Stuck In Jam Quotes

Half way down, he encountered Saphira, who had jammed her head and neck as far up the stair as she could, gouging the wood in her frenzy. Little one. She flicked out her tongue and caught him on the hand with its rough tip. He smiled. Then she arched her neck and tried to pull back, but to no avail. What's wrong? I'm stuck. You're... He could not help it;he laughed even though it hurt. The situation was too absurd.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember – if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be. Disappointment’ s cousin is Frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life – friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought. —Chogyam Trungpa

To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with foreboding. I wanted to see what was out there. All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods. I was more than ready for this.

No one motorist can cause a traffic jam. But no traffic jam can exist without individual motorists. We are stuck in traffic because we are the traffic. The ways we live our lives, the actions we take and don't take, can feed the systemic problems, and they can also change them...

All over America today people would be dragging themselves to work, stuck in traffic jams, wreathed in exhaust smoke. I was going for a walk in the woods.

It's not just the cheerleading thing I have a problem with, it's the whole jock enchilada. I'm all for a good game of basketball in teh driveway or a killer bike ride. But when there's tackling and grunting involved-- no thanks.

The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.

There was a fierce jam on the road to Gurgaon. Every five minutes the traffic would tremble - we'd move a foot - hope would rise - then the red lights would flash on the cars ahead of me, and we'd be stuck again. Eveyone honked. Every now and then, the various horns, each with its own pitch, blended into one continuous wail that sounded like a calf taken from its mother. Fumes filled the air. Wisps of blue exhaust glowed in front of every headlight; the exhaust grew so fat and thick it could not rise or escape, but spread horizontally, sluggish and glossy, making a kind of fog around us. Matches were continually being struck - the drivers of autorickshaws lit cigarettes, adding tobacco pollution to petrol pollution.

Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they described what it was like to be members of Prince's band. They'd sit down, and Prince would tell them what he wanted them to play, and they'd explain that they couldn't--they weren't quick enough, or good enough. And Prince would push them and push them until they mastered it, and then just when they were feeling pleased with themselves for accomplishing something they didn't know they had the capacity for, he'd tell them the dance steps he needed to accompany the music. This story has stuck with me, I think, because it seems like an encapsulation of the very best and most exciting kind of creative process.

Geoff Lye, a British environmental consultant, once told me that after the sudden and premature death of his friend and colleague David Watson, he would find himself stuck in traffic, not clenching his fists in agitation, as per usual, but wondering: “What would David have given to be caught in this traffic jam?

I did all kinds of reckless things that look great if you're driving a fast car. I pulled away form traffic lights with a roar, leaving the other drivers staring bitterly after me - that was called "burning them up" said Daniel. I drove out in front of other cars - Daniel said that was called "cutting them up" and while we were stuck in a traffic jam, I winked and smiled at attractive men in other cars - Daniel said that was called "acting like a brazen trollop.

For Peñalosa, TransMilenio was a crucial victory. “If, in a democracy, all citizens are equal before the law, then a bus with one hundred passengers should have the right to one hundred times more road space than a car carrying only one person. When a fast-moving bus passes cars stuck in a total traffic jam, it is an unconscious and extremely powerful symbol that shows that democracy is really at work, and it gives a whole new legitimacy to the state and social organization.

And the lesson is that when you get stuck or emotionally jammed up one of the ways to get yourself unclogged and flowing again is just to keep moving. Run. Walk. Jog. Write. Do the dishes. Or whatever. But don't sit around waiting for a flash from Heaven.

His name was Gerry Adamson. He stood half a foot taller than stocky Travis. “The highways are jammed. I was able to get a text to my cousin and he’s been stuck for two hours on the Turnpike. But now I can’t get anything else, the Internet connection keeps going out. We were about to get the car and take the Tappan Zee.” “The West side piers,” Travis said. “I ran into someone coming up here, he told me the only option left is by sea. They’re evacuating from the West side.” “By sea?” Corrina said. “How can we escape a tsunami by sea?

It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.

