Keep Me Posted Quotes

[08:31] JPL: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we’re sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She’s also the goddess of rainbows. [08:47] WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

-BDB on the board- Knitter's Anonimous May 8, 2006 Rhage (in his bedroom posting in V's room on the board) Hi, my name is V. ("Hi, V") I've been knitting for 125 years now. (*gasping noises*) It's begun to impact my personal relationships: my brothers think I'm a nancy. It's begun to affect my health: I'm getting a callus on my forefinger and I find bits of yarn in all my pockets and I'm starting to smell like wool. I can't concentrate at work: I keep picturing all these lessers in Irish sweaters and thick socks. (*sounds of sympathy*) I've come seeking a community of people who, like me, are trying not to knit. Can you help me? (*We're with you*) Thank you (*takes out hand-knitted hankie in pink*) (*sniffles*) ("We embrace you, V") Vishous (in the pit): Oh hell no...you did not just put that up. And nice spelling in the title. Man...you just have to roll up on me, don't you. I got four words for you, my brother. Rhage: Four words? Okay...lemme see... Rhage, you're so sexy. hmmm.... Rhage, you're SO smart. No wait! Rhage, you're SO right! That's it, isn't it...g'head. You can tell me. Vishous: First one starts with a "P" Use your head for the other three. Bastard. Rhage: P? Hmm... Please pass the yarn Vishous: Payback is a bitch! Rhage: Ohhhhhhhhhhhh I'm so scuuuuuurred. Can you whip me up a blanket to hide under?

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

I wondered what the FML post would look like. "Today, when my father tried to shoot me, I found out he was an assassin monger who's been keeping my mom locked away in a secret facility for freaky killers. FML." Seriously. F.M.L.

The locals call me alligator man, not only because of my scar, but because I keep an alligator by the name of Emma on my boat. I caught her as a young ‘un back in Louisiana. She’s small and doesn’t take up much room. So far, I’ve had no complaints, although I have no illusions that at some point I will be forced to give her up. For now, what better watch dog could I have? No alarm system needed. I simply post my sign, ‘Beware of Alligator’ on the dock.

Twenty minutes later, a new message came in, this one from Sydney herself: Back in human form. Everything seems to be normal. Everything? I questioned. Well, aside from a weird urge to chase laser pointers, she responded. If that’s the worst effect, I’ll take it. Keep me posted. I love you.

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I finally decided it would be a ludicrous business. I had an inherent dislike of admitting defeat. Moreover, I told myself, there's no need for me to take such decisive action myself, not when I'm surrounded by such a bountiful harvest of death—death in an air raid, death at one's post of duty, death in the military service, death on the battlefield, death from being run over, death from disease—surely my name has already been entered in the list for one of these: a criminal who has been sentenced to death does not commit suicide. No—no matter how I considered, the season was not auspicious for suicide. Instead I was waiting for something to do me the favor of killing me. And this, in the final analysis, is the same as to say that I was waiting for something to do me the favor of keeping me alive.

Harry - I'm flying north immediately. This news about your scar is the latest in a series of strange rumors that have reached me here. If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore - they're saying he's got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he's reading the signs, even if no one else is. I'll be in touch soon. My best to Ron and Hermione. Keep your eyes open,Harry. Sirius Dear Sirius, I reckon I just imagined my scar hurting, I was half asleep when I wrote to you last time. There's no point coming back, everything's fine here. Don't worry about me, my head feels completely normal. Harry Nice try, Harry. I'm back in the country and well hidden. I want you to keep me posted on everything that's going on at Hogwarts. Don't use Hedwig, keep changing owls,and don't worry about me, just watch out for yourself Don't forget what I said about your scar. Sirius

Who wouldn’t love this jargon we dress common sense in: "formal innovation is no longer transformative, having been co-opted by the forces of stabilization and post-industrial inertia," blah, blah. But this co-optation might actually be a good thing if it helped keep younger writers from being able to treat mere formal ingenuity as an end in itself. MTV-type co-optation could end up a great prophylactic against cleveritis—you know, the dreaded grad-school syndrome of like "Watch me use seventeen different points of view in this scene of a guy eating a Saltine." The real point of that shit is "Like me because I’m clever"—which of course is itself derived from commercial art’s axiom about audience-affection determining art’s value.

I fell in love with you when you crashed into my fence post and chased after my chickens and fell down in the mud with the pigs. I fell in love with you when you taught everyone in town to line dance. I fell in love with you when you put Mo’s feelings before your own and stayed with her for as long as she needed you.” One fat tear slid down her cheek as he said, “And, most of all, I fell in love with you when you showed me that it was safe to love again. I keep falling in love with you again and again. Just like I’m falling right this second.

Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando de Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies. The Pilgrims so feared Indianization that they made it a crime for men to wear long hair. “People who did run away to the Indians might expect very extreme punishments, even up to the death penalty,” Karen Kupperman tells us, if caught by whites.49 Nonetheless, right up to the end of independent Native nationhood in 1890, whites continued to defect, and whites who lived an Indian lifestyle, such as Daniel Boone, became cultural heroes in white society.

Why were Jack and his brother digging post holes? A fence there would run parallel to the one that already enclosed the farmyard. The Welches had no animals to keep in or out - a fence there could serve no purpose. Their work was pointless. Years later, while I was waiting for a boat to take me across the river, I watched two Vietnamese women methodically hitting a discarded truck tire with sticks. They did it for a good long while, and were still doing it when I crossed the river. They were part of the dream from which I recognized the Welches, my defeat-dream, my damnation-dream, with its solemn choreography of earnest useless acts.

Keep it simple' wasn't always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to 'Keep it simple' would impoverish me. 'Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings,' warned Samuel Johnson, 'let us therefore by cautious how we strip her.

The no-booze rule is one of several shams perpetuated by certain religious groups, presumably to keep their flocks in line. After all, what’s a shepherd to do with drunk sheep? So take your medicine, but leave the booze on the shelf. We have a label to keep, and it’s not Jack Daniels. Don’t mourn for me. Just tell me what to do rather than teach me what to be. Slam another pill, pop that one last sedative…you’ll find me in the kitchen, washing my glass.

the first rule of being a team is trusting one another. And if you trust someone, you let her keep her secrets. When she is ready to tell you, she will. You dont have to know everything, Anaka. Why not? Why should I trust Oona if she doesnt trust me? How do I know she's not hiding somthing more dangerous? Oona was worried the rest of you would see her differently, Kiki bristled. Don't prove her right.

I made it three days before the text messages started one afternoon while I was trying to finish warming up before our afternoon session. I had gotten to the LC later than usual and had gone straight to the training room, praising Jesus that I’d decided to change my clothes before leaving the diner once I’d seen what time it was and had remembered lunchtime traffic was a real thing. I was in the middle of stretching my hips when my phone beeped from where I’d left it on top of my bag. I took it out and snickered immediately at the message after taking my time with it. Jojo: WHAT THE FUCK JASMINE I didn’t need to ask what my brother was what-the-fucking over. It had only been a matter of time. It was really hard to keep a secret in my family, and the only reason why my mom and Ben—who was the only person other than her who knew—had kept their mouths closed was because they had both agreed it would be more fun to piss off my siblings by not saying anything and letting them find out the hard way I was going to be competing again. Life was all about the little things. So, I’d slipped my phone back into my bag and kept stretching, not bothering to respond because it would just make him more mad. Twenty minutes later, while I was still busy stretching, I pulled my phone out and wasn’t surprised more messages appeared. Jojo: WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME Jojo: HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME Jojo: DID THE REST OF YOU KEEP THIS FROM ME Tali: What happened? What did she not tell you? Tali: OH MY GOD, Jasmine, did you get knocked up? Tali: I swear, if you got knocked up, I’m going to beat the hell out of you. We talked about contraception when you hit puberty. Sebastian: Jasmine’s pregnant? Rubes: She’s not pregnant. Rubes: What happened, Jojo? Jojo: MOM DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS Tali: Would you just tell us what you’re talking about? Jojo: JASMINE IS SKATING WITH IVAN LUKOV Jojo: And I found out by going on Picturegram. Someone at the rink posted a picture of them in one of the training rooms. They were doing lifts. Jojo: JASMINE I SWEAR TO GOD YOU BETTER EXPLAIN EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW Tali: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS THIS TRUE? Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: I’m going on Lukov’s website right now to confirm this Rubes: I just called Mom but she isn’t answering the phone Tali: She knew about this. WHO ELSE KNEW? Sebastian: I didn’t. And quit texting Jas’s name over and over again. It’s annoying. She’s skating again. Good job, Jas. Happy for you. Jojo: ^^ You’re such a vibe kill Sebastian: No, I’m just not flipping my shit because she got a new partner. Jojo: SHE DIDN’T TELL US FIRST THO. What is the point of being related if we didn’t get the scoop before everybody else? Jojo: I FOUND OUT ON PICTUREGRAM Sebastian: She doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t tell you either. Tali: I can’t find anything about it online. Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: Tell us everything or I’m coming over to Mom’s today. Sebastian: You’re annoying. Muting this until I get out of work. Jojo: Party pooper Tali: Party pooper Jojo: Jinx Tali: Jinx Sebastian: Annoying ... I typed out a reply, because knowing them, if I didn’t, the next time I looked at my phone, I’d have an endless column of JASMINE on there until they heard from me. That didn’t mean my response had to be what they wanted. Me: Who is Ivan Lukov?

Brody’s problem is that he has zero respect for the opposite sex. “Does he really refuse to take selfies with a girl, or was he making that up to toy with me?” Sabrina asks. “No, that’s a real thing for him. He thinks that any pictures of him with a girl pressed up to his side would drive other potential hookups away. Selfies are a sign of commitment.” He’d expounded on this topic at some length after instructing me to keep my Tinder account active and to not tell anyone I was having a kid. “Ugh. He’s so gross.” “I signed up for a fake Instagram account so I can troll him. When he posts something, I’ll wait a day or so and then pop on to comment about how cool it is that he and my grandpa are rocking the same shirt. I’ve done that twice now and each time, I’ve seen him shoving the shirt down the apartment’s trash compactor.” Sabrina throws back her head and cackles. “You do not.” “Hey, we all have to get our jollies somewhere, right? For me, it’s negging Brody on Instagram and choking my baby mama in breathing classes.

Anything well done has the feeling of death to me, of being finished. I don't want to "master" anything. I want to spy, and sneak, and capture things just as they are . . . record all that comes before and after the song—jokes and fights and private moments. Having an unfillable hole inside is a great catalyst. You're always trying new things to fill it. People with holes look good! Look ready for action. But then sometimes you're home alone, and there's nothing new to try, and the hole's still there. "Hey," it growls, poking you from inside, "I'm hungry." I get tired of it! We are like two living cells inside a just-dead body—doomed, terrified. She argues herself out of anything she's working on, halfway through. As I stand there in the downpour and pull the mailbox open and drop my letter down the hole, I think about how Cindy is more beautiful, intelligent, and intricate than me, but still I have the winning point: whatever I do, even when I'm wrong, I go all the way. It's dark humor, but it's rooted in something real. What you present to the world is light humor. You keep it fun and fast-paced. No one can relate to that long-term. Struggle is what makes life rich—not success.

Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao. With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them. Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to our subject: that was considered being 'white and expert." In the mad logic of the day, being good at one's profession ('expert') was automatically equated with being politically unreliable ('white').

I saw Orin in bars or at post-tournament dances go up to a young lady he would like to pick up and use this fail-safe cross-sectional pick-up Strategy that involved an opening like “Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I’ll affect the demeanor of that man.” Which in a way of course is being almost pathologically open and sincere about the whole picking-up enterprise, but also has this quality of Look-At-Me-Being-So-Totally-Open-And-Sincere-I-Rise-Above-The-Whole-Disingenuous-Posing-Process-Of-Attracting-Someone-,-And-I-Transcend-The-Common-Disingenuity-In-A-Bar-Herd-In-A-Particularly-Hip-And-Witty-Self-Aware-Way-,-And-If-You-Will-Let-Me-Pick-You-Up-I-Will-Not-Only-Keep-Being-This-Wittily,-Transcendently-Open-,-But-Will-Bring-You-Into-This-World-Of-Social-Falsehood-Transcendence, which of course he cannot do because the whole openness-demeanor thing is itself a purposive social falsehood; it is a pose of poselessness; Orin Incandenza is the least open man I know.

There's a bond that forms over a sink, where the silences seem natural and the conversation is broken up with practical exchanges about where the dishes go or what kind of detergent works best.

Joshie has always told Post Human Services Staff to keep a diary, to remember who we were because every moment, our brains and synapses are being rebuilt and rewired with maddening disregard for our personalities, so that each year, each month, each day, we transfer into a different person, an utterly unfaithful iteration of our original selves, of the drooling kid in the sandbox. But not me. I am still a facsimile of my early childhood. I am still looking for a loving dad to lift me up and brush the sand off my ass and to hear English, calm and hurtless, fall off his lips.

