Plug Away Quotes

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.

I brought music." I pull my iPhone and ear buds out of my bra and plug them in my ears. "What else do you have in there?

From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.

I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

That’s what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don’t notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

The Quitter When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow... It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit: It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten — and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight — Why, that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred, Just have one more try — it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

You were always an underdog in a videogame, but always guaranteed to win if you just kept plugging away, learned the moves, knew when to Save and when to Quit.

What counts more than luck is determination and perseverance. If the talent is there, it will come through. Don't be too impatient. Stick at it. That's my advice. You have to plug away, keep thinking up new ideas. If one doesn't work, try another.

I bite my fingernails till they look like disease, pull strips of my skin away. Get Daddy's razor out cabinet. Cut cut cut arm wrist, not trying to die, trying to plug myself back in. (111)

These growth hormones, where can I get a bunch of them? Is there some way that, with electricity, you could stimulate your own growth hormones? Plug yourself in for five minutes, there'd be a little jolt, but you'd get used to it. It wouldn't be bad at all; in fact, you'd get to enjoy it, probably. Then away you'd go, and youth wouldn't be wasted on the young anymore. You'd be 25, with a 95-year-old mind. Granddad would start breaking into liquor stores and staying out late. Hope we have it soon!

I kept having those "What's the point of ...?" moments, but plugged away at life pretty consistently, anyway.

All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly. . . . He draws blueprints for Utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand--his own part comic, part tragic, part cussed, but part glorious nature.

Eddie saw great things and near misses. Albert Einstein as a child, not quite struck by a run-away milk-wagon as he crossed a street. A teenage boy named Albert Schweitzer getting out of a bathtub and not quite stepping on the cake of soap lying beside the pulled plug. A Nazi Oberleutnant burning a piece of paper with the date and place of the D-Day Invasion written on it. He saw a man who intended to poison the entire water supply of Denver die of a heart attack in a roadside rest-stop on I-80 in Iowa with a bag of McDonald’s French fries on his lap. He saw a terrorist wired up with explosives suddenly turn away from a crowded restaurant in a city that might have been Jerusalem. The terrorist had been transfixed by nothing more than the sky, and the thought that it arced above the just and unjust alike. He saw four men rescue a little boy from a monster whose entire head seemed to consist of a single eye. But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn’t crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren’t random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness. He saw the old people of River Crossing and Roland kneeling in the dust for Aunt Talitha’s blessing; again heard her giving it freely and gladly. Heard her telling him to lay the cross she had given him at the foot of the Dark Tower and speak the name of Talitha Unwin at the far end of the earth. He saw the Tower itself in the burning folds of the rose and for a moment understood its purpose: how it distributed its lines of force to all the worlds that were and held them steady in time’s great helix. For every brick that landed on the ground instead of some little kid’s head, for every tornado that missed the trailer park, for every missile that didn’t fly, for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower. And the quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.

I had a dream about you. You were learning to compose music like Mozart, and I was learning to listen like Beethoven. He was deaf, and you were blind to the fact that you had no musical talent. Still, I wore my ear plugs and I clapped and cheered while you banged away on the piano.

The oil and gas industry—left to its own devices—will mindlessly follow its own nature. It will make tons of money. It will corrode and corrupt and sabotage democratic governance. It will screw up and—in the end—fatally injure the whole freaking planet. And yes, it will also provide oil and gas along the way! And jobs for the workers who produce those things for it. The end-times battle that we’re engaged in now is to figure out how to get along without oil and gas—and we’re plugging away but still a ways off from that—and, in the meantime, commit to a whole new level of constraint and regulatory protection against this singularly destructive industry to minimize its potential harms.

Shh!" said Ford. "It's conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, alright? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn't matter. Sugar's fine. And when it's full, you pull the plug out... are you listening?" "I'm listening." "You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole. "Clever." "That's not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector... backwards!" "Backwards?" "Yes. Threading it backwards is definitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upwards out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?" "And that's how the Universe began is it?" said Arthur. "No," said Ford, "but it's a marvelous way to relax.

When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for music, in the colour of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction. But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G. C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The memecomplexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.

And it took him about 15 years of writing every day, writing thousands of poems and stories before he finally started making a living as a writer. He wrote his first novel at the age of 49 and it was financially successful. After 25 years of plugging away at it he was finally a successful writer.

A human rights activist is the worst type of person to mess with. If I can choose an enemy between the worst finance CEO, or the worst human rights violating dictator, and a human rights activist, I would choose the former. A human rights activist doesn't let go; doesn't have a peace of mind till responsibility for a wrongful act is finally reached. That's the uncomfortable type of person that cannot stand injustice, the type of person that doesn't fear "social desirability" sanctions for confronting wrongdoers directly, upsetting the silence and the status quo, and for screaming loud. That's the person that dares to stand up -- for themselves, for others. That's the type of person who doesn't lay low, doesn't fear being perceived as uncomfortable, the type of person that doesn't just "go along". I do not want as an enemy a person who cannot let go and forget injustice, but who instead will plug away till the very end, till justice is reached. I do not want that man or woman as an enemy.

What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don’t notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

I hate to undermine the worth of talent. Unquestionably, talent exists. It’s no myth or hokum. Your talent tells you that you’re cut out for something. It points you towards what you can do effortlessly and what your potential career could be. However, talent isn’t everything. Knowledge and growth don’t come easily. You have to be willing to put in the hours and the effort, sometimes even without visible progress, because one day, unexpectedly, the results will flower. But without that work, it’s unlikely to happen. Eventually, hard work is not just about plugging away at something. It’s thinking intelligently about what you want to achieve, the goals you’re setting yourself, how you’re improving and how you can incorporate all of this into the list of things that will help you scale that peak.

Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning-- sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.

