Seriously Sick Quotes

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.

I've been here for you all along. I've listened to you cry about other guys, I rescue you, take care of you when you're sick, hug you when you're sad, tell you you're beautiful when you look terrible.” He looks me straight in the eyes and is dead serious when he says, “Princess, I've always been the one.

How do I love thee? wondered Orion. "Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally...obviously eternally-that goes without saying." Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. "Is he serious?" she called over her shoulder to Foaly. "Oh, absolutely," said the centaur "If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately." "Oh, I would never." Orion assured her. "Ladies don't look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows like the Goodly Beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough." "I am not exuding anything." said Holly, through gritted teeth. Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins." Holly gripped the wheel tightly. "I'm going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?" "And dolphins, little ones," said Foaly.

You are a terrible liar. You do want this. Just as badly as I do.” My mouth opened, but no words came out. “You want this as badly as you want to go to ALA this winter.” Now my jaw was on the floor. “You don’t even know what ALA is!” “American Library Association midwinter event,” he said, grinning proudly. “Saw you obsessing over it on your blog before you got sick. I’m pretty sure you said you’d give up your firstborn child to go.” Yeah, I kind of did say that. Daemon eyes flashed. “Anyway, back to the whole you wanting me part.” I shook my head, dumbfounded. “You do want me.” Taking a deep breath, I struggled with my temper… and my amusement. “You are way too confident.” “I’m confident enough to wager a bet.” “You can’t be serious.” He grinned. “I bet that by New Year’s Day, you will have admitted that you’re madly, deeply, and irrevocably—” “Wow. Want to throw another adverb out there?” My cheeks were burning. “How about irresistibly?” I rolled my eyes and muttered, “I’m surprised you know what an adverb is.” “Stop distracting me, Kitten. Back to my bet—by New Year’s Day, you’ll have admitted that you’re madly, deeply, irrevocably, and irresistibly in love with me.” Stunned, I choked on my laugh. “And that you dream about me.” He released my arm and folded his, cocking an eyebrow. “I bet you’ll even admit that. Probably even show me your notebook with my name circled in hearts—” “Oh, for the love of God…” Daemon winked. “It’s on.

If you're sighing with contentment, you're either one sick fuck or you don't grasp the seriousness of the situation. While I no longer kill, I am a killer. A killer in love is a very dangerous thing.

Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile. (From Ketut Liyer, the Balinese healer)

I turned to see his expression. When I saw that he was serious, I shot hum a dubious look. “Sleeping in between the toilet and the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of your best nights? That’s sad, Trav.” “No, sitting up with you when you’re sick and you falling asleep in my lap was one of my best night.” (…) “Thanks, Trav. I won’t make you babysit me again.” He leaned against his pillow. “Whatever. No one can hold your hair back like I can.

A voice within me is sobbing, "You see that's what's become of you. You're surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don't listen to the advice of your own better half." Believe me, I'd like to listen, but it doesn't work, because if I'm quiet and serious, everyone thinks I'm putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I'm not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and setatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can't keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, an finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if . . . if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank.

Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it.

I know it makes sense for me and him to just break up now and just live our seperate lives and not have to worry about missing each other all the time. But when I think about that, I get sick. Physically sick. Like I seriously throw up. I need to be with him, even if I can’t, like, be with him.

When your madness is creative and necessary, people will not notice the fact that you are crazy.

There are sins much more serious than socio-pathologies which really are mental illnesses, whereas self-righteousness is an illness of the soul.

There are two visions of America a half century from now. One is of a society more divided between the haves and the have-nots, a country in which the rich live in gated communities, send their children to expensive schools, and have access to first-rate medical care. Meanwhile, the rest live in a world marked by insecurity, at best mediocre education, and in effect rationed health care―they hope and pray they don't get seriously sick. At the bottom are millions of young people alienated and without hope. I have seen that picture in many developing countries; economists have given it a name, a dual economy, two societies living side by side, but hardly knowing each other, hardly imagining what life is like for the other. Whether we will fall to the depths of some countries, where the gates grow higher and the societies split farther and farther apart, I do not know. It is, however, the nightmare towards which we are slowly marching.

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still, Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will! Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this. Dost thou not laugh?

AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119 You know what!? Fuck this! Fuck this airlock, fuck that Hab, and fuck this whole planet! Seriously, this is it! I've had it! I've got a few minutes before I run out of air and I'll be damned if I spend them playing Mars's little game. I'm so god damned sick of it I could puke! All I have to do is sit here. The air will leak out and I'll die. I'll be done. No more getting my hopes up, no more self-delusion, and no more problem-solving. I've fucking had it! AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119 (2) Sigh...okay. I've had my tantrum and now I have to figure out how to stay alive.

In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying- or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity- but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devistation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.

I'm serious," Lucien said as I lifted the glass to my lips, my brows raised. "Remember the last time you ignored my warning?" He poked me in the neck, and I batted his hand away. "I also remember you telling me how witchberries were harmless, and the next thing I knew, I was half-delirious and falling all over myself," I said, recalling the afternoon from a few weeks ago. I'd had hallucinations for hours afterwards, and Lucien had laughed himself sick-enough so that Tamlin had chucked him into the reflection pool.

Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

That’s the trouble with serious illness, and depression, you can’t imagine being well – like on a cold day you can’t imagine warmth – you live in the everlasting dread-filled moment.

Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.

Paul's face grew serious. 'I think whenever a people has enormous resources, it is easy for them to call themselves democratic. I think of myself more as a physician than an American. We belong to the nation of those who care for the sick. Americans are lazy democrats, and it is my belief, as someone who shares the same nationality as [a Russian doctor], I think the rich can always call themselves democratic, but the sick people are not among the rich [...] I'm very proud to be an American. I have many opportunities because I'm American. I can travel freely through the world, I can start projects, but that's called privilege, not democracy.

Belive me, handsome, one of me is way more than you can handle." "I think… I'm gonna be sick," Lachlan declares. "I know the feeling," Cat sighs. "No, seriously," he burps. "Where's the... bathroom?" Inside said bathroom, the five of us exchange a brief, horrified glance.

But with the increase of serious and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had sprung up in her Mother's mind. She was gentle and quiet in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had been restless and depressed when there had been no real cause for grief.

It is great good health to believe as the Hindus do that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.

Well, we should go get our flu shots.” “I’m good.” “You got one already?” “No.” “I’m pretty sure it’s mandatory for everyone.” The set of Adam’s shoulders clearly broadcasted that he was, in fact, not everyone. “I never get sick.” “I doubt it.” “You shouldn’t.” “Hey, the flu is more serious than you might think.” “It’s not that bad.” “It is, especially for people like you.” “Like me?” “You know . . . people of a certain age.

Rose stood in the last faint beams of sunset. “Whoa!” “Is he wearing a leather cat suit?” “Holy Mother!" “Dude!” The guys all quickly averted their eyes and raised their hands to further block any chance of catching a view. Anything to not see Rose in his painted-on leather one-piece that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. “Stunning, right?” Rose spread his palms as far as the cuffs would allow. “Oh, I’m stunned.” Ayden looked ill. Rose looked down at himself with admiration. “Not many males can pull off this look.” “No male can pull off that look.” "Actually, his finely sculptured physique would be considered the perfect complement for this type of anatomically revealing attire which accentuates his—” “Bloody hell, Jayden, shut it!” “Dude, this is so not right.” “I feel like it’s looking at me.” “Feel like what’s looking at—? Oh. Oh! Ugh, now I feel like it’s looking at me too.” “How can it be looking at both of us?” “Are you serious?” “I’m gonna be sick.” “Someone please gouge out my eyes.

Thanks for staying with me last night,” I said, stroking Toto’s soft fur. “You didn’t have to sleep on the bathroom floor.” “Last night was one of the best nights of my life.” I turned to see his expression. When I saw that he was serious, I shot him a dubious look. “Sleeping in between the toilet and the tub on a cold, hard tile floor with a vomiting idiot was one of your best nights? That’s sad, Trav.” “No, sitting up with you when you’re sick, and you falling asleep in my lap was one of my best nights. It wasn’t comfortable, I didn’t sleep worth a shit, but I brought in your nineteenth birthday with you, and you’re actually pretty sweet when you’re drunk.” “I’m sure between the heaving and purging I was very charming.” He pulled me close, patting Toto who was snuggled up to my neck. “You’re the only woman I know that still looks incredible with your head in the toilet. That’s saying something.

Well, if it’s not an engagement ring, what is it?" He lifted my hand again and studied the ring. “It’s a... ‘I promise to be with you forever, or at least until you’re totally sick of me’ ring,” he declared. “I see. A bit wordy. But seriously, next time you want to buy me jewelry - think ‘small’.

The law presumably says that it is finest to keep as quiet as possible in misfortunes and not be irritated, since the good and bad in such things aren't plain, nor does taking it hard get one anywhere, not are any of the human things worthy of great seriousness.... One must accept the fall of the dice and settle one's affairs accordingly-- in whatever way argument declares would be best. One must not behave like children who have stumbled and who hold on to the hurt place and spend their time in crying out; rather one must always habituate the soul to turn as quickly as possible to curing and setting aright what has fallen and is sick, doing away with lament by medicine.

That God lets himself be born and becomes a human being, is no idle whim, something that occurs to him so as to have something to do, perhaps to put a stop to the boredom that has brashly been said to be bound up with being God-it is not to have an adventure. No, the fact that God does this is the seriousness of existence. And the seriousness in this seriousness is, in turn, that each shall have an opinion about it.

Did you even mean to marry her, dude? Seriously?”... "I don’t know anymore, okay? Fuck. I went to Vegas because I was so sick of all this shit and I met her. She was different. She seemed different that night. I just … I wanted something outside of all this fucking idiocy for a change.

I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God “sends” illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best. “What did I do to deserve this?” is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is “If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?” As we saw in the previous chapter, it becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.

What - what - what are you doing?" he demanded. "I am almost six hundred years old," Magnus claimed, and Ragnor snorted, since Magnus changed his age to suit himself every few weeks. Magnus swept on. "It does seem about time to learn a musical instrument." He flourished his new prize, a little stringed instrument that looked like a cousin of the lute that the lute was embarrassed to be related to. "It's called a charango. I am planning to become a charanguista!" "I wouldn't call that an instrument of music," Ragnor observed sourly. "An instrument of torture, perhaps." Magnus cradled the charango in his arms as if it were an easily offended baby. "It's a beautiful and very unique instrument! The sound box is made from an armadillo. Well, a dried armadillo shell." "That explains the sound you're making," said Ragnor. "Like a lost, hungry armadillo." "You are just jealous," Magnus remarked calmly. "Because you do not have the soul of a true artiste like myself." "Oh, I am positively green with envy," Ragnor snapped. "Come now, Ragnor. That's not fair," said Magnus. "You know I love it when you make jokes about your complexion." Magnus refused to be affected by Ragnor's cruel judgments. He regarded his fellow warlock with a lofty stare of superb indifference, raised his charango, and began to play again his defiant, beautiful tune. They both heard the staccato thump of frantically running feet from within the house, the swish of skirts, and then Catarina came rushing out into the courtyard. Her white hair was falling loose about her shoulders, and her face was the picture of alarm. "Magnus, Ragnor, I heard a cat making a most unearthly noise," she exclaimed. "From the sound of it, the poor creature must be direly sick. You have to help me find it!" Ragnor immediately collapsed with hysterical laughter on his windowsill. Magnus stared at Catarina for a moment, until he saw her lips twitch. "You are conspiring against me and my art," he declared. "You are a pack of conspirators." He began to play again. Catarina stopped him by putting a hand on his arm. "No, but seriously, Magnus," she said. "That noise is appalling." Magnus sighed. "Every warlock's a critic." "Why are you doing this?" "I have already explained myself to Ragnor. I wish to become proficient with a musical instrument. I have decided to devote myself to the art of the charanguista, and I wish to hear no more petty objections." "If we are all making lists of things we wish to hear no more . . . ," Ragnor murmured. Catarina, however, was smiling. "I see," she said. "Madam, you do not see." "I do. I see it all most clearly," Catarina assured him. "What is her name?" "I resent your implication," Magnus said. "There is no woman in the case. I am married to my music!" "Oh, all right," Catarina said. "What's his name, then?" His name was Imasu Morales, and he was gorgeous.

When I went on my first antidepressant it had the side effect of making me fixated on suicide (which is sort of the opposite of what you want). It’s a rare side effect so I switched to something else that did work. Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed. Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me. And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention. I mean, cancer is a serious, often fatal disease we’ve spent billions of dollars studying and treating so obviously a patient would never have to try multiple drugs, surgeries, radiation, etc., to find what will work specifically for them. And once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good. And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time. Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever. And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly. Righ

It doesn't matter what the manifest problem was in our childhood family. In a home where a child is emotionally deprived for one reason or another that child will take some personal emotional confusion into his or her adult life. We may spin our spiritual wheels in trying to make up for childhood's personal losses, looking for compensation in the wrong places and despairing that we can find it. But the significance of spiritual rebirth through Jesus Christ is that we can mature spiritually under His parenting and receive healing compensation for these childhood deprivations. Three emotions that often grow all out of proportion in the emotionally deprived child are fear, guilt, and anger. The fear grows out of the child's awareness of the uncontrollable nature of her fearful environment, of overwhelming negative forces around her. Her guilt, her profound feelings of inadequacy, intensify when she is unable to put right what is wrong, either in the environment or in another person, no matter how hard she tries to be good. If only she could try harder or be better, she could correct what is wrong, she thinks. She may carry this guilt all her life, not knowing where it comes from, but just always feeling guilty. She often feels too sorry for something she has done that was really not all that serious. Her anger comes from her frustration, perceived deprivation, and the resultant self-pity. She has picked up an anger habit and doesn't know how much trouble it is causing her. A fourth problem often follows in the wake of the big three: the need to control others and manipulate events in order to feel secure in her own world, to hold her world together- to make happen what she wants to happen. She thinks she has to run everything. She may enter adulthood with an illusion of power and a sense of authority to put other people right, though she has had little success with it. She thinks that all she has to do is try harder, be worthier, and then she can change, perfect, and save other people. But she is in the dark about what really needs changing."I thought I would drown in guilt and wanted to fix all the people that I had affected so negatively. But I learned that I had to focus on getting well and leave off trying to cure anyone around me." Many of those around - might indeed get better too, since we seldom see how much we are a key part of a negative relationship pattern. I have learned it is a true principle that I need to fix myself before I can begin to be truly helpful to anyone else. I used to think that if I were worthy enough and worked hard enough, and exercised enough anxiety (which is not the same thing as faith), I could change anything. My power and my control are illusions. To survive emotionally, I have to turn my life over to the care of that tender Heavenly Father who was really in charge. It is my own spiritual superficiality that makes me sick, and that only profound repentance, that real change of heart, would ultimately heal me. My Savior is much closer than I imagine and is willing to take over the direction of my life: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me, ye can do nothing." (John 15:5). As old foundations crumble, we feel terribly vulnerable. Humility, prayer and flexibility are the keys to passing through this corridor of healthy change while we experiment with truer ways of dealing with life. Godly knowledge, lovingly imparted, begins deep healing, gives tools to live by and new ways to understand the gospel.

I always lose the guy!” “Yeah, well that’s because they’re always the wrong guy.” “And you think you’re the right one?” “Yeah. I do. I’m the one,” he says, pointing to his chest. … “I've been here for you all along. I've listened to you cry about other guys, I rescue you, take care of you when you're sick, hug you when you're sad, tell you you're beautiful when you look terrible.” He looks me straight in the eyes and is dead serious when he says, “Princess, I've always been the one

It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust.

Angel, I have no idea how you can stand this stench,” he said. “Derrel’s been doing this for long enough that I think he doesn’t have any smell receptors left, but you . . . ?” He grimaced as he snapped pictures of the skull and the injury while I held the body in position for him. “You are one tough chick.” Then his eyes crinkled, and even though he had the mask on, I could tell he was grinning at me. “Or maybe you’re seriously sick and twisted, in which case you are so in the right line of work.” I laughed. “Gotta be the second one,” I said. “I’m not tough!

- “…sometimes it may, though I fear its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe. Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial; but generally speaking, it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber: it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! And unfortunately” (speaking low and tremulously) “ there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is too late.

Cassie, if you’d known back then that this is where our paths would lead us... that I would get sick... would you have still chosen to be with me?” Did he seriously not know the answer? How much I loved him? “Xuan, I do choose this path, every night, in my dreams. I cannot imagine my life any differently.

The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse.

The free spirit again draws near to life - slowly, to be sure, almost reluctantly, almost mistrustfully. It again grows warmer about him, yellower as it were; feeling and feeling for others acquire depth, warm breezes of all kind blow across him. It seems to him as if his eyes are only now open to what is close at hand. he is astonished and sits silent: where had he been? These close and closest things: how changed they seem! what bloom and magic they have acquired! He looks back gratefully - grateful to his wandering, to his hardness and self-alienation, to his viewing of far distances and bird-like flights in cold heights. What a good thing he had not always stayed "at home," stayed "under his own roof" like a delicate apathetic loafer! He had been -beside himself-: no doubt about that. Only now does he see himself - and what surprises he experiences as he does so! What unprecedented shudders! What happiness even in the weariness, the old sickness, the relapses of the convalescent! How he loves to sit sadly still, to spin out patience, to lie in the sun! Who understands as he does the joy that comes in winter, the spots of sunlight on the wall! They are the most grateful animals in the world, also the most modest, these convalescents and lizards again half-turned towards life: - there are some among them who allow no day to pass without hanging a little song of praise on the hem of its departing robe. And to speak seriously: to become sick in the manner of these free spirits, to remain sick for a long time and then, slowly, slowly, to become healthy, by which I mean "healthier," is a fundamental cure for all pessimism.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate. Few people died unnecessarily. People knew a lot more about dying inside the hospital and made a much neater job of it. They couldn’t dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners. They couldn’t keep Death out, but while she was there she had to act like a lady. People gave up the ghost with delicacy and taste inside the hospital. There was none of that crude, ugly ostentation about dying that was so common outside of the hospital. They did not blow-up in mid-air like Kraft or the dead man in Yossarian’s tent, or freeze to death in the blazing summertime the way Snowden had frozen to death after spilling his secret to Yossarian in the back of the plane. “I’m cold,” Snowden had whimpered. “I’m cold.” “There, there,” Yossarian had tried to comfort him. “There, there.” They didn’t take it on the lam weirdly inside a cloud the way Clevinger had done. They didn’t explode into blood and clotted matter. They didn’t drown or get struck by lightning, mangled by machinery or crushed in landslides. They didn’t get shot to death in hold-ups, strangled to death in rapes, stabbed to death in saloons, blugeoned to death with axes by parents or children, or die summarily by some other act of God. Nobody choked to death. People bled to death like gentlemen in an operating room or expired without comment in an oxygen tent. There was none of that tricky now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t business so much in vogue outside the hospital, none of that now-I-am-and-now-I-ain’t. There were no famines or floods. Children didn’t suffocate in cradles or iceboxes or fall under trucks. No one was beaten to death. People didn’t stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of hotel windows with a whoosh!, accelerating at the rate of thirty-two feet per second to land with a hideous plop! on the sidewalk and die disgustingly there in public like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry.

