Luck Movie Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

Any other Disney movies?” I was tempting my luck here. Aaron’s expression remained serious. “All of them.” Shit. “Even Frozen? Tangled? The Princess Frog?” I asked, and he nodded. “I love animated movies. They take my mind off things.” He dipped his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Disney, Pixar … I’m a big fan.” This was too much. First, he’d opened up about his childhood earlier today, and now, this. I wanted to ask how and why, but there was a more pressing issue. “What’s your favorite?” Please don’t say the one that will send my heart into cardiac arrest. Please don’t say it. “Up.” Fuck. He had said it. My heart struggled there for a moment. And that little spot that had been softening throughout the night got a little bigger.

@mink: Well, you’re in luck, if you pick another movie. My hair is clean, I usually eat dinner around eight, and I’m currently single. Not that it matters.

What luck has gave you will probably leave you.

I dunno." She sat on the bench and hugged the robe like a pillow. "I still think that Brett guy is cute." "Good luck getting him away from Bekka." Cleo gathered her silky black hair into a high pony and pink-dabbed Smith's Rosebud Salve on her lips. "She's got more grip than Crazy Glue." "More cling than Saran Wrap," Lala added. "More hold than Final Net." Cleo giggled. "More possession than The Exorcist," Lala managed. "More clench than butt cheeks," Blue chimed in. "More competition than American Idol," Frankie stuck out her chest and showed them her diva booty roll. The girls burst out laughing. "Nice!" Blue lifted her purple gloved hand. Frankie slapped it without a single spark. "I hate to be a downer..." Claudine shuffled back into the conversation wearing her slippers and robe. "But that girl will destroy you if she catches you with Brett." "I'm not worried," Frankie tossed her hair back. "I've seen all the teen movies, and the nice girl gets the boy in the end.

Mr. Gibbs: Curse you for breathin' ya slack-jawed idiot. Mother's love. Jack. You should know better than to wake a man when he's sleepin'. Its bad luck. Jack Sparrow: Fortunately, I know how to counter it; the man who did the waking buys the man who was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping drinks it while listening to a proposition from the man who did the waking. Mr. Gibbs: Aye, that'll about do it.

Going to the movies? Fuck that! You have to sit with fucking asshole strangers and you never know which one has a fucking cold or what fuck is going to bring a fucking crying baby.

GONE TO STATIC it sounds better than it is, this business of surviving, making it through the wrong place at the wrong time and living to tell. when the talk shows and movie credits wear off, it's just me and my dumb luck. this morning I had that dream again: the one where I'm dead. I wake up and nothing's much different. everything's gone sepia, a dirty bourbon glass by the bed, you're still dead. I could stumble to the shower, scrub the luck of breath off my skin but it's futile. the killer always wins. it's just a matter of time. and I have time. I have grief and liquor to fill it. tonight, the liquor and I are talking to you. the liquor says, 'remember' and I fill in the rest, your hands, your smile. all those times. remember. tonight the liquor and I are telling you about our day. we made it out of bed. we miss you. we were surprised by the blood between our legs. we miss you. we made it to the video store, missing you. we stopped at the liquor store hoping the bourbon would stop the missing. there's always more bourbon, more missing tonight, when we got home, there was a stray cat at the door. she came in. she screams to be touched. she screams when I touch her. she's right at home. not me. the whisky is open the vcr is on. I'm running the film backwards and one by one you come back to me, all of you. your pulses stutter to a begin your eyes go from fixed to blink the knives come out of your chests, the chainsaws roar out from your legs your wounds seal over your t-cells multiply, your tumors shrink the maniac killer disappears it's just you and me and the bourbon and the movie flickering together and the air breathes us and I am home, I am lucky I am right before everything goes black

One who doesn't recognise an opportunity is bigger loser than one who tries his hand at an opportunity.

Failure was a luxury we couldn't afford, all chained together as we were, our fates locked up tight. One box office flop from a female director and no one wanted "girl" movies, one stock market plunge from a company with a woman CEO and women couldn't lead, one false accusation and we were liars, all of us. Because when we failed it was because of our chromosomes, it wasn't because of a market dip or an ineffective advertising campaign or plain bad luck.

New York city wasn't yet the post-Giuliani, Bloomberg forever, Disneyland tourist attraction of today, trade-marked and policed to protect the visitors and tourism industry. It was still a place of diversity, where people lived their lives in vibrant communities and intact cultures. Young people could still move to New York City after or instead of high school or college and invent an identity, an art, a life. Times Square was still a bustling center of excitement, with sex work, "adult" movies, a variety of sins on sale, ways to make money for those down on their luck".

Things happen in life to get our attention, to make us wake up. What does it say that I had to lose so much before I had to break down enough to rebuild? I think it says that the thing that got me here—this incredible toughness—was almost the thing that did me in. I got to a place where I could no longer just muscle through; I could either bend, or break. I got here because I needed all of this to become who I am now. I had been holding on to so many misconceptions about myself all my life: that I wasn't valuable, that I didn't deserve to be anywhere good, whether that meant in a loving relationship on my own terms, or in a great film with actors I respected who knew what they were doing. The narrative I believed was that I was unworthy and contaminated. And it wasn't true. There are two reasons I wanted to tell this story, the story of how I learned to surrender. First, because it's mine. It doesn't belong to the tabloids, or my mom, or the men I've married, or the people who've loved or hated my movies, or even my children. My story is mine alone. I'm the only one who was there for all of it, and I decided to claim the power to tell it on my own terms. The second reason is that even though it's mine, maybe some part of this story is yours too. I've had extraordinary luck in this life, both bad and good. Putting it all down in writing makes me realize how crazy a lot of it has been, how improbable. But we all suffer and we all triumph and we all get to choose how we hold both.

