Classic Car Quotes

Hale." Kat sighed. "The headmaster's car? Really? That's not to cliched for you?" What can I say?" He shrugged. "I'm an old-fashioned guy. Besides, it's a classic for a reason." He leaned against the window. "It's good to see you, Kat." Kat didn't know what to say. It's good to see you, too? Thanks for getting me kicked out? Is it possible you've gotten even hotter? I think I might have missed you?

What's the woman doing there?" he asked. "Covering a scratch on the hood. She was cheaper than a new paint job." He flipped through a few more pages of barely dressed women and classic cars. "Nick used to have magazines like this when we were kids. But without the cars." He rotated a photo sideways. "Or the bathing suits.

BILLY: ...Sometimes I’m surprised people still care. I’m surprised they still play us on the radio. Sometimes I listen. The other day, they were playing “Turn It Off” on the classic rock station. I sat in the car in the driveway and listened. [Laughs]We were pretty good. DAISY: We were great. We were really great.

I will paint a classic car yellow and convert it into a bulldozer. If you need me, I’ll be in the cemetery digging to try to find myself as a person.

In a 1931 speech, Butler recounted a story about Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, how he had run over a child with his car, and said, as he moved on, “It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of the State.

A black Mercedes Benz 450 SL pulled up. It was your classic hood auto beloved of terrorists, pimps and African dictators.

She’s out, Jim! The bugger’s out!” Well this was great. Anybody who has driven a car with a hysterical cat hurtling around the interior will appreciate my situation.

Mallory, I lo—" "Wait!" This was from Amy, and she looked at Mallory. "I'm sorry, but don't you think you should tell him about the car before he finishes that sentence?" "No," Mallory said, giving Amy the evil eye. She wanted the rest of Ty's sentence, dammit! Ty frowned. "What's wrong with the Shelby?" "Nothing," Mallory said quickly. "Nothing," Amy agreed. "Except for the dinged door where she parked too close to the mailbox." "Oh my God," Mallory said to her. "What are you, the car police?" "The classic car police," Amy said smugly. "You parked the Shelby on the street?" Ty asked Mallory incredulously. She went brows-up. "Okay," he said, lifting his hands. "It's okay. Never mind about the car.

Simon looks over at me. “What?” “Nothing,” I say. “What?!” he shouts. He can’t hear a thing I’m saying over the wind and the engine and the classic rock. “I hate this fucking car!” I shout back. “The sun is burning me! I might actually catch fire, at any moment!” The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again. “You’re so beautiful!” I shout back. He turns the radio down, so now there’s just the wind and the engine noise to shout over. “What’d you say?!” “Nothing!

Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns, no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.

Conor's grandma wasn't like other grandmas. He'd met Lily's grandma loads of times, and she was how grandmas were supposed to be: crinkly and smiley, with white hair and the whole lot. She cooked meals where she made three separate eternally boiled vegetable portions for everybody and would giggle in the corner at Christmas with a small glass of sherry and a paper crown on her head. Conor's grandma wore tailored trouser suits, dyed her hair to keep out the grey, and said things that made no sense at all, like "Sixty is the new fifty" or "Classic cars need the most expensive polish." What did that even mean? She emailed birthday cards, would argue with waiters over wine, and still had a job. Her house was even worse, filled with expensive old things you could never touch, like a clock she wouldn't even let the cleaning lady dust. Which was another thing. What kind of grandma had a cleaning lady?

Grow up with me,Let’s run in fields and through the dark together,Fall off swings and burn special things,And both play outside in bad weather,Let’s eat badly,Let’s watch adults drink wine and laugh at their idiocy,Let’s sit in the back of the car making eye contact with strangers driving past,Making them uncomfortable,Not caring, not swearing, don’t look,Let’s both reclaim our superpowers, The ones we all have and lose with our milk teeth,The ability not to fear social awkwardness,The panic when locked in the cellar, still sure there’s something down there,And while picking through pillows each feather,Let’s both stay away from the edge of the bed,Forcing us closer together,Let’s sit in public, with ice-cream all over both our faces,Sticking our tongues out at passers-by,Let’s cry, let’s swim, let’s everything,Let’s not find it funny, lest someone falls over,Classical music is boring,Poetry baffles us both,There’s nothing that’s said is what’s meant,Plays are long, tiresome, sullen and filled With hours that could be spent rolling down hills and grazing our knees on cement,Let’s hear stories and both lose our innocence,Learn about parents and forgiveness,Death and morality,Kindness and heart,Thus losing both of our innocent hearts,But at least we wont do it apart,Grow up with me.

Street rods have a Chevy in front and a can of wax in the back; Hot Rods have a flathead in front and a box of tools in the back.

I spotted Mr. Reyes Farrow standing next to his stunning ’70 Plymouth ’Cuda. Classic. Dark. And all muscle. The car was hot, too.

Crowley was currently doing 110 mph somewhere east of Slough. Nothing about him looked particularly demonic, at least by classical standards. No horns no wings. Admittedly he was listening to a Best of Queen tape, but no conclusions should be drawn from this because all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums

When in Rome, Alexander," said Magnus, "one drives a Maserati." They had to get to Rome as fast as possible, and they couldn't use a Portal, so Magnus said he was selecting the next best option. Shinyun was reading the Red Scrolls of Magic and ignoring them both, which was fine with Alec. "An excellent choice," said the attendant at teh luxury car rental lot. "Gotta love a classic 3500 GT Spyder." Alec leaned into Magnus. "The car is also a spider?" Magnus shrugged, flashing Alec an irresistibly bright smile. "No idea. I just picked it because it was Italian and red.

No man can be stolen who doesn't consent to his own theft.

Like a car that's old enough to be old but not old enough to be a classic, it would be years before people would again appreciate the old town square.

Vintage. That was what the used car sales automaton had called the little white car. Three hours later, she learned that vintage meant death trap.

immobility is to the human body what rust is to the classic car.

In books, boys smell of a variety of unrealistic things (unicorn dust, freshly chopped down pine trees, the motor oil of classic cars), but he’s so . . . familiar. Baking spices. Cologne.

You should learn how to play the flute. Then you could ride in the passenger seat of my car and play instrumental versions of classic 80s pop songs while I drive around on the clock for Uber.

My mind went back to my school-days and an old gentleman talking to the class about careers. He had said: “If you decide to become a veterinary surgeon you will never grow rich but you will have a life of endless interest and variety.” I laughed aloud in the darkness and as I got into the car I was still chuckling. That old chap certainly wasn’t kidding. Variety. That was it—variety.

He told us we should always pray to God- talk to Him and all- wherever we were. He told us to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car.

The Edsel was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time. It was also a prime example of the limitations of market research, with its ‘depth interviews’ and ‘motivational’ mumbo-jumbo.

There were a lot of illegal, deadly things stored in Beckett’s car, but the only thing he kept hidden was the CD he now pulled out from under the driver’s seat. He slipped it in the player and turned on the power, letting the classical music sweep over him like a cool breeze. It was the soundtrack of his boys. The music that saved them. Blake’s music.

Barbers, on the other hand, are interesting guys with fascinating stories to tell. And I in turn feel at ease to say what’s on my mind. We converse about politics, cars, sports and family. Guys who are waiting read the newspaper and comment on current events. And everyone is involved: the barbers, the customers getting their haircut and the customers waiting to get their haircut.

Very few people know where they will die, But I do; in a brick-faced hospital, Divided, not unlike Caesarean Gaul, Into three parts; the Dean Memorial Wing, in the classic cast of 1910, Green-grated in unglazed, Aeolian Embrasures; the Maud Wiggin Building, which Commemorates a dog-jawed Boston bitch Who fought the brass down to their whipcord knees In World War I, and won enlisted men Some decent hospitals, and, being rich, Donated her own granite monument; The Mandeville Pavilion, pink-brick tent With marble piping, flying snapping flags Above the entry where our bloody rags Are rolled in to be sponged and sewn again. Today is fair; tomorrow, scourging rain (If only my own tears) will see me in Those jaundiced and distempered corridors Off which the five-foot-wide doors slowly close. White as my skimpy chiton, I will cringe Before the pinpoint of the least syringe; Before the buttered catheter goes in; Before the I.V.’s lisp and drip begins Inside my skin; before the rubber hand Upon the lancet takes aim and descends To lay me open, and upon its thumb Retracts the trouble, a malignant plum; And finally, I’ll quail before the hour When the authorities shut off the power In that vast hospital, and in my bed I’ll feel my blood go thin, go white, the red, The rose all leached away, and I’ll go dead. Then will the business of life resume: The muffled trolley wheeled into my room, The off-white blanket blanking off my face, The stealing secret, private, largo race Down halls and elevators to the place I’ll be consigned to for transshipment, cased In artificial air and light: the ward That’s underground; the terminal; the morgue. Then one fine day when all the smart flags flap, A booted man in black with a peaked cap Will call for me and troll me down the hall And slot me into his black car. That’s all.