July" The figs we ate wrapped in bacon. The gelato we consumed greedily: coconut milk, clove, fresh pear. How we’d dump hot espresso on it just to watch it melt, licking our spoons clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat, the salt we’d suck off our fingers, the eggs we’d watch get beaten ’til they were a dizzying bright yellow, how their edges crisped in the pan. The pink salt blossom of prosciutto we pulled apart with our hands, melted on our eager tongues. The green herbs with goat cheese, the aged brie paired with a small pot of strawberry jam, the final sour cherry we kept politely pushing onto each other’s plate, saying, No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours. How I finally put an end to it, plucked it from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth. How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart. How good it felt: to want something and pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

Angie sometimes wondered if they’d still be married had she stuck with those damn yoga classes. God knows she tried. The crowded, windowless studios made her claustrophobic, and that mandatory loop of Eastern chimes was so annoying. Why the fuck couldn’t they play Pearl Jam? “I’m not cut out for this, Dustin,” she’d said after one blazingly sweaty Bikram session. “Serenity is overrated.” He didn’t get angry; that wasn’t his style. Instead he took up with one of the community’s freshly divorced, self-discovering female yoga fanatics that traveled in packs, ever-alert and lithe as meerkats.

These stories are real, the dreams are real, yet the dilemmas each person faces are founded on the presences that haunt from their past. We see again the twin mechanisms present in all relationships: projection and transference. Each of them, meeting any stranger, reflexively scans the data of history for clues, expectations, possibilities. This scanning mechanism is instantaneous, mostly unconscious, and then the lens of history slips over one's eyes. This refractive lens alters the reality of the other and brings to consciousness a necessarily distorted picture. Attached to that particular lens is a particular history, the dynamics, the script, the outcomes of which are part of the transferred package. Freud once humorously speculated that when a couple goes to bed there are six people jammed together because the spectral presences of the parents are unavoidable. One would have to add to this analogy the reminder that those parents also import their own relational complexes from their parents, so we quickly have fourteen underfoot, not to mention the persistence of even more ancestral influences. How could intimate relationships not be congested arenas? As shopworn as the idea seems, we cannot overemphasize the importance of primal imagoes playing a domineering role in our relational patterns. They may be unconscious, which grants them inordinate power, or we may flee them, but they are always present. Thus, for example, wherever the parent is stuck—such as Damon's mother who only equates sexuality with the perverse and the unappealing, and his father who stands de-potentiated and co-opted—so the child will feel similarly constrained or spend his or her life trying to break away (“anything but that”) and still be defined by someone else's journey. How could Damon not feel depressed, then, at his own stuckness, and how could he not approach intimacy with such debilitating ambivalence?

The door had to be forced open because of the astonishing accumulation of junk mail on the doormat. It jammed itself stuck on what he would later discover were fourteen identical, personally addressed invitations to apply for a credit card he already had, seventeen identical threatening letters for nonpayment of bills on a credit card he didn’t have, thirty-three identical letters saying that he personally had been specially selected as a man of taste and discrimination who knew what he wanted and where he was going in today’s sophisticated jet-setting world and would he therefore like to buy some grotty wallet, and also a dead tabby kitten.

If it was a video-file that I was trying to watch, then at the bottom of the screen there’d be that line, that bar that slowly fills itself in—twice: once in bold red and, at the same time, running ahead of that, in fainter grey; the fainter section, of course, has to remain in advance of the bold section, and of the cursor showing which part of the video you’re actually watching at a given moment; if the cursor and red section catch up, then buffering sets in again. Staring at this bar, losing myself in it just as with the circle, I was granted a small revelation: it dawned on me that what I was actually watching was nothing less than the skeleton, laid bare, of time or memory itself. Not our computers’ time and memory, but our own. This was its structure. We require experience to stay ahead, if only by a nose, of our consciousness of experience—if for no other reason than that the latter needs to make sense of the former, to (as Peyman would say) narrate it both to others and ourselves, and, for this purpose, has to be fed with a constant, unsorted supply of fresh sensations and events. But when the narrating cursor catches right up with the rendering one, when occurrences and situations don’t replenish themselves quickly enough for the awareness they sustain, when, no matter how fast they regenerate, they’re instantly devoured by a mouth too voracious to let anything gather or accrue unconsumed before it, then we find ourselves jammed, stuck in limbo: we can enjoy neither experience nor consciousness of it. Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything. The revelation pleased me. I decided I would start a dossier on buffering.

