Official Couple Quotes

Puck flapped up to the happy couple. "Wait a minute! You have to ask someone to marry you? No one told me that! I thought you just hit them with a club and dragged them back to your cave!" Henry put his arm around Sabrina. "You're officially grounded from ever getting married." "Thank you," Sabrina whispered sincerely.

Jules says there are three things that make you a grown-up: an eight-piece set of matching dishes; gin, vodka and whiskey in the house; and making your bed every morning. I disagree with her. I think you're officially a grown-up when you've got another half. When you don't have to live in fear of other couples. When you don't have to feel you're not good enough.

What brings you onto my property?” Rhev said, cradling his mug with both hands and trying to absorb its warmth. “Got a problem.” “I can’t fix your personality, sorry.” Lassiter laughed, the sound ringing through the house like church bells. “No.. I like myself just as I am, thank you.” “Can’t help your delusional nature, either.” “I need to find an address.” “Do I look like the phone book?” “You look like shit, as a matter of fact.” “And you with the compliments.” Rhev finished his coffee. “What makes you think I’d help you?” “Because.” “You want to toss in a couple of nouns and verbs there? I’m lost.” Lassiter grew serious, his ethereal beauty losing its SOP fuck-yourself smirk. “I’m here on official business.” Rhev frowned. “No offense, but I thought your boss pink-slipped your ass.” “I’ve got one last shot at being a good boy.

The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.

In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since. Our

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.

I'd call it a brilliant success. All those journalists are going to be so disappointed when they find out they missed it." "They'll still have plenty to report on still. They don't need to intrude on Wolf and Scarlet's privacy anymore in order to do it." "Are you going to hold a press conference in place of the wedding in a couple of days? Tell the world about your first foray into matrimonial officiating? Wax poetic about the historical importance of such a union?" He turned his head and smirked down at her. "Nope. But I might tell them what an honor it was for me to be able to marry two of my closest friends, who happen to love each other very much." Her grin widened. "That won't satisfy them at all." "I know. That's half the appeal.

It was an overcast day, but the cloudy weather did not detract from the signs of spring that were evident all around them. It was the second week in March, and the official start of the season was just a couple of weeks away. The magnolia trees had already bloomed, and tulips, daffodils, and wildflowers were shooting up all around the convent's gardens.

With a deliberate shrug, he stepped free of the hold on his shoulder. “Tell me something, boys,” he drawled. “Do you wear that leather to turn each other on? I mean, is it a dick thing with you all?” Butch got slammed so hard against the door that his back teeth rattled. The model shoved his perfect face into Butch’s. “I’d watch your mouth, if I were you.” “Why bother, when you’re keeping an eye on it for me? You gonna kiss me now?” A growl like none Butch had ever heard came out of the guy. “Okay, okay.” The one who seemed the most normal came forward. “Back off, Rhage. Hey, come on. Let’s relax.” It took a minute before the model let go. “That’s right. We’re cool,” Mr. Normal muttered, clapping his buddy on the back before looking at Butch. “Do yourself a favor and shut the hell up.” Butch shrugged. “Blondie’s dying to get his hands on me. I can’t help it.” The guy launched back at Butch, and Mr. Normal rolled his eyes, letting his friend go this time. The fist that came sailing at jaw level snapped Butch’s head to one side. As the pain hit, Butch let his own rage fly. The fear for Beth, the pent-up hatred of these lowlifes, the frustration about his job, all of it came out of him. He tackled the bigger man, taking him down onto the floor. The guy was momentarily surprised, as if he hadn’t expected Butch’s speed or strength, and Butch took advantage of the hesitation. He clocked Blondie in the mouth as payback and then grabbed the guy’s throat. One second later, Butch was flat on his back with the man sitting on his chest like a parked car. The guy took Butch’s face into his hand and squeezed, crunching the features together. It was nearly impossible to breathe, and Butch panted shallowly. “Maybe I’ll find your wife,” the guy said, “and do her a couple of times. How’s that sound?" “Don’t have one.” “Then I’m coming after your girlfriend.” Butch dragged in some air. “Got no woman.” “So if the chicks won’t do you, what makes you think I’d want to?” “Was hoping to piss you off.” “Now why’d you want to do that?” Blondie asked. “If I attacked first”—Butch hauled more breath into his lungs—“your boys wouldn’t have let us fight. Would’ve killed me first. Before I had a chance at you.” Blondie loosened his grip a little and laughed as he stripped Butch of his wallet, keys, and cell phone. “You know, I kind of like this big dummy,” the guy drawled. Someone cleared a throat. Rather officiously. Blondie leaped to his feet, and Butch rolled over, gasping. When he looked up, he was convinced he was hallucinating. Standing in the hall was a little old man dressed in livery. Holding a silver tray. “Pardon me, gentlemen. Dinner will be served in about fifteen minutes.” “Hey, are those the spinach crepes I like so much?” Blondie said, going for the tray. “Yes, Sire.” “Hot damn.” The other men clustered around the butler, taking what he offered. Along with cocktail napkins. Like they didn’t want to drop anything on the floor. What the hell was this? “Might I ask a favor?” the butler said. Mr. Normal nodded with vigor. “Bring out another tray of these and we’ll kill anything you want for you.” Yeah, guess the guy wasn’t really normal. Just relatively so. The butler smiled as if touched. “If you’re going to bloody the human, would you be good enough to do it in the backyard?” “No problem.” Mr. Normal popped another crepe in his mouth. “Damn, Rhage, you’re right. These are awesome.

My parents were never really married, by which I mean they never bothered making their relationship official with any church. I’m not embarrassed by the fact. They considered themselves married and didn’t see much point in announcing it to any government or God. I respect that. In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since.

Does God exist? Unlike many people, this had not been the great inner debate of her life. Under the old Communist regime, the official line in schools had been that life ended with death, and she had gotten used to the idea. On the other hand, her parents’ generation and her grandparents’ generation still went to church, said prayers, and went on pilgrimages, and were utterly convinced that God listened to what they said. At twenty-four, having experienced everything she could experience—and that was no small achievement—Veronika was almost certain that everything ended with death. That is why she had chosen suicide: freedom at last. Eternal oblivion. In her heart of hearts, though, there was still a doubt: What if God did exist? Thousands of years of civilization had made of suicide a taboo, an affront to all religious codes: Man struggles to survive, not to succumb. The human race must procreate. Society needs workers. A couple has to have a reason to stay together, even when love has ceased to exist, and a country needs soldiers, politicians and artists. If God exists, and I truly don’t believe he does, he will know that there are limits to human understanding. He was the one who created this confusion in which there is poverty, injustice, greed, and loneliness. He doubtless had the best of intentions, but the results have proved disastrous; if God exists, he will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here. To hell with taboos and superstitions. Her devout mother would say: “God knows the past, the present, and the future.” In that case, he had placed her in this world in the full knowledge that she would end up killing herself, and he would not be shocked by her actions. Veronika began to feel a slight nausea, which became rapidly more intense.

It wasn’t fun, flying to the Brooklyn Museum. We had to hang from a rope under the griffin’s belly like a couple of Tarzans, dodging policemen, emergency workers, city officials, and several old ladies who chased after us with umbrellas screaming, “There’s the hummingbird! Kill it!

Back in 'my day' – though I didn't claim ownership of it at the time, this is what used to happen: you met a girl, you were attracted to her, you tried to ingratiate yourself, you would invite her to a couple of social events – for instance the pub – and then ask her out on her own, then again, and after a goodnight kiss of variable heat, you were somehow, officially, 'going out' with her. Only when you were semi-publicly committed did you discover what her sexual policy might be. And sometimes this meant her body would be as tightly guarded as a fisheries exclusion zone.

I mean you're only 26 in couple of days, although, you are now officially closer to thirty than twenty!

Like, I don’t know how to interact with you after that awesome date we had. I mean, are we dating now? Are we officially a couple or what? I don’t know.

TJ frowns; she can’t write about willing wind and water in the official report. Voicing elements is a rumor. However, she remembers what her grandmother said five decades ago when she was a child; (it was shortly after the war): “Anyone who trains hard can be a Grade A by the time they’re forty or fifty. But it takes decades more to become strong enough to voice one element.” “One element?” TJ asked. “Do you want to voice the entire universe then?” “Can’t I?” Grandmother didn’t answer, not directly anyway, as most great masters do. They never say you can’t do this or no one can do that or that thing is impossible just because they couldn’t do it, or because they hadn’t found it yet. True masters answer differently. Wisely. Like her grandmother answered that day. “Do you know why we evolve, Tirity?” “Because we’re supposed to?” TJ replied. “Yes. It’s in the grand design. We’re ‘supposed to’ evolve. Not just in body, but also in mind,” she said. “In time. You see, time is the key. If given infinite time, you can evolve your mind infinitely. But we live only for a hundred years or so.” “A hundred years is ‘only’?” “You’re so young, Tirity! But yes, it is little for a complete cognitive evolution. Most hard trainers can prolong it to a couple of hundred years. They even get to call the wind or grow a giant plant that could touch the clouds. But voicing everything in the universe? I think only God can do it, the God who created everything with only words. And if God created the world so that he could see how far the humans can evolve, then I’d say, yes, even a human could get godly power. Godlier than voicing one or two elements. If. Given. The. Time.” “How much time?” “More than thousands of years, maybe. Could even need millions, who knows? …” TJ smiles drily; she remembers how her eyes sparkled at the thought of becoming a goddess who could voice everything. She dreamed of flying in the air or walking in space. She thought of making her own garden full of giant flowers where only enormous butterflies would dance. Some days, when she played video games in VR, she even dreamed of voicing the thunder and lightning to join her wooden sword. She thought time could help her do it. But she didn’t know then, time only makes you grow up. Time steals your dreams. Time only turns you into an adult.

« A bit of useful information. My name is Victoria “call me Vicki” DeVine. I used to be Mrs. Yorick Dane, but giving up my married name was one of the conditions of my receiving valuable property—aka The Jumble—as part of the divorce settlement. Apparently the second official Mrs. Dane didn’t like the idea that someone else had had the name first. Fortunately, she didn’t seem as possessive about Yorick’s Vigorous Appendage. I could have told her that a couple dozen other women had had it before she took possession. But it wasn’t likely that she would keep solo possession of the appendage for long, so let her figure things out the hard way like I did. Of course, if she had been one of those indulgences, then she already knew the signs and might be able to nip them in the bud. »

Our living quarters were in the same compound as the Eastern District administration. Government offices were mostly housed in large mansions which had been confiscated from Kuomintang officials and wealthy landlords. All government employees, even senior officials, lived at their office. They were not allowed to cook at home, and all ate in canteens. The canteen was also where everyone got their boiled water, which was fetched in thermos flasks. Saturday was the only day married couples were allowed to spend together. Among officials, the euphemism for making love was 'spending a Saturday." Gradually, this regimented life-style relaxed a bit and married couples were able to spend more time together, but almost all still lived and spent most of their time in their office compounds. My mother's department ran a very broad field of activities, including primary education, health, entertainment, and sounding out public opinion. At the age of twenty-two, my mother was in charge of all these activities for about a quarter of a million people. She was so busy we hardly ever saw her. The government wanted to establish a monopoly (known as 'unified purchasing and marketing') over trade in the basic commodities grain, cotton, edible o'fi, and meat. The idea was to get the peasants to sell these exclusively to the government, which would then ration them out to the urban population and to parts of the country where they were in short supply.

