Ticking Boxes Quotes

And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now. I can’t stop thinking about you.

And you taught me what this feels like. And then how it feels to lose it. And you showed me who I wanted. And then who I wasn’t. And you ticked every box. And then drew a line. And you weren’t mine to begin with. And then not to end with. And you looked like everything I wanted. And then became something I hated. And you get thought of every day. And then not in a good way. And you let me leave. And then wish I’d stayed. And you almost killed me. But I didn’t die.

I was conceived because it would be good for my House to have an heir and because my parents' genes ticked the right set of boxes. You were probably conceived because your parents loved each other." "According to our mother," Bern said, "he was conceived because she was too wasted to remember a rubber." Mad Rogan stopped chewing. "I was conceived because my mother skipped bail. Her boyfriend at the time threatened to call the cops on her so she had to do something to keep him from doing it," Bern said helpfully. Awesome. Just the right kind of information to share. "Aunt Giselea isn't the best mother," I said. "There's one in every family.

No,” she said. “You are not Patrick Swayze. I am not Demi Moore.” She touched a switch on the little box and it started ticking. “And this sure as hell isn't pottery class.

Time and space were, from Death's point of view, merely things that he'd heard described. When it came to Death, they ticked the box marked Not Applicable. It might help to think of the universe as a rubber sheet, or perhaps not.

Finnie kicked a packet of washing powder. "Why am I surrounded by morons? Did I tick the wrong bloody box for room service? I wanted scrambled eggs on toast, but they delivered a family-sized bag of idiots!

In truth, we will only perform any action a certain number of times, and to know that can never be helpful. There is, in my opinion, no use in demanding to know the number, in demanding to know upon waking the number of boxes to be ticked off every single day. After all, why would it help to be shown the mathematics of things, when instead we could simply imagine that whatever time we have is limitless.

Why do you want me?" I asked, suppressing the trembling of my voice. "I’m strange, definitely not perfect, and fucked up. Actually, a lot of the latter.” “Perfect is boring and overrated.” He smiled that lopsided grin of his that made my lower abdomen twist and curl with delicious desire. “I’m looking for sexy, fun, kind, and honest. And you tick all the right boxes, Brooke.

I wonder if we should add a box to tick off -- Reason for travel: creepy planetary conquest... no, I suppose not.

[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.

Yet I was wound up. I tick. I exist. I am poised eighteen inches over the black rivets you are reading, I am in your place, I am shut in a bone box and trying to fasten myself on the white paper. The rivets join us together and yet for all the passion we share nothing but our sense of division.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF STRINGS And you taught me what this feels like. And then how it feels to lose it. And you showed me who I wanted. And then who I wasn’t. And you ticked every box. And then drew a line. And you weren’t mine to begin with. And then not to end with. And you looked like everything I wanted. And then became something I hated. And you get thought of every day. And then not in a good way. And you let me leave. And then wish I’d stayed. And you almost killed me. But I didn’t die.

We all have one life and we can choose how we want to live it. It's important you realize that, no matter what anyone else says or how people may try to influence things, it's ultimately down to you... only YOU can live for you. You can't live in someone else's shadow or permanently try to please someone else, then what do you have to show for it? You won't have any of your own accomplishments, you won't reach your personal goals, and you'll only be ticking someone else's boxes for them. If there is something in life that you really want to do, then do it. You'll only ever live this day once in your lifetime, so start now.

So he doesn’t tick any of my usual boxes, but there’s something in the way he looks at me. In his eyes, there’s this strange kind of appreciation that is part attraction, part something else that makes me feel rare and precious and . . . seen.

Thanks for the apology, Caden, really. Anyway, isn’t it pretty normal for a straight girl to fall for a gay guy? All the sitcoms treat it like a rite of passage, something that all girls must go through. You’re pretty and kind and way too good to be true. At least I’ve ticked that box now.” “I …” I don’t exist to teach her a lesson, and it irks me that she thinks labeling me is okay now. Like, by liking guys, I automatically take on that role in her life. That I’m suddenly a supporting character in her story rather than the hero of my own.

And you taught me what this feels like. And then how it feels to lose it. And you showed me who I wanted. And then who I wasn’t. And you ticked every box. And then drew a line. And you weren’t mine to begin with. And then not to end with. And you looked like everything I wanted. And then became something I hated. And you get thought of every day. And then not in a good way. And you let me leave. And then wish I’d stayed. And you almost killed me. But I didn’t die.

I couldn't tell anyone how I felt because I knew they wouldn't understand. Oh, poor little Christina, falling for the bad man who treats her like dirt because she didn't know any better. And isn't it a pity that they don't still teach sex-ed in schools? Or, oh, Christina, that filthy slut, if she puts out for a man like that, I imagine she puts out for anyone. You stay away from her. It wasn't like that at all. Maybe it would have been easier if it was, just like ticking a box. Are you the Madonna, or the whore? The victim, or the vixen? The Sabine, or the skank? But nothing in life is ever that simple.

Xav sprinkled olive oil on his lettuce. 'Lola was very particular that it all had to fit properly.' 'Lola?' squeaked Diamond. I wanted to warn her not to rise to the bait Xav was dangling in front of her but it was too late. Xav added some Parmesan and pepper. 'Suspicious, Diamond? You should be. This is a bachelor party I'm organizing, not a school outing, and it is going to tick all of Trace's boxes. Lola is either a very efficient water sports instructor or an exotic dancing girl; I'll leave it your imagination.' I rolled my eyes at Diamond. 'Myabe she's both. I mean the guys will really go for that, I guess. Don't worry,Di, Luigi and his crew will not disappoint us girls.' Luigi was in fact Contessa Nicoletta's little bespectacled chef with whom I had been consulting about the menu for Friday, but the Benedicts weren't to know that. 'He has promised to provide something suitably spicy for our tastes.