I’m surprised they still play us on the radio. Sometimes I listen. The other day, they were playing “Turn It Off” on the classic rock station. I sat in the car in the driveway and listened. [Laughs] We were pretty good. Daisy: We were great. We were really great.

I'll be glad when this election is over!" Mary Anna yelled out the window of her car. She pulled the silver convertible classic Mercedes into the driveway of Eternal Slumber. "I was mobbed by O'Dell's sister and my momma this morning before I even had my boobs tucked in.

10. Never allow your imagination to stop. It was the imagination of great people that brought us the internet, the pyramids, cars, airplanes, boats, great novels, beautiful painting, classical songs, great movies, water irrigation, solar panels, the statue of liberty, the wall of china and so forth. Never under estimate your imagination.

...for if a woman's body can attract the holy angels, how much more the unholy man.

i’m in me mum’s car vroom vroom get out me car aww

I don’t need to sow any damn oats. What are you two, the supernatural version of Thelma and Louise?” “Hardly,” Talia scoffed. “This car is a classic. No way would I drive it off a cliff.

Then Toraf opens the passenger side door…Wait. That’s not Toraf. I’ve never seen this man before, yet he’s eerily familiar. His silhouette sitting next to Galen was definitely classic Syrena male, but the glare from the sun had hidden his face. I’d naturally just assumed that where there’s a Galen, there’s a Toraf. Now that his face is in full view though, I see that this man looks like a slightly older version of Galen. Slightly older as in slightly more jaded. Other than that, he could be his twin brother. It may be because he’s wearing some of Galen’s clothes, a wrinkled brown polo shirt and plaid shorts. But he shares other things, too, besides clothes. He’s handsome like Galen, with the same strong jaw and the same eyebrow shape and the way he’s wearing the same expression on his face that Galen is-that he’s found what he’s been looking for. Only, the stranger’s expression clearly divulges that he’s been looking for a lot longer than Galen has-and this man is not looking at me. And that’s when I know just exactly who he is. That’s when I believe the look in Galen’s eyes. That he didn’t lie to me, that he loves me. Because this man has to be Grom. Mom confirms it with a half cry, half growl. “No. No. It can’t be.” Even if she weren’t handcuffed to Rachel right now, I’m not sure she’d actually be able to move. Disbelief has a special way of paralyzing you. With every step the man takes toward Rachel’s car, he shakes his head more vigorously. It’s like he’s deliberately taking his time, drinking in the moment, or maybe he just can’t believe this moment is actually happening. Yep, disbelief is a cruel hag.

By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr. Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him. For a while, until the tape dirtied or the paper tore, store owners kept a scratchy sketch of him taped to their windows. Lindsey and Samuel walked in the neighboorhood or hung out at Hal's bike shop. She wouldn't go to the diner where the other kids went. The owner of the diner was a law and order man. He had blown up the sketch of George Harvey to twice its size and taped it to the front door. He willingly gave the grisly details to any customer who asked- young girl, cornfield, found only an elbow. Finallly Lindsey asked Hal to give her a ride to the police station. She wanted to know what exactly they were doing. They bid farewell to Samuel at the bike shop and Hal gave Lindsey a ride through a wet December snow. From the start, Lindsey's youth and purpose had caught the police off guard. As more and more of them realized who she was, they gave her a wider and wider berth. Here was this girl, focused, mad, fifteen... When Lindsey and Hal waited outside the captain's office on a wooden bench, she thought she saw something across the room that she recognized. It was on Detective Fenerman's desk and it stood out in the room because of its color. What her mother had always distinguished as Chinese red, a harsher red than rose red, it was the red of classic red lipsticks, rarely found in nature. Our mother was proud of her ability fo wear Chinese red, noting each time she tied a particular scarf around her neck that it was a color even Grandma Lynn dared not wear. Hal,' she said, every muscle tense as she stared at the increasingly familiar object on Fenerman's desk. Yes.' Do you see that red cloth?' Yes.' Can you go and get it for me?' When Hal looked at her, she said: 'I think it's my mother's.' As Hal stood to retrieve it, Len entered the squad room from behind where Lindsey sat. He tapped her on the shoulder just as he realized what Hal was doing. Lindsey and Detective Ferman stared at each other. Why do you have my mother's scarf?' He stumbled. 'She might have left it in my car one day.' Lindsey stood and faced him. She was clear-eyed and driving fast towards the worst news yet. 'What was she doing in your car?' Hello, Hal,' Len said. Hal held the scarf in his head. Lindsey grabbed it away, her voice growing angry. 'Why do you have m mother's scarf?' And though Len was the detective, Hal saw it first- it arched over her like a rainbow- Prismacolor understanding. The way it happened in algebra class or English when my sister was the first person to figure out the sum of x or point out the double entendres to her peers. Hal put his hand on Lindsey's shoulder to guide her. 'We should go,' he said. And later she cried out her disbelief to Samuel in the backroom of the bike shop.

It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here. "Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whizzing by. Its black door were from a Mercedes coupe, the white hood from a BMW; the silver trunk was Jaguar, the red convertible top was Lexus, the whitewall tires were Bentley, the sound system was Bose, and the music was classical. A hood ornament from each model dangled from the rear view mirror. Its license plate appropriately read MUTT. "That car looks like a moving Benton ad." "Or a pileup on Rodeo drive." Candace snapped a picture with her iPhone and e-mailed to her friends back home. They responded instantly with a shot of what they were doing. It must have involved the mall because Candace picked up her pace and began asking anyone under the age of fifty where the cool people hung out.

Aman thinks he scores high with a woman when he does something very big for her, like buying her a new car or taking her on a vacation. He assumes he scores less when he does something small, like opening the car door, buying her a flower, or giving her a hug. Based on this kind of score keeping, he believes he will fulfill her best by focusing his time, energy, and attention into doing something large for her. This formula, however, doesn’t work because women keep score differently.

In the study comparing women with and without ADD, a couple of the examples given were car accidents and the boss yelling at you. The women without ADD would express that the car accident was due to weather, with poor visibility the major culprit. The boss yelled because he was having a bad day. The women with ADD, however, blamed only themselves for the car wreck and thought that the boss was yelling because they did something wrong. These women did not seem to consider the possibility that something outside themselves might at least be partly responsible for the outcome.

He was so warm and accommodating, on the one hand—one of the only husbands I knew who didn’t scoldingly turn down the thermostat a dozen times a day. But also, everything he knew about desire he seemed to have learned from old Chevy Chase movies. (“Can I borrow your towel for a sec?” was his classic seduction line when I emerged from the shower. “My car just hit a water buffalo.”) Belle and Jules tease him because he has chronically dry eyes and he uses eyedrops called Fake Tears. Whenever he drips them into his eyeballs, they announce, “Uh-oh! Dad’s having a pretend feeling!

He started to look at me, but his eyes ran into trouble as they hit Honey and refused to move off of her. It was not an uncommon reaction. One more reason to hate Honey—not that I needed another one. “Honey, this is Tom Black, a reporter who wants the skinny on what it’s like to date Adam Hauptman, prince of the werewolves.” I said it to get a rise out of her, but Honey disappointed me. “Mr. Black,” she said, coolly extending her hand. He shook her hand, still staring at her, and then seemed to recover. He cleared his throat. “Prince of the Werewolves? Is he?” “She can’t talk to you, Mr. Black,” Honey told him, though she glanced at me to make it clear that the words were directed at me. If she weren’t more careful, she’d find herself outed as a werewolf. If she weren’t dumber than a stump, she’d have known I don’t take orders. Not from Bran, not from Adam or Samuel—certainly not from Honey. “No one ever told me not to talk to reporters,” I said truthfully. Everyone just assumed I’d be smart enough not to. I was so busy tormenting Honey that I ignored what the implicit promise in my statement would do to the reporter. “I will make it worth your while,” Black said in a classic assumption close worthy of a used-car salesman. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a roll of bills in a gold clip and set them on the counter. If I hadn’t been so ticked off with Honey—and Adam for sticking me with her—I’d have laughed. But Honey was there, so I licked my lips and looked interested. “Well . . .” I began. Honey turned to me, vibrating with rage. “I hope that Adam lets me be the one to break your scrawny neck.” Yep. It wouldn’t be long before everyone knew Honey was a werewolf. She was just too easy. I ought to have felt guilty for baiting her. Instead, I rolled my eyes at her. “Please.

