Chopped Show Quotes

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dog And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl And that's what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it "Absolutely Nothing" Because that's what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.

Sore loser? You bet your fuckin' ass! What on earth is wrong with being a sore loser? It shows you cared about whatever the contest was in the first place. Fuck losing graciously-that's for chumps. And losers, by the way.

... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book.

Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. Before I was reduced to singsong, I saw all kinds of mating. Most are two-night stands trying to last a season. Some, the riptide ones, claim exclusive right to the real name, even though everybody drowns in its wake. People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props. But the world is such a showpiece, maybe that’s why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets afire. They fail, of course. The world outdoes them every time. While they are busy showing off, digging other people’s graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from greed to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they’re not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can’t be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning’s silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. Women scatter shielding their hair and men bend low holding the women’s shoulders against their chests. I run too, finally. I say finally because I do like a good storm. I would be one of those people in the weather channel leaning into the wind while lawmen shout in megaphones: ‘Get moving!

Om rubed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show tortoise how to fly. Then we let go.

I learned something in the juice isle, and that is, I don't know what's going on with cranberries, but they're getting in all the other juices. Whoever the salesman for cranberries does a great job. He's showing up everywhere. "Hey what do you got? Apples? Well let's put some cranberries in them; we'll call it cran-apple - go fifty fifty. What do you got? Grapes? What about cran-grape? What do you got? Mangos? Cran-mango! What do you got? Pork chops? Cran-chops!

She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.

People call me old-fashioned. The younger guys on the force, they bust my chops because I don't speak their language. Harvey Bullock, dinosaur…because, nope, I didn't see that show last night, where they prance around and belt out awful covers and vote each other into the damn ocean or whatnot.

Grapes are juicy. Strawberries. Oranges. Good pork chops are succulent," said Dusty. "But the word isn't accurately descriptive of a person." Smiling with delight, Ahriman said, "Oh, really, not accurately descriptive? Be careful housepainter. Your genes are showing. What if I were a cannibal?

He frowned. She laughed. He brightened. She pouted. He grinned. She flinched. Come on: we don’t do that. Except when we’re pretending. Only babies frown and flinch. The rest of us just fake with our fake faces. He grinned. No He didn’t. If a guy grins at you for real these days, you’d better chop his head off before he chops off yours. Soon the sneeze and the yawn will be mostly for show. Even the twitch. She laughed. No she didn’t. We laugh about twice a year. Most of us have lost our laughs and now make do with false ones. He smiled. Not quite true. All that no good to think, no good to say, no good to write. All that no good to write.

It was catchy though. The show wasn’t. It was like Lamb Chop’s Play-Along on acid but without the endearing weirdness of acid.

It really was that simple, and through His grace, God showed me that it was my job to pray that He would work in each of our lives to bring us closer to Him. I wasn’t supposed to worry about how it happened . . . I was just supposed to pray that it did.

We have to become people who stay. We have to become friends who show up to chop things for a few hours and stay even later to do the dishes, not just to eat. And we need to do this consistently, time and time again.

To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste. For of all the luxuries that your money could buy, a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur coat could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler. But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate. That was that. And asparagus? My father would sooner have carried a twenty-dollar bill to his grave than spend it on some glamorous weed coated in cheese.

How do two retards eat a turd sandwich? Well, not by first wiping their ass with wheat bread like I showed them.

Women on daytime murder shows are always strangled or stabbed or chopped up for no reason at all, except that they're women, I guess, and to some men that means they deserve it. Women are lucky to get shot, really. I'd rather be shot than strangled. Thank you, Son of Sam, you were uncharacteristically good to us.

...the only light in this tiny-mooned night comes from the windows of the apartment building, a matching purple halo from each window, a dozen televisions all tuned to the pointless, empty, idiotic unreality o the same reality show, everyone watching in vacuous lockstep as true reality cruises slowly past outside licking its chops

So mankind gobbled in a century all the world’s resources that had taken millions of years to store up, and no one on the top gave a damn or listened to all the voices that were trying to warn them, they just let us overproduce and overconsume until now the oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence—and still breeding without control. So I say the time has come to stand up and be counted.

Inside yourself you’re strong. That’s the place where strength counts. Strength shows not only in how fast you can chop down trees.’ -p. 5

We all know food is not just food. It’s thoughtfulness, generosity, and, yes, love. It’s a way of showing that you care for him that he will understand even better than words. But what about me? I hear you asking yourself. Why can’t he cook for me every once in a while? A comedian I heard recently suggested that the best way to get a man to cook for you is to get him to associate cooking with danger. Men who don’t like to fuss with sauces and muffin pans nevertheless can get pretty excited about grilling meats or chopping just about anything. If cooking involves fire or large knives or a whole fish – preferably all three – he’s there.

...what a leveller this remote-control gizmo was...it chopped down the heavyweight and stretched out the slight until all the set's emissions, commercials, murders, game-shows, the thousand and one varying joys and terrors of the real and the imagined, acquired an equal weight...

My, you ought to seen old Henry the Eight when he was in bloom. He was a blossom. He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. 'Fetch up Nell Gwynn,' he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, 'Chop off her head!' And they chop it off. 'Fetch up Jane Shore,' he says; and up she comes, Next morning, 'Chop off her head'—and they chop it off. 'Ring up Fair Rosamun.' Fair Rosamun answers the bell. Next morning, 'Chop off her head.' And he made every one of them tell him a tale every night; and he kept that up till he had hogged a thousand and one tales that way, and then he put them all in a book, and called it Domesday Book—which was a good name and stated the case. You don't know kings, Jim, but I know them; and this old rip of ourn is one of the cleanest I've struck in history. Well, Henry he takes a notion he wants to get up some trouble with this country. How does he go at it—give notice?—give the country a show? No. All of a sudden he heaves all the tea in Boston Harbor overboard, and whacks out a declaration of independence, and dares them to come on. That was his style—he never give anybody a chance. He had suspicions of his father, the Duke of Wellington. Well, what did he do? Ask him to show up? No—drownded him in a butt of mamsey, like a cat. S'pose people left money laying around where he was—what did he do? He collared it. S'pose he contracted to do a thing, and you paid him, and didn't set down there and see that he done it—what did he do? He always done the other thing. S'pose he opened his mouth—what then? If he didn't shut it up powerful quick he'd lose a lie every time. That's the kind of a bug Henry was; and if we'd a had him along 'stead of our kings he'd a fooled that town a heap worse than ourn done. I don't say that ourn is lambs, because they ain't, when you come right down to the cold facts; but they ain't nothing to that old ram, anyway. All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised.

And Grandma spooned in some beans. “We need one of them psychics,” Grandma said. “I saw on television where you can call them up, and they know everything. They find dead people all the time. I saw a couple of them on a talk show, and they were saying how they help the police with these serial murder cases. I was watching that show, and I was thinking that if I was a serial murderer I’d chop the bodies up in little pieces so those psychics wouldn’t have such an easy job of it. Or maybe I’d drain all the blood out of the body and collect it in a big bucket. Then I’d bury a chicken, and I’d take the victim’s blood and make a trail to the chicken. Then the psychic wouldn’t know what to make of it when the police dug up a chicken.” Grandma helped herself to the gravy boat and poured gravy over her pot roast. “Do you think that’d work?” Everyone but Grandma paused with forks in midair.

Howard had a pine display case, fastened by fake leather straps and stained to look like walnut. Inside, on fake velvet, were cheap gold-plated earrings and pendants of semiprecious stones. He opened this case for haggard country wives when their husbands were off chopping trees or reaping the back acres. He showed them the same half-dozen pieces every year the last time he came around, when he thought, This is the season - preserving done, woodpile high, north wind up and getting cold, night showing up earlier every day, dark and ice pressing down from the north, down on the raw wood of their cabins, on the rough-cut rafters that sag and sometimes snap from the weight of the dark and the ice, burying families in their sleep, the dark and the ice and sometimes the red in the sky through trees: the heartbreak of a cold sun. He thought, Buy the pendant, sneak it into your hand from the folds of your dress and let the low light of the fire lap at it late at night as you wait for the roof to give out or your will to snap and the ice to be too thick to chop through with the ax as you stand in your husband's boots on the frozen lake at midnight, the dry hack of the blade on ice so tiny under the wheeling and frozen stars, the soundproof lid of heaven, that your husband would never stir from his sleep in the cabin across the ice, would never hear and come running, half-frozen, in only his union suit, to save you from chopping a hole in the ice and sliding into it as if it were a blue vein, sliding down into the black, silty bottom of the lake, where you would see nothing, would perhaps feel only the stir of some somnolent fish in the murk as the plunge of you in your wool dress and the big boots disturbed it from its sluggish winter dreams of ancient seas. Maybe you would not even feel that, as you struggled in clothes that felt like cooling tar, and as you slowed, calmed, even, and opened your eyes and looked for a pulse of silver, an imbrication of scales, and as you closed your eyes again and felt their lids turn to slippery, ichthyic skin, the blood behind them suddenly cold, and as you found yourself not caring, wanting, finally, to rest, finally wanting nothing more than the sudden, new, simple hum threading between your eyes. The ice is far too thick to chop through. You will never do it. You could never do it. So buy the gold, warm it with your skin, slip it onto your lap when you are sitting by the fire and all you will otherwise have to look at is your splintery husband gumming chew or the craquelure of your own chapped hands.

When Batty got back home from walking the dogs, there were teenagers lounging all over the place, some left over from the basketball game, some arriving for the birthday dinner, some who fit into both categories. For once, she hardly cared, too delighted to see that Oliver's sleek car was no longer in the driveway. Hoping that he was gone forever, she rushed into the house and ended up in the kitchen, where dinner preparations were in full swing. Mr. Penderwick was chopping up vegetables for quesadillas, Rosalind was pulling a cake out of the oven, Jeffrey was shredding cheese, and Iantha was cooking up small, plain cheese quesadillas for Lydia, who was to be fed before the big dinner got rolling. Then there were the non-workers: Lydia in her high chair, wearing both her crown and her lamb bib, her new pink rabbit beside her; Jane sitting cross-legged on the floor, in everyone's way; Ben, strutting around, showing off his new Celtics T-shirt; and Asimov, sticking close to Jeffrey, hoping for falling cheese.