The instant I saw Lori’s dad and Frances across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Lori was still hidden by the trees. She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn’t have looked more guilty. I turned back around. Her dad’s face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he’d thought of the worst possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed to swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape. He opened his mouth. “It was my fault,” I said quickly. “I know!” he roared. At the same time, Lori stepped in front of me and muttered, “Wrong thing to say, Adam.” “Right.” I put my hand on Lori’s shoulder and pushed her an arm’s length away so it wouldn’t look like I was hiding behind her. “It’s nobody’s fault, because we didn’t do anything wrong.

Not sure if this was an angle Glade would want to use – ‘NEW Gas scented plug-ins for all your zombie stench needs. Is Grandma’s rotting corpse beginning to embarrass you? Do guests avoid coming to your house because of the decomposing children? Whisk away those horrible odors with our new GAS plug-ins, now available in Diesel and Oil

It's hard for people now to remember just how enormous the world was back then for everybody, and how far away even fairly nearby places were. When we called my grandparents long distance on the telephone in Winfield, something we hardly ever did, it sounded as if they were speaking to us from a distant star. We had to shout to be heard and plug a finger in an ear to catch their faint, tinny voices in return. They were only about a hundred miles away, but that was a pretty considerable distance even well into the 1950s. Anything farther - beyond Chicago or Kansas City, say - quickly became almost foreign. It wasn't just that Iowa was far from everywhere. Everywhere was far from everywhere.

...went to the back yard and found Jem plugging away at a tin can, which seemed stupid with all the bluejays around.

There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and all the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat died in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat, of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream.

What in the world does the word ‘Lexus’ mean? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a made-up word. An ad agency in New York came up with it at Toyota’s request. It sounds high class, expensive, and has a nice ring to it. What a strange world we live in. Some people plug away at building railroad stations, while others make tons of money cooking up sophisticated-sounding words.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.

can keep plugging away at the surrounding counties tomorrow if you want,” Grandpa said hopefully. He missed being a detective. “Are you sure? It’s grunt work.” “I don’t mind. Work keeps the mind sharp.

To summarize, I’ve presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions. As I concluded after meeting Jordan Tice, there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy. With this in mind, it’s only natural to envy the clarity of performers like Jordan Tice. But here’s the core argument of Rule #2: You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.

I wiped the moisture from my lips, horrified by the plug of greenish mucus that came away on my palm, like I had just plunged my hand into the river and come away with a slither of algae attached to my skin.

Start your day with and in prayer. Communicate with the Lord and listen for instructions. Hooking up, plugging into, and connecting to the POWER SOURCE each day will keep power outages and disconnections away!

If you want to be excellent at something, you must move away from your comfort zone, overcome doubt, setbacks and failure. Never give up. Keep plugging away and being persistent. One day, success will be yours.

If you want to be excellent at something, it involves moving away from your comfort zone, overcoming doubt, setbacks and failure. Don't give up. Keep plugging away and being persistent. Success and winning will be yours.

I felt him on a different level. I shied away from saying a soul-deep level even though that’s what I suspected. His energy charged mine. Kind of like a battery being plugged in. It was impossible not to feel his presence.

I'm sorry," she whispers. "You're sorry? You've been dating Toph for the last month,and you're sorry?" "It just happened.I meant to tell you, I wanted to tell you-" "But you lost control over your mouth? Because it's easy,Bridge. Talking is easy. Look at me! I'm talking right-" "You know it wasn't that easy! I didn't mean for it to happen,it just did-" "Oh,you didn't mean to wreck my life? It just 'happened'?" Bridge stands up from behind her drums. It's impossible,but she's taller than me now. "What do you mean,wreck your life?" "Don't play dumb,you know exactly what I mean. How could you do this to me?" "Do what? It's not like you were dating!" I scream in frustration. "We certainly won't be now!" She sneers. "It's kind of hard to date someone who's not interested in you." "LIAR!" "What,you ditch us for Paris and expect us to put our lives on hold for you?" My jaw drops. "I didn't ditch you. They sent me away." "Ooo,yeah.To Paris.Meanwhile,I'm stuck here in Shitlanta, Georgia, at the same shitty school,doing shitty babysitting jobs-" "If babysitting my brother is so shitty, why do you do it?" "I didn't meant-" "Because you want to turn him against me, too? Well.Congratulations, Bridge. It worked. My brother loves you and hates me. So you're welcome to move in when I leave again,because that's what you want, right? My life?" She shakes with fury. "Go to hell." "Take my life.You can have it. Just watch out for the part where my BEST FRIEND SCREWS ME OVER!" I knock over a cymbal stand,and the brass hits the stage with an earsplitting crash that reverberates through the bowling alley. Matt calls my name.Has he been calling it this entire time? He grabs my arm and leads me around the electrical cords and plugs and onto the floor and away,away,away. Everyone in the bowling alley is staring at me.

We hurry through our days, with our eyes and ears plugged into our devices, our minds far away, not noticing the physical or emotional impression we make on others..... Popular culture stokes delight in humiliation and conflict.

I’m all right now,” I said, “but leave me alone. I’m going down to the river to bathe.” I took seven steps, and then someone must have pulled out the plug, because I gurgled, everything swirled, and the world ran away down the drain.

It is a simple choice: work or succumb to melancholia, depression and despair. Like it or not you have to try to do something with your life, you have to keep plugging away. Besides, the alternatives to giving in and giving up are never as simple as they seem.

I was inclined to drift away from the sum to wonder why people would care what time two trains passed each other (spies), be so picky about seating arrangements (recently divorced people), or—which to this day remains incomprehensible—run the bath with no plug in.