Patricia! Baby! Why don’t you pick up your phone?” he cries. “I called you eight hundred times. Listen, I’m telling you, baby, I never cheated on you . . .” “I know that,” Patricia says calmly. “You know . . .” He stares at her. “If you know that . . . then why . . . in the fuck . . . did you key my CAR!?” he shouts. “BECAUSE YOU LEFT MY GRANDMOTHER AT THE AIRPORT!” Patricia bellows back at him. “You said you were going to pick her up while I was at work! She waited THREE HOURS, MASON! That woman is eighty-seven years old! She saw the Hindenburg explode. Actually, she heard it—BECAUSE THERE WAS NO FUCKING TV!” Mason is standing there frozen, with a guilty grimace on his face. He definitely forgot all about Patricia’s grandma until right this very moment. “Okay, okay,” he says, holding up his hands. “I might have fallen asleep—” “ASLEEP?” “But you didn’t have to key my car, baby! It’s a classic!” “Nana’s a classic, Mason! NANA!

What looks good to you?” he asked as if we were out for ice cream. Rocky road or pistachio? Like my Corvette sitting back in the shop, he had a penchant for American-made classics, the ones Detroit had long-since forgotten it once knew how to make. Slowly, I walked around looking at each one—the acid green Shelby Mustang with white racing stripes, the powder blue Ford Fairlane, the black Chevy Bel-Air— each in pristine condition and only because his blood and sweat coursed through them as surely as gasoline. But if he was serious that I could take my pick and drive it out of here, there was only one choice for me: the cherry red 1955 Ford Bronco.

Five minutes in he risked raising his head to check where he was. Which was in a pretty good spot. He had moved around the dial counterclockwise, from the ten to beyond the eight. And he had gotten much closer. And sure enough, the countervailing defenders, being uncertain of their marksmanship, had grouped at a point physically nearest the main threat, but consistent with their own safety. They perceived the main threat to be the backhoe, and the nearest cover was an outbuilding near the fence, about the size of a single-car garage. Three guys were hiding behind it. Which put them exactly side on to Reacher. Clear as day. A classic flanking maneuver. West Point would have been proud.

So all that took place at the hotel,” he said, “consisted of a—” “The association,” Rachael said, “wanted to reach the bounty hunters here and in the Soviet Union. This [having sex] seemed to work…for reasons which we do not fully understand. Our limitation again, I guess.” “I doubt if it works as often or as well as you say,” he said thickly. “But it has with you.” “We’ll see.” “I already know,” Rachael said. “When I saw that expression on your face, that grief. I look for that.” “How many times have you done this?” “I don’t remember. Seven, eight. No, I believe it’s nine.” She—or rather it—nodded. “Yes, nine times.” “The idea is old-fashioned,” Rick said. Startled, Rachael said, “W-What?” Pushing the steering wheel away from him, he put the car into a gliding decline. “Or anyhow that’s how it strikes me. I’m going to kill you,” he said. “And go on to Roy and Irmgard Baty and Pris Stratton alone.” “That’s why you’re landing?” Apprehensively, she said, “There’s a fine; I’m the property, the legal property, of the association. I’m not an escaped android who fled here from Mars; I’m not in the same class as the others.” “But,” he said, “if I can kill you then I can kill them.” Her hands dived for her bulging, overstuffed, kipple-filled purse; she searched frantically, then gave up. “Goddamn this purse,” she said with ferocity. “I never can lay my hands on anything in it. Will you kill me in a way that won’t hurt? I mean, do it carefully. If I don’t fight; okay? I promise not to fight. Do you agree?” Rick said, “I understand now why Phil Resch said what he said. He wasn’t being cynical; he had just learned too much. Going through this—I can’t blame him. It warped him.” “But the wrong way.” She seemed more externally composed now. But still fundamentally frantic and tense. Yet, the dark fire waned; the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The classic resignation. Mechanical, intellectual acceptance of that which a genuine organism—with two billion years of the pressure to live and evolve hagriding it—could never have reconciled itself to. “I can’t stand the way you androids give up,” he said savagely.

Poetry must be available to the public in far greater volume than it is. It should be as ubiquitous as the nature that surrounds us, and from which poetry derives many of its similes; or as ubiquitous as gas stations, if not as cars themselves. Bookstores should be located not only on campuses or main drags but at the assembly plant’s gates also. Paperbacks of those we deem classics should be cheap and sold at supermarkets. This is, after all, a country of mass production, and I don’t see why what’s done for cars can’t be done for books of poetry, which take you quite a bit further. Because you don’t want to go a bit further? Perhaps; but if this is so, it’s because you are deprived of the means of transportation, not because the distances and the destinations that I have in mind don’t exist.

Nope.' He grabs my hand and places it over his heart. 'I already know the truth. We’re dating.' His eyebrows waggle. 'Exclusively.' 'Gross.' 'Do you want to wear my letterman’s jacket?' 'I’m going to vomit.' '“Should I buy you a corsage?' 'Seriously. Gagging.' 'Okay, no corsage.' He laughs. 'Just the matching tattoos, then?' 'Seriously.' I fight the urge to stomp my foot. 'Let it go, Parker. Let it go.' 'Hey, Elsa, don’t quote Frozen to me unless you’re prepared to listen to the entire soundtrack in my car on the way to Seaport.' I stare up at him. 'I’m not sure whether I should be disturbed or turned on by the fact that you know all the words to Let It Go.' He grins. 'Definitely turned on.' 'Downloaded in your iTunes library, no doubt.' I shake my head. 'This is nearly as disturbing as the time I learned the song A Whole New World from Aladdin is a metaphor for mind-blowing sex.' 'I’m sorry, what?' 'I can open your eyes? Lead you wonder by wonder? Over, sideways, and under?' I snort. 'Come on. That’s basically soft-core porn.' 'Thank you, Zoe, for ruining a beloved Disney classic for me.' 'Anytime.' 'For the record…' He trails off. I wince, anticipating the worst. 'What?' 'I’ll take you on my magic carpet ride any time you want, snookums.' 'Pass.' 'So, that’s a no on rubbing my lamp then?' 'You know, I think I’ll just find my own way to Nate’s…' I turn and start walking to the elevator. 'Oh, come on.' Parker twines his fingers with mine and pushes the call button, humming under his breath. 'I’m a genie in a bottle, baby, gotta rub—' 'AH!' I stare at him in horror as the elevator arrives. 'So help me god if you start singing vintage Christina Aguilera lyrics right now, I will murder you with my bare hands.

But damn you to hell, Faust. I thought you were smart, but you’re a fool after all. If you’d guarded that prisoner properly, at least some good would have come out of this wretched situation. You saved her from the fire in the panzer, and you protected her, and it was all for no result at all.’ Helmann reached for his hip flask. ‘All for no verdamm result at all.’ He wiped his mouth and handed me the cognac. ‘But it’s done. Now let’s find ourselves a car, and get moving. Panzer Marsch!

Just sit right back And you'll hear a tale A tale of a fateful trip, That started from this tropic port, Aboard this tiny ship. The mate was a mighty sailin' lad, The Skipper brave and sure, Five passengers set sail that day, For a three hour tour, A three hour tour. The weather started getting rough, The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew The Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost. The ship set ground on the shore Of this uncharted desert isle With Gilligan, The Skipper too. The millionaire And his wife, The movie star, The professor and Mary Ann, Here on Gilligan's Isle. So this is the tale of our castaways, They're here for a long long time. They'll have to make the best of things, It's an uphill climb. The first mate and his Skipper too Will do their very best, To make the others comf'terble In their tropic island nest. No phone, no lights, no motor car, Not a single luxury Like Robinson Crusoe It's primitive as can be. So join us here each week my friends, You're sure to get a smile, From seven stranded castaways Here on Gilligan's Isle!