Mirabelle knows, and she lets this be unspoken, that all free things require conversation. Sitting in a darkened movie theatre requires absolutely no conversation at all, whereas a free date, like a walk down Hollywood Boulevard in the busy evening, requires comments, chatter, observations, and with luck, wit. She worries that since they have only exchanged perhaps two dozen words between them, these free dates will be horrible.

She didn’t waver or change countenance at all; she continued her grave descent. But in an instant, as though green gelatins had been slid one by one in front of every light in the ballroom, she saw the scene differently. She saw a tawdry mockery of sacred things, a bourgeois riot of expense, with a special touch of vulgar Jewish sentimentality. The gate of roses behind her was comical; the flower-massed canopy ahead was grotesque; the loud whirring of the movie camera was a joke, the scrambling still photographer in the empty aisle, twisting his camera at his eye, a low clown. The huge diamond on her right hand capped the vulgarity; she could feel it there; she slid a finger to cover it. Her husband waiting for her under the canopy wasn’t a prosperous doctor, but he was a prosperous lawyer; he had the mustache Noel had predicted; with macabre luck Noel had even guessed the initials. And she—she was Shirley, going to a Shirley fate, in a Shirley blaze of silly costly glory. All this passed

Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth. Sure, it’s possible to randomly challenge the conventions of your field and luckily find a breakthrough. It’s far more likely, though, that you will design a great Web site or direct a powerful movie or lead a breakthrough product development if you understand the status quo better than anyone else. Beginner’s luck is dramatically overrated. Emotional

WhatsApp forwards about love and kindness. I wonder if on a Sunday morning all these enthusiastic do-gooders could send out truly helpful things like ‘11 cures for a hangover’ or ‘How to clean puke stains from your dress’. I have no such luck; all I get are strange messages like ‘Little memories can last for years’. Very useful when you are trying hard to forget all the embarrassing things you did the night before. Do I really need messages saying, ‘A little hug can wipe out a big tear’ or ‘Friendship is a rainbow’? There is also a message saying, ‘God blues you’, which I am trying to guess could mean that either God wants to bless me, rule me or make a blue movie with me. Has it ever happened that a murderer just before committing his crime gets a message stating, ‘Life is about loving’, and stops in his tracks, or a banker reads ‘No greater sin than cheating’, and quits his job? So, what do these messages really do? I think they allow lazy people to think that they are doing a good deed in the easiest possible manner by sending these daft bits of information out into the universe. Go out there! Sweep a pavement, plant a tree, feed a stray dog. Do something, anything; rather than just using your fingers to tap three keys and destroy 600 people’s brain cells in one shot. 11 a.m.: This is turning out to be a hectic day. The

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

New York city wasn't yet the post-Giuliani, Bloomberg forever, Disneyland tourist attraction of today, trade-marked and policed to protect the visitors and tourism industry. It was still a place of diversity, where people lived their lives in vibrant communities and intact cultures. Young people could still move to New York City after or instead of high school or college and invent an identity, an art, a life. Times Square was still a bustling center of excitement, with sex work, "adult" movies, a variety of sins on sale, ways to make money for those down on their luck".

We stood in the wings together, side by side. Reed's mouth was still agape. "It makes sense when you think about it," I mused. "You get two people together who have you-know-what, and sparks are going to fly." Reed's cue was about to start. He pointed at me and said, "Tonight. There's a party. And we're going to talk." "Yes" "Because this is crazy." "Totally." "Okay. Well." He tugged a strand of my hair. "Good luck out there." "You're not supposed to say that." "Fine. How about..." He squinted at me. "Here's looking at you kid." The smile melted off my face. "What did you say?" "It's a line. From a movie." He shrugged and burst onto the stage with a hee-haw. It was a line. From Casablanca. The same line KARL had said to me when I was Elsa. The same like Karl didn't recognize when I said it to him as Floressa. Which meant... nothing. Right? Lots of people know that line. Just because Reed said it, and Reed was a sub, it didn't mean he was... he was... "You're on," the stage manager whispered. I stumbled onto the stage. The lights were too bright. The theater was packed. Reed gave me a quick, crooked smile, and I knew. My crush on Karl was less complicated than I thought, because it wasn't Karl I'd been with that day in the garden. Now my crush on Reed... ? THAT was a scandal all on its own.