What the hell is taking so long?” Elijah complained. “Elijah, hush,” Legna admonished. “It is their joining. Let them be.” Legna moved to snuggle up against her brother, allowing him to keep her warm as the three of them awaited the bride and her groom. “Jacob! I swear if you don’t put me down this very instant I’m going to marry someone else!” Isabella’s voice carried shrilly through the night, half annoyed, half laughing. The three waiting at the altar turned in unison to see the couple break from the tree line. Jacob had indeed carried his bride out of the woods, but he’d done so by slinging her over a shoulder, leaving her backside displayed prominently. Elijah choked on a laugh and Legna released a horrified gasp. Noah reached out to stay her from moving. “Let it be, Legna. What did you expect from the two of them?” Serves you right, you little tease. Jacob, please! You’re embarrassing me! And having me walk out of the woods in a state of arousal would not have embarrassed me? I said I was sorry! Was that before or after the mental striptease you sent me? Isabella sighed with exasperation, and then giggled. “You know, Emily Post is having heart failure right about now.” “Good, then that makes two of us.

Bliss?” I called. “Yeah?” “Check the drawers of the nightstand! She was playing with it in the middle of the night, and I think I remember taking it away and sticking it in there.” “Okay!” Through the open door, I watched her circle around the edge of the bed. I walked in place for a few seconds, letting my feet drop a little heavier than necessary, then opened and closed the door like I’d gone back inside the bathroom. Then I hid in the space between the back of the bedroom door and the wall where I could just see through the crack between the hinges. She pulled open the top drawer, and my heartbeat was like a bass drum. I don’t know when it had started beating so hard, but now it was all that I could hear. It wasn’t like I was asking her to marry me now. I just knew Bliss, and knew she tended to panic. I was giving her a very big, very obvious hint so that she’d have time to adjust before I actually asked her. Then in a few months, when I thought she’d gotten used to the idea, I’d ask her for real. That was the plan anyway. It was supposed to be simple, but this felt… complicated. Suddenly, I thought of all the thousands of ways this could go wrong. What if she freaked out? What if she ran like she did our first night together? If she ran, would she go back to Texas? Or would she go to Cade who lived in North Philly? He’d let her stay until she figured things out, and then what if something developed between them? What if she just flat out told me no? Everything was good right now. Perfect, actually. What if I was ruining it by pulling this stunt? I was so caught up in my doomsday predictions that I didn’t even see the moment that she found the box. I heard her open it though, and I heard her exhale and say, “Oh my God.” Where before my mouth had been dry, now I couldn’t swallow fast enough. My hands were shaking against the door. She was just standing there with her back to me. I couldn’t see her face. All I could see was her tense, straight spine. She swayed slightly. What if she passed out? What if I’d scared her so much that she actually lost consciousness? I started to think of ways to explain it away. I was keeping it for a friend? It was a prop for a show? It was… It was… shit, I didn’t know. I could just apologize. Tell her I knew it was too fast. I waited for her to do something—scream, run, cry, faint. Anything would be better than her stillness. I should have just been honest with her. I wasn’t good at things like this. I said what I was thinking—no plans, no manipulation. Finally, when I thought my body would crumble under the stress alone, she turned. She faced the bed, and I only got her profile, but she was biting her lip. What did that mean? Was she just thinking? Thinking of a way to get out of it? Then, slowly, like the sunrise peeking over the horizon, she smiled. She snapped the box closed. She didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She didn’t faint. There might have been a little crying. But mostly… she danced. She swayed and jumped and smiled the same way she had when the cast list was posted for Phaedra. She lost herself the same way she did after opening night, right before we made love for the first time. Maybe I didn’t have to wait a few months after all. She said she wanted my best line tomorrow after the show, and now I knew what it was going to be.

What a skeletal wreck of man this is. Translucent flesh and feeble bones, the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes. Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear. When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now. We all have a little sin that needs venting, virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails? Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve? When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned. For the rest of us, there is always Sunday. The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath, so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book. To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers. A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube, and hope you get a taste. WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP! I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we? Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do, and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs, haven’t felt like this in years. The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, and punch me into the dead spout again. That’s where you go when there’s no one else around, it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there? Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse, and a finger on the trigger. CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT! Government is another way to say better…than…you. It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick, it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food, but you can’t touch the silverware. Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for. Humph, isn’t that sweet? And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way, and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little, when your gaffer taped in the middle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening. SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I’m sorry, I could go on and on but their times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident. Forget the freak, your just nature. Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort, and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run. Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.

I’ll often post something I loved making that took me forever and crickets chirp. I’ll post something else I think is sort of lame that took me no effort and it will go viral. If I let those metrics run my personal practice, I don’t think my heart could take it very long.

We go quiet as the next episode picks up exactly where it left off. Antoine manages to subdue Marie-Thérèse, and the two proceed to argue for ten minutes. Don’t ask me about what, because it’s in French, but I do notice that the same word—héritier—keeps popping up over and over again during their fight. “Okay, we need to look up that word,” I say in aggravation. “I think it’s important.” Allie grabs her cell phone and swipes her finger on the screen. I peek over her shoulder as she pulls up a translation app. “How do you think you spell it?” she asks. We get the spelling wrong three times before we finally land on a translation that makes sense: heir. “Oh!” she exclaims. “They’re talking about the father’s will.” “Shit, that’s totally it. She’s pissed off that Solange inherited all those shares of Beauté éternelle.” We high five at having figured it out, and in the moment our palms meet, pure clarity slices into me and I’m able to grasp precisely what my life has become. With a growl, I snatch the remote control and hit stop. “Hey, it’s not over yet,” she objects. “Allie.” I draw a steady breath. “We need to stop now. Before my balls disappear altogether and my man-card is revoked.” One blond eyebrow flicks up. “Who has the power to revoke it?” “I don’t know. The Man Council. The Stonemasons. Jason Statham. Take your pick.” “So you’re too much of a manly man to watch a French soap opera?” “Yes.” I chug the rest of my margarita, but the salty flavor is another reminder of how low I’ve sunk. “Jesus Christ. And I’m drinking margaritas. You’re bad for my rep, baby doll.” I shoot her a warning look. “Nobody can ever know about this.” “Ha. I’m going to post it all over the Internet. Guess what, folks—Dean Sebastian Kendrick Heyward-Di Laurentis is over at my place right now watching soaps and drinking girly drinks.” She sticks her tongue out at me. “You’ll never get laid again.” She’s right about that. “Can you at least add that the night ended with a blowjob?” I grumble. “Because then everyone will be like, oh, he suffered through all that so he could get his pole waxed.” “Your pole waxed? That’s such a gross description.” But her eyes are bright and she’s laughing as she says it.

Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we’re sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She’s also the goddess of rainbows. [08:47] WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

Dear Jessa, I’ve started this letter so many times and I’ve never been able to finish it. So here goes again . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Riley is dead. I’m sorry for ignoring your emails and for not being there for you. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish it had been me that died and not Riley. If I could go back in time and change everything I would. I’m sorry I left without a word. There’s no excuse for my behaviour but please know that it had nothing to do with you. I was a mess. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone for months. And I felt too guilty and didn’t know how to tell you the truth about what happened. I couldn’t bear the thought of you knowing. I got all your emails but I didn’t read them until last week. I couldn’t face it and I guess that makes me the biggest coward you’ll ever meet. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I never replied. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I don’t even know how to ask your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it. I’m just glad you’re doing better. I’m better too. I’ve started seeing a therapist – twice a week – you’d like her. She reminds me of Didi. I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who needed therapy, but they made it a condition of me keeping my job. She’s helped me a lot with getting the panic attacks under control. Working in a room the size of a janitor’s closet helps too – there aren’t too many surprises, only the occasional rogue paperclip. I asked for the posting. I have to thank your dad ironically. The demotion worked out. Kind of funny that I totally get where your father was coming from all those years. Looks like I’ll be spending the remainder of my marine career behind a desk, but I’m OK with that. I don’t know what else to say, Jessa. My therapist says I should just write down whatever comes into my head. So here goes. Here’s what’s in my head . . . I miss you. I love you. Even though I long ago gave up the right to any sort of claim over you, I can’t stop loving you. I won’t ever stop. You’re in my blood. You’re the only thing that got me through this, Jessa. Because even during the bad times, the worst times, the times I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping, the times I’d think the only way out was by killing myself and just having it all go away, I’d think of you and it would pull me back out of whatever dark place I’d fallen into. You’re my light, Jessa. My north star. You asked me once to come back to you and I told you I always would. I’m working on it. It might take me a little while, and I know I have no right to ask you to wait for me after everything I’ve done, but I’m going to anyway because the truth is I don’t know how to live without you. I’ve tried and I can’t do it. So please, I’m asking you to wait for me. I’m going to come back to you. I promise. And I’m going to make things right. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll never stop trying for the rest of my life to make things right between us. I love you. Always. Kit

[8:31] JPL: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we're sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of the wind. She's also the goddess of rainbows. [8:47] WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty-two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post-9/11 anxiety and height-of-Sex-and-the-City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my mind went something like this: Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You’re trying to tell me a place called “Barneys” is fancy? Where are the fabulous gay friends I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help!

It was October 2001 and I lived in New York City. I was twenty two. I, like many of my female friends, suffered from a strange combination of post 9/11 anxiety and height of Sex and the City anxiety. They are distinct and unnerving anxieties. The questions that ran through my ming were something like this: 'Should I keep a gas mask in my kitchen? Am I supposed to be able to afford Manolo Blahnik shoes? What is Barneys New York? You're trying to tell me a place called 'Barney's' is fancy?'Where are the fabulous gay friends that I was promised? Gay guys hate me! Is this anthrax or powdered sugar? Help! Help!

You haven’t seen Tralse’s website today.” She said it as a statement, not a question. Without saying another word—apparently there were none to explain the coming horror—Robin surfed over to Tralse’s website. Aside from having posted videos from the concert last night of their new song, Kyle had posted a new blog. “Ten reasons why Virgin Val sucks?” I screeched. A couple walking past the store looked up, startled, so I bit my tongue to keep from spouting profanities of my own. I clicked on the blog. There was no way to make myself not click on it. The Top Ten Reasons Why Virgin Val Sucks 10. She called me a one-hit-wonder. 9. She doesn’t appreciate the endearing nickname I gave her. 8. She makes me write stupid blogs about her at four in the morning. 7. She’s encouraging people not to have sex. 6. She blew me off when I asked her out. 5. She has a crush on a douche bag. 4. She won’t answer any of my calls. 3. She’s such a tease with her look-but-don’t-touch policy. 2. I played a whole effing concert just for her and she didn’t come even though she told me she would. (You’re such a liar!) And the #1 reason why Virgin Val sucks? I still want her anyway.

In benighted, incompetent Africa, I had never encountered an orphan: the American streets resembled nothing so much as one vast, howling, unprecedented orphanage. It has been vivid to me for many years that what we call a race problem here is not a race problem at all: to keep calling it that is a way of avoiding the problem. The problem is rooted in the question of how one treats one's flesh and blood, especially one's children.

These books have really helped me get through some rough patches in my life... So if you want to disagree with me, that's fine, but please do so in a respectful manner. (On anyone's posts for that matter) You never know what someone may be going through. I was recently called an idiot and other names that I won't repeat because I try to keep my language clean, simply because I was defending some other people who were being attacked for loving the Keeper of the Lost Cities. And I know for a fact that many people (myself included) go to books to escape their everyday life. I know of a few people who have read a book that helped them through depression because the characters in that book found a way through it. I've heard about people who were thinking about suicide and then part of a book helped them realize that it wasn't the answer. Books can save lives, as well as any other hobby. So feel free to share your opinion, but please don't attack people for theirs, no matter what it is.

You came all this way for a whore?” Albert asked, and Royce shot him a harsh look. “Don’t call her that if you want to live a long and happy life,” Hadrian said as they dismounted. “But this is a whorehouse—a brothel, right? And you’re here to see a woman, so—” “So keep talking, Albert.” Hadrian tied his horse to the post. “Just let me get farther away.” Gwen saved our lives,” Royce said, looking up at the porch. “I beat on doors. I even yelled for help.” He looked at Albert, letting that image sink in. Yes, I yelled for help. “No one cared.” Royce gestured toward Hadrian. “He was dying in a pool of blood, and I was about to pass out. Broken leg, my side sliced open, the world spinning. Then she was there saying, ‘I’ve got you. You’ll be all right now.’ We would have died in the mud and the rain, but she took us in, nursed us back to health. People were after us—lots of people … lots of powerful people—but she kept us hidden for weeks, and she never asked for payment or explanation. She never asked for anything.” Royce turned back to Albert. “So if you call her a whore again, I’ll cut your tongue out and nail it to your chest.” Albert nodded. “Point taken.” Royce climbed the steps to the House and rapped once. Albert leaned over to Hadrian and whispered, “He knocks at a—” “Royce can still hear you.” Hadrian stopped him. “Really?” “Pretty sure. You have no idea how much trouble I got into before I learned that. Now I never say anything I don’t want him to know.

