Explosion Box Quotes

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now. I can’t stop thinking about you.

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches.

It's for upset stomachs,' Dylan said, trying to hide a smile. He pointed to the words in the box. 'It's to reduce gas in your digestive system, not to create more gas to make explosions.' Gazzy's face fell as Iggy said. 'Really? Gazzy take it! Take the whole box!' 'I second that emotion!' said Total.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw, my inability to change. I don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more I realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still... It feels safer somehow. And if you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar. Because if you took that leap of faith, went outside the box, did something unexpected... Who knows what other pain might be out there, waiting for you. Chances are it could be even worse. So you maintain the status quo. Choose the road already traveled and it doesn't seem that bad. Not as far as flaws go. You're not a drug addict. You're not killing anyone... Except maybe yourself a little. When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like an earthquake or an explosion, where all of a sudden we're like this different person. I think it's smaller than that. The kind of thing most people wouldn't even notice unless they looked at us really close. Which, thank God, they never do. But you notice it. Inside you that change feels like a world of difference. And you hope this is it. This is the person you get to be forever... that you'll never have to change again.

You're like a box of chocolates with the menu missing - the card that tells you what they are. I never know what I'm going to get with you: a soft, creamy centre, something chewy, or an explosion of alcohol.

Anika walked to the workbench, which was flanked by two metal cabinets. She opened the cabinet on the left and spotted sundry items—nails, paint, and whatnot—that one expected to see. Even the rat poison with skull and crossbones on the bag made sense. She also saw, however, several boxes wrapped in white and labeled, “Explosive Plastic Comp-4 (C-4).” Paralyzed, she tried not to panic or stare. 

I found this, though," Gazzy said excitedly, holding up a small green box. "Gas-X! Like, 'X' for explosion! This is great! I'm thinking I rig this with a detonator and-" "Did you find that in the medicine cabinet?" Dylan asked. "Yeah." "It's for upset stomachs," Dylan said, trying to hide a smile. He pointed to the words on the box. "It's to reduce gas in you digestive system, not to create more gas to make explosions." Gazzy's face fell as Iggy said, "Really? Gazzy, take it! Take the whole box!

How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other and when their surgical appliances lock they stay together for the rest of the day (what a day) I go by to check a slide and I say that painting’s not so blue where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met everyone’s taking their coat off so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes in little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y why not the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won and in a sense we’re all winning we’re alive the apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun they moved a day too soon even the stabbings are helping the population explosion though in the wrong country and all those liars have left the UN the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest not that we need liquor (we just like it) and the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

Hermes and I sat in the back of the delivery truck on a couple of boxes labeled TOXIC SERPENTS. THIS END UP. Maybe that wasn’t the best place to sit, but it was better than some of his other deliveries, which were labeled EXPLOSIVES, DO NOT SIT ON, and DRAKON EGGS, DO NOT STORE NEAR EXPLOSIVES.

This note was a jittery bomb ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day fiercely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and f--- you. Even now.

My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches

Ty and Livvy were the last to come say good-bye to Jules; Livvy embraced him fiercely, and Ty gave him a soft, shy smile. Julian wondered where Kit was. He'd been glued to Ty's and Livvy's sides the whole time they'd been in London, but he appeared to have vanished for the family farewell. "I've got something for you," Ty said. He held out a box, which Julian took with some surprise. Ty was absolutely punctual about Christmas and birthday presents, but he rarely gave gifs spontaneously. Curious, Julian popped open the top of the box to find a set of colored pencils. He didn't know the brand, but they looked pristine and unused. "Where did you get these?" "Fleet Street," said Ty. "I went out early this morning." An ache of love pressed against the back of Julian's throat. It reminded him of when Ty was a baby, serious and quiet. He hadn't been able to go to sleep for a long time without someone holding him, and though Julian had been very small himself, he remembered holding Ty while he fell asleep, all round wrists and straight black hair and long lashes. He'd felt so much love for his brother even then it had been like an explosion in his heart. "Thanks. I've missed drawing," Julian said, and tucked the box into his duffel bag. He didn't fuss; Ty didn't like fuss, but Julian made his tone as warm as he could, and Ty beamed. Jules thought of Livvy, the night before, the way she'd kissed his forehead. Her thank-you. This was Ty's.