He lifted his gaze to hers. "I have a lot of other things I should be doing, but I'm here." He stared into her eyes for several heartbeats before he returned his attention to the big box. "I've tried to stay away. After you threw me out of the house, I thought it was probably for the best. You're a distraction, and I don't need a distraction right now." He handed the screwdriver back to her and ripped the box open with his big hands. "I've got tapes I need to review, and plays I need to go over in my head before today's practice, yet here I am. Putting baby furniture together for you because I can't get you out of my head. I plug in a tape, and all I do is think about you." He peeled back the cardboard and reached for the instruction sheet that had fallen to the floor. "But the thing is, Adele, I'm not really sure whether you want me to be here or not." His polo shirt pulled out of the waistband of his Levi's and slid up the tan muscles of his back. He straightened and looked at her over the top of the instructions. "I don't know what you want.

The Quitter When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child, And Death looks you bang in the eye, And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle To cock your revolver and . . . die. But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can," And self-dissolution is barred. In hunger and woe, oh, it's easy to blow . . . It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard. "You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame. You're young and you're brave and you're bright. "You've had a raw deal!" I know -- but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight. It's the plugging away that will win you the day, So don't be a piker, old pard! Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit: It's the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten -- and die; It's easy to crawfish and crawl; But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight -- Why, that's the best game of them all! And though you come out of each gruelling bout, All broken and beaten and scarred, Just have one more try -- it's dead easy to die, It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

You want to know? What it’s like? To prop up the dam? To keep your fingers plugged in its cracks? To feel like every single breath that passes is another betrayal, another step farther away from what you were and where you were and who you were, another step deeper into the darkness

The second of the Ten Commandments is oddly worded: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other gods before Me.” The statement seems almost self-contradictory. Here the Torah insists on an absolute devotion to monotheism, faith in the one and only God—and then, in the selfsame statement, the text seems to take for granted the existence of other gods, saying only that we shouldn’t have allegiance to them. But what other gods are there? Isn’t the Torah’s whole point that there is only one? The problem falls away, though, if you go back to the original Hebrew and read it carefully. The second commandment states: “Thou shalt not have [allegiance to] any other elohim before Me.” Just plug in our working definition of elohim, and suddenly it all starts to make sense: the text adjures us not to have allegiance to other “powers” besides God. For, indeed, there are other great sources of power one might choose to worship. The sun is powerful, there’s no denying that. It provides light and heat, and without it, we die. Nevertheless, the second commandment tells us that the sun is off-limits for worship because we may not have allegiance to any power other than the Almighty. As

Draw the curtains and let them fall cry your worries and let the fear stand tall. Lie on the bed and throw the ash on the ground and let the darkness surround. Pull the plug before the sunrise brings false hope again and tries to take your pain away. Curtains fall as the the scene ends and disappears like happiness in the air.

Hardest of all were those problems about people doing incomprehensible things with no motivation. I was inclined to drift away from the sum to wonder why people would care what time two trains passed each other (spies), be so picky about seating arrangements (recently divorced people), or - which to this day remains incomprehensible - run the bath with no plug in.

He was on his second plate of steaming-hot kidney pie by the time his chewing slowed. And that's when he heard it. The faintest sounds escaping her room, sweeping across the antechamber, and sliding under the door to him. The sounds of bathing. A splash. A trickle. A faint series of drips. It all added up to torture. Pure, liquid torture. He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands with a groan. Even plugging his ears didn't help. When he closed his eyes, he could picture her. Naked in a shallow tub. Her feet dangling over the lip at one end, and her head reclined against the other. And all that water embracing her with heat, lapping at her nakedness, pouring over her most secret curves and furrows. He was immediately, startlingly hard.

Then I wanted to lock her away where no one could touch her, where I wouldn’t even let her touch herself. I wanted to take away her safety and make her long for her mats and blankets. I wanted to clamp her and plug her and chain her and train her to grovel at my feet. When she was completely broken, when her will and soul were mine, then I’d give her mats and blankets back. That’s what I wanted.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air. “Okay, I’ll keep plugging away,” she said. “Wasn’t much help, was I?” “No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk.” We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform. “You’re really not lonely?” she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came.

This seat taken?" My eyes grazing over the only other occupant, a guy with long glossy dark hair with his head bent over a book. "It's all yours," he says. And when he lifts his head and smiles,my heart just about leaps from my chest. It's the boy from my dreams. The boy from the Rabbit Hole,the gas station,and the cave-sitting before me with those same amazing,icy-blue eues, those same alluring lips I've kissed multiple times-but only in slumber, never in waking life. I scold my heart to settle,but it doesn't obey. I admonish myself to sit,to act normal, casual-and I just barely succeed. Stealing a series of surreptitious looks as I search through my backpack, taking in his square chin,wide generous lips,strong brow,defined cheekbones, and smooth brown skin-the exact same features as Cade. "You're the new girl,right?" He abandons his book,tilting his head in a way that causes his hair to stream over his shoulder,so glossy and inviting it takes all of my will not to lean across the table and touch it. I nod in reply,or at least I think I do.I can't be too sure.I'm too stricken by his gaze-the way it mirrors mine-trying to determine if he knows me, recognizes me,if he's surprised to find me here.Wishing Paloma had better prepared me-focused more on him and less on his brother. I force my gaze from his.Bang my knee hard against the table as I swivel in my seat.Feeling so odd and unsettled,I wish I'd picked another place to sit, though it's pretty clear no other table would have me. He buries his smile and returns to the book.Allowing a few minutes to pass,not nearly enough time for me to get a grip on myself,when he looks up and says, "Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganer roaming the halls,playing king of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?" I clear the lump from my throat, push the words past my lips when I say, "No one's ever accused me of being shy." A statement that,while steeped in truth, stands at direct odds with the way I feel now,sitting so close to him. "So I guess it's your twin-or doppelganer,as you say." I keep my voice light, as though I'm not at all affected by his presence,but the trill note at the end gives me away.Every part of me now vibrating with the most intense surge of energy-like I've been plugged into the wall and switched on-and it's all I can do to keep from grabbing hold of his shirt, demanding to know if he dreamed the dreams too. He nods,allowing an easy,cool smile to widen his lips. "We're identical," he says. "As I'm sure you've guessed. Though it's easy enough to tell us apart. For one thing,he keeps his hair short.For another-" "The eyes-" I blurt,regretting the words the instant they're out.From the look on his face,he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Yours are...kinder." My cheeks burn so hot I force myself to look away,as words of reproach stampede my brain. Why am I acting like such an inept loser? Why do I insist on embarrassing myself-in front of him-of all people? I have to pull it together.I have to remember who I am-what I am-and what I was born to do.Which is basically to crush him and his kind-or,at the very least,to temper the damage they do.

