Trap Shooting Quotes

Trials in this life will expose what is in your heart—whether the offense is toward God or others. Tests either make you bitter toward God and your peers or stronger. If you pass the test, your roots will shoot down deeper, stabilizing you and your future. If you fail, you become offended, which can lead to defilement with bitterness.

My spirituality is most active, not in meditation, but in the moments when: I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being’s suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don’t deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting, and when I end up changed by loving someone I’d never choose out of a catalog but whom God sends my way to teach me about God’s love.

Because here's the thing―we don't give a shit about fairness here. We're soldiers. Soldiers do not give the other guy a sporting chance. Soldiers shoot in the back, lay traps and ambushes, lie to the enemy and outnumber the other bastard every chance they get. Your kind of murder only works among civilians. And you were too cocky, too stupid, too insane to realize it.

The Man He Killed Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have set us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because— Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like—just as I— Was out of work—had sold his traps— No other reason why. Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat, if met where any bar is, Or help to half a crown.

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back.

That was four people right there who loved me. I wished like mad, in that moment, that I had no one at all. Not a single soul. Love was trapping me here. And they didn't know what it was like, what my head was like. Maybe if they were in my head for ten minutes they'd be like, 'Oh, okay, yes, actually. You should jump. There is no way you should feel this amount of pain. Run and jump and close you eyes and just do it. I mean, if you were on fire I could put a blanket around you, but the flames are invisible. There is nothing we can do. So jump. Or give me a gun and I'll shoot you. Euthanasia.' But that was not how it worked. If you are depressed your pain is invisible.

I first set the needle on this record and bingo! the whole mechanism begins: the record player's arm tugs at a thread as the record plays; the thread pulls over this glass and lets this marble loose; the marble rolls down this miniature slide and snap! the spring is released, cutting off your heads! Brilliant! 'And just to be on the safe side,' he continued, 'this crossbow will shoot you as the trap is released, the axe will chop you in half and the anvil will crush you to pieces!' 'And do you see this gun?' Ratigan asked with a smile. 'In case you hadn't noticed, dear friends, it's also pointed at you! Ha! Ha! Ha!' Ratigan burst you laughing

I briefly considered shooting her just to stop the annoyance. But we were in the very public foyer of a five-star hotel, and the cleanup cost alone would make it less than worth it.

Emily cursed. ‘I left the map in the van!’ ‘I am sure we are not far from the zoo,’ Paelen said. ‘That’s not what I’m worried about. The zoo was circled on the map! If the police see it, they’ll know where we’re going.’ Paelen started to laugh. ‘Emily, we are going to the zoo – a place that we already know is a trap for us. There are CRU agents and soldiers with guns waiting to shoot us the moment we arrive. And you are worried about the police because of the stolen van?

Entomologists trap insects in their killing jars and then pin their corpses to cards, and no one utters a single squeak of protest. For that matter, let a gentleman hunt a tiger for its skin, and everyone applauds his courage. But to shoot a dragon for science? That, for some reason, is cruel.

As sure as this Earth is turnin, souls burnin / In search of higher learnin, turnin in every direction seeking direction / My moms cryin cause her insides are dyin / Her son tryin her patience, keep her heart racin / A million beats a minute, I know I push you to your limit / But it's this game, love—I'm caught up all in it / They make it so you can't prevent it, never give it / You gotta take it, can't fake it, I keep it authentic / My hand got this pistol shakin, cause I sense danger / Like Camp Crystal Lake, and / Don't wanna shoot him, but I got him, trapped / Within this infrared dot, bout to hot him and hit rock bottom / No answers to these trick questions, no time shit stressin / My life found I got ta live for the right now / Time waits for no man, can't turn back the hands / Once it's too late, gotta learn to live with regrets

Given their current circumstances, things would have to be very bad indeed for Tilly to think the situation had gotten worse. Sure, they were all trapped in orbit around an alien space station that periodically changed the rules of physics and had killed a bunch of them, but now they’d decided to start shooting each other too. Yes, very bad.

Unbeknownst to me, it had become my mission to prove that the world isn't the horrible place we often make it out to be. That just because there are some dirty fish, it doesn't mean the entire ocean is dirty and we need to confine ourselves to the shores we know. The fear bred by the news compels people to stay at home - trapped in a shrinking comfort zone - like it had once compelled me. I had much to unlearn for the sake of the freedom I chased, the victimhood I despised and my mission to build unlikely friendships.

The Mistress of the Manor (Hoyt calls her MOM) has no idea he shoots the skunks and raccoons he traps on her property. She has asked him please to release the creatures in some other vicinity, a "humane" act that only makes them somebody's else's problem. Typical: MOM sees nothing contradictory in driving twenty miles in a gas-guzzling atmosphere-choking SUV to buy organic vegetables.

Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.

We are all damaged goods. We mourn when we are victims and rejoice at our enemies' misery. We pray for the victory of our fighters and the demise of the enemies. We don't do anything in between. No one talks to anyone. We just shoot or cry. By playing both parts we are winning the pity of the dumb Western countries and rich Arab leaders." "What parts?" Mona asked. "Victims and perpetrators.

Ever driven stick before?" Alec hesitated. "can't be harder than shooting a bow and arrow while riding a horse at a full gallop." "It's definitely not," said Magnus. "Besides, you have superhuman reflexes. What's the worst that could happen?" He threw Alec the keys and slid into the passenger's seat with a smile. Alec grinned and jogged over to the driver's seat. Magnus suggested some practice loops in the parking lot. "You have to lift your left foot as you're applying gas with the right foot," he said. Alec looked at him. "Oh no," he said dryly. "I have to move both feet at the same time. How can I possibly handle such demands on my agility." He turned back, applied the gas, and was rewarded with a high-pitched screech, like a banshee in a trap. Magnus smiled but did not say anything.

Harmony crab-walked back. “You’re the only one left, Reed. You were right. It was a trap. Michael is a sadist. We leave now, or I’ll shoot you on sight next time I see you as one of Bill’s brainwashed dolls.

Some hours later Cooper took the packet of ash from his pocket, where earlier in the evening he had put it for greater security, and threw it angrily at a man who had given him great offence. It bounced, burst, off the wall on to the floor, where at once it became the object of much dribbling, passing, trapping, shooting, punching, heading and even some recognition from the gentleman's code. By closing time the body, mind and soul of Murphy were freely distributed over the floor of the saloon; and before another dayspring greyened the earth had been swept away with the sand, the beer, the butts, the glass, the matches, the spits, the vomit.

My name,” he muttered. He turned his head, pressed a kiss to her palm. “Say my name, damn it.” Chuckling, she pulled his head close. “Taylor.” She said it against his lips. As she did that, she rolled her hips against him, squeezing down with her inner muscles so that she milked him in a teasing, taunting caress. Oh, shit… Little warning tingles were already shooting straight up his spine, but he gritted his teeth. No, damn it. He wasn’t going to lose it after thirty fucking seconds. Especially since he hadn’t told her yet. But then she did it again, and again. “I love you.” It came out a broken, harsh groan against her lips, the words he could no longer keep trapped inside. The words he had to share with her, now.

I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being’s suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don’t deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting, and when I end up changed by loving someone I’d never choose out of a catalog but whom God sends my way to teach me about God’s love.

People are snapping pictures, trying to take some part of you home as a souvenir. People point video cameras, trying to trap you into their vacation. They're all shooting you, shooting the crippled chickens. Everybody's trying to make every minute of the present last forever. Preserve every second.

But saying no to men isn’t always an easy task. I’d love to be direct. Confrontational. Look him right in the eye and say NO. The problem with being a woman is that you never know what a NO will get you. Is it going to earn me an understanding nod and an okay, well, have a great night, it was nice talking to you? Or will it get me a you entitled bitch, what, you think you’re too fucking good for me? And I’ve experienced the latter multiple times. The world is scary sometimes. So, no, I’m not going to shoot this guy down directly, at least not in this specific circumstance, where we’re alone and I’m trapped. I’ll vaguely dance around the issue until I’m able to escape this enclosed space and find the safety of a crowd.

Grace wasn’t so sure. She had become accustomed to the photograph, of course, seeing it every day, but she didn’t envy Nancy Beaton. The girl looked sad, Grace thought, and all of that shining material bunched behind her looked heavy, as if it were weighing her down. She didn’t look like a shooting star about to streak across a dark sky, she looked anchored to the earth. Trapped. Like a butterfly in a jar.

High conflicts tend to erupt in places with low trust. When there is low trust, it is very hard to create a consensus about the facts. People become so suspicious of one another that they can believe anything. This makes it easy for conflict entrepreneurs to inflame the conflict further. And every attempt to end the conflict, by, for example, prosecuting people who shoot wolves, fuels more distrust. This is the trap of high conflict.

In Eastern Europe, we are suspicious of the 'h' and the 'j.' The 'h,' when it is small, looks like a chair. Is it an electric chair? We don't know. Is it a regular chair sitting on a trap door? Again, we don't know. When it's big, the 'H' is always dangerous. If you pass under it, maybe the bar will fall on you. If you go over it, possibly the bar will shoot up when you're halfway across. And the 'j,' whether big or small, is always a hook. In Eastern Europe, we don't get caught.

