Cocktails Night Quotes

Now you listen here, mister,” I said, trying for a more adult tone. “I’m not going to spend every night listening to you try to crash you girl’s head through my wall with the force of your dick alone!

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

I staggered into a Manchester bar late one night on a tour and the waitress said "You look as if you need a Screaming Orgasm". At the time this was the last thing on my mind...

Unbelievable! I said, "What would I be doing walking the streets at night as a stuffed olive- gate-crashing cocktail parties?

Do your own thing. Others own their own thing. If you copy too much, you'll find yourself in late night cocktail lounge cover band limbo.

Different cocktails for different Saturday nights.

I cannot stand small talk, because I feel like there’s an elephant standing in the room shitting all over everything and nobody is saying anything. I’m just dying to say, 'Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?' or 'Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?' But you can’t say that at a cocktail party.

Cats don't drink cocktails,' I said. 'Cats don't shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

If Rosie’s mother had known that eye colour was not a reliable indicator of paternity, and organised a DNA test to confirm her suspicions, there would have been no Father Project, no Great Cocktail Night, no New York Adventure, no Reform Don Project—and no Rosie Project. Had it not been for this unscheduled series of events, her daughter and I would not have fallen in love. And I would still be eating lobster every Tuesday night. Incredible.

his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

The first thing I saw was blue. Blue sweater, blue eyes. Blue. Beautifully blue. Then I saw red as I recognized who belonged to the blue. “Fucking Wallbanger,” I hissed, frozen on the spot. His grin slid off as well as he played place-the-face for a moment. “Fucking Pink Nightie Girl,” he finally concluded. He grimaced. We stared, seething as the air literally turned electric between us, snapping and crackling. The four behind us had fallen silent, listening to this little interchange. Then they caught up. “That’s Wallbanger?” Sophia screeched. “Wait a minute, that’s Pink Nightie Girl?” Neil laughed, and Mimi and Ryan snorted. My face flamed bright red as I processed this information, and Simon’s sneer became that damnable smirk I’d seen that night in the hallway—when I’d banged on his door and made him quit giving it to the Giggler and yelled at him. When I’d been wearing… “Pink Nightie Girl. Pink Nightie Girl!” I choked out, beyond pissed. Beyond angry. Well into Furious Town. I stared at him, pouring all of my tension into that one look. All of the sleepless nights and lost Os and cold showers and banana thrusting and merciless wet dreams went into that one look. I wanted to level him with my eyes, make him beg for mercy. But no…Not Simon, Director of the International House Of Orgasms. He Was Still Smirking.

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.

I looked like I wasn’t at a cocktail party but an airport, waiting for my life to take off. Infinitely delayed.

So that night it’s only Athena and me at a loud, overpriced rooftop bar in Georgetown. She’s flinging back cocktails like she has a duty to prove she’s having a good time, and I’m drinking to dull the bitch in me that wishes she were dead.

Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

The lamp hummed: 'Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain." The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars.

She was teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Three-quarters child, one-quarter yearning. Her dreams were confused kaleidoscopes of swanning through the sets of TV shows, drinking cocktails that looked like vodka martinis and tasted like Sprite, wearing lipstick and pumps covered in red craft glitter, and marrying someone who was half pop star and half stuffed animal.

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment-a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus-a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer was necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.

I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. They made no honey, those things, they can provide no one with any nourishment. At the most, if my books are still read, the reader will think: There wasn’t much she didn’t see! But that unique sum of things, the experience that I lived, with all its order and its randomness — the Opera of Peking, the arena of Huelva, the candomblé in Bahía, the dunes of El-Oued, Wabansia Avenue, the dawns in Provence, Tiryns, Castro talking to five hundred thousand Cubans, a sulphur sky over a sea of clouds, the purple holly, the white nights of Leningrad, the bells of the Liberation, an orange moon over the Piraeus, a red sun rising over the desert, Torcello, Rome, all the things I’ve talked about, others I have left unspoken — there is no place where it will all live again. At

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

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are Johnny Carson and find yourself caught in an intolerable one-on-one conversation at a cocktail party from which there is no escape. Which of the two following events would you prefer to take place: (1) That the other person become more and more witty and charming, the music more beautiful, the scene transformed to a villa at Capri on the loveliest night of the year, while you find yourself more and more at a loss; or (2) that you are still in Beverly Hills and the chandeliers begin to rattle, a 7.5 Richter earthquake takes place, and presently you find yourself and the other person alive and well, and talking under a mound of rubble. If your choice is (2), explain why it is possible for a true conversation to take place under the conditions of (2) but not (1).

I thought of all the nights I’d spent in temperature controlled clubs and restaurants, under artificial lights, drinking artificial cocktails with artificial friends. Artificial problems. Artificial drama. How many real, glorious nights had I missed? Nights like this, when the universe dances for you, and you become a tiny but beautiful note of the magical song it sings.

When you think you can stand no more of the wolf's snuffing under the door and keening softly on cold nights, throw discretion into the laundry bag, put candles on the table, and for your own good if not the pleasure of an admiring audience make one or another of the recipes in this chapter. And buy yourself a bottle of wine, or make a few cocktails, or have a long open-hearted discussion of cheeses with the man on the corner who is an alien but still loyal if bewildered.

I have been seeing dragons again. Last night, hunched on a beaver dam, one held a body like a badly held cocktail; his tail, keeping the beat of a waltz, sent a morse of ripples to my canoe. They are not richly bright but muted like dawns or the vague sheen on a fly's wing. Their old flesh drags in folds as they drop into grey pools, strain behind a tree. Finally the others saw one today, trapped, tangled in our badminton net. The minute eyes shuddered deep in the creased face while his throat, strangely fierce, stretched to release an extinct burning inside: pathetic loud whispers as four of us and the excited spaniel surrounded him.