If loneliness or sadness or happiness could be expressed through food, loneliness would be basil. It’s not good for your stomach, dims your eyes, and turns your mind murky. If you pound basil and place a stone over it, scorpions swarm toward it. Happiness is saffron, from the crocus that blooms in the spring. Even if you add just a pinch to a dish, it adds an intense taste and a lingering scent. You can find it anywhere but you can’t get it at any time of the year. It’s good for your heart, and if you drop a little bit in your wine, you instantly become drunk from its heady perfume. The best saffron crumbles at the touch and instantaneously emits its fragrance. Sadness is a knobby cucumber, whose aroma you can detect from far away. It’s tough and hard to digest and makes you fall ill with a high fever. It’s porous, excellent at absorption, and sponges up spices, guaranteeing a lengthy period of preservation. Pickles are the best food you can make from cucumbers. You boil vinegar and pour it over the cucumbers, then season with salt and pepper. You enclose them in a sterilized glass jar, seal it, and store it in a dark and dry place. WON’S KITCHEN. I take off the sign hanging by the first-floor entryway. He designed it by hand and silk-screened it onto a metal plate. Early in the morning on the day of the opening party for the cooking school, he had me hang the sign myself. I was meaning to give it a really special name, he said, grinning, flashing his white teeth, but I thought Jeong Ji-won was the most special name in the world. He called my name again: Hey, Ji-won. He walked around the house calling my name over and over, mischievously — as if he were an Eskimo who believed that the soul became imprinted in the name when it was called — while I fried an egg, cautiously sprinkling grated Emmentaler, salt, pepper, taking care not to pop the yolk. I spread the white sun-dried tablecloth on the coffee table and set it with the fried egg, unsalted butter, blueberry jam, and a baguette I’d toasted in the oven. It was our favorite breakfast: simple, warm, sweet. As was his habit, he spread a thick layer of butter and jam on his baguette and dunked it into his coffee, and I plunked into my cup the teaspoon laced with jam, waiting for the sticky sweetness to melt into the hot, dark coffee. I still remember the sugary jam infusing the last drop of coffee and the moist crumbs of the baguette lingering at the roof of my mouth. And also his words, informing me that he wanted to design a new house that would contain the cooking school, his office, and our bedroom. Instead of replying, I picked up a firm red radish, sparkling with droplets of water, dabbed a little butter on it, dipped it in salt, and stuck it into my mouth. A crunch resonated from my mouth. Hoping the crunch sounded like, Yes, someday, I continued to eat it. Was that the reason I equated a fresh red radish with sprouting green tops, as small as a miniature apple, with the taste of love? But if I cut into it crosswise like an apple, I wouldn't find the constellation of seeds.

Suggestions to Develop Self-Help Skills Self-help skills improve along with sensory processing. The following suggestions may make your child’s life easier—and yours, too! DRESSING • Buy or make a “dressing board” with a variety of snaps, zippers, buttons and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, buckles and shoelaces. • Provide things that are not her own clothes for the child to zip, button, and fasten, such as sleeping bags, backpacks, handbags, coin purses, lunch boxes, doll clothes, suitcases, and cosmetic cases. • Provide alluring dress-up clothes with zippers, buttons, buckles, and snaps. Oversized clothes are easiest to put on and take off. • Eliminate unnecessary choices in your child’s bureau and closet. Clothes that are inappropriate for the season and that jam the drawers are sources of frustration. • Put large hooks inside closet doors at the child’s eye level so he can hang up his own coat and pajamas. (Attach loops to coats and pajamas on the outside so they won’t irritate the skin.) • Supply cellophane bags for the child to slip her feet into before pulling on boots. The cellophane prevents shoes from getting stuck and makes the job much easier. • Let your child choose what to wear. If she gets overheated easily, let her go outdoors wearing several loose layers rather than a coat. If he complains that new clothes are stiff or scratchy, let him wear soft, worn clothes, even if they’re unfashionable. • Comfort is what matters. • Set out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. Encourage the child to dress himself. Allow for extra time, and be available to help. If necessary, help him into clothes but let him do the finishing touch: Start the coat zipper but let him zip it up, or button all but one of his buttons. Keep a stool handy so the child can see herself in the bathroom mirror. On the sink, keep a kid-sized hairbrush and toothbrush within arm’s reach. Even if she resists brushing teeth and hair, be firm. Some things in life are nonnegotiable.