There was no ground-floor — its ground-floor belonged to a house in the next court, and the front door opened direct upon a flight of stairs leading down to the cellar. Visitors on entering the house would suddenly shoot past the person who had answered the door to them and disappear down these stairs. Those of a nervous temperament used to imagine that it was a trap laid for them, and would shout murder as they lay on their backs at the bottom till somebody came and picked them up.

I could feel Devon’s gaze on my face, reading my body language despite how hard I had tried to keep the irritation from showing. “They’d like you to move them to a tank they have set up. They’re going to trap them for this week and then let them go.” Of course they did. I managed to keep from rolling my eyes but between Devon’s presence and immediately being swarmed by otters the minute we got near the water, I end up wishing that I had. Otters are fast little mammals in the water; the fur keeps the water off their skin while making them slick and fast while in their preferred environment. The hard lesson I’d learned had been that they could scamper and bound pretty darn quickly on land. Nearly twenty of the brown friendly creatures swarmed up the banks of the tributary and made raucous sounds of greetings at me. Two vets stood nearby with nets and silly grins on their faces and a puny four otters ready to be transported to where ever in two tanks on trucks quietly humming with earth energy. Mags and Evan had backed up when I’d been swarmed but Devon had stuck by my side and seemed highly amused by the otters climbing over and around him to get to me. “They weren’t kidding about you and otters.” I shoot him a ‘no duh’ look and scoop up a pair to hand off to one of the Earth Elementals. We were saturating their habitat with majick, we’d been asked not to use majick on them, and so catching my willing victims by hand was the way I was going to do my task...

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

He roars, “What have you done?” I don’t answer. My heart beats crazy happy just to see her get across the iron. She’s not burned. She’s still human. “Zara.” His voice is measured. “I need her to maintain control.” “You don’t need to be in control. You’re all trapped. So there’ll be no more stealing boys, no more shooting arrows in the woods, getting people lost. It’s all over.” The metal is cold on my fingers. Devyn grabs more wire, starts another flight. A group of pixies leaps for him, screaming, a wild, chaotic mess. They start clawing at each other, lost in fear and hunger, angry. A pixie in a pink dress shrieks when another wearing a black gown lashes at her, slashing through the skin on her arm. “Zara?” The king tries to be calm and nice. He tries to look human. It doesn’t work. “Do you know what this means? Do you know the power that I’ll lose? The need? We will fight in here. We will kill each other.” “I know,” I say and my voice shakes as I stare at him, this man who is in my blood, but not me. He is not me. Still, I understand his need, his fear. He is stuck in this awful place where there is no moral way to move forward. “I’m so sorry.” And I am.

We are not doing it for Jagen. We are doing it for our kind.” “We?” Rayna snaps. “What Gift do you have, Grom? Oh, that’s right. You and Nalia get to stay safely behind while me and Galen and Emma drown an entire island.” Oh, heck no. “Um, I’m not killing anyone,” I say, raising my hand. “Not humans, not Syrena.” “It’s a good thing your Gift isn’t deadly then, isn’t it?” Rayna sneers. “I have an idea. You can give the humans their last meal. That would be special, wouldn’t it?” “How would you like to go without eating for a while?” I shoot back. I could use my Gift to send the fish away from her, or I could just bust all her teeth out. Maturity seems to be evaporating into the air. I wonder if her Gift includes pushing all my buttons in rapid-point-five seconds. But then, I know her animosity is really toward Grom, not me. All I’m doing is feeding her anxiety. Galen tucks a tendril of my hair behind my ear. It’s enough to distract me and he knows it. I give him a sour look for interfering, but he grins. “You don’t have to kill anyone, angelfish. In fact, we need your help to save them.” He seems to be telling me something with his eyes, but I’m not picking up on it. I’d love to blame it on the pain meds. “Doesn’t that kind of miss the point?” Rayna says. “Of course not,” Galen says. “Our objective is to rescue our kind, not kill the humans. We can do that without destroying them.” Everyone is all ears, but Galen is not ready to divulge his plan just yet. He stands. “Highness, tell the Archives we will meet with them to discuss our terms.” “Terms?” Grom says. “This isn’t negotiable, Galen. They need us. It’s our duty as Royals.” Galen shrugs. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s entirely negotiable. And we’re not Royals anymore, not until I hear it from their lips.” He turns to Antonis. “And tell them that in view of recent events, the council must come here, on land. There is no reason for us to doubt that this is a trap to recapture us.” Antonis chuckles. I get the feeling that this is all an amusing game to him. But then, old people have earned the right to be amused by everything. And I’m pretty sure he’s the oldest person I know. “Young Prince Galen, I am at your service.” With that, my grandfather leaves. I turn away as he begins to finagle the shorts from his skinny waist on his way down the beach.

[Chang Yu relates the following anecdote of Kao Tsu, the first Han Emperor: “Wishing to crush the Hsiung-nu, he sent out spies to report on their condition. But the Hsiung-nu, forewarned, carefully concealed all their able-bodied men and well-fed horses, and only allowed infirm soldiers and emaciated cattle to be seen. The result was that spies one and all recommended the Emperor to deliver his attack. Lou Ching alone opposed them, saying: “When two countries go to war, they are naturally inclined to make an ostentatious display of their strength. Yet our spies have seen nothing but old age and infirmity. This is surely some ruse on the part of the enemy, and it would be unwise for us to attack.” The Emperor, however, disregarding this advice, fell into the trap and found himself surrounded at Po-teng.”] 19.  Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. [Ts’ao Kung’s note is “Make a display of weakness and want.” Tu Mu says: “If our force happens to be superior to the enemy’s, weakness may be simulated in order to lure him on; but if inferior, he must be led to believe that we are strong, in order that he may keep off. In fact, all the enemy’s movements should be determined by the signs that we choose to give him.” Note the following anecdote of Sun Pin, a descendent of Sun Wu: In 341 B.C., the Ch’i State being at war with Wei, sent T’ien Chi and Sun Pin against the general P’ang Chuan, who happened to be a deadly personal enemy of the later. Sun Pin said: “The Ch’i State has a reputation for cowardice, and therefore our adversary despises us. Let us turn this circumstance to account.” Accordingly, when the army had crossed the border into Wei territory, he gave orders to show 100,000 fires on the first night, 50,000 on the next, and the night after only 20,000. P’ang Chuan pursued them hotly, saying to himself: “I knew these men of Ch’i were cowards: their numbers have already fallen away by more than half.” In his retreat, Sun Pin came to a narrow defile, with he calculated that his pursuers would reach after dark. Here he had a tree stripped of its bark, and inscribed upon it the words: “Under this tree shall P’ang Chuan die.” Then, as night began to fall, he placed a strong body of archers in ambush near by, with orders to shoot directly they saw a light. Later on, P’ang Chuan arrived at the spot, and noticing the tree, struck a light in order to read what was written on it. His body was immediately riddled by a volley of arrows, and his whole army thrown into confusion. [The above is Tu Mu’s version of the story; the SHIH CHI, less dramatically but probably with more historical truth, makes P’ang Chuan cut his own throat with an exclamation of despair, after the rout of his army.] ] He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it. 20.  By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him. [With an emendation suggested by Li Ching, this then reads, “He lies in wait with the main body of his troops.”] 21.  The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.

We’re trapped now, aren’t we?” “Yes,” said Ford, “we’re trapped.” “Well, didn’t you think of anything? I thought you said you were going to think of something. Perhaps you thought of something and I didn’t notice.” “Oh yes, I thought of something,” panted Ford. Arthur looked up expectantly. “But unfortunately,” continued Ford, “it rather involved being on the other side of this airtight hatchway.” He kicked the hatch they’d just been thrown through. “But it was a good idea, was it?” “Oh yes, very neat.” “What was it?” “Well, I hadn’t worked out the details yet. Not much point now, is there?” “So … er, what happens next?” asked Arthur. “Oh, er, well, the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds, of course …” said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle hymn. To Arthur’s eyes he suddenly looked very alien. “So this is it,” said Arthur, “we are going to die.” “Yes,” said Ford, “except … no! Wait a minute!” He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried. “What? Where?” cried Arthur, twisting round. “No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.” He slumped against the wall again and carried on the tune from where he left off. “You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.

the following prayer by Dr. Jane Goodall, who was named a UN Messenger of Peace for her continued world efforts, she seems to touch on most aspects of world conflict as we know them today and as they pertain to all living things. Prayer for World Peace We pray to the great Spiritual Power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma; that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings and our connectedness with the natural world; that we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life; that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children; that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, reaching to the spirit that is within,knowing the power of each individual to change the world. We pray for social justice, for the alleviation of the crippling poverty that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery—hungry, sick, and utterly without hope. We pray for the children who are starving,who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution, and especially for those forced to fight, to kill and torture even members of their own family. We pray for the victims of violence and war, for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind. We pray for the multitudes of refugees, forced from their homes to alien places through war or through the utter destruction of their environment. We pray for suffering animals everywhere, for an end to the pain caused by scientific experimentation, intensive farming, fur farming, shooting, trapping, training for entertainment, abusive pet owners, and all other forms of exploitation such as overloading and overworking pack animals, bull fighting, badger baiting, dog and cock fighting and so many more. We pray for an end to cruelty, whether to humans or other animals, for an end to bullying, and torture in all its forms. We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength we gain in loving; that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life; that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts; that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility; We pray because of the hope that is within us, and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit; We pray because of our love for Creation, and because of our trust in God. We pray, above all, for peace throughout the world. I love this beautiful and magnanimous prayer. Each request is spelled out clearly and specifically, and it asks that love, peace, and kindness be shown to all of earth’s creatures, not just its human occupants.

