Cocktail Hour Quotes

You learn not to mourn every little thing out here, or you’d never, ever stop grieving.

Wear this, don't wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely give up the things you love fro me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It's the female pissing contest -- as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: "Ohh, that's so sweet.

For I am a sinner in the hands of an angry god; Bloody Mary full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails; pray for me now, that the hour of my death, which I hope is soon. Amen.

This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay. I've tried many times to figure out exactly what ignites it -- what cocktail of characteristics come together in the cold, dark cosmos to form a star. I know it's mostly in the face -- not just the eyes, but the brow, the cheeks, the mouth, and the micromuscles that connect them all. Kat's micromuscles are very attractive.

Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.

This is fun, Matty, isn't it? Cocktail hour is intoxicating." "It is." "I made a little joke there." - Celeste.

Surely until all of us own and honor one another's dead, until we have admitted to our murders and forgiven one another and ourselves for what we have done, there can be no truce, no dignity and no peace.

She wished it were evening now, wished for the great relief of the calendar inking itself out, of day done and night coming, of ice cubes knocking about in a glass beneath the whisky spilling in, that fine brown affirmation of need.

WELCOME, ONCE AGAIN, to the beautiful Sinclair family. We believe in outdoor exercise. We believe that time heals. We believe, although we will not say so explicitly, in prescription drugs and the cocktail hour. We do not discuss our problems in restaurants. We do not believe in displays of distress. Our upper lips are stiff, and it is possible people are curious about us because we do not show them our hearts. It is possible that we enjoy the way people are curious about us.

Think about today, not tomorrow. Dance over the cracks so you don't fall into them. Drink champagne in the afternoons and invent ridiculous cocktails to make the ruined world glitter again. Keep going, one foot in front of the other. Don't look down.

...but the pathos and the gift of life is that we cannot know which will be our defining heartbreak, or our most victorious joy.

...."The mind I love must have wild places: a tangled orchard where damsons drop in heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, a chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody has fathomed the depths of... and paths threaeded with flowers planted by the mind." Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulnes

In the age of Facebook and Instagram you can observe this myth-making process more clearly than ever before, because some of it has been outsourced from the mind to the computer. It is fascinating and terrifying to behold people who spend countless hours constructing and embellishing a perfect self online, becoming attached to their own creation, and mistaking it for the truth about themselves.20 That’s how a family holiday fraught with traffic jams, petty squabbles and tense silences becomes a collection of beautiful panoramas, perfect dinners and smiling faces; 99 per cent of what we experience never becomes part of the story of the self. It is particularly noteworthy that our fantasy self tends to be very visual, whereas our actual experiences are corporeal. In the fantasy, you observe a scene in your mind’s eye or on the computer screen. You see yourself standing on a tropical beach, the blue sea behind you, a big smile on your face, one hand holding a cocktail, the other arm around your lover’s waist. Paradise. What the picture does not show is the annoying fly that bites your leg, the cramped feeling in your stomach from eating that rotten fish soup, the tension in your jaw as you fake a big smile, and the ugly fight the happy couple had five minutes ago. If we could only feel what the people in the photos felt while taking them! Hence if you really want to understand yourself, you should not identify with your Facebook account or with the inner story of the self. Instead, you should observe the actual flow of body and mind. You will see thoughts, emotions and desires appear and disappear without much reason and without any command from you, just as different winds blow from this or that direction and mess up your hair. And just as you are not the winds, so also you are not the jumble of thoughts, emotions and desires you experience, and you are certainly not the sanitised story you tell about them with hindsight. You experience all of them, but you don’t control them, you don’t own them, and you are not them. People ask ‘Who am I?’ and expect to be told a story. The first thing you need to know about yourself, is that you are not a story.

....The mind I love must have wild places: a tangled orchard where damsons drop in heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, a chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody has fathomed the depths of and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career. During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer. I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole. p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).

She treated Vanessa and me as if we were visiting budgerigars that needed to be fed and then put somewhere dark for the night.

And what do you do in California?” I gave him the spiel. Orange groves, failed movie stars, lamplit cocktail hours by the swimming pool, cigarettes, ennui.

It was the cocktail hour in Priss’s room at New York Hospital—terribly gay.

Time, tide and cocktail hour wait, as it were, for no man.

I enjoy visitors during the cocktail hour, but equally, I like it when people go back home,’ boomed Henrietta, in contrast to Charles’s one-word answers. ‘I make no bones of that. I’m a good loyal friend, in short sharp bursts.

but Ma once spent four hours lining up in the rain just to buy Ba’s favorite brand of roasted chestnuts, and Ba has been to every single one of Ma’s work events and cocktail parties, even though he hates those kinds of social functions.

Cocktail hour at the embassy consisted of lots of charming men and women in suits and LBDs drinking Buck’s Fizz and being friendly to one another, and so what if half of them had gill slits and dorsal fins under the tailoring, and the embassy smelled of seaweed because it was on an officially derelict oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, and the Other Side has the technical capability to exterminate every human being within two hundred kilometers of a coastline if they think we’ve violated the Benthic Treaty?

It’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love. After cocktail hour one night, in the cabin kitchen, I told Lindsay about how I’d blown up my life.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

In the East, he then believed, a man went to college not for vocational training but in disciplined search for wisdom and beauty, and nobody over the age of twelve believed that those words were for sissies. In the East, wearing rumpled tweeds and flannels, he could have strolled for hours among ancient elms and clock towers, talking with his friends, and his friends would have been the cream of their generation. The girls of the East were marvelously slim and graceful; they moved with the authority of places like Bennington and Holyoke; they spoke intelligently in low, subtle voices, and they never giggled. On sharp winter evenings you could meet them for cocktails at the Biltmore and take them to the theater, and afterwards, warmed with brandy, they would come with you for a drive to a snowbound New England inn, where they’d slip happily into bed with you under an eiderdown quilt. In the East, when college was over, you could put off going seriously to work until you’d spent a few years in a book-lined bachelor flat, with intervals of European travel, and when you found your true vocation at last it was through a process of informed and unhurried selection; just as when you married at last it was to solemnize the last and best of your many long, sophisticated affairs.

Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys. Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark,and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’ Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed! Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’ I am happy not to be in that club. I don’t partake, I don’t get off on emotional coercion, on forcing Nick to play some happy-hubby role – the shrugging, cheerful, dutiful taking out the trash, honey! role. Every wife’s dream man, the counterpoint to every man’s fantasy of the sweet, hot, laid-back woman who loves sex and a stiff drink. I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself. I don’t know why women find that so hard.

Buggery was invented to fill that awkward hour between evensong and cocktails

He was not made for the outdoors unless it involved a patio and a cocktail.

Is it because I’m marrying a woman? Is that why Orion hasn’t responded? He’s never been homophobic, but maybe this strikes too close to home. Bruises his male ego. That time when we met with the lawyers to negotiate the terms of the divorce, he’d already been drinking. I could smell it. And it wasn’t exactly the cocktail hour; it was 11:00 A.M. I’d wanted to say something to him about it after we left, but I didn’t. I was still trying to figure out what the new rules were about such things, now that we were almost divorced. The other day, I tried imagining what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot—if he had left me for a man. It was a ridiculous exercise: picturing two hairy-chested men in bed with each other, one of them Orion. LOL, as Marissa would put it. LMFAO.

Grass: I live in a great steel tower that reflects the blazing sun. People catch fire just walking by. The more bodies that pile up around you, the greater your equity, the stronger your power, the longer you live. This is the point of living in a high rise. To see the bodies pile up at sunset, the nostalgic hour, the hour of summing up, stirring the cocktails, feeling the great tower sway in the hot winds.

shy but handsome fellow is sitting at a club, sipping a cocktail, and sees a beautiful woman seated alone at the bar. After an hour of screwing up his courage he finally heads over to her and asks tentatively, "Um, hi. Would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?" She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar turns in unison and stares at them. Naturally, the poor guy is hopelessly

Characteristic of the overall difference between Boston and New York, the population at the Acropolis was far less forlorn. Its customers were just those who, for whatever reason, wanted to eat coffee-shop food at very strange hours.

What had Freddy mean, "the bravest person I know"? For Less, it is a mystery. Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.

I never saw her again, but I know what she looks like now when cocktails, bonbons, late hours, and nearly forty years have done their work on the peach bloom of cheeks, the pearly, ripe but vigorous bosom, the supple midriff, the brooding, black, velvety-liquid eyes, the bee-stung lips, the luxurious thighs. She sits on a divan somewhere, held more or less in shape by the vigor of a masseuse and the bands of lastex which secretly sheathe her like a mummy, but bloated with the entire universe she has ingurgitated with a long delicious sigh. And now with a hand on which the pointed nails are as red as though she had just used them to rip greedily the guts from a yet living sacrificial fowl, she reaches out to a silver dish to pick up a chocolate.

This girl has the spark of life. This is my primary filter for new friends (girl- and otherwise) and the highest compliment I can pay. I’ve tried many times to figure out exactly what ignites it—what cocktail of characteristics comes together in the cold, dark cosmos to form a star.

I hate to say it, but sometimes I slept better when he was on the road. But you’re not supposed to say that, right? You’re supposed to curl up each and every night for eight solid hours of spooning and cuddling . . . But the truth? I needed my own bed occasionally. I liked some alone time. Is that bad?

Over the years I have read many, many books about the future, my ‘we’re all doomed’ books, as Connie liked to call them. ‘All the books you read are either about how grim the past was or how gruesome the future will be. It might not be that way, Douglas. Things might turn out all right.’ But these were well-researched, plausible studies, their conclusions highly persuasive, and I could become quite voluble on the subject. Take, for instance, the fate of the middle-class, into which Albie and I were born and to which Connie now belongs, albeit with some protest. In book after book I read that the middle-class are doomed. Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer would concede that market-forces capitalism, instead of spreading wealth and security throughout the population, has grotesquely magnified the gulf between rich and poor, forcing a global workforce into dangerous, unregulated, insecure low-paid labour while rewarding only a tiny elite of businessmen and technocrats. So-called ‘secure’ professions seem less and less so; first it was the miners and the ship- and steel-workers, soon it will be the bank clerks, the librarians, the teachers, the shop-owners, the supermarket check-out staff. The scientists might survive if it’s the right type of science, but where do all the taxi-drivers in the world go when the taxis drive themselves? How do they feed their children or heat their homes and what happens when frustration turns to anger? Throw in terrorism, the seemingly insoluble problem of religious fundamentalism, the rise of the extreme right-wing, under-employed youth and the under-pensioned elderly, fragile and corrupt banking systems, the inadequacy of the health and care systems to cope with vast numbers of the sick and old, the environmental repercussions of unprecedented factory-farming, the battle for finite resources of food, water, gas and oil, the changing course of the Gulf Stream, destruction of the biosphere and the statistical probability of a global pandemic, and there really is no reason why anyone should sleep soundly ever again. By the time Albie is my age I will be long gone, or, best-case scenario, barricaded into my living module with enough rations to see out my days. But outside, I imagine vast, unregulated factories where workers count themselves lucky to toil through eighteen-hour days for less than a living wage before pulling on their gas masks to fight their way through the unemployed masses who are bartering with the mutated chickens and old tin-cans that they use for currency, those lucky workers returning to tiny, overcrowded shacks in a vast megalopolis where a tree is never seen, the air is thick with police drones, where car-bomb explosions, typhoons and freak hailstorms are so commonplace as to barely be remarked upon. Meanwhile, in literally gilded towers miles above the carcinogenic smog, the privileged 1 per cent of businessmen, celebrities and entrepreneurs look down through bullet-proof windows, accept cocktails in strange glasses from the robot waiters hovering nearby and laugh their tinkling laughs and somewhere, down there in that hellish, stewing mess of violence, poverty and desperation, is my son, Albie Petersen, a wandering minstrel with his guitar and his keen interest in photography, still refusing to wear a decent coat.

We don’t need to work a hundred hours a week at law firms and investment banks. We don’t need to socialize at cocktail parties. We do need to create a space for the J.D.s and Brians of the world to have a chance. I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.

What had Freddy meant, "the bravest person I know"? For Less, it is a mystery. Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.

