Embarrassing Celebrity Quotes

I think everybody's weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.

Hey. Hands off.”, “Please. Please, please, soooo pretty. Lemme just have one little touch.” “Peabody, isn’t it embarrassing enough you’re wearing pink cowboy boots, again, without standing here drooling on my coat?

When I was younger, I think what I wanted was to travel the world, to lead a glamorous life, to be celebrated for my work, to marry a great intellectual, to reject everything I had been raised with, to cut myself off from the narrow world. I feel very embarrassed by all that now, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn’t understand that these feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness.

I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.

History may well be a series of stories we tell about the past, but the stories are not just any stories. They're not chosen by chance. By and large, the stories are about famous men and celebrated events. We throw in a couple of exceptional women every now and then, not out of any need to recognize female eminence, but out of embarrassment.

Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty, all embarrassment into laughter. In biblical faith, brokenness is never celebrated as an end in itself.

It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form’s sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow. The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense

the more one respects Jesus, the more one must be brokenhearted, embarrassed, furious, or some combination thereof when one considers what we Christians have done with Jesus. That’s certainly true when it comes to calling Jesus Lord, something we Christians do a lot, often without the foggiest idea of what we mean. Has he become (I shudder to ask this) less our Lord and more our Mascot?

Interestingly, adults are only shamed for having an obsessive interest if that interest is a bit too “strange,” and doesn’t come with the opportunity to rack up a lot of achievements or make a lot of money. People who routinely complete eighty-hour workweeks aren’t penalized for being obsessive or hyperfixated; they’re celebrated for their diligence. If an adult fills their evenings after work learning to code or creating jewelry that they sell on Etsy, they’re seen as enterprising. But if someone instead devotes their free time to something that gives them pleasure but doesn’t financially benefit anyone, it’s seen as frivolous or embarrassing, even selfish. In this instance, it’s clear that the punishing rules imposed on Autistic children reflect a much broader societal issue: pleasure and nonproductive, playful time are not valued, and when someone is passionate about the “wrong” things, that passion is discouraged because it presents a distraction from work and other “respectable” responsibilities.

The coronavirus pandemic will show us something embarrassing that we have known for centuries in human history: The dead will be forgotten quickly, and those who live will just start celebrations because they will live only a little longer!

Of course, I think Legna tops this particular cake. You see, when Mind Demons teleport, they have to remember to teleport their clothes with them.” “Oh no . . .” “Oh, yes. Noah’s coronation anniversary. There is an incredible celebration every ten years, and everyone goes, even the most solitary of us. Legna was sixteen years old, and she was running late just like any typical teenager. She exploded into the room. Mind you, the display of a teleport in someone so young is ten times what you see her cause now, so she had everyone’s attention. That youngling blushed bright red in places I never thought a woman could blush. It was a most enlightening moment.” “I’ll bet!” Isabella giggled, her skin flushing in sympathetic embarrassment. “The poor thing!” “Well, Noah responded very fast, so I assure you she only had time for a quick blush before he covered her in smoke, blocking her from a multitude of very astonished eyes. We do not tease her about it, however. Noah actually passed a law saying we could not. It was the only way he could get her to go out in public again. I am risking my peace of mind telling you this. One chuckle in front of her, little flower, and you will doom me. So please . . .

Don't let familiar pain beat unfamiliar gain.

Red Flag: A Narcissist cannot celebrate your success. Upsetting you, ignoring your wins, making it all about them, or embarrassing you are common tactics.

Where most friends would say, “Poor baby,” running friends say, “You’re being a baby.” Where most friends offer gentle encouragement, running friends talk smack. Running buddies celebrate the best, tolerate the worst, and pretend not to notice the embarrassing. They’re a vault for the secrets that we share on the trail, when we’re hungry, hot, and way too tired to be anything but 100 percent real. And when someone asks, “Would it be a horrible idea if . . . ?” the running buddy’s answer is always, “Yes. What time?” A running buddy sees your limitless potential and will happily act as a mirror until you see it, too.

Mrs. Davenport - There's no cause to be so snippy. Gertrude - There's no cause to embarrass a person either, but that didn't stop you from sending me off to a formal engagement celebration wearing a birdcage attached to my behind.

Guston tacked toward celebrating the crap of life not for its own ironic sake, but as the ever-present still life that surrounds the embarrassingly, even tragically human. No Duchampian object is ever tragic. Many if not most of Guston's objects, even the most hilarious, are.

Like when you see a celebrity in a cafe and instinctively burst out, "Oh, hi there!" before you realize that your brain has had time to tell you, "Hey, that's probably someone you know, say hi!" but not, "No wait, it's just that guy from the TV!" Because your brain likes to make you look like an idiot.

When I was younger, I think what I wanted was the travel the world, to lead a glamorous life, to be celebrated for my work, to marry a great intellectual, to reject everything I had been raised with, to cut myself off from the narrow world. I feel very embarrassed by all that now, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn't understand that these feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness. Maybe if I had understood that, as I think I do now, at least a little bit, I would never have written those books, I would never have become this person. I don't know. I know that I couldn't write them again, or feel the way I felt about myself at that time. It was important to me then to prove that I was a special person. And in my attempt to prove it, I made it true. Only afterwards, when I had received the money and acclaim which I believed I deserved, did I understand that it was not possible for anyone to deserve these things, and by then it was too late. I had already become the person I had once longed to be, and now energetically despised.

For Christians, the Trinity is the primary symbol of a community that holds together by containing diversity within itself. Another symbol of a unity that is not uniform might be the Bible itself, with its two creation accounts in the Book of Genesis, and four gospels, each with a strikingly different approach to telling the story of Jesus and his ministry. Church historians such as Margaret Miles point out that “Christianity is, and historically has been, pluralistic in beliefs, creeds, and liturgical and devotional practices in different geographical settings as well as over the 2,000 years of its existence.” The wonder is that this flexibility and diversity has often been considered more of an embarrassment than celebrated as one of the religion’s strengths.

