Name Tag Quotes

If we were teenagers, I could kiss you. But I’m on a platform behind a counter wearing a name tag and we’re too old to be young.

The most intelligent people disguise the fact that they are intelligent. Wise men do not wear name tags. The more people talk about their own skills, the more desperate they are—their work should speak for itself.

They stick you with those names, those labels -- ‘rebel’ or whatever; whatever they like to use. Because they need a label; they need a name. They need something to put the price tag on the back of.

What in the name of Llar was that all about?’ Colin asked, his face still drained of colour. ‘I have no bloody idea,’ William said his voice quivering.

So how did he imagine we would have known anything about them?’ Her husband asked. Gloria smiled awkwardly. ‘They woke up this morning and have been chanting you name ever since.

My name is Jenny,’ the prototype curtly informed Theodore, with a stance that advertised her statement to perfection.

He pinched the name tag and ran his fingers under the letters. "Can you read this, mate? It says C-H-A-R-O-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON." "Charon." "Amazing! Now: Mr. Charon." "Mr. Charon." "Well done.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. --from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Check it out. I got a new name tag today." He unclipped it and held it out toward me. I looked at it. "A. GUY." He grinned. "Someone actually asked me what the A stood for," he said, his hand brushing mine as he took the tag back, sliding it into his pocket. "I said Larry.

I wear a name tag to help people find me. It saves time when you're dealing with idiots.

Isn’t that sad? It’s like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call them.

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.

In your name, the family name is at last because it's the family name that lasts.

Blay: Better than the full bifta. Especially because Qhuinn was beautiful to watch when he had sex. Just….beautitful. Back when Blay had tried to do the hetero thing, the two had tag-teamed a number of human females – not that he could have recalled any of the women’s faces, bodies, or names. It had always been about Qhuinn for him. Always.

People who ask questions and think about their faith are the last ones to embrace dogma -- and the last to abandon their path once they've set out on it. I felt fairly sure that the Almighty, whatever name tag He had on at the moment, could handle a few questions from people sincerely looking for answers. Hell, He might even like it.

War has changed. It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines. War--and it's consumption of life--has become a well-oiled machine. War has changed. ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities. Genetic control, information control, emotion control, battlefield control…everything is monitored and kept under control. War…has changed. The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction, and he who controls the battlefield, controls history. War…has changed. When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine.

Fred!" the nurse said, though they had never met. "How are we today?" Reading the nurse's name tag, Mr. Bennet replied with fake enthusiasm, "Bernard! We're mourning the death of manners and the rise of overly familiar discourse. How are you?

The gods of the realms are many and varied -- or they are the many and varied names and identities tagged onto the same being. I know not -- and care not -- which.

The fact that they're shaped like tiny elves!" Keefe said, clapping his hands before he pointed to the label. "Hang on-THEY CALL THEM 'ELF WITCHES'?" "They do, Keefe. They do. And that's not even the best part." "AHHHHHH LOOK AT THEIR LITTLE FACES!" Keefe shouted as he peeled back the plastic cover. "THIS IS THE GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN---EVER!" "Greater than when you discovered Fitz slept with Mr. Snuggles?" Sophie had to ask. "Um. YEAH. They have names, Foster. NAMES!" He held up one of the cookies and pointed to the name tag the little elf was holding. "This one's Ernie! AHHHH AND THIS ONE IS FAST EDDIE!" he said, snatching a different cookie. "And this one is Bickets! And Elwood! I don't know who named these guys, but whoever they are, they're a genius, I tell you--a GENIUS. - Legacy, chapter 37, page 596-97 hardcover.

Some of us can live without a society but not without a family.

And in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed. And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet.

Reginald, the dog-bear," I repeated. "Or bear-dog," she reminded me. "That's terrible," I said in mock solemnity. "He's already not sure what he is- a dog, a bear... a bog..." She giggled. "And then you tag him with the name Reginald?" I shook my head.

Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true.

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

There was a tiny box left on the table by the window- a box the Mor lifted, squinted and the name tag, and said, "Az, this one's for you." The shadowsinger's brows lifted, but his scarred hand extended to take the present. Elain turned from where she'd been speaking to Nesta. "Oh, that's from me." Azriel's face didn't so much as shift at the words. Not even a smile as he opened the present and revealed- "I had Madja make it for me," Elain explained. Azreil's brows narrowed at the mention of the family's preferred healer. "It's a powder to mix in with any drink." Silence. Elain bit her lip and then smiled sheepishly. "It's for the headaches everyone always gives you. Since you rub your temples so often." Silence again. Then Azriel tipped his head back and laughted.

I was minutes away from stripping naked and screaming, "Oh yeah, baby, finger my name tag!

The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, BIBLO. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. "'I am a leaf on the wind,'" Lou said, and the man-nurse said, "Dude, don't say that. I don't want to start crying on the job.

They all call me "Excuse me," even though my nametag clearly says "Jordan." It's like people don't actually exist while they're working. Workers are just tools who aren't supposed to have feelings or personalities. You don't become human until your shift is over. Until then, we're all just zombies. We're dead to the world: infected people who need to be avoided, unless, of course, someone needs to know where the paintbrushes are located.

Oh, great Hekate, is that his voice?” Carrow cried. “I just had an orgasm! Fudge your name tag if you have to, but get you some of that some-some. Remember, friends let friends live vicariously—

One day, Buckley came home from the second grade with a story he’d written: “Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but he never came out. The End.

How do you know it's a him?" Abel asked. "He's not wearing his pronouns on a name tag." "Male Sunrise Reapers have orange eyes," Roa said. "Females have red or yellow." "But what if he's nonbinary?" Abel wondered. "And we've offended him." "Then he'll eat us." Roa considered it. "I can respect that.