You’ve probably also noted the impacts of virtual distraction on your own and others’ behaviors: memory loss, inability to concentrate, being asked to repeat what you just said, miscommunication the norm, getting lost online and wasting time you don’t have, withdrawing from the real world. The list of what’s being lost is a description of our best human capacities—memory, meaning, relating, thinking, learning, caring. There is no denying the damage that’s been done to humans as technology took over—our own Progress Trap. The impact on children’s behavior is of greatest concern for its present and future implications. Dr. Nicolas Kardaras, a highly skilled physician in rehabilitation, is author of Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction Is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to Break the Trance. He describes our children’s behavior in ways that I notice in my younger grandchildren: “We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices. Worse, we see children who become bored, apathetic, uninteresting and uninterested when not plugged in.”17 These very disturbing behaviors are not just emotional childish reactions. Our children are behaving as addicts deprived of their drug. Brain imaging studies show that technology stimulates brains just like cocaine does.

Safe! All I wanted to do was keep them safe. How do you protect your brothers at eight-fucking-teen? How do you make enough money, get enough respect to do that? I wasn’t smart, Eve. I’m a big, dumb fucking bastard. I couldn’t even get a job as a bagger at the A&P. I wanted to make their lives worth living. That’s what they’d done for me—made my life worth living. They’re my family. I can’t…I just can’t.” Beckett pounded his chest. “They would’ve been better off without me,” he continued. “Blake would still be homeless, but Cole made his own damn way. But I wanted in. I wanted to belong. I was too fucking selfish to walk away. I should have walked away. But I didn’t and now—” Beckett choked on a deep, angry sob. “Now, they’re paying for it. All my stupid decisions. They’ll die tonight. They’ll both die, and I can’t stop it. I can’t plug it with money. I can’t bring them back from the dead, even if I act tough or kill more people.

One day eighteen years ago, Gideon’s mother had tumbled down the middle of the shaft in a dragchute and a battered hazard suit, like some moth drifting slowly down into the dark. The suit had been out of power for a couple of minutes. The woman landed brain-dead. All the battery power had been sucked away by a bio-container plugged into the suit, the kind you’d carry a transplant limb in, and inside that container was Gideon, only a day old. This was obviously mysterious as hell.

Edmund stood up quickly and cupped my face in his hands. His thumb traced the track of my tear, wiping it away and sending shivers through me. “Are you crying?” I sighed. “Yes, I’m crying.” My voice didn’t sound right thanks to my plugged nose. “It’s been a really rough day and I’d just like to be left alone. So, can you go?” I feebly pushed against his chest. “Evie,” he whispered, my name a plea. “Please, tell me I’m not the reason you’re crying?” The way he looked at me made me want to bawl even more. From his face, I could tell the idea that he’d made me cry was torturous. I looked up at him, wanting him closer and hating myself for it. “Today was really crappy and yes, you’re part of that.” I pulled my face away from his hand. “But you’re far from the only reason.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to make you cry. I was a complete arse.” “Yes, you were.” He leaned me back and smiled softly. “Well, at least we can agree.

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, arrangements to make, meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing to do . . . and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and mostly I forget what I’m about or why. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Eternal One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but my mind races with worrying and watching, with weighing and planning, with rutted slights and pothole grievances, with leaky dreams and leaky plumbing and leaky relationships I keep trying to plug up; and my attention is preoccupied with loneliness, with doubt, and with things I covet; and I forget what it is I want to say to you, and how to say it honestly or how to do much of anything. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Almighty One, there is something I wanted to ask you, but I stumble along the edge of a nameless rage, haunted by a hundred floating fears of terrorists of all kinds, of losing my job, of failing, of getting sick and old, having loved ones die, of dying . . . I forget what the real question is that I wanted to ask, and I forget to listen anyway because you seem unreal and far away, and I forget what it is I have forgotten. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ . . . O Father . . . in Heaven, perhaps you’ve already heard what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to ask is forgive me, heal me, increase my courage, please. Renew in me a little of love and faith, and a sense of confidence, and a vision of what it might mean to live as though you were real, and I mattered, and everyone was sister and brother. What I wanted to ask in my blundering way is don’t give up on me, don’t become too sad about me, but laugh with me, and try again with me, and I will with you, too. What I wanted to ask is for peace enough to want and work for more, for joy enough to share, and for awareness that is keen enough to sense your presence here, now, there, then, always.27

It’s our bad luck to have teachers in this world, but since we’re stuck with them, the best we can do is hope to get a brand-new one instead of a mean old fart. New teachers don’t know the rules, so you can get away with things the old-timers would squash you for. That was my theory. So I was feeling pretty excited to start fifth grade, since I was getting a rookie teacher—a guy named Mr. Terupt. Right away, I put him to the test. If the bathroom pass is free, all you have to do is take it and go. This year, the bathrooms were right across the hall. It’s always been an easy way to get out of doing work. I can be really sneaky like that. I take the pass all the time and the teachers never notice. And like I said, Mr. Terupt was a rookie, so I knew he wasn’t going to catch me. Once you’re in the bathroom, it’s mess-around time. All the other teachers on our floor were women, so you didn’t have to worry about them barging in on you. Grab the bars to the stalls and swing. Try to touch your feet to the ceiling. Swing hard. If someone’s in the stall, it’s really funny to swing and kick his door in, especially if he’s a younger kid. If you scare him bad enough, he might pee on himself a little. That’s funny. Or if your buddy’s using the urinal, you can push him from behind and flush it at the same time. Then he might get a little wet. That’s pretty funny, too. Some kids like to plug the toilets with big wads of toilet paper, but I don’t suggest you try doing that. You can get in big trouble. My older brother told me his friend got caught and he had to scrub the toilets with a toothbrush. He said the principal made him brush his teeth with that toothbrush afterward, too. Mrs. Williams is pretty tough, but I don’t think she’d give out that kind of punishment. I don’t want to find out, either. When I came back into the classroom after my fourth or fifth trip, Mr. Terupt looked at me and said, “Boy, Peter, I’m gonna have to call you Mr. Peebody, or better yet, Peter the Pee-er. You do more peein’ than a dog walking by a mile of fire hydrants.

