Tails Movie Quotes

Possibilities I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame for everything. I prefer exceptions. I prefer to leave early. I prefer talking to doctors about something else. I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations. I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries that can be celebrated every day. I prefer moralists who promise me nothing. I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind. I prefer the earth in civvies. I prefer conquered to conquering countries. I prefer having some reservations. I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. I prefer Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages. I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves. I prefer dogs with uncropped tails. I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark. I prefer desk drawers. I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here to many things I've also left unsaid. I prefer zeroes on the loose to those lined up behind a cipher. I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars. I prefer to knock on wood. I prefer not to ask how much longer and when. I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility that existence has its own reason for being.

Draft-dodging is what chicken-hawks do best. Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh (this capon claimed he had a cyst on his fat ass), Newt Gingrich, former Attorney General John Ashcroft—he received seven deferments to teach business education at Southwest Missouri State—pompous Bill O’Reilly, Jeb Bush, hey, throw in John Wayne—they were all draft-dodgers. Not a single one of these mouth-breathing, cowardly, and meretricious buffoons fought for his country. All plumped for deferments. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani? Did not serve. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Did not serve in the military. (He served the Mormon Church on a thirty-month mission to France.) Former Senator Fred Thompson? Did not serve. Former President Ronald Reagan? Due to poor eyesight, he served in a noncombat role making movies for the Army in southern California during WWII. He later seems to have confused his role as an actor playing a tail gunner with the real thing. Did Rahm Emanuel serve? Yes, he did during the Gulf War 1991—in the Israeli Army. John Boehner did not serve, not a fucking second. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY? Not a minute! Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-MS? Avoided the draft. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ—did not serve. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn, R-TX—did not serve. Former Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair John Ensign, R-NV? Did not serve. Jack Kemp? Dan Quayle? Never served a day. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. These are the jackasses that cherish memorial services and love to salute and adore hearing “Taps.

That not-knowing might seem awful but it's not that bad because she knew lots of things in the way nobody teaches a dog to wag his tail or a person to feel hungry; you're born and you just know. Just as nobody one day would teach her how to die: yet she'd surely die one day as if she'd learned the starring role by heart. For at the hour of death a person becomes a shining movie star, it's everyone's moment of glory and it's when as in choral chanting you hear the whooshing shrieks.

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan? 'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.' Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one? 'Ummm... no.' I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying. Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company. 'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said. 'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.' 'Flidais did it.' 'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.' I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there. 'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!' 'And every one of them in heat.' 'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!' He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering. 'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.' I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one step and stopped, looking up at me with a mournful expression, his ears drooping and a tiny whine escaping his snout. 'Only five?

Still, you can’t deny that, like goldfish and gummies, The Little Mermaid is fucking magical. I still feel sparkles in my stomach when I watch it. Despite Ariel wearing an ocean bra for most of that movie, and despite the fact that a man ultimately saves her from an evil plus-sized sea witch, and despite Ariel ditching her entire family for this man just because he’s a handsome prince, I gave in and showed The Little Mermaid to Mari on repeat. Those songs are also the shit. I’m a sucker for a drunk seagull best friend and since this is a safe space free of judgment: Ariel’s dad is kinda hot? I still find my feelings about King Triton confusing. He looks like Santa with abs and a tail.

A MAN HITS YOU ONCE and apologizes, and you think it will never happen again. But then you tell him you’re not sure you ever want a family, and he hits you once more. You tell yourself it’s understandable, what he did. You were sort of rude, the way you said it. You do want a family someday. You truly do. You’re just not sure how you’re going to manage it with your movies. But you should have been more clear. The next morning, he apologizes and brings you flowers. He gets down on his knees. The third time, it’s a disagreement about whether to go out to Romanoff’s or stay in. Which, you realize when he pushes you into the wall behind you, is actually about the image of your marriage to the public. The fourth time, it’s after you both lose at the Oscars. You are in a silk, emerald-green, one-shoulder dress. He’s in a tux with tails. He has too much to drink at the after-parties, trying to nurse his wounds. You’re in the front seat of the car in your driveway, about to go inside. He’s upset that he lost. You tell him it’s OK. He tells you that you don’t understand. You remind him that you lost, too. He says, “Yeah, but your parents are trash from Long Island. No one expects anything from you.” You know you shouldn’t, but you say, “I’m from Hell’s Kitchen, you asshole.