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.

I don't care any more about the handsome wealthy boys who come gingerly into the living room to take out the girl they thought would look nice in an evening cocktail dress ... I said I wanted to go out with them to meet new people. I ask you, what logic is there in that? What guy you would like, would see the depths in a girl outwardly like all the other physical american queenies? So why go places with guys you can't talk to? You'll never meet a soul that way - - - not the sort you want to meet. Better to stay in your garret reading than to go from one party to another. Face it, kid: unless you can be yourself, you won't stay with anyone for long. You've got to be able to talk. That's tough. But spend your nights learning, so you'll have something to say. Something the "attractive intelligent man" will want to listen to.

No, thank you,” she says politely. “I’d rather eat cat turds, followed by broken glass, and topped off with a kerosene cocktail.

I’ll remember that night as long as I live, for its gray, dry tastelessness, and endless length.

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere

Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. He

But the more time passed, the less I hurt. The less I hurt, the more I was able to see how beautiful, how full, my life was. I felt myself smiling as I walked in my neighborhood. My eyes followed the calls of birds to find them in the trees—grackles, woodpeckers, crows, robins, blue jays, cardinals. I’d built a life in which my days were like this: taking long walks, writing, mothering, cackling over coffee or cocktails with friends, sleeping alone some nights, being held close by someone I loved other nights. I was unfolding, learning to take up space. Life began to feel open enough, elastic enough, to contain whatever I might choose for it.

On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

We were having everyone over to the house tonight for game night, since Jillian and Benjamin were home from Amsterdam. We knew it would be harder to plan these once the baby came, so we wanted to all get together while we still could. “Why do we always get stuck hosting this night?” Simon asked, poking his head around the door to the bathroom, where I was trying to get ready. “Because we have the biggest house now, the best entertaining space.

I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

I linger too long in his embrace; the night is so warm, the rocking of the boat so lulling, I have to stop myself from swaying to the music. Daniel smells really good—a masculine cocktail of saltwater, citrus, and probably just full-on testosterone.

One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation

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.

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?

He doesn't say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss-fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

Spiritual but not religious," Zachary clarifies. He doesn't say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

In fact, candy was at the top of the list of things she was supposed to avoid, especially holiday treats from strangers. But there were also dire warnings about public toilets, dogs (even on leashes), convenience stores (especially at night), unsupervised children and teens, electrical outlets (during storms), unlit rooms, steep staircases, carnival rides, banquet or buffet food, cocktails on a date, and all weather conditions.

Carol, a swing-shift cocktail waitress in the Bird of Paradise's show lounge had gotten home (guesswork, here) around 2:15 - 2:30, poured herself a glass of milk, and had opened the back door of the kitchen for reasons unknown. (Fingerprints were later found on the outside knob that, while smudged, didn't belong to either girl.) She had opened the door, and died. Suddenly, quietly, without disturbing her sleeping roommate only a few feet away.

The fortnight in Venice passed quickly and sweetly- perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with the gondola, as we nosed through the side canals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days with the speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light on painted cielings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging in the prow, and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at Harrys Bar.

It's common knowledge in the industry that people often lie, or minimize things, when they participate in surveys, No one wants to tell a stranger they drink four cocktails a night, or eat junk food for every meal. It's the same with their views on candidates and political issues. Most people won't tell you they don't like someone when they have to look you in the eye. None of that would matter for me, though, because I would know their true emotions whether they shared them or not.

Even reading the words ‘snow hotel’ can shoot a shiver up your spine, but spending a night in one of these ethereally beautiful, extravagantly artistic icy buildings is a marvellous, though expensive, experience. There are several to choose from in Lapland, including Lumihotelli in Kemi. Heavy-duty sleeping bags ensure a relatively cosy slumber, and a morning sauna banishes any lingering chills. If you don’t fancy spending the night inside, you can visit the complexes, maybe pausing for a well-chilled vodka cocktail in the bar.

Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. He wonders what, exactly, was in that thing he drank earlier.

Life is an adventure orchestrated by God, and our attempts to be in the driver’s seat will always result in mere frustration. Why? Because this is not the way of authentic love, which involves the total surrender of self. Authentic love calls for sacrifice. That is true of all of us. Whether it’s being up with a baby all night, caring for an aging parent, giving a hurting friend a landing place in your home for a while, or becoming a foster parent, we will be called on to sacrifice. That is the way of the Cross, and we are not offered anything else. It’s easy to think of parenthood as a season of sacrifice that ends so we can move on with our lives. But neither Christ nor the saints ever model living for ourselves. God never tells us, “Wow, thanks for your service. You’ve done your time and please enjoy the next four decades of your life living just for yourself. You’ve been serving others for awhile so grab your sunscreen and enjoy your remaining years drinking cocktails in Aruba.” Can you imagine that being the final chapter of a saint’s life? We are called to live out generous love in whatever opportunities present themselves to us.

Will you be needing to know the location of Mecca?” the Keeper asks. “Oh, no, thanks, though. I’m agnostopagan.” The Keeper cocks his head questioningly. “Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending. He wonders what, exactly, was in that thing he drank earlier.