They ticked the boxes of a certain kind of enlightened, educated middle-classness, the love of dresses that were more interesting than pretty, the love of the eclectic, the love of what they were supposed to love. Ifemelu imagined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.

I wonder what it is about a certain novel that ticks the boxes for a reader. I mean, for me, a story can have the most fascinating plot in the world, but if the narrator's voice is dull, then the plot counts for nothing. For me, authorial charm is everything.

No, hear me out. This whole thing is ticking a lot of the horror movie boxes. Murder at a sleepaway camp. A serial killer. A final girl. A kid who died because some teenagers were being irresponsible.

Ask only whether you are living your values, not whether the boxes are ticked.

Because feeling like a fuck-up isn’t about being a failure, it’s about being made to feel like one. It’s the pressure and the panic to tick all the boxes and reach all the goals . . . and what happens when you don’t. When you find yourself on the outside. Because on some level, in some aspect of your life, it’s so easy to feel like you’re failing when everyone around you appears to be succeeding.

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: "Is it genuwyne?" Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. "Well, all right," said Huckleberry, "it's a trade." Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before.

The current Pandora's box of revelations about sexual crimes committed within the walls of so many of America's families reveals the nuclear family to be cruelly, aptly named. Patriarchy, sexism, and the culture of capitalism have created a "family" that too often is no more than a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.

The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes—in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The

If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization – a society that ticks all the boxes – is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is – that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology – all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us.

Since that era the question “Do you have any food restrictions?” has become a part of the etiquette of a dinner invitation, and participants at conference dinners can now tick a box that will replace a plate of rubber chicken with a plate of sodden eggplant.

Too often we just accept the premise that a homemaker drives carpool, gets the casserole in the oven, and organizes the closets. Once those things are done, we feel like we have ticked all the boxes and now our time is our own. It’s all too easy for us to work in order that we may have leisure, rather than working because we’re convinced that we’re building something phenomenal—and that mindset makes absolutely all the difference in the world. It is the difference between the employee and the boss, the hired help and the entrepreneur, the servant and the free man.

It is easier, I guess, to believe that life is inexhaustible. Not so much that its opportunities are vast or that one’s personal dreams can be reached at any age or season, but rather to believe that every dull or daily thing you do will happen again any number of times over. To stamp a limit on even the most tedious of things—the number of times you have left to buy a coffee, the number of times you will defrost the fridge—is to acknowledge reality in a way that amounts to torture. In truth, we will only perform any action a certain number of times, and to know that can never be helpful. There is, in my opinion, no use in demanding to know the number, in demanding to know upon waking the number of boxes to be ticked off every single day. After all, why would it help to be shown the mathematics of things, when instead we could simply imagine that whatever time we have is limitless.

Many of these approaches are still around, but have become submerged into, and emasculated by, governmental policies; thus issues such as community consultation have become a tick box exercise rather than an opportunity for the production of a radically different conception of the built environment.

Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. Which is one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box?

This note was a jittery bomb ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day fiercely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and f--- you. Even now.

Our sex need not primarily define who we are, what we are capable of, or what we can be expected to enjoy or engage in. In other words, the boy with the Barbie doll does not have a problem with identity. He simply has a Barbie doll. The full-time working mother and full-time stay-at-home father have not given up something essential to their identities by taking on those roles: they have negotiated their lives as it works for them. Likewise, a stay-at-home mum is not anti-feminist any more than a stay-at-home dad is. Other characteristics, such as individual ability, personal relationships, personal choice, past experience and education, are far more important than that box you tick defining yourself as M or F.

I am tired of hiding in my own shadow. I am tired of pushing aside the things that make me me, for some shinier version of myself that ticks everyone else’s boxes.

Without someone to talk to, every sight I saw - whether it was the Trevi Fountain or a canal in Amsterdam - felt simply like a box I'd needed to tick on a list.

Feeling claimed, feeling chosen, Lyla held the man she realized ticked almost every box of love for her.

Going the extra mile is one of the most important things you can do to deliver great customer service. This is when you have ticked all the boxes, yet you still want to do more.

If being a man is something that required a person to tick off a bunch of boxes, not many people would make it through.

She can’t concentrate because trying not to cry is taking all of her focus. She looked up the symptoms of depression and ticked off all the boxes.

The truth is, the harsh reality of love, is that it’s fickle, mostly fleeting, and seldom ticks every single box if we do find it.

It’s the way my mind works, when it works at all. Things to do today: settle down, achieve serenity, live happily ever after. Tick the box and move on.

You’re right, nobody’s perfect. But in the right relationship, you’re going to be perfect for each other. Because you tick each other’s boxes in the things that matter to you. So you can overlook his snoring, or he can ignore your aversion to exercise, or whatever it is that doesn’t exactly align, as long as you each fulfil the big things, the important ones.

Just tick a few boxes, agree to the terms and conditions and wait for the automated reply that says it’s all gone through and we’re now husband and wife. Why has that not been set up?

Ordering online was all about ticking boxes. Species. Color. Size. Number. Grade of quality. Degree of openness. But there was something miraculous about seeing the flowers she'd imagined brought to life. Roses from Columbia. Chrysanthemums from Ecuador. Orchids from Thailand. Anemones and agapanthus from Spain. Stargazers and parrot tulips from the vast Dutch flower fields.

Dating from a place of co-dependency, like a lot of us do, is immediately feeling as though the guy you went on a few dates with (who keeps ghosting you) is suddenly the one - just because he ticks a few of your boxes, texts you back sometimes and happens to be cute. But no, he's not being mysterious for intermittently disappearing on you. He's actually keeping you at a distance and playing on your need for validation, so that when he's done with his other options, he can return to you with minimal effort, knowing that you've been waiting for him all this time.