One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.

Do human software games have directors?" said Tetsuo. "Like movies?" "Yeah," I said, "if they're real pretentious, like Weapon Eternal." "Af be Hui was the director of A Tower of Sand," said Tetsuo. "She became well-known. High-status. She made seven other games and her games changed history a little bit. I think we should play more of her work." "To what purpose? Did she finally get the Ip Shkoy to calm down about the Constellation?" Ashley wriggled violently and Tetsuo crawled off of her tail. "Purpose?" said Tetsuo. "What is purpose? History is not a trash compactor where you lost something important. You have to spend some time there.

Nearby,one of the overexcited frat boys started wildly windmilling his arms. He had overbalanced and now tipped himself right over the wall.In a second, the diver with us had grabbed his ankle and hauled him back.The sharks, instead of being attracted by the flailing, like they are in every single scary underwater movie, took one sideways look and promptly turned tail,heading for the other side of the tank. They stayed there and didn't come back. The culprit's buddies pounded him when we climbed out of the water. "Smooth move, Ex-Lax," one muttered. "Way to be a buzzkill." "hey" was the red-faced retort, "at least I can say I scared off a shark.

Leaving Forever My son can look me level in the eyes now, and does, hard, when I tell him he cannot watch chainsaw murders at the midnight movie, that he must bend his mind to Biology, under this roof, in the clear light of a Tensor lamp. Outside, his friends throb with horsepower under the moon. He stands close, milk sour on his breath, gauging the heat of my conviction, eye-whites pink from his new contacts. He can see me better than before. And I can see myself in those insolent eyes, mostly head in the pupil's curve, closed in by the contours of his unwrinkled flesh. At the window he waves a thin arm and his buddies squall away in a glare of tail lights. I reach out my arm to his shoulder, but he shrugs free and shows me my father's narrow eyes, the trembling hand at my throat, the hard wall at the back of my skull, the raised fist framed in the bedroom window I had climbed through at three A.M. "If you hit me I'll leave forever," I said. But everything was fine in a few days, fine. "I would have come back," I said, "false teeth and all." Now, twice a year after the long drive, in the yellow light of the front porch, I breathe in my father's whiskey, ask for a shot, and see myself distorted in his thick glasses, the two of us grinning, as he holds me with both hands at arm's length.

We need to help her,” Bryce panted to Azriel. “I promise you, she’s fine,” Azriel countered, urging them further into the tunnel. Out of the impact zone, Bryce realized. The Wyrm must have sensed the sword’s approach, because it bucked against the bones and claws pinning it to the rock. It managed to nudge the undead creature back, but only for a heartbeat. Nesta raised her free hand again, and the undead creature slammed the Wyrm back into the ground. The Wyrm thrashed, desperate now. With a dancer’s grace, Nesta scaled the undead beast’s tail, running along the knobs of its spine like rocks in a stream. Getting to higher ground, to a better angle. The Wyrm shrieked, but Nesta had reached the undead beast’s white skull. And then she was jumping, sword arcing above her, then down, down— Straight into the head of the Wyrm. A shudder of silver fire rushed down the Wyrm. That cold, dry wind shivered through the caves again, death in its wake. The Wyrm slumped to the ground. The silence was worse than the sound. Azriel was instantly gone, wings tucking in tight as he rushed toward Nesta and the undead beast that still held the Wyrm in its grip. “Take it off,” Azriel ordered her. The female turned her head toward him with a smooth motion that Bryce had only seen from possessed dolls in horror movies. “Take it off,” Azriel snarled.

