Game Reserve Quotes

Despite serious reservations, I had to forgive Finnick for his role in the conspiracy that landed me here. He, at least has some idea of what I'm going through. And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.

It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties.

It bothers Musk a bit that his kids won’t suffer like he did. He feels that the suffering helped to make him who he is and gave him extra reserves of strength and will. “They might have a little adversity at school, but these days schools are so protective,” he said. “If you call someone a name, you get sent home. When I was going to school, if they punched you and there was no blood, it was like, ‘Whatever. Shake it off.’ Even if there was a little blood, but not a lot, it was fine. What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that? The biggest battle I have is restricting their video game time because they want to play all the time. The rule is they have to read more than they play video games. They also can’t play completely stupid video games. There’s one game they downloaded recently called Cookies or something. You literally tap a fucking cookie. It’s like a Psych 101 experiment. I made them delete the cookie game. They had to play Flappy Golf instead, which is like Flappy Bird, but at least there is some physics involved.

Next, the secretary advised me to take a seat while she notified the headmaster of my arrival. During those dreadful moments I did everything I could to remain calm. Nervously, I kept patting my foot to the floor and heard each and every tap. Suddenly, shouts of extreme havoc rung out just like the other times! “Oh God no! Jesus, please help me Lawd! I got you, Sir, I got you,” were screams filling the airwaves. The door opened and a battered female raced rightpast me with her hands covering her face. She kept mumbling phrases that shouldn’t be repeated by innocent lips. I couldn’t believe those disgusting words coming out of her baby-sized mouth. Then damn, another nightmare was possibly moments away. I needed an out and fast. Fearing for my life, I formulated my plan of action. Right before Principal Shellshock steadies his paddle, I was going to blow out all the gas I reserved in my little butt. I was never a fan of the fart game, but I was scheming like a veteran. That’s all I had, and it was my “A game.” My intentions were to rip a good hard one that opens my belt, ruffles my pants, and sends my new shoes flyingacross the room. Then all options would be left to the principal. He could chance tearing into me and losing a lung or take cover and let me go. Punishing me will become a hazard to his health. For the moment, I felt really good about that notion. I didn’t have much else to cling to, but I was dangerously packing breakfast from Aunt Kathy. Yes, I was sure my stink bomb defense would win that day. According to past reports, I would be the first and only kid at Mitchell Memorial to get on the scoreboard against the headmaster. Make that, Hal “1” and Principal Shell Shock “0.

The needle of his moral compass had swung madly without direction. Fueled by the terror of being prey, how quickly he himself had become a predator, with no reservations about smashing Bobbin to death. He’d

The bedroom is like a game room where you can explore many things within halal boundaries as a couple. So go ahead and have fun in your game room. In fact, bloom without reservation behind closed doors.

One fine day you decide to talk less and less about the things you care most about, and when you have to say something, it costs you an effort . . . You’re good and sick of hearing yourself talk . . . you abridge . . . You give up … For thirty years you’ve been talking . . . You don’t care about being right anymore. You even lose your desire to keep hold of the small place you’d reserved yourself among the pleasures of life . . . You’re fed up … From that time on you’re content to eat a little something, cadge a little warmth, and sleep as much as possible on the road to nowhere. To rekindle your interest, you’d have to think up some new grimaces to put on in the presence of others . . . But you no longer have the strength to renew your repertory. You stammer. Sure, you still look for excuses for hanging around with the boys, but death is there too, stinking, right beside you, it’s there the whole time, less mysterious than a game of poker. The only thing you continue to value is petty regrets, like not finding time to run out to Bois-Colombes to see your uncle while he was still alive, the one whose little song died forever one afternoon in February. That horrible little regret is all we have left of life, we’ve vomited up the rest along the way, with a good deal of effort and misery. We’re nothing now but an old lamppost with memories on a street where hardly anyone passes anymore.

Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

The morning of the game, I'd woken up in my rez house so my dad could drive me the twenty-two miles to Reardan, so I could get on the team bus for the ride back to the reservation. Crazy.

Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.

Vacate the bench of rest and play the game of the bests. Keep on marching; no more benching!

I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau. When did all this craziness become my world? It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all. The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life. Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted. Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back? I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit.

Those head have been selected for the game reserve. The specialists examine them and pick the ones in the best physical condition. The hunters need prey that challenges them, they want to chase after the head, they’re not interested in sitting targets.

Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that's all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us," he concluded, strongly emphasizing the last clause, staring at Drake, not at the professor.

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.

God’s love for you is passionate and pure and without reservation. He never holds back or plays games with your heart. There are no riddles with God. This kind of love does not stand you up. He always shows up, always remembers, and always keeps His promises. God’s love is unrelenting. He does not turn away even if you do. His excitement over you does not wane. God’s love is not some namby-pamby kindergarten crush. He is not fickle. God has seen you across the room, and He cannot take His eyes off you.

Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, ‘Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls!’” Effie beams at us so brilliantly that we have no choice but to respond

He felt strangely detached from the action, as if all his emotional reserve had been depleted by his brief outburst in the shower.

Coriolanus thought about what it had felt like to be in the arena, where there were no rules, no laws, no consequences to one’s actions. The needle of his moral compass had swung madly without direction. Fueled by the terror of being prey, how quickly he himself had become a predator, with no reservations about smashing Bobbin to death. He’d transformed, all right, but not into anything he was proud of.

The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.

Tessa was sincere but shallow; she was loving but mercurial; she was an exhibitionist without enough confidence to be an actor. While Fiona displayed all the characteristics of elder children: stability, confidence, intellect in abundance, and that cold reserve with which to judge all the shortcomings of the world.

[...]watching his white teeth flash at her and the lines in his face soften so that he almost looked boyish. That smile was reserved for her alone and it was full-blown, wide, bright and heart-stopping in its joy.

Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh.. people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

You never stop to think how the history of whiteness in America is one long scroll of affirmative action. You never stop to think that Babe Ruth never had to play the greatest players of his generation - just the greatest white players. You never stop to think that most of our presidents never rose to the top because they bested the competition - just the white competition. White privilege is a self-selecting tool that keeps you from having to compete with the best. The history of white folk gaining access to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale is the history of white folk deciding ahead of the game that you were superior. You argue that slots in school should be reserved for your kin, because, after all, they are smarter, more disciplined, better suited, and more deserving that inferior blacks.

Family room surfaces shouldn’t be reserved for a lifeless parade of ceramic figurines—quite the opposite. They’re meant for four-year-olds to color, teenagers to play games with their friends, and adults to enjoy a cup of coffee.

From his earliest years Cincinnatus, by some strange and happy chance comprehending his danger, carefully managed to conceal a certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in the world of souls transparent to one other; he learned however to feign translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as it were--but he had only to forget himself, to allow a momentary lapse in self control, in the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and angles at which he turned his soul, and immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of a game his coevals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty deception and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque. Sometimes, in the midst of sudden silence, the teacher, in a chagrined perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes, gaze at him for a long while and finally say: "What is wrong with you, Cincinnatus?" Then Cincinnatus would take hold of himself, and, clutching his own self to his breast, would remove that self to a safe place.

