Update Me Quotes

Even though I don't ask, Plutarch gives me cheerful updates on the phone like "Good news, Katniss! I think we've almost got him convinced you're not a mutt!" Or "Today he was allowed to feed himself pudding!

Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they're boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says "Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed"--because he likes you anyways. He'll tolerate your junk

It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?

The updated version of Descartes’s Cogito is ‘I am seen, therefore I am’ – and that the more people who see me, the more I am…

We need to tell your brother." And that would be terrifying. For Jase. But I smiled. "Maybe I'll just update my Facebook to 'in a relationship' and tag you?" Jase snickered and then dropped another kiss on my forehead. "That should go over well.

zoey: Holy crap, Aphrodite! Could you not sneak up and scare me? Aphrodite: No one was sneaking and holy crap is that a curse? Cause if it is i'm afraid i'm going to have to wake up the potty mouth police and have them make an arrest. So Stark's not dead yet. Zoey:Gosh, thanks for the update. You just made me feel so much better. Aphrodite:Don't be a pain in my ass while i'm trying to be nice.

My boyfriend called me a stalker. Well, he’s not actually my boyfriend …” – STATUS UPDATE

Glancing up at Jude, I found him looking at me, staring at me like he couldn't help it. Maybe that's because I could have updated my heritage status from Caucasian to Tomato Red.

The Internet was born into a world where many people had already lost their sense of connection to each other. The collapse had already been taking place for decades by then. The web arrived offering them a kind of parody of what they were losing—Facebook friends in place of neighbors, video games in place of meaningful work, status updates in place of status in the world. The comedian Marc Maron once wrote that “every status update is a just a variation on a single request: ‘Would someone please acknowledge me?

I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything.Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are just SO MANY PEOPLE. Every day, 1,035.6 books are published; sixty-six million people update their status each morning. At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking me what I want to be when I grow up don't want me to make a poster anymore. They want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say HELLO THIS IS WHAT I DO.

Sometimes I don't think I'm ready for the responsibility--I mean, I think my phone is asking too much of me when it wants me to install an update, and I find myself yelling: 'You're suffocating me.' You can't shout that at a child. And children have to be updated all the time, because they can kill themselves just crossing the street or eating a peanut! I've mislaid my phone three times already today, I don't know if I'm ready for a human being.

Why didn’t you come tell me he was heading out alone? (Kat) ’Cause he does it all the time. Didn’t think anything about it. But now that you’re here I’ll make sure and keep you updated on everything he does. That way you can cut his meat up for dinner and help him tie his shoes and use the potty, too. (Damien)

Josh turns to me. “I can’t believe she’s writing these things.” “Not she,” I say. “Me.” “Why would anyone say this stuff about themselves on the Internet? It’s crazy!” “Exactly,” I say. “I’m going to be mentally ill in fifteen years, and that’s why my husband doesn’t want to be around me.

True strength does not come out of bravado. Until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant; our strength will be our own. So long as you think you are really something in and of yourself, what will you need God for? I don’t trust a man who hasn’t suffered; I don’t let a man get close to me who hasn’t faced his wound. Think of the posers you know—are they the kind of man you would call at 2:00 A.M., when life is collapsing around you? Not me. I don’t want clichés; I want deep, soulful truth, and that only comes when a man has walked the road I’ve been talking about.

That peace did not come easily. I spent two years enumerating my father’s flaws, constantly updating the tally, as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified, I thought the strangling guilt would release me and I could catch my breath. But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people. I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake, because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it.

My boyfriend called me a stalker. Well, he’s not actually my boyfriend … —STATUS UPDATE

I regard anti-Semitism as ineradicable and as one element of the toxin with which religion has infected us. Perhaps partly for this reason, I have never been able to see Zionism as a cure for it. American and British and French Jews have told me with perfect sincerity that they are always prepared for the day when 'it happens again' and the Jew-baiters take over. (And I don't pretend not to know what they are talking about: I have actually seen the rabid phenomenon at work in modern and sunny Argentina and am unable to forget it.) So then, they seem to think, they will take refuge in the Law of Return, and in Haifa, or for all I know in Hebron. Never mind for now that if all of world Jewry did settle in Palestine, this would actually necessitate further Israeli expansion, expulsion, and colonization, and that their departure under these apocalyptic conditions would leave the new brownshirts and blackshirts in possession of the French and British and American nuclear arsenals. This is ghetto thinking, hardly even fractionally updated to take into account what has changed. The important but delayed realization will have to come: Israeli Jews are a part of the diaspora, not a group that has escaped from it. Why else does Israel daily beseech the often-flourishing Jews of other lands, urging them to help the most endangered Jews of all: the ones who rule Palestine by force of arms? Why else, having supposedly escaped from the need to rely on Gentile goodwill, has Israel come to depend more and more upon it? On this reckoning, Zionism must constitute one of the greatest potential non sequiturs in human history.