The Meaning of 'Home' As I travel from one city to another From one country to another From one sorrow to another, I encounter thousands of faces: In streets, shops, parks, and cafés. They all ask me the same painful question: 'Where are you from?' As if they know, I am from a place that lost itself and lost me On a long, cold, and sad winter night. They ask me: 'What is your country known for?' I tell them: 'My country is known for exporting sad stories, refugees, and displaced people. All those who were cursed by being born in it.' Similar questions continue to be asked in cocktail parties, In hypocritical and mediocre gatherings, In conferences and boring meetings. Some pretentiously ask me: 'How do you define "home"?' I respond with Ghassan Knafani’s words ringing in my ears: 'Home is for all of this not to happen.' April 19, 2014

Two women friends are having a Girls’ Night Out, and have been decidedly overenthusiastic on the cocktails. Weaving their way home, they realize that they need to pee. They’re near a graveyard—so they decide to do their business behind a headstone. The first woman has nothing to wipe with so she takes off her panties, uses them, and throws them away. Her friend, however, is wearing a rather expensive pair and doesn’t want to ruin hers. She manages to salvage a large ribbon from a wreath on one of the graves and proceeds to wipe herself with that. Soon, they’re heading for home. The next day the first woman’s husband phones the other husband and says, “These damn girls’ nights out have got to stop. My wife came home last night without her panties.” “That’s nothing,” says the other husband. “Mine came back with a card stuck between the cheeks of her ass that said, “From All of Us at the Fire Station, We’ll Never Forget You.

PASSION PLAY WORKSHEET Your true strengths are living right here. What are you intensely interested in? While you’re at it, include your moderate curiosities. You go to the best cocktail party ever. It’s a life-changing event because you meet the most with-it, interesting, empowered people, and each of them can contribute to your career and interests in some way.… Who was there? What kind of information did they share with you? What did they ask you? How did they offer to help you? If you could go to five conferences or events this year, which ones would you go to, or what would they be about? What could you talk about late into the night with like-minded people without running out of things to say? What activities make you feel really useful, alive, and strong? When do you feel like a rock star, a gifted contributor, a very cool and purposeful human being? In terms of things that you do, when do you feel most like yourself? What do you want to be known for?

A week after testifying, Rabi ran into Ernest Lawrence at Oak Ridge and asked him what he was going to say about Oppenheimer. Lawrence had agreed to testify against him. He was truly fed up with his old friend. Oppie had opposed him on the hydrogen bomb and opposed the building of a second weapons lab at Livermore. And more recently, Ernest had come home from a cocktail party outraged upon being told that Oppie had years before had an affair with Ruth Tolman, the wife of his good friend Richard. He was angry enough to accede to Strauss’ request to testify against Oppenheimer in Washington. But the night before his scheduled appearance, Lawrence fell ill with an attack of colitis. The next morning, he called Strauss to tell him he could not make it. Sure that Lawrence was making excuses, Strauss argued with the scientist and called him a coward. Lawrence did not appear to testify against Oppenheimer. But Robb had interviewed him earlier and now made sure that the Gray Board

Fleur listened thoughtfully with his flute in his lap, one hand stroking his German shepherd, when I think how you used to be, Fleur, I really got to wonder, but Mabel couldn’t divert the boy’s gaze from under that overhang of hair, and just as well he thought, so she doesn’t see the anger in his eyes, the rage shaking his body, furious with himself, and though it was a warm autumn and hot at noon, he was glad to retreat deep inside the hoodie that hid his chin but couldn’t stop the piercing words that went straight to the young musician’s heart, Mabel’s voice was like his own, what exactly have you done, Child Prodigy Fleur, not to be that flower crushed in the street, just a raggedy stuffed hoodie, what, what, geez you reek of alcohol, the cocktails your ma serves in the pub by the ocean when the illegal families come out to dance on the beach on Saturday nights and your ma gives them free drinks that knock them out right there, while ever since the divorce, your pa and grandpa stayed on the land, poor land back in Alabama, and haven’t they all just driven you backwards, shrunk you down to their own size, you could have gone to study in Vienna,

Stormy lived more life in one night than most people do their whole lives. She was a force of nature. She taught me that love--” My eyes well up and I start over. “Stormy taught me that love is about making brave choices every day. That’s what Stormy did. She always picked love; she always picked adventure. To her they were one and the same. And now she’s off on a new adventure, and we wish her well.” From his seat on the couch, John wipes his eyes with his sleeve. I give Janette a nod, and she gets up and presses play on the stereo, and “Stormy Weather” fills the room. “Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky…” After, John shoulders his way over to me, holding two plastic cups of fruit punch. Ruefully he says, “I’m sure she’d tell us to spike it, but…” He hands me a cup, and we clink. “To Edith Sinclair McClaren Sheehan, better known as Stormy.” “Stormy’s real name was Edith? It’s so serious. It sounds like someone who wears wool skirts and heavy stockings, and drinks chamomile tea at night. Stormy drank cocktails!” John laughs. “I know, right?” “So then where did the name Stormy come from? Why not Edie?” “Who knows?” John says, a wry smile on his lips. “She’d have loved your speech.” He gives me a warm, appreciative sort of look. “You’re such a nice girl, Lara Jean.

#25. Valuing Yourself and Your Needs (As a Parent): This is about taking care of your OWN needs as a parent because when you consistently put yourself last to be taken care of and habitually continue to sacrifice your basic necessities to make everyone else happy…Essentially, what you’re teaching your children is that they’re here to be of service to others, then themselves. In other words, you’re teaching them to take advantage of you and use you as they please, which in turn communicates to them that they’re most likely to be used. To prevent this from happening, you need to set consistent limits that protect you from demands that could be overbearing and unfair. That way, you’re communicating that your basic needs are just as important as theirs. It’s true…often times parents that are constantly sacrificing themselves are idealized and praised by other parents. You know… the ones that have no hobbies, no friends and no avenue of enjoyment. Is this really desirable? Parents constantly stressed about the needs of others in the family are usually irritable, and unmotivated to try anything new, fun or exciting. How can parents do this long term with no outlet? Instead, us parents need to enjoy ourselves and focus on being re-energized. When you take good care of yourself, you provide the means to take better care of your children. Going out to dinner or cocktails, trips to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, date night with your spouse or even some alone time reading or going for a walk allows you to be a more productive, interested and patient parent.