He was a prisoner to the calendar, he realised, as we all were. He thought in little boxes that were to be ticked off and filled with things to do. Almost every day he thought back to what he had been doing ten years ago, twenty years ago, further. He lived in the past, by his diary. He was a history man, his head full of dead leaves. It was a form of reassurance, he knew. There were too many roads into the future and he didn't like not having a map for it. ("Wait")

The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. Which is one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick that box? When

When understanding is separated from reality, we lose our powers. Understanding must constantly be tested against reality and updated accordingly. This isn’t a box we can tick, a task with a definite beginning and end, but a continuous process.

The bunk was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple-box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk. And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum-powder, razors and those Western magazines ranch-men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe. And there were medicines on the shelves, and little vials, combs; and, from nails on the box-sides, a few neck-ties. Near one wall there was a black cast-iron stove, its stove-pipe going straight up through the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a big square table littered with playing-cards, and around it were grouped boxes for the players to sit on.

The entire page of data had been innocuous, except for the inversion—the Rebirth Principle, Eli had called it, a re-creation of self. It wasn’t necessarily positive, or even voluntary, but always marked, and Flinch ticked off that box with a bold red check. In the wake of his trauma, everything about his life had changed. Not subtle changes, either, but full flips. He went from being married with three kids to being divorced, unemployed, and under a restraining order. His survival—or revival, rather—should have been cause for celebration, for joy. Instead, everything and everyone had fled.

I told my version – faithful and invented, accurate and misremembered, shuffled in time. I told myself as hero like any shipwreck story. It was a shipwreck, and me thrown on the coastline of humankind, and finding it not altogether human, and rarely kind. And I suppose that the saddest thing for me, thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it. I am often asked, in a tick-box kind of way, what is 'true' and what is not 'true' in Oranges. Did I work in a funeral parlour? Did I drive an ice-cream van? Did we have a Gospel Tent? Did Mrs. Winterson build her own CB radio? Did she really stun tomcats with a catapult? I can't answer these questions. I can say that there is a character in Oranges called Testifying Elsie who looks after the little Jeanette and acts as a soft wall against the hurt(ling) force of Mother. I wrote her in because I couldn't bear to leave her out. I wrote her in because I really wished it had been that way. When you are a solitary child you find an imaginary friend. There was no Elsie. There was no one like Elsie. Things were much lonelier than that.

He ticked my every box both intellectually and sexually. He was attentive and warm and had a huge capacity for love which he proudly displayed whenever he spoke to his beautiful little girl. He was the perfect man to steal my heart, and I had zero doubts once he was done with it, it would never be the same.

Presents are made for the pleasure of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them,' said my father. 'Besides, it can't be returned. Open it.' I undid the carefully wrapped package in the dim light of dawn. It contained a shiny carved wooden box, edged with gold rivets. Even before opening it, I was smiling. The sound of the clasp when it unlocked was exquisite, like the ticking of a watch. Inside, the case was lined with dark blue velvet. Victor Hugo's fabulous Montblanc Meisterstuck rested in the centre. It was a dazzling sight. I took it and gazed at it by the light of the balcony. The gold clip of the pen top had an inscription. Daniel Sempere, 1950 I stared at my father, dumbfounded. I don't think I had ever seen him look as happy as he seemed to me at that moment. Without saying anything, he got up from his armchair and held me tight. I felt a lump in my throat and, lost for words, fell utterly silent.

Loftus grew up with a cold father who taught her nothing about love but everything about angles. A mathematician, he showed her the beauty of the triangle's strong tip, the circumference of the circle, the rigorous mission of calculus. Her mother was softer, more dramatic, prone to deep depressions. Loftus tells all this to me with little feeling "I have no feelings about this right now," she says, "but when I'm in the right space I could cry." I somehow don't believe her; she seems so far from real tears, from the original griefs, so immersed in the immersed in the operas of others. Loftus recalls her father asking her out to see a play, and in the car, coming home at night, the moon hanging above them like a stopwatch, tick tick, her father saying to her, "You know, there's something wrong with your mother. She'll never be well again. Her father was right. When Loftus was fourteen, her mother drowned in the family swimming pool. She was found floating face down in the deep end, in the summer. The sun was just coming up, the sky a mess of reds and bruise. Loftus recalls the shock, the siren, an oxygen mask clamped over her mouth as she screamed, "Mother mother mother," hysteria. That is a kind of drowning. "I loved her," Loftus says. "Was it suicide?" I ask. She says, "My father thinks so. Every year when I go home for Christmas, my brothers and I think about it, but we'll never know," she says. Then she says, "It doesn't matter." "What doesn't matter?" I ask. "Whether it was or it wasn't," she says. "It doesn't matter because it's all going to be okay." Then I hear nothing on the line but some static. on the line but some static. "You there?" I say. "Oh I'm here," she says. "Tomorrow I'm going to Chicago, some guy on death row, I'm gonna save him. I gotta go testify. Thank God I have my work," she says. "You've always had your work," I say. "Without it," she says, "Where would I be?

Build a barrier inside her mind, a fence to keep it out. It was just one of the boxes to tick, that’s what she told herself. Focus on that. Just a task to tick off in the plan, like all the plans she’d ever made, even the small ones, even the mundane. This was no different.Except it was, that dark voice reminded her, the one that hid at the back beside the shame, unpicking her barrier piece by piece

Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.

Why does it have to be such a pain-in-the-ass process?” “Nothing worthwhile is easy. Finding a partner isn’t about ticking all the boxes. No one is perfect, not even you, Sloaney Baloney. Falling in love is about discovering someone who makes you better than you are alone and vice versa.” I plucked at the carpet. “What if they hurt you?” “People make mistakes. A lot of them. You get to decide which ones are forgivable

Apparently Alice's CT scan was 'unremarkable', which made her feel ashamed of her mediocrity. It reminded her of her school reports with every single box ticked 'Satisfactory' and comments like, 'A quiet student. Needs to contribute more in class.' They may as well have just come right out and written across the front, 'So boring, we don't actually know who she is.' Elisabeth's reports had some boxes ticked 'Outstanding' and others ticked 'Below Standard' and comments like, 'Can be a little disruptive.' Alice had yearned to be a little disruptive, but she couldn't work out how you got started.

