Get Pumped Quotes

I’d love to work with an Asian guy named Wu Hu, because just saying his name would get me all pumped up and excited.

I knew it!" He pumps a fist into the air. "You've fallen in love with me. You want to have my babies. We'll get a team of horses and a covered wagon and we'll journey to South America and raise goats.

In fact, he's never taken an interest in a woman before. I was beginning to to suspect he might prefer one of his male sneaks, but now..." She paused dramatically. "Now, we have the lovely, intelligent Yelena to get Valek's cold heart pumping." "You really should get out of your sewing room more. You need fresh air and a dose of reality," I said knowing better than to believe a word Dilana said, but unable to control the silly little grin on my face. Her sweet, melodious laughter followed me into the hallway. "You know I'm right, " she called.

We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.

And as for romance? Well, I want that too. I want to fall asleep next to you, 100 times a night, so I can know you 100 times better before we hit the day light. And despite all of this, I also want amnesia so I can relive each kiss with a perfect newness that leaves me smashed in the arms of rapture. I want the sky to fracture under the impossible weight of an apology because I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I want so much. I'm sorry that I'm using "I'm sorry" as a crutch to lean on for so long but if you sing me that song of sweet logic again then I promise to make the effort to stand on my own. There is a reason that our hearts are more like a muscle and less like a bone. I've known so many people who've have grown up flexing in front of mirrors and falling for their own reflection as if that's adequate but that's bullshit. Because we only get now until the time we go and if they've only got time to love themselves then nobody is going to be around to hear the sound of their heartbeat echo. So lady, don't expect an apology when I tell you I'm only held together by a heart that pumps blue, it's the strongest muscle in my body and I'm flexing it for you

You might also see that some of my playlists are simply two songs on repeat fifteen times, like I’m a psycho getting pumped up to murder the president.

A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it. You prime a pump with your own water, you work the handle with your own strength. You do this because you expect to get back more than you give.

They say the city gets in your blood, but that's crap. The city doesn't become part of you... you become part of it. It soaks you up bit by bit, year after year. Until you're just a tiny part of its system... Pumping through its veins, lost in its arteries.

A fuel pump is a fountain drink machine for cars. And people who want to save the environment and get drunk and run to work.

This is how it works You're young until you're not You love until you don't You try until you can't You laugh until you cry You cry until you laugh And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath No, this is how it works You peer inside yourself You take the things you like And try to love the things you took And then you take that love you made And stick it into some Someone else's heart Pumping someone else's blood And walking arm in arm You hope it don't get harmed But even if it does You'll just do it all again

We have, let us face it and admit it, little influence. We prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods.

They say you never know who's the real hero and who's the real coward until you're looking death in the face. I've always been afraid of plenty of things, but fear isn't what makes you a coward. It's how depraved your heart becomes when fear gets pumped through it.

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.

Americans are pushy, obnoxious, neurotic, crass - anything and everything - the full catastrophe as our friend Zorba might say. Canadians are none of that. The way you might fear a cow sitting down in the middle of the street during rush hour, that's how I fear Canadians. To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone's ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality. The thing Canadians don't understand is that some people are extraordinary and should be treated as such.

She pulled her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, which somehow drew even more attention to her chest. "I don't mean the right guy to marry, honey. I mean the right guy to get your blood pumping. To make you turn off your analytical, judgmental, hyperactive brain and think with your body instead." "Bodies can't think." "SEE!" She said. "Analytical. Judgmental.

There’s no winning arguments with your parents, so why get all pumped up over them? It is way better to dive down and get out of the way than it is to get clobbered by some parental tidal wave.

All the lights were off, and I just lay there, trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible when the night was so loud. My neighbor’s electric air conditioner, the bass pumping from other people’s cars. They were all converging together to say one thing: You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone.

Don't aim for perfection. Aim for progress. Learn to slow the process down when your adrenaline gets pumping.

I wanted to get into a little trouble. I wanted to catch some rain, find something that made my heart pump again, and I wanted to know what it was like to not have anyone to grab onto.

See, my aim is not to survive but to be thrown to the wolfs with adrenaline still pumping in my veins and hear the gods laughing saying ”that was one hell of a youth” and everything I do I do in order to push my senses and levels of natural ecstasy. I want to be so awake that I pass out by exhaustion every night with a smile on my face and no thoughts of tomorrow because today was all I ever could make of it and I am sick and tired of boredom. Bored people slumbering boring words about bored habits and I want to get out.

Unfortunately, you’re wrong. Motivation does not come first, action does! You have to prime the pump. Then you will begin to get motivated, and the fluids will flow spontaneously.

She could decide how she was going to be. She had a choice. Life could be an endless series of joyless chores, or she could get totally pumped and make it fun. There were bad things, and there were good things, but she got to choose which things to focus on. Her mom focused only on the bad things. Abby didn’t have to.

Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world. You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing—working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, it’s not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.

A Prayer for The Wild at Heart A prayer for the wild at heart Kept in cages I know how you long To run wild and free To feel your blood pumping To hear your heart beating faster Yet you can’t For you are locked inside a prison One that you will never escape I can hear your howls of pain And your growls of frustration Pacing back and forth Clawing at the bars Tearing at your skin Begging to be set free Your eyes are wild of full hate You face bears no smile Only a snarl of anger Blood drips from your hands Blood from the people Who didn’t understand Your fearful whimpers fill the air As you look to the full moon And let out a mournful howl Your voice gets louder As I and the others join in We let our pleads fill the night As we sit in our cold cages Praying someone will hear - Tennessee Williams

Get him! My hormones scream. Don’t fall for it, my brain cautions. Pretty! They whine. Stupid hormones. Calm down, hormones. We are just pumping him – (really brain, you chose the word pumping?) – for information. He is literally evil. We need to keep our distance.

Seriously. There's no winning arguments with your parents, so why get all pumped up over them? It is way better to dive down and get out of the way than it is to get clobbered by some parental tidal wave.

I placed my drink order first. “I’ll have a nonfat three-pump vanilla latte, low foam and extra hot.” Chance squinted his eyes at me and turned to the waitress. “Did you get all that? She’ll have a hot two-pump chump with extra cream.

Whoo-eeee!” From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Peter. He was on the road to the side, probably waiting to ensure she’d managed to negotiate the first part of the track. She didn’t stop, her adrenaline pumping. He’d catch up. “Come get me!” she yelled, making a slight counter-direction turn in the air to help her blow into the berm on the other side of the road. The trail crossed a short flat, a marked rock garden, a beam over a bog, another rock drop and berm, a zigzag around massive trees, roots and rocks that kicked the bike’s tyres this way and that and tested her balance, more air over another drop – this one caused by a massive log – enough air for her to do a back flip from a kicker over another part of the forestry trail, steep to the left. The first wall appeared. She took it fast, skidded around to slam into the side of a berm and round off on to another gully crossing. “Whoo-eeee!

I glanced up at Zay, then walked over to stand next to him. "You look good with a baby in your arms," he murmured. I took his hand, careful with his fingers that were still wrapped in tape. "Don't get your hopes up, Jones. I'm not the settling-down type." "Want to bet on that?" he asked. "Sure." I made a fist; so did he. We pumped three times. I threw paper. Zayvion threw scissors. I'd lost. Startled, I looked up at him. "Two out of three?" Zay grinned. So did I.

