”
“You’re right,” Lex said, slowly putting something together. “It doesn’t make any sense!”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It is!” Goosebumps rippled up her arms as she grabbed a nearby pen and scrap of paper. “It’s a code!”
“Or that. Sure.”
Lex’s hands were a blur as she wrote. “A simple substitution cipher? One letter for another? Or maybe it needs a keyword. Maybe Bone is the keyword. Is Bone the keyword?”
Driggs raised an eyebrow as she scribbled. “This is an interesting side of you I’ve never seen.”
“My mom’s a teacher,” she said, staring at the paper without blinking. “Instead of cartoons and video games we got work sheets and word puzzles.”
“I see.” He reached in. “Maybe—”
“Don’t touch!”
“Wow. Okay.” He backed away, stifling a snicker. “I just think you’re overthinking this.”
She looked peeved. “Oh, am I, Sherlock?” She offered him the paper. “What do you think it is, just a simple anag—” Her eyes went wide.
Next thing Driggs knew, Lex was rummaging around in the closet. “Are you looking for your sanity?” he called after her. “Because I do believe it showed itself out a while ago.”
She emerged with a Scrabble box in hand. “Silence,” she said, dumping the tiles on the table. “Let me think.
”
”
Gina Damico (Scorch (Croak, #2))
“
Highlights of the Brunel featured the likes of Mr. Iraci, our landlord, coming around and being greeted by myself, stark naked, painting cartoons on my bedroom wall to liven the place up a bit; or Eddie showing another pretty girl his technique for marinating venison in a washing-up bowl full of Bordeaux wine.
Our housekeeping kitty of funds would miraculously evaporate due to Hugo’s endless dinner parties for just him and up to ten different girls that he had been chatting up all week.
Stan developed a nice technique for cooking sausages by leaving them on the grill until the hundred decibel smoke alarm went off, indicating they were ready. (On one occasion, Stan’s sausage-cooking technique actually brought the fire brigade round, all suited and booted, hoses at the ready. They looked quite surprised to see all of us wandering down in our dressing gowns, asking if the sausages were ready, while they stood in the hall primed for action, smoke alarm still blaring. Happy days.)
I also fondly remember Mr. Iraci coming round another time, just after I had decided to build a homemade swimming pool in the ten-foot-by-ten-foot “garden” area out the back.
I had improvised a tarpaulin and a few kitchen chairs and had filled it optimistically with water. It held for about twenty minutes…in fact just about until Mr. Iraci showed up to collect his rent.
Then it burst its banks, filling most of the ground floor with three inches of water, and soaking Mr. Iraci in the process.
Truly the man was a saint.
”
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
Kuni didn’t change his tone at all. If anything, he grew even calmer. “These cartoons are very amateurish. I could show Namen many more tricks about how to insult people artfully. For example, the drawings could have been made much more subtle and also much more lewd.” “What?
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Ken Liu (The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1))
“
And then it was the weirdest thing, just liked you’d see in a cartoon.” Daniel jumped in, his wonder at the event he was describing causing him to momentarily forget he was in trouble. “She turned to run, and bang!” Clapping his hands together, he gestured to show what happened. “She ran right smack into a tree and then just sort of slid down the trunk.” He shook his head. “I never thought that sort of thing happened in real life.
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Nicky Charles (The Keeping (Law of the Lycans, #4))
“
Axl introduced me—as usual—as Duff “the King of Beers” McKagan. Soon after this, a production company working on a new animated series called me to ask if they could use the name “Duff” for a brand of beer in the show. I laughed and said of course, no problem. The whole thing sounded like a low-rent art project or something—I mean, who made cartoons for adults? Little did I know that the show would become The Simpsons and that within a few years I would start to see Duff beer glasses and gear everywhere we toured.
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Duff McKagan (It's So Easy: And Other Lies)
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children could learn new aggressive behaviors as easily from a cartoon-like figure as from a human adult, a result that clearly implicates animated TV shows as an equally unhealthy teacher of aggression.
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Douglas A. Gentile (Media Violence and Children: A Complete Guide for Parents and Professionals, 2nd Edition (ADVANCES IN APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY))
“
But if you manage to make it to some semblance of adulthood, just showing up turns out to be one of the kindest, most selfless things you can do for someone.
