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It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thing—loneliness—and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase “I am useful, even if alone” carved in stone. Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life. And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within. Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, “I’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes. Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then … … instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not … Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness. Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t. But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again. Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is ...

Sometimes I think my ability to concentrate is being nibbled away by the internet; other times I think it's being gulped down in huge, Jaws-shaped chunks. In those quaint days before the internet, once you made it to your desk there wasn't much to distract you. You could sit there working or you could just sit there. Now you sit down and there's a universe of possibilities – many of them obscurely relevant to the work you should be getting on with – to tempt you. To think that I can be sitting here, trying to write something about Ingmar Bergman and, a moment later, on the merest whim, can be watching a clip from a Swedish documentary about Don Cherry – that is a miracle (albeit one with a very potent side-effect, namely that it's unlikely I'll ever have the patience to sit through an entire Bergman film again). Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the backs of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called "this twittering world", I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life. Exactly the same thing has happened now that it's possible to get hold of out-of-print books instantly on the web. That's great too. But one of the side incentives to travel was the hope that, in a bookstore in Oregon, I might finally track down a book I'd been wanting for years. All of this searching and tracking down was immensely time-consuming – but only in the way that being alive is time-consuming.

Later, Bishop Crandall dropped by The house to give me a stern reprimand. He sat across the cluttered table, playing with a paper clip. 'Your parents are worries about you, Pattyn.' I was worried about myself. But I wasn't about to let him know it. "Really?" 'Really. What have you got to say for yourself? You've always been such a good girl.' Good girl. Sit. Stay. Fetch. Bristles rose up along my spine. "Define good." 'I don't appreciate your attitude, Pattyn. Fast and pray. Search your soul for the inequities in your life.' "Any inequity in my life began when I was born female. Can you fix that?" 'You'll have to fix that yourself, by concentrating on the things God expects of you.' His two-faced rhetoric was pissing me off. "You mean like kissing your ass?" He slammed his hand on the table. 'I will not listen to that sort of language. Apologize!' Behind me, I hear Mom gasp. But I was on a roll. "I'm sorry, Bishop I'm sorry I ever believed you might have something worthwhile to say.

Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience. The

Valerie Jennings had clearly searched deep within her wardrobe for something suitably flattering, only to retrieve a frock of utter indifference to fashion. There had been an attempt to tame her hair, which seemed to have been abandoned, and the fuzzy results were clipped to the back of her head. "You look nice," said Hebe Jones.

How to describe the things we see onscreen, experiences we have that are not ours? After so many hours (days, weeks, years) of watching TV—the morning talk shows, the daily soaps, the nightly news and then into prime time (The Bachelor, Game of Thrones, The Voice)—after a decade of studying the viral videos of late-night hosts and Funny or Die clips emailed by friends, how are we to tell the difference between them, if the experience of watching them is the same? To watch the Twin Towers fall and on the same device in the same room then watch a marathon of Everybody Loves Raymond. To Netflix an episode of The Care Bears with your children, and then later that night (after the kids are in bed) search for amateur couples who’ve filmed themselves breaking the laws of several states. To videoconference from your work computer with Jan and Michael from the Akron office (about the new time-sheet protocols), then click (against your better instincts) on an embedded link to a jihadi beheading video. How do we separate these things in our brains when the experience of watching them—sitting or standing before the screen, perhaps eating a bowl of cereal, either alone or with others, but, in any case, always with part of us still rooted in our own daily slog (distracted by deadlines, trying to decide what to wear on a date later)—is the same? Watching, by definition, is different from doing.

The words written down are dirty, carefully and selectedly filthy. But there was something far worse here than dirt, a kind of frightening witches’ Sabbath. Here was no spontaneous cry of anger, of insane rage. Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.

So then one may sketch her spending her morning in a China robe of ambiguous gender among her books; then receiving a client or two (for she had many scores of suppliants) in the same garment; then she would take a turn in the garden and clip the nut trees - for which knee breeches were convenient; then she would change into a flowered taffeta which best suited a drive to Richmond and a proposal of marriage from some great nobleman; and so back again to town, where she would don a snuff-coloured gown like a lawyer's and visit the courts to hear how her cases were doing - for her fortune was wasting hourly and the suits seemed no nearer consummation than they had been a hundred years ago; and so, finally, when night came, she would more often than not become a nobleman complete from head to toe and walk the streets in search of adventure.

