Popcorn Day Quotes

If I had my life to live over... Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over would I change anything. My answer was no, but then I thought about it and changed my mind. If I had my life to live over again I would have waxed less and listened more. Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have eaten popcorn in the "good" living room and worried less about the dirt when you lit the fireplace. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would have burnt the pink candle that was sculptured like a rose before it melted while being stored. I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television ... and more while watching real life. I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband which I took for granted. I would have eaten less cottage cheese and more ice cream. I would have gone to bed when I was sick, instead of pretending the Earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for a day. I would never have bought ANYTHING just because it was practical/wouldn't show soil/ guaranteed to last a lifetime. When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now, go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more I love yous ... more I'm sorrys ... more I'm listenings ... but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it ... look at it and really see it ... try it on ... live it ... exhaust it ... and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it.

You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a baby’s face as she lies asleep in your lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you haven’t tried yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the likelihood of dying from falling. There are books you haven’t read yet that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late-night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.

I want to see this video," I say. "Seriously?" asks Tattoo. "Want popcorn too?

Popcorn, chocolate, coffee, ice cream, and pizza. The five food groups. Health nuts are going to feel stupid one day, dying of nothing.

RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS As devised by frantastica: dvds with Johnny Depp in them white chocolate chip cookies peanut m&ms popcorn pillows X 17 Method: put all on sofa and mix till cheerful.

It was wintertime. I was starving to death trying to be a writer in New York. I hadn't eaten for three or four days. So, I finally said, "I'm gonna have a big bag of popcorn." And God, I hadn't tasted food for so long, it was so good. Each kernel, you know, each one was like a steak! I chewed and it would just drop into my poor stomach. My stomach would say, "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!" I was in heaven, just walking along, and two guys happened by, and one said to the other, "Jesus Christ!" The other one said, "What was it?" "Did you see that guy eating popcorn? God, it was awful!" And so I couldn't enjoy the rest of the popcorn. I thought; what do you mean, "it was awful?" I'm in heaven here. I guess I was kinda dirty. They can always tell a fucked-up guy.

Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.

It's been a long, hard day, and bit by bit you have been transformed into a single, vertical, barely ambulatory ache. All that awaits you now is another long, lonely night on the hard, cold ground. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. "I must be mad!" Indeed, you are mad. Otherwise right now you could be warm and cozy and stretched out in front of your beloved TV, munching popcorn and swigging down ice-cold brew, just like a civilized person. "Oh well," you sigh to yourself. "I'd better stop and get a fire going.

WILL THERE BE A MOVIE, THEN? Neil likes to think that one day maybe there will, and Terry is certain that it will never happen. In either case, neither of them will believe it until they’re actually eating popcorn at the premiere. And even then, probably not.

Everything feels right with her. I can’t explain it. The world just stops. Everything freezes. It’s me. It’s her. It’s just us. Everything else, every molecule, including the oxygen we breathe, is only secondary to the chemistry we create. When we watch a movie it’s more than images strung together in the form of mindless entertainment. It’s an experience. An experience we share together from making the popcorn to watching the film to talking about it for days after. Chemistry. What more can I say? You either have it or you don’t.

WILL THERE BE A MOVIE, THEN? Neil likes to think that one day maybe there will, and Terry is certain that it will never happen. In either case, neither of them will believe it until they’re actually eating popcorn at the premiere. And even then, probably not.

Happy ending roll credits pick our way out, over crushed pieces of popcorn to emerge into the glaring light of day

She rejoins the crowd and watches with her friends, but she feels like an emptied glass - that crestfallen feeling of walking out from a movie theatre in the middle of the day, out from the intimate matinée darkness and the smell of popcorn, which is the smell of heightened colour and sound and story, into the borderless bright of day. Bereft.

Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground rattling boom that follows.

And even if it never makes it to the big screen, millions of people have watched a very impressive version of the opening in the box office hit Independence Day. So when/if Childhood’s End is finally made into a movie, the popcorn set will undoubtedly think we’ve ripped off I.D.

He takes a kitchen chair and sits in the yard and all the ducks come around. He holds up the cheese curls in one hand and caramel popcorn in the other and his audience looks up and he tells them a joke. He says: So one day a duck come into this bar and ordered a whiskey and a bump and the bartender was pretty surprised, he says, "You know we don't get many of you ducks in here." The duck says, "At these prices I'm not surprised.* And he tosses out the popcorn and they laugh. 'Wak wak wak wak wak. I was shot in the leg in the war.' Have a scar? 'No thanks, I don't smoke.

I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day.

I lowered my phone, hope and anger warring for control of my emotions. As always, it was easier to let anger win. I turned back to Sylvester. "You threw him out?" I asked, in a low dangerous tone. "I was asleep for almost eleven hours, and you threw him out?" "October, I told you we had asked him -" "No. 'We asked him to leave so you can rest' only works if I was asleep for four hours, or six, or maybe eight, although me sleeping for eight hours when I'm not injured or drugged is such a perishingly rare event that he should have been sitting next to the bed with a bowl of popcorn. Do you understand me? I was poisoned. This stuff is poison to changelings, and the man I love wanted to be with me, and you sent him away. You kept him away from me for eleven hours, and you didn't tell him what was going on. I know you meant well. But can either of you tell me how in the hell you could believe that was right?

He himself did not eat. I had been hungry, but sitting there now, at the table with the two of them, it felt as crude to chew or swallow as it would have to munch on popcorn at a baby’s christening, or lick an ice-cream cone while your friend told you his dog died. I shouldn’t be here was how I felt.

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)

It wasn’t every day there was a shooting in a historic lighthouse involving a celebrity chef, an officer of the court, a standard poodle and a fudge recipe.

This isn't an army marching on the Mists. This isn't a case you have to solve. It's just a bunch of nobles coming to puff their chests out at each other an try to look important. Do what I do. Bring popcorn.

It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches. And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo. And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

*Gone are the days of Benton's childhood, when his sticky fingers dung through caramel-glazed popcorn and peanuts for treasure, such as a plastic whistle or BB game or, best of all, the magic decoding ring that little Benton wore on his index finger, pretending it empowered him to know wgat people thought, what they would do and which monster he would defeat on his next secret mission. *The toy surprises inside are games printed on folded white paper, cheap as hell, and require the IF of a pigeon.