When you finally make it out of whatever took you to your bottom, don't forget to put your recovery first. I've seen a lot of people over the years, slowly work their way back to their bottom, because they stop doing everything that got them sober. Sure life gets busy, but if you become irresponsible with your recovery, the outcome is almost always catastrophic. I just want to encourage those who have drifted away from their recovery program, to get plugged back in. It's very important for you, your family and your friends to maintain your sobriety with like-minded people.

Others wonder about the possibilities. Maybe the princess cheated on her prince with a dashing knight, ran away with him to live in the wilds, cheated on him with a neighbouring farmer and ended up working the fields for the rest of her life. These are the people who lie awake at night, frightened by the stars above them, intimidated by how the world keeps turning and it doesn't matter if they live or die. These are the people who attempt to stop those thoughts by painting, or writing, or reading... anything to plug up that hole in the brain that gushes out a constant stream of consciousness.

All summers take me back to the sea. There in the long eelgrass, like birds' eggs waiting to be hatched, my brothers and sister and I sit, grasses higher than our heads, arms and legs like thicker versions of the grass waving in the wind, looking up at the blue sky. My mother is gathering food for dinner: clams and mussels and the sharply salty greens that grow by the shore. It is warm enough to lie here in the little silty puddles like bathwater left in the tub after the plug has been pulled. It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. Out past the planets, far away from Uranus and the edge of our solar system, into the brilliantly lit dark where the things we don't know about yet reside. Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars. Like the silvery lace curtains of my bedroom being drawn from my window, letting in light, so the moon gently pulls back the layers of the year, leaving the best part open and free. So summer comes to me.

At Takamatsu Station I take a bus to the fitness club. I change into my gym clothes in the locker room, then do some circuit training, plugged into my Walkman, Prince blasting away. It’s been a while and my muscles complain, but I manage. It’s the body’s normal reaction—muscles screaming out, resisting the extra burden put on them. Listening to “Little Red Corvette,” I try to soothe that reaction, suppress it. I take a deep breath, hold it, exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale. Even breathing, over and over. One by one I push my muscles to the limit. I’m sweating like crazy, my shirt’s soaked and heavy. I have to go over to the cooler a few times to gulp down water.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for music, in the colour of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction. But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G. C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus, and Marconi are still going strong.

Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, “Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check. “I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the encephalographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads—all the tests I had to go through under Government medical officers before my nomination for presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?” Ford nodded. “And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum.” Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white. “Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford. “Yeah.” “But have you any idea who? Or why?” “Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.” “You know? How do you know?” “Because they left their initials burned into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.” Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl. “Initials? Burned into your brain?” “Yeah.” “Well, what were they, for God’s sake?” Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away. “Z.B.,” he said quietly. At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber. “I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed out.

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine. And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Billy ran around with a rare old crew And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew Where Billy's bones are resting now Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee And he took him down from six to five foot three Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi That copper won't be having any family Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Billy went away with a peace-keeping force 'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course Went away in an old khaki van To the banks of the River Jordan Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat And they ran like shites Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? One night Billy had a rare old time, Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line Came back to camp not looking too pretty Never even got to see the holy city Now Billy's out there in the desert sun And his mother cries when the morning comes And there's mothers crying all over this world For their poor dead darling boys and girls Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Have a Billy holiday… Born on a Monday Married on a Tuesday Drunk on a Wednesday Got plugged on a Thursday Sick on a Friday Died on a Saturday Buried on a Sunday. "Billy's Bones

I’m fine, Sierra. Really.” “No, you’re not fine. Brit, I’m your best friend. I’ll be here before and after your boyfriends. So spill your guts. I’m all ears.” “I loved him.” “No shit, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know.” “He used me. He had sex with me to win a bet. And I still love him. Sierra, I am pathetic.” “You had sex and didn’t tell me? I mean, I thought it was a rumor. You know, of the untrue kind.” I lean my head in my hands in frustration. “I’m just kidding. I don’t even want to know. Okay, I do, but only if you want to tell me,” Sierra says. “Forget about that now. I saw the way Alex always looked at you, Brit. That’s why I laid off you for liking him. There was no way he was acting. I don’t know who told you about a supposed bet--” I look up. “He did. And his friends confirmed it. Why can’t I let him go?” Sierra shakes her head, as if erasing the words I’ve said. “First things first.” She grabs my chin and forces me to look at her. “Alex had feelings for you, whether he admitted it to you or not, whether there was a bet or not. You know that, Brit, or you wouldn’t be clutching those hand warmers like that. Second of all, Alex is out of your life and you owe it to yourself, to his goofy friend Paco, and to me to keep plugging along even if it’s not easy.” “I can’t help but think he pushed me away on purpose. If I could only talk to him, I can get answers.” “Maybe he doesn’t have the answers. That’s why he left. If he wants to give up on life, to ignore what’s right in front of him, so be it. But you show him that you’re stronger than that.” Sierra is right. For the first time I feel I can make it through the rest of senior year. Alex took a piece of my heart that night we made love, and he’ll forever hold it. But that doesn’t mean my life has to be on hold indefinitely. I can’t run after ghosts. I’m stronger now. At least, I hope I am.