Stage one of the investigative process – has a crime been committed? – is rendered redundant. Whereas for the children of Rochdale or Savile, the default conclusion of the police was always ‘No’, the equally unsatisfactory default under this model is ‘Yes’. The box is already ticked, no questions asked. Only if the police are satisfied of the opposite will it ever be unticked. I can do no better than directly quote Sir Richard: this policy ‘perverts our system of justice and attempts to impose upon a thinking investigator an artificial and false state of mind’.25 It ‘has and will generate miscarriages of justice on a considerable scale’.26

National Curriculum! league tables! lesson plans! all of which left no room for responding to the fluctuating needs of a classroom of living, breathing, individualized children nor could she freely write school reports any more, which she’d actually enjoyed, commenting on her pupils’ progress, letting their parents know she was looking out for their child instead she had to tick boxes according to a list of generic statements she could no longer say, for example, that a child’s handwriting had improved, making their work more legible and therefore higher gradable because she had encouraged the child to sit straight, concentrate and write slower

We are taught to believe that we do, or rather we should, come from one place. We are raised to be proud of the land we call home, to be happy to spill our blood – or the blood of our children – to protect it. But what about those of us that don’t come from just one place, just one land? Who find our souls stretched and bisected by bodies of water? Those of us whose identities are more fluid than small tick-boxes on forms allow for. This is the reality of so many of us, whose nationalities, genders or neurology are neither one thing or another, but inherently fluid, both/and. How do we honour this fluidity? We, I think, are perhaps more likely to honour the sea in ourselves, in our identities. We are we of the sea.

Death and life are not in opposition. So when someone tells you to live every day like it’s your last, kindly tell them to fuck off. They’re wrong. You should live every day like it’s your first. Live it like it’s your last and you’ll just run around like the house is on fire. I don’t want a bucket list. I don’t wanna live like I’m dying. I wanna live like I’m living. And I want there to be more possibilities left when I die, not NONE. Why rush to tick off all of those boxes? You don’t get a fucking gold star from God for that. I know now that I am going to spend the rest of my life incomplete. But life was designed to be incomplete. It’s not a worksheet you fill out. It’s an open platform. You do some things, but you also leave behind infinite possibilities for those in your wake. That’s the freedom.

-Now the paperwork – -What if I don’t want to do the Ultimate, right away? Maybe I want to ease into this thing gently. -No you don’t. -I might. I might just want to ease into the activity, the idea of it. -it’ll be fine, said Rebecca. -you will be fine, and no regrets, honestly. Jillian took me over to the desk. -No possible regrets, said Rebecca, just sign this, she handed me a sheaf of forms. -Jesus I don’t want to buy the place, I scanned the pages – 45 pages. -just fill in page 25 through28 and sign. -Pages 25 through 28, what is this? Rebecca took the pages of forms from my hand – look its simple stuff, here we’ll read it through. Jillian looked over her shoulder at the pages -weight? -what? - Say 110, Jillian said. -Height? -5’ 8’’, Jillian again. -Hair length? -What? Why? -Long, Jillian again. -Cup size? - O come on. - say C -how about say nothing, I was getting angry -Shaved or bikini or natural? -Fuck off Rebecca ticked a box anyway – well she was at the waxing too. Why ask in fact? -Last menstrual cycle? - enough, enough, give me those papers -Yes ignore that, said Rebecca taking the pages away from my grasping hand -Tested? she said this to Jillian -Tested? What tested? What do you mean tested? -Yes, said Jillian, I forwarded a blood sample from the main island -You what! -You were sleeping. -Great now sign here, Rebecca handed me a page and a pen -Who has blood samples for a theme park? -Everyone -especially the staff, can’t have mi’lady getting STDs I took a breath -This is getting a bit weird guys are you sure? I mean, well this is a bit, weird. -We’re 100 and a million per cent sure, said Jillian - 100 million per cent, said Rebecca

Settlement (Ephraim Margolin, San Francisco) Such news of an amicable settlement having made this court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one-legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped naked off of a twelve foot step ladder into a five gallon bucket of porcupines than have presided over a two week trial of the herein dispute, a trial which, no doubt, would have made the jury more confused than a hungry baby in a topless bar and made the parties and their attorneys madder than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory. The clerk shall engage the services of a structural engineer to ascertain if the return of this file to the Clerk’s office will exceed the maximum structural load of the floor of said office. Judge Wins Reelection While Pleading Insanity [Huffington Post, Chicago, Nov.

This afternoon, I went to my doctor. She did a check-up, then asked me questions about my life, including what sort of contraception Miles and I were using. I grew embarrassed, admitting the truth: pulling out. It was what I had used with almost every man. What if you get pregnant? Would you be okay with that? I tried to answer in an easy way, but soon my sentences got twisted up. After the appointment, I walked in the streets and called Teresa. I brought up my worries over paths not taken, and she said everyone had those, but often when you looked back on your life, you saw that the choices you made and the paths you went down were the right ones. She said it wasn’t a matter of choosing one life over another, but being sensitive to the life that wants to be lived through you. You need tension in order to create something—the sand in the pearl. She said my questioning and doubts were the sand. She said they were good and forced me to live with integrity, to interrogate what was important to me, and so to live the meaning of my life, rather than resort to convention. Then to try and discover and live my values, even if it may not seem like I’m moving forward in my life, while my friends appear to be moving forward in theirs—ticking off all the boxes. Ask only whether you are living your values, not whether the boxes are ticked. After our call, I realized the thing I always do: I try to imagine different futures for myself, what I would most like to occur. I don’t know why I do this, when any of the things I’ve hoped for—whenever I have actually got them—are nothing like what I imagined they’d be. Then why don’t I spend time acclimating myself to what actually occurred? Why not make peace with the way things are, given what I know about life from actually living? Instead I spin fantasies, when the only happiness I have ever known has occurred without my design.

face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom.