She had often disconcerted me by the truth. In the days when we were in love, I would try to get her to say more than the truth—that our affair would never end, that one day we should marry. I wouldn’t have believed her, but I would have liked to hear the words on her tongue, perhaps only to give me the satisfaction of rejecting them myself. But she never played that game of make-believe, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, she would shatter my reserve with a statement of such sweetness and amplitude

If ever I create a website, I'll call it Two-Face Book, and I'll invite everyone to it, it will be a game board, of a whitewash chalkboard. A social network, with reserved intentions, where we can fall into our cliques and circle of friends. We can dis who we want and accept who appeals to our discretion. Where the users will keep abusing, and abusers keep using, where the computer bullies will keep swinging and the J-birds that fly by will die; where the lonely will keep seeking and the needy still go desperate, where the envious will keep hating, and the lustful will keep flashing. Where those that think ignoring, will keep one down and the wannabes will foolishly think themselves greater by the number of "likes" that pours caffeine into their coffee. We can jump on the bandwagon of likes, or reserve not to show we care. Where the scorners, scammers and stalkers lay wait to take hold of the innocent and fragile, and my pockets will get fatter as more and more will join up, where being fake is accepted. As a mirror that stares at a different face. It will be my two-face epilogue, in a 3-world dimension, of a twofold war. I will build an empire of contagious hooks, and still we will live, happily-ever disastrous.

It was an observation, not a judgment. Shylah liked the way Draden seemed to reserve his conclusions until he had the facts.

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Sad, really, as they were both rather exceptional people, for whom the world had reserved its harshest treatment.

Despite reservations on Coin’s side that it’s too extravagant, and on Plutarch’s side that it’s too drab,

I reserve the right to do what I like" he (Manuel Ruíz de Lopera) announced to the press, a statement that rather sums up the moral state of the game in Spain.

Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much." "You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely. "We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz. "You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis." "Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock." I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body. "Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga." My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe. "We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explained, "You would have known he was coming.We didn't want you to leave.The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together,let me tell you." "I'm not buying it," I informed Chloe. "You were distracted.You had your mind on taking inventory." Liz giggled,turned red, and fell back to the pillows. "Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!" Chloe said with a straight face,but she was blushing,too.

Three fractured ribs. Sprained LCL. Twisted ankle. Broken nose. That’s most of it.’ That’s most of it. Jeremy’s chest ached with tender grief. It was a heat normally reserved for game nights against their most violent opponents, a niggling sense of helplessness as people repeatedly tried to hurt a team that just wanted to have a good time. Jeremy powered his phone off before he could ask Kevin ‘Why?’ A reason wouldn’t take back what they’d done.

Despite serious reservations, I had to forgive Finnick for his role in the conspiracy that landed me here. He, at least, has some idea of what I’m going through. And it takes too much energy to stay angry with someone who cries so much.

Dawn was casting spun-gold threads across a rosy sky over Sawubona Game Reserve as Martine Allen took a last look around to ensure there weren’t any witnesses, leaned forward like a jockey on the track, wound her fingers through a tangle of silver mane, and cried, ‘Go, Jemmy, go!’ The white giraffe sprang forward so suddenly that she was almost unseated, but she recovered and, wrapping her arms around his neck, quickly adjusted to the familiar rhythm of Jemmy’s rocking-horse stride.

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Calamity-peddling journalism also sets up perverse incentives for terrorists and rampage shooters, who can game the system and win instant notoriety.37 And a special place in Journalist Hell is reserved for the scribes who in 2021, during the rollout of Covid vaccines known to have a 95 percent efficacy rate, wrote stories on the vaccinated people who came down with the disease—by definition not news (since it was always certain there would be some) and guaranteed to scare thousands from this lifesaving treatment.

game hunting was flourishing; and, dining at Muthaiga Club, I was offered trout freshly caught in the mountains, together with some last bottles of a particularly fragrant Rhine wine. Not since that last bright summer in Paris in 1939, when the wealthy of the world came flocking to spend their money lest they should not visit Paris again, had I seen women so well groomed, wearing so many lush furs. Baboon pelts and leopard skins were particularly popular. Great log fires burned in the grates of the club chimney places, though the nights were scarcely sharp. The men wore dinner-jackets or dress uniform. The conversation tended to hunting. In the day one had golf at Brackenridge, or swimming or riding or fooling round the game reserves where giraffe still roam haphazardly. Normally one looked in at a roadhouse for an apéritif around eight in the evening, and after dinner perhaps went down to Torr’s to dance. They say the altitude at Nairobi makes people slightly crazy, but after the desert I found it all delightful, as though the world were enjoying one long holiday. As

The needle of his moral compass had swung madly without direction. Fueled by the terror of being prey, how quickly he himself had become a predator, with no reservations about smashing Bobbin to death. He'd transformed, all right, but not into anything he was proud of — and being a Snow, he had more self-control than most. He tried to imagine what it would be like if the whole world played by those same rules. No consequences. People taking what they wanted, when they wanted, and killing for it if it came to that. Survival driving everything.

Not well. I know at any moment Snow could kill him. Especially since he warned Thirteen about the bombing. It’s a terrible thing to live with,” I say. “But because of what they’re putting him through, I don’t have any reservations anymore. About doing whatever it takes to destroy the Capitol. I’m finally free.

When you feel the need to escape your problems, to escape from this world, don't make the mistake of resorting to suicide Don't do it! You will hear the empty advice of many scholars in the matter of life and death, who will tell you, "just do it" there is nothing after this, you will only extinguish the light that surrounds you and become part of nothingness itself, so when you hear these words remember this brief review of suicide: When you leave this body after committing one of the worst acts of cowardice that a human being can carry out, you turn off the light, the sound and the sense of reality, you become nothing waiting for the programmers of this game to pick you up from the darkness, subtly erase your memories and enable your return and I emphasize the word subtle because sometimes the intelligence behind this maneuver or automated mechanism is wrong and send human beings wrongly reset to such an extent, that when they fall to earth and are born again, they begin to experience memories of previous lives, in many cases they perceive themselves of the opposite sex, and science attributes this unexplainable phenomenon to genetic and hormonal factors, but you and I know better! And we quickly identified this trigger as a glitch in the Matrix. Then we said! That a higher intelligence or more advanced civilization throws you back into this game for the purpose of experimenting, growing and developing as an advanced consciousness and due to your toxic and destructive behavior you come back again but in another body and another life, but you are still you, then you will carry with you that mark of suicide and cowardice, until you learn not to leave this experience without having learned the lesson of life, without having experienced and surprised by death naturally or by design of destiny. About this first experience you will find very little material associated with this event on the internet, it seems that the public is more reserved, because they perceive themselves and call themselves "awakened" And that is because the system has total control over the algorithm of fame and fortune even over life and death. Now, according to religion and childish fears, which are part of the system's business to keep you asleep, eyes glued to the cellular device all day, it says the following: If you commit this act of sin, you turn off light, sound and sense of reality, and from that moment you begin to experience pain, fear and suffering on alarming scales, and that means they will come for you, a couple of demons and take you to the center of the earth where the weeping and gnashing of teeth is forever, and in that hell tormented by demons you will spend eternity. About this last experience we will find hundreds of millions of people who claim to have escaped from there! And let me tell you that all were captivated by the same deity, one of dubious origin, that feeds on prayers and energetic events, because it is not of our nature, because it knows very well that we are beings of energy, then this deity or empire of darkness receives from the system its food and the system receives from them power, to rule, to administer, to control, to control, to kill, to exclude, to inhibit, to classify, to imprison, to silence, to infect, to contaminate, to depersonalize. So now that you know the two sides of the same coin, which one will your intelligence lean towards! You decide... Heads or tails? From the book Avatars, the system's masterpiece.