Then the voice - which identified itself as the prince of this world, the only being who really knows what happens on Earth - began to show him the people around him on the beach. The wonderful father who was busy packing things up and helping his children put on some warm clothes and who would love to have an affair with his secretary, but was terrified on his wife's response. His wife who would like to work and have her independence, but who was terrified of her husband's response. The children who behave themselves because they were terrified of being punished. The girl who was reading a book all on her own beneath the sunshade, pretending she didn't care, but inside was terrified of spending the rest of her life alone. The boy running around with a tennis racuqet , terrified of having to live up to his parents' expectations. The waiter serving tropical drinks to the rich customers and terrified that he could be sacket at any moment. The young girl who wanted to be a dance, but who was studying law instead because she was terrified of what the neighbours might say. The old man who didn't smoke or drink and said he felt much better for it, when in truth it was the terror of death what whispered in his ears like the wind. The married couple who ran by, splashing through the surf, with a smile on their face but with a terror in their hearts telling them that they would soon be old, boring and useless. The man with the suntan who swept up in his launch in front of everybody and waved and smiled, but was terrified because he could lose all his money from one moment to the next. The hotel owner, watching the whole idyllic scene from his office, trying to keep everyone happy and cheerful, urging his accountants to ever greater vigilance, and terrified because he knew that however honest he was government officials would still find mistakes in his accounts if they wanted to. There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed out because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects of one's merits.

I had no particular problem about getting divorced. For all intents and purposes we already were divorced. And I had no emotional hang up about signing and sealing the official documents. If that's what she wanted, fine. It was a legal formality, nothing more. But when it came to why, and how, things had turned out this way, the sequence of events was beyond me. I understood, of course, that over time, and as circumstances changed, a couple could grow closer, or move apart. Changes in a person's feelings aren't regulated by custom, logic, or the law. They're fluid, unstable, free to spread their wings and fly away. Like migratory birds have no concept of borders between countries. But these were all just generalizations, and I couldn't easily grasp the individual case here-that this woman, Yuzu, refused to love this man, me, and chose instead to be loved by someone else. It felt terribly absurd, a horribly ugly way to be treated. There wasn't any anger involved (I think). I mean, what was I supposed to be angry with? What I was feeling was a fundamental numbness. The numbness your heart automatically activates to lessen the awful pain when you want some-body desperately and they reject you. A kind of emotional morphine.

In a 2007 cable about Nauru, made public by WikiLeaks, an unnamed U.S. official summed up his government’s analysis of what went wrong on the island: “Nauru simply spent extravagantly, never worrying about tomorrow.” Fair enough, but that diagnosis is hardly unique to Nauru; our entire culture is extravagantly drawing down finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow. For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere - because we can’t see them - will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of whatever mess we have made. And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more “inputs” (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us. We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can’t afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse. At every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing - a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us.

My parents were never really married, by which I mean they never bothered making their relationship official with any church. I’m not embarrassed by the fact. They considered themselves married and didn’t see much point in announcing it to any government or God. I respect that. In truth, they seemed more content and faithful than many officially married couples I have seen since. Our

Zach: Are you close with your brother? He’s partially to blame for the wrong number thing, isn’t he? * * * Me: Kind of. Yeah, we’re close. My mom worked at the hospital so it was usually just us two fending for ourselves. * * * Me: Okay, so I shouldn’t say fending for ourselves. That makes me sound like a dick and unappreciative of all my mom did. We just spent many nights just the two of us because my mom was a hardworking single lady and she wasn’t searching for a man to put a ring on it because she. Is. Fierce. * * * Zach: I bet your mom is the shit. * * * Me: She really is. You should meet her sometime. * * * Me: Oh, awkward…I’m talking about meeting the family and we’re not even officially a couple. * * * Zach: We’re not? * * * Me: We are? My phone lights up with a call from Zach. “Are you saying we aren’t dating?” he says before I can say anything. “We are…” “Are you saying you’re wanting to see other people?” “No…” “So then we’re a couple.” I’m quiet, unsure what to say. I’m so scared to label this, which is stupid, I know. “Delia?” “Yes, Zach?” “Do you not want to be?” I take a deep breath and push out the answer I know is right, even though my head is saying otherwise. “No. I want to be a couple.” “Are you sure?” “Yes. I’m just…scared. I know I shouldn’t put that all on you, but you’re kind of the reason I’m scared. I like you, Zach—a lot—but what if this doesn’t work out? What if we jump in too soon?” He sighs. “Remember when we were talking about our exes? About the lack of fireworks?” “Yeah.” “I swear to god, someone is going to swoop in and take my man card for this shit, but I felt them with you. When we first kissed, I knew right then you were worth jumping in with both feet and taking a risk.” I don’t let myself overthink his words, wanting to keep my head level and clear. “What if I’m not worth the risk?” “We’ll never know if we don’t take it.” “Say you’re a couple already, Dalilah!” Robbie’s voice comes loud through the speaker. “He paused the movie during an epic scene!” “How many times have I told you that her name is Delia. Deal-ya. Get it?” “You talk about me with Robbie?” I ask. “Sometimes.” “Say yes! He looks like someone kicked his goat!” “Shut the fuck up, Robbie!” I laugh. “If I say yes, will he stop shouting?” “YES!” Robbie shouts again. “I’ll take the risk, Zach, but you better be worth it.” “You’ve seen my Harry Potter underwear—you know I’m worth it.” Then he whispers, “Wink.

The four had rented a riverside cottage and lived together there as two couples. Their vice was public, official and perfectly obvious to all. It was referred to quite naturally as something entirely normal. There were rumours about jealous scenes that took place there and about the various actresses and other famous women who frequented the little cottage near the water’s edge. One neighbour, scandalized by the goings-on, alerted the police at one stage and an inspector accompanied by one of his men came to make enquiries. It was a delicate mission: there was nothing the women could be prosecuted for, least of all prostitution. The inspector was deeply puzzled and could not understand what these alleged misdemeanours could possibly be. He asked a whole lot of pointless questions, compiled a lengthy report and dismissed the charges out of hand. The joke spread as far as Saint-Germain.

He tells me about human weddings, held inside or outside if the weather is mild. The couple wear clothes that are painfully uncomfortable and make their friends do the same. An officiant says a few words that neither party has really thought through—sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse—or at least don’t believe will be put to the test. Family and friends toast the couple, eat a little, drink too much, give vases, dance badly, and then run for the exits.

The jury was composed of eight blacks and four whites. Hoffa and his attorney, the legendary Edward Bennett Williams, struck only white jurors in the selection process. Hoffa had a black female lawyer flown in from California to sit at counsel table. He arranged for a newspaper, The Afro-American, to run an ad praising Hoffa as a champion of the “Negro race.” The ad featured a photo of Hoffa’s black-and-white legal team. Hoffa then had the newspaper delivered to the home of each black juror. Finally, Hoffa’s Chicago underworld buddy Red Dorfman had the legendary boxing champion Joe Louis flown in from his Detroit home. Jimmy Hoffa and Joe Louis hugged in front of the jury as if they were old friends. Joe Louis stayed and watched a couple of days of testimony. When Cye Cheasty testified, Edward Bennett Williams asked him if he had ever officially investigated the NAACP. Cheasty denied he had, but the seed was planted. Hoffa was acquitted. Edward

But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found. Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.

Dad and Mom had a lesbian couple living in our chalet for several years in the early 1970s. One was Dad’s secretary, the other Mom’s helper. They shared a room. Fortunately, my parents were hypocritical and acted as if, no matter their official religious absolutes, the higher call was to ignore what the Bible said in favor of what they hoped it meant. Thus, without ever saying it, it seems to me my parents were affirming that the Bible should be read as if Jesus was the only lens through which to see God. The result was that Francis and Edith Schaeffer were nicer than their official theology.

People like Mrs. Lee were used to only one kind of Chinese wedding banquet—the kind that took place in the grand ballroom of a five-star hotel. There would be the gorging on salted peanuts during the interminable wait for the fourteen-course dinner to begin, the melting ice sculptures, the outlandish floral centerpieces, the society matron invariably offended by the faraway table she had been placed at, the entrance of the bride, the malfunctioning smoke machine, the entrance of the bride again and again in five different gowns throughout the night, the crying child choking on a fish ball, the three dozen speeches by politicians, token ang mor executives and assorted high-ranking officials of no relation to the wedding couple, the cutting of the twelve-tier cake, someone’s mistress making a scene, the not so subtle counting of wedding cash envelopes by some cousin,* the ghastly Canto pop star flown in from Hong Kong to scream some pop song (a chance for the older crowd to take an extended toilet break), the distribution of tiny wedding fruitcakes with white icing in paper boxes to all the departing guests, and then Yum seng!†—the whole affair would be over and everyone would make the mad dash to the hotel lobby to wait half an hour for their car and driver to make it through the traffic jam.

The people who hitched to Katmandu (and are doubtlessly still doing so, despite the usual reports of official prohibitions) seem to me to be of this sort, displaced persons, aimless couples without papers. They are ill-suited to play the role which they are conventionally given; that of proletarian playboys, outriders of a modern sub-culture, who intend, mainly through will-power, to end injustice and rule the world. For the most part they have chosen to be the sole inhabitants of private worlds, and their aspirations will not be found in the bazaars of the international youth movement, or of the global underground or any other such tentative organizations.

Between the fourth and fifth innings, they had the Kiss Cam going around. A heart was displayed on a big screen in the stadium and a camera would zoom in on a couple. The couple would then kiss. There was an older couple with white hair--had to be married. Then they moved on to a couple of kids, who just laughed and waved. Then there was Jason and me. On the big screen. A big red heart around us. I felt my face turn as red as that heart. I heard Bird squeal and felt her punch my arm, thought I heard Tiffany shriek behind me. “Kiss him!” Bird ordered. The camera stayed on us. I knew it would until we kissed. I turned my head to look at Jason, but he was already there, kissing me, while the spectators screamed and applauded, especially the Ragland Rattlers. I guess it was official--we were on a date.

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall.