Every so often, the gods stop laughing long enough to do something terrible. There are few facts that are not brutal. The bitter, insufficient truth is that God recovered, but fun is dead. Alcohol: the antidote to civilization. Alcoholism is a fatal disease. But then I am not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, because I don't want to be cured. Alcoholism is suicide with training wheels. I watch myself sinking, an inch at a time, and I spit into the eye of fate, like Doc Holliday, who died too weak to lift a playing card. My traitorous and degenerate attitude is sort of my book review of the world we live in. I resign from the human race. I declare myself null and void; folded, spindled, and mutilated. . . .This bar is an oasis for the night people, the street people, the invisible tribe, the people who simply do not exist in the orderly world we see in Time - the weekly science fiction magazine published by the Pentagon - an orderly world which is a sanitized Emerald City populated by contented Munchkins who pay taxes to buy tanks, nerve gas, and bombers and not a world which is a bus-station toilet where the air is a chemical cocktail of cancer-causing agents, children are starving, and the daily agenda is kill or be killed. When the world demands that you be larger than life, and you are finding it hard enough just being life-size, you can come here, in the messy hemorrhaging of reality, let your hair down, take your girdle off, and not be embarrassed by your wounds and deformities. Here among the terminally disenchanted you are graded not by the size of the car on display in your driveway but by the size of your courage in the face of nameless things. . . .Half of these people look like they just came back from the moon, and all of them are sworn witnesses for the prosecution on the charge that Earth serves as Hell for some other planet.

Soon after I arrived on the island I had a run-in with my son’s first grade teacher due to my irreverent PJ sense of humor. When Billy lost a baby tooth I arranged the traditional parentchild Tooth Fairy ritual. Only six years old, Billy already suspected I was really the Tooth Fairy and schemed to catch me in the act. With each lost tooth, he was getting harder and harder to trick. To defeat my precocious youngster I decided on a bold plan of action. When I tucked him in I made an exaggerated show of placing the tooth under his pillow. I conspicuously displayed his tooth between my thumb and forefinger and slid my hand slowly beneath his pillow. Unbeknownst to him, I hid a crumpled dollar bill in the palm of my hand. With a flourish I pretended to place the tooth under Billy’s pillow, but with expert parental sleight of hand, I kept the tooth and deposited the dollar bill instead. I issued a stern warning not to try and stay awake to see the fairy and left Billy’s room grinning slyly. I assured him I would guard against the tricky fairy creature. I knew Billy would not be able to resist checking under his pillow. Sure enough, only a few minutes later he burst from his room wide-eyed with excitement. He clutched a dollar bill tightly in his fist and bounced around the room, “Dad! Dad! The fairy took my tooth and left a dollar!” I said, “I know son. I used my ninja skills and caught that thieving fairy leaving your room. I trapped her in a plastic bag and put her in the freezer.” Billy was even more excited and begged to see the captured fairy. I opened the freezer and gave him a quick glimpse of a large shrimp I had wrapped in plastic. Viewed through multiple layers of wrap, the shrimp kind of looked like a frozen fairy. I stressed the magnitude of the occasion, “Tooth fairies are magical, elusive little things with their wings and all. I think we are the first family ever to capture one!” Billy was hopping all over the house and it took me quite awhile to finally calm him down and get him to sleep. The next day I got an unexpected phone call at work. My son’s teacher wanted to talk to me about Billy, “Now what?” I thought. When I arrived at the school, Billy’s teacher met me at the door. Once we settled into her office, she explained she was worried about him. Earlier that day, Billy told his first grade class his father had killed the tooth fairy and had her in a plastic bag in the freezer. He was very convincing. Some little kids started to cry. I explained the previous night’s fairy drama to the teacher. I was chuckling—she was not. She looked at me as if I had a giant booger hanging out of a nostril. Despite the look, I could tell she was attracted to me so I told her no thanks, I already had a girlfriend. Her sputtering red face made me uncomfortable and I quickly left. Later I swore Billy to secrecy about our fairy hunting activities. For dinner that evening, we breaded and fried up a couple dozen fairies and ate them with cocktail sauce and fava beans.

I wasn’t quite as awake as I’d hoped to begin unpackingpalooza, and I silently cursed last night’s antics next door. The girl was plowed, spanked, she came, she slept. The same for Simon. I assumed his name was Simon, as that was what the girl who liked to be spanked kept calling him. And really, if she was making up a name there were hotter ones than Simon to be screaming out in the throes.

Tommy Dorsey’s Opus One, had Moonlight Cocktails with Glenn Miller and his band, took a Sentimental Journey with Les Brown and Doris Day, and finally boarded a Slow Boat to China with Kay Kyser, Harry Rabbit and Gloria Wood. By the time a nostalgic two-hour-long segment replaying old radio shows like Suspense and Jack Benny, Dangerous Assignment and Rocky Jordan finished, I was feeling better.

He sat forlorn, feeling as if that most feared enemy of sleep had entered silently on a busy night, the one person whom you must come face to face with someday, who asks you, in the earshot of your oldest customers, to mix a cocktail whose name you have never heard.

In its place had arisen a Promised Land of Duane Reades and Chase ATMs on every corner, luxury doorman buildings, Pilates studios and spin classes, eighteen-dollar rosemary-infused cocktails and seven-dollar cups of single-origin coffee—all of which were there to cater to a new generation of twentysomethings, the data scientists and brand strategists and software engineers and social media managers and product leads and marketing associates and IT coordinators ready to disrupt the world with apps. And today, like every day, they would work until it was dark again, and then they would go to dinner parties or secret cocktail bars or rooftop events, and most of them would end the night watching Netflix on their laptops in bed" - Prologue, Save Your Generation, in Doree Shafrir's Startup

Jimmy gave a startled yelp. She had put cute little candy cane striped glass cocktail stirrers in everyone's drinks and Jimmy had thought they were real candy canes and bitten his in half. "Goodness. I feel dreadful", Jane said to everyone while Jimmy was in the bathroom, spitting out blood and shards of glass. "Should we take him to the ER?" "Oh, he'll be fine," Duncan assured her. "He didn't go to the ER that time he accidentally locked himself into the finishing room and inhaled fumes all night." That didn't seem like the soundest piece of logic to Jane, but Jimmy came back into the room at that moment and said, "I'm OK, really Jane. I'll just keep this napkin in there to stop the bleeding." So Jimmy spent spent the rest of the evening with a white cloth napkin poking out of his mouth and looked vaguely like a trout.

