Clicking With Someone Quotes

Sometimes when you meet someone, there’s a click. I don’t believe in love at first sight but I believe in that click. Recognition.

Speak with caution. Even if someone forgives harsh words you've spoken, they may be too hurt to ever forget them. Don't leave a legacy of pain and regret of things you never should have said.

Sometimes someone says something and their words are like the catch of a gas stove, the click, click while you’re waiting for it to light up and flame big and blue...

So what don't you get?" "The way people talk and act like they're crazy in love, and then, ding, suddenly they're not. It's like it was all just pretend. Like it's just a game." He crunched on an ice cube. "Well, sometimes it is just a game." "Then how are you supposed to believe someone when it isn't?

Because they’re so attuned to feelings, internalizers are extremely sensitive to the quality of emotional intimacy in their relationships. Their entire personality longs for emotional spontaneity and intimacy, and they can’t be satisfied with less. Therefore, when they’re raised by immature and emotionally phobic parents, they feel painfully lonely. If there’s anything internalizers have in common, it’s their need to share their inner experience. As children, their need for genuine emotional connection is the central fact of their existence. Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. A blank face kills something in them. They read people closely, looking for signs that they’ve made a connection. This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them. They find nothing more exhilarating than clicking with someone who gets them. When they can’t make that kind of connection, they feel emotional loneliness. From

I am tortured too. I am tortured by belly fat and magazine covers about how to please everyone but myself. I am tortured by sheep who click on anything that will guarantee a ten-pound loss in one week. Sheep who will get on their knees if it means someone will like them more. I am tortured by my inability to want to hang out with desperate sheep. I am tortured by goddamned yearbooks full of bullshit. I met you when. I’ll miss the times. I’ll keep in touch. Best friends forever. Is this okay? Are you all right? Are you tortured too?

I much prefer the idea of going all in. I’ve always wanted someone I could instantly click with and then just fucking drown in.

Someday in the far future, when the Milky Way has turned another cosmic click, will someone carry a chair to your grave site and keep you company forever? Can you imagine someone loving you that much?

How easily we can remove someone from our lives today. Within a click. I wish it was that easy. Friend. Unfriend. Like. Unlike. Love. Unlove.

Kaitie, are you alone?" "Yeah, why?" "Hang up." "But why? What is it?" "I can hear someone breathing on the line." [Click]

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he’s either already gone or just about to leave, and you’re basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call I want.

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing "catches," and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I 'want'.

When shooting a story about someone, their hands should always be on your list to shoot.

Miss Clover," said Minister Fairweller to the Viscount after a long moment, "is not here. She has gone to a speech with her father, in Werttemberg. I could set you up with a carriage, if you'd like." The girls' mouths dropped open. Viscount Duquette did not see. "Well!" he said,clicking his heels together. "It is nice to see that someone behaves like a gentleman around here!" The girls found Clover about an hour later, hidinga mong the untrimmed unicorn and lion topiaries, weeping on a stone bench. They flocked to her, wrapped an extra shawl around her shoulders, and told her the story. "Werttemberg, though," said Eve. That's two countries away!" Clover wept and laughed at the same time.

In the old days – or so I’ve heard – you could go round someone’s place and rifle through their record collection, take a look at their bookcases. Now you have to scroll through their iTunes or click on their Kindle.

All you have to do is circulate and listen. If you know what they’re talking about, join in. If you don’t know what they’re talking about, then ask questions,’ he relayed as if it was really that simple. ‘People don’t mind being asked questions. In fact, they like to show off their knowledge. What they don’t like is someone pretending to know what they’re talking about when they don’t.

This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.

I could smash the measured clicking sound that haunts me - draining away life, and dreams, and idle reveries. Hard, sharp, ticks. I hate them. Measuring thought, infinite space, by cogs and wheels. Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that- I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much- so very much to learn.

We tend to match the emotions of those around us. For example, we’re more prone to become stressed when we’re around someone who is high-strung. And we’re more likely to be in a good mood when others around us are laughing.

How could I forget. I was her ghost daughter, sitting at empty tables with crayons and pens while she worked on a poem, a girl malleable as white clay. Someone to shape, instruct in the ways of being her. She was always shaping me. She showed me an orange, a cluster of pine needles, a faceted quartz, and made me describe them to her. I couldn’t have been more than three or four. My words, that’s what she wanted. ”What’s this?” she kept asking. ”What’s this?” But how could I tell her? She’d taken all the words. The smell of tuberoses saturated the night air, and the wind clicked through the palms like thoughts through my sleepless mind. Who am I? I am a girl you don’t know, mother. The silent girl in the back row of the classroom, drawing in notebooks. Remember how they didn’t know if I even spoke English when we came back to the country? They tested me to find out if I was retarded or deaf. But you never asked why. You never thought, maybe I should have left Astrid some words. I thought of Yvonne in our room, asleep, thumb in mouth, wrapped around her baby like a top. ”I can see her,” you said. You could never see her, Mother. Not if you stood in that room all night. You could only see her plucked eyebrows, her bad teeth, the books that she read with the fainting women on the covers. You could never recognize the kindness in that girl, the depth of her needs, how desperately she wanted to belong, that’s why she was pregnant again. You could judge her as you judged everything else, inferior, but you could never see her. Things weren’t real to you. They were just raw material for you to reshape to tell a story you liked better. You could never just listen to a boy playing guitar, you’d have to turn it into a poem, make it all about you.

It was like someone had turned a knob a hair to the right ... and the radio station clicked in so loud and clear it almost knocked her over .

Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.

Something clicked inside me at that moment. I stood outside of myself, realizing how easy it was to judge someone, to vilify and condemn the things we don’t understand, because:

I’ve always wanted someone I could instantly click with and then just fucking drown in.

And again. I kept clicking until the photograph was demolished, until it was no more than a mosaic of gray tiles, adding up to nothing. Nothing. Because wasn’t that how I felt that day? If you zoom close—if you really get close to someone, if you really get close to yourself—then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can’t see anything anymore. Your mind becomes all these abstract fragments. English becomes math.

I of course have not told my dad about the meet-up, nor do I plan to. I'd rather risk getting abducted by a potential pedophile who has been pretending to be Harper Knight, sixteen-year-old girl, this whole time than admit to him I have feelings for someone I met over the internet.

Sure, we’d just made friends like toddlers in the park, but why did adults have to complicate everything? If you click with someone, be their friend. If they prove they’re not worthy of your friendship, bury their body and start again.

It was dawning on the wizards that they were outside the University, at night and without permission, for the first time in decades. A certain suppressed excitement crackled from man to man. Any watch trained in reading body language would have been prepared to bet that, after the click, someone was going to suggest that they might as well go somewhere and have a few drinks, and then someone else would fancy a meal, and then there was always room for a few more drinks, and then it would be 5 a.m. and the city guards would be respectfully knocking on the University gates and asking if the Archchancellor would care to step down to the cells to identify some alleged wizards who were singing an obscene song in six-part harmony, and perhaps he would also care to bring some money to pay for all the damage. Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

a silver statue of a bird that seemed to be twitching. “Poor little thing,” he said, petting it with his large hands. “Someone tried to change it into a real bird, but it got stuck in between. It thinks it’s alive, but it’s much too heavy to fly.” The metal bird cheeped feebly, a dry, clicking noise like an empty pistol. Fogg sighed and put it away in a drawer. “It’s always launching itself out of windows and landing in the hedges.

Oh, this was getting better and better. Beau was making a valiant effort to remain stoic, but his face betrayed the long-suffering look of someone who had to listen to something patently idiotic. "What happened next?" an older female voice asked. "We got up to leave, and the girl wanted to come with us, and the first black guy, he, like, got up and he was all, 'You're not leaving!' and we were all like, 'Yes we are,' and then I threw some chicken at them so they'd know we meant business, and the white kid who was with them, he picked up Chad and threw him through the window." Drunk knights in shining armor, protecting the hapless female from the clutches of scary black guys. Give me a break. "Then what happened?" the older female asked. "Then they left and went up the street. And Chad was like, 'We can't let them get away with this shit,' so we followed them. And I said, 'Hey! What do you think you're doing with that throwing people through windows and shit.' And the white guy said, 'You must like going through windows.' And I told him 'Fuck you' in a polite voice and he threw me through the window." Beau clicked the recorder off. "It's good that he used his polite voice," I said. "Otherwise no telling what would've happened.

Do you like this? I click on the attachment. It’s a slightly blurry picture, but of what, I’m not sure. A…a tree, maybe, though it doesn’t look so healthy. It looks diseased, moist and soft. There’s a knothole that looks damp and sick. Whatever it is, I can’t imagine why someone would be sending it to Adam. He doesn’t know anything about trees.

Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase? So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man—the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognize each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine. And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you’re buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognized, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though.) You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It’s finally arrived.

With one Like I can say hi to a friend, support them during a crisis, share in a joke, make someone happy, or reinforce a person’s self esteem.  I make myself part of their world.  It’s like I stopped by for coffee.  But, by Liking, I can also avoid talking to all the people I don’t want to waste time on.  Or I can check to see what my ex-girlfriend is doing seven or eight times an hour.  It’s a double-edged mouse click.

The number one rule of the Internet: People are lazy. If you don’t include a link, no one can click it. Attribution without a link online borders on useless: 99.9 percent of people are not going to bother Googling someone’s name.

As they passed through the exit, Indrani pulled Zarina’s stole over her head, covering half of her face. The two words—not guilty—had changed Zarina’s stature in minutes, from a relentless human rights activist to someone running for cover. They climbed down the stairs and rushed to the parking lot. Zarina’s car was in a pathetic condition—smashed windscreen, deflated tyres, broken rear view mirrors and torn upholstery. An exasperated Zarina raised her hands in utter disgust. Mob fury. Idiots, if they have won the case, let them celebrate their victory; why smash my car? The fighter in her forced Zarina to take out her cell phone and click pictures of her car from different angles.

The Internet doesn't distinguish between names of the living and names of the dead. And every time we clicked on one of those names, we would be relieved that it wasn't our Gordy Johnson. But sad that it was someone else's Gordy Johnson.

I quite love memorizing lines, actually. I sort of enjoy... quoting them to narrate my own life in some ways." He laughs, self-conscious. "That sounds absurd, I'm sure. I promise you it makes more sense than it seems." "No, I think it makes perfect sense," Louis replies with a shrug. "That's what I enjoy about reading, you know? Remembering certain poignant lines. Spewing 'em out later and keeping them with you. Sometimes you'll be in a certain situation and you'll be a bit speechless almost? You know?" Harry nods, now watching him with light in his eyes, a smile barely hidden. "And suddenly this borrowed line will just pop into your head and it just clicks into place with you. Sometimes you need someone else to fill in your blanks, I reckon.

And I thought, I am in love. For the first time I am in love. And loved. Someone loves me. And I love them. And within me things clicked and whirled like the insides of some gigantic clock, cog against wheel, spring against spiral, tick against tock, and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I had shown someone what I really was. I had shown someone my truth, my secret. Out there, beyond the walls of the Castle, there was a boy who had seen inside my chrysalis. And I would never be safe again.

He slammed the door shut in Ian's face, the lock clicking into place. Ian hit it again with his fist before roaring, “If I were a pervert, I'd be looking for something a damn bit more attractive than you, jackass. And definitely someone that smelled alive.

If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said. 'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what the right thing is? Who decides?' 'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. Good metaphor, huh?

She inhaled the steam rising from the coffee without touching it. “I’m very picky about my coffee.” “White chocolate peppermint latte, half skim, half soy, no whip, extra white chocolate sauce on the bottom and a drizzle on top.” Her gaze shot up, watching me over the rim of the cup with a hint of incredulity. “How’d you know?” I shrugged. “Maybe we like the same drinks.” Or maybe Wendy had told me the other day when she balanced three cups of coffee in the elevator. Liya clamped her mouth shut but covered the warm cup with her petite hands. Her glossy red nails clicked against the sturdy paper cup, drowning out the muted sounds of others in the hallway beyond the open door. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “I don’t think you did anything to the coffee.” “I mean it’s okay to smile because someone brought you your picky-ass latte.” She took a sip. “We’re not friends, you know?” “No one forgets being told they’re not friends,” I said teasingly, knowing full well she didn’t want to be friends but yet, here we were. A smile crept across her lips, even though she tried hard to stop it.

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show. Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I’d post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable “push-back,” or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click “like” and “share” so readily? One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all “like” Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can recite our favorite lines. Indeed, we all can quote Yoda, and we all have tried out our best impression of him. When someone posts a meme of Yoda, many immediately share it, not just because they think it is funny (though it usually is — it’s hard to go wrong with the Master), but because it says something about the sharer. It’s shorthand for saying, “This little guy made a huge impact on me, not sure what it is, but for certain a huge impact. Did it make one on you, too? I’m clicking ‘share’ to affirm something you may not know about me. I ‘like’ Yoda.” And isn’t that what sharing on Facebook is all about? It’s not simply that the sharer wants you to snortle or “LOL” as it were. That’s part of it, but not the core. At its core is a statement about one’s belief system, one that includes the wisdom of Yoda. Other eminently shareable icons included beloved Tolkien characters, particularly Gandalf (as played by the inimitable Sir Ian McKellan). Gandalf, like Yoda, is somehow always above reproach and unfailingly epic. Like Yoda, Gandalf has his darker counterpart. Gollum is a fan favorite because he is a fallen figure who could reform with the right guidance. It doesn’t hurt that his every meme is invariably read in his distinctive, blood-curdling rasp. Then there’s also Batman, who seems to have survived both Adam West and Christian Bale, but whose questionable relationship to the Boy Wonder left plenty of room for hilarious homoerotic undertones. But seriously, there is something about the brooding, misunderstood and “chaotic-good” nature of this superhero that touches all of our hearts.

This practice seems to be general in the Soviet Union. I suppose it is general any place where bureaus of the government operate. No one is willing to go out on any limb. No one is willing to say yes or no to a proposition. He must always go to someone higher. In this way he protects himself from criticism. Anyone who has had dealings with armies, or with governments, will recognize this story. The reaction to our cameras was invariably courteous, but very careful, and the camera did not click until the policeman was quite sure that everything was in order.

Sometimes you run into someone, regardless of age or sex, whom you know absolutely to be an independently operating part of the Whole that goes on all the time inside yourself, and the eye-motes go click and you hear the tribal tones of voice resonate, and there it is - you recognize them.

So can I ask you a question?” She wraps a strand of hair around her finger and examines the end of it before dropping it to look at me. “Sure.” I pass a slow-moving BMW and get comfortable, glancing at her to continue. “Does the FBI monitor Google searches? Like, um, randomly? For normal people?” “Normal people?” “Non-criminal people.” “What kind of a question is that?” “It’s a real question!” “But why are you asking it?” “Because I Google some weird shit,” she says, blowing out a breath and shaking her head. “I keep expecting someone to show up on my doorstep and ask what the heck I’m doing, but I’m just a really curious person and all the answers are right there, you know? Just click, click and there’s your answer.” “I think you’ll be okay,” I assure her.

I click on the list of attendees, furiously scanning for his name. Yes, there it is. There he is, eyes crinkling away at me from his profile photo, his right arm around someone out of shot. Sam Parker is attending this event. Why hasn’t he said anything to me? Obviously we hardly spend hours chatting, but he could have mentioned it when I was dropping Henry off. Maybe he’s hoping I don’t find out about it

The story is at once very easy and very hard to explain. I’ve never tried to do it in person, but I imagine if I did, I would end up vomiting on someone’s shoes. Explaining something online is as simple as pasting a link and saying, “Here, read this.” They click. Read the intro page. If they like it, they keep reading. If not, oh well, at least I didn’t have to talk. If I did have to explain the story without the very handy reference of the story itself, I imagine it would sound something like this: “On distant planet Orcus, a girl and boy fight on opposite sides of a long war between the natives and colonists from Earth. The girl and boy are hosts to parasitic energy creatures whose only weakness is each other. There’s lots of ocean, and there are monsters in that ocean. Stuff happens. Colors are pretty.” There’s a reason I’m an artist and not a writer.

Adam!” someone cries. Coughs. “Please, man, if you’re in there—” I freeze. The voice sounds familiar. Adam’s spine straightens in an instant. His lips are parted, his eyes astonished. He punches in the pass code and turns the latch. Points his gun toward the door as he eases it open. “Kenji?” A short wheeze. A muffled groan. “Shit, man, what took you so long?” “What the hell are you doing here?” Click. I can hardly see through the small slit of the door, but it’s clear Adam isn’t happy to have company. “Who sent you here? Who are you with?” Kenji swears a few more times under his breath. “Look at me,” he demands, though it sounds more like a plea. “You think I came up here to kill you?” Adam pauses. Breathes. Doubts. “I have no problem putting a bullet in your back.” “Don’t worry, bro. I already have a bullet in my back. Or my leg. Or some shit. I don’t even know.” Adam opens the door. “Get up.” “It’s all right, I don’t mind if you drag my ass inside.

Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.

Maybe it wasn’t the right time just then, and maybe it wouldn’t be for the next five years, but I was still in this fight. I was still in this life. I glanced to the man at Liberty House once more, and it all clicked into place. Two lone strangers, passing in the night, we’d both have someone beside us one day. The time just wasn’t now. “One day, I’ll find the rest of my pack. I’m just a lone wolf for now.” One day, both that man in the distant shadows and I would find someone who fit.

This should be easy because I’ve fallen out of love with Facebook. First, I want to be the kind of friend who hears about others’ milestones in person. I hate learning about major life events buried in a timeline between photos of fresh pedicures and pictures of lunch. When someone close to me has a baby or goes through emergency surgery or suffers a loss, they deserve more than a “like.” A click should never take the place of real interaction. Plus, I almost never visit anyone else’s page

It is the largest and most popular advertising platform on the web and has become the number one search engine in terms of search traffic and advertising revenue, according to Google. Geotargeting allows companies to qualify clicks by location and helps them show up in search. Google Ads is cost effective because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. You must use the same keywords that you use to promote your ads so that Google can tell you if the ad is relevant to the user's search.