Back in Mother Ivy’s time I would have been obliged to cook you gingerbread and show you my spickle dancing, and yet now I have permission to chop you up into little pieces. I cry myself to sleep every night, and feel dead inside, but society is definitely improving.

Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon—for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you—and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter’s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn’t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn’t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still-bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.

You have to explain the invention to customers — not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time. You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it’s not at all hard to use.

It’s all supposed to be so innocent, upwardly mobile snob, designer shades, beret, so desperate to show he’s got good taste, except he’s also dyslexic so he gets ‘good taste’ mixed up with ‘taste good,’ but it’s worse than that! Far, far worse! Charlie really has this, like, obsessive death wish! Yes! he, wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won’t be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Suprmarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it. . . .” “Saunch, wow, that’s. . .” “It’s been on my mind. And another thing. Why is there Chicken of the Sea, but no Tuna of the Farm?” “Um. . .” Doc actually beginning to think about this. “And don’t forget,” Sauncho went on to remind him darkly, “that Charles Manson and the Vietcong are also named Charlie.

Charlie glanced at the poster hanging on the door, which announced the store's annual Hungry Ghost Festival, just four days away. It used to be Charlie's favorite holiday, from the puppet shows at the community center to the paper lanterns that his mom hung outside and to the food- especially the food. Sautéed pea shoots. Roasted duck. Pineapple cakes that fit into the palm of your hand. Then there was his grandma's shaved ice with all the toppings- chopped mangos, condensed milk poured on thick, and her famous mung beans in sugary syrup. He could eat a whole bowl of those.

never so happy in my whole life. Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen.

It’s just so soothing,” Henry says. “Everything’s all pastel-colored and the music is so relaxing and everyone’s so lovely to one another. And you learn so much about different types of biscuits, Alex. So much. When the world seems awful, such as when you’re trapped in a Great Turkey Calamity, you can put it on and vanish into biscuit land.” “American cooking competition shows are nothing like that. They’re all sweaty and, like, dramatic death music and intense camera cuts,” Alex says. “Bake Off makes Chopped look like the fucking Manson tapes.” “I feel like this explains loads about our differences,” Henry says, and Alex gives a small laugh.

I didn’t pack very much. Some clothes, some weapons. I threw out the perishable food, and stripped my bed of its sheets and blankets. Akos helped in silence, his arm still wrapped in a bandage. His bag of possessions was already on the table. I had watched him pack some clothes and some of the books I had given him, his favorite pages folded over. Though I had already read all those books, I wanted to open them again just to search out the parts he most treasured; I wanted to read them as if immersed in his mind. “You’re acting weird,” he said once we were finished, and all there was left to do was wait. “I don’t like going home,” I said. It was true, at least. Akos looked around, and shrugged. “Seems like this is your home. There’s more of you in here than anywhere in Voa.” He was right, of course. I was happy that he knew what “more of me” really was--that he might know as much about me, from observation, as I knew about him. And I did know him. I could pick him out in a crowd from his gait alone. I knew the shade of the veins that showed on the backs of his hands. And his favorite knife for chopping iceflowers. And the way his breath always smelled spiced, like hushflower and sendes leaf mixed together. “Maybe next time I’ll do more to my room,” he said. You won’t be back next time, I thought. “Yeah.” I forced a smile. “You should.

For myself, master, I never took with that hand’ — holding it before him— ‘what wasn’t my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or poorly paid. Whoever can deny it, let him chop it off! But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur; when my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks “Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of ‘em more. Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help the show when there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or what not.

I take off my shirt, I show you. I shaved the hair out under my arms. I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair on my legs with a knife, getting white. My hair is the color of chopped maples. My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south. (Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills) Skin polished as a Ming bowl showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet. In the night I come to you and it seems a shame to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man. You recognize strangers, think you lived through destruction. You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory. You want to know what I know? Your own hands are lying.

They were flying back from a big show in London, the whole roster on the plane. The story goes that much alcohol was consumed and things quickly got uncomfortable: Hennig and Scott Hall went wild with some shaving cream; Dustin Rhodes awkwardly serenaded his ex-wife, Terri; the legendary wrestler turned booker Michael “P.S.” Hayes got punched out by JBL and later, after he had fallen asleep, had his ponytail chopped off by Sean Waltman; Ric Flair paraded in front of a flight attendant in nothing but his sequined ring robe; and, to top it all off, Hennig challenged collegiate wrestling star (and WWE golden boy) Brock Lesnar to a Greco-Roman wrestling match that ended when Lesnar tackled Hennig into the exit door, and they were pulled apart just before they jeopardized the flight.

Some series teach us that ethnic features must be "fixed," by drastic means if necessary. Plastic surgeons with questionable ethics give insecure women of all ethnicities boob jobs, liposuction, and face-lifts on shows such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and Dr. 90210, ignoring medical risks and reinforcing problematic ideas about women's worth. Yet they don't make white surgical candidates feel like their cultural identity should also be on the chopping blocking - or that they'd be so much more attractive and fulfilled if only they didn't look so... Caucasian. In contrast, TV docs' scalpels reduce or remove racial markers on patients of colour. Black women's noses and lips are made smaller. In an increasingly common procedure targeting Asian women, creases are added to Asian women's eyelids.

Primer of Love [Lesson 7] "He disrespected the Bing." ~ Tony Soprano, Episode 34 Lesson 7)Don't diss'em or let'em diss you. We're back on Brooklyn's streets (or Newark) on this one. It's all about respect - show none and you get whacked. None of that 'alpha' shit flies here - you're equals and command equal respect. She watches the kids, you cart the garbage. The kids wear her down all day; the cops break your chops about a missing WalMart tractor trailer with 100,000 pair of Levi jeans 'somebody' jacked on the Jersey Turnpike. You twos gotta' to vent your daily shit to each other.Let it all out, but be careful not to anything you may regret or prepare to sleep with a Glock under your pillow for the rest of your live. Insist you be totally naked when having sex to make sure nobody's wearing a wire. Capisce!

Chef Ayden says you have something special. An 'affinity with the things that come from the dirt,' he says. A master of spices. And coming from Ayden that means a lot. He doesn't usually believe in natural inclinations. Only in working hard enough to make the hard work seem effortless. Is it true about you?" I know my eyebrows look about ready to parachute off my face. "You mean the bay-leaf thing?" "No more oil, that's good." She takes the bowl of marinated octopus from my hand, covers it with a red cloth, and puts it in the fridge. "The 'bay-leaf thing' is exactly what I mean. You're new to Spain. From what your teacher tells me, not many of you have had exposure to world cuisines. Yet, you know a variety of herb that looks and smells slightly different when found outside of this region. I'm sure you've probably seen it in other ways. You've probably mixed spices together no one told you would go together. Cut a vegetable in a certain way that you believe will render it more flavorful. You know things that no one has taught you, sí?" I shake my head no at her. 'Buela always said I had magic hands but I've never said it out loud about myself. And I don't know if I believed it was magic as much as I believed I'm a really good cook. But she is right; most of my experimenting is with spices. "My aunt Sarah sends me recipes that I practice with. And I watch a lot on Food Network. Do you have that channel here? It's really good. They have this show called Chopped-" Chef Amadí puts down the rag she was wiping down the counter with and takes my hands in hers. Studies my palms. "Chef Ayden tells me you have a gift. If you don't want to call it magic, fine. You have a gift and it's probably changed the lives of people around you. When you cook, you are giving people a gift. Remember that.

Then, as we ascend into the fifth and final act of the show, we can choose what we want to take back with us: a piece of our underworld self that, frankly, the cheating boyfriend may need to meet, or the boss that doesn't appreciate you, or the terrorizing Bitch at school—or maybe you're the terrorizing Bitch, maybe I am. Some fragments that took their masks off while we were on this underworld journey sometimes walk quietly with me. Only I know that after the show they will be staying with me as my figurative New Renter in my seafront condo, down the street from Pituitary Lane, behind Heart Terrace. Then again, some unmasked Beings that I see during a performance find me once I'm back in my dressing room and receive from me the “Okay you, thank you for the perspective and the vision, but in this century you can't just chop people's heads off and feed them to your cats, and I know these guys are bad guys, and thank you for the vision. So you can haunt me during the show again in Indy

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen.

But as time passes and the evidence continues to accumulate, our hero suddenly changes direction and begins using public-relations jujitsu. He says, “We’re trying to get to the bottom of this.” We. Suddenly, he’s on the side of the law. “We’re trying to get to the bottom of this, so we can get the facts out to the American people.” Nice. The American people. Always try to throw them in; it makes it sound as if you actually care. As the stakes continue to rise, our hero now makes a subtle shift and says, “I’m willing to trust in the fairness of the American people.” Clearly, he’s trying to tell us something: that there may just be a little fire causing all the smoke. But notice he’s still at the I-have-nothing-to-hide stage. But then, slowly, “I’m willing to trust in the fairness of the American people” progresses to “There is no credible evidence,” and before long, we’re hearing the very telling, “No one has proven a thing.” Now, if things are on track in this drama, and the standard linguistic path of the guilty is being followed faithfully, “No one has proven a thing” will precede the stage when our hero begins to employ that particularly annoying technique: Ask-yourself-questions-and-then-answer-them: “Did I show poor judgment?

