Renting A Car Quotes

recant, v. I want to take back at least half of the “I love you”s, because I didn’t mean them as much as the other ones. I want to take back the book of artsy photos I gave you, because you didn’t get it and said it was hipster trash. I want to take back what I said about you being an emotional zombie. I want to take back the time I called you “honey” in front of your sister and you looked like I had just shown her pictures of us having sex. I want to take back the wineglass I broke when I was mad, because it was a nice wineglass and the argument would have ended anyway. I want to take back the time we had sex in a rent-a-car, not because I feel bad about the people who got in the car after us, but because it was massively uncomfortable. I want to take back the trust I had while you were away in Austin. I want to take back the time I said you were a genius, because I was being sarcastic and I should have just said you’d hurt my feelings. I want to take back the secrets I told you so I can decide now whether to tell them to you again. I want to take back the piece of me that lies in you, to see if I truly miss it. I want to take back at least half the “I love you”s, because it feels safer that way.

I don't know what the hell I'm workin' for. Sometimes I sit in my apartment–all alone. And I think of the rent I'm paying. And it's crazy. But then, it's what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I'm lonely.

In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sports cars on their sixteenth birthdays. Teacher smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the Pride of the Trojans. Oops – I mean Pride of the Blue Devils. In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship the stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancún during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before prom.

If you meet somebody and they love you when you are your true, awful, not-ready-yet, boring, not cool enough, not handsome enough, not pretty enough, too fat, too poor self? And if you love them back so much it makes you calm? And they have flaws and you do not mind a single one of them? That means you get yourself to the church and you pull one of those priests out of bed and you have him cast one of those wedding spells on you. If you’re gay and this happens, you might have to rent a car first and drive to one of the states that operates a few hours ahead. Because if you found that, you found it.

Stealing drugs, selling drugs, buying clothes, renting luxury cars, taking clothes back, ordering blender drinks, this isn't what I'd call Real Life, not by a long shot.

Love That’s it: The cashless commerce. The blanket always too short. The loose connexion. To search behind the horizon. To brush fallen leaves with four shoes and in one’s mind to rub bare feet. To let and rent hearts; or in a room with shower and mirror, in a hired car, bonnet facing the moon, wherever innocence stops and burns its programme, the word in falsetto sounds different and new each time. Today, in front of a box office not yet open, hand in hand crackled the hangdog old man and the dainty old woman. The film promised love.

Do you see that man in the black Porsche?" I asked the women. They squinted out at Ranger. "Yes," they said."Your partner." "He's homeless. He's looking for a place to stay and he might be interested in renting Singh's room." Mrs.Apusenja's eyes widened. "We could use the income."She looked at Nonnie and then back at Ranger. "Is he married?" "Nope. He's single. He's a real catch." Connie did something between a gasp and a snort and buried her head back behind the computer. "Thank you for everything." Mrs.Apusenja said. "I suppose you are not such a bad slut. I will go talk to your partner.: "Omigod," Connie said, when the door closed behind the Apusenja's. "Ranger's going to kill you." The Apusenjas stood beside the Porsche, talkig to Ranger for a few long minutes, giving him the big sales pitch. The pitch wound down, Ranger responded, and Mrs. Apusenja looked disappointed. The two women crossed the road and got into the burgundy Escort and quickly drove away. Ranger turned his head in my direction and our eyes met. His expression was still bemused, but this time it was the sort of bemused expression a kid has when he's pulling the wings off a fly. "Uh-Oh,"Connie said. I whipped around and faced Connie. "Quick, give me an FTA. You're backed up, right? For God's sake, give me something fast. I need a reason to stand here until he calms down!" Connie shoved a pile of folders at me. "Pick one. Any one! Oh shit, he's getting out of his car.".... He leaned into me and his lips brushed the shell of my ear. "Feeling playful?" "I don't know what you're talking about." "Watch your back babe. I will get even." -Ranger and Stephanie

But I have never had the privilege of unhappiness in Happy Valley. California is about the good life. So a bad life there seems so much worse than a bad life anywhere else. Quality is an obsession there—good food, good wine, good movies, music, weather, cars. Those sound like the right things to shoot for, but the never-ending quality quest is a lot of pressure when you’re uncertain and disorganized and, not least, broker than broke. Some afternoons a person just wants to rent Die Hard, close the curtains, and have Cheerios for lunch.

And yet, women keep trying. They put off the rent or the utilities to scrape together the $500 for a first-trimester abortion. They drive across whole states to get to a clinic and sleep in their cars because they can’t afford a motel. They do not do this because they are careless sluts or because they hate babies or because they fail to see clearly what their alternatives are. They see the alternatives all too clearly. We live, as Ellen Willis wrote, in a society that is “actively hostile to women’s ambitions for a better life. Under these conditions the unwillingly pregnant woman faces a terrifying loss of control over her fate.” Abortion, wrote Willis, is an act of self-defense.5

The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves.

Were we just two more rootless jungle-dwelling erotomaniacs creamining in their pre-faded jeans over Historical New England, dreaming the old agrarian dream in their rent-a-car convertible

The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my mother's necklace, the beads rolling north and south. Broken the rose stem, water into drops, glass knob on the bedroom door. Last summer's pot of parsley and mint, white roots shooting like streamers through the cracks. Years ago the cat's tail, the bird bath, the car hood's rusted latch. Broken little finger on my right hand at birth-- I was pulled out too fast. What hasn''t been rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night sky into stars, the stars into patterns I make up as I trace them with a broken-off blade of grass. Possible, unthinkable, the cricket's tiny back as I lie on the lawn in the dark, my hart a blue cup fallen from someone's hands.

THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ITINERANTS, drifters, hobos, restless souls. But now, in the second millennium, a new kind of wandering tribe is emerging. People who never imagined being nomads are hitting the road. They’re giving up traditional houses and apartments to live in what some call “wheel estate”—vans, secondhand RVs, school buses, pickup campers, travel trailers, and plain old sedans. They are driving away from the impossible choices that face what used to be the middle class. Decisions like: Would you rather have food or dental work? Pay your mortgage or your electric bill? Make a car payment or buy medicine? Cover rent or student loans? Purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute? For many the answer seemed radical at first. You can’t give yourself a raise, but what about cutting your biggest expense? Trading a stick-and-brick domicile for life on wheels?

It's time now to rent a car, roll down the windows and prepare for your first big thrill: the freeways. They're so much fun they should charge admission. Never fret about zigzagging back and forth through six lanes of traffic at high speeds; it erases jet lag in a split second. You're now heading toward Hollywood, like any normal tourist. Breathe in that smog and feel lucky that only in L.A. will you glimpse a green sun or a brown moon. Forget the propaganda you've heard about clean air; demand oxygen you can see in all its glorious discoloration.

She asked me for some advice regarding Mark’s financial affairs. It’s a very common problem for the families of missing persons – what happens when someone disappears? How long do you wait before you clean out their flat? Do you reregister their car? Who keeps paying the car payments? How do you access their bank account? What about rent and mortgage? When do you tell their employer you don’t think they’re coming back to their job?

You know, I'm like Avis rent-a-car: Because I'm insignificant, I try harder.

There were two more cars parked in the lot than when Seph and Madison had arrived. One was the old Jeep that Will and Ellen shared. The other one was unfamiliar, a black minivan with a rent-a-car sticker. It must belong to the alumni, Seph thought. At least he hoped so, because he melted all four tires.

Something is wrong, very wrong, when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow. You don’t need a degree in economics to see that wages are too low and rents too high.

I wonder if my father, given the chance, would have wished to go back to the time before he made all that money, when he just had one store and we rented a tiny apartment in Queens. He worked hard and had worries but he had a joy then that he never seemed to regain once the money started coming in. He might turn on the radio and dance cheek to cheek with my mother. He worked on his car himself, a used green Impala with carburetor trouble. They had lots of Korean friends that they met in church and then even in the street, and when they talked in public there was a shared sense of how lucky they were, to be in America but still have countrymen near.