To me, Chicago was the bar in the twelfth-floor lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, where I drank strawberry daiquiris—sophisticated!—with my visiting parents and with girls I was trying to impress. It was the elegant shops at the new, fancy Water Tower Place. My favorite Chicago spots were primarily restaurants. Dianna’s Opaa, in Greektown on South Halsted Street, with its lanky, serpent-like owner, Petros Kogiones, performing his host duties that were as important as the food—on the nights he wasn’t there, you felt cheated—sliding back his sheet of long black hair to greet his female customers with an overly familiar kiss and their dates with a disarming, arms-flung-wide cry of “cousin!” then conducting his odd 9 p.m. ceremonies, calling up all the engaged couples to be officially blessed by Famous Petros in the name of God, the Greek Orthodox Church, and Dianna’s Opaa! We’d all cheer and raise our juice glasses of Roditis high. Or

Charlie, I want to get married," she said. "Well, so do I, darling -" "No, you don't understand," she said. "I want to get married right now." Froggy knew from the desperate look in her eyes that Red was dead serious. "Sweetheart, are you sure now is a good time?" he said. "I'm positive," Red said. "If the last month has taught me anything, it's how unpredictable life can be - especially when you're friends with the Bailey twins. This could very well be the last chance we'll ever get! Let's do it now, in the Square of Time, before another magical being can tear us apart!" The idea made Froggy's heart fill with joy, but he wasn't convinced it was the right thing to do. "Are you sure this is the wedding you want?" he asked. "I don't mean to be crude, but the whole street is covered in a witch's remains." A large and self-assured smile grew on Red's face. "Charlie, I can't think of a better place to get married than on the ashes of your ex-girlfriend," she said. "Mother Goose, will you do the honors?" Besides being pinned to the ground by a three-ton lion statue, Mother Goose couldn't think of a reason why she couldn't perform the ceremony. "I suppose I'm available," she said. "Wonderful!" Red squealed. "And for all intents and purposes, we'll say the Fairy Council are our witness, Conner is the best man, and Alex is my maid of honor. Don't worry, Alex! This will only take a minute and we'll get right back to helping you!" Red and Froggy joined hands and stood in the middle of Times Square as Mother Goose officiated the impromptu wedding. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today - against our will - to unexpectedly watch this frog and woman join in questionable matrimony. Do you, Charlie Charming, take Red Riding Hood as your lovably high-maintenance wife?" "I do," Froggy declared. "And do you, Red Riding Hood, take Charlie Charming as your adorably webfooted husband?" "I do," Red said. "Then it is with the power mistrusted in me that I now pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss the frog!" Red and Froggy shared their first kiss as a married couple, and their friends cheered. "Beautiful ceremony, my dear," Merlin said. "Believe it or not, this isn't the strangest wedding I've been to," Mother Goose said.

It had been almost exactly four months since we’d met; four months since we’d locked glances in that bar; four months since his eyes and hair had made my knees turn to overcooked noodles. It had been four months since he’d failed to call me the next day, week, month. I’d moved on, of course, but the rugged image of Marlboro Man had left an indelible mark on my psyche. But I’d just begun my Chicago planning before I’d met him that night and had continued the next day. And now, at the end of April, I was just about set to go. “Oh, hi,” I said nonchalantly. I was leaving soon. I didn’t need this guy. “How’ve you been?” he continued. Yikes. That voice. It was gravelly and deep and whispery and dreamy all at the same time. I didn’t know until that moment that it had already set up permanent residence in my bones. My marrow remembered that voice. “Good,” I replied, focusing my efforts on appearing casual, confident, and strong. “I’m just gearing up to move to Chicago, actually.” “No kidding?” he said. “When are you going?” “Just a couple of weeks,” I replied. “Oh…” He paused. “Well…would you like to go out to dinner this week?” This was always the awkward part. I could never imagine being a guy. “Um, sure,” I said, not really seeing the point of going out with him, but also knowing it was going to be next to impossible for me to turn down a date with the first and only cowboy I’d ever been attracted to. “I’m pretty free all this week, so--” “How ’bout tomorrow night?” he cut in. “I’ll pick you up around seven.” He didn’t know it at the time, but that single take-charge moment, his instantaneous transformation from a shy, quiet cowboy to this confident, commanding presence on the phone, affected me very profoundly. My interest was officially ablaze.

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice. It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do. In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk." O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in. "Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, to do the things we've always talked about." The jocular tone was gone. This was a serious discussion. They digressed into some things they'd "always talked about," especially reforming Medicare and Social Security. For Paul and Alan, the possibility of such bold reinventions bordered on fantasy, but fantasy made real. "We have an extraordinary opportunity," Alan said. Paul noticed that he seemed oddly anxious. "Paul, your presence will be an enormous asset in the creation of sensible policy." Sensible policy. This was akin to prayer from Greenspan. O'Neill, not expecting such conviction from his old friend, said little. After a while, he just thanked Alan. He said he always respected his counsel. He said he was thinking hard about it, and he'd call as soon as he decided what to do. The receiver returned to its cradle. He thought about Greenspan. They were young men together in the capital. Alan stayed, became the most noteworthy Federal Reserve Bank chairman in modern history and, arguably the most powerful public official of the past two decades. O'Neill left, led a corporate army, made a fortune, and learned lessons - about how to think and act, about the importance of outcomes - that you can't ever learn in a government. But, he supposed, he'd missed some things. There were always trade-offs. Talking to Alan reminded him of that. Alan and his wife, Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC news, lived a fine life. They weren't wealthy like Paul and Nancy. But Alan led a life of highest purpose, a life guided by inquiry. Paul O'Neill picked up the telephone receiver, punched the keypad. "It's me," he said, always his opening. He started going into the details of his trip to New York from Washington, but he's not much of a phone talker - Nancy knew that - and the small talk trailed off. "I think I'm going to have to do this." She was quiet. "You know what I think," she said. She knew him too well, maybe. How bullheaded he can be, once he decides what's right. How he had loved these last few years as a sovereign, his own man. How badly he was suited to politics, as it was being played. And then there was that other problem: she'd almost always been right about what was best for him. "Whatever, Paul. I'm behind you. If you don't do this, I guess you'll always regret it." But it was clearly about what he wanted, what he needed. Paul thanked her. Though somehow a thank-you didn't seem appropriate. And then he realized she was crying.

Another episode startled Trump’s advisers on the Asia trip. As the president and his entourage embarked on the journey, they stopped in Hawaii on November 3 to break up the long flight and allow Air Force One to refuel. White House aides arranged for the president and first lady to make a somber pilgrimage so many of their predecessors had made: to visit Pearl Harbor and honor the twenty-three hundred American sailors, soldiers, and marines who lost their lives there. The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just off the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff. Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him. “He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser. Trump’s lack of basic historical knowledge surprised some foreign leaders as well. When he met with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations back in September 2017, Trump complimented him on the spectacular Bastille Day military parade they had attended together that summer in Paris. Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.” A senior European official observed, “He’s totally ignorant of everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested.” Tillerson developed a polite and self-effacing way to manage the gaps in Trump’s knowledge. If he saw the president was completely lost in the conversation with a foreign leader, other advisers noticed, the secretary of state would step in to ask a question. As Tillerson lodged his question, he would reframe the topic by explaining some of the basics at issue, giving Trump a little time to think. Over time, the president developed a tell that he would use to get out of a sticky conversation in which a world leader mentioned a topic that was totally foreign or unrecognizable to him. He would turn to McMaster, Tillerson

First, pick through the dried beans and throw out any that look fucked up, then rinse the winners. Put them in a big container and cover with a couple inches of water. They’re going to swell up as they soak and you don’t want those bastards sticking up out the water. Soak them overnight or for at least 4 hours. This will help cut down on your cook time. Throw them in the water before you go to work and then they’re ready to cook when you get home.

When you’re ready to cook the beans, drain the soaking water and throw the beans in a pot. You can add some carrots, onions, celery, or bay leaves for flavor, but that shit is not required. Add a bunch of fresh water, about 3 times the height of the beans in the pot. Simmer this, uncovered, until the beans are tender. Add a couple pinches of salt in the last 10 minutes of cooking for flavor. Drain any extra liquid and toss out any sad-looking veggies in the pot and store the cooked beans in the fridge or freezer until you’re ready

If you had an Internet connection and lived in North America at the time, you may have seen it. Vasquez is the man behind the “Double Rainbow” video, which at last check had 38 million views. In the clip, Vasquez pans his camera back and forth to show twin rainbows he’d discovered outside his house, first whispering in awe, then escalating in volume and emotion as he’s swept away in the moment. He hoots with delight, monologues about the rainbows’ beauty, sobs, and eventually waxes existential. “What does it mean?” Vasquez crows into the camera toward the end of the clip, voice filled with tears of sheer joy, marveling at rainbows like no man ever has or probably ever will again. It’s hard to watch without cracking up. That same month, the viral blog BuzzFeed boosted a different YouTuber’s visibility. Michelle Phan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese American makeup artist, posted a home video tutorial about how to apply makeup to re-create music star Lady Gaga’s look from the recently popular music video “Bad Romance.” BuzzFeed gushed, its followers shared, and Lady Gaga’s massive fanbase caught wind of the young Asian girl who taught you how to transform into Gaga. Once again, the Internet took the video and ran with it. Phan’s clip eventually clocked in at roughly the same number of views as “Double Rainbow.” These two YouTube sensations shared a spotlight in the same summer. Tens of millions of people watched them, because of a couple of superconnectors. So where are Vasquez and Phan now? Bear Vasquez has posted more than 1,300 videos now, inspired by the runaway success of “Double Rainbow.” But most of them have been completely ignored. After Kimmel and the subsequent media flurry, Vasquez spent the next few years trying to recapture the magic—and inadvertent comedy—of that moment. But his monologues about wild turkeys or clips of himself swimming in lakes just don’t seem to find their way to the chuckling masses like “Double Rainbow” did. He sells “Double Rainbow” T-shirts. And wears them. Today, Michelle Phan is widely considered the cosmetic queen of the Internet, and is the second-most-watched female YouTuber in the world. Her videos have a collective 800 million views. She amassed 5 million YouTube subscribers, and became the official video makeup artist for Lancôme, one of the largest cosmetics brands in the world. Phan has since founded the beauty-sample delivery company Ipsy.com, which has more than 150,000 paying subscribers, and created her own line of Sephora cosmetics. She continues to run her video business—now a full-blown production company—which has brought in millions of dollars from advertising. She’s shot to the top of a hypercompetitive industry at an improbably young age. And she’s still climbing. Bear Vasquez is still cheerful. But he’s not been able to capitalize on his one-time success. Michelle Phan could be the next Estée Lauder. This chapter is about what she did differently.

The day before we headed out was an unusually warm day. Shasta had a hard time of it. Bindi wrapped her in wet towels to help her cool off. Every few minutes she would raise her head and bark a bit. The last couple of years, Shasta’s back had been out so bad that I would wheelbarrow her around. She always liked sleeping in the car. I think it made her excited to be going on a trip. That night she seemed so restless that I put her in the car and kissed her good night. I knew she’d be happiest there. In the morning, we were off to our first official day of filming the movie. Steve put the last few things together in the zoo. I went out to get Shasta organized for staying with a friend. She was still asleep. “Good morning, lazybones,” I said. I bent down to give her a kiss on the forehead. Then I realized she wasn’t there. Sometime during the night, Shasta had died. She was seventeen and a half years old, the only dog I ever had. She went through nine months of quarantine to join me in Australia. She had been a loyal friend and an excellent guard dog. Bindi and I said good-bye to Shasta together. We discussed the circle of life and collected a few of Shasta’s favorite things. She would be buried with her favorite blanket. I knew I’d never have another dog. Now Sui was the only dog in the family.