I dismissed this course of action, sensing my own reserves of strengths, but I experimented with the idea and took it as far as I could in a game I christened Bus Stop: on summer nights, I would stretch out on the road in front of my house, on hot, grainy asphalt scattered with sharp bits of gravel, and watch and wait for growling motors, the blinding movement of headlights, and I weighed up the pros and cons, what tied me to life like a blood oath, what left me cold, or tired me out; and when the noise grew sharper, more grating, and when the headlights from the first bend in the road began to cut out the sides of the buildings and project a slow, revolving shadow dance on the wall, I always came back to the same conclusion - that I felt something stir inside me, as hazy and phony as a childhood memory, as insistent as a hit song you'd heard so often you couldn't get its bitterness out of your head, something that promised me a better future, only somewhere else. And I would unpeel myself from the road, I'd pick myself up, what was left of me, what could still be of some use, and slowly make my way back to the pink gravel of the sidewalk, just like the one my little retarded friend was standing on this morning as stoic as an abandoned house awaiting demolition.

Everyone has their reservations, naturally. You being from the coal district. But I said, and this was very clever of me, I said, ‘Well, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls!’” Effie beams at us so brilliantly that we have no choice but to respond enthusiastically to her cleverness even though it’s wrong.

In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that’s all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us,

He did not hate his wife, but felt for her the kind of affection a man usually reserves for an excitable puppy. Her immediate acceptance of his every opinion and observation was both disheartening and a little hilarious to him. There was not a single criticism he could offer that she would not immediately accept as true. He made a game out of it.

Waste persons are those no longer useful as resources to a society for whatever reason, and have become apatrides, or noncitizens. Waste persons must be placed out of view-in ghettos, slums, reservations, camps, retirement villages, mass graves, remote territories, strategic hamlets-all places of desolation, and uninhabitable. We live in a century whose Master Players have created many millions of such "superfluous persons" (Rubenstein).

Carry must have been the germ that produced the ultimate Trilby, there can be no two opinions about it; she had the same camaraderie, the same boyish attraction, the same funny shy reserve. Kicky absorbed her, without realising it, and absorbed the game of mesmerising at the same time, so that the two things combined and became one at the back of his mind. He forgot all about them for nearly forty years—and then he wrote Trilby and made a fortune at sixty.

National Park. This I must keep reminding myself. Our parks serve a great purpose, not just for preservation, but also as a funnel. The Designated Route. Mobs of tourists, RVs, buses, and family station wagons out on summer vacation need a place to go. Our national parks serve this purpose, complete with entrance fees, advance reservation campgrounds, snack bars, game rooms, bowling alleys, roped-off viewpoints, paved trails, lodges, and reserved backcountry campsites. Permit required. For a fee.

Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.

We dropped in one evening, and found the ladies at home. My long friend engaged his favourites, the two younger girls, at the game of "Now," or hunting a stone under three piles of tappa. For myself, I lounged on a mat with Ideea the eldest, dallying with her grass fan, and improving my knowledge of Tahitian. The occasion was well adapted to my purpose, and I began. "Ah, Ideea, mickonaree oee?" the same as drawling out—"By the bye, Miss Ideea, do you belong to the church?" "Yes, me mickonaree," was the reply. But the assertion was at once qualified by certain, reservations; so curious that I cannot forbear their relation. "Mickonaree ena" (church member here), exclaimed she, laying her hand upon her mouth, and a strong emphasis on the adverb. In the same way, and with similar exclamations, she touched her eyes and hands. This done, her whole air changed in an instant; and she gave me to understand, by unmistakable gestures, that in certain other respects she was not exactly a "mickonaree." In short, Ideea was "A sad good Christian at the heart— A very heathen in the carnal part." The

The warmth of your heart is tauntingly near, but you reserve it as you shut me out in the blizzard of your doubt. Is it because you don't understand the freakish assembly of my soul, a soul that was once broken? In some ways I guess I don't blame you. if I had the opportunity to avoid the vague horizon of my future, I would. But these are the cards I've been dealt and I still don't know all the rules of the game. My burden is heavy and becomes harder to bear each day. I know I have the ability to endure it alone if I really persevere, but I prefer a steady hand to help guide me along the way and maybe even hold me in times of uncertainty.

Such moments have been called “peak experiences” by the humanistic psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow. Researching the common characteristics of persons having such experiences, he reports the following descriptive phrases: “He feels more integrated” [the two selves are one], “feels at one with the experience,” “is relatively egoless” [quiet mind], “feels at the peak of his powers,” “fully functioning,” “is in the groove,” “effortless,” “free of blocks, inhibitions, cautions, fears, doubts, controls, reservations, self-criticisms, brakes,” “he is spontaneous and more creative,” “is most here-now,” “is non-striving, non-needing, non-wishing … he just is.

The Merry Chrismouse by Stewart Stafford What a time for the merry Chrismouse, Making toys in his workshop/house, Everyone contributes, even his spouse, With Christmas cheer, no one will douse. A sprig of holly for a present tree, Blizzard snow is grated cheese, The kindly rodent set to please, When he comes on Christmas Eve. Nuts and seeds on their button table, Playing games and telling fables, Discarded tinsel on the wall of gable, In midwinter's icy spell unstable. A time for amnesia that felines exist, Kindness and joy at their fingertips, Baby mice excitedly make lists, To have many gifts when they insist. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

Did you see anything?” Piper asked. “Anything at all?”  Trevor was slumped on the couch, his NexFlight game system’s power cord creating a tripping hazard in the underground bunker. It was supposed to be plugged while charging, but the batteries had dwindled to useless over a month ago. There were vast stores in a cold cellar near the bedrooms, reserved for flashlights and lanterns in case of emergency. Meyer would have a fit if Trevor used them for games. But Meyer wouldn’t throw a fit because he was gone. And, Piper felt more certain by the day, was never coming back.  “I didn’t look.” Trevor’s eyes never left the game.  “You didn’t look? Go look, Trevor.”  Trevor sighed and met Piper’s

Minoru and Yoko spent many evenings at video arcades. They looked over players' shoulders until it made young kids nervous. "What the fuck's your problem, mister?" one kid in a Kiss T-shirt barked at Minoru. Arakawa asked him, "Would you like a job?" He watched kids stand in front of the machines, transfixed, their hands melded to controllers, their bony arms like umbilical cords joining human and machine. He asked the kids questions about what made a game good. Arakawa realized that the most successful games had something the players couldn't articulate. The words used to describe them were those usually reserved to describe forms of intimacy between people. It was as if the players and the game itself somehow merged.

And we also recognize this dance-like spirit, this ethos of grace: societal conduct, the control not only of written and established conventions, the virtuous mastery of forms of play where persons come close to each other without meeting and where they establish distance without damaging each other through indifference; amiability and not insistence is the atmosphere of this ethos of grace - its ethical law is the game and its observation, not seriousness. Forced distance between persons becomes ennobled into reserve. The offensive indifference, coldness, and rudeness of living past each other is made ineffective through the forms of politeness, respectfulness, and attentiveness. Reserve counteracts a too great intimacy.

This game we play is full of contrasts. It has to be. Being warm is much better if you have known what it is to be cold. The light is a welcome break from being surrounded by darkness. Earth is contrast. Nothing is bad nor good; things are just on one end of the spectrum or the other. Some periods in a person’s life are full of confusion, peril, and pain. Other periods are filled with times of clarity, safety and pleasure. I advise you to slow down and enjoy yourself when things are good. It can go on for years, but don’t waste one precious moment of the good times. Because the bad times come, and if you haven’t built up your reserves during the good times, you may not make it through the bad and into the next session of good.