The American really loves nothing but his automobile: not his wife his child nor his country nor even his bank-account first (in fact he doesn't really love that bank-account nearly as much as foreigners like to think because he will spend almost any or all of it for almost anything provided it is valueless enough) but his motor-car. Because the automobile has become our national sex symbol. We cannot really enjoy anything unless we can go up an alley for it. Yet our whole background and raising and training forbids the sub rosa and surreptitious. So we have to divorce our wife today in order to remove from our mistress the odium of mistress in order to divorce our wife tomorrow in order to remove from our mistress and so on. As a result of which the American woman has become cold and and undersexed; she has projected her libido on to the automobile not only because its glitter and gadgets and mobility pander to her vanity and incapacity (because of the dress decreed upon her by the national retailers association) to walk but because it will not maul her and tousle her, get her all sweaty and disarranged. So in order to capture and master anything at all of her anymore the American man has got to make that car his own. Which is why let him live in a rented rathole though he must he will not only own one but renew it each year in pristine virginity, lending it to no one, letting no other hand ever know the last secret forever chaste forever wanton intimacy of its pedals and levers, having nowhere to go in it himself and even if he did he would not go where scratch or blemish might deface it, spending all Sunday morning washing and polishing and waxing it because in doing that he is caressing the body of the woman who has long since now denied him her bed.

there wasn't a stove and we put cans of beans in hot water in the sink to heat them up and we read the Sunday papers on Monday after digging them out of the trash cans but somehow we managed money for wine and the rent and the money came off the streets out of hock shops out of nowhere and all that mattered was the next bottle and we drank and sang and fought were in and out of drunk tanks car crashes hospitals we barricaded ourselves against the police and the other roomers hated us and the desk clerk of the hotel feared us and it went on and on and it was one of the most wonderful times of my life. -- Bumming with Jane

So he bought tickets to the Greyhound and they climbed, painfully, inch by inch and with the knowledge that, once they reached the top, there would be one breath-taking moment when the car would tip precariously into space, over an incline six stories steep and then plunge, like a plunging plane. She buried her head against him, fearing to look at the park spread below. He forced himself to look: thousands of little people and hundreds of bright little stands, and over it all the coal-smoke pall of the river factories and railroad yards. He saw in that moment the whole dim-lit city on the last night of summer; the troubled streets that led to the abandoned beaches, the for-rent signs above overnight hotels and furnished basement rooms, moving trolleys and rising bridges: the cagework city, beneath a coalsmoke sky.

MY BOSS SENDS me home because of all the dried blood on my pants, and I am overjoyed. The hole punched through my cheek doesn’t ever heal. I’m going to work, and my punched-out eye sockets are two swollen-up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I’d become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I’m doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone’s hostile little FACE. Worker bees can leave Even drones can fly away The queen is their slave You give up all your worldly possessions and your car and go live in a rented house in the toxic waste part of town where late at night, you can hear Marla and Tyler in his room, calling each other hum; butt wipe. Take it, human butt wipe. Do it, butt wipe. Choke it down. Keep it down, baby. Just by contrast, this makes me the calm little center of the world. Me, with my punched-out eyes and dried blood in big black crusty stains on my pants, I’m saying HELLO to everybody at work. HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it’s so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me. Sigh. Look. Outside the window. A bird. My boss asked if the blood was my blood. The bird flies downwind. I’m writing a little haiku in my head. Without just one nest A bird can call the world home Life is your career I’m counting on my fingers: five, seven, five. The blood, is it mine? Yeah, I say. Some of it. This is a wrong answer.

In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sport cars on their sixteenth birthdays, Teachers smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the pride of the school. In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancun during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before the prom. But they are so cute. And they cheer on our boys, inciting them to violence and, we hope, victory. They’re are our role models- the Girls Who Have It All. I bet none of them ever stutter or screw up or feel like their brains are dissolving into marshmallow fluff.

Would you rather have food or dental work? Pay your mortgage or your electric bill? Make a car payment or buy medicine? Cover rent or student loans? Purchase warm clothes or gas for your commute?

Today the man who has the courage to build himself a house constructs a meeting place for the people who will descend upon him on foot, by car, or by telephone. Employees of the gas, the electric, and the water- works will arrive; agents from life and fire insurance companies; building inspectors, collectors of radio tax; mortgage creditors and rent assessors who tax you for living in your own home.

Bit by bit, he has pared down his desires to what is now approaching a bare minimum. He has cut out smoking and drinking, he no longer eats in restaurants, he does not own a television, a radio, or a computer. He would like to trade his car in for a bicycle, but he can’t get rid of the car, since the distances he must travel for work are too great. The same applies to the cell phone he carries around in his pocket, which he would dearly love to toss in the garbage, but he needs it for work as well and therefore can’t do without it. The digital camera was an indulgence, perhaps, but given the drear and slog of the endless trash-out rut, he feels it is saving his life. His rent is low, since he lives in a small apartment in a poor neighborhood, and beyond spending money on bedrock necessities, the only luxury he allows himself is buying books, paperback books, mostly novels, American novels, British novels, foreign novels in translation, but in the end books are not luxuries so much as necessities, and reading is an addiction he has no wish to be cured of.

I made the mistake of renting a cottage in a village near Chichester. Charles had advised against it but at the time I’d thought how nice it would be to get away now and then for the weekend. He was right. I couldn’t wait to get back. I soon discovered that every time I made one friend I made three enemies and that arguments about such issues as car parking, the church bells, dog waste and hanging flower baskets dominated daily life to such an extent that everyone was permanently at each other’s throats. That’s the truth of it. Emotions which are quickly lost in the noise and chaos of the city fester around the village square, driving people to psychosis and violence. It’s a gift to the whodunnit writer.

I’m kicking myself for selecting the cheapest car I could possibly rent. Thirty bucks a day. I wonder if Verity has ever sat in a Kia Soul.

I got into the car and began cruising up and down the streets looking for a For Rent sign. It didn’t seem to be an unusual thing to do.

On my way out of rent-a-car row I saw a sign with an arrow pointing the way to Paradise Road. I thought that everybody needed a sign like that. I wished that it was that easy.

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.

And are we not worthy?” she asked, rolling the end of one ceramic chopstick back and forth between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. “Are our lives devoid of merit? Are we not generous to our friends, kind to strangers, skilled in our areas of expertise, reliable with rent, gentle with children, quick to phone an ambulance when we see a man hit by a car, thoughtful in word and deed? Do we not have worth enough? Are we not already perfect? Perfectly ourselves? Perfect in being who we are?” “I have no one to measure that quality against.” “Do you believe in God?” “No.” “Do you have eyes, judgement?” “And I see the world, but I have no one else’s eyes to measure my own vision against.” “Of course you do. You have the words of friends and strangers. You have discourse and reason. You have critical thought, which may be trained to the highest degree. In short, you do not need the world to tell you what to be. Especially if the world tells you that you are never good enough.

I am still vaguely haunted by our hitchhiker’s remark about how he’d “never rode in a convertible before.” Here’s this poor geek living in a world of convertibles zipping past him on the highways all the time, and he’s never even ridden in one. It made me feel like King Farouk. I was tempted to have my attorney pull into the next airport and arrange some kind of simple, common-law contract whereby we could just give the car to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: “Here, sign this and the car’s yours.” Give him the keys and then use the credit card to zap off on a jet to some place like Miami and rent another huge fireapple-red convertible for a drug-addled, top-speed run across the water all the way out to the last stop in Key West … and then trade the car off for a boat. Keep moving. But this manic notion passed quickly. There was no point in getting this harmless kid locked up—and, besides, I had plans for this car. I was looking forward to flashing around Las Vegas in the bugger. Maybe do a bit of serious drag-racing on the Strip: Pull up to that big stoplight in front of the Flamingo and start screaming at the traffic: “Alright, you chickenshit wimps! You pansies! When this goddamn light flips green, I’m gonna stomp down on this thing and blow every one of you gutless punks off the road!” Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Come screeching up to the crosswalk, bucking and skidding with a bottle of rum in one hand and jamming the horn to drown out the music … glazed eyes insanely dilated behind tiny black, gold-rimmed greaser shades, screaming gibberish … a genuinely dangerous drunk, reeking of ether and terminal psychosis. Revving the engine up to a terrible high-pitched chattering whine, waiting for the light to change … How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

Fear of living, fear of falling, fear of losing your job, your car, your home, your possessions, fear of never having what you ought to have in order to be. In the widespread clamor for public security, imperiled by lurking criminal monsters, the members of the middle class shout loudest. They defend order as if they owned it, even though they’re only tenants overwhelmed by high rents and the threat of eviction.