Howie?” Arthur says. “What?” “Why do you want me to freak out?” He asks it sort of gently, which makes it worse somehow. “Because you make me freak out all the time.” Maybe I’m not so totally chill, but whatever, whatever, I’m sick of it. “Like, honestly, I’m pretty sure I’ve started doing it professionally. Maybe you should start considering paying me extra. ‘Cause seriously, dude, when it comes to freaking out about you, I am the master. I am friggin’ incomparable, I got mad skills all over the place. And I don’t think this is exactly mutual freaking out, like, I don’t get the sense that I make you want to wither and die and explode. And that’s okay. That’s cool. I’m kind of going through a thing here that you probably went through a long time ago, unless you didn’t go through it at all because you’re just all together, like, you popped out of the womb, all, ‘Thanks for squeezing me out, Mom; no more pussy for me.

As one patient with chronic fatigue syndrome put it, 'The difference between a crazed neurotic and a seriously ill person is simply a test.

Stray voltage/current/frequency is the most serious form of exposure. Electrocution kills very few people per year. Stray voltage/current/frequency exposure is suspected to be making people sick in the millions!

What I found more frightening than the dream was the voice in my head telling me I’d never let Livvie go. Mine. Mine forever. If you’re sighing with contentment, you’re either one sick fuck or you don’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. While I no longer kill, I am a killer. A killer in love is a very dangerous thing.

I focus on the endless treetops scrapin' the sunset into gooey colors, the birds trillin' and fussin' at our departure. I close my eyes for a second, breathin' in deep to make serious memories, the kind that sick forever.

for men who a short time before had been shooting at him and doing all in their power to wreck his cause, I remembered what my father had said about the South bearing within itself the seeds of defeat, the Confederacy being conceived already moribund. We were sick from an old malady, he said: incurable romanticism and misplaced chivalry, too much Walter Scott and Dumas read too seriously. We were in love with the past, he said; in love with death.

Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, a total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage, he sees it not as a sickness or an accident of the environment, but as a responsible choice of offense against God which involves his eternal future. Either one is serious about salvation or one is not. And it is well to realize that the maximum amount of seriousness admits the maximum amount of comedy. Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe. One reason a great deal of our contemporary fictions is humorless is because so many of these writers are relativists and have to be continually justifying the actions of their characters on a sliding scale of values.

What is your preference?" She felt nearly sick asking this question. "My preference is to pack you in my suitcase,but those TSA people are so picky,and there's some kind of stupid regulation about human trafficing and-" "Justin. This is serious.

So look," he began, leaning over the desk, "I was—" "Excuse me?" Bethany said. Her voice was loud, even. Wes turned and looked at her. As he did so, I watched his profile, his arm, that little bit of the heart in hand peeking out from his sleeve. "We can help you over here," Bethany said to him. "Did you have a question?" "Um, sort of," Wes said, glancing at me, a mild smile on his face. "But—" "I can answer it," Bethany said solidly, so confidently. Amanda, beside her, nodded, seconding this. "Really, it's fine," he said, then looked at me again. He raised his eyebrows, and I just shrugged. "Okay, so—" "She's only a trainee, she won't know the answer," Bethany told him, pushing her chair over closer to where he was, her voice too loud, bossy even. "It's better if you ask me. Or ask us." Then, and only then, did I see the tiniest flicker of annoyance on Wes's face. "You know," Wes said, "I think she'll know it." "She won't. Ask me." Now it wasn't just a flicker. Wes looked at me, narrowing his eyes, and for a second I just stared back. Whatever happens, I thought, happens. For the first time, time at the info desk was flying. "Okay," he said slowly, moving down the counter. He leaned on his elbows, closer to Bethany, and she sat up even straighter, readying herself, like someone onJeopardy awaiting the Daily Double. "So here's my question." Amanda picked up a pen, as if there might be a written portion. "Last night," Wes said, his voice serious, "when the supplies were being packed up, what happened to the big tongs?" The sick part was that Bethany, for a second, looked as if she was actually flipping through her mental Rolodex for the answer. I watched her swallow, then purse her lips. "Well," she said. But that was all. I could feel myself smiling. A real smile. Wes looked at Amanda. "Do you know?" Amanda shook her head slowly. "All right," he said, turning back to look at me. "Better ask the trainee, then. Macy?" I could feel Amanda and Bethany looking at me. "They're in the bottom of that cart with the broken back wheel, under the aprons," I said. "There wasn't room for them with the other serving stuff.

When I got to school the next morning I had stepped only one foot in the quad when he spotted me and nearly tackled me to the ground. “Jamie!” he hollered, rushing across the lawn without caring the least bit about the scene he was creating. The next thing I knew, my feet were off the ground and I was squished so tightly in Ryan’s arms that I could barely breathe. “Okay, Ryan?” I coughed in a hushed tone. “This is exactly the kind of thing that can get you killed.” “I don’t care, I’m not letting go. Don’t ever disappear like that again!” he scolded, but his voice was more relieved than angry. “It’s been days! You had your mother worried sick!” “My mother?” I questioned sarcastically. Ryan laughed as he finally set me back on my feet. “Okay, fine, me too.” He still wouldn’t let go of me, though. He was gripping my arms while he looked at me with those eyes, and that smile… You know, being all Ryan-ish. And then, when I got lost in the moment, he totally took advantage of how whipped I was and he kissed me. The jerk. He just pulled my face to his right then and there, in the middle of a crowded quad full of students, where I could have accidentally unleashed an electrical storm at any moment. And okay, maybe I liked it, and maybe I even needed it, but still! You can’t just go kissing Jamie Baker whenever you want, even if you are Ryan Miller! “Ryan!” I yelled as soon as I was able to pull away from him—which admittedly took a minute. “I’m sorry.” Ryan laughed with this big dopey grin on his face and then kissed me some more. I had to push him away from me. “Don’t be sorry, just stop!” I realized I was screaming at him when I felt a hundred different pairs of eyes on me. I tried to ignore the audience that Ryan seemed oblivious to and dropped the audio a few decibels. “I wasn’t kidding when I said this has to stop. Look, I will be your friend. I want to be your friend. But that’s it. We can’t be anything more. It’ll never work.” Ryan watched me for a minute and then whispered, “Don’t do that.” I was shocked to hear the sudden emotion in his voice. “Don’t give up.” It was hopeless. “Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll be your stupid girlfriend!” Big shocker, me giving Ryan his way, I know. But let’s face it—it’s just what I do best. I had to at least act a little tough, though. “But!” I said in the harshest voice I was capable of. “You can’t ever touch me unless I say. No more tackling me, and especially no more surprise kissing.” He actually laughed at my request. “No promises.” Stupid, cocky boyfriend. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?” Ryan got this big cheesy smile on his face and said, “Crazy about you.” “Ugh,” I groaned. “Would you be serious for a minute? Why do you insist on putting your life in danger?” “Because I like you.” His stupid grin was infectious. I wanted to be angry, but how could I with him looking at me like that? “I’m not worth it, you know,” I said stubbornly. “I have issues. I’m unstable.” “You’re cute when you’re unstable,” Ryan said, “and I like your issues.” The stupid boy was straight-up giddy now. But he was so cute that I cracked a smile despite myself. “You really are crazy,” I muttered.

When I started researching this book, I expected that women's stories would be similar and rooted in the same systemic problems, but I didn't anticipate finding that our fates are so intimately intertwined. In a medical system with a tendency to assume that anything it can't explain is psychogenic, as long as women have more "medically unexplained symptoms" thanks to the knowledge gap, women will continue to find that they are stereotyped as stressed-out somaticizers and their symptoms are not taken as seriously as men's.

The unluckiest of the Caribbean’s sick came, in search of cures: a poor woman who, since childhood, had been counting the beats of her heart so long that she had run out of numbers to count; a Jamaican who, because of the tormenting sound the stars made, never slept; a sleepwalker who rose from bed at night, and in sleep undid all the things he had done in waking; and many other ailments too, less serious in nature.

You all right, sis?” Kaden asked, pausing between heaping spoonfuls of oatmeal. “Of course.” “You look a little stressed.” “You would, too, if you were going to run the country,” I teased. “Sometimes I think about that,” he said, getting all serious. “Like, what if a disease swept over all of Illéa, and you and Mom and Dad and Ahren got sick and died. Then I’d be in charge and have to figure out everything on my own.” In my periphery I saw Dad lean forward, listening to his son. “That’s a little morbid, Kaden.” Kaden shrugged. “It’s always good to plan ahead.” I

I wish I could bottle this,' I whispered. 'And drink it every morning.' 'And every day at lunch, and then again at dinner, and before bed.' 'You'd get sick of it,' he said. I shook my head. 'Never.' 'Seriously,' he said. 'I want to freeze this moment.' 'Good thing you don't need to.' 'No?' 'Will Doniger, there is nothing in the entire universe that could make me stop wanting to be with you. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.

To the narcissistic sociopath, a sexual experience is not about sex; it's about having complete control over his victims. They satisfy their sick compulsions by preying on vulnerable victims who they feel can most easily be manipulated and are least likely to expose their crimes. Warren needed the FLDS even more than the rebel religion needed a leader. His specialized psychosis was dependent on a unique religious hook that just would not work in the general population. In the outside world, he would never have been able to convince anyone to take him seriously. But with the FLDS predilection for blind religious obedience and submission to authority, he had the willing, captive audience that he needed, like a scientist needs labs rats.

Mouse took an idle whack at some kudzu as he passed, but his face was serious. “Hell, I don’t know. Why do you care? That was right after our farm burned. They got everyone. Mom and Dad. Simon. Shane got recruited. I saw that. They shot Simon because he was too little, but they took Shane.” He knocked aside more kudzu. “Maybe I was hoping they’d just shoot me and get it over with. I was so sick of hiding and scavenging. I think I wanted the bullet.

We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?

Perhaps the very medicine they need is a glimpse of cheerful outlook. Sick people ofttimes fall into a mood of disheartenment and self-pity which seriously retards their recovery. To sit down beside them then, and fall into their gloomy spirit, listening sympathetically to their discouraged words, is to do them sore unkindness. The true office of friendship in such cases is to drive away the discouragement, and put hope and courage into the sore heart. We must try to make our sick friend braver to endure his sufferings.

I’m serious. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to hold you or kiss you. Not because I thought I’d get sick. I thought I would have to watch you suffer all alone.

suicide is a very serious problem in both depression and schizophrenia as estimates are that as many as one out of every ten persons with schizophrenia will take his life.

Stoat himself was registered independent, but he hadn't stepped inside a voting booth in fourteen years. He couldn't take the concept seriously; he knew too much.

In western societies many people become sick in their thirties, develop serious medical conditions in their forties and are disabled in their fifties.

There was a few seconds' pause. Then Amit said: I meant, what were you thinking just now. When? said Lata. When you were looking at Pran and Savita. Over the pudding. Oh. Well, what? I can't remember, said Lata with a smile. Amit laughed. Why are you laughing? asked Lata I like making you feel uncomfortable, I suppose. Oh. Why? --Or happy--or puzzled--just to see your change of mood. It's such fun. I pity you! Why? said Lata, startled. Because you'll never know what a pleasure it is to be in your company. Do stop talking like that, said Lata. Ma will come in any minute. You're quite right. In that case: Will you marry me? Lata dropped her cup. It fell to the floor and broke. She looked at the broken pieces--luckily, it has been empty--and then at Amit. Quick! said Amit. Before they come running to see what's happened. Say yes. Lata had knelt down; she was gathering he bits of the cup together and placing them on the delicately patterned blue-and-gold saucer. Amit joined her on the floor. Her face was only a few inches away from his, but her mind appeared to be somewhere else. he wanted to kiss her but he sensed that there was no question of it. One by one she picked up the shards of china. Was it a family heirloom? asked Amit. What? I'm sorry--said Lata, snapped out of her trance by the words. Well, I suppose I'll have to wait. I was hoping that by springing it on you like that I'd surprise you into agreeing... ...Do stop being idotic, Amit, said Lata. You're so brilliant, do you have to be so stupid as well? I should only take you seriously in black and white. And in sickness and health. Lata laughed: For better and for worse, she added.

Just about everyone I've ever interviewed has told me that by doing something or other--recovering from cancer, climbing a mountain, playing the part of a serial killer in a movie--they have learned something about themselves. And I always nod and smile thoughtfully, when really I want to pin them down: What did you learn from the cancer, actually? That you don't like being sick? That you don't want to die? That wigs make your scalp itch? Come on, be specific. I suspect it's something they tell themselves in order to turn the experience into something that might appear valuable, rather than a complete and utter waste of time. In the last few months, I have been to prison, lost every last molecule of self-respect, become estranged from my children, and thought very seriously about killing myself. I mean, that little lot has got to be the psychological equivalent of cancer, right? And it's certainly a bigger deal than acting in a bloody film. So how come I've learned absolutley bugger all? What was I supposed to learn? I've found out that prison and poverty aren't really me. But, you know, I could have had a wild stab in the dark about both of those things beforehand. Call me literal-minded, but I suspect people might learn more about themselves if they didn't get cancer. They'd have more time, and a lot more energy.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I’m sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I’m trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. ...

Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.

Who would ever want to read a novel about a punk and a drunk! Everybody knew a couple or a dozen; they were not to be taken seriously; nuisances and trouble-makers, nothing more; like queers and fairies, people were bell-sick of them; whatever ailed them, that was their funeral; who cared? - life presented a thousand things more important to be written about than misfits and failures.

Take my hand and join me on this journey, please. If you are a Christian and you are struggling with sexual sin, this book is meant to equip and encourage you in your daily walk of faith with Jesus. If you are not yet a Christian, my hope is that I can reach through the pages of this book, take your hand, and put it in the hand of our Savior.             If you call yourself a Christian, but you do not believe that you need to repent of the sin that claims your identity, heart, and perhaps body, my prayer is that this book sounds a serious alarm to you. Your soul is at stake, and I will take the risk of offending you to help. Salvation is a gift, offered to all who have a broken and contrite heart (Ps. 51:17). God promises tenderness to the brokenhearted: “I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick,” but judgment for those who defend the right to their sin: “but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment” (Ezek. 34:16). A humble and a broken heart is a gift from God. Pray for a heart that breaks on the rock of Christ. Pray for a tender conscience about sin, even your deepest, most primal sin.

along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding? The field of palliative

Indeed, a parallel history of Europe could be written which viewed family life and regular work as the essential Continental motor of civilization. Then war and revolution would need to be seen by historians as startling, sick departures from that norm of a kind that require serious explanation, rather than viewing periods of gentle introversy as mere tiresome interludes before the next thrill-packed bloodbath.

When someone doesn’t reckon you with the seriousness that you’d like, the impulse is to correct them. (As we all wish to say: Do you know who I am?!) You want to remind them of what they’ve forgotten; your ego screams for you to indulge it. Instead, you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you.

This was not going the way I wanted it to. I felt a desperate need to escape before I said something that would screw up my plans. Ren was the dark side, the forbidden fruit, my personal Delilah-the ultimate temptation. The question was…could I resist? I gave his knee a friendly pat and played my trump card…”I’m leaving.” “You’re what?” “I’m going home to Oregon. Mr. Kadam thinks it will be safer for me anyway, with Lokesh out there looking to kill us and all. Besides, you need time to figure out…stuff.” “If you’re leaving, then I’m going with you!” I smiled at him wryly. “That kind of defeats the purpose of me leaving. Don’t you think?” He slicked back his hair, let out a deep breath, then took my hand and looked intently into my eyes. “Kells, when are you going to accept the fact that we belong together?” I felt sick, like I was kicking a faithful puppy who only wanted to be loved. I looked out at the pool. After a moment, he sat back scowling and said menacingly, “I won’t let you leave.” Inside, I desperately wanted to take his hand and beg him to forgive me, to love me, but I steeled myself, dropped my hands in my lap, then implored, “Ren, please. You have to let me go. I need…I’m afraid…look, I just can’t be here, near you, when you change your mind.” “It’s not going to happen.” “it might. There’s a good chance.” He growled angrily. “There’s no chance!” “Well, my heart can’t take that risk, and I don’t want to put you in what can only be an awkward position. I’m sorry, Ren. I really am. I do want to be your friend, but I understand if you don’t want that. Of course, I’ll return when you need me, if you need me, to help you find the other three gifts. I wouldn’t abandon you or Kishan in that way. I just can’t stay here with you feeling obligated to pity-date me because you need me. But I’d never abandon your cause. I’ll always be there for you both, no matter what.” He spat out, “Pity-date! You? Kelsey, you can’t be serious!” “I am. Very, very serious. I’ll ask Mr. Kadam to make arrangements to send me back in the next few days.” He didn’t say another word. He just sat back in his chair. I could tell he was fuming mad, but I felt that, after a week or two, when he started getting back out in the world, he would come to appreciate my gesture. I looked away from him. “I’m very tired now. I’d like to go to bed.” I got up and headed to my room. Before I closed the sliding door, I asked, “Can I make one last request?” He sat there tight-lipped, his arms folded over his chest, with a tense, angry face. I sighed. Even infuriated he was beautiful. He said nothing so I went on, “It would be a lot easier on me if I didn’t see you, I mean as a man. I’ll try to avoid most of the house. It is yours after all, so I’ll stay in my room. If you see Mr. Kadam, please tell him I’d like to speak with him.” He didn’t respond. “Well, good-bye, Ren. Take care of yourself.” I tore my eyes away from him, shut the door, and drew the curtains. Take care of yourself? That was a lame goodbye. Tears welled in my eyes and blurred my vision. I was proud that I’d gotten through it without showing emotion. But, now, I felt like a steamroller had come along and flattened me.

Indeed, the unjustifiable error was not in failing to more quickly determine a very unlikely diagnosis but in not taking Maggie's report of extreme pain seriously—and eventually deciding it must not be real at all—until they did.