I get to see her at night." "No deal." "That's the only deal. I sleep over." "She's my daughter." "She's the love of my life". My heart was pumping so damn fast I needed to see her. David was searching my eyes. I let him see the truth. I needed her. That was the only way. "Fine, but only you. Logan can't start sleeping over, too." "He'll try." David groaned. "You two, you just storm your way in-" "We're family to her. We took her in when you let her go. We protected her from that woman.

What industry calls innovation, in other words, looks more like the final suicidal throes of addiction. We are blasting the bedrock of our continents, pumping our water with toxins, lopping off mountaintops, scraping off boreal forests, endangering the deep ocean, and scrambling to exploit the melting Arctic—all to get at the last drops and the final rocks. Yes, some very advanced technology is making this possible, but it’s not innovation, it’s madness.

With the supplies gathered, he went over to the stainless-steel sink and pressed the foot pedal to get the water running. While he washed his hands, he said quietly, "If I could, I would." "Excuse me?" Qhuinn pumped some suds into his palms and scrubbed all the way up his forearms. Which was overkill, but if Blay wanted him superclean, then that was what he was going to be. "If I could love a guy like that, it would be you.

The key is to pump up your righteous anger and mute your petty resentment. I'll be happy if I can get that balance to fifty-fifty.

First Pallas and now you,” the gray-haired man said, shaking his head at Nick. “It’s like I’m running a goddamn dating service around here.” He spun around. “Wilkins! Huxley!” he barked. “Next case that involves a single woman—you’re up.” Standing at the sidewalk, Agent Wilkins pumped his fist excitedly. “Yes.” Huxley adjusted his glasses with a grin, looking decidedly pleased. “That was supposed to be sarcastic. I’m getting too old for this shit,

It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.” “Now there’s a thought,” Lor says. “If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again,” Ryodan says. “Just saying, boss,” Lor says. “You can’t tell me you didn’t think it, too.” I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don’t care. “You can touch me if you want to,” I say to Lor magnanimously. I’m so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I’m feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. “Check me out. It feels really cool.” All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan. “He doesn’t own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him?

Nobody wants to die! So why do people let themselves go? Why kill yourself off? Stop and think, get fit and strong! Even a good shag will burn the calories off and pump your heart! There is no excuse - you know it!

We’ll go on the river...or we’ll go that way. Or we’ll walk the highways now. And we’ll have time to put things into ourselves. And someday, after it sets into us a long time, it’ll come out her hands and our mouths. And a lot of it will be wrong, but just enough of it will be right. We’ll just start walking around today and see the world and the way the world really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after awhile it’ll gather together inside and it’ll be me. Look at the world out there. My God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face, and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it’s finally me, where it’s in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get a hold of it so it will never run off. I’ll hold on to the world tight someday. I’ve got one finger on it now. That’s a beginning.

Can I get to the bottle of Old Crow and mix it up with the remains of these ice fragments...a cool drink for the freak? Give the gentleman something cool, dear, can't you see he's wired his brain to the water pump and his ears to the generator...

What about me?” Frances asked. “The butler,” Harriet replied without even a second of hesitation. Frances’s mouth immediately opened to protest. “No, no,” Harriet said. “It’s the best role, I promise. You get to do everything.” “Except be a unicorn,” Daniel murmured. Frances tilted her head to the side with a resigned expression. “The next play,” Harriet finally gave in. “I shall find a way to include a unicorn in the one I’m working on right now.” Frances pumped both fists in the air. “Huzzah!

A ghost-memory rises, here: a phantom moment, a shaky reflection in the pool of remembrance. I know how it felt when the scavengers took my heart. How it felt as the hunger birds, all mouth, tore into my chest and snatched out my heart, still pumping, and devoured it to get at what was hidden inside it. I know how that feels, as if it was truly a part of my life, of my death. And then the memory snips and rips, neatly, and -

It was May’s idea,” Quentin added. “I’m sure it was,” I said. Sylvester started circling. I dropped into a defensive position. “I’m not really comfortable with this, May.” “Cope,” she said. “Maybe an audience will make you shape up,” Sylvester said, and lunged. I parried. “Maybe an audience will distract me and get me gutted.” “Let’s see some carnage!” hollered May, pumping her fist in the air. “This isn’t professional wrestling!” I snapped, trying to hit Sylvester’s ankle. He blocked, turning my thrust aside and nearly disarming me. “And I swear if you shout ‘take it off,’ I am coming over there.” “Take what off?” asked Sylvester. “Nothing, Your Grace,” Quentin and I said in unison.

When he heard light, rushing footfalls, he turned his head. Someone was racing along the second-floor balcony. Then laughter drifted down from above. Glorious feminine laughter. He leaned out the archway and glanced at the grand staircase. Bella appeared on the landing above, breathless, smiling, a black satin robe gathered in her hands. As she slowed at the head of the stairs, she looked over her shoulder, her thick dark hair swinging like a mane. The pounding that came next was heavy and distant, growing louder until it was like boulders hitting the ground. Obviously, it was what she was waiting for. She let out a laugh, yanked her robe up even higher, and started down the stairs, bare feet skirting the steps as if she were floating. At the bottom, she hit the mosaic floor of the foyer and wheeled around just as Zsadist appeared in second-story hallway. The Brother spotted her and went straight for the balcony, pegging his hands into the rail, swinging his legs up and pushing himself straight off into thin air. He flew outward, body in a perfect swan dive--except he wasn't over water, he was two floors up over hard stone. John's cry for help came out as a mute, sustained rush of air-- Which was cut off as Zsadist dematerialized at the height of the dive. He took form twenty feet in front of Bella, who watched the show with glowing happiness. Meanwhile, John's heart pounded from shock...then pumped fast for a different reason. Bella smiled up at her mate, her breath still hard, her hands still gripping the robe, her eyes heavy with invitation. And Zsadist came forward to answer her call, seeming to get even bigger as he stalked over to her. The Brother's bonding scent filled the foyer, just as his low, lionlike growl did. The male was all animal at the moment....a very sexual animal. "You like to be chased, nalla, " Z said in a voice so deep it distorted. Bella's smile got even wider as she backed up into a corner. "Maybe." "So run some more, why don't you." The words were dark and even John caught the erotic threat in them. Bella took off, darting around her mate, going for the billiards room. Z tracked her like prey, pivoting around, his eyes leveled on the female's streaming hair and graceful body. As his lips peeled off his fangs, the white canines elongated, protruding from his mouth. And they weren't the only response he had to his shellan. At his hips, pressing into the front of his leathers, was an erection the size of a tree trunk. Z shot John a quick glance and then went back to his hunt, disappearing into the room, the pumping growl getting louder. From out of the open doors, there was a delighted squeal, a scramble, a female's gasp, and then....nothing. He'd caught her. ......When Zsadist came out a moment later, he had Bella in his arms, her dark hair trailing down his shoulder as she lounged in the strength that held her. Her eyes locked on Z's face while he looked where he was going, her hand stroking his chest, her lips curved in a private smile. There was a bite mark on her neck, one that had very definitely not been there before, and Bella's satisfaction as she stared at the hunger in her hellren's face was utterly compelling. John knew instinctively that Zsadist was going to finish two things upstairs: the mating and the feeding. The Brother was going to be at her throat and in between her legs. Probably at the same time. God, John wanted that kind of connection.

Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world tight someday. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.

Here's what you need to know: some cliches are true, and war is definitely hell. It's being afraid all the time, and when you're not afraid it's because you're pumped full of adrenaline you could literally burst. It's watching people who you love- really profoundly love- get blown to pieces right next to you. It's seeing a leg lying in the ditch and picking it up to put it in a bag because no man- or part of a man, your friend- can be left behind. It's the dark night of the soul. There's no front line over there. The war is all around them, every day, everywhere they go. Some handle it better than others. We don't know why, but we do know this: the human mind can't safely or healthily process that kind of carnage and uncertainty and horror. It just can't. No one comes back from war the same.

She had a bottle of water in her pack—a big one with a squeeze-top—but suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh, from its rusty lip. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains.

Oil and coal? Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not [...]. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here.

I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I'll get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world so tight some day. I've got a finger on it now; that's a beginning.

You drink your whiskey, I’ll drink my wine. Later when we’re fevered and tipsy we’ll make savage love divine. Until then, let’s swim in the warm, opal sea of each other. Crash a few innocent waves, skinny dip, laugh and get lost in those blood-pumping hearts, and for a time forget all our broken parts.

To Canadians, everyone is equal. Joni Mitchell is interchangeable with a secretary at open-mic night. Frank Gehry is no greater than a hack pumping out McMansions on AutoCAD. John Candy is no funnier than Uncle Lou when he gets a couple of beers in him. No wonder the only Canadians anyone’s ever heard of are the ones who have gotten the hell out. Anyone with talent who stayed would be flattened under an avalanche of equality.

You know, Chase, one of these days you're going to need me. You might need help changing a tire, or you can't figure out a gas pump, or, damn," she smacked her forehead, "you bought the wrong brand of spark plugs and need me to get you different ones, and you'll be sorry you were such a prick to me and didn't become my friend.

Give yourself to me, Gemma, and you will never be alone again. You'll be worshiped. Adored. Loved. But you must give yourself to me- a willing sacrifice.' Tears slip down my face. 'Yes,' I murmur. Gemma, don't listen,' Circe says hoarsely, and for a moment, I don't see Eugenia; I see only the tree, the blood pumping beneath its pale skin, the bodies of the dead hanging from it like chimes. I gasp, and Eugenia is before me again. 'Yes, this is what you want, Gemma. Try as you might, you cannot kill this part of yourself. The solitude of the self taht waits just under the stairs of your soul. Always there, no matter how much you've tried to get rid of it. I understand. I do. Stay with me and never be lonely again.' Don't listen... to that... bitch,' Circe croaks, and the vines tighten around her neck. No, you're wrong,' I say to Eugenia as if coming out of a long sleep. 'You couldn't kill this part of yourself. And you couldn't accept it, either.' I'm sure I don't know what you mean.' she says, sounding uncertain for the first time. That's why they were able to take you. They found your fear.' And what, pray, was it?' Your pride. You couldn't believe you might have some of the same qualities as the creatures themselves.' I am not like them. I am their hope. I sustain them.' No. You tell yourself that. That's why CIrce told me to search my dark corners. So I wouldn't be caught off guard.' Circe laughts, a splintered cackle that finds a way under my skin. And what about you, Gemma?' Eugenia purrs. 'Have you "searched" yourself, as you say?' I've done things I'm not proud of. I've made mistakes,' I say, my voice growing stronger, my fingers feeling for the dagger again. 'But I've done good, too.' And yet, you're alone. All that trying and still you stand apart, watching from the other side of the grass. Afraid to have what you truly want because what if it's not enough after all? What if you get it and you still feel alone and apart? So much better to wrap yourself in the longing. The yearning. The restlessness. Poor Gemma. She doesn't quite fit, does she? Poor Gemma- all alone. It's as if she's delivered a blow to my heart. My hand falters. 'I-I...' Gemma, you're not alone,' Circe gasps, and my hand touches metal. No. I'm not. I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.' I've got it now. Sure and strong in my grip. 'I see through you. I see the truth.

Humans, like all mammals, are heat engines; surviving means having to continually cool off, as panting dogs do. For that, the temperature needs to be low enough for the air to act as a kind of refrigerant, drawing heat off the skin so the engine can keep pumping. At seven degrees of warming, that would become impossible for portions of the planet’s equatorial band, and especially the tropics, where humidity adds to the problem. And the effect would be fast: after a few hours, a human body would be cooked to death from both inside and out. At eleven or twelve degrees Celsius of warming, more than half the world’s population, as distributed today, would die of direct heat. Things almost certainly won’t get that hot anytime soon, though some models of unabated emissions do bring us that far eventually, over centuries. But at just five degrees, according to some calculations, whole parts of the globe would be literally unsurvivable for humans. At six, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the United States east of the Rockies would suffer more from heat than anyone, anywhere, in the world today. New York City would be hotter than present-day Bahrain, one of the planet’s hottest spots, and the temperature in Bahrain “would induce hyperthermia in even sleeping humans.

I tried to compete with my ill-fitting Calvin Klein button-up shirts that I got at Ross and my imitation mini-ish skirts I got from the DEB. If you’re not familiar with DEB, it’s like the trashy stepsister of Forever 21 that takes F21 out for her twenty-first birthday, pumps her full of Jell-O shots, and convinces her to get a bald-eagle tattoo.

The girl looked straight up at him. “You’re trying to get to me, aren’t you?” she said. Jeb’s eyes cowered and darted back and forth between her crossed, luminous knees and the rumbling windowpane. “I see your game. You’ve trying to shame me for being young and pretty. You want to make me apologize for all the other girls who didn’t like you. You just can’t stand that I’m right next door reminding you of all that. That’s it, isn’t it? Pump and dump,” she scoffed. “Nothing you say can hurt me. See if you can do it. I dare you.” She chuckled and sipped her whiskey, then placed the glass on the coffee table. “You

Bond is now the Bond Girl of the opening credits. It’s his silhouette we see – and nary a dancing naked babe in sight. Perhaps to compensate for this, in the actual film he gets his tits out a lot. He emerges from the sea glistening, showing off his pumped boobs, like Ursula Andress in ‘Dr No’ — save his nipples are more prominent. Bond has finally become his own Bond Girl.

To overcome fear, why does getting excited work better than trying to calm yourself down? Fear is an intense emotion. You can feel your heart pumping and your blood coursing. In that state, trying to relax is like slamming on the brakes when a car is going 80 miles per hour. The vehicle still has momentum. Rather than trying to suppress a strong emotion, it's easier to convert it into a different emotion - one that's equally intense, but propels is to step on the gas.

Champagne for my wife,” he said without taking his eyes off her. He drew her chair back himself. “Let me introduce you to Natalie and Sam Derrick.” “So this is Eve! I’m just thrilled to meet you.” Natalie flashed a mile-wide grin, even as her gaze tracked over Eve’s clothes. “Glad you could join us.” Sam held out a hand the size of a rump roast, pumped Eve’s twice. “Roarke’s told us it’s hard for you to get away from work.” “I just can’t think how you investigate murders .” Eve glanced back at Natalie. “First I need a body.” She felt Roarke’s hand pat her thigh twice.