What had Freddy meant, "the bravest person I know'"? For Less, it is a mystery. Name a day, name an hour, in which Arthur Less was not afraid. Of ordering a cocktail, taking a taxi, teaching a class, writing a book. Afraid of these and almost everything else in the world. Strange, though; because he is afraid of everything, nothing is harder than anything else. Taking a trip around the world is no more terrifying than buying a stick of gum. The daily dose of courage.

Wed don't need to live like the elites of California, New York, or Washington, D.C. We don't need to work a hundred hours a week at law firms and investment banks. We don't need to socialize at cocktail parties. We do need to create a space for the J.D.s and Brians of the world to have a chance. I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do make things better.

As he confessed in 2002, ‘Some of my most joyous hours have been spent in a state of semi-incoherence, composing foam-flecked hymns of hate to the latest Euro-infamy: the ban on the prawn cocktail flavour crisp.’20 The fact that there was no ban on the prawn cocktail flavour crisp (it is still freely available over the counter) was no impediment to the foam-flecked hymns of hate. On the contrary, being pure fiction made the story beautifully elastic. Like the tale of Marina’s toast, this tiny seed of grievance could blossom into a monstrous oppression.

BEE’S KNEES COCKTAIL ½ ounce honey simple syrup (recipe follows) 1 ounce lemon juice (about ½ medium lemon) 2 ounces gin Lemon peel Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add ingredients (except peel) and shake; strain into a martini glass. Twist the lemon peel and set inside glass. HONEY SIMPLE SYRUP In a small saucepan combine ⅓ cup honey and ⅓ cup water. Over low heat stir the mixture until honey starts to dissolve. Let cool and pour into a squeeze bottle or glass container. Will keep for several weeks. PORK WITH HONEY-LIME MARINADE (Serves 4) Juice of two limes ¼ cup honey ¼ cup olive oil 1 garlic clove, grated 1 teaspoon hot sauce (you can use red pepper flakes for less heat) Pork tenderloin, trimmed (1 pound) Whisk first five ingredients together. Pour half of marinade into a ziplock bag and add pork tenderloin. Marinate for at least 1 hour. Preheat gas or charcoal grill for indirect grilling. Brush grate with canola or vegetable oil. Cook pork indirectly 4 to 6 minutes per side until a meat thermometer registers 145 degrees. Remove from grill and brush with remaining marinade. Let meat rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

So during the years of the Depression I had arranged a schedule for myself. When you don’t have a job or anyone to tell you what to do, you’ve got to fix one for yourself. I divided the day into 4 four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four-hour periods, and free one of them. By getting up a 8 o’clock in the morning, by 9 I could sit down to read. That meant that I used the first hour to prepare my own breakfast and take care of the house and put things together in whatever shack I happened to be living in at the time. Then three hours of that first four-hour period went to reading. Then came an hour break for lunch and another three-hour unit. And then comes the optional next section. It should normally be three hours of reading and then an hour out for dinner and then three hours free and an hour getting to bed so I’m in bed by 12. On the other hand, if I were invited out for cocktails or something like that, then I would put the work hour in the evening and the play hour in the afternoon. It worked very well. I would get nine hours of sheer reading done in a day. And this went on for five years straight. You get a lot done in that time.

The ritual is designed to get a group of people through the hour without having to get close to anyone. They may, but they don’t have to. It is more comfortable to go to a High Church Mass than to attend a revival service where one may be asked, “Are you saved, brother?” Sexual relations are less awkward in the dark for people for whom physical intimacy has no involvement at the level of personality. There is less chance for involvement in throwing a cocktail party than in having a dinner for six. There is little commitment, therefore little fulfillment. Rituals, like withdrawal, can keep us apart. An

Waternish Estate was sold to a Dutchman in the 1960s when Bad-tempered Donald died. In turn, the Dutchman sold a part of the estate to the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. Donovan was the first of the British musicians to adopt the flower-power image. He is most famous for the psychedelically fabulous smash hits “Sunshine Superman,” “Season of the Witch” and “The Fat Angel,” and for being the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for the possession of marijuana. Donovan has a history of being deeply groovy and of being most often confused with Bob Dylan, which reportedly annoys Donovan quite a lot. “Sometime in the early seventies, Bob Dylan bought part of the estate,” Mum tells me. “But he put a water bed on the second floor of the house for whatever it is these hippies get up to, and it came crashing through the ceiling.” “Not Bob Dylan,” I say. “Donovan.” “Who?” Mum says.

The fact is that the gap between state-owned means of violence and what people can muster by themselves—from beer bottles to Molotov cocktails and guns—has always been so enormous that technical improvements make hardly any difference. Textbook instructions on “how to make a revolution” in a step-by-step progression from dissent to conspiracy, from resistance to armed uprising, are all based on the mistaken notion that revolutions are “made.” In a contest of violence against violence the superiority of the government has always been absolute; but this superiority lasts only as long as the power structure of the government is intact—that is, as long as commands are obeyed and the army or police forces are prepared to use their weapons. When this is no longer the case, the situation changes abruptly. Not only is the rebellion not put down, but the arms themselves change hands—sometimes, as in the Hungarian revolution, within a few hours.

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot.

But I love [America] the way you love a wife of many years: not because you have a sentimental notion of her perfection, but because you know her thoroughly, from the courage of the maternity room to the pettiness of her morning moods; from seeing her sit for weeks by her dying mother's bedside, to watching her worry about which shoes to wear to a cocktail party given by a person she does not like. You know she has the capacity to get up at five in the morning and make you pancakes before you set off on a particularly arduous business trip, and you know she also has the capacity to say things, in the heat of an argument, that she should not say, to sneak the last piece of chocolate cake, to lose track of time and keep the rest of the family waiting for an hour, at the beach, on a burning hot afternoon. You know everything from what flavor lip gloss she likes to what books she would bring with her to the proverbial desert island and what she believes the meaning of life to be. And then, always, there is a part of her you do not know.

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days. Surprisingly, the least effective way to spread germs (according to yet another study) is kissing. It proved almost wholly ineffective among volunteers at the University of Wisconsin who had been successfully infected with cold virus. Sneezes and coughs weren’t much better. The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs is physically by touch. A survey of subway trains in Boston found that metal poles are a fairly hostile environment for microbes. Where microbes thrive is in the fabrics on seats and on plastic handgrips. The most efficient method of transfer for germs, it seems, is a combination of folding money and nasal mucus. A study in Switzerland in 2008 found that flu virus can survive on paper money for two and a half weeks if it is accompanied by a microdot of snot. Without snot, most cold viruses could survive on folding money for no more than a few hours.