The women's reports of pain are received seems to be at least as influenced by cultural stereotypes about men as about women. The stoicism expected of men is cited as one of the reasons that their pain is taken more seriously; their reports of pain are less likely to be doubted, because it's assumed they're more reluctant to make them in the first place. But there's no rational reason that men's assumed stoicism should result in women's pain not being taken seriously.

The air of a deposed prince. falsehood as restorative-if they wouldnt do that if they wouldnt do all that they do. the body as traitor the body as foe. she's thinking about mythology,about reluctant daphne/ relentless apollo. if she could, as daphne did, cry out to mother earth for protection. and have every suitors find a laurel tree in his arms. people would still look up to her. misjudge her. misunderstand her. worship her evn[damn druids]. or carve someone elses name into her. 'oh sweetie dont take things so seriously: the world is your oister' just as she thot, the world is something slimy in a shell. he's so proud of his knavery. okay, she's been vainglorious about her sins too but shes tired of that. 'if you love someone you accept him as he is, but if you accept him as he is than you dont really love him because if you did youd want whats best for him and that usually means he should be better than he is. a meadowy susuration that she used to pretend to like. but not anymore. shes sick of 'huh?' too, that interjection of ignorance. 'love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.'-Feodor Dostoyevsky. she wants to kiss him. but just in some neutral way. some agape-not-eros way. like disciples kiss. or brave french freedom fighters. 'for i the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visisting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children'-Exodus 20:5 'its just stuff that i thot was interesting. its not, you know, a rorshach. its not like somebody could read this and figure me out.' 'transylvania has beautiful nights. ill just open the window and slip out of this cumbersome crucfix.' 'like the Torah said, dont just hate somebody in your heart; rebuke him.'" -Margaux with an X

I’d always worried about being practically empty, about having no serious reason for living. And now, confronted with the facts, I was sure of my individual nullity. In that environment, too different from the one where my petty habits were at home, I seem to have disintegrated, I felt very close to nonexistence. I discovered that with no one to speak to me of familiar things, there was nothing to stop me from sinking into irresistible boredom, a terrifying, sickly sweet torpor. Nauseating.

He raised his hand. “Hear me out. Before this injury, I had never been seriously ill. I’m a physician who understood what it’s like to be sick but had never personally felt the impact of a life-threatening disease or experienced a significant injury.

I glance over my shoulder, at the car following close behind us. It’s impossible to see the driver. To tell if it’s Cassian. After a moment, it pulls around and passes us. I sigh. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m abducting you? Should I be on alert for sirens in the rearview mirror?” “I left willingly.” I force a grin and tease, “I don’t think you’ll get arrested.” “Great. You don’t ‘think.’ That’s encouraging.” He gives me a wincing smile. “But maybe not. I am eighteen, after all—” “You’re eighteen? But you’re a sophomore.” An uneasy look passes over his face. “I missed a lot of school a few years back. Half of seventh grade and all of eighth, in fact. I was sick.” “Sick?” I echo. That reminder of his mortality crashes down on me. It’ll always be there, smoke rising between us. Xander had mentioned Will being ill, but I never imagined it as anything serious. “How? I mean, what . . .” He shrugs like it’s nothing, but he won’t glance at me. He stares at the road. “Leukemia. But I’m better now. Completely cured.” “Were you very . . . bad off?” “For about a year. The prognosis wasn’t—” He stops suddenly, like he’s said too much, and I get that sense again. The feeling that he’s not telling me something. That he’s holding back. A muscle in his jaw ripples with tension. “Look, don’t worry about it. Aren’t I a perfect male specimen now?” He sends me a wink. “Don’t I look healthy?” I really didn’t like when I found out that Will was actually 18 years old, instead of the 16 that Jacinda was.

He’ll never get out of there,” V sneered, his icy eyes flaring with pure violence. “Not alive, at any rate.” “Good thing you have more than one table.” Butch clapped his bestie on the shoulder. “You sick fuck.” “Don’t knock it till you tried it.” “Nah, I’m a good Catholic boy. I go that route and my body would incinerate on the spot—and not from hot wax.” “Pansy.” “Pervert.” The pair of them chuckled at their inside joke and then got serious again—because with a squeak of the brakes, the ambulance stopped.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.

energy. It doesn’t change anything, but it’ll show us when our minds are connected, and I thought it would help us concentrate and . . .” His voice trailed off. “You hate them, don’t you?” “Of course not!” She liked them a little too much, actually. She was just trying not to show it. There were a lot of kids staring at them. And whispering. And giggling. Fitz twisted his palms, breaking the rings’ connection. “I guess I should’ve gone with the necklace Biana showed me. You just have so many necklaces—and the last one you got . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. It would’ve meant mentioning Keefe. “I’m glad you got me these. Seriously. They’re my fave.” She pointed to the “FAV.” That earned her another smile, and Fitz brushed his dark hair off his forehead. “Come on, I’m sure Dex and Biana are getting sick of waiting for us.

Whoever is planning a nuclear war or seriously thinking about using nuclear weapons must directly be taken to a mental hospital! Mad people are mentally sick and they only need a medical treatment! Every nation has the responsibility to weed their deranged politicians out from their governments!

I felt a warm hand touch mine. “Are you okay?” “If you mean am I injured, then the answer is no. If you mean am I ‘okay’ as in am-I-confident-I’m-still-sane, the answer is still no.” Ren frowned. “We have to find a way to get across the chasm.” “You’re certainly welcome to give it a try.” I waved him off and went back to drinking my water. He moved to the edge and peered across, looking speculatively at the distance. Changing back to a tiger, he trotted a few paces back in the direction we had come from, turned, and ran at full speed toward the hole. “Ren, no!” I screamed. He leapt, clearing the hole easily, and landed lightly on his front paws. Then he trotted a short distance away and did the same thing to come back. He landed at my feet and changed back to human form. “Kells, I have an idea.” “Oh, this I’ve got to hear. I just hope you don’t plan on including me in this scheme of yours. Ah. Let me guess. I know. You want to tie a rope to your tail, leap across, tie it off, and then have me pull my body across the rope, right?” He cocked his head as if considering it, and then shook his head. “No, you don’t have the strength to do something like that. Plus, we have no rope and nothing to tie a rope to.” “Right. So what’s the plan?” He held my hands and explained. “What I’m proposing will be much easier. Do you trust me?” I was going to be sick. “I trust you. It’s just-“ I looked into his concerned blue eyes and sighed. “Okay, what do I have to do?” “You saw that I was able to clear the gap pretty well as a tiger, right? So what I need you to do is to stand right at the edge and wait for me. I’ll run to the end of the tunnel, build up speed, and leap as a tiger. At the same time, I want you to jump up and grab me around my neck. I’ll change to a man in midair so that I can hold onto you, and we’ll fall together to the other side.” I snorted noisily and laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” He ignored my skepticism. “We’ll have to time it precisely, and you’ll have to jump too, in the same direction, because if you don’t, I’ll just hit you full power and drive us both over the edge.” “You’re serious? You seriously want me to do this?” “Yes, I’m serious. Now stand here while I make a few practice runs.” “Can’t we just find another corridor or something?” “There aren’t any. This is the right way.” Reluctantly, I stood near the edge and watched him leap back and forth a few times. Observing the rhythm of his running and jumping, I began to grasp the idea of what he wanted me to do. All too quickly Ren was back in front of me again. “I can’t believe you’ve talked me into doing this. Are you sure?” I asked. “Yes, I’m sure. Are you ready?” “No! Give me a minute to mentally write a last will and testament.” “Kells, it’ll be fine.” “Sure it will. Alright, let me take in my surroundings. I want to make sure I can record every minute of this experience in my journal. Of course, that’s probably a moot point because I’m assuming that I’m going to die in the jump anyway.” Ren put his hand on my cheek, looked in my eyes, and said fiercely, “Kelsey, trust me. I will not let you fall.

Labelling a woman as a hypochondriac is the modern day way of labelling a woman hysterical – the insinuation is that it is all in her mind, she is unstable (mentally and perhaps physically) her opinion and feelings are not to be trusted. Her pain and her concerns are not real. But what if the hypochondriac, the highly sensitive woman, is picking up perfectly on the signs that something is wrong, she is registering the imbalance, that something is wrong, but she mistakes the issue as being in her own body, rather than the body of the world beyond her. She is told to quiet down, that nothing is wrong. But there is, she knows there is. This is why the constant reassurance does little to help her. She is feeling, deep in her bones, in her nerves, in her pulse that something is seriously wrong. Because it is. Her biological system may or may not have gotten sick from it yet, but the signs of a sick world are quickening within her.

I venture to say Kierkegaard meant that truth has lost its force with us and horrible pain and evil must teach it to us again, the eternal punishments of Hell will have to regain their reality before mankind turns serious once more. I do not see this. Let us set aside the fact that such convictions in the mouths of safe, comfortable people playing at crisis, alienation, apocalypse and desperation, make me sick. We must get it out of our heads that this is a doomed time, that we are waiting for the end, and th rest of it, mere junk from fashionable magazines. Things are grim enough without these shivery games. People frightening one another--a poor sort of moral exercise. But, to get to the main point, the advocacy and praise of suffering take us in the wrong direction and those of us who remain loyal to civilization must not go for it. You have to have the power to employ pain, to repent, to be illuminated, you must have the opportunity and even the time.

Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset. And then a new question arises: If independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?

Once when I was in graduate school, I got a terrible case of the flu and dropped a good deal of weight in a short amount of time. When I returned to campus, a professor said, “You look good! Did you lose weight?” When I responded that I had lost weight because I’d been seriously ill, she just shrugged and said, “Well, however it happened, looks good!” I remember that moment as such a clear example that much of what we claim to be health-based concern about other women’s weight is not at all. It’s nothing more than an ill-disguised bit of buy-in to a culture that says our worth is determined by our body size and that less is always more, no matter how we get there.

An obsession, a mania, Lib supposed it could be called. A sickness of the mind. Hysteria, as that awful doctor had named it? Anna reminded Lib of a princess under a spell in a fairy tale. What could restore the girl to ordinary life? Not a prince. A magical herb from the world's end? Some shock to jolt a poisoned bite of apple out of her throat? No, something simple as a breath of air: reason. What if Lib shook the girl awake this very minute and said, Come to your senses! But that was part of the definition of madness, Lib supposed, the refusal to accept that one was mad. Standish's wards were full of such people. Besides, could children ever be considered quite of sound mind? Seven was counted the age of reason, but Lib's sense of seven-year-olds was that they still brimmed over with imagination. Children lived to play. Of course they could be put to work, but in spare moments they took their games as seriously as lunatics did their delusions. Like small gods, children formed their miniature worlds out of clay, or even just words. To them, the truth was never simple. But Anna was eleven, which was a far cry from seven, Lib argued with herself. Other eleven-year-olds knew when they'd eaten and when they hadn't; they were old enough to tell make-believe from fact. There was something very different about - very wrong with - Anna O'Donnell.

You seem disappointed that I am not more responsive to your interest in "spiritual direction". Actually, I am more than a little ambivalent about the term, particularly in the ways it is being used so loosely without any sense of knowledge of the church's traditions in these matters. If by spiritual direction you mean entering into a friendship with another person in which an awareness and responsiveness to God's Spirit in the everydayness of your life is cultivated, fine. Then why call in an awkward term like "spiritual direction"? Why not just "friend"? Spiritual direction strikes me as pretentious in these circumstances, as if there were some expertise that can be acquired more or less on its own and then dispensed on demand. The other reason for my lack of enthusiasm is my well-founded fear of professionalism in any and all matters of the Christian life. Or maybe the right label for my fear is "functionalism". The moment an aspect of Christian living (human life, for that matter) is defined as a role, it is distorted, debased - and eventually destroyed. We are brothers and sisters with one another, friends and lovers, saints and sinners. The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction. But then it begins to develop a culture and language and hierarchy all its own. It becomes first a special interest, and then a specialization. That is what seems to be happening in the circles you are frequenting. I seriously doubt that it is a healthy (holy) line to be pursuing. Instead, why don't you look over the congregation on Sundays and pick someone who appears to be mature and congenial. Ask her or him if you can meet together every month or so - you feel the need to talk about your life in the company of someone who believes that Jesus is present and active in everything you are doing. Reassure the person that he or she doesn't have to say anything "wise". You only want them to be there for you to listen and be prayerful in the listening. After three or four such meetings, write to me what has transpired, and we'll discuss it further. I've had a number of men and women who have served me in this way over the years - none carried the title "spiritual director", although that is what they have been. Some had never heard of such a term. When I moved to Canada a few years ago and had to leave a long-term relationship of this sort, I looked around for someone whom I could be with in this way. I picked a man whom I knew to be a person of integrity and prayer, with seasoned Christian wisdom in his bones. I anticipated that he would disqualify himself. So I pre-composed my rebuttal: "All I want you to do is two things: show up and shut up. Can you do that? Meet with me every six weeks or so, and just be there - an honest, prayerful presence with no responsibility to be anything other than what you have become in your obedient lifetime." And it worked. If that is what you mean by "spiritual director," okay. But I still prefer "friend". You can see now from my comments that my gut feeling is that the most mature and reliable Christian guidance and understanding comes out of the most immediate and local of settings. The ordinary way. We have to break this cultural habit of sending out for an expert every time we feel we need some assistance. Wisdom is not a matter of expertise. The peace of the Lord, Eugene

Chlamydia, today´s most common cause of venereal disease, does the equivalent of hiding in the police station. Schistosomes of the mansoni type go a step further and essentially steal police uniforms. These parasites, a serious cause of liver disease in Asia, pick up blood-group antigens so that they may look to the immune system like our own normal blood cells.

A few days later, I found myself back in the cellar. But this time, I was involved in an activity way more fun than cataloging magic junk. “What happened to the promise of making out in castles?” I asked as Archer and I pulled back for a breather. I was leaning back against one of the shelves, my hands clutching Archer’s waist. Over his shoulder, there was a jar of eyeballs staring at me, and I nodded toward it. “Because, see, things like that? Kind of a mood killer.” He glanced at the jar and then turned back to me, waggling his eyebrows. “Really? I find it has the opposite effect.” Giggling, I elbowed him in the stomach and pushed myself off the shelf. “You’re sick.” He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me again, but I skirted around him. “Come on, Cross, we came down here for a reason, and it wasn’t fooling around.” Smirking, Archer folded his arms over his chest. “May not have been your reason, but-“ I cut him off. “No. Don’t distract me with your sexy talk. We need to search this place, and that spell Elodie did will only last so long.” Elodie had swooped into my body at the cellar door, doing a quick spell to unlock it. She hadn’t even looked at Archer, much less said anything. And the second the lock clicked open, she’d vanished. The smirk disappeared from Archer’s face, and he actually looked kind of sullen. “Are you honestly that bummed about not hooking up right now?” I teased. But he was deadly serious when he shook his head and said, “It’s not that. It’s Elodie.” “What about her?” Archer rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Mercer. Maybe it’s that I’m not completely crazy about the ghost of my ex-girlfriend occasionally inhabiting the body of my current girlfriend.” I backed up another step and ran into another shelf. Something fell off and thunked against the dirt floor. “Whoa, I’m your girlfriend now?” Archer shrugged. “We’ve tried to kill each other, fought ghouls, and kissed a lot. I’m pretty sure we’re married in some cultures.” Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Whatever. Look, the fact of the matter is, I don’t have any magic right now. Elodie does. If her occasionally using me as her puppet means that I have powers again, then I’m fine with it. And you should be, too. My body, my ghost, and all that.

Isn’t it wonderful that he’s so excited to meet you, Zeke?” She smiles, eyebrows rising a fraction…gives her head an encouraging little nod up and down until I hear myself saying, “Yes?” The kid does a fist pump. “I’ve seen all your home games, and last week at Cornell?” His voice cracks with excitement. “Holy shit man, that pin on JJ Beldon was sick! Seriously sick. My friends and I lost our minds.” Violet nudges my arm gently with a smile on her face. “Thanks?” She pats my arm and— Wait just one damn minute. Is she…is Violet coaching me on how to be nice? Her hand is still on my sleeve and I look down into her pretty, upturned face. Down at her bold, dark lips. Her huge eyes and long lashes. All that pale blonde hair. She’s a damn wet dream. Fuck me.

While I applaud all efforts to incorporate authentic nature into cities, not acknowledging noise levels is a serious oversight. Our cities' collective racket is making all of us sick. Our hearts race and breathing speeds. We must talk louder, our voices hitting higher and higher pitches, our faces contorting, trying to communicate and claim our place in the landscape. Hearing lost is epidemic.

Then I put the hot barrel beneath my chin. “No.” Zoeller lurched toward me, eyes wide. “No, Laney.” I curled my finger around the trigger and he froze. I could see his white sclera. I’d never seen him frightened. I was only half-serious but his fear made it feel suddenly real. “Don’t,” he said. “This is all I want. It’s all I can think about.” “It’s defeat. You’re too strong for this.” “No I’m not.” I laughed, the muzzle digging into the soft meat beneath my jaw. “I’m weak, like you said.” “You’re better than me. I’m broken, Laney. I’m a sociopath.” “If you’re a sociopath, you can’t feel compassion. You don’t care whether I live or die.” “I do. I need you. I’ve never met anyone like you.” I rolled my eyes. “Spare me the suicide hotline bullshit. I’ve heard it all before. You know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, I’m sick of this. Things are going to change.” “Don’t leave me,” he said. The parallel of my words to Dad startled me. That gleam in his eyes wasn’t madness. It was tears. Was this really happening? Look at every terrible thing he’s done to me. Look at every good thing he didn’t have to do, but did.

I'm seriously going to be sick, C.P.," I said and turned away. "Hey, serial killer dude!" I called out toward the street. "You can come get me now! I can't live with the image that is now burned on my brain." "Tandy! Take that back!" C.P. said. "Okay, fine. I take back the part about wanting the serial killer to come and get me," I told her. "But the rest? That is insane. I can't believe it. You and my . Freaksome.

I made a gagging motion, shifted on my feet, then texted again. Me: Seriously! Trapped! And your dick can't be the sick of that python on your arm because that would mean you actually impale women on a daily basis! Colin: Just call me Dracula I frowned. Colin: Get it? The Impaler? Me: Look at that, Basement Dweller can joke. He's got jokes. Meanwhile I'm going to starve to death in this pantry! Colin: You mean, around all that food?

For her first summer vacation, my sister went to California with a couple of friends on a package tour put together by her agency. One of the members of the tour group was a computer engineer a year her senior, and she started dating him when they came back to Japan. This kind of thing happens all the time, but it's not for me. First of all, I hate package tours, and the thought of getting serious about somebody you meet in a group like that makes me sick.