So there are pics of Tucker’s mighty wang on the internet?” “I haven’t been tagged on Instagram yet, so I’m hopeful they aren’t out there. But thanks for calling my dick mighty. We appreciate that.” Amusement colors his words. “We? As in you and your penis?” “Yup,” he says cheerfully. I snuggle deeper under the covers. “You have a name for your penis?” “Doesn’t everyone? Guys put a name on everything that’s important to them—cars, dicks. One of my teammates in junior hockey named his stick, which was dumb because sticks break all the time. He’d gone through twelve of them by the end of the season.” “What were the names?” “That’s the thing. He just kept adding a number to the end, like iPhone 6, iPhone 7, except in his case it was Henrietta 1, Henrietta 2, et cetera.” I snicker. “He should’ve used the hurricane naming convention.” “Darlin’, he wasn’t smart enough to come up with two names, let alone twelve.

In united families, they might sleep with half filled stomach but no one sleeps with empty stomach.

What if we started naming heartbreaks after people like they do with storms on news channels how would this heart look with name tags?

The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, bilbo. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. “ ‘I am a leaf on the wind,’ ” Lou said, and the man-nurse said, “Dude, don’t say that. I don’t want to start crying on the job.

Some men define themselves by women although they appear to believe it is quite the opposite; to believe that it is she, rather than themselves, who is being filed away, tagged, named at last like a quivering cell under a microscope.

THE SWORD-WIELDER LOOKED DELIGHTED. “Chop off head?” His name, GUNTHER, was printed on an Amtrak name tag he wore over his armor—his only concession to being in disguise. “Not yet.” Luguselwa kept her eyes on us. “As you can see, Gunther loves decapitating people, so let’s play nice. Come along—

The campus police officer folded his hands and stared at me from across the table. “Coffee?” “What flavor is it?” I asked. He was in his forties, a big, solid man with bags under his calm, wary eyes, and his name tag read dean. “It’s coffee-flavored coffee.” “No mocha?” “Fuck mocha.” “Thank God,” I said. “Black.

Perhaps it is to fulfill this primal urge that runners and joggers get up every morning and pound the streets in cities all over the world. To feel the stirring of something primeval deep down in the pits of our bellies. To feel "a little bit wild." Running is not exactly fun. Running hurts. It takes effort. Ask any runner why he runs, and he will probably look at you with a wry smile and say, "I don't know." But something keeps us going. We may obsess about our PBs and mileage count, but these things alone are not enough to get us out running... What really drives us is something else, this need to feel human, to reach below the multitude of layers of roles and responsibilites that societ y has placed on us, down below the company name tags, and even the father, husband, and son, labels, to the pure, raw human being underneath. At such moments, our rational mind becomes redundant. We move from thought to feeling.

Not everyone who died had left a "memory" and not everyone who had left a memory had left a "blessed" one. Therefore, not all have died should be tagged "...of a blessed memory

What I have to face is that 'Barb,' the name on my ID tag, is not exactly the same person as Barbara. 'Barb' is what I was called as a child, and still am by my siblings, and I sense that at some level I'm regressing. Take away the career and the higher education, and maybe what you're left with is this original Barb, the one who might have ended up working at Wal-Mart for real if her father hadn't managed to climb out of the mines. So it's interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out — that she's meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I'd hoped.

But isn’t that the point of labels like boyfriend and girlfriend? To make things easier for other people? Isn’t that sad? It’s like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call the.

Racist” and “antiracist” are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other.

A continuing problem of this static war was that senior officers did not have enough to do to make them keep their hands off their junior’s affairs. Or they had time to think up new projects, from painting fire buckets red to promulgating the color of name tags on enlisted fatigues.

If you are uncomfortable meeting people on your own, the perfect way to do it is to volunteer to help greet those who arrive. This way, you have a purposeful task that is meeting people. Be sure to wear your name tag (on the right side of your body, please) and have business cards at the ready.

But isn’t that the point of labels like boyfriend and girlfriend? To make things easier for other people? She slurps her beer. Isn’t that sad. It’s like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call them.

It would be just my luck, of course, to be savaged by an animal with a flea collar and a medical history. I imagined lying on my back, being extravagantly ravaged, inclining my head slightly to read a dangling silver tag that said: “My name is Mr. Bojangles. If found please call Tanya and Vinny at 924-4667.

Are you this friendly to all the guests Mr...?" I ask, while trying to see if he's wearing a name tag. "Yes, when we have a gorgeous lady in the lounge such as yourself, we pull out all the charm. I'll be back in a little while with your food and another martini." He says as he turns to walk back to the bar.

Okay, so, I’m in Ikea, right?” Anh started, looking done with life. “And I’m trying to pronounce some of the names on these tags. Somehow—I have no idea how—but somehow I managed to summon a demon. He’s demanding the reason for his summons. What do I do with him?

You can take the Indian out of the family, but you cannot take the family out of the Indian.

If you keep insisting on collecting boyfriends,” he teased, “we’re going to have to start wearing name tags.

He’s wearing a dog tag. His name is Henry Webb. His unit is called BLM.” “What does it mean?” “Black Like Me. A solidarity movement, I suppose.

Her name tag read “Lily Harper Hart,

Prussians were singularly well prepared in other areas as well. They invented the “dog tag” in 1870: an oval disc worn by every soldier bearing his name, regiment, and place of residence.

This is how foreign grace was to her, that when she heard it she mistook it for heresy. There are some people, I am sorry to say, who wouldn’t recognize grace if it stood at their door wearing a name tag.

It wasn’t the bent, nasty, yellow laminated four-by-six card everyone else got but a real heavyweight plastic tag embossed with my name. Jenks had one, too, and he was obnoxiously proud of it even though I was the one wearing it, right under mine. It would get me into the morgue when nothing else would. Well, besides being dead.

But isn't that the point of labels like boyfriend and girlfriend? To make things easier for other people? [...] It's like the whole world has to walk around with name tags on so we can all feel more comfortable? I guess things are less scary if you know what to call them.

To improve quality of life, to evolve into a better version of ourselves, to pause in recognition of blessings with only our name on the tag, to dance in graitutde, to embrance with abandon, to give without receiving, to seek the face of God ... all this and more is why we exisit.