Before dinner each night the two leaders, Hopkins, and various other members of the president’s official family gathered for cocktails in the Red Room. Roosevelt sat by a tray of bottles and mixed the cocktails himself. This was a cherished part of the president’s daily routine, his “children’s hour,” as he sometimes called it, when he let the day’s tensions and stresses slip away. “He loved the ceremony of making the drinks,” said Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames; “it was rather like, ‘Look, I can do it.’ It was formidable. And you knew you were supposed to just hand him your glass, and not reach for anything else. It was a lovely performance.” Roosevelt did not take drink orders, but improvised new and eccentric concoctions, variations on the whiskey sour, Tom Collins, or old-fashioned. The drinks he identified as “martinis” were mixed with too much vermouth, and sometimes contaminated with foreign ingredients such as fruit juice or rum. Churchill, who preferred straight whiskey or brandy, accepted Roosevelt’s mysterious potions gracefully and usually drank them without complaint, though Alistair Cooke reported that the prime minister sometimes took them into the bathroom and poured them down the sink.

It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days. Surprisingly,

For years, Britain operated a research facility called the Common Cold Unit, but it closed in 1989 without ever finding a cure. It did, however, conduct some interesting experiments. In one, a volunteer was fitted with a device that leaked a thin fluid at his nostrils at the same rate that a runny nose would. The volunteer then socialized with other volunteers, as if at a cocktail party. Unknown to any of them, the fluid contained a dye visible only under ultraviolet light. When that was switched on after they had been mingling for a while, the participants were astounded to discover that the dye was everywhere—on the hands, head, and upper body of every participant and on glasses, doorknobs, sofa cushions, bowls of nuts, you name it. The average adult touches his face sixteen times an hour, and each of those touches transferred the pretend pathogen from nose to snack bowl to innocent third party to doorknob to innocent fourth party and so on until pretty much everyone and everything bore a festive glow of imaginary snot. In a similar study at the University of Arizona, researchers infected the metal door handle to an office building and found it took only about four hours for the “virus” to spread through the entire building, infecting over half of employees and turning up on virtually every shared device like photocopiers and coffee machines. In the real world, such infestations can stay active for up to three days.

BEEKEEPER’S GRANOLA 32 ounces Bob’s Red Mill GF Old Fashioned Rolled Oats ½ cup pumpkin seeds 1 cup sliced almonds ½ cup honey ½ cup canola oil Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Spray a large baking sheet (21 x 15 inches) with cooking spray. In a large bowl combine the oats, pumpkin seeds, and almonds. Pour the honey and oil over the mixture and toss lightly, making sure the oat mixture is covered. Spread on baking sheet and bake for 90 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Granola keeps for several weeks in a sealed container. CRANACHAN (Serves 4) 1¼ cups granola, divided ½ cup bourbon, plus 2 teaspoons, divided 3 cups raspberries, plus 8 whole berries for garnish 1 teaspoon honey, divided 2 cups heavy cream 4 parfait glasses or martini glasses Combine ¾ cup granola and ½ cup bourbon and let sit for several hours before assembling dessert. The granola will absorb the alcohol and become soft but not mushy. Meanwhile, chill a mixing bowl. Lightly crush raspberries with a fork, add ½ teaspoon honey and 1 teaspoon bourbon. Toss to combine. You want a puree texture. In a chilled bowl, start whipping the heavy cream. When it begins to thicken, add remaining ½ teaspoon honey and remaining 1 teaspoon bourbon. Continue whipping cream until it is slightly firm. Fold soaked granola into the cream. To assemble, sprinkle a bit of the reserved granola into each glass. Spoon a layer of the cream mixture over granola and then add a layer of the raspberry mixture. Repeat until you have a few layers, finishing with a layer of the cream. Sprinkle remaining granola and a couple of whole raspberries on top. QUEEN BEE COCKTAIL 1½ teaspoons honey simple syrup (recipe on this page) Club soda 1½ ounces bourbon 1 teaspoon lime juice Sliced lime, for garnish Fill

There is a lot of randomness in the universe, but truly lucky people recognize that fairy godmothers are lazy. If taking your career to the next level will require your fairy godmother to tip her wand, make sure the wand is pointed at you, and that you’re standing as close to her as possible, so all she has to do is nudge the thing like a bored barfly fiddling with a cocktail glass.

Two such misfits in the nineteenth century had a particularly strong influence on the later existentialists: Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Neither was an academic philosopher: Kierkegaard had no university career, and Nietzsche was a professor of Greek and Roman philology who had to retire because of ill health. Both were individualists, and both were contrarians by nature, dedicated to making people uncomfortable. Both must have been unbearable to spend more than a few hours with. Both sit outside the main story of modern existentialism, as precursors, but had a great impact on what developed later.

Soon we began to collect a little group of odd people who would drink with us every cocktail hour. Brigitte, who was a 22-year-old German, very beautiful, could have been on the cover of Stern magazine. Her boyfriend Volker was one of the most beautiful men I'd ever met - people said he looked like James Hunt, the English racecar driver. He was like Billy Budd. He was from Germany and had been a cowboy in Wyoming. Then there was Elford Elliot from England, who had something to do with producing garden gnomes. He was tripping on acid all the time and going out to Delos, this little island off Mykonos, chipping little pieces off the ancient ruins, which he then brought back in the pocket of his jumpsuit. Then there was Bryan, an IBM operator from Australia, who fancied himself as a kind of Oscar Wilde figure. I don't know why. The only story of his I remember was about some Australians who stole a garden gnome from the front lawn of a very elegant mansion and took it for a trip around the world. They would send postcards back to the owner saying things like, 'Having a lovely time in the Fiji Islands' and sign it, 'The Garden Gnome.' After six weeks, they brought the garden gnome back and left it on the lawn with little suitcases full of tiny clothing they'd knitted for it.