In those busy but meaningful days, I began to understand, truly, the fierce and formidable power of women. Though we could not enlist and take up arms, I felt that I, and the many women around me, could have a direct hand in supporting this war abroad and keeping this country free at home. Though I could not vote for the president, though I could not even sit on the board of the company that bore my family’s name, I began to hope that, by the time my girls were older, these facts might change.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

Singular-race makers push for the end of categorizing and identifying by race. They wag their fingers at people like me identifying as Black—but the unfortunate truth is that their well-meaning post-racial strategy makes no sense in our racist world. Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. Imagining away the existence of races in a racist world is as conserving and harmful as imagining away classes in a capitalistic world—it allows the ruling races and classes to keep on ruling.

I never met a librarian worth his or her salt who didn't perceive my passion for books. And without exception, each one would lend me a book on a subject we had been discussing. No paperwork, no formalities of any kind, no rules or regulations. My unspoken side of the bargain was to protect them, in two ways; first by keeping the book unharmed - not that easy, especially in bad weather, but when it rained, I carried the book next to my skin. I can tell you now that carrying Gulliver's Travels or Lays of Ancient Rome or Mr. Oscar Wilde's stories or Mr. William Yeat's poems next to my heart gave me a kind of sweet pleasure. The second half of the bargain often nearly broke my heart, but I always kept it - and that was to return the book safe and sound to the library that had lent it. To part company with Mr. Charles Dickens or Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray and his lovely name! - that was harder than saying good-bye to a dear flesh-and-blood companion. But I always did it - and I sent the book by registered post, no small consideration of cost given the peculiar economics of an itinerant storyteller.

This syndrome is a distant cousin to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. What makes PBS different from PTSD is the sense of disbelief one gets from PBS. How could someone who loved me hate me so deeply? How could I stay and subject myself to all that pain despite all my education and awareness? Remember the error message—the brain can’t compute bizarre behavior right away, but after some time, it can look back and parse through the details. But that’s rarely a neutral process. It can create an inability to focus and a foggy mental state that keeps the victim stumbling through their day.

I'm very visual, so I have a picture of a person on a tightrope hanging over my desk to remind me that working to stay open and at the same time to keep boundaries in place is worth the energy and risk. I actually used a Sharpie to write this across the balance bar: "Worthiness is my birthright." It's both a reminder to practice shame resilience and a touchstone of my spiritual beliefs. And in case I'm feeling more ornery than usual, I have a little Post-it Note under my tightrope picture that reads, "Cruelty is cheap, easy, and chickenshit." That's also a touchstone of my spiritual beliefs.

Their gazes locked,he said,"I made a mistake." "Confusing your wife with a goat?" What was that he had thought about the difficulty of having a wife who was a truthsayer? He took a breath,let it out slowly, and sent with it a prayer. "There was a time-a brief time-when I considered you might be guilty." Truth. Rycca smiled. She freed her hands, cupped them to his face,and rose on her toes to touch her mouth to his. "What is that for?" he asked, caught between relief and bewilderment. Likely she would always keep him so off balance and likely he would always be glad of it for truly fortune smiled upon him. A great knot seemed to be untangling in his chest. "For believing me." "I only briefly didn't," he repeated. "No,I mean for believing I am a truthsayer." "And you know that because-" She laughed and took his hand again. "Because you are a wise and canny man, Lord Dragon. You could as easily have insisted you never even flirted with the thought that I might be guilty and thereby saved yourself what must surely have been an uneasy moment for a husband." He was slightly stung but not too much, for her ready forgiveness was as a balm over all else. "Generally speaking, I do tell the truth for its own sake." "I never thought otherwise. And I would be as truthful with you. Last night, I realized suddenly that I was not afraid. All things considered, that was rather ridiculous but it was how I felt nonetheless." The knot was definitely gone. Indeed, a great warmth seemd to suffuse him. If a woman who had every reason to fear Vikings could be tied to a punishment post by her own Viking husband and not be afraid, that could mean only one thing. "You trust me." "And you trust me." At that moment, looking down at her, his face held nothing of the mighty warrior and jarl. He looked instead like a boy handed the world. She wanted only to give it to him again and again. "I would say," Rycca murmured, "that for a rocky beginning, we are managing well enough." It was an incongruously happy note upon which to discuss a dead man.

Was it as scary for you as it is for me? Falling for Sawyer?” “Not really, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m sure I had some of the same worries, everyone does. But I’m a leaper. You’re a thinker. We process things differently.” “You didn’t have a panic attack and run away?” I ask sarcastically. “No,” she muses. “Not even that time he refused to have sex with me.” “That was your first date, Everly. And you did have sex,” I remind her. I know, because I heard about it for a week. “Whew.” She blows out a breath. “It was a tough few hours though. How is Boyd’s POD by the way? Can we talk about that?” She leans forward on the couch, looking at me expectantly. “Um, no. I don’t think so.” She shrugs good-naturedly then changes the subject back to me. “Chloe, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling with your anxiety? You know I’m never too busy for you, no matter how many husbands or children I have.” “You have one husband, babe,” Sawyer says, walking into the room at that moment. “You’re still the one, baby.” “We’ve been married for three months, Everly. I sure as hell better still be the one.” “Sawyer,” she sighs. “I was trying to have a moment, okay? Work with me.” “Next time, try waiting more than a day after downloading Shania Twain’s greatest hits to your iPod. You do realize the receipts come to my email, don’t you?” “Um.” Everly looks away and scrunches her nose. “No?” “You’ve been on quite the 90’s love ballads kick this week. Which is weird, because you’re not old enough to have owned the CD’s those songs were originally released on.” He looks at her with amused interest. “What’s a CD?” She blinks at Sawyer dramatically. “Cute. Keep it up.” “Nineties music is all the rage with the millennials,” she tells him with a shrug. “I saw a blog post about it.” “Don’t worry, sweets. We’ll beat the odds together.” He winks and she scowls. “You’re still the only one I dream of,” he calls as he walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water. “See! I don’t even care that you lifted that from a song. It still gave me all the feels!

Yet the very smell of food made her stomach oddly unsettled and she set down the bowl of porridge without taking a spoonful. That infuriated Dragon,still watching from the stable. As though the circumstances were not bad enough,a night without sleep had left him even more on edge. It was all he could do not to stomp out into the yard and demand she swallow every bite. After which he would take her in his arms, kiss her lingeringly, beseech her to tell him he could not possibly be wrong to trust her,and generally make a slobbering fool of himself to rival those great dolts Grani and Sleipnir. No,that he would not do. He would instead have a word with the men on the watchtowers, telling them to keep an eye on his wife and leaving them to make of that what they would while he went off to the river, there to immerse himself in blessedly cold water and cast off the shadows of sleeplessness. When he returned, freshly garbed but not having taken time to shave, he found the day unfolding much as usual. People were coming and going about their daily tasks,now that the barn was rebuilt, apparently determined to ignore the fact that the lady of their manor was tied to a punishment post. Not Magda,though. That stalwart passed him with as close to a glare as she would ever come and bustled out to ask Rycca advice about something or other. The sheer ludicrousness of that struck Dragon and he was chuckling when Magda passed by again,which earned him another stern frown. That was the height of levity for the day.Hours passed and nothing happened. Magda came and went,clucking over Rycca's failure to eat and glaring more at Dragon every time she saw him. Several of the other women began to do the same. He took that as an indication that those who had gotten to know Rycca best held her blameless. His venture into Byzantine intrigue of the previous day rankled all the more. He tried not to think about it. The day dragged on. With the stronghold as busy as ever, Dragon told himself no one would be so foolish as to approach Rycca with intent to do her harm. Yet he found excuse after excuse to be in the yard himself.

I love analogies! Let’s have one. Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let’s say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn’t punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can’t be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don’t even see it, because it’s always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don’t like it and they wish it would stop. Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that’s better, right? Kind of? Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won’t punch you in the face. Not even once, not even a little bit. Women and POC and LGBT and various combinations thereof flock to this place, and praise it to the skies. And then some white, straight, cis dude–one of the ones who’s on record as publicly disapproving of punching diners in the face, who has expressed the wish that it would stop (maybe even been very indignant on this topic in a blog post or two) says, “Sure, but it’s not anything really important or significant. It’s getting all blown out of proportion. The food is exactly the same! In fact, some of it is awfully retro. You’re just all relieved cause you’re not getting punched in the face, but it’s not really a significant development in this city’s culinary scene. Why couldn’t they have actually advanced the state of food preparation? Huh? Now that would have been worth getting excited about.” Think about that. Seriously, think. Let me tell you, being able to enjoy my delicious supper without being punched in the face is a pretty serious advancement. And only the folks who don’t get routinely assaulted when they try to eat could think otherwise.

Just ask me how to get bloodstains out of a fur coat. No, really, go ahead. Ask me. The secret is cornmeal and brushing the fur the wrong way. The tricky part is keeping your mouth shut. To get blood off of piano keys, polish them with talcum powder or powdered milk. This isn’t the most marketable job skill, but to get bloodstains out of wallpaper, put on a paste of cornstarch and cold water. This will work just as well to get blood out of a mattress or a davenport. The trick is to forget how fast these things can happen. Suicides. Accidents. Crimes of passion. Just concentrate on the stain until your memory is completely erased. Practice really does make perfect. If you could call it that. Ignore how it feels when the only real talent you have is for hiding the truth. You have a God-given knack for committing a terrible sin. It’s your calling. You have a natural gift for denial. A blessing. If you could call it that. Even after sixteen years of cleaning people’s houses, I want to think the world is getting better and better, but really I know it’s not. You want there to be some improvement in people, but there won’t be. And you want to think there’s something you can get done. Cleaning this same house every day, all that gets better is my skill at denying what’s wrong. God forbid I should ever meet who I work for in person. Please don’t get the idea I don’t like my employers. The caseworker has gotten me lots worse postings. I don’t hate them. I don’t love them, but I don’t hate them. I’ve worked for lots worse. Just ask me how to get urine stains out of drapes and a tablecloth. Ask me what’s the fastest way to hide bullet holes in a living-room wall. The answer is toothpaste. For larger calibers, mix a paste of equal parts starch and salt. Call me the voice of experience.

‹ Prev Next › When I Give It Does Not Come With Strings Mar 22 by LSI on March 22, 2015 at 5:57 pm Posted In: Relationship When I Give It Does Not Come With Strings when i give it does not come with strings When I give, it does not come with strings. I’m not keeping track of what you owe me. When I give, I choose to do so without ulterior motives. I give because I know what it’s like to be without. To long for and be ignored; to speak and not be heard; to care for and have nothing returned. When I give it’s because I know the value in what I have in my heart. And I refuse to let the world stop me from sharing that, But when things start being taken for granted, When you no longer appreciate my sincerity, I won’t switch, I won’t get angry, and I won’t be spiteful. I’ll just get smart, and change your role in my life. Because when I give, I’m all in. But when I’m done, there’s no turning back.

Well, remember when your husband died and you disappeared for a year and then came back, but were super depressed and you started banging an asshole who turned out to not be an asshole but just a dude who was hurt because his wife and son died? And then you two like kind of fell into a weird sexlationship where you pretended you were both someone else but then one day you were like, ‘But I want you to be you and me to be me,’ so you fell in love. And then you found out that your husband was involved in his family’s deaths, and then shit got weird and the dude left town, but for some reason thought it was okay to keep leaving you Post-It notes that just left you even more confused and hurt and totally, ‘Oh my gosh, it feels like I’m PMSing for four weeks out of every month and I can’t even eat any more ice cream because my hot tears melt it every time I cry into the Ben and Jerry’s.’ Do you remember all of that?