The chorus of criticism culminated in a May 27 White House press conference that had me fielding tough questions on the oil spill for about an hour. I methodically listed everything we'd done since the Deepwater had exploded, and I described the technical intricacies of the various strategies being employed to cap the well. I acknowledged problems with MMS, as well as my own excessive confidence in the ability of companies like BP to safeguard against risk. I announced the formation of a national commission to review the disaster and figure out how such accidents could be prevented in the future, and I reemphasized the need for a long-term response that would make America less reliant on dirty fossil fuels. Reading the transcript now, a decade later, I'm struck by how calm and cogent I sound. Maybe I'm surprised because the transcript doesn't register what I remember feeling at the time or come close to capturing what I really wanted to say before the assembled White House press corps: That MMS wasn't fully equipped to do its job, in large part because for the past thirty years a big chunk of American voters had bought into the Republican idea that government was the problem and that business always knew better, and had elected leaders who made it their mission to gut environmental regulations, starve agency budgets, denigrate civil servants, and allow industrial polluters do whatever the hell they wanted to do. That the government didn't have better technology than BP did to quickly plug the hole because it would be expensive to have such technology on hand, and we Americans didn't like paying higher taxes - especially when it was to prepare for problems that hadn't happened yet. That it was hard to take seriously any criticism from a character like Bobby Jindal, who'd done Big Oil's bidding throughout his career and would go on to support an oil industry lawsuit trying to get a federal court to lift our temporary drilling moratorium; and that if he and other Gulf-elected officials were truly concerned about the well-being of their constituents, they'd be urging their party to stop denying the effects of climate change, since it was precisely the people of the Gulf who were the most likely to lose homes or jobs as a result of rising global temperatures. And that the only way to truly guarantee that we didn't have another catastrophic oil spill in the future was to stop drilling entirely; but that wasn't going to happen because at the end of the day we Americans loved our cheap gas and big cars more than we cared about the environment, except when a complete disaster was staring us in the face; and in the absence of such a disaster, the media rarely covered efforts to shift America off fossil fuels or pass climate legislation, since actually educating the public on long-term energy policy would be boring and bad for ratings; and the one thing I could be certain of was that for all the outrage being expressed at the moment about wetlands and sea turtles and pelicans, what the majority of us were really interested in was having the problem go away, for me to clean up yet one more mess decades in the making with some quick and easy fix, so that we could all go back to our carbon-spewing, energy-wasting ways without having to feel guilty about it. I didn't say any of that. Instead I somberly took responsibility and said it was my job to "get this fixed." Afterward, I scolded my press team, suggesting that if they'd done better work telling the story of everything we were doing to clean up the spill, I wouldn't have had to tap-dance for an hour while getting the crap kicked out of me. My press folks looked wounded. Sitting alone in the Treaty Room later that night, I felt bad about what I had said, knowing I'd misdirected my anger and frustration. It was those damned plumes of oil that I really wanted to curse out.

The morning was already setting up to be hectic, and Jon thanked his lucky stars that Jessie was so good at his job and a constant spark-plug of activity. Oh god, you did not just think Jessie was a spark-plug? You really are getting old. Next thing you know you’ll being saying whipper-snappers and break a hip getting out of bed. He shook his head. I guess I had a good run. Jessie quickly re-entered the office. “Alright. Elisabeth has her caffeine fix and said she’ll be down to say goodbye in a few. So let’s get this bad boy going for the week. Travel plans are done for next month and meetings for the week are in you planner so I’m assuming they’ll be no more complaining about flying coach class this time?” Jessie gave a sly wink and kept organizing his desk. “Yes. And for that I thank you for that my color-coding, hyper computer organized planner. We have to make sure the next presentation for Chicago is ready in three weeks; the storyboards for the new campaign ideas have to be finished by Tuesday the 16th so we can get them shipped before I head out there.” “And let’s not forget our important morning ritual.” Jon looked at Jessie with a question about to form before the realization hit him. His expression changed from confused to stern. “No cat videos Jessie. I swear. Enough of the cat videos.” “C’mon. You know you love them and they brighten your dour moods. Look at this one.” Jessie turned his screen and Jon begrudgingly looked at the cute little puppy and kitten with captions over them. “How can you not love this?” Jessie smiled. “The cute little kitty tells the playful puppy not to do it and yet the puppy bonks the little kitty on the head with his little puppy paw. “Boop Boop.” And then the cat swipes at the puppy and it falls off the bed. You know this is internet gold.” Jon smiled. “Can we get back to work?” Jessie nodded and then walked up to Jon - without hesitating, he bonked him lightly on the head. “Boop.” He paused and added, “I think this puppy is onto something.” Jessie grinned ear to ear still. “I pledge, from now on if something makes me as happy as this bonking picture I’m just going to say Boop boop.” Jon stood stone-faced but a second later, could not stop his smile. “I am not amused.” Jon shook the smile away. “Now, if you’re done boop booping me, there is something else I want to talk with you about.” Jessie looked at Jon with a quizzical smile. “Not to blow my own horn but I have a new and brilliant thought my young apprentice.” Jessie opened his mouth to comment on the blowing horn, but Jon held up his hand and cut him off. “Stop it.” Jessie closed his mouth and swallowed the sexual innuendo-laced comment he had forming on the tip of his tongue.

told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.

But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words ? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other ? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal ? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon ? Heard ? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away ? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it ? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Tow-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted for after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had give them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked by devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in ther blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuse and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.