Uri was turned, looking at him, shouting something, but at that point, Gabe couldn’t hear him. A moment later, Gabe felt like the car was spinning uncontrollably. The nausea overcame him and he seriously thought he might be sick. He looked down at Sophie to make sure she was still all right. His hands were holding her head gently, but they no longer seemed like his hands. There was a glowing, blue light coming from his palms. He began to hyperventilate. Everything went black.

Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.

Steve continued our serious discussion, and he spoke of his mortality. He was convinced that he would never reach forty. That’s why he was in such a hurry all the time, to get as much done as he could. He didn’t feel sad about it. He only felt the motivation to make a difference before he was gone. “I’m not afraid of death,” he said. “I’m only afraid of dying. I don’t want to get sick and dwindle. I love working hard and playing hard and living hard, and making every moment count.

The more conscious I was of all the good and of all this "beautiful and lofty," the deeper I kept sinking into my mire, and the more capable I was of getting completely stuck in it. But the main feature was that this was all in me not as if by chance, but as if it had to be so. As if it were my most normal condition and in no way a sickness or a blight, so that finally I lost any wish to struggle against this blight. I ended up almost believing (and maybe indeed believing) that this perhaps was my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, how much torment I endured in this struggle! I did not believe that such things happened to others, and therefore kept it to myself all my life as a secret. I was ashamed (maybe I am ashamed even now); it reached the point with me where I would feel some secret, abnormal, mean little pleasure in returning to my corner on some nasty Petersburg night and being highly conscious of having once again done a nasty thing that day, and again that what had been done could in no way be undone, and I would gnaw, gnaw at myself with my teeth, inwardly, secretly, tear and suck at myself until the bitterness finally turned into some shameful, accursed sweetness, and finally-into a decided, serious pleasure! Yes, a pleasure, a pleasure! I stand upon it. The reason I've begun to speak is that I keep wanting to find out for certain: do other people have such pleasures? I'll explain it to you: the pleasure here lay precisely in the too vivid consciousness of one's own humiliation; in feeling that one had reached the ultimate wall; that, bad as it is, it cannot be otherwise; that there is no way out for you, that you will never change into a different person; that even if you had enough time and enough faith left to change yourself into something different, you probably would not wish to change; and even if you did wish it, you would still not do anything, because in fact there is perhaps nothing to change into.

Love is funny thing. I don´t know if you can call it a "thing" precisely. It´s a force. An energy. A feeling. A moment. A look, a kiss, a smile. All those things in one. It sneaks up on you; you never see it coming. And when it does finally hit you, It isn´t a small little poke. It´s like a rhinoceros rammed itself against your chest. Or you just got run over by a car. It knocks the wind out of you. Slams you against wall. Kick-starts yout heart. You lose your apetite. You can´t sleep. Some can call love a sickness. Seriously, you´re sick over another human being. You belong to them. They control your feelings with the look in their eye. They change the way you see yourself, feel about yourself. You feel like your world shifted, and everything´s the same, but you aren´t. I say it´s funny because it seems to bend and twist every concept of reality you have. You can survive off nothing. The only thing sustaining you is the feeling, energy, force. You can go days without decent sleep. You´re not hungry for anything exept that one person who seems to occupy your every thought. Time slows down when you´re without them. Seconds feel like hours, minutes like days, And whenn you´re together, time moves at the spped of light. It´s alla blur, and when it´s over, you don´t remember half the things you were doing but you just remember this feeling. This bliss. And it is all over in a flash. And you´re back to counting the long, eternal minutes until you see him again.

The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak. There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead. If we compare the chief trumpeter of the new era (Bacon) with Marlowe's Faustus, the similarity is striking.

It took a full week to find her way in. In that time she was chased by some of the same-clothes people, and other dogs, and was almost hit by cars more times than she could remember. But she made it, inside the big building full of terrible smells—layers upon layers of ancient sickness and slow death. Now she was curled up next to Meatsmell and it wasn’t raining on them and everything was back the way it was supposed to be. She fell into a deep sleep, inside this huge building full of anxious and tired people, many of whom she noticed were not really people.

Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed. Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me. And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention. I mean, cancer is a serious, often fatal disease we’ve spent billions of dollars studying and treating so obviously a patient would never have to try multiple drugs, surgeries, radiation, etc., to find what will work specifically for them. And once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good. And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time. Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever. And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly. Right?

These multiplying societies treated the sick, aided the industrious poor, housed orphans, fed imprisoned debtors, built huts for shipwrecked sailors, and, in the case of the Massachusetts Humane Society, even attempted to resuscitate those suffering from “suspended animation,” that is, those such as drowning victims who appeared to be dead but actually were not. The fear of being buried alive was a serious concern at this time. Many, like Washington on his deathbed, asked that their bodies not be immediately interred in case they might be suffering from suspended animation.

Where is everybody?” “Hiding,” she said. “Except for Doolittle. He was excused from the chewing-out due to having been kidnapped. He’s napping now like he doesn’t have a care in the world. I got to hear all sorts of interesting stuff through the door.” “Give.” She shot me a sly smile. “First, I got to listen to Jim’s ‘it’s all my fault; I did it all by myself’ speech. Then I got to listen to Derek’s ‘it’s all my fault and I did it all by myself’ speech. Then Curran promised that the next person who wanted to be a martyr would get to be one. Then Raphael made a very growling speech about how he was here for a blood debt. It was his right to have restitution for the injury caused to the friend of the boudas; it was in the damn clan charter on such and such page. And if Curran wanted to have an issue with it, they could take it outside. It was terribly dramatic and ridiculous. I loved it.” I could actually picture Curran sitting there, his hand on his forehead above his closed eyes, growling quietly in his throat. “Then Dali told him that she was sick and tired of being treated like she was made out of glass and she wanted blood and to kick ass.” That would do him in. “So what did he say?” “He didn’t say anything for about a minute and then he chewed them out. He told Derek that he’d been irresponsible with Livie’s life, and that if he was going to rescue somebody, the least he could do is to have a workable plan, instead of a poorly thought-out mess that backfired and broke just about every Pack law and got his face smashed in. He told Dali that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she had to accept responsibility for her own actions instead of pretending to be weak and helpless every time she got in trouble and that this was definitely not the venue to prove one’s toughness. Apparently he didn’t think her behavior was cute when she was fifteen and he’s not inclined to tolerate it now that she’s twenty-eight.” I was cracking up. “He told Raphael that the blood debt overrode Pack law only in cases of murder or life-threatening injury and quoted the page of the clan charter and the section number where that could be found. He said that frivolous challenges to the alpha also violated Pack law and were punishable by isolation. It was an awesome smackdown. They had no asses left when he was done.” Andrea began snapping the gun parts together. “Then he sentenced the three of them and himself to eight weeks of hard labor, building the north wing addition to the Keep, and dismissed them. They ran out of there like their hair was on fire.” “He sentenced himself?” “He’s broken Pack law by participating in our silliness, apparently.” That’s Beast Lord for you. “And Jim?” “Oh, he got a special chewing-out after everybody else was dismissed. It was a very quiet and angry conversation, and I didn’t hear most of it. I heard the end, though—he got three months of Keep building. Also, when he opened the door to leave, Curran told him very casually that if Jim wanted to pick fights with his future mate, he was welcome to do so, but he should keep in mind that Curran wouldn’t come and rescue him when you beat his ass. You should’ve seen Jim’s face.” “His what?” “His mate. M-A-T-E.” I cursed. Andrea grinned. “I thought that would make your day. And now you’re stuck with him in here for three days and you get to fight together in the Arena. It’s so romantic. Like a honeymoon.” Once again my mental conditioning came in handy. I didn’t strangle her on the spot.

Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always terrible-people want to know why. In a pantheistic world, the explanation was simple-one god had caused the problem, another could cure it. In the time since people have been trying to get along with only one God, explaining disease and evil has become more difficult. Generations of theologians have wrestled with the problem of theodicy-how can a good God allow such bad things to happen to good people? Darwinian medicine can't offer a substitute for such explanations. It can't provide a universe in which events are part of a divine plan, much less one in which individual illness reflects individual sins. It can only show us why we are the way we are, why we are vulnerable to certain diseases. A Darwinian view of medicine simultaneously makes disease less and more meaningful. Diseases do not result from random or malevolent forces, they arise ultimately from past natural selection. Paradoxically, the same capacities that make us vulnerable to disease often confer benefits. The capacity for suffering is a useful defense. Autoimmune disease is a price of our remarkable ability to attack invaders. Cancer is the price of tissues that can repair themselves. Menopause may protect the interests of our genes in existing children. Even senescence and death are not random, but compromises struck by natural selection as it inexorably shaped out bodies to maximize the transmission of our genes. In such paradoxical benefits, some may find a gentle satisfaction, even a bit of meaning-at least the sort of meaning Dobzhansky recognized. After all, nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of evolution.

[WAIT—IT WON’T LET ME REDACT THESE LITTLE SUBHEADING THINGS? THAT’S SUPER ANNOYING!] [FINE, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU MY SUMMARY.] [SO, WHOEVER WROTE THIS WAS ALL BLAH-BLAH-BLAH-STELLARLUNE-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-LEGACY. BUT SERIOUSLY, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT THE CREEPY STUFF MY MOM DID BEFORE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH ME! (AND WE’RE ALL SUPER SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY “LEGACY,” AMIRITE?) SO, LET’S JUST LEAVE IT AT THIS: MY MOM IS EVIL. SHE THINKS SHE’S WAY SMARTER THAN SHE IS. AND NOTHING SHE DID IS GOING TO AFFECT MY GENERAL AWESOMENESS, OKAY?] A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: [WOW, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH SUCH A CLEVER TITLE?!] [AND YEAH, I HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. NOT SURE WHY ANYONE CARES. BUT IT DOES COME IN HANDY DURING MIDTERMS AND FINALS.] AHEAD OF THE GAME: [BASICALLY: I’M A GENIUS. I SKIPPED LEVEL ONE AT FOXFIRE. YES, YOU SHOULD BE IMPRESSED.] UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS: [GOTTA ADMIT, I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE, SINCE WHOEVER WROTE IT ACTUALLY GOT THINGS PRETTY MUCH RIGHT. I GUESS EVEN THE COUNCIL KNOWS MY DAD’S A JERK WHO FREAKS OUT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I’M NOT A LITTLE MINI-HIM. WHO KNEW?] A POWERFUL EMPATH: [UGH, THAT’S THE BEST YOU COULD DO FOR THIS SUBHEADING???] [HOW ABOUT “LORD OF THE FEELS”? OR “TRUST THE EMPATH”! OR “HE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE FEELING—AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”?] [OOO! I’VE GOT IT! “HE KNOWS FOSTER BETTER THAN YOU DO! BETTER THAN SHE EVEN KNOWS HERSELF!”] [THOUGH… KEEPING IT REAL? THE FOSTER OBLIVION CAN BE KINDA NOT COOL SOMETIMES.] THE HEART OF THE MATTER: [I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GUYS NAMED A SECTION OF MY FILE AFTER MY FATHER’S SUPER-BORING BOOK—AND THEN RAMBLED ON FOR TWO PAGES ABOUT HIS SUPER-BORING THEORY!!!!!] [YOU DON’T NEED TWO PAGES ON IT. YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TWO SENTENCES. HERE’S ALLLLLL YOU NEED TO KNOW—BESIDES THE FACT THAT HE’S TOTALLY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO COME UP WITH THIS (JUST THE ONE WHO LOVES TO TAKE CREDIT): OUR HEADS AND OUR HEARTS SOMETIMES FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS, AND WHAT’S IN OUR HEARTS IS PROBABLY STRONGER.] [THAT’S IT!] [WELL… OKAY… I GUESS HE ALSO GOES ON A BIT ABOUT HOW EMPATHS PROBABLY ONLY READ THE EMOTIONS FROM THE HEAD.] [AND THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HEART EMOTIONS BEING PURER BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEM.] [BUT THAT’S IT.] [AND DON’T TELL LORD BORINGPANTS I READ HIS DUMB BOOK! I MOSTLY SKIMMED.] PRANKSTER AND TROUBLEMAKER: [100 PERCENT ACCURATE. ALSO, I’M LEAVING YOUR LITTLE ATTACHED DETENTION RECORD BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!]

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the senator, “I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom.” “It is noble to write as we think,” said Pococurante; “it is the privilege of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of the Caesars and Antonines dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a Dominican father. I should be enamored of the spirit of the English nation, did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion and the spirit of party.” Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that author a great man. “Who?” said Pococurante sharply; “that barbarian who writes a tedious commentary in ten books of rumbling verse, on the first chapter of Genesis? that slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who disfigures the creation, by making the Messiah take a pair of compasses from Heaven’s armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Diety as producing the whole universe by his fiat? Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s Hell and the Devil; who transforms Lucifer sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school–divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of firearms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in Heaven? Neither I nor any other Italian can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries; but the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the neglect it deserved at its first publication; and I only treat the author now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries.

You all right, sis?” Kaden asked, pausing between heaping spoonfuls of oatmeal. “Of course.” “You look a little stressed.” “You would, too, if you were going to run the country,” I teased. “Sometimes I think about that,” he said, getting all serious. “Like, what if a disease swept over all of Illéa, and you and Mom and Dad and Ahren got sick and died. Then I’d be in charge and have to figure out everything on my own.” In my periphery I saw Dad lean forward, listening to his son. “That’s a little morbid, Kaden.” Kaden shrugged. “It’s always good to plan ahead.” I propped my chin on my hand. “So what would be King Kaden’s first order of business?” “Vaccinations, obviously.” I

Van Gogh was a complete nut job! Can you imagine in this day and age, if an artist or writer that you were going to sign or host an exhibit for had just cut off their freaking EAR and mailed it to their unrequited love? Talk about a PR nightmare. No one would be willing to work with that mess – seriously! How would you feel if you were told, “Hey, umm, your next writer just cut her own finger off? No big deal. She’s all right.” As artists, we’re all kind of odd in our own ways. I think that should be celebrated and more appreciated – I’m not saying that more people should start to cut off their ears or fingers or other appendages – but for god’s sake, stop censoring everyone to death. It makes me sick.

P.S.” Kimmie continues, nodding toward my sculptor of Adam’s lips, the assignment was to sculpt something exotic, not erotic. Are you sure you weren’t so busy wishing me dead that you just didn’t hear right? Plus, if it was eroticism you were going for, how come there’s no tongue wagging out of his mouth?” “And what’s exotic about your piece?” “Seriously, it doesn’t get more exotic than leopard, particularly if that leopard is in the form of a swanky pair of kitten heels . . . but I thought I’d start out small.” “Right,” I say, looking at her oblong ball of clay with what appears to be four legs, a golf-ball-sized head, and a long, skinny tail attached. “And, from the looks of your sculpture,” she continues, adjusting the lace bandana in her pixie-cut dark hair, “I presume your hankering for a Ben Burger right about now. The question is, will that burger come with a pickle on the side or between the buns?” “You’re so sick,” I say, failing to mention that my sculptor isn’t of Ben’s mouth at all. “Seriously? You’re the one who’s wishing me dead whilst fantasizing about your boyfriend’s mouth. Tell me that doesn’t rank high up on the sik-o-meter.” “I have to go,” I say, throwing a plastic tarp over my work board. “Should I be worried?” “About what?” “Acting manic and chanting about death?” “I didn’t chant.” “Are you kidding? For a second there I thought you were singing the jingle to a commercial for roach killer: You deserve to die! You deserve to die! You deserve to die!

So can you exercise too much? Perhaps at extreme levels, and most certainly if you are sick with a serious infection or injured and need to recover. You also increase your risk of musculoskeletal injuries if you haven’t adapted your bones, muscles, and other tissues to handle the stresses of repeated high forces of Olympic-level weight lifting, playing five sets of tennis a day, running marathons, or overdoing some other sport that obsesses you. In other respects, the negative effects of too much exercise appear to be ridiculously less than the negative effects of too little. As my wife points out, the biggest risk of exercising too much is ruining your marriage, to which I would add that the biggest risk of exercising too little is not being around

In 2011, actor Johnny Depp told the November issue of Vanity Fair that he felt participating in a photoshoot was akin to rape. "Well, you just feel like you're being raped somehow. Raped . . . It feels like a kind of weird - just weird, man. But whenever you have a photo shoot or something like that, it's like - you just feel dumb. It's just so stupid," he said. Likening instances of being flustered or uneasy to the often life-shattering experience of rape has become a far too common comparison in modern lexicon. The phrase "Facebook rape" is perhaps the most widely used, which implies one person has posted on another person's Facebook account - usually something intended to embarrass the person. But the casual, flippant use of the term "rape" in instances that do not involve sexual violence is highly problematic in that it trivialises one of the most despicable invasions of a human being. Desensitising the masses to the term "rape" is just another way the conversation surrounding sexual assault is derailed or diluted in society. Rape is, and should be considered universally, as a serious societal sickness that occurs within the "toxic silence" that surrounds sexual assault as Tara Moss put so elegantly in her recent Q&A appearance. Further to that, the use of the term can be a trigger for rape survivors in that it may jolt terrifying memories of their own experience. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, up to 57 per cent of rape survivors suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in their lifetime, with "triggers" including inflammatory words like rape causing deeply traumatic recollections. Beware desensitising the term "rape", Newcastle Herald, June 6, 2014

Guess what, Grandpa!” she says, not giving him time to guess before she continues. “I seen that Breezeo got sick in an accident, so Mommy told me I could draw him a picture!” My father’s eyes go wide as he shoots me a look. “I told her we’d find an address and mail it to him,” I explain. “You know, like fan mail.” “Makes sense.” “You wanna draw one, Grandpa?” Maddie asks. “I bet mine would be better, but you can try, too.” He scowls at her. “What makes you think yours would be better?” “ ‘Cuz I’m best at drawing,” she says. “You’re good, too, but Mommy can’t draw.” “Hey,” I say defensively. “I can draw some seriously cool stars.” Maddie dramatically rolls her eyes, making sure I see it, announcing, “That don’t count!” before making her way inside. “You heard the girl,” my father says, grinning and nudging me when I join him on the porch. “Your stars don’t count, kiddo.