Nigeria is not alone, either in the prevalence of child marriage or in attempts to end the practice. In September 2008, Moroccan officials closed sixty Koranic schools operated by Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui, because he issued a decree justifying marriage to girls as young as nine. “The sheikh,” according to Agence France-Presse, “said his decree was based on the fact that the Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to his favourite wife when she was that age.”23 It should come as no surprise, then, given the words of the Koran about divorcing prepubescent women and Muhammad’s example in marrying Aisha, that in some areas of the Islamic world the practice of child marriage enjoys the blessing of the law. Time magazine reported in 2001 that “in Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys,” and notes that “the law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move.”24 Likewise, the New York Times reported in 2008 that in Yemen, “despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a 9-year-old.”25 (The characterization of proponents of Islamic law as “conservatives” is notable—the Times doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that “conservatives” in the U.S. are not typically advocates of child marriage.) And so child marriage remains prevalent in many areas of the Islamic world. In 2007, photographer Stephanie Sinclair won the UNICEF Photo of the Year competition for a wedding photograph of an Afghani couple: the groom was said to be forty years old but looked older; the bride was eleven. UNICEF Patroness Eva Luise Köhler explained, “The UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007 raises awareness about a worldwide problem. Millions of girls are married while they are still under age. Most of theses child brides are forever denied a self-determined life.”26 According to UNICEF, about half the women in Afghanistan are married before they reach the age of eighteen.27

Why am I getting so worked up over this? Because I like him and I feel like he’s telling me, in code, that I’m not worth his time. That starting something with me would be a mistake. I’m officially giving up being logical about this. He should too. I already know it’s going to suck saying good-bye, so he should kiss me and at least give me a tingly memory to take back with me. “I might be different.” I clench my teeth when I realize I said that out loud, keeping myself from saying any more. “Pippa.” He breathes a sigh, eyes looking everywhere but at me. “You are different.” I slowly turn toward him on the bench, pleading with my eyes for him to look at me. Footsteps crunching gravel behind me rob me of my daydream, and an older couple approaches the metal railing near the cliff edge. The tired-looking woman glances back at the bench with longing. “You can sit here,” Darren says to her. He clasps my hand, sending a current up my arm to my chest. “We were just leaving.” He leads me back down the path and for the brief moment he keeps hold of my hand, it’s the only thing anchoring me to the ground.

the UN IPCC AR3 actually made the following admission:206   In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.   So the IPCC agrees that climate is a “coupled, non-linear chaotic system” and “therefore that long term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” I regard this official statement by the IPCC as devastating but entirely appropriate. The climate system is chaotic and multivariate. So although climate is deterministic it is not determinable.

When most people think of intolerance, they imagine a racist taunting a black person. Or they may envision a male chauvinist hurling bigoted insults at women. It seldom occurs to them that intolerance comes in all political shapes and sizes. A protester storming a stage and refusing to let someone speak is intolerant. So, too, are campus speech codes that restrict freedom of expression. A city official threatening to fine a pastor for declining to marry a gay couple is every bit as intolerant as a right-winger wanting to punish gays with sodomy laws. Intolerance exists on the right and the left. It knows no exclusive political or ideological affiliation. It happens any time someone uses some form of coercion, either through government fiat or public shaming rituals, to restrict open debate and forcefully eliminate opponents from the playing field.

They headed across the meadow, passing groups of students eating lunch. A mottled bird that looked like a cross between a chicken and a pheasant burst from the undergrowth. Ash watched it flutter into the trees, then land in the bushes. “What in the world…?” Vale followed his gaze to where the bird waddled through the undergrowth. “It’s a spruce grouse.” Ash stared into the trees. A few steps away from the meadow, the light dropped by half. “What did you call it again?” “Spruce grouse is the official name, though they’re sometimes called prairie chickens or fool hens.” Ash chuckled. “Fool hens, huh?” “Yeah. People think they’re kind of dumb—the way they let other animals get close to them. They’re pretty mellow.” Ash watched it as it faded back into the autumn foliage, the plumage a match to the brown and orange leaves. “How do you know all this stuff?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I read things, I guess.” “I know that, but where’d you learn the stuff about birds?” “I’ve got a couple books on wildlife. Books on the woods, and on camping, and survival, and…” Vale shrugged. “I just read a lot of stuff. Okay?” Ash grinned. “Pretty cool.

How to Apply for the Best divorce Advocate in Chennai? When a marriage does not last for an extended period of time, couples frequently search online for information on how to apply for divorce Lawyers in Chennai. Many couples must endure the difficult process of separation that eventually results in the best divorce advocate in Chennai at some point in their lives. It is a serious truth that provides us with a second chance to start over. The lack of legal complexities and the emotional turmoil each spouse experiences while deciding to end their partnership amicably are the reasons why the proceedings are simple. This article will teach you how to file for divorce, especially if you're Indian. Frequently Mentioned Events that Ultimately Lead to Divorce As we have closely analyzed, it has been conceivable over time to list a few typical legal justifications that are adequate for one spouse to petition the family court for a divorce from the other. These factors include: The petitioner has learned that their partner is having an extra - marital or sexual relationship with someone else. when the petitioner's spouse has avoided them for a period longer than two years beginning on the date the divorce petition was filed. when the petitioner's partner repeatedly mistreats him or her, either physically or mentally, in a way that seems so grave that it could be death. Another cause for filing a divorce petition could be inability or rejection of sexual activity. Divorce proceedings may start when one partner or better half has had a terminal illness for a long time. If there is evidence of mental illness, the other party may choose to divorce lawfully. List of Paperwork Required for Divorce Filing If a married couple in India wants to end their marriage by mutual consent, they must present the following paperwork to the court: the partners' biographical information and family information. The previous two years' income tax or IT returns statement for the spouses. Types of Divorce in Chennai In Chennai, a divorce typically occurs using one of the two processes listed below: Divorce by mutual consent Contested divorce In the first scenario, the spouse's consent to divorcing one another. These divorces' maintenance obligations can be any amount of money or nothing at all. Any parent whose obligation is shared is solely responsible for child custody. Again, this depends on the cooperation and respect between the two people. The husband and wife must execute a "no-fault divorce," as permitted by Section B of the Hindu Marriage Law, under this consensual arrangement. The first motion is done on the date set by the family court, and the relevant couple's statements are electronically recorded and preserved for later use. Both parties agree to maintain the jury as a witness throughout the remaining processes. The judge gives the couple six months to reevaluate their next motion or second motion. Many couples change their minds during this time, thus the court is using this as an opportunity to prevent a negative event like divorce. Even after these six months, if there is still no change of heart, the court moves forward with its decision and issues a divorce decree, officially recognising the previously married couple's permanent separation.

What’s your favorite part of the trip?” “I don’t have one.” “C’mon, there must’ve been something.” “I took a weekend trip to Caño Cristales. I liked seeing the different colors of the river. It was like a liquid rainbow.” Many of the students had spent their time traveling around Colombia on the weekends. No one had a car, but we could hop on a plane for fairly cheap and fly into different areas such as Bogotá, the country’s official capital city, or Cali, the salsa-dancing capital of the world. Amanda had even convinced me to fly with her to the seductive, sizzling city of Cartagena. We climbed the fortified walls that had once protected the city from pirate attacks and watched the sunset. The entire city had a Miami-style skyline and, after the sun went down, infatuation seemed to bloom into fever and take hold of the city. At night we could hear the clink of rum bottles and mojito glasses in cafés on almost every street as moonlight picked out the silhouettes of softly swaying couples. We walked for hours along the coastal city streets. Candle flames beckoned from the dimness of nearby baroque churches.

English and half Nigerian, Stacey had never set foot outside the United Kingdom. Her tight black hair was cut short and close to her head following the removal of her last weave. The smooth caramel skin suited the haircut well. Stacey’s work area was organised and clear. Anything not in the labelled trays was stacked in meticulous piles along the top edge of her desk. Not far behind was Detective Sergeant Bryant who mumbled a ‘Morning, Guv,’ as he glanced into The Bowl. His six foot frame looked immaculate, as though he had been dressed for Sunday school by his mother. Immediately the suit jacket landed on the back of his chair. By the end of the day his tie would have dropped a couple of floors, the top button of his shirt would be open and his shirt sleeves would be rolled up just below his elbows. She saw him glance at her desk, seeking evidence of a coffee mug. When he saw that she already had coffee he filled the mug labelled ‘World’s Best Taxi Driver’, a present from his nineteen-year-old daughter. His filing was not a system that anyone else understood but Kim had yet to request any piece of paper that was not in her hands within a few seconds. At the top of his desk was a framed picture of himself and his wife taken at their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. A picture of his daughter snuggled in his wallet. DS Kevin Dawson, the third member of her team, didn’t keep a photo of anyone special on his desk. Had he wanted to display a picture of the person for whom he felt most affection he would have been greeted by his own likeness throughout his working day. ‘Sorry I’m late, Guv,’ Dawson called as he slid into his seat opposite Wood and completed her team. He wasn’t officially late. The shift didn’t start until eight a.m. but she liked them all in early for a briefing, especially at the beginning of a new case. Kim didn’t like to stick to a roster and people who did lasted a very short time on her team. ‘Hey, Stacey, you gonna get me a coffee or what?’ Dawson asked, checking his mobile phone. ‘Of course, Kev, how’d yer like it: milk, two sugars and in yer lap?’ she asked sweetly, in her strong Black Country accent.

Love is not the answer to everything, but it creates a climate of security in which we can seek answers to those things that bother us. In the security of love, a couple can discuss differences without condemnation. Conflicts can be resolved. Two people who are different can learn to live together in harmony. We discover how to bring out the best in each other. Those are the rewards of love.