Later that night, after cocktails, a long and spirited debate ensued between him and Elon about the future of AI and what should be done. As we entered the wee hours of the morning, the circle of bystanders and kibitzers kept growing. Larry gave a passionate defense of the position I like to think of as digital utopianism: that digital life is the natural and desirable next step in the cosmic evolution and that if we let digital minds be free rather than try to stop or enslave them, the outcome is almost certain to be good. I view Larry as the most influential exponent of digital utopianism. He argued that if life is ever going to spread throughout our Galaxy and beyond, which he thought it should, then it would need to do so in digital form. His main concerns were that AI paranoia would delay the digital utopia and/or cause a military takeover of AI that would fall foul of Google’s “Don’t be evil” slogan. Elon kept pushing back and asking Larry to clarify details of his arguments, such as why he was so confident that digital life wouldn’t destroy everything we care about. At times, Larry accused Elon of being “specieist”: treating certain life forms as inferior just because they were silicon-based rather than carbon-based. We’ll return to explore these interesting issues and arguments in detail, starting in chapter 4.

going to make him remember her, make them

going to make him remember her, make them both remember

He thought for a while before beginning. “I think it was October of 1990. I was walking on Wisconsin Avenue when I met him. I struck up a conversation and asked if he wanted to come home to my apartment for some cocktails. I also mentioned that I would pay him a hundred dollars if he let me take some nude pictures of him. He agreed, and we walked to my apartment, where we engaged in some light sex and I gave him the drink. Soon he was out, and I made love to him for about an hour or so. I decided that I would kill him, and used my hands to strangle him until he stopped breathing.” Murphy interrupted by placing the Polaroid picture found on the table in the apartment. It depicted the victim straddled on his back over the side of a bathtub. There was an incision made from the bottom of his chin to the top of his genitals. The viscera was pulled out of the body and lying, as if on display, on top of the torso. The colored Polaroid was shocking. The moist, red entrails glistened, revealing the intestines and internal organs. “What’s this all about?” Murphy said, pointing to the ghastly sight. Dahmer picked it up and shrugged. “I wanted a picture of his insides, so I placed him in the bathroom and cut him open. I pulled the viscera from his body with my hands. The look and feel of it gave me unbelievable pleasure, and I masturbated and made love to him by placing my penis in it, like having intercourse.” He took a long, slow drag from his cigarette without looking up as the rest of us sat in silence. We had identified our sixth victim: David Thomas. Murphy, serious as ever, finally broke the silence. “How did you dispose of this one? Did you keep any of his parts?” Dahmer answered that he became leery of placing the bones and flesh in the trash for fear of discovery. This is when he began to use the muriatic acid. He tried to save the skull by boiling it; however, he wanted to speed up the drying process and used a higher oven temperature. The increased heat popped the skull into smaller sections. Because it was ruined, he threw it into the acid. There were no remaining parts of this victim.

At the heart of the theory was an astonishing change in the chemical cocktail of your brain that takes place during REM sleep. Concentrations of a key stress-related chemical called noradrenaline are completely shut off within your brain when you enter this dreaming sleep state. In fact, REM sleep is the only time during the twenty-four-hour period when your brain is completely devoid of this anxiety-triggering molecule. Noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine, is the brain equivalent to a body chemical you already know and have felt the effects of: adrenaline (epinephrine).

Naturally, potables stronger than Diet Coke are the responsibility of the individual. As always, cocktail hour begins at sunrise.

But marriage, she thought, was for women who wanted to stay put and play tennis with the neighbors and have cocktail hour on the lawn in full dresses. Martha didn’t want any of that. She wanted to be with him traveling from war to war. They were correspondents, not stay-at-home pals.

. The Itinerary Friday 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.: Arrivals 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Cocktail hour/hors d’oeuvres 7:00 p.m.: Dinner on the deck Saturday 8:00 a.m.: Yoga by the pool/continental breakfast 10:00 a.m. to noon: Shopping in town Noon to 5:00 p.m.: Beach, lunch, pool 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Get ready for dinner; cocktails and snacks 7:30 p.m.: Dinner at Nautilus (suggested colors: black and/or white) 10:00 p.m.: Maxxtone at the Chicken Box! Sunday Free morning, continental breakfast Noon: Lunch at Galley Beach (suggested colors: hot pink or orange) 2:00 p.m.: Sail aboard Endeavor 7:00 p.m.: Pizza party 8:30 p.m.: Ice cream truck and fireworks on the beach Monday Departures

Wisely, Vanessa has grown up to be an inscrutable artist—fabric, graphics and exuberant, tropical canvases all expressed with a kind of noncommittal chaos—so no one can really pin anything on her.

jitterbug Few ingredients combine to create as much comfort as do coffee and chocolate. The Jitterbug includes this star duo while also tossing in some coconut, vanilla, and, of course, alcohol, in the form of rum. It’s essentially a vacation in a glass, but one so filled with activities that you need a little pick-me-up in order to make it through cocktail hour. Teetotalers can use rum extract mixed with water to simulate the liquor content in this drink. TIME: 5 MINUTES SERVES: 1 2 tablespoons coconut sugar 1½ teaspoons unsweetened cacao powder 1 ounce Vanilla Syrup 1½ ounces dark rum 2 ounces coconut cream 3 ounces cold-brew coffee 3 coffee beans, for garnish Mix the coconut sugar and cacao powder on a small round plate until fully combined. Fill a large coupe (10 to 12 ounces) with ice and water to chill the glass, then discard them when the glass is sufficiently cold. Using a sponge or paper towel, moisten the rim of the chilled glass with a bit of vanilla syrup. Turn the glass upside down and dip it into the chocolate coconut sugar, without twisting. Make sure the rim is thoroughly coated. Combine the rum, coconut cream, vanilla syrup, and coffee in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously. Strain into the sugared-rim coupe. Garnish with the coffee beans to make a triangle shape. Serve and enjoy.