He’d promised she would be “safe,” which she now realized left a great deal of room for personal interpretation. “If I’m going to remain,” she said uneasily, “I think we ought to agree to observe all the proprieties and conventions.” “Such as?” “Well, for a beginning, you really shouldn’t be calling me by my given name.” “Considering the kiss we exchanged in the arbor last night, it seems a little absurd to call you Miss Cameron.” It was the time to tell him she was Lady Cameron, but Elizabeth was too unstrung by his reference to those unforgettable-and wholly forbidden-moments in his arms to bother with that. “That isn’t the point,” she said firmly. “The point is that although last night did happen, it must not influence our behavior today. Today we ought-ought to be twice as correct in our behavior,” she continued, a little desperately and illogically, “to atone for what happened last night!” “Is that how it’s done?” he asked, his eyes beginning to glint with amusement. “Somehow I didn’t quite imagine you allowed convention to dictate your every move.” To a gambler without ties or responsibility, the rules of social etiquette and convention must be tiresome in the extreme, and Elizabeth realized it was imperative to convince him he must yield to her viewpoint. “Oh, but I am,” she prevaricated. “The Camerons are the most conventional people in the world! As you know from last night, I believe in death before dishonor. We also believe in God and country, motherhood and the king, and…and all the proprieties. We’re quite intolerably boring on the subject, actually.” “I see,” he said, his lips twitching. “Tell me something,” he asked mildly, “why would such a conventional person as yourself have crossed swords with a roomful of men last night in order to protect a stranger’s reputation?” “Oh, that,” Elizabeth said. “That was just-well, my conventional notion of justice. Besides,” she said, her ire coming to the fore as she recalled the scene in the card room last night, “it made me excessively angry when I realized that the only reason none of them would try to dissuade Lord Everly from shooting you was because you were not their social equal, while Everly is.” “Social equality?” he teased with a lazy, devastating smile. “What an unusual notion to spring from such a conventional person as yourself.” Elizabeth was trapped, and she knew it. “The truth is,” she said shakily, “that I am scared to death of being here.” “I know you are,” he said, sobering, “but I am the last person in the world you’ll ever have to fear.

If you are afflicted with melancholy at this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk-cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year. Their gravestones are not bespoken yet. Who shall be sexton to them? Is it the winter of their discontent? Do they seem to have lain down to die, despairing of their skunk-cabbagedom? “Up and at ‘em,” “Give it to ‘em,” “Excelsior,” “Put it through,” –these are their mottoes. Mortal human creatures must take a little respite in this fall of the year; their spirits do flag a little. There is a little questioning of destiny, and thinking to go like cowards to where the “weary shall be at rest.” But not so with skunk-cabbage. Its withered leaves fall and are transfixed by a rising bud. Winter and death are ignored; the circle of life is complete. Are these false prophets? Is it a lie or a vain boast underneath the skunk-cabbage bud, pushing it upward and lifting the dead leaves with it? They rest with spears advanced; they rest to shoot! I say it is good for me to be here, slumping in the mud, a trap covered with withered leaves. See those green cabbage buds lifting the dry leaves in that watery and muddy place. There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead.

If you are afflicted with melancholy at this season, go to the swamp and see the brave spears of skunk-cabbage buds already advanced toward a new year. Their gravestones are not bespoken yet. Who shall be sexton to them? Is it the winter of their discontent? Do they seem to have lain down to die, despairing of their skunk-cabbagedom? “Up and at ‘em,” “Give it to ‘em,” “Excelsior,” “Put it through,” –these are their mottoes. Mortal human creatures must take a little respite in this fall of the year; their spirits do flag a little. There is a little questioning of destiny, and thinking to go like cowards to where the “weary shall be at rest.” But not so with skunk-cabbage. Its withered leaves fall and are transfixed by a rising bud. Winter and death are ignored; the circle of life is complete. Are these false prophets? Is it a lie or a vain boast underneath the skunk-cabbage bud, pushing it upward and lifting the dead leaves with it? They rest with spears advanced; they rest to shoot! I say it is good for me to be here, slumping in the mud, a trap covered with withered leaves. See those green cabbage buds lifting the dry leaves in that watery and muddy place. There is no can’t nor cant to them. They see over the brow of winter’s hill. They see another summer ahead. (October 31, 1857)

He rode into Vassy on March 1, 1562, accompanied by an entourage of two hundred armed knights and found the local Huguenot congregation, numbering some five or six hundred people, including many women and children, conducting its Sunday morning meeting not outside the city walls, as was specified in the Edict of Toleration, but right in town—and, worse, on his property in one of his very own buildings, which they had appropriated without his permission, an unimaginable insult. An altercation between the duke’s people and the Protestants promptly ensued. Being for the most part unarmed, the Huguenots had to improvise. Rocks were thrown. Members of the lower classes were not supposed to throw stones at their superiors from the upper classes. The duke’s soldiers retaliated by shooting and stabbing as many of the dissenters as they could (which was quite a few, as their opponents were trapped inside the building attending a church service), accompanied by rousing shouts of “Kill! Kill! By God’s death kill these Huguenots!” An hour later the Massacre of Vassy, as this infamous incident would later be dubbed, was over. Fifty Huguenots lay dead, another two hundred were wounded, and a flaming torch had been thrust into the tinderbox of religious controversy that would blaze up into the bonfire of the Wars of Religion.

Today there is much talk about democratic ideals in the outside world. But not in Germany! For here in Germany we had more than enough time-fifteen years-to acquaint ourselves with these democratic ideals. And we ourselves had to pick up the legacy left behind by this democracy. Now we are being credited with many a truly astounding war aim, especially by the English. After all, England is quite experienced in issuing proclamations of objectives in warfare as it has waged the greatest number of wars the world over. Truly astounding are the war aims announced to us today. A new Europe will arise. This Europe will be characterized by justice. This justice will render armament obsolete. This will lead to disarmament at last. This disarmament in turn will bring about an economic blossoming. Change and trade will spring up-much trade-free trade. And with the sponsorship of this trade, culture shall once more blossom, and not only culture will benefit, but religion will also prosper. In other words: we are heading towards a golden age! Well, we have heard of this golden age before. Many times precisely the same people attempted to illustrate its virtues to us who are now flooding us with descriptions of its benefits. The records are old ones, played once too often. We can only pity these gentlemen who cannot even come up with a new idea to trap a great people. For all this they had already promised us in 1918. Then, too, England’s objectives in the war were the creation of this “new Europe,” the establishment of a “new justice,” of which the “right to selfdetermination of the peoples” was to form an integral part. Back then already they promised us justice to render obsolete-for all time-the bearing of any sort of weaponry. Back then already they submitted to us a program for disarmament-one for global disarmament. To make this disarmament more evident, it was to be crowned by the establishment of an association of nations bearing no arms. These were to settle their differences in the future-for even back then there was no doubt that differences would still arise-by talking them to death in discussion and debate, just as is the custom in democratic states. There would be no more shooting under any circumstances! In 1918, they declared a blessed and pious age to come! What came to pass in its stead we all lived to see: the old states were destroyed without even as much as asking their citizenry. Historic, ancient structures were severed, not only state bodies but grown economic structures as well, without anything better to take their place. In total disregard of the principle of the right to self-determination of the peoples, the European peoples were hacked to pieces, torn apart. Great states were dissolved. Nations were robbed of their rights, first rendered utterly defenseless and then subjected to a division which left only victors and vanquished in this world. And then there was no more talk of disarmament. To the contrary, armament went on. Nor did any efforts materialize to settle conflicts peacefully. The armed states waged wars just as before. Yet those who had been disarmed were no longer in a position to ward off the aggressions of those well armed. Naturally, this did not herald economic prosperity but, to the contrary, produced a network of lunatic reparations payments which led to increasing destitution for not only the vanquished, but also the so-called victors themselves. The consequences of this economic destitution were felt most acutely by the German Volk. International finance remained brutal and squeezed our Volk ruthlessly. Adolf Hitler – speech in the Sportpalast Berlin, January 30, 1940

The thunder howled and the rain splashed, the leaves played with the breeze and the lightning flashed, and the tigress growled at last. She looked here and she looked there, she hadn't seen so much rain anywhere, a desire suddenly came in her heart, a mad longing that had to start, she felt deep love in the rain, looking at her cubs all over again But two years ago she had been wounded, By cowardly men who wanted her grounded, They were afraid of her power, they wanted to capture her and to enslave her in their tower They laid traps and they waited in the trees, The jungle was full of birds and the bees, The tigress was out hunting for meat, her cubs awaiting in the cave for their treat There was something missing in the air, the fragrance of jasmine was not there, The tigress looked up into the trees and saw the men's faces painted in grease, She challenged them looking into their eyes, And saw fear, fright , and faces full of lies! She roared with all her might, This was her land, She had all the right! The cowardly men crouching behind the trees, Fired their guns in twos and threes, The brave Tigress looked them in the eye, She was the fire and she was the sky, Indomitable force, invincible power, She was the Tigress, The Queen in her Empire None of the bullets could break her Spirit, Only one could graze her right leg a bit, She roared with all her heart's might, For she was the Queen for all to sight! The guns emptied and no more bullets to shoot, The cowardly men jumped from the trees and ran away in two hoots! The Tigress laughed and loudly roared, For she was the power and her Spirit soared She is the Tigress inside every Woman, She has the Power to defeat any Man, Love her and she would love you back, Respect her and she would respect you back, Dare to harm her and she would defeat you till the Last!