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Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing: Essays and Cartoons (A Smart and Funny Essay Collection))
“
All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late--that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.
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Anonymous
“
In 1952 NBC put on its early morning "Today Show" featuring Dave Garroway. Before then the networks had assumed that few people would tune in at an early hour of day: many channels had been blank. At first the show did not do well, but Garroway then brought on stage a chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs. The chimp excited children, then adults, and "The Today Show" became a popular fixture. Cartoons soon dominated morning TV on weekends.19
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James T. Patterson (Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10))
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Ingrid Seward
It was 11 a.m. on one of those hot humid days of her last summer when I arrived at apartments 8 and 9 in Kensington Palace, where the Princess lived. The front door was open so I walked straight in. It took a few minutes before I found her butler, Paul Burrell, who apologized for not greeting me, and showed me to the loo. The walls were hung with cartoons depicting various events in Diana’s life (including one of a huge pile of horse dung, which said, “Has anyone seen James Hewitt?”).
”
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
“
On the TV he found cartoons and movies, music videos and game shows, repeat broadcasts and reruns, but there was nothing current, and no news. Many channels were just blank, or displayed brightly coloured test cards.
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A. Ashley Straker (Infected Connection)
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He reached across the couch for the remote and switched channels. He couldn’t bear to watch yet another show about the appalling truth he’d uncovered. The subject had been done to death by the television networks, but they wouldn’t let it go. He couldn’t go anywhere without seeing the words viatical and shocking used in the same sentence. It would be on cereal boxes next. He stopped channel-hopping when he came to the cartoons. He couldn’t see Tom and Jerry selling a viatical settlement to Butch.
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Simon Wood (Accidents Waiting to Happen)
“
Back then, there weren’t channels dedicated to subcategories of the population. There was no Disney channel, no Food Network, no ESPN, no Bravo. There was Sam Donaldson, Peter Jennings, and, my personal crush, Tom Brokaw on the news, and we got cartoons for three hours on Saturday mornings until CBS switched to golf at 11:00 after the Smurfs. Oh sure, MTV hit the scene in 1981, but we couldn’t watch it because of the devil. Apparently we could watch a show starring two outlaw brothers, their half-naked cousin, and a car painted with the Confederate flag but couldn’t watch Madonna sing “Like a Virgin” because we might get secondhand pregnant.
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Jen Hatmaker (Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life)
“
a production company working on a new animated series called me to ask if they could use the name “Duff” for a brand of beer in the show. I laughed and said of course, no problem. The whole thing sounded like a low-rent art project or something—I mean, who made cartoons for adults? Little did I know that the show would become The Simpsons and that within a few years I would start to see Duff beer glasses and gear everywhere we toured.
”
”
Duff McKagan (It's So Easy: And Other Lies)
“
Consider the example of a young person going down a YouTube rabbit hole. There’s a human intelligence taking in the content. There’s also an algorithmic system at work, showing them one video after another. You wouldn’t necessarily call the algorithm an ‘intelligence’, although it does seem to do things with a purpose. But then there’s a third entity in the background – the company that owns YouTube, and the structure of cause and effect that brought the other two things together. There’s no one person, or group of people, making the decision about what videos our hypothetical young person is being shown. In fact, the executives in charge of the parent company are sometimes horrified and distraught at the decisions made – in 2017, there was a scandal at YouTube when it was discovered that people were producing parody cartoons featuring beloved characters burning down houses or undergoing painful dentistry, and that these were being shown more often to innocent children than to the ironic adult consumers that were their intended target market. But somewhere, at some point in time, it’s been decided that ‘engagement’ is the purpose of the system – what it does – and somewhere else, a set of decisions have been made about what methods are going to be used to achieve that purpose.
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Dan Davies (The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind)
“
I couldn’t shake the idea that I, too, was probably one conversation away from changing my own mind about something, maybe a lot of things. But I also recalled how many conversations I’d had that only made my convictions stronger. I thought about the truthers and all the conversations they had in New York. I wondered what made these interactions different.
In the training, after the videos, Laura handed things over to Steve, and I got my first clue. He opened by telling the crowd that facts don’t work. A serene man with a gentle and patient spirit, Steve put away his persistent smile and raised his voice to address the audience on this point.