Solange wir Kinder sind, denken wir nur selten an die Zukunft. Diese Unschuld ermöglicht es uns, uns zu vergnügen, wie nur wenige Erwachsene das können. Der Tag, an dem wir beginnen, uns Gedanken über die Zukunft zu machen, ist der Tag, an dem wir unsere Kindheit hinter uns lassen.

THEY WOULDN’T LET LOU WALK ANYWHERE, DIDN’T WANT TO TAKE A chance that the fat man might get dizzy and fall onto his face, so after his examination he sat in a wheelchair and a man-nurse wheeled him to recovery. The man-nurse was his age and had sleepy eyes with dark circles under them, and a jutting Cro-Magnon forehead. His name tag said, improbably, BILBO. He had a spaceship tattooed on one hairy forearm: Serenity from the TV show Firefly. “‘I am a leaf on the wind,’” Lou said, and the man-nurse said, “Dude, don’t say that. I don’t want to start crying on the job.

Some parents have taught their small children, “Go to the manager,” but this poses the same problem of identification as with the policeman: That small name tag is several feet above the child’s eye-line. I don’t believe in teaching inflexible rules because it’s not possible to know they’ll apply in all situations. There is one, however, that reliably enhances safety: Teach children that if they are ever lost, Go to a Woman. Why? First, if your child selects a woman, it’s highly unlikely that the woman will be a sexual predator. Next, as Jan’s story illustrates, a woman approached by a lost child asking for help is likely to stop whatever she is doing, commit to that child, and not rest until the child is safe. A man approached by a small child might say, “Head over there to the manager’s desk,” whereas a woman will get involved and stay involved.

His shoes were bench-made by a company called Cheaney, from Northampton in England. Smarter buys than Church’s, which were basically the same shoes but with a premium tag for the name. The style Reacher had chosen was called Tenterden, which was a brown semi-brogue made of heavy pebbled leather.

I won’t even go into Kala. Still trying to figure that one out.” Ten stepped out into the hallway. How had Adam—who claimed to be the smartest man in the building—not figured that one out? “Kick A Little Ass. What the hell else would Tag name his kid?” Adam’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. You’re right.

...good she had been. Not nice, not merely molto simpatico – how charmingly and effectively these foreign tags assist one in calling a spade by some other name! – but good. You felt the active radiance of her goodness when you were near her…. And that feeling, was that less real and valid than two plus two?

The truth is - people won't believe you, they won't care for you, they won't give you time or attention, but once you do something that is 'big' in their eyes, you will get it all. Then suddenly you become everyone's friend, everyone seems to have time for you. The people who ignored you earlier will tag you in their posts to gain publicity. And all of a sudden, you become the 'new' inspiration. But the ones who always support you will still call you by your pet name, tease you by those old names and will be there for you like before. The 'key' to life is - knowing who is permanent and who is temporary. The people who are with you in your struggle, are the people who deserve to eat a slice of your success, and the people who are there right after your success, are the ones who should be kept at a distance, for those people would be the first ones to run away if you are in any problem. This life is too short to be lived in any fake fame or publicity. Know your real friends, and know their worth, because if they're lost, the meaning of your life is lost...

It's not like you ate Filipino food all the time. You loved Emperor's Way takeout, and the friendly Chinese girl there who you were too shy to ask but whose name tag said to call her Ming always gave you extra sauce for your orange chicken. The sweet potato pie from Butter was absolutely to die for, and it made you feel soft and warm the same way Lola's leche flan did. The youngest Manzano once handed you a delicious pastry without prompting or demanding payment before drifting away, seemingly lost in a world of her own. If this was a marketing strategy for their pastelería, it worked. But you could tell that there were differences in the way they cooked and baked, that they took old and treasured recipes and put in their own unique, modern spin to them. Why couldn't you do the same?

We become “possessed” by the principality and power when we internalize the spirituality of the system and the practices, beliefs, attitudes, habits, values, expectations, norms, and traditions of the system become the sources we use to form our own identity. And while the tag “possession” might seem extreme, it does help us name something more clearly, something left out of our descriptions at the start of the chapter regarding the ill effects associated with our service to the powers. Specifically, we previously noted how the powers can make us harried, stressed, and rivalrous. But it’s a bit worse than all that. It’s not just that the powers push us around from the outside with demands, deadlines, and expectations. The powers also affect (and infect) us from the inside. A focus on service— how we work and make sacrifices for the institution— tends to miss how we often internalize the spirituality of the institution, how our identity becomes formed by and fused with the institution. A focus on service and work (though important) tends to be too behavioral in nature to capture how the institution gets inside us, inhabiting our hearts and minds and affecting how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us.

You in pain brother”? Big Tag asked with his trademark sarcasm as he was placed in handcuffs. ”You better be happy they’ll take you to a hospital because I swear if I end up with a boyfriend named Juan, I’m going to kill you myself.