In 1946 the young couple was transferred to Esslingen. “Germany was destroyed, devasted. There were no residences for American women. But at least my Swiss passport allowed me to live officially in the officers’ quarters with my husband. We

A couple of weeks after Mia’s bone graft surgery in January 2014, she received a letter from Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona on official United States congressional letterhead. Mia was so excited about the letter that she stood on the fireplace hearth (the living room stage) and proceeded to read it to the entire family. In the letter, Congressman Franks told Mia that he, too, was born with a cleft lip and palate and underwent many surgeries as a child. He told her he understood how she felt and told her not to get discouraged because he recognized how she is helping so many people. He invited her to Washington, DC, to receive an award from Congress for service to her community. As soon as she had finished reading it to us, she exclaimed, “Can we go?” Knowing how Jase puts little value on earthly awards and how he likes to travel even less, I responded with a phrase that most parents can understand and appreciate: “We’ll see.” Mia immediately ran upstairs and tacked the letter to her bulletin board, full of hope and optimism. How could Jase say no to this? Oh, she knew her daddy well. He couldn’t, and he didn’t. That summer, Mia, Jase, Reed, Cole, and I spent a few days together visiting monuments and historical sites in Washington before meeting Congressman Franks on July 8 in his office on Capitol Hill. Mia’s favorite monument was the Lincoln Memorial because she had learned about it in school, so it was cool to see it “for real.” It was really crowded there, and people were taking pictures of us while we were trying to read about the monument and take photographs ourselves. Getting Jase out of there took a while because of so many fans wanting pictures--he’s very accommodating. That’s why it surprised me that this was Mia’s favorite site. I’m glad she remembers the impact of the monument and didn’t allow the circus of activity from the fans to put a damper on her experience. Congressman Franks presented Mia with a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for “outstanding and invaluable service to the community” at a press conference held at the foot of the Capitol steps. Both he and Mia made speeches that day to numerous cameras and reporters. Hearing my ten-year-old daughter speak about her condition and how she hopes people will look to God to help them get through their own problems was an unbelievably proud moment for me, Jase, and her brothers. After the press conference, Congressman Franks took us into the House chamber where Congress was voting on a new bill. He took Mia down to the floor, introduced her to some of his colleagues, and let her push his voting button for him. When some of the other members of Congress saw this, they also asked her to push their voting buttons for them. Of course, Mia wasn’t going to push any buttons without quizzing these representatives about what exactly she was voting for. She needed to know what was in the bill before she pushed the buttons. Once she realized she agreed with the bill and saw that some members were voting “no,” she commented, “That’s just rude.” Mia was thrilled with the experience and told us all how she helped make history. Little does she know just how much history she has made and continues to make.

We weren't a couple, but friends didn't spoon every night. Fate and I were officially in relationship-no-man's-land.

Also the Federal Reserve System was again safe and sound. A couple of hours after Kennedy’s death, the new President Johnson’s first official action in office was ordering the state printing office in Washington D.C. to stop printing anymore Kennedy-appointed state notes and remove the notes already in circulation. With the assistance of the Federal Reserve System the circulated money was intercepted from transfer and destroyed. American society and the rest of the world never noticed this. Since then not a single president has ever risked undermining the power of the Federal Reserve System.

Dagon brushed a couple flies away from his face angrily. “These flies are truly annoying. If their presence persists, I may have to call you, Ba’alzebub.” Ba’alzebub meant “Lord of the Flies.” Dagon said, “Now let us call upon the Sons of Rapha.”               • • • • • Goliath and Ishbi came alone to the sanctuary later that night. Dagon limited his presence to the highest officials of the warrior cult. And Dagon alone of the gods was present. He felt that including the other deities would only dilute his authority in the eyes of his devotees. Goliath and Ishbi knelt before Dagon, eager for duty. He had told them of Israel’s new institution of monarchy, and their first king, Saul of Benjamin. Goliath said, “A king would unite their tribes and make their military formidable.” “Indeed,” pondered Dagon. “What is your command, my god?” “Continue organizing and training the Sons of Rapha. But begin gathering intelligence on this Saul. He is a mighty warrior king and you will be fighting battles against him. You will need to know how he thinks, his weaknesses, his strengths.

The International Herald Tribune reported on April 21, 2006, that the “crumbling mud-brick buildings” in the area Hussein was trying to re-build in Babylon, “look like smashed sandcastles at the beach. The newspaper observed that Babylon had been “ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied…soldiers had even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags”. The Mayor of a nearby village, Hilla, told the newspaper that he still had hopes that Babylon could someday have “restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots…and maybe even a Holiday Inn.” Iraqi officials are quoted as saying they would still like to turn Babylon into “a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.” In spite of this, one Bible commentator wrote recently, that it was “enormously significant” that the U.S. had agreed to invest $700,000 (that’s thousands, not millions or billions – enough to buy a couple of nice houses) into re-building Babylon as a ‘tourist attraction.’ He wrote that ancient Babylon would become “the wealthiest and most powerful city on the face of the planet.” In arriving at this conclusion he has interpreted the Bible’s Daughter of Babylon verses as applying to the site of ancient Babylon.

of the agreed facts: the official bedding; the young couple co-habiting at Ludlow; their youth and health; and the absence of any concern about the consummation of their marriage; convincingly indicates

PARTNERS IN CRIME HOW THE CLINTONS WENT FROM DEAD BROKE TO FILTHY RICH And the money kept rolling in from every side. —Song from the musical Evita The quotation above refers to the Juan and Evita Peron Foundation, established in 1948 by Evita Peron for the purpose of helping Argentina’s poor. Evita professed to be a champion of the campesinos—the wretched workers who lived in shanties on the outskirts of Buenos Aires—and they trusted Evita. She had, after all, risen up herself from poverty and obscurity. Her fame was the result of her marriage to the general who became the military leader of the country, Juan Peron. Long before the Clintons, Argentina had its own power couple that claimed to do good and ended up doing very well for themselves. There are, obviously, differences between the Clintons and the Perons. Despite her personal popularity, Evita remained an appendage of her husband, seeking but never obtaining political office. At one point, Evita had her eye on an official position, but the political establishment vigorously opposed her, and her husband never supported her in this effort. Hillary, by contrast, was elected senator and now, having deployed her husband on the campaign trail, seeks election to the nation’s highest office previously held by him. The Perons also had a foundation that took in millions of pesos—the equivalent of $200 million—from multiple foreign sources, Argentine businesses, as well as contributions from various individuals and civic groups. With its 14,000 employees, the foundation was better equipped and more influential than many agencies within the Argentinian government. Evita and her cronies were experts at shaking down anyone who wanted something from the government; donations became a kind of tax that opened up access to the Peron administration. Trade unions sent large contributions because they saw Evita and her husband as champions of their cause. In 1950, the government arranged that a portion of all lottery, movie, and casino revenues should go to the foundation. While the foundation made symbolic, highly publicized gestures of helping the poor, in reality only a fraction of the money went to the underprivileged. Most of it seems to have ended up in foreign bank accounts controlled by the Perons, who became hugely wealthy through their public office profiteering. When Evita died in 1954 and the foundation was shut down, Argentines discovered stashes of undistributed food and clothing. No one from the foundation had bothered to give it away, so it sat unused for years. Helping the poor, after all, wasn’t the real reason Evita set up her foundation. No, she had a different set of priorities. Like so many Third World potentates, the Perons used social justice and provision for the poor as a pretext to amass vast wealth for themselves. The Clintons have done the same thing in America; indeed, Hillary may be America’s version of Evita Peron.

banns’. This is a weird English custom dating back to the twelfth century, where couples have to give official notice of their intention to marry several weeks in advance – presumably giving time for anyone to come forward if they know the bride and groom are secretly related.

At 9.03 pm on June 21, 1982 Diana produced the son and heir which was cause for national rejoicing. When the Queen came to visit her grandchild the following day her comment was typical. As she looked at the tiny bundle she said drily: “Thank goodness he hasn’t got ears like his father.” The second in line to the throne was still known officially as “Baby Wales” and it took the couple several days of discussion before they arrived at a name. Prince Charles admitted as much: “We’ve thought of one or two. There’s a bit of an argument about it, but we’ll find one eventually.” Charles wanted to call his first son “Arthur” and his second “Albert”, after Queen Victoria’s consort. William and Harry were Diana’s choices while her husband’s preferences were taken into account in their children’s middle names.

While Diana and her mother started planning guest lists, wardrobe requirements and the other details for the wedding of the year, the media vainly attempted to discover her hiding-place. The one man who did know was the Prince of Wales. As the days passed, Diana pined for her Prince and yet he never telephoned. She excused his silence as due to the pressure of his royal duties. Finally she called him only to find that he was not in his apartment at Buckingham Palace. It was only after she called him that he telephoned her. Soothed by that solitary telephone call, Diana’s ruffled pride was momentarily mollified when she returned to Coleherne Court. There was a knock on the door and a member of the Prince’s staff appeared with a large bouquet of flowers. However there was no note from her future husband and she concluded sadly that it was simply a tactful gesture by his office. These concerns were forgotten a few days later when Diana rose at dawn and travelled to the Lambourn home of Nick Gaselee, Charles’s trainer, to watch him ride his horse, Allibar. As she and his detective observed the Prince put the horse through its paces on the gallops Diana was seized by another premonition of disaster. She said that Allibar was going to have a heart attack and die. Within seconds of her uttering those words, 11-year-old Allibar reared its head back and collapsed to the ground with a massive coronary. Diana leapt out of the Land Rover and raced to Charles’s side. There was nothing anyone could do. The couple stayed with the horse until a vet officially certified its death and then, to avoid waiting photographers, Diana left the Gaselees in the back of the Land Rover with a coat over her head. It was a miserable moment but there was little time to reflect on the tragedy. The inexorable demands of royal duty took Prince Charles on to wales, leaving Diana to sympathize with his loss by telephone. Soon they would be together forever, the subterfuge and deceit ended. It was nearly time to let the world into their secret. The night before the engagement announcement, which took place on February 24, 1981, she packed a bag, hugged her loyal friends and left Coleherne Court forever. She had an armed Scotland Yard bodyguard for company, Chief Inspector Paul Officer, a philosophical policeman who is fascinated by runes, mysticism and the after-world. As she prepared to say goodbye to her private life, he told her: “I just want you to know that this is the last night of freedom in your life so make the most of it.” Those words stopped her in her tracks. “They felt like a sword through my heart.

The dramatically different manner in which the couple responded to William’s injury publicaly underlined what those within their immediate circle have known for some time, the fairy-tale marriage between the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer is over in all but name. The breakdown of their marriage and the virtual collapse of their professional relationship is a source of sadness to many of their friends. This much discussed union which began with such high hopes has now reached an impasse of mutual recrimination and chilling indifference. The Princess has told friends that spiritually their marriage ended the day Prince Harry was born in 1984. The couple, who have had separate bedrooms at their homes for years, stopped sharing the same sleeping quarters during an official visit to Portugal in 1987. Little wonder then that she found a recent article in the Tatler magazine which posed the question: “Is Prince Charles too sexy for his own good” absolutely hilarious because of its unintentional irony.

One regularly nips off around the globe projecting majesty and generally intimidating the world’s smaller nations on official State Visits, but being invited to spend a couple of days with one in the United Kingdom is generally considered the pinnacle of any lesser head of state’s time in office.