She doesn’t like alcohol in cakes. That’s Katie’s thing. And she isn’t into gluten-free or, you know, polenta. She doesn’t think it’s right for cake. Anyway, it’s what poor people eat.’ My dad winces, in spite of his best Dr Seuss face. ‘In developing countries like Mexico, I mean. You have to be middle-class to afford it here.’ That didn’t help. When you get stuck, stick to the facts – that’s what Dad always tells me. ‘She’d like a Victoria sponge with lots of cream and some fruit. Raspberries and jam. Something simple.’ He looks disappointed. I can see he wanted a statement of a cake. Like his love.

Writing makes everything better. It's tied to how our brains are wired. We are creatures of habit, evolved animals who perceive stimuli, run it through our limbic system, attach significance to it, and then respond. Stimulus—significance—response. Here's an example. Let's say you're stuck in traffic. The traffic jam is a stimulus. It's the job of your amygdala, an almond-shaped glob of neurons housed deep in your brain, to process stimuli, organizing events into emotional memories. Your amygdala codes this particular experience with frustration, which is the significance you attach to it. You respond to this emotion by swearing and mentally squishing the heads of the people in the cars around you. This swearing and mental-head-squishing response becomes your established action pattern any time you perceive a stimulus that your amygdala has classified as frustrating. Stimulus—significance—response. Traffic jam—frustration—mental head squishing.

If you’re like most of us, then the reason your choosing process is stuck isn’t about your knowledge—it’s about the length of your list and your relationship with all those options. We can most easily make this point clear by looking at how people buy jam.

Americans collectively spend over one hundred billion hours stuck in traffic jams, a testament to the fact that road pricing is not yet widely adopted. By some estimates, the revenues from optimal congestion pricing would be enough to eliminate all state taxes in California.

Imagine that you are on your way home. You know without doubt that you will arrive. You look ahead and notice there is a massive traffic jam. You are stuck. There is no way out but through. All you can do is resign yourself to waiting. This is withdrawal.

Like all economists, Keynes expected British employment to recover to ‘normal’ (as measured by pre-war standards) when prices ‘settled down’ in 1922. But unemployment remained obstinately stuck at above 10%. It was its failure to come down much below this rate for the rest of the 1920s which alerted Keynes to the possibility that the employment costs of a savage deflation might be more than ‘transitional’, with the economy remaining ‘jammed’ in a low-employment trap.

When the psoas muscle is chronically tense, it constantly sends the message: “We are in danger; we are under persistent threat” to the mind. The mind attempts to determine the source of this threat but can’t locate it. It sends a signal to the body that the environment is calm and that the muscle can relax. However, the energy that got “stuck” in the psoas muscle in the moment of shock is too strong and simply can’t just go away and allow the muscle to relax. The muscle becomes “jammed” in tension and continues to send the signal: “We are in danger; we need to stay alert” to the mind. The mind has to listen to this message again and again, which forces it to keep monitoring the environment for danger. As a result, the person develops groundless anxiety; it seems to them that something is threatening them, but they can’t identify what that threat is.

At the club, nicknames stuck like dog hair to merino wool. A wiry, anxious weekend player called Phil who’d once missed a crucial putt when he was distracted by the call of a skein of Canada geese overhead was thereafter known to all as ‘Quack’. Carl Marchwell, who was infamous for telling all of his playing companions in great detail about his week and lacked the skill of self-editing, hadn’t been called ‘Carl’ by anybody at the club for years; he was always ‘Jackanory’. Ian Welcombe, who liked to bet big money on foursome matches but had never, to anybody’s knowledge, actually won, was ‘The Bank’. Jill, Ian’s wife – one of the few female members of the club who actually seemed to enjoy the game – was not ‘Jill’ but ‘Mrs Bank’. Recently I’d overheard people talking about somebody called ‘Jam Jar’ but I was yet to find out who that was.

Working out new ideas, concepts, hypotheses in a methodical, linear fashion is an indispensable part of human growth and becoming. But if all we have is the thinking mind—no openness to the heart, to the body’s knowing, to awareness itself—the mind tends to loop on itself, driving endless circles on well-worn lanes. We get stuck in the mind’s traffic jams and can never find an exit that will take us to the beach.