This is what I least wished to write about last night, but I am going to try to write it down this evening. Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit, it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense spider) stood over me. I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing that if I did he would be gone. He touched my forehead with something he held, and the pit vanished. I was standing in Nettle’s kitchen. She was making soup, and I watched her add a whole plateful of chopped meat to her kettle and shake the fire. She turned and saw me, and we kissed and embraced. I explained to her that I was not really in her kitchen at all, that I lay at the bottom of a pit in a ruin of the Vanished People on an island far away, and that I was dying of thirst. “Oh,” Nettle said, “I’ll get you some water.” She went to the millstream and brought back a dipper of clean, cool water for me; but I could not drink. “Come with me,” I told her. “I’ll show you where I am, and when you give me your water there I’ll be able to drink it.” I took her hand (yes, Nettle my darling, I took your hard, hardworking little hand in mine) and tried to lead her back to the pit in which I lay. She stared at me then as if I were some horror from the grave, and screamed. I can never forget that scream. And I lay in the pit, as before. The Short Sun was burning gold. *

In the white bowl, the paper caught fire, burning like a desperate flower, blooming and dying at the same time. Its scents came on tendrils of smoke, wrapping themselves around me. We missed you. I inhaled, and Victoria's kitchen disappeared around me. It was early morning in the cabin, winter; I could smell the woodstove working to keep the frost at bay. My father had fed the sourdough starter, and the tang of it played off the warm scent of coffee grounds. I could smell my own warmth in the air, rising from the blankets I'd tossed aside. I remembered that morning. It was the first time I ever saw the machine. I must have been three, maybe four years old. I'd woken up and seen my father, standing in the middle of the room, a box in his hands, bright and shiny and magical. I remembered racing across the floor, my bare feet tingling from the chill. What is it, Papa? It's wonderful. I want to know. And he'd put the shiny box aside and lifted me up high and said, You are the most wonderful thing in the world, little lark. The last of the paper crumbled to ash. I stood there, trying to remember what had happened next- but I couldn't. Did my father show me the machine, or did we go outside and chop wood? You'd think I'd remember, but I didn't. What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way, before everything else happened. And in that moment, I felt whole. "Oh," I heard Victoria say, and when I turned to her, her eyes were filled with tears.

1953. It was a world with a war that had just ended and, like a devil that grows a new tail after you’ve chopped one off, another war had begun. With a draft and an enemy just like the one before, only this time there were nuclear weapons; there were veterans’ cemeteries that refused to bury Negro soldiers; there was a government telling you what to look for in a nuclear flash, what kind of structure to hide under should the sirens start wailing—though they must have known that it would have been madness to look or hide or consider anything except lying down and taking your death in with one full breath. There were the subcommittee hearings with Sheedy asking McLain on TV, “Are you a red?” whereupon McLain threw water into his face, and Sheedy threw water back and knocked off his glasses. A world in which TV stations were asked to segregate characters on their shows for Southern viewers, in which all nudes were withdrawn from a San Francisco art show because “local mother Mrs. Hutchins’s sensibilities are shaken to the core;” and beautiful Angel Island became a guided missile station, and a white college student was expelled for proposing to a Negro, and they were rioting against us in Trieste; the Allies freed Trieste not many years ago, and suddenly they hated us … and hovering above all this, every day in the paper, that newsprint visage like the snapshot of a bland Prometheus: Ethel Rosenberg’s face. When would the all clear come? Didn’t somebody promise us an all clear if we were good, and clean, and nice,

Our two taco specials get shoved up on the serving counter, crispy, cheesy goodness in brown plastic baskets lined with parchment paper, sour cream and guacamole exactly where they should be. On the side. There is a perfect ratio of sour cream, guac, and salsa on a shredded chicken tostada. No one can make it happen for you. Many restaurants have tried. All have failed. Only the mouth knows its own pleasure, and calibration like Taco Heaven cannot be mass produced. It simply cannot. Taco Heaven is a sensory explosion of flavor that defies logic. First, you have to eye the amount of spiced meat, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, and tomatillos. You must consider the size and crispiness of the shells. Some people–I call them blasphemers–like soft tacos. I am sitting across from Exhibit A. We won’t talk about soft tacos. They don’t make it to Taco Heaven. People who eat soft tacos live in Taco Purgatory, never fully understanding their moral failings, repeating the same mistakes again and again for all eternity. Like Perky and dating. Once you inventory your meat, lettuce, tomato, and shell quality, the real construction begins. Making your way to Taco Heaven is like a mechanical engineer building a bridge in your mouth. Measurements must be exact. Payloads are all about formulas and precision. One miscalculation and it all fails. Taco Death is worse than Taco Purgatory, because the only reason for Taco Death is miscalculation. And that’s all on you. “Oh, God,” Fiona groans through a mouthful of abomination. “You’re doing it, aren’t you?” “Doing what?” I ask primly, knowing damn well what she’s talking about. “You treat eating tacos like you’re the star of some Mythbusters show.” “Do not.” “Do too.” “Even if I do–and I am notconceding the point–it would be a worthwhile venture.” “You are as weird about your tacos as Perky is about her coffee.” “Take it back! I am not that weird.” “You are.” “Am not.” “This is why Perky and I swore we would never come here with you again.” Fiona grabs my guacamole and smears the rounded scoop all over the outside of her soft taco. I shriek. “How can you do that?” I gasp, the murder of the perfect ratio a painful, almost palpable blow. The mashed avocado has a death rattle that rings in my ears. Smug, tight lips give me a grimace. “See? A normal person would shout, ‘Hey! That’s mine!’ but you’re more offended that I’ve desecrated my inferior taco wrapping with the wrong amount of guac.” “Because it’s wrong.” “You should have gone to MIT, Mal. You need a job that involves nothing but pure math for the sake of calculating stupid shit no one else cares about.” “So glad to know that a preschool teacher holds such high regard for math,” I snark back. And MIT didn’t give me the kind of merit aid package I got from Brown, I don’t add. “Was that supposed to sting?” She takes the rest of my guacamole, grabs a spoon, and starts eating it straight out of the little white paper scoop container thing. “How can you do that? It’s like people who dip their french fries in mayonnaise.” I shudder, standing to get in line to buy more guac. “I dip my french fries in mayo!” “More evidence of your madness, Fi. Get help now. It may not be too late.” I stick my finger in her face. “And by the way, you and Perky talk about my taco habits behind my back? Some friends!” I hmph and turn toward the counter.

The Unknown Soldier A tale to tell in bloody rhyme, A story to last ’til the dawn of end’s time. Of a loving boy who left dear home, To bear his countries burdens; her honor to sow. –A common boy, I say, who left kith and kin, To battle der Kaiser and all that was therein. The Arsenal of Democracy was his kind, –To make the world safe–was their call and chime. Trained he thus in the far army camps, Drilled he often in the march and stamp. Laughed he did with new found friends, Lived they together for the noble end. Greyish mottled images clipp’ed and hack´ed– Black and white broke drum Ʀ…ɧ..λ..t…ʮ..m..ȿ —marching armies off to ’ttack. Images scratched, chopped, theatrical exaggerate, Confetti parades, shouts of high praise To where hell would sup and partake with all bon hope as the transport do them take Faded icons board the ship– To steel them away collaged together –joined in spirit and hip. Timeworn humanity of once what was To broker peace in eagles and doves. Mortal clay in the earth but to grapple and smite As warbirds ironed soar in heaven’s light. All called all forward to divinities’ kept date, Heroes all–all aces and fates. Paris–Used to sing and play at some cards, A common Joe everybody knew from own heart. He could have been called ‘the kid’ by the ‘old man,’ But a common private now taking orders to stand. Receiving letters from his shy sweet one, Read them over and over until they faded to none. Trained like hell with his Commander-in-Arms, –To avoid the dangers of a most bloody harm. Aye, this boy was mortal, true enough said, He could be one of thousands alive but now surely dead. How he sang and cried and ate the gruel of rations, And grumbled as soldiers do at war’s great contagions. Out–out to the battle this young did go, To become a man; the world to show. (An ocean away his mother cried so– To return her boy safe as far as the heavens go). Lay he down in trenched hole, With balls bursting overhead upon the knoll. Listened hardnfast to the “Sarge” bearing the news, —“We’re going over soon—” was all he knew. The whistle blew; up and over they went, Charging the Hun, his life to be spent (“Avoid the gas boys that’ll blister yer arse!!”). Running through wires razored and deadened trees, Fell he into a gouge to find in shelter of need (They say he bayoneted one just as he–, face to face in War’s Dance of trialed humanity). A nameless sonnuvabitch shell then did untimely RiiiiiiiP the field asunder in burrrstzʑ–and he tripped. And on the field of battle’s blood did he die, Faceless in a puddle as blurrs of ghosting men shrieked as they were fleeing by–. Perished he alone in the no man’s land, Surrounded by an army of his brother’s teeming bands . . . And a world away a mother sighed, Listened to the rain and lay down and cried. . . . Today lays the grave somber and white, Guarded decades long in both the dark and the light. Silent sentinels watch o’er and with him do walk, Speak they neither; their duty talks. Lone, stark sentries perform the unsmiling task, –Guarding this one dead–at the nation’s bequest. Cared over day and night in both rain or sun, Present changing of the guard and their duty is done (The changing of the guard ’tis poetry motioned A Nation defining itself–telling of rifles twirl-clicking under the intensest of devotions). This poem–of The Unknown, taken thus, Is rend eternal by Divinity’s Iron Trust. How he, a common soldier, gained the estate Of bearing his countries glory unto his unknown fate. Here rests in honored glory a warrior known but to God, Now rests he in peace from the conflict path he trod. He is our friend, our family, brother, our mother’s son –belongs he to us all, For he has stood in our place–heeding God’s final call.