I'm not sure what form I expected the threat to take; a police car actually stopping outside, a powerfully built black man darting up the drive? I had several dreams of siege, in which the house became a frail slatted box, shadowy and exquisite within, the walls all cracked and bleached louvres which fell to powder as one brushed against them. In one dream Arthur and I were there, and others, old school friends, a gaggle of black kids from the Shaft, my grandfather tearful and hopeless. We knew we had no chance of surviving the violence that surrounded us, closing in fast, and I was gripped by a nauseating terror. I woke up in the certain knowledge that I was about to die: the bedsprings were ticking from the sprinting vehemence of my heartbeat. I didn't dare go back to sleep and after a while sat up and read, while Arthur slept deeply beside me. It took days to lose the mood of the dream, and its power to prickle my scalp. The neighbourhood seemed eerily impregnated with it, and its passing made possible a new confidence, as if a sentence had been lifted.

Vaishali felt flattered. “But my mother proved that no injustice was done to the girl.” “You should not worry about that. Those in power will use all means to prove their point. They’ll make it look real, appealing, convincing. And that’s what your mother did.” “Do you think so?” asked Vaishali eagerly. Regina smiled as she ticked mentally the first box: Gullible. Regina continued the conversation. “Going to the US?” “Yes, my leave is over. I am going back to the university. In spite of whatever I did to them, my parents have agreed to pay for my overseas education.” “What is so great about it? After all, you are their daughter and it is their responsibility to give you the right education. Indians are unnecessarily sentimental about it,” said Regina. “Perhaps you are right…” As Vaishali paused for a moment, Regina ticked a couple of more boxes: Ungrateful. Disdain for Indian values. In the next few minutes, Regina ticked a few other boxes mentally: Insolent. Obstinate. Unreasonable. Unrepentant. Regina concluded that she had identified the right candidate for the role of an activist.

pick Maddy and Josh up from Mum’s house no later than six each day, and we’re always home around ten minutes later. I thought that was enough to qualify me as a good mother, a parent who is there for her children. Yet I feel a niggle deep down that tells me he’s right. Once I get through the door each evening, I simply set my laptop up on the kitchen counter and carry on working. I often cook the children’s tea around updating the InsideOut4Kids website. The reality is, I’m there… but I’m not really there. Not all of me. For the first time, I consider the echoes of my own childhood, when Mum spent so much time in her bedroom. I can’t remember the last time we all sat down and ate together, or watched TV as a family. We often stay in different rooms until it’s time for bed. And the outings to the park or the cinema we used to plan and enjoy at weekends? I seriously can’t remember the last time we did that. I thought I was being Superwoman, and it turns out I’m struggling to tick all the boxes like any other mere mortal. The realisation renders me speechless, and it doesn’t take Tom long to

I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings-- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on the ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. Rain is when the earth is television. It has the properites of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside -- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anything missed. But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips and soothe it to sleep with sounds. And yet, they wake it up deliberately, by tickling with a finger. Only the young are allowed to suffer openly. Adults go to a punishment room with water but nothing to eat. They lock the door and suffer the noises alone. No one is exempt and everyone's pain has a different smell. At night, when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves -- in colour, with their eyelids shut.

I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles. Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall. “Leidah?” I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?” I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore. It has happened again. I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her. I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me. But it’s not under me. It is me. I have become the floor. I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down. How is this possible? I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out. That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor. Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go. The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix— Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go? Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her. It’s then that I feel it. Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed. She is becoming dust. She is drier than the wood I have become. - Becoming Leidah Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.

I must at this point reiterate my strong objection to being asked to fill in forms in which I have to tick a box labelling my 'race' or 'ethnicity', and voice my strong support for Lewontin's statement that racial classification can be actively destructive of social and human relations - especially when people use racial classification as a way of treating people differently, whether through negative or positive discrimination. To tie a racial label to somebody is informative in the sense that it tells you more than one thing about them. It might reduce your uncertainty about the colour of their hair, the colour of their skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eye, the shape of their nose and how tall they are. But there is no reason to suppose that it tells you anything about how well-qualified they are for a job. And even in the unlikely event that it did reduce your statistical uncertainty about their likely suitability for some particular job, it would still be wicked to use racial labels as a basis for discrimination when hiring somebody. Choose on the basis of ability, and if, having done so, you end up with an all-black sprinting team, so be it. You have not practised racial discrimination in arriving at this conclusion... Discriminating against individuals purely on the basis of a group to which they belong is, I am inclined to think, always evil. There is near-universal agreement today that the apartheid laws of South Africa were evil. Positive discrimination in favour of 'minority' students on American campuses can fairly, in my opinion, be attacked on the same grounds as apartheid. Both treat people as representative of groups rather than as individuals in their own right. Positive discrimination is sometimes justified as redressing centuries of injustice. But how can it be just to pay back a single individual today for the wrongs done by long-dead members of a plural group to which he belongs?