Americans collectively spend over one hundred billion hours stuck in traffic jams, a testament to the fact that road pricing is not yet widely adopted.

Stuck I sit at the door of of your heart and hard as I try, I can't walk in. Studying with the yoga masters, I've stretched my eight limbs with Ashtanga, and still get jammed at the portal. I've shvitzed for hours in a Swedish sauna, shedding pounds like sheep at a shearing, and still can't squeeze through. Believing all I would need is magic, I've dislocated my shoulders like Houdini, but I still get stuck at the door. I mused that maybe it's my bloated ego that gets me stuck. So I gave up bits of myself in small sacrifices, each bringing me closer, and now I fit snugly inside you, perfectly at peace like a swaddled Russian doll.

The reason is this. Any schemes – such as ‘think of symmetry laws’, or ‘put the information in mathematical form’, or ‘guess equations’ – are known to everybody now, and they are all tried all the time. When you are stuck, the answer cannot be one of these, because you will have tried these right away. There must be another way next time. Each time we get into this log-jam of too much trouble, too many problems, it is because the methods that we are using are just like the ones we have used before. The next scheme, the new discovery, is going to be made in a completely different way. So history does not help us much.

Nonetheless, there is something mysterious about social networks. We live surrounded by them, but usually cannot see more than one step beyond the people we are directly connected to, if that. It is like being stuck in a traffic jam surrounded by cars and trucks. The traffic helicopter can see beyond our immediate surroundings and suggest routes that might extricate us. Network analysis is like that helicopter. It allows us to see beyond our immediate circle.

Meanwhile, Singapore has implemented an Electronic Road Pricing System that has virtually eliminated congestion. Americans collectively spend over one hundred billion hours stuck in traffic jams, a testament to the fact that road pricing is not yet widely adopted.

I’m sorry.” “I don’t think that’s something you have to be sorry for. I haven’t done it. I’ve had two hundred years and I haven’t.” “Why not?” asked Halim. “It was easier to be a toad,” said Toadling. “I thought perhaps I could, one day, but then I was a toad for a long time, and as long as I was a toad, I didn’t have to worry about it. And then no one could get in, so it didn’t matter anymore.” “Didn’t matter? But you couldn’t leave here, could you?” “No. But I’d made a mess of the gift. I didn’t give it to her properly. So it was only right I had to stay.” “You think you had to pay for two hundred years for a momentary slip of the tongue?” Toadling was giggling at him. She could feel the words slipping down inside her, into a place under her breastbone. The other words rearranged themselves to make space. “There’s a very high wall,” said Halim, “according to the imams, called al-A’raf. Between hell and paradise. And if you haven’t been good enough or evil enough to go to one place or the other, you live in this wall. But even those people will eventually enter paradise, because God is merciful.” He jammed his chin onto his fist and gazed at Toadling. “It seems like you’ve been stuck in that wall for quite a long time now…That’s all the theology I’ve got in me, incidentally, so I hope it’s useful.” Toadling sighed. “I would like to climb down from that wall,” she admitted.

The starting point of transforming your thinking is to change your explanatory style—the way you interpret your experience to yourself. Two people could be driving to work, and both could be stuck in a traffic jam. One person could be angry, frustrated, and pounding the steering wheel. The other person could say, “This is an opportunity to think, listen to an educational audio program, and get caught up with the day.” Two people, same situation: different explanatory style. When you start explaining things to yourself in a positive way, you start to feel positive about them.

You’re not expecting us to jump to that?” I asked, worried. “I’m not expecting anything. We’re doing it.” With that, Erica sprang over the railing onto the whale skeleton. She sailed through the air and landed perfectly atop the skull with an agility and finesse I knew I didn’t have in the slightest. I looked around for another way out. The only other exit was blocked by the government agent, who was digging himself out of the dinosaur toys. He had a livid glare in his eye and a plesiosaur jammed in his ear. The SPYDER agents appeared to have lost us, but the government agent was threatening enough. I jumped over the railing. To my surprise, I landed deftly atop the whale skull. Only, the perfect balance thing was completely beyond me. I pitched forward and nearly took a header into the piranha display below. Erica caught me at the last instant and steadied me, but my weight had thrown her off balance too. She now pitched forward herself and had no choice but to leap from the skull and catch onto the lip of the model humpback whale. The cables supporting it strained under the sudden jolt. One snapped free from the ceiling and the whale shifted wildly. Erica swung from the whale’s lip, launched herself into a backflip, and stuck the landing in the middle of the hall. The tourists gathered there all applauded, impressed. As though they figured the Smithsonian had started hiring circus performers to spice things up. Erica looked to me expectantly. So did all the tourists. Now I had potential death and performance anxiety to deal with. Knowing I couldn’t possibly do what Erica had just done, I carefully shimmied down the metal framework that supported the whale skeleton—and still biffed the dismount. I fell backward and landed on my butt atop a large sea turtle. The tourists groaned, like I had let them down.