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!” Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles. The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him. “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade. Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek. “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face. “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths. Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away. “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly. “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.” “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?” “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!

I trudge toward the porch, entertaining the idea of running the other way. But technically, I shouldn't be in any trouble. It wasn't my car. I'm not the one who got a ticket. Samantha Forza did. And the picture on Samantha Forza's driver's license looks a lot like Rayna. She told Officer Downing that she swerved to keep from hitting a camel, which Officer Downing graciously interpreted as a deer after she described it as "a hairy animal with four legs and a horn." Since no one formed a search party to look for either a camel or a unicorn, I figured we were in the clear. But from Mom's expression, I'm miles from clear. "Hi," I say as I reach the steps. "We'll see about that," she says, grabbing my face and shining a pen light in my eyes. I slap it away. "Really? You're checking my pupils? Really?" "Hal said you looked hazy," she says, clipping the pen back on the neckline of her scrubs. "Hal? Who's Hal?" "Hal is the paramedic who took your signature when you declined medical treatment. He radioed in to the hospital after he left you." "Oh. Well, then Hal would have noticed I was just in an accident, so I might have been a little out of it. Doesn't mean I was high." So it wasn't small-town gossip, it was small-county gossip. Good ole Hal's probably transported hundreds of patients to my mom in the ER two towns over. She scowls. "Why didn't you call me? Who is Samantha?" I sigh and push past her. There's no reason to have this conversation on the porch. She follows me into the house. "She's Galen's sister. I didn't call because I didn't have a signal on my cell. We were on a dead road." "Where was Galen? Why were you driving his car?" "He was home. We were just taking it for a drive. He didn't want to come." Technically, all these statements are true, so they sound believable when I say them. Mom snorts and secures the dead bolt on the front door. "Probably because he knows his sister is life threatening behind the wheel." "Probably.

The communists didn’t release their grip until the late 1980s. Effective organisation kept them in power for eight long decades, and they eventually fell due to defective organisation. On 21 December 1989 Nicolae Ceaus¸escu, the communist dictator of Romania, organised a mass demonstration of support in the centre of Bucharest. Over the previous months the Soviet Union had withdrawn its support from the eastern European communist regimes, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and revolutions had swept Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Ceaus¸escu, who had ruled Romania since 1965, believed he could withstand the tsunami, even though riots against his rule had erupted in the Romanian city of Timis¸oara on 17 December. As one of his counter-measures, Ceaus¸escu arranged a massive rally in Bucharest to prove to Romanians and the rest of the world that the majority of the populace still loved him – or at least feared him. The creaking party apparatus mobilised 80,000 people to fill the city’s central square, and citizens throughout Romania were instructed to stop all their activities and tune in on their radios and televisions. To the cheering of the seemingly enthusiastic crowd, Ceauşescu mounted the balcony overlooking the square, as he had done scores of times in previous decades. Flanked by his wife, Elena, leading party officials and a bevy of bodyguards, Ceaus¸escu began delivering one of his trademark dreary speeches. For eight minutes he praised the glories of Romanian socialism, looking very pleased with himself as the crowd clapped mechanically. And then something went wrong. You can see it for yourself on YouTube. Just search for ‘Ceauşescu’s last speech’, and watch history in action.20 The YouTube clip shows Ceaus¸escu starting another long sentence, saying, ‘I want to thank the initiators and organisers of this great event in Bucharest, considering it as a—’, and then he falls silent, his eyes open wide, and he freezes in disbelief. He never finished the sentence. You can see in that split second how an entire world collapses. Somebody in the audience booed. People