For the first time in years I opened my box of paints and poured out an honest rage, an explosion of reds and blacks and yellows. As I looked at the drawing, tears of joy and relief flowed down my cheeks. In my disease, I had given up my art, a self-inflicted punishment far greater than any imposed from outside.

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him—it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I

Amelia crouched and set the cereal on the ground beside the box of rice. She thought of James’s sperm, fanning out, a slow-mo explosion, how cool it looked,

As part of the animal sentinel program, going back to 1999, scientists had been making great progress training honeybees to locate bombs. Bees have sensing capabilities that outperform the dog’s nose by a trillion parts per second. Using Pavlovian techniques, scientists cooled down groups of bees in a refrigerator, then strapped them into tiny boxes using masking tape, leaving their heads, and most of their antennae, poking out the top. Using a sugar water reward system, the scientists trained the bees to use their tongues to “sniff out” explosives, resulting in a reaction the scientists call a “purr.” After training, when the scientists exposed the bees to a six-second burst of explosives, some had learned to “purr.

Only three of the naturally occurring elements were manufactured in the big bang. The rest were forged in the high-temperature hearts and explosive remains of dying stars, enabling subsequent generations of star systems to incorporate this enrichment, forming planets and, in our case, people. For many, the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements is a forgotten oddity—a chart of boxes filled with mysterious, cryptic letters last encountered on the wall of high school chemistry class. As the organizing principle for the chemical behavior of all known and yet-to-be-discovered elements in the universe, the table instead ought to be a cultural icon, a testimony to the enterprise of science as an international human adventure conducted in laboratories, particle accelerators, and on the frontier of the cosmos itself.

I’m fragile, the fragility of a hopeless romantic trapped in a reality in which there is no happily ever after. Some people outgrow their fragility. I never did. Instead I became proficient at packaging it. Have you ever encountered a product that comes in a box covered with duct tape, which opens to an explosion of packing peanuts, and then you are faced with layers of tightly taped bubble wrap, only to find after that there’s still a hard plastic shell that’s a pain in the ass to pry apart? That’s me. Except I never let anyone get past the duct-tape stage. Okay, maybe occasionally Zelda saw the packing peanuts, but no further, no deeper. So what’s underneath it all? Fear, yes. Need, so much of it. More wishful thinking than there is in the entire country on a Powerball weekend. Maybe greed too, a greed for happiness that’s matched only by the fear of losing it.

She said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, words, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off those explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold, and defenseless, is capable of providing that food. That's why it's important to keep your distance from people who have frigid breath. Just their presence can put out the most intense fire, with results we're familiar with. If we stay a good distance away from those people, it's easier to protect ourselves from being extinguished.

But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and the ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil--wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister; whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole, of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind. Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. ... I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say--no words stronger than steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become. And I have nothing to give either--except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot out of its box of flesh to understand as you have done, the wit of eternity; it's gift of unhinged release through the darkness of its knell.

mesmerizing -- gold, red, orange, black -- the colors of the dragons that had promised so much: prosperity, love, good health, a second chance, a new start. The fire began to pop, the small sounds lost in the constant boom of firecrackers going off in the streets of San Francisco in celebration of the Chinese New Year. No one would notice another noise, another spark of light, until it was too late. In the confusion of the smoke and the crowds, the dragons and the box they guarded would disappear. No one would ever know what had really happened. The flame reached the end of the gasoline-soaked rope and suddenly burst forth in a flash of intense, deadly heat. More explosions followed as the fire caught the cardboard boxes holding precious inventory and jumped toward the basement ceiling. A questioning cry came from somewhere, followed by the sound of footsteps running down the halls of the building that had once been their sanctuary, their dream for the future, where the treasures of the past were turned into cold, hard cash. The cost of betrayal would be high. They would be brothers no more. But then, their ties had never been of blood, only of friendship --

So many people never seemed to think about the consequences of their everyday actions. And then a witch on her broom would have to set out from her bed in the rain in the dead of night because of "I only" and its little friends "I didn't know" and "It's not my fault." "I only wanted to see if the copper was hot . . . " "I didn't know a boiling pot was dangerous . . . " "It's not my fault--no one told me dogs that bark might also bite." And her favorite, "I didn't know it would go off bang"--when it said "goes bang" on the box it came in. That had been when little Ted Cooper had put an explosive banger (another tiny clue) into the carcass of a chicken after his mum's birthday party and nearly killed everybody around the table.