The bottom of the bathtub was grimy and sticky because the water took forever to drain. The hot water made me feel cold and then warm. Soaped up my chest and stomach and face. Got soap in my eye. Stung. Imagined the rabbits the Johnson & Johnson people tortured Clockwork Orange-style with soap just so they knew you couldn’t go blind that way. Soaped up my pussy, legs, and ass. Wished I had a cock. I had to rub myself on stuff. Bet it would be fun to jerk off in the shower. Took the razor and put my leg up on the side of the tub, shaved, and then shaved the other one. My sinuses started to clear. I blew snot out of my nose. Shaved the outside of my pussy, covered my clit with a finger and shaved inside at the top where there was always hair and inside the lips and then all the way through the middle and then all inside the ass. Kept feeling with my fingers for those stubborn hairs I had to keep going over. The water felt like someone spitting at me. The bikini area was a bitch. Ingrown hairs or razor burn. Those lucky bitches back in the seventies could let it all grow out into a giant bush. Sometimes the present seemed just as dumb as the past if you imagined what it would sound like in the future: In ancient times, the female would rub a bladed tool over her genitalia to slice the hair growing from the body even with the surface of the skin, from where it would grow again. I plugged in the laptop and brought it from the coffee table to the couch to watch porn. The way they characterized the women like different breeds. Black bitch. White cunt. Asian slut. The line of spit from the cock to the woman’s mouth. A woman blew two guys. When she took them both in her mouth at the same time, the cocks touched. I wondered if that made the men feel a little gay. A gangbang scene. The men looked pathetic, jerking off as they waited their turn, and then this one dude rubbed his cock in the woman’s hair and then wrapped some of her hair around his cock and jerked off with it. Men are so weird. A girl swallowed and then opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue so you could see she really did swallow it all. An asshole, a wrinkled, gaping hole spitting back the come like an awful little volcano, and you thought to yourself, Why would anyone on Earth want to see that? And yet there it was. Someone on Earth wanted to see just that. The men were bullies. Pulling, slapping, ordering the women around. I put the throw pillow underneath me and started to fuck it. I liked watching the scenes where the women really didn’t look like they wanted it. Like they were just doing it for the money or drugs or whatever. When I came, I came wanting it all. In one way or another, I wanted to be the men, and I wanted to hurt the woman. I wanted to hurt like the woman, and I wanted to hate the men for hurting me. I wanted to be the man at home jerking off wanting to be the man wanting to hurt the woman. And then I wanted to hurt more. Isn’t it a little sad we can’t do a little of everything there is to do? I’ll never know what it feels like to jam my cock into a tight little asshole.

Until you are stuck in an Indian traffic jam of speeding cars, rickshaws, scooters, and occasional livestock, you can never really know what it’s like.

MOO Moo. MOO: One morning in 2012, commuters in Rayburn, Pennsylvania, got stuck in a traffic jam when a cow and a bull decided to have “relations” in the middle of a busy intersection. Police tried shooing them away, but, according to reports, “That just got the bull mad and it started to escalate.” Game officials arrived and steered the couple into a private trailer. MOO: In 2012 a cow named Sadhana and her “bullfriend” got married in a lavish wedding ceremony in Guradia, India. More than 1,500 guests attended. Reason for the wedding: Sadhana’s owners were unable to have children, so without a daughter to marry off, the well-to-do couple married off their cow. MOO: An 18-year-old thief wearing a full-body cow costume stole 26 gallons of milk from a Walmart in Garrisonville, Virginia, in 2011. Witnesses recalled seeing him exit the store “on all fours.” Hours later police apprehended the human cow “skipping down the sidewalk” in front of a nearby McDonald’s.