I’m not sure how the ponies happened, though I have an inkling: “Can I get you anything?” I’ll say, getting up from a dinner table, “Coffee, tea, a pony?” People rarely laugh at this, especially if they’ve heard it before. “This party’s ‘sposed to be fun,” a friend will say. “Really? Will there be pony rides?” It’s a nervous tic and a cheap joke, cheapened further by the frequency with which I use it. For that same reason, it’s hard to weed it out of my speech – most of the time I don’t even realize I’m saying it. There are little elements in a person’s life, minor fibers that become unintentionally tangled with your personality. Sometimes it’s a patent phrase, sometimes it’s a perfume, sometimes it’s a wristwatch. For me, it is the constant referencing of ponies. I don’t even like ponies. If I made one of my throwaway equine requests and someone produced an actual pony, Juan-Valdez-style, I would run very fast in the other direction. During a few summers at camp, I rode a chronically dehydrated pony named Brandy who would jolt down without notice to lick the grass outside the corral and I would careen forward, my helmet tipping to cover my eyes. I do, however, like ponies on the abstract. Who doesn’t? It’s like those movies with the animated insects. Sure, the baby cockroach seems cute with CGI eyelashes, but how would you feel about fifty of her real-life counterparts living in your oven? And that’s precisely the manner in which the ponies clomped their way into my regular speech: abstractly. “I have something for you,” a guy will say on our first date. “Is it a pony?” No. It’s usually a movie ticket or his cell phone number. But on our second date, if I ask again, I’m pretty sure I’m getting a pony. And thus the Pony drawer came to be. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but almost every guy I have ever dated has unwittingly made a contribution to the stable. The retro pony from the ‘50s was from the most thoughtful guy I have ever known. The one with the glitter horseshoes was from a boy who would later turn out to be straight somehow, not gay. The one with the rainbow haunches was from a librarian, whom I broke up with because I felt the chemistry just wasn’t right, and the one with the price tag stuck on the back was given to me by a narcissist who was so impressed with his gift he forgot to remover the sticker. Each one of them marks the beginning of a new relationship. I don’t mean to hint. It’s not a hint, actually, it’s a flat out demand: I. Want. A. Pony. I think what happens is that young relationships are eager to build up a romantic repertoire of private jokes, especially in the city where there’s not always a great “how we met” story behind every great love affair. People meet at bars, through mutual friends, on dating sites, or because they work in the same industry. Just once a coworker of mine, asked me out between two stops on the N train. We were holding the same pole and he said, “I know this sounds completely insane, bean sprout, but would you like to go to a very public place with me and have a drink or something...?” I looked into his seemingly non-psycho-killing, rent-paying, Sunday Times-subscribing eyes and said, “Sure, why the hell not?” He never bought me a pony. But he didn’t have to, if you know what I mean.

Seamstresses had been working all night making uniforms for me. As I waited to be fitted, I looked over at a rack of uniforms tagged with the word “Custer” and the name of another actor. I watched a wardrobe man come in and gather up the uniforms, toss them like rags in a corner, and replace them on the rack with blue and gold-braided uniforms marked “Custer” with my name on them. I looked at those uniforms piled up on the floor and said to myself: “That can happen to me some day.

Then they were off again, across the unbroken sprawl of Chicagoland, a single city made up of interlocking strip malls, decorated at random intervals by WELCOME TO signs with defiantly rural names—River Forest, Forest Glen, Glenview—and enough dales and groves and elms and oaks to populate Middle Earth. The flatlanders had been especially determined to tag every bump of land with a “Heights” or “Ridge.” Pity the poor hobbit trying to find anything to climb in the town of Mount Prospect.

Rockweiler (nickname) has settled down over the years, he is a man mountain, he stands some six-and-a-half foot tall, and is round about eighteen or nineteen stones in weight. He too works in Barlinnie, this dog was responsible for giving the Wendy House seg unit the tough name tag, as he dished out the beatings to some very hard prisoners in the past. I can’t take that away from him, but he was a bit of a shit bag as well because he wore the full riot body armour when he offered to fight.

Oh, he’s going to get beat up for that name you gave him, but he’s a good boy.” Adam’s eyes rolled as Ten passed him. “Hey, it’s a McKay-Taggart thing. We pick weird names. Carys? Yeah, like she’s going to be able to teach people how to spell that. How about Cooper? The kid sounds like he walked out of a Western. I won’t even go into Kala. Still trying to figure that one out.” Ten stepped out into the hallway. How had Adam—who claimed to be the smartest man in the building—not figured that one out? “Kick A Little Ass. What the hell else would Tag name his kid?

I want to run out of the world, not into a monastery—I still have my strength—but in order to find myself (that is what every fool says), in order to forget myself; nor will I go where the wandering stream / in the meadow is seen.—I don't know whether this poem has been written by some poet, but I would wish that an uncompromising irony would compel some sentimental poet to write it, though in such a way that he himself always read something else. Or Echo—yes, Echo, you Grand Master of Irony!, you, who parody within yourself the most sublime and profound thing in the world—the Word which created the world—when you give only the tag end, not the fullness. Yes, Echo, avenge all the sentimental nonsense which conceals itself in the forests and meadows, in the church and the theater, and which breaks out there now and then, drowning out everything for me. I do not hear the trees in the forest telling old legends and such. No, to me they whisper all the nonsense to which they have been witness for so long, to me they plead in the name of God to be cut down in order to be freed from these nature worshipers who spout nonsense.—Yes, would that all these drivel-heads sat upon a single neck, then, like Caligula, I would know what to do.

There were several things to chew on, but of course the main one was Bingham’s alternatives. If he had known Carol Mardus as well as he said he did there were just four candidates. Even if he had killed her himself, he would name the ones she would have been most likely to pick if she hadn’t picked him, so it was highly probable that it was one of those four. I stood at a window, and sat at my desk, and stood some more, going over them. Which one? That’s the silliest game of solitaire there is, and we all play it, trying to tag a murderer as one of a bunch from what they said and how they looked and acted, unless you can spot something that really opens a crack. I couldn’t.

Shepard clears his throat again. “I need to tell you something, a few somethings. Because now is the time to tell you. Before we get serious. But it’s going to make it seem like I think we’re more serious than we are. I just don’t want to miss my window for being honest with you.” “Shepard, you’re making me nervous.” He groans. “I’m sorry. Don’t be nervous.” My hands were on his shoulders. I drop them into my lap. “Don’t pull away,” he says. “Just tell me, Shepard! Are you engaged to more than one demon?” “No! But … you know I’ve been in a lot of unusual magickal situations…” “Right.” “And you know about my thirdborn…” “I know that a giant you call a friend is going to eat your thirdborn.” He closes one eye and bites his bottom lip. “I may also have promised someone my firstborn.” “Shepard, your firstborn…” He squeezes my waist. “It’s all right, I told you—I’m not having kids.” “Who gets your firstborn?” “An imp. Or three.” “Aren’t imps the same as demons?” “Never say that to an imp.” “How did this even happen?” “We were playing impdice. I thought they were joking about the wager.” “We are going to kill these imps.” “Penelope…” He bites his lip again. “There’s more.” “More? Your secondborn?” “No, I’ve got dibs on that one…” He’s grimacing. “But I did lose my last name.” Every time he talks, my jaw drops lower and my eyebrows climb higher. “How on earth did you lose your last name?” “Told it to the wrong fairy.” My hands are in the air. “How have you met so many fairies!” “I fell in with a crew of them…” “Shepard—hell’s spells, is your name even Shepard?” “Yes! I only lost my last name. And I only ‘magickally and profoundly’ lost it; I can still say it, I can still wear name tags. There’s just one more thing—one more big thing…” He closes both eyes for a second. “I have a, um, well … I don’t have a sexually transmitted disease. But I am a carrier. Only other merpeople can get it. So it’s probably not relevant. Unless you want to sleep with a merperson. And also me. Me first. Which I’m not suggesting…” Hell’s spells … Shepard. I climb off his lap.