The symposium was a closed-doors, synod-style assembly of people who would never have mixed otherwise. My first surprise was to discover that the military people there thought, behaved, and acted like philosophers—far more so than the philosophers we will see splitting hairs in their weekly colloquium in Part Three. They thought out of the box, like traders, except much better and without fear of introspection. An assistant secretary of defence was among us, but had I not known his profession I would have thought he was a practitioner of skeptical empiricism. Even an engineering investigator who had examined the cause of a space shuttle explosion was thoughtful and open-minded. I came out of the meeting realising that only military people deal with randomness with genuine, introspective intellectual honesty—unlike academics and corporate executives using other people's money. This does not show in war movies, where they are usually portrayed as war-hungry autocrats. The people in front of me were not the people who initiate wars. Indeed, for many, the successful defence policy is the one that manages to eliminate potential dangers without war, such as the strategy of bankrupting the Russians through the escalation in defence spending. When I expressed my amazement to Laurence, another finance person who was sitting next to me, he told me that the military collected more genuine intellects and risk thinkers than most if not all other professions. Defence people wanted to understand the epistemology of risk.

All of Rusty’s senses strained ahead as he prowled forward. Then he detected another noise. It came from behind, but sounded muted and distant. He swiveled his ears backward to hear it better. Pawsteps? he wondered, but he kept his eyes fixed on the strange red fur up ahead, and continued to creep onward. It was only when the faint rustling behind him became a loud and fast-approaching leaf-crackle that Rusty realized he was in danger. The creature hit him like an explosion and Rusty was thrown sideways into a clump of nettles. Twisting and yowling, he tried to throw off the attacker that had fastened itself to his back. It was gripping him with incredibly sharp claws. Rusty could feel spiked teeth pricking at his neck. He writhed and squirmed from whisker to tail, but he couldn’t free himself. For a second he felt helpless; then he froze. Thinking fast, he flipped over onto his back. He knew instinctively how dangerous it was to expose his soft belly, but it was his only chance. He was lucky—the ploy seemed to work. He heard a “hhuuffff” beneath him as the breath was knocked out of his attacker. Thrashing fiercely, Rusty managed to wriggle free. Without looking back he sprinted toward his home. Behind him, a rush of pawsteps told Rusty his attacker was giving chase. Even though the pain from his scratches stung beneath his fur, Rusty decided he would rather turn and fight than let himself be jumped on again. He skidded to a stop, spun around, and faced his pursuer. It was another kitten, with a thick coat of shaggy gray fur, strong legs, and a broad face. In a heartbeat, Rusty smelled that it was a tom, and sensed the power in the sturdy shoulders underneath the soft coat. Then the kitten crashed into Rusty at full pelt. Taken by surprise by Rusty’s turnabout, it fell back into a dazed heap. The impact knocked the breath out of Rusty, and he staggered. He quickly found his footing and arched his back, puffing out his orange fur, ready to spring onto the other kitten. But his attacker simply sat up and began to lick a forepaw, all signs of aggression gone. Rusty felt strangely disappointed. Every part of him was tense, ready for battle. “Hi there, kittypet!” meowed the gray tom cheerily. “You put up quite a fight for a tame kitty!

Yes, it was quick, all right, he thought about saying to her--ah, how that would shatter her face all over again, and he felt a vicious urge to do it, to simply spray the words into her face. It was quick, no doubt about that, that's why the coffin's closed, nothing could have been done about Gage even if Rachel and I approved of dressing up dead relatives in their best like department store mannequins and rouging and powdering and painting their faces, It was quick, Missy-my-dear, one minute he was there on the road and the next minute he was lying in it, but way down by the Ringers' house. It hit him and killed him and then it dragged him and you better believe it was quick. A hundred yards or more all told, the length of a football field. I ran after him, Missy, I was screaming his name over and over again, almost as if I expected he would still be alive, me, a doctor. I ran ten yards and there was his baseball cap and I ran twenty yards and there was one of his Star Wars sneakers, I ran forty yards and by then the truck had run off the road and the box had jackknifed in that field beyond the Ringers' barn. People were coming out of their houses and I went on screaming his name, Missy, and at the fifty-yard line there was his jumper, it was turned inside-out, and on the seventy-yard line there was the other sneaker, and then there was Gage.