We walk around inside that house like everything is okay, but it’s not, Quinn. We’ve been broken for years and I have no idea how to fix us. I find solutions. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. But I have no idea how to solve me and you. Every day I come home, hoping things will be better. But you can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. You hate it when I touch you. You hate it when I talk to you. I pretend not to notice the things you don’t want me to notice because I don’t want you to hurt more than you already do.” He releases a rush of air. “I am not blaming you for what I did. It’s my fault. I did that. I fucked up. But I didn’t fuck up because I was attracted to her. I fucked up because I miss you. Every day, I miss you. When I’m at work, I miss you. When I’m home, I miss you. When you’re next to me in bed, I miss you. When I’m inside you, I miss you.” Graham presses his mouth to mine. I can taste his tears. Or maybe they’re my tears. He pulls back and presses his forehead to mine. “I miss you, Quinn. So much. You’re right here, but you aren’t. I don’t know where you went or when you left, but I have no idea how to bring you back. I am so alone. We live together. We eat together. We sleep together. But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.” Graham releases me and falls back against his seat. He rests his elbow against the window, covering his face as he tries to compose himself. He’s more broken than I’ve ever seen him in all the years I’ve known him. And I’m the one slowly tearing him down. I’m making him unrecognizable. I’ve strung him along by allowing him to believe there’s hope that I’ll eventually change. That I’ll miraculously turn back into the woman he fell in love with. But I can’t change. We are who our circumstances turn us into. “Graham.” I wipe at my face with my shirt. He’s quiet, but he eventually looks at me with his sad, heartbroken eyes. “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been here this whole time. But you can’t see me because you’re still searching for someone I used to be. I’m sorry I’m no longer who I was back then. Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe I won’t. But a good husband loves his wife through the good and the bad times. A good husband stands at his wife’s side through sickness and health, Graham. A good husband- a husband who truly loves his wife - wouldn’t cheat on her and then blame his infidelity on the fact that he’s lonely.” Graham’s expression doesn’t change. He’s as still as a statue. The only thing that moves is his jaw as he works it back and forth. And then his eyes narrow and he tilts his head. “You don’t think I love you, Quinn?” “I know you used to. But I don’t think you love the person I’ve become.” Graham sits up straight. He leans forward, looking me hard in the eye. His words are clipped as he speaks. “I have loved you every single second of every day since the moment I laid eyes on you. I love you more now than I did the day I married you. I love you, Quinn. I fucking love you!” He opens his car door, gets out and then slams it shut with all his strength. The whole car shakes. He walks toward the house, but before he makes it to the front door, he spins around and points at me angrily. “I love you, Quinn!” He’s shouting the words. He’s angry. So angry. He walks toward his car and kicks at the front bumper with his bare foot. He kicks and he kicks and he kicks and then pauses to scream it at me again. “I love you!” He slams his fist against the top of his car, over and over, until he finally collapses against the hood, his head buried in his arms. He remains in this position for an entire minute, the only thing moving is the subtle shaking of his shoulders. I don’t move. I don’t even think I breathe. Graham finally pushes off the hood and uses his shirt to wipe at his eyes. He looks at me, completely defeated. “I love you,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I always have. No matter how much you wish I didn’t.

Thrasher" They were hiding behind hay bales, They were planting in the full moon They had given all they had for something new But the light of day was on them, They could see the thrashers coming And the water shone like diamonds in the dew. And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light Trying to catch an hour on the sun When I saw those thrashers rolling by, Looking more than two lanes wide I was feelin' like my day had just begun. Where the eagle glides ascending There's an ancient river bending Down the timeless gorge of changes Where sleeplessness awaits I searched out my companions, Who were lost in crystal canyons When the aimless blade of science Slashed the pearly gates. It was then I knew I'd had enough, Burned my credit card for fuel Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand With a one-way ticket to the land of truth And my suitcase in my hand How I lost my friends I still don't understand. They had the best selection, They were poisoned with protection There was nothing that they needed, Nothing left to find They were lost in rock formations Or became park bench mutations On the sidewalks and in the stations They were waiting, waiting. So I got bored and left them there, They were just deadweight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin' my mama's T.V., It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode. Where the vulture glides descending On an asphalt highway bending Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars Down the windy halls of friendship To the rose clipped by the bullwhip The motel of lost companions Waits with heated pool and bar. But me I'm not stopping there, Got my own row left to hoe Just another line in the field of time When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