Philby now went in for the kill. Elliott had tipped him off that he would be cleared by Macmillan, but mere exoneration was not enough: he needed Lipton to retract his allegations, publicly, humiliatingly, and quickly. After a telephone consultation with Elliott, he instructed his mother to inform all callers that he would be holding a press conference in Dora’s Drayton Gardens flat the next morning. When Philby opened the door a few minutes before 11:00 a.m. on November 8, he was greeted with gratifying proof of his new celebrity. The stairwell was packed with journalists from the world’s press. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “Do come in.” Philby had prepared carefully. Freshly shaved and neatly barbered, he wore a well-cut pinstriped suit, a sober and authoritative tie, and his most charming smile. The journalists trooped into his mother’s sitting room, where they packed themselves around the walls. Camera flashes popped. In a conspicuous (and calculated) act of old-world gallantry, Philby asked a journalist sitting in an armchair if he would mind giving up his seat to a lady journalist forced to stand in the doorway. The man leaped to his feet. The television cameras rolled. What followed was a dramatic tour de force, a display of cool public dishonesty that few politicians or lawyers could match. There was no trace of a stammer, no hint of nerves or embarrassment. Philby looked the world in the eye with a steady gaze and lied his head off. Footage of Philby’s famous press conference is still used as a training tool by MI6, a master class in mendacity.

I had heard that Presley died on the toilet, but I’d assumed the location was happenstance, as it was with Judy Garland and Lenny Bruce: an embarrassing setting for a standard celebrity overdose. But the straining-at-stool theory made some sense. With all three autopsies—that of J.W., Mr. K., and E., as Presley’s intimates called him—the collapse was abrupt and the autopsy revealed no obvious cause of death. (Though Presley had traces of several prescription drugs in his blood, none was present at a lethal level.) What Elvis’s autopsy did unambiguously reveal was a colon two to three times normal size.

Deacon met my glare with an impish grin. “Anyway, did you celebrate Valentine’s Day when you were slumming with the mortals?” I blinked. “Not really. Why?” Aiden snorted and then disappeared into one of the rooms. “Follow me,” Deacon said. “You’re going to love this. I just know it.” I followed him down the dimly-lit corridor that was sparsely decorated. We passed several closed doors and a spiral staircase. Deacon went through an archway and stopped, reaching along the wall. Light flooded the room. It was a typical sunroom, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, wicker furniture, and colorful plants. Deacon stopped by a small potted plant sitting on a ceramic coffee table. It looked like a miniature pine tree that was missing several limbs. Half the needles were scattered in and around the pot. One red Christmas bulb hung from the very top branch, causing the tree to tilt to the right. “What do you think?” Deacon asked. “Um… well, that’s a really different Christmas tree, but I’m not sure what that has to do with Valentine’s Day.” “It’s sad,” Aiden said, strolling into the room. “It’s actually embarrassing to look at. What kind of tree is it, Deacon?” He beamed. “It’s called a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree.” Aiden rolled his eyes. “Deacon digs this thing out every year. The pine isn’t even real. And he leaves it up from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Which thank the gods is the day after tomorrow. That means he’ll be taking it down.” I ran my fingers over the plastic needles. “I’ve seen the cartoon.” Deacon sprayed something from an aerosol can. “It’s my MHT tree.” “MHT tree?” I questioned. “Mortal Holiday Tree,” Deacon explained, and smiled. “It covers the three major holidays. During Thanksgiving it gets a brown bulb, a green one for Christmas, and a red one for Valentine’s Day.” “What about New Year’s Eve?” He lowered his chin. “Now, is that really a holiday?” “The mortals think so.” I folded my arms. “But they’re wrong. The New Year is during the summer solstice,” Deacon said. “Their math is completely off, like most of their customs. For example, did you know that Valentine’s Day wasn’t actually about love until Geoffrey Chaucer did his whole courtly love thing in the High Middle Ages?” “You guys are so weird.” I grinned at the brothers. “That we are,” Aiden replied. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.” “Hey Alex,” Deacon called. “We’re making cookies tomorrow, since it’s Valentine’s Eve.” Making cookies on Valentine’s Eve? I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as Valentine’s Eve. I laughed as I followed Aiden out of the room. “You two really are opposites.” “I’m cooler!” Deacon yelled from his Mortal Holiday Tree room

When I was younger, I think what I wanted was to travel the world, to lead a glamorous life, to be celebrated for my work, to marry a great intellectual, to reject everything I had been raised with, to cut myself off from the narrow world. I feel very embarrassed by all that now, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I didn’t understand that these feelings were ordinary, that there was nothing singular about my loneliness, my unhappiness. Maybe if I had understood that, as I think I do now, at least a little bit, I would never have written those books, I would never have become this person. I don’t know. I know that I couldn’t write them again, or feel the way I felt about myself at that time.

My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.” They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after. “I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said. “That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.

Most of people she knew thought Rennie was way out ahead of it, but she saw herself as off to the side. She preferred it there; she’d noted, many times, the typical pose of performers, celebrities, in magazine shots and publicity stills and especially on stage. Teeth bared in an ingratiating smile, arms flung wide to the sides, hands open to show that there were no weapons, head thrown back, throat bared to the knife; an offering, an exposure. She felt no envy towards them. In fact she found them embarrassing, their eagerness, their desperation, for that was what it was, even when they were successful. Underneath it they would do anything; they’d take their clothes off if there was no other way, they’d stand on heads, anything, in that frenzied grab for attention. She would much rather be the one who wrote things about people like that than be the one that got written about.

He had discovered that the reason for the carnival atmosphere on Saquo-Pilia Hensha was that the local people were celebrating the annual feast of the Assumption of St. Antwelm. St. Antwelm had been, during his lifetime, a great and popular king who had made a great and popular assumption. What King Antwelm had assumed was that what everybody wanted, all other things being equal, was to be happy and enjoy themselves and have the best possible time together. On his death he had willed his entire personal fortune to financing an annual festival to remind everyone of this, with lots of good food and dancing and very silly games like Hunt the Wocket. His Assumption had been such a brilliantly good one that he was made into a saint for it. Not only that, but all the people who had previously been made saints for doing things like being stoned to death in a thoroughly miserable way or living upside down in barrels of dung were instantly demoted and were now thought to be rather embarrassing.