He drew his Glock and proceeded down the hallway as another explosion rocked the ship.

The sneaker is a slightly overhanded right hook to the head, delivered at the instant you force a break-away from a clinch. In boxing, it is illegal for you to use this blow, or any other, after the referee has told you to break. But you can use it before he orders a break-when you make your own break. In fist-fighting you can use it whenever you get the chance. Here's what you do in a clinch when you haven't room to punch with either hand: (1) Keep your head in close to the left side of your opponent's head, with your chin slightly over his shoulder; (2) maneuver with your left hand until you can grab the inside crook of his right elbow, and thus hold his right arm so firmly that he can't punch with it; (3) get his left arm under your right arm, and clamp your right hand under his arm-just above the elbow-just below the biceps (Figure 36). When you hold him in that fashion, he can't hit you; but you are in perfect position to break away sharply and deliver a stunning overhanded "sneaker" hook. Suddenly, yank him tighter to you with your right hand; then, shove him violently away with both hands; and-- almost in the same movementwhip an outside right hook up over his left shoulder-and down-so that your striking knuckles smash into his left jawbone or left temple (Figure 37). If the "sneaker" is delivered properly, your opponent will drop like a poleaxed steer. If he doesn't drop, he'll be so groggy that one or two shovels to the chin will finish him. Practice the "sneaker" until you can do it automatically. It's called a sneak punch because it's delivered on the break, when an opponent is not expecting it, and when he's off balance. Because of its surprise and explosiveness, the sneaker is one of the deadliest of punches.

Keep your weak hand up by your face, so that you can easily defend your head if a punch is unexpectedly thrown. Use the weak hand to scratch your head or cheek, brush your hair, wipe your brow, adjust your hat, etc., but keep that hand up. Remember that you will most likely be reacting to an assault, and therefore it will take too long to bring a hand up from your waist to your head to defend yourself against a sneak attack. Cover This block/cover comes from boxing, and is identical to the one taught in my book The Cook Method of the Sap for Law Enforcement and Civilians. The weak (left) hand comes up and brings the hand to the ear as though you are talking on the phone. The upraised elbow and bent arm create a large, strong defense against any type of blow, especially a hook punch, which is difficult to defend against by trying to parry or block with the hand. You can also think of this move as raising the left elbow upward. In close, this shielding move can be used as a strike, hitting the attacker with an upward elbow strike. Train this move by having a partner slowly and lightly swing with his right hand at your head. If you get boxing headgear and gloves, you can gradually increase the speed and power of this strike. It is also possible for your partner to swing at your head using the punch mitts. Hammerfist As the left elbow comes up and the left hand is placed just off your ear, your right hand –which has been resting near your left armpit-- snaps outward, striking with the bottom of the fist. Aim for the opponent's jawline. A problem with punching on the street is that it's easy to damage your knuckles when hitting someone's skull or teeth. The bottom-of-the-fist blow, also known as a hammerfist, is a very powerful blow that can be delivered with little risk of injury to the knuckles or wrist. It has proven itself to be devastatingly effective in the full-contact cage matches of the mixed martial arts. Practice doing both motions at the same time; raising the left elbow up to cover the head while striking out with the right hammerfist. Practice slowly at first, then move to the heavy bag. You can also have a partner with the focus mitts swing the right mitt while holding the left mitt up as a target for you to hit with the right hand. Once you have the form down, make the move explosive. Burst outward with the elbow and hammerfist simultaneously. Snap the hammerfist, bringing it quickly back to the start position. Another tip as you practice this move is to drop your head down, so that your chin and the side of your face are not exposed. With your chin down, the striking right hand and arm will help to shield your head from attacks with the opponent's left hand. This is how you defend yourself when an opponent has surprised you with a flurry of punches –not by trying to block a rain of blows, but by striking while protecting your head.