What is your name?” she said crossing her legs. “I am Raj Singhania, owner of Singhania group of Industries and I am on my way to sign a 1000 crore deal.” “Oh my God, Oh my God!” she said laughing and looked at Bobby from top to bottom. “What’s with this OMG thing and girls, stop saying that. I am not going to propose you anytime soon. But it’s OK. I can understand how girls feel when they meet famous dudes like me,” Bobby said smiling. “What kind of an idiot are you?” she said laughing. “Indeed, a very rare one. The one that you find after searching for millions of years,” Bobby said. “Do you always talk like this?” she said laughing. “Only to strangers on bus or whenever I get bored,” Bobby said. “OK, tell me your real name,” she said. “My name is Mogaliputta Tissa and I am here to save the world.” “Oh no not again!” she said squeezing her head with both her hands. “I know you are dying inside to kiss me,” Bobby said flashing a smile. “Why would I kiss you?” she said with a pretended sternness. “Because, you are impressed with my intelligence level and the hotness quotient, I can see that in your eyes.” “You think you are hot! Oh no! You look like that cartoon guy in 7 up commercial,” she said laughing. “Thank you. He was the coolest guy I saw on TV,” Bobby said. “OK fine, let’s calm down. Tell me your real name,” she said calmly. “I don’t remember my name,” Bobby said calmly. “What kind of idiot forgets his name?” she said staring into Bobby’s eyes. “I am suffering from multiple personality disorder and I forgot my present personality’s name. Can you help me out?” Bobby said with an innocent look on his face. “I will kill you with my hair clip. Leave me alone,” she said and closed her eyes. “You look like a Pomeranian puppy,” Bobby said looking at her hair. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “You look very beautiful,” Bobby said. “Nice try but I am not going to open my eyes,” she said. “Your ear rings are very nice. But I think that girl in the last seat has better rings,” Bobby said. “She is not wearing any ear rings. I know because I saw her when I was getting inside. It takes just 5 seconds for a girl to know what other girls around her are wearing,” she said with her eyes still closed. “Hey, look. They are selling porn CDs at a roadside shop,” Bobby said. “I have loads of porn in my personal computer. I don’t need them,” she said. “OMG, that girl looks hotter than you,” Bobby said. “I will not open my eyes no matter what. Even if an earthquake hits the road, I will not open my eyes,” she said crossing her arms over her chest. Bobby turned back and waved his hand to the kid who was poking his mom’s ear. The kid came running and halted at Bobby’s seat. “This aunty wants to give you a chocolate if you tell her your name,” Bobby whispered to the kid and the kid perked up smiling. “Hello Aunty! Wake up, my name is Bintu. Give me my chocolate, Aunty, please!” the kid said yanking at the girl’s hand. All of a sudden, she opened her eyes and glared at the kid. “Don’t call me aunty. What would everyone think? I am a teenage girl. Go away. I don’t have anything to give you,” she said and the kid went back to his seat. “This is what happens when you mess with an intelligent person like me,” Bobby said laughing. “Shut up,” she said. “OK dude.” “I am not a dude. Stop it.” “OK sexy. Oops! OK Saxena,” “I will scream.” “OK. Where do you study?” “Why should I tell you?” “Are you suffering from split personality disorder like me?” Bobby said staring into her eyes. “Shut up. Don’t talk to me,” she said with a pout. “What the hell! I have enlightened your mind with my thoughts, told you my name and now you are acting like you don’t know me. Girls are mad.

Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la

Aza [Raskin] explained it to me by saying that I should imagine that inside of Facebook's servers, inside of Google's servers, there is a little voodoo doll, [and it is] a model of you. It starts by not looking much like you. It's sort of a generic model of a human. But then they're collecting your click trails [i.e., everything you click on], and your toenail clippings, and your hair droppings [i.e., everything you search for, every little detail of your life online]. They're reassembling all that metadata you don't really think is meaningful, so that doll looks more and more like you. [Then] when you show up on [for example] YouTube, they're waking up that doll, and they're testing out hundreds and thousands of videos against this doll, seeing what makes its arm twitch and move, so they know it's effective, and then they serve that to you. ...they have a doll like that for one in four human beings on earth.

Even though this was now routine, returning home to the sight of eight squad cars parked in our driveway still caused me to feel an instant and roiling vertigo; a few months ago I’d nearly swerved off the road and clipped a fire hydrant when I saw them all there. My immediate thought was always that my Internet search history had been discovered,

How many people today have what you are talking about? What roots are there in an apartment twelve floors up? What roots are in a housing development of hundreds and thousands of small dwellings almost exactly alike? My father came from Italy," he said. "He grew up in Tuscany in a house where his family had lived maybe a thousand years. That's roots for you, no running water, no toilet, and they cooked with charcoal or vine clippings. They had just two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom where everybody slept, grandpa, father and all the kids, no place to read, no place to be alone, and never had had. Was that better? I bet if you gave my old man the choice he'd cut his roots and live like this.