A man once made it a reproach that I should be so happy, and told me everybody has crosses, and that we live in a vale of woe. I mentioned moles as my principal cross, and pointed to the huge black mounds with which they had decorated the tennis–court, but I could not agree to the vale of woe, and could not be shaken in my belief that the world is a dear and lovely place, with everything in it to make us happy so long as we walk humbly and diet ourselves. He pointed out that sorrow and sickness were sure to come, and seemed quite angry with me when I suggested that they too could be borne perhaps with cheerfulness. ‘And have not even such things their sunny side?’ I exclaimed. ‘When I am steeped to the lips in diseases and doctors, I shall at least have something to talk about that interests my women friends, and need not sit as I do now wondering what I shall say next and wishing they would go.’ He replied that all around me lay misery, sin, and suffering, and that every person not absolutely blinded by selfishness must be aware of it and must realise the seriousness and tragedy of existence. I asked him whether my being miserable and discontented would help any one or make him less wretched; and he said that we all had to take up our burdens. I assured him I would not shrink from mine, though I felt secretly ashamed of it when I remembered that it was only moles, and he went away with a grave face and a shaking head, back to his wife and his eleven children. I heard soon afterwards that a twelfth baby had been born and his wife had died, and in dying had turned her face with a quite unaccountable impatience away from him and to the wall; and the rumour of his piety reached even into my garden, and how he had said, as he closed her eyes, ‘It is the Will of God.’ He was a missionary.

So what's the deal with you and my sister?" He laughs shortly and rubs the back of his neck like something is there, tickling, tapping. "Tamra." Clutching the dashboard, I turn and glare at her. "There is no deal." She snorts. "Well, we wouldn't be sitting here if that was the case now, would we?" I open my mouth to demand she end the interrogation when Will's voice stops me. "I like your sister. A lot." I look at him dumbly. He looks at me, lowers his voice to say, "I like you." I know that, I guess, but heat crawls over my face. I swing forward in my seat, cross my arms over my chest and stare straight ahead. Can't stop shivering. Can't speak. My throat hurts too much. "Jacinda," he says. "I think you've shocked her," Tamra offers, then sighs. "Look, if you like her, you have to make it legit. I don't want everyone at school whispering about her like she's some toy you get your kicks with in a stairwell." Now I really can't speak. My blood burns. I already have one mother doing her best to control my life. I don't need my sister stepping in as mother number two. "I know," he says. "That's what I'm trying to do now-if she'll let me." I feel his gaze on the side of my face. Anxious. Waiting. I look at him. A breath shudders from me at the intensity in his eyes. He's serious. But then he would have to be. If he's willing to break free of his self-imposed solitude for me, especially when he suspects there's more to me than I'm telling him...he means what he's saying. His thumbs beat a staccato rhythm on the steering wheel as he drives. "I want to be with you, Jacinda." He shakes his head. "I'm done fighting it." "Jeez," Tamra mutters. And I know what she means. It seems too much. The declaration extreme. Fast. After all, we're only sixteen... I start, jerk a little. I think he's sixteen. I don't even know. I don't know anything about him other than his secret. That sort of eclipses everything else. But he has to be more. More than the secret. More than a hunter. More than a boy who doesn't want to be a force of destruction. More than the boy who saved my life. The boy I've built a fantasy around. I don't know the real him. Xander mentioned Will being sick, and I don't even know what happened to him. But then I don't feel bad about that for long. Because he doesn't know the real me either. And yet he still wants to be with me. Maybe it's perfect because I want to be with him, too. And not just because I need to get close to him and use him for information. Although there is that. Something I would like to forget but can't let myself. Forgetting is resigning myself to a life here. Forever. As a ghost. A small voice whispers through me, a tempting thought... Not if you have Will.

The argument that normal adaptive functioning in a sick world can itself be considered pathological is an old one (Fromm, 2001), but not well made and still not taken seriously. We do not have a good antonym for depression, mania being one of the closest but not conveying any sense that a widespread upbeat mentality might be considered pathological; or that delusional denial of widespread malaise might be taken as something less jocular than Pollyannaism. It is inconceivable that the psychotherapy and psychiatric professionals themselves would in effect declare, ‘the baseline for human beings including ourselves is one of pathological self-deceit and illusion serving to keep us functional in an insane world’. Nor are we likely to read the corollary of this – ‘individuals experiencing chronic dysthymia who hold a negative worldview and who are known as depressive realists, might be considered less pathological and more mentally healthy than others’.

Rather than returning to school, he drove straight to the psychologist. “You may need a bit of adjustment, but it’s nothing serious,” the doctor said, after listening to his lengthy narrative. “Nothing serious?” Luo Ji opened his bloodshot eyes wide. “I’m madly in love with a fictional person from a novel of my own creation. I’ve been with her, I’ve traveled with her, and I’ve even broken up with my real-life girlfriend over her. Is that nothing serious to you?” The doctor smiled tolerantly. “Don’t you get it? I’ve given my most profound love to an illusion!” “Are you under the impression that the object of everyone else’s love actually exists?” “Is that even a question?” “Sure. For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn’t need a template.” “So this isn’t a sickness?” “Only in the way your girlfriend pointed out: You’ve got natural literary talent. If you want to call that a sickness, go right ahead.” “But isn’t imagining to this degree a little excessive?” “There’s nothing excessive about imagination. Especially where love is concerned.” “So what should I do? How can I forget about her?” “It’s impossible. You can’t forget her, so don’t make the effort. That will only lead to side effects, and maybe even mental disorders. Let nature take its course. Once more, for emphasis: Don’t try to forget about her. It won’t work. But as time passes, her influence on your life will decrease. And you’re actually quite lucky. Whether or not she really exists, you’re fortunate to be in love.” This

—I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath!… Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say, generous self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millenniums of this madhouse of a world, call it “Christianity,” “Christian faith” or the “Christian church,” as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better… . What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called “truth”; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any “sinner,” or any “Saviour”—that “free will” and the “moral order of the world” are lies—: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it… . All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation… . We know, our conscience now knows—just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,—the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master… . Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?… A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!… Whom, then, does Christianity deny? what does it call “the world”? To be a soldier, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud … every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now anti-Christian: what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian!—

When I go running through the forest on hot days, if I stop for any reason, in that very moment mosquitoes will attack me. If I keep moving, they do not bother me. This motivates me to continue without resting. Imagine how wonderful it would be if every time we stopped being active in life the Universe would send us a signal that would push us to carry on. Guess what, it does. When the life we lead does not align with our passions, depression bites at us so we will change our ways. If we eat poorly and live sedentary, we are often afflicted with a serious health condition. We do not get sick, or become ill so that we can blame God, curse our genetics, or give up on life. These conditions arise to motivate us so we will correct our errors and clean up our mistakes. The reason why we are confronted with failures on our mission to obtain happiness is not so we can dwell in misery, but rather for us to reshape our desires and go after what we are destined to succeed with. The Universe is working in our favor, not against us. It is okay to rest at times, but if we do not want to get bit by misfortunes, then we must remain active in our pursuit of a better life.

With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.

Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously - the mid-day sun always excepted. Too much work and too much energy kill a man as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink. Flirtation does not matter, because every one is being transferred, and either you or she leave the station and never return. Good work does not matter, because a man is judged by his worst output, and another man takes all the credit of his best as a rule. Bad work does not matter, because other men do worse, and incompetents hang on longer in India than anywhere else. Amusements do not matter, because you must repeat them as soon as you have accomplished them once, and most amusements only mean trying to win another person's money. Sickness does not matter, because it's all in the day's work, and if you die, another man takes over your place and your office in the eight hours between your death and burial. Nothing matters except Home-furlough and acting allowances, and these only because they are scarce. It is a slack country, where all men work with imperfect instruments, and the wisest thing is to escape as soon as you ever can to some place where amusement is amusement and a reputation worth the having.

When we turn the body into human capital, the political consequences of the body disappear. Hands that are raised, legs that move, fingers that point, floors that are mopped, mouths that are fed. Our economy is built on bodies. If the body was taken seriously as a starting point for the economy, it would have far-reaching consequences. A society organized around the shared needs of human bodies would be a very different society from the one we know now. Hunger, cold, sickness, lack of healthcare, and lack of food would be central economic concerns. Not like today: unfortunate by-products of the one and only system. Our economic theories refuse to accept the reality of the body and flee as far from it as they can. That people are born small and die fragile, and that skin cut with a sharp object will bleed no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what you earn, and no matter where you live. What we have in common starts with the body. We shiver when we are cold, sweat when we run, cry out when we come, and cry out when we give birth. It's through the body that we can reach other people. So, economic man eradicates it. Pretends it doesn't exist. We observe it from the outside as if we were foreign capital. And we are alone.

He got in beside her and impatiently reached for her seat belt, snapping it in place. “You always forget,” he murmured, meeting her eyes. Her breath came uneasily through her lips as she met that level stare and responded helplessly to it. He was handsome and sexy and she loved him more than her own life. She had for years. But it was a hopeless, unreturned adoration that left her unfulfilled. He’d never touched her, not even in the most innocent way. He only looked. “I should close my door to you,” she said huskily. “Refuse to speak to you, refuse to see you, and get on with my life. You’re a constant torment.” Unexpectedly he reached out and touched her soft cheek with just his fingertips. They smoothed down to her full, soft mouth and teased the lower lip away from the upper one. “I’m Lakota,” he said quietly. “You’re white.” “There is,” she said unsteadily, “such a thing as birth control.” His face was very solemn and his eyes were narrow and intent on hers. “And sex is all you want from me, Cecily?” he asked mockingly. “No kids, ever?” It was the most serious conversation they’d ever had. She couldn’t look away from his dark eyes. She wanted him. But she wanted children, too, eventually. Her expression told him so. “No, Cecily,” he continued gently. “Sex isn’t what you want at all. And what you really want, I can’t give you. We have no future together. If I marry one day, it’s important to me that I marry a woman with the same background as my own. And I don’t want to live with a young, and all too innocent, white woman.” “I wouldn’t be innocent if you’d cooperate for an hour,” she muttered outrageously. His dark eyes twinkled. “Under different circumstances, I would,” he said, and there was suddenly something hot and dangerous in the way he looked at her as the smile faded from his chiseled lips, something that made her heart race even faster. “I’d love to strip you and throw you onto a bed and bend you like a willow twig under y body.” “Stop!” she whispered theatrically. “I’ll swoon!” And it wasn’t all acting. His hand slid behind her nape and contracted, dragging her rapt face just under his, so close that she could smell the coffee that clung to his clean breath, so close that her breasts almost touched his jacket. “You’ll tempt me once too often,” he bit off. “This teasing is more dangerous than you realize.” She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She was throbbing, aroused, sick with desire. In all her life, there had been only this man who made her feel alive, who made her feel passion. Despite the traumatic experience of her teens, she had a fierce physical attraction to Tate that she was incapable of feeling with any other man. She touched his lean cheek with cold fingertips, slid them back, around his neck into the thick mane of long hair that he kept tightly bound-like his own passions. “You could kiss me,” she whispered unsteadily, “just to see how it feels.” He tensed. His mouth poised just above her parted lips. The silence in the car was pregnant, tense, alive with possibilities and anticipation. He looked into her wide, pale, eager green eyes and saw the heat she couldn’t disguise. His own body felt the pressure and warmth of hers and began to swell, against his will. “Tate,” she breathed, pushing upward, toward his mouth, his chiseled, beautiful mouth that promised heaven, promised satisfaction, promised paradise. His dark fingers corded in her hair. They hurt, and she didn’t care. Her whole body ached. “Cecily, you little fool,” he ground out. Her lips parted even more. He was weak. This once, he was weak. She could tempt him. It could happen. She could feel his mouth, taste it, breathe it. She felt him waver. She felt the sharp explosion of his breath against her lips as he let his control slip. His mouth parted and his head bent. She wanted it. Oh, God, she wanted it, wanted it, wanted it…

Beyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. “Isn’t this extraordinary?” Ed Regis said. “Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course.” Ellie paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant found abundantly in fossils more than two hundred million years old, now common only in the wetlands of Brazil and Colombia. But whoever had decided to place this particular fern at poolside obviously didn’t know that the spores of veriformans contained a deadly beta-carboline alkaloid. Even touching the attractive green fronds could make you sick, and if a child were to take a mouthful, he would almost certainly die—the toxin was fifty times more poisonous than oleander. People were so naïve about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction—and defense. But Ellie knew that, in the earth’s history, plants had evolved as competitively as animals, and in some ways more fiercely. The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved. There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication. When a Douglas fir tree was attacked by beetles, it produced an anti-feedant chemical—and so did other Douglas firs in distant parts of the forest. It happened in response to a warning alleochemical secreted by the trees that were under attack. People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with animals—discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others; and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process which she never ceased to find fascinating. And which she knew most people simply didn’t understand. But if planting deadly ferns at poolside was any indication, then it was clear that the designers of Jurassic Park had not been as careful as they should have been.

the mystery was far from solved. Nobody understood why heparin—which is made from the mucosal lining of pig intestines, most of which come from China—was suddenly making patients sick. In February 2008, the FDA discovered the likely source of the contamination: a Chinese plant supplying crude heparin to Baxter. In a clerical blunder, the FDA had completely overlooked and failed to inspect the facility, Changzhou SPL, located about 150 miles west of Shanghai. Instead, it inspected and approved a plant with a similar-sounding name. Predictably, once FDA officials finally traveled to Changzhou in February 2008 to make an on-the-ground inspection, they found serious problems. The facility had dirty manufacturing tanks and no reliable method of removing impurities from heparin, and it acquired the crude heparin from workshops that had not been inspected. Chinese regulators were no help at all. A loophole in Chinese regulations allowed certain pharmaceutical plants to register as chemical plants, which made them subject to far less oversight. For U.S. congressional investigator David Nelson, whose committee was now immersed in the heparin crisis as well, the situation laid bare the “classically good reason to be suspect of production coming from any country that doesn’t have competent regulatory authority.” The FDA issued an import alert in March 2008, meaning that Changzhou SPL’s shipments would be stopped at the U.S. border. Though

Love is funny thing. I don´t kno if you can call it a "thing" precisely. It´s a force. An energy. A feeling. A moment. A look, a kiss, a smile. All those things in one. It sneaks up on you; you never see it coming. And when it does dinall< hit you, it isn´t a small little poke. It´s like a rhinoceros rammed itself against our chest. Or you just got run over by a car. It knocks the wind out of you. Slams you against wall. Kick-starts yout heart. You lose your apetite. You can´t sleep. Some can call love a sickness. Seriously, you´re sick over another human being. You belong to them. They control your feelings. with the look in their eye. They change the way you see yourself, feel about yourself. You feel like your world shifted, and everything´s the same, but you aren´t. I say it´s funny because it seems to bend and twist every concept of reality you have. You can survive off nothing. The only thing sustaining you is the feeling, energy, force. You can go days without decent sleep. You´re not hungry for anything exept that one person who seems to occupy your every thought. Time slows down when you´re without them. Seconds feel like hours, minutes like days, And whenn you´re together, time moves at the spped of light. It´s alla blur, and when it´s over, you don´t remember half the things you were doing but you just remember this feeling. This bliss. And it is all over in a flash. And you´re back to counting the long, eternal minutes until you see him again.

The definition of morality; Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves with success upon life. I attach great value to this definition. 8 [Pg 141] Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism.... The man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man—even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life—everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists—in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"—that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is [Pg 142] [Pg 143] The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ecce Homo, by Friedrich Nietzsche. detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally—to keep the worst to the last—by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future—this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.

In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest. But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?" Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice? Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy- minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way. Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea. The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one

Carajo!" Paco says, throwing down his lunch. "They think they can buy a U-shaped shell, stuff it, and call it a taco, but those cafeteria workers wouldn't know taco meat from a piece of shit. That's what this tastes like, Alex." "You're makin' me sick, man," I tell him. I stare uncomfortably at the food I brought from home. Thanks to Paco everything looks like mierda now. Disgusted, I shove what's left of my lunch into my brown paper bag. "Want some of it?" Paco says with a grin as he holds out the shitty taco to me. "Bring that one inch closer to me and you'll be sorry," I threaten. "I'm shakin' in my pants." Paco wiggles the offending taco, goading me. He should seriously know better. "If any of that gets on me--" "What'cha gonna do, kick my ass?" Paco sings sarcastically, still shaking the taco. Maybe I should punch him in the face, knocking him out so I won't have to deal with him right now. As I have that thought, I feel something drop on my pants. I look down even though I know what I'll see. Yes, a big blob of wet, gloppy stuff passing as taco meat lands right on the crotch of my faded jeans. "Fuck," Paco says, his face quickly turning from amusement to shock. "Want me to clean it off for you?" "If your fingers get anywhere close to my dick, I'm gonna personally shoot you in the huevos," I growl through clenched teeth. I flick the mystery meat off my crotch. A big, greasy stain lingers. I turn back to Paco. "You got ten minutes to get me a new pair of pants." "How the hell am I s'posed to do that?" "Be creative." "Take mine." Paco stands and brings his fingers to the waistband of his jeans, unbuttoning right in the middle of the courtyard. "Maybe I wasn't specific enough," I tell him, wondering how I'm going to act like the cool guy in chem class when it looks like I've peed in my pants. "I meant, get me a new pair of pants that will fit me, pendejo. You're so short you could audition to be one of Santa Claus's elves." "I'm toleratin' your insults because we're like brothers." "Nine minutes and thirty seconds." It doesn't take Paco more than that to start running toward the school parking lot.

There are kinds of food we’re hard wired to love. Salt, sugars, and fats. Food that, over the course of the history of our species, has helped us get through some long winters, and plow through some extreme migrations. There are also certain kinds of information we’re hard wired to love: affirmation is something we all enjoy receiving, and the confirmation of our beliefs helps us form stronger communities. The spread of fear and its companion, hate, are clearly survival instincts, but more benign acts like gossip also help us spread the word about things that could be a danger to us. In the world of food, we’ve seen massive efficiencies leveraged by massive corporations that have driven the cost of a calorie down so low that now obesity is more of a threat than famine. Those same kinds of efficiencies are now transforming our information supply: we’ve learned how to produce and distribute information in a nearly free manner. The parallels between what’s happened to our food and what’s happened to our information are striking. Driven by a desire for more profits, and a desire to feed more people, manufacturers figured out how to make food really cheap; and the stuff that’s the worst for us tends to be the cheapest to make. As a result, a healthy diet — knowing what to consume and what to avoid — has gone from being a luxury to mandatory for our longevity. Just as food companies learned that if they want to sell a lot of cheap calories, they should pack them with salt, fat, and sugar — the stuff that people crave — media companies learned that affirmation sells a lot better than information. Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they’re right? Because of the inherent social nature of information, the consequences of these new efficiencies are far more dramatic than even the consequence of physical obesity. Our information habits go beyond affecting the individual. They have serious social consequences. Much as a poor diet gives us a variety of diseases, poor information diets give us new forms of ignorance — ignorance that comes not from a lack of information, but from overconsumption of it, and sicknesses and delusions that don’t affect the underinformed but the hyperinformed and the well educated.