Secret Door" Fools on parade cavort and carry on For waiting eyes That you would rather be beside than in front of But she's never been the kind to be hollowed by the stares She swam out of tonight's phantasm Grabbed my hand and made it very clear There's absolutely nothing for us here It's a magnolia celebration To be attempted on a Wednesday night It's better than to get a reputation As a miserable little tyke At least that's the conclusion She came to in this overture The secret door swings behind us She's saying nothing She's just giggling along Her arms were folded most indignant Not looking like she was soon to leave I had to squint in order to believe And then like a butler pushing on a bookshelf I'm unveiling the unexpected I, who was earlier reluctant, was suddenly embarrassed and corrected How could such a creature Survive in such a habitat The secret door swings behind us She's saying nothing She's just giggling along And even if they were to find us I wouldn't notice, I'm completely occupied At all the fools on parade Cavort and carry on for waiting eyes That you would rather be beside than in front of But she's never been the kind To be hollowed by the stares Fools on parade Frolic and fuck about to make her gaze Turn to a scribble on a page by a picture That holds her options But you're daft to think she'd care Fools on parade [3x] Conduct a sing-along

That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays. We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story. “Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.” She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled. “Just don’t tell my manager,” she whispered. So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain. The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring. I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler. He looked a little surprised. I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop. I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling. When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on. We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just. Love doesn’t require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite. Luckily.

Emergency food has become very useful indeed, and to a very large assortment of people and institutions. The United States Department of Agriculture uses it to reduce the accumulation of embarrassing agricultural surpluses. Business uses it to dispose of nonstandard or unwanted product, to protect employee morale and avoid dump fees, and, of course, to accrue tax savings. Celebrities use it for exposure. Universities and hospitals, as well as caterers and restaurants, use it to absorb leftovers. Private schools use it to teach ethics, and public schools use it to instill a sense of civic responsibility. Churches use it to express their concern for the least of their brethren, and synagogues use it to be faithful to the tradition of including the poor at the table. Courts use it to avoid incarcerating people arrested for Driving While Intoxicated and a host of other offense. Environmentalists use it to reduce the solid waste stream. Penal institutions use it to create constructive outlets for the energies of their inmates, and youth-serving agencies of all sorts use it to provide service opportunities for young people. Both profit-making and nonprofit organizations use it to absorb unneeded kitchen and office equipment. A wide array of groups, organizations, and institutions benefits from the halo effect of 'feeding the hungry,' and this list does not even include the many functions for ordinary individuals--companionship, exercise, meaning, and purpose. . .If we didn't have hunger, we'd have to invent it.

The one person who didn’t seem enthusiastic about giving a speech in Berlin was Obama. When Favreau and I talked to him about it, he didn’t offer much beyond suggesting we use Berlin’s story to talk about what we were proposing in our own foreign policy. Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected a request from the campaign for the speech to take place at the Brandenburg Gate, where Reagan had called on Gorbachev to tear down the wall, saying that the venue should be reserved for an actual president. When he learned about this, Obama was embarrassed and annoyed. “I never said I wanted to give a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate,” he snapped. It spoke to a larger dynamic in the campaign: While Obama was often blamed for the cult of personality growing up around him—arty posters, celebrity anthems, and lavish settings for his events—he was rarely responsible for it, and worried that we were raising expectations too high in a world that has a way of resisting change. “Before he left for Afghanistan, he read a draft of the speech and told us he was satisfied with it—“You could put this speech on the teleprompter and I’d be fine,” he said—but I was hoping for more than that. I was hoping for edits that would elevate the speech and make it more than a summation of our worldview. The shift to a foreign audience hadn’t been hard, as Obama’s message about working across races “and religions, his preference for diplomacy over war, his embrace of the science of climate change, and his recognition that the world needed to confront issues beyond terrorism were going to be well received in Germany. I kept looking for the phrase or two that might elevate that message, summarizing it in a way that could convey the same sense of common mission that Kennedy and Reagan had evoked.

As a country, as a people, have we changed? On the surface we might appear to have done so, but underneath I think we are still the same. Our change is measurable, but not significant. We remain bent on destroying ourselves. We still kill each other with alarming frequency and for foolish reasons, and we begin the killing at a younger age. We have much to celebrate, but we live in fear and doubt. We are pessimistic about our own lives and the lives of our children. We trust almost no one. “It is the same everywhere. We are a people under siege, walled away from each other and the world, trying to find a safe path through the debris of hate and rage that collects around us. We drive our cars as if they were weapons. We use our children and our friends as if their love and trust were expendable and meaningless. We think of ourselves first and others second. We lie and cheat and steal in little ways, thinking it unimportant, justifying it by telling ourselves that others do it, so it doesn’t matter if we do it, too. We have no patience with the mistakes of others. We have no empathy for their despair. We have no compassion for their misery. Those who roam the streets are not our concern; they are examples of failure and an embarrassment to us. It is best to ignore them. If they are homeless, it is their own fault. They give us nothing but trouble. If they die, at least they will provide us with more space to breathe.” His smile was bitter. “Our war continues, the war we fight with one another, the war we wage against ourselves. It has its champions, good and bad, and sometimes one or the other has the stronger hand. Our place in this war is often defined for us. It is defined for many because they are powerless to choose. They are homeless or destitute. They are a minority of sex or race or religion. They are poor or disenfranchised. They are abused or disabled, physically or mentally, and they have forgotten or never learned how to stand up for themselves.

In Riverview, we stopped at Larkin’s Drugstore for a cold drink. Leaving the rest of us to scramble out unaided, John offered Hannah his hand. Although I’d just seen her leap out of a tree as fearless as a cat, she let him help her. At the soda fountain, Hannah took a seat beside John. In her white dress, she was as prim and proper as any lady you ever saw. Quite frankly, I liked her better the other way. I grabbed the stool on the other side of Hannah and spun around on it a couple of times, hoping to get her to spin with me, but the only person who noticed was Mama. She told me to sit still and behave myself. “You act like you have ants in your pants,” she said, embarrassing me and making Theo laugh. While I was sitting there scowling at Theo in the mirror, John leaned around Hannah and grinned at me. “To celebrate your recovery, Andrew, I’m treating everyone to a lemon phosphate--everyone, that is, except you.” He paused dramatically, and Hannah gave him a smile so radiant it gave me heartburn. She was going to marry John someday, I knew that. But while I was here, I wanted her all to myself, just Hannah and me playing marbles in the grove, talking, sharing secrets, climbing trees. She had the rest of her life to spend with stupid John Larkin. “As the guest of honor,” John went on, “you may pick anything your heart desires.” Slightly placated by his generosity, I stared at the menu. It was amazing what you could buy for a nickel or a dime in 1910. “Choose a sundae,” Theo whispered. “It costs the most.” “How about a root beer float?” Hannah suggested. “Egg milk chocolate,” Mama said. “It would be good for you, Andrew.” “Tonic water would be even better,” John said, “or, best of all, a delicious dose of cod-liver oil.” When Hannah gave him a sharp poke in the ribs, John laughed. “Andrew knows I’m teasing. Come on, what will it be, sir?” Taking Theo’s advice, I asked for a chocolate sundae. “Good choice,” John said. “You’d have to go all the way to St. Louis to find better ice cream.