It was the fire of justice that was burning through Townhouse now. The fire of justice that appeases the injured spirit and sets the record straight. The third blow was an uppercut that put me flat on the pavement. It was a thing of beauty, I tell you. Townhouse took two steps back, heaving a little from the exertion, the sweat running down his forehead. Then he took another step back like he needed to, like he was worried that if he were any closer, he would hit me again and again, and might not be able to stop. I gave him the friendly wave of one crying uncle. Then being careful to take my time so the blood wouldn’t rush from my head, I got back on my feet. —That’s the stuff, I said with a smile, after spitting some blood on the sidewalk. —Now we’re square, said Townhouse. —Now we’re square, I agreed, and I stuck out my hand. Townhouse stared at it for a moment. Then he took it in a firm grip and looked me eye to eye—like we were the presidents of two nations who had just signed an armistice after generations of discord. At that moment, we were both towering over the boys, and they knew it. You could tell from the expressions of respect on the faces of Otis and the teens, and the expression of dejection on the face of Maurice. I felt bad for him. Not man enough to be a man, or child enough to be a child, not black enough to be black, or white enough to be white, Maurice just couldn’t seem to find his place in the world. It made me want to tussle his hair and assure him that one day everything was going to be all right. But it was time to move along. Letting go of Townhouse’s hand, I gave him a tip of the hat. —See you round, pardner, I said. —Sure, said Townhouse. I’d felt pretty good when I settled the scores with the cowboy and Ackerly, knowing that I was playing some small role in balancing the scales of justice. But those feelings were nothing compared to the satisfaction I felt after letting Townhouse settle his score with me. Sister Agnes had always said that good deeds can be habit forming. And I guess she was right, because having given Sally’s jam to the kids at St. Nick’s, as I was about to leave Townhouse’s stoop I found myself turning back. —Hey, Maurice, I called. He looked up with the same expression of dejection, but with a touch of uncertainty too. —See that baby-blue Studebaker over there? —Yeah? —She’s all yours. Then I tossed him the keys. I would have loved to see the look on his face when he caught them. But I had already turned away and was striding down the middle of 126th Street with the sun at my back, thinking: Harrison Hewett, here I come.

than chasing my boss’s job, I will accept that and I will move forward.” Now you’re on a whole different kind of trajectory. Before, what was right, desirable, and worthy of pursuit was something narrow and concrete. But you became stuck there, tightly jammed and unhappy. So you let go. You make the necessary sacrifice, and allow a whole new world of possibility, hidden from you because of your previous ambition, to reveal itself. And there’s a lot there. What would your life look like, if it were better? What would Life Itself look like? What does “better” even mean? You don’t know. And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, exactly, right away, because you will start to slowly see what is “better,” once you have truly decided to want it. You will start to perceive what remained hidden from you by your presuppositions and preconceptions—by the previous mechanisms of your vision. You will begin to learn.

Davy Keith, don't you know that it is very wrong of you to be eating that jam, when you were told never to meddle with anything in that closet?" "Yes, I knew it was wrong," admitted Davy uncomfortably, "but plum jam is awful nice, Anne. I just peeped in and it looked so good I thought I'd take just a weeny taste. I stuck my finger in. . ." Anne groaned. . ."and licked it clean. And it was so much gooder than I'd ever thought that I got a spoon and just sailed in." Anne gave him such a serious lecture on the sin of stealing plum jam that Davy became conscience stricken and promised with repentant kisses never to do it again. "Anyhow, there'll be plenty of jam in heaven, that's one comfort," he said complacently. Anne nipped a smile in the bud. "Perhaps there will. . .if we want it," she said, "But what makes you think so?" "Why, it's in the catechism," said Davy. "Oh, no, there is nothing like that in the catechism, Davy." "But I tell you there is," persisted Davy. "It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. `Why should we love God?' It says, `Because He makes preserves, and redeems us.' Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam." "I must get a drink of water," said Anne hastily. When she came back it cost her some time and trouble to explain to Davy that a certain comma in the said catechism question made a great deal of difference in the meaning.