The other distinctive thing about them, and the reason I like to go to Hazlitt's, is that they cannot bear to admit that they don't know the location of something they feel they ought to know, like a hotel, which I think is rather sweet. to become a London cab driver you have to master something called The Knowledge--in effect, learn every street, hospital, hotel, police station, cricket ground, cemetery, and other notable landmarks in this amazingly vast and confusing city. It takes years and the cabbies are justifiably proud of their achievement. It would kill them to admit that there could exist in central London a hotel that they have never heard of. So what the cabbie does is probe. He drives in no particular direction for a block or two, then glances at you in the mirror and in an over casual voice says, “Hazlitt’s–that’s the one on Curzon Street, innit, guv? Opposite the Blue Lion?” But the instant he sees a knowing smile of demure forming on your lips, he hastily says, “No, hang on a minute, I’m thinking of Hazelbury. Yeah, Hazelbury. You want Hazlitt’s, right?” He’ll drive on a bit in a fairly random direction. “That’s this side of Shepherd’s Bush, innit?” he’ll suggest speculatively. When you tell him that it’s on Frith Street, he says, “Yeah, that’s the one. Course it is. I know it–modern place, lots of glass.” “Actually, it’s an eighteenth-century brick building.” “Course it is. I know it.” And he immediately executes a dramatic U-turn, causing a passing cyclist to steer into a lamppost (but that’s all right because he has on cycle clips and one of those geeky slip-stream helmets that all but invite you to knock him over). “Yeah you had me thinking of the Hazelbury,” the driver adds, chuckling as if to say it’s a lucky thing he sorted that one out for you, and then lunges down a little side street off the Strand called Running Sore Lane or Sphincter Passage, which, like so much else in London, you had never noticed was there before. Hazlitt’s is a nice hotel, but the thing I like about it is that it doesn’t act like a hotel. It’s been there for years, and the employees are friendly–always a novelty in a big-city hotel– but they do manage to give the slight impression that they haven’t been doing this for very long. Tell them that you have a reservation and want to check in and they get a kind of panicked look and begin a perplexed search through drawers for registration cards and room keys. It’s really quite charming. And the delightful girls who cleans the rooms–which, let me say, are always spotless and exceedingly comfortable–seldom seem to have what might be called a total command of English, so that when you ask them for a bar of soap or something you see that they are watching your mouth closely and then, pretty generally, they return after a bit with a hopeful look bearing a potted plant or a commode or something that is manifestly not soap. It’s a wonderful place. I wouldn’t go anywhere else.

Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).

Frank slept in the chair beside Ollie’s bed, his elbow propped on a table, his hand holding his head somewhat upright. As we entered the room, he leapt to his feet. His confused gaze searched my face, and then his eyes narrowed at the sheriff. “Should she be out of bed?” Gravelly words. “Fever’s broke.” A clipped response. I looked from one man to the other, trying to comprehend the antagonism that crackled the air between them. A shiver swayed me. Each man’s face softened, but I disregarded their concern. I needed to know about Ollie. She looked so tiny in the middle of her parents’ bed. A slick, almost bloodless face. My stomach clutched. Was she dead? Then I realized that no spots shadowed her eyes or her cheeks. Her body shook with a deep cough. I winced, trying to suppress the answering one creeping up my own throat. Frank reached across the bed and felt her face and the back of her neck. He dropped back into the chair. “She’s still fine.” I wavered. Frank jumped up, caught hold of my arm, and kept me upright. He led me to the bed and urged me to lie beside Ollie. As the fog in my head cleared further, fear pounced at me like a threatened bobcat. “Where are the boys? And Janie? Tell me.” I gripped Frank’s shirtsleeves. “They’re fine. They’re at the Crenshaws. Under the weather, but not the flu. Definitely not the flu.” I looked to the sheriff. He nodded. Once. “Truly?” My gaze held Frank’s. He wouldn’t lie to me. He couldn’t. “I promise.