Here’s a two-week alternative, which could include a few car days in southern Spain near the end of your trip: Start in Barcelona (two days); train to Madrid (five days total, with two days in Madrid and three for side-trips to Toledo, El Escorial, and Segovia or Ávila); train to Granada (two days); bus to Nerja (one day, could rent car here); both Ronda and Arcos for drivers, or just Ronda by train (two days); to Sevilla (drop off car, two days); and then train to Madrid and fly home.

As is the Vermont way, our trips were pretty low-key. No entourage. No advance people. No communications director. No security. Just Phil and me flying in coach, renting cars, and showing up for meetings—trying to get a sense of the potential support that might exist.

It made me feel like King Farouk. I was tempted to have my attorney pull into the next airport and arrange some kind of simple, common-law contract whereby we could just give the car to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: “Here, sign this and the car’s yours.” Give him the keys and then use the credit card to zap off on a jet to some place like Miami and rent another huge fireapple-red convertible for a drug-addled, top-speed run across the water all the way out to the last stop in Key West … and then trade the car off for a boat. Keep moving. But this manic notion passed quickly.

When bicycling, you’re simply less likely to make unplanned purchases, especially large ones. Shopping, especially for bulky items, must be more carefully planned and premeditated—you’ll want to do it all at once, and either bringing your trailer or renting or borrowing a car for an afternoon.

The only factor that affects your chance of getting a raise is whether or not you’ve earned it. It doesn’t matter if your car broke down or that your landlord’s raising your rent. Those facts are not your boss’s problem. All she needs to know is that you’re kicking ass, like a #GIRLBOSS should.

You’re going to need plenty of legal advice before this thing is over. And my first advice is that you should rent a very fast car with no top and get the hell out of L.A. for at least forty-eight hours. This blows my weekend, because naturally I’ll have to go with you—and we’ll have to arm ourselves.

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

Saying good-bye to Ben is Sarina's least favorite activity. So sad the number of times she's had to do it. Ball games, recitals, the homes of friends, rented shore houses, through car windows after dropping off some forgotten camera to Annie. Goodbye. See you later. Nice seeing you. She has mastered it: A dismissive peck on the cheek. A hug like an afterthought. Telling herself, Do not watch him walk away. Watching him walk away. Watching him drive away. Watching him descend the stairs to the subway. How many times have they said goodbye to each other? Already tonight, twice. He interrupts her before she can get the second goodbye out. "How would you feel," he says, "about missing your train?" Once at the beach, Sarina watched a crane bathing in a gully at dusk. It used its wings to funnel the water over its back, then shook out the excess in a firework of droplets. After several minutes it took off, arcing out over the fretless sea. That felt like this.

The rain stayed with me all the way back to California. An abrupt departure, I knew, would be too much; if I was to leave the East at all, I could do so only gradually and so I rented a car, and drove and drove until finally the landscape changed, and I was in the Midwest, and the rain was all I had left of Camilla’s goodbye kiss.

deep-sea-fishing boat, which they would buy, man themselves, and rent to vacationers—this though neither had ever skippered a canoe or hooked a guppy. Then, too, there was quick money to be made chauffeuring stolen cars across South American borders. (“You get paid five hundred bucks a trip,” or so Perry had read somewhere.) But of the many replies he might have made, he chose to remind Dick of the fortune awaiting them on Cocos Island, a land speck off the coast of Costa Rica. “No fooling, Dick,” Perry said. “This is authentic. I’ve got a map. I’ve got the whole history. It was buried there back in 1821—Peruvian bullion, jewelry. Sixty million dollars—that’s what they

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards—an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them ‘angels.

Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets.” “On the plane?” “He broke Lozano’s fingers and Baldacci’s arms and no one noticed.” “That’s not possible.” “Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It’s a blatant humiliation. And now he’s renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is?

The sun rises in a clear sky that moves from black to gray to white to deep, pure crystal blue. One in Georgia packs his things he’s going to take a bus. Four in Mexico walk across scorched earth water in packs on their back. Two in Indiana best friends coming together they pack their best clothes while their parents wait to take them to the airport. One in Canada drives south. Sixty from China in a cargo container sail east. Four in New York pool their cash and buy a car and drop out of school and drive west. Sixteen cars of a passenger train crossing the Mojave only one stop left. One in Miami doesn’t know how she’s going to get there. Three in Montana have a truck none of them have any idea what they’re going to do once they arrive. A plane from Brazil sold out landing at LAX. Six in Chicago dreaming on shared stages they rented a van they’ll see if any of them can make it. Two from Arizona hitchhiking. Four more just crossed in Texas walking. Another one in Ohio with a motorcycle and a dream. All of them with their dreams. It calls to them and they believe it and they cannot say no to it, they cannot say no. It calls to them. It calls. Calls.

Don’t worry about me,” he said. “The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It’s healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can’t harm you as long as it doesn’t settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough’s all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia’s all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I’m getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They’ll die of something just as bad. The money’s no problem. I’m all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don’t have to worry about that. That’s all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don’t worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It’s only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it’s somebody else’s hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There’s no point eating what you can’t see. Don’t worry about the eyes. The eyes can’t get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. So don’t worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering’s all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain.” Deadpan.

So... Dell had been a good boy with bad friends. I knew this – I used to be one of them. I’d always known Dell would disappear one day; he was too decent, too golden. This place never tainted that, and I don’t know why. He made me feel dirty. Dark and corrupt. It hadn’t always that way, and I don’t know when it changed... but I felt it now. I only knew I couldn’t hold onto him tight enough to stop those long legs carrying him away somewhere better. A day’ll come when everybody’s had you and nobody wants you anymore... As Dell drove Erin away in their rent-a-car from the Holiday Inn into the early evening traffic, I felt the walls closing in, the world swelling around me, and I knew that day had finally come. Tomorrow, I leave Paradise. It’s true. Shanise was right. I turned away as the car disappeared up the slushy street. That was the last time I saw them alive.

On my arrival at Tokyo, I rushed into her house swinging my valise, before going to a hotel, with "Hello, Kiyo, I'm back!" "How good of you to return so soon!" she cried and hot tears streamed down her cheeks. I was overjoyed, and declared that I would not go to the country any more but would start housekeeping with Kiyo in Tokyo. Some time afterward, some one helped me to a job as assistant engineer at the tram car office. The salary was 25 yen a month, and the house rent six. Although the house had not a magnificent front entrance, Kiyo seemed quite satisfied, but, I am sorry to say, she was a victim of pneumonia and died in February this year. On the day preceding her death, she asked me to bedside, and said, "Please, Master Darling, if Kiyo is dead, bury me in the temple yard of Master Darling. I will be glad to wait in the grave for my Master Darling." So Kiyo's grave is in the Yogen temple at Kobinata.

Having seen several hundred lease agreements entered into by people I have counseled, my financial calculator confirms that the average interest rate is 14 percent. Shouldn’t you lease or rent things that go down in value? Not necessarily, and the math doesn’t work on a car, for sure. Follow me through this example: If you rent (lease) a car with a value of $22,000 for three years, and when you turn it in at the end of that three-year lease the car is worth $10,000, someone has to cover the $12,000 loss. You’re not stupid, so you know that General Motors, Ford, or any of the other auto giants aren’t going to put together a plan to lose money. Your fleece/lease payment is designed to cover the loss in value ($12,000 spread over 36 months is equal to $333 per month), plus provide profit (the interest you pay). Where did you get a deal in that? You didn’t! On top of that, there is the charge of 10 to 17 cents per mile for going over the allotted miles and the penalties everyone turning in a lease has experienced for “excessive wear and tear,” which takes into account every little nick, dent, carpet tear, smudge, or smell. You end up writing a large check just to walk away after renting your car. The whole idea of the back-end penalties is twofold: to get you to fleece/lease another one so you can painlessly roll the gotchas into the new lease, and to make sure the car company makes money.