What do I want? I stared at him stupidly. What I wanted was to be with Andy forever, for us to be together, openly, in front of the world. I wanted to come home to him after work every day and hold him every night. I wanted to throw popcorn at each other while watching movies and join a soccer league on the weekends. I wanted to be there when he graduated from law school. I wanted not to have my heart shattered into a million pieces. I wanted not to be broken for however many years it was going to take me to get over this. I couldn’t have those things, though. And it wasn’t fair.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

It seems like as we stand there I’m watching my whole life with Hana, our entire friendship, fall away: sleepover parties with forbidden midnight bowls of popcorn; all the times we rehearsed for Evaluation Day, when Hana would steal a pair of her father’s old glasses, and bang on her desk with a ruler whenever I got an answer wrong, and we always started choking with laughter halfway through; the time she put a fist, hard, in Jillian Dawson’s face because Jillian said my blood was diseased; eating ice cream on the pier and dreaming of being paired and living in identical houses, side by side. All of it is being sucked into nothing, like sand getting swept up by a current.

The pelting sing-song of it carried me forward to scenes and sounds ofy boyhood days: "N-e-e-ew Haven! ten minutes for refreshments--knductor'll strike the gong-bell two minutes before train leaves--passengers for the Shore-linr please take seats in the rear k'yar, this k'yar don't go no furder--ahh-pls, aw-rnjz, b'nanners, s-a-n-d'ches, p----op-corn!

I stopped noticing the nit-picky things years ago, My late husband was brilliant, but never figured out dirty cups went in the sink. Used to drive me crazy, but one day I compared it to his good qualities. Supportive husband, hands-on dad. Smart, funny, awesome popcorn-maker. All that versus doesn't put cups in the sink. The latter just wasn't worth mentioning.

The way I feel about you, Jacinda...I know you feel it, too." He stares at me so starkly, so hungrily that I can only nod. Agree. Of course, I feel it. "I do," I admit. But I don't understand him. Don't get why he should feel this way about me. Why should he want me so much? What do I offer him? Why did he save me that day in the mountains? And why does he pursue me now? When no girl spiked his interest before? "Good," he says. "Then how about a date?" "A date?" I repeat, like I've never heard the word. "Yeah. A real date. Something official. You. Me. Tonight. We're long overdue." His smile deepens, revealing the deep grooves on the sides of his cheeks. "Dinner. Movie. Popcorn." "Yes." The word slips past. For a moment I forget. Forget that I'm not an ordinary girl. That he's not an ordinary boy. For the first time, I understand Tamra. And the appeal of normal. "Yes." It feels good to say it. To pretend. To drink in the sight of him and forget there's an ulterior reason I need to go out with him. A reason that's going to tear us apart forever. Stupid. Did you think you might have a future with him? Mom's right. Time to grow up. He smiles. Then he's gone. Out the door. For a second, I'm confused. Then he's at my door, opening it, helping me out. Together we walk through the parking lot. Side by side. We move only a few feet before he slips his hand around mine. As we near the front of the building, I see several kids hanging out around the flagpole. Tamra with her usual crowd. Brooklyn at the head. I try to tug my hand free. His fingers tighten on mine. I glance at him, see the resolve in his eyes. His hazel eyes glint brightly in the already too hot morning. "Coward." "Oh." The single sound escapes me. Outrage. Indignation. I stop. Turn and face him. Feel something slip, give way, and crumble loose inside me. Set free, it propels me. Standing on my tiptoes, I circle my hand around his neck and pull his face down to mine. Kiss him. Right there in front of the school. Reckless. Stupid. I stake a claim on him like I've got something to prove, like a drake standing before the pride in a bonding ceremony. But then I forget our audience. Forget everything but the dry heat of our lips. My lungs tighten, contract. I feel my skin shimmer, warm as my lungs catch. Crackling heat works its way up my chest. Not the smartest move I've ever made.

1. "Ahem. I know you hate Mondays, madam, but you picked the absolutely wrong one to play hooky. Or be sick. Yes, I suppose it's vaguely possible that you are actually sick. Anyway, here we are at lunch, Sadie and I, witnessing total social disorder. Your friend Alexander Bainbridge is sitting at the usual table, but facing the room. Amanda Alstead is sitting at Table One. Or, should I say,sitting more or less on a Phillite senior boy, whose name is unimportant, at Table One. A very nice young lady at the next table over-you know, the one who writes about Mr. Darcy-has just informeed us that Amanda dumpled Alex over the break. On Thanksgiving Day,no less. By e-mail. No telling how much truth is there, but a lot more than a kernal, I would say. We have a large, seven-dollar bag o' movie popcorn here. Thought you'd like to know. Call me.

Once she was caffeinated and showered, she was a whole new person. That person would take a second cup of coffee to the big armchair and pull out her planner and pencil box. She would decide what to eat and how she was going to exercise. She would make a shopping list. She would feel like her life was controlled and organized and heading in the right direction. It was the most satisfying part of her day. Today she had a book club meeting, after which her plan was to come home and read until bedtime. She laid out some extra-fluffy pajama pants and socks in preparation. She made a note to get popcorn. She made a note to get mini marshmallows to go in her cocoa. And then she made a note to get cocoa. And milk.

There was gray train smoke over the town most days, it smelled of travel, of transcontinental trains about to flash by, of important things about to happen. The train smell sounded the ‘A’ for Lamptown and then a treble chord of frying hamburger and onions and boiling coffee was struck by Hermann Bauer's kitchen, with a sostenuto of stale beer from Delaney's back door. These were all busy smells and seemed a 6 to 6 smell, a working town's smell, to be exchanged at the last factory whistle for the festival night odors of popcorn, Spearmint chewing gum, barber-shop pomades, and the faint smell of far-off damp cloverfields. Mornings the cloverfields retreated when the first Columbus local roared through the town. Bauer’s coffee pot boiled over again, and the factory’s night watchmen filed into Delaney’s for their morning beer.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you before, but a few years ago, I started keeping a diary, which I called ‘the life book’. I began with the idea of writing one short entry each day, just a line or two, describing something good. I suppose by ‘good’ I must have meant something that made me happy or brought me pleasure. I went back to look at it the other day, and the early entries are all from that autumn, almost six years ago now. Dry upturned sycamore leaves scuttling like claws along the South Circular Road. The artificial buttered taste of popcorn in the cinema. Pale-yellow sky in the evening, Thomas Street draped in mist. Things like that. I didn’t miss a day through all of September, October, November that year. I could always think of something nice, and sometimes I would even do things for the purpose of putting them in the book, like taking a bath or going for a walk. At the time I felt like I was just absorbing life, and at the end of the day I never had to strain to think of anything good I had seen or heard. It just came to me, and even the words came, because my only aim was to get the image down clearly and simply so that I would later remember how it felt. And reading those entries now, I do remember what I felt, or at least what I saw and heard and noticed. Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things—I mean just the things that were in front of me. People’s faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that—like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me.

Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed.

I open the box, and there are notes. Notes and notes and notes. Peter’s notes. Peter’s notes I threw away. “I found them when I was emptying your trash,” she says. Hastily she adds, “I only read a couple. And then I saved them because I could tell they were important.” I touch one that Peter folded into an airplane. “Kitty…you know Peter and I aren’t getting back together, right?” Kitty grabs the bowl of popcorn and says, “Just read them.” Then she goes into the living room and turns on the TV. I close the hatbox and take it with me upstairs. When I am in my room, I sit on the floor and spread them out around me. A lot of the notes just say things like “Meet you at your locker after school” and Can I borrow your chemistry notes from yesterday?” I find the spiderweb one from Halloween, and it makes me smile. Another one says, “Can you take the bus home today? I want to surprise Kitty and pick her up from school so she can show me and my car off to her friends.” “Thanks for coming to the estate sale with me this weekend. You made the day fun. I owe you one.” “Don’t forget to pack a Korean yogurt for me!” “If you make Josh’s dumb white-chocolate cranberry cookies and not my fruitcake ones, it’s over.” I laugh out loud. And then, the one I read over and over: “You look pretty today. I like you in blue.” I’ve never gotten a love letter before. But reading these notes like this, one after the other, it feels like I have. It’s like…it’s like there’s only ever been Peter. Like everyone else that came before him, they were all to prepare me for this. I think I see the difference now, between loving someone from afar and loving someone up close. When you see them up close, you see the real them, but they also get to see the real you. And Peter does. He sees me, and I see him. Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That’s part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared anymore. I want to be brave, like Margot. It’s almost a new year, after all.

New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It's Oscar time again, which means two things: (1) I've got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We're too liberal; we're out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products--movies---that people all over the world still want to buy. Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska. What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sony Bono? Fred Thompson? And let'snot forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That's right, Dick Cheney. I'm not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they're almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derrick with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be "Two Die in Car Bombing." The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liebral stars that the right is always demonizing--Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy--they're just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren't begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do...nothing. We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: The people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys. So please don't hat eon us. And please don't ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we're just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.

If an ancient Hebrew invoked the name of the Lord God in a vow, he believed God alone had the power to break it. Because the Israelites understood Him to be a covenant God and knew that He was faithful, they more readily assumed that the vow was utterly binding. I am convicted by how thoughtlessly I often petition something “in the name of Jesus” without really seeking the heart and will of God in the matter. We need to be careful what we pray. Sometimes our hasty, popcorn prayers reveal a lack of conviction in the true power of the name of Jesus.

Tune into good memories Knowing this, you have to be proactive. When negative memories come back to the movie screen of the mind, many people pull up a chair, get some popcorn, and watch it all again. They’ll say: “I can’t believe they hurt me, that was so wrong.” Instead, remember this: That’s not the only movie playing. There’s another channel that is not playing back your defeats, your failures, or your disappointments. This channel features your victories, your accomplishments, and the things you did right. The good-memory channel plays back the times you were promoted, you met the right person, you bought a great house, and your children were healthy and happy. Instead of staying on that negative channel, switch over to your victory channel. You will not move forward into better days if you’re always replaying the negative things that have happened. We’ve all been through loss, disappointments, and bad breaks. So those memories will come to mind most often. The good news is you have the remote control. Just because the memory comes up doesn’t mean you have to dwell on it. Learn to change the channel.

People are hitting little old ladies on the head. Teachers are driving into trees. You are being arrested every other day by your childhood friend. Come back to California.” Funny,

Warrior beckoned to her. “Loh-rhett-ah, you come, eh?” Loretta glanced uneasily at Red Buffalo. To her surprise, he moved closer to Maiden of the Tall Grass to make room for her. Blackbird dashed across the room and seized Loretta’s hand. “Keemah!” she cried. Loretta rose and let the child lead her to the circle. She shot a glance at Red Buffalo. He caught the look and smiled. She had the uneasy feeling he did so only for the benefit of Warrior and Maiden of the Tall Grass, and that he had a motive for this sudden turnabout. Oh, God. Did he hope that Warrior might leave him alone with her? “This Comanche will not eat you,” he said. “Be easy.” Not sure what to make of his mood, Loretta arranged her skirt around her and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. With Warrior sitting so close, she felt fairly safe. These last five days he had proven himself to be an even-tempered and kind man. Maiden of the Tall Grass, in her sweet, quiet way, ruled the roost. Loretta felt confident no one would harm her with Warrior close at hand. After the corn finished popping, Maiden removed the kettle from over the flames and set it in the center of their circle. When she whisked away the lid, the smell itself was almost good enough to eat. Once everyone else had helped themselves, Loretta shyly scooped a small handful, trying not to think about Amy and failing miserably. Red Buffalo snorted and dipped his hands into the fluffed kernels, his palms forming a sizable bowl. The next instant he dumped the mountain of corn onto Loretta’s skirt where it stretched across her lap. “Oh, my! I--” Loretta was about to say she couldn’t possibly eat so much. She swallowed the words and forced a smile. These people didn’t know Amy. She couldn’t expect them to understand her somber mood--or even to care. “Thank you.” Blackbird snitched a piece of popcorn from Loretta’s mound, and everyone laughed. Not to be outdone, Pony Girl, always on the move, toddled over and helped herself as well. “You see? It is good you have so much,” Red Buffalo said.

It happens sometimes that you accidentally star in a little public performance of your very own comedy, tragedy, or melodrama. You’re running for your morning bus, briefcase swinging jauntily, when you trip and tumble playground-style to the footpath. You’re trapped in the heavy-breathing silence of a crowded elevator when your lover says something infuriating (What did you just say?), or your child asks a rather delicate question, or your mother calls on your mobile to shriek dire warnings. You’re shuffling past a row of knees in the cinema, caught in the spotlight of the previews, when you tip your popcorn into a stranger’s lap. You’re having one of those days of accumulating misery when you argue violently with someone in a position of power: a bank teller, a dry cleaner, a three-year-old.