This is getting weird,” Lip said, flipping through some of the others.  “Do you think these are code?” “Could be.  Don’t know.  Not our speed, though.  We’re going to need to call in some favors to get them run.” Lip nodded.  “That shouldn’t be a problem.  We’ll use our go-to boy.” “Lawrence?” “He owes us.” Lawrence Simpson.  He still worked at the NSA.  Man was a lifer.  And he owed them big. “They’ve got the Black Widow now,” Lip said.  “I’d love to work with that baby.” The Black Widow.  The NSA’s colossal Cray supercomputer.  Thing could scan through millions of emails, phone calls, you name it, in seconds.  It could find patterns, search for key words, and do it on a scale that was unfathomable. “Keep dreaming,” Marks said. Lip could get carried away.  Like the NSA was going to let ‘em use that.  Thing was needed for its job.  Like spying on the world. First time on the job Marks was pretty blown away.  Didn’t faze him in the least now, knowing that the NSA captured every bit of correspondence every day and every second from around the world.  Phone calls, cell or land lines.  Domestic and international.  Emails.  Text messages.  Fuckin’ everything. It was all captured, scanned and stored.  And Lip and he had a hand in helping with that.  Still were helping.  Information in motion.  There were always new pipes that needed to be tapped, more splitters to put in place somewhere around the world.  Dubai, Chóngqing, Bangalore…  Marks and Lip, just two of your friendly cable box installers.  No job too small or too far away. Marks eyed the walls again.  In a micro sense this was almost like a snapshot of the soup.  Random and nonsensical.  Just a bunch of non-related groups lumped together. He examined some of the newspaper clippings.  It was weird to see the paper content. 

Myron’s eyes narrowed, swerving from Clip to Calvin Johnson, back to Clip. Their expressions were neutral. “Why do I have the feeling,” Myron asked, “that I’m missing something here?” Clip finally smiled. He looked over to Calvin Johnson. Calvin Johnson forced up a return smile. “Perhaps I should be less”—Clip paused, searched for the word—“opaque.” “That might be helpful.” “I want you on the team. I don’t much care if you play or not.” Myron waited again. When no one continued, he said, “It’s still a bit opaque.” Clip let loose a long breath. He walked over to the bar, opened a small hotel-style fridge, and removed a can of Yoo-Hoo. Stocking Yoo-Hoos. Hmm. Clip had been prepared. “You still drink this sludge?” “Yes,” Myron said. He tossed Myron the can and poured something from a decanter into two glasses. He handed one to Calvin Johnson. He signaled to the seats by the glass window. Exactly midcourt. Very nice. Nice leg room too. Even Calvin, who was six-eight, was able to stretch a bit. The three men sat next to one another, all facing the same way, which again felt weird in a business setting. You were supposed to sit across from one another, preferably at a table or desk. Instead they sat shoulder to shoulder, watching the work crew pound the floor into place.

At first she felt overwhelmed by the house, its airy symmetry its silence. Now she was accustomed to the place, but she caught herself wondering, Is this still Berkeley? George's neighborhood felt as far from Telegraph as the hanging gardens of Babylon. You could get a good kebab in Jess's neighborhood, and a Cal T-shirt, and a reproduction NO HIPPIES ALLOWED sign. Where George lived, you could not get anything unless you drove down from the hills. Then you could buy art glass, and temple bells, and burled-wood jewelry boxes, and dresses of hand-painted silk, and you could eat at Chez Panisse, or sip coffee at the authentically grubby French Hotel where your barista took a bent paper clip and drew cats or four-leaf clovers or nudes in your espresso foam. You returned home with organic, free-range groceries, and bouquets of ivory roses and pale green hydrangeas, and you held dinner parties where some guests got lost and arrived late, and others gave up searching for you in the fog. That was George's Berkeley, and even in these environs, his home stood apart, hidden, grand, and rambling; windows set like jewels in their carved frames, gables twined with wisteria of periwinkle and ghostly white.

She's wryly amused by the world's innate ability to deny death. But wholly unsurprised, too. People are too busy staring at their telephones, endlessly searching for some truth that will never come. Idly sniggering at infantile video clips of goodness knows what, never stopping to notice the universe around them, or the people in it.