All of us are writers reading other people's writing, turning pages or clicking to the next screen with pleasure and admiration. All of us absorb other people's words, feeling like we have gotten to know the authors personally in our own ways, even if just a tiny bit. True, we may also harbor jealousy or resentment, disbelief or disappointment. We may wish we had written those words ourselves or berate ourselves for knowing we never could or sigh with relief that we didn't, but thank goodness someone else has.

I'm profoundly attracted to classical Zen literature, I have the gall to lecture on it and the literature of Mahayana Buddhism one night a week at college, but my life itself couldn't very conceivably be less Zenful than it is, and what little I've been able to apprehend - I pick that verb with care - of the Zen experience has been a by-result of following my own rather natural path of extreme Zenlessness. Largely because Seymour himself literally begged me to do so, and I never knew him to be wrong in these matters.) Happily for me, and probably for everybody, I don't believe it's really necessary to bring Zen into this. The method of marble-shooting that Seymour, by sheer intuition, was recommending to me can be related, I'd say, legitimately and un-Easternly, to the fine art of snapping a cigarette end into a small wastebasket from across a room. An art, I believe, of which most male smokers are true masters only when either they don't care a hoot whether or not the butt goes into the basket or the room has been cleared of eyewitnesses, including, quite so to speak, the cigarette snapper himself. I'm going to try hard not to chew on that illustration, delectable as I find it, but I do think it proper to append - to revert momentarily to curb marbles - that after Seymour himself shot a marble, he would be all smiles when he heard a responsive click of glass striking glass, but it never appeared to be clear to him whose winning click it was. And it's also a fact that someone almost invariably had to pick up the marble he'd won and hand it to him.

Lord, what will I be? Where will the careless conglomeration of environment, heredity and stimulus lead me? Someday I may say: It was of great significance that I sat and laughed at myself in a convertible with the rain coming down in rattling sheets on the canvas roof. It influenced my life that I did not find content immediately and easily - - and now I am I because of that. It was inestimably important for me to look at the lights of Amherstn town in the rain, with the wet black tree-skeletons against the limpid streetlights and gray November mist, and then look at the boy beside me and feel all the hurting beauty go flat because he wasn't the right one - not at all. And I may say that my philosophy has been deeply affected by the fact that windshield wipers ticked off seconds too loudly and hopelessly, that my clock drips loud sharp clicks too monotonously on my hearing. I can hear it even through the pillow I muffle it with - the tyrannical drip drip drip drip of seconds along the night. And in the day, even when I'm not there, the seconds come out in little measured strips of time. And I wind the clock. And I look at the windshield wipers cutting an arch out of the sprinkled raindrops on the glass. Click-click. Clip-clip. Tick-tick. snip-snip. And it goes on and on. I could smash the measured clicking sound that haunts me - draining away life, and dreams, and idle reveries. Hard, sharp, ticks. I hate them. Measuring thought, infinite space, by cogs and wheels. Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

What happened to your arm?" she asked me one night in the Gentleman Loser, the three of us drinking at a small table in a corner. Hang-gliding," I said, "accident." Hang-gliding over a wheatfield," said Bobby, "place called Kiev. Our Jack's just hanging there in the dark, under a Nightwing parafoil, with fifty kilos of radar jammed between his legs, and some Russian asshole accidentally burns his arm off with a laser." I don't remember how I changed the subject, but I did. I was still telling myself that it wasn't Rikki who getting to me, but what Bobby was doing with her. I'd known him for a long time, since the end of the war, and I knew he used women as counters in a game, Bobby Quine versus fortune, versus time and the night of cities. And Rikki had turned up just when he needed something to get him going, something to aim for. So he'd set her up as a symbol for everything he wanted and couldn't have, everything he'd had and couldn't keep. I didn't like having to listen to him tell me how much he loved her, and knowing he believed it only made it worse. He was a past master at the hard fall and the rapid recovery, and I'd seen it happen a dozen times before. He might as well have had next printed across his sunglasses in green Day-Glo capitals, ready to flash out at the first interesting face that flowed past the tables in the Gentleman Loser. I knew what he did to them. He turned them into emblems, sigils on the map of his hustler' s life, navigation beacons he could follow through a sea of bars and neon. What else did he have to steer by? He didn't love money, in and of itself , not enough to follow its lights. He wouldn't work for power over other people; he hated the responsibility it brings. He had some basic pride in his skill, but that was never enough to keep him pushing. So he made do with women. When Rikki showed up, he needed one in the worst way. He was fading fast, and smart money was already whispering that the edge was off his game. He needed that one big score, and soon, because he didn't know any other kind of life, and all his clocks were set for hustler's time, calibrated in risk and adrenaline and that supernal dawn calm that comes when every move's proved right and a sweet lump of someone else's credit clicks into your own account.

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he’s either already gone or just about to leave, and you’re basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call I want.

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don't really see him, he's in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing 'catches', and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I WANT.

On Monday morning, she called me into her bedroom. Her dark hair was tousled, her light robe very feminine against the soft blue of her bed. Her eyes were full of mischief. “Oh, Mr. West,” she whispered in her beguiling child’s voice. “I’ve gotten myself into something. Can you help me get out of it?” “What can I do?” I asked, wondering who was next in line to be fired. “I’ve invited someone to stay here,” she said, “but now we’ve changed our minds.” She cast a glance in the direction of the President’s bedroom. “Could you help us cook up something so we can get out of having her as a houseguest?” Without waiting for a reply, she rushed on, her request becoming a command in mid-breath. “Would you fix up the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room so that it looks like we’re still decorating them, and I’ll show her that our guest rooms are not available.” Her eyes twinkled, imagining the elaborate deception. “The guest rooms will be redecorated immediately,” I said, and almost clicked my heels. I called Bonner Arrington in the carpenter’s shop. “Bring drop-cloths up to the Queen’s Room and Lincoln Bedroom. Roll up the rugs and cover the draperies and chandeliers, and all the furniture,” I instructed. “Oh yes, and bring a stepladder.” I called the paint shop. “I need six paint buckets each for the Queen’s Room and the Lincoln Room. Two of the buckets in each room should be empty—off-white—and I need four or five dirty brushes.” I met the crews on the second floor. “Now proceed to make these two rooms look as if they’re being redecorated,” I directed. “You mean you don’t want us to paint?” said the painters. “No,” I said. “Just make it look as if you are.” The crew had a good time, even though they didn’t know what it was all about. As I brought in the finishing touches, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts, Bonner shook his head. “Mr. West, all I can say is that this place has finally got to you,” he said. That evening the President and Mrs. Kennedy entertained a Princess for dinner upstairs in the President’s Dining Room. Before dinner, though, President Kennedy strolled down to the East Hall with his wife’s guest. He pointed out the bedraped Queen’s Room. “… And you see, this is where you would have spent the night if Jackie hadn’t been redecorating again,” he told the unsuspecting lady. The next morning, Mrs. Kennedy phoned me. “Mr. West, you outdid yourself,” she exclaimed. “The President almost broke up when he saw those ashtrays.

Violet didn’t realize that she’d pressed herself so tightly against the door until it opened from the inside and she stumbled backward. She fell awkwardly, trying to catch herself as her feet slipped and first she banged her elbow, and then her shoulder-hard-against the doorjamb. She heard her can of pepper spray hit the concrete step at her feet as she flailed to find something to grab hold of. Her back crashed into something solid. Or rather, someone. And from behind, she felt strong, unseen arms catch her before she hit the ground. But she was too stunned to react right away. “You think I can let you go now?” A low voice chuckled in her ear. Violet was mortified as she glanced clumsily over her shoulder to see who had just saved her from falling. “Rafe!” she gasped, when she realized she was face-to-face with his deep blue eyes. She jumped up, feeling unexpectedly light-headed as she shrugged out of his grip. Without thinking, and with his name still burning on her lips, she added, “Umm, thanks, I guess.” And then, considering that he had just stopped her from landing flat on her butt, she gave it another try. “No…yeah, thanks, I mean.” Flustered, she bent down, trying to avoid his eyes as she grabbed the paper spray that had slipped from her fingers. She cursed herself for being so clumsy and wondered why she cared that he had been the one to catch her. Or why she cared that he was here at all. She stood up to face him, feeling more composed again, and quickly hid the evidence of her paranoia-the tiny canister-in her purse. She hoped he hadn’t noticed it. He watched her silently, and she saw the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Violet waited for him to say something or to move aside to let her in. His gaze stripped away her defenses, making her feel even more exposed than when she had been standing alone in the empty street. She shifted restlessly and finally sighed impatiently. “I have an appointment,” she announced, lifting her eyebrows. “With Sara.” Her words had the desired effect, and Rafe shrugged, still studying her as he stepped out of her way. But he held the door so she could enter. She brushed past him, stepping into the hallway, as she tried to ignore the fact that she was suddenly sweltering inside her own coat. She told herself it was just the furnace, though, and had nothing to do with her humiliation over falling. Or with the presence of the brooding dark-haired boy. When they reached the end of the long hallway, Rafe pulled out a thick plastic card from his back pocket. As he held it in front of the black pad mounted on the wall beside a door, a small red light flickered to green and the door clicked. He pushed it open and led the way through. Security, Violet thought. Whatever it is they do here, they need security. Violet glanced up and saw a small camera mounted in the corner above the door. If she were Chelsea, she would have flashed the peace sign-or worse-a message for whoever was watching on the other end. But she was Violet, so instead she hurried after Rafe before the door closed and she was locked out.

And yet. For that was the peculiar thing, Lady Darvish thought, clicking through to browse the seller’s other listings while she waited for the auction to elapse: ever since the knighthood – no, further back; ever since they’d met Lemoine – Sir Owen had talked incessantly about ‘deserving’, and it seemed to her that the more he’d dwelled upon the subject, the more his sense of satisfaction in his life had ebbed away. Now he was almost like a different person. Gone was the creature of habit, the man of confident complacency and firm, well-trodden ground; in his place was someone oddly younger, someone who was eager, and reckless, and unsettled, and unsure.

Oh God,was all Keeley could think. Oh God, get me out of here. When they swung through the stone pillars at Royal Meadows,she had to fight the urge to cheer. "I'm so glad our schedules finally clicked. Life gets much too demanding and complicated, doesn't it? There's nothing more relaxing than a quiet dinner for two." Any more relaxed, Keeley thought, and unconsciousness would claim her. "It was nice of you to ask me, Chad." She wondered how rude it would be to spring out of the car before it stopped, race to the house and do a little dance of relief on the front porch. Pretty rude,she decided.Okay, she'd skip the dance. "Drake and Pamela-you know the Larkens of course-are having a little soiree next Sunday evening.Why don't I pick you up at eightish?" It took her a minute to get over the fact he'd actually used the word soiree in a sentence. "I really can't Chad. I have a full day of lessons on Saturday. By the time it's done I'm not fit for socializing.But thanks." She slid her hand to the door handle, anticipating escape. "Keeyley,you can't let your little school eclipse so much of your life." Her and stiffened,and though she could see the lights of home, she turned her head and studied his perfect profile. One day,someone was going to refer to the academy as her little school, and she was going to be very rude.And rip their throat out.

But you must admit,it's taking up an inordinate amount of your time. Why it's taken us six months to have dinner together." "Is that all?" He misinterpreted the quiet response, and the gleam in her eyes.And leaned toward her. She slapped a hand on his chest. "Don't even think about it.Let me tell you something,pal.I do more in one day with my school than you do in a week of pushing papers in that office your grandfather gave you between your manicures and amaretto lattes and soirees. Men like you hold no interest for me whatsoever,which is why it's taken six months for this tedious little date.And the next time I have dinner with you,we'll be slurping Popsicles in hell.So take your French tie and your Italian shoes and stuff them." Utter shock had him speechless as she shoved open her door.As insult trickled in,his lips thinned. "Obviously spending so much time in the stables has eroded your manners, and your outlook." "That's right, Chad." She leaned back in the door. "You're too good for me. I'm about to go up and weep into my pillow over it." "Rumor is you're cold," he said in a quiet, stabbing voice. "But I had to find out for myself." It stung,but she wasn't about to let it show. "Rumor is you're a moron. Now we've both confirmed the local gossip." He gunned the engine once,and she would have sworn she saw him vibrate. "And it's a British tie." She slammed the car door, then watched narrow-eyed as he drove away. "A British tie." A laugh gurgled up,deep from the belly and up into the throat so she had to stand, hugging herself, all but howling at the moon. "That sure told me." Indulging herself in a long sigh, she tipped her head back,looked up at the sweep of stars. "Moron," she murmured. "And that goes for both of us." She heard a faint click, spun around and saw Brian lighting up a slim cigar. "Lover's spat?" "Why yes." The temper Chad had roused stirred again. "He wants to take me to Antigua and I simply have my heart set on Mozambique.Antigua's been done to death." Brian took a contemplative puff of his cigar.She looked so damn beautiful standing there in the moonlight in that little excuse of a black dress, her hair spilling down her back like fire on silk.Hearing her long, gorgeous roll of laughter had been like discovering a treasure.Now the temper was back in her eyes,and spitting at him. It was almost as good. He took another lazy puff, blew out a cloud of smoke. "You're winding me up, Keeley." "I'd like to wind you up, then twist you into small pieces and ship them all back to Ireland." "I figured as much." He disposed of the cigar and walked to her. Unlike Chad, he didn't misinterpret the glint in her eyes. "You want to have a pop at someone." He closed his hand over the one she'd balled into a fist, lifted it to tap on his own chin. "Go ahead." "As delightful as I find that invitation, I don't solve my disputes that way." When she started to walk away, he tightened his grip. "But," she said slowly, "I could make an exception." "I don't like apologizing, and I wouldn't have to-again-of you'd set me straight right off." She lifted an eyebrow.Trying to free herself from that big, hard hand would only be undignified.

Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they’ll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I’m lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone’s hallway.

Be someone who is cool under pressure. Value serenity instead of outrage. It seems that our culture is moving in the wrong direction here. If you are blessed enough to not be on social media, you might be surprised to learn that the angriest, most passionate public figures are rewarded with the most clicks and biggest audiences. Our culture has begun to confuse passion with substance, reward the loudest and angriest voices, and thus incentivize behavior wholly at odds with Stoic wisdom. The number of decibels your voice hits as you scream about how right you are is not necessarily an indicator of how much sense you are making. As a society founded on reason and Western Enlightenment ideals, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We have to collectively stop allowing emotion and passion to pass for reason and factual debate.

But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he’s either already gone or just about to leave, and you’re basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call I want. How couldn’t I have known, you ask? I know desire when I see it— and yet, this time, it slipped by completely. I was going for the devious smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he’d read my mind, when all I really wanted was skin, just skin.

Good-bad problems are major destroyers. People who can’t reconcile either their own or anyone else’s faults suffer tremendous isolation because they are unable to attach to real, whole people who are both good and bad. The ideals of what “should” be get in the way. Perfectionists demand that their friends be perfect. Initially, when they click with someone, they will experience a wonderful honeymoon period, full of discoveries about “all the things we have in common” and how “compatible” they are. Then a conflict will arise. They will start to see the other person’s faults: they’re always late; they don’t listen well; they are too controlling. Suddenly the perfectionists are confused and disappointed. Someone they’d believed in, hoped for, expected more from has seriously let them down. And they tend to leave and reenter the fruitless, futile search for the ideal. Since safe people aren’t perfect people, they are disqualified, and the perfectionist goes on alone.

She and I spend a good twenty minutes talking about sperm (truly a magnificent topic), then dry shampoo, then book recommendations. We talk so much that we get distracted from our work. And it clicks. I’ve been on so many average friend-dates and had so many lacklustre networking chats that I now recognise chemistry when I see it. I take the leap of faith and ask for her number. She invites me to her book club. This time, I don’t have to walk into an unfamiliar flat full of strangers alone – I walk in with her, my new friend, who introduces me to everyone. A small book club, at someone’s house, eating homemade pie: this was where I want to be. It is somehow one of the most outgoing things I have ever done and also somehow feels kinda normal. Everyone here works in the same field, but we aren’t talking about work. We are drinking wine and discussing the book over dinner. Casual. Intimate. This is what Emma had meant. And it all started with a single question: what was the deal with all this sperm from Denmark in the noughties?

She didn’t tell you?” “Tell me what?” Akos demanded. “Cyra was working with us,” Teka said. “During the attack on the sojourn ship, I was supposed to take her out--take our Ryzek’s Scourge while announcing his fate on the intercom, see?” “Don’t call her that,” Akos said. He felt Isae’s eyes on him, and his cheeks went hot. “Yeah, yeah.” Teka waved him off. “Well, she bested me, and she let me go. And then she found me, requested a meeting. She offered to give us whatever we wanted--information, help, whatever--if we did something for her in exchange: get you out of Shotet.” Teka looked at Jorek. “That’s why she didn’t tell him. Because she wanted to get him out, but he wouldn’t leave without his brother.” Jorek clicked his tongue. Those weeks after Ryzek had threatened him, after Cyra tortured Zosita and kept up appearances on Pitha, she had let him think she was just doing whatever Ryzek said. Let Akos believe the worst of her. And all that time she was out working with renegades, giving whatever she could to get him out. It was like she had become someone new and he hadn’t even noticed.

The only people who ever called me were my dad, my brother, assorted Vaders to tell me to come early or late to work (including Sean, but he always sounded grumpy that he had to call me, so it wasn’t as big a thrill as you’d think), Tammy to tell me to come early or late to tennis practice, and Frances. I glanced at the caller ID screen and clicked the phone on. “What’s up, Fanny?” From the time Mom died until I was eleven, Frances the au pair had hung out in the background of my life. Once Sean overheard someone calling her Fanny, whch apparently is a nickname for Frances. We found this shocking. I mean, who has a nickname that’s a synonym for derriere? Who’s named Frances in the first place? So the boys started calling her Fanny the Nanny. Then, Booty the Babysitter. Then, Butt I Don’t Need a Governess. This had everything to do with the nickname Fanny and the fact that she tried not to get upset at being addressed in this undignified manner when she was trying to raise compassionate, responsible children. It had nothing to do with her having an outsized rumpus. Frances had a cute figure, if you could see it under all that hippie-wear.