There is always drama, and sometimes comedy, involved. Ghosts are people, haunted by unhappy memories, and incapable of escaping by themselves from the vicious net of emotional entanglements. It’s not a good idea for a ghost hunter to be afraid of anything, because fear attracts undesirables even among the Unseen. An authoritative and positive position is quite essential with both medium and ghost. Sometimes, these “entities” or visitors in temporary control of the medium’s speech mechanism like their newly found voice so much, they don’t want to leave. That’s when the firm orders of the Investigator alone send them out of the medium’s body. There are dangers involved in this work, but only for the amateur. For a good psychic researcher does know how to rid the medium of unwanted entities. If all this sounds like a medieval text to you, hold your judgment. You may not have seen a “visitor” take over a Sensitive’s body, and “operate” it the way you might operate a car! But I have, and other researchers have, and when the memories are those of the alleged ghost, and certainly not those of the medium, then you can’t dismiss such things as fantastic! Too much disbelieving is just as unscientific as too much believing. Even though the lady in T. S. Eliot’s Confidential Clerk says blandly, “I don’t believe in facts,” I do. Facts—come to think of it—are the only things I really do believe in.

She could not resist, so she asked, "Why do men refer to vehicles in the feminine form?"... Amelia groaned. "You're going to say it's because they're temperamental like women, aren't you?" "Of course not," defended Rick. "Far from it. Men have a great deal of respect for their cars and their women. I was talking to a friend about this the other day and we both agreed that we see a vehicle as a piece of artwork." "What do you mean?" asked Amelia as she leaned against the door and faced him. "The body of a car, especially a classic, has pleasing curves to the male eye. Just like women. It tends to work better with tender loving care. Just like women. Not only that, cars get us men excited and so do women.

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy’s back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down. “Our duel,” Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, “will represent the struggle our nation’s currently engaged in.” “Please, we both know you’re just going for home team advantage.” “You wound me, Sam. I can’t help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field.” He did a quick hamstring stretch. “Suck it up.” “Fine,” I said, “then I get the handicap.” “Sam, you’re Texas. Texas always gets the handicap.” “I’m Team Texas again?” He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them. I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. “Shiny.” Ramon snorted. “Classic. Check out the gullwing doors.” “Fine. Classic Shiny.” Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy’s cup into the Dumpster. “Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood.” “A car is to get you from place to place. That’s it.” Ramon shook his head at my ignorance. “Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico.” “It’s Team South America,” he said. “You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?” “Yeah, but I have the whole continent behind me.” He held up his fist dramatically. “They support their cousin to the north.” I laughed and he dropped his hand back down. “And it’s that guy’s own fault for parking in our lot so he could sneak over to Eddie Bauer or Starbucks or whatever.

The officer stopped his car and got out. ‘Papers, please,’ he said. ‘Really?’ said the man, in perfect English with the accent Lady Thorton used. ‘Why ever for?’ ‘Routine,’ the officer said. The man raised his eyebrow as if it were all a joke, but reached into his pocket readily enough. He pulled his identity card out of a battered leather wallet. ‘I’m just on a bit of a walking holiday,’ he said, indicating the rucksack on his back. ‘My ration card’s in there if you want me to fish it out.’ He could not sound more English. He could not look more English. And yet— ‘Sir,’ I said to the officer. He came over to the window on the passenger side, and leaned in. ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘but I think you’ve—’ I said, ‘His trouser cuffs are wet. And they’re full of sand.’ No one went on the beaches anymore. No one ever. It wasn’t allowed. The officer’s smile disappeared.

Is this a date? Are you on a date with him? And who the hell’s car is this?” Before I can answer, Genevieve makes a move toward me, which I dodge. I run behind the pillar. “Don’t be such a baby, Lara Jean,” she says. “Just accept that you lose and I win!” I peek from behind the pillar, and John is giving me a look--a look that says, Get in. Quickly I nod. Then he throws open the passenger door, and I run for it, as fast as I can. I’ve barely got the door closed before he’s driving off, Peter and Gen in our dust. I turn back to look. Peter is staring after us, his mouth open. He’s jealous, and I’m glad. “Thanks for the save,” I say, still trying to catch my breath. My heart is pounding in my chest so hard. John is looking straight ahead, a broad smile on his face. “Anytime.” We stop at a stoplight, and he turns his head and looks at me, and then we’re looking at each other, laughing like crazy, and I’m breathless again. “Did you see the looks on their faces?” John gasps, dropping his head on the steering wheel. “It was classic!” “Like a movie!” He grins at me, jubilant, blue eyes alight. “Just like a movie,” I agree, leaning my head back against the seat and opening my eyes wide up at the moon, so wide it hurts. I’m in a red Mustang convertible sitting next to a boy in uniform, and the night air feels like cool satin on my skin, and all the stars are out, and I’m happy. The way John is still grinning to himself, I know he is too. We got to play make-believe for the night.

Of course L has not been reading the Odyssey the whole time. The pushchair is also loaded with White Fang, VIKING!, Tar-Kutu: Dog of the Frozen North, Marduk: Dog of the Mongolian Steppes, Pete: Black Dog of the Dakota, THE CARNIVORES, THE PREDATORS, THE BIG CATS and The House at Pooh Corner. For the past few days he has also been reading White Fang for the third time. Sometimes we get off the train and he runs up and down the platform. Sometimes he counts up to 100 or so in one or more languages while eyes glaze up and down the car. Still he has been reading the Odyssey enough for a straw poll of Circle Line opinion on the subject of small children & Greek. Amazing: 7 Far too young: 10 Only pretending to read it: 6 Excellent idea as etymology so helpful for spelling: 19 Excellent idea as inflected languages so helpful for computer programming: 8 Excellent idea as classics indispensable for understanding of English literature: 7 Excellent idea as Greek so helpful for reading New Testament, camel through eye of needle for example mistranslation of very similar word for rope: 3 Terrible idea as study of classical languages embedded in educational system productive of divisive society: 5 Terrible idea as overemphasis on study of dead languages directly responsible for neglect of sciences and industrial decline and uncompetitiveness of Britain: 10 Stupid idea as he should be playing football: 1 Stupid idea as he should be studying Hebrew & learning about his Jewish heritage: 1 Marvellous idea as spelling and grammar not taught in schools: 24 (Respondents: 35; Abstentions: 1,000?) Oh, & almost forgot: Marvellous idea as Homer so marvellous in Greek: 0 Marvellous idea as Greek such as marvellous language: 0 Oh & also: Marvellous idea but how did you teach it to a child that young: 8

Comus. The Star that bids the Shepherd fold, Now the top of Heav'n doth hold, And the gilded Car of Day, [ 95 ] His glowing Axle doth allay In the steep Atlantick stream, And the slope Sun his upward beam Shoots against the dusky Pole, Pacing toward the other gole [ 100 ] Of his Chamber in the East. Mean while welcom Joy, and Feast, Midnight shout, and revelry, Tipsie dance and Jollity. Braid your Locks with rosie Twine [ 105 ] Dropping odours, dropping Wine. Rigor now is gone to bed, And Advice with scrupulous head, Strict Age, and sowre Severity, With their grave Saws in slumber ly. [ 110 ] We that are of purer fire Imitate the Starry Quire, Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears, Lead in swift round the Months and Years. The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove [ 115 ] Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move, And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves, Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves; By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim, The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, [ 120 ] Their merry wakes and pastimes keep: What hath night to do with sleep? Night hath better sweets to prove, Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love. Com let us our rights begin, [ 125 ] Tis onely day-light that makes Sin, Which these dun shades will ne're report. Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame [ 130 ] That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr, Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair, Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend [ 135 ] Us thy vow'd Priests, till utmost end Of all thy dues be done, and none left out, Ere the blabbing Eastern scout, The nice Morn on th' Indian steep From her cabin'd loop hole peep, [ 140 ] And to the tel-tale Sun discry Our conceal'd Solemnity. Com, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastick round.