There was silence. At last she said, „Lazarus, I don’t want to die. But what is the purpose of our long lives? We don’t seem to grow wiser as we grow older. Are we simply hanging on after our tune has passed? Loitering in the kindergarten when we should be moving on? Must we die and be born again?“ „I don’t know,“ said Lazarus, „and I don’t have any way to find out. . . and I’m damned if I see any sense in my worrying about it. Or you either. I propose to hang onto this life as long as I can and learn as much as I can. Maybe wishing and understanding are reserved for a later existence and maybe they aren’t for us at all, ever. Either way, I’m satisfied to be living and enjoying it. Mary my sweet, carpe that old diem! It’s the only game in town.

Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them. Like me, for instance. Right now. Besides, there’s one wonderful thing she did when I arrived back in the district. After our families and friends had greeted Peeta and me at the train station, there were a few questions allowed from reporters. Someone asked my mother what she thought of my new boyfriend, and she replied that, while Peeta was the very model of what a young man should be, I wasn’t old enough to have any boyfriend at all. She followed this with a pointed look at Peeta. There was a lot of laughter and comments like “Somebody’s in trouble” from the press, and Peeta dropped my hand and sidestepped away from me. That didn’t last long — there was too much pressure to act otherwise — but it gave us an excuse to be a little more reserved than we’d been in the Capitol. And maybe it can help account for how little I’ve been seen in Peeta’s company since the cameras left. I go upstairs to the bathroom, where a steaming tub awaits. My mother has added a small bag of dried flowers that perfumes

Primer of Love [Lesson 47] And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the sins of the children of Israel, putting them upon the head of the goat. ~ Leviticus 16:3-30 Kowal zawini, cygana powiesili. The blacksmith was guilty, but they hung the gypsy. ~ Polish Proverb Lesson 47) Sometimes to save a relationship you need a scapegoat Not an innocent scapegoat ~ that's fair game for the media wolves. The scapegoat for the common man is the government. Don't like the economy ~ blame it on Obama.Don't like your job ~ blame it on your boss. Not enough money for Christmas gifts -- it's Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve's fault. If he loves hummus -- it's Hillary Clinton's Mideast policy. If she's contracted genital warts -- it's Bill Clinton's fault. It really is.

Why can't we sit together? What's the point of seat reservations,anyway? The bored woman calls my section next,and I think terrible thoughts about her as she slides my ticket through her machine. At least I have a window seat. The middle and aisle are occupied with more businessmen. I'm reaching for my book again-it's going to be a long flight-when a polite English accent speaks to the man beside me. "Pardon me,but I wonder if you wouldn't mind switching seats.You see,that's my girlfriend there,and she's pregnant. And since she gets a bit ill on airplanes,I thought she might need someone to hold back her hair when...well..." St. Clair holds up the courtesy barf bag and shakes it around. The paper crinkles dramatically. The man sprints off the seat as my face flames. His pregnant girlfriend? "Thank you.I was in forty-five G." He slides into the vacated chair and waits for the man to disappear before speaking again. The guy onhis other side stares at us in horror,but St. Clair doesn't care. "They had me next to some horrible couple in matching Hawaiian shirts. There's no reason to suffer this flight alone when we can suffer it together." "That's flattering,thanks." But I laugh,and he looks pleased-until takeoff, when he claws the armrest and turns a color disturbingy similar to key lime pie. I distract him with a story about the time I broke my arm playing Peter Pan. It turned out there was more to flying than thinking happy thoughts and jumping out a window. St. Clair relaxes once we're above the clouds. Time passes quickly for an eight-hour flight. We don't talk about what waits on the other side of the ocean. Not his mother. Not Toph.Instead,we browse Skymall. We play the if-you-had-to-buy-one-thing-off-each-page game. He laughs when I choose the hot-dog toaster, and I tease him about the fogless shower mirror and the world's largest crossword puzzle. "At least they're practical," he says. "What are you gonna do with a giant crossword poster? 'Oh,I'm sorry Anna. I can't go to the movies tonight. I'm working on two thousand across, Norwegian Birdcall." "At least I'm not buying a Large Plastic Rock for hiding "unsightly utility posts.' You realize you have no lawn?" "I could hide other stuff.Like...failed French tests.Or illegal moonshining equipment." He doubles over with that wonderful boyish laughter, and I grin. "But what will you do with a motorized swimming-pool snack float?" "Use it in the bathtub." He wipes a tear from his cheek. "Ooo,look! A Mount Rushmore garden statue. Just what you need,Anna.And only forty dollars! A bargain!" We get stumped on the page of golfing accessories, so we switch to drawing rude pictures of the other people on the plane,followed by rude pictures of Euro Disney Guy. St. Clair's eyes glint as he sketches the man falling down the Pantheon's spiral staircase. There's a lot of blood. And Mickey Mouse ears. After a few hours,he grows sleepy.His head sinks against my shoulder. I don't dare move.The sun is coming up,and the sky is pink and orange and makes me think of sherbet.I siff his hair. Not out of weirdness.It's just...there. He must have woken earlier than I thought,because it smells shower-fresh. Clean. Healthy.Mmm.I doze in and out of a peaceful dream,and the next thing I know,the captain's voice is crackling over the airplane.We're here. I'm home.

The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year?  We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization?  The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.”  After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations—configurations—of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other—when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.

The future is now quite uncertain; everyone lives for today, a state of mind in which the game of graft and swindle is played with ease — that is, it is only "for today" that they allow themselves to be bribed and bought, while tomorrow and tomorrow’s virtue they reserve to themselves! It is a well-known fact that individuals, being truly things apart, care more for the moment than their opposites the gregarious do, because they consider themselves as unpredictable as the future; likewise, they readily take up with the violent, because the crowd could neither understand nor condone the actions to which they dare have recourse — but the tyrant or Caesar understands that the individual has a right even to his excesses, and has an interest in advocating a bolder private morality, and even in lending it a hand. For what he thinks of himself, and what he wants others to think of him, is what Napoleon in his classical manner at one time declared: "I have the right to answer any complaint against me with an eternal “this is what I am”. I stand aloof from the whole world and accept conditions from no one. I want submission even to my fancies and regard it as a matter of course that I indulge myself in this or that diversion." Napoleon once spoke thus to his wife, who had reasons to question her husband’s fidelity. It is during the most corrupt times that these apples ripen and fall, by which I mean the individuals who bear the seeds of the future, the intellectual pioneers and founders of causes and federations. Corruption is only an ugly word for the autumn of a people.

Jamie used the time away from me to do some soul-searching. She finally also did something she’d thought about for a long time. She walked into an Army recruitment office in Nashville and joined the military. She didn’t discuss it with me beforehand. Instead she called and said, “I’m joining the Army. It’s active duty and I’m going to be a truck driver with an airborne contract.” Shocked, I blurted out, “You’re going to do what? No you’re not.” “What do you mean? I’m gonna be a truck driver in a convoy.” I knew she was referring to a seventies country song she likes. Only this wasn’t a country song, this was real life. “Are you crazy? This is not a game. You will hate being a truck driver. You don’t even know if you’ll like being in the military. Go National Guard or Reserves and see if you like it.” “They said I’m already in. Basic is not for another few months but I’m in and I can’t change it.” “Yes you can. You are not in yet. You are not in the military. That was just a recruiter telling you that. Why aren’t you going in as an officer? You have a degree. You can make more money.” She seemed annoyed that I was raining on her parade, but I think it was also dawning on her that maybe I was right and she hadn’t done the research. “They told me that it’s not really that much more.” I explained to her, “They are lying to you. It is a lot more.” I had no problem with her joining the military. If that’s what she wanted to do, I supported it. But I was going to make sure she made the smartest moves she could make if that was in fact what she wanted to do with her life. I certainly wasn’t going to let her be talked into a lower-paid, higher-risk job.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations – configurations – of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other – when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.