Kewauna traced a lot of her current academic difficulties to sixth grade, when, because of her poor grades and bad behavior, she was placed in a remedial class called WINGS. Officially, WINGS stood for Working Innovatively Now for Graduation Success, but Kewauna told me that at Plymouth, the joke was that it was called WINGS because the kids used to sit in class all day just eating chicken wings. That was an exaggeration, she said—but not much of one. “We never did anything in that class,” she said. “It was for kids who needed help, but they didn’t give us any help. We didn’t read. We didn’t study. We just played video games and watched movies and ate popcorn. It was fun, but that’s why I’m struggling with the ACT now. That’s why I’m getting denied from scholarships. Those two years were when we were supposed to be learning punctuation, commas, metaphors, all that stuff. When they bring it up today, they say, ‘Remember when we learned this?’ And I’m like, ‘No, I don’t! I never learned any of that.

They all blur together these days—the smell of manure and buttered popcorn, urine and cotton candy, hay and innocence. He wrings his hands again and then stands up. Bob hobbles over to the corner, goosebumps rippling across his flesh, and he begins to wash off the cloud of white, his costume of the day, the way he is able to meander through any festive occasion with hardly a worry—balloons in hand, a smile on his face, knots twisting in his gut, blood filling his shoes.

I was finding it hard to keep a straight face while watching.” When Amon calmed himself down, he sighed a happy one before speaking again, “if only I had some popcorn.” “I think I prefer Abigor stabbing me rather than your pleasantries,” I muttered in a low dull tone as I stare at him feeling uneased. What I say is true. At least with Abigor, he is straight forward with his intentions. It is as clear as day, but everything about Amon is so… warped. “Hmmm,” he hummed delightfully but curious, “are you sure about that?” In the background, Abigor sneered surveying his perimeter while grumbling to himself. From my firm glare, he lightly scoffed and continued to speak. “Now, now… I’m a fair guy. I would share the popcorn, I’m not that heartless,” Amon again cheerfully grinned.

I can not help the Torch got out my Hand that day.

You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush.

After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush.

Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground rattling boom that follows.

This was inevitable, and another unmistakable inkling tells me that I knew it well before now. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. It’s Cecelia’s call that stops me from embracing the dark snaking its way into me. Focusing on her, I allow myself the chance to tell her that briefly, she gave me a glimpse of a happiness I hadn’t thought I was capable of. “Cecelia,” I address firmly, my heart lurching into the rhythm she created. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Tobias attempts to cut in, calling my name, but I refuse him. “I’m talking to Cecelia.” “Yes?” she replies, voice shaking with fear. “After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a life we might have had . . . if I didn’t have so many fucking monsters to slay. “Yeah, and I’ll watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.” Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. “We love rainy days, don’t we, baby?” “We do,” she croaks, voice breaking. Tilting my head at Matteo in challenge, I make my declaration clear to Tobias to ready himself. “We don’t fucking negotiate with terrorists.” Taking another step toward Matteo, Cecelia’s voice reaches me in elevated panic. “Dominic.” “What is it, baby?” “S’il te plaît, ne fais rien de stupide. Je t’aime.” Please don’t do anything stupid. I love you. “Je sais.” I know. Her declaration fuels me as I stand between her and the monster I swore to protect her from while her love sets me free. For a brief time, she was my solace—my reprieve. The only dream of a future I allowed myself to have, but she can’t be. Not anymore. Too many monsters. “Dominic,” Tobias orders gruffly. “Stand down, right fucking now. We’re still talking.” I feel the desperation in his order, in him, as he rattles behind me to stop and think it through. But I have, for far too long, and I’m finally ten steps ahead. Sorry brother.

These two men have flipped my world, made colors more vivid, made sounds sweeter, made the world as a whole more bearable. My dreams consist of ray-filled days full of coconut lotion, long kisses, itchy sunburns, floating between waterfalls, and sighs before exhausted bodies collapse against feathery pillows. Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground rattling boom that follows.

I arrived at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol at around 11 a.m. I was supposed to meet my friend Ben at the Vondelpark at 3 p.m., so that we could then go and check in to our hostel together. Now, I guess it’s important to note that neither of us had a cellphone that worked in Europe, because I’m not even sure that shit existed back then. We just made a plan and were supposed to do it, which seems reckless and terrifying in retrospect. These days, I text my wife while I’m in line for popcorn at the theater to make sure the seat-finding process is going okay. The fact that I flew to a different continent and was just supposed to meet my friend at a certain place at a certain time feels like something out of the Middle Ages. It’s like when you hear that NASA sent people to the moon with a scientific calculator; that’s what meeting someone without a cellphone seems like to me now.

To this day the smell of fresh popcorn causes me to experience stress, hunger, and sketch ideas for John Goodman.

*Gone are the days of Benton's childhood, when his sticky fingers dung through caramel-glazed popcorn and peanuts for treasure, such as a plastic whistle or BB game or, best of all, the magic decoding ring that little Benton wore on his index finger, pretending it empowered him to know wgat people thought, what they would do and which monster he would defeat on his next secret mission. *The toy surprises inside are games printed on folded white paper, cheap as hell, and require the IQ of a pigeon.

EL Ideas- Chef Phillip Foss Valentine's Day Menu freeze pop- honeydew/truffle/bitters shake and fries- potato/vanilla/leek black cod- black rice/black garlic/black radish cauliflower- botarga/anchovy/pasta brussels sprouts- grits/kale/horseradish apple- peanut/bacon/thyme french onion- gruyere/brioche/chive ham- fontina/butternut/green almonds pretzel- beer/mustard/cheddar buffalo chicken- blue cheese/carrot/celery steak- components of béarnaise pie- lime/graham crackers/cream cheese movie snacks- popcorn/Twizzlers/Raisinets

It’s got this chemical, diacetyl, that causes lung scarring. The factory workers who make it? They get this disease called popcorn lung from working around the fumes all day.

Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them.” —Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NKJV) I was making rounds at the veterans hospital where I work, when an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair pointed his cane to a sign on a bulletin board. “Look, hon,” he said to his wife, “they’re having an old-fashioned Easter egg hunt on Saturday. It says here that the kids can compete in a bunny-hop sack race for prizes.” He barely came up for air. “Remember when we used to have those Easter egg hunts on our farm? The kids would color eggs at our kitchen table and get dye all over everything.” Just then, his wife noticed the smell of popcorn in the air. Volunteers sell it for a bargain price—fifty cents a sack. The veteran didn’t miss a beat. “Remember when we used to have movie night and you would pop corn? We’ve got to start doing that again, hon. I love popcorn. Movies too.” As I took in this amazingly joyful man, I thought of things I used to be able to do before neurofibromatosis took over my body. It was nothing to run a couple of miles; I walked everywhere. Instead of rejoicing in the past, I too often complain about my restrictions. Rather than marvel how I always used to walk downtown, shopping, I complain about having to use a handicap placard on my car so I can park close to the mall, which I complain about as well. But today, with all my heart, I want to be like that veteran and remember my yesterdays with joy. Help me, dear Lord, to recall the past with pleasure. —Roberta Messner Digging Deeper: Eph 4:29; Phil 2:14

* * * In the afternoon, when Grace was just about to ruin her dinner with a big bowl of popcorn while looking through various online floral arrangements on her laptop, there was a light tapping at her back door. She pulled the curtain to peek out through the window in the door and was shocked to see Iris. She opened the door. “Don’t newlyweds lay around in bed for several days after the wedding?

Barbara preferred to decorate the tree early instead of waiting for Christmas Eve, saying she wanted to have some time to enjoy the tree prior to the actual holiday. So three days before Christmas, she set Abe and the children to stringing popcorn, while she carefully unwrapped the glass ornaments from Germany that Robert brought down from the attic.

​ My name is David, but most peole call me Popcorn. I write breathtaking adventures. I write the way most people think. I challengen myself to alter women emotion and guys intensely whenever they read what I write. I am forever involved in darker side of my writing. I often get jealous of the remarkablel women and the dangerious men I write about. My techique isunorthodox and my writing style is various.I can spin a fairytale from every genre, from murder mystery to urban fantasy to exotic romance. I I have been writing passionate since, I was 8. I am going to be a popular writer one day because I am capable of writing with such passion, intensity and sensitivity,

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) Home, upon that word drops the sunshine of beauty and the shadow of tender sorrows, the reflection of ten thousand voices and fond memories. This is a mighty fine old world after all if you make yourself think so. Look happy even if things are going against you— that will make others happy. Pretty soon all will be smiling and then there is no telling what can’t be done. Coca-Cola Girl Mother baked a fortune cake pale yellow icing, lemon drops round rim, hidden within treasures, a ring—you’ll be married, a button—stay a bachelor, a thimble—always a spinster, and a penny—you’re rich. Gee, but I am hungry. Wait a second, dear, until I pull my belt up another notch. There that’s better. So, you see, Hon, I am straighter than a string around a bundle. You ought to see my eye, it’s a peach. I am proud of it, looks like I’ve been kicked by a mule. You know, dear, that they can kick hard enough to knock all the soda out of a biscuit without breaking the crust Hogging Catfish This gives you a fighting chance. Noodle your right hand into their gills, hold on tight while you grunt him out of the water. This can be a real dogfight. Old river cat wants to go down deep, make you bottom feed. Like I said, boys, when you tell a whopper, say it like you believe it. Saturday Ritual My Granddad was a cobbler. We each owned two pairs of shoes, Sunday shoes and everyday shoes. When our Sunday shoes got worn they became our everyday shoes. Main Street Saturday Night We each were given a dime on Saturday opening a universe of possibilities. All the stores stayed open and people flocked into town. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds set up a popcorn stand on Reinheimer’s corner and soon after lighting a little stove, sounding like small firecrackers, popping began. Dad, laughing shooting the breeze with a group of farmers, drinking Coca Cola, finding out if any sheds needed to be built or barns repaired, discussing the price of next year’s seed, finding out who’s really working, who’s just looking busy. There is no object I wouldn’t give to relive my childhood growing up in Delavan— where everyone knew everyone— and joy came with but a dime. Market Day Jim Pittsford’s grocery smelled of bananas ripening and the coffee he ground by hand, wonderful smoked ham and bacon fresh sliced. He’d reward the child who came to pick up the purchase, with a large dill pickle Biking home, skillfully balancing Jim Pittsford’s bacon, J B’s tomatoes and peaches, while sniffing a tantalizing spice rising from fresh warm rolls, I nibbled my pickle reward.

Sucralose (Splenda): 600X sweeter Soft drinks, iced teas and coffees, juice drinks, flavored syrups, chewing gum, protein drinks, energy bars, baked goods, ice cream, gummy bears, microwave popcorn Neotame: 7,000–13,000X sweeter Approved in 2002, it’s found in: carbonated soft drinks, powdered soft drinks, baked goods, dairy, chewing gum Advantame: 20,000X sweeter Newly approved in 2014, it’s found in: dairy drinks, frozen desserts, beverages, chewing gum

Go on a date with me,” he said when I didn’t answer. “We’ll do anything you want. Even eat popcorn.” “We’ve been on dates before.” “That was before. This is now.” His face softened. “Just one date. Please.” “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” “Why not?” “There’re a thousand different reasons… We’re not good together, Dante. Our relationship was so hot and cold, but we made it work because we had to make it work. Now that we don’t… Things have been difficult since day one. Maybe it’s a sign.” “That’s six reasons,” Dante said. “I can work with six. I can even work with a thousand.” My chest ached. “Dante…” “You don’t think we’re a good idea, but I’ll prove we are.

These two men have flipped my world; made colors more vivid, made sounds sweeter, made the world as a whole more bearable. My dreams consist of ray-filled days full of coconut lotion, long kisses, itchy sunburns, floating between waterfalls, and sighs before exhausted bodies collapse against feathery pillows. Other dreams of rainy days and nights filled with flips of pages and old nineties flicks, of cheddar popcorn and lavender-scented blankets, of lightning and thunder and the fast pants and moans between the streak in the sky and the ground-rattling boom that follows. But these are my waking dreams, and I’m living them.

In a way, it's like a significant lead that landed in their laps like a magnificent firecracker has just turned into a dud that went out like a popcorn fart.

You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a baby's face as she lies asleep in your lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious food you haven't tried yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the likelihood of dying from falling. There are books you haven't read that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late-night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn't going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it. (Reason No.10).

You will have days Where you don’t give a damn about a label Where you don’t need the support of others to feel stable Where all you want is to binge on popcorn and watch cable Where your style will be similar to that of Clark Gable

And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more.