Isn't there something in Genesis about not looking back? A stupid glance over my shoulder showed her expression relaxing, glad I wasn't taking anything that couldn't be replaced and glad I didn't destroy anything that couldn't be repaired. "Do you care for me, Georgia?" I asked her. "Tell me you don't and I'm out of your life forever." She stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. "Andre is on his way." "I didn't ask you about no Andre." "He'll be here in a minute." My head hurt, but I pressed her. "It's a yes-or-no question." "Can we talk when Andre gets back? We can-" "Stop talking about him. I want to know if you love me." "Andre…" She said his name one time too many. For what happened next, she would have to take some of the blame. I asked her a simple question and she refused to give me a simple answer. I turned from her and made a sharp left turn, pounding across the yard, feeling the dry grass crunch under my shoes. Six long strides put me at the base of the massive tree. I touched the rough bark, an instant of reflection, to give Old Hickey the benefit of the doubt. But in reality, a hickory tree was a useless hunk of wood. Tall, and that's all. To break the shell of a hickory nut, you needed a hammer and an act of Congress, and even then you needed a screwdriver to get at the meat, which was about as tasty as a clod of limestone. Nobody would ever mourn a hickory tree except Celestial, and maybe Andre. When I was a boy, so little I couldn't manage much more than a George Washington hatcher, Big Roy taught me how to take down a tree. Bend your knees, swing hard and low, follow up with a straight chop. Celestial was crying like the baby we never had, yelping and mewing with every swing. Believe me when I say that I didn't slow my pace, even though my shoulders burned and my arms strained and quivered. With every blow, wedges of fresh wood flew from the wounded trunk peppering my face with hot bites. "Speak up, Georgia," I shouted, hacking at the thick grey bark, experiencing pleasure and power with each stroke. "I asked you if you loved me.

once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem and he called it "chops" because that was the name of his dog and thats what it was all about his teacher gave him an A and a gold star and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts. that was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo and he let them sing on the bus and his little sister was born with tiny nails and no hair and his mother and father kissed a lot and the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant and his father always tucked him in bed at night and was always there to do it once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season and that's what it was all about and his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of the new paint and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars and left butts on the pews and sometime they would burn holes that was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see santa claus and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot and his father never tucked him in bed at night and his father got mad when he cried for him to do it once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl and thats what it was all about and his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her that was the year Father Tracy died and he forgot how the end of the Apostles's Creed went and he caught his sister making out on the back porch and his mother and father never kissed or even talked and the girl around the corner wore too much make up that made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because it was the thing to do and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly that's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem and he called it "Absolutely Nothing" because that's what it was really all about and he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen

once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem and he called it "chops" because that was the name of his dog and that's what it was all about his teacher gave him an a and a gold star and his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts. that was the year father tracy took all the kids to the zoo and he let them sing on the bus and his little sister was born with tiny nails and no hair and his mother and father kissed a lot and the girl around the corner sent him a valentine signed with a row of x's and he had to ask his father what the x's meant and his father always tucked him in bed at night and was always there to do it once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem he called it "autumn" because that was the name of the season and that's what it was all about and his teacher gave him an a and asked him to write more clearly and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of the new paint and the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars and left butts on the pews and sometime they would burn holes that was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames and the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see santa claus and the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot and his father never tucked him in bed at night and his father got mad when he cried for him to do it once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem and he called it "innocence: a question" because that was the question about his girl and that's what it was all about and his professor gave him an a and a strange steady look and his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her that was the year father tracy died and he forgot how the end of the apostles' creed went and he caught his sister making out on the back porch and his mother and father never kissed or even talked and the girl around the corner wore too much make up that made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because it was the thing to do and at 3 am he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly that's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem and he called it "absolutely nothing" because that's what it was really all about and he gave himself an a and a slash on each damned wrist and he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dog And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the season And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girl And that's what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it "Absolutely Nothing" Because that's what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen. That was the poem I read for Patrick. Nobody knew who wrote it, but Bob said he heard it before, and he heard that it was some kid’s suicide note. I really hope it wasn’t because then I don’t know if I like the ending.

Luce closed her eyes,trying to remember exactly what he'd looked like. There were no words for it.It was just an incredible, joyous connection. "I saw him." "Who,Daniel? Yeah,I saw him,too. He was the guy who dropped the ax when it was his turn to do the chopping. Big mistake. Huge." "No,I really saw him. As he truly is." Her voice shook. "He was so beautiful." "Oh,that." Bill tossed his head, annoyed. "I recognized him.I think I've seen him before." "Doubt it." Bill coughed. "That was the first and last time you'll be able to see him like that.You saw him, and then you died.That's what happens when mortal flesh looks upon an angel's unbridled glory. Instant death. Burned away by the angel's beauty." "No,it wasn't like that." "You saw what happened to everyone else. Poof. Gone." Bill plopped down beside her and patted her knee. "Why do you think the Mayans started doing sacrifices by fire after that? A neighboring tribe discovered the charred remains and had to explain it somehow." "Yes,they burst into flames right away. But I lasted longer-" "A couple of extra seconds? When you were turned away? Congratulations." "You're wrong.And I know I've seen that before." "You've seen his wings before, maybe.But Daniel shedding his human guise and showing you his true form as an angel? Kills you every time." "No." Luce shook her head. "You're saying he can never show me who he really is?" Bill shrugged. "Not without vaporizing you and everyone around you.Why do you think Daniel's so cautious about kissing you all the time? His glory shines pretty damn bright when you two get hot and heavy." Luce felt like she could barely hold herself up. "That's why I sometimes die when we kiss?" "How 'bout a round of applause for the girl, folks?" Bill said snarkily. "But what about all those other times, when I die before we kiss, before-" "Before you even have a chance to see how toxic your relationship might become?" "Shut up." "Honestly,how many times do you have to see the same story line before you realize nothing is ever going to change?" "Something has changed," Luce said. "That's why I'm on this journey, that's why I'm still alive. If I could just see him again-all of him-I know I could handle it." "You don't get it." Bill's voice was rising. "You're talking about this whole thing in very mortal times." As he grew more agitated,spit flew from his lips. "This is the big time,and you clearly cannot handle it." "Why are you so angry all of a sudden?" "Because! Because." He paced the ledge, gnashing his teeth. "Listen to me: Daniel slipped up this once, he showed himself,but he never does that again.Never.He learned his lesson. Now you've learned one,too: Mortal flesh cannot gaze upon an angel's true form without dying.

BUTTERSCOTCH BONANZA BARS Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   ½ cup salted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces, ¼ pound) 2 cups light brown sugar*** (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 beaten eggs (just whip them up in a glass with a fork) 1 and ½cups flour (scoop it up and level it off with a table knife) 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) 2 cups butterscotch chips (optional) ***- If all you have in the house is dark brown sugar and the roads are icy, it’s below zero, and you really don’t feel like driving to the store, don’t despair. Measure out one cup of dark brown sugar and mix it with one cup regular white granulated sugar. Now you’ve got light brown sugar, just what’s called for in Leslie’s recipe. And remember that you can always make any type of brown sugar by mixing molasses into white granulated sugar until it’s the right color. Hannah’s Note: Leslie says the nuts are optional, but she likes these cookie bars better with nuts. So do I, especially with walnuts. Bertie Straub wants hers with a cup of chopped pecans and 2 cups of butterscotch chips. Mother prefers these bars with 2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips and no nuts, Carrie likes them with 2 cups of mini chocolate chips and a cup of chopped pecans, and Lisa prefers to make them with 1 cup of chopped walnuts, 1 cup of white chocolate chips, and 1 cup of butterscotch chips. All this goes to show just how versatile Leslie’s recipe is. Try it first as it’s written with just the nuts. Then try any other versions that you think would be yummy. Grease and flour a 9-inch by 13-inch cake pan, or spray it with nonstick baking spray, the kind with flour added. Set it aside while you mix up the batter. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat on the stovetop, or put it in the bottom of a microwave-safe, medium-sized mixing bowl and heat it for 1 minute in the microwave on HIGH. Add the light brown sugar to the mixing bowl with the melted butter and stir it in well. Mix in the baking powder and the salt. Make sure they’re thoroughly incorporated. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the beaten eggs. Add the flour by half-cup increments, stirring in each increment before adding the next. Stir in the nuts, if you decided to use them. Mix in the butterscotch chips if you decided to use them, or any other chips you’ve chosen. Spoon the batter into the prepared cake pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula. Bake the Butterscotch Bonanza Bars at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took 25 minutes.) When the bars are done, take them out of the oven and cool them completely in the pan on a cold stove burner or a wire rack. When the bars are cool, use a sharp knife to cut them into brownie-sized pieces. Yield: Approximately 40 bars, but that all depends on how large you cut the squares. You may not believe this, but Mother suggested that I make these cookie bars with semi-sweet chocolate chips and then frost them with chocolate fudge frosting. There are times when I think she’d frost a tuna sandwich with chocolate fudge frosting and actually enjoy eating it!

Just because I murdered a man—my boss—doesn’t mean I deserve to be fired. In fact, as I see it and saw it, I should be promoted for showing initiative and seeing an opportunity and opening where others saw none.

I popped the tape into the VCR and watched a pretty, middle-aged Italian woman in a flowered housedress and frilly apron hold up various fish and shellfish as she spoke to the tape in rapid, enthusiastic Italian, espousing the virtues of the seafood. She was standing at a battered wooden table in what appeared to be her own kitchen. After she finished showing off the fish, she beheaded and eviscerated them, and then washed them in a chipped white enamel bowl full of water that sat on the table. She put the cleaned pieces on a brightly painted platter, chosen, I'm sure, with less deliberation than our Jonathan would have required. She poured olive oil into a large, slightly dented pot that sat on a small two-burner stove and then in a flash chopped a couple of onions and a good amount of garlic and put them in the oil. While the aromatics became, well, aromatic, she cut up a half dozen fresh tomatoes and a healthy amount of herbs and added them to the pot. She stirred everything around, and before long she had all the fish and shellfish in the pot.

Cucumber Sandwiches • Mayonnaise • Cucumbers, thinly sliced • Salt and pepper • Parsley, chopped fine Spread each slice of your sandwich bread with the thinnest bit of mayonnaise you can spread. Pile 8 to 10 slices of cucumber on one side. Salt and pepper. Top with the other slice of bread. Trim off any cucumber sticking out over the edges. Then cut the sandwich into 4 triangles. Spread very thin mayo on one edge of each of the triangles and then dip that into your chopped parsley. Arrange on a plate, standing up like little sails with the parsley side showing. Pepper Jelly Triple-Decker Surprise Sandwiches • Pepper jelly • Cream cheese Spread pepper jelly on one slice of bread and cream cheese on the other. You know what to do—put them together. Now spread cream cheese on the top of that sandwich. Take another slice of bread and spread pepper jelly on that and put it on top. You should now have a triple-decker sandwich with pretty stripes. These get sliced into 4 long fingers. Pimento Cheese and Tomato Sandwiches • Pimento cheese (I know I put my pimento cheese recipe in here somewhere. Just look it up because I am not writing it down again.) • Cherry tomatoes This is a real pretty open-face sandwich. Spread your pimento cheese on a slice of bread all the way to the edges. Cut the bread into quarters. Slice 2 cherry tomatoes in half. Top each bread quarter with a tomato half, cut side up. If you have a wait before you start eating, cover the sandwiches with a wet paper towel that you’ve wrung out till it’s just damp. I like to arrange them all nice and fancy on my pressed-glass plate that I got from my mama. Then I call a girlfriend over for a chat and some sweet tea. What occasion could be more special than that? Serves 2.