Two nights after the Chaworth ball, Gabriel practiced at the billiards table in the private apartments above Jenner's. The luxurious rooms, which had once been occupied by his parents in the earlier days of their marriage, were now reserved for the convenience of the Challon family. Raphael, one of his younger brothers, usually lived at the club, but at the moment was on an overseas trip to America. He'd gone to source and purchase a large quantity of dressed pine timber on behalf of a Challon-owned railway construction company. American pine, for its toughness and elasticity, was used as transom ties for railways, and it was in high demand now that native British timber was in scarce supply. The club wasn't the same without Raphael's carefree presence, but spending time alone here was better than the well-ordered quietness of his terrace at Queen's Gate. Gabriel relished the comfortably masculine atmosphere, spiced with scents of expensive liquor, pipe smoke, oiled Morocco leather upholstery, and the acrid pungency of green baize cloth. The fragrance never failed to remind him of the occasions in his youth when he had accompanied his father to the club. For years, the duke had gone almost weekly to Jenner's to meet with managers and look over the account ledgers. His wife Evie had inherited it from her father, Ivo Jenner, a former professional boxer. The club was an inexhaustible financial engine, its vast profits having enabled the duke to improve his agricultural estates and properties, and accumulate a sprawling empire of investments. Gaming was against the law, of course, but half of Parliament were members of Jenner's, which had made it virtually exempt from prosecution. Visiting Jenner's with his father had been exciting for a sheltered boy. There had always been new things to see and learn, and the men Gabriel had encountered were very different from the respectable servants and tenants on the estate. The patrons and staff at the club had used coarse language and told bawdy jokes, and taught him card tricks and flourishes. Sometimes Gabriel had perched on a tall stool at a circular hazard table to watch high-stakes play, with his father's arm draped casually across his shoulders. Tucked safely against the duke's side, Gabriel had seen men win or lose entire fortunes in a single night, all on the tumble of dice.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why if all politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes? You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don’t have Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don’t write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don’t set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don’t control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices — 545 human beings out of 235 million — are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excused the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered by private central bank. I exclude all of the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislators’ responsibility to determine how he votes. Don’t you see the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O’Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes. Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses — provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

Breanne, I'm asking you nicely to please reconsider. Mom and Dad are coming to the game. They have a suite reserved and Mom is expecting you." Jayson almost sounded as if he were begging. I wasn't buying it. "Take Belinda or one of those other women," I huffed. "I don't do much in the leather department. I'm a vegetarian, remember?" "Mom loves that about you." "I'm sure she does. Her son, however, finds me grossly inadequate and walks away whenever he gets a chance. As much as I like your mother, I don't feel good about stringing her along. I'm just a front for you—admit it." "Bree, I'll invite Hank to come, too. I promise one of us will be with you." "Sure. That sounds so comfortable," I said. "Your mother will wonder what the hell is going on when Hank pays more attention than you do. Frankly, I don't want anything from either of you." Jayson was still trying to convince me to go to the basketball game the following evening, and he'd shown up at my front door to do it. I'd been grumpy ever since I'd come back after saving Teeg San Gerxon's ass. Sure, it would put the Campiaan Alliance in chaos, but for a blink, or maybe half a blink—I'd considered saving Stellan and his brothers and leaving Teeg behind to be flayed and swallowed by a sandstorm that had destroyed most of Thelik. "What can I possible do to convince you to come? Donate to Mercy Crossings or some other charity? What?" He'd arrived at my front door as if he'd been invited. I made him stand at the door instead of inviting him in. "Give Trina a raise. That car she's driving really needs to be retired." "What?" Jayson almost shouted. "Okay, the price just went up. Buy her a new car." Did I realize he'd take the bait? No. "All right. I agree, that piece of crap needs to go to the salvage yard. I'll buy her a new car." "A good one. She doesn't want a TinyCar, I know that much." "You think I'd let anybody out of the driveway in one of those things? I saw yours and almost gagged." "But since I'm nobody important to you, I can drive whatever the hell I want," I pointed out. "Besides, I got my car from a vending machine. Put in a dollar and it dropped out. It was too bad, too—I wanted a soda." The corners of Jayson's mouth threatened to turn up. Schooling his face, he said, "I never pegged you for an extortionist," instead. "I never pegged you for an asshole, either, but disappointment abounds. Sell that Mercedes you have and buy four decent cars with the proceeds. See? Everybody's happy." "That's a Mercedes McLaren," Jayson howled. "Then buy eight decent cars." "If you weren't so smart and my mother didn't like you so much," Jayson threatened. "You'd what? Have one of those bigger, taller, better-endowed women beat me up? Jayson Rome, feel free to bring anybody you want against me. They won't last ten seconds." "You'll come to the game? I still plan to invite Hank. I usually sit courtside, but since Dad's coming and bringing Mom," Jayson didn't finish. "Just don't make an ass out of yourself this time." I shut the door in his face before he could sputter a reply.

A camper should know for himself how to outfit, how to select and make a camp, how to wield an axe and make proper fires, how to cook, wash, mend, how to travel without losing his course, or what to do when he has lost it; how to trail, hunt, shoot, fish, dress game, manage boat or canoe, and how to extemporize such makeshifts as may be needed in wilderness faring. And he should know these things as he does the way to his mouth. Then is he truly a woodsman, sure to do promptly the right thing at the right time, whatever befalls. Such a man has an honest pride in his own resourcefulness, a sense of reserve force, a doughty self-reliance that is good to feel. His is the confidence of the lone sailorman, who whistles as he puts his tiny bark out to sea.

Across the ancient Roman Empire there were only four chariot teams, each designated by a color. By the fifth century, those had been reduced to two, the Blues and the Greens. At least once a week the gates of the Hippodrome would open, allowing thousands of Constantinople’s citizens to file in. To the left were the seats reserved for aristocrats and governmental officials. The closer that one could sit to the imperial loge, of course, the better. To the right were the sections for the regular citizens. Here, too, there were sharp divisions, first by team supporters and then by social status. And the divisions went deeper than that. The Blues and the Greens were not simply teams, but highly competitive clubs of sports fans, whose activities extended well beyond the games. They were, as historians refer to them, circus factions, and they had a clear organization. The faction leaders sat directly opposite the emperor; they were present for the award ceremonies and, in later centuries, took part in virtually all civic ceremonies inside and outside the Hippodrome. Emperors usually expressed a preference for one faction or the other (usually the Blues), and in later years the favored faction could occasionally provide an emperor with armed support against urban insurrections. It is not true, as one sometimes reads, that the factions were political parties. Instead, they were extremely enthusiastic fan clubs whose members, when unhappy, could become very, very dangerous.