So,” Marlboro Man began over dinner one night. “How many kids do you want to have?” I almost choked on my medium-rare T-bone, the one he’d grilled for me so expertly with his own two hands. “Oh my word,” I replied, swallowing hard. I didn’t feel so hungry anymore. “I don’t know…how many kids do you want to have?” “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Six or so. Maybe seven.” I felt downright nauseated. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, my body preparing me for the dreaded morning sickness that, I didn’t know at the time, awaited me. Six or seven kids? Righty-oh, Marlboro Man. Righty…no. “Ha-ha ha-ha ha. Ha.” I laughed, tossing my long hair over my shoulder and acting like he’d made a big joke. “Yeah, right! Ha-ha. Six kids…can you imagine?” Ha-ha. Ha. Ha.” The laughter was part humor, part nervousness, part terror. We’d never had a serious discussion about children before. “Why?” He looked a little more serious this time. “How many kids do you think we should have?” I smeared my mashed potatoes around on my plate and felt my ovaries leap inside my body. This was not a positive development. Stop that! I ordered, silently. Settle down! Go back to sleep! I blinked and took a swig of the wine Marlboro Man had bought me earlier in the day. “Let’s see…,” I answered, drumming my fingernails on the table. “How ’bout one? Or maybe…one and a half?” I sucked in my stomach--another defensive move in an attempt to deny what I didn’t realize at the time was an inevitable, and jiggly, future. “One?” he replied. “Aw, that’s not nearly enough of a work crew for me. I’ll need a lot more help than that!” Then he chuckled, standing up to clear our plates as I sat there in a daze, having no idea whether or not he was kidding. It was the strangest conversation I’d ever had. I felt like the roller coaster had just pulled away from the gate, and the entire amusement park was pitch-black. I had no idea what was in front of me; I was entering a foreign land. My ovaries, on the other hand, were doing backflips, as if they’d been wandering, parched, in a barren wasteland and finally, miraculously, happened upon a roaring waterfall. And that waterfall was about six feet tall, with gray hair and bulging biceps. They never knew they could experience such hope.

Will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live? “I will.” I breathed in. The scent of roses…the evening light coming through the stained-glass window. Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? “I will.” That voice. The voice from all the phone calls. I was marrying that voice. I couldn’t believe it. We faced each other, our hands intertwined. In the Name of God, I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. He stood before me, his face serious. My heart leaped in my chest. Then I spoke the words myself. In the Name of God, I take you to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. Marlboro Man watched me as I spoke, and he listened. My voice broke; emotion moved in. It was a beautiful moment--the most beautiful moment since we’d met. Bless, O Lord, these rings to be a sign of the vows by which this man and this woman have bound themselves to each other. We kneeled, and Father Johnson administered the blessing. Most Gracious God…Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads…Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death…Send therefore your blessing upon these your servants, that they may so love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and true godliness, that their home may be a haven of blessing and peace. My heart pounded in my chest. This was real, it was not a dream. His hand held mine. I now pronounce you husband and wife.

The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.

Long story short, I got lured into a trap. A Mage using that concealment spell tried to knife me. Then someone else tried to blow my brains out with a bullet." "A Mage attacked you?" Alain asked, feeling a sick sensation inside. "She tried. I knew they'd been watching me. I didn't give them any reason to try to kill me." Mari looked at him. "Did I?" "It is my fault," Alain admitted. "Even though I have tried to keep them from finding out who you are, they still believe that you are dangerous." She gave him another look, then shook her head. "From the looks of things, I'm mainly dangerous to my friends and myself. Just how much trouble did you actually get in because of spending time with me in Dorcastle?" Alain looked into the fire. "My Guild did not believe that I had been with you in Dorcastle. The elders thought that the woman I had been seen with in that city was a common I had sought out because she researched the Mechanic I had met in Ringhmon." "Why would you want to find a common who looked like me?" Mari asked. "For physical satisfaction." The simple statement would have created no reaction in a Mage, but he saw the outraged look in Mari's face and hurriedly added more. "I would not have done that. But the elders assumed that I did. I told you that they believed I was attracted to you." "Alain, 'attracted to' doesn't bring to mind the idea of finding another woman who resembles me so that you can pretend that you're—" she choked off the words, glaring into the night. "The elders assumed that. I never wanted it. I would never do it. There is no other woman like you." Somehow he must have said the right thing, because she relaxed. "But because of that belief of theirs," Mari said, "your elders thought you might look for me again." "They actually thought that you would seek me," Alain explained. "They were very concerned that you would..." His "social skills" might need work, but Alain realized that he probably should not say the rest. Too late. Mari bent a sour look his way. "What did they think I would do?" "It is not important." "Alain..." He exhaled slowly, realizing that Mari would not give up on this question. "The elders thought that you would seek to ensnare me, using your physical charms, and through me work to strike at the Mage Guild." She stared back in disbelief. "Ensnare? They actually used the word ensnare?" "Yes. Many times." "Using my physical charms?" Mari seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or get angry. She looked down at herself. "I'm a little low on ammunition when it comes to physical charms, or hadn't these elders of yours noticed?" "You are beautiful beyond all other women," Alain objected. Mari rolled her eyes. "And you ate seriously deluded. I hadn't realized how badly until this moment.

In the cities of the Jewish diaspora (especially Alexandria, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, and Rome), Jews were widely admired by their gentile neighbors. For one thing, they had a real religion, not a clutter of gods and goddesses and pro forma rituals that almost nobody took seriously anymore. They actually believed in their one God; and, imagine, they even set aside one day a week to pray to him and reflect on their lives. They possessed a dignified library of sacred books that they studied reverently as part of this weekly reflection and which, if more than a little odd in their Greek translation, seemed to point toward a consistent worldview. Besides their religious seriousness, Jews were unusual in a number of ways that caught the attention of gentiles. They were faithful spouses—no, really—who maintained strong families in which even grown children remained affectively attached and respectful to their parents. Despite Caesar Nero’s shining example, matricide was virtually unknown among them. Despite their growing economic success, they tended to be more scrupulous in business than non-Jews. And they were downright finicky when it came to taking human life, seeming to value even a slave’s or a plebeian’s life as much as anyone else’s. Perhaps in nothing did the gentiles find the Jews so admirable as in their acts of charity. Communities of urban Jews, in addition to opening synagogues, built welfare centers for aiding the poor, the miserable, the sick, the homebound, the imprisoned, and those, such as widows and orphans, who had no family to care for them. For all these reasons, the diaspora cities of the first century saw a marked increase in gentile initiates to Judaism. Many of these were wellborn women who presided over substantial households and who had likely tried out some of the Eastern mystery cults before settling on Judaism. (Nero’s wife Poppea was almost certainly one of these, and probably the person responsible for instructing Nero in the subtle difference between Christians and more traditional Jews, which he would otherwise scarcely have been aware of.) These gentiles did not, generally speaking, go all the way. Because they tended to draw the line at circumcision, they were not considered complete Jews. They were, rather, noachides, or God-fearers, gentiles who remained gentiles while keeping the Sabbath and many of the Jewish dietary restrictions and coming to put their trust in the one God of the Jews. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, however, could turn out to be a difficult test of the commitment of the noachides. For here in the heart of the Jewish world, they encountered Judaism enragé, a provincial religion concerned only with itself, and ages apart from the rational, tolerant Judaism of the diaspora. In the words of Paul Johnson:

As Frank promised, there was no other public explosion. Still. The multiple times when she came home to find him idle again, just sitting on the sofa staring at the rug, were unnerving. She tried; she really tried. But every bit of housework—however minor—was hers: his clothes scattered on the floor, food-encrusted dishes in the sink, ketchup bottles left open, beard hair in the drain, waterlogged towels bunched on bathroom tiles. Lily could go on and on. And did. Complaints grew into one-sided arguments, since he wouldn’t engage. “Where were you?” “Just out.” “Out where?” “Down the street.” Bar? Barbershop? Pool hall. He certainly wasn’t sitting in the park. “Frank, could you rinse the milk bottles before you put them on the stoop?” “Sorry. I’ll do it now.” “Too late. I’ve done it already. You know, I can’t do everything.” “Nobody can.” “But you can do something, can’t you?” “Lily, please. I’ll do anything you want.” “What I want? This place is ours.” The fog of displeasure surrounding Lily thickened. Her resentment was justified by his clear indifference, along with his combination of need and irresponsibility. Their bed work, once so downright good to a young woman who had known no other, became a duty. On that snowy day when he asked to borrow all that money to take care of his sick sister in Georgia, Lily’s disgust fought with relief and lost. She picked up the dog tags he’d left on the bathroom sink and hid them away in a drawer next to her bankbook. Now the apartment was all hers to clean properly, put things where they belonged, and wake up knowing they’d not been moved or smashed to pieces. The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang’s cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the wall she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. That was what her parents had taught her and what she had promised them: To choose, they insisted, and not ever be moved. Let no insult or slight knock her off her ground. Or, as her father was fond of misquoting, “Gather up your loins, daughter. You named Lillian Florence Jones after my mother. A tougher lady never lived. Find your talent and drive it.” The afternoon Frank left, Lily moved to the front window, startled to see heavy snowflakes powdering the street. She decided to shop right away in case the weather became an impediment. Once outside, she spotted a leather change purse on the sidewalk. Opening it she saw it was full of coins—mostly quarters and fifty-cent pieces. Immediately she wondered if anybody was watching her. Did the curtains across the street shift a little? The passengers in the car rolling by—did they see? Lily closed the purse and placed it on the porch post. When she returned with a shopping bag full of emergency food and supplies the purse was still there, though covered in a fluff of snow. Lily didn’t look around. Casually she scooped it up and dropped it into the groceries. Later, spread out on the side of the bed where Frank had slept, the coins, cold and bright, seemed a perfectly fair trade. In Frank Money’s empty space real money glittered. Who could mistake a sign that clear? Not Lillian Florence Jones.

Christ was an Aryan, and St. Paul used his doctrine to mobilise the criminal underworld and thus organise a proto-Bolshevism. This intrusion upon the world marks the end of a long reign, that of the clear Graeco-Latin genius. What is this God who takes pleasure only in seeing men grovel before Him? Try to picture to yourselves the meaning of the following, quite simple story. God creates the conditions for sin. Later on He succeeds, with the help of the Devil, in causing man to sin. Then He employs a virgin to bring into the world a son who, by His death, will redeem humanity! I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mahomet, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians ! In your lifetime, you used to hear the music of Richard Wagner. After your death, it will be nothing but hallelujahs, the waving of palms, children of an age for the feeding-bottle, and hoary old men. The man of the isles pays homage to the forces of nature. But Christianity is an invention of sick brains : one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. A negro with his tabus is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in Transubstantiation. I begin to lose all respect for humanity when I think that some people on our side, Ministers or generals, are capable of believing that we cannot triumph without the blessing of the Church. Such a notion is excusable in little children who have learnt nothing else. For thirty years the Germans tore each other to pieces simply in order to know whether or not they should take Communion in both kinds. There's nothing lower than religious notions like that. From that point of view, one can envy the Japanese. They have a religion which is very simple and brings them into contact with nature. They've succeeded even in taking Christianity and turning it into a religion that's less shocking to the intellect. By what would you have me replace the Christians' picture of the Beyond? What comes naturally to mankind is the sense of eternity and that sense is at the bottom of every man. The soul and the mind migrate, just as the body returns to nature. Thus life is eternally reborn from life. As for the "why?" of all that, I feel no need to rack my brains on the subject. The soul is unplumbable. If there is a God, at the same time as He gives man life He gives him intelligence. By regulating my life according to the understanding that is granted me, I may be mistaken, but I act in good faith. The concrete image of the Beyond that religion forces on me does not stand up to examination. Think of those who look down from on high upon what happens on earth: what a martyrdom for them, to see human beings indefatigably repeating the same gestures, and inevitably the same errors ! In my view, H. S. Chamberlain was mistaken in regarding Christianity as a reality upon the spiritual level. Man judges everything in relation to himself. What is bigger than himself is big, what is smaller is small. Only one thing is certain, that one is part of the spectacle. Everyone finds his own rôle. Joy exists for everybody. I dream of a state of affairs in which every man would know that he lives and dies for the preservation of the species. It's our duty to encourage that idea : let the man who distinguishes himself in the service of the species be thought worthy of the highest honours.

You’re going to do great,” Lizzy said as they reached the mini Tiki bar. The air was cool in the high fifties and the scent of various meats on the grill filled the air. Even though they’d had the party catered, apparently Grant had insisted on grilling some things himself. “I wouldn’t have recommended you apply for it otherwise.” Athena ducked behind the bar and grinned at the array of bottles and other garnishes. She’d been friends with Lizzy the past couple months and knew her friend’s tastes by now. As she started mixing up their drinks she said, “If I fail, hopefully they won’t blame you.” Lizzy just snorted but eyed the drink mix curiously. “Purple?” “Just wait. You’ll like it.” She rolled the rims of the martini glasses in sugar as she spoke. “Where’d you learn to do this?” “I bartended a little in college and there were a few occasions on the job where I had to assist because staff called out sick for an event.” There’d been a huge festival in Madrid she’d helped out with a year ago where three of the staff had gotten food poisoning, so in addition to everything else she’d been in charge of, she’d had to help with drinks on and off. That had been such a chaotic, ridiculous job. “At least you’ll have something to fall back on if you do fail,” Lizzy teased. “I seriously hope not.” She set the two glasses on the bar and strained the purple concoction into them. With the twinkle lights strung up around the lanai and the ones glittering in the pool, the sugar seemed to sparkle around the rim. “This is called a wildcat.” “You have to make me one of those too!” The unfamiliar female voice made Athena look up. Her eyes widened as her gaze locked with Quinn freaking Brody, the too-sexy-man with an aversion to virgins. He was with the tall woman who’d just asked Athena to make a drink. But she had eyes only for Quinn. Her heart about jumped out of her chest. What was he doing here of all places? At least he looked just as surprised to see her. She ignored him because she knew if she stared into those dark eyes she’d lose the ability to speak and then she’d inevitably embarrass herself. The tall, built-like-a-goddess woman with pale blonde hair he was with smiled widely at Athena. “Only if you don’t mind,” she continued, nodding at the drinks. “They look so good.” “Ah, you can have this one. I made an extra for the lush here.” She tilted her head at Lizzy with a half-smile. Athena had planned to drink the second one herself but didn’t trust her hands not to shake if she made another. She couldn’t believe Quinn was standing right in front of her, looking all casual and annoyingly sexy in dark jeans and a long-sleeved sweater shoved up to his elbows. Why did his forearms have to look so good? “Ha, ha.” Lizzy snagged her drink as Athena stepped out from behind the bar. “Athena, this is Quinn Brody and Dominique Castle. They both work for Red Stone but Dominique is almost as new as you.” Forcing a smile on her face, Athena nodded politely at both of them—and tried to ignore the way Quinn was staring at her. She’d had no freaking idea he worked for Red Stone. He looked a bit like a hungry wolf. Just like on their last date—two months ago. When he’d decided she was too much trouble, being a virgin and all. Jackass. “It’s so nice to meet you both.” She did a mental fist pump when her voice sounded normal. “I promised Belle I’d help out inside but I hope to see you both around tonight.” Liar, liar. “Me too. Thanks again for the drink,” Dominique said cheerfully while Lizzy just gave Athena a strange look. Athena wasn’t sure what Quinn’s expression was because she’d decided to do the mature thing—and studiously ignore him.

estrogenics are a class of molecule that are structurally similar to estrogen and they are trouble. Serious trouble.

The last myth proved false by recent research concerns the idea that when one is seriously mentally ill, insight into illness leads to demoralization, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Having said that, suicide is clearly a very serious problem in both depression and schizophrenia, as estimates are that as many as one out of every ten persons with schizophrenia will die from suicide.

As a way of thanking the doctors that looked after his seriously ill daughter, Johnny Depp visited the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and read stories to sick kids for over four hours in full Jack Sparrow attire.

The truth that many people do not understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. —Thomas Merton

If a patient arrives via ambulance and is seriously injured or really sick or has a heart attack, a doctor checks him out and sends him to the nearest real emergency department connected to a hospital with facilities like operating rooms and a cardiac laboratory. Aside from the risk of delays in treatment, the sequence results in bills for two separate high-level ER visits and a charge for emergency transport.

In many European countries, medicines like asthma inhalers and insulin are free because their use prevents serious diseases that lead to expensive hospitalization and long-term complications. For-profit insurers may not care about cost considerations down the road, because people can change their plans from year to year, but companies and unions want to retain their workers far longer than that, so they should carefully weigh the long-term pros and cons of the health plans they design.

HE SAID TO Beatrice, ‘I was just leaning forward to switch on the engine. That saved me, I imagine. Of course it was his right to fire back. It was a real duel, but the third shot was mine.’ ‘What happened afterwards?’ ‘I had time to drive away before I was sick.’ ‘Sick?’ ‘I suppose if I hadn’t missed the war it would have seemed much less serious a thing killing a man. Poor Carter.’ ‘Why should you

The degree of consciousness of a living creature fluctuates up and down, depending on its emotional condition, within the limits of an octave of vibrations. These fluctuations, however, must not exceed the limits of elasticity of the nerves; for if they do, injuries and sicknesses of a more or less serious nature occur, even death. The vibration belonging to creative vital energy is absolutely lethal for creatures whose consciousness has not yet reached this level. It would burn out the nerves and nervous centres. For this reason, vital energy from the spinal column, where it has its seat, is transformed into a low vibration corresponding to the degree of consciousness of the person concerned and only this transformed vital current is conducted into the body. ‘Thus animals, for example, are animated by a much lower life vibration than primitive man; and primitive man with his beast-like selfish nature, is animated by lower vibrations of vital energy than a person who is spiritually developed. If one were to conduct the vital energy of a highly developed human being into an animal or a much less developed human, the animal or “lower-level” human would die instantly because of the contact with the more powerful vibrations.