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.

Is there anything I can do?" He gave her a tired grin. "Crawl in bed with me." She glared at him, then got up and tossed him a terry-cloth robe she found hanging on the back of the bathroom door. "Meet me in the kitchen. I'll make you a sandwich." "You don't need to make me a sandwich." "But I'm going to." She left the room before he could protest further. In the kitchen, she layered grilled pancetta, tomato and lettuce on toasted thick slabs of sourdough. She added some chopped cornichons, Dijon mustard and fresh snipped tarragon to the mayo, just to show off. Around Bella Vista, her PLT's were legendary. Mac wasn't wearing the robe when he came downstairs. He'd thrown on a pair of lived-in cutoffs, faded in all the right places, and a rumpled but clean T-shirt with a logo from a kiteboarding resort in Australia. She cut the sandwich into quarters and set it on a pottery plate, along with a side of grapes and parmesan chips, and a beer in a frosty mug. He regarded the small feast on the table. "I hope you don't mind if I moan in ecstasy while I eat this." "I'd rather you didn't," she said, helping herself to a quarter of the sandwich. "Cook's tax," she explained.

What is this?" Emily asked, looking in the largest Styrofoam container. There was a bunch of dry-looking chopped meat inside. "Barbecue." "This isn't barbecue," Emily said. "Barbecue is hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill." Vance laughed, which automatically made Emily smile. "Ha! Blasphemy! In North Carolina, barbecue means pork, child. Hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill- that's called, 'cooking out' around here," he explained with sudden enthusiasm. "And there are two types of North Carolina barbecue sauce-Lexington and Eastern North Carolina. Here, look." He excitedly found a container of sauce and showed her, accidentally spilling some on the table. "Lexington-style is the sweet sugar-and-tomato-based sauce, some people call it the red sauce, that you put on chopped or pulled pork shoulder. Julia's restaurant is Lexington-style. But there are plenty of Eastern North Carolina-style restaurants here. They use a thin, tart, vinegar-and-pepper based sauce. And, generally, they use the whole hog. But no matter the style, there's always hush puppies and coleslaw. And, if I'm not mistaken, those are slices of Milky Way cake. Julia makes the best Milky Way cakes." "Like the candy bar?" "Yep. The candy bars are melted and poured into the batter. It means 'Welcome.'" Emily looked over to the cake Julia had brought yesterday morning, still on the counter. "I thought an apple stack cake meant 'Welcome.'" "Any kind of cake means 'Welcome,'" he said. "Well, except for coconut cake and fried chicken when there's a death." Emily looked at him strangely. "And occasionally a broccoli casserole," he added.

Tina, who clearly had it in mind to dazzle her new husband in the kitchen, wanted desperately to learn the secrets of Angelina's red gravy. So they picked a Sunday afternoon soon after New Year's and Angelina hauled out her mother's old sausage grinder and stuffer. Gia had volunteered to make the trip to the butcher's shop and brought back good hog casings, a few pounds of beautifully marbled pork butt and shoulder glistening with clean, white fat, and a four-pound beef chuck roast. It wasn't every that the grinder came out for fresh homemade sausages and meatballs, but it wasn't every day that Gia and Angelina teamed up to pass on the Mother Recipe to the next generation. Gia patiently instructed Tina on the proper technique for flushing and preparing the casings, then set them aside while Angelina showed her how to build the sauce: start with white onion, fresh flat-leaf parsley, and deep red, extra-sweet frying peppers; add copious amounts of garlic (chopped not so finely); season with sea salt, crushed red pepper, and freshly ground black pepper; simmer and sweat on a medium flame in good olive oil; generously sprinkle with dried herbs from the garden (palmfuls of oregano, rosemary, and basil); follow with a big dollop of thick, rich tomato paste; cook down some more until all of the ingredients were completely combined; pour in big cans of fresh-packed crushed tomatoes and a cup of red wine (preferably a Sangiovese or a Barolo); reseason, finish with fresh herbs; bring to a high simmer, then down to a low flame; walk away.

She looked like a planetary: not tall, but her body bulky with high grav muscles, shoulders wide and sleeves of her coverall rolled up to show off sculpted forearms. She had a broad face with high, slanted cheekbones; coffee-dark eyes with a moderate fold, straight black hair chopped at the ear except for some longer locks, those dyed in fluttering streaks of red and gold.

I can chop, sauté, dice, whisk, knead. Massage. And rub. Among other things." I bite my lip. This feels like some sort of indecent kitchen pillow talk. My eyes skim the shiny metal surface of the nearby prep table. If only there weren't a handful of servers due back in the kitchen at any minute, I'd demand he bend me over the shiny cold surface and show me for the millionth time just how good he is with his hands. That's a decidedly friends-with-benefits thought. I shake my head and glance at the clock. Only four minutes of ogling time left. "You look like you've got something on your mind." It's as if he can read the naughty thoughts crowding my head. My eyes fall to the floor. It's time to rein in the pornographic kitchen euphemisms and focus back on the task at hand.

Hannah showed me what on the order had been completed, and I rushed to begin the four baker's dozens of our good-morning muffins. They were a big hit with the health-crazed folks on the island. The muffins were packed with grated carrots, chopped apples, raisins soaked in vanilla, coconut, and pecans.

People who burn out usually do so because their newfound awareness causes them to try to bleed the white supremacy out of any and everything. They become overly scrupulous, refusing to participate in or enjoy everything they think could be “problematic.” They fight every battle, going to the mat over every instance where white supremacy shows up with the same level of tenacity for each offense. Large or small, every incident or slight raises the threat level to DEFCON 1 and must be dispensed with. They struggle to give people a chance to learn or course-correct out of fear that they could be giving place to white supremacy. They adopt a form of fundamentalism that seems principled on the exterior but often ends in existential crisis. They chop away at the white supremacy they discern in everything, and they end up experiencing a personal crisis because they’ve left nothing to anchor themselves to.

I pop into Barrett's, ducking beneath the bright-red awning into the tiny shop, which is packed with fresh cuts of everything, from delicate lamb chops to meaty pork roasts covered in thick layers of fat. Mountains of fat sausages beckon from within the glass case, in more varieties than I could ever imagine---wild boar and apple, venison, chicken and sage, beef and garlic. A musty funk fills the store, giving the place an air of rustic authenticity. I order three Cornish hens (or, as the British call them, poussin) and then head back toward Pomona, the small food shop I visited this morning, remembering the fresh, crusty loaves of bread on their shelves. I grab a loaf of challah, its braided crust shiny and golden brown, along with some celery, an onion, some mushrooms, and a few spices. Before I pay, I also throw a bunch of speckled bananas, a pot of Greek yogurt, and some flour and sugar into my basket. The ingredients are slightly different here than they are back home---"self-raising flour," "caster sugar"---but I'm sure I can re-create the banana bread I developed for a famous morning-show host back in Chicago. It's one of my most popular recipes to date, and I'm sure it would taste great with a cup of tea.

since the accident. I don’t know what her problem was. After all, I was a “hero.” At least the newspaper said so. “Hey, Alex,” she said, twirling her ponytail with her pencil. “Oh, hi,” I stammered, looking down at my burger. “You guys sounded really great in the talent show. I didn’t know you could sing like that.” “Uhh, thanks. It must be all the practice I get with my karaoke machine.” Oh God, did I just tell her I sing karaoke? Definitely not playing it cool, I thought to myself. TJ butted in, “Yeah, Small Fry was ok, but I really carried the show with my awesome guitar solo.” He smiled proudly. “Shut up, TJ,” I said, tossing a fry at him, which hit him between the eyes. “Hey, watch it, Baker. Just because you’re a ‘hero’ doesn’t mean I won’t pummel you.” “Yeah, right,” I said, smiling. Emily laughed. “Maybe we could come over during Christmas break and check out your karaoke machine. Right, Danielle?” Danielle rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, whatever.” I gulped. “Uhhh…yeah…that sounds great.” “Ok, give me your hand,” she said. “My hand,” I asked, surprised. “Yep,” she said, grabbing my wrist and opening my palm. “Here’s my number,” she said, writing the numbers 585-2281 in gold glitter pen on my palm.” I will never wash my hand again, I thought to myself. “Text me over break, ok?” she said, smiling brightly. “Yeah, sure,” I nodded, as she walked away giggling with Danielle. “Merry Christmas to me!” I whispered to TJ and Simon. “Yeah, there’s just one problem, Dufus,” TJ said. “Oh yeah, what’s that, TJ? That she didn’t give you her number?” I asked. “No, Dork. How are you going to text her if you don’t have a cell phone?” He smiled. “Oh, right,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “That could be a problem.” “You could just call her on your home phone,” Simon suggested, wiping his nose with a napkin. “Yeah, sure,” TJ chuckled. “Hi Emily, this is Alex Baker calling from the year 1984.” He held his pencil to his ear like a phone.  “Would you like to come over to play Atari? Then maybe we can solve my Rubik’s Cube while we break dance ….and listen to New Kids on the Block.” He was cracking himself up and turning bright red. “Maybe I’ll type you a love letter on my typewriter. It’s so much cooler than texting.” “Shut up, TJ,” I said, smiling. “I’m starting to remember why I didn’t like you much at the beginning of the year.” “Lighten up, Baker. I’m just bustin’ your chops. Christmas is coming. Maybe Santa will feel sorry for your dorky butt and bring you a cell phone.” Chapter 2 ePhone Denied When I got home from school that day, it was the perfect time to launch my cell phone campaign. Mom was in full Christmas mode. The house smelled like gingerbread. She had put up the tree and there were boxes of ornaments and decorations on the floor. I stepped over a wreath and walked into the kitchen. She was baking sugar cookies and dancing around the kitchen to Jingle Bell Rock with my little brother Dylan. My mom twirled Dylan around and smiled. She was wearing the Grinch apron that we had given her last Christmas. Dylan was wearing a Santa hat, a fake beard, and of course- his Batman cape. Batman Claus. “Hey Honey. How was school?” she asked, giving Dylan one more spin. “It was pretty good. We won second place in the talent show.” I held up the candy cane shaped award that Ms. Riley had given us. “Great job! You and TJ deserved it. You practiced hard and it payed off.” “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, grabbing a snicker-doodle off the counter. “And now it’s Christmas break! I bet your excited.” She took a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed

hate this. I miss my husband so much I can’t even breathe, and all I’m supposed to do is just get on with things, be a grown-up. I don’t want to. I want to stand up on top of a building and scream about it. I want to slice my body, chop off all my hair, something to show how much it hurts.