Lake Natron resided in northern Tanzania near an active volcano known as Ol Doinyo Lengai. It was part of the reason the lake had such unique characteristics. The mud had a curious dark grey color over where Jack had been set up for observation, and he noted that there was now an odd-looking mound of it to the right of one of the flamingo’s nests. He zoomed in further and further, peering at it, and then realized what he was actually seeing. The dragon had crouched down beside the nests and blended into the mud. From snout to tail, Jack calculated it had to be twelve to fourteen feet long. Its wings were folded against its back, which had small spines running down the length to a spiky tail. It had a fin with three prongs along the base of the skull and webbed feet tipped with sharp black talons. He estimated the dragon was about the size of a large hyena. It peered up at its prey with beady red eyes, its black forked tongue darting out every few seconds. Its shoulder muscles bunched and its hind legs tensed. Then it pounced. The dark grey dragon leapt onto one of flamingoes atop its nest and seized it by the throat. The bird squawked in distress and immediately beat its wings, trying to free itself. The others around them took to the skies in panic. The dragon slammed it into the mud and closed its jaws around the animal’s throat, blood spilling everywhere. The flamingo yelped out its last breaths and then finally stilled. The dragon dropped the limp carcass and sniffed the eggs before beginning to swallow them whole one at a time. “Holy shit,” Jack muttered. “Have we got a visual?” “Oh, yeah. Based on the size, the natives and the conservationists were right to be concerned. It can probably wipe out a serious number of wildlife in a short amount of time based on what I’m seeing. There’s only a handful of fauna that can survive in these conditions and it could make mincemeat out of them.” “Alright, so what’s the plan?” “They told me it’s very agile, which is why their attempts to capture it haven’t worked. I’m going to see if it responds to any of the usual stimuli. So far, they said it doesn’t appear to be aggressive.” “Copy that. Be careful, cowboy.” “Ten-four.” Jack glanced down at his utility belt and opened the pocket on his left side, withdrawing a thin silver whistle. He put it to his lips and blew for several seconds. Much like a dog whistle, Jack couldn’t hear anything. But the dragon’s head creaked around and those beady red eyes locked onto him. Jack lowered the whistle and licked his dry lips. “If I were in a movie, this would be the part where I said, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’” The dragon roared, its grey wings extending out from its body, and then flew straight at him.

His coat was white, his eyes as black as ink, his tail pale pink. He was cuter than the kind of mice you didn’t want in your house, an elegant little gentleman. If Amity were Cinderella, Snowball would morph into a magnificent stallion to pull her carriage. That’s the kind of special mouse he was. Now, after she turned on her TV and streamed an animated Disney movie that she had seen many times and that didn’t have a cat in it, she took Snowball out of his cage. She sat in an armchair, and for a while he ran up and down her arms and across her shoulders, pausing now and then to stare at her with what she believed was affection. Then he settled in her lap, on his back. She rubbed his tummy with one finger, and he relaxed into an ecstatic trance.

I should have felt something—a pang of sadness, a twinge of nostalgia. I did feel a peculiar sensation, like oceanic despair that—if I were in a movie—would be depicted superficially as me shaking my head slowly and shedding a tear. Zoom in on my sad, pretty, orphan face. Smash cut to a montage of my life's most meaningful moments: my first steps; Dad pushing me on a swing at sunset; Mom bathing me in the tub; grainy, swirling home video of my sixth birthday in the backyard garden, me blindfolded and twirling to pin the tail on the donkey. But the nostalgia didn't hit. These weren't my memories. I just felt a tingling in my hands, an eerie tingle, like when you nearly drop something precious off a balcony, but don't. My heart bumped up a little. I could drop it, I told myself—the house, this feeling. I had nothing left to lose.

Tina, who worked at the Hampshire Gazette and drank like a journalist in a movie, was loudly musing about getting her shadow altered to have a cat tail. “Guys love a tail,” Tina proclaimed, to protests by nearly everyone. Aimee thought Tina shouldn’t consider fetishes along a gender binary. Ian wanted it to be known that he thought it was disgusting, and that men did not want to molest animals. The artist agreed it was kind of hot, but his comic was about saucy mice. Charlie told Tina that maybe she had misunderstood what “getting some tail” actually meant. “Mermaids, right?” Vince asked, in such a clueless just-joined-the-conversation tone that it was hard to know if he was joking, or if he’d misheard the earlier part. It didn’t matter. Everyone laughed. It was funny either way. As Charlie poured more bourbon—with ice this time—she decided she was glad she’d come. She was just buzzed enough to feel an expansive warmth for the people in the room. See, she was fine being a normal person and doing normal-person things.