TechCrunch, Fast Company, Mashable, Inc., Entrepreneur, and countless other publications. LinkedIn and Hacker News abound with job postings: Growth Hacker Needed. Their job isn’t to “do” marketing as I had always known it; it’s to grow companies really fast—to take something from nothing and make it something enormous within an incredibly tight window. And it says something about what marketing has become that these are no longer considered synonymous tasks. The term “growth hacker” has many different meanings for different people, but I’ll define it as I have come to understand it: A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like “branding” and “mind share,” growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth—and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users. They are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of their own self-sustaining and self-propagating growth machine that can take a start-up from nothing to something.

Your success with that initial group, the number that clicks on the video, determines how far and wide YouTube will promote it further. If many of your subscribers click on the video, YouTube will send it out to more subscribers and to some non-subscribers that have watched similar content. If that group of non-subscribers also clicks to watch the video, the platform will expand the reach even further. The platform keeps doing this, continuously using data from who is clicking and how much of the video they watch, to determine how much further to expand your video’s reach. So what does this mean to your niche and why is it important? Think about it from the perspective of someone with no definable niche, a person that posts videos with no clear content strategy. People that subscribe to their channel may do so because they like the creator’s personality but they aren’t likely to be interested in a lot of the content. That means there might not be many of your subscribers from that initial test group that will be interested in the new video. They won’t click through and it will be a negative signal to YouTube…even the subscribers aren’t interested so why push it out to more people? That’s going to make it difficult to grow a channel in the first place if your videos aren’t being promoted much by YouTube. Now think of it in terms of someone that posts videos only

It’s a librarian, down at Corinth,” I tell my supervisor, clicking my phone off again. “She works with my sister.” “A librarian,” Gutierrez repeats, as if I just told her I’ve been sleeping with an alien. “You...and a librarian?” I give her my best frown, even popping up my sunglasses so she can see my mock-hurt eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Nothing,” she says, grabbing her keys and climbing out of the car. I get out of the car too, and we walk toward the front door of the academy. “Just that normally you seemed to go for the women more like you.” “More like me?” “Do you really want me to elaborate?” I open the door for her and then follow her inside the depressingly bland building. “Is it going to be mean?” “Kelly, face it. You’re the stereotype of a bachelor cop, and the women you sleep with are the stereotypes of women who like bachelor cops. I just don’t want you to wreak havoc on some poor woman’s life because you’re bored or you’re dying—” “I’m not dying!” I protest. She flips her sunglasses up to the top of her head and squints at me. “You’re over thirty, aren’t you?” “If one more person says that—” “Just don’t be a dick, okay? Especially to some sweet librarian. They deserve better than that. Now if you want to go ruin the life of someone down at the post office, be my guest. You know the last time I had to mail a blood kit up to Topeka, they actually refused to—

He came back from France when Tom and Daisy were still on their wedding trip, and made a miserable but irresistible journey to Louisville on the last of his army pay. He stayed there a week, walking the streets where their footsteps had clicked together through the November night and revisiting the out-of-the-way places to which they had driven in her white car. Just as Daisy's house had always seemed to him more mysterious and gay than other houses so his idea of the city itself, even though she was gone from it, was pervaded with a melancholy beauty. He left feeling that if he had searched harder he might have found her—that he was leaving her behind. The day-coach—he was penniless now—was hot. He went out to the open vestibule and sat down on a folding-chair, and the station slid away and the backs of unfamiliar buildings moved by. Then out into the spring fields, where a yellow trolley raced them for a minute with people in it who might once have seen the pale magic of her face along the casual street. The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.

On Saturday, March 19, 2016, at 4:34 A.M., John Podesta, the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman, received what looked like an email from Google about his personal Gmail account. “Hi John Someone just used your password to try to sign in to your Google Account,” read the email from “the Gmail Team.” It noted that the attempted intrusion had come from an IP address in Ukraine. The email went on: “Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.” The Gmail Team helpfully included a link to a site where Podesta could make the recommended password change. That morning, Podesta forwarded the email to his chief of staff, Sara Latham, who then sent it along to Charles Delavan, a young IT staffer at the Clinton campaign. At 9:54 AM that morning, Delavan replied, “This is a legitimate email. John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on his account… It is absolutely imperative that this is done ASAP.” Delavan later asserted to colleagues that he had committed a typo. He had meant to write that “this is not a legitimate email.” Not everybody on the Clinton campaign would believe him. But Delavan had an argument in his favor. In his response to Latham, he had included the genuine link Podesta needed to use to change his password. Yet for some reason Podesta clicked on the link in the phony email and used a bogus site to create a new password. The Russians now had the keys to his emails and access to the most private messages of Clinton World going back years.

You must go back to bed.” “No,” I shouted. “Not yet! I have to finish this game.” I couldn’t leave Andrew, not now, not when I was finally winning. Hannah released me so suddenly I staggered backward. “I’ll fetch Papa!” she cried. Andrew threw himself at her. “Hannah, stop, you’re ruining everything!” I grabbed his arm. “Let her go. We don’t have much time!” Casting a last terrified look at me, Hannah ran downstairs, calling for Mama and Papa. Andrew turned to me, his face streaked with tears. “Quick, Drew. Shoot four more marbles out of the ring!” Holding my breath I aimed. Click, click, click. An immie, a cat’s-eye, and a moonstone spun across the floor, but I missed the fourth. Andrew knuckled down and shot at the scattered marbles. Of the seven in the ring, he managed to hit two before he missed. Downstairs I heard Hannah pounding on Papa and Mama’s door. “One more, Drew,” Andrew whispered. It was hard to aim carefully. Papa and Mama were awake. Their voices rose as Hannah tried to explain I was in the attic acting as if I’d lost my mind. My hand shook and the first marble I hit merely clicked against another. Andrew took his turn, hit three, and missed the fourth. “Send me home, Drew,” he begged. “I don’t care if I die when I get there.” Two marbles were left--a carnelian and an immie, widely separated. Neither was close to my aggie. Even for someone as good as Andrew, it was a hard shot. Holding his breath, Andrew crossed his fingers and closed his eyes. I knuckled down and aimed for the carnelian. Click. As Papa tramped up the steps with Mama at his heels, the seventh marble rolled into the shadows. My aggie stayed in the middle of the ring. Andrew let out his breath and stared at me. I’d won--what would happen now?

If you could be anyone else, who would you want to be?” I ask, because I’ve decided that I admire how David doesn’t self-censor. I should try it too. I think about this all the time. Waking up in the morning, looking in the mirror, and seeing someone wholly different staring back. These days I’d give anything to be the old me, the pre-accident me, who could sit at my old lunch table and chat about nothing. The pre-accident me who aspired to be more like Lauren Drucker, former benevolent ruler and social chair of Mapleview. I really wouldn’t mind being entirely full of shit, so long as I didn’t notice. “There’s this guy Trey who teaches me guitar,” David says. “He kind of pisses me off, actually, but he’s just the type of guy everyone likes. He always knows exactly what to say. Like has annoyingly pitch-perfect radio waves. So I guess him?” “I used to want my metaphorical radio waves to play music that was, like, quirky but also perfectly curated, you know? Something cool. But now I feel like I’ve become traffic on the hour.” “You are so not traffic on the hour,” he says, and to my dismay dabs at his chin with a napkin. “Though I wouldn’t mind even being that. Reliable, informative, albeit repetitive. At least people actually listen to it.” “I think your signal is in Morse code,” I say with a smile. “When I was eight, I taught myself Morse code. The clicks are highly irritating.” I lean over and for no reason I can think of—maybe because I have nothing smart to say, maybe because with David I feel like someone else entirely, I want to be someone else entirely—I take a lick of his ice cream. The vanilla part. He stares at my lips, as shocked as I am. “Sorry,” I say. “I liked your order better.” “The cold medicine is not for me. Just to be clear,” he says. “Wasn’t worried.

So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart - perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase? So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man - the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you've made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine. And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you're buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though). You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it's so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It's finally arrived.

Geraldine nodded and headed for Mrs. Armstrong's lawn. I felt sorry for her in her carrot pajamas, having no idea what was really going on. I followed the other girls and stood behind the shrubs. Mrs. Armstrong's house was ginormous. Her house was even bigger than Aunt Jeanie's. There was one light on upstairs. I figured that was the bedroom. The rest of the house was dark. Geraldine went to the far end of the yard and removed a can of spray paint from the bag. She shook it and began to spray. "She's such an idiot," Ava said, taking out her phone to record Geraldine's act of vandalism. "You guys are going to get her into so much trouble," I said. "So what?" Hannah replied. "She got us in trouble at the soup kitchen, it's not like she's ever going to become a Silver Rose anyway. She's totally wasting her time." Geraldine slowly made her way up and down the huge yard carefully spraying the grass. It would take her forever to complete it and there wasn't nearly enough spray paint. "Hey, guys!" Geraldine yelled from across the lawn. "How about I spray a rose in the grass? That would be cool, right?" I cringed. The light on upstairs meant the Armstrongs were still awake. Geraldine was about to get us all caught. "O-M-G," Hannah moaned. "Shhhh," Summer hissed, but Geraldine kept screaming at the top of her lungs. "Well, what do you guys think?" My heart dropped into my stomach as a light from downstairs clicked on. We ducked behind the hedges and froze. "Who's out there?" called a man's voice. I couldn't see him and I couldn't see Geraldine. I heard the door close and I peeked over the hedges. "He went back inside," I whispered, ducking back down. At that moment something went shk-shk-shk and Geraldine screamed. We all stood to see what was happening. Someone had turned the sprinklers on and Geraldine was getting soaked. The door flew open and I heard Mrs. Armstrong's voice followed by a dog's vicious barking. "Get 'em, Killer!" "Killer!" Ava screamed and we all took off running down the street with a soggy Geraldine trailing behind us. I was faster than all the other girls. I had no intentions of being gobbled up by a dog named Killer. We stopped running when we got to Ava's street and Killer was nowhere in sight. We walked back to the house at a normal pace. "So, did I prove myself to the sisterhood?" Geraldine asked. Hannah turned to her. "Are you kidding me? Your yelling woke them up, you moron. We got chased down the street by a dog because of you." Geraldine frowned and looked down at the ground. Hopefully what I had told her before about the girls not being her friends was starting to settle in. Inside all the other girls wanted to know what had happened. Ava was giving them the gory details when a knock on the door interrupted her. It was Mrs. Armstrong. She had on a black bathrobe and her hair was in curlers. I chuckled to myself because I was used to seeing her look absolutely perfect. We all sat on our sleeping bags looking as innocent as possible except for Geraldine who still stood awkwardly by the door, dripping wet. Mrs. Armstrong cleared her throat. "Someone has just vandalized my lawn with spray paint. Silver spray paint. Since I know it's a tradition for the Silver Roses to pull a prank on me on the night of the retreat, I'm going to assume it was one of you. More specifically, the one who's soaking wet right now." All eyes went to Geraldine. She looked at the ground and said nothing. What could she possibly say to defend herself? She even had silver spray paint on her fingers. Mrs. Armstrong looked her up and down. "Young lady, this is your second strike and that's two strikes too many. Your bid to become a Junior Silver Rose is for the second time hereby revoked." Geraldine's shoulders drooped, but most of the girls were smirking. This had been their plan all along and they had accomplished it.

You whom I could not save, Listen to me. Can we agree Kevlar backpacks shouldn’t be needed for children walking to school? Those same children also shouldn’t require a suit of armor when standing on their front lawns, or snipers to watch their backs as they eat at McDonalds. They shouldn’t have to stop to consider the speed of a bullet or how it might reshape their bodies. But one winter, back in Detroit, I had one student who opened a door and died. It was the front door to his house, but it could have been any door, and the bullet could have written any name. The shooter was thirteen years old and was aiming at someone else. But a bullet doesn’t care about “aim,” it doesn’t distinguish between the innocent and the innocent, and how was the bullet supposed to know this child would open the door at the exact wrong moment because his friend was outside and screaming for help. Did I say I had “one” student who opened a door and died? That’s wrong. There were many. The classroom of grief had far more seats than the classroom for math though every student in the classroom for math could count the names of the dead. A kid opens a door. The bullet couldn’t possibly know, nor could the gun, because “guns don’t kill people,” they don’t have minds to decide such things, they don’t choose or have a conscience, and when a man doesn’t have a conscience, we call him a psychopath. This is how we know what type of assault rifle a man can be, and how we discover the hell that thrums inside each of them. Today, there’s another shooting with dead kids everywhere. It was a school, a movie theater, a parking lot. The world is full of doors. And you, whom I cannot save, you may open a door and enter a meadow, or a eulogy. And if the latter, you will be mourned, then buried in rhetoric. There will be monuments of legislation, little flowers made from red tape. What should we do? we’ll ask again. The earth will close like a door above you. What should we do? And that click you hear? That’s just our voices, the deadbolt of discourse sliding into place.

She clicks on the last slide, and that’s when it happens. “Me So Horny” blasts out of the speakers and my video, mine and Peter’s, flashes on the projector screen. Someone has taken the video from Anonybitch’s Instagram and put their own soundtrack to it. They’ve edited it too, so I bop up and down on Peter’s lap at triple speed to the beat. Oh no no no no. Please, no. Everything happens at once. People are shrieking and laughing and pointing and going “Oooh!” Mr. Vasquez is jumping up to unplug the projector, and then Peter’s running onstage, grabbing the microphone out of a stunned Reena’s hand. “Whoever did that is a piece of garbage. And not that it’s anybody’s fucking business, but Lara Jean and I did not have sex in the hot tub.” My ears are ringing, and people are twisting around in their seats to look at me and then shifting back around to look at Peter. “All we did was kiss, so fuck off!” Mr. Vasquez, the junior class advisor, is trying to grab the mic back from Peter, but Peter manages to maintain control of it. He holds the mic up high and yells out, “I’m gonna find whoever did this and kick their ass!” In the scuffle, he drops the mic. People are cheering and laughing. Peter’s being frog-marched off the stage, and he frantically looks out into the audience. He’s looking for me. The assembly breaks up then, and everyone starts filing out the doors, but I stay low in my seat. Chris comes and finds me, face alight. She grabs me by the shoulders. “Ummm, that was crazy! He freaking dropped the F bomb twice!” I am still in a state of shock, maybe. A video of me and Peter hot and heavy was just on the projector screen, and everyone saw Mr. Vasquez, seventy-year-old Mr. Glebe who doesn’t even know what Instagram is. The only passionate kiss of my life and everybody saw. Chris shakes my shoulders. “Lara Jean! Are you okay?” I nod mutely, and she releases me. “He’s kicking whoever did it’s ass? I’d love to see that!” She snorts and throws her head back like a wild pony. “I mean, the boy’s an idiot if he thinks for one second it wasn’t Gen who posted that video. Like, wow, those are some serious blinders, y’know?” Chris stops short and examines my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “Everybody saw us.” “Yeah…that sucked. I’m sure that was Gen’s handiwork. She must’ve gotten one of her little minions to sneak it onto Reena’s PowerPoint.” Chris shakes her head in disgust. “She’s such a bitch. I’m glad Peter set the record straight, though. Like, I hate to give him credit, but that was an act of chivalry. No guy has ever set the record straight for me.

A folded triangle of paper landed in the center of his notebook. Normally he’d unfold it discreetly, but Beamis was so clueless that the note could have hit him in the head and he wouldn’t notice. Loopy script in purple pen. The paper smelled like her. What’s your #? Wow. Hunter clicked his pen and wrote below her words. I have a theory about girls who ask for your number before asking for your name. Then he folded it up and flicked it back. It took every ounce of self-control to not watch her unfold it. The paper landed back on his desk in record time. I have a theory about boys who prefer writing to texting. He put his pen against the paper. I have a theory about girls with theories. Then he waited, not looking, fighting the small smile that wanted to play on his lips. The paper didn’t reappear. After a minute, he sighed and went back to his French essay. When the folded triangle smacked him in the temple, he jumped a mile. His chair scraped the floor, and Beamis paused in his lecture, turning from the board. “Is there a problem?” “No.” Hunter coughed, covering the note with his hand. “Sorry.” When the coast was clear, he unfolded the triangle. It was a new piece of paper. My name is Kate. Kate. Hunter almost said the name out loud. What was wrong with him? It fit her perfectly, though. Short and blunt and somehow indescribably hot. Another piece of paper landed on his notebook, a small strip rolled up tiny. This time, there was only a phone number. Hunter felt like someone had punched him in the stomach and he couldn’t remember how to breathe. Then he pulled out his cell phone and typed under the desk. Come here often? Her response appeared almost immediately. First timer. Beamis was facing the classroom now, so Hunter kept his gaze up until it was safe. When he looked back, Kate had written again. I bet I could strip na**d and this guy wouldn’t even notice. Hunter’s pulse jumped. But this was easier, looking at the phone instead of into her eyes. I would notice. There was a long pause, during which he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Then a new text appeared. I have a theory about boys who picture you na**d before sharing their name. He smiled. My name is Hunter. Where you from? This time, her response appeared immediately. Just transferred from St. Mary’s in Annapolis. Now he was imagining her in a little plaid skirt and knee-high socks. Another text appeared. Stop imagining me in the outfit. He grinned. How did you know? You’re a boy. I’m still waiting to hear your theory on piercings. Right. IMO, you have to be crazy hot to pull off either piercings or tattoos. Otherwise you’re just enhancing the ugly. Hunter stared at the phone, wondering if she was hitting on him—or insulting him. Before he could figure it out, another message appeared. What does the tattoo on your arm say? He slid his fingers across the keys. It says “ask me about this tattoo.” Liar. Mission accomplished, I’d say. He heard a small sound from her direction and peeked over. She was still staring at her phone, but she had a smile on her face, like she was trying to stifle a giggle. Mission accomplished, he’d say.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

A shutter is clicked, a flash goes off and you've stopped time. If just for a blink of an eye. And if these pictures have anything to say to the future generation, it is this 'I was here, I existed, I was young, I was happy and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

Was she the type?” At that Gretchen clicked her tongue. “Anyone is the type.” “What do you mean?” “You empaths and your stereotypes,” Gretchen chided. “You think there’s one rigid moral code—usually squarely centered around your own belief system. If someone follows it, she’s ‘good.’ If she doesn’t, she’s ‘bad.’ As if that actually means anything at all, as if humans can be slotted into two permanent, unforgiving categories.