“There is no superior argument, no piece of information that we can offer, that is going to change their mind,” he said, taking a long pause before continuing. “The only way they are going to change their mind is by changing their own mind—by talking themselves through their own thinking, by processing things they’ve never thought about before, things from their own life that are going to help them see things differently.”
He stood by a paper easel on which Laura had drawn a cartoon layer cake. Steve pointed to the smallest portion at the top with a candle sticking out. It was labeled “rapport,” the next smallest layer was “our story,” and the huge base was “their story.” He said to keep that image in mind while standing in front of someone, to remember to spend as little time as possible talking about yourself, just enough to show that you are friendly, that you aren’t selling anything. Show you are genuinely interested in what they have to say. That, he said, keeps them from assuming a defensive position. You should share your story, he said, pointing to the portion of the cake that sat on top of the biggest layer, but it’s their story that should take up most of the conversation. You want them to think about their own thinking.
The team tossed out lots of metaphors like these. For instance, Steve later said to think of questions as keys on a giant ring. If you keep asking and listening, he told the crowd, one of those keys was bound to unlock the door to a personal experience related to the topic. Once that real, lived memory was out in the open, you could (if done correctly) steer the conversation away from the world of conclusions with their facts googled for support, away from ideological abstractions and into the world of concrete details from that individual’s personal experiences. It was there, and only there, he said, that a single conversation could change someone’s mind.
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David McRaney (How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion)
“
But he wasn’t procrastinating because he didn’t want to work on the friar’s painting. No. A masterpiece did not pop immediately to mind. He had to knead the problems like dough: how could the Virgin’s face fulfill classical expectations of beauty, yet surprise the viewer with the unexpected; how could each of the figures maintain their separate identities, yet intertwine into a single whole; how could he transform a few scratches of lines on paper into a living, breathing, complex organism? Creating new life took time. Now that his first year was almost up, Leonardo needed to convince the friars to let him stay. He had barely made any progress on human flight. Relocating now would interrupt his experiments. He had to prove that he was not only working on the altarpiece, but that a painting by him would be worth the wait. So, for the last two weeks, he had been displaying his design to the public, and now he had invited the friars up to witness the spectacle. As the song came to an end, Leonardo stepped onto a raised platform next to a large panel covered in a piece of black velvet. He raised his hand with a flourish, and Salaì yanked off the cloth. His cartoon, the life-sized preparatory drawing for the altarpiece, was displayed on a gilded pedestal. Candlelight illuminated the charcoal and chalk sketch on thin, tinted paper. The picture was of St. Anne, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and baby Jesus, all interconnected in a surging, pyramidal composition. The four figures were vibrant, their faces the ideal of classical beauty. He’d spent months dreaming up that image before putting it down on paper, so when he’d finally started sketching, the lines seemed to appear in a flash. Like his performance that night, it was all part of his show. Let the people think the design had arrived complete and perfect, as if sent by God himself.
”
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Stephanie Storey (Oil and Marble: A Novel of Leonardo and Michelangelo)
“
Salisbury poisoning and current cabinet and PM (“…..regard him as a cross between a fame show host and a cartoon yeti
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Mick Herron (Slough House (Slough House, #7))
“
regard him as a cross between a fame show host and a cartoon yeti
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Mick Herron (Slough House (Slough House, #7))
“
Jakob sends Rakel a text message that contains a link to the xkcd webcomic. The cartoon, titled “Angular Momentum,” shows a girl spinning around and around next to a bed on which her boyfriend is sitting and watching her in amazement.
“What are you doing?” his speech bubble says.
“Spinning counterclockwise. Each turn robs the planet of angular momentum, slowing its spin the tiniest bit, lengthening the night, pushing back the dawn, giving me a little more time here, with you,” answers the spinning girl.
Rakel is amused and sends Jakob a response: “Right now I’m spinning the other way, clockwise with the earth’s rotation. All in the hope of making our planet turn the tiniest bit faster, so that time will pass more quickly and it won’t be so long until I see you again.”
“Cunning—you can spin both ways” is his answer.
”
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Klara Hveberg (Lean Your Loneliness Slowly Against Mine)
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Interjections, show excitement, or emotion. They’re generally set apart from a sentence by an exclamation point, or by a comma when the feelings not as strong,” Julia sang, mimicking the Saturday morning School House Rock cartoon.