In Minnesota, they were seizing cars from every siding, from the Mesabi Range, from the ore mines of Paul Larkin where the cars had stood waiting for a dribble of iron. They were pouring wheat into ore cars, into coal cars, into boarded stock cars that went spilling thin gold trickles along the track as they clattered off. They were pouring wheat into passenger coaches, over seats, racks and fixtures, to send it off, to get it moving, even if it went moving into trackside ditches in the sudden crash of breaking springs, in the explosions set off by burning journal boxes. They fought for movement, for movement with no thought of destination, for movement as such, like a paralytic under a stroke, struggling in wild, stiff, incredulous jerks against the realization that movement was suddenly impossible. There were no other railroads: James Taggart had killed them; there were no boats on the Lakes: Paul Larkin had killed them. There was only the single line of rail and a net of neglected highways. The trucks and wagons of waiting farmers started trickling blindly down the roads, with no maps, no gas, no feed for horses—moving south, south toward the vision of flour mills awaiting them somewhere, with no knowledge of the distances ahead, but with the knowledge of death behind them—moving, to collapse on the roads, in the gullies, in the breaks of rotted bridges. One farmer was found, half a mile south of the wreck of his truck, lying dead in a ditch, face down, still clutching a sack of wheat on his shoulders. Then rain clouds burst over the prairies of Minnesota; the rain went eating the wheat into rot at the waiting railroad stations; it went hammering the piles spilled along the roads, washing gold kernels into the soil.

A creeping sensation at the base of my spine woke me in the middle of the night. I had gone to bed alone, for Narian had not come to me, but I was no longer certain I was the only person in the room. Unnerved, I slowly opened my eyes to see him next to me on his back, hands behind his head, fully awake and staring at the ceiling. “What are you doing?” I whispered, and he shrugged. “I’m…thinking.” “Yes, I can see that much.” I plucked at the bedclothes, then tried again. “What time is it? It must be close to morning--have you slept at all?” Again, that shrug. “I’ll take that as a no.” I laughed, trying to lighten his mood. I draped an arm across his chest, pressing myself against him, and he lowered one arm to embrace me. I was concerned about him--the previous evening he’d left the royal box shortly before the feast and had not returned to eat with us, unlike the other men. Perhaps he had wanted to avoid all contact with Koranis, or avoid problems for Alantonya if the Baron saw her with their firstborn. It wasn’t until the feast had concluded, and the drinking and dancing had begun, that he had returned. And at that point, he had, without explanation, taken me back to the Bastion, insisting that I stay there. I had done as he had requested, despite the fire and explosions that had occurred a few hours later, and I had not attended the faire on this, its final day, again in accordance with his wishes. He had handled the disturbance of the night before but did not trust that there would be no further breaches of the peace. Now he was avoiding sleep, and he would be leaving early in the morning for Cokyri. “You need rest, Narian,” I murmured, fighting off drowsiness. “Are you thinking about your family?” “Alera, you are my family. You’re all the family I need.” He hesitated, then changed the subject. “Can…can I ask you for a favor?” “Of course,” I answered, sitting up, for whatever was on his mind was more serious than I had thought. “Come to Cokyri with me.” I peered at him, unable to see his face clearly in the darkness. “What? Why?” “I want you to see it. The mountains. When all is said and done, I don’t know how often I’ll be returning there. I just…want you to see it.” “All right,” I said, baffled by the unusual nature of the request and by his explanation, for he regularly went to Cokyri. But if it was important to him--and obviously it was--I would go.

The building was a sniper’s heaven; it was long with dozens of windows and many points of view. Three floors. Someone had put cardboard in each of the panes, dozens of cardboard boxes, making it almost impossible to see inside. The marines kept firing, thousands and thousands of rounds. The barrels of their machine guns glowed and sagged. “Get me another barrel,” one of the kids said. More firing commenced. “I don’t know who he is, but he is very well trained,” said Lieutenant Steven Berch, another one of the platoon leaders. Omohundro was downstairs. He listened to the commotion and called in an airstrike. “Just blow the building to shit,” he said. First a 2,000 -pound bomb, then a 500 -pounder flew into the building and burst. A cloud unfolded upward and revealed a gigantic fire. It rose through the ruined ceiling. Part of a wall collapsed. Crack! Crack! Crack! The marines ducked, cursed loudly and returned fire. No one spotted the sniper this time. The sniper fired back. The marines responded with another blast of gunfire, many thousands of rounds. I stood with some guys at the back of the roof, behind a shed. A blue and green parakeet fluttered out of the sky and hovered in tight circles. Bullets flew past. The parakeet landed on a slumping power line. The marines stared in amazement. “Someone’s pet?” a marine said. I ran across the top of the roof and the sniper took a shot. Crack! The bullet whizzed by. An artillery barrage began. First came the 155 mm shells, each filled with fifty pounds of high explosives. One after the other the shells sailed into the building. Fire swept through the three floors. What was left of the ceiling collapsed in the smoke. Cardboard sailed out of shattered windows. Twenty shells, then thirty, each one large enough to end the world. The shelling ceased and the shooting stopped. The building burned. Remarkably it still had a frame, and parts of its three floors still stood. Suddenly a sound rustled from a storefront on the first floor. The marines tensed. A cat sauntered out, dirty yellow, tail in the air. It walked like a runway model in front of a construction site. “Can I shoot it, sir?” a marine asked his squad leader. “Absolutely not,” came the reply. Crack!