[...] Even then I wanted to slip into the wet dark rectangle and swim on barefoot to other depths where nothing could be seen that was a further story — "Lock" [..] having reached for what is remote, covert during a tender alliance like hidden stairs down into a pond — "Leg Glance" from dark rural highways into a city wild with light I remember you in a rented car in blackness, a loose map on your knees both of us tense with sudden geography [...] — "Night When I Drove

Lane,” it said curtly. “I was afraid you were still out of the country,” Cecily said with relief. “Are you all right?” “A few new scars,” he said, with lightness in his tone. “How about a pizza? I’ll pic you up…” “I’m in South Dakota.” “What?” “It’s a long story. Leta has a comfortable sofa. Can you come out here right away?” There was a pause. “If you miss me that much, maybe we’d better get married,” he pointed out. “I’m not marrying a man who shoots people for a living,” she replied with a girn. “I only shoot bad people,” he protested. “Besides…I know what a foramen magnum is.” “Darling!” she exclaimed theatrically. “Get the license!” He chuckled. “That’ll be the day, when you take me on. What sort of mischief are you up to, Cecily?” “No mischief. Just an artifact-buying trip. But I need you.” “In that case, I’m on the way. I’ll rent a car at the airport. See you soon.” He hung up. “You’re not going to marry Colby Lane,” Leta said like a disapproving parent. “But he knows what a foramen magnum is,” she said teasingly. “A who?” “It’s the large opening at the back of the skull,” Cecily said. “Gory stuff.” “Not to an archaeologist,” Cecily said. “Did you know that we can identify at least one race by the dentition of a skull? Native Americans are mongoloid and they have shovel-shaped incisors.” This caused Leta to feel her teeth and ask more questions, which kept her from thinking too much about Colby’s mock proposal.

In general, men should only be doing dinner dates once she proves herself worthwhile after some coffee or cocktail dates. Under no circumstances should a man pay for a woman's debt, be that credit cards or student loans. Under no circumstances should a man help with a woman's rent or car payment. And you absolutely never donate money to an e-thot for any reason. But if there's a nice girl you've met for coffee before, and she is sincere, paying for dinner and a movie isn't bad.

Why do Mexicans park their cars on the front lawn? MIGHT EVEN NEED SOME OAXACANS Dear MENSO: Where do you want us to park them, MENSO? The garage we rent out to a family of five? The backyard where we put up our recently immigrated cousins in tool-shacks-cum-homes? The street with the red curbs recently approved by city planners? The driveway covered with construction materials for the latest expansion of la casa? The nearby school parking lot frequented by cholos on the prowl for a new radio? MENSO, the lawn is the only spot

There’s a workaround for encroaching phone stupidity. The first thing I did when I got to my place in Austin – an apartment rented for three days over the internet – was connect the thing to wifi. Just like that, my secondary brain got all its little grey cells back. The next few days were all about scurrying from wifi field to field, trying to keep the thing on life support. It’s a workaround. We live in a workaround culture. You have to jiggle the key in the ignition just right to start the car. You have to hold the TV remote at a certain angle. You know how it goes.

These feelings don't just go away. They linger. Hover. They are with me always. Even at my most functioning...they are there, watching me. These emotions are my roommates now, bunking up beside me at night. They do not pay any rent...they are determinded to ruin me, and yet I can never fully evict them from my brain. I have tried -- really tried -- to chip away at my grief...But lately, I've just given up. I'm finally giving it permission to breathe and exist... Most days now, they lie dormant in me. Sometimes it gets so quiet in my brain I think they've finally packed up and left. But every year as the calendar rounds the corner to March and the anniversary of her death approaches, anger bubbles again...I rage over the smallest of things, screaming behind the steering wheel of my car when another driver forgets to use their blinker. At first I'm perplexed, and then I remember: it's here again. And I am still mad. So mad. I can starve it, avoid it, rationalize it, manage it, talk about it in therapy, and eat it up in neat little points value. No matter how much weight I lose, I will never lose this one simple truth: I want my mom. I am so f***ing mad that she's gone. And that feeling will never, ever die.

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.

Trevor stayed in the rented convertible as I walked around the perimeter of the house, peering through the dusty windows at the empty spaces inside. It hardly looked any different from when I’d lived in it. “Don’t sell until the market improves,” Trevor yelled. I got emotional and embarrassed, ducked away and jumped in the mucky pond behind the garage, then emerged covered in rotting moss. Trevor got out of the car to hose me off in the garden, made me strip and put on his blazer before getting back into the car, then asked for a blow job in the parking lot of the Poughkeepsie Galleria before he went in to buy me a new outfit. I acquiesced. For him, this was erotic gold.

So much of what we dream flickers out before we can name it. Even the sun has been frozen on the next street. Every word only reveals a past that never seems real. Sometimes we just stare at the ground as if it were a grave we could rent for a while. Sometimes we don’t understand how all that grief fits beside us on the stoop. There should be some sort of metaphor that lifts us away. We should see the sky open up or the stars descend. There are birds migrating, but we don’t hear them, cars on their way to futures made of a throw of the dice. The pigeons here bring no messages. A few flies stitch the air. Sometimes a poem knows no way out unless truth becomes just a homeless character in it.

There is a tendency among environmentalists to single out the big players in the market as the principal culprits: to pin environmental crime on those – like oil companies, motor manufacturers, logging corporations, agribusinesses, supermarkets – that make their profits by exporting their costs to others (including others who are not yet born). But this is to mistake the effect for the cause. In a free economy such ways of making money emerge by an invisible hand from choices made by all of us. It is the demand for cars, oil, cheap food and expendable luxuries that is the real cause of the industries that provide these things. Of course it is true that the big players externalize their costs whenever they can. But so do we. Whenever we travel by air, visit the supermarket, or consume fossil fuels, we are exporting our costs to others, and to future generations. A free economy is driven by individual demand. And in a free economy individuals, just as much as big businesses, strive to pass on their costs to others, while keeping the benefits. The solution is not the socialist one, of abolishing the free economy, since this merely places massive economic power in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats, who are equally in the business of exporting their costs, while enjoying secure rents on the social product.16 The solution is to adjust our demands, so as to bear the costs of them ourselves, and to find the way to put pressure on businesses to do likewise. And

Are you a relative of her late husband?” the woman asked. His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” “It must be so hard for her, pregnant and just widowed,” the middle-aged woman continued. “We’ve all done what we could to make her happy here. Mr. Johnson, the curator, is a widower himself. He’s already sweet on her. But you’re probably anxious to see Mrs. Peterson. Shall I ring her and let her know you’re coming?” Tate’s eyes were blazing. “No,” he said with forced politeness. “I want to surprise her!” He stalked out, leaving the rented vehicle where it was as he trudged through the small layer of snow and glared contemptuously at the cars sliding around in the street as they passed. This little bit of snow was nothing compared to the six-foot snowdrifts on the reservation. Southerners, he considered, must not get much winter precipitation if this little bit of white dust paralyzed traffic! As for Cecily’s mythical dead husband, he considered, going up the walkway to the small brick structure where she lived, he was about to make a startling, resurrected appearance! He knocked on the door and waited. There was an irritated murmur beyond the closed door and the sound of a lock being unfastened. The door opened and a wan Cecily looked straight into his eyes. He managed to get inside the screen door and catch her before she passed out. She came to on the sofa with Tate sitting beside her, smoothing back her disheveled hair. The nausea climbed into her throat and, fortunately, stayed there. She looked at him with helpless delight, wishing she could hide what the sight of him was doing to her after so many empty, lonely weeks. He didn’t speak. He touched her hair, her forehead, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, with fingers that seemed bent on memorizing her. Then his hands went to the robe carelessly fastened over her cotton nightdress and pushed it aside. He touched her belly, his face radiant as he registered the very visible and tangible signs of her condition. “When did we make him?” he asked without preamble. She felt her world dissolve. He knew about the baby. Of course. That was why he was here. He met her eyes, found hostility and bitter disillusionment in them. His hand pressed down over her belly. “I would have come even if I hadn’t known about the baby,” he said at once. “The baby is mine.” “And mine.” “Audrey is not getting her avaricious little hands on my child…!

the streets. So now everyone is afraid of it. Petr GINZ Today it’s clear to everyone who is a Jew and who’s an Aryan, because you’ll know Jews near and far by their black and yellow star. And Jews who are so demarcated must live according to the rules dictated: Always, after eight o’clock, be at home and click the lock; work only labouring with pick or hoe, and do not listen to the radio. You’re not allowed to own a mutt; barbers can’t give your hair a cut; a female Jew who once was rich can’t have a dog, even a bitch, she cannot send her kids to school must shop from three to five since that’s the rule. She can’t have bracelets, garlic, wine, or go to the theatre, out to dine; she can’t have cars or a gramophone, fur coats or skis or a telephone; she can’t eat onions, pork, or cheese, have instruments, or matrices; she cannot own a clarinet or keep a canary for a pet, rent bicycles or barometers, have woollen socks or warm sweaters. And especially the outcast Jew must give up all habits he knew: he can’t buy clothes, can’t buy a shoe, since dressing well is not his due; he can’t have poultry, shaving soap, or jam or anything to smoke; can’t get a license, buy some gin, read magazines, a news bulletin, buy sweets or a machine to sew; to fields or shops he cannot go even to buy a single pair of winter woollen underwear, or a sardine or a ripe pear. And if this list is not complete there’s more, so you should be discreet; don’t buy a thing; accept defeat. Walk everywhere you want to go in rain or sleet or hail or snow. Don’t leave your house, don’t push a pram, don’t take a bus or train or tram; you’re not allowed on a fast train; don’t hail a taxi, or complain; no matter how thirsty you are you must not enter any bar; the riverbank is not for you, or a museum or park or zoo or swimming pool or stadium or post office or department store, or church, casino, or cathedral or any public urinal. And you be careful not to use main streets, and keep off avenues! And if you want to breathe some air go to God’s garden and walk there among the graves in the cemetery because no park to you is free. And if you are a clever Jew you’ll close off bank accounts and you will give up other habits too like meeting Aryans you knew. He used to be allowed a swag, suitcase, rucksack, or carpetbag. Now he has lost even those rights but every Jew lowers his sights and follows all the rules he’s got and doesn’t care one little jot.