Washington Boulevard until he reached another small park that had a view over the lake. He stopped and looked out at the churning grey water. One of the first things the police had done was attempt to trace Scarlett through her phone. Using GPS, they had been able to tell that Scarlett had been at Aidan’s apartment at eleven fifty, but then the signal had gone dead. Either her phone had died at that point or she had turned it off. Aidan wondered briefly if someone had broken into the apartment while he lay listening to his sleep story, but there was no evidence of it. The police believed Scarlett had done it herself. They had asked the phone company to retrieve her messages and call records from the couple of days before she disappeared, but there was nothing that shed any light on where she’d gone. ‘If she was using WhatsApp, it’s all secure and impossible to access or recover,’ the police reminded Aidan, who already knew that fact – and that Scarlett frequently used the app to message her friends. They had searched her laptop too and discovered that she had wiped her search history. Using special data tools they had been able to recover it, but hadn’t found anything interesting. She had mostly been on social media and YouTube, where she had watched a couple of make-up tutorials, various clips by her favourite content creators, and a video about the climate protest she and Aidan had got mixed up in. Aidan speculated that she had been looking to see if she could spot herself. There was nothing to indicate why she had felt the need to delete her history. Maybe it was something she did regularly, out of habit. On day three, someone had come forward to say he had seen a red-headed woman or girl on Lake Washington Boulevard in the early hours after Scarlett disappeared. Apparently, she had been walking down the hill, which made the police wonder if she’d gone back to Viretta Park. Over the next couple of days there had been a lot of activity on the lake. The police had gone out with boats. Divers had plunged beneath the surface and scoured the area close

knew about chicken factories. I knew about the lightless cages, the clipped beaks, the overhead drizzle of shit, the poison-laced corn and soy shoved down their gullets, the farmers bullied into serfdom. I knew about growth hormones and preservatives and artificial flavors, the obscene categorization of body type by cooking method: fryer, broiler, roaster.

He was the only child of anxious parents who had very much overprotected him, never going out at night, for example, because of their hesitancy to leave him alone. Though the parents were ostensibly “liberal” and “rational” in all dealings with the son, he could never remember in all his childhood that he ever once talked back to them. The parents would brag about his achievements in school to relatives, cutting clippings about his successes from the papers and taking pride in the fact that he was brighter than his cousins: but they rarely expressed real appreciation directly to him. Thus already as a child he was unable to develop a feeling of his own independent power and worth, and used as a substitute an overconcern for the praise which came, at least indirectly, from winning prizes in school.

Nature plays a cruel joke. CREB’s attempt to suppress dopamine and endogenous opioids to urge ‘over indulgers’ to take a break works against a chronic porn user. Numbing his pleasure response can drive him to seek out more extreme material, often swiping from clip to clip in search of the one that will restore his dopamine levels. Put simply, CREB can lead to tolerance, which may result in compulsive porn use and escalation.

It affects the false part of the human memory or whatever. That’s not all. They’re not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore.” “What are they calling it?” He looked at me carefully. “The airborne toxic event.” He spoke these words in a clipped and foreboding manner, syllable by syllable, as if he sensed the threat in state-created terminology. He continued to watch me carefully, searching my face for some reassurance against the possibility of real danger—a reassurance he would immediately reject as phony. A favorite ploy of his. “These things are not important. The important thing is location. It’s there, we’re here.” “A large air mass is moving down from Canada,” he said evenly. “I already knew that.” “That doesn’t mean it’s not important.” “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Depends.” “The weather’s about to change,” he practically cried out to me in a voice charged with the plaintive throb of his special time of life. “I’m not just a college professor. I’m the head of a department. I don’t see myself fleeing an airborne toxic event. That’s for people who live in mobile homes out in the scrubby parts of the county, where the fish hatcheries are.