he was no mountaineer when he decided to climb the Hindu Kush. A few days scrambling on the rocks in Wales, enchantingly chronicled here, were his sole preparation. It was not mountaineering that attracted him; the Alps abound in opportunities for every exertion of that kind. It was the longing, romantic, reasonless, which lies deep in the hearts of most Englishmen, to shun the celebrated spectacles of the tourist and without any concern with science or politics or commerce, simply to set their feet where few civilized feet have trod. An American critic who read the manuscript of this book condemned it as ‘too English’. It is intensely English, despite the fact that most of its action takes place in wildly foreign places and that it is written in an idiomatic, uncalculated manner the very antithesis of ‘Mandarin’ stylishness. It rejoices the heart of fellow Englishmen, and should at least illuminate those who have any curiosity about the odd character of our Kingdom. It exemplifies the essential traditional (some, not I, will say deplorable) amateurism of the English. For more than two hundred years now Englishmen have been wandering about the world for their amusement, suspect everywhere as government agents, to the great embarrassment of our officials. The Scotch endured great hardships in the cause of commerce; the French in the cause of either power or evangelism. The English only have half (and wholly) killed themselves in order to get away from England. Mr Newby is the latest, but, I pray, not the last, of a whimsical tradition. And in his writing he has all the marks of his not entirely absurd antecedents. The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited; finally in his formal self-effacement in the presence of the specialist (with the essential reserve of unexpressed self-respect) which concludes, almost too abruptly, this beguiling narrative – in all these qualities Mr Newby has delighted the heart of a man whose travelling days are done and who sees, all too often, his countrymen represented abroad by other, new and (dammit) lower types. Dear reader, if you have any softness left for the idiosyncrasies of our rough island race, fall to and enjoy this characteristic artifact. EVELYN

Like,” he repeats with distaste. “How about I tell you what I don’t like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn’t be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children’s books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires. I rarely stock debuts, chick lit, poetry, or translations. I would prefer not to stock series, but the demands of my pocketbook require me to. For your part, you needn’t tell me about the ‘next big series’ until it is ensconced on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Above all, Ms. Loman, I find slim literary memoirs about little old men whose little old wives have died from cancer to be absolutely intolerable. No matter how well written the sales rep claims they are. No matter how many copies you promise I’ll sell on Mother’s Day.” Amelia blushes, though she is angry more than embarrassed. She agrees with some of what A.J. has said, but his manner is unnecessarily insulting. Knightley Press doesn’t even sell half of that stuff anyway. She studies him. He is older than Amelia but not by much, not by more than ten years. He is too young to like so little. “What do you like?” she asks. “Everything else,” he says. “I will also admit to an occasional weakness for short-story collections. Customers never want to buy them though.” There is only one short-story collection on Amelia’s list, a debut. Amelia hasn’t read the whole thing, and time dictates that she probably won’t, but she liked the first story. An American sixth-grade class and an Indian sixth-grade class participate in an international pen pal program. The narrator is an Indian kid in the American class who keeps feeding comical misinformation about Indian culture to the Americans. She clears her throat, which is still terribly dry. “The Year Bombay Became Mumbai. I think it will have special int—” “No,” he says. “I haven’t even told you what it’s about yet.” “Just no.” “But why?” “If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you’re only telling me about it because I’m partially Indian and you think this will be my special interest. Am I right?” Amelia imagines smashing the ancient computer over his head. “I’m telling you about this because you said you liked short stories! And it’s the only one on my list. And for the record”—here, she lies—“it’s completely wonderful from start to finish. Even if it is a debut. “And do you know what else? I love debuts. I love discovering something new. It’s part of the whole reason I do this job.” Amelia rises. Her head is pounding. Maybe she does drink too much? Her head is pounding and her heart is, too. “Do you want my opinion?” “Not particularly,” he says. “What are you, twenty-five?” “Mr. Fikry, this is a lovely store, but if you continue in this this this”—as a child, she stuttered and it occasionally returns when she is upset; she clears her throat—“this backward way of thinking, there won’t be an Island Books before too long.

You are my friend, Prairie Flower. If I tell you what is in my heart, will you promise never to tell?" Prairie Flower laid a hand on Jesse's shoulder, pulling it away quickly when her friend flinched in pain. "I will not betray my friend." Taking a deep breath, Jesse lifted her head. "When Rides the Wing comes near to me, my heart sings.But I do not believe that he cares for me.I am clumsy in all of the things a Lakota woman must know.I cannot speak his language without many childish mistakes. And..." Jesse reached up to lay her hand on her short hair, "I am nothing to look at.I am not..." Prairie Flower grew angry. "I have told you he cares for you.Can you not see it?" Jesse shook her head. Prairie Flower spoke the unspeakable. "Then,if you cannot see that he cares for you in what he does,you must see it in what he has not done. You have been in his tepee. Dancing Waters has been gone many moons." "Stop!" Jesse demanded. "Stop it! I..just don't say any more!" She leaped up and ran out of the tepee-and into Rides the Wind, who was returning from the river where he had gone to draw water. Jesse knocked the water skins from both of his hands. Water spilled out and she fumbled an apology then bent stiffly to pick up the skins, wincing with the effort. "I will do it, Walks the Fire." His voice was tender as he bent and took the skins from her. Jesse protested, "It is the wife's job." She blushed, realizing that she had used a wrong word-the word for wife, instead of the word for woman. Rides the Wind interrupted before she could correct herself. "Walks the Fire is not the wife of Rides the Wind." Jesse blushed and remained quiet. A hand reached for hers and Rides the Wind said, "Come, sit." He helped her sit down just outside the door of the tepee. The village women took note as he went inside and brought out a buffalo robe. Sitting by Jesse,he placed the robe on the ground and began to talk. "I will tell you how it is with the Lakota. When a man wishes to take a wife..." he described Lakota courtship. As he talked, Jesse realiced that all that Prairie Flower had said seemed to be true.He had,indeed, done nearly everything involved in the courtship ritual. Still, she told herself, there is a perfectly good explanation for everything he has done. Rides the Wind continued describing the wedding feast. Jesse continued to reason with herself as he spoke. Then she realized the voice had stopped and he had repeated a question. "How is it among the whites?How does a man gain a wife?" Embarrassed,Jesse described the sparsest of courtships, the simplest wedding.Rides the Wind listened attentively. When she had finished, he said, "There is one thing the Lakota brave who wishes a wife does that I have not described." Pulling Jesse to her feet, he continued, "One evening, as he walks with his woman..." He reached out to pick up the buffalo robe.He was aware that the village women were watching carefully. "He spreads out his arms..." Rides the Wind spread his arms,opening the buffalo robe to its full length, "and wraps it about his woman," Rides the Wind turned toward Jesse and reached around her, "so that they are both inside the buffalo robe." He looked down at Jesse, trying to read her expression.When he saw nothing in the gray eyes, he abruptly dropped his arms. "But it is hot today and your wounds have not healed.I have said enough.You see how it is with the Lakota." When Jesse still said nothing, he continued, "You spoke of a celebration with a min-is-ter.It is a word I do not know.What is this min-is-ter?" "A man who belives in the Bible and teaches his people about God from the Bible." "What if there is no minister and a man and a woman wish to be married?" Jesse grew more uncomfortable. "I suppose they would wait until a minister came.