My wife has been on my tail six weeks with a blackmail gag,” he went on. “She’s here. When I got back to the hotel a little while ago she came into my room and put on an act.” I thought then I knew who Gard’s client was. “She came in this afternoon. She’s got the room next to mine.” He was silent so long that I laughed a little and said: “So what?” “I’ve got to duck, quick,” he went on. “She’s a bad actor. She came into my room and put on an act. She’s got a guy with her that’s supposed to be her brother and he’s a bad actor, too. You said you were going to drive back to LA. I saw your name on the register when I came in and I thought you might take me along. I can’t rent a car here and there isn’t a train till midnight.” He pulled the biggest roll I ever saw out of his pocket and skimmed off a couple notes. “If it’s a question of money …

Sometimes I wander round and round in circles, going over the same ground, getting lost, sometimes for hours, or days, or even weeks....But I know that if I immerse myself in it long enough, things will clarify, simplify. I can count on that. When it happens, it happens fast. Boom ba boom ba boom! One thing after the other, taking the breath away. And then, you know, I feel like I'm walking out in some remote corner of space, where no mortal's ever been, all alone with something beautiful....Once, when I was in Switzerland some friends took me up in some very high cable cars, climbing up a mountain....There was a restaurant on top and the view was supposed to be sublime. When we got up it was a great disappointment because the clouds were obscuring everything. But suddenly there was a rent in the clouds and there were the Jungrau and two other peaks towering right in front of us....That's what it's like.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

women keep trying. They put off the rent or the utilities to scrape together the $500 for a first-trimester abortion. They drive across whole states to get to a clinic and sleep in their cars because they can’t afford a motel. They do not do this because they are careless sluts or because they hate babies or because they fail to see clearly what their alternatives are. They see the alternatives all too clearly. We live, as Ellen Willis wrote, in a society that is “actively hostile to women’s ambitions for a better life. Under these conditions the unwillingly pregnant woman faces a terrifying loss of control over her fate.” Abortion, wrote Willis, is an act of self-defense.5 Perhaps we don’t see abortion that way because we don’t think women have the right to a self. They are supposed to live for others. Qualities that are seen as normal and desirable in men—ambition, confidence, outspokenness—are perceived as selfish and aggressive in women, especially when they have children. Perhaps that is why women’s privacy has so little purchase on the abortion debate: Only a self can have privacy. And only a self can have equality.

Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.” He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven’t been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat. “No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven’t.” I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?” He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?” I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?” Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?” I refused to be thwarted. “Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn’t get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don’t fit?” I was the clear winner here. “Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning. I smiled and took the last bite of my steak.

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.

In the shock of the moment, I gave some thought to renting a convertible and driving the twenty-seven hundred miles back alone. But then I realized I was neither single nor crazy. The acting director decided that, given the FBI’s continuing responsibility for my safety, the best course was to take me back on the plane I came on, with a security detail and a flight crew who had to return to Washington anyway. We got in the vehicle to head for the airport. News helicopters tracked our journey from the L.A. FBI office to the airport. As we rolled slowly in L.A. traffic, I looked to my right. In the car next to us, a man was driving while watching an aerial news feed of us on his mobile device. He turned, smiled at me through his open window, and gave me a thumbs-up. I’m not sure how he was holding the wheel. As we always did, we pulled onto the airport tarmac with a police escort and stopped at the stairs of the FBI plane. My usual practice was to go thank the officers who had escorted us, but I was so numb and distracted that I almost forgot to do it. My special assistant, Josh Campbell, as he often did, saw what I couldn’t. He nudged me and told me to go thank the cops. I did, shaking each hand, and then bounded up the airplane stairs. I couldn’t look at the pilots or my security team for fear that I might get emotional. They were quiet. The helicopters then broadcast our plane’s taxi and takeoff. Those images were all over the news. President Trump, who apparently watches quite a bit of TV at the White House, saw those images of me thanking the cops and flying away. They infuriated him. Early the next morning, he called McCabe and told him he wanted an investigation into how I had been allowed to use the FBI plane to return from California. McCabe replied that he could look into how I had been allowed to fly back to Washington, but that he didn’t need to. He had authorized it, McCabe told the president. The plane had to come back, the security detail had to come back, and the FBI was obligated to return me safely. The president exploded. He ordered that I was not to be allowed back on FBI property again, ever. My former staff boxed up my belongings as if I had died and delivered them to my home. The order kept me from seeing and offering some measure of closure to the people of the FBI, with whom I had become very close. Trump had done a lot of yelling during the campaign about McCabe and his former candidate wife. He had been fixated on it ever since. Still in a fury at McCabe, Trump then asked him, “Your wife lost her election in Virginia, didn’t she?” “Yes, she did,” Andy replied. The president of the United States then said to the acting director of the FBI, “Ask her how it feels to be a loser” and hung up the phone.

Twenty-three One day you wake up and you’re twenty-three and you can’t remember what it feels like to be seventeen but you still cry to your mother after a bad day and you look a little older but you don’t really feel it. One day you’re twenty-three and your great-aunt is telling you how mature you look and how you grew a little taller but inside you still remember sitting under the oak tree reading with no meetings tomorrow and no rent to pay and the only thing you can think about is how at seventeen you thought at twenty-three you would know everything and now you can’t remember how you got from there to here. But seventeen-year-old you was wrong because you know only some things and not everything. You know that coffee tastes better in the mornings and your home isn’t your home anymore; it’s “Mum and Dad’s.” You know your car needs servicing every six months and groceries are harder to do after breakups. She liked cookie dough and walnuts and strawberry-flavored milk and now every time you go to the store you can’t buy spaghetti without remembering it was a Friday night and she kissed you for the first time and the heat from her skin could have set your entire place on fire. One day you’re twenty-three and you’re trying to explain to a seventeen-year-old all the mistakes you made so they won’t make them too, when all you really want is for someone to realize you still don’t have the first clue.

If you are stuck in circumstances in which it takes Herculean efforts to get through the day— doing low-income work, obeying an authoritarian boss, buying clothes for the children, dealing with school issues, paying the rent or mortgage, fixing the car, negotiating with a spouse, paying taxes, and caring for older parents— it is not easy to pay close attention to larger political issues. Indeed you may wish that these issues would take care of themselves. It is not a huge jump from such a wish to become attracted to a public philosophy, spouted regularly at your job and on the media, that economic life would regulate itself automatically if only the state did not repeatedly intervene in it in clumsy ways. Now underfunded practices such as the license bureau, state welfare, public health insurance, public schools, public retirement plans, and the like begin to appear as awkward, bureaucratic organizations that could be replaced or eliminated if only the rational market were allowed to take care of things impersonally and quietly, as it were. Certainly such bureaucracies are indeed often clumsy. But more people are now attracted to compare that clumsiness to the myth of how an impersonal market would perform if it took on even more assignments and if state regulation of it were reduced even further. So a lot of “independents” and “moderates” may become predisposed to the myth of the rational market in part because the pressures of daily life encourage them to seek comfort in ideological formations that promise automatic rationality.