And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. That instinct never goes—look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I’ve chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other’s self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drunk from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Bar-made Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding’s “Cigarettes and Coffee” (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we

Unfortunately, my mind was also in part formed by the apocalyptic, death-obsessed culture of the past several decades. Tens of millions were supposed to have died in an ice age back in the 1980s, just as predicted in 1969, and still more were said to be doomed by a bath of acid rain shortly thereafter, as well as in radiation that would fry the world when the ozone layer disappeared. Hadn’t hundreds of millions more perished at the turn of the millennium—Y2K—when every damn computer went haywire and all the nuclear missiles in the world were launched, to say nothing of the lethal effects of canola oil in theater popcorn? Living in the End Times was exhausting. When you were assured that billions of people were on the brink of imminent death at every minute of the day, it was hard to get the necessary eight hours of sleep, even harder to limit yourself to only one or two alcoholic drinks each day, when your stress level said, I gotta get smashed. As

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Did I bring Adam and Sabrina together or did the fact that I got a new girlfriend do that? I was asking the wrong questions. There were so many of them playing mind games that I had to try different angles to find answers. It seemed like Adam was manipulating Martina with an idea of Sabrina and the club. But how could Adam do that if Sabrina and Ruan already knew each other most likely, working for Adam? How could Adam paint two different pictures of Sabrina to Ruan and Martina? Mabye couldn't convince Ruan of any wrongdoing; perhaps he wanted to warn me or Martina, and his arm broke for certain reason. Or was Sabrina playing the same role that Adam painted about her to Martina? Was Adam paying Sabrina to play this game while also trying to sell registration apps to clubs downtown? It seemed like it was a cover up. What was the prize besides the club and the marijuana grow? Who wanted to kill me and why were all these people daring to mess with me? How did they form a group against me? Who or what made them a criminal group? Who was their real leader? Who did they think was the leader, Adam? He was afraid of me. Then who, Sabrina? She wasn't afraid of me, but she wouldn't step over me in my life, my job, or my career unless she had an open field and open goal. Why did she do that? Why did Adam invite her to such strange games? What was the fun? What was the joke? What was the reason why these people thought they were bullying me and wouldn’t get slapped? Why was it my impression that everyone was laughing at me? I felt like Adam didn't have the courage, and his father was not their leader either. I felt like their leader was much less intelligent than Adam or Ferran. I felt like they were being manipulated by someone much less intelligent, or they were acting like that for some reason, or they didn't seem to be hiding how stupid of a leader they had, who wanted to kill me personally, as if the rest of them were just bystanders eating popcorn while I plotted to do the same with Martina once we thought they had taken away my club and the Camorra would take it away from them anyhow. Did Nico say the word “Camorra” to try and scare me? Who told Nico that I knew about the Camorra and what they were up to? Adam, Nico and Martina were aware that the Camorra were one of my clients. Who could have seen Roberto Saviano's book “Gomorrah” in Cantabria, Urgell, and Radas which I bought in the last days of 2011? All of them. I do not know the exact number of particular books that have influenced these events thus far.

I was wondering why Adam had called Sabrina “crazy bitch” in front of me and Martina? Why would he do that when he knew I would not like to hear it? Did I bring Adam and Sabrina together or did the fact that I got a new girlfriend do that? I was asking the wrong questions. There were so many of them playing mind games that I had to try different angles to find answers. It seemed like Adam was manipulating Martina with an idea of Sabrina and the club. But how could Adam do that if Sabrina and Ruan already knew each other most likely, working for Adam? How could Adam paint two different pictures of Sabrina to Ruan and Martina? Maybe couldn't convince Ruan of any wrongdoing; perhaps he wanted to warn me or Martina, and his arm broke for certain reason. Or was Sabrina playing the same role that Adam painted about her to Martina? Was Adam paying Sabrina to play this game while also trying to sell registration apps to clubs downtown? It seemed like it was a cover up. What was the prize besides the club and the marijuana grow? Who wanted to kill me and why were all these people daring to mess with me? How did they form a group against me? Who or what made them a criminal group? Who was their real leader? Who did they think was the leader, Adam? He was afraid of me. Then who, Sabrina? She wasn't afraid of me, but she wouldn't step over me in my life, my job, or my career unless she had an open field and open goal. Why did she do that? Why did Adam invite her to such strange games? What was the fun? What was the joke? What was the reason why these people thought they were bullying me and wouldn’t get slapped? Why was it my impression that everyone was laughing at me? I felt like Adam didn't have the courage, and his father was not their leader either. I felt like their leader was much less intelligent than Adam or Ferran. I felt like they were being manipulated by someone much less intelligent, or they were acting like that for some reason, or they didn't seem to be hiding how stupid of a leader they had, who wanted to kill me personally, as if the rest of them were just bystanders eating popcorn while I plotted to do the same with Martina once we thought they had taken away my club and the Camorra would take it away from them anyhow. Did Nico say the word “Camorra” to try and scare me? Who told Nico that I knew about the Camorra and what they were up to? Adam, Nico and Martina were aware that the Camorra were one of my clients. Who could have seen Roberto Saviano's book “Gomorrah” in Cantabria, Urgell, and Radas which I bought in the last days of 2011? All of them. I do not know the exact number of particular books that have influenced these events thus far.

I bet it’s because I was talking about Garrett.” “Ooo,” she sang, lifting an eyebrow at me, “Is that so?” “Yep,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I caught them kissing the other day.” I shot up into a sitting position, narrowing my eyes at the little devil who was conveniently hiding behind Sadie. Layla’s expression was so giddy, all she needed was a bag of popcorn to complete the package. “Kissing in plain sight, Mads? Tsk-tsk.” Jamie pretended to gag, holding a finger to his open mouth. “It was gross. He kissed her so much, she fell to the ground.

... The last thing I want to do is harsh your vibe or rain on your parade, but I take no shit on your behalf. I haven’t since the day we moved into the dorms freshman year and you demanded we stay up all night bonding over burnt microwave popcorn because you, and I quote, have a feeling we’re supposed to be best friends. I’m not going to start now.