Toyota wasn’t really worried that it would give away its “secret sauce.” Toyota’s competitive advantage rested firmly in its proprietary, complex, and often unspoken processes. In hindsight, Ernie Schaefer, a longtime GM manager who toured the Toyota plant, told NPR’s This American Life that he realized that there were no special secrets to see on the manufacturing floors. “You know, they never prohibited us from walking through the plant, understanding, even asking questions of some of their key people,” Schaefer said. “I’ve often puzzled over that, why they did that. And I think they recognized we were asking the wrong questions. We didn’t understand this bigger picture.” It’s no surprise, really. Processes are often hard to see—they’re a combination of both formal, defined, and documented steps and expectations and informal, habitual routines or ways of working that have evolved over time. But they matter profoundly. As MIT’s Edgar Schein has explored and discussed, processes are a critical part of the unspoken culture of an organization. 1 They enforce “this is what matters most to us.” Processes are intangible; they belong to the company. They emerge from hundreds and hundreds of small decisions about how to solve a problem. They’re critical to strategy, but they also can’t easily be copied. Pixar Animation Studios, too, has openly shared its creative process with the world. Pixar’s longtime president Ed Catmull has literally written the book on how the digital film company fosters collective creativity2—there are fixed processes about how a movie idea is generated, critiqued, improved, and perfected. Yet Pixar’s competitors have yet to equal Pixar’s successes. Like Toyota, Southern New Hampshire University has been open with would-be competitors, regularly offering tours and visits to other educational institutions. As President Paul LeBlanc sees it, competition is always possible from well-financed organizations with more powerful brand recognition. But those assets alone aren’t enough to give them a leg up. SNHU has taken years to craft and integrate the right experiences and processes for its students and they would be exceedingly difficult for a would-be competitor to copy. SNHU did not invent all its tactics for recruiting and serving its online students. It borrowed from some of the best practices of the for-profit educational sector. But what it’s done with laser focus is to ensure that all its processes—hundreds and hundreds of individual “this is how we do it” processes—focus specifically on how to best respond to the job students are hiring it for. “We think we have advantages by ‘owning’ these processes internally,” LeBlanc says, “and some of that is tied to our culture and passion for students.

My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!

. Karl was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1947. His parents stayed married, as did the parents of his friends. His mother still lives in the house they moved to the year Karl turned one. He walked down the street to school. I was born in Los Angeles in 1963. By the time I started college I had moved fifteen times. We saw different movies, read different books. I never had a single date in high school, but when I went with Karl to his high school reunion women lined up all night to tell me how they had been in love with my husband. All I felt was the wondrous luck that he had found me. “Just think,” I say to Karl, “every night we come home to the same house and we sleep in the same bed with the same dog, and of all the houses and beds and dogs in the world we hit on this combination.” The fact that we came so close to missing out, missing out because of my own fear of failing, makes me think I avoided a mortal accident by the thickness of a coat of paint. We

Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock know jokes. Hot dogs - not even East 86th Street bratwurst but mealy, greasy big guts that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to National Geographic. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of ever description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies - you're laughing - but I don't eat them - anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key - how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear?Beach Boys. Elvis - never lose your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them...(sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn't any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn't notice that "Quiet City" made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasure: the Bronx Zoo and the botanical gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I'd ever met who'd actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art - Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise - yourself a strong defense. There were times you were worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in a t a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds' worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were enormous. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How luck we are, when we've spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!

. Karl was born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1947. His parents stayed married, as did the parents of his friends. His mother still lives in the house they moved to the year Karl turned one. He walked down the street to school. I was born in Los Angeles in 1963. By the time I started college I had moved fifteen times. We saw different movies, read different books. I never had a single date in high school, but when I went with Karl to his high school reunion women lined up all night to tell me how they had been in love with my husband. All I felt was the wondrous luck that he had found me. “Just think,” I say to Karl, “every night we come home to the same house and we sleep in the same bed with the same dog, and of all the houses and beds and dogs in the world we hit on this combination.” The fact that we came so close to missing out, missing out because of my own fear of failing, makes me think I avoided a mortal accident by the thickness of a coat of paint. We are, on this earth, so incredibly small, in the history of time, in the crowd of the world, we are practically invisible, not even a dot, and yet we have each other to hold on to.

«It's not easy to believe.» «I» she told him, «I can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.» «Really?» «I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in "War of the Worlds". I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kind of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.»

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

During homeroom, before first period, I start a bucket list in one of my notebooks. First on the list? 1) Eat in the cafeteria. Sit with people. TALK TO THEM. 2) And…that’s all I can come up with for now. But this is good. One task to work on. No distractions. I can do this. When my lunch period rolls around, I forgo the safety of my bag lunch and the computer lab and slip into the pizza line, wielding my very own tray of semi-edible fare for the first time in years. “A truly remarkable sight.” Jensen cuts into line beside me, sliding his tray next to mine on the ledge in front of us. He lifts his hands and frames me with his fingers, like he’s shooting a movie. “In search of food, the elusive creature emerges from her den and tries her luck at the watering hole." I shake my head, smiling, moving down the line. “Wow, Peters. I never knew you were such a huge Animal Planet fan.” “I’m a fan of all things nature. Birds. Bees. The like.” He grabs two pudding cups and drops one on my tray. “Pandas?” I say. “How did you know? The panda is my spirit animal.” “Oh, good, because Gran has this great pattern for an embroidered panda cardigan. It would look amazing on you.” “Um, yeah, I know. It was on my Christmas list, but Santa totally stiffed me." I laugh as I grab a carton of milk. So does he. He leans in closer. “Come sit with me.” “At the jock table? Are you kidding?” I hand the cashier my lunch card. Jensen squints his eyes in the direction of his friends. “We’re skinny-ass basketball players, Wayfare. We don’t really scream jock.” “Meatheads, then?” “I believe the correct term is Athletic Types.” We step out from the line and scan the room. “So where were you planning on sitting?" “I was thinking Grady and Marco were my safest bet.” “The nerd table?” I gesture to myself, especially my glasses. “I figure my natural camouflage will help me blend, yo.” He laughs, his honey-blond hair falling in front of his eyes. “And hey,” I say, nudging him with my elbow, “last I heard, Peters was cool with nerdy.” He claps me gently on the back. “Good luck, Wayfare. I’m pulling for ya.