In passing we mention Joseph Weizenbaum’s celebrated program ELIZA that mimics conversation between a patient and an analyst. It attracted a lot of attention, even a belief in the psychotherapist it simulates, to the extent that its inventor came to be surprised and even embarrassed by the misguided enthusiasm that the ELIZA program generated. The code supporting the program is simple, but the behavior is, at first, quite impressive. What we are after, however, is a code that rests on a pattern theoretic analysis of the human mind specifying the details of mental processes, and such codes will have to be complex. As we shall see it will take some complex software to achieve our goal, even roughly. To facilitate programming we shall write in MATLAB although this will result in slow execution. In a later stage we may compile the code into C++ or into executables, but at the moment

In passing we mention Joseph Weizenbaum’s celebrated program ELIZA that mimics conversation between a patient and an analyst. It attracted a lot of attention, even a belief in the psychotherapist it simulates, to the extent that its inventor came to be surprised and even embarrassed by the misguided enthusiasm that the ELIZA program generated. The code supporting the program is simple, but the behavior is, at first, quite impressive. What we are after, however, is a code that rests on a pattern theoretic analysis of the human mind specifying the details of mental processes, and such codes will have to be complex. As we shall see it will take some complex software to achieve our goal, even roughly. To facilitate programming we shall write in MATLAB although this will result in slow execution. In a later stage we may compile the code into C++ or into executables, but at the moment we are not concerned with computational speed.

One on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. Significant differences begin to appear only when we cross the threshold of 150 individuals, and when we reach 1,000–2,000 individuals, the differences are astounding. If you tried to bunch together thousands of chimpanzees into Tiananmen Square, Wall Street, the Vatican or the headquarters of the United Nations, the result would be pandemonium. By contrast, Sapiens regularly gather by the thousands in such places. Together, they create orderly patterns – such as trade networks, mass celebrations and political institutions – that they could never have created in isolation. The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation. Of course, we also needed other skills, such

A handful of individual football stars—not necessarily the most talented, but those boasting good looks, beautiful wives and an animated private life—assumed a role in European public life and popular newspapers hitherto reserved for movie starlets or minor royalty. When David Beckham (an English player of moderate technical gifts but an unsurpassed talent for self-promotion) moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2003, it made headline television news in every member-state of the European Union. Beckham’s embarrassing performance at the European Football Championships in Portugal the following year—the England captain missed two penalties, hastening his country’s ignominious early departure—did little to dampen the enthusiasm of his fans.

ant a successful party? Remember to laugh! Don't take yourself too seriously-especially when it's party time. Tell jokes, share funny stories that highlight your own embarrassing moments. Celebrate fun memories. One of our favorite family parties is getting out the old photo albums and making fun of ourselves. Guests love it too if you have them bring some pictures of their own to add to the fun. now when to say "no" to good things and "yes" for the best. Everything I didn't do yesterday Added to everything I haven't done today Plus everything I won't do tomorrow-completely exhausts me! AUTHOR UNKNOWN ne of the best compliments you can give a friend is to say, "You're such a kind person!" And what exactly is a kind person? • Kindness is an attitude of the heart. • A kind person goes out of her way to be nice to someone else. All through Scripture we're shown God's character, and it's one of kindness. So why not lighten someone's load today and bring him or her joy? • Offer to help lighten someone's load. • Open the door for someone. • Even a bright smile conveys kindness.

the lawn from a grassy field to a twilit garden. As if on cue, Sebastian arrived leading a parade into the clearing, and called everyone to order. “Honored guests,” he shouted, holding his hands out in greeting. “I’m pleased to announce we have record attendance this year. This is in no small part due to the efforts of our friends-of-the-farm coordinator, Benjamin Thorndike, and his new assistant, Jason Adams.” Polite applause accompanied an occasional cheer. One woman at the back called out, “Which ones are they, Sebastian?” The managing director scanned the crowd and pointed. “Over there. Benjamin’s the one on the porch steps with the camera, taking your pictures. And you can’t miss Jason. He’s the tallest here, but just in case, raise your hand, Jason.” Helena watched, bemused, as Jason raised his hand. He seemed embarrassed, but she thought he was enjoying the celebrity. Once Sebastian completed his welcome, the crowd headed for the food and drink, then milled around sipping apple wine and taking in the scene. Two farm members mounted the steps of the great house and began to play music on a penny whistle and violin, a lilting tune from a time when farmers would gather to celebrate the harvest. A few people came over to meet

But most important, I see me . . . or rather, the me I’ve become. Because I can finally see that all the terrible parts of my life, the embarrassing parts, the incidents I wanted to pretend never happened, and the things that make me “weird” and “different,” were actually the most important parts of my life. They were the parts that made me me. And this was the very reason I decided to tell this story . . . to celebrate the strange, to give thanks for the bizarre, and to one day help my daughter understand that the reason her mother appeared mostly naked on Fox News (that’s in book two, sorry) is probably the same reason her grandfather occasionally brings his pet donkey into bars: Because you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. Because there is joy in embracing—rather than running screaming from—the utter absurdity of life. And because it’s illegal to leave an unattended donkey in your car, even if you do live in Texas.