Life emerged from the burrows and fissures. Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind’s superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.

I've always wanted someone i could instantly click with and then just fucking drown in

Well, sure, the vows say “in sickness and health” and “for better or worse” and all that, but that’s kind of like clicking okay to the terms and conditions when you download an app or sign up for a credit card. You don’t think any of that is going to apply to you.

Or maybe you’ve been watching everyone else in your life find love, walk down the aisle, and start the life you’ve dreamed of for yourself. Then a few months ago you met someone who was everything you’ve been hoping for. You clicked with them. You told your friends you thought this might be the one. And then this week you felt that person pulling back. It’s hard to understand. You feel panicked. But the more you press in, the more distance you feel between the two of you. There are thousands of scenarios that evoke these feelings of uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion from life not being like you thought it would be. Whatever your situation is, you probably feel like you can’t change it, but you still have to live through the realities of what’s happening right now. Sometimes you just have to walk in your “I don’t know.

Have an intimate dinner where you introduce a few friends who you think would really click and have complementary personalities. Instead of introducing people as “Jane, who is a teacher,” introduce each person with their name and how they are special to you as well as something they might have in common with someone else at your dinner party.

Joe held the speedometer needle at the maximum speed allowed, and the countryside flashed by. When they hit the turnpike, Frank spelled his brother at the wheeL Now, with greater speed, the miles melted past. “She purrs like a kitten,” Frank said. “A great car, Joe.” “Good thing we had the motor tuned up,” Frank remarked as the wind whipped through his hair. After a quick stop for lunch, Joe drove away from the roadside restaurant. “Want to listen to the news?” “Okay. What country’s having a war today?” “Maybe someone has landed on the moon,” Frank said as he clicked on the high-powered transistor.

That’s because clicking with your therapist matters in a way that it doesn’t with other clinicians (as another therapist said: “It’s not the same as choosing a good cardiologist who sees you maybe twice a year and will never know about your massive insecurity”). Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of “feeling felt.” This matters more than the therapist’s training, the kind of therapy they do, or what type of problem you have.

The belt clicked around my belly and he started the engine with a roar. Why he roared, I’ll never know and I came within a whisker of wetting myself. I felt how I imagined I’d feel if someone locked me in a cage with a tiger, except tigers are beautiful.

Two boys play with a soccer ball. Their clothes are patched and dotted with stains, one brown shirt with Snoopy as the Flying Ace but with chunks of white worn away, Snoopy’s existence precarious. Their ball is scuffed. Somewhat deflated. Most likely it was found, discarded by someone who had one better, and the empty lot they’re in is scattered with broken slabs of concrete and thick, scraggly thistles. But the boys are in heaven. Olivia lifts her camera, wanting to capture their joy, the way they’ve adapted the physical obstacles into part of their game, but with one click, she realizes that in truth it’s everything else that makes the photo interesting, that makes their joy stand out. It’s their circumstance. Their stains and tears. Their broken field.

I sit there for a moment in the silence. How is it that some lucky people avoid all the pitfalls of love—the cheating husband who blindsides you, then the indignities of “putting yourself out there again,” waiting for someone to click on your profile, the retelling again and again of your life story to a random, bored stranger, and then the slow realization that time may be running out and that you need to figure out how to settle for a life that is so far from what you imagined? How, indeed, do they get that lucky?

his toenails clicking

At three, I open Skype and click Call, expecting to find John sitting in an office at a desk. Instead, the call connects and I’m looking into a familiar house. It’s familiar to me because it’s one of the main sets of a TV show that Boyfriend and I used to binge-watch on my sofa, arms and legs entwined. Here, camera and lighting people are moving about, and I’m staring at the interior of a bedroom I’ve seen a million times. John’s face comes into view. “Hang on a second” is how he greets me, and then his face disappears and I’m looking at his feet. Today he’s wearing trendy checkered sneakers, and he seems to be walking somewhere while carrying me with him. Presumably he’s looking for privacy. Along with his shoes, I see thick electrical wires on the floor and hear a commotion in the background. Then John’s face reappears. “Okay,” he says. “I’m ready.” There’s a wall behind him now, and he starts rapid-fire whispering.

I lean backin my chair, wiping tears from my eyes. A logical part of my brain tells me I need to stop. But for some reason, I lack all self-control and don’t click away. Someone knocks on my office door, and I look up, prepared to hide behind my monitor if needbe. But it’s just Marissa, and I wave herin. “Oh my God,” she says and comes around to my desk. “Stop watching those clips of dogs greeting their owners after they come home from the military.” “But it’s so sweet!” “You have mascara dripping down yourface.” “I didn’t wear any today.” She hikes an eyebrow. “Then it’s yesterday’s leftover mascara.” I grab a tissue from my desk drawer. “That’s likely.” I wipe my eyes and close the viral video. “Did you come in here just to yell atme?

There is something about a good nurse. Having a nursing license and job doesn’t make you a good nurse. Working for 30 years doesn’t make you a good nurse. It’s not about being good at starting IV’s or being best friends with all of the physicians. It’s not about having a commanding presence or knowing all of the answers to the 900 questions you get asked each shift. While all of these things are important, it’s not all there is. Being a good nurse is so much less defined and measurable than that. It isn’t measured in letters after your name, certifications, professional affiliations, or by climbing the clinical ladder. It’s something you feel when you see a good nurse care for their patients. It’s that security you see in their patient’s eyes when they walk in the room to provide care. It’s that sense of safety and security felt by the patient’s family that is so reassuring, they can finally head home for a shower and some sleep, knowing their loved one is being well cared for. Good nurses breathe instinct. They breathe discernment. Good nurses can pick out seemingly insignificant things about a patient, interpret an intricate clinical picture, somehow predict a poor outcome, and bring it to the provider’s attention, literally saving someone’s life. Did you read that? Save someone’s life. I have seen the lives of patients spared because of something that their nurse, their good nurse, first noticed. And then there’s that heart knowledge good nurses have that blows me away even more. They are those nurses who always know the right thing to say. They know how to calm an apprehensive and scared mother enough to let them take care of her son. They know how to re-explain the worst news a husband is ever going to hear because it didn’t quite make sense when the doctor said it 15 minutes ago. And they know how to comfort him when they see it click in his mind that his wife is forever gone.

Just as we did with used cars, take a moment to brainstorm every single reason (fear, worry, question, concern) as to why someone would not buy from your company. What would hold them back? What would keep them from clicking “buy,” swiping their credit card, or writing that big check?

Sighing, she wished Pallas were here right now. Then she’d have someone friendly to talk to. Shoving the pink scroll aside, Athena pulled out a ball of yellow yarn. Knitting relaxed her, and it would help disguise the fact that she was a loser with no friends. The soft click, click of her needles was a comforting sound. When lunch period was nearly over, she remembered the cookie. Finding it under the pink scroll, she tore off the wrapper and bit into it. Instantly, a small, dramatic voice announced, “You’ll be famous.” “What?” Athena looked around, her eyes wide. No one was near. “Who said that?” she asked. But no one answered. She took another bite.

Soon, the desert was filled with the buzz and click and screech of creatures which, lacking mankind's superior brainpower, did not concern themselves with finding someone to blame and instead tried to find someone to eat.

How to get my business on top of google search? Let’s begin with an explanation of why being on top of Google is important. To be precise, what does this mean? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being here? And who should care about it in any case? Being on top of google search means that when users make the search query - the site appears before its competitors. Not only in the row of results, but also among them in the first place. The more often you are there, the better. Being on top of Google search has a significant impact on traffic growth for your business. This is due to two reasons: 1) 80% of people do not click beyond page 1 in search engine results 2) When someone goes down to pages 2-3 they do not stay there, so it's a lost cause When it comes to SEO, there are no secrets or magic formulas that work 100% all the time. There is only a set of rules that helps you determine which actions yield a better result based on research made within a certain period of time. It may not be 100%, but you need to know at least some basics in order to have an idea about why your site doesn't have high rankings yet and what needs to be done to achieve them! Based on our experience with improving the search engine position of numerous fantasy app development websites, we compiled this list of the most important factors that influence Google rankings: 1. The code of your website and its structure (technical part) 2. The relevance of content on your site - how to make it unique and relevant at the same time (on-page factors) 3. Relevance and popularity of backlinks pointing to your site (off-page factors) 4. Quality of traffic coming from search engines to your website (on-page and off-page factors) 5. The overall authority, popularity, and trustworthiness of a domain name as well as quantity and quality of backlinks you have pointing to it (backlink profile). 6. Compatibility with the type and model of used CMS platform, user-friendliness, and a number of bugs or errors that may be present 7. Terms and conditions mentioned on your website as well as its structure, design, and user-friendliness (UX)

Because we sit there in the gap for a long time saying [gasps]. And that’s when you begin to learn the meaning of ‘Lord Have Mercy’. I can’t do anything to raise my state but what I can do is stay honestly ahead of, in plain sight, what’s happened, acknowledging. Here I am. And I think it’s from that repeated acknowledgement of my own helplessness at that level, but refusing to simply hide from that helplessness, that gradually, gradually, gradually the energy that had originally gone into your, sort of, ego programmes gets recaptured to begin to hold this other kind of field of awareness, of attentiveness, that’s not identified with that small self acting out and can begin to become a nest for that deeper and fuller and truer wiser self to live in. And then we begin to Be. Then we begin to have Being. And it’s from that Being that sometimes we can pull ourselves out of that spiral we were heading into, and it’s from that Being that we can begin to offer our force of Being to the world as love, as assistance, as a shift in the energy field for someone else. ‘Baraka’ the Sufis call it. But it comes slowly, because you can’t just, kind of, click your heels together and have Being. It has to accumulate slowly in your being for a life of painfully bearing the crucifixion of inner honesty, and slowly it emerges. Interviewer: So that brings up the question in me, what is then freedom? Because you go on this journey. We start out on this journey to become free, which we call enlightenment. Cynthia: Well, you know, we have so many mixed metaphors as Western and Eastern ways of contexting reality come together like tectonic plates. And they don’t often match up. I think, in a very obvious way, freedom is easy. At the obvious level, what it means is what you’d call ‘freedom from the false self’. Most of us think we’re free, and yet we are not free at all because we are under the absolute compulsion of agendas, addictions and aversions that have been programmed into us from early life, and sometimes from the womb. We have our values, we have our triggers, we have our flash points, we have our agendas. And, as A.H. Almaas said so famously, “Freedom to be your ego is not freedom.” Because that’s slavery. You’re being pulled around by a bull ring in the nose. So part of the work of freedom begins when you can stabilise in yourself this thing that some of the Eastern traditions helpfully call ‘witnessing presence’, which is something deeper that’s not dependent on the pain-pleasure principle, that’s not attracted by attraction, or repulsed by aversion. You know, as my teacher Rafe, the hermit monk of Snowmass, Colorado, used to say, “I want to have enough Being to be nothing.” Which means he is not dependant on the world to give him his identity, because he’s learned his identity nests in something much deeper. [...] And as you finally become free to follow what you might call the ‘homing beacon of your own inner calling’, you realise that it’s only in that complete obedience that freedom lies. And, of course, the trick to that is the word ‘obedience’, which we usually thinks means knuckling under, or capitulating, really comes from the Latin ‘ob audire’, which means ‘to listen deeply’. So, as we listen deeply to the fundamental, what you might call the ‘tuning fork’ of our being – which is given to us not by ourself and is never about self-realisation because the self melts as that realisation comes closer – you find the only freedom is to be your own cell in the vast mystical body of God.

Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role. No doubt it was someone playing the role of leader who conjured up the notion that we "fall in love," that we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner because when the chemistry is present, when the click is there, it just happens—it overwhelms—it takes control. This way of thinking about love seems to be especially useful for men who are socialized via patriarchal notions of masculinity to be out of touch with what they feel. In the essay "Love and Need," Thomas Merton contends: "The expression to 'fall in love' reflects a peculiar attitude toward love and life itself—a mixture of fear, awe, fascination, and confusion. It implies suspicion, doubt, hesitation in the presence of something unavoidable, yet not fully reliable." If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.

Hey _Node_ — how well do you know X? Or combine the two: Hey _Node_, hope all is well! I noticed you [are connected to _Investor_ on LinkedIn] and heard from a few folks they’re pretty good. They have relevant experience to what we’re building and I’d love to get to know them. Do you know them really well? If not, I’ll find someone else, no stress. If you do know them well, I’d love an introduction. Here’s a quick email draft you can copy and paste. Feel free to modify as you see fit! Thank you so much. "Hey _Investor_, hope all is well!   I have a friend, Ryan Breslow, who is building Bolt. They are doing one-click checkout for the entire online commerce landscape. Ryan is sharp, and I think you both should get to know each other. Can I make the introduction? _Node_

The way Bill was the other day, and with what’s happening at the farm I –’ ‘Dad talked to me about that after you left.’ Heather’s voice was sharp. ‘He said you’re imagining things, just like your mother.’ Ellie clenched her hands on her lap as anger surged through her. ‘It’s something to do with the Aboriginal council or the environmental committee, isn’t it?’ It was dark now and Ellie couldn’t see Heather’s expression. Kane reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘What happened the other day?’ ‘Bill warned me off when I asked him some questions.’ ‘Like he said, Ellie, just drop it. It was an accident.’ Heather’s voice was short. There was no more conversation until they got back to the lodge. Ellie pushed opened the door of her apartment. Kane raised his hand and stepped in first and flicked the lights on. ‘It’s okay. All good.’ ‘You can have my room. I’ve got an early start. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’ Ellie frowned as Heather nodded and walked past her into the bedroom. The door closed behind her with a loud click and Kane raised his eyebrows. Ellie crossed the living area and stood by the bedroom door. ‘Something sounded a bit off, didn’t it?’ ‘It did.’ ‘I’m not going to let it go.’ Ellie pushed open the door and sat beside her friend as she lay back on the pillow with her hand over her eyes. ‘What’s going on, Heather? I know there’s something. Why would someone do this to Bill? Has he been threatened?’ Heather’s eyes flew open and she stared at Ellie. ‘What?’ ‘I think I know what’s going on.’ Heather’s face closed. ‘You heard Dad at our place. He’s right. Just stay out of it.’ ‘For fuck’s sake, Heather. Someone tortured him tonight. They cut his finger off. What the hell is

If there’s anything internalizers have in common, it’s their need to share their inner experience. As children, their need for genuine emotional connection is the central fact of their existence. Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. A blank face kills something in them. They read people closely, looking for signs that they’ve made a connection. This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them. They find nothing more exhilarating than clicking with someone who gets them. When they can’t make that kind of connection, they feel emotional loneliness.

I stare at Finlay and he stares back. We’re both fixed on each other, and as seconds pass, I realize neither of us is trying to pretend it’s anything other than a heart-struck gaze of mutual longing. Everything about his face is so ridiculously, staggeringly lovely to me, in this moment, I’m unable to speak. Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here. “How are you?” Fin says to me, eventually, and we both break into broad smiles at the ludicrousness of having declared our feelings without saying a word. I can’t wait to talk to him properly, after we leave here. I can’t wait, full stop.

Mr. Bojangles" I knew a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you In worn out shoes Silver hair and ragged shirt and baggy pants He did the old soft shoe He jumped so high He jumped so high Then he'd lightly touch down I met him in a cell in New Orleans I was down and out He looked to me to be the eyes of age As he spoke right out He talked of life He talked of life He laughed slapped his leg a step He said the name Bojangles and he danced A lick across the cell He grabbed his pants a better stance Then he jumped so high He clicked his heels He let go a laugh oh he let go a laugh Shook back his clothes all around Mister Bojangles Mister Bojangles Mister Bojangles Dance He danced for those at minstrel shows and county fairs Throughout the South He spoke with tears of fifteen years how his dog And him traveled about His dog up and died He up and died After twenty years he still grieves He said I dance now at every chance in honky-tonks For drinks and tips But most o' the time I spend behind these county bars Hell I drinks a bit He shook his head and as he shook his head I heard someone ask him please Mister Bojangles Mister Bojangles Mister Bojangles Dance Jerry Jeff Walker, Mr. Bojangles (1968)

It's not what it looks like. That was a photo one of my barbecue teammates took. That was our ice luge. It melted, so I was picking it up and throwing it over the fence there. But from the angle he took the picture, my teammates thought it looked funny and posted it online. You can write your story and try to get a couple of clicks. It is what it is. ut it's just stupid. It's a nonstory. Given what’s happening with so many elected officials in the capital with so many real scandals going on, it seems like someone is trying to do a little misdirection and throw some heat onto a political consultant who has no skin in the game.

Someone is following me. I can't see them, or even really hear them, but someone is watching me, stalking me, and my every instinct is screaming danger. I walk faster, my heart hammering in my chest, my palms getting sweaty. I pull pepper spray out of my bag and clutch it in my hand. I won't go quietly, whatever they think. My black boot heals click against the wet pavement. I try to quiet my breathing so I can hear if someone else approaches, but all I hear is the steady drone of rain washing the city away. By the time I enter the crazy world-unto-its-own that is The Roxy, my thin jacket is soaked and I'm shaking, though not just from the cold. The diner is buzzing with people, and the warmth and fragrant smells set my nerves at ease like nothing else can. I peek outside, but see nothing unusual. Maybe it all was just in my head.

This is what people used to do, when they fell in love with a thing or place, knowing they could only live the moment once. Pictures take the pressure off experience: one click and we would possess those things forever. When someone takes lots of pictures, it means they have a huge appetite for beauty, and an equal fear of losing it.

Digital camera can be bought for seventy-five cents a click, whereas digital cameras fetches a dollar and eight cents. The advertisers know that the plural is more likely to be typed by people who are planning to buy a digital camera, though they don’t know why.25 The reason is that a bare noun like digital camera is generic, and is likely to be typed by someone who wants to know how they work. A plural like digital cameras is more likely to be referential, and typed by someone who wants to know about the kinds that are out there and how to get one.

You think you know someone until that lock clicks and there is a stranger on the other side.