Depending on which flavor of academic scholarship you prefer, that age had its roots in the Renaissance or Mannerist periods in Germany, England, and Italy. It first bloomed in France in the garden of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 1780s. Others point to François-René de Chateaubriand’s château circa 1800 or Victor Hugo’s Paris apartments in the 1820s and ’30s. The time frame depends on who you ask. All agree Romanticism reached its apogee in Paris in the 1820s to 1840s before fading, according to some circa 1850 to make way for the anti-Romantic Napoléon III and the Second Empire, according to others in the 1880s when the late Romantic Decadents took over. Yet others say the period stretched until 1914—conveniently enduring through the debauched Belle Époque before expiring in time for World War I and the arrival of that other perennial of the pigeonhole specialists, modernism. There are those, however, who look beyond dates and tags and believe the Romantic spirit never died, that it overflowed, spread, fractured, came back together again like the Seine around its islands, morphed into other isms, changed its name and address dozens of times as Nadar and Balzac did and, like a phantom or vampire or other supernatural invention of the Romantic Age, it thrives today in billions of brains and hearts. The mother ship, the source, the living shrine of Romanticism remains the city of Paris.

The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

Rusty had two kids he was less eager to lock up, and the nocturnal stakeouts had made for a long week. On Tuesday, out of riot-night boredom, Carney gave him a new title: associate sales manager. Knowing his boss wouldn’t get around to it, Rusty went ahead and ordered the name tag. While he awaited its arrival, he taped an interim version onto a Pan Am Junior Captain pin he’d obtained somewhere. “What do you think?” It looked okay. “It looks great,” Carney said. Business was slow anyway. Elizabeth had bought some books for Rusty’s little ones and Carney handed them over. “What’d you, loot these?” Carney had asked when she pulled them out of the shopping bag. That would be a sight: Elizabeth climbing into the window display, stepping over broken glass to grab some shit. Wouldn’t put it past her,

I had come to love the space, and I could see why Lady Anna had too. The orchids were positively glorious. She'd tagged each flower with its proper botanical name, but I favored the pet names she'd given each bloom. For instance, a stunning pink 'Cattleya' was named "Lady Catalina." And a yellow 'Oncidium,' which to me looked like a flock of ladies in fluffy party dresses, was called "Lady Aralia of the Bayou.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Snow has stolen him from me, twisted him beyond recognition, and made me a present of him. Boggs, who came to 2 when I did, told me that even with all the plotting, it was a little too easy to rescue Peeta. He believes if 13 hadn’t made the effort, Peeta would’ve been delivered to me anyway. Dropped off in an actively warring district or perhaps 13 itself. Tied up with ribbons and tagged with my name. Programmed to murder me.

free.” On the edge of town, Fitzgerald saw a sight “that has never left my memory. It was a picture story of the death of one 82nd Airborne trooper. He had occupied a German foxhole and made it his personal Alamo. In a half circle around the hole lay the bodies of nine German soldiers. The body closest to the hole was only three feet away, a potato masher [grenade] in its fist.II The other distorted forms lay where they had fallen, testimony to the ferocity of the fight. His ammunition bandoliers were still on his shoulders, empty of M-1 clips. Cartridge cases littered the ground. His rifle stock was broken in two. He had fought alone and, like many others that night, he had died alone. “I looked at his dog tags. The name read Martin V. Hersh. I wrote the name down in a small prayer book I carried, hoping someday I would meet someone who knew him. I never did.”34

There are videos and books in her room to entertain her, but Miracolina has to laugh, because just as the harvest camp van had only happy, family-friendly movies, the titles she has to choose from here have a clear agenda as well. They’re all about kids being mistreated, but rising above it, or kids empowering themselves in a world that doesn’t understand them. Everything from Dickens to Salinger—as if Miracolina Roselli could possibly have anything in common with Holden Caulfield. ... Finally a bald middle-aged man comes in with a clipboard and a name tag that just says BOB. “I used to be a respected psychiatrist until I spoke out against unwinding,” Bob tells her after the obligatory introductions. “Being ostracized was a blessing in disguise, though, because it allowed me to come here, where I’m truly needed.” Miracolina keeps her arms folded, giving him nothing. She knows what this is all about. They call it “deprogramming,” which is a polite term for undoing brainwashing with more brainwashing.

The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?

Tex would introduce himself to every goo-green kid who joined the squad, every piece of farm-fresh. He’d put his arm around their shoulder, tell them his life story, his real name, ask them all about their hometowns, so that even those nearby had to learn shit we’d rather not. We’d get hit by these frag grenades of nicety. He took people in, Tex. Got close to them. Cried like a baby when the smoke cleared and the tags were tallied. And I thought he was fucking crazy, going about war like that. Not learning what the rest of us learned.