Some of my scientific friends and colleagues confess that they cannot for the life of them see why I don't abandon ship and join them. The short answer is that I have managed, by straddling the boundaries, to have the best of both worlds. By working with scientists I get a rich diet of fascinating and problematic facts to think about, but by staying a philosopher without a lab or a research grant, I get to think about all the theories and experiments and never have to do the dishes

But thinking is to be a corrective in our life — it’s not supposed to be a center of our life. Living is supposed to be the center of our life, being is supposed to be the center — with correctives around, which hold us like the skin holds our blood and our flesh in. But our skin is not a way of life — the way of living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know. And the intellect doesn’t help you very much there — you should get on with the business of living.

Most people think love comes from the heart or soul. The heart simply pumps blood, so love can't be created there. Where is the center for what appears to be a person's soul? The Brain. And what is created there, Jilly? That's right--dopamine. What does dopamine do? Creates feelings of love and euphoria. How do we get our brains to create more? Drugs, massage, and/or sex. Boil it down and it's all just dopamine.

Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans -- vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming.

Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah.

The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky liquid, but as her body gradually grew cold, he felt as though they'd been glued together. She seemed to be see-sawing between agony and ecstasy, but finally Satake pressed his lips over hers to quiet the groans-of pain or pleasure-that were leaking from her mouth. He found the hole that he had made in her side and worked his finger deep into the opening. Blood was pumping from the wound, staining their sex a gruesome crimson. He wanted to get further inside, to melt into her. As he was about to come, he pulled his lips from her and she whispered in his ear: "I'm finished . . . finished." "I know," he'd said, and he could still hear the exact sound of his own voice.

Fixing a sneer on her face, she deliberately lowered her toolbox and let it fall with a terrible clatter. That he jumped like a rabbit under the gun pleased her. “Christ Jesus!” he scraped his chair around, thumped a hand to his heart as if to get it pumping again. “What’s the matter?” “Nothing.” She continued to sneer. “Butterfingers,” she said sweetly and picked up her dented toolbox again. “Give you a start, did I?” “You damn near killed me.

Trees don't rely exclusively on dispersal in the air, for if they did, some neighbors would not get wind of the danger. Dr. Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver has discovered that they also warn each other using chemical signals sent through the fungal networks around their root tips, which operate no matter what the weather. Surprisingly, news bulletins are sent via the roots not only by means of chemical compounds but also by means of electrical impulses that travel at the speed of a third of an inch per second. In comparison with our bodies, it is, admittedly, extremely slow. However there are species in the animal kingdom, such as jellyfish and worms, whose nervous systems conduct impulses at similar speed. Once the latest news has been broadcast, all oaks int he area promptly pump tannins through their veins.

Well, why not? I guess the reasons against having more children always seem uninspiring and superficial. What exactly am I missing out on? Money? A few more hours of sleep? A more peaceful meal? More hair? These are nothing compared to what I get from these five monsters who rule my life. I believe each of my five children has made me a better man. So I figure I only need another thirty-four kids to be a pretty decent guy. Each one of them has been a pump of light into my shriveled black heart. I would trade money, sleep, or hair for a smile from one of my children in a heartbeat. Well, it depends on how much hair.

Marcellus, it’s me.” The octopus shifts slightly out of its corner and peers at her, blinking its creepy eye. Who is this lady? And how did she get in here, anyway? She nods, encouraging. “It’s okay.” She holds out her hand, and to Cameron’s shock the creature extends one of its arms and winds it around her wrist. She repeats, “It’s okay. I’m going to help you down now, all right?” The octopus nods. Wait, no. It did not. Did it? He rubs his eyes. Are they pumping hallucinogens through the ductwork here?

And everyone drank too much coffee too, at the wrong times and for the wrong reasons. They drank it when they came in every morning to get going, and then again in the afternoon to keep going. They ran on caffeine fumes all day and never fucking got anywhere. Then they went home spent and empty and crashed in front of the TV every night and slept away the few hours they had for themselves. All these motherfuckers are always talking about the best ways to manage your time. The fact is any time spent at work not sleeping in the bathroom is wasted time, and it’s hard to sleep when you’re pumped full of caffeine. Everyone’s awake for the wrong part of their lives. And by the weekend they’re too exhausted from all the frantic, useless activity to even care, and it’s only fucking two days off anyway. Nobody has the time or the energy to do what they really want, or to even figure out what that is.

At one point I was climbing off the bus and I bumped into a woman in a crisp black blazer and pointy, witchy shoes. She had a bulky cell phone pressed against her ear and a black bag with gold Prada lettering hooked around her wrist. I was a long ways off from worshiping at the Céline, Chloé, or Goyard thrones, but I certainly recognized Prada. “Sorry,” I said, and took a step away from her. She nodded at me briskly but never stopped speaking into her phone, “The samples need to be there by Friday.” As her heels snapped away on the pavement, I thought, There is no way that woman can ever get hurt. She had more important things to worry about than whether or not she would have to eat lunch alone. The samples had to arrive by Friday. And as I thought about all the other things that must make up her busy, important life, the cocktail parties and the sessions with the personal trainer and the shopping for crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets, there it started, my concrete and skyscraper wanderlust. I saw how there was a protection in success, and success was defined by threatening the minion on the other end of a cell phone, expensive pumps terrorizing the city, people stepping out of your way simply because you looked like you had more important places to be than they did. Somewhere along the way, a man got tangled up in this definition too. I just had to get to that, I decided, and no one could hurt me again.

The worst thing you do when you think is lie — you can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and what you’re trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself — find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and get it out of yourself — making things that you hate and things that you love, you write about these then, intensely. When it’s over, then you can think about it; then you can look, it works or it doesn’t work, something is missing here. And, if something is missing, then you go back and reemotionalize that part, so it’s all of a piece. But thinking is to be a corrective in our life — it’s not supposed to be a center of our life. Living is supposed to be the center of our life, being is supposed to be the center — with correctives around, which hold us like the skin holds our blood and our flesh in. But our skin is not a way of life — the way of living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know. And the intellect doesn’t help you very much there — you should get on with the business of living.

Almost every software development organization has at least one developer who takes tactical programming to the extreme: a tactical tornado. The tactical tornado is a prolific programmer who pumps out code far faster than others but works in a totally tactical fashion. When it comes to implementing a quick feature, nobody gets it done faster than the tactical tornado. In some organizations, management treats tactical tornadoes as heroes. However, tactical tornadoes leave behind a wake of destruction. They are rarely considered heroes by the engineers who must work with their code in the future. Typically, other engineers must clean up the messes left behind by the tactical tornado, which makes it appear that those engineers (who are the real heroes) are making slower progress than the tactical tornado.

This tub is for washing your courage...When you are born your courage is new and clean. You are brave enough for anything: crawling off of staircases, saying your first words without fearing that someone will think you are foolish, putting strange things in your mouth. But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in awhile, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not many facilities in your world that provide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of a spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true. ... This tub is for washing your wishes...For the wishes of one's old life wither and shrivel like old leaves if they are not replaced with new wishes when the world changes. And the world always changes. Wishes get slimy, and their colors fade, and soon they are just mud, like all the rest of the mud, and not wishes at all, but regrets. The trouble is, not everyone can tell when they ought to launder their wishes. Even when one finds oneself in Fairyland and not at home at all, it is not always so easy to catch the world in its changing and change with it. ... Lastly, we must wash your luck. When souls queue up to be born, they all leap up at just the last moment, touching the lintel of the world for luck. Some jump high and can seize a great measure of luck; some jump only a bit and snatch a few loose strands. Everyone manages to catch some. If one did not have at least a little luck, one would never survive childhood. But luck can be spent, like money, and lost, like a memory; and wasted, like a life. If you know how to look, you can examine the kneecaps of a human and tell how much luck they have left. No bath can replenish luck that has been spent on avoiding an early death by automobile accident or winning too many raffles in a row. No bath can restore luck lost through absentmindedness and overconfidence. But luck withered by conservative, tired, riskless living can be pumped up again--after all, it is only a bit thirsty for something to do.