Every once in a while, when the Brewers are in a losing streak, Bob Uecker will pull out a secret weapon. It’s a tape made by a sound effects company of a man having an explosive—and exceedingly long—bowel movement. Sophomoric? Yes. But it gets guys laughing so hard that a couple of losses or a 0-for-12 streak doesn’t seem so daunting.

a collection that included, among other items, an Allen wrench set, some pliers, a power drill, several clamps, some hacksaws, an impact-wrench set, a brace of cold-tolerant bungie cords, assorted files and rasps and planes, a crescent-wrench set, a crimper, five hammers, some hemostats, three hydraulic jacks, a bellows, several sets of screwdrivers, drills and bits, a portable compressed gas cylinder, a box of plastic explosives and shape charges, a tape measure, a giant Swiss Army knife, tin snips, tongs, tweezers, three vises, a wire stripper, X-acto knives, a pick, a bunch of mallets, a nut driver set, hose clamps, a set of end mills, a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers, a magnifying glass, all kinds of tape, a plumber’s bob and ream, a sewing kit, scissors, sieves, a lathe, levels of all sizes, long-nosed pliers, vise-grip pliers, a tap-and-die set, three shovels, a compressor, a generator, a welding-and-cutting set, a wheelbarrow— and so on. And

The movies were just kind of figuring out how to use computers in 2003, and nobody was just kind of figuring out how to use computers harder than Michael Bay. It’s tempting to say that every frame of Bad Boys II looks like a TV commercial, but truly every frame looks like a print advertisement, like those Candies ads where Jenny McCarthy’s taking a shit, shallow and glossy and tinged acid green. There are four car chases, one of which is at least fifteen minutes long. Even the most passing transitions are giddily tasteless: the camera EXPLODES out of the speedboat’s tailpipe and ZOOMS across Biscayne Bay and WHAMS down the ventilation shaft in the backward sunglasses factory and SHOOMPS into the buttcrack of a raver’s low-rise jeans and SPROINGS across her transverse colon and SQUEAKS through her appendix and AIRHORNS out her belly button and PLOPS into the Cuban drug lord’s mojito as he shoots his favorite nephew in the head while saying, “Adios, kemosabe,” or something fucking cool like that. When faced with a choice, Bay picks “all of the above” every time. He’s like a dog in one of those obedience trials who’s like, “Obedience? I don’t know her,” and just goes buck wild on the sausages. Except instead of “obedience” it’s “having a coherent plot that holds the audience’s attention” and instead of “sausages” it’s “explosions, Ferrari chases, and how many different cool kinds of box could a gun come in.

O Bilquìs. Naked and eyebrowless beneath the golden knight, wrapped in the delirium of the firewind, she saw her youth flying past her, borne away on the wings of the explosion which were still beating in her ears. All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes – but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see the rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging – at any rate, my point is that Bilquìs’s past left her even before she left that city; she stood in a gully, denuded by the suicide of her father, and watched it go.

The amount of time that elapsed between my two-year-old self toddling along the National Mall waving a flag and my eighteen-year-old self moving into a dorm feels vast to me, but I know now how time moves when you're grown-up, and I know those years must have gone much faster for my parents than for me. To my dad, hardly any time at all passed between when the siren called him into the bunker and when he started packing boxes full of shelf-stable food to send to his baby at college.

Small explosions of white powdery snow blasted all around the puppy. It jumped again and then barked once more. Then, as if it completely understood what Jordan had said, it turned and disappeared through the bushes.