Noel: A lot of people see friends as something you have on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to read your updates and you want to read their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t ever have to see each other. But that seems like a stupid definition to me. Roo: Yeah. Noel: Although on the other hand, rethink. Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says, “Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed” – because he likes you anyway. He’ll tolerate your junk. Roo: You have lots of friends. Noel: No, I don’t. Roo: You do. You know everyone at school. You get invited to parties. Noel: I get invited to parties, yeah. And I know people. But I don’t want their updates. Roo: Oh. Noel: And I sincerely doubt they want mine. Roo: I want your updates. Noel: I want your updates. (He looks down, bashfully.) I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.

Well, we can get started now,” Daz said in a dry tone as he gave me a displeased look for my tardiness. “As always, we’ll begin with an update on our females. My Fra-kee is very round. I told her that, and she didn’t speak to me for half of a rotation, so I suggest to the rest of you with pregnant mates not to call them round.” “Noted,” Ward said solemnly. “Reba cries a lot.

There's a honey-do-list for you on your nightstand in case you get to feeling like I managed just fine without you. And a wish list of movies I want to see, and books I'd like you to buy me." She bit her lip. "Actually I bought most of the books and called them gifts, so maybe you should give me back that list to update once more.

1790: Mayer Amschel Rothschild states, “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.

Update your version of me because I’m not the same person I was before. If you don’t get that, you don’t get me.

Sometimes hitting things makes me feel better. Be that as it may... I don't think electronics respond to physical violence. Ya can't "alpha" your way through a Windows update.

I think it’s glorious to be nervous. Being nervous is great! How often do we get nervous on a daily basis? Being slightly nervous means you care, and you’re alive, and you’re taking some kind of risk. Hooray for being nervous! A friend told me to substitute the word ‘excitement’ for ‘nervous’. That way you acknowledge the physical feelings without putting a negative spin on things. So to answer your question, sometimes I still get so excited about ‘Update’ that I want to throw up

If you could refresh my recollection on that matter I might be able to recall what you want me to recall, but at this particular time I do not recall the particulars of that particular matter.

Given enough time, everything changes. Maybe this sense of how fragile our connections are is what makes us obsessed with saving them—writing them down, taking pictures, recording them in tweets, documenting them with status updates and videos. It is clear to me now that when the earth does move beneath our feet—when our hearts slam and scrape and break apart—when we barely survive the flood, we take precautions. We

I am receiving. I am receiving now. I am receiving all the wealth that the universe has,for me now.

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, “In the coming world, they will not ask me: ‘Why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’ “4 The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, “the will to be oneself.

Three updates?" I whispered, and his eyes crinkled with a smile. "One, I love you,” he replied. "'Two, I can't stand the idea of leaving again, of you not coming back to this cottage, without you knowing how much I love you." He took a shaky breath, then knelt on one knee, taking my hands in his. “Three,” he looked up at me, his blue eyes serious and wide and hopeful and scared, "I want you to marry me.

My childhood home in Coeur-de-Lune was now a vacation rental, managed by efficient strangers. I'd never gone back. But my mother kept a buzzing gossip line into her church women from town, and gave me sporadic updates on Casey's life. She always brought Casey up when I was lulled into complacency. When we'd had a surprisingly peaceful afternoon together. When we were outside on her balcony, or sharing a piece of her peach pie like other mothers and daughters did. Only then would she jab, a master fencer going for the unprotected sliver of my heart.

Very low. It’s going to be one of the cast or crew, one of the people who worked with her, one of the people she pushed, insulted, threatened.” “Who pushed back.” He got to his feet. “Celebrity murders,” he muttered. “They’ll probably make another goddamn vid.” At Eve’s stunned, slightly horrified expression, he smiled. “You could make book on it,” he said. “Keep me updated. And don’t be late for the media conference.” “Shit,” Eve said when he’d gone out. “Shit. He could be right.” “Who’d play me in this one? I mean, it’s really wild, isn’t it? Somebody playing me investigating the murder of somebody who was playing me. And then there’s—” “Don’t. You’re giving me a headache. Get those runs done.

I didn’t say anything on social media, though relatives tried to tag me in supportive status updates, which I did my best to untag myself from. I didn’t want to be a part of their mourning. I didn’t want to be involved in someone else’s grief when I knew so little about how to deal with my own.

I have felt incredible energy and life force through my body, and I have really been reborn a happier, healthier, and more confident person. I have learned I can choose to focus on the darker side or the lighter side of all that is around me. I choose the lighter side and have the discipline to keep it up.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us."[21] — Donald Miller

Russell turned his head and said to me, “Say hello to Jimmy Hoffa.” Then Russ handed me the phone. I reached for the phone and I thought, can you imagine this? Jimmy Hoffa calling to talk to me? “Hello,” I said. “Glad to meet you.” Jimmy Hoffa didn’t even say hello. He got right to the point. The next thing I heard were the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to me. “I heard you paint houses,” Jimmy said.

Pushing money was a natural for me, because I was already pushing football lottery tickets in the White Tower hamburger joints on my route for an Irish muscle guy and ex-boxer named Joey McGreal, who was a Teamster organizer out of my Local 107.