Gilan," Will said. "I've been thinking...." Gilan raised his eyebrows to heaven in mock despair. Again the expression reminded Will forcefully of Halt. "Always a problem," said the Ranger. "And what, pray tell, have you been thinking?" "Well," began Will slowly, "this double knife business is all well and good. But wouldn't it be better just to shoot the swordsmen before he got to close quarters?" "Yes, Will. It certainly would," Gilan agreed patiently. "But what if you were about to do that and your bowstring broke?" "I could run and hide," he suggested, but Gilan pressed him. "What if there were nowhere to run? You're trapped against a sheer cliff. Nowhere to go. Your bowstring just broke and an angry swordsman is coming at you. What then?" Will shook his head. "I suppose I'd have to fight," he admitted reluctantly. "Exactly," Gilan agreed. "We avoid close combat whenever possible. But if the time comes when there's no other choice, it's a good idea to be prepared, isn't it?" "I guess," Will said. Then Horace chimed in with a question. "What about an axman?" he said. Gilan looked at him, nonplussed for a moment. "An axman?" he asked. "Yes," said Horace, warming up to his theme. "What about if you're facing an enemy with a battleax? Do your knives work then?" Gilan hesitated. "I wouldn't advise anyone to face a battleax with just two knives," he said carefully. "So what should I do?" Will joined in. Gilan glared from one boy to the other. He had the feeling he was being set up. "Shoot him," he said shortly. Will shook his head, grinning. "Can't," he said. "My bowstring's broken." "Then run and hide," said Gilan, between gritted teeth. "But there's a cliff," Horace pointed out. "A sheer drop behind him and an angry axman coming at him." "What do I do?" prompted Will. Gilan took a deep breath and looked them both in the eye, one after the other. "Jump off the cliff. It'll be less messy that way.

Catch Either/Or Thinking Anxious perfectionists will typically think “I need to perform flawlessly at all times,” with their underlying assumption being “or else it will result in disaster.” This is a common type of thinking trap termed either/or thinking. In this case, the either/or is this: Either there is flawless performance or complete and utter failure, and nothing in between. Not only can this style of thinking make you feel crushed when you don’t meet your own ideal standards, but it also often leads to perfectionism paralysis. Take, for example, an artist who sees his future career prospects as becoming either the next Picasso or a penniless flop; this person doesn’t see other possible outcomes in between. You can see how this would give the artist a creative block. For other folks, their hidden assumption may be slightly different: “Either I need to perform flawlessly at all times, or other people will reject me.” When I look back at my clinical psychology training, I realize I had this belief at that time. At a semiconscious level, I thought that the only way to prevent getting booted out of the program was to score at the top of the class for every test or assignment. Ultra-high standards often arise because a person is trying to hide imagined catastrophic flaws. In this scenario, people often think that if their flaws get revealed they’ll be shunned, and so the only way to conceal their defects is by always excelling. When people who have this belief do excel, their brain jumps to the conclusion that excelling was the only reason they managed to avoid catastrophe. This then perpetuates their belief that excelling is necessary for preventing future disasters. Researchers have used the term clinical perfectionism to describe the most problematic kind of perfectionism. When clinical perfectionists manage to meet their ultra-high standards, they often conclude that those standards must not have been high enough and revise them upward, meaning they can never feel any sense of peace. All this being said, I’m not suggesting you shoot for “acceptable” performance standards if you’re capable of excellence. Most of the anxious perfectionists I’ve worked with would hate that. It’s not in their nature to feel comfortable with mediocre performance.

The Sudden Light and the Trees" My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog and wife beater. In bad dreams I killed him and once, in the consequential light of day, I called the Humane Society about Blue, his dog. They took her away and I readied myself, a baseball bat inside my door. That night I hear his wife scream and I couldn't help it, that pathetic relief; her again, not me. It would be years before I'd understand why victims cling and forgive. I plugged in the Sleep-Sound and it crashed like the ocean all the way to sleep. One afternoon I found him on the stoop, a pistol in his hand, waiting, he said, for me. A sparrow had gotten in to our common basement. Could he have permission to shoot it? The bullets, he explained, might go through the floor. I said I'd catch it, wait, give me a few minutes and, clear-eyed, brilliantly afraid, I trapped it with a pillow. I remember how it felt when I got my hand, and how it burst that hand open when I took it outside, a strength that must have come out of hopelessness and the sudden light and the trees. And I remember the way he slapped the gun against his open palm, kept slapping it, and wouldn't speak. .

Next day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and, disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which the sportsmen still did not come out.

He took our entwined hands and set them on his chest…which forced me to have to scoot closer to him, eating up space between us. I felt his heart beat under the back of my hand. I could hardly breathe. I didn’t want to move and break the contact. “Are you comfortable?” he murmured. I bunched the blanket at my head to make a better pillow and drew in a breath for my thankful lungs. “Yes.” His forearm was trapping my forearm against his side at the angle he held our hands. “And this…” he rubbed his thumb along mine. Again…electricity ran through my veins. “Is okay?” My heart hitched in my chest. “Yes.” He repeated the action and he could have asked me anything and I probably would have said yes. He sighed out a breath. “I’m glad,” he whispered. “I don’t think I could let go if you asked me.” His fingers contracted. His face turned toward me, but I did not look up into the hood. I studied our hands on his chest. “Nothing has felt this good…this right, in a long time, Nerissa.” He said it so softly I thought I had imagined it. I smiled, afraid to say anything. Knowing me…I would burst into tears. His other hand reached to touch my cheek and I felt him lean in…his breath was on my face. I closed my eyes. “I think he’s going to kiss her,” Amelia crowed. “Yuck!” His nearness was taken away…but my hand remained in his. “What are you two little monkeys cackling about?” Liam chuckled. Amelia smiled innocently. “Uncle Ian says…” “We don’t want to hear what Uncle Ian has to say,” Liam growled playfully. “Now lie down here and watch for those shooting stars you were hoping for. Daddy needs one to wish on tonight.” Brianne giggled. “You going to wish for a kiss, Daddy?

That was an inspiring service, Thomas, and I believe it should be followed by an inspiring bit of entertainment.” Kitty clapped her hands. “Oh yes! What a lovely idea.” “What shall we do then?” Nathaniel asked. “Why don’t we have Liza perform for us?” Kitty said. Eliza snapped her head toward her sister. “Me?” Kitty tilted her head. “Yes, like you used to do! I haven’t heard you perform Shakespeare in so long.” Nathaniel sat back down. “I have heard tales of your talents, Eliza. Shakespeare is one of my favorites. It would be a great honor if you’d perform for us.” Eliza turned to Thomas, shooting him a stern but playful glare. “Did you have anything to do with this?” Thomas attempted to smother a telling grin. “Nothing whatsoever.” She turned again toward her sister. Kitty bit her lip and tilted her head farther as if to say “pretty please?” Eliza looked around the room tapping her foot, searching for a reason to decline. The last thing she wanted was to make a fool out of herself. “I’d love to, Kitty, but it’s been such a long time and I don’t have any of my books with me. I really need to freshen my memory before I do anything like that and I’m out of practice on my recitations. I’m sorry, my dear.” “Not to worry.” Nathaniel popped out of his chair again and went to fetch a small bundle by the front door. “It so happens that I’ve brought such a book with me.” Eliza threw an accusatory glance at Thomas. He grinned wide as the horizon, and leaned back in his seat. She couldn’t get out of it now. She was trapped. She pinched her lips and laced her fingers in her lap. Nathaniel came to her chair and held the thick book in front of her. “Your reputation precedes you, Miss Campbell. You must indulge us, please.” Eliza

My grandmother had actually known some real mountain men back in the old days, but she had never taken a liking to them. She said they drank and swore and spit tobacco and never took baths, and fought and bragged and lied all the time. I don't recall, however, that she ever mentioned what was bad about them.

Young people just now starting out in camping probably have no idea that it wasn't but a couple of decades ago that people went camping expecting to be miserable. Half the fun of camping in those days was looking forward to getting back home. When you did get back home you prolonged the enjoyment of your trip by telling all your friends how miserable you had been. The more you talked about the miseries of life in the woods, the more you wanted to get back out there and start suffering again. Camping was a fine and pleasant misery.

The first step in Sleeping Out Alone is to select just the right spot on which to spend the night. If it is too close to the house you will draw such taunts as, "Albert is spending the night on the back stoop." On the other hand, the sleeping spot should not be so far from the house that the distance cannot be covered in less than two seconds starting from a prone position. An imaginary straight line extends from the sleeping spot to the back door of the house. The line should be clear of all obstacles: hoses, lawn chairs, tall blades of grass. If one has a dog, he should be tied or locked up well before night in order to prevent his slipping in under cover of darkness and surreptitiously depositing a new obstacle on the escape route. Dogs have been known to fall asleep directly on the beeline, as it is sometimes called. Once while traveling at a high rate of speed, I collided with my old dog, Strange, under just such circumstances. The result was multiple bites on the legs, neck, head, and hindquarters, but after a good deal of rest and medication he managed to pull through.