Have you adopted any new ideas or practices generated by your staff and lawyers? Yes. In the pricing area, our policy is that if you come up with a new way to price with the customer, then do it. The young people have come up with ways to use Twitter, for example, to keep up with customers. That comes from the younger people, not from my generation. Over the past fifteen years, we’ve had lots of contributions from staff to keep our model and practices up to date and responsive. Everyone takes this seriously. A couple years ago, someone on staff was talking about a late-night brief or a big project, and two to three other legal assistants stayed until midnight to help this person out. They coined the phrase, “The Summit team runs toward the fire.” If I’m doing something that requires a late-night effort, I don’t have to go to anyone to get permission for help and work and support from others. Another person who doesn’t have anything on the case will run to the project to help out. That happens every single day. The staff sees a problem someone else has, and they run to the problem to help out. This stuff just happens. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of. Many years ago, someone sent an email thanking other people for helping. No one officially adopted the practice, but somebody did it, and it was rewarded, and now whenever someone does something they should be congratulated for, someone sends an email to everyone in the firm praising the efforts of that person to everyone else in the firm. Those emails fly around Summit on a daily basis. That has the impact of encouraging supportive behavior and making it part of the way Summit operates.

Seeing my breathless reaction causes him to break out with a smug grin. “That was our first official kiss as a couple.

The crowd was getting hysterical, so I reached into my back pocket and flippe open my wallet to reveal my badge. "Official business," I announced. "Please leave the area." This had the desired effect; it deescalated the mood and prompted most of the crowd to disperse. It's funny what a plastic badge and a meaningless phrase can do. The authority of the police is anothe mass delusion that can be useful at times. I hadn't even needed to claim I was a cop; all it took was a couple of simple cues to invoke the delusion.

Go see who it is, Kez,’ says Liam. ‘And if it’s anyone official, get rid of them.’ Keren opens the door to a middle-aged woman, holding flowers and what looks like a lunchbox. She’s wearing the sort of jeans Keren’s mum wears, and a flowery top. Her shoulder-length blonde hair is wispy and untamed, and her face has a sort of faded prettiness. Keren looks down at the stranger’s feet, which have unvarnished nails emerging from battered Birkenstocks. Imagine not painting your toenails, Keren thinks. The woman smiles broadly and holds out the flowers and the plastic box. ‘Hi, I’m Jane Headley. We live at number five: my husband Fergus and I. I just wanted to come and say welcome to Sycamore Gardens,

the drawing up of false accounts by capitalist enterprises coupled with the corruption of state officials makes it possible for monopolists to conceal the real amount of their profits and to evade payment of a considerable part of taxes. That which they must pay, they recover from the mass of people by various means (for instance, by increasing prices, rents, etc.). Finally the mechanism of taxation is used also for the extraction of a considerable part of the profits of the small and medium capitalists

The transition of the National Rifle Association is a perfect parable: over a couple of decades, it evolved from a gun-safety education organization to a thuggish gang that rewards those at the top with millions of dollars based on proven ability to muscle elected officials into doing what they mostly know is wrong.

Girls will run for queen, and boys will run for king-there's definitely no accounting for people who might not identify as either. And the hardest for me to ignore, same-sex couples aren't allowed to attend together. We can dance with each other once they get there, maybe, if no chaperones care enough to stop them, but they can't officially go as dates. And just in case they hadn't made their prejudice clear enough if your gender identity doesn't explicitly align with the one you were assigned at birth you can't come dressed the way you might want. Girls wear dresses and the boys's wear tuxes. And that's the end of it. The whole thing royally sucks in my opinion.

MOO Moo. MOO: One morning in 2012, commuters in Rayburn, Pennsylvania, got stuck in a traffic jam when a cow and a bull decided to have “relations” in the middle of a busy intersection. Police tried shooing them away, but, according to reports, “That just got the bull mad and it started to escalate.” Game officials arrived and steered the couple into a private trailer. MOO: In 2012 a cow named Sadhana and her “bullfriend” got married in a lavish wedding ceremony in Guradia, India. More than 1,500 guests attended. Reason for the wedding: Sadhana’s owners were unable to have children, so without a daughter to marry off, the well-to-do couple married off their cow. MOO: An 18-year-old thief wearing a full-body cow costume stole 26 gallons of milk from a Walmart in Garrisonville, Virginia, in 2011. Witnesses recalled seeing him exit the store “on all fours.” Hours later police apprehended the human cow “skipping down the sidewalk” in front of a nearby McDonald’s.

As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

overcompensated and next thing the buggers aren’t dropping far enough, so they’re hanging there strangling!’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Gave the Yanks their cards, packed them off home, and Albert and me took over their quota.’ ‘What’s the most you ever done in a session at Nuremberg, Harry?’ someone asked. We were all quiet as we watched him and waited for his answer. ‘Mmmm, one afternoon we did twenty-seven in two hours forty minutes.’ ‘Bloody hell! So they weren’t left to hang for very long.’ ‘No, hadn’t the time. As soon as we put four down, the doc would go underneath the scaffold, ’ave a listen with his stethoscope, feel for a pulse. “Right, okay,” he’d say. We had these soldier orderlies. They’d go underneath and lift them up, take the weight, we’d take the ropes and bags off, the soldiers would put them onto trolleys and whisk them away to the temporary morgue. A couple of minutes later the next four were marching in.’ That had been the craic last night. As Ken and I sit having breakfast with the hangmen, I can’t rid myself of the contradictory feeling that, somehow, I’m letting Russell down by breakfasting with the men who are about to hang him. ‘How was he last night?’ Allen looks rather bleary-eyed. He’s on his second mug of hot, sweet tea. And at least his third cigarette. We tell him. He takes a deep draw. ‘I think this lad will go without any bother.’ As he speaks, the blue smoke spills out of his mouth. Just after ten to eight, from the kitchen door at the end of the mess, Ken, the two hangmen, Teddy Bear and I, watch as the Governor, Lord Lieutenant of the County and other official witnesses file quietly into the block. They enter the empty execution chamber. At three

The Coast Guard patrol boat watched the City of Savannah steaming off toward New York. The Cahoone’s captain believed this, coupled with the general view of the situation, conveyed the impression that all passengers had been rescued. It was an unhappy mistake. Another followed. The Cahoone called up the Monarch of Bermuda. The Cahoone’s log recorded: “Monarch of Bermuda so busy handling press radio traffic that we cannot break in with a call.” The Monarch of Bermuda later denied the charge; its radio operators insisted they were only transmitting names of survivors and dead. Next the Cahoone approached the Morro Castle. The patrol boat’s log documents another curious incident: “Held verbal conversation with the crew of the Morro Castle, grouped on forecastle deck. When asked if they wanted to be taken off, some member of the crew, apparently an officer, replied they were going to stand by for a tow to port.” The official Coast Guard report on the Cahoone’s role makes equally strange reading: “Had the Morro Castle or the Monarch of Bermuda given the Cahoone any information that lifeboats had gone ashore or that passengers had jumped over the side, the Cahoone could have gone inshore to search, and possibly some lives might have been saved by that vessel.” (Author’s italics) In all, the Cahoone spent ninety minutes floundering around the Morro Castlebefore going off to search for swimmers. In the end it recovered two bodies.

Us. I’m talking about us. About being a real couple. About being in a relationship. I don’t want to try and hide my feelings for you anymore. I want this to be official.” Warmth pools in my chest at his words. “Are you asking me to go steady?” He pinches my hip, making me squeak. “Keep being a smartass, see where that gets you.

The ceremony was beautiful, and as Hope and Mark stood beneath the towering floral arch, I couldn't help but think this scene truly looked like something out of a fairytale wedding. I even started feeling a little emotional--- until they started to recite their vows. Hope had told me earlier that she and Mark had written their own vows but failed to say more about them. At first, I thought my hearing had failed or I was having some kind of stroke. "What language is that?" I whispered to Dom from our perch in the back. "I... I actually think it's a pretend language," he replied. "What are you talking about?" I asked. "What do you mean pretend language?" "Do you have one of the programs with you?" he asked. "I bet there's a note in there about it." "No, but let me grab one." I didn't have to go far before I found the table at the back of the aisle and a basket full of programs. Each program was iridescent, in the shape of a flower with a beautiful lilac ribbon tied at the bottom. Under the order of service, a small line read: "The bride and groom have chosen to recite their own vows to one another in their favorite mythical tongue: Sindarin, one of the Elvish languages of Tolkein." My eyes were wide as saucers. Both the Elvish and English translations were printed below for everyone to follow along. Dom was going to lose it for sure. I quietly moved back to my seat next to Dom, who was still filming. "You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you," I whispered as I casually fanned myself with the floral program. "What is it?" he asked. "It's Elvish," I said, holding back a laugh. "What?" he replied a little too loud. "Keep your voice down," I said, now pointing to the line in the program as proof. "Like, from The Lord of the Rings?" "I can't believe she didn't mention this to me earlier," I said. "But yes, I think so. This wedding is just full of surprises." "For once, I'm at a loss for words," Dom said. "They are clearly perfect for each other if this was something they both enjoyed. I bet they go to all those conferences for people who like fantasy stuff." "Maybe that's what they're doing for their honeymoon," I added. "I haven't asked them about it yet. If it is, I'm going to die." We were both holding back giggles at this point, but thankfully the couple finished reciting whatever it was they were saying to each other. I wondered whether we'd need to add subtitles to our video if we showed this part of the ceremony. As soon as the officiant pronounced them man and wife, the ceremony musicians played a set of chimes and the officiant asked for every guest to open the small box that was placed at the base of every bench. Inside each box was a butterfly that flew into the air and fluttered around the entire area above all the guests. I supposed that since real fairies weren't available, butterflies were the next best option. It was actually the perfect ending to this mythical ceremony, and everyone cheered in delight.

The Sixteen Great Bodhisattva Precepts are recited as part of a number of Soto Zen ceremonies. In the bimonthly confession ceremony, which is one of the oldest Buddhist ceremonies, practitioners gather on the full and new moons and formally confess their past actions, pay homage to the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and recite the precepts. In funeral and memorial services, the priest confers the precepts upon the deceased person. In the marriage ceremony, the precepts are recited by the wedding couple as they make their vows to live together. The officiating priest does not directly ask the couple if they will receive and continue to observe the precepts, but there is an implied commitment on the part of the couple to practice them in their marriage.

Set an alarm for fifteen to thirty minutes before the official bedtime so you can ease into bed. This last step is key. If you don’t start winding down until your actual bedtime, you will go to bed later than you intend to. So start the process at least fifteen minutes before. If you want to read for more than a few minutes, or have some couple time, set your bedtime alarm earlier. Turn off the lights when the moment arrives. Try this for a week and see how it goes. Since most adults can’t really “sleep in,” at least during the week, then going to bed on time is the best way to recreate this sense of on-vacation-with-no-kids luxury.

Ryle and I weren’t even an official couple yet when I ran into Atlas at that restaurant the first time. Hell, if Atlas had given me any reason to believe there was a chance between us that night, I know without a doubt that I would have chosen him over Ryle. I barely even knew Ryle at that point.