man of stark passions. This woman knows exactly how to incite them… and how to calm them down. The King goes from barely reserved to ravenously passionate. I dare a quick glimpse at Dagan. He’s watching the display with complete apathy. But I cannot help but feel the stirring of some very bad, very unwanted emotions in my gut. I tear my eye away from the heavily muscled vampire. If anybody even suspected my secret… Quickly, I stem those thoughts. Better not entertain the horrendous possibilities. Eventually the King lets his woman go. He yanks her to his side and openly gropes her ass. Some of the rage has flowed out of him. “You should not chastise poor Riyu so,” Beatrice says sweetly. “If the fault lies with anyone, it is with me. Yes, I let both your lieutenant and his trusted under servant assume the command came from you. I take the blame.” Her voice turns sultry. “So punish me, if you’re going to punish anyone.” A growl of deep desire comes from the King’s throat. I don’t know the sort of bedroom games they play, nor do I want to. “Later,” he promises. “When we are in a more suitable space.” “The King can do as he pleases anywhere,” Beatrice reminds him. “Dismiss all these men, and have me now.” A trickle of discomfort goes down my spine. “I would, but I am not done with them.” “Then tell them what you want. But be quick about it. My recent activities have given me quite the appetite for…” She leans in and whispers the final word in his ear. It sounds a lot like “lock.” The atmosphere in the room shifts. Few know exactly the sort of experiments Beatrice runs underground. But all have heard the agonizing screams, the shrieks for mercy, which occasionally drift up from her “laboratories.” Vampires are ruthless killers. None of us shy away from a little blood. But what Beatrice

Most game reserves in Botswana are large tracts of totally undeveloped wilderness. There are no paved roads, fast-food stands, water fountains, campgrounds, restrooms, or any of the other “improvements” found in parks and reserves in more developed countries.

month ago. There were vast stores in a cold cellar near the bedrooms, reserved for flashlights and lanterns in case of emergency. Meyer would have a fit if Trevor used them for games. But Meyer wouldn’t throw a fit because he was gone. And, Piper felt more certain by the day, was never coming back. “I didn’t look.” Trevor’s eyes never left the game.

I knew that once I was sworn in, I would be a Midshipman in the United States Naval Reserve and a Cadet in the United States Maritime Service. That meant that I would be a low life “plebe” or “mugg” to the upperclassmen. Everyone on the bus had a good idea of what we were in for as muggs, and it was not good. The bus rolled through Bucksport and then passed through Orland, which could hardly be called a town, onto even narrower, bumpier roads, to what seemed to be the end of the Earth. By now, it was getting late and the shadows were getting longer, as the bus ground up a long incline and then turned right, past a small golf course on a barren hill. Finally, I saw the “Maine Maritime Academy” sign, indicating that we had arrived. I don’t know what I expected, but the few buildings on the side of this windblown hill wasn’t it! The buildings that I was looking at would be my home for the next three years. The bus took a final left hand turn and pulled up alongside a relatively large red brick building. I could see the upperclassmen through large windows, anxiously awaiting our arrival. Seeing us, they finally knew that they had graduated to the exalted position of “Lord and Master.” For the first time, I got that sickening feeling of total helplessness, mixed with apprehension and anxiety. There was nowhere to hide and I refused to show my feelings, so I compensated by getting off the bus with a swagger and a smug grin that would soon get me into trouble and be wiped from my face. If I wanted to survive, I had better be ready to play their game and put up with the countless acts of immaturity that would be bestowed upon poor me….

What is it about the Greek character that has allowed this complex culture to thrive for millennia? The Greek Isles are home to an enduring, persevering people with a strong work ethic. Proud, patriotic, devout, and insular, these hardy seafarers are the inheritors of working methods that are centuries old. On any given day, fishermen launch their bots at dawn in search of octopi, cuttlefish, sponges, and other gifts of the ocean. Widows clad in black dresses and veils shop the local produce markets and gather in groups of two and three to share stories. Artisans stich decorative embroidery to adorn traditional costumes. Glassblowers, goldsmiths, and potters continue the work of their ancient ancestors, ultimately displaying their wares in shops along the waterfronts. The Greeks’ dedication to time-honored occupations and hard work is harmoniously complemented by their love of dance, song, food, and games. Some of the earliest works of art from the Greek Isles--including Minoan paintings from the second millennium B.C.E.--depict the central, day-to-day role of dance, and music. Today, life is still lived in common, and the old ways often survive in a deep separation between the worlds of women and men. In the more rural areas, dancing and drinking are--officially at least--reserved for men, as the women watch from windows and doorways before returning to their tasks. At seaside tavernas throughout the Greek Isles, old men sip raki, a popular aniseed-flavored liqueur, while playing cards or backgammon under grape pergolas that in late summer are heavy with ripe fruit. Woven into this love of pleasure, however, are strands of superstition and circumspection. For centuries, Greek artisans have crafted the lovely blue and black glass “eyes” that many wear as amulets to ward off evil spirits. They are given as baby and housewarming gifts, and are thought to bring good luck and protect their wearers from the evil eye. Many Greeks carry loops of wooden or glass beads--so-called “worry beads”--for the same purpose. Elderly women take pride in their ability to tell fortunes from the black grounds left behind in a cup of coffee.

Most buyers will go in aloof and reserved. They’ll shoot down ideas and inject cautionary responses at opportune times. They act like a conservative investor who must be convinced to be brought to the table, and if they do, their actions warn, it’s going to be hardball. This is not a trust but verify approach. It’s a prove it and then I’ll consider trusting you approach. There is a time to be a conservative investor during this process. This book, however, is not about how to become a conservative investor; it’s about acquisition entrepreneurship. Any acquisition will obviously include volumes of cautious investing analysis. Buying your first business is usually the largest investment you’ve ever made in your life and you will research accordingly. If there are snakes in the bushes, you will simply walk away later. The best buyers, however, understand that they too are entrepreneurs, just like the seller. The transaction will be completed within a few months after meeting the seller and then the buyer will be in the driver’s seat for the next four to forty years. Acting like an entrepreneur and not a venture capitalist during the interactions with the seller is the key to winning the seller over, getting the best deal outcome later, and behaving like the new CEO of the company—which you may or may not be, but that will be up to you and not them if you play your cards right.

Showy makeup, she explained, is reserved for women who either make their living on the streets or are trying too hard.

This all sounds pretty ominous, but you haven’t seen anything yet. You must add the “multiplier effect” of bank lending practices. Practically no one is aware that, when you make a deposit of $1,000 at your favorite bank, they can now lend out $10,000 as a result of your deposit. It is called the “fractional reserve lending system,” that is, they are creating money out of thin air. (My own description of what they are doing is the world’s largest con game). It is all predicated on the theory that “everyone is not going to withdraw their money at the same time.” For a complete treatise on what is going on in banking I suggest, no, I beg you to read The Case Against The Fed, by Murray Rothbard. You can get it at the Ludwig von Mises Institute located in Auburn, AL.

For the best bounce house and water slide rentals in Baton Rouge, Greyson's Events & Entertainment has you covered. We have inflatables of all types, including: water slides, bounce houses, combos, mechanical bulls, rock climbing walls, interactives, and games. We also have concessions like popcorn, and cotton candy machines. Party accessories like garbage cans, tables and chairs, generators, etc. Give us a call or reserve on-line and we promise a great all around experience.