Now anyone I encounter might lash out. What happens then might as well be my private thoughts come to life. I’ve walked past Gandalf, heading toward the right side of the fork, when he moves in a flash, striking out hard with his walking stick down low on the back of my ankles. It hurts. And it disrupts my balance. I fall forward, dropping my gun and barely catching myself with my hands before my face hits the dirt. Then the old man is on top of me, the grizzled face that looked so harmless twisted into a predatory grin. I kick out instinctively and push him off me, but he’s stronger than he looks. He grabs for me again, using his weight to hold down my legs and wrenching one of my arms so it’s trapped. But I still have one hand free. My mind roaring fiercely with terror and outrage both, I fumble with my hand until I can feel the butt of my dropped gun. I’ve been trained to fight. For years now. First by Mack. Then by Maria, who leads the group of women I used to travel with. I’m no longer a trapped and trembling girl, and I’m not going to be her again. I grab the gun and swing it hard to slam into the man’s head. He roars in pain and backs off slightly, giving me enough time to fit my fingers around the trigger and aim. I shoot, blowing Gandalf’s head off.

Maybe we’ve gone soft. Gotten used to the relative safety of the farms in the past week. But Mack slows down immediately, and I jump off without hesitation so I can run over to help. I should know better. We both should. But things have felt settled and secure since we got together for real, like the worst of the danger should be over. But we still live in the world. And The Wild has never been safe. And this is undoubtedly a trap for the most gullible of travelers. Evidently today that’s us. Before I can reach the prostrate woman, a man steps out from behind a thick tree. The woman isn’t armed, but he is. And he lifts his pistol, aiming it unwaveringly at the largest threat. That’s Mack, of course. I can’t even take a breath before he’s pulled the trigger, firing directly at Mack. I act on pure instinct. Not because I’ve thought it through in even the slightest of ways. This stranger is shooting a gun at Mack, and Mack will always—always, always—be mine. So I jump right at the man, blocking Mack from the bullet that would have killed him. Unfortunately that means the bullet hits me instead.

Move quickly and don’t say anything,” Wesley ordered as he pushed me forward. The steel wire fence of the Death Camps rose up sharply in the light of the moon. I stopped, whirling around to face him. “How can you live with yourself, working for this army?” I asked in a trembling voice, staring deep into his eyes. “If you’re going to kill me, go ahead and do it now.” He pushed me forward. “Didn’t you hear me?” he hissed. “I said, don’t speak. Keep walking.” The moonlight fell across his angular cheekbones and lit up the dark hollows of his eyes. We had passed the camps and were now walking down the dark field toward a windowless brick building. “Where are you taking me?” I said through clenched teeth. He pulled me to a stop and began to untie the rope binding my wrists. “You’re not taking me to the camps?” My voice was filled with confusion. He took a second gun from his uniform and placed it in my palm. “Do you know how to shoot?” “Yes.” “There’s a full round in there. Don’t let go of it. If we get separated, if the Roamers get you, just shoot them. Don’t hesitate or they’ll kill you first.” I nodded mechanically and wrapped my fingers around the grip, wincing at the pain as I placed my finger experimentally on the trigger. “I’m taking you somewhere safe, but we have to go through the woods to get there,” Wesley went on. “And we need to be quiet and careful. If I’m caught helping you, we’ll both be killed.” I raised my eyes to his. I wanted to trust him, but what if this was just an elaborate trap? “Why are you helping me?” I asked. He looked toward the Death Camps in the distance. “You’re not the only person here with something to hide, Eliza.

On March 13, 1957, with guns blazing, they exited their vehicles and attacked the unwary guards at the Presidential Palace. Running, the attackers stormed into the dining room and then on to the offices on the lower level, only to find them empty. Since the elevator was up on the third floor of the building, the attackers were momentarily stymied. Although they had previously studied a floor plan of the palace, they became disoriented, perhaps from the intense fighting that had already claimed about ten of their number. An equal number or more of the president’s elite guards also lay dead on the presidential grounds. For a moment those attackers still alive had difficulty in locating the grand marble staircase to the second floor. Once they did, they were repelled by a hail of gunfire from the guardsmen, now fully aware of what was happening. When Carlos Menoyo was fatally hit on the stairs, Menelao Mora Morales took charge of the assault and managed to ascend to the top of the stairs, where he also was shot dead. About nine men made it to the second floor, but without leadership, they didn’t know where to go from there. Trapped on the second floor, they searched for a way out. The hapless, amateur warriors couldn’t retreat down the stairs where their leaders lay and where the shooting was still intense. Stuck, they didn’t know how to get up to the third floor or back down the staircase and out of the building. Batista was on the upper floor with his family, as the remaining attackers were now being methodically killed. To them the third floor could only be reached by elevator, which was effectively being kept in place at the top of the lift shaft, thus preventing the assault from reaching Batista and his family. Although some few managed to escape during the next few hours, thirty-five of the attackers were killed in and around the palace. A final count revealed that five of the palace guards were killed along with one tourist, who just happened to be there at the wrong time. Only three of the rebels managed to find a way out and escaped.

The Battle of Mogadishu on October 3, 1993, was part of Operation Restore Hope. We remember it now as “Black Hawk Down” from the novel (and subsequent film) of that name by an on-the-scene journalist, Mark Bowden. Army Rangers paid a heavy price for not looking “too intimidating” or “like invaders,” valiantly fighting while stripped of the equipment they requested. Had the administration not ignorantly meddled with events, the 160 Special Forces operators of Army Rangers and Delta wouldn’t have taken so many casualties. And here is what the Clinton Machine didn’t comprehend: Our guys wouldn’t have had to inflict as many casualties either, shooting their way out against 4,000–6,000 Somalis with an entire city of civilians trapped in the crossfire. The Rangers became a legend that day but lost eighteen fine men and suffered seventy-three wounded.

Well as long as you’re in the game, you should figure out your special ability.” “I don’t think I have a special ability.” “Sure you do! Every Wild Thing has a special ability. Like there’s one that can call down lightning, there’s one that has poison burps, one that does tornadoes.” “I don’t think I can do any of those things.” “Well, you can probably do something. You should try figuring it out. While you’re at it, maybe you could sneak into the cafeteria and let me know what’s for dessert today.” “I’m not doing that.” “Fine, but if you happen to see a Golden Hawkwadoodle…” “Just go to class.” Eric gave me a thumbs up and put his phone in his pocket. Then he looked back in my direction and waved his hand where he remembered my face being. “Man, this is cool!” Eric exclaimed as he turned to walk to class. Alone at last, I took a breath and looked around. Mr. Gregory had seen me get on the bus, so he’d probably be at the school soon. All I had to do was stay away from anyone playing Go Wild until then. In the meantime… I looked at my hands. Did I really have special powers? I squinted really hard and tried to shoot fire from my eyes like the snake. Nothing happened. I burped. Smelly but not poisonous. I pressed my finger against my palm like Spider-Man, got mad like the Hulk and clenched my fists like Wolverine. Zip, zero, nada. This was stupid. After being up for half the night, I needed a nap, not a superpower. I yawned and stretched my arms. SWOOOOOOOOOSH!

We were eighteen thousand vertical feet above sea level, in the mouth of Everest’s killer jaws. I noticed my hand was shaking as I fumbled with the ropes through thick mittens. It was pure fatigue. An hour later, it felt like we were still no closer to base camp, and it was starting to get late. I glanced nervously around the icefall. We should be meeting back up with Nima somewhere around here, as arranged. I scanned around but couldn’t see him. I dug my crampons into the snow, leaned back against the face to get my breath back, and waited for Mick behind me. He was still ten yards away, stepping carefully across the broken blocks of ice. We had been in this crevasse-ridden frozen death trap for more than nine hours, and we were both moving very laboriously. Watching him, I knew that if the mighty Mick was moving this slowly then we were indeed on a big mountain. I stood up and took a few more careful steps, testing the ice with each movement. I reached the end of one length of rope, unclipped, breathed hard, and grabbed the next rope. I held it loosely in my hand, looked around, took another deep breath, then clipped my karabiner into the line. Then all of a sudden, I felt the ground beneath me twitch. I looked down and saw a crack in the ice shoot between my feet, with a quiet, slicing sound. I didn’t dare move. The world seemed to stand still. The ice cracked once more behind me, then with no warning, it just dropped away beneath me, and I was falling. Falling down this lethal black scar in the glacier that had no visible bottom. Suddenly I smashed against the gray wall of the crevasse. The force threw me to the other side, crushing my shoulder and arm against the ice. Then I jerked to a halt as the thin rope that I had just clipped into held me. I am spinning round and round in free air. The tips of my crampons catch the edge of the crevasse wall. I can hear my screams echoing in the darkness below. Shards of ice keep raining down on me, and one larger bit smashes into my skull, jerking my head backward. I lose consciousness for a few precious seconds. I blink back into life to see the last of the ice falling away beneath me into the darkness. My body gently swings around on the end of the rope, and all is suddenly eerily silent. Adrenaline is coursing through my body, and I find myself shaking in waves of convulsions. I scream up at Mick, and the sound echoes around the walls. I looked up to the ray of light above, then down to the abyss below. I clutch frantically for the wall, but it is glassy smooth. I swing my ice axe at it wildly, but it doesn’t hold, and my crampons just screech across the ice. In desperation I cling to the rope above me and look up. I am twenty-three years old and about to die. Again.