On to the good news, Bailey. We are officially a couple now. Me and you. Us. I’ve claimed you as mine. So see, using my truck isn’t a big deal. Couples do that sort of thing all the time. They share. So being the generous guy I am, I am now willing to be exclusive with you and share my possessions and my body with only you. How cool is that?” I state. And then I remember to add, “And you will be sharing your body with me. Only me. That’s a very important part of being a couple. An us, if you will.” Huh. That’s odd. She’s not squealing for joy as I expected. In fact, her eyes have gone a little past squinty and now getting close to scary. I, once again, deploy my best smile on her. And I’m still waiting for that joyful squeal. “So, let me get this straight. You have decided that we are now officially a couple. An us. And you decided this why?” she asks. Still with the squinty eyes! What’s up with that? “Several reasons. I realized how much I like you in my life when I heard what happened yesterday. I could have lost you! That’s unacceptable. And Pooh made me realize that you are worth claiming. So, you’re mine now. We’re going to be great together, babe.” “While you were deciding this, with Pooh’s help, did it occur to you to ask me what I thought about us becoming a couple? Maybe I don’t want to be tied down to one guy? Maybe I like you in bed but don’t want to be in a relationship with you? Huh? Did you think about what I might want?” Bailey asks me. “Uh, well, I guess I just assumed you would want to be mine. I’m a catch, babe! Seriously! Quit smirking at me! I have a good job, the best dad possible, club members that are family to me and they like you already. I am loyal and would never cheat or hurt you in any way. I own my own home, bike, truck. No debt. And I can promise you lots and lots of orgasms. I would never deprive you of those. I solemnly swear you can use my cock, hands or mouth anytime you want to get off. I am a giver like that. So, why wouldn’t you want me to be yours?” “Wow! At least you’ll be generous with your cock. That makes me feel better already!” Bailey sarcastically says. “I solemnly swear that so you have no worries on that front. Use my body however you want. I’ll never say no to you. And whatever freaky fantasies you may have, I’m your guy. I’d like freaky, dirty sex with you.

1. I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it. 2. Don't be confused that my interest in religion, faith, and spirituality is driven by any sense of faith or spirituality of my own. 3. I am sensitive to the value of faith and religion and spirituality in people's lives because I'm a journalist. 4. Have a sense of humor about life - you will need it. And be courteous. 5. A couple of weeks is a long time in American politics. 6. I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people. 7. I am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

That is the reason we go out and attempt to discover what different people are stating about items like this. Since it's a moderately new item, there are certifiably not a lot of PowerVolt audits out there, however we had the option to locate a couple. It appears as though we're not by any means the only individuals that adoration this gadget. The most we found that somebody had spared was 90% off their bill, however the normal reserve funds were somewhere in the range of 60% and 70%. Nobody appears to have had an issue utilizing it, so what we discovered was likely positive. PowerVolt Energy Saver is easy to get You Should Visit on Its official website:

Bringing Citizen Participation to Life Some years ago John McKnight attended the annual Canadian Conference of Community Development Organizations. Several hundred groups were in attendance. The convener of the conference told him that the best community “developer” in all of Canada was at the conference and pointed toward a middle-aged man named Gaëtan Ruest, the mayor of Amqui, Quebec. John introduced himself to Mayor Ruest and asked about Amqui. The mayor said that it was a town of about six thousand people on the Gaspé Peninsula amid the Chic-Choc Mountains, located at the intersection of the Matapédia and Humqui rivers. These rivers are the richest Atlantic salmon rivers on the North American continent, and Amqui is the regional center for fishing for these salmon. Gaëtan invited John to visit his town, and a year later John was able to take him up on the invitation. He found that all the townspeople were French-speaking, and a great deal of the economic base of the community was from fisherpeople who came to fish for the rare Atlantic salmon. One day, as Gaëtan and John walked together down the street, two men approached the mayor. There was a long conversation in French. After they were finished Gaëtan explained to John what had happened. The mayor said that the town had put nets on salmon streams in order to keep the fish near Amqui and accessible to the fishing guides. The two men reported that somebody was cutting the nets to let the salmon go upstream where they could poach them. “That’s terrible,” Gaëtan replied. “What do you think we can do about that?” The men thought for a while and then suggested three things that could be done. “Is there anybody who could help you do those things?” Gaëtan asked. “Yes,” they responded. “We know a couple of other fisherpeople who could help.” Gaëtan said, “Will you ask them to join you to meet with me at city hall this evening?” They agreed. That evening John joined Gaëtan at the meeting with four concerned people. The mayor had insisted that they meet in the city council’s meeting room and he led a discussion of how the group could deal with the salmon poaching problem. By the time they were done, the group had specific plans and specific people committed to carrying them out. Then Gaëtan asked, “Is there anything the city can do to help you with the job?” The participants came up with two ways the city could be helpful. “I am making you the official Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee,” Gaëtan said. “I want you to hold your meetings in the city council meeting room because you are official. I want you to come to city council meetings and tell the council people how you are coming along.” The convener of the National Association of Community Development Organizations, previously mentioned, told John that the process he had observed in the council meeting room that gave birth to the Amqui Salmon Preservation Committee was repeated over and over during Gaëtan’s long tenure as mayor. As a result, the convener said that in Amqui, hidden away in the Chic-Choc Mountains, almost all the residents had become officials of the local government and the principal problem-solvers for the community. John wholeheartedly believes that every public official can learn a great deal from the mayor of Amqui.

Sue and I stood in the hallway, waiting on Vice President Biden to arrive to officiate at the ceremony. When he appeared, I took a couple of steps forward, preparing to shake his hand, but without making eye contact with me, he went straight to Sue, thanking her for the sacrifices she'd made, for her service, and for letting me come back to government. What a classy thing to do! I thought. In that moment I knew that he understood how difficult life can be for families, who also serve, and who often see when we're frustrated, sad, or angry--or sometimes, elated--but can't always be told the reason why.

On 1 April AD 527 the Illyrian soldier was officially named Justin’s successor. When Justinian was acclaimed emperor he made his way in through Constantinople’s Golden Gate, down the processional route of the Mese, bordered originally with those wide vegetable gardens – the stuff of life of the city – and then with canopied walkways and sculptures (canopies and shops are still here, selling everything from apple tea to diamond-studded handguns). The shouts of acclamation for Constantinople’s new ruler would have bounced off the marble colonnades and the bronze statuary lining the processional way. And one in the city in particular must have listened to this brouhaha with great pleasure. Three years before, a rather extraordinary woman had moved into Justinian’s palace apartments to share his bed, and just three days after his investiture Justinian and his new wife, his showgirl-bride Theodora, were crowned together as joint emperor and empress. Enjoying a flurry of revived interest in the twenty-first century, Empress Theodora deserves every moment of her late-found fame. Now honoured as a saint by the Greek Orthodox Church, this player in Constantinople’s history has not been universally loved: ‘This degenerate woman [Theodora] was another Eve who heeded the serpent. She was a denizen of the Abyss and mistress of Demons. It was she who, drawn by a satanic spirit and roused by diabolic rage, spitefully overthrew a peace redeemed by the blood of martyrs,’ wrote Cardinal Baronius. Our most detailed source for Theodora’s life is a lascivious, spittle-flecked diatribe, a Secret History written by our key source for Justinian and Theodora’s reign, Procopius (Procopius would write both hagiographies and damnations of the imperial couple and their works). Clearly gorged with literary and rhetorical tropes, Procopius’ account has to be taken with a large amphora of salt – but many of the details ring true both for the age and as a backstory to the remarkable life of this girl from Constantinople.

You are going to give us man lessons.”   Ariana let out a sharp bark of laughter, her eyes twinkling. “Him? Are you kidding? He’s going to give us man lessons?”   “We don’t need to look super convincing as men close up,” Kyra said. “We just need to give the impression of men Fred’s taken into his service. If you saw a potion bottle with a red stamp on it, your brain would make you think it was a red skull, and you’d think it was dangerous even if the stamp was actually a grinning squirrel.” Kyra looked at Fred skeptically. “I’m sure Fred can give us a few tips, at least, of how to act like men.”   “Hey! I am more than capable of giving man lessons.” Fred smiled broadly at Kyra. “What do you want to know?”   “For one thing, we need to know how to walk.”   “No problem. I’ve been walking most of my life.” Fred held up a hand. “Stop and watch.”   The girls leaned up against an apple tree with Rosie at their feet.   “First, you aren’t just acting like any kind of men; you’re going to be especially manly men. I picked you up to work for me, after all, and I wouldn’t choose just any men for that sort of thing. I need men who can fight and lift heavy things. You might want to spit occasionally.”   “Why?”   “It helps keep you from looking too smart. Now, because you are so manly, it naturally follows that you have large upper-arm muscles. Huge muscles, really. The way you let people know this is by slightly bending your elbows and holding your arms out from your body, like your muscles are so big they’re getting in the way.”   Kyra and Ariana bent their elbows and pushed their arms a couple of inches away from their bodies.   The edges of Fred’s lips quirked as though he was trying to restrain a smile. “Then you need to let them know that not only are you muscular, you’re confident of your abilities in all areas. You accomplish this by swaggering when you walk. Langley, stay.” He pointed for the dog to sit next to the girls.   Fred sauntered away from them under the lacey white boughs of the trees in a masculine strut.   “Your turn.”   The girls copied Fred’s walk while he stood back and watched.   “A little less hip swinging, Kyra.”   “I’m not—”   “And don’t walk so close together. Imagine there’s at least one invisible guy between you at all times.”   Ariana leaned over and whispered in Kyra’s ear. “He wants us to imagine him between us. Guys are so weird.”   “Men don’t whisper, but if you have to do it, at least do it the right way.”   Ariana and Kyra stopped walking and turned back to Fred.   “If you find you need to whisper, you don’t get up close to the other person and lean into their ear. Stay where you are, a person’s-width apart, and put a hand up on the far side of your face like a shield.” He demonstrated with his hand out straight from one side of his face. “Then turn your head slightly to the other person and say what you need to say.”   The girls exchanged a look.   “No ‘best friends’ glances at each other like that, either. Or ‘dears’ and ‘darlings.’ Men insult each other every chance they get.”   “Men don’t have best friends?” Kyra asked.   “You’d only know it by the ferocity of the insults. If a guy’s your really good pal, you let him have it at every opportunity.”   “Got it, fathead,” Ariana said.   “Perfect.” Fred plucked two blossoms from the tree above him and tucked one behind each girl’s ear, then grabbed another and tucked it behind his own ear. “You have officially completed man lessons. Now that you know how to act like manly men, what’s the plan?

It's not what it looks like. That was a photo one of my barbecue teammates took. That was our ice luge. It melted, so I was picking it up and throwing it over the fence there. But from the angle he took the picture, my teammates thought it looked funny and posted it online. You can write your story and try to get a couple of clicks. It is what it is. ut it's just stupid. It's a nonstory. Given what’s happening with so many elected officials in the capital with so many real scandals going on, it seems like someone is trying to do a little misdirection and throw some heat onto a political consultant who has no skin in the game.

I get why we need to go as a couple. That way, I would be her official defender. Any move against her would be a direct insult to me.