Kim was twenty-three, single, on her own, and at a job making $27,000 per year. She had recently started her Total Money Makeover. She was behind on credit cards, not on a budget, and barely making her rent because her spending was out of control. She let her car insurance drop because she “couldn’t afford it.” She did her first budget and two days later was in a car wreck. Since it wasn’t bad, the damage to the other guy’s car was only about $550. As Kim looked at me through panicked tears, that $550 might as well have been $55,000. She hadn’t even started Baby Step One. She was trying to get current, and now she had one more hurdle to clear before she even started. This was a huge emergency. Seven years ago George and Sally were in the same place. They were broke with new babies, and George’s career was sputtering. George and Sally fought and scraped through a Total Money Makeover. Today they are debt-free, even their $85,000 home. They have a $12,000 emergency fund, retirement in Roth IRAs, and even the kids’ college is funded. George has grown personally, his career has blossomed, and he now makes $75,000 per year while Sally stays home with the kids. One day a piece of trash flew out of the back of George’s pickup and hit a car behind him on the interstate. The damage was about $550. I think you can see that George and Sally probably adjusted one month’s budget and paid the repairs, while Kim dealt with her wreck for months. The point is that as you get in better shape, it takes a lot more to rock your world. When the accidents occurred, George’s heart rate didn’t even change, but Kim needed a Valium sandwich to calm down. Those true stories illustrate the fact that as you progress through your Total Money Makeover, the definition of an emergency that is worthy to be covered by the emergency fund changes. As you have better health insurance, disability insurance, more room in your budget, and better cars, you will have fewer things that qualify as emergency-fund emergencies. What used to be a huge, life-altering event will become a mere inconvenience.

It’s so weird that it’s Christmas Eve,” I said, clinking my glass to his. It was the first time I’d spent the occasion apart from my parents. “I know,” he said. “I was just thinking that.” We both dug into our steaks. I wished I’d made myself two. The meat was tender and flavorful, and perfectly medium-rare. I felt like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, when she barely seared a steak in the middle of the afternoon and devoured it like a wolf. Except I didn’t have a pixie cut. And I wasn’t harboring Satan’s spawn. “Hey,” I began, looking into his eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been so…so pathetic since, like, the day we got married.” He smiled and took a swig of Dr Pepper. “You haven’t been pathetic,” he said. He was a terrible liar. “I haven’t?” I asked, incredulous, savoring the scrumptious red meat. “No,” he answered, taking another bite of steak and looking me squarely in the eye. “You haven’t.” I was feeling argumentative. “Have you forgotten about my inner ear disturbance, which caused me to vomit all across Australia?” He paused, then countered, “Have you forgotten about the car I rented us?” I laughed, then struck back. “Have you forgotten about the poisonous lobster I ordered us?” Then he pulled out all the stops. “Have you forgotten all the money we lost?” I refused to be thwarted. “Have you forgotten that I found out I was pregnant after we got back from our honeymoon and I called my parents to tell them and I didn’t get a chance because my mom left my dad and I went on to have a nervous breakdown and had morning sickness for six weeks and now my jeans don’t fit?” I was the clear winner here. “Have you forgotten that I got you pregnant?” he said, grinning. I smiled and took the last bite of my steak. Marlboro Man looked down at my plate. “Want some of mine?” he asked. He’d only eaten half of his. “Sure,” I said, ravenously and unabashedly sticking my fork into a big chuck of his rib eye. I was so grateful for so many things: Marlboro Man, his outward displays of love, the new life we shared together, the child growing inside my body. But at that moment, at that meal, I was so grateful to be a carnivore again.

The photographer was taking pictures with a small pocket camera but the sergeant sent him back to the car for his big Bertillon camera. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed left the cellar to look around. The apartment was only one room wide but four storeys high. The front was flush with the sidewalk, and the front entrance elevated by two recessed steps. The alleyway at the side slanted down from the sidewalk sufficiently to drop the level of the door six feet below the ground-floor level. The cellar, which could only be entered by the door at the side, was directly below the ground-floor rooms. There were no apartments. Each of the four floors had three bedrooms opening on to the public hall, and to the rear was a kitchen and a bath and a separate toilet to serve each floor. There were three tenants on each floor, their doors secured by hasps and staples to be padlocked when they were absent, bolts and chains and floor locks and angle bars to protect them from intruders when they were present. The doors were pitted and scarred either because of lost keys or attempted burglary, indicating a continuous warfare between the residents and enemies from without, rapists, robbers, homicidal husbands and lovers, or the landlord after his rent. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, mammoth sexual organs, vulgar limericks, opened legs, telephone numbers, outright boasting, insidious suggestions, and impertinent or pertinent comments about various tenants’ love habits, their mothers and fathers, the legitimacy of their children. “And people live here,” Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for.” “Like maggots in rotten meat.” “It’s rotten enough.” Twelve mailboxes were nailed to the wall in the front hall. Narrow stairs climbed to the top floor. The ground-floor hallway ran through a small back courtyard where four overflowing garbage cans leaned against the wall. “Anybody can come in here day or night,” Grave Digger said. “Good for the whores but hard on the children.” “I wouldn’t want to live here if I had any enemies,” Coffin Ed said. “I’d be scared to go to the john.” “Yeah, but you’d have central heating.” “Personally, I’d rather live in the cellar. It’s private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat.” “But you’d have to put out the garbage cans,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever occupied that whore’s crib ain’t been putting out any garbage cans.” “Well, let’s wake up the brothers on the ground floor.” “If they ain’t already awake.

Justice, solidarity, freedom, equal rights—these are all ideas that come straight out of the Enlightenment. In fact, out of classical liberalism. Classical liberalism is very anti-capitalist, contrary to what everybody says. And classical liberal and Enlightenment ideals lead in a very direct path, I think, to what was called libertarian socialism, or anarchism, or something like that. The idea is that people have a fundamental core right and need to be free and creative, not under external constraints. Any form of authority requires legitimation. The burden of proof is always on an authoritarian structure, whatever it may be, whether it's owning people, sex-linked, or even child-parent relationships. Any form of authority has to be challenged. Sometimes they can be justified, and maybe in that case, okay, you live with them. But for the most part, not. That would then lead quite directly to what were kind of truisms about a century ago. I mean, now they sound really crazy because there's been such a deterioration of values. But if you look at the thinking of just ordinary people, like say the working-class press in the mid-19th century, which grew where the ideas just grew out of the same soil—Enlightenment, classical liberal soil—the ideas are clear. Obviously, people should not be machines. They shouldn't be tools of production. They shouldn't be ordered around. We don't want chattel slavery, you know, like black slaves in the South, but we also don't want what was called, since the 18th century, wage slavery, which is not very different. Namely, where you have to rent yourself to survive. In a way, it was argued with some plausibility that you're worse off than a slave in that scenario. Actually, slave owners argued that. When slave owners were defending slavery, there was a kind of a moral debate that went on. It had shared moral turf, as a lot of moral debate did. The slave owners made a plausible point. They said, "Look, we own our workers. You just rent your workers. When you own something, you take much better care of it than when you rent it." To put it a little anachronistically, if you rent a car, you're not going to pay as much attention to taking care of it as if you own the car, for obvious reasons. Similarly, if you own people, you're going to take more care of them than if you rent people. If you rent people and you don't want them anymore, you throw them out. If you own people, well, you've got a sort of an investment in them, so you make them healthier and so on. So, the slave owners, in fact, argued, "Look, we're a lot more moral than you guys with your capitalist, wage slave system." Ordinary working people understood that. After the Civil War, you find in the American working-class press bitter complaints over the fact that, "Look, we fought to end chattel slavery, and now you're driving us into wage slavery, which is the same sort of thing." This is one core institution in society where people are forced to become tools of others, to be cast out if they're not necessary. It's a grotesque arrangement, totally contrary to the ideals of classical liberalism or Enlightenment values or anything else. It's now become sort of standard doctrine, but that's just a victory of absolutism, and we should dismantle all that stuff. Culturally, it starts with changes. You've got to change your minds and your spirit, and recover what was a common understanding in a more civilized period, let's say a century ago, in the shop floors of Lowell, Massachusetts. Recover that understanding, and then we work to simply democratize all institutions, free them up, and eliminate authoritarian structures. As I say, you find them everywhere. From families up to corporations, there are all kinds of authoritarian structures in the world. They all ought to be challenged. Very few of them can resist that challenge. They survive mainly because they're not challenged.

A changing space. As we saw with Michael’s example in Chapter 1, car dealerships were going out of business, and he was able to rent his first temporary mattress space on the cheap. Not everyone would have thought of locating a mattress shop in a former car dealership, but Michael grabbed the opportunity.