It is a maxim among carnivore biologists that the main reason big predators now die is because people kill them. People run them over with speeding cars, they shoot them, trap them, gas them, poison them, and torture them. Laws notwithstanding, they kill them out of sheer spite, then bury the evidence—a practice so routine it has become a barstool commandment in certain rural cultures: Shoot, shovel, and shut up.

To Giovanni da Pistoia Michelangelo, translated from the Italian by Joel Agee | 144 words (On painting the vault of the Sistine Chapel) 1509 I’ve grown a goiter from this trap I’m in, as cats do from foul water in Lombardy, or some such place, wherever it may be. My stomach’s almost up against my chin, My beard points skyward, at my nape the store of memory dangles, I’ve grown a harpy’s breast, and from above, my dripping brush, for jest, transforms my face into a mosaic floor. And while my haunches press into my gut, my ass serves as a steady counterweight. My feet tread blindly somewhere down below. In front I feel my skin stretched lengthwise, but in back it crimps and folds. This is my state: arched and indented like a Syrian bow. Not to be trusted, though, are the strange thoughts that through my mind now run, for who can shoot straight through a crooked gun? My painting’s dead. I’m done. Giovanni, friend, remove my honor’s taint, I’m not in a good place, I cannot paint.

I, myself, would never shoot big game (and would hesitate to even lay traps for them). You see, as a committed animal liker – #animals – I think very carefully about which animals I am and am not prepared to kill.

You have stolen my heart.” “No,” she whispered rawly. “Don’t say that, don’t even think it. Can’t you understand? I’ll never love you back, Hunter.” Her pulse started to slam. “I’m terrified of--” He crossed her lips with a gentle finger, his eyes clouding with warmth. “Of lying with me? I am not blind, Blue Eyes. Your heart is laid upon the ground with memories. That will pass. You will come to me. You will want my hand upon you. It will be so. The Great Ones have spoken it.” She wrenched her face aside. “I’ll lie with you because I promised and because I vowed to before God and a priest. But I’ll never want to, never.” A sob caught in her throat. “Oh, God, what am I doing here? I don’t want to hurt you, Hunter, truly I don’t.” He lay down beside her and pulled her back into the crook of his arm, pressing her fair head to his shoulder. “Ka taikay. Sh-hh, Blue Eyes. Do not weep. It will be well.” “How can it be? I’m trapped here. I can never leave. I’ve made promises I’m not sure I can keep. I’m frightened, Hunter, of you and your people--even of myself. How can all be well?” “It will be well. My people will accept. You are one with them now, the wife of a warrior. In time, you will want to be beside me. Your fear will leave. You will see. Until then, this Comanche will wait, eh?” “Wait?” she whispered. “You mean you won’t--” She broke off and looked up at him. “You won’t--force me?” Hunter’s throat tightened. “I make no promise for you. I wait now, yes? We will see where our moccasins fall.” To soothe her, he began telling her stories about his childhood, about his first bow, leaving out the part about shooting his father, about his first fight, about his first hunting trip. He had come to the tale of his vision quest when he felt her slender body relax against him and heard her breathing change. His voice trailed off. He stared upward into the darkness, filled with a yearning that couldn’t be slaked. It would be a very long while before he followed his blue-eyes into the black depths of slumber. A very long while.

WHO MAKES THESE CHANGES? Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. I ride after a deer and find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want and end up in prison. I dig pits to trap others and fall in. I should be suspicious of what I want. DROWNING

I want more. Please,” she begged. And I want everything. I was taking a risk, I knew that, but what better time to shoot my shot? “Be mine, Dakota,” I demanded more than asked. “Yours?” “I don’t want to be a regret you have in the morning.” She raised a brow at the implication, and I laughed. “Not like that. I want more with you than just ‘hanging out’. I want our time spent together to mean something, to hopefully lead somewhere. I want to hold you in public, to say you’re my girl. And maybe have you be proud to call me yours as well.” “You’re sure you want me? When you can have your pick of any woman out there?

Yeah, this girl’s daddy had taught her how to shoot whiskey; it was more than needed tonight.

But I wouldn’t be Maddox fucking Sterling if I didn’t shoot my shot, even when the odds of scoring were minimal.

You know what they say about a man who can shoot his whiskey straight, don’t you?” “No. Tell me,” I commanded, my voice gone gruff. “That he’s not afraid to go down on a woman.

I found my truck where I had left it, parked with the rear against a juniper. Water in the jugs had frozen. A mouse trap in the back still hadn’t caught the mouse who was living in my wool socks and eating holes in my plastic bags. I drove north. By the time the Milky Way was out I had reached the foot of the Book Cliffs and the remains of Thompson, Utah. The train comes through the town and was heading out for Christmas. I was an hour late. The train is customarily two hours late. I still had time to set pennies on the tracks. This was the only time I had seen another customer in the Silver Grill Cafe. Through the window he sat at one end of the counter gesturing toward the gray-haired woman who runs the place, sitting at the other end. I once ordered a cinnamon roll in there, and she peeled open a box she had gone all the way to Moab City Market a couple days earlier to purchase. By telling me this, she was emphasizing the fact that the cinnamon rolls were fresh. She put it in the microwave for me. Gave me an extra pat of butter, the kind with foil around it. I spent an hour once just up the street talking to the post mistress and her cat. I checked the WANTED bulletins, then ran when the train came through. If you are not standing at the tracks in Thompson, the Amtrak will not stop. They call it a whistle stop. One of the few left in the country. The gray-haired woman shut down the cafe, clicked off the front lights. Electricity was buzzing out of the single street light, so I opened the truck door and turned on the tape deck. After a while I shut it off because my battery has never proved itself to be resilient. A couple of freight trains tore through with the impact of sudden cataclysm, flattening my pennies. Then the buzzing of the street light. Then the coyotes. They were yelping and howling up Sego Canyon, where there are pre-Anasazi paintings on the walls—big, round eyes, huge and red, looking over the canyon. The train was three hours late. I stood nearly on the tracks so they couldn’t miss me with that blinding, drunken light. The conductor threw open the steel door. “Shoot,” he yelled. “It’s dark out here!” I dove through and tackled him with my backpacks, flashing a ticket in his face. He quickly announced that I had too many pieces, but the train was already moving. I looked back out. Utah was black. He pulled the door closed and the train began to rock along the tracks. When I came down the aisle I saw a few passengers who were still awake, on their way to San Francisco or Las Vegas. Overhead lights were trained on paperbacks in their laps. They were staring out their windows into absolute darkness. I knew what they were thinking; there is nothing out there.

You’ve never told me how he died.” “What?” “Josh. I knew he was dead, but you never told me what happened to him.” “Oh.” I swallow. Put my head back down on his shoulder since it seems safer that way. “I thought I had.” “You haven’t. I figured it was too raw and hard for you, so I never asked directly. You don’t have to tell me now if you don’t want.” “No. It’s okay. After Impact… After Impact, he got worse. A lot of people did. All the fear and the stress and the struggle to even survive. He eventually started to hit me. He’d do it once and then act all sorry and promise to never do it again. He’d be good for a while, but then he’d do it again. In the old world, I think him hitting me would have been a hard line for me. I really think I would have left after the first time. But after everything fell apart… I felt trapped. I was trapped. How the hell was I going to survive on my own in that world right after Impact. Everything was chaos. And so incredibly dangerous.” “So what happened?” he murmurs gently. “It went on like that for about six months. Then one day he hit me in the face. I tried to cover the bruise with the makeup I had left, but an older lady in town noticed and asked about it. I… I told her. The truth. That he was hitting me and it had been going on for a while. Nothing I did would make him stop.” Mack is silent. His hand is still now as it rests on my back. “Then… Then the next day…” I take a ragged breath. “Maybe it was just a coincidence. I never knew for sure. But the timing… Anyway, the next day he went off into the woods with a hunting party like normal. He never came back.” “Fuck,” Mack breathes out. “They said it was an accident. Someone else was shooting in the area and must have mistaken him for a deer or something. But he was wearing orange, so… I don’t know. But he was dead, and I was…” “You were what?” “I was so relieved. Not sad at all. Just relieved.” “Of course you were. Anyone would have been.” “And it was then I decided I was going to make the best of my freedom and new start. Even though we were going through an apocalypse, why shouldn’t I finally try to learn how to be strong?” “You did.” “Yeah. I think I did okay. I did get stronger, and maybe I’ve also finally figured out that real strength isn’t what I used to assume it was.

Your beauty is a darkened form," he began, his voice shooting sparks through her pulse. "Wispy strands within a crippled storm." He slid his finger along the hair near her face. "Weaving its way into every thread... that protects my soul and keeps me dead..." Her heart clenched and seized her breath at those words. "Decayed fibers guard your heart... By terror's strings, you dance the part... My hidden masterpiece in dark so dark... I see the rosy glow upon your scars..." She gasped as tears flooded her eyes. "Down to the marrow of your beautiful soul... I'll trap every shadow in your broken bones... I'll find you in your hellish maze... And set a snare with my blinding rage... Oh, I'll set a snare, of blinding rage... My love... My heart... My soul...

If gun control in the US proves impossible to get over the line, it may be time for architects to design new buildings with special lockdown alarms that divide buildings into six or seven sections, trapping potential shooters and denying them access to everyone in an entire school, workplace or place of worship.