She gasps, tipping her chin back, studying me. What I’m not seeing is a get the fuck off me right now red light and it’s impossible to ask me to wait a second longer to taste her, not with the hollow rush of blood through my ears. “Have to kiss you, Bexley.” Another little sexy gasp and her pupils blow out to pure black. And then like it’s the biggest imposition to her, she huffs, chewing her lip again and presents her mouth. “Fine, get it over with.” Another time I will joke about how she’s taking one for the team or something equally lame like that, but I’m a frantic man and I’ve just been given the keys to heaven again. No way am I pumping the breaks on my lust to say some damn joke. My lips take hers; I try to go gentle, I really do, but there’s something so drugging about Bexley that pulls me in. Almost like she has full control over my body, because the kiss becomes feral in seconds.

I grabbed her by the waist and swung her around to face me. As I bent, I closed my eyes … and kissed air as she ducked out of my grasp. I opened my eyes to see her dancing backward along the path. I made a noise in my throat. “Don’t growl,” she said. “Aren’t you always complaining that you don’t get enough exercise?” I lunged. She backed away. I let out another growl and crossed my arms. “Better watch out. I might decide the prize isn’t worth the effort.” She grinned, blue eyes dancing. “Oh, you know it is. And you know it’s never as sweet as when you have to work for it.” She wheeled and ran. As I went after her, adrenaline pumped through me, like liquid fire. There was nothing quite like a chase, and one that ended with this reward was the best chase of all.

Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man's blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the weight of the building stressing the delicate, dangling shoe, is captured. And he'd think it was the woman he wanted, and not some combination of curved stone, and a swinging, high-heeled shoe moving in and out of sunlight. He would know right away the deception, the trick of shapes and light and movement, but it wouldn't matter at all because the deception was part of it too. Anyway, he could feel his lungs going in and out. There is no air in the City but there is breath, and every morning it races through him like laughing gas brightening his eyes, his talk, and his expectations. In no time at all he forgets little pebbly creeks and apple trees so old they lay their branches along the ground and you have to reach down or stoop to pick the fruit. He forgets a sun that used to slide up like the yolk of a good country egg, thick and red-orange at the bottom of the sky, and he doesn't miss it, doesn't look up to see what happened to it or to stars made irrelevant by the light of thrilling, wasteful street lamps. That kind of fascination, permanent and out of control, seizes children, young girls, men of every description, mothers, brides, and barfly women, and if they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more like the people they always believed they were.

You added the feeding pillow to the list?” he asks as we turn down the nursing aisle. “I told you I did.” I look down at the iPad though to make sure I really did. (I did.) When I look up again, he’s holding up the two pumps from a double electric breast pump on display to his chest. “Please, please, please can we get these?” I roll my eyes. “Oh my God. Are you twelve?” I don’t mention his second slip of the word “we.” “This is like having a video game on your chest.” He pretends to shoot the pumps in my direction. I snatch one out of his hand. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like.” “I’d never leave my house.” He’s examining the remaining pump, as if trying to figure out how he could make one of his own. “You’d never leave the house if you had breasts, period.” I grab the second one from him and return it to the shelf. He stands over my shoulder to look at the screen of the registry iPad. “Put it on the list. Put it on. Put. It. On.” Shaking my head, I add it to the list.

Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.” “Snap ending.” Mildred nodded. “Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag), whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.” Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down. Beatty ignored her and continued: “Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his pillow. Right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say, “What’s this?” and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence. “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion...

In the heat of leadership, with the adrenaline pumping, it is easy to convince yourself that you are not subject to the normal human frailties that can defeat ordinary mortals. You begin to act as if you are indestructible. But the intellectual, physical, and emotional challenges of leadership are fierce. So, in addition to getting on the being and assess the tolls those changes are taking. If you don't, your seemingly indestructible self can self-destruct. This, by the way, is an ideal outcome for your foes-and even friends who oppose your initiative- because no one has to feel responsible for your downfall. _________ When you take "personal" attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue. Attacks may be personal, understand that they are basically attacks on positions you represent and the role you are seeking to play

It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip — and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about J. O. Incandenza’s The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naïveté is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it’s natural that Himself’s dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive. Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia. 281 281 - This had been one of Hal’s deepest and most pregnant abstractions, one he’d come up with once while getting secretly high in the Pump Room. That we’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that he goes around feeling like he misses somebody he’s never even met? Without the universalizing abstraction, the feeling would make no sense.

Who exactly are we?' I asked. The American Dreamers. There aren't too many of us left.' I don't know if I qualify.' You an American? Or want to be an American?' I am an American.' You said you were having a dream.' It's true, I did.' Was it the one where you're inside the girl and you are pumping her and pumping her and you are so happy but then it turns out it's not a girl, it's really one of those super poisonous box jellyfish, and it stings you and you are screaming and screaming and the sky rains the diarrhea of babies?' The...no, I don't think so.' I get that sometimes. Anyway, see you around.

Barrett said that when we’re dehydrated, we don’t necessarily feel thirsty—we feel exhausted. When we have something odd happening in our stomach, our body doesn’t quite know if we have a menstrual cramp or a stomachache or if we need to poop. We might not even be aware for a long period of time that our stomach hurts. And this isn’t unique to people with PTSD. It’s normal, everyday bodily dissociation that we all suffer from. If we find ourselves in a shitty mood, we might not necessarily be mad about a certain trigger. We could just be running at a metabolic deficit. Our body might be screaming “I NEED FUNYUNS” while we project our hangriness onto, say, this poor sweaty schmuck who’s breathing too loud in the elevator. But Barrett said that PTSD does make these inclinations worse. It affects a variety of systems in the body, throwing them all out of whack. Our hearts might beat faster. Our lungs might pump harder. Our body budget can get tipped off-balance more easily. And when it does, our reactions to these deficits can feel outsized. “Make sure that you get enough sleep, make sure you exercise, make sure that you eat in a healthful way,” she told me when I asked her what I could do to be a better person. When I countered that that didn’t seem like enough, she kindly offered, “You know, all you can do is take as much responsibility as you can. And sometimes it’s the attempt that matters, you know, more than the success.” Then she chuckled at herself. “That’s a very Jewish mother response!” So, first step of hacking my brain: sustaining it with enough oxygen and nutrients

The medicine-man, having given him the once-over, had ordered him to abstain from all alcoholic liquids, and in addition to tool down the hill to the Royal Pump-Room each morning at eight-thirty and imbibe twelve ounces of warm crescent saline and magnesia. It doesn't sound much, put that way, but I gather from contemporary accounts that it's practically equivalent to getting outside a couple of little old last year's eggs beaten up in sea-water. And the thought of Uncle George, who had oppressed me sorely in my childhood, sucking down that stuff and having to hop out of bed at eight-fifteen to do so was extremely grateful and comforting of a morning. At four in the afternoon he would toddle down the hill again and repeat the process, and at night we would dine together and I would loll back in my chair, sipping my wine, and listen to him telling me what the stuff had tasted like. In many ways the ideal existence.