Here I was, on the trip of a lifetime: seven nights in South America, exploring the rough mountains and the ripe valleys between with my best friend of more than a decade. A cocktail so bracing and sweet, it tasted like stepping into the surf. And we still had two nights to go.

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.

So take three instances at random. A young white college sophomore throws a Molotov cocktail that burns down a black-owned deli, and he does this because he wants to register his deep dissatisfaction with the police treatment of blacks in that city. Or another person, as timid as they come, is out for a walk on a bike path, two miles out of town, all by herself, and she is wearing a mask. Or someone else thinks that it can cost two dollars to get a gallon of milk to market, but also thinks that we can make the make the greedster grocer sell it for a buck fifty, and yet still have milk on the shelf. What do these, and countless other instances, have in common? What they all have in common is that these people received a lousy education. As we watch this great parade of duncical folly every night on the news, one thought should come back to haunt us with every fresh insult to right reason. And that thought should be, "Who educated these people?" And the follow-up question should be, "And why haven't they been sacked?

• Inner Fist She has promised herself that she will not allow the past to taint her future. She will no longer envision how her life might have been, but will instead create the life she should have. She will knock the memories back with her inner fist instead of drowning them in Friday night sympathy cocktails.

If traveling with cold-weather cohorts, before you begin packing, start a shared online spreadsheet for menu planning and cooking assignments. Determine who’s in charge of each fireside feast (and the resulting dish duty), what ingredients and equipment are needed, and, perhaps paramount, who has bar duty, because those calvados cocktails aren’t going to mix themselves. Keep a tally of expenses, and settle up via Venmo.

She feels a sense of unease pass through her as she sees Giovanni head to the cocktail cabinet for a second bottle of vodka, the careless, loose-wristed glugging into guests’ glasses, the glaze across Nathan’s eyes, the loudness of him, the babble of bullshit, the overloud laugh, and she knows already that this will be one of those nights and she doesn’t want to be that wife, the purse-lipped, stick-up-the-butt wife, the wife who can’t relax and can’t have fun and spoils it for everyone else. She wants to down tequila shots and sing and dance and laugh like a drain. But she can’t take on that role because Nathan has already staked his claim on it and one of them has to remain sentient and together; one of them has to be the grown-up.

Moreover he did it without saying a word to anyone, which is perhaps even more uncommon, and even the Saint did not hear about it until after the crime had been committed. “Next time you’re thinking of being rude to me,” said Peter Quentin, on that night of revelation, “please remember that you’re talking to a budding novelist whose work has been compared to Dumas, Tolstoy, Conan Doyle, and others.” Simon Templar choked over his highball. “Only pansies bud,” he said severely. “Novelists fester. Of course, it’s possible to be both.” “I mean it,” insisted Peter seriously. “I was keeping it quiet until I heard the verdict, and I had a letter from the publishers today.” There was no mistaking his earnestness, and the Saint regarded him with affectionate gloom. His vision of the future filled him with overwhelming pessimism. He had seen the fate of other young men—healthy, upright young men who had had a book published. He had seen them tread the downhill path of pink shirts, velvet coats, long hair, quill pens, cocktail parties, and beards, until finally they sank into the awful limbos of Bloomsbury and were no longer visible to the naked eye.

Cats don’t drink cocktails,” I said. “Cats don’t shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.

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?

Despite the absence of speech, the green area on the upper part of the gyrus was glowing. “If it’s lighting up, it means she’s talking to me at this very moment.” “Eugenie?” Sharko grunted. Leclerc felt a chill. To see his chief inspector’s meninges react to speech like this, when you couldn’t even hear a fly buzzing, made him feel like there was a ghost in the room. “What’s she saying?” “She wants me to buy a pint of cocktail sauce and some candied chestnuts next time I go shopping. She loves those miserable chestnuts. Excuse me a second…” Sharko closed his eyes, lips pressed tight. Eugenie was someone he might see and hear at any moment. On the passenger seat of his old Renault. At night when he went to bed. Sitting cross-legged, watching the mini-gauge trains run around the tracks. Two years earlier, Eugenie had often shown up with a black man, Willy, a huge smoker of Camels and pot. A real mean son of a bitch, much worse than the little girl because he talked loud and tended to gesticulate wildly. Thanks to the treatment, the Rasta had disappeared for good, but the other one, the girl, came and went as she pleased, resistant as a virus.

That’s the only reason,” he said. “Have a good night. Sweet dreams.

That night Koch... tacked Chalmers down at a cocktail party for the conferencees and chastised him for his speech. It is precisely because philisophical approaches to consciousness have all failed that scientists must focue on the brain, Koch declared in his rapid-fire German-accented voice, his rubberneckers gathered. Chalmers's information-based theory of consciousness, Koch continued, liek all philosophical ideas, was untestable and therefore useless. "Why don't you just say that when you have a brain the Holy Ghost comes down and makes you conscious!" Koch exlaimed. Such a theory was unnecissarily complicated, Chalmers responded drily, and it would not accord with his own subjective experience. "But how do I know that your subjective experience is the same as mine?" Koch sputtered. "How do I even know you're conscious?