When bored, many people seek excitement and turn to dramatic news headlines. When we feel overly stressed we seek calm, perhaps finding relief in sites like Pinterest. When we feel lonely, destinations like Facebook and Twitter provide instant social connections. To ameliorate the sensation of uncertainty, Google is just a click away. Email, perhaps the mother of all habit-forming technology, is a go-to solution for many of our daily agitations, from validating our importance (or even, simply our existence) by checking to see if someone needs us, to providing an escape from life's more mundane moments.

Saving Lives and Protecting Rights in Translation It is said that life and death are under the power of language. —Hélène Cixous, French author and philosopher Lifeline The phone rings, jolting me to attention. It’s almost midnight on a Friday night. I didn’t want to work the late shift, but the need for my work never sleeps. Most of the calls I get at this late hour are from emergency dispatchers for police, fire, and ambulance. They often consist of misdials, hang-ups, and other nonemergencies. I’ve been working since early this morning, and I’m just not in the mood tonight to hear someone complain about a neighbor’s television being turned up too loud. But someone has got to take the call. I pick up before it rings a second time. “Interpreter three nine four zero speaking, how may I help you?” The dispatcher wastes no time with pleasantries. “Find out what’s wrong,” he barks in English. He didn’t ask me to confirm the address, so I assume he must already have police officers headed to the scene. I ask the Spanish speaker how we can help. I wait for a response. Silence. I ask the question again. No answer, but I can hear that there’s someone on the line. We wait, but we don’t hear any response. It’s probably just another child playing with the phone, accidentally dialing 911. I imagine the little guy looking curiously at the phone and pressing the buttons, then staring at it as a voice comes out of the other end. This happens all the time. I turn up the volume on my headset, just in case it might help me pick up the scolding words of a parent in the background. Then suddenly, I hear a timid female voice speaking so quietly that I can barely make out the words. “Me va a matar,” she whispers. The tiny hairs on my arm stand up on end. I swiftly render her words into English: “He’s going to kill me.” Not missing a beat, the dispatcher asks, “Where is he now?” “Outside. I saw him through the window,” I state, after listening to the Spanish version. I’m trying to stay calm and focused, but the fear in the caller’s voice is not only contagious, but essential to the meaning I have to convey. For what seems like an eternity (but is probably just a few seconds), I hear only the beeps of the recorded line and the dispatcher clicking away at his keyboard. I feel impatient. He’s most likely looking to see how far the nearest police officer is from the scene. “Interpreter, find out where she is.

growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While

You can’t read about someone’s life and click favorite and make one-sentence comments and call that a friendship.

In that moment Baja felt something like a hammer blow to his chest. Everyone in those pockets of Air was Felsia to someone. Every life saved there filled someone else with relief and joy. Every life snuffed out was another Katowa, someone somewhere having their heart torn out. Baja could feel the detonator in his hands. The horrible click transferring to his palm as the button depressed. He could feel that terrible shockwave again as the landing pad vanished in fire. He could feel the horror replaced by fear. As some unlucky combinations of events up the shuttle too close to the blast and knocked it from the sky. He could feel all of it so clearly, it was as if it was happening right then, but more than that he felt sorrow. Someone had just tried to do the same thing to his baby girl, had tried to kill her. Not because he hated her, but because she was standing in the path of his political statement. Everyone who had dies on that shuttle had been a Felsia to someone, and with a click of a button he’s killed them. He hadn’t meant to; he’d been trying to save them. That was the little lie that he’d kept close to his heart for months now. But the truth was much worse. Some secret part of him had wanted the shuttle to die, had reveled watching it fall from the sky in flames, had wanted to punish the people trying to take his world away. Except that was a lie, too. The real truth, the truth beneath it all, was that he had wanted to spread his pain around to punish the universe for being a place where his little boy had been killed – to punish other people for being alike when his Katowa was dead. That part of him had watched the shuttle burn and thought now you know how it feels; now you know how I feel. But the people he’d hurt had just saved his daughter because they were the type of people who couldn’t let even their enemies die helpless. The first sob took him by surprise, nearly bending him double with its power. Then he was blind, his eyes filled with water, his throat closed like someone was choking him. He gasped for air, and every gasp turned into another loud sob. …He tried to speak, to reassure (Naomi), but when he tried, the only words he could say were, “I killed them.” He meant the governor and Coop and Kate and the RCE security team, but most of all Katowa. He’d killed his little boy over and over again every time he’d let someone else die to punish them for his son’s death. “I killed them.” “This time you saved them,” Naomi repeated. “These ones you saved.

And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So" Today there has been so much talk of things exploding into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we all run outside into the hot streets and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth you can always see. With more sparkle and pop is the only way to live. Your confetti tongue explodes into acid jazz. Small typewriters that other people keep in their eyes click away at all our farewell parties. It is hard to pack for the rest of your life. Someone is always eating cold cucumber noodles. Someone will drop by later to help dismantle some furniture. A lot can go wrong if you sleep or think, but the trees go on waving their broken little hands.

Picture Perfect A few evenings into my bath time assignation, I heard clicking sounds from a camera shutter, every few seconds. As curious as I was to know who the photographer was, I was also excited by his voyeurism. It was curiosity versus exhibitionism; I wondered if I should discard my mask or just continue to be mystified and enjoy my lover and the voyeur. As the sounds of clicking magnified within my head, I rose to the occasion, giving a performance to whom-ever was viewing my lover and me through his lens. My overwhelming curiosity was too much. Whispering into my partner's ear I said, "Tell me, who’s taking the photographs." My seducer replied, "A friend who already knows our deepest darkest secrets." "Who and what might those secrets be?” I whispered into his ear in the heat of our passionate caresses. "Someone whom we adore -- you will find out when we return to your room because he is joining us tonight.

How can you know him at all when you two don’t talk?” “You don’t need to talk to get to know someone.  You just need to listen,” I said absently, trying to concentrate on my reading.  My words rattled in my head for a moment before what I said clicked into place.  I froze and looked at Clay.  His brown eyes met mine steadily. Damn the patient, clever dog.  A smile twitched my lips.  I never had a chance...and I didn’t mind. “But that’s what I’m saying.  He doesn’t talk.  What are you listening to?” I laughed at her and myself.  “Actions speak louder than words,” I quoted, finally looking up at Rachel.  “He’s there when I need him, he’s kind and caring, he keeps me safe, and as you’ve seen, he cooks and cleans.  What’s not to like, Rachel?” She grumbled under her breath but didn’t have anything else to add. Clay walked over to her and lay on some of her dresses, ending her mutterings that I should get out and meet other people.  She laughed at him then tried to move him.  He laid his head on his paws and winked at me.  He wasn’t mad but enjoyed giving Rachel some grief. Shaking

BLAKE: You look beautiful tonight. Instead of bolting for my car like any sane person would have, I looked around until I found him. Well, running to my car wouldn’t have helped much; he was parked right next to it and leaning against the driver’s door of his shiny little Lexus. How did he know I was here? If he didn’t know I was here, what is he doing here at two in the morning? Oh my word, he’s been following me! No, that’s ridiculous; come on, Rachel, get a grip. He is not following you. Frick, I really need to stop thinking the world and everyone in it revolves around me. He just happened to be here and saw your car. That’s all. Right? Right. I took a few steps closer to the cars and took a deep breath as I dropped my phone back into my purse, trying to calm myself down. “Hi, Blake.” “I was starting to think you would never leave. I’ve been out here for hours.” Oh God, he has been waiting for me! Those words were creepy enough, but paired with the sexy, innocent smile they seemed even worse. I meant for my voice to sound strong and annoyed but it was barely a whisper. “Why are you following me?” “Following you? I’m not following you. Candice told me you were waiting for me to pick you up from the study group. Jesus, Rachel, you look like you’ve just seen a ghost; are you all right?” “Candice said what? No, I was definitely not waiting for you; I drove myself here. That should be obvious, since you’re parked next to my Jeep.” I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted to get out of there and away from him. Now. “Yeah, but your car isn’t starting. Which is why I’m here.” He said every word slowly, like I was a child or something. “Don’t you remember, Rachel? You called her almost three hours ago, but she was busy, so you told her to call me. Are you feeling okay? Come on, get in the car. I’ll get you back to your room.” “I am not getting in your car, I’ll drive myself back!” With that I took the last few steps to my car, got in, locked the door, and put the key in the ignition. I turned it but nothing happened. There wasn’t even a click. What had happened to my car? I knew I hadn’t called Candice. And even then, if I’d wanted Blake to pick me up I would have called him myself. Someone tapped on the window and even though I knew who it was, I still jumped. “Come on, Rach, this is dumb. Just get in the car and I’ll take you back. I’ll get your car towed in a couple hours.” There was no point in trying to call someone else. It was two in the morning, everyone was asleep, and I definitely couldn’t walk back at this hour. I grimaced and opened the door. “That’s my girl. Come on, let’s go.” He helped me into his car, then got in beside me. This time he didn’t put his hand on my thigh. The

one of the funniest mockeries of psychology he'd ever seen. He'd wanted to share the joke with her so badly, he ached with the need. The phone rings… Click… Recording: Hello, welcome to the psychiatric hotline. --If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. --If you are co-dependent, please ask for someone to press 2. --If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line until we can trace the call. --If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press. --If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

With a curt nod, Vane strode in. And stopped dead. Patience was in the hall, waiting- the sight literally stole his breath. As his gaze, helplessly, slid over her, over the soft green merino pelisse, severely cut and snugly fitted, its upstanding collar framing her face, over the tan gloves and half boots, over the pale green skirts peeking beneath the pelisse's hem, Vane felt something inside him tighten, click, and lock. Breathing was suddenly more difficult than if someone had buried a fist in his gut. Her hair, glinting in the light streaming in through the door, was coiffed differently, to more artfully draw attention to her wide golden eyes, to the creaminess of her forehead and cheeks, and the delicate yet determined line of her jaw. And the soft vulnerability of her lips.

They’re such little thoughts”—Matrona winced, fingers returning to her temples—“often passing as quickly as they came, or after a good night’s rest. Only, imagine if all those thoughts were . . . I don’t know, saved in a chest. Every single one. And every bad feeling you’ve ever had. Guilt over telling a lie, or shame from doing something wrong. All of it inside this chest. And then suddenly you’re in the room with the chest, and it opens, but someone’s jammed the door and you can’t get out—” “You’re rambling, Matrona.” Roksana clicked her tongue and resituated her heavy body, trying to get comfortable. “You sound almost poetic, in a sad, strange way.” “Just imagine it, Roksana!” Matrona cried, her hands jerking away from her temples and slamming fists into her pillow, making her friend jump. “Imagine how it would make you feel. What would you do, trapped with all of it around you?” Tears wet her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to banish them, her eyes still sore from the night’s weeping. “Tell me what to do.

It’s more obvious than ever how unfair life is. In the past, your local community was your yardstick. Now your yardstick moves at the speed of light; no matter your situation, you’re just a click away to see someone who’s living utter perfection. Instagram and other media are bursting with highlights. How could you then not feel chronically jealous and unsatisfied?

We were both filled with the enthusiasm that comes from being with someone you automatically click with.

In the old days – or so I’ve heard – you could go round someone’s place and rifle through their record collection, take a look at their bookcases. Now you have to scroll through their iTunes or click on their Kindle. It’s not the same, is it? I’m pleased to see you have some real books though.’ She

If any can show just cause why this couple may not be lawfully joined in matrimony, speak now or --- "Reverend Norton halted, looking behind them with raised eyebrows. Before Grace had time to wonder why the minister paused - if someone was, indeed, objecting to their union - the rapid click of toenails on the wooden floor made both of them look back over their shoulders. Frey groaned and made a face. "Gertie!" He released Grace's hand. Who? A brown and black dog trotted up the aisle to them, tail held high. She had soft brown eyes and a thin, dark line down the middle of her forehead that gave her a worried look. She stopped in front of Frey and looked at him, her head cocked as if in expectation. The tips of her ears flopped forward. Seth burst into laughter. "Do you think Gertie's objecting to your marriage?" Obviously aghast at his breach of decorum, Trudy gave Seth an owlish glare. Frey shrugged in apparent chagrin. "I'm sorry. I left her tied up on my porch." She looked from the man to his dog... The dog sniffed her fingers. Seeming to approve, she edged closer. Grace rubbed Gertie's head. "If Reverend Norton doesn't mind," she said to the dog, "I'm fine with you remaining for the rest of the ceremony.

Why won’t you give up this silly idea of homesteading?” Gertrude went on. Her tone of voice was moderate, but her blue eyes were snapping. “I can’t help thinking you’re just being stubborn, Lily. Caleb is well able to provide for you, I assure you. He comes from one of the finest families in Pennsylvania—I’ve known the Hallidays a long time.” Lily looked down at the floor for a moment, gathering her courage. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said softly. Gertrude sighed. “Do sit down,” she told Lily kindly, taking a chair herself. “Now what is it that I would find so difficult to understand?” “I love Caleb very much,” Lily began in a shaky voice, “but I’m not the woman for him.” Mrs. Tibbet raised her eyebrows. “Oh? And why not?” Lily leaned forward in her chair and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think I may be like my mother.” “How so?” Mrs. Tibbet asked, smoothing her skirts. “She was—she drank. And there were men. Lots of men.” “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Tibbet seriously. “And you drink?” Lily swallowed. “Well—no.” “Then there are men.” “Only Caleb,” Lily said quietly. “But he can make me do and say the most shameful things. I’m so afraid it’s because I’m—er—hot-blooded.” Mrs. Tibbet looked as though she might be trying to suppress a smile. “You wouldn’t be the first girl who’d given herself to a man before marriage, Lily. It isn’t a wise course of action, but it happens often enough.” Lily drew in a deep breath. “I suppose the drinking would come later,” she said, discounting Mrs. Tibbet’s remarks as mere kindness. “And then the men. No, I’m sure I’m better off going on with my life just as I’ve planned.” There was a rap at the door, and then Velvet put her head inside. “Pardon, missus, but dinner’s ready, and the men say they’re going to eat without you if you don’t hurry.” “We’ll be there in a moment,” Mrs. Tibbet answered. “And tell the men that if they don’t wait, they’ll have me to deal with.” “Yes, ma’am,” Velvet replied with a hint of laughter in her voice. The door closed with a click. Mrs. Tibbet turned back to her guest. “If you were my own daughter, Lily, I would tell you the same thing. You couldn’t do better than Caleb Halliday if you searched the world over for a man. Don’t throw away a chance at real happiness—it might be the only one you get.” Lily pushed herself out of her chair and went to stand at the window. From there she could see the moon rising above the roof of the house next door; it looked as though it had just squeezed out of the chimney. “Sometimes I think I know what I want. I’ll decide that I want to marry Caleb and forget all about having a homestead. But then I remember what Mama was like.” “Lily, you’re not your mother.” “No,” Lily agreed sadly, turning to face Mrs. Tibbet, her hands clasped in front of her. “But Mama was young and happy once, and she must have thought she was in love with my father. She married him, she had his children. And then something changed, and she began to drink. Papa went away—I don’t even remember him—and the men started coming around, one after the other …” Gertrude came to take Lily’s hands in her own. “Things will be different for you,” she said quietly. “You’re strong, and so is Caleb. Oh, Lily, don’t be afraid to take a chance.” At that moment the colonel thundered from the hallway that he was going to have his supper right then whether the women cared to come to the table or not, and Lily smiled. “I promise I’ll think things through very carefully, Mrs. Tibbet.” “Don’t take too long,” Gertrude answered, ushering her toward the door of the study. “Fate can take the strangest twists and turns, sealing us off from someone when we least expect it.” At

sounded like another language entirely. I felt relieved, momentarily, to be a relatively worldly Lubavitcher, even if I didn’t entirely fit in with the Crown Heights crowd. — Much to my disappointment, Miri was rarely to be seen. Most days she left the apartment around ten in a giddy rush and returned in the early evening with armloads of shopping bags, only to leave again for dinner with her friends. But one morning, when Leah was otherwise engaged, I was finally recruited for shomeres service. We were going to Ratfolvi’s, in Flatbush, to pick up the sheitel that Miri would be required to wear as a married woman. Pulling up to a residential building, we let ourselves into Mrs. Ratfolvi’s wig shop/apartment and sat down in the reception area, where four or five women were chatting away on a damask sofa and chairs. While we waited our turn, I examined the rows of wigs on display: there were various shades of brunette, blonde, and ginger; short, teased bouffants and glamorous, shoulder-length falls; wigs encased in rollers and wigs that were fully styled, needing nothing more than a final shpritz of hair spray. They were set upon Styrofoam heads complete with turned-up noses, high cheekbones, and luscious lips that looked like they could come alive at any moment. I longed to get my hands on a brush and a pair of scissors so that I could create my own visions of tonsorial loveliness. I did this from time to time to my dolls, to my mother’s great irritation, and here was a whole wall of victims. When Miri’s name was called, she plunked herself into the salon chair and pulled the silk scarf off her ponytail. I stood as close as I could without getting in the way. From conversations that I’d overheard between my mother and her sisters, I knew that Mrs. Ratfolvi was considered “the best,” and I was eager to watch her at work. The “rat” in her name had led me to expect someone old and unattractive, but she was actually a nicely put-together middle-aged woman. The receptionist brought over a plastic case about the size of a chubby toddler. In one expert motion, Mrs. Ratfolvi clicked it open, withdrew the fully styled wig on its Styrofoam head

Don’t get excited. It was a HAM signal, which means it was local to the area. Not sure where from but somewhere up high, maybe. This tells me likely north because according to the maps I seen of the area the north slopes up more than the south. Then again, who knows?” “Was anything actually said?” asked Derek. “No, but it clicked on and then off in a distinctive pattern. I wrote down the pattern and ran it through my knowledge of Morse Code,” he handed it over to Derek, and then Derek handed it to Karen. “Oh my God,” breathed Karen. “What is it?” asked Sheridan. “My Dad’s address… his home address… and his cell number for work,” answered Karen. “Of all the daft things,” mused Terrence. “Is it him or someone looking for him?” Derek groaned and leaned back in his chair. “If it’s him, I’m glad that I headed back here. The trip to Garson would have been a gigantic waste… but if it’s someone looking for him then we definitely know where he is.” “Do we risk it?” asked Marissa. “Yes. In this area… other than here… where would Garrett be?” asked Derek. “Wait, did you say Garrett?” asked Francis. “Last name wouldn’t also be Wither, would it?” They looked over at Francis. “Yeah, why?” asked Derek. “Right before everything went silent we granted a travel pass for one Garrett Wither so he could head up to High Falls,” replied Francis. “I was the last one to sign off on it.