An asteroid or comet traveling at cosmic velocities would enter the Earth’s atmosphere at such a speed that the air beneath it couldn’t get out of the way and would be compressed, as in a bicycle pump. As anyone who has used such a pump knows, compressed air grows swiftly hot, and the temperature below it would rise to some 60,000 Kelvin, or ten times the surface temperature of the Sun. In this instant of its arrival in our atmosphere, everything in the meteor’s path—people, houses, factories, cars—would crinkle and vanish like cellophane in a flame. One second after entering the atmosphere, the meteorite would slam into the Earth’s surface, where the people of Manson had a moment before been going about their business. The meteorite itself would vaporize instantly, but the blast would blow out a thousand cubic kilometers of rock, earth, and superheated gases. Every living thing within 150 miles that hadn’t been killed by the heat of entry would now be killed by the blast. Radiating outward at almost the speed of light would be the initial shock wave, sweeping everything before it. For those outside the zone of immediate devastation, the first inkling of catastrophe would be a flash of blinding light—the brightest ever seen by human eyes—followed an instant to a minute or two later by an apocalyptic sight of unimaginable grandeur: a roiling wall of darkness reaching high into the heavens, filling an entire field of view and traveling at thousands of miles an hour. Its approach would be eerily silent since it would be moving far beyond the speed of sound. Anyone in a tall building in Omaha or Des Moines, say, who chanced to look in the right direction would see a bewildering veil of turmoil followed by instantaneous oblivion. Within minutes, over an area stretching from Denver to Detroit and encompassing what had once been Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, the Twin Cities—the whole of the Midwest, in short—nearly every standing thing would be flattened or on fire, and nearly every living thing would be dead. People up to a thousand miles away would be knocked off their feet and sliced or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond a thousand miles the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that’s just the initial shockwave. No one can do more than guess what the associated damage would be, other than that it would be brisk and global. The impact would almost certainly set off a chain of devastating earthquakes. Volcanoes across the globe would begin to rumble and spew. Tsunamis would rise up and head devastatingly for distant shores. Within an hour, a cloud of blackness would cover the planet, and burning rock and other debris would be pelting down everywhere, setting much of the planet ablaze. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead by the end of the first day. The massive disturbances to the ionosphere would knock out communications systems everywhere, so survivors would have no idea what was happening elsewhere or where to turn. It would hardly matter. As one commentator has put it, fleeing would mean “selecting a slow death over a quick one. The death toll would be very little affected by any plausible relocation effort, since Earth’s ability to support life would be universally diminished.

So I will commit to showing up with deep humility and doing the best I can. I will keep getting it wrong, which is the closest I can come to getting it right. When I am corrected, I will stay open and keep learning. Not because I want to be the wokest woke who ever woked. But because people’s children are dying of racism, and there is no such thing as other people’s children. Hidden racism is destroying and ending lives. It’s making police officers kill black men at three times the rate of white men. It’s making lawmakers limit funding for clean water and poison children. It’s making doctors allow black women to die during or after childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women. It’s making school officials suspend and expel black students at three times the rate of white students. It’s making judges incarcerate black drug users at nearly six times the rate of white drug users. And—because of my complicity in this system that dehumanizes others—it is dehumanizing me. The fact that the programmed poison of racism was pumped into us may not be our fault, but getting it out is sure as hell our responsibility.

Two young men drinking beer on the steps of a closed bookstore across the street fixed their eyes on Savannah. Even from that distance Gregori could see their instant fixation, the obsession she so easily produced in men.It was in the way she moved, her flowing hair and enormous eyes, her aura, at once innocent and sexy. There as no hope that they would not recognize her. She embodied magic and fantasy. Gregori sighed heavily,his gut tightening. She was going to drive him crazy and maybe get some innocent drunk killed. The two men had risen, whispering excitedly, working up their courage to approach her. He could hear them pumping each other up. He fixed his silver eyes on them and concentrated briefly. He wiped their thoughts away and planted in them an urgency to leave the area immediately. "Do me a favor,cherie. Try to look plain and uninteresting." Savannah laughed softly in spite of her growing sense of dread. "Get over it already," she suggested. "You are more than disrespectful, woman. I cannot remember a single time in my existence when anyone spoke to me as you do." She rubbed her cheek along his shoulder in a small caress. Gregori's breath seemed to still in his throat. "That's why I do it.You need someone to give you a little trouble." Her teasing tone slid over him, into him, the tiny threads that tied them together multiplying every moment. "I would not mind a little trouble. You are big trouble.

Between the Gardening and the Cookery Comes the brief Poetry shelf; By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology Offers itself. Critical, and with nothing else to do, I scan the Contents page, Relieved to find the names are mostly new; No one my age. Like all strangers, they divide by sex: Landscape Near Parma Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, So does Rilke and Buddha. “I travel, you see”, “I think” and “I can read’ These titles seem to say; But I Remember You, Love is My Creed, Poem for J., The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter For several seconds; From somewhere in this (as in any) matter A moral beckons. Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart Or squash it flat? Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; Girls aren’t like that. We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff Can get by without it. Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough; They write about it. And the awful way their poems lay them open Just doesn’t strike them. Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them. Deciding this, we can forget those times We stayed up half the night Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, And couldn’t write.

What were you doing with her?” The words burst from my lips. Before I can take them back, he stares at me. I stare back at him as the silence stretches onwards. We’re both stiff. He says nothing. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.” I shake my head, my nails digging into my palms. Then before I can react, he has pushed me roughly up the wall, his eyes now dark and fiery, like a storm ready to unleash itself. Good. He’s mad too. His hands force me to the wall as he presses his body against mine. The intensity of the move, the feel of him makes my breath hitch. “Get off me,” I seethe, pounding my fists into his chest but Adrian keeps me locked in place, so that his breath caresses my ear. “Were you guys too rushed?’ He mocks. “Too desperate to book a hotel room?” I can barely stifle a disgusted snort. “What are you talking about?” Fury pumps through my head. “A hotel room? What kind of girl do you think I am—mmf?” He moves against me, moving to kiss me. The moment where his lips meet mine hard and unyielding. He tastes of smoke and lipgloss—and I’m reminded of the scene earlier where he and Lauren got out of the closet together. Disgust fills me as I squirm in his arms. He groans, fire burning in his voice. “You want me, you’re trying to hide from it.” “No,” I try to bite the words at him but it comes out strangled. I try to push him away but before I have to, he releases me. I try to put as much distance between him and myself, shaking. Loathing is my voice. "Get away from me. I hate you." He swallows and looks away, his breathing slowing. He pushes himself from the wall, still very pale. Then closing his eyes and turning, he starts walking away, heading towards the parking lot. "I hate you!" I scream again behind him. Adrian stops for a moment, his back to me. “I’ve told you from the very beginning. You should.” He keeps on walking, never glancing back.