Haridwar Chopta taxi at guaranteed lowest fare at Haridwar taxi services and get amazing deals on Haridwar Chopta One way taxi & round trip cab booking. Haridwar to Chopta is completely hill area so trains are not available for Chopta. Mostly people hire a taxi from Haridwar to Chopta where Haridwar Taxi services provides best price. Haridwar Taxi services Provide Haridwar to Chopta outstation car rental Services with verified Drivers, Latest car and assured service. You can Enjoy our car rental services for Haridwar to Chopta for Local Sightseeing, Business services and special occasion rentals. So if you plan you can also wrap it. Haridwar Taxi services serve you a wide range Cab services we have Cabs like indica, indigo, swift dzire, etios, innova, xuv, xylo and tempo traveler. Our all drivers know the root very well and have up to 10 years experience in hill station. So enjoy our Haridwar to Chopta Cab very lowest price. We Provides Best range of taxi and cab, air conditioned vehicles, including Toyota Innova, Indigo, swift dzire and luxury car on rent. Price will be depending on your group size and Tour plane. For more information & booking taxi or cab between Haridwar to Chopta call or missed call at 9720678777. # HaridwarChoptaTaxi #HaridwarChoptaCab #HaridwarChoptaTaxiService

The sharing economy is also growing, in which the culture of ownership —with every household equipped with its own washing machine and car—is giving way to a culture of access, with households sharing laundry facilities and renting cars by the hour from a local car club. Rather than go shopping for new clothes, books and children’s toys, a growing number of people are swapping—or ‘swishing’—them with friends and neighbours.41 In such an economy, plenty of economic value will still be generated through the products and services that people enjoy, but far less of that total value will flow through market transactions. The implication of these various trends for GDP growth? ‘The steady decline of GDP in the coming years,’ concludes Rifkin, ‘is going to be increasingly attributable to the change-over to a vibrant new economic paradigm that measures economic value in totally new ways.

I remain silent for a few minutes as I scroll through everything about Miles that I love. Then I think about everything he loves, and my eyes alight when I recall the night we shared in his grandpa’s truck. “His grandpa has this old truck that he’s dying to fix up. But he’s dumping all his money into house renovations, so he’s holding off on it for now. He said the carburetor needed replacing.” Dean’s eyes brighten at this revelation. “You just had seven months’ worth of rent open up.” “You think this is a good idea?” I ask, chewing on my thumbnail nervously. “Can you just buy a carburetor for a car? Wouldn’t he have to like…I don’t know…repair it or something?” “That’s what Google is for!” Lynsey squeals and reaches out to grab my computer. “Wait, will this be emasculating?” I say, stopping her mid-Google. “If I buy some expensive part for his grandpa’s truck, is he going to be like, ‘Fuck you bitch, I pay my own way?’” Lynsey and I both look at Dean for an answer. “Not if you give it to him naked.” He simply shrugs. My first reaction is to laugh, but when Dean doesn’t join in, my face drops. “Wait, seriously?” He lifts his brows and pins me with a look. “I’m not even into cars, but if you came at me naked with a carburetor in your hand, I’d probably be all over that.” I look over at Lynsey, who gives me a shrug as well. “We’ll figure that part out later

Finally, I set some reassuring limits to whatever tribulations I might have to endure. First, I would always have a car. In Key West I drove my own; in other cities I used Rent-A-Wrecks, which I paid for with a credit card rather than my earnings. Yes, I could have walked more or limited myself to jobs accessible by public transportation. I just figured that a story about waiting for buses would not be very interesting to read. Second,

We are hopping into strangers’ cars (Lyft, Sidecar, Uber), welcoming them into our spare rooms (Airbnb), dropping our dogs off at their houses (DogVacay, Rover), and eating food in their dining rooms (Feastly). We are letting them rent our cars (RelayRides, Getaround), our boats (Boatbound), our houses (HomeAway), and our power tools (Zilok). We are entrusting complete strangers with our most valuable possessions, our personal experiences—and our very lives. In the process, we are entering a new era of Internet-enabled intimacy.9

Those plates came back registered to a hire company. The car was rented from them by an Erin Jade Fair on Saturday.

Critics of capitalism often decry the “greed” that animates successful entrepreneurs. The real problem, however, is not the amount of money made by people at the top; it is the systematic suppression of people at the bottom. The real-life equivalent of the Monopoly player who has to mortgage all his money-making assets to pay his debts is the hand-to-mouth day laborer who, unable to pay his car insurance, loses his car and, unable to drive to his job, is unable to pay his rent. The villain here is not necessarily the avarice of the banker who loaned this poor fellow his money in the first place. It is the unstable dynamic of a system that mercilessly drives some people down to the bottom through a succession of cascading misfortunes. To experience the board game version of this kind of misery vortex in Monopoly is to appreciate the advantages of the welfare state, which, when it is functioning properly, does not just take money from rich people and give it to poor people. It also softens the iterative feedback dynamics within the system so as to ensure that minor nudges—a lost job, a criminal conviction, a divorce, a medical setback—do not create feedback effects that ultimately produce a full-blown personal catastrophe. Job training, public health care, a humane justice system, community housing and support for single mothers are examples of programs that can achieve that effect.

Most travellers here feel that driving in Rome qualifies as an experience that can be added to one’s vita, that everyday autostrada trips are examinations in courage and that the Amalfi coast drive is a definition of hell. “These people really know how to drive,” I remember him saying as he swung our no-power rented Fiat into the passing lane, turn signal blinking. A Maserati zooming forward in the rearview mirror blasted us back to the right lane. Soon he was admiring daring maneuvers. “Did you see that? He had two wheels dangling in thin air!” he marveled. “Sure, they have their share of duffers riding the center lane but most people keep to the rules.” “What rules?” I asked as someone in a tiny car like ours whizzed by going a hundred. Apparently there are speed limits, according to the size of the engine, but I never have seen anyone stopped for speeding in all my summers in Italy. You’re dangerous if you’re going sixty. I’m not sure what the accident rate is; I rarely see one but I imagine many are caused by slow drivers (tourists perhaps?) who incite the cars behind them.

The good news for the national team, at least, was that now the distraction of Solo’s legal issues was in the past and the team could focus on the Women’s World Cup, which was now only a few months away. But that didn’t quite happen. On January 19, 2015, Solo made headlines again. She was at the national team’s annual January camp outside of Los Angeles when she allowed her visiting husband, Jerramy Stevens, to drive a U.S. Soccer–rented car. Stevens had been drinking and was pulled over after police allegedly saw the car swerving off the road. Stevens was arrested on DUI charges, and Solo, who was the passenger, was reported to have been “belligerent” toward the arresting officers. The federation didn’t know about the incident until celebrity tabloid TMZ reported the news. After the federation had been slammed by the media for not punishing Solo throughout the episode surrounding her arrest, there was little choice this time. Solo was suspended from the team for 30 days. Her suspension was scheduled to end about four months before the World Cup was set to start.

These feelings don't just go away. They linger. Hover. They are with me always. Even at my most functioning...they are there, watching me. These emotions are my roommates now, bunking up beside me at night. They do not pay any rent...they are determined to ruin me, and yet I can never fully evict them from my brain. I have tried -- really tried -- to chip away at my grief...But lately, I've just given up. I'm finally giving it permission to breathe and exist... Most days now, they lie dormant in me. Sometimes it gets so quiet in my brain I think they've finally packed up and left. But every year as the calendar rounds the corner to March and the anniversary of her death approaches, anger bubbles again...I rage over the smallest of things, screaming behind the steering wheel of my car when another driver forgets to use their blinker. At first I'm perplexed, and then I remember: it's here again. And I am still mad. So mad. I can starve it, avoid it, rationalize it, manage it, talk about it in therapy, and eat it up in neat little points value. No matter how much weight I lose, I will never lose this one simple truth: I want my mom. I am so f***ing mad that she's gone. And that feeling will never, ever die.

She’s only nineteen. She can’t buy a beer or rent a car. She can barely vote!

After catching my breath, I shook my head and let out an aggravated chuckle. See, this was one of the many things that I disliked about my mother. She was selfish and inconsiderate. My apartment had a one car garage, and somehow, she thought it was ok to park in my garage instead of the apartment’s parking lot. Yeah, she paid my rent because I couldn’t afford it and my car payment on a bagger’s salary.