It was a problem that needed squaring away and I squared it away for them. By now it seemed like it was something I was doing all my life. If you count my father sending me out to beat up other boys so he could win beer bets, maybe it was. Evidently

You fat fuck,” I said and jumped up and decked him. I broke his jaw, and they expelled me permanently on the spot. Naturally,

I got a hold of Whispers and told him where to meet me later that night to talk about the thing. The next morning it was

I told him about the macaroni hanging out on the line like laundry to dry on Sunday in Catania. Sometimes he’d invite me to eat with him and we’d talk a little Italian.

They say the average number of days of actual combat for a veteran is around eighty. By the time the war was over the Army told me I had 411 combat days, which entitled me to $20 extra

Social media has put an incredible pressure on the Facebook generation. We’ve made our lives so public to one another, and as a result we feel pressure to live up to a certain ideal version of ourselves. On social media, everyone is happy, and popular, and successful—or, at least, we think we need to look like we are. No matter how well off we are, how thin or pretty, we have our issues and insecurities. But none of that shows up online. We don’t like to reveal our weaknesses on social media. We don’t want to appear unhappy, or be a drag. Instead, we all post rose-colored versions of ourselves. We pretend we have more money than we do. We pretend we are popular. We pretend our lives are great. Your status update says I went to a totally awesome party last night! It won’t mention that you drank too much and puked and humiliated yourself in front of a girl you like. It says My sorority sisters are the best! It doesn’t say I feel lonely and don’t think they accept me. I’m not saying everyone should post about having a bad time. But pretending everything is perfect when it’s not doesn’t help anyone. The danger of these kinds of little white lies is that, in projecting the happiness and accomplishments we long for, we’re setting impossible standards for ourselves and others to live up to.

In order to have a life worth living, you need to be you. Not the parental- or friend- or boy-dictated version. Not the Internet-updated version. But the true version. You are you. You actually can’t be anyone else. God made you you on purpose. You are the only one alive who ever was or ever will be you. “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” said the brilliant Dr. Seuss.1 You is not only who you get to be; it’s who you are supposed to be. Problems come when we would rather be someone else. Anyone else. Sometimes others don’t like us. Sometimes we don’t like ourselves. We know where we are struggling or failing or hurting or simply wanting out. We know we are not all that we are meant to be. So here’s the good news. You are meant to be you, but you are meant to become a better you. You are meant to change and grow in the ways you long to. That is, in fact, why you long to. The very fact that we long for the change we do is a sign that we are meant to have it. Our very dissatisfaction with our weaknesses and struggles points to the reality that continuing to live in them is not our destiny.

They supplied me the piece and they had one guy right there to take it from me after the thing and get in one car with it and drive away. His only job was to break the piece down and destroy it.

(It was a car they said I got under the table. When they were trying to get the eight of us Hoffa suspects on anything they could, they used the car to send me to jail in 1981 on labor racketeering.) The

I don’t understand. She’s always been so friendly toward me.” “Yes, so long as your work consisted of updating calendars and photocopying golf club bylaws.” “But there was no danger of my taking her place!” “She was never afraid of that.” “Then why denounce me? Why would it upset her if I went to work for you?” “Miss Mori struggled for years to get the job she has now. She probably found it unbearable for you to get that sort of promotion after being with the company only ten weeks.” “I can’t believe it. That’s just so … mean.” “All I can say is that she suffered greatly during the first few years she was here.” “So she wants me to suffer the same fate? It’s too pathetic. I must talk to her.” “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” “Of course. How else are we going to work things out if we don’t talk?” “You just talked to Mister Omochi. Does it strike you that things have been worked out?

Ask subjects to estimate the likelihood of the same events again. Adults incorporate the feedback into the new estimates. Adolescents update their estimates as adults do for good news, but feedback about bad news barely makes a dent. (Researcher: “How likely are you to have a car accident if you’re driving while drunk?” Adolescent: “One chance in a gazillion.” Researcher: “Actually, the risk is about 50 percent; what do you think your own chances are now?” Adolescent: “Hey, we’re talking about me; one chance in a gazillion.”) We’ve just explained why adolescents have two to four times the rate of pathological gambling as do adults.

Let me use a second metaphor. Imagine that you found a tangle of seaweed on the edge of the shore and lifted it. The heaviest parts rest on the sand in a mesh, but some skeins extend vertically. This neural network is shaped like that: it looks like a tangled skein of a hundred thousand golden threads that has been drawn upward. The mass of it gathers in the pelvis, but strands from the same network extend upward to the spinal cord and brain.

They started inviting me into the Messina Club at Tenth and Tasker, which is a members-only joint where you get the best sausage and peppers you ever ate. You’d play cards there; just hang out without the public citizens being at the next table. It’s still there, and it still has the best sausage and peppers in all of South Philly. A

Many a time Russ reached up and pinched my cheek and said, “You should’ve been Italian.” He’s the one named me “The Irishman.” Before that they used to call me “Cheech,” which is short for Frank in Italian — Francesco. After

Bill handed me an envelope. I handed it back to him. I told him, “I’ll do a friend a favor.” Russell had taught me well. Don’t cheapen yourself. “If you do a friend a favor,” Russell had said, “then sometimes he does you a favor.” Bill

out-of-court settlement. I tried to be easygoing again like I was before I went in the war, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. It didn’t take much to provoke me. I’d just flare up. Drinking helped ease that a little. I hung around with my old

to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of?