Pokémon with a blue glow surrounding it in your menu simply indicates that you have caught this Pokémon in the last 24 hours. If you tap on a Pokémon, you can check its name, HP below the Pokémon, CP above the Pokémon, various traits, different attacks and the location and date you caught this particular Pokémon. You can rename your Pokémon by tapping the pencil next to its name.   You may also want to give your Pokémon a power up to boost its maximum health and CP, and thus making your Pokémon more powerful. This will cost you Stardust and Pokémon candy. If you wish to get rid of a Pokémon, you will want to tap the “Transfer” button in order to transfer your Pokémon to the Professor. Note that once you transfer a Pokémon to the Professor, this Pokémon will be lost forever and cannot be retrieved.   The last category features your items. In your items you will find all the items with their quantities you currently own. Pressing the trash allows you to toss an item if you wish to do so. Your maximum capacity is 350 items, but you can buy an upgrade in the Shop if you wish to expand your capacity.   An additional feature of the main menu is the Settings panel, which you will find in the upper right of your screen. If you open up the Settings, you can toggle the Music, Sound Effects, Vibration and Battery Saver. You may also revisit Professor Willow if you missed any of his speeches using the Quick Start option. Another feature is being able to sign out. This could be useful in case you wish to log in via another account. You can check the version of the application in the Settings too.   Toggling the Battery Save option will allow you to enter the Battery Save state. To enter this state simply tick the box and hold your device upside down. Your device will enter a battery saving state, indicated by a dark screen featuring the Pokémon Go logo, until held in its authentic state again. This feature is especially useful when your device is below 5% of its battery life. To utilize the remaining battery life to the fullest extent, simply hold your device upside down and put your device where it’s most comfortable for you. Mind that you may want to have your device in a position where you can still notice vibration, because whenever a Pokémon approaches you, your device will notify you through vibration, if you’ve enabled vibration in the Settings. Whenever your device vibrates, you can turn around your device with ease to continue playing without having to unlock your device. Note that you will not be notified when passing a gym or PokéStop.   The

each other. No words were needed, they both felt the same. What a load of bollocks. They’d known each other two minutes. How could they be in love? Joan was just going over the top. The four glasses clinked together. “Tuck in guys. This is one of my better dishes. My mam helped with it too so I know it’s going to be top notch.” Trevor rubbed his hands together and grabbed his fork. There were no flies on him he was tucking in. Food was his comfort and now Joan was off the market he needed it more than ever. Mabel picked at the food on her plate, nibbling, watching everyone else around her. Patrick sat next to Joan and every chance he got he kissed her, held her hand. He knew he was on show here tonight and he was making sure he ticked all the boxes. * Cath and Katrina were chatting in the yard. The winds were blowing with force. They both looked freezing as they marched around the concrete yard. There were high steel fences with barbed wire on the top of it. There was no way out. Katrina needed a friendly ear, some advice, someone to ease her heavy heart. Once she’d filled Cath in on everything that had happened they both sat on a bench not far from the fence.  The screws watched them with caution and never took their eyes from them. They were high-risk prisoners. Cath let out a laboured breath and bit down hard on her bottom lip. “For crying out loud didn’t I tell you to keep away from that prick. Look what’s happened now. You’ve fucking blown it. You were getting out of this shit-hole in a few more months and you’ve gone and fucked it all. Where is your head at woman, you should of steered well clear of any trouble?” Katrina snivelled, her eyes flooding with tears. “I know, I just wanted to hurt him like he’s hurt me. I loved that man with all my heart and he just fucked off and left me. I’ve lost it all Cath. My kids, my home, everything I ever loved. How can I tell my kids I’m not coming home? It will break their hearts. I’ve made promises to them. A better life, no more trouble. Their mother home for good.” “They’ve not charged you yet. Wait until it’s set in stone and then you know what you’re dealing with.” Cath held her in her arms and squeezed her tight. She knew as much as the other person that she wasn’t getting out of jail anytime soon. The crime she’d committed would be all over the news soon and the public would know who she was. She’d seen it so many times before. Once an offender was named, the nation would be all over it. No doubt Norman would be made out to be the hero too. There would be no story about the way he treated this woman, no mention of all the women he’d abused in the past. Maybe someone should have grassed him up. Katrina had warned him if he she got her collar felt there would be repercussions. Why hadn’t she put his name in the picture yet? Now was the time to put her cards on the table and look after number one. Maybe if she turned Queen’s evidence she could get a deal with the prosecution. A lesser sentence, a few years knocked off. Cath was aware of this but to be a Judas was another matter. Katrina would have to

The hoard here is just as regimented, kept hidden from prying eyes by its obsessive use of containers. But I know from looking in that cupboard that inside those cardboard boxes is a wormhole to a world of chaos. That is what she was always like, I suppose, rigid control on the surface, and the howling void beneath. That's why so many people cling so desperately to their semblances of discipline, their habits, schedules, routines, diets, personal trainers, personal grooming, theories of morality. It's all about the fear of the chaos beneath. It's certainly true of India, nothing in her life is real unless it's been ticked off on a list. For us, the recognition of the void came so early that we were always going to go one of two ways, spend our lives fighting valiantly to hold back the tide the way she does, or, like me, accept the truth and let the chaos reign.

If the dominant ideology is to be liberalism - a doctrine of tolerance - then to what extent can liberalism tolerate anything other than itself? Liberalism seems to be increasingly coercive. 'You must have such and such a curriculum...You must have certain views on alternative sexualities...You must have certain views about gender...etc etc' in an increasing set of boxes which one is expected to tick, which seems to sit ill with the basic premise of liberalism which is to open the horizon for people to think and behave as they will as long as they do not constitute a threat to public order. The current strange liberal inquisition in the schools: Thou Shalt Be A Liberal, is just an example of the paradox of this Late Liberal or Coercive Liberal Project.