I am at your mercy.” Matthias cracked one of his whips. “Get up and get in the house.” “As you wish.” Rose wrinkled his nose, picked a banana peel off his lap, and stood in the last faint beams of sunset. “Whoa!” “Is he wearing a leather cat suit?” “Holy Mother!" “Dude!” The guys all quickly averted their eyes and raised their hands to further block any chance of catching a view. Anything to not see Rose in his painted-on leather one-piece that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Their reactions were pure entertainment. “Stunning, right?” Rose spread his palms as far as the cuffs would allow. “Oh, I’m stunned.” Ayden looked ill. Rose looked down at himself with admiration. “Not many males can pull off this look.” “No male can pull off that look.” “Actually, his finely sculptured physique would be considered the perfect complement for this type of anatomically revealing attire which accentuates his—” “Bloody hell, Jayden, shut it!” “Dude, this is so not right.” “I feel like it’s looking at me.” “Feel like what’s looking at—? Oh. Oh! Ugh, now I feel like it’s looking at me too.” “How can it be looking at both of us?” “Are you serious?” “I’m gonna be sick.” “Someone please gouge out my eyes.” “He might as well be naked.” “Already did that,” Rose said dryly and gave me a suggestive wink. “Ask Aurora.” “What!” Now the crowd had eyes on me. I frantically shook my head. “No, no, no. It’s not what you think. He was in the water with most,” my hands circled over my abdomen, “stuff covered.” “Most?” Ayden almost shrieked. The orange-red flames on his arms flashed blue-white.

How to avoid food poisoning | Free health article. Food poisoning affects an estimated 4.1 million people in Australia every year. The symptoms of food poisoning can range from mild to severe, but there are steps you can take to reduce your risk, says Jean Hailes dietitian Stephanie Pirotta. Food poisoning is caused by bacteria, toxins or viruses present in the food or drinks we consume. In Australia, food poisoning is commonly due to bacteria, namely the Campylobacter or Salmonella bacteria types. However, as Ms Pirotta explains, not all bacteria are bad for you; some bacteria in food is normal – and in some cases, such as the good bacteria found in yoghurts, it can even be beneficial. “Bacteria becomes a problem and can cause food poisoning when they grow to unsafe levels, or if the type of bacteria present in the food is harmful,” says Ms Pirotta. Symptoms of food poisoning may include nausea (feeling sick), vomiting, stomach pains, diarrhoea (loose watery bowel motions), feeling weak, headache, fever, chills or sweating. When the symptoms start, how long they last and how serious they are can depend on many factors. A common assumption is that food poisoning is caused by the last thing the person ate. However, this is often not the case, says Ms Pirotta. “Symptoms of the bacteria Campylobacter food poisoning [one of the most common culprits] usually develop two to five days after eating the food,” she says. And which food is usually the guilty party in cases of Campylobacter? “This type of illness is frequently associated with eating undercooked chicken,” says Ms Pirotta. So how can you best protect yourself? Below Ms Pirotta answers some frequently asked questions. For More Information please Visit Our Website;-myhomedoctor.com.au/

Maybe it sounds like a compliment, You're too young, something to show that you look youthful and vibrant and all. Maybe it's just a refrain I should learn to ignore. But when I talk with other young women who hear it over and over again, they too roll their eyes and look upset. We do feel that we got sick too soon, decades before we'd expect to feel our bodies break down. But if there were truly such a thing as being too young to be sick, then we wouldn't be sick.

Perfectionism doesn’t want you to look at the progress. It might tell you that you don’t need to. Smarter people don’t need maps or measurements or data. Or it might tell you that you’ll be afraid of what you’ll find. For a solid year, I didn’t look at my book sales data because I was scared of what I would learn. At the most extreme edge of this problem are people who refuse to go to the doctor because they’re afraid to find out they might be seriously sick. For a thousand reasons, this doesn’t make any sense.

Serious illness or loss of some sort or great moral failure often brings into question the goodness of God. If God is good, why is there so much war, so much sickness, so much evil? Some people even deny God's existence in the face of great human suffering. For some, it's easier to believe in demonic influence rather than divine goodness.

At the beginning, when they thought that it was a sickness like any other, religion had its place. But when they saw that it was serious, they remembered pleasure.

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our

BREAKFAST WAS SOMETHING of a disappointment. Captain Hamond had always drunk cocoa, originally to encourage the crew to do the same and then because he liked it, whereas Jack and Stephen were neither of them human until the first pot of coffee was down, hot and strong. ‘Killick,’ said Jack, ‘toss this hog’s wash over the side and bring coffee at once.’ ‘Ax pardon, sir,’ said Killick, seriously alarmed. ‘I forgot the beans, and the cook’s got none.’ ‘Then jump to the purser’s steward, the gun-room cook, the sick-bay, anywhere, and get some, or your name will not be Preserved much longer, I can tell you. Cut along. God-damned lubber, to forget our coffee,’ he said to Stephen, with warm indignation.

Then he turns to me. ‘So much of health is in the mind,’ he says. ‘Don’t think too much. If you think too much, you’ll get sick. If someone tells you that you are sick, don’t take it too seriously, don’t think about it too much—it can affect your health,’ and he bursts out laughing.

How are you feeling, Aven?” “Why?” “Because you’ve been sick,” Lando said. “You were sick all week. I was worried about you.” “Why?” Lando laughed. “Are you always this suspicious?” “I just don’t understand why you’d care.” Lando grabbed his chest. “Ouch. Straight to the heart. So what did you have?” Oh my gosh. What did I have? I couldn’t think of anything. “Botulism,” I blurted out. “I had botulism.” Lando looked from me to Zion. Zion nodded seriously. “Yes, that’s what she had.” “Geez,” Lando said. “We learned about that in bio.” Oh, shoot.

Language is a tricky thing, especially when we try to capture what's happening in our bodies and in our culture. Words like "health," "healthy," "sick," "illness," and "disability" are always relative and always loaded, rarely static, and often problematic. Words like "women," too. Our definitions are constantly in flux--as are, for instance, the laws that govern our rights. Whose bodies count?

He saw a man who was certainly Weston, to judge from his height and build and coloring and features. In that sense he was quite recognizable. But the terror was that he was also unrecognizable. He did not look like a sick man: but he looked very like a dead one. The face which he raised from torturing the frog had that terrible power which the face of a corpse sometimes has of simply rebuffing every conceivable human attitude one can adopt towards it. The expressionless mouth, the unwinking stare of the eyes, something heavy and inorganic in the very folds of the cheek, said clearly: “I have features as you have, but there is nothing in common between you and me.” It was this that kept Ransom speechless. What could you say—what appeal or threat could have any meaning—to that? And now, forcing its way up into consciousness, thrusting aside every mental habit and every longing not to believe, came the conviction that this, in fact, was not a man: that Weston’s body was kept, walking and undecaying, in Perelandra by some wholly different kind of life, and that Weston himself was gone. It looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile. We have all often spoken—Ransom himself had often spoken—of a devilish smile. Now he realized that he had never taken the words seriously. The smile was not bitter, nor raging, nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with a horrible naïveté of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive, nor ashamed, it had nothing of the conspirator in it. It did not defy goodness, it ignored it to the point of annihilation. Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but halfhearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was wholehearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence. It was beyond vice as the Lady was beyond virtue.

...had recommended pediatrics as the most honest specialization, because children become sick only when in fact they are sick, and they cannot communicate with the physician using conventional words but only with concrete symptoms of real disease. After a certain age, however, adults either had the symptoms without the diseases or, what was worse, serious diseases with the symptoms of minor ones.

The Amazing Vomiting Boy On the weekend I was sick. I woke up at midnight on Saturday and vomited all over myself. Then I vomited over myself again. I called out to Ma. She came and put me in clean pajamas. I vomited over them. Then I vomited over Ma. While Ma was in the shower, Dad came to help. I vomited over him, too. He told me to go to the kitchen and get a bowl to vomit in. On the way to the kitchen I vomited over the dog and the cat. And the goldfish. I found a bowl and filled it with vomit. Then I filled another bowl with vomit. I was going through bowls fast. Ma got out of the shower and told me to get in the car. She was taking me to hospital. For the whole way there, I stuck my head out the window and vomited. I was like Hansel and Gretel, only instead of breadcrumbs I left a trail of vomit.

Any asshole can fall in love on a private beach in a tropical locale, surrounded by lush flora and adorable fauna, shining suns and chirping birds. Give me ten uninterrupted minutes without some ding-dong demanding something or subtweeting me or making me do work and I could fall in love with my worst fucking enemy. Seriously. What’s not to love about being expertly lit and drunk at two in the afternoon? But I’m going to need you to love me on the bus, dude. And first thing in the morning. Also, when I’m drunk and refuse to shut up about getting McNuggets from the drive-thru. When I fall asleep in the middle of that movie you paid extra to see in IMAX. When I wear the flowered robe I got at Walmart and the sweatpants I made into sweatshorts to bed. When I am blasting “More and More” by Blood Sweat & Tears at seven on a Sunday morning while cleaning the kitchen and fucking up your mom’s frittata recipe. When I bring a half dozen gross, mangled kittens home to foster for a few nights and they shit everywhere and pee on your side of the bed. When I go “grocery shopping” and come back with only a bag of Fritos and five pounds of pork tenderloin. When I’m sick and stumbling around the crib with half a roll of toilet paper shoved in each nostril. When I beg you fourteen times to read something I’ve written, then get mad when you tell me what you don’t like about it and I call you an uneducated idiot piece of shit. Lovebird city.

behind one ear. “I bet you’re here just because you miss having someone to take all your bullshit. I can’t believe you’d seriously hurt people, all for money. And then get mad when I call you out! And you show up to my art show, all sad and sick and looking for sympathy.” She suddenly goes quiet. “Okay, I’m done. You can talk.

There’s a Fly in My Ice-Cream On the weekend, a fly got stuck in my ice-cream and I wrote a poem about it. There’s a fly in my ice-cream, I think that it’s dead. No, hang on a minute, It’s moving its head. Do flys have heads? I’m really not sure. Well, whatever that is, It’s moving some more. There’s a fly in my ice-cream, What should I do? You won’t believe this, Now it’s doing a poo! It is so doing a poo, Honestly, I swear. Look at that black thing, Look – right there! What do you mean you don’t care? Now it’s wiping its butt, It’s got a tiny toilet roll! OMG, that’s so funny, Seriously, lol! Okay, I might have made that up, You know, about the tiny toilet roll. I’m picking the fly out now, Oh look, it’s left a hole. Of course I’m going to eat it. Why? What’s wrong with that? It’s just a few fly germs, Stop looking at me like that. Mmmm, this is really yummy, Okay, that was a crunchy bit, Which is weird for vanilla, Look out – I’m going to be sick!

I apologize for judging your culture and for being intolerant of other beliefs. I created a hostile environment, and…” He frowns, like he’s trying to remember his lines. Then he sighs and crumples, looking at me with pain on his face. “I really am sorry. My friends and I can be kind of the worst sometimes. I know my dad thinks that. And I’m sure my teachers do. And…you know, everyone.” I bite my lip. Ricky’s dad seems nicer than he did in the grocery store, but it’s still sad that Ricky feels that way. He takes a breath and continues. “But we really do think your hall-money is cool. Everybody in town does. And I feel really bad that she’s sick. I feel really bad that I said she’s sick. Sometimes my mouth keeps talking even when my brain knows it shouldn’t.” I can’t help but smile. “Thanks,” I say. I didn’t realize how much I was hoping to hear that. How much of a relief it is to know he doesn’t think Halmoni is creepy or scary or whatever. “I don’t think you’re the worst. And I shouldn’t have fed you mud.” I mean this, mostly. But if Halmoni’s right about the spell, it might not be so bad for him. He shrugs. “Mud has vitamins, probably. I’ve eaten worse.” “Oh.” “A worm,” he says. “Only once, though. And also another time, a Raisinet that definitely was not a Raisinet. I’m still not sure…Well, never mind.” I wait to see if he’s joking, but he’s serious. I fight back a smile. “But still. Sorry. It’s not like me to do that.” Then I correct myself. “Or, I guess it is? But I didn’t know that until now.” “It’s okay,” he says. “Let’s stop apologizing now. Apologizing is awkward.” I tug at one of my braids. “Do your friends hate me?” He laughs. “They think you’re supercool. They kept referring to you as Witch Girl. But not in a bad way. Anyone who does something like that is probably worth knowing.” I sneak a glance at him. He’s staring at me, but he looks away fast. His cheeks go splotchy. In that moment, I don’t feel like an invisible girl. But I also don’t want to be known for putting mud in someone’s pudding. I wonder if there’s a way to be a visible person and a good person at the same time. “Is that going to be my reputation in school now?” I ask. He tilts his head, thinking. “Well, yeah. But only until the next big thing.” Then after a moment, he adds, “I think it’s nice that you’re doing something to help your halmoni.” He still says it wrong, like hail-money, but he’s trying, and I appreciate it.

Serious illness is chaotic. Illness is not as simple as "I got sick and then I got better," but rather a series of ups and downs, surprises, catastrophes and rescues, and human reactions-some great and some disappointing-from patients, families, physicians, and other professionals. Physicians can acknowledge the chaos to patients. At the very least, they should not contribute to it with ill-chosen words, actions uncoordinated with other colleagues, or inaccessibility.

Having had the rare and privileged experience of having had my anger taken seriously, valued on its merits, I no longer believe that it is anger that is hurting us, but rather the system that penalizes us for expressing it, that doesn't respect or hear it, that isn't curious about it, that mocks or ignores it. That's what's making us sick; that's what's making us feel crazy, alone; that's why we're grinding our teeth at night.

Henderson coauthored a paper in 2006 that refutes the Glass work and the CDC guidelines. The Henderson paper states, “Historically, it has been all but impossible to prevent influenza from being imported into a country or political jurisdiction, and there has been little evidence that any particular disease mitigation measure has significantly slowed the spread of flu. . . . The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme (forced confinement of sick people with the well; complete restriction of movement of large populations . . .) that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration. . . . Travel restrictions, such as closing airports . . . have historically been ineffective . . . and will likely be even less effective in the modern era.

[Nietzsche's] questions - transcend, but where to; ascend, but to what height? - would have answered themselves if he had calmly kept both feet on the ascetic ground. He was too sick to follow his most important insight: that the main thing in life is to take the minor things seriously. When minor things grow stronger, the danger posed by the main thing is contained; then climbing higher in the minor things means advancing in the main thing.

Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.

Am I too serious, Diary? What else is wrong with me besides stating the obvious, that I am following head on into my father's footsteps? When my father was sick to death of life and his own was coloured with pale sadness and illness, he too went to the hospital for a 'rest'.

widening. “Don’t you dare draw their fire.”  Lynn.   Jonathan committed the name to memory. The outsiders didn’t seem to notice the man’s slip. They kept their weapons trained on the girl. She glared at them as if daring them to kill her. “Go ahead! Shoot! I’m sick of being hunted by you! Kill me and claim the fame. Do it!”  Parker dodged forward, rushing past any and all that stood between him and the woman named Lynn. He shoved his body in front of hers in a protective manner and glared at the men. “You’ll not harm her. She’s under my protection now.”  Eli let out a low whistle. “Never did I see that coming. Saw-bones is a born skirt-chaser. Think he might have The Fever or something? He’s always doctorin’ folks with weird ailments.”  Well, if The Fever included an uncontrollable urge to protect a woman, then his brother most certainly had caught it. He could only hope Parker’s case was curable. Jonathan knew his own case wasn’t. Molly had infected him long ago and he knew he’d never get her out of his veins. It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried. His exploits of the female persuasion were legendary—so was the fact he refused to commit. “Are you stupid?” Lynn asked, giving Parker a good shove. At five-eight, she was tall by female standards but short compared the MacSweeny boys. Still, she managed to get Parker to budge ever so slightly, shocking Jonathan. “Move! They’ll gun you down to get to me.”  “Then so be it.”  Jonathan shook his head. Parker was bound to get himself killed without some serious intervention. “Parker, get her and your ass out of there. We’ll take care of our guests. We’ll even be sweet enough to give ‘em that welcome speech you had worked out.”  “Parker?” the girl asked. She glanced at Jonathan and Eli and her eyes widened. “That means one of you is Jonathan.” The feel of a cold, hard barrel pressed against the back of Jonathan’s head. Cursing himself for letting his guard down, he put his hands up as his attacker shoved harder with the gun.  “Lookie, boys, we got us a sheriff. He’s got to bring a good amount of coinage, don’t ya think?”  There was a flash of black. A blur. Several shots. Screams. Jonathan caught movement out of the corner of his eye and realized someone had shot the man who had him at gunpoint. Chapter Four Molly

This vilification and demonization of predators (which overrides science and gives credence to lies) has serious negative consequences for wildlife, generating misunderstanding and encouraging public policies that promote the killing of wild animals. As is the case with sharks, land predators like wolves and wolverines serve vital roles in keeping ecosystems healthy. They cull sick

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

You said that if a killer zombie can’t find his murderer and have his revenge, he can start killing and eating anything that gets in his way, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Then shouldn’t giving the vampires over to the zombies quiet some of them?’ ‘It might, but we’d be giving two legal citizens over to be torn limb from limb. Vampires are a lot harder to kill than humans usually, which means the vamps would stay alive a lot longer during the process.’ He nodded. ‘Makes sense.’ ‘That would be a really bad way to die, Nicky.’ ‘Yeah.’ He said it as if to say, So what? ‘If we were just going to execute the vamps anyway, and it would save dozens of lives …’ Yancey let his words trail off. Badger looked at him. ‘You could do that, give someone over to the thing we saw today?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a thought; we’re just brainstorming and gathering information, right?’ ‘They’re rotting vampires,’ Nicky said. ‘If you can’t teach them how to look human, the woman seemed to want to die.’ ‘They should have two forms; one should be totally human and as attractive as they were in life,’ I said. Dev and Lisandro came over to us. ‘What has you guys all serious face?’ Dev asked, smiling. ‘We’re debating on whether giving the two vampires in custody over to the zombies of their murder victims would make the zombies stop killing other people,’ I said. Dev’s eyes widened and he went pale. ‘Who came up with the idea?’ Lisandro asked. ‘I did,’ Nicky said. ‘You are a sick motherfucker,’ Lisandro said. ‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Nicky said, totally unbothered by the comment. Lisandro laughed, as if he couldn’t quite believe it, but he did.