I noticed the valet stand, but didn't think to look for the valet. My frustration with Lily - and the fact that she was still updating the blog over which she was being blackmailed - may have caused me to throw my door open slightly harder than necessary. And then I saw the valet. In my defense, I wasn't used to people opening my car door for me, and he only made a small wheezing sound when it nailed him in the stomach. I stood and reached out to steady him by the arm. "You okay?" The valet's hazel eyes rested on mine. "I'll live.

Mary liked to arrange picnics with the kids, and we’d take them to the Willow Grove Amusement Park. I wasn’t always running. When they were smaller I used to take them out. I was very close to Peggy, but she doesn’t talk to me any more, not since Jimmy disappeared. The

Permit me to bypass the entire nature vs. nurture “is gender really built-in?” debate with one simple observation: Men and women are made in the image of God as men or as women. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Now, we know God doesn’t have a body, so the uniqueness can’t be physical. Gender simply must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn’t make generic people; he makes something very distinct—a man or a woman. In other words, there is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God’s heart.

Underlying James's career crisis was a psychological crisis. He had to confront what was really true about himself. Faced with the competing job offer, James had been asking people, "What should I do?" instead of, "What do I really want? What gives me a sense of self-worth?

Jimmy looked at me and said, “I think you should stay in Chicago for a while.” And what a town that turned out to be. If you can’t make money in Chicago you can’t make money anywhere. They leave the bodies right on the sidewalk. If your dog was with you, your dog goes, too. They

All in one day I flew to Puerto Rico and took care of two matters. Then I flew to Chicago and took care of one matter. Then I flew to San Francisco and stopped at a bar for a couple of glasses of wine, because I knew I wouldn’t get anything to drink when I got to the Fairmont to meet up with Jimmy and give him the report. I walked into Jimmy’s hotel room at exactly 8:00 P.M. and he yelled at me for keeping him waiting.

People in those days didn’t display affection like they do today. I’m still learning how to be affectionate to my grandchildren. I don’t ever remember getting a kiss from my mother. I never even saw her kiss my kid brother, or my kid sister, Margaret. Not that anyone meant to play favorites, but Tom was my father’s favorite and Peggy was my mother’s. I guess I was so big, and being the oldest, they expected me to be more grown up than the two younger ones.

one time when we were at the Friendly Lounge they introduced me to Skinny Razor, and I got started doing it on my route. It was easy money, no muscle, strictly providing a service for people who had no credit. This was before credit cards when the people had nowhere to go for a couple of bucks between paychecks.

Jane Russell! My physical therapist had never heard of her. “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” I said. “Not in my experience,” she replied. Bina’s younger; perhaps that’s it. All this was earlier today; before I could argue with her, she laced one of my legs over the other, capsized me onto my right side. The pain left me breathless. “Your hamstrings need this,” she assured me. “You bitch,” I gasped. She pressed my knee to the floor. “You’re not paying me to go easy on you.” I winced. “Can I pay you to leave?” Bina visits once a week to help me hate life, as I like to say, and to provide updates on her sexual adventures, which are about as exciting as my own. Only in Bina’s case it’s because she’s picky. “Half the guys on these apps are using five-year-old photos,” she’ll complain, her waterfall of hair poured over one shoulder, “and the other half are married. And the other half are single for a reason.” That’s three halves, but you don’t debate math with someone who’s rotating your spine.

Giancana was taken care of in his kitchen in the back of the head and then under the chin six times, Sicilian style, to signify he was careless with his mouth. It looked like it was done by some old friend that was close enough to him to be frying sausages in olive oil with him. Russell often said to me: “When in doubt have no doubt.

If I burst into a house and yell to all assembled, “Put on the kettle!” I have uttered an imperative English sentence, but some will probably infer that I would like to have a cup of tea or other hot beverage, while another may further surmise that I feel myself at home here, and may in fact be the occupant of this house. Yet another person present, a monoglot Hungarian, may infer only that I speak English, and so does whomever I am addressing (well, it sounds like English to her), while somebody really in the know will be instantly informed that I have decided after all to steam open that sealed envelope and surreptitiously read the letter inside in spite of the fact that it isn’t addressed to me; a crime is about to be committed. What semantic information can be gleaned from the event depends on what information the gleaner already has accumulated. Learning that somebody speaks English can be a valuable update to your world knowledge, a design improvement that may someday pay big dividends.

Naturally, I knew what to expect when my father got home. I had a lot of time to think about it, but all I could think about was breaking the principal’s jaw with just one punch, a grown man. My father walked in the door steaming mad and threw the boxing gloves at me hard. I caught them, but this time I threw them back at him. I said, “You better take another look.” I was sixteen, almost seventeen, by then. “I won’t hit you,” I said. “You’re my father. But you better get yourself another punching bag.