It was a Thompson submachine gun. She calmly lowered the seat back in place. She stuck the stock under her left armpit and clutched the front handle. “Jesus!” I yelled. “Did you always have that there?” “Yes!” “What the hell were you waiting for?” “I was waiting until we got into a jam,” she turned and hefted the Tommy gun rearward. “Cover your ears!

ALL OF US ARE STUCK IN ONE HUGE TRAFFIC JAM WE CONTROL OUR CAR AND NOTHING BEYOND एक बड़े से ट्रैफिक जाम में फंसे हैं हम एक कार के दायरे में ही सिमटा है दम

You’re strangely prepared.” “Not for this, no. I just heard condoms were really good for opening a stuck jar. You just pop it on top and instant hand grip. That’s the only reason I’ve been carrying one around.” “You… often come across bottles you can’t open?” “Far too much. And the lube was for greasing up… stuff, obviously. I didn’t at all plan to have you take me to an amusement park and fuck me in the car or something weird,” I say as I tear open the packet of lube. After I squirt some onto my hand, he takes it from me. “I’m surprised you weren’t planning for something R-rated on the carousel or something after dark.” “Ooh, that’s a good one. Especially with that music they play, it’d be the best sex jam ever.” “Would it?” he asks suspiciously. “Of course,” I say, unable to keep the grin off my face. “If I had my phone, I’d play it and you could fuck me to the beat.” “I don’t think carousel songs have a ‘fucking beat,’ but I could be wrong.

Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town" I seem to recognize your face Haunting, familiar, yet I can't seem to place it Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name Lifetimes are catching up with me All these changes taking place I wish I'd seen the place But no one's ever taken me Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away I swear I recognize your breath Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising Me you wouldn't recall for I'm not my former It's hard when you're stuck upon the shelf I changed by not changing at all Small town predicts my fate Perhaps that's what no one wants to see I just wanna scream "Hello!" My God it's been so long Never dreamed you'd return But now here you are, and here I am Hearts and thoughts they fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away Hearts and thoughts they fade fade away Pearl Jam, Vs. (1993)

And because of moments like these, the world jams up. People let themselves be dictated by their own personal protocols that they’ve established out of absurdity, their habits so ingrained, their perspectives so skewed that they’re addicted to their own logic, and no one is ever willing to step to one side, cede to other ways of looking at things and proceed in new directions; even when reality demands it, even in the absence of alternatives, people would prefer to be stuck than to have to step aside. Imagine where we could be by now. Imagine humanity moving forward, like a wave, never crashing on the shore. Imagine it.

shoehorning my car into the traffic jam that is the elementary school car-pool line.

sometimes I struggle to get the thoughts out of my head because they are stuck behind one another like cars in a traffic jam.

I can see the need for a new male archetype, but is he sexy and thrilling? He’s practical, convenient, like a washing machine. Men need a vision of masculinity that is not just predicated on the thrilling highlights of an outdated romantic narrative – it needs to celebrate the true everyday happiness that comes from stable intimate relationships and a meaningful role in the here and now. I have no unconscious emotion churning away when I think of new man. He seems like a good idea but a tough sell – like trying to sell a car on the strength of how nice it is, when you’re stuck in a traffic jam.

I figured he’d gotten caught up in the same traffic jam we had, which in Ponchatoula meant that we got stuck behind one tractor while there was another tractor coming in the other lane and the two streams of cars and trucks behind the tractors couldn’t figure out who had the right of way to pass on a blind curve, so we all just kinda poked along for about fifteen minutes until the tractors and all the lines of cars got past one another and we could move on about our lives. The part of that shit I never understand is why the old fart on the tractor don’t just pull off and drive on the shoulder for a minute. I mean, it’s a tractor, fo god’s sake—it’s designed to drive through grass and dirt. Ain’t like riding on the shoulder of the highway is gonna screw up its suspension.

(We got stuck in one traffic jam for fifteen minutes, which turned out to have been caused by tourons stopping in the middle of the road to see a common white-tailed deer.)

houses are pretty illiquid assets - which means they are hard to sell quickly when you are in a financial jam. House prices are ‘sticky’ on the way down because sellers hate to cut the asking price in a downturn; the result is a glut of unsold properties and people who would otherwise move stuck looking at their For Sale signs. That in turn means that home ownership can tend to reduce labour mobility, thereby slowing down recovery.