The term ‘political correctness’ has evolved out of the Marxist and Freudian philosophies of the 1930s to become a tool for multicultural-ism, multisexualism, multitheism, and multi-anythingism. It was created to discourage bias and prejudiced thinking that discriminates against an individual or group. It has become society’s way of not offending anyone, whether it is an individual, a group, or a nation. In many instances, however, it is a simple, disarming way of ignoring or deflecting the truth about a situation. Today, the use of political correctness has become so abused that anyone who voices his or her opinion contrary to ‘politically correct think’ is immediately tagged with some form of disparaging label, such as racist and bigot. This exploitation has gotten so out of control that this name-calling accusation is used as a simple and mindless means to manipulate academic, social, or political discussion. The result is a social paranoia which discourages free thought and expression. It’s like living in a totalitarian state in which you are afraid to say what you think. Now who wants to suffer that? So people keep quiet. Their opinions are held captive to fear. How handy for the Islamo-fascists, the American-hating, Jew-killing, Israel-destroying, women-abusing, multireligious-intolerant Muslims. Oh! Excuse me. Did I say something not quite PC? This social paranoia is similar to the attitude that developed in the late 1980s and 1990s, when people became so concerned about children’s self-esteem that failure could not be acknowledged or misbehavior corrected. ‘Now, let’s not hurt their feelings’ was the standard approach. This degree of concern led to teachers giving passing grades for poor performance and youth sport activities where no one kept score. And what has been the fallout of all that psychobabble? High school kids who can’t read their diploma or make change for a dollar, internationally embarrassing scholastic performance scores, and young adults ill equipped to face the competitive lifestyle the world has to offer. They are left watching the television show The Apprentice, not competing to be an apprentice. America got itself into a mess by not upholding the high standards and expectations it once had, instead giving in to mediocrity; and we’re getting into a mess now with political correctness.

I had tracked down a little cafe in the next village, with a television set that was going to show the World Cup Final on the Saturday. I arrived there mid-morning when it was still deserted, had a couple of beers, ordered a sensational conejo au Franco, and then sat, drinking coffee, and watching the room fill up. With Germans. I was expecting plenty of locals and a sprinkling of tourists, even in an obscure little outpost like this, but not half the population of Dortmund. In fact, I came to the slow realisation as they poured in and sat around me . . . that I was the only Englishman there. They were very friendly, but there were many of them, and all my exits were cut off. What strategy could I employ? It was too late to pretend that I was German. I’d greeted the early arrivals with ‘Guten Tag! Ich liebe Deutschland’, but within a few seconds found myself conversing in English, in which they were all fluent. Perhaps, I hoped, they would think that I was an English-speaker but not actually English. A Rhodesian, possibly, or a Canadian, there just out of curiosity, to try to pick up the rules of this so-called ‘Beautiful Game’. But I knew that I lacked the self-control to fake an attitude of benevolent detachment while watching what was arguably the most important event since the Crucifixion, so I plumped for the role of the ultra-sporting, frightfully decent Upper-Class Twit, and consequently found myself shouting ‘Oh, well played, Germany!’ when Helmut Haller opened the scoring in the twelfth minute, and managing to restrain myself, when Geoff Hurst equalised, to ‘Good show! Bit lucky though!’ My fixed grin and easy manner did not betray the writhing contortions of my hands and legs beneath the table, however, and when Martin Peters put us ahead twelve minutes from the end, I clapped a little too violently; I tried to compensate with ‘Come on Germany! Give us a game!’ but that seemed to strike the wrong note. The most testing moment, though, came in the last minute of normal time when Uwe Seeler fouled Jackie Charlton, and the pig-dog dolt of a Swiss referee, finally revealing his Nazi credentials, had the gall to penalise England, and then ignored Schnellinger’s blatant handball, allowing a Prussian swine named Weber to draw the game. I sat there applauding warmly, as a horde of fat, arrogant, sausage-eating Krauts capered around me, spilling beer and celebrating their racial superiority.

I took a cautious step inside, marveling at the sight before me. A vast conservatory awaited, or what 'once' was a conservatory. Sunlight beamed through the enormous glass roof. I realized that its position at the center of the house precluded its visibility from below. In awe, my heart beating wildly, I lingered in an arbor covered with bright pink bougainvillea, with a trunk so thick, it was larger than my waist. Most of it had died off, but a single healthy vine remained, and it burst with magenta blossoms. I could smell citrus warming in the sunlight, and I immediately noticed the source: an old potted lemon tree in the far corner. 'This must have been Lady Anna's.' I walked along the leaf-strewn pathway to a table that had clearly once showcased dozens of orchids. Now it was an orchid graveyard. Only their brown, shriveled stems remained, but I could imagine how they'd looked in their prime. I smiled when I picked up a tag from one of the pots. 'Lady Fiona Bixby. She must have given them her own names.' Perhaps there hadn't been anything sinister going on in the orchard, after all. Lady Anna was clearly a creative spirit, and maybe that played out in her gardens and the names she gave to her flowers and trees.

Zeit in Bursa In Bursa: ein Moscheehof, klein, uralt, Drin Wasser plätschernd in dem Springbrunn wallt, Und eine Mauer noch aus Orhans Zeiten, Gleichaltrig die Platane ihr zu Seiten, Die allseits heitren Tag durchscheinen läßt - Die Trauer, die noch eines Traumes Rest; Darinnen lächelt mir tief aus dem Innern, Gleichsam aus einem kühlenden Erinnern Des Himmels Blau, as Grün der eb'nen Flur Und jene göttlichste Architektur. Hier ist ein jeder Name Siegeskunde; In eins verflossen, leben Zeit, Tag, Stunde Den Zauber einer längst vergangnen Pracht Des Traums, der noch in diesen Steinen lacht. Das taubenäugige, das Schweigen auch Tönt noch mit jener Zeiten fernem Hauch - Gümüslü: Spiegel frühster Siegeshuld; Muradiye: Bittre Frucht nur der Geduld; Symbol des Lebens: weiße Nilüfer; Moscheen, Türben, Gärten altersschwer, Zahlloser Helden ruhmreiche Legenden, Kriegsschreie auch, die sich zum Himmel wenden, Trägt jeden zur Vergangenheit mit Macht. In diesem Traum schläft Bursa jede Nacht, Mit ihm erwacht es, wenn der Tag anbricht, Zypresse, Rose lacht im Silberlicht - Und der verhalt'nen Brunnen frischer Ton ... Inmitten eines Wunders leb ich schon Von Flügelschlagen und der Wasser Hall - Die Zeit hier: eine Ampel von Kristall ...