Got something!’ Maria Lynch interrupted them, dragging a page from the printer. ‘The dress was bought from Dinkydress on April first. Paid for by credit card. They won’t say who owns the card, but it was delivered by courier to Maeve Phillips, 251 Mellow Grove, on the fifth.’ ‘She had that dress over a month and never wore it. Wonder what it was bought for? Any credit cards in her own name?’ Lottie asked, reading the page. ‘She hasn’t even got a bank account,’ Lynch said. ‘Someone bought it for her. Might be a boyfriend. See if you can get the company to release the name.’ ‘How?’ ‘Make something up. I think whoever bought that dress may be Maeve’s mystery boyfriend. If we find this boyfriend, we might find Maeve. We need to be concentrating on the murder of the woman found under the street.’ ‘Will I hand this missing person case over to someone else, so?’ Lynch asked. ‘No. We need to make it high priority. Find out if Maeve Phillips has a passport, and I want to talk to this friend of hers, Emily. I need to be sure Maeve’s disappearance isn’t linked to the murder.’ ‘Hardly likely, is it?’ Boyd said. ‘Ticking the box,’ Lottie said. ‘As long as it’s not a wooden one with a brass cross on top,’ Kirby said, raising his head from behind a mountain of paperwork.

You are scared to relive them, the vulnerability of succumbing. So you think to shove them into a box at the back of your closet makes them less of a ticking time bomb?

I swallow two pills with the last of my wine, then fall back against the spread. A clock is ticking somewhere, distant and oddly muffled. I pull the box close. It’s just us again. My box of memories and me. I close my eyes, welcoming the darkness, where everything is quiet and the memories can’t find me. I have always grieved the ends of things.

Life is not about ticking boxes, Marika, it is about creating them.

Once every few weeks, beginning in the summer of 2018, a trio of large Boeing freighter aircraft, most often converted and windowless 747s of the Dutch airline KLM, takes off from Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam, with a precious cargo bound eventually for the city of Chandler, a western desert exurb of Phoe­nix, Arizona. The cargo is always the same, consisting of nine white boxes in each aircraft, each box taller than a man. To get these pro­foundly heavy containers from the airport in Phoenix to their des­tination, twenty miles away, requires a convoy of rather more than a dozen eighteen-wheeler trucks. On arrival and family uncrated, the contents of all the boxes are bolted together to form one enormous 160-ton machine -- a machine tool, in fact, a direct descendant of the machine tools invented and used by men such as Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay and Henry Royce and Henry Ford a century and more before. "Just like its cast-iron predecessors, this Dutch-made behemoth of a tool (fifteen of which compose the total order due to be sent to Chandler, each delivered as it is made) is a machine that makes machines. Yet, rather than making mechanical devices by the pre­cise cutting of metal from metal, this gigantic device is designed for the manufacture of the tiniest of machines imaginable, all of which perform their work electronically, without any visible mov­ing parts. "For here we come to the culmination of precision's quarter­millennium evolutionary journey. Up until this moment, almost all the devices and creations that required a degree of precision in their making had been made of metal, and performed their vari­ous functions through physical movements of one kind or another. Pistons rose and fell; locks opened and closed; rifles fired; sewing machines secured pieces of fabric and created hems and selvedges; bicycles wobbled along lanes; cars ran along highways; ball bearings spun and whirled; trains snorted out of tunnels; aircraft flew through the skies; telescopes deployed; clocks ticked or hummed, and their hands moved ever forward, never back, one precise sec­ond at a time."Then came the computer, then the personal computer, then the smartphone, then the previously unimaginable tools of today -- and with this helter-skelter technological evolution came a time of translation, a time when the leading edge of precision passed itself out into the beyond, moving as if through an invisible gateway, from the purely mechanical and physical world and into an immobile and silent universe, one where electrons and protons and neutrons have replaced iron and oil and bearings and lubricants and trunnions and the paradigm-altering idea of interchangeable parts, and where, though the components might well glow with fierce lights send out intense waves of heat, nothing moved one piece against another in mechanical fashion, no machine required that mea­sured exactness be an essential attribute of every component piece.

True Diversity and Inclusion come from focusing on CHARACTERS first, not ticking off boxes on a list.

Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here.

I mean, where do you turn when you've already ticked off all the boxes? What else is there? I had built my ordinary, perfect little life, not realizing that ordinary often comes at the cost of extraordinary.

The idea of him, perpetually sarcastic and smiling, handsome and rich, ever dating me is ridiculous. He’s so firmly outside of the box of romantic possibility.

Papa had no inner life. He was hollow, hollow… profit, acquisition and ticking little social-democratic boxes… his death grew naturally out of his life. Anomic suicide: Durkheim describes it well. Everyone’s death is a fulfilment, really.

His insinuation that he’d fuck me dead or alive shouldn’t turn me on, but damn, it does. I love a psychopath, and Night ticks all the boxes for me.

this is what I need. Not a date. Not another boyfriend to tick a box. I need something raw and real and now.

Without someone to talk to, every sight I saw - whether it was the Trevi Fountain or a canal in Amsterdam - felt simply like a box I'd needed to tick on a list. - Lou Clark