inquisitor’s stick, beginning with the bizarre claims of Mary Toft, the Englishwoman from Surrey who in 1726 tricked doctors into believing she’d given birth to rabbits. Though the hoax was eventually unmasked, the king’s own credulous doctor was embarrassed by the scandal and the wider medical profession also emerged with egg on its

There is something seriously at fault with a society, something that will in the end destroy us, if poverty that is voluntarily chosen is nowhere celebrated as a good. No other standard is today set against the pursuit of wealth and possessions. From the moment at which the child begins to receive the messages from the society around it, it is subject to the continual pressure of group attitudes that tell it that it will be judged only by success, and that its success will be measured largely by its acquisitiveness. No other model is set before it. The call to a life of poverty in the New Testament is passed over in silence and embarrassment. This pursuit of wealth and possessions, when conducted with such single-mindedness as it is in our societies, constantly distracts us from spiritual things and not least from the spiritual side of our natures. There is not one person who sets too high a store by wealth and possessions who is not coarsened by them.

These people have already attained, at whatever age, a degree of celebrity you a--holes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame is, essentially, God -- all you people know that, believe it, even if you don't admit it. As children you watched him, in the basement, cross-legged in front of the TV, and you thought you should be him, that his lines were yours, that his spot on Battle of the Network Stars was yours, that you'd be so good on the obstacle course - you'd win for sure! So doing all this, when he's no longer such the world-conquering celebrity, gives you power over him, the ability to embarrass him, to equalize the terrible imbalance you feel about your relationship to those who project their charisma directly, not sublimated through snarky little magazines. You and everyone like you, with your Q&As or columns or Web sites - you all want to be famous, you want to be rock stars, but you're stuck in this terrible bind, where you also want to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing, are read by your little coterie, while secretly seething about the Winona Ryders and Ethan Hawkes.

This, I believe, is the heart of every person’s journey. We all have an inherent desire to be recognized and celebrated for everything we can do and everything we have accomplished instead of being characterized by what others may perceive as a loss. Our ability to succeed in this pursuit lies in the truth that we define our limitations; our limitations don’t define us unless we allow them to do so. When we are afraid of reliving a trauma, an embarrassment, or a hurt, we end up making decisions from a place of fear. We are afraid of coming in last, so we never even try... But the difference between first place and last is infinitely smaller than the difference between last place and never even having tried.

For an unrelated reason, I was fortunate to be in London to witness a set of extraordinary festivities commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Elizabeth II’s accession to the throne of England. Although the queen had been traveling the globe for months to Commonwealth nations hosting Golden Jubilee events in her name, the celebrations peaked on June 4, 2002, with a program on the Mall in London that drew over a million well-wishers from around Britain and the world. The marked adulation surprised many in the national press who’d predicted the Jubilee would be a fizzle, demonstrating the modern-day irrelevance of the British monarchy in general and of Her Royal Highness in particular. The opposite proved to be the case. In the several weeks’ run-up to June 4, throngs within the United Kingdom flocked to dedications, parades, concerts, and special proceedings honoring the queen, which she honored in turn with her presence. Especially coveted were invitations to small parties where it was sometimes possible to be addressed personally by the queen in a receiving line. Of course, the opportunity to meet Elizabeth II under any circumstances would be considered exceptional; but the chance to meet her amid the pomp and pageantry of the Golden Jubilee added even more significance to such occasions, which were widely reported by the media. One report stood out from all the others for me. A young woman moving through a reception line at one of the small fêtes experienced the horror of hearing the cell phone in her purse begin to ring just as she met the queen. Flustered and frozen with embarrassment as her phone pealed insistently, she stared helplessly into the royal eyes that had become fixed on her bag. Finally, Elizabeth leaned forward and advised, “You should answer that, dear. It might be someone important.

To feel awkward is to be human, and to avoid it entirely is a lie.

Fitting in and catering to others is not only overrated, but it also diminishes your performance.

Performing to meet others' expectations smothers your potential and is more hype than substance.

Unexpected mistakes can produce unexpected treasures.

Awkwardness can make the heart race, but don't let it set the pace.

Bravery requires being off balance.

The goal is to prepare ourselves for the road, not to expect the road to clear itself for us.

When Sasha was ten she had such an intense crush on Harrison Ford that sometimes she would lie in bed and cry with deep sorrow that they would never be together. She knew it was weird. He was a grown man and a famous actor and she was a child with a dawning awareness that little hairs were growing up and down her legs, and it all compounded into a tragedy so devastating that she could barely stand to watch him in movies when anyone else was in the room. Her brothers obviously noticed her mooning after him and taunted her mercilessly. Later in life, when she saw in some celebrity magazine at the nail salon that Harrison got an earring, she felt embarrassed all over again that she had been obsessed with someone so old.

The avoidance of awkwardness increases awkwardness.

Awkwardness is an invitation to vulnerability.

Sometimes in our quest to be seen as credible and professional and sophisticated, we forget the value of our humanity.

Awkwardness isn't a weakness to fix. It's your greatest asset for professional and personal growth.

Other members of the Guglielmi family lit candles of celebration. Putting an ocean between them and this embarrassing spendthrift was the answer to all their prayers.

It also seems indisputable that life in the public eye demands a certain amount of additional brainpower that can feel even more exhausting. Think about the vigilance required to maintain appearances, to tailor every form of expression for mass consumption out of a fear that missteps or embarrassing moments will spread around the globe at the speed of light. Suddenly, everyone is a celebrity in a world in which celebrities aren’t exactly known for being emotionally well adjusted.

In a few short decades, the Western tradition has moved from being celebrated to being embarrassing and anachronistic and, finally, to being something shameful. lt turned from a story meant to inspire people and nurture them in their lives into a story meant to shame people. And it wasn't just the term "Western" that critics objected to. It was everything connected with it. Even "civilization" itself. As one of the gurus of modern racist "anti-racism," lbram X. Kendi put it, '"Civilization' itself is often a polite euphemism for cultural racism.