Between the second and third rounds I asked my buddies what the hell was going on. “Who’s hitting me on the head?” They told me it’s the referee, that he doesn’t like Irishmen. I walked over and told the referee if he hits me on the back of the head one more time I’m going to knock him out. He said, “Get back in there and fight, rookie.” I

Just be yourself” sounds like good advice at first, but what if you’re a jerk? What if you’re a serial killer? Maybe you should be someone else. “Believe in yourself” is fine, but “anything is possible”? No, it’s not. Expressing yourself, respecting yourself, and being honest with yourself are somewhat tautological but not usually directly harmful. But “you have to love yourself first” has a crucial flaw: people who really love themselves are called narcissists, and they make horrible relationship partners.

They say good girls like bad boys. Opposites attract. Mary loved me, but her family hated me. They thought I was what they used to call shanty Irish, and I guess they thought they were what they used to call lace-curtain Irish. Or maybe they saw something in me; that as hard as I was trying I was still too unpredictable for their Mary. Mary

I asked him about work, and he sent me to a guy and the guy asked me if I thought I could handle loading hindquarters. Three days a week I was going to the gym and hitting the heavy bag, the speed bag, lifting weights, and playing handball. Plus I was teaching dancing, so I picked up a hindquarter like it was a pork chop, and I got the job. The

Russell had taken me with him to Cuba just when Castro was starting to kick everybody out and confiscate their casinos and racetracks and houses and bank accounts and everything else they owned in Cuba. I never saw Russell madder than on that trip to Cuba, and I wasn’t even on the last trip he made where he was even madder because his friend Santo Trafficante from Florida had been arrested by the Communists and was being held in jail. I heard a rumor that Sam Giancana had to send Jack Ruby to Cuba to spread some money around to get Santo out. Around

came out now with one eye on the kangaroo and one eye on the referee. I’m really steaming mad now, and I creamed that kangaroo. His tail hit me so hard my head ached for three days. I jumped off at the referee and decked him. The referee’s people jumped in the ring after me, and my pals jumped in after them. The cops had a hell of a time in that ring sorting things out. I

Sometime in the fifties I remember seeing On the Waterfront in the movies with Mary and thinking that I’m at least as bad as that Marlon Brando character and that some day I’d like to get in union work. The Teamsters gave me good job security at Food Fair. They could only fire you if they caught you stealing. Let me put it another way, they could only fire you if they caught you stealing and they could prove it.

Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all. And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage. Why would I give a fuck about the original public meaning of the words written by these men? Conservatives will tell you that the text of laws explicitly passed in response to growing political, social, or economic power of nonwhite minorities should be followed to their highest grammatical accuracy, and I’m supposed to agree the text of this bullshit is the valid starting point of the debate? Nah. As Rory Breaker says in the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: “If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain’t the kind of pussy to drink it.” The Constitution was so flawed upon its release in 1787 that it came with immediate updates. The first ten amendments, the “Bill of Rights,” were demanded by some to ensure ratification of the rest of the document. All of them were written by James Madison, who didn’t think they were actually necessary but did it to placate political interests.

When the waiter came I ordered a glass of Chianti, and Bill kicked me under the table and shook his head “no.” I stuck to my guns and drank my wine, but I do know there was a little tension in Bill’s face after that at the table every time I lifted my glass. Bill and Sam stuck to ginger ale. Bill later told me that before the dinner he had been recommending me to Jimmy and he wanted me to make a good impression. During

You see, another thing I didn’t know is that the kangaroo defends itself with its tail. It has an eight-foot tail that comes whipping up behind you when you knock the kangaroo down. And the harder I hit him, the harder and faster his tail came up behind me. I never saw that tail come whipping up behind me, and I never paid attention to the boxing glove on the tail. He had an eight-foot reach I didn’t know about. Actually,

Monstrous Sea Private Message 2:54 p.m. 28 - Oct -16 rainmaker: Hey, it’s Wallace. Please tell me I blew your mind again. You make the best face when your mind is being blown. MirkerLurker: Whoa that sounded dirty. rainmaker: Too much? MirkerLurker: Ummmmmmmmmm rainmaker: Too much. Noted. MONSTROUS SEA FORUMS USER PROFILE rainmaker * Fanfiction Moderator AGE: Not telling you LOCATION: NO INTERESTS: MS. Writing things.Campfires. Sweaters. Sleeping in. Dogs. Followers 1,350,199 | Following 54 | Posts 9,112 [Unique Works 144] UPDATES View earlier updates Oct 20 2016 The next chapter of the Auburn Blue fanfic will probably be a little late. Just started at the new school. So, that’s fun. Oct 21 2016 Thanks to @joojooboogee for my new avatar! #DallasRainerForever Oct 23 2016 If math homework were a real person, I’d be doing 25 to life. #Mathslaughter Oct 24 2016 There might actually be other MS fans at this school. THANK JESUS I’M SAVED. Oct 26 2016 Life is destroying me today. No time to write. Stupid math. #Mathslaughter Oct 27 2016 Definitely another MS fan at this school. Pros: Awesome; Not alone; Pretty girl. Cons: Pretty girl. #Fuuuuuuuuck Oct 28 2016 Heyyyy let’s not talk about the pretty girl anymore okay she’s probably looking at this.