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T.L. Travis (Derek's Destiny (Maiden Voyage #2))
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You do know scones are not donuts, right?" Nina wasn't one to pass up any baked goods, but a donut was a donut. No scone would do.
"This is not your white, British-royals high tea, my friend. This is Highland Park high tea. It opened a month ago, and I think we're about to have our whole world rocked."
The Jam's exterior was black-and-white---- if you blinked you'd miss it. But when they went inside Nina immediately spotted a colorful mural of dinosaurs seated on velvet cushions, eating donuts and drinking out of porcelain cups. A pristine glass display case on the opposite wall featured rows and rows of endless donuts--- a happy welcoming committee of frosting and dough.
"We'll be having tea for two," Jasmine said at the counter. "And for my donut, could I get the Swirly Rosewater, please?"
As soon as she saw the names and flavors of the donuts, she instantly knew two things: one, she was going to love these, and two, Leo would absolutely hate them. Nina suddenly felt sympathy for Leo any time a contestant created a unique flavor pairing on the show. She raced to find the donut her friend had ordered in the case, and landed on a frosted pink cake donut that had a lemon rosewater glaze topped with roasted pistachios. "You live your life in pink, Jas."
"No better color. So from what I read online, the deal is that instead of scones, they do vegan donuts---"
Nina's eyes narrowed, and Jasmine glared right back. "Don't judge. What are you going to get?"
"I need chocolate," Nina said. She scanned the rows in search of the perfect solution.
"May I recommend our Chocolate from the Crypt donut?" the saleswoman suggested from behind the display. Her sharp bangs and blunt ponytail bobbed as she explained, "It's our fall-themed donut--- chocolate cake with a chocolate glaze, and it's got a kick from the cayenne pepper and cinnamon we add in."
"Oh, my donut," Nina said. In the case was an absolutely gorgeous chocolate confection--- the cayenne and cinnamon flakes on the outside created a black-and-orange effect. "I am sold."
"You got it." The saleswoman nodded and rang them up.
A narrow hallway covered in murals of cartoon animals drinking tea led them to the official tearoom. Soaring ceilings revealed exposed beams and brick walls, signaling that the building was likely older and newly restored. Modern, barrel-back walnut chairs were clustered around ultrasleek Scandinavian round tables. Nina felt like she'd followed Jasmine down a rabbit hole and emerged into the modern interpretation of the Mad Hatter's tea party.
"This is like..." Nina began. "It's a fun aesthetic."
"I know, right?" Jasmine replied as they sat down.
"It makes me feel like I'm not cool enough to be here, but glad I got invited." Nina picked up the prix fixe high tea menu on the table. The Jam's version of finger sandwiches were crispy "chicken" sliders, potato-hash tacos and mini banh mi, and in lieu of scones, they offered cornbread with raspberry jam and their signature donuts. "And it's all vegan...?"
"Yes, my friendly carnivore, and hopefully delicious.
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Erin La Rosa (For Butter or Worse (The Hollywood Series #1))
“
We created and registered a new brand, the ‘Barça Toons’, a cartoon version of all the players in the first team. We started using them to promote match attendance and they ended up having their own range of merchandise. In order to increase its dissemination and legitimacy as a club brand, we started the tradition of giving every new player his own Barça Toon at every presentation press conference.
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Esteve Calzada (Show Me the Money!: How to Make Money through Sports Marketing)
“
tipped three spoons of tea into the pot, inundating it with boiling water and picked up the chipped mugs. ‘Careful with those,’ said Hobbes, ‘they’re Chippendale.’ ‘Oh right, of course.’ I held them with exaggerated care. They showed images of Chip and Dale, the cartoon chipmunks.
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Wilkie Martin (Inspector Hobbes and the Blood / Inspector Hobbes and the Curse / Inspector Hobbes and the Gold Diggers (Unhuman, #1-3))
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The Arab countries are beset by prejudices, indeed hatreds of which the average Westerner knows so little that they tend not to believe them even if they are laid out in print before their eyes. The routine expression of hatred for others is so common in the Arab world that it barely draws comment other than from the region’s often Western-educated liberal minority who have limited access to the platform of mass media. Anti-Semitic cartoons which echo the Nazi Der Stürmer propaganda newspaper are common. Week in, week out, shock-jock imams are given space on prime-time TV shows.