A child, maybe five, catches my eye. He has stacked his Lego bricks into a tall building. After showing everyone his feat, he pulls one arm back and with a swift chop tumbles them all to the ground. A human instinct, I muse. Destroy that which we have built.

I was a busy child and never grew out of it, so I was moving fast as usual when I passed Jep that day on my way out of Connie Sue’s salon. But not too fast to notice his thick dark hair, cut just above his ears and brushed back, with sexy Elvis chops on the sides. He had deep green eyes, a strong jaw, and a small, dark soul patch under his bottom lip that stood out against his tanned skin. Our eyes locked, and I was mesmerized. His steps slowed, and he tilted his head down a little, smiled a sweet smile, and said, “Hey.” Did I mention the dimples? He had the cutest dimples I’d ever seen. My heart seriously skipped a beat, although I tried not to let it show. (I always tell him he had me at “hey,” and that’s no joke.) “Hey,” I said back. I wish I could tell you I said something original and witty, but that’s all I could come up with. A nod and a “hey.” Then he was gone. Who is he? Jep was twenty-two, I was twenty, and somehow we’d grown up in the same town and never met each other. And even though we were young, we both already had complicated lives. We had experienced pain, guilt, betrayal, and brokenness. But in that moment, none of it mattered. Not one bit.

She shrieked his name, threw her arms around his neck and hugged him so fiercely he took a step back and started to laugh. He put his arms around her and held her off the floor in her excitement. She kissed him on both cheeks, several times, making loud smacking noises. He laughed at her, hanging on, hating the thought of letting her go. He had to put her down too soon. Large, liquid green eyes stared up at him, overcome, and on her lips a phenomenal smile. “How did you do this?” she asked in a breath. “It was easy,” he said. “I need to show you how to work that computer. I can’t believe you didn’t use a computer before.” She just shook her head and stared at the paper. Wes wouldn’t allow her use of his computer; it would have put her in touch with the outside world too much. “Go on,” he said. “Call ’em. Use the phone in my place instead of in here. Have a little time alone with the girlfriends.” She got up on her toes and kissed his cheek again, laying her small hand against the other cheek. She looked at him with such gratitude, it melted his heart. Then she whirled and ran to his apartment, gripping that paper like a lifeline. “Yeah,” he said to himself, under his breath, nodding. “Bet there’s lots of little things I can look up for her. Yeah.” And he went back to chopping. Jack came into the kitchen, looked at Preacher and frowned. “What are you grinning about?” he asked. “I’m not grinning,” Preacher said. “Preacher, I didn’t know you had that many teeth.” “Aw, Paige. I looked up something for her, got her all excited. That’s all.” “Kind of looks like it got you a little excited, too. I think you’re flushed. And Jesus, you sure have a mouthful. You never showed me a grin like that.” Yeah, he thought—big mystery. You put your arms around me and kiss all over me like that, I’ll show you a mouthful—of fist. But he couldn’t stop grinning. He could feel it and couldn’t stop it. Jack just shook his head and left the kitchen. There

From the Bridge” The Importance of History Not all that many years ago the Importance of history would have been a “no brainer!” People understood that there was very little new under the sun, and history was a good barometer to the future. “Those that fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it, “was an adage frequently heard. It gave us a perspective by which to stabilize our bearings and allowed us to find one of the few ways by which we could understand who we are. The myth that George Washington, not being able to lie, admitted to chopping down his father’s favorite cherry tree helped us create a moral compass. Abraham Lincoln’s moniker “Honest Abe,” took root when he worked as a young store clerk in New Salem, IL. The name stuck before he became a lawyer or a politician. His writings show that he valued honesty and in 1859 when he ran for the presidency the nickname became his campaign slogan. However, apparently ”Honest Abe” did lie about whether he was negotiating with the South to end the war and also knowingly concealed some of the most lethal weapons ever devised during the Civil War." These however, were very minor infractions when compared to what we are now expected to believe from our politicians. Since World War II the pace of life has moved faster than ever and may actually have overrun our ability to understand the significance and value of our own honesty. We no longer turn to our past for guidance regarding the future; rather we look into our future in terms of what we want and how we will get it. We have developed to the point that we are much smarter than our ancestors and no longer need their morality and guidance. What we don’t know we frequently fabricate and in most cases, no one picks up on it and if they do, it really doesn’t seem to matter. In short the past has become outdated, obsolete and therefore has become largely irrelevant to us. Being less informed about our past is not the result of a lack of information or education, but of ambivalence and indifference. Perhaps history belongs to the ages but not to us. To a great extent we as a people really do not believe that history matters very much, if at all. My quote “History is not owned solely by historians. It is part of everyone’s heritage,” was written for the opening page of my award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba.” Not only is it the anchor holding our Ship of State firmly secure, it is the root of our very being. Yes, history is important. In centuries past this statement would have been self-evident. Our predecessors devoted much time and effort in teaching their children history and it helped provide the foundation to understanding who they were. It provided them a reference whereby they could set their own life’s goals. However society has, to a great extent, turned its back on the past. We now live in an era where the present is most important and our future is being built on shifting sand. We, as a people are presently engaged in a struggle for economic survival and choose to think of ourselves in terms of where wind and tide is taking us, rather than where we came from. We can no longer identify with our ancestors, thus they are no longer relevant. Their lives were so different from our own that they no longer can shed any light on our experience or existence. Therefore, in the minds of many of us, the past no longer has the value it once had nor do we give it the credence it deserves. As in war, the truth is the first victim; however this casualty threatens the very fabric of our being. When fact and fiction are interchanged to satisfy the moment, the bedrock of history in undermined. When we depend on the truth to structure our future, it is vital that it be based on truthful history and the honesty of those who write it. It is a crime without penalty when our politicians tell us lies. In fact they are often shamefully rewarded; encouraging them to become even more blatant in the lies they tell.

When he reached the door, he overheard the cook talking to some servants. “That plump gobbler will make one glorious feast for the president.” Tad crept closer to listen. “One of you will have to chop off Jack’s head,” said the cook. Tad gasped. He turned and ran along the hallway, then tore upstairs and burst into his father’s office. Tears streamed down his cheeks. The president was speaking to one of his advisors and looked around, surprised. “Pa! Pa!” Tad hollered. “They’re going to kill Jack! You can’t let them do it, Pa. It would be mean and wicked!” The president put down his papers. “But, Tad, Jack was sent here to be eaten for our holiday dinner. I thought you knew that.” “No, Pa. I didn’t!” Tad wailed. “He’s a good turkey, and I don’t want him killed. He has as much right to live as anybody. You pardon soldiers all the time, Pa. Can’t you pardon Jack?” Mr. Lincoln sighed, shook his head, and chuckled. He reached for a blank card and repeated aloud as he wrote, “By order of the President of the United States, Jack the turkey is to be spared from execution.” “Perfect, Pa!” “Here, now. Show this to the cook.” Tad grabbed the card, gave his father a big hug, and fled. “Then what am I to make for Thanksgiving?” asked the cook, studying the card Tad had just handed him. “I don’t know,” Tad replied happily. “But it won’t be Jack!

This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. —2 Corinthians 9:12 (NIV) One Sunday afternoon, early in November, I felt I just had to get out of the house. After calling ahead, I drove to visit friends, old enough to be my parents. Anne and I chatted warmly while Dick, suffering the effects of a stroke, smiled, nodded agreements, and haltingly tried to contribute. Before leaving, as if asking for a prayer, I admitted that I’d been depressed. Anne and Dick gave me more than a prayer. Midweek Anne called. “Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving?” Among three generations of their family, I sat down to a feast: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple pie. Taking the empty dessert plates into their kitchen, I whispered in disbelief, “Anne, are you throwing away that carcass?” “You want it? Please take it.” I went home with more than a festive memory. That weekend I made a mess of soup, a quart of which I delivered to Anne and Dick. I slid a few more cups of deboned turkey into the freezer for a later time. Which happens to be today. Dick has had another stroke and is dying. My response to the news? I chopped onions and celery and am simmering soup to take to Anne. An hour ago, when a maintenance man came by to fix my kitchen radiator, he exclaimed, “It smells like Thanksgiving in here.” Wrong month, wrong day of the week, and I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. But, yes, this tureen is indeed about more than turkey soup. Lord, show me ways to give tangible thanks to those who have been kind to me. —Evelyn Bence Digging Deeper: Lk 6:38; Col 3:17

Once the apartment was ready, Portia had begun to plan out what foods they would showcase in this little glimpse into a Glass Kitchen world. Her sisters couldn't help her with this part. Portia had let go, and dishes had come to her, all of which she wrote down and prepared to make. Then, at eight that morning, she got to work. Olivia and Cordelia served as sous-chefs; they started by making a decadent beef bourguignon. Olivia and Cordelia washed and chopped as Portia browned layer after layer of beef, bacon, carrots, and onion, folding in the beef stock and wine, then putting it in to slow bake as they dove into the remaining dishes. They opened all the windows and ran four swiveling fans Portia had bought and found that pushed the scent of the baking and cooking out onto the sidewalk. Then they had put up a fairly discreet sign in the window, hand-painted by Olivia: THE GLASS KITCHEN. Portia had gotten the idea while walking down Broadway and passing the French soap store. Scents had spilled into the street from the shop- lavender and primrose, musk and sandalwood- luring passersby inside. Portia had realized that the best way to get investors interested was to show them a version of The Glass Kitchen. The food. The aromas. She had realized, standing there on Broadway, that she needed to create a mini version of her grandmother's restaurant to lure people in.