You’re back,” I said, refusing to embarrass myself further by getting angry. “I took Tag home. He had big plans to train for his next fight old school, like Rocky, but discovered that it’s a little more appealing in the movies. Plus, I don’t do a very good Apollo Creed.” “Tag’s a fighter?” “Yeah. Mixed martial arts stuff. He’s pretty good.” “Huh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know anything about the sport. “Didn’t Apollo Creed die in one of the movies?” “Yeah. The black guy always dies at the hands of the white man.” I rolled my eyes, and he grinned, making me grin with him before I remembered that I was embarrassed and ticked off that he had kissed me and left town. It felt a little too much like the past. The grin slipped from my face and I turned away, busying myself shaking out the saddle blankets. “So why did you come back?” I kept my eyes averted. He was quiet for a minute, and I bit my lips so I wouldn’t start to babble into the awkward silence. “The house needs more work,” he replied at last. “And I’m thinking of changing my name.” My head shot up, and I met his smirk with confusion. “Huh?” “I heard there was this new law in Georgia. Nobody named Moses can even visit. So I’m thinking a name change is in order.” I just shook my head and laughed, both embarrassed and pleased at his underlying meaning. “Shut up, Apollo,” I said, and it was his turn to laugh.

Thank you, Clara,” I say. “How did you get the key?” “Dumb luck,” she says. “Those twins with the funny names dropped it just a few feet away from me.” “They… dropped it?” Those guys are the most skilled sleight-of-hand tricksters I’ve ever seen. Hard to imagine either of them dropping anything. “Yeah, they were juggling a bunch of things between them as they walked. The key just fell and they didn’t notice.” “But you did.” “Sure.” “How did you know it was the key to our police car?” She lifts the key tag to show me. It’s a clear plastic holder that’s probably meant for pictures. This one frames a piece of paper with a note scrawled in little-kid block letters: “Penryn’s police car—Super Secret.” If I ever see the twins again, it looks like I owe them a zombie-girl mud fight.

I push through the door of the market into the fragrance of Stargazer lilies and roses, then coffee brewing and briny oysters fresh from the coast. I stroll the aisles as if in a museum, looking at every item, loading work recipe ingredients into the wire handbasket along with the odd little goodie: Cozy Shock flan, Scharffenberger chocolate. What I'd really like is ice cream: Tillamook Brown Cow or a Dove dark chocolate on chocolate ice cream bar- heaven on a stick- but it would melt long before I could get home. I grab another Scharffenberger bar to compensate. Inside the gourmet deli case, white plastic tags poke out of luscious mounds of cheese, each with handwritten names bordering on the orgasmic: BURRATA WITH TRUFFLES, EVORA, BRESCIANELLA, BLEU D'AUVERGNE. I can almost feel the creamy sensation against my tongue, smell the musk of perfect aging, taste its tang,

Why?” “Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we’re best left alone.” At this moment the boat bumped gently into the harbor wall. Hagrid folded up his newspaper, and they clambered up the stone steps onto the street. Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn’t blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, “See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?” “Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, “did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?” “Well, so they say,” said Hagrid. “Crikey, I’d like a dragon.” “You’d like one?” “Wanted one ever since I was a kid — here we go.” They had reached the station. There was a train to London in five minutes’ time. Hagrid, who didn’t understand “Muggle money,” as he called it, gave the bills to Harry so he could buy their tickets. People stared more than ever on the train. Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting what looked like a canary-yellow circus tent. “Still got yer letter, Harry?” he asked as he counted stitches. Harry took the parchment envelope out of his pocket. “Good,” said Hagrid. “There’s a list there of everything yeh need.” Harry unfolded a second piece of paper he hadn’t noticed the night before, and read: HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY UNIFORM First-year students will require: 1. Three sets of plain work robes (black) 2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear 3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) 4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings) Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name tags COURSE BOOKS All students should have a copy of each of the following: The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling A

I heard a thunk that sounded like Lend’s head against the door. “This is stupid. Let my dad take care of it. He’s been contacting everyone he knows who is still with IPCA, and—” I walked over and put my own head against the door, pretending there wasn’t anything between us. “And it doesn’t matter. IPCA isn’t the same. There are new people in charge, and they aren’t messing around. I can help her. Raquel would do the same for me. She has done the same for me.” “I don’t see what good it’s going to do for you to waltz back in there and—” “Can I tango back in there, instead? So much sexier than the waltz.” “Evie, I’m serious! You just broke out of IPCA! You’re going to get tased and tagged again.” “I really doubt it. Faerie backup, remember?” I went to the window and looked down into the yard, where Reth stood in the midst of the dead brown grass, looking like a god of spring and sunshine who had seriously lost his way. He was staring straight up at me, although how he knew I’d look straight down that instant I had no idea. Creeper. I shivered a little, still not breaking eye contact with Reth. I was in over my head, I knew that, and I knew I’d owe him even more after this. I had no doubt I’d pay in a way I really didn’t want to, and soon. The door shook as Lend kicked it. “Pretty much the only idea I like less than you walking back into IPCA is you walking back into IPCA with only Jack and Reth for protection.” “They owe me.” “True,” Jack said, standing up and swaying slightly as he shook his head to clear it. “Plus, I’m pretty sure Reth’s threat to remove my hands if I don’t help Evie is still under effect. And I’m always up for making hell at IPCA. It’s a favorite pastime of mine.” Lend kicked the door again, harder. “Along with abandoning people in the Faerie Paths?” “One time! I do that one time and no one’s going to let me live it down? Just off the top of my head I can name five worse things I’ve done in the last year.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Probably not the best way to get back in our good graces.