Some philosophical research projects — or problematics, to speak with the more literary types — are rather like working out the truths of chess. A set of mutually agreed-upon rules are presupposed — and seldom discussed — and the implications of those rules are worked out, articulated, debated, refined. So far, so good. Chess is a deep and important human artifact, about which much of value has been written. But some philosophical research projects are more like working out the truths of chmess. Chmess is just like chess except that the king can move two squares in any direction, not one. I just invented it. … There are just as many a priori truths of chmess as there are of chess (an infinity), and they are just as hard to discover. And that means that if people actually did get involved in investigating the truths of chmess, they would make mistakes, which would need to be corrected, and this opens up a whole new field of a priori investigation, the higher-order truths of chmess … Now none of this is child’s play. In fact, one might be able to demonstrate considerable brilliance in the group activity of working out the higher-order truths of chmess. Here is where psychologist Donald Hebb’s dictum comes in handy: If it isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well.

Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I’m getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They’ll die of something just as bad. The money’s no problem. I’m all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don’t have to worry about that. That’s all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don’t worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It’s only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it’s somebody else’s hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There’s no point eating what you can’t see. Don’t worry about the eyes. The eyes can’t get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering’s all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain.” Deadpan.

Close your eyes. Be with me. Imagine that I am stepping off of the front stoop of my old apartment building. That I am strolling along the Upper West Side, like always. Just like any other morning. It is a splendid, sunlit day, and I am wearing my brand-new Gucci pumps. Walking across 110th Street, I take the rustic, parkside staircase into the tiled recesses of the Cathedral Parkway station. It may have originally opened in 1904, but for my money it doesn’t look a day over 60. I wonder, sometimes, what it must have been like to be alive back then, when all of this was different. Before the city had made, erased, and remade itself fifty times over. In my fantasy world, everything must have been slower—easier, even. I like to think that if we could somehow slow down the passage of time, if we could eke just a little bit more out of each minute, then we could get more depth out of life. That things might taste a bit richer, more diffuse. That we could experience the fullness of sound. That we could feel things more deeply—and longer.

What would you like for your own life, Kate, if you could choose?” “Anything?” “Of course anything.” “That’s really easy, Aunty Ivy.” “Go on then.” “A straw hat...with a bright scarlet ribbon tied around the top and a bow at the back. A tea-dress like girls used to wear, with big red poppies all over the fabric. A pair of flat, white pumps, comfortable but really pretty. A bicycle with a basket on the front. In the basket is a loaf of fresh bread, cheese, fruit oh...and a bottle of sparkly wine, you know, like posh people drink. “I’m cycling down a lane. There are no lorries or cars or bicycles. No people – just me. The sun is shining through the trees, making patterns on the ground. At the end of the lane is a gate, sort of hidden between the bushes and trees. I stop at the gate, get off the bike and wheel it into the garden. “In the garden there are flowers of all kinds, especially roses. They’re my favourite. I walk down the little path to a cottage. It’s not big, just big enough. The front door needs painting and has a little stained glass window at the top. I take the food out of the basket and go through the door. “Inside, everything is clean, pretty and bright. There are vases of flowers on every surface and it smells sweet, like lemon cake. At the end of the room are French windows. They need painting too, but it doesn’t matter. I go through the French windows into a beautiful garden. Even more flowers there...and a veranda. On the veranda is an old rocking chair with patchwork cushions and next to it a little table that has an oriental tablecloth with gold tassels. I put the food on the table and pour the wine into a glass. I’d sit in the rocking chair and close my eyes and think to myself... this is my place.” From A DISH OF STONES

I am for that thing in your genome that demands it. I am for that thing which keeps you animals alive. I am, at most, a slice of monkey suspended within the stuff of universal intelligence. You are a monkey in nice clothes. In the harsh environment you refer to as a habitable planet, group behaviors are required to survive long enough to procreate. Since you are stupid monkeys, you have no natural affinity for group altruism. And so you have evolved a genetic pump that delivers pleasant chemicals to your monkey brains. One that is triggered by awe and fear of an anthropomorphism of your environment. Earth mothers. Sky gods. Bits of bush that catch fire. Interesting-looking rocks. An oddly-shaped branch. You’re not fussy. When your brain does this idiot work, you stop in front of that bump or stick and consider it fiercely. Other monkeys will, like as not, stop next to you and emulate you. Your genetic pump delivers morphine for your souls. You have your fellow monkeys join in. Perhaps so they can feel it too. Perhaps because you feel it might please the stick god to have more monkeys gaze at it in narcotic awe. The group must be defended. Because as many monkeys as possible must please the stick god, and you can continue to get your fix off praying to it. You draw up rules to organize and protect the group. Two hundred thousand years later, you put Adolf Hitler into power. Because you are, after all, just monkeys. I am your stash.

So it’s democracy versus capitalism at this point, friends, and we out on this frontier outpost of the human world are perhaps better positioned than anyone else to see this and to fight this global battle, there’s empty land here, there’s scarce and nonrenewable resources here, and we’re going to get swept up into the fight and we cannot choose not to be part of it, we are one of the prizes and our fate will be decided by what happens throughout the human world. That being the case, we had better band together for the common good, for Mars and for us and for all the people on earth and for the seven generations, it’s going to be hard it’s going to take years, and the stronger we are the better our chances, which is why I’m so happy to see that burning meteor in the sky pumping the matrix of life into our world, and why I’m so happy to see you all here to celebrate it together, a representative congress of all that I love in this world, but look I think that steel-drum band is ready to play aren’t you” (shouts of assent) “so why don’t you folks start and we’ll dance till dawn and tomorrow scatter on the winds and down the sides of this great mountain, to carry the gift everywhere.

I never went to college. I don’t believe in college for writers. I think too many professors are too opinionated and too snobbish and too intellectual. And the intellect is a great danger to creativity because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things instead of staying with your own basic truth--- who you are, what you are, what you wanna be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for twenty-five years now which reads, “Don’t think.” You must never think at the typewriter--- you must feel, and your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. You collect up a lot of data, you do a lot of thinking away from the typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living. It should be a living experience. The worst thing you do when you think is lie — you can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did, and what you’re trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself — find out who you really are, and try not to lie, try to tell the truth all the time. And the only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional, and get it out of yourself — making things that you hate and things that you love, you write about these then, intensely. When it’s over, then you can think about it; then you can look, it works or it doesn’t work, something is missing here. And, if something is missing, then you go back and reemotionalize that part, so it’s all of a piece. But thinking is to be a corrective in our life. It’s not supposed to be a center of our life. Living is supposed to be the center of our life, being is supposed to be the center, with correctives around, which hold us like the skin holds our blood and our flesh in. But our skin is not a way of life. The way of living is the blood pumping through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know, and the intellect doesn’t help you very much there. You should get on with the business of living. Everything of mine is intuitive. All the poetry I’ve written, I couldn’t possibly tell you how I did it. I don’t know anything about the rhythms or the schemes or the inner rhymes or any of these sorts of thing. It comes from 40 years of reading poetry and having heroes that I loved. I love Shakespeare, I don’t Intellectualize about him. I love Gerard Manley Hopkins, I don’t intellectualize about him. I love Dylan Thomas, I don’t know what the hell he’s writing about half the time, but he sounds good, he rings well. Let me give you an example on this sort of thing: I walked into my living room twenty years ago, when one of my daughters was about four years old, and a Dylan Thomas record was on the set. I thought that my wife had put the record on; come to find out my four-year-old had put on his record. I came into the room, she pointed to the record and said, ‘He knows what he’s doing.’ Now, that’s great. See, that’s not intellectualizing, it’s an emotional reaction. If there is no feeling, there cannot be great art.” 