Phase I Shopping List For smoothies: 5 red apples 5 small bananas 3 medium oranges 1 bag red or green grapes 5 pears 3 avocados (can use for soups, too) 1 bunch fresh spinach 3 limes 4 (10- or 12-ounce) bags frozen raspberries 2 (10- or 12-ounce) bags frozen blueberries 2 (16-ounce) bags frozen strawberries 1 (16-ounce) bag almonds (can also use for snacking) Ground cinnamon Almonds or 1 (16-ounce) bag almond meal, depending on the strength of your blender Plain or vanilla protein powder (see this page for a complete guide to buying protein powder) 1 (12-ounce) bag ground or whole flaxseeds or chia seeds, depending on the strength of your blender (Some, like the blenders I describe on this page, will be able to grind the seeds themselves. Less powerful machines might require ground seeds.) ½ gallon fat-free, 1 percent, or 2 percent organic milk (or unsweetened nondairy milk of your preference) 1 quart fat-free, 1 percent, or 2 percent plain Greek yogurt (Chobani, Oikos, Fage, Trader Joe’s, Siggi’s, or Icelandic Skyr) For soups: 1 head broccoli 2 medium zucchini 1 pound carrots (can be used for snacking, too) 1 box bouillon cubes (I prefer Knorr’s) Garlic powder Onion powder For snacks: 1 pint fresh blackberries or raspberries 1 small package high-fiber crackers, like Ryvita ½ pound low-fat cheese of your choice 1 (5-or-so-ounce) bag air-popped, low-cal popcorn 1 pound sliced turkey 1 (12-ounce) package frozen or fresh peeled edamame

Nanaki would be besotted for many hours. She would watch like a novice, like she was in a foreign country, with fresh eyes. Like starting all over again. Like wiping clean a film of experience from eyes and starting afresh, like a child. She would then do a very Chandigarh thing - buy herself a tub of buttered popcorn and continue observing. On days she would get so late that the blue of the sky would deepen into a flush of Prussian. Poor selling boys launched neon frisbees to attract little children taking a walk with parents. The sodium pole lamps would be lit and the water of the bird fountain would become a psychedelic pink. She would continue to observe- not in a way that would make people uncomfortable but in a detached, wholesome way, like she was part of the surroundings. This was also one of the early lessons by her favourite Prof Ramanujan at DCA, who always said that observation was the key. Nature or culture.

I have clients that feel like family, I make far more money than I've got a right to, considering the workload, and I have amazing benefits. What could be bad?" "I suppose I meant if you are satisfied creatively." I'd never really thought about that. The Farbers give me free rein, but they have a repertoire of my dishes that they love and want to have regularly in the rotation, and everything has to be kid friendly; even if we are talking about kids with precocious tastes, they are still kids. Lawrence is easy: breakfasts, lunches, and healthy snacks for his days; he eats most dinners out with friends, or stays home with red wine and popcorn, swearing that Olivia Pope stole the idea from him. And I'm also in charge of home-cooked meals for Philippe and Liagre, his corgis, who like ground chicken and rice with carrots, and home-baked peanut butter dog biscuits. Simca was a gift from him, four years ago. She was a post-Christmas rescue puppy, one of those gifts that a family was unprepared for, who got left at a local shelter where Lawrence volunteers. He couldn't resist her, but knew that Philippe and Liagre barely tolerate each other, and he couldn't imagine bringing a female of any species into their manly abode. Luckiest thing that ever happened to me, frankly. She's the best pup ever. I named her Simca because it was Julia Child's nickname for her coauthor Simone Beck. She is, as the other Eloise, my own namesake, would say, my mostly companion. Lawrence's dinner parties are fun to do- he always has a cool group of interesting people, occasionally famous ones- but he is pretty old-school, so there isn't a ton of creativity in those menus, lots of chateaubriand and poached salmon with the usual canapés and accompaniments.

Here, take this rag. I have a tool you can polish.” I make a face. “All day?” Bash cuts me a look. “I have a very large tool.” Gracie, leaning against the throne in the shade, erupts in a hacking, choking chortle. Her bowl of popcorn almost spills.

I like to think of myself as roughneck scribe of rugged cut and poetic intent, but right now that is difficult as I am typing up this column in the middle seat of a minivan en route to a high school volleyball game where I will be just another bald dad thinking, “Wow that popcorn smells good,” and perhaps peeking at my phone to check the score of the football game.

Left unsatisfied, the craving for sensations can become an actual hunger. A few years ago on a trip to Kauai, I noticed something funny. Five days in, I hadn’t had a single snack between meals. This was strange because, at home, I’m an inveterate grazer. There’s nearly always a packet of trail mix or a bowl of popcorn on my desk. But on this vacation, not a nibble. I realized that in Hawaii I was surrounded all day by the lush textures of the jungle, the whoosh of the ocean, and the smell of salt water. I had my feet in volcanic sand and a lei of plumeria flowers around my neck. I was satiated, head to toe. Sure enough, by 11:00 a.m. on that first day back in the office, I had my head in the snack cabinet, hunting for almonds. People are quick to blame habits, and to dismiss this as mindless eating, but I believe that ignores the root cause. In our humdrum environments, we live with a sensorial hunger, and without any other means to satisfy it, we feed it.

One activity we tend to enjoy on this day is popping some popcorn and along with enjoying it ourselves, stringing some on yarn with fresh cranberries to make an edible garland for the birds and other backyard creatures, seen and unseen. Or we spread some natural peanut butter on pinecones and cover it with birdseed. We usually designate one of the cedar trees growing near our house to hold these offerings.

You’re being modest. I’m told you’re actually quite a talented cook.” “I know what most of the buttons on the microwave do. It’s been days since I burned popcorn.

Hello, Popcorn,” he said, petting the dog, whose tail was going faster than ever. “We

We need to be careful what we pray. Sometimes our hasty, popcorn prayers reveal a lack of conviction in the true power of the name of Jesus.

Meanwhile, the Mosteks spent a frantic hour trying to comprehend the dire nature of Rece’s situation. Then Dr. Sammut entered the waiting room and gave the worried parents a thumbs-up. Inside a plastic vial was the unbelievable item that had nearly taken Rece’s life: a popcorn kernel that had been lodged in his left lung. Rece’s condition was the result of a perfect storm. Months earlier, he had inhaled a kernel of popcorn, which became lodged in his right lung. This led to infections and breathing problems, including pneumonia. But his excessive coughing earlier that day had thrust the kernel from the right lung and propelled it into his left lung, where it unluckily blocked his airway.