Living in this niche therefore requires both individual and collective creativity, intensive cooperation, a tolerance for strangers and crowds, and a degree of openness and trust that is entirely unmatched among our closest primate relatives. Compared to fiercely individualistic and relentlessly competitive chimpanzees, for instance, we are like goofy, tail-wagging puppies. We are almost painfully docile, desperately in need of affection and social contact, and wildly vulnerable to exploitation. As Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist and primatologist, notes, it is remarkable that hundreds of people will cram themselves shoulder to shoulder into a tiny airplane, obediently fasten their seat belts, eat their packets of stale crackers, watch movies and read magazines and chat politely with their neighbors, and then file peacefully off at the other end. If you packed a similar number of chimpanzees onto a plane, what you’d end up with at the other end is a long metal tube full of blood and dismembered body parts.6 Humans are powerful in groups precisely because we are weak as individuals, pathetically eager to connect with one another, and utterly dependent on the group for survival.

Where’s Sam?” Brianna asked. “He’s out. So is Edilio,” Dekka said. “You going to tell us what’s in the bag or do we have to guess?” Brianna stopped. She was disappointed. In her imagination the big revelation would have been to an admiring Sam Temple. He was the one she wanted to impress. Failing that, Edilio, who was generally warm and sweet to her. But she was tired and wanted to put the bag down. Also, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer. She climbed nimbly up to the top deck of the boat, grinned, and said, “Is it anyone’s birthday? Because I have a present.” “Breeze,” Dekka warned. So Brianna opened the bag. Dekka looked inside. “What is it?” So Brianna upended the bag. Dead lizards, broken eggs, and Drake’s head landed on the antiskid flooring. “Ahhhh!” Astrid screamed. “Ah, Jesus!” Dekka yelled. “I know,” Brianna said proudly. What lay there was something to strike envy into the heart of a horror movie special-effects expert. The two halves of Drake’s head had started to rejoin. But because the halves had been tossed wildly together, the process was very incomplete. Very. In fact at the moment the halves were backward, so that the left half was looking one direction and the right half another. Sections of neck and spine stuck both up and down. The part that held most of Drake’s mouth was stuffed with hair from the back of his head. And, somehow, bits of dead lizard were squeezed in between. But the dead lizards thus incorporated were no longer dead. And there was egg white smeared across one eye. The mouth was trying to speak and not managing it. A lizard tail whipped one eye—hard to tell if it was left or right—a parody of Drake’s whip arm. The three of them stared: Astrid with blue eyes wide, hand over mouth; Dekka with mouth wide open and brow furrowed; Brianna like a proud school kid showing off her art project. “Ta-da!” Brianna said.

THE IRIS OF THE EYE WAS TOO BIG TO HAVE BEEN FABRICATED AS A single rigid object. It had been built, beginning about nine hundred years ago, out of links that had been joined together into a chain; the two ends of the chain then connected to form a loop. The method would have seemed familiar to Rhys Aitken, who had used something like it to construct Izzy’s T3 torus. For him, or anyone else versed in the technological history of Old Earth, an equally useful metaphor would have been that it was a train, 157 kilometers long, made of 720 giant cars, with the nose of the locomotive joined to the tail of the caboose so that it formed a circular construct 50 kilometers in diameter. An even better analogy would have been to a roller coaster, since its purpose was to run loop-the-loops forever. The “track” on which the “train” ran was a circular groove in the iron frame of the Eye, lined with the sensors and magnets needed to supply electrodynamic suspension, so that the whole thing could spin without actually touching the Eye’s stationary frame. This was an essential design requirement given that the Great Chain had to move with a velocity of about five hundred meters per second in order to supply Earth-normal gravity to its inhabitants. Each of the links had approximately the footprint of a Manhattan city block on Old Earth. And their total number of 720 was loosely comparable to the number of such blocks that had once existed in the gridded part of Manhattan, depending on where you drew the boundaries—it was bigger than Midtown but smaller than Manhattan as a whole. Residents of the Great Chain were acutely aware of the comparison, to the point where they were mocked for having a “Manhattan complex” by residents of other habitats. They were forever freeze-framing Old Earth movies or zooming around in virtual-reality simulations of pre-Zero New York for clues as to how street and apartment living had worked in those days. They had taken as their patron saint Luisa, the eighth survivor on Cleft, a Manhattanite who had been too old to found her own race. Implicit in that was that the Great Chain—the GC, Chaintown, Chainhattan—was a place that people might move to when they wanted to separate themselves from the social environments of their home habitats, or indeed of their own races. Mixed-race people were more common there than anywhere else.