When you have a kid, everyone warns you about the sleepless nights. The explosive diaper changes. How they grow so fast that you hemorrhage money on clothing them. What they don’t tell you is that you’ll never spend another day of your life without worrying about another person. You’ll never completely relax again because that person you created will always, always be on your mind. You’ll wonder where they are, what they’re doing, and if they’re okay.

China’s O2O explosion gave its companies tremendous data on the offline lives of their users: the what, where, and when of their meals, massages, and day-to-day activities. Digital payments cracked open the black box of real-world consumer purchases, giving these companies a precise, real-time data map of consumer behavior. Peer-to-peer transactions added a new layer of social data

But let’s assume it’s an indestructible hair dryer. And if we have something as cool as an indestructible hair dryer, it seems like a shame to limit it to 1875 watts. With 18,750 watts flowing out of the hair dryer, the surface of the box reaches over 200°C (475°F), as hot as a skillet on low-medium. I wonder how high this dial goes. There’s a distressing amount of space left on the dial. The surface of the box is now 600°C, hot enough to glow a dim red. If it’s made of aluminium, the inside is starting to melt. If it’s made of lead, the outside is starting to melt. If it’s on a wood floor, the house is on fire. But it doesn’t matter what’s happening around it; the hair dryer is indestructible. Two megawatts pumped into a laser is enough to destroy missiles. At 1300°C, the box is now about the temperature of lava. One more notch. This hair dryer is probably not up to code. Now 18 megawatts are flowing into the box. The surface of the box reaches 2400°C. If it were steel, it would have melted by now. If it’s made of something like tungsten, it might conceivably last a little longer. Just one more, then we’ll stop. This much power—187 megawatts—is enough to make the box glow white. Not a lot of materials can survive these conditions, so we’ll have to assume the box is indestructible. The floor is made of lava. Unfortunately, the floor isn’t. Before it can burn its way through the floor, someone throws a water balloon under it. The burst of steam launches the box out the front door and onto the sidewalk.​[​2​]​ We’re at 1.875 gigawatts (I lied about stopping). According to Back to the Future, the hair dryer is now drawing enough power to travel back in time. The box is blindingly bright, and you can’t get closer than a few hundred meters due to the intense heat. It sits in the middle of a growing pool of lava. Anything within 50–100 meters bursts into flame. A column of heat and smoke rise high into the air. Periodic explosions of gas beneath the box launch it into the air, and it starts fires and forms a new lava pool where it lands. We keep turning the dial. At 18.7 gigawatts, the conditions around the box are similar to those on the pad during a space shuttle launch.

As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements needed to produce phosphorus. And let me tell you something I've never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

Instinctively, Cody glanced over but all he could see was the gaping silver-rimmed muzzle of a snub-nosed large caliber revolver an inch from his eye. The cylinder revolved, filled with dull lead bullets, as the trooper pulled the trigger. There was a tremendous explosion of light and thunder. He could no longer see out of his right eye, but it was more than that. There was no pain, only tremendous silence. Then he was floating, light as air, as if his lungs had filled with helium. He passed through the sheet metal roof of his pickup into the night, which was no longer cold. As he rose his eyesight was restored but he no longer had feeling in his limbs and his arms hung loose at his sides. He looked down. He could see the top of his pickup from above, the bed of his truck which was empty except for a crumpled fast-food wrapper in the corner, then the rusted metal roof of the First National Bar. The windows of his pickup strobed three more times but there was no sound and he felt nothing. Cody’s life didn’t pass before his eyes, but he clearly saw the photo of Justin in his football uniform and a vision of Jenny sleeping in bed from years before they separated the first time and he rose until he could see the river and the ribbon of highway through the valley and Jimmy and the truck driver emerge from the bar and stand on the porch and he knew what happened to those poor girls and he felt both cheated and angry at the same time and he wished he could do it all over again, everything. Especially the last five minutes. Then nothing. No sound, smell, or sight. Peace.