I’ve decided to bridge out a little, explore different genres, if you will. And because you, my very good friend, are starring in a play penned by none other than the renowned—which I’m sure you know means celebrated—Mr. Grimstone, I decided to try a few of his gothic novels.” “What did you think of the Grimstone stories?” Bram asked from behind them. Turning, Lucetta found that Bram had stepped out of the carriage and was looking dashingly rumpled, with his hair standing on end and his face streaked with soot here and there. Glancing at Millie, Lucetta found her friend considering Bram closely, right before she nodded at Lucetta and arched a brow. “The mysterious grandson, I assume?” “One and the same.” Lucetta pulled Millie forward, stopping right in front of Bram. “Millie, I’d like to introduce you to Abigail’s grandson, Mr. Bram Haverstein. Bram, this is one of my very dearest friends, Millie Mulberry, formerly Millie Longfellow.” “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Mulberry,” Bram said, bringing Millie’s hand to his lips and placing the expected kiss on it. “Lucetta and my grandmother speak most highly of you.” Millie smiled, the action causing a dimple to pop out on her cheek. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr. Haverstein. I won’t embarrass you by relaying all the things your grandmother told me and Lucetta about you over the past few months. Although I will admit I thought she was exaggerating your attributes—and that means features—but . . . never mind about that.” Her smile widened. “I’m very relieved to discover that you appear to be relatively normal, and that you’re not sporting a humped back or any other peculiar deformity, something Lucetta and I were afraid your grandmother was trying to hide.” Bram quirked a brow Lucetta’s way. “You’d thought I’d be deformed?” Smiling, Lucetta shrugged. “Abigail made you out to be so mysterious, who could blame us for concluding the worst?” “She kept calling you a dish,” Millie added with a grin.

celebrities’ societal role is to live pitiably empty and ignorant lives with zero privacy while being chain-whipped by the flying monkeys of Rupert Murdoch (or his epoch-specific equivalent) during embarrassing political scandals, mass mind-control experiments, the mass extermination of the underprivileged, or other leadership crises in government. This

I’ve made no secret of my dislike for this charlatan and “Nerdfighteria,” the vast, sprawling cult he leads with his brother Hank. I have no beef with the strictly average Young Adult novels he writes – somebody’s got to write such things, and they serve a useful training-wheels function in conditioning young reading muscles for the more rigorous joys of the reading awaiting them down the road (at least, they used to perform that function – but I’ll come back to that). No, my problems with John & Hank Green, with “Nerdfighters” and “Nerdfighteria” and their idiotic motto “Don’t Forget To Be Awesome” is the way the whole lock-step conformist mess undermines the very individuality it alleges to celebrate. The ranks of “Nerdfighers” in their thousands quote back and forth the catch-lines from The Fault in Our Stars; they pattern their every last behavior according to these limp, overwritten little things; they check their smallest stray individual thought against the consensus of their chat-boards – and they worship the Green brothers with a blind idolatry that would have embarrassed the golden calf at Mammon.

From the beginning, the SS Deutschland was beset by problems, She was known as the “Cocktail Shaker” when she was first launched in 1923. On her trials, it was noticed that the ship had a serious vibration problem due to an imbalance in her twin shafts or perhaps her massive bronze propellers. Because of a lack of funding, this vibration was accepted and remained so for the first six years of her existence. It was an embarrassment to have a ship represent the German Merchant Marine, Handelsmarine, that was handicapped from the start. However, she was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air. By the time I boarded her for my voyage to the United States in November, 1934, the SS Deutschland was over 11 years old and, although she was still Hamburg-Amerika Line’s flagship, she was beginning to show her age. Germans, who prided themselves in their knowledge of science and engineering, were falling behind other European countries. Paying retribution to the victors of World War I had drained the German treasury and as a nation, they resented it. Hostility had increased and the pressure it put on the people was obvious. Many looked to Hitler to make “Germany great again.

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” —Mexican proverb There are some secrets we don’t share because they’re embarrassing. Like that time I met Naval Ravikant (page 546) by accidentally hitting on his girlfriend at a coffee shop? Oops. Or the time a celebrity panelist borrowed my laptop to project a boring corporate video, and a flicker of porn popped up—à la Fight Club—in front of a crowd of 400 people? Another good example. But then there are dark secrets. The things we tell no one. The shadows we keep covered for fear of unraveling our lives. For me, 1999 was full of shadows. So much so that I never wanted to revisit them. I hadn’t talked about this traumatic period publicly until April 29, 2015, during a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). What follows is the sequence of my downward spiral. In hindsight, it’s incredible how trivial some of it seems. At the time, though, it was the perfect storm. I include wording like “impossible situation,” which was reflective of my thinking at the time, not objective reality. I still vividly recall these events, but any quotes are paraphrased. So, starting where it began . . . It’s the beginning of my senior year at Princeton University. I’m slated to graduate around June of 1999. Somewhere in the next six months, several things happen in the span of a few weeks. First, I fail to make it to final interviews for McKinsey consulting and Trilogy software, in addition to others. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong, and I start losing confidence after “winning” in the game of academics for so long. Second, a long-term (for

Google was a company that’d made more money off advertisements than any other company in the history of the world, but it had been founded by people who were embarrassed by a business model dependent upon advertising lawn chairs, car insurance, and Viagra. To deflect the embarrassment, the company cloaked itself in an aura of innovation and some old bullshit about the expansion of human knowledge. Google maintained this façade by providing web and mobile services to the masses. The most beloved of these services was the near daily alteration of the company’s logo as it appeared on the company’s website. Almost every day, the Google logo transformed into cutesy, diminutive cartoons of people who’d done something with their lives other than sell advertisements. These cartoons were called Google Doodles. They encompassed the whole spectrum of achievement, with a special focus on scientific achievement and the lives of minorities. In its own way, this was a perfect distillation of politics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Whenever they appeared, the Google Doodles were beloved and celebrated in meaningless little articles on meaningless little websites. They were not met with the obvious emotion, which would be total fucking outrage at a massive multinational corporation co-opting a wide range of human experience into an advertisement for that very same corporation. Here was the perversity of Twenty-First-Century AD life: Native-American women had a statistically better chance of being caricatured in a Google Doodle than they did of being hired into a leadership position at Google. And no one cared. People were delighted! They were being honored! By a corporation!

Cover hatred and fear with love and delight, and with innocent things. With love and delight, and with innocent things. The trouble was that people were cynical about innocent things, or too embarrassed to celebrate them. The proponents of confrontation, violence, the acerbic comment, laughed at innocent things, thought them naïve, considered them beneath them. How easy it was to destroy the civilised structures of the world; how easy to poison the wells.