You wonder what had happened, when a feller like that, in a place like that, talked of a childhood that might have as easily belonged to a millionaire, a lawyer, a schoolteacher, you. You had to think he was defective somehow, or had fucked up not once, not twice, but again and again, a peculiar resolve to his life. That was the thing, that resolve. We didn’t credit it. You looked at him and your brain said he was on the losing end of one of the two bargains that America made with you. There was the romantic one, that of the rambler, the man out seeking his destiny, living by his wits, all that horseshit. Then there was the classical American dare, that you could risk all, take an internal grudge and make of it a billion dollars and get a monumental tomb in the bargain. But the truth was neither. America was a grindstone. She used those notions as twin abrasives to wear you down into a dutiful drudge walking the straight and narrow. But there was something in the hearts of the some men, some of whom became Fritz, that wouldn’t accept that. These men in crummy bars, some of them, most of them, they were main-chance fellers. You could take ten of these wrecks and offer them a salesman’s job, a dozen white shirts and ties, forty Gs a year and perks, a neat house on a quiet street, a yard, a car, a dog, a wife, an expense account, a Chinese laundryman, membership in a church, grandkids who’d bounce on their knees, and you’d be lucky if one or two took you up on it. And those two would be the most defeated, the most broken and worn down. Take the same ten and offer them eight dollars a day to be litter bearers on a great adventure, a hike after a lost civilization, a one in hundred shot at survival, a one in thousand shot at a fabulous fortune of jewels and gold, and if you provided rum along the way, nine of the ten would sign up. I guarantee it. I guarantee too that the one or two who took the salesman’s job—within a year or two or three, he’d be fucking up again and again, no matter how many chances you gave him. He’s a main-chance feller, and even if he didn’t have the brains or the luck to make it work, he still couldn’t abide the line others toed, even if he couldn’t think of anything else to do with his life but the miserable American two step—toe the line, fuck up, toe the line, fuck up....

After your email about the Late Bronze Age collapse, I became very intrigued by the idea that writing systems could be ‘lost’. In fact I wasn’t really sure what that even meant, so I had to look it up, and I ended up reading a lot about something called Linear B. Do you know all about this already? Basically, around the year 1900, a team of British excavators in Crete found a cache of ancient clay tablets in a terracotta bathtub. The tablets were inscribed with a syllabic script of unknown language and appeared to date from around 1400 BCE. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, classical scholars and linguists tried to decipher the markings, known as Linear B, with no success. Although the script was organised like writing, no one could work out what language it transcribed. Most academics hypothesised it was a lost language of the Minoan culture on Crete, with no remaining descendants in the modern world. In 1936, at the age of eighty-five, the archaeologist Arthur Evans gave a lecture in London about the tablets, and in attendance at the lecture was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy named Michael Ventris. Before the Second World War broke out, a new cache of tablets was found and photographed – this time on the Greek mainland. Still, no attempts to translate the script or identify its language were successful. Michael Ventris had grown up in the meantime and trained as an architect, and during the war he was conscripted to serve in the RAF. He hadn’t received any formal qualifications in linguistics or classical languages, but he’d never forgotten Arthur Evans’s lecture that day about Linear B. After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four

Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.

Walks all ass straw.’ ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘The car. A classic. Ass-straw translates as star, I believe.

First, he’s a billionaire, and a seventy-year-old man. Meaning, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass anymore about anything other than what matters. He’s lived a wild life already—so he doesn’t care who his casual comments offend. When he makes a joke it’s like when a baby farts. It’s nothing personal, the baby’s forgotten it, while everyone is choking out in the room. But the baby doesn’t care. I also had to admit that he’s never been in public office, so he doesn’t know how to be that particular kind of phony. I mean the phony that we all accept—which I call the “mandatory fake.” The mandatory fake is the married news anchor who condemns unseemly sexual behavior while banging Dalmatians in a nearby hotel. Being an old rich uncle who’s never been in politics, Trump has no familiarity with mandatory fake. There is, however, a different kind of fakery in Trump’s world of real estate fibbery. But such lies—salesman’s lies—are deliberately obvious by their excess. You know a salesman is lying when he tells you the car you’re buying from him was only driven by a little old lady once a week to church, which is great because she lives in the attic above the church! A salesman’s lie is done with a wink and an exaggeration (“This is the biggest crowd ever!”). A politician’s lie is a promise that could very well be true, but never is (“Read my lips, no new taxes”). You see the difference? Trump’s lies are common and do not insult us, because he assumes we’re all in on the joke. Politicians are daring you to go against your own innate skepticism (which is always a mistake). Am I “Trump-splaining”? Yes, I am. For now that he’s our president and up against so much, it’s no longer fealty to do so. It’s actually fairness. Anyway, as a Holmes, I’ve since reevaluated some positions that I’ve taken for granted. I’ve looked at the research on illegal immigration and its effects on unemployment. I’ve also looked harder at crime numbers, legal vs. illegal offenders. I’ve pretty much stuck to my original precepts, but I realize that ideology ultimately helps no one in that debate.

The first and the most exciting thing for me as someone who has studied growth across countries from a macro perspective was that there is something truly unique about the Indian development model. I call this the ‘precocious development model’, since a precocious child does things far ahead of its time—in both the good and bad sense. Political scientists have often observed that India is a complete outlier in having sustained democracy at very low levels of income, low levels of literacy, with deep social fissures, and with a highly agrarian economy. Almost no country in the world has managed that under these conditions. I think the only continuous democracies have all been small countries (Costa Rica, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius and Botswana) with higher levels of literacy and fewer social divisions. The second part of the precocious model is that it entails not just precocious politics but also precocious economics. There are many ways of explaining this precocious economics model, but I focus on two. Most countries grow by either specializing in or exploiting their minerals—as in the old model—and in some cases, exploiting their geography. But most of the post-war growth experiences have come about by becoming manufacturing powerhouses, especially starting with low-skill labour and going up the value-added spectrum. Korea, Taiwan and China are classic examples, specializing in textiles and clothing initially and now becoming major exporters of electronics, cars, IT products, etc.

There’s nothing that makes me cry harder than fiction. There’s nothing that makes me weep, nothing that holds my breath and brings tears stinging to my eyes more than fiction. And all those sad realities which filter through my days. They leave no lasting impression. All they serve is small reminders of my busy life. Small purposes: remember the pain of the world. Okay, alright. I remember it all. Then I go watch a movie. I listen to the classical music station in my car at five-thirty pm where they always play that same song. I watch a play, watch the performance. Watch the smoke descend upon the stage. This fiction. It’s the only thing that affects me. Funny, isn’t it?

As I looked over this curious document, I was particularly struck by a band of text across the bottom. It bore the title “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” and read: The time needed to complete and file this form will vary depending on individual circumstances. The estimated average time is: The text then cheerfully concluded with a note that if I had comments “concerning the accuracy of these time estimates or suggestions for making this form simpler” the IRS would be happy to hear from me. It provided an address in Washington, D.C., where I could send my comments. The Paperwork Reduction Act, passed in 1980 in the waning days of the Carter administration and amended in 1995, is a classic example of structural deepening gone awry. The law was supposed to improve the efficiency of the U.S. federal government and lighten the burden of paperwork on citizens. In Brian Arthur’s terms, the additional complexity introduced by the law was supposed to improve government performance. But it has not worked. Although the U.S. Office of Management and Budget hired a special staff to review and approve every form and information request of every agency of the federal government, the estimated total time that the U.S. public invested each year fulfilling federal paperwork requirements rose from 4.7 billion hours in 1980 to 6.7 billion hours in 1996.14 More perversely, Form 1001 showed how the law makes government more inefficient and confusing to the average person. My first reaction to the notice at the bottom was to add up the time allotments. Was I really supposed to spend over six and a half hours on this form? The suggested times seemed so precise, and the total amount so daunting, that Form 1001 practically leapt at me with self-importance. And what records, exactly, was I supposed to spend four hours and thirty-two minutes keeping? I hadn’t a clue. In its entirety, Form 1001 resembled the jumble of hoses and wiring under the hood of a modern car, and the “Paperwork Reduction Act Notice” at the bottom was a particularly forbidding clump of complexity.

She hit a new low in mid-July when she took up with Dodi Fayed, the son of Egyptian tycoon Mohamed Fayed, who had been repeatedly denied British citizenship by the U.K. government. Mohamed Fayed had befriended Diana as a generous benefactor of several of her charities. He appealed to her, according to Andrew Neil, a sometime consultant for Fayed, “by cultivating the idea that both were outsiders and had the same enemies.” Diana met Dodi while she and her sons were staying at the ten-acre Fayed estate in Saint-Tropez. At age forty-two, Dodi was a classic case of arrested development: spoiled, ill-educated, unemployed, rootless, and irresponsible, with a taste for cocaine and fast cars. He showered Diana with extravagant gifts, including an $11,000 gold Cartier Panther watch, and sybaritic trips on his father’s plane and yachts. From the moment the story of their romance broke on August 7, the tabloids covered the couple’s every move with suggestive photographs and lurid prose. William and Harry, who were at Balmoral with their father, mistrusted Dodi, and they were embarrassed by their mother’s exhibitionistic behavior.