Most Romans worked and played as usual while Rome fell about their ears. But surely it is fair to say that when a man becomes depressed, falls down in a sand trap, and decides to shoot himself, something has gone wrong with the man, not the world.

Scarlett …” The alarming voice of Nickolas sounded from behind her. This girl was looking for her own execution. As much as he dreaded admitting it they had lost. The rebellion failed many and young people sacrificed their lives for this failure. Scarlett was a victim he was not willing to sacrifice. She only turned to him without saying a word. Her gaze was invincible. He saw literal flames burning in her blue eyes. He recognized the emotion immediately. Scarlett’s eyes were burning with rage! Was he seeing things, or were these actual flames? “It’s time for this bastard to pay for being such a treacherous ass!” she spoke. With every word, it was as if the fire in her eyes whirled around her pupils like a vortex. She felt her whole body start to burn. The blood in her veins was boiling like never before. Smoke began to emerge from her skin. It hurt her, she felt as if her whole body had set itself on fire. The pain could not be compared to the first time it happened with her palms. She was fighting the urge to scream as loud as she could, but could not afford even the slightest distraction. Nickolas’s life, as well as Chris’, depended on her. The men around her looked stunned at what was happening. Pratcher realized that nothing had played with his sanity when the soldiers, along with Hammerdell, took a step back after the girl’s body had begun emitting smoke. It was all very real indeed. What the hell was going on? “Get away from her! She will set herself on fire!” Christopher grabbed the man’s shoulders and pulled him back. He knew what was going to happen. He had seen Scarlett burn her palms, but never her whole body. He was afraid for her! The telekinesis with the jeep was a step away from killing her, and with that burning, her death could be inevitable. There was not enough energy in her body to escape without consequences. Scarlett did not stop focusing on her anger. She had to maintain it if she wanted to achieve the desired result. The pain was taking over her, she felt exhausted and gave out smoke. Her eyes did not go down from Hammerdell. At first, her hands were ablaze, and fire spread all over her body as if it had been covered with gas. Her clothes became ash. Scarlett remained naked under the tongues of the red flames. She fell to her knees on the pebble track - the fire swirled, and the pain was growing even more intolerable. “Shoot!” The mayor screamed in a voice full of fear. He had never seen such a thing. What was that hat girl? Definitely not an ordinary person! Seconds before they pulled the trigger, the guns jumped off from the hands of the soldiers all by themselves. A cone of fire separated from Scarlett and flew towards them, enclosing them in a perfect circle. She sacrificed her last drop of strength to create a fiery dome above them, which trapped her enemies and became a lid from which they could not get away. They burned alive with the last shrieking screams of panic, fear, and despair. It was over. Hammerdell had earned his merit. Now, the rebels could finally rest easy. In pain and exhaustion, she left herself get swallowed by the darkness.

us. And why must vines be pruned, my friend?” I considered his question. Surely there was a trap set for me. “First, the dead canes must be cut off in this season when the vine is sleeping. This season … you see the workers there … the pruning is severe. Down to the trunk of the vine. Dead canes will not bear fruit and so must be cut off first. In another month or so, depending on the weather, there will be bud break. The vine will produce new, healthy shoots. New growth will bear fruit.” Jesus asked, as though he did not know, “Is the job of the vinedresser finished when he cuts away these dead branches?” “Well … no. Through the growing season, we train the branches. Set them in the best position to expose fruit to the sun. Thin the leaves that block the sun from the berries; break off clusters that will never ripen evenly. They only steal the life of the vine from the good clusters. The vinedresser cuts away excess foliage to concentrate the life of the vine into the best berries that will make the finest quality wine. The vine can’t nourish the new growth properly … the quality of the grapes is not as good

have to be as fast as I can and shoot something to take back before I freeze to death. I had hoped not to have to withstand another winter up here in the Wind River Mountains of the Rockies but circumstances had decreed otherwise. This year though I hope to get away to somewhere lower and hopefully warmer. I’ve been trapping up here now for too long although it’s been better since I met Chipeta. Before that it was lonely on my own but change will have to come once the warm weather returns and we can figure out what to do next.

Leave the train!” More soldiers meet Fez and his loyal companion, “This way,” one shouts, “step into the circle!” Fez glances down, at a large circle scribed into the ground, and walks into the centre with Gnash skittering in behind him, at which point he addresses the soldiers. “Did you know the philosopher Gurdjieff wrote about his encounters with the Yezidis—how he once saw a Yezidi boy distraught, struggling to break out of a circle drawn in the ground by other boys. Try as he might the boy just couldn’t step outside of the circle. The other boys teased and taunted him until Gurdjieff erased part of the circle, whereby the boy was able to escape. Perhaps the philosopher wants us to think carefully about the Yezidis—perhaps you should think carefully about me.” Out of the floor a circular glass wall made of toughened glass shoots up, stopping at a circular lip in the ceiling, trapping them like a ship in a bottle. “A prison—how quaint, never been in a prison before. When do I get my medication?” No one answers, but Fez spies a security camera in the ceiling and stares into its lens. “You think that I think you can’t hear me, but I know that you don’t know I can.” “What’s he on about?” one of the operators asks in the control room. “Something about us hearing him.

Daniel Inouye, a nisei senior at McKinley High School long before he became a U.S. senator, furiously pedaled his bike to help at an aid station. He looked up into the sky and said to himself: “You dirty Japs!” On cruiser San Francisco an engineer came topside to join Ensign John Parrott. “I thought I’d come up and die with you.” Rear Admiral William Furlong stood on the bridge wing on Helena. A gunner called: “Excuse me, admiral, would you mind moving so we can shoot through here?” An officer playing golf went into a sand trap after his ball to find a soldier there shooting a rifle into the air. A bomb blew off a comer of a guardhouse. The inmates rushed out to help set up a .50 caliber machine gun. The phone rang in a Hickam hangar and someone reflexively picked it up. The caller wanted to know what all the noise was about. Kimmel stood in a window at his headquarters as a spent bullet tumbled in the window and hit him on the chest, smudging his whites. “It would have been better if it killed me,” he said. Down the hall Layton, Kimmel’s intelligence officer, caught sight of Admiral Bye who the day before had said the Japanese would never attack the United States. He was wearing a life jacket, his whites smeared with oil, staring wordlessly into the middle distance. “Soc” McMorris appeared: “Well, Layton, if it’s any satisfaction to you, we were wrong and you were right.” •

This is a true story. Unfortunately, the twenty-four rabbits released by Mr. Austin in Australia in 1859 did produce ten billion rabbits by 1925 and wreaked havoc on the flora and fauna of the continent.10 Despite more than one hundred fifty years of government efforts ranging from building fences, trapping, shooting, and conducting biological warfare (by releasing flies with the deadly myxoma virus), Australia has been unable to eliminate this pest.

There is scarcely a book of mine that didn't have The Pigeon Tunnel at some time or another as its working title. Its origin is easily explained. I was in my mid-teens when my father decided to take me on one of his gambling sprees to Monte Carlo. Close by the old casino stood the sporting club, and at its base lay a stretch of lawn and a shooting range looking out to sea. Under the lawn ran small, parallel tunnels that led in a row to the sea's edge. Into them were inserted live pigeons that had been hatched and trapped on the casino roof. Their job was to flutter their way along the pitch-dark tunnel until they emerged in the Mediterranean sky as targets for well-lunched sporting gentlemen who were standing or lying in wait with their shotguns. Pigeons who were missed or merely winged then did what pigeons do. They returned to the place of their birth on the casino roof, where the same traps awaited them. Quite why this image has haunted me for so long is something the reader is perhaps better able to judge than I am.

Master has such a penchant for shooting himself in the foot. Try as I might to stop him, his aim is ever true.

whenever there is a sunset in front of you, turn around and start shooting what’s behind you.

The best storytellers eliminate photographs before they even begin shooting. They pre-edit. They determine what isn’t worth their effort to free up their time for the things that may prove to be remarkable.

I am clamour. I am avarice. I am not part of this world in front of me. I am not compatible with it. Grass grows upon the sky. Reptiles spend the day in pursuit of the sun. Night belongs to the moon. Wind passes through the rivers. Rain turns ice-cold to fall like shooting stars. But only me…I am crude and simple, confined and trapped in this insignificant form. A great sorrow fermented inside me, but not a single tear ran down my cheek. My weaknesses were on full display. I was the petulant child stamping my feet for attention, a clown putting on a show in the hope that someone would watch. But no one did. Nature turned a deaf ear to tantrum. I’ve spoken before…lamented many times my loneliness. I’ve also spoken of the many kinds of loneliness experienced by countless numbers of people. But the more I say about this, the more embarrassed I feel. I stand alone on the earth, unable to bring the show to an end.