I also worried about her morale. During Linda’s first season working for Amazon, she had seen up close the vast volume of crap Americans were buying and felt disgusted. That experience had planted a seed of disenchantment. After she left the warehouse, it continued to grow. When she had downsized from a large RV to a minuscule trailer, Linda had also been reading about minimalism and the tiny house movement. She had done a lot of thinking about consumer culture and about how much garbage people cram into their short lives. I wondered where all those thoughts would lead. Linda was still grappling with them. Weeks later, after starting work in Kentucky, she would post the following message on Facebook and also text it directly to me: Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don’t need to impress people I don’t like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don’t have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won’t last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world. After sending that, she continued: Radical I know, but this is what goes through my head when I’m at work. There is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. It’s really depressing to be there. Linda added that she was coping

Evan slung his arm over my shoulder. “That’s my mom and dad,” he pointed to a couple approaching us as families trickled onto the field. “Mom! Get a picture of me and she-wolf?” “Sure, sure,” the strawberry blonde lady said, digging in her purse. “Aha! Here it is. I’m Elaine, Evan’s mom,” she announced to us. “Now smile!” I smiled but just before the flash went off Evan kissed my cheek. I gasped in surprise, probably making the funniest face known to man. Evan snatched the camera from his mom and laughed. “That is totally going to be my facebook profile pic. Take a look she-wolf.” He turned the camera so I could see the image on the screen. Oh, God. I narrowed my eyes and pointed a finger at Evan. “You better promise me that, that picture never sees the light of day.” “Well, technically it’s already seen the light of day, seeing as it’s the morning and all.” “Evan, you know what I mean.” “Fine,” he lowered his head, “I won’t post it on facebook.” “Or twitter, instagram, or any other picture sharing site. Got it? Maybe you should just delete it now?” “Nah,” Evan grinned. “I’m keeping this forever and ever as proof that I kissed the she-wolf.

I just have to ask these questions. Are you DEA? FDA? NICB? NHCAA? Are you a private investigator hired by any private or governmental entity? Do you work for a medical insurance company? Are you a drug dealer? Drug addict? Are you a clinician? A med student? Getting pills for an abusive boyfriend or employer? NASA?” “I think I have insomnia. That’s my main issue.” “You’re probably addicted to caffeine, too, am I right?” “I don’t know.” “You better keep drinking it. If you quit now, you’ll just go crazy. Real insomniacs suffer hallucinations and lost time and usually have poor memory. It can make life very confusing. Does that sound like you?” “Sometimes I feel dead,” I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts. I’m sure I can help you. But I do ask new patients to come in for a fifteen-minute consultation to make sure we’ll make a good fit. Gratis. And I recommend you get into the habit of writing notes to remind yourself of our appointments. I have a twenty-four-hour cancellation policy. You know Post-its? Get yourself some Post-its. I’ll have some agreements for you to sign, some contracts. Now write this down.” Dr. Tuttle told me to come in the next day at nine A.M.

I ran into him at the library one other time, with my mother, as he was coming out and we were walking past on our way to the post office. He tipped his hat to her, and she nodded, and though I wanted to tell my mother who he was, my stomach went cold, and all I managed was a meek hello. For the rest of the afternoon I felt like crying without knowing why. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I couldn’t picture Dr. Young walking into Mr. Awad’s store—how could I, when Mr. Awad warns us to always check for the back of a cloche hat or a curl of yellow hair before we step out to dress a mannequin, so that the American women won’t see our dirty hands? The white Americans might be ajanib, but my parents say we’re white, too, or we must be something close to it if we are both Christians, and I think they really believe that if we keep our noses in our work, a day will come when we’ll earn more than their disdain. In the meantime, my mother whispers about the widow Haddad and scrubs my face with turmeric, and my father warns me against dating like the American girls, saying, Do you know how hard we worked to get you here? Neither of them know what Mrs. Theodore taught me about my color in the back of that Rolls-Royce. In that moment with my mother and Dr. Young, little wing, when I felt the cold drip of fear in my stomach, I realized that an infinite number of moments had instilled in me a reflex as potent and inescapable as a sneeze. It was like seeing the shape of something large coming toward you in the dark.

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice’s friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this—a day spent floating from one thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood. People with siblings usually had a leg up, but not always. There were two boys from Belvedere, best friends since kindergarten, who had grown up and married a pair of sisters, and now all four of their children went to Belvedere, driven by one mom or the other in a little cousin carpool. That was next-level friendship—locking someone in through marriage. It seemed positively medieval, like when you realized that all the royal families in the world were more or less cousins. Even just the concept of cousins felt like bragging—Look at all these people who belong to me. Alice had never felt like she belonged to anyone—or like anyone belonged to her—except for Leonard.

As he helped Sejanus unpack and make his bed, Coriolanus got caught up on the Capitol news. His suspicions about the Hunger Games were right. “By the next morning, there was no mention of it,” said Sejanus. “When I went into the Academy for my review, I heard some of the faculty talking about what a mistake it’d been to involve the students, so I think that was a one-off. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Lucky Flickerman back again next year, or the post office open for gifts and betting.” “Our legacy,” said Coriolanus. “So it seems,” said Sejanus. “Satyria told Professor Sickle that Dr. Gaul is determined to keep it going somehow. A part of her eternal war, I guess. Instead of battles, we have the Hunger Games.” “Yes, to punish the districts and remind us what beasts we are,” said Coriolanus, focused on lining up Sejanus’s folded socks in the locker. “What?” asked Sejanus, giving him a funny look. “I don’t know,” said Coriolanus. “It’s like . . . you know how she’s always torturing that rabbit or melting the flesh off something?” “Like she enjoys it?” asked Sejanus. “Exactly. I think that’s how she thinks we all are. Natural-born killers. Inherently violent,” Coriolanus said. “The Hunger Games are a reminder of what monsters we are and how we need the Capitol to keep us from chaos.” “So, not only is the world a brutal place, but people enjoy its brutality? Like the essay on everything we loved about the war,” said Sejanus. “As if it had been some big show.” He shook his head. “So much for not thinking.” “Forget it,” said Coriolanus. “Let’s just be happy that she’s out of our lives.” A downcast Beanpole appeared, reeking of urinals and bleach. Coriolanus introduced him to Sejanus, who, upon learning of his predicament, cheered him up by promising to help him with the drills. “It took me awhile to get it, too, back at school. But if I can master it, so can you.

I lost my first patient on a Tuesday. She was an eighty-two-year-old woman, small and trim, the healthiest person on the general surgery service, where I spent a month as an intern. (At her autopsy, the pathologist would be shocked to learn her age: “She has the organs of a fifty-year-old!”) She had been admitted for constipation from a mild bowel obstruction. After six days of hoping her bowels would untangle themselves, we did a minor operation to help sort things out. Around eight P.M. Monday night, I stopped by to check on her, and she was alert, doing fine. As we talked, I pulled from my pocket my list of the day’s work and crossed off the last item (post-op check, Mrs. Harvey). It was time to go home and get some rest. Sometime after midnight, the phone rang. The patient was crashing. With the complacency of bureaucratic work suddenly torn away, I sat up in bed and spat out orders: “One liter bolus of LR, EKG, chest X-ray, stat—I’m on my way in.” I called my chief, and she told me to add labs and to call her back when I had a better sense of things. I sped to the hospital and found Mrs. Harvey struggling for air, her heart racing, her blood pressure collapsing. She wasn’t getting better no matter what I did; and as I was the only general surgery intern on call, my pager was buzzing relentlessly, with calls I could dispense with (patients needing sleep medication) and ones I couldn’t (a rupturing aortic aneurysm in the ER). I was drowning, out of my depth, pulled in a thousand directions, and Mrs. Harvey was still not improving. I arranged a transfer to the ICU, where we blasted her with drugs and fluids to keep her from dying, and I spent the next few hours running between my patient threatening to die in the ER and my patient actively dying in the ICU. By 5:45 A.M., the patient in the ER was on his way to the OR, and Mrs. Harvey was relatively stable. She’d needed twelve liters of fluid, two units of blood, a ventilator, and three different pressors to stay alive. When I finally left the hospital, at five P.M. on Tuesday evening, Mrs. Harvey wasn’t getting better—or worse. At seven P.M., the phone rang: Mrs. Harvey had coded, and the ICU team was attempting CPR. I raced back to the hospital, and once again, she pulled through. Barely. This time, instead of going home, I grabbed dinner near the hospital, just in case. At eight P.M., my phone rang: Mrs. Harvey had died. I went home to sleep.

I'm renowned within the ton as being cool under fire- around you, I'm never cool. I'm heated- I seethe- I burn with desire. If I'm in the same room, all I can think about is heat- your heat- and how you'll feel around me." Patience felt the heat rise, a real force between them. "I've gained the reputation of being the soul of discretion- now look at me. I've seduced my godmother's niece- and been seduced by her. I share her bed openly, even under my godmother's roof." His lips twisted wryly. "So much for discretion." He drew a deep breath; his chest brushed her breasts. "And as for my vaunted, up-until-you 'legendary' control- the instant I'm inside you that evaporates like water on hot steel." What prompted her Patience never knew. His lips were so close- with her teeth, she nipped the lower. "I told you to let go- I won't break." The tension, pouring off him in waves, eased, just a little. He sighed, and rested his forehead on hers. "I don't like losing control- it's like losing myself- in you." She felt him gather himself, felt the tension swell and coalesce about them. "It's giving myself to you- so that I'm in your keeping." The words, low and gravelly, rolled through her; closing her eyes, she drew in a shallow breath. "And you don't like doing that." "I don't like it- but I crave it. I don't approve of it, yet I yearn for it." His words feathered her cheek, then his lips touched hers. "Do you understand? I haven't any choice." Patience felt his chest swell as he drew a deep breath. "I love you." She shivered, eyes shut tight, and felt the world shift about her. "Losing myself in you- giving my heart and soul into your keeping- is part of that." His lips brushed hers in an inexpressibly tender caress. "Trusting you is part of that. Telling you I love you is part of that." His lips touched hers; Patience didn't wait for more. She kissed him. Letting go of the post, she slid her hands up, framing his face, so she could let him know- let him feel- her response to all he'd said. He felt it, sensed it- and reacted; his arms locked tight about her. She couldn't breathe, but she didn't care. All she cared about was the emotion that held them, that flowed so effortlessly between them. Silver and gold, it wound about them, investing each touch with its magic. Silver and gold, it shimmered about them, and quivered in their fractured breaths. It was immediate compulsion and future promise, heavenly delight and earthly pleasure. It was here and now- and forever.

Minny came ever day to make sure I was breathing, feed me food to keep me living. All I know is, I ain't saying it. And I know she ain't saying what she want a say either and it's a strange thing happening here cause nobody saying nothing and we still managing to have us a conversation. "Mama, it would really be so terrible if I never met a husband?" Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else. I stare at her, wishing the ceiling fan would fly from its post, crash down on both of us. I feel tears come up in my eyes, cause three years just ain't long enough. A hundred years ain't gone be long enough. Eugenia, just because this is a hospital doesn't mean I'm an invalid" "you kind. you smart. you important." See, I think if God had intended for white people and colored people to be this close together for so much of the day, he would've made us color-blind. Every time a Negro complained about the cost of living didn't mean she was begging for money. But the truth is, I don't care about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if, in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver. when you little, you only get to ask two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right. Mister Jonny knows about me. Miss Celia Knows Mister Jony know about me. But Mister Jonny doesn't know that Miss Celia knows he knows. "Yes ma'am. I tell her." In about a hundred years. How an awful day could turn even worse. It seems like at some point you'd just run out of awful. Lots of folks think if you talk back to your husband, you crossed the line. And that justifies punishment. She can take the most complicated things in life and wrap them up so small and simple, they'll fit right in your pocket. "Don't you let him cheapen you. If Stuart doesn't know how intelligent and kind I raised you to be, he can march straight on back to State Street. Frankly, I don't care much for Stuart. He doesn't know how lucky he was to have you." You tell her we love her, like she's our own family. "You a beautiful person, Minny." Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me unless she is their mother too. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism

cap to scratch his bald head. ‘Well, you won’t miss the veg because I’ll be bringing you some every week now. I’ve always got plenty left over and I’d rather give it to you than see it waste.’ He gave a rumbling laugh. ‘I caught that young Tommy Barton digging potatoes from Percy’s plot this mornin’. Give ’im a cuff round ’is ear but I let him take what he’d dug. Poor little bugger’s only tryin’ to keep his ma from starvin’; ain’t ’is fault ’is old man got banged up for robbin’, is it?’ Tilly Barton, her two sons Tommy and Sam and her husband, lived almost opposite the Pig & Whistle. Mulberry Lane cut across from Bell Lane and ran adjacent to Spitalfields Market, and the folk of the surrounding lanes were like a small community, almost a village in the heart of London’s busy East End. Tilly and her husband had been good customers for Peggy until he lost his job on the Docks. It had come as a shock when he’d been arrested for trying to rob a little corner post office and Peggy hadn’t seen Tilly to talk to since; she’d assumed it was because the woman was feeling ashamed of what her husband had done. ‘No, of course not.’ Peggy smiled at him. A wisp of her honey-blonde hair had fallen across her face, despite all her efforts to sweep it up under a little white cap she wore for cooking. ‘I didn’t realise Tilly Barton was in such trouble. I’ll take her a pie over later – she won’t be offended, will she?’ ‘No one in their right mind would be offended by you, Peggy love.’ ‘Thank you, Jim. Would you like a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie?’ ‘Don’t mind a slice of that pie, but I’ll take it for my docky down the allotment if that’s all right?’ Peggy assured him it was and wrapped a generous slice of her freshly cooked pie in greaseproof paper. He took it and left with a smile and a promise to see her next week just as her husband entered the kitchen. ‘Who was that?’ Laurence asked as he saw the back of Jim walking away. ‘Jim Stillman, he brought the last of the stuff from Percy’s allotment.’ Peggy’s eyes brimmed and Laurence frowned. ‘I don’t know what you’re upset for, Peggy. Percy was well over eighty. He’d had a good life – and it wasn’t even as if he was your father…’ ‘I know. He was a lot older than Mum but…Percy was a good stepfather to me, and wonderful to Mum when she was so ill after we lost Walter.’ Peggy’s voice faltered, because it still hurt her that her younger brother had died in the Great War at the tender age of seventeen. The news had almost destroyed their mother and Peggy thought of those dark days as the worst of her