After placing everything in the backseat, Nadia buckled her seat belt and turned to him. “Corvon,” she addressed him by his in-game persona. “If I were to tell you that you get a prize for besting me, what would you want?” He slid closer, dragging his gaze over her without hiding it. Caleb could see her nipples peaking under her bra. She was as turned on as he was. “Anything I want?” “Perhaps. What would it be?” She wouldn’t commit, which meant she didn’t trust him. It was time to drop the asshole persona. He couldn’t help but let her in. She was his One. “I would want …” He reached for her chin. “...a kiss.” Caleb leaned in so far he could feel her breath on his face. Her pupils were dilated wide, and he ran his thumb over her plush bottom lip. “Would you award me such a prize, Asteria?” She nodded. Closing the distance between them, he claimed her lips. This kiss was even hotter than the one at laser tag, slow and languid, like they had all the time in the world. He wrapped his hand around the base of her head and leaned her body back as her arms wrapped around his waist. Her tongue slid along his in a tantalizing dance that stoked the fire within. She sighed softly into his mouth as he felt the walls between them melt away from the heat. One kiss, that’s all he’d asked for. But he never wanted it to end. This felt dangerous. But so right. Finally, he forced himself to break the kiss, moaning Nadia’s name. She looked dazed, like she was just waking up — or just had the most incredible orgasm. What he wouldn’t give to see Nadia’s afterglow. “Can you drive?” His mouth was bone dry but he managed to get the words out eventually. She nodded and started the motor. He buckled himself in but didn’t stop looking at her. That had been no ordinary kiss. He needed another. As she backed out to turn the truck around, Nadia looked over at him shyly. “I wanna do that again.” “Me, too.” Licking his lips at the idea of tasting her again, he broke the first of his rules. “Come upstairs when we get to my place and we can.

They also devised an ingeniously low-tech solution to a complex problem. Even highly verbal autistic adults occasionally struggle with processing and producing speech, particularly in the chaotic and generally overwhelming atmosphere of a conference. By providing attendees with name-tag holders and pieces of paper that were red on one side and yellow on the other, they enabled Autistics to communicate their needs and desires without having to articulate them in the pressure of the moment. The red side facing out signified, "Nobody should try to interact with me," while the yellow side meant, "Only people I already know should interact with me, not strangers." (Green badges were added later to signify, "I want to interact but am having trouble initiating, so please initiate an interaction with me.") These color-coded "interaction signal badges" turned out to be so useful that they have since been widely adopted at autistic-run events all over the world, and name-tag labels similar to Autreat ("autistic retreat") green badges have recently been employed at conferences for Perl programmers to indicate that the wearer is open to spontaneous social approaches.

DAY 137 Laser Tag “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” ROMANS 8:31 A few years ago my daughter was invited to a laser tag birthday party. She was little, and the laser tag vest and gun were huge, which made it hard for her to play. The first time through, she didn’t do well at all. She was an easy target for the more experienced players, and she got shot—a lot! She was pretty discouraged, but before the next round started, one of the dads handed me a vest and said, “Go get ’em, Dad.” I got the message. I followed close behind my daughter and picked off any kids foolish enough to come near her. By the end of the round, the kids knew that she was no longer an easy target. Her daddy was there, and he was not to be messed with. It was awesome. Her score that round vastly improved, bringing a big smile to her face. When we go into the arena alone, it’s easy to get picked on, singled out, and told that we are destined to fail. But when we go into battle with our heavenly Father’s protection and covering, everything changes. Not only do we have a chance to stay alive, we have a guaranteed win. PRAYER Thank you, Father, for fighting for me, keeping me safe, and helping me come through as a victor. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love? BY AILISH HOPPER We buried the problem. We planted a tree over the problem. We regretted our actions toward the problem. We declined to comment on the problem. We carved a memorial to the problem, dedicated it. Forgot our handkerchief. We removed all “unnatural” ingredients, handcrafted a locally-grown tincture for the problem. But nobody bought it. We freshly-laundered, bleached, deodorized the problem. We built a wall around the problem, tagged it with pictures of children, birds in trees. We renamed the problem, and denounced those who used the old name. We wrote a law for the problem, but it died in committee. We drove the problem out with loud noises from homemade instruments. We marched, leafleted, sang hymns, linked arms with the problem, got dragged to jail, got spat on by the problem and let out. We elected an official who Finally Gets the problem. … We watched carefully for the problem, but our flashlight died. We had dreams of the problem. In which we could no longer recognize ourselves. We reformed. We transformed. Turned over a new leaf. Turned a corner, found ourselves near a scent that somehow reminded us of the problem, In ways we could never Put into words. That Little I-can’t-explain-it That makes it hard to think. That Rings like a siren inside.

Have I really been in a battle?” wondered Stendhal’s hero after many hours blundering around the field of Waterloo, and many people today share a similar perplexity. Like Stendhal’s hero, they eat and drink and sustain the business of life, but the meaning of it all depends upon their conviction of contributing to the liberation of workers, women, the colonized, or other varieties of the oppressed. Like Fabrizio del Dongo, they find a regiment and tag along—the Hussars against Patriarchy, the Dragoon Guards of the Proletariat, and so on. Quite where the real battle lies is hotly disputed, but its significance is agreed to be a final end to oppression. (…) My argument, then, is an exploration of the hypothesis that there is a pure theory of ideology, and while from one point of view it is a critique, from another it is a do-it-yourself ideology kit. It begins with some suggestions about how ideology was generated from eighteenth-century social theory. The long central section is an attempt to characterize ideologies as forms of understanding. The last section develops the view that, although ideology must take on political trappings in order to transform the world, its real character is entirely antithetical to the practice of politics. Ideology is to reality, I suggest, as (in Tolstoy’s opinion) the reports of battles are to the concrete experience of individuals in the field. In ideological moods, we think we see in social and political life those clear lines from the history books depicting the battle order of the antagonists in massed array. They have neat, clear names like bourgeois and proletarian, colonialist and national, city-dweller and producer, in a word, oppressor and oppressed. The actual reality, however, is messy. Things change all the time, and it becomes impossible to keep any clear and distinct identities in focus. Confronting the arguments of ideology, we are forced to transform the Stendhalian question: Is it really a battle that we are in?