The M1A3 Abrams was a man-killer. Colonel J. “Lonesome” Jones thanked the good Lord that he had never had to face anything like it. The models that preceded it, the A1 and A2, were primarily designed to engage huge fleets of Soviet tanks on the plains of Europe. They were magnificent tank busters, but proved to be less adept at the sort of close urban combat that was the bread and butter of the U.S. Army in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In the alleyways of Damascus and Algiers, along the ancient cobbled lanes of Samara, Al Hudaydah, and Aden, the armored behemoths often found themselves penned in, unable to maneuver or even to see what they were supposed to kill. They fell victim to car bombs and Molotovs and homemade mines. Jones had won his Medal of Honor rescuing the crew of one that had been disabled by a jihadi suicide squad in the Syrian capital. The A3 was developed in response to attacks just like that one, which had become increasingly more succesful. It was still capable of killing a Chinese battle tank, but it was fitted out with a very different enemy in mind. Anyone, like Jones, who was familiar with the clean, classic lines of the earlier Abrams would have found the A3 less aesthetically pleasing. The low-profile turret now bristled with 40 mm grenade launchers, an M134 7.62 mm minigun, and either a small secondary turret for twin 50s, or a single Tenix-ADI 30 mm chain gun. The 120 mm canon remained, but it was now rifled like the British Challenger’s gun. But anyone, like Jones, who’d ever had to fight in a high-intensity urban scenario couldn’t give a shit about the A3’s aesthetics. They just said their prayers in thanks to the designers. The tanks typically loaded out with a heavy emphasis on high-impact, soft-kill ammunition such as the canistered “beehive” rounds, Improved Conventional Bomblets, White Phos’, thermobaric, and flame-gel capsules. Reduced propellant charges meant that they could be fired near friendly troops without danger of having a gun blast disable or even kill them. An augmented long-range laser-guided kinetic spike could engage hard targets out to six thousand meters. The A3 boasted dozens of tweaks, many of them suggested by crew members who had gained their knowledge the hard way. So the tank commander now enjoyed an independent thermal and LLAMPS viewer. Three-hundred-sixty-degree visibility came via a network of hardened battle-cams. A secondary fuel cell generator allowed the tank to idle without guzzling JP-8 jet fuel. Wafered armor incorporated monobonded carbon sheathing and reactive matrix skirts, as well as the traditional mix of depleted uranium and Chobam ceramics. Unlike the tank crew that Jones had rescued from a screaming mob in a Damascus marketplace, the men and women inside the A3 could fight off hordes of foot soldiers armed with RPGs, satchel charges, and rusty knives—for the “finishing work” when the tank had been stopped and cracked open to give access to its occupants.

McGee made a gagging sound deep in his throat and scrubbed the bloody hand against his wet raincoat. His eyes were muddy, his bony angular face tight and shiny from the rain and the tension of taut nerves and muscles. Rain drummed steadily on the car’s metal roof and the windshield wipers squeaked monotonously, louder and more nerve-wracking than the endless sucking whine of the tires on the wet pavement. But louder than all these sounds was the mournful, sobbing wail of squad cars ripping through the night, converging on the neighborhood McGee was desperately fleeing.

Instead, help your new kitten to associate cars with fun, happy experiences instead of just trips to the vet. The process, called desensitization using classical conditioning, takes patience and time, but works whether your kitty acts scared, sick, or just hyper. Use A Crate. For safety's sake, kittens and cats must ride inside a carrier while in the car. A loose pet becomes a furry projectile in case of an accident. The driver needs to concentrate on the road and traffic, not the bouncy baby on a lap or under the pedals. Even well-behaved cats loose in the car could be injured, because an airbag will crush the crate and pet if on the front seat during an accident. So be sure to crate train the cat before you hit the road. Let Him Explore. Even though he'll be inside a crate, it's helpful for kitty to experience positive things about the car before you start the engine. Cats are sensitive to environment and territory which is why they prefer staying home in familiar surroundings. So once the cat carrier is securely in the closed car, sit beside your cat and open the carrier door. Allow him

Robert Cialdini's "Influence" is the single best place to start to read about the social psychology of persuasion, and at first glance the book looks like an overwhelming testimony to irrationality in our interactions with one another. This classic work explores six major factors which can help persuade other people. For example, one major factor is “reciprocity”, whereby we feel compelled to give something back when people have given something to us (for example when a car salesperson has agreed to cut the price by 10%, maybe we feel we should raise the amount we’re willing to pay in return). There’s no need to labour the opportunities for the unscrupulous to take advantage of this kind of habit of mind. None of Cialdini’s important persuasion factors are rational argument, so at one reading of Cialdini’s manual of persuasion is coming firmly from the “we’re irrational” side. But there is another interpretation. Much of the evidence on which the power of these factors to aid persuasion is based assumes a situation where you have an at least half-way rational argument to begin with. Rationality is the background against which these irrational factors create variation.

He waved at a red pickup—one that looked old in a ready-for-the-junkyard way, rather than in a classic-car-show way—parked behind Jules’s SUV. A shepherd-type dog sat in the passenger seat, watching them with huge, pricked ears. “Why?” “No reason.” A rustling sound made her jerk her head around, but it was only the wind making leaves dance across the road. “Uh-huh,” Hugh said, not sounding as if he believed her. “Was someone bothering you in there?” “She wasn’t sure how to answer that. Although she would’ve sworn she heard someone outside her dressing room, she was starting to think that she was imagining things. After all, the past several days would’ve messed with almost anyone’s sanity. Since she didn’t want to consider that she couldn’t trust her own senses, she changed the subject. “What are you doing out here?” “Just…more errands.” For the first time since she’d met him, Hugh didn’t answer with his usual cocky confidence. Instead, his gaze darted to the side as he slid his hands in his pockets, looking like a strangely appealing combination of naughty boy and confident man. He snuck a glance at her, and she raised an eyebrow, making him huff and swing a hand toward the pickup. “My truck’s right there. I had to walk by here to get to it.” “Uh-huh.” She echoed his skeptical sound from earlier. “Do we need to have the stalking-is-bad talk again?” “I’m a cop, not a stalker,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I arrest stalkers.” “Might want to check out your house.” “What?” She smirked. “It’s looking a little see-through and glassy to me.” “What?” “Glass house? Throwing stones?” Lips pursed, he eyed her for several seconds. “You’re not very good at telling jokes.” “I’m an excellent joke teller!” Grace huffed. “Uh-huh.

She said, "I could kill him for what he did to you!" It was a curious phrase. I could kill... One I never used since I actually had killed before. I was a murderer, so for me it lost its hyperbolic quality. But like when you buy a car and then see that specific model everywhere, I noticed whenever anyone idly threw out murderous threats. And it was often. For me they stuck out like neon signsin otherwise dull common colloquialisms. People were always exclaiming, "I could kill you right now! or "I want to fucking kill her!" or the classic joke, "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you," and on and on and on. I heard something like that said at least once a week, and I nodded and smiled and understood, like a well-adjusted nonhomicidal person.

Mason wasn't the jealous type, and San wasn't the confrontational type. And I thought maybe if I saw them in the same room together, I would be reminded that Sam was just a regular guy. That maybe I had built him up as this mythical creature, a perfect friend and potential boyfriend who would;t seem so precious and rare out in the real world.