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Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography)
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You know,” she said, “it makes me think of a cartoon by Abner Dean that I saw a few years ago. It shows these people in a living room, sitting in a circle on the floor with their arms around each other, about eight or ten of them, and they are all sort of melted into each other in a kind of nasty way. They’ve built a bonfire in the middle on the rug, and the caption says, ‘After the others have left, how did we all get so wonderful?’” “Are we all so wonderful?” “Maybe I think of the cartoon because we’re all so unwonderful. Damn these sandals. Sand comes in the toes.
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John D. MacDonald (A Man of Affairs (Murder Room Book 23))
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The word cartoon had lost it’s meaning over the years, and some kid’s shows had far too much adult content or they simply didn’t teach good values. It was hard enough raising a child and trying to instill morally sound character traits without having to compete with the media sources using bad behavior as entertainment.
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Elsie Davis (The Help of a Cowboy (Crossroads Creek Cowboys #2))
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American Canals and Railroads.” And in an echo of a stock image in contemporary political cartoons showing
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Andrew Delbanco (Melville: His World and Work)
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It’s not funny,” she said. Her face showed real fear, and Turnbull pulled himself together. “I just got shushed by a grown man in a cartoon fox suit,” he said. “How am I supposed to take this seriously?
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Kurt Schlichter (Wildfire (Kelly Turnbull, #3))
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two men made me fall for them. Hard. They both walked away at the same time. And look, I could handle the hit to my pride. I can pull up my big girl panties to deal with the humiliation of that. It’s the blows they dealt to my heart that left me broken. Shattered. I’m like a cartoon statue that’s been hammered. There’s a crack at the impact. The crack spreads into a thousand fractures, until I’m made of a million pieces. There’s a moment in the show when I’m frozen in air that way, and that’s how I’ve been living these past six months—the pieces suspended, waiting to fall. There’s no way to avoid it; the killing blow already happened.
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Skye Warren (The Evolution of Man (The Trust Fund Duet, #2))
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Stanislav Grof drew a cartoon showing a bearded yogi with a loincloth who was hanging upside down from a tree. Sitting under the tree was a man in a straightjacket who was saying, “Why do they call you a mystic and me a psychotic?” The yogi answers, “A mystic knows whom not to talk to.”(
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Kylea Taylor (The Ethics of Caring: Finding Right Relationship with Clients for Profound, Transformative Work in Professional Healing Relationships)
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Then I stumbled upon Max and Dave Fleischer’s Superman cartoons. They were beautiful, even a small black and white TV. The scene that lit up my brain like a Christmas tree showed Superman use his cape to protect Lois Lane from a cascade of molten metal. Rather than being angry at her for getting in trouble, he was gentle and brave and saved her. I imprinted on that moment like a baby duck and my child’s mind folded around a sudden understanding.
No, Superman was never going to be my father but if I worked at it really hard maybe day could become Superman. (32)
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J. Michael Straczynski (Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood with Stops Along the Way at Murder, Madness, Mayhem, Movie Stars, Cults, Slums, Sociopaths, and War Crimes)
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After the show Humphrey Barclay, a highly talented Harrovian Head Boy who could act, direct, and draw cartoons, introduced me to John Cleese, a very tall man with black hair and piercing dark eyes. They were very complimentary and encouraged me to audition for the Footlights. I had never heard of this University Revue Club, founded in 1883 to perform sketches and comedy shows, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and a month later Jonathan Lynn and I were voted in by the Committee, after performing to a packed crowd of comedy buffs in the Footlights’ Club Room. Jonathan, a talented actor, writer, and jazz drummer, would go on to direct Pass the Butler, my first play in the West End, and also write and direct Nuns on the Run, a movie with me and Robbie Coltrane. The audition sketch I had written for us played surprisingly well and, strange details, in the front row, lounging on a sofa, laughing with some Senior Fellows, was the author Kingsley Amis, next to the brother of the soon-to-be-infamous Guy Burgess, who would shortly flee the country, outed as perhaps the most flamboyant of all the Cambridge spies—for whenever he was outrageously drunk in Washington, which was every night, he would announce loudly to everybody that he was a KGB spy. Nobody believed him
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Eric Idle (Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography)
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As Jake the Dog from Adventure Time says: "Sucking at something is the first step to becoming sorta good at something.
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Emilie Wapnick (How to Be Everything)