- I’m a normal kid, I was raised by television. The secret to great barbeque: only Oscar knows it. Life should be so simple as enjoying ribs, farting, crapping, pissing, fucking and drinking, and maybe smoking too, but anything other than that is too complicated, life should be simple. It is not. - Work? You would go to work even if there’s a chance your job’s imaginary? Imaginary or not, the questions Max poses remain as relevant for Frank, Sam, and Oscar as they are for us. A slight hangover won’t be best friends with any kind of daylight and while this one wasn’t particularly hazardous, they wouldn’t be having any of it. "...the lunatic is on the grass." Surely if you see a bunch of people having a picnic in a park that would turn your head wouldn’t it? How normal a picnic really is? When was the last time you saw one happening? Not in a movie, in real life. If a man’s hat falls to the ground, said man is expected to pick it up. That’s the premise. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because some priests rape kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. I’m not some pissy little kid who stopped believing in God because the church raped kids. I don’t believe in God because I can’t be sure of its existence. Nothing is wrong. You don’t take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man’s woman. Those are universal laws. - You do not take another man’s hat, another man’s ride, or another man's woman. Universal laws, Rosa. - Jesus, no. That won’t be necessary Mr. Coyote. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the course of my life is this: loaded guns make pretty compelling arguments, and it’s not like I was the star in the debate team in high school. A lot of dinners are joined by assholes, people that don’t matter, and good friends too, but breakfast are kind of elite. You have breakfast with fewer people in your life and most of the time those people you have breakfast with are the good ones. - That’s the thing: I don’t know. I’m aware of the fact that guns might not be the ultimate protection when what we’re facing is the truth, we’re coming to terms with our reality, but we don’t know what we might find out there and if by god there’s an imaginary monster or something waiting there for us, I’d rather have ammo than luck No gun will ever protect a man as he prepares to meet his maker. Personally, I think half a burger is something you can have regardless of how hungry you are. Air conditioning is a marvel of modern science, how could we have lived without it? In the end, there was no greener grass than Texas.

I can believe that things are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen – I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe." "Really?" "I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in this universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath. Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud.

In 1991, a college sophomore studying music in the American Midwest made the mistake of selling some drugs to the wrong person. Until then, he hadn’t done much more than smoke pot and sell some of it to his friends. Petty vandalism at his high school was as high stakes as his criminal career had been. Then, as these things tend to go when you’re just 18 years old, he tried to push the envelope and test his boundaries. He started experimenting with hard drugs like LSD. But he was naive, and the brashness of youth got the best of him. He sold some of that LSD outside his circle—to an undercover policeman. And as if his luck couldn’t get worse, like a scene out of a TV movie of the week, the judge, under pressure to make an example out of this young man, sentenced him to 6 to 25 years in prison. It’s a faceless, timeless story that transcends race, class, and region. A young kid makes a mistake that forever changes their lives and their family’s lives as well. We are all too familiar with how stories like this usually end: The kid spends their most impressionable years behind bars and comes out worse than when they went in. Life on the outside is too difficult to contend with; habits learned on the inside are too difficult to shed. They reoffend; their crimes escalate. The cycle continues. This story, however, is a little different. Because this young man didn’t go back to jail. In fact, after being released in less than 5 years on good behavior, he went on to become one of the best jazz violinists in the world. He left prison with a fire lit underneath him—to practice, to repent, to humble himself, to hustle, and to do whatever it took to make something of his life. No task was too small, no gig was too tiny, no potential fan was too disinterested for him not to give it everything he had. And he did. The story is a little different for another reason, too. That young man’s name is Christian Howes. He is my older brother.

Outside there a lot of powerful stuff, starting from mind movies up to movies like drama, real life, horror, mysteries and many other. Music which makes your day interesting, quotes which change your thought, books which provoke and many other stuff... (So now you know what's everything about, Good Luck with the other Stuff!)

He shouldn’t have walked out, because now the awkwardness was going to fester until she felt a need to talk about the incident in the bathroom. He could have laughed it off as morning wood, making it clear the pronounced lump had nothing to do with her. That would have been a lie, of course. He’d been up for several hours and it most definitely had something to do with her. But she might have bought the story and not had to talk about it. The kitchen felt claustrophobic all of a sudden, what with the two women he barely knew and the elephant in the room, so he took his coffee and muttered about catching the morning news. He turned on the TV in the living room and sank onto the couch with a sigh of relief. It would take a few minutes to make the French toast, so he had a few minutes of normal. “Can I talk to you for a second?” It was Emma, of course, and there went his normal. He sighed and moved over on the couch. “Knock yourself out.” She sat down, far enough away so none of their body parts touched. “I get the whole guy thing. Morning…you know, and I don’t want this to be weird.” “It’s no big deal.” “Okay.” She took a sip of her coffee, then wrapped both hands around the mug. “We’ll probably have more moments like this if we’re going to live together for a month. Probably best to just laugh them off.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Actually, when a guy’s standing in front of you, fully hard and wearing nothing but a towel, laughing might not be the best way to handle it.” “True.” Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink and she laughed softly. “If we were in a movie, the towel would have fallen off. Could’ve been worse.” “With my luck, I’m surprised it didn’t.