Mrs. E. K. Shields, of Saginaw, Michigan, was driven to despair—even to the brink of suicide—before she learned to live just till bedtime. “In 1937, I lost my husband,” Mrs. Shields said as she told me her story. “I was very depressed—and almost penniless. I wrote my former employer, Mr. Leon Roach, of the Roach-Fowler Company of Kansas City, and got my old job back. I had formerly made my living selling World Books to rural and town school boards. I had sold my car two years previously when my husband became ill; but I managed to scrape together enough money to put a down payment on a used car and started out to sell books again. “I had thought that getting back on the road would help relieve my depression; but driving alone and eating alone was almost more than I could take. Some of the territory was not very productive, and I found it hard to make those car payments, small as they were. “In the spring of 1938, I was working out of Versailles, Missouri. The schools were poor, the roads bad; I was so lonely and discouraged that at one time I even considered suicide. It seemed that success was impossible. I had nothing to live for. I dreaded getting up each morning and facing life. I was afraid of everything: afraid I could not meet the car payments; afraid I could not pay my room rent; afraid I would not have enough to eat. I was afraid my health was failing and I had no money for a doctor. All that kept me from suicide were the thoughts that my sister would be deeply grieved, and that I did not have enough money to pay my funeral expenses. “Then one day I read an article that lifted me out of my despondence and gave me the courage to go on living. I shall never cease to be grateful for one inspiring sentence in that article. It said: ‘Every day is a new life to a wise man.’ I typed that sentence out and pasted it on the windshield of my car, where I saw it every minute I was driving. I found it wasn’t so hard to live only one day at a time. I learned to forget the yesterdays and to not think of the tomorrows. Each morning I said to myself, ‘Today is a new life.

Why do people choose one restaurant over another? One college? Why drive this car and not that one? Why did that poker champion make a bad bet? Why rent a house instead of buying one? What club do you belong to? If you look closely at decisions that don’t initially make sense, you’ll likely see status roles at work. The decision didn’t make sense to you, but it made perfect sense to the person who made it. We spend a lot of time paying attention to status.

Gather six to 12 months of checking, savings, and credit card statements, and break your income and expenses down into categories and then line items. I have suggested some here, but add your own as needed. Check to see if your bank or credit card company provides reporting that categorizes charges or lets you assign categories—your work may already be almost done for you: •Income—paychecks, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, business income, pension, social security, child support, spousal support •Housing—mortgage/rent, property taxes, HOA dues, insurance •Utilities—gas, electric, propane, phone, TV/Internet, trash, water/sewer •Food—groceries, dining out •Auto—car payments, gasoline, repairs, insurance •Medical—health insurance, doctor/dentist visits, prescriptions, physical therapy •Entertainment—travel, concerts/shows, sports •Clothing—personal purchases, dry cleaning, uniforms •Personal care—hair/nails, gym/yoga, vitamins/supplements •Miscellaneous—gifts, pets, donations •Children—education, activities, school lunches, childcare You can use a spreadsheet or pen and paper to take note of income and expenses as you go through statements, then calculate a monthly average for each item.

Jenn notes that in California, the number of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles rented by Uber and Lyft drivers skyrocketed under GM’s business model that leases the cars to drivers who save on ownership and fuel costs.

You hit a button on Amazon and a complicated multijurisdictional delivery process ensues, resulting in a box landing at your front door. You hit a button on Uber and a car arrives. You hit a button on Doordash and food arrives. You hit a button to rent an Airbnb, and then another to open the smart lock, and the door to housing opens. You can do the same for the door to your coworking space office, or the door to your electric car. So, more and more of the goods people prize in the physical world are in a sense “printed” out.

We are hopping into strangers’ cars (Lyft, Sidecar, Uber), welcoming them into our spare rooms (Airbnb), dropping our dogs off at their houses (DogVacay, Rover), and eating food in their dining rooms (Feastly). We are letting them rent our cars (RelayRides, Getaround), our boats (Boatbound), our houses (HomeAway), and our power tools (Zilok). We are entrusting complete strangers with our most valuable possessions, our personal experiences—and our very lives. In the process, we are entering a new era of Internet-enabled intimacy. ~ Jason Tanz Not so long ago, activities like these would have been viewed as weird, if not downright dangerous. Today, they are familiar to millions, thanks to the trust-building mechanisms established by platform businesses.

I don’t remember how much time passed between my saying, “It’s nothing,” and someone in that other group of soldiers opening fire, but it was likely less than ten seconds. And I don’t know why they did it. But I know that .50 caliber machine-gun rounds tore into the small white car and tore into the old man and the old woman until the small white car stopped moving and the old man and the old woman were both dead. So it goes. They have been dying in my mind every day for the last fourteen years. I suspect they will do so until I’ve exhausted my own days on this earth. This is my moment trapped in amber. I am now thirty-eight years old. I live in a rented house in Pittsboro, North Carolina, with my wife, my two daughters, and my dog. I try to be kind. I try not to hurt people. And though I have just told you all the things I know with certainty about that day in September in Tal Afar, Iraq, when I was twenty-four, I’m still not sure what it means. I don’t know if my being there in that place and at that time makes me a bad person, but on most days I think it means I do not get to claim to be a good one.

The first thought of writing this book came to me two years ago after I had driven through the mining district of Lanarkshire. The journey took me through Hamilton, Airdrie and Motherwell. It was a warm, overcast summer day; groups of idle, sullen-looking young men stood at the street corners; smaller groups were wandering among the blue-black ranges of pit-dumps which in that region are the substitute for nature; the houses looked empty and unemployed like the tenants; and the road along which the car stumbled was pitted and rent, as if it had recently been under shell-fire. Everything had the look of a Sunday which had lasted for many years, during which the bells had forgotten to ring - a disused, slovenly everlasting Sunday.

When you have to go an area where you could easily reach by your vehicle however the thing is you do not have your very own individual vehicle. During that time you should obtain the best transport solution where you could relocate anywhere as like you are going by your own automobile. You could work with vehicle or a car that is quickly readily available for you and also without any problem you acquire the trustworthy automobile solutions. Even, employing a vehicle from the hiring auto company supplies high-end and budget plan automobile whatever you want to take it. Nevertheless, the monthly vehicle lease could be taken where you as soon as hire the automobile on rental fee and book previously by dealing with the date. At exact same time or same date the car will come to your door specifically. At any time whenever you call for car on lease that you can register via online however you should understand the trustworthy website where you can decide on the auto which you really want to hire after all. But the best to go with the car hire Dubai whereas; in Dubai you will be offered different types of royal cars on hires. There are varieties of cars available for you where you once visit the site and find the vehicles at very reasonable charges. But you have to clear up all the things that you have to inform to the automobile business that till the number of days you require automobile to consider the excursions. Baseding on your needs the autos will be readily available which will satisfy your entire requirements. Month-to-month car rent is readily available to you where you can register your luxury car as each as your needs just. In Dubai the autos are supplied at really cost-effective charges as well as the cars what you will enter totally excellent conditions whereas, you don't have to encounter any type of difficulty in the means of roads. The automobiles what you will certainly hire that will run smoothly when driving and conveniently the automobiles runs quick as well as will certainly reach easily as well as conveniently at your location only. Thus, the cars are offered for rental fee on monthly, everyday and once a week basis as these depending on as you want the car rental services at your place. If you wish to hire the budget plan vehicle to reach your location or you require the autos on rent for some days then, you can acquire the auto at inexpensive fees and also the you need to pay charge for hiring car on daily basis.

In America, my father began working as a clerk for a government agency. He rented an apartment in a place called Queens, New York. A year after he left us, he sent airplane tickets. The Delhi of the seventies is hard to imagine: the quietness, the streets empty of traffic, children playing cricket in the middle of the street and rarely having to move out of the way to let cars by, the vegetable vendors who came pushing their carts down the streets in the late afternoon, crying out their wares in tight, high-pitched voices. There weren't VCRs back then, let alone cable channels. A movie would play for twenty-five or fifty weeks in huge auditorium theaters, and then once the movie was gone, it was gone forever. I remembered feeling grief when the enormous billboards for Sholay at the end of our street were taken down. It was like somebody had died. It is also hard to remember how frugal we were. We saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. Our mothers used it to make wicks. This frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of the world in a way most people no longer are. When my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. When we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. This close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper split on paper slows down how it burns. By the time our airplane tickets arrived, not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country. Still, many families did.