Provide a full biography. Some of your readers will be more interested in your full bio. This is the place to provide it. You should share your education, your work history, any books you have written, current interests or hobbies, your family, and so forth. The more you can be a real person, the more people will connect with you. 105 10. Tell them how to contact you. Why hide this? Make it easy. Though it sometimes creates additional work for me, I enjoy hearing from my readers and even answering questions as time permits. (Make it clear what not to contact you about too.) You will also want visitors to follow you on Twitter and Facebook, so provide links to those pages. Finally, you might want to create a separate About page for your Twitter profile so you can make your page more specific to Twitter followers. This is the page you then link to in your Twitter profile. While this list provides a top ten, there are a couple of additional items you might want to include. These are, in my opinion, optional: 11. Include a photo or video. Since I currently have several on my sidebar already (they rotate with every screen refresh), I don’t have a separate one on my About page. If you don’t have one there, please do include one on your About page. People want to see what you look like! And, please, if you’re forty, don’t use your high school graduation picture or a Photoshopped photo. Be authentic. Be real. You might also consider adding a short video welcome. This could add even more personality and warmth. 12. Add a colophon. Publishers used to add these at the end of books to describe details about the fonts and paper used. You can use it to describe the technologies you are using in your blog (e.g., blogging system, themes, hosting service, and so on), along with design notes about type fonts, photography, and anything else you deem noteworthy. You’d be surprised at how many e-mails I get about these items every week. 13. Consider a disclaimer. This is especially important if you work for someone else. You don’t want your readers to confuse your blog posts with your company or organization’s official position.

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I’m sweaty. I’m tired. And I stink in places I really shouldn’t be stinking.” I whine and shoot a glare to Dean, who’s sitting in the passenger seat looking sheepish. “What?” he exclaims with his hands raised. “I didn’t know we’d have fucking car trouble. Your car isn’t even a year old.” “I know!” I snap, hitting my hand on the wheel and growling in frustration. “Stupid old lady car!” I exclaim and push my head closer to the window for a breeze. “The frickin’ air conditioning isn’t even working anymore. Me and this car are officially in a fight.” “I think we all just need to remain calm,” Lynsey chirps from the back seat, leaning forward so her head comes between Dean’s and mine. “Because, as horrible as this trip was, after everything that’s happened between the three of us the past couple of years, I think this was really healing.” I close my eyes and shake my head, ruing the moment I agreed that a road trip to the Rocky Mountains to pick up this four-thousand-dollar carburetor from some hick who apparently didn’t know how to ‘mail things so they don’t get lost.’” Honestly! How are people who don’t use the mail a thing? Though, admittedly, when we got to the man’s mountain home, I realized that he was probably more familiar with the Pony Express. And I couldn’t be sure his wife wasn’t his cousin. But that’s me being judgmental. Still, though, it’s no wonder he wouldn’t let me PayPal him the money. I had to get an actual cashier’s check from a real bank. Then on our way back down the mountain, I got a flat tire. Dean, Lynsey, and I set about changing it together, thinking three heads could figure out how to put a spare tire on better than one. One minute, I’m snapping at Dean to hand me the tire iron, and the next minute, he’s asking me if I’m being a bitch because he told me he had feelings for me. Then Lynsey chimes in, hurt and dismayed that neither of us told her about our conversation at the bakery, and it was a mess. On top of all of that, my car wouldn’t start back up! It was a disaster. The three of us fighting with each other on the side of the road looked like a bad episode of Sister Wives: Colorado Edition. I should probably make more friends. “God, I hope this thing is legit,” Dean states, turning the carburetor over in his hands. “Put it down. You’re making me nervous,” I snap, eyeing him cautiously. We’re only five miles from Tire Depot, and they close in ten, so my nerves are freaking fried. “I just want to drop this thing off and forget this whole trip ever happened.” “No!” Lynsey exclaims. “Stick to the plan. This is your grand gesture! Your get out of jail free card.” “I don’t want a get out of jail free card,” I cry back. “The longer we spent on that hot highway trying to figure out what was wrong with my car, the more ridiculous this plan became in my head. I don’t want to buy Miles’s affection back. I want him to want me for me. Flaws and all.” “So what are you going to do?” Dean asks, and I feel his concerned eyes on mine. “I’m going to drop this expensive hunk of metal at the counter and leave. I’m not giving it to him naked or holding the thing above my head like John Cusack in Say Anything. I’ll drop it off at the front counter, and then we’ll go. End of story.” Lynsey’s voice pipes up from behind. “That sounds like the worst ending to a book I’ve ever heard.” “This isn’t a book!” I shriek. “This is my life, and it’s no wonder this plan has turned into such a mess. It has desperation stamped all over it. I just want to go home, eat some pizza, and cry a little, okay?” The car is dead silent as we enter Boulder until Dean’s voice pipes up. “Hey Kate, I know you’re a little emongry right now, but I really don’t think you should drive on this spare tire anymore. They’re only manufactured to drive for so many miles, you know.” I turn and glower over at him. He shrinks down into his seat a little bit.

The question everyone asked me before I went to Birobidzhan and after I returned was: Are there any Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Region? I posed it to Valery Gurevich, the deputy governor responsible for everything Jewish in the region, from the children's song-and-dance ensemble to the statues of imaginary shtetl figures all over the city - a series of illustrations to Sholem Aleichem stories cast in bronze. I felt ridiculous asking a Jew in Birobidzhan if there were Jews in Birobidzhan, but was a master at answering this question. His answer was "Well . . ." He tried to avoid giving me any figures at all - I had to fill them in later - but the gist of his story was this: Before the Soviet Union collapsed, the census placed the percentage of Jews in the Jewish Autonomous Region at a bit over four, which was about four times the percentage of Jews in the general population of the Soviet Union. In absolute figures, that was about nine thousand Jews. But these figures were based on answers people gave to the census taker, an official, in a country where if one had a choice (for example, if one of one's parents was not Jewish), one did not choose to call oneself Jewish. Just ten years before the last Soviet census, the percentage of Jews in the region's population had been three times higher - suggesting that it had been diluted by intermarriage but the number of people who had some Jewish roots was a lot higher than the official nine thousand. So it should come as no surprise that the number of people who emigrated to Israel when this became possible, at the turn of the 1990s, far exceeded the official number of Jews in Birobidzhan. And there were still some Jews left - a couple thousand, give or take as many. Of them, roughly five people - including Iosif Bekerman, Maria Rak, and Valery Gurevich - were engaged on an ongoing basis with Jewish culture. Of them, only one - Bekerman - spoke Yiddish. There were no Yiddish writers left in the Jewish Autonomous Region.

In several villages in Punjab, kids have developed neurological problems and deformities as there is uranium in the water due to pollution by nearby plants. And Bhopal, the mother of all industrial disasters, serves as an example of how little our government values Indian citizen's lives. Let there be no doubt, the government is as much a culprit in Bhopal as Union Carbide. Every plant approval, safety norm and inspection also involves government authorities. Palms are greased, relationships are made and the good Indian businessmen learn to manage government officials. After all, the skill of doing business in India lie in managing the system, not innovation or better products. The nexus between the rich and government servants is strong and you will often find one in the other's living room in the evenings. Why do so many politicians socialize with industrialists? They bond over dinners and plan their kids' education and their wives' shopping trips. At parties, they shake hands over approvals. It all seems perfectly harmless. What's wrong with making friends? However, trouble happens when disaster strikes.The first person the politician/bureaucrat helps is the industrialist, not the suffering people. I'm sure Anderson knew the right people. And he used his contacts to make his escape. The little kid who got gassed didn't have contacts. Neither did he have a government representative who would bang his fists on the table to get him justice. Because, quite simply, people in India are cheaper than fish. All hope is not lost, however. We can still learn our lessons and do a couple of things right. One, our laws need to be amended for corporate disasters. Corporates make a mistake, they have to pay—heavily. Two, politician-industrialist socializing should not be encouraged. While a politician making social visits to industrialists can't be banned, it should definitely be disclosed. Only then will, perhaps, an ordinary citizen's life be valued higher than a company's profit. What's a Citizen's Life Worth?, page 42 and 43

The Federal Government government's policy of racial exclusion had roots earlier in the twentieth century. The Wilson administration took the initial steps. Terrified by the 917 Russian revolution, government officials came to believe that communism could be defeated in the United states by getting as many white Americans as possible to become homeowners-the idea being that those who owned property would be invested in the capitalist system. So in 1917 the federal Department of Labor promoted an 'Own-Your-Own-Home' campaign, handing out 'We Own Our Own Home' buttons to schoolchildren and distributing pamphlets saying that it was a 'patriotic duty' to cease renting and to build a single-family unit. the department printed more than two million posters to be hung in factories and other businesses and published newspaper advertisements throughout the country promoting single-family ownership-each one had an image of a white couple or family.

In 2014, an executive used the software’s “god view”—which shows customers’ real-time movements, as well as their ride history—to track a journalist who was critical of the company. Other sources have claimed that most corporate employees have unfettered access to customers’ ride data—and have, at times, tracked individual users just for fun.6 In 2012, Uber even published an official blog post bragging about how it can tell when users have had a one-night stand—dubbing them, somewhat grossly, “rides of glory.” (Uber deleted the post a couple years later, when major stories started breaking about its disregard for privacy.)

A couple could only live together & be considered decent & right if they were officially married.

Jules and me extensively, talked to everyone at the office, and flown themselves out to California to interview Crazy Craig. They’ve even tracked down the first wedding Cyrus ever officiated. The couple, Gillian and Michael Rushmore-Smith, live in Boulder, Colorado, and run a no-waste grocery store where you bring your own containers. For them, Cyrus designed something called a Wetting: their guests brought water from all four corners of the country and anointed the couple, after which they all jumped into the Boulder Reservoir. They are still very happy together.

and Gini would be off the grid for a couple of hours. He closed his eyes and waited. He might have dozed off, but it wasn’t long before he was startled by a sound somewhere close by. “Everyone else is cooperating,” Magnus said, his voice sounding hollow in the cave. “Yeah,” Ekki said, “looks like you dropped your bouquet of flowers, too.” “Lucas,” Magnus said. “There’s only one way out of here.” For most people that was true. Lucas knew the main door was the only official exit. But Lucas also knew there was a tunnel that connected the catacombs with the Paris sewer system. In his brain he overlapped the two maps. The only thing left was to find the opening. He read the graffiti on the wall. Written in charcoal on the top of a skull were the same words he had seen in the cemetery. Lucas muttered, “Huis clos.” Gini said, “No exit.” Lucas looked at the little girl like she was the smartest kid ever. “You’re right, but the sign’s not.

This was normal couple behavior. I am officially part of a couple now.

These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples. Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows. The extra they produced fed the tiny minority of elites – kings, government officials, soldiers, priests, artists and thinkers – who fill the history books. History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. An Imagined Order The food surpluses produced by peasants, coupled with new transportation technology, eventually enabled more and more people to cram together first into large villages, then into towns, and finally into cities, all of them joined together by new kingdoms and commercial networks.