Antidepression medication is temperamental. Somewhere around fifty-nine or sixty I noticed the drug I’d been taking seemed to have stopped working. This is not unusual. The drugs interact with your body chemistry in different ways over time and often need to be tweaked. After the death of Dr. Myers, my therapist of twenty-five years, I’d been seeing a new doctor whom I’d been having great success with. Together we decided to stop the medication I’d been on for five years and see what would happen... DEATH TO MY HOMETOWN!! I nose-dived like the diving horse at the old Atlantic City steel pier into a sloshing tub of grief and tears the likes of which I’d never experienced before. Even when this happens to me, not wanting to look too needy, I can be pretty good at hiding the severity of my feelings from most of the folks around me, even my doctor. I was succeeding well with this for a while except for one strange thing: TEARS! Buckets of ’em, oceans of ’em, cold, black tears pouring down my face like tidewater rushing over Niagara during any and all hours of the day. What was this about? It was like somebody opened the floodgates and ran off with the key. There was NO stopping it. 'Bambi' tears... 'Old Yeller' tears... 'Fried Green Tomatoes' tears... rain... tears... sun... tears... I can’t find my keys... tears. Every mundane daily event, any bump in the sentimental road, became a cause to let it all hang out. It would’ve been funny except it wasn’t. Every meaningless thing became the subject of a world-shattering existential crisis filling me with an awful profound foreboding and sadness. All was lost. All... everything... the future was grim... and the only thing that would lift the burden was one-hundred-plus on two wheels or other distressing things. I would be reckless with myself. Extreme physical exertion was the order of the day and one of the few things that helped. I hit the weights harder than ever and paddleboarded the equivalent of the Atlantic, all for a few moments of respite. I would do anything to get Churchill’s black dog’s teeth out of my ass. Through much of this I wasn’t touring. I’d taken off the last year and a half of my youngest son’s high school years to stay close to family and home. It worked and we became closer than ever. But that meant my trustiest form of self-medication, touring, was not at hand. I remember one September day paddleboarding from Sea Bright to Long Branch and back in choppy Atlantic seas. I called Jon and said, “Mr. Landau, book me anywhere, please.” I then of course broke down in tears. Whaaaaaaaaaa. I’m surprised they didn’t hear me in lower Manhattan. A kindly elderly woman walking her dog along the beach on this beautiful fall day saw my distress and came up to see if there was anything she could do. Whaaaaaaaaaa. How kind. I offered her tickets to the show. I’d seen this symptom before in my father after he had a stroke. He’d often mist up. The old man was usually as cool as Robert Mitchum his whole life, so his crying was something I loved and welcomed. He’d cry when I’d arrive. He’d cry when I left. He’d cry when I mentioned our old dog. I thought, “Now it’s me.” I told my doc I could not live like this. I earned my living doing shows, giving interviews and being closely observed. And as soon as someone said “Clarence,” it was going to be all over. So, wisely, off to the psychopharmacologist he sent me. Patti and I walked in and met a vibrant, white-haired, welcoming but professional gentleman in his sixties or so. I sat down and of course, I broke into tears. I motioned to him with my hand; this is it. This is why I’m here. I can’t stop crying! He looked at me and said, “We can fix this.” Three days and a pill later the waterworks stopped, on a dime. Unbelievable. I returned to myself. I no longer needed to paddle, pump, play or challenge fate. I didn’t need to tour. I felt normal.

Steve Carver-the guy with the faux-surfer hair-and Amanda's best friend, Nicole,are chosen.Rashmi and I groan in a rare moment of camaraderie.Steve pumps a fist in the air.What a meathead. The selecting begins,and Amanda is chosen first. Of course. And then Steve's best friend.Of course. Rashmi elbows me. "bet you five euros I'm picked last." "I'll take that bet.Because it's totally me." Amanda turns in her seat toward me and lowers her voice. "That's a safe bet, Skunk Girl. Who'd want you on their team?" My jaw unhinges stupidly. "St. Clair!" Steve's voice startles me. It figures that St. Clair would be picked early. Everyone looks at him, but he's staring down Amanda. "Me," he says, in answer to her question. "I want Anna on my team,and you'd be lucky to have her." She flushes and quickly turns back around,but not before shooting me another dagger.What have I ever done to her? More names are called. More names that are NOT mine. St. Clair goes to get my attention,but I pretend I don't notice. I can't bear to look at him.I'm too humiliated. Soon the selection is down to me, Rashmi,and a skinny dude who, for whatever reason,is called Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger is always wearing this expresion of surprise, like someone's just called his name, and he can't figure out where the voice is coming from. "Rashmi," Nicole says without hestitation. My heart sinks.Now it's between me and someone named Cheeseburger. I focus my attention down on my desk, at the picture of me that Josh drew earlier today in history. I'm dressed like a medieval peasant (we're studying the Black Plague), and I have a fierce scowl and a dead rat dangling from one hand. Amanda whispers into Steve's ear. I feel her smirking at me,and my face burns. Steve clears his throat. "Cheeseburger.

Chang-bo took to his bed, or rather to the quilts on the floor that was all they had left. His legs swelled up like balloons with what Mrs. Song had come to recognize as edema — fluid retention brought on by starvation. He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories. “Come, darling. Let’s go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine,” he told his wife one morning when they were stirring on the blankets. They hadn’t eaten in three days. Mrs. Song looked at her husband with alarm, worried that he was hallucinating. She ran out the door to the market, moving fast and forgetting all about the pain in her back. She was determined to steal, beg — whatever it took — to get some food for her husband. She spotted her older sister selling noodles. Her sister wasn’t faring well — her skin was flaked just like Chang-bo’s from malnutrition — so Mrs. Song had resisted asking her for help, but now she was desperate, and of course, her sister couldn’t refuse. “I’ll pay you back,” Mrs. Song promised as she ran back home, the adrenaline pumping her legs. Chang-bo was curled up on his side under the blanket. Mrs. Song called his name. When he didn’t respond, she went to turn him over — it wasn’t diffcult now that he had lost so much weight, but his legs and arms were stiff and got in the way. Mrs. Song pounded and pounded on his chest, screaming for help even as she knew it was too late.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as a dog’s gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice-president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tyler’s words coming out of my mouth. I used to be such a nice person. I just look at my boss. My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R 68 semiautomatic carbine also takes a thirty-shot mag, and it only weighs seven pounds. My boss just looks at me. It’s scary, I say. This is probably somebody he’s known for years. Probably this guy knows all about him, where he lives, and where his wife works and his kids go to school. This is exhausting, and all of a sudden very, very boring. And why does Tyler need ten copies of the fight club rules? What I don’t have to say is I know about the leather interiors that cause birth defects. I know about the counterfeit brake linings that looked good enough to pass the purchasing agent, but fail after two thousand miles. I know about the air-conditioning rheostat that gets so hot it sets fire to the maps in your glove compartment. I know how many people burn alive because of fuel-injector flashback. I’ve seen people’s legs cut off at the knee when turbochargers start exploding and send their vanes through the firewall and into the passenger compartment. I’ve been out in the field and seen the burned-up cars and seen the reports where CAUSE OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.” No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk. Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.