Do you ever watch old black-and-white war movies? The weary soldier advances cautiously out of the brush. There's a clearing ahead: are there any land mines, or is it safe to cross? There aren't any indications that it's a minefield—no signs, barbed wire, or craters. The soldier pokes the ground ahead of him with his bayonet and winces, expecting an explosion. There isn't one. So he proceeds painstakingly through the field for a while, prodding and poking as he goes. Eventually, convinced that the field is safe, he straightens up and marches proudly forward, only to be blown to pieces. The soldier's initial probes for mines revealed nothing, but this was merely lucky. He was led to a false conclusion—with disastrous results. As developers, we also work in minefields. There are hundreds of traps just waiting to catch us each day. Remembering the soldier's tale, we should be wary of drawing false conclusions. We should avoid programming by coincidence—relying on luck and accidental successes—in favor of programming deliberately.

What she was doing was watching TCM and eating tiny slivers of metal. If her health plan paid for more or better imaging, maybe the jig would have been up, and it all could have been an accident, bad luck, one failing kitchen appliance trying to kill her, her husband unwittingly involved. As it was, she just kept getting chewed up from the inside. And nobody suspected anything, least of all Sheila. Her mom was the right age for her body to be failing in unexpected ways, wasn’t she? It was a tragedy, it was sad, but it wasn’t any kind of real surprise. It’s what we all have waiting for us, surely. Only, it didn’t have to be. Not for my mother-in-law. Did she know right at the end, too? Did she finally see a glittering shard in her corn or peas and look up to her husband, watching her spoon this in? At that point, coughing up blood, blood in the toilet, her stomach and intestines in revolt, all failing, did she just guide that next bite in anyway and turn back to her classic movie? I don’t know. She was from that long-suffering generation, though. The one that would rather hide a thing like this than involve her own daughter. The one that would rather her daughter keep a father she could believe in.

If someone's meant to be yours, eventually they will be.

The Music Lab findings suggest that many songs (or books or movies) that go on to become hits owe much of their success to the fact that the first people to review them just happened to like them.

Let’s talk turkey,” said Arthur over the PA system at school. “The best part in the Thanksgiving play is still open. If you’re interested, please come to the office at once.” No one came to the office. In fact, the principal left the office, laughing. Arthur put posters in the cafeteria. He placed ads in the school paper. Nothing worked. Arthur had other problems, too. Muffy complained about everything. “I should be narrator; my parents are paying for the cast party!” she whined. Francine would not take off her movie-star glasses. “They’re good luck,” she explained, but she was having a hard time seeing what she was doing. Buster couldn’t remember his lines. “In 1620,” he recited, “we sailed to America on the cauliflower.

His apartment was on the twenty-fifth floor and cost him $3000 a month. He was in his early twenties and had a stupidly disarming smile. “Welcome to my shabby shack!” he said, beaming. I realized that he was just a clean-cut boy, not too bright, understandably proud of his luck. It occurred to me that I’d had a better life behind me than he could ever hope to live: I had seen many more interesting things than he could ever learn from watching movies! It was unpleasant to realize that I had to feel my superiority over this kid in order to feel good and comfortable in his comfortable, spacious apartment.

Hulking piece of rust,” she grumbled, then gave it a little pat on the wheel well as she scooted out between her truck and Hannah’s car. “Can’t let the car gods hear you dis their minions,” she said when she caught Cooper’s amused look. “They’ll strand you in the desert as sure as look at you. Besides, she might be a hulking piece of rusted metal but she’s my hulking piece.” She stopped when she reached her sister and gave her a one-armed hug. “And to what do I owe this pleasure? Cross-examining my afternoon date, are we?” “Maybe,” Hannah said, hugging her back. “Oh, good.” Kerry grinned, rubbing her hands together. “What did you learn?” “Hey, now,” Cooper said, chuckling. “What makes you think I’d give anything up?” “Oh, she’s good,” Kerry told him. “She once talked a tribal chief in Papua New Guinea, out of marrying me to his youngest son.” Cooper looked at Hannah, who just raised an arched brow but didn’t refute the statement. “Well, then, I suppose I’m even more in your debt,” he told Kerry’s oldest sister. “Unless of course the tribe believes in polygamy.” Kerry looked affronted. “You’d share me? Well, well, good to know.” She folded her arms. “So glad we’re having this little chat.” “Oh, no, Starfish, no such luck. You’d be stuck making do with only me. You see, I know a guy who could fly us out of there on his helicopter, and I’m guessing your erstwhile tribal spouse wouldn’t go anywhere near one of those flying birds. I’d spirit you off and--” “And leave my poor first husband brokenhearted and alone? Do I get a say in this?” She looked to her sister. “You’re drawing up my pre-nup, right?” Cooper brightened and clapped his hands together, which earned him an arched brow from Kerry. “Well, while I’m not too thrilled about your attachment to Number One, speaking as Number Two, I will say I’m happy to hear we’re in the negotiation phase.” “Husband Number One is a lot younger,” she said consideringly. “And while he doesn’t have as many head of cattle as you do, he does come with an entire village, and if something happens to his other six brothers, he’ll be chief one day.” She smiled sweetly. “Just saying.” Cooper flashed her a smile that might have been a little too private with her sister standing right there, but what the hell. “Keep in mind, Number Twos traditionally try harder. So I have that going for me.” Hannah looked from Cooper to Kerry, then at both of them, before finally looking at Kerry. “Seriously, marry him before he wises up.” “Hey,” Kerry replied, mock wounded. “And why do you say that?” “You speak the same language.” “Says the woman who communicates with her husband using old movie quotes that nobody gets but the two of you.” Hannah smiled, really smiled, and it transformed her often more serious expression into something truly radiant. “Yes, that’s exactly who’s saying that.” She looked at Cooper. “I have a feeling you and Calder will become fast friends.” “Thank you,” Cooper said, “for both sentiments.