I worked at Budd Manufacturing where they made auto body parts. It was a slave pit, a real butcher shop. They had no decent safety standards. Every so often somebody would lose a hand or a finger. People today forget how much good the unions did in getting decent working conditions. I didn’t feel like donating an arm to Budd so that’s another place I quit, but that job made an impression on me when I got into union work later. In

Thinking about what my brother said to me on the dock in Le Havre makes me wonder if he was looking into my soul. I knew something was different about me. I didn’t care anymore about things. I had been through practically the whole war; what could anybody do to me? Somewhere overseas I had tightened up inside, and I never loosened up again. You get used to death. You get used to killing. Sure, you go out and have fun, but even that has an edge.

(Yank was a good man who lived a good life. He never did anything wrong. He died before his time, while I was still in jail. They wouldn’t let me come home on a pass for his funeral. Not even for my brother’s or sister’s funerals. Yank managed O’Malley’s Restaurant on the West Chester Pike, and he wrote me in jail that he was going to throw a great big welcome home party for me when I got out, but poor Yank got a heart attack and it killed him.)

feel very bad about it now. I wasn’t an abusive father, but I started getting a little neglectful, and Mary was too good a woman, too easy on me. Then at some point, I just joined that other culture and I stopped coming home. But I brought cash over every single week. If I did good, Mary did good. I was a selfish bastard. I thought I was doing good by giving money, but I didn’t give the kids enough family time. I didn’t give my wife enough time.

Rebel factions are like Nazi collaborators during the war, like they had in Norway and France,” Bill Isabel told me. “Jimmy Hoffa will never tolerate rebel factions. He’s worked too hard to build what we have. He’s the first one up in the morning and the last one in bed at night. Look at how much better off we all are today. The rebels didn’t give us shit. Jimmy won it all. The pension, the hospitalization covering your whole family every time you’re sick.

Live for all America to see in black and white as no newspaper could convey it were tough mobsters wearing diamond pinkie rings conferring quietly with their mob lawyers, then shifting in their chairs to face the senators and their counsel, Bobby Kennedy, and in gruff voices taking the Fifth Amendment as to every single question. Most of these questions were loaded with accusations of murder, torture, and other major criminal activity. The litany became a part of the culture of the fifties: “Senator, on advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.” And, of course, the public took that answer as an admission of guilt. No

At the end of a workday I still had plenty of energy left to compete against Yank for the neighborhood girls. My secret weapon against Yank was my dancing. Most big men are clumsy and heavy-footed, but not me. I had a good sense of rhythm and I could move every part of my body. I had very fast hands, too, and good coordination. Swing music was sweeping the country and social dancing was all the rage. I went dancing six nights a week (never on a Sunday) to a different hall every night. That’s how you learned the dances. You learned by going dancing. They all had certain steps, unlike today where you just make it up as you go along. After the war, one of the jobs I had was a ballroom dance instructor. In

We couldn’t afford our own place in the beginning, and so like most of our friends we lived with her parents to start off our married life. I wouldn’t advise that to anyone who could help it. The night of the wedding we had a reception at her parents’ house, and I had a few drinks in me and I announced that I was going to return all the wedding gifts to her side of the family. If they didn’t want me I didn’t want their gifts. I wouldn’t advise that either. I still had that hair-trigger from the war. According

Jimmy never met Joe Louis before that trial, only the jury didn’t know that. But Jimmy was strong for civil rights. That part is true. The only thing is, every time he won a trial, he thought he could never lose. And have no doubt: he hated Bobby with a passion. I heard him call Bobby a spoiled brat to his face in an elevator and start after him. I held Jimmy back. Many a time Jimmy said to me they got the wrong brother. But he hated brother Jack, too. Jimmy said they were young millionaires who had never done a day’s work.

They supplied me the piece and they had one guy right there to take it from me after the thing and get in one car with it and drive away. His only job was to break the piece down and destroy it. They had other guys sitting in crash cars to pull out in front of cops who might go after the car I got in. The car I got in was supposed to take me back to the airport. I relaxed when I saw the airport coming up. I knew that they used “cowboys” sometimes and then took care of the “cowboys” when the matter was completed. The “cowboys” were expendable.