Some find it hard to write emotively. I've had some people say to me that they simply cannot. There are two ways to try and achieve it, to either draw upon your own lives experiences or pushing your imagination into those circumstances and feeling how your heart reacts. When I write emotively much of it comes from my own experiences and thoughts. But for some things it is not because I have experienced every emotion in my short life time already. It means I am able to imagine in my mind a given situation and feel how my heart reacts to those thoughts. Forcing myself deep into the moment of fantasy and not fearing how I feel. Some writers rely on this skill, not picturing it in their mind they are feeling it as though with their own heart even though the situation is not one they have found themselves to have been in. I believe I struggle with this, I challenge myself in some of my stories and writing that I do but I find myself favouring writing about what I know, what I have felt in my own life, love being most favoured but also excitement, worry, fear and of course sorrow. Many people will be happy to write about joy and happiness but would never write of their fears and weaknesses, feeling that for others to see you so exposed in a raw state of emotion adds to the agony of the original event you are writing about. Especially those who want to be seen as strong all the time, they worry that so show any emotion other than strength of positivity is weakness. This façade is very telling, it reminds us that we only see the parts of people that they want us to see. I'm quite happy with a little motivational post, but no one, no human is able to be positive every moment of every day. It makes me think that behind closed doors these strong motivational people have their quiet moments and keep the sadness to themselves, which is a little sad for me, because they choose to maybe be alone when those around them would want to support them in return for all the motivation they bring. There are many who will understand that the support they can give is not to make you bounce back and be happy, but to simply sit down by your side and keep you company, making sure you're not alone in your darkness, not forcing you out from it too soon. The other frustration is that persistent insistence that we must all be happy everyday, all the time and if we're not there's something wrong with us which of course is nonsense. Whenever I read something of sadness, filled with grief and sorrow I feel a beautiful moment of honesty revealed by an individual. That they are offering their vulnerability to the world, that I have something connect to. That I am not the only one who has found themselves collapsed to my knees crying in a shower at 3am. That I, like them, am human after all.

So, what did you want to watch?’ ‘Thought we might play a game instead,’ he said, holding up a familiar dark green box. ‘Found this on the bottom shelf of your DVD cupboard … if you tilt the glass, the champagne won’t froth like that.’ Neve finished pouring champagne into the 50p champagne flutes she’d got from the discount store and waited until Max had drunk a good half of his in two swift swallows. ‘The thing is, you might find it hard to believe but I can be very competitive and I have an astonishing vocabulary from years spent having no life and reading a lot – and well, if you play Scrabble with me, I’ll totally kick your arse.’ Max was about to eat his first bite of molten mug cake but he paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘You’re gonna kick my arse?’ ‘Until it’s black and blue and you won’t be able to sit down for a week.’ That sounded very arrogant. ‘Really, Max, Mum stopped me from playing when I was thirteen after I got a score of four hundred and twenty-seven, and when I was at Oxford, I used to play with two Linguistics post-grads and an English don.’ ‘Well, my little pancake girlfriend, I played Scrabble against Carol Vorderman for a Guardian feature and I kicked her arse because Scrabble has got nothing to do with vocabulary; it’s logic and tactics,’ Max informed her loftily, taking a huge bite of the cake. For a second, Neve hoped that it was as foul-tasting as she suspected just to get Max back for that snide little speech, but he just licked the back of the spoon thoughtfully. ‘This is surprisingly more-ish, do you want some?’ ‘I think I’ll pass.’ ‘Well, you’re not getting out of Scrabble that easily.’ Max leaned back against the cushions, the mug cradled to his chest, and propped his feet up on the table so he could poke the Scrabble box nearer to Neve. ‘Come on, set ’em up. Unless you’re too scared.’ ‘Max, I have all the two-letter words memorised, and as for Carol Vorderman – well, she might be good at maths but there was a reason why she wasn’t in Dictionary Corner on Countdown so I’m not surprised you beat her at Scrabble.’ ‘Fighting talk.’ Max rapped his knuckles gently against Neve’s head, which made her furious. ‘I’ll remind you of that little speech once I’m done making you eat every single one of those high-scoring words you seem to think you’re so good at.’ ‘Right, that does it.’ Neve snatched up the box and practically tore off the lid, so she could bang the board down on the coffee table. ‘You can’t be that good at Scrabble if you keep your letters in a crumpled paper bag,’ Max noted, actually daring to nudge her arm with his foot. Neve knew he was only doing it to get a rise out of her, but God, it was working. ‘Game on, Pancake Boy,’ she snarled, throwing a letter rack at Max, which just made him laugh. ‘And don’t think I’m going to let you win just because it’s your birthday.’ It was the most fun Neve had ever had playing Scrabble. It might even have been the most fun she had ever had. For every obscure word she tried to play in the highest scoring place, Max would put down three tiles to make three different words and block off huge sections of the board. Every time she tried to flounce or throw a strop because ‘you’re going against the whole spirit of the game’, Max would pop another Quality Street into her mouth because, as he said, ‘It is Treat Sunday and you only had one roast potato.’ When there were no more Quality Street left and they’d drunk all the champagne, he stopped each one of her snits with a slow, devastating kiss so there were long pauses between each round. It was a point of honour to Neve that she won in the most satisfying way possible; finally getting to use her ‘q’ on a triple word score by turning Max’s ‘hogs’ into ‘quahogs’ and waving the Oxford English Dictionary in his face when he dared to challenge her.

Why are you mad at me?” He didn’t look at her. “I’m not mad.” “You’re not happy.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “That was no practice kiss.” “I know it wasn’t. I was trying to give us a reason not to talk about it.” “Oh. So you don’t think we should talk about it?” “I thought guys hated talking things out.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “I just don’t want you getting any ideas, that’s all.” Getting any ideas? Emma was speechless for a moment, unable to believe he’d actually said that. “Since I was walking away from you when you spun me around and kissed me, I’d say you’re the one getting ideas.” “Of course I’m getting ideas. You’re hot and I’m not dead. But I know enough not to confuse lust with anything else.” She snorted and looked out her window. “Oh, yes, Sean Kowalski. Your amazing kisses have made all rational thought fly out of my besotted brain. If only you could fill me with your magic penis, I know we’d fall madly in love and live happily ever after.” The truck jerked and she glanced over to find him glaring at her. “Don’t ever say that again.” “What? The ‘madly in love’ or the ‘happily ever after’?” “My penis isn’t magic.” His tone was grumpy, but then he smiled at the windshield. “It does tricks, though.” “The only trick your penis needs to know for the next three and a half weeks is down boy.” How the hell had she gotten herself into this conversation? “To get back to the point, if you think I have any interest in a real relationship with a guy who thinks he’s a better driver than me just because I have breasts, you’re insane.” “It’s not because you have breasts. Women don’t drive as well because they lack a magic penis.” She turned toward the passenger door, letting him know with her body language she had no interest in talking to him anymore. “Why didn’t I tell Gram I was dating Bob from the post office?” He laughed at her. “You’ve met the Kowalskis. You were doomed the minute you said the name out loud.” Doomed, she thought, glaring at the passing scenery. That was a good word for it.

So after I got Jamie’s address, I wrote to her every day. Every night after I put the kids to bed, I would write. I would tell her about everything that had happened--what I did, what the kids did, something funny one of them said. I just wrote as much as I could for several pages. Every night I wrote her novels and every morning I mailed them to her. That was all well and good until I found out I’d addressed all of the envelopes incorrectly! I’d left out one digit of the zip code on every single letter I’d written. I was devastated. Even though I had put a return address on them, I was sure they were stuck in post office limbo. I had this realization the same day I got my first letter from Jamie. I ripped it open and read it through gripped fingers. She told me all about her first few days in basic training, and at the bottom she added the most heartbreaking line, “I wish you’d write me. I know you’re busy and I know you don’t like to write, but I wish you would.” I couldn’t believe it. She thought I hadn’t written at all. I called a buddy of mine who is now Command Sergeant Major Phil Blaisdell, a battalion sergeant major at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. “Phil, I’m in trouble. Man, I’ve been sending her letters and I was putting the wrong zip code on them and I got a letter from her and she thinks I’m not sending her letters and I know she needs that.” “All right, let me call you back.” A little while later my phone rang. “I’m Command Sergeant Major Duncan. I am the battalion sergeant major of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. First of all, I’d like to tell you that I know who you are and I appreciate your service and what you’ve done. I’ve seen your Men’s Health issue and you are an inspiration. I understand you know a Specialist Boyd,” she said. “Yes, Sergeant Major, I do.” “Well, I’ve got her standing in front of me right now. Would you like to talk to her?” “Yes, Sergeant Major, I would.” So she handed the phone to Jamie. Jamie was a little stressed out because she had been called to the sergeant major’s office and thought, What have I done? The conversation was rushed and she was speaking in a hushed tone. “Hey, I miss you, I love you.” “Hey, me, too, baby. Let me tell you real quick, I’ve been sending you letters--” “I got them all today. Thank you.” “I miss you, and I hope that you can tell.” “Look, I want to keep talking but they’re watching me.” “Okay, we’re good. Just wanted to make sure you got the letters. I love you and we’ll talk later.

I just wrote as much as I could for several pages. Every night I wrote her novels and every morning I mailed them to her. That was all well and good until I found out I’d addressed all of the envelopes incorrectly! I’d left out one digit of the zip code on every single letter I’d written. I was devastated. Even though I had put a return address on them, I was sure they were stuck in post office limbo. I had this realization the same day I got my first letter from Jamie. I ripped it open and read it through gripped fingers. She told me all about her first few days in basic training, and at the bottom she added the most heartbreaking line, “I wish you’d write me. I know you’re busy and I know you don’t like to write, but I wish you would.” I couldn’t believe it. She thought I hadn’t written at all. I called a buddy of mine who is now Command Sergeant Major Phil Blaisdell, a battalion sergeant major at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. “Phil, I’m in trouble. Man, I’ve been sending her letters and I was putting the wrong zip code on them and I got a letter from her and she thinks I’m not sending her letters and I know she needs that.” “All right, let me call you back.” A little while later my phone rang. “I’m Command Sergeant Major Duncan. I am the battalion sergeant major of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. First of all, I’d like to tell you that I know who you are and I appreciate your service and what you’ve done. I’ve seen your Men’s Health issue and you are an inspiration. I understand you know a Specialist Boyd,” she said. “Yes, Sergeant Major, I do.” “Well, I’ve got her standing in front of me right now. Would you like to talk to her?” “Yes, Sergeant Major, I would.” So she handed the phone to Jamie. Jamie was a little stressed out because she had been called to the sergeant major’s office and thought, What have I done? The conversation was rushed and she was speaking in a hushed tone. “Hey, I miss you, I love you.” “Hey, me too, baby. Let me tell you real quick, I’ve been sending you letters—” “I got them all today. Thank you.” “I miss you, and I hope that you can tell.” “Look, I want to keep talking but they’re watching me.” “Okay, we’re good. Just wanted to make sure you got the letters. I love you and we’ll talk later.

I remember my professor saying "Walk merrily to your execution." I always thought of that line when I did something stupid. Just love with the consequences of your actions and try to make the best of the situation.

Pink passes by me with a wicked look on his face. He walks over to where Elle is sitting, and before she can protest, he scoops her up out of her stool, dips her back dramatically like something from an old movie, and plants a kiss right on her lips. After a moment, he breaks the kiss, sets her back down on the stool, and walks away. “Asshole,” Elle mumbles as she touches her lips, and her cheeks turn bright red. “As much as you keep mentioning your ass, Prinzessin, I can see that’s going to need attention first,” Pink says, not looking back as he walks out the door. I look over to see Elle’s mouth drop open and her cheeks burn even brighter, so I leave her and a laughing Zoey alone in the apartment. When we get outside, I talk to my guys posted outside as a precaution, then Pink and I head to my truck. “You sure you want to keep digging that grave?” I ask, looking over as Pink gets in the truck. “As long as I end up buried inside her, I’m good.