Who?” “Bill Judd Jr.” “Oh, noooo.” Round, Swedish oooo’s. “Miz Sweet, when we were going through Judd Sr.’s office, we found some invoices on your computer, for chemicals that were apparently used in an ethanol plant out in South Dakota…” “I heard about it on TV. That was the same one? The one where they were making drugs?” “Yes, it was,” Virgil said. “Oh, nooo.” The sound was driving him crazy; she sounded like a bad comedian. “Who in town knew about the ethanol plant?” She turned her face to one side and put a hand to her lips. “Well, the Judds, of course.” “Both of them?” Virgil asked. “Well…Junior set it up, but Senior knew about it.” He pressed. “Are you sure about that?” “Well, yes. He signed the checks.” “Did you see him signing the checks?” Virgil asked. “No, but I saw the checks. It was his signature…” “Do you remember the bank?” She shook her head. “No, no, I don’t.” She frowned. “I’m not even sure that the bank name was on the checks.” “Did you ever talk to Junior about that?” “No. It wasn’t my business,” she said. “They wanted to keep it quiet, because, you know, when ethanol started, it sounded a little like the Jerusalem artichoke thing. The Judds were involved in that, of course.” “So how quiet did they keep it?” Virgil asked. “Who else knew? Did you tell anybody?” He saw it coming, the noooo. “Oh, noooo…Junior told me, don’t talk about this, because of my father. So, I didn’t.” “Not to anybody?” Her eyes drifted. She was thinking, which meant that she had. “It’s possible…my sister, I might have told. I think there might have been some word around town.” “It’s really important that you remember…” She put her hand to her temple, as though she were going to move a paper clip with telekinesis, and said, “I might have mentioned it at bridge. At our bridge club. That a plant was being built, and some local people were involved.” “All right,” Virgil said. “So who was at the bridge club?” “Well, let me see, there would have been nine or ten of us…” She listed them; he only recognized one of the names. WHEN HE WAS DONE with Sweet, he strolled up the hill to the newspaper office. He pushed in, and found Williamson behind the business counter, talking to a woman customer. Williamson looked past the woman and snapped, “What do you want?” “I have a question, when you’re free.” “Wait.” Williamson was wearing a T-shirt and had sweat stains under his arms, as though he’d been lifting rocks. “Take just a minute.” The customer was trying to dump her Beanie Baby collection locally—ten years too late, in Virgil’s opinion—and wanted the cheapest possible advertisement. She got twenty words for six dollars, looking back and forth between Virgil and Williamson, and after writing a check for the amount, said to Virgil, “I’d love to hear your question.” Virgil looked at her over his sunglasses and grinned: “I’d love to have you, but I’m afraid it’s gotta be private, for the moment.” “Shoot.” She looked at Williamson, who shrugged, and she said, “Oh, well.” WHEN SHE’D GONE out the door, Williamson said, “I’m working. You can ask me out back.” “You still pissed about the search?

A person can cultivate a new persona from a pâté of earthy personal experiences. How do I reconcile all my faults and propagate all my innate gifts to create the type of self that I am happy to claim responsibility for authorship? How do I go about turning over the peat moss that lines the feldspar of my rocky existence? How do I plow under the seedlings of my youth and grow a protective bed of winter clover to shield my adulthood? How do I mulch the clippings from variegated personal experiences, ferment the rot, harrow new rows, and plant hardy spring wheat to take root in the enriched chocolate loam of a fertile mind? Is all this laborious plow pulling work of creating a fresh and authentic self-identify worth the backbreaking effort? How does one go about revamping their personal storyline? How do I cast myself into a robust image that does not appall other people? My continued existence entails industriously giving seed to the lush myths that I live by, amassing dwindling personal willpower, and resolving to impose upon my weathered soul the missing character traits that wait forging in the glowering inferno fed by a rising mountain of ignited personal anxiety.

unspoken message. “You’re fundamentally okay.” As the weeks and months passed, he began to feel a quiet confidence and affirmed himself. He began to blossom, at his own pace and speed. He became outstanding as measured by standard social criteria—academically, socially and athletically—at a rapid clip, far beyond the so-called natural developmental process. As the years passed, he was elected to several student body leadership positions, developed into an all-state athlete and started bringing home straight A report cards. He developed an engaging and guileless personality that has enabled him to relate in nonthreatening ways to all kinds of people. Sandra and I believe that our son’s “socially impressive” accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than merely a response to social reward. This was an amazing experience for Sandra and me, and a very instructional one in dealing with our other children and in other roles as well. It brought to our awareness on a very personal level the vital difference between the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic of success. The Psalmist expressed our conviction well: “Search your own heart with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life.

The four men fidgeted, animated about something or other, eyes constantly searching, seeing and cringing at the spiders on the walls and the mothmen in the corners. All four tweakers were white, thin, and tall. And close to the same age. All wore baggy shirts and baggy pants, and their flat-brimmed ball caps were crooked. When they spoke it was clipped and fast and they used hand gestures that looked like bad karate. Occasionally they’d look my way, make a gesture, laugh, and sneer. One spit at my feet. I smiled, nodded, and held up my whiskey. The three at the table must have been coming down from “a long time on the moon,” as the meth heads called the time they spent tweaked. Their heads were cradled on skinny folded arms and one, the guy, snored. “You