So mankind gobbled in a century all the world’s resources that had taken millions of years to store up, and no one on the top gave a damn or listened to all the voices that were trying to warn them, they just let us overproduce and overconsume until now the oil is gone, the topsoil depleted and washed away, the trees chopped down, the animals extinct, the earth poisoned, and all we have to show for this is seven billion people fighting over the scraps that are left, living a miserable existence

Writing a clean, lean, simple story is one of the hardest things in the world to do. When stories are first born, they’re always big and complicated, but simple stories are more powerful and meaningful. Think of Blaise Pascal’s famous postscript: “I’m sorry for writing such a long letter, but I didn’t have the time to write a shorter one.” Writers are always inclined to make their stories bigger and more complicated than anyone else wants them to be. Luckily, there are gatekeepers to cut us off at the pass. Editors chop novels down to size. Theater directors chop out scenes that don’t work. Producers slice the fat out of screenplays. They take sprawling, complicated messes and find the lean, simple story hiding inside. Ghostbusters was sold to the studio in the form of a forty-page treatment. It was set in the future. New York had been under siege by ghosts for years. There were dozens of teams of competing ghostbusters. Our heroes were tired and bored with their job when the story began. The Marshmallow Man showed up on page 20. The budget would have been bigger than any movie ever made, and far more than anybody was willing to spend. So why did the studio buy it? Because it liked one image: a bunch of guys who live in a firehouse slide down a pole and hop in an old-fashioned ambulance, then go out to catch ghosts. So the studio stripped away all the other stuff, put that image in the middle of the story, spent the first half gradually moving us from a normal world gradually that moment, and spent the second half creating a heroic payoff to that situation. That’s it. That’s all they had time to do. A few years after the success of Ghostbusters, one of the writers/stars of that movie, Harold Ramis, found himself on the other side of the fence. He wanted to direct a script called Groundhog Day, written by first-time screenwriter Danny Rubin. This was a very similar situation: In the first draft of that movie, the weatherman had already repeated the same day 3,650,000 times before the movie began! Everybody loved the script, so Rubin had his pick of directors, but most of them told him up front they wanted him to rewrite the story to begin with the origin of the situation. Ramis won the bidding war by promising Rubin he would stick to the in medias res version. Guess what happened? By the time the movie made it to the screen, Ramis had broken his promise. The final movie spends the first half getting the weatherman into the situation and the second half creating the most heroic payoff.

We see this even more in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), with Mercer again at MGM, collaborating with composer Gene De Paul. This one has a real Broadway score, every number embedded in the characters’ attitudes. Ragged, bearded, buckskinned Howard Keel has come to town to take a wife, and a local belle addresses him as “Backwoodsman”: it’s the film’s central image, of rough men who must learn to be civilized in the company of women. The entire score has that flavor—western again, rustic, primitive, lusty. “Bless Yore Beautiful Hide,” treating Keel’s tour of the Oregon town where he seeks his bride, sounds like something Pecos Bill wrote with Calamity Jane. When the song sheet came out, the tune was marked “Lazily”—but that isn’t how Keel sings it. He’s on the hunt and he wants results, and, right in the middle of the number, he spots Jane Powell chopping wood and realizes that he has found his mate. But he hasn’t, not yet. True, she goes with him, looking forward to love and marriage. But her number, “Wonderful, Wonderful Day,” warns us that she is of a different temperament than he: romantic, vulnerable, poetic. They don’t suit each other, especially when he incites his six brothers to snatch their intended mates. Not court them: kidnap them. “Sobbin’ Women” (a pun on the Sabine Women of the ancient Roman legend, which the film retells, via a story by Stephen Vincent Benét) is the number outlining the plan, in more of Keel’s demanding musical tone. But the six “brides” are horrified. Their number, in Powell’s pacifying tone, is “June Bride,” and the brothers in turn offer “Lament” (usually called “Lonesome Polecat”), which reveals that they, too, have feelings. That—and the promise of good behavior—shows that they at last deserve their partners, whereupon each brother duets with each bride, in “Spring, Spring, Spring.” And we note that this number completes the boys’ surrender, in music that gives rather than takes. Isn’t

Hercules showed restraint. He didn’t chop off the messenger’s ears, nose, or hands. He just sent back a message that read LOL. NAH.

Hacking Blood Sugar Several months ago, I received a text from Kevin stating “I found the grail” with a screenshot of his Dexcom continuous glucose monitor showing his levels at 79mg/dL (which is healthily low) after consuming two beers, a pork chop with honey glaze, 4 slices of corn bread with honey and butter, and a side order of potato gnocchi. What was the “grail”? 25 mg of acarbose (¼ pill) with food. He learned this trick from Peter Attia (page 59), who I introduced him to.

The silver lining is that people have stopped busting my chops. I confronted Dad about the phone calls, and I check in every day, and he says they’ve stopped. I have no idea if he’s blowing smoke up my ass or not, but he seems more chill. Then there’s the added bonus that having Cash around drives Toby nuts. The downside is that Toby’s decided to turn up the PDA with his new girl, Samantha, to twelve. And I don’t care. I really, really don’t. I don’t want him back. I don’t miss feeling the way I felt with him—at all. But I know he’s doing it to mess with me, even though he’d never admit it, probably not even to himself. I have to act like it’s fine. I’m chill. And that’s too much like how it was being in a relationship with him. Playing it cool reminds me of how long I had shit in my mouth and didn’t say a word. So I’m constantly flustered, clumsy, hot, and cranky. I can’t possibly seem like a woman with a new boyfriend, but people buy it ‘cause Cash Wall says it’s so. And of course, if he showed the slightest bit of interest in me—out of guilt or pity or whatever—I’d fall over myself saying yes, please, sign me up. And that’s exactly what it looks like I did. It sucks, and tonight, Cash wants to take it to the next level. It’s Friday, and he’s taking me out on our first fake date. We’re going to Birdy’s Bar. Everyone under thirty goes to Birdy’s on Friday night. I’ve never been. I’m getting ready. On the one hand, I don’t want Cash to think I’m putting forth an effort. On the other, I don’t want everyone in town to gawk at me all night, thinking I really need to put forth more effort. So, I’m wearing a teal, silk cami and my best-fitting jeans. I swapped my nose ring out for a diamond stud and curled my hair in big, beachy waves. I’m going the whole nine yards with primer and foundation and concealer and bronzer and blush and highlighter and powder and setting spray. Toby would hate it. Goes against his oft-stated “natural beauty” preference. It’s been so long since I’ve done my face in

For of all the luxuries that your money could buy, a restaurant left you the least to show for it. A fur coat could at least be worn in winter to fend off the cold, and a silver spoon could be melted down and sold to a jeweler. But a porterhouse steak? You chopped it, chewed it, swallowed it, wiped your lips and dropped your napkin on your plate. That was that.

We also ate well in the kitchen, and I found that I had inherited my father's palate and appreciation of good food. Our cuisine at home always been rather basic, even in the days when we had a cook, and I became fascinated with the process of creating such wonderful flavors. "Show me how you made that parsley sauce, those meringues, that oyster stew," I'd say to Mrs Robbins, the cook. And if she had a minute to spare, she would show me. After a while, seeing my willingness as well as my obvious aptitude for cooking, she suggested to Mrs Tilley that her old legs were not up to standing for hours any more and that she needed an assistant cook. And she requested me. Mrs Tilley agreed, but only if she didn't have to pay me more money and I should still be available to do my party piece whenever she entertained. And so I went to work in the kitchen. Mrs Robbins found me a willing pupil. After lugging coal scuttles up all those stairs, it felt like heaven to be standing at a table preparing food. We had a scullery maid who did all the most menial of jobs, like chopping the onions and peeling the potatoes, but I had to do the most basic of tasks- mashing the potatoes with lots of butter and cream until there wasn't a single lump, basting the roast so that the fat was evenly crisp. I didn't mind. I loved being amongst the rich aromas. I loved the look of a well-baked pie. The satisfaction when Mrs Robbins nodded with approval at something I had prepared. And of course I loved the taste of what I had created. Now when I went home to Daddy and Louisa, I could say, "I roasted that pheasant. I made that apple tart." And it gave me a great rush of satisfaction to say the words. "You've a good feel of it, I'll say that for you," Mrs Robbins told me, and after a while she even sought my opinion. "Does this casserole need a touch more salt, do you think? Or maybe some thyme?" The part I loved the best was the baking. She showed me how to make pastry, meringues that were light as air, all sorts of delicate biscuits and rich cakes.

Semi-Charmed Life" Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... I'm packed and I'm holding I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden She lives for me, says she lives for me Ovation, her own motivation She comes round and she goes down on me And I make her smile, like a drug for you Do ever what you wanna do, coming over you Keep on smiling, what we go through One stop to the rhythm that divides you And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse Chop another line like a coda with a curse Come on like a freak show takes the stage We give them the games we play, she said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose I was taking sips of it through my nose And I wish I could get back there, someplace back there Smiling in the pictures you would take Doing crystal meth, will lift you up until you break It won't stop, I won't come down I keep stock with a tick-tock rhythm, a bump for the drop And then I bumped up, I took the hit that I was given Then I bumped again, then I bumped again I said... How do I get back there to the place where I fell asleep inside you How do I get myself back to the place where you said... I want something else to get me through this Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-bye I believe in the sand beneath my toes The beach gives a feeling, an earthy feeling I believe in the faith that grows And the four right chords can make me cry When I'm with you I feel like I could die And that would be alright, alright And when the plane came in, she said she was crashing The velvet it rips in the city, we tripped on the urge to feel alive Now I'm struggling to survive, Those days you were wearing that velvet dress You're the priestess, I must confess Those little red panties they pass the test Slide up around the belly, face down on the mattress one And you hold me, and we're broken Still it's all that I wanna do, just a little now Feel myself, heading off the ground I'm scared, I'm not coming down No, no And I won't run for my life She's got her jaws now locked down in a smile But nothing is alright, alright And I want something else to get me through this life Baby, I want something else Not listening when you say Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, good-bye Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo... The sky was gold, it was rose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I was taking sips of it through my nose (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) And I wish I could get back there (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Someplace back there, in the place we used to start (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) I want something else (Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo...) Third Eye Blind (1997)

computers.” “Computers?” George Washington said, his forehead all wrinkly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady. This is the year 1790. Computers haven’t been invented yet.” No matter what we said, the army guy with the wig insisted that he was really George Washington. He read us a story about when he was a boy and he chopped down a cherry tree. Then he showed us a bunch of books about the United States. All through library period, the army guy with the wig said that he was George Washington. After a while, we started calling him George Washington. “General Washington,” I asked, “may I go to the bathroom?” Everybody laughed even though I didn’t say anything funny. Kids think anything to do with bathrooms is funny. If you want to make your friends laugh, all you have to do is stick your face in their face and say either “bathroom” or “underwear.” It works every time. “I’m sorry,” George Washington said. “This is the year 1790. Bathrooms have not been invented yet.” It wasn’t an emergency or anything, so I waited. We were allowed to check out any book we wanted from the library. I took out a book about jet fighter planes because it had cool pictures in it. For