It is not that simple to adhere to good routines in tri cities wa dentist hygiene, but it is something that you need to do your whole life. You need to stay committed if you want your smile to constantly be a healthy one. This short article is packed with great dental care guidance. Avoid drinking soda water as part of your daily routine. Beverages rich in sugar can cause dental caries and staining unless you brush your teeth right away. This assists your teeth and naturally your overall health. It is essential that you brush your teeth regularly. Do it at least twice, preferably post-meal. Take a minimum of two minutes, brushing every surface of your teeth. Never ever brush too harshly, and constantly make use of a tooth paste with fluoride. You ought to also thoroughly floss your teeth afterward. Do not ever chew on ice. Chewing ice can crack teeth and make it easier for germs that triggers tooth cavities to stick to teeth and develop troubles. In addition, you ought to make use of care when consuming popcorn or nuts because these can also cause damages. If you fear that you have a broken tooth, visit your dental practitioner as soon as possible. Brilliant use of lipstick can make your teeth look more beautiful. Light average or red coral shades are going to have your teeth looking whiter than they truly are. Lighter shades have the tendency to have a reverse result. If they are white, they can make your teeth appear yellow even! You have to successfully brush at least two times daily to keep teeth in good shape. It is essential to brush in the early morning in order to remove collected germs from sleeping. During the night, you brush to clean away food debris you gathered during your day. Does tarter develop up on your teeth rapidly? If you do, you should buy a great anti-tartar tooth paste and mouthwash. Tartar typically kinds on your bottom front teeth and your upper molars. See a dental expert frequently to eliminate tartar. Do cold and hot foods trigger your teeth to hurt? Select a toothpaste for sensitive gums and teeth, and see a dental expert when you can. Go to an additional dental professional for a 2nd opinion if your dentist tells you a deep cleaning is needed. This form of cleaning costs a lot more so make certain that you aren't being ripped off. Does it appear outrageous to pay out $75 for a tooth brush? Well, many dental experts assert that a more pricey electricity toothbrush is one of the most efficient ways of cleaning your teeth, right alongside getting your teeth cleaned at the dental practitioner office. While you will not be removing everything on your teeth 100 percent, you will still get a remarkable clean. Search for models that have numerous styles of heads, and ensure the warranty is excellent! Take your time when brushing your teeth. Brushing could be something you already do, however you might rush when brushing. Do not make this mistake. Take care and sufficient time while you brush your teeth. Maximize the time when your brushing your teeth. See to it you brush comprehensive for one full minute or more. Do you really desire to get your tongue pierced? Piercing your tongue makes the location attractive to germs. It could chip off the enamel of your teeth if you aren't careful. Constantly follow appropriate brushing methods. You must do it as soon as you awaken and right prior to going to sleep. When you are asleep at night, your saliva dries, and this prevents bacteria that cause cavities from working. Make certain you set the timer for at least two minutes and brush around your teeth at a 45-degree angle. Since these fruits include carbonic acids that can ha

Shopping for the essentials of the Eat Clean diet can be tricky. For some people, just the thought of replacing all their “unclean” food scares them. This overwhelming reaction is normal and is typical among those who are still on the adjustment phase of the program. If you find yourself in this stage, you don’t have to fret. Here are some tips to help you get at ease with the process: Take Your Time You don’t have to rush. Take your time in examining each item in your pantry. Bear in mind that it is not necessary to eliminate all the bad foods. You can just eliminate the worst items first, and then gradually get rid of the others in the next few days or weeks. Once you have already discarded some of the worst food items, you may start making your grocery list. Prepare Your Grocery List Preparing your grocery list is the start of this Clean Eating journey. Allow yourself to make necessary adjustments, especially if you personally feel that it is a major transition and you want to tackle it step by step. It’s okay to miss an item or two. The important thing here is to stick to the basic principle of the program. Below are some of the essential items that you should consider when going shopping for this Eat Clean diet: Grains and Protein ·Brown rice ·Millet ·Black beans ·Pinto beans ·Lentils ·Chickpeas ·Raw almonds ·Raw cashews ·Sunflower seeds ·Walnuts ·Almond butter ·Cannellini beans ·Flax seed Vegetables/Herbs ·Kale ·Lettuces ·Onions ·Garlic ·Cilantro ·Parsley ·Tomatoes ·Broccoli ·Potatoes ·Fennel Condiments/Flavoring ·Extra virgin olive oil ·Coconut oil ·Sesame oil ·Black pepper ·Pink Himalayan salt ·Hot sauce ·Turmeric ·Cayenne ·Gomasio ·Cinnamon ·Red pepper flakes ·Maple syrup ·Tamari ·Stevia ·Dijon mustard ·Apple cider vinegar ·Red wine vinegar Fruits ·Lemons ·Avocado ·Apples ·Bananas ·Melon ·Grapes ·Berries Snacks ·Raw chocolate ·Coconut ice cream ·Tortilla chips ·Popcorn ·Pretzels ·Dairy-free cheese shreds ·Frozen fruits for smoothies ·Bagged frozen veggies ·Organic canned soups Beverages ·Coconut water ·Herbal teas ·Almond or hemp milk Pick the Fresh Ones You will know if the fruit or vegetable is fresh through its appearance and texture.

AUGUST 25 A Special Angel By Maria Gillard Thank you for my childhood, for my laughing heart and soul for all your magic, and for being bold Thank you for being my mom’s best friend and loving me no matter what state I was in Thanks for chives and roses, popcorn and TV Thanks for always letting me be me Thanks for rides to swim meets and yummy chocolate cake Thanks for being strong and true when my heart was aching Thank you for the blankets and pillow for my head Thank you for the back hill and the Westside River bed Thank you for the smell of melting butter on the stove Thank you for the nickels you gave me for the store You were a special angel sent to all of us with your disguise of freckles, kisses, hugs and guts We know you’re out there somewhere and you’ll stay inside our dreams We know wherever you are there’s a brilliant golden beam Watch over us, dear angel, as you go on your way and we will laugh and sing and dance again someday Amen

One day when you stop by for the study, the bowl of popcorn is on the table within easy reach, about a foot away, while the apple slices are on a counter—visible, although you’d have to stand up to take one. On another day you stop by, the apples are on the table and the popcorn is on the counter. Participants ate about 50 calories when the apples were within easy reach, but about three times more when the popcorn bowl was within reach. Friction in this study was pretty simple—distance. Just putting the high-calorie snack slightly out of reach was substantial friction. Participants could still see and smell the popcorn, but the distance was enough to discourage eating. By putting desserts at the end of the line (instead of at the beginning) and making healthy foods easier to see, restaurants can influence what people eat. As the saying goes, “Eye level is buy level.” If we have to bend low or reach high, we’re less likely to bother.