It was about how one time there was this guy who took his dog to the movies, right in, and sat the dog down in the next seat, and the movie was one called War and Peace. Anyhow, the dog sat up in the seat and kept awake, and it wasn’t long before the people near to him began to realize that this dog was paying attention to the screen. And the people realized that the dog seemed to understand everything and to be having a good time. It nodded when something good happened, and growled when there was something bad, and it even wagged its tail at the jokes and whimpered when things were sad, all like the things the people nearby were feeling. Well, this went on through the whole movie and when it was over, a big crowd gathered around the man and his dog and everybody said, “That’s amazing.” “What’s amazing?” the guy asked. “Your dog,” the people said. “Your dog wagged his tail at the jokes and growled at the danger and he really seemed to enjoy the movie.” “Yeah, he did enjoy it, didn’t he?” the man said. “And I agree, that is amazing. Because he didn’t like the book at all.

You’re brutal.” “Not brutal. Honest. So, she left and you…” Her head tilts to the side. “Just let her go. Just like that? You didn’t fight for her?” “This is real life. It isn’t some cheesy romance movie, Ariana.” “Obviously not. Future NHL star with up-and-coming songwriter. Best childhood friends turned high school enemies with a second chance at love. But no. You’re a colossal idiot. Not romance movie material at all. You let her go. Wuss move. If you were in a romance movie, you’d chase after her to the airport, or announce your love for her in front of the entire college. You wouldn’t run like a coward with your tail between your legs.” “She’s not flying anywhere.” “Totally missing the point, brother. If you don’t go after her, you’ve got zero chance. Personally, I think the odds are low even if you go after her, but a slim chance is better than no chance.” She glances around. “How about I stay another night? Before we have to go back to school on Monday.” “After that inspiring speech, how could I possibly say no?” I duck to avoid the second swat aimed at me.

They were standing in the middle of the arena, with Stardust tacked up and ready to go. Issie watched as Aunt Hester walked over to the mare and attached a long webbing lunge rein, clipping it on to the bit and running it over the mare’s poll and down the other side. “Before you get on her, let’s try putting Stardust through her paces on the lunge rein,” Hester said. “Run the stirrups up the leathers, will you, dear?” Issie slid the irons up on their leathers so that they didn’t bounce against the mare’s sides and then she stood back as Aunt Hester led Stardust into the centre of the arena. “Tsk tsk, walk on!” Hester clucked at the palomino to get her moving, and Stardust obeyed her commands, stepping out on the lunge at a brisk walk. The lunge rein was about three metres long. Hester held the end of the rein and her eyes followed the mare as she circled around her. “Trot on!” Hester called out and again Stardust immediately obliged, breaking into a trot on command. “She’s got the most lovely trot!” Issie called out to her aunt. “That’s nothing, wait until you see her canter,” Hester grinned. “Come on, Stardust, canter on!” Hester was right. Stardust had a canter that almost seemed to float above the ground–she was as graceful as a ballerina. Issie could see why Rupert had cast this mare in his movie. With her silver mane and tail flowing out behind her, she looked exactly like the sort of pony that belongs to a princess. Stardust shook her mane and arched her neck, as if she knew that she was the centre of attention as she circled round and round the arena. “And steady…walk on! And…halt!” Hester instructed. Stardust did just as she was asked, pulling up on the lunge and stopping in front of Hester in a perfect square halt. “Good girl, Stardust!