Ini and Aevi were entranced by his description of a curriculum that included farming, cparnetry, sewage reclamation, printing, plumbing, road mending, playwriting, and al the other occupations of the adult community, and by his admission that nobody was ever punished for anything. “Though sometimes,” he said, “they make you go away by yourself for a while.” “But what,” Oiie said abruptly, as if the question, long kept back, burst from him under pressure, “what keeps people in order? Why don’t they rob and murder each other?” “Nobody owns anything to rob. If you want things you take them from the depository,. As for violence, well, I don’t know, Oiie; would you mruder me, ordinarily? And if you felt like it, would a law against it stop you? Coercsion is the least efficient means of obtaining order.” “All right, but how do you et peopled to do the dirty work?” “What dirty work?” asked Oiie’s wife, not following. “Garbage collecting, grave digging,” Oiie said. Sheik added, “Mercury mining,” and nearly said, “Shit processing,” but recollected the Ioti taboo on scatological words. He had reflected, quite early in his stay on Urras, that the Urasti lived among mountains of excrement, but never mentioned shit. “Well, we all do them. But nobody has to do them for very long, unless he likes the work. One day in each decade the community management committee or the block committee or whoever needs you can ask you to join in such work; they make rotating lists. Then the disagreeable work postings, or ‘dangerous ones like the mercury mines and mills, normally they’re for one half year only.” “But then the whole personal must consist of people just learning the job.” “Yes. It’s not efficient, but what else is to be done? You can’t tell a man to work on a job that will cripple him or kill him in a few years. Why should he do that?” “He can refuse the order?” “It’s not an order, Oiie. He goes to Divlab- the Division of Labor office- and says, I want to do such and such, what have you got? And they tell him where there are jobs.

But I, the angel of repentance, say to you Fear not the devil; for I was sent,” says he, “to be with you who repent with all your heart, and to make you strong in faith. Trust God, then, ye who on account of your sins have despaired of life, and who add to your sins and weigh down your life; for if ye return to the Lord with all your heart, and practice righteousness the rest of your days, and serve Him according to His will, He will heal your former sins, and you will have power to hold sway over the works of the devil. But as to the threats of the devil, fear them not at all, for he is powerless as the sinews of a dead man. Give ear to me, then, and fear Him who has all power, both to save and destroy, and keep His commandments, and ye will live to God.” I say to him, “Sir, I am now made strong in all the ordinances of the Lord, because you are with me; and I know that you will crush all the power of the devil, and we shall have rule over him, and shall prevail against all his works. And I hope, sir, to be able to keep all these commandments which you have enjoined upon me, the Lord strengthening me.” “You will keep them,” says he, “if your heart be pure towards the Lord; and all will keep them who cleanse their hearts from the vain desires of this world, and they will live to God.

They put me in the job because of my skills and accomplishments," the reasoning goes. "So that must be what they expect me to do here." This thinking is destructive, because doing what you know how to do (and avoiding what you don't) can appear to work, at least for a while. You can exist in a state of denial, believing that because you're being efficient, you're being effective. You may keep believing this until the moment the walls come crashing down around you.

Let me reassure you that you can rejuvenate & heal yourself on all levels simply by beginning to look at things, situations, places & people from a newer perspective & by committing to let go of the thoughts, behaviors & feelings that keep you from being your best. Darling listen – if you truly want to become super joyful, healthier, successful & the greater version of yourself, look over your life & see what needs to be released, eliminated & subtracted; this could be your old beliefs, old matters, rituals, your triggers, conflicting feelings, destructive emotions, hatred or unwarranted resentment or your prejudicial way of thinking, speaking & doing things that are actually detrimental to your health, happiness & future. I know for sure that you, like anyone else, wish to continue with your old routines, habits & beliefs, I request you to add, embrace or continue with only those things that resonate with your soul purpose from today onwards. Hopefully this post will motivate you to re-evaluate everything in life once again & help you to gain a myriad of benefits such as happiness, more optimism, better health & promising future. Good luck & Tons of Good wishes!

Let’s talk about the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial! I’m trying to keep on open mind about other people’s opinions on the case but I still believe that it can be prevented with a simple no. Amber has done so much damage to Johnny’s career. It seems to me that an old fling of mine is mirroring what went on with Johnny and Amber in their home. He is with someone who people only knows because of him. This person is a person of color but that doesn’t mean that she can’t abuse someone and their dog. I’ve spoken to someone who thinks that she is abusing him. Abuse can be done mentally, emotionally, or physically. Grooming can also be done the same way too. And deleting evidence of conversation is a crime, it’s also known as tampering with evidence so that the guilty party remains free. I’m sick and tired of those who are trying to speak up get silenced by “successful” people. People don’t see the truth because of the things people are hiding from the public. This brings me back to my post about standing up from myself and speaking up about grooming. And honestly, I do have a history with Tom Hiddleston. He was someone who I’ve met when I was 7 or 8 years old in Scotland. This is true because I’ve lived it and I can tell you the things he said. But back to the trial, I am glad that someone with mental issues (Winona Ryder) is standing up for a friend. I, too, have mental issues and I’m also standing up for a friend. Abuse is something that can be lethal and can also be prevented. Amber lied to everyone about what happened in 2016. I believe that Zawe will also lie about what happened at home with Tom and his dog when the time comes. I have a friend who also thinks that Zawe is like Amber Heard. I’m saying this because enough is enough. I stand with those who have been abused by someone.

The young man squeezed by me at one point in the cramped store and I felt, through his jacket, through mine, the hard shape that could only be a gun. Only when Franco eased up beside me and said, softly, “We have stepped in it,” did I really understand what was happening. There was no place to hide in a store like that, no place to run. They were between us and the door. We just had to stand and watch and hope that when it started, the shooting, it would be quick and clean. But I had little faith in that. When two country boys pull their pistols and start popping’, chances are that they will hit what they are “shooting at. They practice, blowing beer cans off fence posts, or stalking deer through the pines. But city boys can’t shoot for shit. It is why they kill so many children and innocent bystanders. They keep their guns in their waistbands because they like the way it feels against their skin, but they are amateurs at killing.

demand the same rights to control access as the caretaker of Blackwell Keep.” “Your contentment is irrelevant,” Marat said. “The arrangement cannot be altered.” “Except by mutual agreement between the caretakers,” Celebrant said smoothly. “We won’t change the arrangement,” Kendra said. Celebrant glared at her for a long moment. “Then we may find ourselves in conflict. If I were to become the sole caretaker, the power to come and go from Wyrmroost would reside with me. You have been warned.” “Are the applicants acceptable?” Marat asked. Celebrant drew his head near Kendra and Seth again, sniffing one, then the other. Kendra held still and kept her gaze away from his eyes. Celebrant swung his head over to Marat. “I will accept the candidates on one condition,” Celebrant said. “Make it official right now. Give up your post and instate them as caretakers immediately. Otherwise I will deny them the opportunity.” “Normally we verify our choice with Lord Dalgorel of the Fair Folk,” Marat said. “That is a matter of courtesy, not necessity,” Celebrant said. “Dalgorel has no power to veto our selection. It will be as

Jennifer Pozner put it in 2010 about another massacre by a woman-hating man: I am sick to death that I have to keep writing some version of this same article or blog post on loop. But I have to, because in all of these cases, gender-based violence lies at the heart of these crimes—and leaving this motivating factor uninvestigated not only deprives the public of the full, accurate picture of the events at hand, but leaves us without the analysis and context needed to understand the violence, recognize warning signs, and take steps to prevent similar massacres in the future.

Tory Vega just shut me down. I asked her to come to my room tonight but she just messaged me saying she's not coming and that I should use this time to 'work on my personality'.” He sighed, furiously thumbing through FaeBook posts absentmindedly, kicking out against the railing and making us swing backwards. “The Vegas are hard work.” I leaned my head back with a grunt. Caleb threw me a curious look. “You're not judging me then? Because every time I mention her name in front of Darius he looks like he's about to burst into flames.” ... “Well look at the bright side,” I said. “You could marry one of them and avoid marrying your buck-toothed cousin?” Darius's eyes whipped to me, his anger seeming to dissolve for a second. “That's not a terrible idea. Tory Vega has dry humped me on more than one occasion so I could probably win her round.” “I do hope you're fucking joking right now,” Caleb said in a deadly low voice and I turned to him with a smirk. “Someone's jealous,” I taunted, shoving his thigh with mine and he pressed his lips together into a tight line. A smirk pulled at Darius's features as he played up to Caleb's reaction. “That would be one way to keep her in line, huh Caleb? Surely you don't mind if I claim your play-thing. You're only passing time with her anyway, right?” “Right,” Caleb ground out, his shoulders becoming rigid and I glanced at him, knowing that wasn't true. Caleb didn't do exclusive very often, but it seemed like he was trying to do it with Tory. Which meant he actually gave a shit about her. And with my emotions all knotted up over Darcy, I sensed we were both about to cause a real issue when it came to keeping them both under heel. “That was the least convincing act I've ever seen,” Max jibed. “And I can feel your jealousy from here, mate, so you're not fooling anyone.” “She's my Source, it's natural for me to be possessive. That doesn't mean I care about her,” Caleb insisted, glaring at Max to try and make him back down. Their fighting made me uncomfortable and I snarled at Max to try and make him back off too. He raised his hands in innocence and I relaxed, getting to my feet and moving to stand next to Darius instead. (Seth POV)

Your mom asked me to come and see if I could help you with-” “Why did you say no to Darius?” he blurted, his brow lowering as he gazed at the black rings in my eyes. “I know he was an asshole to you and he did a lot of things that he shouldn’t have but that was all about power, the throne, the fucking crown. And I didn’t think you cared that much about any of that.” “I don’t. Or I guess, I didn’t. Being Fae kind of goes hand in hand with claiming power though, doesn’t it?” I asked, tightening my jaw as I refused to balk at the subject. “Fine. Whatever. I get that side of it. But what I don’t understand is how you could have said no to loving him. Because when I saw the two of you together I could see how much you liked each other. Even when you were denying it or fighting or whatever, it was still there. And I just don’t get how you could stand there beneath the stars, look him in the eyes and say no. Why would you curse him like that? Why would you curse yourself?” I wanted to shrug off his question, but the accusation in his dark eyes demanded an answer and I blew out a breath as I gave it to him. “Because all I’ve ever wanted is to be loved like that but I was afraid that if I let myself love him, he’d use it to hurt me. Too much has happened between us and…I just don’t trust him.” I raised my chin as the two of them looked at me like my words caused them physical pain. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Darius. I came here for you.” ... “What are you doing?” Catalina gasped. “Do you trust me, Xavier?” I asked. “Why?” he countered suspiciously “Because I’m going to set you free. Come here.” I beckoned and he got up, walking towards me cautiously as I pulled my Atlas from my pocket and set it recording. “This is Xavier Acrux and he’s got something fucking amazing to show you,” I said, smirking at him as I raised my other hand. “Do I?” he asked in confusion. “Fuck yes. His Order just Emerged and he’s something way cooler than a big old lizard – no offence to Dragons, I’m sure your scaly balls are great and all but it’s just not as badass as being a fucking Pegasus.” Xavier’s eyes widened in horror as I flicked my fingers at him and threw him straight out of the tower window with a gust of wind. We were on the ninth floor so he had plenty of time for fear to shock his Order form from his flesh and spread his wings way before he could hit the ground, but I was ready to catch him with my magic if he didn’t manage it for any reason. Xavier cried out as he fell but his screams suddenly became whinnies as the huge, lilac Pegasus burst from his skin, shredding through his clothes as his wings unfurled and caught on an updraft. I caught it all on camera, laughing excitedly as he levelled out then beat his wings and started flying up and up and up towards the clouds which were lined with silver as the moon shone through them. Catalina rushed forward like she meant to rip my Atlas from my hands, but as her gaze fell on her son out of the window, her lips parted and a beautiful smile graced her mouth. Xavier shot into the clouds and out of sight and I finally ended the recording. I typed out a FaeBook post with the video attached and glanced up at Catalina with my thumb hovering over the post button. I had over a million followers on there now, and if I hit that button, the word would be well and truly out. “The only reason Lionel maintains his hold over him is because it’s a secret. Pegasuses are one of the most common Order forms there are. Unless Lionel wants to alienate all of them, he’ll have to come out in support of his son. The only power he holds here is in keeping it a secret. Once it’s out, it’s out.” “He’ll kill you for exposing this,” she breathed, her eyes wide with fear. (Tory POV)