Read the notes.Never buy a stock without reading the footnotes to the financial statements in the annual report. Usually labeled “summary of significant accounting policies,” one key note describes how the company recognizes revenue, records inventories, treats installment or contract sales, expenses its marketing costs, and accounts for the other major aspects of its business.7 In the other footnotes, watch for disclosures about debt, stock options, loans to customers, reserves against losses, and other “risk factors” that can take a big chomp out of earnings. Among the things that should make your antennae twitch are technical terms like “capitalized,” “deferred,” and “restructuring”—and plain-English words signaling that the company has altered its accounting practices, like “began,” “change,” and “however.” None of those words mean you should not buy the stock, but all mean that you need to investigate further. Be sure to compare the footnotes with those in the financial statements of at least one firm that’s a close competitor, to see how aggressive your company’s accountants are. Read more. If you are an enterprising investor willing to put plenty of time and energy into your portfolio, then you owe it to yourself to learn more about financial reporting. That’s the only way to minimize your odds of being misled by a shifty earnings statement. Three solid books full of timely and specific examples are Martin Fridson and Fernando Alvarez’s Financial Statement Analysis, Charles Mulford and Eugene Comiskey’s The Financial Numbers Game, and Howard Schilit’s Financial Shenanigans. 8

the carrier to elevate the benefit of hanging out in the carrier. Offer A Treat. Many cats respond well to treat rewards. To make the carrier an even better experience, try tossing a few inside for your kitten to discover. If he figures out that every now and then, going inside brings a bonus of yummies, your kitten will be more likely to explore and figure out the crate is a terrific place. Make sure that the treats you use for crate training are irresistible, and reserve them for this situation only. Once your cat has begun to visit the crate on his own, try offering an occasional high-value meal (like pungent canned food) but only when he’s inside. Teach Him Tolerance. After your kitten spends time willingly inside, try shutting the door briefly. Most kitties tolerate the door shut at least as long as they have something to munch. Praise the dickens out of him! He should know that staying calmly inside the crate earns him good things, maybe even a game of chase-the-red-dot. Repeat several times over the next few days, each time letting the kitten out after a few minutes. Extend Crate Time. By the end of the first week, you can begin increasing the time the kitten spends in the crate. Some cats feel calmer when inside the carrier if you cover it with a towel because this shuts out at least the visual cues that may raise stress. Scent the towel with the Feliway. Carry Kitty Around. Once your kitten feels comfortable in the carrier with the door shut, drop in a couple of treats and then pick up the carrier while he’s in it and carry him around. Give him another treat or play a favorite game as soon as you let him out.

your cat to explore. It should be convenient for you to access, too, and away from lots of traffic so the cat has a private place to retreat. Leave the top portion of the carrier open or take it off completely, and let him sniff it inside and out. Consider some “second story” locations, so that your kitten has the added allure of an elevated lookout. Take a cue from your cat’s current favorite hangouts, and offer a location he already loves. Many cats love warm sunny spots, so a window view could be a great location. Don’t make a big deal of it. Make It A Happy Place. Place a snuggly kitty blanket inside, or even a fuzzy shirt that YOU have worn. That associates the carrier with your familiar and trusted scent. Adding a spritz of a feline facial pheromone product like Feliway also may help. Add A Toy or Game. Toss a toy inside to create positive experiences with the crate. Ping Pong balls are great fun inside the hard crates. Offer a catnip toy to make points with reluctant cats. Lure your kitten inside with a chase-the-red-dot laser game, or flick a feather toy in and out and let him catch it, once he’s inside. Reserve his favorite toy to use only near or inside

A reserve is a tract of land set aside under the Indian Act and treaty agreements for the exclusive use of an Indian band. At least that’s how a reserve is described on paper. In reality, reserves were created as a means of containing and controlling Indians while providing European settlers full access to the fish and game, water, timber, and mineral resources that had formerly sustained Indian life and culture.

Monkstown Hospital by Stewart Stafford My first time away from Mam, Tonsillectomy at six years old, Teddy bear fights Action Man, Pinball Pocketeer for company. Silver torch lights the dark hours, A miniscule pack of playing cards, A made-up game played undercover, My best guess of what picture follows. An older man awaits surgery too, Seeing that I'm alone and scared, He draws pictures to amuse me or, We watch "funnies" in the TV room. Waking from the operation in the bed, Congealed blood covers my pyjamas, My mother makes her shock known, We go home for my First Communion. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

I desire again to urge upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to set aside certain portions of reserves, or other public lands, as game refuges for the preservation of bison, the wapiti, and other large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains, and on our great plains, and now tending toward extinction . . . We owe it to future generations to keep alive the noble and beautiful creatures which by their presence add such distinctive character to the American Wilderness.

fended off shareholder pressure by agreeing to have his executives write a report disclosing the company’s “climate risk.” When that report was released in the winter of 2018, it found that Exxon faced no need to change at all. The team at InsideClimate News, which had broken the original story about Exxon’s lies, summarized the company’s statement: “Exxon insists it would be able to produce all the oil in its existing fields and to keep investing in new reserves.

Sports teams conduct practice sessions and call time-outs mid-game to quickly review what’s going wrong and introduce modified approaches. This is true even in sports that don’t allow breaks. In rowing, for instance, a coxswain might call on a crew to focus on a particular aspect of their technique for five or ten strokes to recover their timing. A basketball point guard might dribble a few seconds off the shot clock while shouting directions to her teammates so they can regroup. Similarly, leaders must reserve time for slowification. Toyota, studied for their organizational learning and outstanding performance, routinely puts breaks between shifts so leaders can run problem-solving and improvement activities before production resumes. When production is interrupted, downtime is often used as a slowification opportunity.

Life is a party you create; don’t wait to be invited to one. I’m sure if we were on an episode of Family Feud with the question things singles are guilty of, we would hear the host happily quip, 'Survey says … They put their lives on hold!' Even I have to put up a guilty finger on this one. Thank heaven this season of my life is over and I finally got a clue. The only thing that should be reserved for marriage is sex (but we’ll talk about that later). Otherwise, it’s time to let the games begin. Stop waiting for someone else to make your life happen. There is an endless world of possibilities for pleasure and fulfilling living at your fingertips. Fortunately, as a single person all your resources are yours to invest into living the life you want without having to check with anyone else. This makes for options and opportunities that are sure to be the envy of your married friends. There is no time like the present to enjoy what you might not be able to do tomorrow because of different priorities. What does a no-holds-barred life look like? It’s downright exciting. I repeatedly tell people I meet to finish this statement: 'I’ve always wanted to _______________.' Well, what’s stopping you? Certainly your excuse should not be 'Because I have no man.' Until that blessed addition to your life shows up to claim you, your life should be full of fulfilling activities and amazing experiences that broaden you intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually as a person. In other words, get a life. Get one that will make you interesting and intriguing to others. A well-lived life full of passion and interests is like a magnet. It will draw other exciting people to you. So go ahead and mix it up.