I look back at Willem and the girl. Maybe this is the French girl. Or someone altogether new. They are sitting facing each other, knees touching, talking, holding hands. It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist. That's how it felt when I was with him last year. Maybe if an outsider saw us then, that's exactly how we would've looked. But now I'm the one who's the outsider. I look at them again. Even from here, I can tell she is someone special to him. Someone he loves. I wait for the fist of devastation, the collapse of a year's worth of hopes, the roar of sadness. And I do feel it. The pain of losing him. Or the idea of him. But along with the pain is something else, something quiet at first, so I have to strain for it. But when I do, I hear the sound of a door quietly clicking shut. And then the most amazing thing happens: The night is calm, but I feel a rush of wind, as if a thousand other doors have just simultaneously flung open. I give one last glance toward Willem. Then I turn to Wolfgang. "Finished," I say. But I suspect the opposite is true. That really, I'm just beginning.

Then I began calling advertising agencies, as I had done during the research-and-information phase, but this time I was dead serious. I needed someone to take a chance on me—anyone. And it was hard. Getting people on the phone was a piece of cake, but finding the person who made the decisions was almost impossible. I would leave one voice-mail, no more—because I didn’t want to sound desperate—then follow it up with an e-mail. If I didn’t have an e-mail address, I’d guess, which really isn’t that complicated. First initial, last name, @whatevercompany.com. And whenever someone actually responded, I was ready. “I have a company called Click Agents,” I would say. “We have a consortium of Web sites. I can get your ads on those sites, and I will price them on a per-click basis.” I

The result is churnalism—cheap, disposable content repurposed from press releases, news reports, viral media, social networks, and elsewhere, all of it practically out-of-date and irrelevant as soon as someone clicks Publish. With

This is how online advertising works: money turns into pixels and electrons in the form of ads, which turn into a scintilla of attention in someone’s mind, which after a few more clicks and electrons shuffling about, turns back into money. The only goal here is to make that second pile of money as large as possible relative to the first pile of money.

We expose our most sensitive personal information any time we Pick up a phone, respond to a text, click on a link, or carelessly provide personal information to someone we don’t know; Fail to properly secure computers or devices; Create easy-to-crack passwords; Discard, rather than shred, documents that contain PII; Respond to an email that directs us to call a number we can’t independently confirm, or complete an attachment that asks for our PII in an insecure environment; Save our user ID or password on a website or in an app as a shortcut for future logins; Use the same user ID or password throughout our financial, social networking, and email universes; Take [online] quizzes that subtly ask for information we’ve provided as the answers to security questions on various websites. Snap pictures with our smartphone or digital camera without disabling the geotagging function; Use our email address as a user name/ID, if we have the option to change it; Use PINS like 1234 or a birthday; Go twenty-four hours without reviewing our bank and credit card accounts to make absolutely sure that every transaction we see is familiar; Fail to enroll in free transactional monitoring programs offered by banks, credit unions, and credit card providers that notify us every time there is any activity in our accounts; Use a free Wi-Fi network [i.e. cafés or even airports] without confirming it is correctly identified and secure, to check email or access financial services websites that contain our sensitive data.

Me: Hypothetical question. 
Mystery Date: Okay, shoot. 
Me: If someone were to carry five very heavy bags of groceries from their car to their apartment. Then proceed to spend hours baking cupcakes. Does that and clicking the button to let Netflix know they haven’t gotten their life together and are still watching while eating said cupcakes, count as exercise? 
Me: Asking for a friend, of course. ;)

In the morning, I jumped out of bed with a burst of excitement, the song “Child of Mine” playing in my head. Happy birthday to me! I’d been wanting a baby for the past several years, and finding a donor I felt so comfortable with seemed like the best birthday present ever. Heading to the computer, I smiled at my good fortune—I was really going to do this. I typed in the sperm bank’s URL, found the donor’s profile, and read it all over again. I was just as certain as I’d been the night before that he was The One—the one that would make sense to my child when he or she asked why, of all the possible donors, I chose this guy. I placed the donor in my online shopping cart—just as I might with a book on Amazon—double-checked the order, then clicked Purchase Vials. I’m having a baby! I thought. The moment felt monumental. As the order processed, I planned what I had to do next: Make an appointment for the insemination, buy prenatal vitamins, put together a baby registry, get the baby’s room set up. Between thoughts, I noticed that my order was taking a while to complete. The rotating circle on my screen, known as the “spinning wheel of death,” seemed to be spinning for an unusually long time. I waited, waited some more, and finally tried using the back button in case my computer was crashing. But nothing happened. Finally, the spinning wheel of death disappeared and a message popped up: Out of stock. Out of stock? I figured there must be some computer glitch—maybe when I pressed the back button?—so I speed-dialed the sperm bank and asked for Kathleen, but she was out and I got transferred to a customer-service rep named Barb. Barb looked into the matter and determined that this was no glitch. I’d selected a very popular donor, she said. She went on to explain that popular donors went quickly and that, while the company tried to “restock” their “inventory” often, there was a six-month hold for it so it could get quarantined and tested. Even when the inventory was made available, she said, there still might be a long wait, because some people had placed it on back order. As Barb spoke, I thought of how Kathleen had called just yesterday. Now it occurred to me that maybe she’d suggested this donor to several women. Like me, maybe many women had bonded with Kathleen over her honest appraisals of semen.

JULY 2010. IT was morning as Markus logged onto his computer at home, as part of the morning routine he had developed and rather enjoyed. Every time someone bought a copy of Minecraft, he received an e-mail. Since most customers were in the United States, most of those e-mails came in while Markus was asleep in Sweden and when he woke up, the purchase confirmations would be waiting for him in droves. Not only had clicking through them become second nature, it put him in a great mood. To Markus, those e-mails symbolized the acknowledgement of all his hard work and bore the fruits of his labors. And so many people willing to pay for Minecraft was pretty good indication that things were going pretty well.

You said yourself that I seemed happy,” I tell her. “But why are you?” It’s a good question. How can I be happy when the clasp on my clarinet case actually creaks from lack of use? How can I be happy when I flubbed a basic scale this week in band, my fingers correcting automatically, but not before Charity’s eyes made a quick dash in my direction, noting the mistake? How can I be happy when my boyfriend and my lover are two different people? “Because I’m two different people,” I say, answering myself aloud, feeling the jigsaw of my new life click together. I’m a puzzle, definitely. But not the kind that lies flat on the table waiting for someone to piece it together. My broken bits have flurried through the air of their own volition, creating in three dimensions. And I don’t need finishing.

Only Read/Answer Emails Twice a Day In the past I would have my email client open all day, every day. I would be working on something and then get distracted by the email alert in the bottom of my computer screen and instantly click over to see from who and what it contains. The solution is to only check your emails twice a day. I do it once in the morning and once straight after lunch. The rest of the time I am distraction free. This is not only a technique I use but one that has been suggested by some of the most productive people in the world. Michael Hyatt, Scott Belsky, Leo Babauta to name a few. Try this out for a week. If you are someone like me who receives numerous emails a day, you will immediately see the benefits of using this.

The comedian toys with our rational minds and brings about a "momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices." The punch line comes a surprise but makes perfect sense. The sudden click of logic makes a joke funny; humor is reasonable. Someone without a strongly developed sense of logic is unlikely to have a good sense of humor either.

I turned and flipped the latch on the door, then pulled hard on the handle, stumbling over the threshold into the fresh air. I would have fallen in the dirt for the second time that day except that someone standing outside caught me. Terrified that my escape was being thwarted, I struck out at whoever it was, feeling a sharp pain when my fist connected with the person’s jaw. “Empress, you hit hard!” a male voice exclaimed, then he captured my arms and trapped them behind my back. By the strange expletive he had used, I knew him to be Cokyrian--my luck was golden. “What’s going on here?” The butcher staggered into the doorway, squinting in the sunlight. “Your girl’s a thief,” he muttered at sight of the man who held me, sparing a glower for me as though warning me to be quiet. I ground my teeth and looked away, intending to do just that. Now that I had stopped struggling, the Cokyrian soldier released me, and I considered whether or not to run. Then I saw who had been restraining me--Saadi, the man with whom Narian and my uncle had dealt after my failed prank. There would be no point in running if he remembered who I was. “My girl?” Saadi repeated, his pale blue eyes calculating. “She is no Cokyrian. Besides, I would expect you to show any comrade of mine more respect than that.” “My apologies,” the butcher forced himself to say, and rage filled me at his newly respectful attitude. “She broke into my store and I assumed from her clothing…I also assume you’ll see her punished for her crime.” “You were about to punish her yourself, weren’t you?” Saadi scrutinized me, noting the red marks around my wrists and perhaps the beginnings of the bruises I would have across my mouth. “In Cokyri, you would be killed for what you did to her--what you tried to do.” “It’s good we’re not in Cokyri then,” the butcher sneered. Saadi’s jaw clenched, and he seemed to be fighting a deep urge to pummel the merchant who stood before him. “I should take you to join the men at the gallows.” “I would welcome it.” “I can see why,” Saadi coldly retorted, with a subtle look up and down at the heavyset man. “But I’m afraid the lack of your business might dampen the economy in the province, and that is something my sister would frown upon. She’ll be disappointed, though--she does so enjoy seeing men like you hang.” “And I enjoy seeing women in skirts as God intended.” Another strained moment passed, then Saadi laughed. “Perhaps if your God had paid less attention to clothing and more to abilities, you and your kind wouldn’t be in this position right now.” The butcher shifted uncomfortably, and Saadi quickly dispensed with him. “If you want me to arrest her for thievery, I’ll also arrest you for assault. So I would advise that you go back to your meat and your customers, may they be few.” The man did not need to be told twice. He slammed the door in our faces, and I could hear the lock click into place. It was then that I noticed the canvas bag at Saadi’s feet. He must have seen flight in my eyes, for he started running at almost the same moment I did.

driver’s side opened, and someone got in and sat down. He didn’t turn to see who it was, because by this point he was unable to take his eyes off the hospital entrance. “I went to Marinella to look for you,” said Fazio, “but you weren’t there. Then I realized you’d be here, and so I came.” Montalbano didn’t answer. Half an hour later, he saw Garrufo come out, bent over, face in his hands, weeping. “Take me home,” he said to Fazio. He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes, at last.   Click here for more books by this author.

A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like “branding” and “mind share,” growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth—and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users. They are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of their own self-sustaining and self-propagating growth machine.

Occasionally, though, an introduction to someone new is more intense and intimate from the get-go. Maybe we share the same sense of humor or we admire the other individual’s personality or passion. Or we immediately sense that we can just be ourselves around that person. Things feel right; we hit it off. There is an immediate sense of familiarity and comfort. Conversation flows easily, without embarrassing pauses or self-consciousness. In essence, we click.

He could feel all of it so clearly it was as if it were happening right then. But more than that, he felt sorrow. Someone had just tried to do the same thing to his baby girl. Had tried to kill her, not because he hated her, but because she was standing in the path of his political statement. Everyone who died on that shuttle had been a Felcia to someone. And with the click of a button he’d killed them. He

I’m discovering that most of the time the power of the Spirit is subtle, not showy. The Spirit is present in our subtle inclinations to serve our spouses, do what’s right, read the Bible, love the marginalized, make disciples, and commune with God. He is that renewing presence that says: “Choose what is good, right, and true.” He is that tug toward self-sacrifice for the good of others. He is that challenge to boldly tell someone how Jesus is changing your life. He is the Person that brings Scripture to mind and coaxes you to believe it. He is the one who prompts you to pray for others. He is the one who restrains you from clicking on that image on the Internet, making that purchase, or silently judging someone. He prompts you to encourage a friend, to praise the good in a coworker, or to rejoice in God’s remarkable grace. If you are in Christ, you have the Spirit, and he prompts you all the time. We simply need to surrender to his prompting!

How to Make an Impression at Your Next Meeting Translate percentages into fractions: If someone says that “25 percent of people clicked on this button,” quickly chime in with “So about one in four,” and make a note. Everyone will nod in agreement, secretly impressed.   Ask the presenter to go back a slide: Do this at any point in the presentation, and you’ll look like you’re paying closer attention than anyone else.   Nod continuously while pretending to take notes: Always bring a notepad with you. Take notes by writing down one word from every sentence you hear. Nod continuously while doing so.   Encourage everyone to “take a step back”: There comes a point in most meetings when everyone is chiming in, except you. This is a great point to say “Guys, guys, can we take a step back here?” Followed by a quick “What problem are we trying to solve?” You’ve just bought yourself another hour of looking clever.

A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Their tools are e-mails, pay-per-click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money. While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like “branding” and “mind share,” growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth—and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users. They are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of their own self-sustaining and self-propagating growth machine that can take a start-up from nothing to something.

Previously, leaving the couch and walking up to the television to change the channel might cost more effort than merely enduring the awful advertisement and associated anxiety. But with a remote in hand, the viewer can click a button and move away effortlessly. Add cable television and the ability to change channels without returning the set (not to mention hundreds of channels to watch instead of just three), and the audience's orientation to the program has utterly changed. The child armed with the remote control is no longer watching a television program, but watching television—moving away from anxiety states and into more pleasurable ones. Take note of yourself as you operate a remote control. You don't click the channel button because you are bored, but because you are mad: Someone you don't trust is attempting to make you anxious. You understand that it is an advertiser trying to make you feel bad about your hair (or lack of it), your relationship, or your current SSRI medication, and you click away in anger. Or you simply refuse to be dragged still further into a comedy or drama when the protagonist makes just too many poor decisions. Your tolerance for his complications goes down as your ability to escape becomes increasingly easy. And so today's television viewer moves from show to show, capturing important moments on the fly. Surf away from the science fiction show's long commercial break to catch the end of a basketball game's second quarter, make it over to the first important murder on the cop show, and then back to the science fiction show before the aliens show up.

You needn’t have come to Hampshire in such a hurry.” “The threat of lawyers and Chancery Court impressed me with the need for haste,” he said darkly. Perhaps her telegram had been a bit dramatic. “I wasn’t really going to bring layers into it. I only wanted to gain your attention.” His reply was soft. “You always have my attention.” Kathleen wasn’t certain how to take his meaning. Before she could ask, the latch of the bathroom door clicked. The wood panels trembled as someone began to push his way in. Kathleen’s eyes flew open. She wedged her hands against the door, her nerves stinging in horror. A violent splash erupted behind her as Devon leaped from the bathtub and flattened a hand on the door to keep it from opening farther. His other hand slid around her to cover her mouth. That was unnecessary--Kathleen couldn’t have made a sound to save her life. She quivered in every limb at the feel of the large, steaming male at her back. “Sir?” came the valet’s puzzled voice. “Confound it, have you forgotten how to knock?” Devon demanded. “Don’t burst into a room unless it’s to tell me that the house is on fire.” Distantly Kathleen wondered if she might swoon. She was fairly certain that Lady Berwick would have expected it of her in such circumstances. Unfortunately her mind remained intractably awake. She swayed, her balance uncertain, and his body automatically compensated, hard muscles flexing to support her. He was pressed all along her, hot water seeping through the back of her riding habit. With every breath, she dew in the scents of soap and heat. Her heart faltered between every beat, too weak, too fast. Dizzily she focused on the large hand braced against the door. His skin was faintly tawny, the kind that would brown easily in the sun. One of his knuckles was scraped and raw--from lifting the carriage wheel, she guessed. The nails were short and scrupulously clean, but ink stains lingered in faint shadows on the sides of two fingers. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” the valet said. With an overdone respect that hinted at sarcasm, he added, “I’ve never known you to be modest before.” “I’m an aristocrat now,” Devon said. “We prefer not to flaunt our assets.

Da―wh-w-w-WHAT THE HELL DO YOU TWO THINK YOU’RE DOING?! DON’T GO AROUND KISSING IN PUBLIC! THERE ARE PEOPLE WATCHING!” Lilian clicked her tongue in annoyance after removing her lips from a slightly insensate Kevin. “Considering that Kevin and I are dating, you have no right to tell us what we can and cannot do.” “Sure I do.” Christine’s baleful glare was colder than icicles hanging from a hut in the Arctic Circle. “Someone has to stop you two from acting so promiscuous in public.” “So you say, but I think you’re just jealous.” “Je-je-je―I AM NOT!” “Are too.” “AM NOT!” “Yes, you are.” “NO, I’M NOT!” “No, you’re not!” “YES, I AM!” A pause. It took Christine exactly two seconds to compute what she’d just said. Were her tsundere protocols not already activated, they would have been now. “Y-y-y-y-you…! Shut up! shut up, shut up, shut up!” “Has anyone told you that your voice is really annoying? Your Seiyuu’s not Kugimiya-san, is it?” “What?” Christine couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of that statement.