matcha do about nothing A matcha-and-prosecco mix seems to me to be the stuff Instagram dreams are made of (hint, hint #LittlePine #shamelesspromotion #helpussavetheanimals). This drink may not know if it’s up or down, but either way, it’s packed with antioxidants which, while it may not be the most important consideration of happy hour, I’d imagine is a welcome perk nonetheless. For a virgin version of this drink, simply replace prosecco with sparkling water. TIME: 3 MINUTES SERVES: 1 1 tablespoon sugar ½ teaspoon matcha powder ¼ teaspoon matcha powder ½ ounce hot water 1½ ounces Simple Syrup 1½ ounces fresh lemon juice Prosecco (roughly 2 ounces) Lemon wheel, for garnish Mix the sugar and ¼ teaspoon of the matcha powder in a small bowl with a dry barspoon until you’ve made a pale green sugar. Pour the matcha sugar onto a small plate and set aside. Combine the remaining ¼ teaspoon matcha powder and hot water directly in a highball glass. Use an electric frother to whisk the matcha until a smooth, creamy texture is achieved. Add ice to the matcha mixture, filling the glass to the rim. Add the simple syrup and lemon juice. Top off the glass with prosecco. Stir the cocktail with a barspoon, briefly and lightly. Cut a small notch in the lemon wheel. Following the line of the notch, coat half the wheel in matcha sugar by carefully and evenly pressing that half into the matcha sugar. Position the coated lemon wheel on the edge of the glass. Serve and enjoy.

trial and error. Other experimenters recorded the visual fields of target subjects exposed to the color red. Trainees who learned, through feedback, to approximate that same neural activity reported seeing red in their mind’s eye. Since those days, the field had shifted from visual learning to emotional conditioning. The big grant money was going to desensitizing people with PTSD. DecNef and Connectivity Feedback were being touted as treatments to all kinds of psychiatric disorders. Marty Currier worked on clinical applications. But he was also pursuing a more exotic side-hustle. “Why not?” I told my wife. And so we volunteered in her friend’s experiment. IN THE RECEPTION AREA OF CURRIER’S LAB, Aly and I chuckled over the entrance questionnaire. We would be among the second wave of target subjects, but first we had to pass the screening. The questions disguised furtive motives. HOW OFTEN DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE PAST? WOULD YOU RATHER BE ON A CROWDED BEACH OR IN AN EMPTY MUSEUM? My wife shook her head at these crude inquiries and touched a hand to her smile. I read the expression as clearly as if we were wired up together: The investigators were welcome to anything they discovered inside her, so long as it didn’t lead to jail time. I’d given up on understanding my own hidden temperament a long time ago. Lots of monsters inhabited my sunless depths, but most of them were nonlethal. I did badly want to see my wife’s answers, but a lab tech prevented us from comparing questionnaires. DO YOU USE TOBACCO? Not for years. I didn’t mention that all my pencils were covered with bite marks. HOW MUCH ALCOHOL DO YOU DRINK A WEEK? Nothing for me, but my wife confessed to her nightly Happy Hour, while plying the dog with poetry. DO YOU SUFFER FROM ANY ALLERGIES? Not unless you counted cocktail parties. HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED DEPRESSION? I didn’t know how to answer that one. DO YOU PLAY A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT? Science. I said I might be able to find middle C on a piano, if they needed it. Two postdocs took us into the fMRI room. These people had way more cash to throw around than any astrobiology team anywhere. Aly was having the same thoughts

Photos of leisure time are the new status symbols. People line up for hours to buy giant rainbow cotton candy at the Totti Candy Factory in Tokyo, or go to Purl bar in London for a cocktail served with a helium balloon or billowing honey fog, or pursue vacations in more picturesque settings like Iceland and Bali.

I returned to shower and dress with particular care. I intended to dazzle Meg Trumble with sartorial splendor, which was why I selected a knitted shirt of plum-colored Sea Island cotton and a linen sport jacket of British racing green. Slacks of fawn silk. Cordovan loafers. No socks. I displayed this costume at the family cocktail hour. “Good God!” my father gasped. I prayed Meg would be more favorably impressed by my imitation of a male bower bird.

Hosting parties that build big relationships is a skill you can learn.

You’re making me feel bad for sitting on my ass and making you do all the work.” I don’t actually feel bad. I quite enjoy him being in service to me for cocktail hour.

Races weren’t supposed to be pageants or cocktail parties. They were tests. Hundreds of hours of training came down to a few breathless moments—and only then would anyone know if the animals were ready, which would rise and which would stumble, how the work and the talent would match up to carry this horse through, while that one would be left wearing dust, the jockey ashamed or surprised or full of excuses. There

I’d helped kick caffeine withdrawal the week before. I’d given him an l-tyrosine cocktail and,

In the Macomb household, cocktail hour was religion.

Analytic philosophy has spent the last seventy years engaged in two successive revolts. If you didn't know this, don't feel bad -- philosophers engaged in revolt look pretty much exactly like philosophers not engaged in revolt. They go to the office, teach introduction to philosophy, make a few phone calls, have office hours, work on a rough draft, and head home. There's no storming of the parliament building, ripping up of city streets, or lobbing of Molotov cocktails for your revolting philosopher, or, I should say, the philosopher in revolt. "Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python

[So, what do you do?] I never enjoyed answering this cocktail question because it reflects an epidemic I was long part of: job descriptions as self-descriptions. If someone asks me now and is anything but absolutely sincere, I explain my lifestyle of mysterious means simply. I'm a drug dealer.

Ah yes, she has forgotten that success should come effortlessly or not at all. It’s always got to be playtime. Cocktail hour. As if life were always a mooning adolescence or always blindingly fun. Hard work was for other people.

It struck Linda suddenly that this was the middle of the night. Even here, in the city that never slept, most people now were sleeping. Law firm time was like casino time, only instead of an endless cocktail hour it was always a neon-bright afternoon. The dead center of the workday, all night long.

And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote. It now seems completely clear to me, looking back, that when a government talks about “fighting for Freedom” almost every Freedom you can imagine disappears for ordinary people and expands limitlessly for a handful of people in power.

DYING BREATH COCKTAIL ½ ounce Jack Daniel’s Whiskey ½ ounce Jägermeister Digestif ½ ounce Bacardi Black Rum ½ ounce Don Julio Reposado Tequila ½ ounce Cointreau Orange Spirit 2 ounces orange flavor 5 Hour Energy Drink

Host one or multiple simple “holiday cheer” gatherings. I found that just one afternoon of baking can go a long way. I make large batches of several types of cookies for Scott to share at work and the kids to offer as teachers’ gifts and to host small get-togethers, such as afternoon cocktails with my girlfriends, a coffee hour with my walking group, a mulled-wine evening with the neighbors, and spiced-cider playdates with the kids’ playmates. A minimal effort for maximum impact. No wasted flour there!