It showed a golden, spotted cat holding a knife in one paw and chopping the head off a snake.

me, and nobody was talking to anyone. I didn’t even know if We Stink had just broken up, or what. Which was too bad, because we’d just played the best show of our lives. After all the bands performed, they finally brought all of us back out onstage for the results. We stood there in a big line while Mr. Swivel got up in front of the families again. “Well, well, well, isn’t this exciting?” he said, and you could just feel all the kids onstage grinding their teeth down to little nubs, waiting to hear who had won. I still wanted this. I wanted it so bad. Then maybe we could start to put the whole stupid fight behind us and just keep going. “And our winner today—” I mean, I could live with not winning if I had to. I just didn’t want to have to. “—is a band that showed the musical chops to stand toe-to-toe with the one and only Lulu and the Handbags—” “JUST SAY IT!” someone yelled in the audience, and everyone laughed. Mr. Swivel kept going. “As hard as this decision was, it was also unanimous,” he said. “So, without further delay, the winning band is…” I swallowed hard. It felt like choking down a rock. No pun intended. “Extra Creddit!” A big spotlight came on and Extra Creddit was high-fiving and jumping around, while the rest of us stood around like a giant pile of leftovers. And just like that… it was all over. Truthfully, I never thought we’d get as far as we did. But once that happened, I wanted to hear Jordy Swivel say “WE STINK IS THE WINNER!” as much as I’ve ever wanted anything. Now, the girls and I were just standing there with nothing to say. And I was starting to think that We

The Chinese for pay is pei, and the Farsi Iranian word for bad is bad. The Uzbek for chop is chop, and in the extinct Aboriginal language of Mbaram a dog was called a dog. The Mayan for hole is hole and the Korean for many is mani. When, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, an Afghan wants to show you something, he will use the word show; and the ancient Aztecs used the Nahuatl word huel to mean well. Any idiot can deduce from this that all the languages of the world are related. However, anyone of reasonable intelligence will realize that they are just a bunch of coincidences. There are a lot of words and a lot of languages, but there are a limited number of sounds. We're bound to coincide sometimes.

Les Oeufs Jeannette (EGGS JEANNETTE) YIELD: 4 SERVINGS WHEN WE WERE KIDS, eggs were a staple on our table. Meat or poultry showed up there once a week at the most, and more often than not, our “meat” dinners consisted of a delicious ragout of potatoes or cabbage containing bits of salt pork or leftover roast. Eggs were always a welcome main dish, especially in a gratin with béchamel sauce and cheese, and we loved them in omelets with herbs and potatoes that Maman would serve hot or cold with a garlicky salad. Our favorite egg recipe, however, was my mother’s creation of stuffed eggs, which I baptized “eggs Jeannette.” To this day, I have never seen a recipe similar to hers, and we still enjoy it often at our house. Serve with crusty bread as a first course or as a main course for lunch. 6 jumbo eggs (preferably organic) 1 teaspoon chopped garlic 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 2 to 3 tablespoons whole milk ¼ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (preferably peanut oil) DRESSING 2 to 3 tablespoons leftover egg stuffing (from above) 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard 2 to 3 tablespoons water Dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper FOR THE HARD-COOKED EGGS: Put the eggs in a small saucepan, and cover with boiling water. Bring to a very gentle boil, and let boil for 9 to 10 minutes. Drain off the water, and shake the eggs in the saucepan to crack the shells. (This will help in their removal later on.) Fill the saucepan with cold water and ice, and let the eggs cool for 15 minutes. Shell the eggs under cold running water, and split them lengthwise. Remove the yolks carefully, put them in a bowl, and add the garlic, parsley, milk, salt, and pepper. Crush with a fork to create a coarse paste. Spoon the mixture back into the hollows of the egg whites, reserving 2 to 3 tablespoons of the filling to use in the dressing. Heat the vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet, and place the eggs, stuffed side down, in the skillet. Cook over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the eggs are beautifully browned on the stuffed side. Remove and arrange, stuffed side up, on a platter. FOR THE DRESSING: Mix all of the dressing ingredients in a small bowl with a whisk or a spoon until well combined. Coat the warm eggs with the dressing, and serve lukewarm.

If you enjoy cooking, don't put shows on in the background, or think about problems while you cook – instead, devote your mind to each sight, sound, feeling and sizzle around you while performing the task. Concentrate on the smell and feel of your ingredients while you chop them, memorize each textural change that occurs in the process, devote your sight and attention to each pop and sizzle on the pan.

The demon is the mental shadow-side archetype. What it shows is that the lifeblood of Raktabija has the power to give birth to thousands of Raktabijas, just like the thinking of the soul. Similarly, thoughts from the mind seem to sprout more and more thoughts as soon as they appear to land. Even if one in meditation cuts them off, more will sprout. It requires the power of Shakti Kundalini to spring the mind, dispatch the demon. Kali comes in in this great mythical tale and cuts the demon's head off. Before it could hit the fertile ground of existence she drank all her blood. In other words, out of all the thoughts, desires, and delusions that plague the seeker and prevent the seeker from knowing pure union, Kali Kundalini takes the life energy. Kali, as She's chopping the heads off, is symbolically slashing through the soul, removing all the emotions that will give birth to slavery and illusion over and over again. She absorbs them into herself; in other words, She frees from those bound forms the life-force, the Shakti. The formation is all forms. She alone has the power to dissolve all forms, to free from them the soul, the life. Kali wears a fifty-skull garland all around her neck. In addition, these fifty skulls reflect the Sanskrit alphabet's fifty letters— the sounds and forms that make up thought, which are the basis of all life. She's the one who sucks the life-force out of them so we can be safe from them, as well as the one who gave them birth to begin with. Taking refuge in Kali takes refuge in that inherent ability to cut off the heads of the very modes of thought, behaviors, values and all of the mind's restricting mechanisms that trap us in illusion. When free, She brings us back into unity with the Infinite — as does Kali with her husband Shiva. Even a myth of this kind, which may seem so bizarre and gruesome to the ignorant, has profound significance for our sadhana, revealing moment by moment what is involved in our spiritual practice. When you do japa, the ritual of mantra repeating, of Om Kali Ma, her mantra, you bring your mind back to Kali again and again. You can do this practice right now, or you can sit for meditation the next time. Close your eyes and dissolve Om Kali Ma, Om Kali Ma, Om Kali Ma with every thought. Kali's story shows that with every repeat of Om Kali Ma, this glorious phenomenon occurs. She cuts off all the emotions, all the deluded ideas, all the bound behaviors and perceptions that might have filled the mind as the pulse of mantra. Keeping the mind in the mantra refuge means holding the mind in a sacred place that is safe from all the modes of thought with which the mind might have developed its own slavery. Every repetition of mantra is a movement of Kali's sword clearing and opening that spaciousness of awareness, freeing our energy and consciousness so we can experience the fullness of who and what we are in each moment.

When we first started dating, he introduced me to all his friends and colleagues as his little firecracker. That's what he started calling me after our third date, when he brought me to a Redskins party at his friend Eric's place. Eric had decided to make buffalo chili, but, in what became clear to both me and everyone else at the party, he had no idea what he was doing. Two hours into the party, after all of us had blown through the bags of tortilla chips and pretzels, Eric was still chopping red peppers. Determined not to let a room of fifteen people go hungry, I rolled up my sleeves, marched into the kitchen, and grabbed my knife. "Okay, Bobby Flay," I said as I wielded my knife. "Time to get this show on the road." I chopped and minced and crushed at rapid-fire speed, and in no time, dinner was served. "Get a load of this firecracker," Eric said as he watched me work my magic. After that, the name sort of stuck. For a while, the nickname seemed like a good thing. Every time I would rail against fad diets or champion the importance of sustainable agriculture or lament the lack of food options in inner cities, Adam would laugh and say, "That's my little firecracker." He made me feel special, as if I were a vital part of his life. His parents were the only people from whom he seemed to hide me, and though it bothered me a little, I understood. I was the anti-Sandy. That's what made me attractive. But he hasn't called me his little firecracker in what feels like months now, and lately I feel as if he's hiding me from everyone. When did this little firecracker become a grenade?

I’ll do you a show, Howards, you’ll never believe. I’ll chop you to pieces, and be alive and immortal when you’re nothing but a lingering bad taste in a hundred million mouths, fried to a crisp in the electric chair, you Frankenstein axe-murderer you!

The Chances" "I mind as ’ow the night afore that show Us five got talking,—we was in the know, “Over the top to-morrer; boys, we’re for it, First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that’s tore it.” “Ah well,” says Jimmy,—an’ ’e’s seen some scrappin’— “There ain’t more nor five things as can ’appen; Ye get knocked out; else wounded—bad or cushy; Scuppered; or nowt except yer feeling mushy.” One of us got the knock-out, blown to chops. T’other was hurt, like, losin’ both ’is props. An’ one, to use the word of ’ypocrites, ‘Ad the misfortoon to be took by Fritz. Now me, I wasn’t scratched, praise God Almighty (Though next time please I’ll thank ’im for a blighty), But poor young Jim, ’e’s livin’ an’ ’e’s not; ’E reckoned ’e’d five chances, an’ ’e’s ’ad; ’E’s wounded, killed, and pris’ner, all the lot— The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim’s mad.