Lilian?” Kevin needed a moment to register that, indeed, Lilian was standing before him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were taking a bath with the others.” “I was going to,” Lilian admitted, “but then I realized that my mate and I haven’t been able to spend much time alone together because my family kept getting in the way, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to bond.” “Bond?” He studied the girl, and eventually realized that she wasn’t looking at his face. Feeling a sense of unease growing in the pit of his stomach, Kevin looked down. His face grew red. He let out a loud “eep!” and tried to cover himself with his hands. “Ufufufu,” Lilian chuckled. “You’re still too cute when you get embarrassed like that.” Kevin tried to glare at her, but the blush on his face lessened the effect. “It’s got nothing to do with being embarrassed and everything to do with common decency,” he insisted, lying through his teeth. “Most people don’t stand around in the nude while someone else is present, not even if they’re dating that person.” “Most people aren’t mated to a kitsune.” “Ugh…” She had him there. “Kevin” Lilian’s eyes were warm and so incredibly earnest that Kevin was unable to look away, “you are my mate; the person I love more than anyone else in this world.” Delicate hands reached up and cupped his face. “This isn’t some random person wanting to see you naked. This is me, your mate, who wants to become more intimate with you. If it helps, I promise not to touch anything below the belt.” Staring at the girl with an uncomprehending gaze, Kevin’s mind became a warzone, a battle the likes of which no one had ever seen before—mostly because it was all happening in his mind. *** The desolate wasteland spread out for miles, its borders traveling far beyond the distant horizon. Cracks traversed the ground like a myriad system of interconnecting spiderwebs. There was no flora or fauna in this wasteland. It was the perfect place… for war. Two forces stood on opposite ends of each other, armies of nearly equal might. Multi-segmented plates clicked together as figures moved and jostled each other. Horned helms adorned the many heads, their faceplates masking their identities. Hands gripped massive halberds with leaf-shaped blades that gleamed like a thousand suns. The army on the northern border wore white armor, while those in the southern quadrant wore red. A moment of silence swept through the clearing. A tumbleweed rolled across the ground. It was the unspoken signal for the battle to start, and the two forces rushed in toward the center, yelling out their battle cries. “For Lilian!!” “For chastity!!” Thunder struck the earth as these two titanic armies fought. Bodies were thrown into the air with impunity. Halberds clashed, the sound of metal on metal, steel ringing against steel, rang out in a symphony of chaos. Sparks flew and shouts accompanied the maelstrom of combat. It was, indeed, a battle worthy of being placed within the annals of history. A third party soon entered the fray. From one of the many cliffs surrounding the battlefield, an army appeared. Unlike the two forces duking it out down below, this army was bereft of nearly all their clothes. Wearing nothing but simple loincloths and bandoleers similar to Tarzan’s, the group of individuals looked identical. Messy blond hair framed bright blue eyes that glared down at the battlefield. With nary a thought, this force surged down the cliff, their own battle cry echoing across the land. “DEATH TO THE CHERRY!!” And so more chaos was unleashed upon the battlefield. ***

I see my weekly emails differently; as a kind of long-line fishing. When I share the ten most popular topics being discussed in my forum community, that’s like having ten hooks on a line. If someone clicks through to view one of those topics, they’re consuming my information and engaging with others in the community. The more involved they are, the more likely they are to stay a member

Getting comfortable again, I grab one of the magazines that I keep stuffed under my thin mattress. Flipping to the article the guard Paul told me about, I’m just getting to the part about how chandeliers are a necessity in creating an awesome she-shed, when two prison guards come running in. They take one look at my open cell door, the magic smoke still polluting the air, the unconscious male on the ground, and turn gaping looks at me. I give them a bright smile and point down at Scarface. “Hey, Paul. Could you clean that up for me? I think he wet himself.” Paul lowers his gun and pulls off his SWAT-style helmet. “Another one?” he asks, jerking his chin toward my uninvited cell guest. I shrug my shoulders and give him an apologetic smile. He shakes his head and nudges the unconscious jail-breaker with his boot. “Damn. We need to up our security. We aren’t used to so many supernaturals trying to break someone out of here,” he says, scratching the back of his neck as he frowns in thought. “Yeah, it’s very disruptive,” I tell him. He grunts in agreement. “Good thing your ride is here,” Paul mentions casually as my unwelcome cell guest groans loudly from the floor. I squeal and start clapping excitedly, which startles both guards. “Yes, finally!” I shoot up from my cot and thrust both arms out, ready for the required shackles whenever a prisoner is being transported. Paul releases an amused chuckle, and Terrence—the other guard in my cell right now—gives me some judgement-laced side-eye as I giggle and wait like a kid on Christmas morning for the cuffs to click into place. I’m finally going to be sentenced and booked into Nightmare Penitentiary. I can’t fucking wait.

Stand tough. You can only become the kind of person you admire through surviving hardship. As human beings, we usually only learn to take life seriously when our world comes into question. So although a mob attack might seem like a worst-case scenario, recognize that it’s actually an opportunity for growth and self-discovery. Then act upon it. Never apologize. This means having the courage of your convictions, right when the pile-on is at its most intense. At this point, it might be tempting to wave the white flag of surrender and apologize, but don’t do it. This is the precise moment when you must keep going with your head held high. Accept that you’ll lose friends. Everything clicks once you start figuring out who you are, but the process of self-discovery is often painful, requiring you to let go of people. Fight hard to maintain your friendships, especially the old ones, but don’t be anyone’s doormat. At some point you may have to let someone go. This is very sad, but embrace it like you would any breakup. And believe it or not, you’ll make new friends who’ll accept you exactly for who you are.

Those vestal virgins found guilty of being unchaste”—their leader’s voice ricochets off the surrounding walls—“were whipped to death in the public square.” She pauses so they can take photos and ask questions. “Public deaths were popular,” I hear her answer someone. “As were blood shows—known as munera. After lunch we will see the slave quarters beneath the Colosseum.” There are collective oohhs and aahhs, and I wonder if they would watch one, or if I would. The ripping of flesh, the breaking of man. Suddenly I get a cramp. When was the last time I had my period? Three, five weeks ago? I can’t remember. I should have been recording it in that damn diary. One of the tour members is watching the couple, who are back at it. Our eyes meet, and I feel myself blush. He’s short and hefty, wearing pleated pants and a sweat-stained polo shirt. His hand rests on a camera that hangs around his neck. He smiles, waggles his eyebrows. Yes, hi, hello. I give him a polite grimace and turn so I can sit more comfortably. Then slowly, out of the corner of my eye I see him raise his camera and click. I don’t know if he’s taking a picture of me or the couple or the ruins. Maybe all three. When the cramp subsides, the tour has moved on. The couple too. At the entrance, I flag down a cab, feeling more spent than I should. “Signora, signora.” The cabby rattles off something in Italian. Usually a migraine precedes my period, and I think I feel one coming on. “Where to?” he finally asks in English.

His usual habit was to click twice. If in doubt, et cetera. Maybe it helped, and it never seemed to hurt. Like shooting someone in the head. A double tap could do no harm.

Did someone just happen by your house one day and see it and say, like, ‘Can we borrow your table?

Dani froze, craning her head to the right, where the noise had come from. She clicked off the flashlight. She bit down on the urge to call, “hello?” into the dark. That was how people died in horror movies. And if someone else was creeping around in the library, she didn’t want them to know where she was.

filling the form in.  She held up the photo and matched it with the wall, a tired, thinlooking girl looking out at her. It was set to the right of Oliver’s. They could have had them taken at the same time. She’d ask Mary.  Grace had said she had only been with Oliver — or at least that’s what the answers suggested. She’d have to ask her to make sure. It wasn’t unknown for homeless people to get into disagreements over love. When you’ve got nothing much to lose, the law doesn’t come into play when you’re asking yourself if you’re prepared to kill for someone.  Grace also admitted to being a regular heroin user and agreed to have an examination. She also said she didn’t have any diseases as far as she knew. She was the same age, too. Eighteen. Had they known each other before they’d become homeless? She’d have to find Grace to know the truth.  She went back to Oliver’s file and checked the date next to his signature. It said the seventh of September. Just under two months ago.  Jamie leafed to the next and only other page in the file. It was another shabbily photocopied sheet. Mary must have been doing them on her printer-scanner at home, creating them on her computer. She really did care. The sheet displayed a pixelated outline of the human body — no doubt an image pulled off the web and then stretched out to fill a page. The resolution was too low to keep any sort of detail, but the shape still came through okay. It was a human with their arms out, feet apart. At the top of the page, in Comic Sans, ‘Examination Sheet’ was written as the title.  In appropriately illegible handwriting for a doctor, notes had been jotted around the body. Parts had been circled with lines being drawn to the corresponding note. She read words like ‘graze’ and ‘lesion’. ‘Rash’ cropped up a few times. But there didn’t look to be anything sinister going on. The crooks of the elbows, as well as the ankles, were all circled several times but nothing was written at the sides. Those areas didn’t need explaining, though underneath, as if encapsulating the entire exam were the words ‘No signs of infection’. So he’d been relatively careful, then. Clean needles, at least. Under that, there was a little paragraph recommending a general blood panel, but overall, Oliver seemed to be in decent health. Nothing had been prescribed, it seemed.  She checked Grace’s and found it to be much the same, complete with triple circles around the elbows and ankles. Though her genital area had also been circled and the word ‘Rash’ had been written. At the bottom, a prescription had been written for azithromycin.  Jamie clicked her teeth together, rummaging in her brain for the name. Was it a gonorrhoea medication or chlamydia? She knew it was for an STD, she just couldn’t remember which. But that meant that where she’d put down ‘1’ for number of

In the car, she took out her phone and dialed the number in Canada. Four nerve-racking rings before someone finally picked up. Not a sound, not a hello. So it was up to Lucie. “Hello?” Long pause. Lucie repeated, “Hello? Is anyone there?” “Who is this?” Male voice, pronounced Quebec accent. “Lucie Henebelle. I’m calling from—” Abrupt click. He’d hung up. Lucie imagined a nervous type, on his guard, distrustful. Dazed by the brevity of the exchange, she burst from her car and went back to knock on Szpilman’s door.

Under Musk’s direction, X.com tried out some radical banking concepts. Customers received a $20 cash card just for signing up to use the service and a $10 card for every person they referred. Musk did away with niggling fees and overdraft penalties. In a very modern twist, X.com also built a person-to-person payment system in which you could send someone money just by plugging their e-mail address into the site. The whole idea was to shift away from slow-moving banks with their mainframes taking days to process payments and to create a kind of agile bank account where you could move money around with a couple of clicks on a mouse or an e-mail. This was revolutionary stuff, and more than 200,000 people bought into it and signed up for X.com within the first couple of months of operation.

This was far worse than that. It was like the moment after you realize someone has taken the pin out of a grenade. Like the quiet but deadly click of a landmine beneath a soldier’s boot.

Ciao, Bruno!” someone calls from a boat puttering slowly into the marina. A hard line sets Bruno’s jaw for a split second before he smiles and turns. “Ciao, Mauro!” Bruno shouts back. Mauro? I lift my camera back up to my eye and zoom in to the white- and red-trimmed boat. It’s definitely the same scumbag from a few days ago. He’s glaring at me, but I click a picture anyway. Just in case I need to identify him in a lineup.

Oh, well…they’ve been a little relaxed because of Gram’s passing, but I’ve been assured once school starts my life will be all work and no play.” I kick my feet under the water and watch the surface swirl. “Well, we better take advantage.” He pulls me in for another kiss and when we break apart, I’m overcome with laughter. This is so the opposite of how I saw my summer ending even just a few hours ago. “You’re really here. I can’t get over it.” “When I called and heard your voice mail greeting this morning, something inside me just clicked. I had to see you. Today.” He leans toward me until our foreheads press together, his fingertips trailing tortuously slowly up and down each of my arms. “I tried all summer to talk myself out of liking you, to stay away from Cinque Terre once I knew you were there. Especially when I thought you might be with someone else. But I couldn’t. I want to make this work, Pippa. I knew we met for a reason.” His breath is warm on my face as he whispers, “I can’t not be with you.” I close my eyes and absorb his words. He wants to make this work. I want to make this work. It will. Somehow. “You really like me that much?” I hear him swallow. “I’m not sure like is a strong enough word.

When I called and heard your voice mail greeting this morning, something inside me just clicked. I had to see you. Today.” He leans toward me until our foreheads press together, his fingertips trailing tortuously slowly up and down each of my arms. “I tried all summer to talk myself out of liking you, to stay away from Cinque Terre once I knew you were there. Especially when I thought you might be with someone else. But I couldn’t. I want to make this work, Pippa. I knew we met for a reason.” His breath is warm on my face as he whispers, “I can’t not be with you.” I close my eyes and absorb his words. He wants to make this work. I want to make this work. It will. Somehow. “You really like me that much?” I hear him swallow. “I’m not sure like is a strong enough word.

That’s the journal on your chair, right?” he holds out a hand, demanding to see it. “Show me this list.” I grab it and turn directly to the page with the list. He takes it from me and holds out his hand again. “Pen?” I eye him curiously but he doesn’t say anything, so I hand the pen over too. He makes a humming sound in his throat as he studies my handwriting, then says, “Ciao.” When I don’t respond, he says it again and holds out his hand for me to shake. “Sono Darren.” My eyes widen when I realize what he’s doing. “Ciao. Sono Pippa.” He squeezes my hand. “Che bel nome, Pippa.” I blush because I can’t help myself. He thinks my name is pretty. And I forgot how hot it is when he speaks Italian. “Grazie.” “Arrivederci.” I wave as if we really are going to part ways. “Arrivederci.” Darren clicks the pen into action and strikes though “Have a conversation with someone in only Italian.” It wasn’t exactly my original plan, and it’s elementary at best, but it had a beginning, middle, and end. And summer’s not over yet, so I’m counting it.

Veramente particolare! You know what this word means?” She looks straight at me, and I feel very large and under-made-up by comparison with her Italian chic. “‘Particolare’? It means strange, or odd. You say this word when you don’t like something but you don’t want to be rude.” “Well, that’s not something you ever have a problem with,” Kendra snaps back, and even through my upset at Elisa’s meanness, I admire Kendra’s quick wits. Catia clicks her tongue crossly. “It means ‘special,’ or ‘particular,’” she says to me reassuringly, but we all know that Elisa’s hit the nail on the head. “And Elisa, if you don’t like flowers, you can leave us, please.” “Oh, stai zitta, Mamma,” Elisa says, shrugging exactly the same way her mother does. She walks across the room and out the french windows, where she collapses as if boneless onto the wicker chair, lifts her phone, and sips her espresso while dialing a number. “It’s like ‘darling,’” Paige says suddenly. She looks at our bemused faces. “My grandmother’s from Georgia,” she explains, “and there, if you want to be mean to someone, you say her bag of her hair or something’s ‘darling.’ It’s the worst thing you can say. Like you’re paying a compliment, but it’s really the opposite. Or,” she adds, warming to this theme, “if you’re talking about someone and you say ‘Bless her heart!’ that means you think she’s a total moron.” Catia decides, visibly, to ignore Paige’s comments and her daughter’s horrid behavior.

Hadassah Hospital. She worked on Herschlag in his bed, a towel around his neck, while Nomi held a mirror, a tiny compact, for him to see, according to his wishes. “I can’t stand the prickly little hairs,” Elias said. “I need to take a shower.” The Songstress of Abu Dis, who had not hurried back to the nurse’s station, offered to accompany Elias to the shower. But he refused, and Nomi noticed the resentment in his eyes. “That’s his pride,” the nurse explained to Nomi while Elias showered. “He won’t let anyone bathe him. Doesn’t matter if it takes him an hour, he’ll do it himself. Don’t lock the door!” she shouted amicably. They heard the click of the lock, and Nomi smiled at her. The nurse returned a knowing smile. “He’s a prince,” she said before she went back to her work. “Not bad for a last haircut,” Elias said as he emerged from the shower. Herschlag smiled at the two women in the room. “Ne’iman,” Nomi said, using the Arabic blessing for someone who has bathed. His eyes filled with softness and warmth. Katy returned from the canteen and snuck four bottles of beer into the room, a look of mischief on her face. Elias and Herschlag

What are we doing here?” Kat whispered. Stacy started down the corridor. “You don’t have to whisper. We’re alone.” Stacy stopped in front of the door with a keypad. She typed in a code and the door unlocked with an audible click. Kat entered. It was a corner office with a pretty great view up Park Avenue. Stacy flicked on the lights. The office was done in early American Elitism. Rich burgundy leather chairs with gold buttons sat atop a forest-green oriental carpet. Paintings of foxhunts hung on dark wood paneling. The expansive desk was pure oak. A large antique globe rested next to it. “Someone

The personal statements were all over the place, but if she had to use one word to sum them up, it would probably be treacle. The first read, “Every morning, life is a blank canvas waiting to be painted”—click. Some aimed for honesty by telling you repeatedly that they were honest. Some faked sincerity. Some were highfalutin or showboating or insecure or needy. Just like real life, when Kat thought about it. Most were simply trying too hard. The stench of desperation came off the screen in squiggly, bad-cologne waves. The constant soul-mate talk was, at best, off-putting. In real life, Kat thought, none of us can find someone we want to go out with more than once, yet somehow we believe that on YouAreJustMyType.com, we will instantly find a person we want to wake up next to for the rest of our lives. Delusional—or does hope spring eternal? This

We might not have as much money as we want to give, but we have as much love as we can think of ways to give it out: sweet words, considerate gestures, clicking Send, hitting Like, or sometimes even just staying quiet. When kind words are directed at someone who needs them, they can change the world.

day, the trigger was an older woman with deep wrinkles. To this day, I cannot be certain about what caused her to react so strongly. Perhaps she had used up her patience simmering in the sun for hours at the back of the line. Perhaps she had some desperately hungry grandchildren who she needed to get back to. It is impossible to know exactly what happened. But after she received her allocation of wheat, she broke the established rules of the feeding site and moved toward Bubba. She looked up at him and unleashed a verbal attack. Bubba, as gentle as ever, simply smiled at her. The more he smiled, the angrier she got. I noticed the commotion when our Somali guards suddenly tensed and turned toward the disturbance. All I could see was Bubba, head and shoulders above a gathering crowd, seemingly unperturbed, and smiling down at someone. His patient response only fueled the woman’s rage. I heard her sound of fury long before I spotted the source when she launched a long stream of vile curses at Bubba. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word that she was saying. It was now possible to understand her complaint. She was upset about the quality of the “animal feed” that was being distributed for human consumption. She was probably right in her assessment of the food. These were surplus agricultural products that United Nations contributing members didn’t want, couldn’t sell, and had no other use for. As this hulking American continued to smile, the woman realized that she was not communicating. Now, furious and frustrated, she bent down, set her plastic bag on the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirty, broken wheat, grain dust, dirt and chaff. She straightened to her full height and flung the filthy mixture as hard as she could into Bubba’s face. The crowd was deathly silent as I heard a series of loud metallic clicks that indicated that an entire squad of American soldiers had instinctively locked and loaded all weapons in readiness for whatever might happen next. Everything felt frozen in time as everyone waited and watched for Bubba’s reaction. A Somali man might have beaten the woman for such a public insult—and he would have considered his action and his anger entirely justified. I knew that Bubba had traveled half-way around the world at his own expense to spend three months of personal vacation time to help hurting people. And this was the thanks that he received? He was hot, sweaty, and drained beyond exhaustion—and he had just been publicly embarrassed. He had every reason to be absolutely livid. Instead, he raised one hand to rub the grit out of his eyes, and then he gave the woman one more big smile. At that point, he began to sing. And what he sang wasn’t just any song. She didn’t understand the words, of course. But she, and the entire crowd, stood in silent amazement as Bubba belted out the words to the 1950’s Elvis Presley rock-n-roll classic: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine. By the time he started singing the next verse, the old woman had turned and stomped off in frustration, angrily plowing a path through the now-smiling crowd of Somalis to make her escape. Watching her go, Bubba raised his voice to send her off with rousing rendition of the final verse: Well they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Ya know they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine.

few people beat you to it, though. Looks like you’ll have to wait your turn.” Nicole clipped her name tag to her dress and looked across the banquet hall. The tight cluster of people was a giveaway that Quinn would be at its core. A broad smile rose from deep within Nicole as her heels clicked against the dated gray-and-green tile in a quickening rhythm. Her eyes were on the man in the tux. Every few seconds the position of someone in the group shifted and Nicole got a glimpse of Quinn. Gesturing.