¡Carajoǃ” Paco says, throwing down his lunch. “They think they can buy a U-shaped shell, stuff it, and call it a taco, but those cafeteria workers wouldn’t know taco meat from a piece of shit. That’s what this tastes like, Alex.” “You’re makin’ me sick, man,” I tell him. I stare uncomfortably at the food I brought from home. Thanks to Paco everything looks like mierda now. Disgusted, I shove what’s left of my lunch into my brown paper bag. “Want some of it?” Paco says with a grin as he holds out the shitty taco to me. “Bring that one inch closer to me and you’ll be sorry,” I threaten. “I’m shakin’ in my pants.” Paco wiggles the offending taco, goading me. He should seriously know better. “If any of that gets on me--” “What’cha gonna do, kick my ass?” Paco sings sarcastically, still shaking the taco. Maybe I should punch him in the face, knocking him out so I won’t have to deal with him right now. As I have that thought, I feel something drop on my pants. I look down even though I know what I’ll see. Yes, a big blob of wet, gloppy stuff passing as taco meat lands right on the crotch of my faded jeans. “Fuck,” Paco says, his face quickly turning from amusement to shock. “Want me to clean it off for you?” “If your fingers come anywhere close to my dick, I’m gonna personally shoot you in the huevos,” I growl through clenched teeth. I flick the mystery meat off my crotch. A big, greasy stain lingers. I turn back to Paco. “You got ten minutes to get me a new pair of pants.” “How the hell am I s’posed to do that?” “Be creative.” “Take mine.” Paco stands and brings his fingers to the waistband of his jeans, unbuttoning right in the middle of the courtyard. “Maybe I wasn’t specific enough,” I tell him, wondering how I’m going to act like the cool guy in chem class when it looks like I’ve peed in my pants. “I meant, get me a new pair of pants that will fit me, pendejo. You’re so short you could audition to be one of Santa Claus’s elves.” “I’m toleratin’ your insults because we’re like brothers.” “Nine minutes and thirty seconds.” It doesn’t take Paco more than that to start running toward the school parking lot. I seriously don’t give a crap how I get the pants; just that I get ‘em before my next class. A wet crotch is not the way to show Brittany I’m a stud.

My friends, it was hard for us when we were young: we suffered youth itself like a serious sickness. That is due to the time into which we have been thrown— a time of extensive inner decay and disintegration, a time that with all its weaknesses, and even with its best strength, opposes the spirit of youth. Disintegration characterizes this time, and thus uncertainty: nothing stands firmly on its feet or on a hard faith in itself; one lives for tomorrow, as the day after tomorrow is dubious. Everything on our way is slippery and dangerous, and the ice that still supports us has become thin: all of us feel the warm, uncanny breath of the thawing wind; where we still walk, soon no one will be able to walk.

There were usually not nearly as many sick people inside the hospital as Yossarian saw outside the hospital, and there were generally fewer people inside the hospital who were seriously sick. There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital, and a much healthier death rate.

Sin’s outcome is eternal misery. What infinite ugliness then must be the ugliness of sin. This is the constant subject of preaching, for this is what we must ever overcome. It is more serious than Satan and sickness and insanity. None of those can damn a soul. Only sin can damn. This we must defeat in preaching, or all is in vain. Flippancy in and around our preaching communicates to people that sin is not as serious as the Bible says it is.

Watching trips driving under the influence of alcohol, details Since a randomized control the peaks. From the perspective of travel between the armed forces and the strategy for the enforcement of the initiation of a hasty road block using the techniques that are considered disturbing the police only with unauthorized functions this movement control points on the basis of many DUI action initiated. Every time the checkpoints suspicious driver drunk driving, Kits, laws applications traversing the streets to protect the driver. Then, when the driver suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, it would be towards getting a DUI lawyer to be soon after fertilization. DUI prices could the lives of sick people are taken in the context concerned, so that the money really is removed before use. To clarify this point, it is important to achieve the experience in DUI legal knowledge based on track to use to get rid of costs. General address is to escape unnoticed a trip to the environment in which they can find through future target for it to rotate too slowly. In many situations, under the influence of alcohol, driving, fast that the driver Checkpoint see some time, immediate auto or truck and escapes through the information on the screen. Show information about the tours, the driver will have the opportunity not only to avoid the checkpoint. The decrease is the result of a DUI is a criminal offense, or the great nations. Suspension of driver's license penalty for a crime, loved. Large trigger additional sanctions crime and that if all packets death only a misdemeanor. Unlike the provisions in relation to the position of DUI in the direction of the nation. DUI attorney knows all the DUI laws, the only country. So it is very good in the sense speaks DUI lawyer immediately after his arrest, stay away from most of the impact. If the driver can be caught in DUI checkpoints on the road licenses are revoked. If the error in transit, these people are in high demand because of a drunk driver, it is more important. Asked the pilot, from the breath alcohol tests and inspections. If the driver refuses, blood test or breathing difficulties, law enforcement agencies, including the authority to proceed under the influence of alcohol to manage directly in the driver's driving. Control or DUI checkpoints to protect positions of police officers, the general requirements of each tram and to check that the driver may influence the direction of the excitation. This type of set up checkpoints to travel a few hours in the morning or at the weekend overnight when the possibility of impaired drivers generally. Experience driver search on the phone all alcoholic breath test and operation of a one-car conveyor belt. Again, a simple test is not available, the agenda requires sophisticated. The driver stopped and should work out of the car and then seriously consider. He is seriously considering an indication of the psychological stability and capacity. If the driver is not necessary to work the sober to catch your breath.

Wiley saw a flash of confusion cross Cassi’s brow. She appeared unsure if he was being goofy or serious. “Dish really is sick? Carver really asked you to join him on the ticket?” “Yes and no,” Wiley said. “Yes, Dish really is sick. And no, President Carver has not asked me to be his running mate—not yet. But he will.

All that exists, or remains, of Duchamp’s stay in Buenos Aires is a readymade. Though of course his whole life was a readymade, which was his way of appeasing fate and at the same time sending out signals of distress. As Calvin Tomkins writes: As a wedding present for his sister Suzanne and his close friend Jean Crotti, who were married in Paris on April 14, 1919, Duchamp instructed the couple by letter to hang a geometry book by strings on the balcony of their apartment so that the wind could “go through the book, choose its own problems, turn and tear out the pages.” Clearly, then, Duchamp wasn’t just playing chess in Buenos Aires. Tompkins continues: This Unhappy Readymade, as he called it, might strike some newlyweds as an oddly cheerless wedding gift, but Suzanne and Jean carried out Duchamp’s instructions in good spirit; they took a photograph of the open book dangling in midair (the only existing record of the work, which did not survive its exposure to the elements), and Suzanne later painted a picture of it called Le Readymade malheureux de Marcel. As Duchamp later told Cabanne, “It amused me to bring the idea of happy and unhappy into readymades, and then the rain, the wind, the pages flying, it was an amusing idea.” I take it back: all Duchamp did while he was in Buenos Aires was play chess. Yvonne, who was with him, got sick of all his play-science and left for France. According to Tompkins: Duchamp told one interviewer in later years that he had liked disparaging “the seriousness of a book full of principles,” and suggested to another that, in its exposure to the weather, “the treatise seriously got the facts of life.

At least,' I said, 'she has the virtue of sincerity.' 'Some virtue! They've all got it. They show off quite shamelessly for everybody—except themselves, of course—to see. In our trade, we say a succulent abscess or a magnificent case of eczema; similarly, they proudly exhibit their sick organs under all manner of garbs. A man who makes a plate or a shirt or a loaf of bread or anything our great great ancestors called a work of art, has no need to try to be sincere; all he can do is practice his craft to the best of his ability. But once he starts making useless things, how can he not be sincere? I'm using the word in the somewhat weird sense that you yourself seem to understand it.)

You are not really an animated corpse, are you?” Burnrath laughed. “No, our condition is more like a sickness in the blood that we can pass on to others. Our legends say it is magic spread from the first vampires, who were demons cast out of hell because they weren’t evil enough to suit his dark majesty.” His gaze turned serious as he leaned closer and caressed her cheek with his knuckles. “I assure you I am quite alive, my sweet.” She

Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Matt?” I ask. And I really want to know, because it’s unfathomable to me that he’s single. He’s handsome, and he’s so kind. He shakes a finger at me. “There’s a story there,” he says. I settle into the sofa a little deeper and turn so that my feet are pointed toward him, my legs extended. My toes almost touch his thigh. But then he lifts my feet and slides under them, scooting closer to me. “I was in love with a girl. For a long time.” “What happened to her?” I ask. He starts to tickle across my toes, and then his fingertips drag down the top of my foot. It’s a gentle sweep, and it feels so good that I don’t want him to stop. His fingers play absently as he starts to talk. “When I got the diagnosis,” he says, “she couldn’t deal with it.” “Cancer?” I ask. He nods. His fingers drag up and down my shin, and he slides around to stroke the back of my knee. I don’t stop him when his hand slides beneath my skirt, although I do tense up. He smiles when he finds the top of my thigh-highs, and he unclips the little fastener that attaches them to my garters. He repeats the action on the other side, his hands teasing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh as he frees the stocking and rolls it down. He pulls it all the way over my foot, and does the same with the other side. I am suddenly really glad I shaved my legs this morning. I wiggle my toes at him, and he starts to stroke me again. I don’t ever want him to stop. “This okay?” he asks. But he’s not looking at my face. He’s looking at my legs. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Keep talking. You got diagnosed…” “I got diagnosed, and the prognosis wasn’t good. I went through chemo and got a little better. But then I needed a second round. Things didn’t look good, and we were flat broke. I couldn’t work at the tattoo parlor anymore because my immune system was too weak, so I had no money coming in. I was poor and sick, and she didn’t love me enough to walk the path with me.” He shrugs, but I can tell he’s serious. “She cheated with my best friend.” He shrugs again. “And that’s the end of that sad story.” “You still love her?” I ask. I don’t breathe, waiting for his answer. He shakes his head and looks up. “I did love her for a long time. And I haven’t been looking for a relationship. I haven’t dated anyone since her. But I’m not in love with her anymore. I know that now.” “Why now?” I ask. He looks directly into my eyes and says, “Because I met you, and I feel really hopeful that you’ll want to go after something real with me. I know we just met and all, but I was serious about making you fall in love with me.” He laughs. “Then you hit me in the nose tonight, and I knew it was meant to be.” “What?” I have no idea what he’s talking about. “When my brother Logan met Emily, she punched him in the face. And when Pete and Reagan first started dating, she hit him in the nose.” He reaches up and touches his nose gently. “So, when you hit me tonight, I just knew it was meant to be.” He grins. “I hope you feel the same way, because I really want to see where this thing is going to go.” “So the women your brothers fell in love with, they committed bodily harm to them and that’s how you guys knew it was real?” “We kind of have a rule. If a woman punches you in the face, you have to marry her.” He laughs. “I didn’t punch you.” “Same difference,” he says. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Ingrid Seward Ingrid Seward is editor in chief of Majesty magazine and has been writing about the Royal Family for more than twenty years. She is acknowledged as one of the leading experts in the field and has written ten books on the subject. Her latest book, Diana: The Last Word, with Simone Simmons, will be published in paperback in 2007 by St. Martin’s Press. Although Diana assured me that she was happy and finally felt she had found a real purpose in her life, I could still sense some of her inner turmoil. When we were gossiping, she was relaxed, but when we moved on to more serious matters, such as her treatment by the media, her body language betrayed her anxiety. She wrung her hands and looked at me out of the corner of her starling blue eyes. “No one understands what it is like to be me,” she said. “Not my friends, not anyone.” She admitted, however, that there was a positive side to her unique situation in that she could use her high profile to bring attention to the causes she cared about, and this, she assured me, was what she was doing now and wanted to do in the future. But it was the darker, negative side that she had to live with every day. After all this time, she explained, it still upset her to read untruths about herself, and it was simply not in her nature to ignore it. “It makes me feel insecure, and it is difficult going out and meeting people when I imagine what they might have read about me that morning.” Diana had no idea how much she was loved. To the poor, the sick, the weak, and the vulnerable, she was a touchstone of hope. But her appeal extended much further than that. She had the ability to engage the affections of the young and the old from all walks of life. That summer, she wrote a birthday letter to my daughter that read, “I hope for your birthday you managed to get those grown-ups to give you a doll’s house and the cardigan and the pony hair brush you wanted. Don’t believe their excuses.” She wrote similar letters to thousands of other people and always in her own hand. The effect was magical. “Please don’t say anything unkind about her. She’s my friend,” our daughter instructed her father. That, I think, explains the extraordinary outpouring of grief we witnessed when Diana died. Her appeal was as simple as it was unique. Diana touched the child in each and every one of us. She wasn’t the “people’s princess”--she was the people’s friend. The words of a London cabbie still ring in my ears when I think about the week after her death. “We’ll never see the like of her again,” he said as he dropped me off near the ocean of flowers outside Buckingham Palace. He was right.

Seriously? You told him that?” Sophie bit her lip. “He sort of…pried it out of me. And then he wanted to go after Burke. I made him promise to stay away—well, not to kill him, but Sylvan went after him anyway.” “Really?” Olivia stared at her. “You mean he tracked down Burke after all these years and beat him up? That doesn’t sound like Sylvan to me.” “It’s not like him. At least, not as far as I can tell.” Sophie sighed unhappily. “I saw everything he did—he didn’t just beat Burke up—he broke his arm. A bad break. I could see the…the bones coming out of his skin all jagged and bloody…” The memory made her sick to her stomach and she shook her head, unable to continue. “A compound fracture, huh?” Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “That is bad.” “But that’s not all,” Sophie went on. “He also, uh, castrated him.” “He what?” Liv and Kat said together. “He did.” Sophie nodded. “With this little silver thingy. It was really small—it fit in the palm of his hand. But it burned Burke’s, uh, equipment right off. There was nothing left but a…but a scar.” She swallowed hard, willing her stomach to be steady. Considering the fact that she hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, she felt remarkably un-hungry. “I think I know what you’re talking about,” Liv said. “It’s mostly used for dermatological cases—when somebody needs a wart burned off or something. I never thought of burning off anything, uh, bigger.” “Well I guess Burke’s out of business.” There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Kat’s tone. “Permanently from the sound of it.” Liv laughed. “Good for Sylvan! I wish I could have seen it.” “I

Simone Simmons Simone Simmons works as an energy healer, helping her patients through empowering them rather than creating a dependency on the healer. She specializes in absent healing, mainly with sufferers of cancer and AIDS. She met Diana four years before her death when the Princess came to her for healing, and they became close friends. In 2005, Simone wrote a book titled Diana: The Last Word. The most important thing I did with Diana over the four years I knew her well, when we met almost every day and spent hours on the telephone, was to teach her how to heal. This enabled her to bring real comfort to the many hundreds and thousands of seriously ill people she met. Nothing was too lowly or demanding for her to tackle. She embraced people suffering from leprosy and AIDS. She cuddled the wounded and the sick. Diana was so committed to her work that she learned to channel her remarkable gift as a healer to aid the afflicted. It was while I was teaching her to meditate that I started to train her to channel her energies toward those she was in contact with. She picked this up very quickly, and once she got the knack of it, she used to practice on her sons, William and Harry, her friends, and the people she met through her charity work. She was a tactile person and told me that when she was a child, she would always snuggle up to whoever was reading her a bedtime story, as she liked the feeling of human contact. On her visits to hospices and hospitals, she would hold the people’s hands and look directly into their eyes so they could feel her love and energy flowing forth. She explained, “Nothing gives me greater joy than trying to help the most vulnerable members of society. It’s my one real goal in life--a destiny.

Shane lingered over a sickly sweet bit of doggerel comparing accepting Christ into one’s life with turning a pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern. “It sounds like God is seriously going to mutilate you.” Roselyn took the pamphlet from Shane, her eyes flickering over the text. “I always pictured it a bit more like a lobotomy than an evisceration.

That was when her mother got sick. Not-ever-getting-better sick. Sick with cancer – first of the liver, then of the everything. Seriously? Barry floats his organs in sixty per cent proof, and Paula’s liver goes? Clearly there was no God, no justice, nobody at the switchboard. The universe was a badly written soap opera where every plot twist strained credibility just that little bit further.

What’s up, Sam?” “What birthday?” he panted. “What?” “What birthday, Anna?” It took a while for her to absorb his fear. It took a while for the reason for his fear to dawn on her. “Fifteen,” Anna said in a whisper. “What’s the matter?” Emma asked, sensing her twin’s mood. “It doesn’t mean anything.” “It doesn’t,” Anna whispered. “You’re probably right,” Sam said. “Oh, my God,” Anna said. “Are we going to disappear?” “When were you born?” Sam asked. “What time of day?” The twins exchanged scared looks. “We don’t know.” “You know what, no one has blinked out since that first day, so it’s probably—” Emma disappeared. Anna screamed. The other older kids took notice, the littles, too. “Oh, my God!” Anna cried. “Emma. Emma. Oh, God!” She grabbed Sam’s hands and he held her tight. The prees, some of them, caught the fear. Mother Mary came over. “What’s going on? You’re scaring the kids. Where’s Emma?” Anna just kept saying, “Oh, my God,” and calling her sister’s name. “Where’s Emma?” Mary demanded again. “What’s going on?” Sam didn’t want to explain. Anna was hurting him with the pressure of her fingers digging into the backs of his hands. Anna’s eyes were huge, staring holes in him. “How far apart were you born?” Sam asked. Anna just stared in blank horror. Sam lowered his voice to an urgent whisper. “How far apart were you born, Anna?” “Six minutes,” she whispered. “Hold my hands, Sam,” she said. “Don’t let me go, Sam,” she said. “I won’t, Anna, I won’t let you go,” Sam said. “What’s going to happen, Sam?” “I don’t know, Anna.” “Will we go to where our mom and dad are?” “I don’t know, Anna." “Am I going to die?” “No, Anna. You’re not going to die.” “Don’t let go of me, Sam.” Mary was there now, a baby on her hip. John was there. The prees, some of them, watched with serious, worried looks on their faces. “I don’t want to die,” Anna repeated. “I…I don’t know what it’s like.” “It’s okay, Anna.” Anna smiled. “That was a nice date. When we went out.” “It was.” For a split second it was like Anna blurred. Too fast to be real. She blurred, and Sam could almost swear that she had smiled at him. And his fingers squeezed on nothing. For a terribly long time no one moved or said anything. The littles didn’t cry out. The older kids just stared. Sam’s fingertips still remembered the feel of Anna’s hands. He stared at the place where her face had been. He could still see her pleading eyes. Unable to stop himself, he reached a hand into the space she had occupied. Reaching for a face that was no longer there. Someone sobbed. Someone cried out, other voices then, the prees started crying. Sam felt sick. When his teacher had disappeared he hadn’t been expecting it. This time he had seen it coming, like a monster in a slow-motion nightmare. This time he had seen it coming, like standing rooted on the railroad tracks, unable to jump aside.