The next morning, Carley was nervous about both wolves encountering people. He made the decision to recapture them and place them back in their pens. The men shot cracker shells at Margie, hoping to push her back across the marsh to Bulls Island, but she hunkered down in the woods under deep leafy cover. The team set traps, hoping to catch her quickly, but their activity pushed her closer to U.S. Highway 17, which she crossed and moved to the northwest. It appeared she was on a beeline for the Francis Marion National Forest. On December 22, Carley decided to shoot her with a tranquilizer dart. If that didn’t work out, he’d just plain shoot her the next day. Luckily, a gunner in a Bell JetRanger helicopter lodged a dart in Margie’s back end by 1:00 P.M., saving Carley from having to make a fatal decision. By 3:00 P.M., she was back in her pen on Bulls Island, groggy but alive. The incident marked the first time in the lower forty-eight states that a live wolf was shot with a tranquilizer dart from a helicopter. (It worked so well that Carley began renting helicopters to flush and dart wild canids in the inaccessible marshes and swamps that neither horses nor boats could help his team penetrate in Louisiana and Texas.) The next afternoon, they caught Buddy, too. He had returned to Bulls Island, likely in search of Margie. With both wolves safely in their pen, Carley quipped to his team that the wolves were in better shape than their keepers. He and Dorsett were flat tuckered out. Though everyone laughed at his joke, Carley felt they all looked at him askance. They knew he had been prepared to shoot Margie. “Although it was ‘we’ who decided the statements [to shoot escaped wolves] should be made and adhered to,” Carley wrote in a field report on the incident, “in looking around after the recapture of the wolves, I had the distinct uncomfortable feeling of abandonment, and that ‘we’ had suddenly narrowed to ‘I.

Norm looked out over the court. The workers involved in the [model] shoot darted about like trapped particles under sudden heat.

I’m going to make it easy for the bastards to find me. When they do, I’ll have a little surprise waiting for them.” Her worry heightened and a knot clenched in her stomach. “You’re going to set a trap and you’re planning to use yourself as bait.” He turned his attention to her. “More or less. I’m going to stop hiding and see what crawls out of the woodwork when I do.” “Why don’t you just pin a target on your back and parade around downtown Seattle until someone shoots you?

Left Head: Steve snuck up on us! I knew he would want to come back and talk to us again and maybe set things straight. Middle was so mad. He was right in the middle of making some kind of trap with dynamite and TNT when Steve got here. I wanted to try talking things over first, but Middle wouldn’t stop shooting skulls long enough for me to get a word in. I had to take matters into my own hands and fly straight into the…well, it isn’t really a sky, is it? But I flew us away until Middle could get his head on straight and stop shooting skulls all over the place. Right Head: Left is right. Steve’s an okay guy. Wait, Left can’t be Right. I’m Right. Wait. I’m getting confused. @_@ But Middle blew up our base. He says it was an accident, but he likes blowing stuff up more than I do! So, everything exploded and then we flew away! I like flying. =) Not as much as exploding though. And I like growing stuff even more! =D I’m not really sure where we’re flying to, but Middle knows.

Middle Head: I’m surrounded by idiots. No really, I’ve got one on either side. Between the gardener and the bleeding heart, it’s amazing that we’ve made it this far. Left is right about one thing, though; the pyramid will make a good base of operations while we plan out our next move. And he’s right that we should probably stop blowing up everything on the way there. We’re making a rather obvious trail of destruction. He’s so annoying when he’s right. Well, I guess “Right” isn’t exactly the right word. Right is a complete idiot. And now I’ve confused him again. Well, it’s easier to just wait until he gets distracted than try to explain it. Right Head: But really, though. Left can’t be Right, right? I’m Right! Is there more than one Right? That has to be it. I’m on our right, but Left would be Right to someone else. Right? @_@ Oh no, my head hurts. Oh, more cacti! I like them a lot! They get so tall! =) And sometimes they blow up! =D Middle says those ones are actually creepers, but I know better. I want to grow my own cactus bombs! >=) Day Fourteen Right Head: The pyramid is super fun! =D I blew it all up!! >=D All it took was one little explosion, and then boom, boom, BOOM!!! Middle isn’t very happy with me, but he’s never happy. =/ Left is pretty mad too. And he never gets mad. =( I didn’t mean to blow everything up, but it was so much fun! I had a good day. =) Middle Head: That complete, utter, absolute moron! We finally make it to the pyramid after a whole day’s journey across the hot desert, and he blows it up! First thing! No conversation! Left says that we should check for booby traps, and then the idiot just starts shooting skulls all over the place! It’s a miracle that the explosion wasn’t even bigger! He’s lucky that we don’t have skin. I would tear his off and make it into a coat. Or shoes, if we had feet. All the fires of the Nether wouldn’t be enough to burn the stink of stupidity from my skull. Humph. Well, Left convinced me that we need to keep looking for Steve. He isn’t in this desert, and east still feels like the best way to go. We’ve been asking any skeletons we see about the best places to look. The zombies are all obsessed with some village nearby, and nothing else seems willing to talk to us.

men had an easier time controlling their terror and dread; at least they could shoot back. The women, however, were left to manage the damage and loss, the awful inventory that battle always leaves.

Arab retribution was swift and terrible. Six days after Deir Yassin, a bus convoy carrying eighty nurses and doctors headed toward Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, set off slightly from the rest of Jewish Jerusalem. To get there, the convoy had to cross through Arab neighborhoods. Therefore, several armored cars escorted the buses. But the lead armored car hit a huge mine and tumbled into a crater, blocking the rest of the vehicles. Soon, Arab gunmen swarmed over the site, screaming, “Deir Yassin!” They began shooting at the trapped convoy, killing the passengers one by one. An attempt by the Haganah to rescue the trapped convoy failed. Some Arabs reached the vehicles and set them on fire, burning the passengers inside alive. The convoy’s agony was clearly visible to the civilians watching from rooftops and balconies around the city. The shooting went on for six hours, until the British finally authorized a force large enough to extricate the convoy. By the time they arrived at the scene of the devastation, there were only six survivors. It might have seemed that the episode that began at Deir Yassin the week before was over, but it was only beginning.

The photographer will ask you what kind of music you want to play during the shoot. Remember that whatever you choose will be blasted through the loft and heard by an entire crew of people who are all so cool that the Board of Ed. officially closed school. Just murmur, “Hip-hop,” or make up the name of a hipster-sounding band and then act superior when they’ve never heard of it. “Do you guys have any Asphalt of Pinking? [disappointed] Really? [shrug] Whatever you want, then.” Sometimes they ask if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It’s a trap. They’ll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row: “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from Annie, “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips, “That’s What Friends Are For,” Various Artists, and “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover” from Annie.

I’ve already alerted the boys. They’re waiting on the pier to greet you and welcome you home.” You would do that. You couldn’t just keep this between us? “Hell no. And by that, I mean hell no.” Wyatt moved easily, as if Trap didn’t weigh anything. “The great Trap Dawkins bested by a little bitty woman. She took you down so fast, so easily. It was a thing of beauty. I did record it, just so the others could see it.” This toxin is going to wear off and then I’m going to shoot you. “Yeah, but in the meantime, I get to tell everyone about this. I think the other teams ought to know as well. They all revere you. This is going to show them you’re human just like the rest of us.

ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Active Release Technique (A.R.T.) in Leland, NC What exactly is Active Release Technique (A.R.T.)? ART is a patented, state-of-the-art, soft tissue management system developed by Dr. Michael Leahy (an Air Force engineer/chiropractor) that treats problems occurring with: - Muscles - Tendons - Ligaments - Fascia - Nerves Injuries to these tissues can occur in 3 different ways: Acute trauma injury – a sprained ankle playing racquetball is a great example of this type of injury. Compression injury – an example of a compression injury would be back stiffness and pain and/or numbness down the leg (sciatica) caused by sitting behind a computer frequently and for long periods of time. Sitting causes reduced oxygen flow to the tissues, which in turn causes the numbness and/or pain. Overuse injuries – frequently seen in people whose jobs involve typing all day. The repetitive motion can produce wrist and hand pain (i.e. carpal tall syndrome) due to the accumulation of small tears in the tissues. Each of these changes causes your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up: Muscles become shorter and weaker. Tension on tendons causes tendonitis. Nerves can become trapped. This can result in reduced ranges of motion, loss of strength, and pain. With trapped nerves, you may also feel tingling, numbness, shooting pains, burning sensations, weakness, muscle atrophy and circulatory changes. Even when most doctors say medications or surgery is the only answer, ART may still be able to resolve the symptoms and put you back on the field or back to work and into your best game. ChiroCynergy can help! We offer Active Release Technique (A.R.T.) in Leland, NC. Call us: (910) 368-1528 #chiropractor_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_Leland_nc #chiropractor_near_Leland_nc #chiropractic_in_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #chiropractic_near_me #chiropractor_near_me #family_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #female_chiropractors_in_Leland_nc #physical_therapy_in_Leland_nc #sports_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #pregnancy_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #sciatica_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #car_accident_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #Active_Release_Technique_in_Leland_nc #Cold_Laser_Therapy_in_Leland_nc #Spinal_Decompression_in_Leland_nc

It’s a good rule when you are walking into the West Wing of the White House to advise the president, vice president, or the White House staff to remind yourself that this might be the last time you will walk through that door. If you base your advice on the truth and on scientific evidence and do not sugarcoat anything, it is likely that sooner or later you will be telling the president or the vice president something they really don't want to hear, something that may point out a problem with how their administration is handling an issue. Sometimes when advisers do that, their opinion is no longer sought. It's a version of shooting the messenger. Some people might fall into the trap of never wanting to disappoint a powerful figure, and so they slant their advice toward pleasing rather than informing. Don't fall into that trap.' I hope I would have arrived at the wisdom Jim imparted on my own, but he was explicit about it, and continued, 'If you're consistent and totally honest, you might risk being being dropped as an adviser, but this approach with the right kind of president or vice president can also engender respect and a durable relationship.