One crude but unquestionable indication of his greatness was his power to create permanent images. All through his work there are images which are as impossible to forget, once you have seen them, as some of the grandest and simplest passages in music or poetry. The most beautiful single shot I have seen in any movie is the battle charge in The Birth of a Nation. I have heard it praised for its realism, and that is deserved; but it is also far beyond realism. It seems to me to be a perfect realization of a collective dream of what the Civil War was like, as veterans might remember it fifty years later, or as children, fifty years later, might imagine it. I have had several clear mental images of that war, from almost as early as I can remember, and I didn’t have the luck to see “The Birth of a Nation” until I was in my early twenties; but when I saw that charge, it was merely the clarification, and corroboration, of one of those visions, and took its place among them immediately without seeming to be of a different kind or order. It is the perfection that I know of, of the tragic glory that is possible, or used to be possible, in war; or in war as the best in the spirit imagines or remembers it.

One Newport acquaintance who hadn’t snubbed Jack Astor was Margaret Tobin Brown, the estranged wife of Denver millionaire James J. Brown. She was sympathetic to marital woes and escaped her own by traveling. That winter, in fact, Mrs. Brown had joined the Astors on their excursion to North Africa and Egypt. In her pocket as she sat near the Astor party on the Nomadic was a small Egyptian tomb figure that she had bought in a Cairo market as a good luck talisman. The voyage Margaret Brown was about to take would immortalize her in books, movies, and a Broadway musical as “the unsinkable Molly Brown,” a feisty backwoods girl whose husband’s lucky strike at a Leadville, Colorado, gold mine vaults her into a mansion in Denver, where she is rebuffed by Mile High society.

I’d also toyed with calling him Caverat before that ‒ which I’ll explain in a minute. Anyway, Twitch was the nickname of the kid that took Zero's place and who I named Z after when he ran away in Holes ‒ which is still my favorite book ever. Now that I think about it, it's probably my favorite movie too. Not only that but my other cat’s name was X-Ray. He was mostly black but had several white markings that looked sorta like fuzzy bones ‒ with one in particular running down his left hind leg about where his tibia would show up in an actual x-ray. So I probably would've called him X-Ray no matter what but it sure didn't hurt that it's the name of the leader of the kids at Camp Green Lake. I even considered Stanley before that ‒ who's the book’s main character and of course, the star of its’ movie. Before that that, I’d actually debated calling him Bob ‒ if you can believe it. But cats shouldn't have regular old people names as far as I'm concerned ‒ with maybe just a few exceptions. I decided that neither Bob ‒ which only came up in the first place because I like palindromes ‒ nor Stanley were one of 'em. Even besides the bone-like birthmarks making X-Ray the obvious choice. To be honest, it was Nat's suggestion anyway. Back to Stanley though, even though his nickname at Camp Green Lake was Caveman, I decided against Cave-cat right away. But it did seem to fit Twitch since he was hiding under the china cabinet and all. Another name I’d thought about before she brought up X-Ray was Yelnats ‒ which is Stanley's last name and the emordnilap of his first ‒ and plenty un-regular-old-people-like enough but as I pointed out at the time, we already had a Nat in the house who yells. That made her laugh but it wasn't exactly true plus on top of it, I ended up having to admit that her idea was better all along. By the way, if you didn’t know it, an emordnilap is the reverse of a word or phrase that isn't a nonsense string but also isn’t a palindrome ‒ which spells the same thing forwards and backwards. Other palindromes besides ‘Bob’ are 'refer'; ‘bird rib’; 'a nut for a jar of tuna’; ‘borrow or rob?’; ‘racecar’; ‘Yo banana boy!’; 'deified'; ‘Go Hang a Salami, I'm a Lasagna Hog’ ‒ or like I already half mentioned… Stanley Yelnats. Emordnilaps make a new one instead ‒ such as ‘live’ and ‘evil’; ‘lived’ and ‘devil’; ‘dog’ and ‘god’; ‘stressed’ and ‘desserts’; ‘stops’ and ‘spots’; or ‘keep reward’ and ‘drawer peek’. As you’ve probably figured out already, ‘emordnilap’ is the emordnilap of ‘palindrome’ so therefore ‘palindrome’ is not a palindrome.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A TAX SHELTER AND TAX DEFERMENT The first lesson I learned was simple: not every tax break is scuzzy. Leona Helmsley, also known as the “Queen of Mean,” may have been sentenced to sixteen years in prison for tax evasion (ah, sweet justice), but there’s a big difference between legal and illegal tax avoidance. When I first started out, I didn’t have nearly as many tax-avoidance strategies as the rich did, but there are a few available to anyone, and taking advantage of every opportunity is absolutely critical. Tax sheltering means putting your money someplace where taxes no longer apply. Think of taxes as gravity in The Matrix, or logic in the Transformers movies. Even if it technically exists, it doesn’t apply to you. For example, if you invest in an index ETF and it goes up, it’s not reported on your tax return. If you earn interest on that account, ditto. Once your money is inside a tax shelter, you never get taxed on it again. This is because the money that goes into a tax-sheltering account has already been taxed. Tax deferment, on the other hand, is the process of taking a chunk of your income and choosing not to pay income taxes on it that year. Here’s how it works: You contribute a portion of your income to a tax-deferred account. The amount you contribute reduces your taxable income for that year, and accountants would call this contribution “deductible.” So, if you made $50,000 one year, and you chose to defer $10,000, then that year you would only be taxed as if you earned $40,000. That $10,000 you deferred gets put into a special account where it can grow tax-free, but if you withdraw it, it will be added on to your taxable income and you’ll pay taxes on it then. This is because money going into tax deferral hasn’t been taxed yet. To recap . . . Tax Shelter Tax Deferral Contributions are . . . Not deductible Deductible Growth/interest/dividends are . . . Tax-free Tax-free Withdrawals are . . . Tax-free Taxed as income