He said, “You’re a little lax on that rake.” I tried to ignore him, and he said, “You hear what I said, boy?” I asked him who the hell did he think he was talking to. He said: “I’m talking to you, boy.” He said that if I didn’t put more effort into the job he’d stick the rake up my butt. I told him I’d do him one better and stick the rake down his throat. He was a big black guy, and he came at me. I tapped him and put him on the conveyor belt unconscious. I stuffed blueberries in his mouth. That took care of him. The cops had to take me out of there. After

And now, over to Romulus for our popular feature ‘Pals of Potter.’” “Thanks, River,” said another very familiar voice; Ron started to speak, but Hermione forestalled him in a whisper. “We know it’s Lupin!” “Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve appeared on our program, that Harry Potter is still alive?” “I do,” said Lupin firmly. “There is no doubt at all in my mind that his death would be proclaimed as widely as possible by the Death Eaters if it had happened, because it would strike a deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime. ‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting.” A mixture of gratitude and shame welled up in Harry. Had Lupin forgiven him, then, for the terrible things he had said when they had last met? “And what would you say to Harry if you knew he was listening, Romulus?” “I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit,” said Lupin, then hesitated slightly. “And I’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.” Harry looked at Hermione, whose eyes were full of tears. “Nearly always right,” she repeated. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Ron in surprise. “Bill told me Lupin’s living with Tonks again! And apparently she’s getting pretty big too…” “…and our usual update on those friends of Harry Potter’s who are suffering for their allegiance?” Lee was saying. “Well, as regular listeners will know, several of the more outspoken supporters of Harry Potter have now been imprisoned, including Xenophilius Lovegood, erstwhile editor of The Quibbler,” said Lupin. “At least he’s still alive!” muttered Ron.

I didn’t know anything about “made men” back then. That’s a special status in the alleged mob where you go through a ceremony and after that you are then untouchable. Nobody can whack you without approval. You get extra respect wherever you go. You are part of the “in” crowd, the inner circle. It only applies to Italians. Later on I got so close to Russell that I was higher up than a made man. Russell even said that to me. He said, “Nobody can ever touch you because you are with me.” I can still feel him gripping my cheek with that strong grip of his and telling me, “You should have been an Italian.” If

Glimco was having a problem with a freight hauler that was resisting the union and wouldn’t rehire a shop steward they had fired. It made Joey Glimco look bad to his men, and he wanted me to take care of the matter. I told him nobody needed to paint anybody’s house. I told him to give me a case of Coca-Cola that used to come in those old-fashioned bottles. I said give me one of your men and we’ll handle it. I got on a bridge just down the street from the freight company. When a truck would pull out and drive down to go under the bridge, the man and I dropped bottles of Coke down on the truck. It sounded like bombs going off, and trucks were crashing into the bridge abutment without knowing what was happening. Finally, the drivers refused to take trucks out of the yard, and the freight company came around and rehired the shop steward, but he didn’t get his back pay. Maybe I should have used two cases of Coke. I

One night the three of us were out on the town. Bill was driving us to an Italian restaurant. I had been on my new job just a few weeks. I was in the backseat and Bill was watching me in the rearview mirror. Bill said to me, “We heard from Jimmy that you paint houses.” I didn’t say anything. I just nodded my head “yes.” Okay, here it is, I thought. So much for getting away from the downtown culture and getting into a new line of work. “We got something in Chicago that needs to be straightened out. We got a friend there named Joey Glimco. He runs the cab local there, 777. He’s got the trucks on the waterfront, too. Ever heard of him?” I

You’d take cabbies aside and you’d explain the benefits of being organized, and you’d ask them to sign a union card. If you got 30 percent of the workers to sign, then the labor law entitled you to an election to see if the workers wanted the union or not. But Bill taught me that you would never ask for the election until you had better than 50 percent, because with less than that you were sure to lose. Bill also explained to me that if you did get the right to hold an election, another union could come in and try to take it from you. If they got 10 percent of the cards they could intervene in the election and maybe beat your union out after you did all the work.

Now a kangaroo has short arms, so I’m figuring I’ll knock his ass out. They put gloves on me and I start jabbing away at him, but what I didn’t know is that a kangaroo has a loose jaw so when you hit them it doesn’t go to their brain and knock them out. I’m only jabbing at him, because who wants to hurt a kangaroo? But when I couldn’t’ get anywhere with him with my jab I let loose with an overhand right, a real haymaker. Down the kangaroo goes and I feel this hard whack on the back of my head where my old man used to whack me. I shake it off and go back to jabbing the kangaroo who’s hopping all over the place, and I’m trying to figure out who the S.O.B. was who clipped me from behind. You

principal was on the stage singing and leading us in the old song “On the Road to Mandalay.” He would emphasize by winking after each line of the song like some vaudeville singer. Being so tall I stood out and he could look right at me. So every time he would wink I would imitate him and wink back at him. When we got done with the assembly he told me to wait in his office for him. I went and sat there in the chair in front of his desk. He was a pretty big man, my height, only he outweighed me. He walked into the office, came up behind me, and cuffed me hard on the back of the head just the way my father used to whenever I lost one of his beer bets for him. “You fat fuck,” I said and jumped up and decked him. I broke his jaw, and they expelled me permanently on the spot. Naturally,