Perhaps the most common device for giving people focus and direction is goal setting, but goals, as often as they are used, have their pros and cons. Sure, if you can convince everybody that profits must increase 20% next quarter or we’re going out of business, people will hurry around looking for ways to hype profits by 20%. When discussing “mission” I assigned Susan a goal of 25% improvement in sales, based on what I calculated was needed to avoid closing the factory and on what I felt her district could reasonably provide. It was not a number pulled from the ether, and I went to some length to explain this to her. Short of any such basis in reality, people will often do the easiest things, such as firing 20% of the workforce, canceling vital R&D programs, or simply not making any payments to suppliers. In other words, they will take achieving the goal as seriously as they feel you were in setting it; they will sense whether you have positioned yourself at the Schwerpunkt. Goals, as we all know, can be motivators. Cypress Semiconductor, a communications-oriented company founded in 1982, used to have a computer that tracked the thousands of self-imposed goals that its people fed into the system. Cypress founder T. J. Rodgers identified this automated goal tending system as the heart of his management style and a big factor in the company’s early success.136 Frankly, I find this philosophy depressing, not to mention a temptation to focus inward: If the boss places great importance on entering and tracking goals, as he obviously does, then that is what the other employees are going to consider important.137 In any case, what’s the big deal about meeting or missing a goal? A goal is an intention at a point in time. It is, to a large extent, an arbitrary target, whether you set it or someone above you assigns it. And we all know that numerical goals can be gamed, like banking (delaying) sales that we could have made this quarter to help us make quota next quarter. Unlike a Schwerpunkt, which gives focus and direction for chaotic and uncertain situations, what does a goal tell you? Just keep your head down and continue plugging away?

Under Musk’s direction, X.com tried out some radical banking concepts. Customers received a $20 cash card just for signing up to use the service and a $10 card for every person they referred. Musk did away with niggling fees and overdraft penalties. In a very modern twist, X.com also built a person-to-person payment system in which you could send someone money just by plugging their e-mail address into the site. The whole idea was to shift away from slow-moving banks with their mainframes taking days to process payments and to create a kind of agile bank account where you could move money around with a couple of clicks on a mouse or an e-mail. This was revolutionary stuff, and more than 200,000 people bought into it and signed up for X.com within the first couple of months of operation.

The truth is, the biggest factor in who made it to the next level wasn’t talent or work ethic. It was a willingness to keep plugging away through all the hard times.

Various companies manufacture drain cleaning chemicals at affordable price and these chemicals are better option for small blockages as they only eat away at a small percentage of the blockage.

Virtually everything of any value in North Korea originates in China, and it mostly reaches the DPRK via Dandong. North Korean officials and businessmen, like the men I met on the train from Beijing, coming cap in hand on state-sponsored shopping trips are everywhere. Easily spotted by their badges proclaiming their loyalty to the various Kims, at night they haunt the Korean restaurants and karaoke bars within view of the DPRK itself. During the day, they congregate on the street by the border post beneath the bridge that leads to North Korea. From the early morning to the late afternoon, the line of trucks waiting to cross into the DPRK tails back down the road. There are warehouses and wholesale shops all along it and a constant procession of North Koreans going in and out of them. They buy spark plugs and coils of wire, generators and tyres, household appliances and kitchenware. The goods are destined for North Korea’s armed forces, more than a million strong, for the few industrial concerns still working, or for the Pyongyang elite.

Should you do what you love, what’s outrageous and unpredictable, and worry about the future later, or plug away at a steady job first and go off and have your fun when you retire? In

I realize that if you work hard, hold onto your dreams and plug away going forward, you will get to your destination. All roads lead to Rome. You may be diverted, distracted and feel defeated, but if you move forward, you will get there.

8Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?”     I said, “Here I am. Send me.”     9And he said, “Yes, go, and say to this people,     ‘Listen carefully, but do not understand.         Watch closely, but learn nothing.’ +    10Harden the hearts of these people.         Plug their ears and shut their eyes.     That way, they will not see with their eyes,         nor hear with their ears,     nor understand with their hearts         and turn to me for healing.”* +     11Then I said, “Lord, how long will this go on?”     And he replied,     “Until their towns are empty,         their houses are deserted,         and the whole country is a wasteland; +    12until the LORD has sent everyone away,         and the entire land of Israel lies deserted. +    13If even a tenth—a remnant—survive,         it will be invaded again and burned.     But as a terebinth or oak tree leaves a stump when it is cut down,         so Israel’s stump will be a holy seed.

I was developing the musculature, bit by bit by bit, to lean in instead of away. To listen, when my first instinct was to plug my ears. To open up, when I wanted to shut down.

There was so much suffering in Africa that it was tempting just to shrug your shoulders and walk away. But you can't do that, she thought. You just can't.

Woody's life was leaking away but I was the one who stepped forward and pulled the plug. Was my timing right? Could he have had another day at home, another week? Could he have gone for one more turn around the park, had one last supper? We'll never know and to handle the reality of euthanasia I learned to be comfortable with the ambiguity and magnitude of when to take a life. All I know for sure is at that irredeemable moment when I drive the plunger home, I will be there for the person trading the overpowering presence of love and companionship with their pet for the cold, empty ache of loss.

We naturally plug into sockets that are linked with our karma. Change your thoughts and you’ll be able to plug into the sockets that create a magical life. Negative karma will burn away.

The Internet was originally built on trust,” write the authors of the IBM paper, Veena Pureswaran and Paul Brody. “In the post-Snowden era, it is evident that trust in the Internet is over. The notion of IoT solutions built as centralized systems with trusted partners is now something of a fantasy.” Pureswaran and Brody argue that the blockchain offers the only way to build the Internet of Things to scale while ensuring that no one entity has control over it. A blockchain-based system becomes the Internet of Things’ immutable seal. In an environment where so many machine-to-machine exchanges become transactions of value, we will need a blockchain in order for each device’s owner to trust the others. Once this decentralized trust structure is in place, it opens up a world of new possibilities. Consider this futuristic example: Imagine you drive your electric Tesla car to a small rural town to take a hike in the mountains for the day. When you return you realize you don’t have enough juice in your car and the nearest Tesla Supercharger station is too far away. Well, in a sharing economy enabled by blockchains, you would have nothing to fear. You could just drive up to any house that advertises that it lets drivers plug into an outlet and buy power from it. You could pay for it all with cryptocurrency over a high-volume payments system, such as the Lightning Network, and the tokens would be deducted from your car’s own digital wallet and transferred to the wallet of the house’s electric meter. You have no idea who owns this house, whether they can be trusted not to rip you off, or whether they’re the sort of people who might install some kind of malware into your car’s computer to rob its digital-currency wallet.