Favourite Fresh Fruit Salad   This best fresh fruit salad you can prepare with any fresh fruits available in any season. It is very refreshing and also very low in calories. I normally use different fresh fruits to make this salad which depends on the season. You will never want to try any of the disgusting can fruit salads available in the market once you master this one.   5 servings Prep time:    Ingredients Take ½ cup of each fruit Raspberries Blueberries Bananas (sliced and peeled) Kiwi fruit (sliced and peeled) Pineapple (cored, sliced and peeled) Peaches (sliced and peeled) Red grapes (halved) Mangoes (hulled and sliced) Strawberries (sliced, skinned and cored) Watermelon and Cantaloupe Juice of 1 fresh-squeezed lemon Honey or granulated sugar to taste   Instructions 1.    First step is to prepare the banana dressing. 2.    Take a small bowl, mash a banana with a fork. 3.    Add just a small amount of lemon juice but you can add more if you want more consistency. 4.    Add sugar or honey to sweeten the dressing. 5.    Set aside the banana dressing to use it later. 6.    Take the Watermelon and Cantaloupe and remove their flesh and cut into bit-size pieces. 7.    Take a large bowl and combine all the mixed prepared fruits. 8.    Add prepared banana dressing over the prepared fruits. 9.    Gently toss the fruits to coat the complete layer. 10. Cover it and refrigerate for few hours before serving. 11. You can serve it in chilled cocktail glasses to make it look appetizing.   Serving suggestions   Top this fresh salad with chopped nuts.

These guys had names for every conceivable drinking situation. They liked to have a little eye-opener to get themselves going in the morning, a midmorning bracer before attempting anything serious, a few modest cocktails at lunch, followed by the obligatory afternoon pick-me-up, which segued neatly right into happy hour and ended with a little one just to help them sleep. For purely medicinal purposes, of course.

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown hours, days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep a special cocktail of tears made of angst and gratitude, permeating us with some of the deepest emotions we will ever know. Finally, the release is ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. It also envelopes us in a warm cloak of acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet hours, days, weeks... or years.” Until that day of our own flying away, and beholding our loved one again, in that Beautiful Paradise.

Text from Mimi to Caroline: So I’m thinking we should have a game night—you know, play Pictionary and stuff like that? I’d love to, but I’m slammed. When were you thinking? Maybe the Saturday night before Thanksgiving? Can you spare a few hours over the weekend? I can spare a few hours, yes, that’s about it. You guys wanna come out to Sausalito? Be nice not to have to go back into the city. We can do that. I was thinking we should invite Sophia. Of course we should. And Neil. Oh boy. Trust me. There’s an entire wall of windows in Jillian’s house, Mimi. The last thing I need is someone throwing things. Trust me. Think Barry Derry sells party insurance?

Sean deliberately loitered on the patio with his grandmother and the other septuagenarians before going to the kitchen to pour May Ellen and Lily’s drinks. He wanted to give them a bit of privacy. As for me, Sean thought—drawing deep drafts of the scented, heavy Florida night air into his lungs--I need to pull myself together. Because it was happening already: the Lily Effect was at work on his brain. Why in God’s name had he told her he’d be accompanying her and the team on some dives, when that was the last thing he wanted to do . . . especially if he intended to maintain his sanity? Unfortunately, as dumb as he was feeling, Sean had the answer to that one. It pained him to realize that he was still as hung up on Lily as ever—and just as susceptible to her disdain. It had taken her, what, two hours since she waltzed back into Coral Beach to accuse him of crooked politics? Did Lily have any idea of the high-wire act he was attempting by trying to get the reef accurately documented and assessed before he took a public stance on the marina development? No, of course not. Sean might have filled her in, if she hadn’t made it clear she assumed his sole motivation was political gain. Stung, he’d retaliated in kind, implying that Lily might stoop so low as to manipulate the reef study—even though Sean knew the sun would set in the east before Lily Banyon committed an act of professional dishonesty. Her integrity had always been one of the things he admired most about her. That Lily actually fell for his bogus threat merely showed how profound her distrust, her dislike of him was. At the Rusted Keel, Dave had urged him to seize the opportunity to go on the research boat and work on charming Lily. Yeah, Sean thought acidly, as he carried the cocktails toward the living room. He and Lily were off to their usual great start.

I had a new romance novel downloaded to my Kindle for the five-hour flight, and a bubbling excitement

Imagine the cocktail party raconteur who captivates his listeners with some adventure story while taking dramatic sips from a gin martini. Chances are he is not a writer. This seems counter-intuitive. After all, writers create characters that are so darn interesting. A good writer can hold you spellbound through a two-hundred page story. Why aren’t all writers scintillating, life-of-the-party types in person? Some are. But many are not. Part of the answer is that writers are not required to think on their feet. Spur-of-the-moment wittiness is a necessary quality for improv actors, talk-show hosts, and politicians. But writers don’t think or work in real time. They create at their own pace, spending hours or days on clever dialogue, or crafting a scene in which they get to micro-manage every detail. Real life doesn’t work like that. And that’s okay. There is really only one place where a writer needs to be absolutely charming and irresistible; not at cocktail parties, not on television, not in front of a live audience -- but on paper.

Alexander Fuller said in Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness about being English: "In this way, the English part of our identity registers as a void, something lacking that manifests in inherited, stereotypical characteristics: an allergy to sentimentality, a casual ease with profanity, a horror of bad manners, a deep mistrust of humorlessness.