The muscles of Sue’s legs tensed, and the saddle lurched. One of the little girls screamed. And then the Tyrannosaur came down from the leap that had carried her over the besieged Wardens. Sue landed with one clawed foot on the street, and the other came down squarely on the Caddy’s hood, like a falcon descending upon a rabbit. There was an enormous sound of shrieking metal and breaking glass, and the saddle lurched wildly again. I leaned over to see what had happened. The car’s hood and engine block had been compacted into a two-foot-thick section of twisted metal. Even as I looked, Sue leaned over the car in a curiously birdlike movement, opened her enormous jaws, and ripped the roof off. Inside was Li Xian, dressed in a black shirt and trousers. The ghoul’s forehead had a nasty gash in it, and green-black blood had sheeted over one side of his face. His eyes were blank and a little vague, and I figured he’d clipped his head on the steering wheel or window when Sue brought his sliding car to an abrupt halt. Li Xian shook his head and then started to scramble out of the car. Sue roared again, and the sound must have terrified Li Xian, because all of his limbs jerked in spasm and he fell on his face to the street. Sue leaned down again, her jaws gaping, but the ghoul rolled under the car to get away from them. So Sue kicked the car, and sent it tumbling end over end three or four times down the street. The ghoul let out a scream and stared up at Sue in naked terror, covering his head with his arms. Sue ate him. Snap. Gulp. No more ghoul. “What’s with that?” Butters screamed, his voice high and frightened. “Just covering his head with his arms? Didn’t he see the lawyer in the movie?” “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,” I replied, turning Sue around. “Hang on!” I rode the dinosaur into the stream of zombies following in the Wardens’ wake and let her go to town. Sue chomped and stomped and smacked zombies fifty feet through the air with swinging blows of her snout. Her tail batted one particularly vile-looking zombie into the brick wall of the nearest building, and the zombie hit so hard and so squishily that it just stuck to the wall like a refrigerator magnet, arms and legs spread in a sprawl.

Netflix’s algorithm has a deeper (even if still quite limited) understanding of your tastes than Amazon’s, but ironically that doesn’t mean Amazon would be better off using it. Netflix’s business model depends on driving demand into the long tail of obscure movies and TV shows, which cost it little, and away from the blockbusters, which your subscription isn’t enough to pay for. Amazon has no such problem; although it’s well placed to take advantage of the long tail, it’s equally happy to sell you more expensive popular items, which also simplify its logistics. And we, as customers, are more willing to take a chance on an odd item if we have a subscription than if we have to pay for it separately.

You need to be careful to stay out of Charlie’s line of sight,” Steve said to me. “I want Charlie focusing only on me. If he changes focus and starts attacking you, it’s going to be too difficult for me to control the situation.” Right. Steve got no argument from me. Getting anywhere near those bone-crushing jaws was the furthest thing from my mind. I wasn’t keen on being down on the water with a huge saltwater crocodile trying to get me. I would have to totally rely on Steve to keep me safe. We stepped into the dinghy, which was moored in Charlie’s enclosure, secured front and back with ropes. Charlie came over immediately to investigate. It didn’t take much to encourage him to have a go at Steve. Steve grabbed a top-jaw rope. He worked on roping Charlie while the cameras rolled. Time and time again, Charlie hurled himself straight at Steve, a half ton of reptile flesh exploding up out of the water a few feet away from me. I tried to hang on precariously and keep the boat counterbalanced. I didn’t want Steve to lose his footing and topple in. Charlie was one angry crocodile. He would have loved nothing more than to get his teeth into Steve. As Charlie used his powerful tail to propel himself out of the water, he arched his neck and opened his jaws wide, whipping his head back and forth, snapping and gnashing. Steve carefully threw the top-jaw rope, but he didn’t actually want to snag Charlie. Then he would have had to get the rope off without stressing the croc, and that would have been tricky. The cameras rolled. Charlie lunged. I cowered. Steve continued to deftly toss the rope. Then, all of a sudden, Charlie swung at the rope instead of Steve, and the rope went right over Charlie’s top jaw. A perfect toss, provided that had been what Steve was trying to do. But it wasn’t. We had a roped croc on our hands that we really didn’t want. Steve immediately let the rope go slack. Charlie had it snagged in his teeth. Because of Steve’s quick thinking and prompt maneuvering, the rope came clear. We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve looked up at the cameras. “I think you’ve got it.” John agreed. “I think we do, mate.” The crew cheered. The shoot lasted several minutes, but in the boat, I wasn’t sure if it had been seconds or hours. Watching Steve work Charlie up close had been amazing--a huge, unpredictable animal with a complicated thought process, able to outwit its prey, an animal that had been on the planet for millions of years, yet Steve knew how to manipulate him and got some fantastic footage. To the applause of the crew, Steve got us both out of the boat. He gave me a big hug. He was happy. This was what he loved best, being able to interact and work with wildlife. Never before had anything like it been filmed in any format, much less on thirty-five-millimeter film for a movie theater. We accomplished the shot with the insurance underwriters none the wiser. Steve wanted to portray crocs as the powerful apex predators that they were, keeping everyone safe while he did it. Never once did he want it to appear as though he were dominating the crocodile, or showing off by being in close proximity to it. He wished for the crocodile to be the star of the show, not himself. I was proud of him that day. The shoot represented Steve Irwin at his best, his true colors, and his desire to make people understand how amazing these animals are, to be witnessed by audiences in movie theaters all over the world. We filmed many more sequences with crocs, and each time Steve performed professionally and perfected the shots. He was definitely in his element. With the live-croc footage behind us, the insurance people came on board, and we were finally able to sign a contract with MGM. We were to start filming in earnest. First stop: the Simpson Desert, with perentie lizards and fierce snakes.