I'm in the house that Claire and I built, in the life we made, naked in the bathtub. I'm shivering. I feel like a wet rug. If I pull the plug, maybe the water will drain away.

He's speaking loudly into the phone, but he sounds like he's miles away. It's like my ears are plugged with something cotton, wax, earbuds. All I hear is a thumping of my own blood and the steady sound of my heartbeat speeding up.

And as I look between the three Calloway girls- Rose in a frazzled state, Daisy drifting far away, and Lil with a sad, soft voice- I get it. I get what Ryke sees and what he feels. I have this insane wish to just make things right again, to plug all the cracks in our lives- just for the small, sliver of hope that these girls will be able to stand up on their own one more day.

When they encounter a tough problem or a tough course, they plug away at it. They persevere. Their confidence makes a major contribution to their success.

Busy During the Day? Set Automatic Trade Triggers If you work during the day and can’t watch the market, you can set “conditional orders” ahead of time with your broker. It can be a great way to catch a big breakout—even as you’re plugging away at your day job. And when you’re on vacation and can’t watch your stocks closely, you also can set conditional sell orders to lock in your gains or cut short any losses if the stock declines.

This confidence may come from their parents. When they encounter a tough problem or a tough course, they plug away at it. They persevere. Their confidence makes a major contribution to their success.

Doyle was puzzled by the instructions and by the fact that they carried no signature. He looked again at the label. It had been typed on the standard office machine of the radio department. This also puzzled him. He turned toward the door, intending to ask Rogers for a comment. Rogers had disappeared. Doyle shrugged and turned back to the heater. For a moment he toyed with the heater, then plugged it into the workbench’s double-outlet plug. He flicked the switch on the outlet plug. The resulting explosion broke windows in the workshop, and shook the main police headquarters building over two hundred feet away. It was a miracle that Doyle escaped death. His left hand, left leg, and right foot were smashed. His left eardrum was fractured. He was rushed to Bayonne Hospital, where he underwent an emergency operation. The next day Rogers visited Vincent Doyle in the hospital, and asked through his tears: “How can I get the guy who did this to you?” Two weeks later Rogers was charged with the attempted murder of Vincent Doyle.

The key here is that your brain goes to work on any question you ask it. Good, bad or indifferent…your brain keeps plugging away. You need to be very aware of the questions you ask yourself, because the quality of your question will directly influence the quality of your answer.

No lectures about one-night stands?” “Of course not. As long as you use a condom, there’s nothing wrong with commitment-free pleasure. That being said, I wouldn’t advise using someone as a fuck-buddy. One of you always starts to have feelings. Expectations. Eventually someone gets hurt. So after the one-night stand, it’s better to pull the plug right away.

there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good.

Quickly pushing and shoving to get out of the pool, was in a full-on panic. That is when Shy moved in for the kill- she was Jenny's best friend at the time. She grabbed Lizzy’s goodies, and bikini bottom and pulled the plug out by the sting, and the blood started to show in the water all pink. Shy dunked her and swam away, that is when Lizzy swam over to the diving board ass showing to get out, she claimed out and ran the length of the Olympic sized pool dripping and shaking to get around everyone, while the rest of us nearly died laughing at the sight of her new hair and a blood-covered vertical smile that was showing. That is how Shy became popular, she did Jenny’s dirty work for her. It reminded me of the time my parents took me to Kenny Wood when I was about in the fourth grade and made me get on one of the big coasters. My legs were not able to stop shaking and my feet got a tingling feeling on the bottom side of them like they were itching to get out of a pair of hot shoes: I couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to fall out, how high up we were. After my mom got the picture, they took off on the ride, I started laughing and couldn’t stop at how scared yet thrilled I was. Standing on the high dive with Jenny got me exactly in the same way. It’s like I started craving more and more of that feeling too. It feels like that twenty-six seconds when you have a girly eruption and shaking because of it so good.

Dear Halo, I see you. You are the light around the moon, and I know that you are the light above my head. You are a reflection of what and who I want to be. Therefore, tonight is the perfect time to reflect. There have been so many times, if not all the time, that the halation of light has spread in my life beyond its boundaries and has formed a fog everywhere. However, I have you right above my head to help me direct my path. I have changed. I have worked so hard on—me, Ember. I feel like when it comes to my mom, I am like water in the sink. My emotions go around and around in circles because she has drained me and taken everything from me. She is so good at pulling the plug on everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish. I never gave away my power—it’s just that I am depleted. Right now, just for tonight and tomorrow, I am in hibernation as I unfold the memories that once hunted me. These memories have taken me to the highest point, and they most definitely have dragged me to my lowest point. They have dragged me so low to the point that my feelings and emotions are deeper than the sea. The name I use for Mom is—claustrophobia. She is the person I fear most, for Kace’s sake. Every time I see her, she closes me in—in a confined space in my heart and in my mind. Anxiety takes over me because I knew this day would come—that she would try to get custody of Kace. When I see her, I lose control... seeing her and thinking of her sends my mind to claustrophobia. The memories and remembrance of her close me in, and they trap me every single time—that is why I am in here. I have to control it. From this day forth, I am not surrounded by death. I am not mentally folding up in a ball. I am a parachute. I am free. I am flying like a bald eagle. I’m going in a direction where I cannot and will not carry dead weight. From now on, I am dealing with certain people with a long-handled spoon.

I dare you to press on when darkness is all around. I dare you to go on when things become tough when failure is staring you in the face. I dare you to keep plugging away when you have committed and when you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I dare you to storm through hurdles if they come your way. I dare you to keep getting up again and again when you keep falling on your face.