There’s a great Pixar video about telling stories. The video—“Pixar in a Box”—featured Pete Docter, director of the films Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc. According to Docter, the power of story is that “it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level.” He gives a bit of advice that I think is worth keeping in mind when you create a compelling story: Write what you know. Says Docter, even though you may be writing a story about explosions or monsters or car chases, “put something into it that talks about your own life—how you feel…. Something from your own life will make that story come alive.” Every good story has three elements: Characters. In a work situation, that might be you, your teammates, your customers or clients, and your boss. Who is in the story? Get your audience to feel an emotional investment in the characters. Plot. This could be, for example, the process of digitally transforming your business. A good plot keeps your audience engaged, wondering what’s coming up next. Story arc. This is the movement of the story from beginning to middle to end. You’ve got a problem and, through much trial and tribulation, you find a solution and become the hero of your team. Every story you tell—even if you’re writing about a technical problem, or starting your own business, or whatever it might be—needs to have these three elements. If you do this right, then people will care about your story. They don’t care about features, they care about the benefits of your idea—how what you’re pitching makes them better, smarter, more successful, happier, more fulfilled, more respected, and so on. They want to feel like a hero. And if you can make your audience feel like heroes, they will be engaged in your story and deeply connect with it on an emotional level.

As you see, within our bodies each of us has the elements needed to produce phosphorus. And let me tell you something I’ve never told a soul. My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit. ‘If

Seventy-five years ago, the dragons fell from the sky. We thought they were just meteorites—six terrifying explosions rang the world like a bell. When the dust settled, we went on with our lives as though nothing had happened.

Lauriston, as soon as he saw me, came to my box, and told me that the First Consul, on his way to the opera, had narrowly escaped being assassinated in the Rue St. Nicaise by the explosion of a barrel of gunpowder, the concussion of which had shattered the windows of his carriage. "Within ten seconds after our escape," added Lauriston, "the coachman having turned the corner of the Rue St Honore, stopped to take the First Consul's orders; and he coolly said, 'To the opera.

Once upon a time humans faced each other and pulled thoughts from minds, advanced rapidly, revolutionised industry and evolved explosively. Then one day they stopped, and stared at a box. They grew fat and awkward in public, stopped expressing emotions and couldn't figure out how to reverse it: they reinvented themselves from Emperors back into prawns, because someone turned the TV on.

Tanks are easily identified, easily engaged, much-feared targets which attract all the fire on the battlefield. When all is said and done, a tank is a small steel box crammed with inflammable or explosive substances which is easily converted into a mobile crematorium for its highly skilled crew.” -Brigadier Shelford Bidwell, British military historian

But then that evening on the couch Malcolm said something he didn’t catch. Oliver had leaned forward and asked what he’d said, and Malcolm had kissed him. A speculative kiss; nothing more, nothing less. Oliver could smell that dizzying aftershave of Malcolm’s mixed with the musk of a day in a hot office and a night at a party in Kensington. Sweat and tobacco and alcohol. “I don’t know how to do any of this,” Oliver whispered. He pressed his forehead to Malcolm’s and closed his eyes. All he could see was Jenny, there in the house with Imogen at her side. Manic, when he’d left her this morning. Baking pies and organising their receipts and bills into boxes so they could find everything when they needed them. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t acknowledge his readiness to leave. Imogen hadn’t kissed him goodbye. His daughter, once so full of life, with so many questions and an endless thirst for adventure, had grown quiet and deeply suspicious of his absences too; she simply avoided interaction with him as much as she could now, which upset him more than anything else. He could accept Jenny’s coldness, he had earned that, but Imogen? He couldn’t abide the thought of alienating his only child. He wanted to sit her down and explain what was going on in his life, in her life. But how could she begin to understand what was happening when he barely grasped it himself? That closeness they’d had on their little tour of the children’s homes seemed so very long ago now. “Just let yourself go, Oliver,” Malcolm said. “Abandon yourself. Forget about everything else. Just for tonight.” Oliver kissed him back finally and raised a hand to Malcolm’s face. After a moment’s hesitation, he ran his fingers through Malcolm’s fine blond hair. He’d wanted to do that for weeks. To touch him. One touch led to another until their hands were entwined and they were kissing in the darkness with the sound of London traffic drifting into the apartment. One door being opened that led to another door, and another, deeper into a house he didn’t know the dimensions of. But Malcolm coaxed him through with gentle encouragement. It felt like a controlled explosion in his life. Over the next few days and weeks, he came to realise that there were shards of that explosion in everything. Some of them shone like diamonds, some of them were sharp to the touch. He tried to conceal them as well as he could.