I’m pretty sure he plans on killing me anyway,” I said with a shrug. “At least if he kills me for this, it was for something that matters.” “I-” “Tell him I came here and spoke with you about Darius. Tell him I made some excuse to get you to leave the room and by the time you came back I’d done this. Put all the blame on me. I mean that.” “Okay…” she said hesitantly and I met her eye. “Do I need to make you swear it on the stars?” I growled. “No. I’ll tell him. Thank you, Roxanya.” “It’s Tory. Only Darius calls me Roxy and I can’t make him stop, but I don’t want anyone else making a habit of it,” I said. Although at this point if Darius started calling me Tory it would probably just be weird. Not that I’d ever admit that I was okay with the Roxy thing. “Okay. Thank you, Tory.” I smirked at her and hit post. Catalina gasped as Xavier’s secret went viral and I glanced down at my Atlas as reactions and comments began to pour in before I locked the screen. Shit, what if Daddy Acrux really does kill me for this? “Run, Tory,” Catalina breathed, real fear dancing in her eyes. “Run for the gate and get back to the academy before he comes back. If he finds you here-” “Consider me gone.” I barked a laugh as nerves made my heart flutter. Catalina smiled at me before ripping her dress off, knocking her hair free of its perfectly styled bun, flashing me those gloriously fake tits and leaping out of thewindow after her son. She transformed as she plummeted and my lips fell open as a stunning silver Dragon burst from her flesh. She beat a path up towards the clouds just as Xavier dipped beneath them with an excited whinny. I quickly raised my Atlas and snapped a picture of the two of them dancing through the sky before I took a running jump out of the window too. My wings burst to life at my back and I flew hard and fast along the drive until I soared over the gates, beyond the anti-stardust wards where I landed quickly, my boots skidding in the gravel. I grabbed the stardust from my pocket and winked at the startled guards half a second before I tossed it over my head and the stars whisked me back to the academy. I stumbled as they deposited me and suddenly strong arms locked around my chest from behind, making me scream in surprise. A hand slapped over my mouth and I stilled for a moment as the scent of smoke and cedar overwhelmed me. Darius dragged me back through the hole in the wards, pulled me through the fence and shoved me up against a huge tree at the edge of campus before he took his hand from my mouth. His hands landed either side of my head as he penned me in, glaring down at me with an angry as fuck Dragon peering out of his eyes, his pupils transformed into reptilian slits and a hint of smoke slipped between his lips. He was only wearing sweatpants and I got the impression he’d flown here to ambush me the moment I returned. I guess he didn’t like my FaeBook post. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded. “Whoa, chill out dude,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest to push him back. He didn’t move a single inch and I just ended up with my hands pressed to his rock hard muscles, his heart pounding frantically beneath my right palm. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Darius snarled. “Father could kill Xavier for this! He could-” “He won’t,” I snapped angrily. “He can’t. Don’t you see that? The only power he held over Xavier was in keeping his real Order form a secret. Now everyone knows, he’s free. Killing him wouldn’t change the truth. And he can’t very well alienate every Pegasus in Solaria by making his Orderist bullshit public knowledge. He’ll have to let Xavier leave the house, join a herd, fly.” Darius was staring at me like he didn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me and as my gaze fell on his mouth, I found myself aching for the latter. Fuck the stars. (Tory POV)

Now you’re as ugly as me,” Nomad said, looking down and admiring all the hurt he’d delivered. Wicks rolled to his side and spat out a mouthful of blood, making Nomad step back in amazement. How the hell can Wicks keep going? Nomad had never seen anything like it. Most men would have passed out long ago, their eyes closing and minds drifting off into dreamland. It must have been the man’s stubbornness fueling his will to continue, despite the endless beating. Wicks got to his feet once again, only this time he remained bent over at the waist, wobbling from left to right. Nomad spotted something crawling on the wall, not far from the entrance to this section. He ran and snatched it, feeling its hairy legs filling his grip. He circled to the front of Wicks and jammed the spider into the man’s mouth. Wicks stood more erect, gagging from the creature filling his throat. Nomad punched at Wicks’ mouth, hitting it with a jab over and over until an ooze of spider guts leaked out and ran down his chin. Right then, a vision appeared in his mind, showing Wicks molesting Summer,

Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour. 'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling. Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next. Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see. Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.' In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same. At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.

How will the men know which way to throw the switches?” “By written orders.” “Uh?” “By written orders—just as in the old days.” She pointed to the tower director. “He’s working out a schedule of how to move the trains and which tracks to use. He’ll write out an order for every signal and switch, he’ll pick some men as runners and they’ll keep delivering the orders to every post—and it will take hours to do what used to take minutes, but we’ll get those waiting trains into the Terminal and out on the road.” “We’re to work it that way all night?” “And all day tomorrow—until the engineer who’s got the brains for it, shows you how to repair the interlocker.” “There’s nothing in the union contracts about men standing with lanterns. There’s going to be trouble. The union will object.” “Let them come to me.” “The Unification Board will object.” “I’ll be responsible.” “Well, I wouldn’t want to be held for giving the orders—” “I’ll give the orders.

160 items on the CPCE or 200 items on the NCE. The good news, nevertheless, is that as a perfectionist, you can keep in mind that you could conceivably miss 40 items on the NCE and still receive a perfect score. Counselors say to me: “I’m so upset. I bet I missed 40 or 50 questions on the exam” and I reply with something like, “that’s terrific, it’s possible you achieved one of the highest scores ever posted on the exam!” Well, are you breathing any easier yet?

After two and half decades of covering the crimes of our oligarchic elites, I go through periods when the impunity of it all gets the better of me. The sweatshops and oil spills. The Iraq invasion. The 2008 financial crisis. The coups that threw a generation of idealists out of helicopters in Latin America. Washington’s coordinated attack on Russia’s nascent post-Soviet democracy that created the oligarchs and paved the way for Vladimir Putin. I simply cannot bear what these people have been able to get away with. No one paid. Everyone gets a reputational rebrand. Henry Kissinger keeps advising presidents. Dick Cheney is hailed as a reasonable Republican. Robert Rubin, one of the men who personally helped inflate the derivatives bubble that melted down the global economy in 2008, now gives advice about how we can’t move too fast to prevent catastrophic climate change. My throat constricts. My breath becomes shallow. On bad days, I feel like I might explode. Impunity can drive a person mad.

Another reason why I've been slow to answer is that I've been working on something I've tried to get behind for 12 years: a sequel to MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. Maybe I should keep you posted about it; possibly it will be the best thing (so to speak) that I've done or will do. Working title is: VALISYSTEM A. That's an acronym for "Vast Active Living Intelligence System" A. I have a 7-page letter on the subject addressed to Peter Fitting, one of the Marxist writers; if I can get it together to get a Xerox, I'll send it to you. Bear with me, please, because I am lazy & disorganized. But brilliant (you knew that).

Seems to me, thinking about it, praying on it, that groups like the Klan guard the idea that whites and colored folk were made so different that we might as well keep our lives on parallel tracks. But everywhere I look on post, I see lives that intersect. Some officers are curt with me, but I have won a few of them over. Just a few. It’s been a revelation to be around white folks and not feel unsafe.

Kira dried off and returned to her room.  When she got there, she found a missed text message from Emily. ‘Can’t make it.  In hospital.  Food poisoning.  Never eating clams again.’ As disappointed as she was to read this, Kira was even more concerned.  She wrote back. ‘Okay.  Take care.  Keep me posted.  Don’t die.  Stupid clams.’ She

And now, my sons, listen to me; those who keep my ways are happy.  33 Listen to instruction and be wise;  don't ignore it. 34 Anyone who listens to me is happy,  watching at my doors every day, waiting by the posts of my doorway. 35 For the one who finds me finds life  and obtains favor from the Lord,  36 but the one who misses me harms himself;  all who hate me love death.” 

My hands were trembling out of anger and distress by the time I reached the end. When I finally raised my eyes to his, Narian answered my unspoken question. “These have replaced the High Priestess’s laws everywhere they were posted.” He turned from me to address Cannan. “The regulations as they were intended still stand, and will be enforced whether or not the people are aware of them. Inform any who might have had a hand in mocking the High Priestess’s rules that their game is putting their countrymen at greater risk.” Cannan remained silent in face of the order, and Narian did not wait for a reply. With a quick, respectful nod toward me, he departed, Rava at his heels, and the office door closed resoundingly behind them. I stared at the parchment I still held, unable to keep it from shaking, and my vision blurred. It was foolish to be hurt, for this blow was not aimed at me, but yet the insolence of the document stung. “Steldor and Galen did this?” I demanded. “So it would seem.” “Why?” My throat and jaw were tight. “Why would they do this, undermine my authority? They’ve taken what I’m trying to do and ground it underfoot. The Cokyrians will be furious. They’ll bear down harder than ever.” I whisked the moisture from my eyes, taking deep breaths to calm myself. “How can they think this will help?” Cannan sighed and leaned forward, assuming a more fatherly posture. “They’re allowing the people to dissent. They’re showing that we can still laugh and, most of all, that we haven’t been forgotten. I don’t approve of the method, either, Alera, but what they’ve done may not be all bad.” I forced myself to nod, struggling to control my raging emotions. The hard work had scarcely begun, I knew that, but to see what I had accomplished tempered with and ridiculed was painful, even with Cannan’s assurance that it could be taken in a positive light. Then London’s words about being neither too cooperative nor too defiant returned to me. Perhaps this was what my bodyguard had meant--opposition, but on an isolated scale. “You’re right,” I finally said. “This might not be all bad, provided it doesn’t escalate.” “I agree. I will, however, talk with them.” “Thank you,” I murmured, and he rose to see me to the door. As I crossed the Hearing Hall toward my study, I debated whether I should be the one to talk to Steldor, all the time knowing he would probably deny any involvement if I broached the topic. No, he was far more likely to listen to his father. When had he ever been open to listening to me on matters affecting the kingdom?

Steldor, maybe you could try to deter your father, you know, from making arrangements for me so soon. Would another year or two really matter?” He responded with a dry laugh. “Deter my father? Shaselle, trying to deter my father once he’s made up his mind is like yelling whoa at a stampede of wild horses.” “Doesn’t stop you,” I muttered, crossing my arms with a huff. Again that cynical chuckle. “I assure you, it does.” “No, it doesn’t.” I pushed off the rough stone to stare at him. Annoyance came to me ever more quickly these days, and now the disagreeable temperament my mother and older sister condemned was emerging. I pointed back up the road. “Explain that scarecrow to me, if you’re so obedient! I know your father was upset with you after you posted your rules, but you went ahead anyway, without his blessing.” Steldor clamped a hand over my mouth, the other holding the back of my neck, then he leaned close to hiss, “I’d prefer if my involvement in both of those incidents remained undisclosed.” My cheeks burned, and I pushed his hands away. “Sorry. That was stupid. But isn’t there anything you can do? You have the captain’s ear.” “What I have is his attention,” he corrected, having accepted my apology and brushed aside our tense exchange. “Not intentionally, mind you, but I’ll be keeping it over the next few weeks. He’ll probably be distracted from you anyway.” “You’re planning another stunt?” He winked. “Would you expect anything less of Galen and me?” “Can I help you?” The up-and-down nature of our conversation persisted, and he shook his head vehemently. “This is dangerous, what we’ve been doing. We laugh, but these aren’t games. If we’re caught, we’ll be arrested. There’s a reason my father disapproves, in spite of his own ambitions.” He let his rebuff hang in the hot air while I again felt color rising in my cheeks. “Just go home, Shaselle. Put on a dress. Be a lady, and stay out of trouble. Understand?” “I hate them, too, you know,” I said, his dismissal and the humiliation that came with it rankling me. “It’s not just your homeland that the Cokyrians have sullied--it’s my homeland, too. And those bastards killed my father.” “And bitches,” he added, catching me off guard. “Wouldn’t want to forget the women.” I didn’t know how to respond, so I gaped at him foolishly until he stepped onto the cobblestone of the thoroughfare. “Come on. Let me take you home.” We walked in silence back to the western residential area where I lived, though he stopped at the beginning of my street to let me traverse the rest of the distance by myself. “I shouldn’t be seen around here. Not where Galen’s assigned--the Cokyrians are trying to keep us apart to avoid plots big and small, and will be suspicious if we’re seen in the same area.” I nodded and turned to go, but he grabbed my arm. “I know how you feel, Shaselle. I know you want to do something, and it’s not even that I don’t think you could. I just can’t let you be involved, for the sake of your safety. And mine,” he added as an afterthought. “My father would kill me if I let you help and you came to harm. Just please, let this go, and I swear I’ll do my best to influence him on your marriage issue.” Now that I was thinking rationally, offering my assistance had been absurd--I had no special skills aside from horseback riding, and certainly no military training , so accepting Steldor’s offered compromise was not difficult.