Then the center of influence shifted to London, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Cream, the Who, the Kinks, and all the bands that orbited them. San Francisco, with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana, had its moment in a psychedelic spotlight around the Summer of Love and the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, but as the 1960s gave way to the '70s, the center of the musical universe shifted unmistakably to Los Angeles. "It was incredibly vital," said Jonathan Taplin, who first came to LA as the tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band and later relocated there to produce Martin Scorsese's breakthrough movie, Mean Streets. "The nexus of the music business had really moved from New York to Los Angeles. That had been a profound shift . . . It was very clear that something big had changed."'' For a breathtaking few years, the stars aligned to glittering effect in Los Angeles. The city attracted brilliant artists; skilled session musicians; soulful songwriters; shrewd managers, agents, and record executives; and buzz-building clubs. From this dense constellation of talent, a shimmering new sound emerged, a smooth blend of rock and folk with country influences. Talented young people from all over the country began descending on Los Angeles with their guitar cases or dreams of becoming the next Geffen. Irving Azoff, a hyper-ambitious young agent and manager who arrived in Los Angeles in 1972, remembered, "It was like the gold rush. You've never seen anything like it in the entertainment business. The place was exploding. I was here—right place, right time. I tell everybody, `If you're really good in this business, you only have to be right once,' so you kind of make your own luck, but it is luck, too. It was hard to be in LA in that time and have any talent whatsoever in the music business—whether you were a manager, an agent, an artist, a producer, or writer—[and] not to make it, because it was boom times. It was the gold rush, and it was fucking fun.

Blake, I reckon them Seattle newsboys must-a took him t’ the movies t’ see Rin-tin-tin do his stuff. Why, that actor dog allers clumb ladders, er jumped inter the water, er through winders jest in the nick o’ time t’ save his master; and Luck’s ‘zackly like him.

I suffered through that live-action Cats movie last night trying to score points with the wife. One fart–one–and I lost all my progress.' Fox bit back a smile. "No luck, huh?' 'Had to sleep on the couch,' grumbled the deckhand. 'Don’t take it so hard, man.' Fox shivered, despite the heat. 'That movie could dry up the Pacific.' 'I don't know, there's just something about Judi Dench…' Sanders mused.

LOCAL SELF AS HOST FOR NONLOCAL SELF When you drop back into your daily life after meditation, you’re changed. You’ve communed with nonlocal mind for an hour, experiencing the highest possible cadence of who you are. That High Self version of you rearranges neurons in your head to create a physical structure to anchor it. You now have a brain that accommodates both the local self and the nonlocal self. My experience has been that the longer you spend in Bliss Brain, whether in or out of meditation, the greater the volume of neural tissue available to anchor that transcendent self in physical experience. Once a critical mass of neurons has wired together, a tipping point occurs. You begin to flash spontaneously into Bliss Brain throughout your day. When you’re idle for a while, like being stuck in traffic or standing in line at the grocery store, the most natural activity seems to be to go into Bliss Brain for a few moments. This reminds you, in the middle of everyday life, that the nonlocal component of your Self exists. It also brings all the enhanced creativity, productivity, and problem-solving ability of Bliss Brain to bear on your daily tasks. You become a happy, creative, and effective person. These enhanced capabilities render you much more able to cope with the challenges of life. They don’t confer exceptional luck. When everyone’s house burns down, yours does too. When the economy nosedives, it takes you with it. But because you possess resilience, and a daily experience of your nonlocal self, you take it in stride. Even when external things vanish, you still have the neural network that Bliss Brain created. No one can take that away from you. DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Posttraumatic Growth Exercise 1: In your journal, write down the names of the most resilient people you’ve known personally. They can be alive or dead. They’re people who’ve gone through tragedy and come out intact. Make an appointment to spend time with at least two of the living ones in the coming month. Listen to their stories and allow inspiration to fill you. Neural Reconsolidation Exercise: This week, after a particularly deep meditation, savor the experience. Set a timer and lie down for 15 to 30 minutes. Visualize your synapses wiring together as you deliberately fire them by remembering the deliciousness of the meditation. Choices Exercise: Make 10 photocopies of illustration 7.4, the two doors. Next, analyze in what areas of your environment you often make negative choices. Maybe it’s in online meetings with an annoying colleague at work. Maybe it’s the food choices you make when you walk to the fridge. Maybe it’s the movies you watch on your TV. Tape a copy of the two doors illustration to those objects, such as the monitor, fridge, or TV. This will help you remember, when you’re under stress, that you have a choice.