One on one, even ten on ten, we are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. Significant differences begin to appear only when we cross the threshold of 150 individuals, and when we reach 1,000–2,000 individuals, the differences are astounding. If you tried to bunch together thousands of chimpanzees into Tiananmen Square, Wall Street, the Vatican or the headquarters of the United Nations, the result would be pandemonium. By contrast, Sapiens regularly gather by the thousands in such places. Together, they create orderly patterns – such as trade networks, mass celebrations and political institutions – that they could never have created in isolation. The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.

From this colossal embarrassment, the Catholic Church learned a valuable lesson and now celebrates scientific inquiry. Today, science classes in Catholic high schools in the United States spend more time studying evolution than the science classes in public high schools. It’s time for evangelicals to learn the lesson that Catholics have learned. I regularly tell my church that I don’t know of a single peer-reviewed scientific theory that is a threat to the Christian faith. All truth is God’s truth, and in the end, scientists and theologians are seeking the same thing.

celebrate your happiness in limit so others not feel abashment.

We were not created to be independent. We were formed to be dependent on the One who made us, and we were re-created in Jesus Christ to be dependent on his grace. God does not hold you to a standard of independent strength. God does not expect of you what you do not have. He knows who you are. He is never shocked or dismayed by your weakness. He has moved toward you in grace because you are weak and would have no hope in life and death without him. The person who is shocked and dismayed by your weakness is you. It bothers you. It embarrasses you. It makes you want to hide and cover yourself. It causes you to playact in public and to deceive yourself in private. Your weakness will drive you crazy unless you understand the gospel of Jesus. What is that message? It is the story of a strong and able Savior who showers his powerful grace on people who are fundamentally weak and unable. He confronts you with your weakness so you will run to him for strength. He calls you to mountains too big to climb so that in your inability, you will look to him. He leads you to taste failure so that you will find your hope in him. He works to prove to you how weak you really are so that you will gladly accept his invitation to enabling grace. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to come to the end of your rope if at the end of your rope you find a strong and willing Savior. So don’t be afraid to cry out in weakness, because when you affirm your weakness, you are teaching your heart to esteem and celebrate the grace that can make you strong. Sometime in the next week, you’ll be confronted with your weakness; when you are, you’ll either work to convince yourself you’re strong or you’ll run to the One who is.

THE FIRST DEMOCRAT The real founder of the modern Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson. Jackson, an orphan from Appalachia, rose from obscurity to become America’s most celebrated general and military hero after George Washington. He won the presidency by a landslide in 1828 and an even bigger one in 1832. His proteges dominated the Democratic Party for half a century, until the Civil War. During his lifetime Jackson was immensely popular with ordinary people, earning him the reputation of being the common man’s president. One might expect the Democrats—who even today purport to be the party of the common man—to embrace Jackson and acknowledge his paternity of their party. This, however, is not the case. So why do they distance themselves from Jackson? Why do progressives consider him such an embarrassment? Not only do many on the Left refuse to acknowledge Jackson’s founding role in the Democratic Party, they also want to kick him off the $20 bill where his face currently appears. Progressives want to see him replaced on the currency with the woman who ran the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman. To some degree, the progressive objective seems clear. Jackson, after all, owned some three hundred slaves during his lifetime. At one time he ran a plantation that had 150 slaves. So Jackson’s expulsion seems consistent with the general progressive antipathy toward slavery. The same antipathy explains the choice of Tubman, who was a female abolitionist. Moreover, Tubman was a woman. If the Democrats are going to place a woman, Hillary, on the presidential ticket, why not also have a woman, Tubman, on the currency? Even so, the proposal is interesting because Jackson was a Democrat—the founding father of the Democratic Party—while Tubman was a Republican. Admittedly progressives have no intention of highlighting that fact about Tubman; indeed it goes virtually unmentioned in the news reports. The progressive media is not comfortable with a female black abolitionist representing the Republican Party while a white male slave owner represents the Democratic Party.

SYLVESTER STALLONE: Mike Ovitz carried a heavy hammer, and he swung it like he was Beverly Hills Thor. He went around smashing people, sometimes I think just for the fun of it. He did things to me that I thought were beyond unfair. We got into sort of a business with art, and the person he hooked me up with turned out to be a disaster, and had me spending a great deal of money on art that turned out to be—well, I don’t want to get into it because of the lawsuit, but it just wasn’t good. The next thing I know, he’s throwing an engagement party for them at CAA, a building that I basically put tons of money into with my commissions. I told him, “I find this to be really offensive. You know how much these people hurt me, yet you’re celebrating them?” He said to me, “What do you want me to do? Cancel it? Throw them out? And embarrass yourself and me all over the city? Would that make you happy?” I believe that was the last time I talked to him for many, many years. Is he beloved? That’s a rhetorical question.

So tell me what C and A means.’ Ana was flailing her arm around, scowling at Jessica but knowing she wasn’t going to get her own way. ‘It’s a, how you say… a bar.’ ‘A pub?’ ‘Crown and Anchor.’ How a group of police officers had managed to miss the name of a pub, no one seemed quite sure. It was like someone being knocked over in front of a solicitors’ office and none of them realising, or a celebrity being shagged in the reception area of a newspaper and journalists walking past. Frankly, it was embarrassing.

Baby escaped! Fluid has become flesh. No turning back now. We've named it Jasper. A cause for celebration & fear & trembling. Astrid proud mother--me semiproud. Never been much of a collaborator. Baby was joint project & my personal stamp hard to ascertain. Today baby on a blanket kicking chubby legs in the air. Told Astrid to keep him off the floor--would be embarrassing if he was eaten by rats. Bent over baby & looked but really wanted to peer into his skull to see if any evil or cruelty or intolerance or sadism or immorality in there. A new human being. Am not impressed it's mine.

For St Paul and other Christian preachers, the body and its urges were not to be celebrated but smothered. In tortuous and embarrassed circumlocutions, Paul raged at ‘this body of death’. The rewards of a virgin in heaven were said to be sixty times greater. Christian writers in this period recorded the stirrings of their sexuality with great distaste – perhaps none more influentially than Augustine. Sex was, he felt, permissible if children resulted from the union but even then the action itself was lustful, evil and ‘bestial’, while erections were ‘unseemly’. The West would reap a bitter harvest of sexual shame from the disgusted writings of these two men. In the earliest days of the religion, some Christians went further, arguing that there was no need for sex any more at all. A new form of creation, in the form of a great conflagration and rebirth of the godly, was imminent. What need for awkward, messy, inexact human reproduction? Eternal life rendered reproduction redundant.