Just wait until they cut you lose, Kat, and find some other nice Kindred. Try a Blood Kindred like Sylvan—they’re wonderful.” “I would have to put in a vote for a Beast Kindred,” Olivia said, grinning. “Not only are they the best lovers, they’re the best cooks too. Baird has been making me something new every night.” “Better than his first attempt at pizza, I hope?” Kat said, trying to smile. Liv grinned. “Much better. Baird’s come a long way from the days when he thought fruit cocktail was a good topping option.” Kat sighed. “They sound great and both of your husbands are wonderful men…” “I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Sophie murmured. “But, I’m just not interested.” Kat sighed and put her head in her hands. “I don’t know, maybe when this is all over with I’ll just go back to Earth and try to find a regular human guy. One who doesn’t force me to feel his painful emotions all the time, one without a tortured secret past, one who doesn’t freaking have to have his brother in bed with him to have sex.” Liv snorted. “Uh, sorry Kat but that came out sounding really wrong.” Kat waved a hand. “You know what I mean. It’s not sexual—not between them, anyway. But they seriously can’t touch me unless the other one is too, or it hurts them.” Sophie shook her head. “That’s so weird.” “Weirder than being bitten every single time you have sex?” Liv said, frowning. “Weirder than any of the other stuff that goes with being a Kindred bride?” “Well, I guess not,” Sophie said, shrugging. “But you have to admit, it’s not what we’re used to.” “Different isn’t always bad,” Liv said. “And love comes in all shapes and sizes. Maybe Deep is afraid to let himself love you, Kat. Maybe because of whatever it was that happened he feels unworthy of your love.” Kat frowned. “He did say something about me being unattainable—like the moon or the stars or something like that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But then he went right back to being a jerk.” “He went back into his protective shell,” Olivia said. “I’m telling you, Kat—I bet he loves you just as much as Lock does—in his own way.” “Yeah? Well he could have fooled me,” Kat said sarcastically.

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.

Girls’ Night Out Two female friends had gone out drinking, just the girls, and had made excessively close friends with a large but uncertain number of cocktails. Walking home feeling no pain at all, they suddenly both realized they needed to pee. There was no toilet in sight and no open restaurants or anything, but they were passing by a graveyard and one of them suggested they flush their systems there, so they did, fertilizing some unknown person’s final resting place. Of course they had no toilet paper, this fact having slipped their minds in their inebriation. The first woman took off her panties, used them to wipe herself, and tossed them aside. Her friend didn’t want to do the same because she was wearing some fancy underwear and didn’t want to ruin it, but she was lucky enough to find a wreath on a grave with a big ribbon attached and wiped herself with that (after all, the intended recipient had no use for it, or for anything else). After finishing, they made their unsteady way home. The next day one woman’s husband phoned the other husband and said, “You know, we have to talk to our wives about these damned girls’ nights out. When my wife came home last night her panties were missing. I have no idea what she was up to, but it can’t be anything good!” “You think that’s bad,” said the other husband. “My wife came back with a card stuck between the cheeks of her butt that said, ‘From all of the firemen at the fire station, in heartfelt appreciation.

Some critics questioned Mr. Obama for the optics of a jovial president dancing the night away as police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, exchange tear gas and Molotov cocktails.

Kokomo Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take ya Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go, Jamaica Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo That's where you want to go to get away from it all Bodies in the sand, tropical drink melting in your hand We'll be falling in love to the rhythm of a steel drum band Down in Kokomo [Chorus] Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go Ooh I want to take you down to Kokomo, we'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow That's where we want to go, way down in Kokomo. Martinique, that Montserrat mystique We'll put out to sea and we'll perfect our chemistry And by and by we'll defy a little bit of gravity Afternoon delight, cocktails and moonlit nights That dreamy look in your eye, give me a tropical contact high Way down in Kokomo [Chorus] Port au Prince, I want to catch a glimpse Everybody knows a little place like Kokomo Now if you want to go and get away from it all Go down to Kokomo [Chorus] Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go Ooh I want to take you down to

The night sky was licking dew all over them. She felt the weight of the world in the weight of his body, and she knew he was about to break her and brand her. She licked her lips and tightened her hold on his hips. “Do it,” she said.