Where are we? This isn’t the way to the barbershop.” “No, it’s not.” “Are you taking a roundabout way? Are you trying to shake Gregory in case he’s following?” She craned to glance behind them, wondering if one of the cars tailing them held her ex-boyfriend. Was he even now plotting to ram them and turn them into road kill? Would he drive them off a bridge? Open fire? Or… She slammed the door shut on her overactive imagination that ran through too many movie plots for a paranoid mind to handle. “We’re not actually going to the hair shop.” His words penetrated, and she diverted all her focus to Arik. His amber gaze briefly met her own, striking her anew with his good looks—and the smug smirk he wore. “What do you mean we’re not going there? Exactly where are you taking me?

Traditions are conditioned reflexes. Throughout Part 2 of this book, you will find suggestions for establishing family traditions that will trigger happy anticipation and leave lasting, cherished memories. Traditions around major holidays and minor holidays. Bedtime, bath-time, and mealtime traditions; sports and pastime traditions; birthday and anniversary traditions; charitable and educational traditions. If your family’s traditions coincide with others’ observances, such as celebrating Thanksgiving, you will still make those traditions unique to your family because of the personal nuances you add. Volunteering at the food bank on Thanksgiving morning, measuring and marking their heights on the door frame in the basement, Grandpa’s artistic carving of the turkey, and their uncle’s famous gravy are the traditions our kids salivated about when they were younger, and still do on their long plane rides home at the end of November each year. (By the way, our dog Lizzy has confirmed Pavlov’s observations; when the carving knife turns on, cue the saliva, tail wagging, and doggy squealing.) But don’t limit your family’s traditions to the big and obvious events like Thanksgiving. Weekly taco nights, family book club and movie nights, pajama walks, ice cream sundaes on Sundays, backyard football during halftime of TV games, pancakes in Mom and Dad’s bed on weekends, leaf fights in the fall, walks to the sledding hill on the season’s first snow, Chinese food on anniversaries, Indian food for big occasions, and balloons hanging from the ceiling around the breakfast table on birthday mornings. Be creative, even silly. Make a secret family noise together when you’re the only ones in the elevator. When you share a secret that “can’t leave this room,” everybody knows to reach up in the air and grab the imaginary tidbit before it can get away. Have a family comedy night or a talent show on each birthday. Make holiday cards from scratch. Celebrate major family events by writing personalized lyrics to an old song and karaoking your new composition together. There are two keys to establishing family traditions: repetition and anticipation. When you find something that brings out excitement and smiles in your kids, keep doing it. Not so often that it becomes mundane, but on a regular and predictable enough basis that it becomes an ingrained part of the family repertoire. And begin talking about the traditional event days ahead of time so by the time it finally happens, your kids are beside themselves with excitement. Anticipation can be as much fun as the tradition itself.