The Caesars by Stewart Stafford A dynasty regurgitated: The Emperor is mad, Bloodily decadent, Corrupt in the mind. Thank the Gods, No hubris eclipses Rome's, Let them have their toys; Lives to violate and end. Satire prickles august flesh; As Suetonius's profiles bite, Caligula's infamy was my youth, Now déjà vu relative Nero reigns. Bull and Aquila check Caesarean power: Senatorial consensus, martial muscle; Praetorian fealty is the Golden House, Whilst gory "games" slake Plebeian thirst. The ghost of the Old Republic, Laments its peacock successors; Barbaric beasts to wrestle with, Not sport for imperial whims. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

So she is tearing us apart, dictating the rest of my life and we have to go along with it or she will destroy Hytanica?” “Yes. And we’re running out of time.” He shook his head in awe. “I have to hand it to her, Alera. She’s ruthless in pursuing what she wants.” “This is serious, Narian.” I found his attitude almost irritating. He obviously understaood the direness of his situation, yet was acting like it was only a game. “I know it’s serious, but there is only one choice as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to live without you, Alera. I won’t live without you.” I sat up and searched the depths of his blue eyes. “What do you mean?” He leaned forward and kissed me tenderly, and my pulse raced. Then I put my hands on his chest and pushed myself away. “Tell me, Narian.” “All right. There are three things I believe with all my heart. Hytanica can withstand a Cokyrian assault. I can no longer let Nantilam control my life and I will die before I let you go.” His eyes met mine and he unlaced my blouse, slowly pushing it off my shoulders. This time I did not resist him. “What I want,” he softly finished, “is to spend these last hours holding the woman I love, the woman to whom I am bound.” “But how are you feeling?” “Trust me, Alera, I’m not feeling any pain right now.” Tears trickled from the corners of my eyes as I opened his shirt and ran my fingers over the muscles of his chest. He stood, leading me to the rug in front of the hearth, where he drew me down to kneel beside him. His touch was warm, gentle, as he almost reverently removed my clothing, then he stripped off his shirt and breeches, his skin and his golden hair glistening in the light cast by the fire. As my pulse and breathing quickened, he caressed me, first with his eyes, then with his hands and mouth. “I love you, Alera,” he whispered against my skin, and I gave in to him completely, sinking into the feelings he stirred in me, knowing I stirred the same feelings in him. In all my dreams of what this moment would be like, I had never imagined the soaring bliss that came from giving yourself to another person with reservation, without fear, without pressure. A person you loved and trusted with all your heart and who returned those feelings a hundredfold.

reserved. This book is a work of fiction. No part of this book or this book as a whole may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or means without written permission from

Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science is the epitome of someone who recognizes what it means to reject God consistently and face the consequences. To the self-appointed “anti-Christ” and the one who did his philosophy “with a hammer,” the idea that God is dead was no yawning matter. The insane man jumped into their midst, and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you. We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? “Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—For even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!”42 Nietzsche saw himself as a “born riddle-reader,” standing watch on the mountains “posted ’twixt today and tomorrow,” who could see what most people could not see yet. There was always a gap between the lightning and the thunder, though the storm was on its way. But while ordinary people could not be expected to have seen the arrival of this great event, he reserved his most withering scorn for thinkers who saw what he saw, but were unmoved and went on as before. They may have believed that God had “died” in European society, but it made no difference to them. Life would go on as it had. Such people, Nietzsche wrote, thinking of English writers such as George Eliot, were “odious windbags of progressive optimism.” If God is dead, everything that once depended on God would in the end go too. Did even science-based naturalism, he wondered, come from “a fear and an evasion of pessimism? A refined means of self-defense against—the truth?”43

THE MIGHTY SCREEWEE™ EMPIRE™ IS POISED TO ATTACK EARTH! OUR BATTLESHIPS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED IN A SNEAK RAID! NOTHING CAN STAND BETWEEN EARTH AND THE TERRIBLE VENGEANCE OF THE SCREEWEE™! BUT THERE IS ONE STARSHIP LEFT . . . AND OUT OF THE MISTS OF TIME COMES ONE WARRIOR, ONE FIGHTER WHO IS THE LAST HOPE OF CIVILIZATION! YOU! YOU ARE THE SAVIOR OF CIVILIZATION. YOU ARE ALL THAT STANDS BETWEEN YOUR WORLD AND CERTAIN OBLIVION. YOU ARE THE LAST HOPE. ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND!™ ACTION-PACKED WITH NEW FEATURES! JUST LIKE THE REAL THING! FULL-COLOR SOUND AND SLAM-VECTOR™ GRAPHICS!   Suitable for IBM PC, Atari, Amiga, Pineapple, Amstrad, Nintendo. Actual game shots taken from a version you haven’t bought. Copyright © 1992 Gobi Software, 17834 W. Agharta Drive, Shambala, Tibet. All Rights Reserved. All company names and product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies. The names ScreeWee, Empire, and Mankind are trademarks of Gobi Software 1992.

Awaken your childhood consciousness by playing games in your mind all the time, not just at times reserved for innovating.

If North Korea were The Hunger Games, Pyongyang would be the Capitol: a place reserved for the elite to enjoy good food, nice clothes, and electricity. Out in the districts, the people have nothing.

Of course it is. Marriage is out of the question. It’s highly unlikely that God means for her to be a preacher’s wife.” Such a woman would have to be modest, reserved, and obedient—all the things Elizabeth Princeton was not. “As unlikely as Sarai and Abram having a child in their old age?” Alden asked. “Or Moses, a man slow of speech, becoming a leader and great orator?” added the preacher with the watch. The Texan gave a nod. “Or a lowly shepherd boy takin’ down Goliath without benefit of a firearm?” Soon a friendly game was in progress with the four older preachers vying to name God’s most unlikely servants.

Well do I remember the first night we met, how you questioned my opinion that first impressions are perfect. You were right to do so, of course, but even then I suspected what I’ve come to believe most passionately these past weeks: from that first moment, I knew you were a dangerous woman, and I was in great peril of falling in love.” She thought she should say something witty here. She said, “Really?” “I know it seems absurd. At first, you and I were the last match possible. I cannot name the moment when my feelings altered. I recall a stab of pain the afternoon we played croquet, seeing you with Captain East, wishing like a jealous fool that I could be the man you would laugh with. Seeing you tonight…how you look…your eyes…my wits are scattered by your beauty and I cannot hide my feelings any longer. I feel little hope that you have come to feel as I do now, but hope I must.” He placed his gloved hand on top of hers, as he had in the park her second day. It seemed years ago. “You alone have the power to save me this suffering. I desire nothing more than to call you Jane and be the man always by your side.” His voice was dry, cracking with earnestness. “Please tell me if I have any hope.” After a few moments of silence, he popped back out of his chair again. His imitation of a lovesick man in agony was very well done and quite appealing. Jane was mermerized. Mr. Nobley began to test the length of the room again. When his pacing reached a climax, he stopped to stare at her with clenched desperation. “Your reserve is a knife. Can you not tell me, Miss Erstwhile, if you love me in return?” Oh, perfect, perfect moment. But even as her heart pounded, she felt a sense of loss, sand so fine she couldn’t keep it from pouring through her fingers. Mr. Nobley was perfect, but he was just a game. It all was. Even Martin’s meaningless kisses were preferable to the phony perfection. She was craving anything real--bad smells and stupid men, missed trains and tedious jobs. But she remembered that mixed up in the ugly parts of reality were also those true moments of grace--peaches in September, honest laughter, perfect light. Real men. She was ready to embrace it now. She was in control. Things were going to be good. She stared at the hallway and thought of Martin. He’d been the first real man in a long time who’d made her feel pretty again, whom she’d allowed herself to fall for. And not the Jane-patended-oft-failed-all-or-nothing-heartbreak-love, but just the sky-blue-lean-back-happy-calm-giddy-infatuation. She looked at Mr. Nobley and back at the hallway, feeling like a pillow pulled in two, her stuffing coming out. “I don’t know. I want to, I really do…” She was replaying his proposal in her mind--the emotion behind it had felt skin-tingling real, but the words had sounded scripted, secondhand, previously worn. He was so delicious, the way he looked at her, the fun of their conversations, the simple rapture of the touch of his hand. But…but he was an actor. She would have liked to play into this moment, to live it wholeheartedly in order to put it behind her. An unease stopped her. The silence stretched, and she could hear him shift his feet. The lower tones of the dancing music trembled through the walls, muffled and sad, stripped of vigor and all high prancing notes. Surreal, Jane thought. That’s what you call this.