It was a memorable night of riotous jollity. Princess Margaret attached a balloon to her tiara, Prince Andrew tied another to the tails of his dinner jacket while royal bar staff dispensed a cocktail called “A Long Slow Comfortable Screw up against the Throne.” Rory Scott recalls dancing with Diana in front of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and embarrassing himself by continually standing on Diana’s toes. The comedian Spike Milligan held forth about God, Diana gave a priceless diamond and pearl necklace to a friend to look after while she danced; while the Queen was observed looking through the programme and saying in bemused tones: “It says here they have live music”, as though it had just been invented. Diana’s brother, Charles, just down from Eton, vividly remembers bowing to one of the waiters. “He was absolutely weighed down with medals,” he recalls, “and by that stage, with so many royal people there, I was in automatic bowing mode. I bowed and he looked surprised. Then he asked me if I wanted a drink.” For most of the guests the evening passed in a haze of euphoria. “It was an intoxicatingly happy atmosphere,” recalls Adam Russell. “Everyone horribly drunk and then catching taxis in the early hours, it was a blur, a glorious, happy blur.

PEP, sometimes known as PEPSE, is a cocktail of HIV medications that can prevent the infection from taking root. If you were in danger of transmitting HIV during the incident, you can use it afterwards. PEP must be consumed within 72 hours (three days) in order to be effective; ideally, it should be consumed within 24 hours. PEP is not a "morning after pill" for HIV and it cannot be relied upon to be effective. It is intended to be used in an emergency situation as a last resort, such as when a condom fails during sexual activity. You won't be shielded from other STDs or an unforeseen pregnancy by taking PEP.

A reasonable expectation was that performance in the fourth group of participants would reflect the additive impact of these two groups: four hours of sleep plus the effect of alcohol (i.e., twelve times more off-road deviations). It was far worse. This group of participants drove off the road almost thirty times more than the well-rested, sober group. The heady cocktail of sleep loss and alcohol was not additive, but instead multiplicative.

Welcome to one of the most robust, if troubling, findings from the science of self-control: People who use their willpower seem to run out of it. Smokers who go without a cigarette for twenty-four hours are more likely to binge on ice cream. Drinkers who resist their favorite cocktail become physically weaker on a test of endurance. Perhaps most disturbingly, people who are on a diet are more likely to cheat on their spouse. It’s as if there’s only so much willpower to go around. Once exhausted, you are left defenseless against temptation—or at least disadvantaged.

Being in my late 60s, what my wife calls the cocktail hour of life, some of these walks were much more tiring than I anticipated, even though my farm work keeps me reasonably fit. But that is the nature of research.

It’s a beautiful thing to be in Hollywood... the feeling of it... that classical glamour never dies.” She walked to the closet and back to the bed. “The actress lives a beautiful life once at a certain level... when her sink has a view and her phone calls aren’t rejections anymore, but producers, offices, playhouses in London, a director pitching his sacred screenplay. The food gets healthier, people around you are more positive... driving in traffic is even different because your car is nice, and the music you normally hate sounds different when life works... when you get the furniture you want... And mentors pass down movie posters from their mentors—so Hepburn never really dies. You keep it in your home... there’s room for everything... I treasure letters from other artists... studio invitations... Being a woman in Hollywood is entirely different than a man’s experience. All the time, by everyone, for everything, a woman is wanted... dinners... so many dinners... so many scripts lying around the room, in the sun... the people you have yet to meet... it’s not about fame—I do not care for the public praise... but what is truly compelling is when you make it big, you finally understand why there are palm trees in this city... Los Angeles suddenly turns on. Like a bulb you thought disliked you and would never light. But it lights. Of course, one must put the cocktail down, leave the house, and make more movies. But this is to say, the after hours are nice. When the camera is off and I return home, I get to love what is left.

Crazy Pavers: A Sophisticated and Sleek Solution for Walls and Fireplaces The beauty of Crazy Paving, or randomly placed pavers, is that it complements many different types of spaces. Like, in a retro-inspired home, its wildness makes sense and gives you the impression that it’s cocktail hour whenever the sun sets.

Embury was the first true cocktailian of the modern age, and he took time to analyze the components of a cocktail, breaking them down into a base (usually a spirit, it must be at least 50 percent of the drink); a modifying, smoothing, or aromatizing agent, such as vermouth, bitters, fruit juice, sugar, cream, or eggs; and “additional special flavoring and coloring ingredients,” which he defined as liqueurs and nonalcoholic fruit syrups. Embury taught us that the Ramos Gin Fizz must be shaken for at least five minutes in order to achieve the proper silky consistency, suggested that Peychaud’s bitters be used in the Rob Roy, and noted that “for cocktails, such as the Side Car, a three-star cognac is entirely adequate, although a ten-year-old cognac will produce a better drink.” In the second edition of his book, Embury mentioned that he had been criticized for omitting two drinks from his original work: the Bloody Mary, which he described as “strictly vile,” and the Moscow Mule, as “merely mediocre.” On the subject of Martinis, he explained that although most cocktail books call for the drink to be made with one-third to one-half vermouth, “quite recently, in violent protest of this wishy-washy type of cocktail, there has sprung up the vermouth-rinse method of making Martinis.” He describes a drink made from chilled gin in a cocktail glass coated in vermouth. Embury didn’t approve of either version, and went on to say that a ratio of seven parts gin to one part vermouth was his personal favorite. While Embury was taking his drinking seriously, many Americans were quaffing Martinis by the pitcher, and Playboy magazine commissioned cocktail maven Thomas Mario and, later, Emanuel Greenberg to deliver cocktail news to a nation of people who drank for fun, and did it on a regular basis. Esquire magazine issued its Handbook for Hosts as early as 1949, detailing drinks such as the Sloe Gin Fizz, the Pan American, the “I Died Game, Boys” Mixture, and the Ginsicle—gin with fruit juice or simple syrup poured over chipped ice in a champagne glass. A cartoon in the book depicts a frustrated bartender mopping his fevered brow and exclaiming, “She ordered it because it had a cute name.” The world of cocktails was tilting slightly on its axis, and liquor companies lobbied long and hard to get into the act. In the fifties, Southern Comfort convinced us to make Comfort Manhattans and Comfort Old-Fashioneds by issuing a booklet: How to Make the 32 Most Popular Drinks. By the seventies, when the Comfort Manhattan had become the Improved Manhattan, they were bringing us Happy Hour Mixology Plus a Primer of Happy Hour Astrology, presumably so we would have something to talk about at bars: “Oh, you’re a Virgo—discriminating, keenly analytical, exacting, and often a perfectionist. Wanna drink?

On the cocktail of drugs he’d ingested over the last forty-eight hours, he had fallen deeply in love with a kebab.