Last night's harsh phone call seemed to be a distant memory as we spent the day in the snow with my new fake friends, going for one last turn on the mountain while I drank boiled wine at the bottom of the ski lift at the hutte. I honestly told Anette in the ski lift during the day what Sabrina had told me on the phone the night before, but she remained silent and didn't seem surprised for some reason. I didn't think Anette would conspire with Betty to test me or win me. I didn’t think they would conspire with Sabrina but perhaps I didn’t know her well enough to assume what she was capable of when jealous, mad, sad, confused or in love. Perhaps they did not. Everything I don't know. I try to write here all that I know and have managed to figure out, taking a long time. I try to share what I have been through because I am sure that others will find it useful to learn from my mistakes, faults, sins, virtues, and so on. Perhaps only my luck, good or bad, I don't know. I could not have figured out what happened if I had not written down exactly how things unfolded in order to be able to see through it all and comprehend what really happened since I bought that Roberto Saviano book and met Sabrina. Perhaps the women had been conspiring for one reason or another; perhaps they had not. Nonetheless, it was odd. „Water is wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets. Who gives a f..k?” – Joe Hallenbeck Do all men have to be natural-born and supernatural detectives like Bruce Willis in all his movies, or in The Last Boy Scout? I'm not sure how many coincidences can fit so strangely into reality by chance, or is it all manipulation? Is it all because of the story of Eve and the snake and the apple?

Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom.

Luck also played a part. Any successful actor or writer or artist will tell you that luck is a crucial factor. But the only way to get lucky is to be prepared for luck to find you. Writers write. Actors act. If you’re not constantly applying your talents to your craft, no one is going to stop you on the street and say, “Hey, come write this TV show!” Or, “I want you to star in my movie.

The idea that this technology is a new business model for animation is bullshit. Good luck with that! The artists and storytellers will want to continue to grow the technology, so this year’s technology will be obsolete in ten years.” Katzenberg was right, of course. No matter how much technology you throw at the art of making an animated movie, a good one will always be expensive. Pixar made Toy Story for around $20 million (a number that doesn’t include what Disney spent on it for promotion and distribution). Pixar’s 2013 movie, Monsters University, is rumored to have cost around $200 million, marketing included.

If you’re tired of watching rerun movies on television you’re in luck, there are hundreds of thousands of books that are movies in text.

Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because, what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse. But, how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won't take the hint! In every moment there's the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it. And because you won't believe it you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up!

...you should’ve seen me ready to shiv security for making me take my ring off earlier.” I frowned as I accidently lost control of my chopsticks, my California roll dropping into the little plastic cup of soy sauce. “See?Sounds like classic Bridezilla behavior to me.” She almost choked on her wasabi-laced sushi piece. “Bridezilla? I am the least likely person to turn Bridezilla you will ever meet. In fact, I am like the Mothra of the Bridezilla world.” “Mothra.” I tsked. “Pedestrian. Destoroyah—no, Bridestoroyah—could totally take on Bridezilla.” “You have the chopstick skill level of a preschooler, and you dare to go around citing Japanese monster movie characters to me?” Laney seethed. “I have my reasons for choosing Mothra.” “Yeah?” I stabbed my chopsticks straight through the middle of my errant sushi piece. “Let’s hear them.” “Don’t, it’s bad luck!” she exclaimed. “What, to talk to a bride about her wedding dress before the big day?” And I thought Sloane was taking the wedding superstitions too far. “No, to stab your chopstick through the middle of your food.” She reached across the table and readjusted my sticks for me with one hand. I noticed she kept her other hand on the garment bag riding shotgun in the chair next to her. Its midnight blue sheen and fancy silver embroidery looked out of place in the middle of the airport food court.

Visualization As you hone and create your identity and new narrative, being able to picture yourself moving through this new life actually helps it become your reality. As you use imagery as a tool, be aware that there is a huge difference between fantasizing and visualizing. It’s like the saying “If you write it down, it’s a plan; if you don’t, it’s a wish.” Fantasizing is the activity of imagining scenarios that satisfy your desire for gratification and vengeance. Fantasizing is wishing, which is not a bad place to start. Fantasy often uses a third-person POV, like watching yourself in the best movie ever, starring you. It might be fun to fantasize, but as a psychological tool that enables you to get what you want in life, it’s more or less useless. Fantasy is usually about outcome. You imagine yourself being respected or thin, in a sexual or romantic relationship, or on the beach, but you are no closer to realizing those dreams than you were before you fantasized about them. Visualizing is like writing it down to make a plan; more specifically, it is making a model in your mind of the process leading to the desired result. Visualizing is a scientific methodology for rehearsing different reality-based scenarios in your head before an important event or interaction. If you learn to visualize effectively, you can condition yourself to succeed, even in stressful, anxious situations. To visualize for success: First, use the third-person POV to see yourself showing up as required in your life, on task, and with the performance you desire. Next, use the first-person POV, where you enter into the scene and you see and feel the experience. Go over the specifics of a job interview and see yourself being assertive. Feel your steady heart rate. Smell the confidence. Train your brain to associate walking into that interview with assurance and calm. Visualize every sensation and step. The coldness of the doorknob, the plush carpet under your shoes, the overhead lighting, the sound of the copy machine down the hall. Immerse yourself in detail. Script the scene with positive, powerful phrases, like I can and I am. I can get the job done. I am the person you’re looking for. Repeat the scenario. During the week before the specific event or interaction is to take place, practice daily. Later on, when it’s all over, examine how close your visualization was to reality. Even if the two look completely different, you’ll be glad you did all you could to be prepared and to succeed. This is a tried-and-true method of practicing for success. Athletic coaches on the sports field and personal life coaches advocate and outright require this kind of thorough mental preparation. There is no substitute except to rely on luck, which is not really a plan. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and remember what Louis Pasteur said: “Chance seems to favor the prepared mind.