He put one of the platters in front of Liv, forcing her to get up-close and personal with his dinner creation. It looked even worse on her plate than it had from a distance. Liv was glad she had a strong stomach. She’d seen some fairly disgusting things during nursing school, especially during her surgery rotation and in the burn unit, but none of them were quite as nasty as Baird’s “pizza.” “Well, go ahead. I thought you were starving.” She looked up to see him watching her, black eyebrows raised in anticipation. Oh my God, I’m actually going to have to eat it! Her stomach rolled at the thought. “You, uh, gave me so much I don’t know where to begin,” she lied weakly. “Only one piece.” He frowned. “Is it too much?” “It’s just a little more than I’m used to. Uh, on Earth we cut a pizza into eight or ten wedges.” And we don’t top it with fruit cocktail! “I can cut it into smaller pieces if you want,” he offered. “No, no. That’s okay. I’ll make do.” There was no putting it off anymore. Taking a deep breath, Liv lifted the huge sloppy slice and forced herself to take a bite. “You like it?” Baird stared at her suspiciously. “Mmm, delicious,” Liv mumbled, fighting her gag reflex. Inside her mouth the flavors of canned salmon, lima beans, and fruit cocktail were fighting and she wondered how in the world she would swallow without throwing up. But the big warrior was still watching her carefully for her reaction and she didn’t want to insult him. With a monumental effort she choked down the mess and prayed it wouldn’t come back up. “So it’s good?” he asked again. “Unforgettable,” Liv assured him which for once was the absolute truth. “Glad you like it.” Baird lifted his own piece of pizza and, keeping his eyes on her the entire time, took a huge bite. But when he started to chew, his face turned a peculiar shade of red. “Gods!” Getting up from the table in a hurry, he ran to the sink and spat out the mouthful. Then he turned back to Liv. “That was fuckin’ horrible. Why didn’t you tell me?” Liv shrugged, not sure if she should laugh or feel sorry for him. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” “I’d rather have my feelings hurt than eat that slop.” Baird frowned. “I don’t understand what you humans see in that dish anyway.” “Well…” Liv tried to think of a way to put it tactfully. “We don’t always make it exactly like that.” She nodded at the half a pizza she’d put back down on the metal serving tray. “But I did everything the clerk told me to,” Baird protested. “He said it was mistake proof. That anyone could do it.” “Anyone can do it. You just put a little too much on it, that’s all.” “Damn it to hell.” Baird sighed. “I’m sorry, Olivia. I wanted to make all your favorites—the things I saw you eating in my dreams. It was between this and that other stuff you like with the raw sea creatures rolled in the white grains. I thought this would be easier.” “Sushi?” Liv bit her lip to keep from laughing. “You were going to try and make me sushi?” As badly as he’d screwed up the pizza, she couldn’t imagine what his version of sushi would look like. Visions of a whole dead fish coated in sticky rice and rolled in peas and carrots instead of roe rose to mind. Ugh. Baird shrugged. “I wanted to. I wanted to make you something special every night. But I guess I’m not very good at cooking human food. Sorry.” He sounded so crestfallen and his broad shoulders slumped so sadly that Liv couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She rose and went to put a hand lightly on his arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure if I tried to make Kindred cuisine I wouldn’t do any better.” Baird

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.

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.

Spotted on Facebook Student: I don’t understand why my grade was so low. How did I do on my research paper? Teacher: Actually, you didn’t turn in a research paper. You turned in a random assemblage of sentences. In fact, the sentences you apparently kidnapped in the dead of night and forced into this violent and arbitrary plan of yours clearly seemed to be placed on the pages against their will. Reading your paper was like watching unfamiliar, uncomfortable people interacting at a cocktail party that no one wanted to attend in the first place. You didn’t submit a research paper. You submitted a hostage situation.

Alice looked up at the moon just starting the nightly shift. It’s light outlined a single cloud slowly crossing the sky. She chewed her bottom lip. That’s how she needed it to be. Just being close to him pushed her to the limit. Desire and fear. A cocktail better left on the table. But it burned through her stomach when they were together. -Finding Home, a novel by Jesse Birkey

FLETCHER: The truth is I don’t think people understand what it is I did at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any idiot can move his hands and keep people in tempo. No, it’s about pushing people beyond what’s expected of them. And I believe that is a necessity. Because without it you’re depriving the world of its next Armstrong. Its next Parker. Why did Charlie Parker become Charlie Parker, Andrew? ANDREW: Because Jo Jones threw a cymbal at him. FLETCHER: Exactly. Young kid, pretty good on the sax, goes up to play his solo in a cutting session, fucks up -- and Jones comes this close to slicing his head off for it. He’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night. But the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And practices and practices. With one goal in mind: that he never ever be laughed off-stage again. A year later he goes back to the Reno, and he plays the best motherfucking solo the world had ever heard. Now imagine if Jones had just patted young Charlie on the head and said “Good job.” Charlie would’ve said to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a good job,” and that’d be that. No Bird. Tragedy, right? Except that’s just what people today want. The Shaffer Conservatories of the world, they want sugar. You don’t even say “cutting session” anymore, do you? No, you say “jam session”. What the fuck kind of word is that? Jam session? It’s a cutting session, Andrew, this isn’t fucking Smucker’s. It’s about weeding out the best from the worst so that the worst become better than the best. I mean look around you. $25 drinks, mood lighting, a little shrimp cocktail to go with your Coltrane. And people wonder why jazz is dying. Take it from me, and every Starbucks jazz album only proves my point. There are no two words more harmful in the entire English language than “good job”.

Recoiling backwards from the horror, his flight catapulted him headlong over the rail of the balcony. His piercing scream drowned out the uproarious Happy Birthday greeting from his wife, friends, and neighbors flooding into the hallway and the living room to begin the celebration. In midair, when someone turned on the lights in the dining room, Gary saw the monster from the master bedroom pulling off her rubber mask and looking down at him from the railing with sad eyes. It was Janine, his next-door neighbor. In the seconds before Gary lost consciousness after breaking his neck on the ceramic tile floor, he saw the entire room fill with balloons and confetti. Gwen looked ravishing in her favorite cocktail dress blowing a noisemaker and tossing a streamer into the air. A huge banner with the words, “Happy Halloween, Gary on Your 40th Birthday… A Night To Remember” was the last thing he saw before the grim reaper gobbled him up. Gwen had done it again. She had planned a truly memorable party that no one in attendance would ever forget. Gary died on the same day he was born, October 31.

I’d booked three nights at a hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. It would be our first vacation ever, and I couldn’t wait. The pictures on the hotel’s website showed couples lazing in hammocks, or sipping cocktails beside the pool. Also? Miami Beach was supposed to be one of the gayest vacation spots in America. And Caleb and I had never seen the ocean yet. There was just so much to look forward to.

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You,” she says, as if it’s a curse. I smile down at her, enjoying everything about this moment, including how much she’d obviously like to stab me in the eye with a cocktail fork. “Buonasera, Miss Bobbitt. Cut off anyone’s cock since I last saw you?” She narrows her gorgeous green eyes at me. “The night’s still young.