Whether it be brand marketers trumpeting the new BMW X5, game developers getting players to spend real money on virtual goods, or someone selling an online nursing degree, the only difference is the time frame in which those different goals occur—in other words, the time between attention and action. If the time frame is very short, like browsing for and buying a shirt at nordstroms.com, it’s called “direct response,” or “DR” advertising. If the time frame is very long, such as making you believe life is unlivable outside the pricey mantle of a Burberry coat, it’s called “brand advertising.” Note that the goal is the same in both: to make you buy shit you likely don’t need with money you likely don’t have. In the former case, the trail is easily trackable, as the “conversion” usually happens online, usually after clicking on the very ad you were served.* In the latter, the media employed is a multipronged strategy of Super Bowl ads, Internet advertising, postal mail, free keychains, and God knows what else. Also, the conversion happens way after the initial exposure to the media, and often offline and in a physical space, like at a car dealership. The tracking and attribution are much harder, due to both the manifold media used and the months or years gone by between the exposure and the sale. As such, brand advertising budgets, which are far larger than direct-response ones, are spent in embarrassingly large broadsides, barely targeted or tracked in any way. Now you know all there is to know about advertising. The rest is technical detail and self-promoting bullshit spun by agencies. You’re officially as informed as the media tycoons who run the handful of agencies that manage our media world.

Roscoe had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. He awoke to find persistent itching on his stomach. He scratched it through his T-shirt. He went back to sleep. But dreams kept him from sleeping soundly. That and the itching. He woke again and felt the itchy spot. There was a lump there. Like a swelling. And when he held still and pressed his fingers against the spot he could feel something moving under the skin. The small room was suddenly very cold. Roscoe shivered. He went to the window hoping for light. There was a moon but the light was faint. Roscoe pulled his shirt over his head. He looked down at the spot on his stomach. It was moving. The flesh itself. He could feel it under his fingertips. Like something poking back at him. But he couldn’t feel it from the inside, couldn’t feel it in his stomach. And he realized that his entire body was numb. He could feel with his fingertips but not the skin of his stomach— The skin split! “Ahhhh!” He was touching it as it split, and he shrieked in terror and something pushed its way out through a bloodless hole. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, no no no no!” Roscoe screamed and leaped for the door. His hand clawed at the knob as he babbled and wept and the door was locked, locked, oh, God, no, they had locked him in. He banged at the door, but it was the middle of the night. Who would hear him in the empty town hall? “Hey! Hey! Is anyone there? Help me. Help me. Please, please, someone help me!” He banged and the thing in his belly stuck out half an inch. He was scared to look at it. But he did and he screamed again because it was a mouth now, a gnashing insect mouth full of parts like no normal mouth. Hooked, wicked mandibles clicked. It was inside him, chewing its way out. Hatching from him. “Help me, help me, don’t leave me here like this!” But who would hear him? Sinder? No. Not anymore. That was over. All over. And he was alone and friendless. No one even to hear as he screamed and begged. The window. He grabbed the pillow from his bed and pushed it against the glass and then punched it hard. The pane shattered. He took off his shoe and smashed at the starred glass until most of it fell tinkling to the street below. Then he screamed for help. Screamed into the Perdido Beach night air. No answer. “Help me! Please, please, oh, God, please help me! You can’t just leave me locked up!” But still, no answer. Fear took hold of him, deep crazy-making fear. No. No. No no no no, this couldn’t be happening. He hadn’t done anything to hurt anyone, he hadn’t done anything awful. Why? Why was this happening to him? Roscoe fell to his knees and begged God. God, please, no, no, no, I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t brave or strong but I wasn’t bad, either. Not like this, please, God, no no no, not like this. Roscoe felt an itching in the middle of his back. He sat down and cried.

If I may be so bold, sir,” the butler spoke up, causing Sebastian to start. Good lord, he hadn’t even realized he was still there. “I could not help but notice that you seemed to have quarreled with Miss Westforth.” Sebastian grunted in response. “She is your old friend from home.” The butler shrugged. “She will forgive you. Of course, may I suggest that you beg forgiveness as soon as possible? That seems the smoothest way to go about these things. Especially when you know someone as well as you know Miss Westforth.” “That’s just it!” Sebastian cried, with more vehemence than he realized he’d felt. “I do know Susie – Miss Westforth. And that fashionable creature is not her!” The Susie Sebastian knew would have laughed at a crowd of men vying for her attention. She would have rather been reading or working on puzzles or… “She is acting foolish, and I simply point this out, and I am told off for it. She’s dancing with Parkhurst and… and laughing with him, for God’s sake!” “Mr. Parkhurst is perhaps not the most humor-inducing young man here,” the butler agreed solemnly. “But how is Miss Westforth’s dancing and laughing different from any other young lady’s actions tonight?” “It’s…. it just is.” Sebastian said stubbornly. “And her dress… it’s unseemly!” “Actually, I have it on good authority that Miss Westforth’s gown is of the highest fashion and appropriate modesty for a young lady of nineteen.” Nineteen . God, hadn’t she just been sixteen and all bony angles? “How do you know all this?” Sebastian grumbled after a time. “About Miss Westforth’s gown… and how we are old friends, come to think of it.” The butler simply shrugged. “I am Philbert, sir. I know everything.” “Did you know that she tried to kiss me, then?” Sebastian mumbled, kicking his boot against the grey stone balustrade. Philbert’s mouth crooked up. “In the ballroom? How very forward.” “No, not now. She told me she tried to kiss me before.” “Before…?” “Before I went away. But apparently I wasn’t paying attention, and she ended up kissing a log.” “And were you?” Philbert asked. Sebastian’s eyebrow went up, not understanding. “Were you not paying attention,” he clarified. “Or did you know she tried to kiss you?” Sebastian felt another shift in the world beneath his feet. Smaller this time, but so, so important. Something clicking into place. “No. I suppose I did know. I just pretended it hadn’t happened.” He’d seen it. Just out of the corner of his eye, but he’d seen it. Three years ago, after a long run on their horses, breathless, her cheeks flushed and lovely. Sitting nearly leg to leg with him on that felled tree. And his heart had skipped a beat. A rush of… something had him standing before her lips could touch his cheek. “Why did you pretend it hadn’t happened?” Philbert asked quietly. “Because it would have changed things,” Sebastian answered in kind. A

[Reacher] moved the mouse and sent the arrow up toward the icons. He knew they were files. Or file folders. You had to click on them, and in response they would open. He was never sure whether you had to click once or twice. He had seen it done both ways. His usual habit was to click twice. If in doubt, etcetera. Maybe it helped, and it never seemed to hurt. Like shooting someone in the head. A double tap could do no harm.

In his words, a click is invisible — and it’s hard to sell to invisible. A click is not a conversion. A click is not a sale. If you ask most entrepreneurs which they’d rather have — someone click on their post or someone convert (either to an email list or a sale) — I’ll bet you five shiny Internet dollars that every single one would say they prefer the conversion.

You and I are close friends now, reader. So you know how I feel about writing. Writing is the hum. Writing is laying track. Writing is the high. Now imagine that hum, that high, that track to be laid is behind a door. And that door is five miles away. Those five miles are just . . . writing crap and doodling and trying to have an idea and surfing the internet and hoping like hell not to get so distracted that you give up. Worse? Those five miles are lined with brownies and cupcakes and episodes of Game of Thrones and Idris Elba waiting to talk to only you and really good novels to read. Every time I sit down to write, I have to mentally run those five miles past all of that to get to that door. It’s a long, hard five-mile run. Sometimes I am almost dead by the time I reach the door. That’s why I have to keep doing it. The more often I run the five miles, the fitter I become. And the fitter I become, the easier the run begins to feel and the less fresh and exciting all that stuff on the side of the road seems. I mean, how long has it been there? More important, as I get fitter, I can run faster. And the faster I can run, the faster I can get to that door. The faster you can too, writers out there. When you sit down to write every day, it becomes easier and easier to tap into that creative space inside your mind. The faster I can get to that door, the quicker I can get to the good stuff. Behind that door is the good stuff. So when I reach the door and open it . . . that’s when my creativity clicks in and that special spot in my brain starts working and I go from exertion to exultation and suddenly I can write forever and ever and ever and eve— And then someone opens the door and asks me if I want coffee or water and I am FIVE MILES AWAY all over again. I grit my teeth and try to smile and say No thank you, see, I have coffee AND water both already, right here. And then I start running that five miles all over. That happens roughly thirty-five times a day at the office.

By the Cauldron,' a familiar male voice said beside Cassian, and he turned to find Lucien in the archway to the training area. ... 'Feyre said she was training, but I hadn't realised she was... well, training.' ... 'Did you think she was filing her nails?' Lucien's mechanical eye clicked. His face tightened as Nesta threw a spectacular left hook into the wood beam. It shuddered with the impact. 'I wonder if there are some things that should not be awoken,' he murmured. Cassian cut him a glare. 'Mind your own business, fireling.' Lucien just watched Nesta attack, his golden skin a little pale. 'Why are you here?' Cassian asked, unable to help the sharpness. 'Where's Elain?' 'I am not always in the city to see my mate.' The last two words dripped with discomfort. 'And I came up here because Feyre said I should. I need to kill a few hours before I'm to meet with her and Rhys. She thought I might enjoy seeing Nesta at work.' 'She's not a carnival attraction,' Cassian said through his teeth. 'It's not for entertainment.' Lucien's red hair gleamed in the dimness of the rainy day. 'I think Feyre wanted a progress assessment from someone who hasn't seen her in a while. 'And?' Cassian bit out. Lucien threw him a withering look. 'I'm not your enemy, you know. You can drop the aggressive brute act.' Cassian gave him a grin that didn't meet his eyes. 'Who says it's an act?' Lucien let out a long sigh. 'Very well.

You see someone, but you don’t really see him, he’s in the wings. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing “catches,” and before you’re even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he’s either already gone or just about to leave, and you’re basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you’re forced to call I want.

Just as we did with used cars, take a moment to brainstorm every single reason (fear, worry, question, concern) as to why someone would not buy from your company. What would hold them back? What would keep them from clicking “buy,” swiping their credit card, or writing that big check? If you do this activity properly (especially if you do it with fellow employees), you should come up with ten to 20 reasons, if not more (sadly, a surprising number of businesses struggle with this one small task, all because they’ve lost touch with the most important part of their business: what the potential customer is thinking).

Everyone was in some kind of trouble. Everyone needed aid. The whole country had practically shut down, and now it was time for people to band together. No one person could do it alone. It was why people formed communities and societies, so the burden of knowledge could be shared and passed around to the others. Mike had always heard the theory that technology was what was wrong with people, but he had always shrugged that off. The technology wasn’t the problem. It was the people who used it. No law forced someone to spend all of their time in front of a computer screen. People had just become too dependent on their screens to take care of things for them instead of people. But it was people that still did all the work behind the scenes, regardless of how many clicks you had to go through to order your food and have it delivered to your door. People were still behind all of it, the only difference now was that most folks didn’t know or understand how to react to those people. No one knew how to hold a conversation, at least not an

But nobody is allowed to talk about the loneliness – nobody wants to hear that someone they know is lonely, because it makes them uncomfortable. So we have to plaster on smiles and pretend we’re fine, for fear we’ll push people even further away.

The brain is wired to make a clear, quick yes-or-no decision—fight or flight, click or scroll, read or ignore, remember or forget. • The dopamine blast of a great idea or word buys you a few more seconds of someone’s time. Every word is a battle for additional time and attention.

In 1968 at the age of 17 years, I started my migration journey to Karachi, leaving my mother, brothers, and sisters for my literary fondness and higher study. I achieved a Bachelor of Arts from Sindh University, Hyderabad, and a Master of Arts and a Law degree from Karachi University. I started my Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. Aslam Farrukhi. I couldn't complete it, and in 1978, at the age of 26, I migrated to the Netherlands to face The Prisoner Of The Hague; you can read it on Google Book.com in Urdu. The pic that someone so much liked, whom I have loved since the age of eleven; she was ten years older than me, but love does not care about such things. Unfortunately, my destiny brought me to Europe; I betrayed her that I feel and think; she never married and died. I have a gift, a handkerchief that she gave me in 1962, which I always keep with me wherever I go. After six-decade, I saw someone when I was editing an article about her in 2011, with the same features, height, and smile, but unfortunately, this time, she was too young. Surprisingly, whenever I searched my name on Google, I saw her pic displayed with my pics; I clicked the text alongside the pic, not relevant, and the pic went disappeared but not from my heart.

In her analysis, she learned that the CFO had answered phishing emails telling him he’d just won a $500 gift card from Costco. The man made $13 million a year before bonuses. A senior chemical engineer had accepted fifty-four invitations on social media from people she didn’t know. The head of patents had been sexting with someone he met online, clicked on what was promised to be a dick pick, and unleashed a virus. All of this had been done on company computers and the corporate server. Data breaches galore. Proprietary information insecure. Financial records out there for all the world to see.

Glass" In every bar there’s someone sitting alone and absolutely absorbed by whatever he’s seeing in the glass in front of him, a glass that looks ordinary, with something clear or dark inside it, something partially drunk but never completely gone. Everything’s there: all the plans that came to nothing, the stupid love affairs, and the terrifying ones, the ones where actual happiness opened like a hole beneath his feet and he fell in, then lay helpless while the dirt rained down a little at a time to bury him. And his friends are there, cracking open six-packs, raising the bottles, the click of their meeting like the sound of a pool cue nicking a ball, the wrong ball, that now edges, black and shining, toward the waiting pocket. But it stops short, and at the bar the lone drinker signals for another. Now the relatives are floating up with their failures, with cancer, with plateloads of guilt and a little laughter, too, and even beauty—some afternoon from childhood, a lake, a ball game, a book of stories, a few flurries of snow that thicken and gradually cover the earth until the whole world’s gone white and quiet, until there’s hardly a world at all, no traffic, no money or butchery or sex, just a blessed peace that seems final but isn’t. And finally the glass that contains and spills this stuff continually while the drinker hunches before it, while the bartender gathers up empties, gives back the drinker’s own face. Who knows what it looks like; who cares whether or not it was young once, or ever lovely, who gives a shit about some drunk rising to stagger toward the bathroom, some man or woman or even lost angel who recklessly threw it all over—heaven, the ether, the celestial works—and said, Fuck it, I want to be human? Who believes in angels, anyway? Who has time for anything but their own pleasures and sorrows, for the few good people they’ve managed to gather around them against the uncertainty, against afternoons of sitting alone in some bar with a name like the Embers or the Ninth Inning or the Wishing Well? Forget that loser. Just tell me who’s buying, who’s paying; Christ but I’m thirsty, and I want to tell you something, come close I want to whisper it, to pour the words burning into you, the same words for each one of you, listen, it’s simple, I’m saying it now, while I’m still sober, while I’m not about to weep bitterly into my own glass, while you’re still here—don’t go yet, stay, stay, give me your shoulder to lean against, steady me, don’t let me drop, I’m so in love with you I can’t stand up. Kim Addonizio, Tell Me (BOA Editions Ltd.; First Edition (July 1, 2000)

No dummy, the first day you get your wolf everyone has a brief moment of feeling  fuzzy before everything clicks into place,’ someone said.

This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them. They find nothing more exhilarating than clicking with someone who gets them. When they can’t make that kind of connection, they feel emotional loneliness.

Anmol Rane , is a man who belongs to the land of Shree Yamuna river . He born in a village situated at the bank of Yamuna river . He born on 28 september 2003 at Gaba Hospital YamunaNagar . He born with some illness . The illness which can not be seen but can feel . As he started joining his school he was not a common person like other . People used to make him bully and make to feel him ashemd because of his mental illness and physical appreance . Anmol was not mentally strong when he join the school he has many friend but he didn't come into the touch of someone who understands him mentally and can help him to grow . He joined Gian Deep High School , Sandhali where he come into the touch of Mr. Parveen Kamboj. He look into the condition of Anmol and help him to grow mentally and physically with his personal guidance . He helped Anmol to grow mentally . He came to know that Anmol have some special skills than others which make him different from others . This was the reason he loves Anmol personally and support him like his own son . As Anmol grows his schooling was complete . Than he joined Maharaj Aggarsain Public school , Gumthala Rao to complete his 12th . Here he met more individuals who are like him but not the same . Anmol get the guidance of experienced with effectivness teacher who helped him to grow mentally and make his stronger but he missed one thing there that was his personal assistance of friends he do not have such friends to whom he can connect and make him mentally strong. As of now Anmol is pursuing his graduation in business administration . To know more about Anmol's Life you can follow him on Instagram by Clicking here

My bags were already circling the small baggage carousel, the benefit of being the only plane at a small airport. The bag clicked behind me on the tile floor as I looked around for my ride to the hotel. I found a well-dressed man with large aviator glasses holding up a sign with my name on it: Emma LaRue. I must have looked like someone ready for vacation because he started smiling at me as soon as he saw me. Must have been the grin plastered on my face and the big eyes trying to take it all in.