So now that you’re in like with me, do you think we should start color coordinating our outfits?” She rolled her eyes and groaned. During the last half hour of our car ride, I’d hounded her about her confession. Mostly because I liked to see her squirm. Well, and because she liked me. I was freaking stoked. So I teased her about everything from the necessity of pet names to the value of posting couples’ selfies on various forms of social media to suggestions about our “celebrity” name—I was rooting for Macity. “For what it’s worth, I’m in serious dislike of you right now.” I laughed, enjoying this way too much. “We should also start having sleepovers…since you’re in like with me.” She pressed her palms to her forehead then dragged them down her face. “Oh. My. God. I’m going to kill you before we even make it out of this car.” “Tomorrow I’ll run to the store and get extra toothbrushes so we can keep them at each other’s places. Should I get his and hers towels too?” She banged her head on the headrest. “Too soon?” I pulled into the parking lot of the marina. “Okay, only toothbrushes.” “I’m going to murder you with that fucking toothbrush if you don’t stop saying ‘in like’ with you.” I parked the car. “You started it.” The overhead light popped on as I got out. “Mason!” I laughed as the car door shut. Grumbling, she got out, and I greeted her on the passenger side. “One more, then I promise I’m done.” I shut her door and pushed her up against it. “I’m happy you’re finally in like with me because I’ve been in like with you for a while

Second Week Of June 2012 I agreed to be Dr. Arius’ case study. In my reply to the psychiatrist, I wrote: Good Day Dr. A. I’m surprised and flattered that you consider me an appropriate candidate to conduct a case study on my unique E.R.O.S., Bahriji, elite Arab Household, and secondary school experiences. As much as I am delighted to agree to your proposed challenge and to answer your questionnaires to the best of my abilities, I also have questions for you for which I would like answers before being an active participant in the survey. * Are you planning to publish professional psychiatric papers and publications to your findings? Or are you working on this project solely for your personal interest? * If your research reveals a positive alternative to the current accepted educational norm, are you planning to actively advocate for change? As you are aware, I can only provide you with my personal opinion on my educational experiences. I cannot speak for other  E.R.O.S. members. Before I agree to undergo this case study, I wish to make it very clear that I only speak for myself. Under no circumstances will I undermine to reveal the actual names of people and places, or jeopardize their society and individual standing in any way. I am obligated to honor my oath of confidentiality and pledge never to reveal the true identity of the clandestine society. As long as you are aware of my pledge, I am happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. Although I have not known you for very long, I consider you a trusted friend. My intuition tells me you are a man of integrity. I have always trusted my inner voice and it has never failed me. I look forward to your next correspondence and your answers to my questions. I hope all is going splendidly in your part of the world. Keep me posted on the progress of your gay organization. It is good to receive your emails as always. Yours truly, Young.

Just a damn minute,” Caleb barked, bringing her up short with a quick grasp on her elbow. “Where do you think you’re going?” “To my brother’s home,” Lily replied, her chin high. “Kindly unhand me, Major. If you don’t, I’ll scream.” Reluctantly Caleb let go of Lily’s arm. He swept his hat off his head and then put it back on again in a single furious motion. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he hissed, keeping up with Lily’s short strides easily when she set out for Rupert’s home. Wagons and buggies rattled by on the brick street, and Lily indulged in a secret smile. “I’ve become a woman of means, Caleb,” she said, still walking briskly. By that time he’d taken her valise, so she swung her arms at her sides. “I’m going to buy all the things I need to homestead my land.” “That’s crazy. Who’s going to protect you from Indians and outlaws?” “I am,” Lily answered without pause, though inside she didn’t feel so confident. “I suppose I’ll marry one day, though.” Caleb swore softly. “Fine. Marry anybody you want to,” he snapped. “Thank you,” Lily replied in a dulcet tone. “I will.” She turned onto a side street, and her spirits lifted because she could see Rupert’s small house in the distance. “Tell me where you got the money for this harebrained project!” Caleb demanded. Lily looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I sold myself to every man on the post,” she whispered. “I let them do everything you’ve ever done.” Caleb was practically apoplectic. “I’m warning you, Lily Chalmers—” “Of what?” Just as Lily would have entered Rupert’s front gate Caleb caught hold of her again. He dropped the valise to the ground and gripped her by both shoulders. “Tell me.” Lily sighed. “I don’t know exactly where the money came from, Caleb,” she said moderately. “My mother sent it. Apparently her circumstances improved considerably after she got rid of us. Now, since I’ve answered your question—and may I say it was none of your business in the first place—will you stop carrying on in public?” Caleb glowered at her and let go of her arm. “We have to talk.” Lily worked the gate latch. “Why?” “Because when you go in there you’re going to find out that I’ve been here asking questions, that’s why.” Lily’s hand froze in midair. “What?” “I’ve hired a Pinkerton man to look for your sisters, Lily.” Lily was stunned. “I told you—” “That you didn’t want to be obligated. I know. But I wanted to do this for you, and I can afford it, so I went ahead.” Before

Just a damn minute,” Caleb barked, bringing her up short with a quick grasp on her elbow. “Where do you think you’re going?” “To my brother’s home,” Lily replied, her chin high. “Kindly unhand me, Major. If you don’t, I’ll scream.” Reluctantly Caleb let go of Lily’s arm. He swept his hat off his head and then put it back on again in a single furious motion. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he hissed, keeping up with Lily’s short strides easily when she set out for Rupert’s home. Wagons and buggies rattled by on the brick street, and Lily indulged in a secret smile. “I’ve become a woman of means, Caleb,” she said, still walking briskly. By that time he’d taken her valise, so she swung her arms at her sides. “I’m going to buy all the things I need to homestead my land.” “That’s crazy. Who’s going to protect you from Indians and outlaws?” “I am,” Lily answered without pause, though inside she didn’t feel so confident. “I suppose I’ll marry one day, though.” Caleb swore softly. “Fine. Marry anybody you want to,” he snapped. “Thank you,” Lily replied in a dulcet tone. “I will.” She turned onto a side street, and her spirits lifted because she could see Rupert’s small house in the distance. “Tell me where you got the money for this harebrained project!” Caleb demanded. Lily looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I sold myself to every man on the post,” she whispered. “I let them do everything you’ve ever done.” Caleb was practically apoplectic. “I’m warning you, Lily Chalmers—” “Of what?” Just as Lily would have entered Rupert’s front gate Caleb caught hold of her again. He dropped the valise to the ground and gripped her by both shoulders. “Tell me.” Lily sighed. “I don’t know exactly where the money came from, Caleb,” she said moderately. “My mother sent it. Apparently her circumstances improved considerably after she got rid of us. Now, since I’ve answered your question—and may I say it was none of your business in the first place—will you stop carrying on in public?” Caleb glowered at her and let go of her arm. “We have to talk.” Lily worked the gate latch. “Why?” “Because when you go in there you’re going to find out that I’ve been here asking questions, that’s why.” Lily

During the year before Shara and I got married, I managed to persuade the owners of a small island, situated in Poole Harbor, to let me winter house-sit the place in return for free lodging. It was a brilliant deal. Chopping logs, keeping an eye on the place, doing a bit of maintenance, and living like a king on a beautiful twenty-acre island off the south coast of England. Some months earlier, I had been walking along a riverbank outside of London when I had spotted a little putt-putt fishing boat with an old 15 hp engine on the back. She was covered in mold and looked on her last legs, but I noticed her name, painted carefully on the side. She was called Shara. What were the chances of that? I bought her on the spot, with what was pretty well my last £800. Shara became my pride and joy. And I was the only person who could get the temperamental engine to start! I used the boat, though, primarily, as my way of going backward and forward to the small island. I had done some properly dicey crossings in Shara during the middle of that winter. Often done late at night, after an evening out, the three-mile crossing back to the island could be treacherous in bad weather. Freezing waves would crash over the bows, threatening to swamp the boat, and the old engine would often start cutting in and out. I had no nav-lights, no waterproofs, no life jacket, and no radio. And that meant no backup plan--which is bad. Totally irresponsible. But totally fun. I held my stag weekend over there with my best buddies--Ed, Mick, Neil, Charlie, Nige (one of Shara’s uni friends who has become such a brilliant buddy), Trucker, Watty, Stan, and Hugo--and it was a wild one. Charlie ended up naked on a post in the middle of the harbor, we got rescued twice having broken down trying to water-ski behind the underpowered Shara, and we had a huge bonfire while playing touch-rugby by firelight. Perfect.

Third Week of June 2012 The questionnaire arrived via email from Dr. Arius. It read: Good Day, Young! Thank you for agreeing to be a candidate in my survey. As I mentioned previously, let’s conduct this research like our regular correspondence. There is no pressure on your part to answer or not to answer my questions; it’s entirely up to your discretion on the way you like to channel this analysis. There are no fixed rules or regulations on how you answer my queries. Be yourself and treat this study like you are talking with a confidant. Let’s get started and begin from the beginning; * In “Initiation” you said that as far as you can remember; as a baby you disliked your father. What was it that you didn’t like about the man? Did he have a certain smell that repelled you or something conscious or subconscious that repulsed your connection towards him? * Do you think your overly protective mother had an influence on you disliking your father? * When you were wearing pretty frocks and playing with dolls, did you feel less than a boy? How did you feel or react when you saw other boys playing with ‘boyish’ toys; like miniature toy soldiers or train sets, etc.? * Did your mom try distancing you away from your dad? * What did your brothers think of your parent’s relationship? * Did you have any boy pals or friends when you were growing up? If not, why is that? Would you have grown up differently if you had had guy friends? Let’s start with these questions and we’ll proceed further with others, as we continue along in our future correspondence. Now that you, Andy and Oscar have reconnected, I hope your newfound friendships are progressing well with both your ex ‘big brothers and lovers. Keep me posted, as I’m interested to know the outcome. Kind regards, A.S.

A post at St Polycarp’s. I was getting quite bored being at home all day.’ ‘When do you start?’ ‘Next month. I’m replacing a teacher on maternity leave.’ I turn to Rufus. ‘Jack tells me you have a huge garden,’ I prompt and, while I serve more of the beef Wellington, which, along with the vegetables, has been keeping warm on a hotplate, the conversation around the table revolves around landscaping rather

If you are too afraid to be loved, and to love- and if you want to build fences in the wilderness of my love to keep my intensity of expression at bay... Then I am not the one for you. If you want me to be anyone but myself, then you need to read the warning sign posted on my spirit: keep out of my heart.

Want 2 (Feat. Porsches)" Don't wanna take it slow I could be your fantasy You gotta let me know You gotta let me know Don't wanna take it slow I could be your ecstasy But I gotta let you know Gotta let you know I'm running like a white horse I'm running like a tiger, yeah I'm walking on a tight boat I'm??? like a lighthouse I'm hot like a fire I'll bite you like a spider, yeah I'm smoking like a white ghost I'm shining like a lamp post, yeah I can give you everything that I want to That I want to Coming on strong girl we can get it done If you want to, if you want to Don't wanna take it slow I could be your fantasy You gotta let me know You gotta let me know Don't wanna take it slow I could be your ecstasy But I gotta let you know Gotta let you know I'm running like a white horse I'm running like a tiger, yeah I'm walking on a tight boat I'm??? like a lighthouse I'm hot like a fire I'll bite you like a spider, yeah I'm smoking like a white ghost I'm shining like a lamp post, yeah I can give you everything that I want to That I want to Coming on strong girl we can get it done If you want to, if you want to I keep you coming, I keep you coming I keep you coming, I keep you coming I keep you coming, I keep you coming I keep you coming, I keep you coming I can give you everything that I want to That I want to Coming on strong girl we can get it done If you want to, if you want to

Shake Me Down" Shake me down, Not a lot of people left around, Who knows now, Softly laying on the ground, ooooh Not a lot people left around, ooooh. ooooh In my life, I have seen, People walk into the sea, Just to find memories, Plagued by constant misery, Their eyes cast down, Fixed upon the ground, Their eyes cast down I'll keep my eyes fixed on the sun Shake me down, Cut my hair on a silver cloud, Broken sound, Softly laying on the ground, ooooh Not a lot people left around, ooooh, ooooh In my past, bittersweet, There's no love between the sheets, Taste the blood, broken dreams, Lonely times indeed, With eyes cast down, Fixed upon the ground, Eyes cast down I'll keep my eyes fixed on the sun Turn back now its time for me to let go, Way down had to find a place to lay low, Lampshade turned around into a light post Walk around the corner, Never saw it coming still, I try to make a move, It almost stopped me from belief, I don't wanna know the future, But I'm like rolling thunder, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, Even on a cloudy day, I'll keep my eyes fixed on the- I'll keep my eyes fixed on the- I'll keep my eyes fixed on the sun Shake me down, Not a lot of people left around, ooooh, ooooh

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time—when pursued like a bandit—will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you’re banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won’t. You have to admit that you can’t catch it. That you’re not supposed to catch it. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well—that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it, Groceries. This is the message I’m getting. Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens. The birds do not crash dead out of the sky in mid-flight, after all. The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on. Even the Italian post office will keep limping along, doing its own thing without you—why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don’t you let it be?