Justice, solidarity, freedom, equal rights—these are all ideas that come straight out of the Enlightenment. In fact, out of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is very anti-capitalist, contrary to what everybody says. And classical liberal and Enlightenment ideals lead in a very direct path, I think, to what was called libertarian socialism, or anarchism, or something like that. The idea is that people have a fundamental core right and need to be free and creative, not under external constraints. Any form of authority requires legitimation. The burden of proof is always on an authoritarian structure, whatever it may be, whether it's owning people, sex-linked, or even child-parent relationships. Any form of authority has to be challenged. Sometimes they can be justified, and maybe in that case, okay, you live with them. But for the most part, not. That would then lead quite directly to what were kind of truisms about a century ago. I mean, now they sound really crazy because there's been such a deterioration of values. But if you look at the thinking of just ordinary people, like say the working-class press in the mid-19th century, which grew where the ideas just grew out of the same soil—Enlightenment, classical liberal soil—the ideas are clear. Obviously, people should not be machines. They shouldn't be tools of production. They shouldn't be ordered around. We don't want chattel slavery, you know, like black slaves in the South, but we also don't want what was called, since the 18th century, wage slavery, which is not very different. Namely, where you have to rent yourself to survive. In a way, it was argued with some plausibility that you're worse off than a slave in that scenario. Actually, slave owners argued that. When slave owners were defending slavery, there was a kind of a moral debate that went on. It had shared moral turf, as a lot of moral debate did. The slave owners made a plausible point. They said, "Look, we own our workers. You just rent your workers. When you own something, you take much better care of it than when you rent it." To put it a little anachronistically, if you rent a car, you're not going to pay as much attention to taking care of it as if you own the car, for obvious reasons. Similarly, if you own people, you're going to take more care of them than if you rent people. If you rent people and you don't want them anymore, you throw them out. If you own people, well, you've got a sort of an investment in them, so you make them healthier and so on. So, the slave owners, in fact, argued, "Look, we're a lot more moral than you guys with your capitalist, wage slave system." Ordinary working people understood that. After the Civil War, you find in the American working-class press bitter complaints over the fact that, "Look, we fought to end chattel slavery, and now you're driving us into wage slavery, which is the same sort of thing." This is one core institution in society where people are forced to become tools of others, to be cast out if they're not necessary. It's a grotesque arrangement, totally contrary to the ideals of classical liberalism or Enlightenment values or anything else. It's now become sort of standard doctrine, but that's just a victory of absolutism, and we should dismantle all that stuff. Culturally, it starts with changes. You've got to change your minds and your spirit, and recover what was a common understanding in a more civilized period, let's say a century ago, in the shop floors of Lowell, Massachusetts. Recover that understanding, and then we work to simply democratize all institutions, free them up, and eliminate authoritarian structures. As I say, you find them everywhere. From families up to corporations, there are all kinds of authoritarian structures in the world. They all ought to be challenged. Very few of them can resist that challenge. They survive mainly because they're not challenged.

TECHNO-OPTIMISM IS NOT THE SOLUTION On top of this, there is yet another inconvenient truth we must confront. The effectiveness of the green policies put into effect in some developed countries is doubtful. In places where households typically possess multiple cars and trucks, the result would still be unsustainable even if every single one were replaced by an electric vehicle. Furthermore, the planned rollout by Ford and Tesla of SUV-style electric vehicles signals nothing more than the continued strengthening of our present culture of consumption, which will only lead to an increased waste of resources. It is, when all is said and done, simply another classic example of greenwashing.

The feminist classics talk a lot about women like this. There were millions of women saying things just like it. And the women meant what they said. They were sincere. Yet now, if we could go back in a time machine and talk to these women, what we’d say is: You had everything a woman could possibly want by the standards of the culture. You had nothing to be unhappy about by the standards of the culture. But we now know that the standards of the culture were wrong. Women need more than a house and a car and a husband and kids. They need equality, and meaningful work, and autonomy.

Vasana is determinism that feels like free will. I’m reminded of my friend Jean, whom I’ve known for almost twenty years. Jean considers himself very spiritual and went so far in the early nineties as to walk way from his job with a newspaper in Denver to live in an ashram in western Massachusetts. But he found the atmosphere choking. “They’re all crypto Hindus,” he complained. “They don’t do anything but pray and chant and meditate.” So Jean decided to move on with his life. He’s fallen in love with a couple of women but has never married. He doesn’t like the notion of settling down and tends to move to a new state every four years or so. (He once told me that he counted up and discovered that he’s lived in forty different houses since he was born.) One day Jean called me with a story. He was on a date with a woman who had taken a sudden interest in Sufism, and while they were driving home, she told Jean that according to her Sufi teacher, everyone has a prevailing characteristic. “You mean the thing that is most prominent about them, like being extroverted or introverted?” he asked. “No, not prominent,” she said. “Your prevailing characteristic is hidden. You act on it without seeing that you’re acting on it.” The minute he heard this, Jean became excited. “I looked out the car window, and it hit me,” he said. “I sit on the fence. I am only comfortable if I can have both sides of a situation without committing to either.” All at once a great many pieces fell into place. Jean could see why he went into an ashram but didn’t feel like he was one of the group. He saw why he fell in love with women but always saw their faults. Much more came to light. Jean complains about his family yet never misses a Christmas with them. He considers himself an expert on every subject he’s studied—there have been many—but he doesn’t earn his living pursuing any of them. He is indeed an inveterate fence-sitter. And as his date suggested, Jean had no idea that his Vasana, for that’s what we’re talking about, made him enter into one situation after another without ever falling off the fence. “Just think,” he said with obvious surprise, “the thing that’s the most me is the thing I never saw.” If unconscious tendencies kept working in the dark, they wouldn’t be a problem. The genetic software in a penguin or wildebeest guides it to act without any knowledge that it is behaving much like every other penguin or wildebeest. But human beings, unique among all living creatures, want to break down Vasana. It’s not good enough to be a pawn who thinks he’s a king. We crave the assurance of absolute freedom and its result—a totally open future. Is this reasonable? Is it even possible? In his classic text, the Yoga Sutras, the sage Patanjali informs us that there are three types of Vasana. The kind that drives pleasant behavior he calls white Vasana; the kind that drives unpleasant behavior he calls dark Vasana; the kind that mixes the two he calls mixed Vasana. I would say Jean had mixed Vasana—he liked fence-sitting but he missed the reward of lasting love for another person, a driving aspiration, or a shared vision that would bond him with a community. He displayed the positives and negatives of someone who must keep every option open. The goal of the spiritual aspirant is to wear down Vasana so that clarity can be achieved. In clarity you know that you are not a puppet—you have released yourself from the unconscious drives that once fooled you into thinking that you were acting spontaneously.

It's a classic tale of good versus evil, except with garlic. Gramma goes to La Senora for consultation, for help, for direction. But Gramma has darker thoughts than La Senora can get behind. She's casting midnight spells with nail clippings and earwax, cheap powdery perfumes and dead toads in jars, carrying her 9 millimeter pistol in her car. She prays for strength. She prays for death. Not for herself or him. Maybe him. She prays to Pancho Villa, she prays to bad saints.

Association of dissimilar ideas “I had earlier devised an arrangement for beam steering on the two-mile accelerator which reduced the amount of hardware necessary by a factor of two…. Two weeks ago it was pointed out to me that this scheme would steer the beam into the wall and therefore was unacceptable. During the session, I looked at the schematic and asked myself how could we retain the factor of two but avoid steering into the wall. Again a flash of inspiration, in which I thought of the word ‘alternate.’ I followed this to its logical conclusion, which was to alternate polarities sector by sector so the steering bias would not add but cancel. I was extremely impressed with this solution and the way it came to me.” “Most of the insights come by association.” “It was the last idea that I thought was remarkable because of the way in which it developed. This idea was the result of a fantasy that occurred during Wagner…. [The participant had earlier listened to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’] I put down a line which seemed to embody this…. I later made the handle which my sketches suggested and it had exactly the quality I was looking for…. I was very amused at the ease with which all of this was done.” 10. Heightened motivation to obtain closure “Had tremendous desire to obtain an elegant solution (the most for the least).” “All known constraints about the problem were simultaneously imposed as I hunted for possible solutions. It was like an analog computer whose output could not deviate from what was desired and whose input was continually perturbed with the inclination toward achieving the output.” “It was almost an awareness of the ‘degree of perfection’ of whatever I was doing.” “In what seemed like ten minutes, I had completed the problem, having what I considered (and still consider) a classic solution.” 11. Visualizing the completed solution “I looked at the paper I was to draw on. I was completely blank. I knew that I would work with a property three hundred feet square. I drew the property lines (at a scale of one inch to forty feet), and I looked at the outlines. I was blank…. Suddenly I saw the finished project. [The project was a shopping center specializing in arts and crafts.] I did some quick calculations …it would fit on the property and not only that …it would meet the cost and income requirements …it would park enough cars …it met all the requirements. It was contemporary architecture with the richness of a cultural heritage …it used history and experience but did not copy it.” “I visualized the result I wanted and subsequently brought the variables into play which could bring that result about. I had great visual (mental) perceptibility; I could imagine what was wanted, needed, or not possible with almost no effort. I was amazed at my idealism, my visual perception, and the rapidity with which I could operate.

pajamas. He stumbled a little, the two men jerked him upright and his glasses went askew. They stopped at the back of the Stolypin car, and one of the men let him go in order to open the door. Instinctively, he adjusted his glasses. Turned his head. For a bare instant, he stared at Khristo. His face appeared to have somehow shrunk, and his eyes looked enormous. Then the two

Calling themselves the Slush Pile Brigade as a nod to the unsolicited writings sent to publishing houses, four friends take on the publishing industry and get caught up in dangerous events beyond their control in Samuel Marquis's The Slush Pile Brigade. This high-energy, rollicking misadventure will change the way you look at the publishing industry forever. The plot--complete with car chases and the requisite gun play--is unpredictable and sometimes turns violent; twists and turns and counterturns abound. So, too, does the humor. Numerous references to classic movies, songs, and literature are sprinkled throughout...The dialogue is superb, especially the rat-a-tat round robin responses given when the Slush Pile Brigade members are in discussion. Be prepared to never look at the publishing world in the same way again." Foreword Reviews - Five Stars (******)

It’s about seeing how much they can get away with not telling you. This is just a test. Thieves start out by taking candy bars, just to see if they can. Then, when they realize how easy it is, they move to cars and jewels and banks. This is a mere trifle compared with what’s coming your way. And the bitch of it is, your generation won’t ever see it coming. You’ll just sit there with your video games and your Mac Classics or whatever while the bastards rob the store blind. And you don’t even know you own the damn store. It’s pitiful. Fucking pathetic. The beginning of the end of a goddamn failed empire.