Rava approached Steldor and removed a dagger from a sheath at her hip. With her left hand, she smoothed the collar of his white shirt, then yanked the fabric away from his chest, slicing through it in a single motion. Spying the silver wolf’s head talisman that he always wore, she seized it, ripping it free of his neck. “Whether for good luck or good fortune, you’ll have no need of this,” she sneered, dropping the pendant into a pouch that hung from her belt. “I’m sorry it’s not strong enough to cover your stench,” he icily replied, for the mixture inside the talisman was the source of his rich, masculine scent. Rava stared at Steldor, then stalked around him to tear the remnants of his shirt from his back, trying without success to strip him of his pride. She perused his muscular torso, and when she faced him once more, her eyes came to rest on the scar beneath his rib cage--the one that marked the life-threatening wound given to him by a Cokyrian blade--and placed the tip of the dagger she still held against it. “Only slightly marred.” She traced the knife’s point along the jagged white line, leaving a trail of red. “I’ll see what I can do to change that.” She tucked the weapon back into its sheath and gave a nod to the soldiers who had brought Steldor out of the Bastion. As they tied his wrists with rope, she went to the woman who had brought the box and lifted its lid. With a satisfied chuckle, she removed a whip more fearsome than any I had ever seen, cradling it like a mother would an infant, and the gathered throng fell silent. It was indeed rawhide, but uncoiled it reached four feet in length before meeting a silver ring, on the other end of which another two feet of metal-studded leather waited to strike. I looked to Narian and Cannan, and knew by both of their expressions that this was not what they had expected. Indeed, Rava purposefully made eye contact with Narian, her demeanor haughty, before returning her attention to her prey. “On your knees,” Rava growled, dangling the whip in front of Steldor. He obeyed, his eyes never leaving her face, continuing to radiate strength and insolence. “How can a flag be of consequence in a dead kingdom?” she taunted. “It is cloth. It is meaningless. And it can be burned.” She ticked a finger for one of the many soldiers around us to come forward, and I recognized Saadi. He extended our rolled Hytanican flag, and Rava took it, letting it unfurl until the end touched the ground. She held out her other hand and Saadi passed her a lit torch, which she touched to the banner of my homeland, letting flames consume it. The courtyard’s white stone walkway would now and forever be scorched. Steldor’s upper lip lifted away from his teeth, but aside from this snarl, he showed no reaction. “Tell me, does it seem worth it to you to suffer this punishment for a rag?” “Without question,” Steldor forcefully answered, and cheers rolled like thunder through the Hytanicans who had gathered to watch, sending chills down my spine.

I don’t blame them. After seven weeks, Sarah’s disappearance was a footnote unless something significant happened to draw attention back to it. Nothing had.” “What about the reward?” “That also never came up at trial.” Dan squinted as if fighting a headache. “Given that Hagen’s testimony provided Calloway and Clark what they needed to convince Judge Sullivan to issue the search warrants, Finn should have jumped all over Hagen about every detail, especially because Hagen also laid the groundwork for Calloway’s testimony the next day.” Roy Calloway sat in the witness chair as if he was seated in his living room and everyone else in the courtroom was an invited guest. The rain ticked off the second-story wood-sash windows, sounding like birds pecking against the glass. Tracy looked out at the trees in the courthouse square, their soaked limbs sagging. Smoke curled from the chimneys of houses in the near distance, but the bucolic image only seemed to magnify the illusion that Edmund House had exposed. Small towns were not immune to violent crimes. Far from it. Clark stepped to the railing of the jury box. “When did you next return to Parker House’s property, Sheriff Calloway?

No one knew Greek mythology like my friend. He was no doubt running through the entire story in his head. How Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. And Zeus decided to punish Prometheus by making a clay figure of a smokin’ hot chick which he then brought to life. The gods gave that lady, Pandora, all sorts of gifts like beauty, charm, wit, and curiosity. Then Zeus gave her a box, told her she was never to open it, and told Prometheus he could have this drop-dead gorgeous girl as a wife. Prometheus wasn’t stupid; he knew it was a trick and said, “No way.” Zeus got ticked off and punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and then let a vulture chow down on him. Prometheus’s brother married Pandora, and the couple settled down for a happy life. But Pandora always wondered what was in the box Zeus gave her. Finally her curiosity won out. She opened the box, and out flew hate, anger, sickness, poverty, and every bad thing in the world. She slammed the lid down and managed to trap one final thing in the box: hope. So today, even when the going gets tough, every human still has hope. No

Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here. Embracing a culture of teamwork and discipline is.

It’s the fear of being mistaken for Joyce that has always ensured that I ignore the box marked “biracial” and tick the box marked “black” on any questionnaire I fill out, and call myself unequivocally a black writer and roll my eyes at anyone who insists that Obama is not the first black president but the first biracial one. But I also know in my heart that it’s an equivocation; I know that Obama has a double consciousness, is black and, at the same time, white, as I am, unless we are suggesting that one side of a person’s genetics and cultural heritage

Just ticking boxes is not the ultimate goal here. Embracing a culture of teamwork and discipline is. And if we recognised the opportunity, the two-minute WHO checklist is just a start.

We somehow felt safe sharing every aspect of our lives, whether through public posts or private messages, with a corporate entity that was: a) legally bound by prior legislation to pass our data onto whichever government agencies desired it, and: b) legally bound by a duty to its stockholders to share our data with advertising agencies and partners. We implicitly agreed to this by using their service and explicitly agreed by ticking boxes beside user agreements we didn’t have time to read.

When discipleship is narrowed down to jumping through behavioral hoops and ticking the right theological boxes, grace is squeezed out, and we come to see God as just plain impossible to please, like some nasty first-grade teacher or harsh, authoritarian parent. When we reduce Christianity to a negative system where fasting becomes more sacred than feasting, law wins out over grace, and correct theology becomes more important than divine encounter, we in effect become the modern-day Pharisees—whose ministry Jesus was set against.

When you live in Jersey a beach isn’t enough. People have energy in Jersey. They need things to do. They need a beach with a boardwalk. And the boardwalk has to be filled with rides and games and crappy food. Add some miniature golf. Throw in a bunch of stores selling T-shirts with offensive pictures. Life doesn’t get much better than this. And the best part is the smell. I’ve been told there are places where the ocean smells wild and briny. In Jersey the ocean smells of coconut-scented suntan lotion and Italian sausage smothered in fried onions and peppers. It smells like deep-fried zeppoles and chili hot dogs. The scent is intoxicating and exotic as it expands in the heat rising from crowds of sun-baked bodies strolling the boardwalk. Surf surges onto the beach and the sound is mingled with the rhythmic tick, tick, tick of the spinning game wheels and the highpitched Eeeeeeee of thrill seekers being hurtled down the log flume. Rock stars, pickpockets, homies, pimps, pushers, pregnant women in bikinis, future astronauts, politicians, geeks, ghouls, and droves of families who buy American and eat Italian all come to the Jersey shore.