By the time I was done, I’d made a bear bus—Just like that famous cat bus from a certain famous anime movie. The face was shaped like a bear’s, and I’d also given it legs, ears, and a tail. It was super sturdy thanks to the bear magic, so that was two birds with one stone.

Brigit stopped to look in a shop window, checking she hadn’t picked up a tail. She’d seen this on telly numerous times. You look in the reflection and see if anyone is following you. It was proving trickier than she’d imagined. In a movie, the extras would all walk by in straight lines and some over-muscled Eastern European guy would stutter-step, look around in confusion and give himself away. In reality, actual people were proving to be much messier than that. She’d never noticed before but on a cold winter’s day, pretty much everyone was wearing a long black overcoat. It looked like a hitman convention back there.

Anyhow, I drove like my daddy was chasing me, which he did a few times when I was a teenager and I snuck out of the house, and made it to the airport. I stowed away on a plane, which looks a lot more fun in the movies by the way, and made it back home. Most guys would have stopped at that point but Dmitri, being stubborn, called a few times spouting off, so I had my number changed.” “But?” “But, he got my family’s number and started calling them. Which was fine. My aunts and stuff blocked him, but thing is, he showed up on my parents’ doorstep while I was out shopping. My parents are vacationing in Mexico, and so Aunt Cecily had to deal with him.” “They scared her.” She laughed. “Scare my Aunt Cecily? Not in this lifetime. She wields a mean right hook. Daddy’s sister is the one who taught me to fight dirty.” “Something had to have happened to get you banished.” “Well, she was kind of worried about me, on account of me being delicate and stuff.” He couldn’t help but snort. “Yeah, that was my reaction too, but that’s what I get for being the youngest in the family. Teena beat me into the world by like ten seconds. Anyhow, Aunt Cecily would have kept me around, except the goons trampled Mama’s flower garden during one of their kidnapping attempts.” “You got banished over flowers?” “No, I got banished before the goons did any more damage to Mama’s stuff. When my mother cries, Daddy gets a little upset, and when Daddy gets upset, things happen. Dealing with the disposal of bodies is always a pain, and law enforcement really frowns upon murder. And Daddy’s been trying so hard to stay out of jail. Anyhow, for the good of the family, it was strongly suggested I take an extended vacation in the hopes my absence would see Dmitri call off his paid thugs and give up on the whole marriage business.” “Except he realized you took off and followed you here.” A frown creased her brow. “Yeah, which is weird because I was certain I didn’t have a tail.” “Well, you’re going to have one now, twenty-four-seven, until I locate this Dmitri fellow and tell him to get the hell out of pride territory.” -Meena & Leo

Now, this is why the women in horror movies always died. Stupidity.

Nothing is definite, nothing precise. Evil is a free-floating force and can inhabit the most commonplace objects. Fear of the dark is essentially unspecific; like darkness itself, it is formless, engulfing, full of menace, full of death. The rest is child's play: naming the demons (Satan, Beelzebub, Hecate, Lucifer) and filling in the details (fangs, claws, bats' wings, goats' horns, toad's skin, dragon's tail) are ways of sanitising the nameless dread, of containing the uncontainable. In horror movies, no matter how brilliant the special effects, the moment where the monster is finally revealed is invariably a disappointment. The creature from the black lagoon or the morgue or the pit or outer space is always easier to live with, however dangerously, than the nebulous shapes created by the imagination running free. Once you can put a face on evil, it becomes, as Hannah Arendt said, banal.

hipped dino moved on two feet, they are Theropods. Those who walk on all fours are Sauropods. Allosaurus Outside of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Allosaurus is perhaps the scariest dinosaur. This meat-eating predator which preferred to snack on the stegosaurus can reach up to 30 feet long and weighs around two tons. The Allosaurus was first called Antrodemus by paleontologist Joseph Leidy. It got its new name, which translates to “different lizard”, in the mid-1970’s. These big-headed, sharp-toothed dinosaur walked on two legs, had two short arms and a large tail that helped it keep balanced. Due to its popularity, the Allosaurus has been depicted in books, documentaries, movies and video games such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, BBC’s The Ballad of Big Al, and Jurassic World – The Game. Ankylosaurus