She was crossing the street to come to me when the car hit her. We planned a special date to celebrate our tenth anniversary. We left our eight-year-old daughter Samantha with a babysitter, snuck out in separate cars, parked the cars and walked toward each other on opposite sides of the street. We pretended we were meeting by mistake, as though we’d just glimpsed each other across the street and had to rush together.

The Andy Griffith Show was anachronistic. The denizens of Mayberry wore clothing of uncertain vintage and hair of indeterminate style and drove cars of unspecified age. Scant mention was made of current affairs or changing times. Telephone calls were placed through a human operator, and no one seemed to own a television set.

He handed me a letter. I unfolded it and read: Dear Mr Spratt, It has come to our attention that you may be attempting to give up the booze and reconcile with your wife. While we approve of this as a plot device to generate more friction and inner conflicts, we most strongly advise you not to carry it through to a happy reconciliation, as this would put you in direct contravention of Rule 11C of the Union of Sad Loner Detective’s Code, as ratified by the Union of Literary Detectives, and it will ultimately result in your expulsion from the association with subsequent loss of benefits. I trust you will do the decent thing and halt this damaging and abnormal behaviour before it leads to your downfall. PS. Despite repeated demands, you have failed to drive a classic car or pursue an unusual hobby. Please do so at once or face the consequences.

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Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.

BLOOD ORANGE MIMOSAS Hands-on: 10 min. Total: 12 min. We love the color blood oranges give this classic brunch cocktail. A dash of bitters adds depth. Look for orange bitters—such as Fee Brothers or Stirrings— at liquor stores or specialty grocers. The sugar cube dissolves as you sip, balancing the bitters and giving of bubbles for a festive touch. Juice the oranges and keep chilled up to a day ahead. 12 sugar cubes 1 ⁄ 2 teaspoon blood orange bitters or angostura bitters 1 7 1 ⁄ 2 cups sparkling wine, chilled 3 cups fresh blood orange juice (about 6 oranges) blood orange rind curls (optional) 1. Place 1 sugar cube in each of 12 Champagne futes or slender glasses; add 1 drop bitters to each fute. Combine wine and juice. Divide wine mixture evenly among futes. Garnish with rind, if desired. SErVES 12 (serving size: about 3 ⁄ 4 cup) CalOriES 143; FaT 0g; prOTEiN 0g; CarB 11g; FiBEr 0g; CHOl 0mg; irON 0mg; SODiUM 0mg; CalC 5mg

After arriving in America, John and Adeline continued on their tour of American Universities, leaving their daughter Ursula in the New York City area, after her marriage to the present-day, award-winning author, Captain Hank Bracker. At the beginning of their tour of the United States, John and Adeline purchased a vintage “Ford Woodie Station Wagon,” which they drove across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. When they prepared for their return to South Africa, they had their “Woodie” loaded into the cargo hold of the SS African Moon and proudly took the car, south of the equator, with them. At that time “Classic American Cars” were quite prestigious in South Africa.

The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these jobs, the instruction would always give only one understanding of Quality, the classic. It would tell you how to hold the blade when sharpening the knife, or how to use a sewing machine, or how to mix and apply glue with the presumption that once these underlying methods were applied, “good” would naturally follow. The ability to see directly what “looks good” would be ignored. The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of “style” to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it’s not just depressingly dull, it’s also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized houses. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It’s the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don’t know where to start because no one has ever told them there’s such a thing as Quality in this world and it’s real, not style. Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.

raising your prices can increase demand by appealing to a more attractive type of customer. Automobiles are a classic example of this type of price sensitivity: some cars are desirable because they’re expensive. The typical customer who purchases a Bentley Continental GT is very different from the type of customer who purchases a Toyota Camry.

1984 cult classic Repo Man

1973 was the year when the United Kingdom entered the European Economic Union, the year when Watergate helped us with a name for all future scandals, Carly Simon began the year at number one with ‘You’re So Vain’, John Tavener premiered his Variations on ‘Three Blind Mice’ for orchestra, the year when The Godfather won Best Picture Oscar, when the Bond film was Live and Let Die, when Perry Henzell’s film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, opened, when Sofia Gubaidulina’s Roses for piano and soprano premiered in Moscow, when David Bowie was Aladdin Sane, Lou Reed walked on the wild side and made up a ‘Berlin’, Slade were feeling the noize, Dobie Gray was drifting away, Bruce Springsteen was ‘Blinded by the Light’, Tom Waits was calling ‘Closing Time’, Bob Dylan was ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’, Sly and the Family Stone were ‘Fresh’, Queen recorded their first radio session for John Peel, when Marvin Gaye sang ‘What’s Going On’ and Ann Peebles’s ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain’, when Morton Feldman’s Voices and Instruments II for three female voices, flute, two cellos and bass, Alfred Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style for violin and piano and Iannis Xenakis’s Eridanos for brass and strings premiered, when Ian Carr’s Nucleus released two albums refining their tangy English survey of the current jazz-rock mind of Miles Davis, when Ornette Coleman started recording again after a five-year pause, making a field recording in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, when Stevie Wonder reached No. 1 with ‘Superstition’ and ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’, when Free, Family and the Byrds played their last show, 10cc played their first, the Everly Brothers split up, Gram Parsons died, and DJ Kool Herc DJed his first block party for his sister’s birthday in the Bronx, New York, where he mixed instrumental sections of two copies of the same record using two turntables.

didn’t matter if you and your parents had been freedmen before the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it matter that you were almost three-quarters white. You were, nevertheless, classed with those hordes of hungry, ragged, ignorant black folk arriving from the South in such great numbers, packed like so many stampeding cattle in dirty, manure-littered box cars.

Bryce Almus, 32, is the VP of Acquisitions at Almus Capital and founded Almus Private Aviation. He’s a skilled commercial pilot, flight instructor, and member of MENSA, YPO, and AOPA. Bryce’s interests include classic car racing, photography, movies, and pickleball. He enjoys his Lake Michigan beach house and continually seeks new investment prospects.

So we went. Down the stairs and out to the street and into the same damned car that Rhonda—I mean Lori—had used for fun and games. That, I decided, was one thing I would always regret. I hadn’t managed to knock off a piece of Lori. It was one hell of a shame.

Possibly she insists upon being called a Scottish terrier because, at the moment, Scottish terriers are high in fashion — it is queer, isn’t it that there should be fashions in dogs? Scotties are a sane style; they are, so to say, serviceable and they give good wear. They have all the compactness of a small dog and all the valor of a big one. And they are so exceedingly sturdy that it is proverbial that the only thing fatal to them is being run over by an automobile — in which case the car itself knows that it has been in a fight.

It wasn’t really much of a taxi. The car was a 1990s-era Caprice Classic, painted burgundy, with patches of orange rust on the trunk and a bumper that was attached to the rest of the car with duct tape. A big handwritten sign in the corner of the rear window said, “TAXI.” Next to the sign was an oversize photograph of a Roswell alien taped to the glass, along with bumper stickers about ghosts, cats, marijuana, and guns.

When he kisses me, he tastes like heartbreak and drive-ins from the fifties, classic cars and hot summer passion.

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If you want to be free, learn to live simply. Use what you have and be content where you are. Quit trying to solve your problems by moving to another place, by changing mates or careers. Leave your car in the garage. If you have a gun, put it away. Sell that complex computer and go back to using pencil and paper. Rather than read every new book that comes along, reread the classics. Eat food grown locally. Wear simple, durable clothing. Keep a small home,