Finally, Diana had worked her way down to the Abbey, an upscale restaurant with a small but lush courtyard that featured a tinkling fountain, a pair of wooden benches, flowering bushes and stands of tall grasses, and a statue resembling Rodin's The Thinker (one of the few things she did remember from the art history class she'd taken). She'd never eaten there, but she remembered Dr. Levy mentioning it as one of the places she and her husband visited for date night at least once every summer. She sat on the bench for a minute to rest her feet and peruse the menu. Tuna sushi tempura (eighteen dollars for an appetizer). Almond-crusted cod with a mandarin-citrus beurre blanc (twenty-eight dollars) and butter-poached lobster (market price). The list of cocktails and special martinis ran two pages, and when she walked up the curved stone steps and stepped into the dining room, the views of the bay were gorgeous.

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

On that night in 1946 when the Count and Richard had first become acquainted over Audrius’s magenta concoction, the American had challenged the bartender to design a cocktail in each of the colors of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Thus were born the Goldenrod, the Robin’s Egg, the Brick Wall, and a dark green potion called the Christmas Tree. In addition, it had become generally known in the bar that anyone who could drink all four cocktails back to back earned the right to be called “The Patriarch of All Russia”—as soon as he regained consciousness.

Regret is what happens the morning after the night before. I regret going out for drinks after work. I regret not saying no to the third, fourth or any of the subsequent cocktails I enjoyed. I regret forgetting to cancel my alarm and I regret that I’m unable to call in sick to work. Most of all, I regret that I’d taken the promotion six months ago

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.

Molly. If people could choose and control their dreams, why would anyone ever be awake? We’d all be on a Greek island drinking free cocktails and having sex with Aidan Turner.

There’s only one activity that stimulates the brain to produce all seven at the same time, and that’s the ecstatic state of flow. The shortest way there is deep, alpha-driven meditation. When you blend all seven into a single cocktail, the result is euphoria. Let’s see: What might a combination of the first letters of each drug look like? Serotonin, Oxytocin, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Anandamide, Nitric oxide, and Beta-endorphin? Just for fun, let’s combine them, and call our cocktail’s special blend SONDANoBe. This is the magic formula that, produced inside our own bodies in the proper ratios, bathes the brain in the chemicals of ecstasy. GETTING HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY When I meditate, I can feel the moment when each drug in the cocktail kicks in. First, I use EFT tapping and release any and every negative thought, emotion, and energy. This drops my level of cortisol, along with suppressing the high beta brain waves of stress. I now have a molecular substrate in my brain upon which I can build a deep and focused meditative experience. Next, I close my eyes and focus. Dopamine kicks in as I anticipate the delicious hormone and neurotransmitter drug cocktail I’m about to be rewarded with. The dopaminergic reward system of my brain fires up and the “body learning” of how to meditate—stored in my basal ganglia, which memorize frequently performed actions—comes online. Ingredient one. My mind starts to wander. My email inbox. The morning’s first meeting. The laugh line of the movie I watched last night. An overdue deadline. Damn, I’m way out of the zone already, cortisol rising, and I haven’t been meditating more than 5 minutes. Dopamine brings me back to focus, aided by norepinephrine. I’m motivated. I want Bliss Brain more than I want an endless loop of the Me Show. I return to center. Cortisol drops. Ahhh, I’m back. Norepinephrine stimulates my attention. Ingredient two. Then I realize that my body is uncomfortable. I have a twinge in my right knee. My lower back hurts. My tummy’s rumbling because it’s empty. I consciously shift my wandering mind back into focus. Back in sync, my neurons secrete beta-endorphin, which masks the pain. The discomfort drops away, and being in a body feels wonderful. Ingredient three. I tune in to each of the archetypal strands that guide me. Mother Mary. Kwan Yin. Healing. Strength. Beauty. Wisdom. I imagine myself meditating in a field of a million saints. I’m lost in Bliss Brain, as serotonin, the satisfaction drug, kicks in. Ingredient four. I feel one with the universe. Oxytocin starts to flow, as I bond with everything. Ingredient five. That releases nitric oxide and anandamide. Ingredients six and seven.

The seventies were crazy everywhere, but crazier in Los Angeles. It was the era of freewheeling drugs and sex, the rag end of the sixties. I refer to sprees, to strange couplings and triplings, to nights that started with beer and wine and ended with cocaine and capsules, to debaucheries too various to chronicle. In a sense, we were all Robert Mitchum, smoking rope in bed with two girls while the sun was still noon high. We thought it was normal. You would walk into a house for a pool party, and there, on the cocktail table in the center of the living room, as if it were nuts or cooked shrimp, would be a platter of cocaine. We did it because we were stupid, because we did not know the danger. When I talk about my drug years, I am talking about twenty-four months in the middle of the seventies. I was in the rock and roll world, which meant I was around the stuff all the time. Of course, it was more than mere proximity. I was fun when I was high, talkative and all-encompassing. I could go forever, never be done talking. To some extent, I was really self-medicating, using the drugs to skate over issues in my own life. The fact is, money and success had come so fast, while I was away doing something else, not paying attention, that, when I finally realized where I was and just what I had, I could not understand it. There was this voice in my head, saying, Who do you think you are? What do you think you did? You are a fraud! You don’t deserve any of this! I tortured myself, and let the anxiety well up, then beat back the anxiety with the drugs, on and on, until one day, I stood up and said, “Screw it. That’s over. I’m done.” No rehab, no counseling, nothing like that. Just a moment of clarity, in which I saw myself from the outside, the mess I was making, the waste. I was slipping, not working as hard as I used to. I started leaving the office early on Fridays, then skipping Fridays altogether. Then I started leaving early on Thursdays, then arriving late on Mondays. I was letting myself go. Then one day, I just decided, It has to stop. I threw away the pills and bottles, took a cold shower, had a barbershop shave, and stepped into the cool of Sunset Boulevard, and began fresh. Maybe it had to do with my family situation. I was a father again.