I went around to four finance companies and borrowed a hundred bucks from each one so we could get married. Then when the collectors came around I persuaded them that they couldn’t find me. One of them that I convinced had my case taken over by his supervisor, who decided not to cooperate with my disappearance and showed up one night at Wagner’s looking for Frank Sheeran. He didn’t know it was me at the door. I said to follow me and I’d take him in to see Mr. Sheeran. He followed me into the bathroom and I gave him a shot to the body and a shot to the jaw and down he went. I didn’t give him the boot or anything. I just wanted to make sure he understood that Mr. Sheeran was too busy to see him that night or any other night. He got the message. Mary had a good job with the Philadelphia

Pierce Hutton gave him a highly amused smile as they went over updated security information from the oil rig in the Caspian Sea. “So you’ve finally decided to do something about Cecily,” Peirce murmured. “It’s about time. I was beginning to get used to that permanent scowl.” Tate glanced at him wryly. “I thought I was doing a great job of keeping her at arm’s length. She’s pregnant, now, of course,” he volunteered. The older man chuckled helplessly. “So much for keeping her at arm’s length. When’s the wedding?” Tate’s smile faded. “That’s premature. She ran. I finally tracked her down, but now I have to convince her that I want to get married without having her think it’s only because of the baby.” “I don’t envy you the job,” Pierce replied, his black eyes twinkling. “I had my own rocky road to marriage, if you recall.” “How’s the baby these days?” he asked. Pierce laughed with wholehearted delight. “We watch him instead of television. I never expected fatherhood to make such changes in me, in my life.” He shook his head, with a faraway look claiming his eyes. “Sometimes I’m afraid it’s all a dream and I’ll wake up alone.” He shifted, embarrassed. “You can have the time off. But who’s going to handle your job while you’re gone?” “I thought I’d get you to put Colby Lane on the payroll.” He held up his hand when Pierce looked thunderous. “He’s stopped drinking,” he hold him. “Cecily got him into therapy. He’s not the man he was.” “You’re sure of that?” Pierce wanted to know. Tate smiled. “I’m sure. “Okay. But if he ever throws a punch at me again, he’ll be smiling on the inside of his mouth!” Tate chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll give him a call before I leave town.

Sometime in the fifties I remember seeing On the Waterfront in the movies with Mary and thinking that I’m at least as bad as that Marlon Brando character and that some day I’d like to get in union work. The Teamsters gave me good job security at Food Fair. They could only fire you if they caught you stealing. Let me put it another way, they could only fire you if they caught you stealing and they could prove it. • chapter eight • Russell Bufalino In 1957 the mob came out of the closet. It came out unwillingly, but out it came. Before 1957 reasonable men could differ over whether an organized network of gangsters existed in America. For years FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had assured America that no such organization existed, and he deployed the FBI’s greatest resources to investigate suspected Communists. But as a result of the publicity foisted on the mob in 1957, even Hoover came on board. The organization was dubbed “La Cosa Nostra,” meaning “this thing of ours,” a term heard on government wiretaps. Ironically,

I have in my files a copy of a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer in the 2nd Rhode Island. He writes to his wife on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, a battle he senses will be his last. He speaks tenderly to her of his undying love, of “the memories of blissful moments I have spent with you.” Ballou mourns the thought that he must give up “the hope of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us.” Yet in spite of his love the battle calls and he cannot turn from it. “I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter . . . how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution . . . Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break” and yet a greater cause “comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistably on with all these chains to the battle field.

That peace did not come easily. I spent two years enumerating my father's flaws, constantly updating the tally as if reciting every resentment, every real and imagined act of cruelty, of neglect, would justify my decision to cut him from my life. Once justified I thought the strangling guilt would release me, and I could catch my breath. But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of ones own retchedness. It has nothing to do with other people. I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on my own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old greviences, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. I learned to accept my decision for my own sake. Because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. It was the only way I could love him. When my father was in my life, wrestling me for control of that life, I percieved him with the eyes of a soldier, through a fog of conflict. I could not make out his tender qualities. When he was before me towering, indignant, I could not remember how when I was young his laugh used to shake his gut and make his glasses shine. In his stern presence I could never recall the pleasant way his lips used to twitch, before they were burned away, when a memory tugged tears from his eyes. I can only remember those things now, with a span of miles and years between us. But what has come between me and my father is more than time or distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised but he is the father who raised her.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist . . .” Lord, I put on the belt of truth. I choose a lifestyle of honesty and integrity. Show me the truths I so desperately need today. Expose the lies I’m not even aware that I’m believing. “. . . with the breastplate of righteousness in place . . .” And yes, Lord, I wear your righteousness today against all condemnation and corruption. Fit me with your holiness and purity—defend me from all assaults against my heart. “. . . and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace . . .” I do choose to live for the gospel at any moment. Show me where the larger story is unfolding and keep me from being so lax that I think the most important thing today is the soap operas of this world. “In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one . . .” Jesus, I lift against every lie and every assault the confidence that you are good, and that you have good in store for me. Nothing is coming today that can overcome me because you are with me. “. . . Take the helmet of salvation . . .” Thank you, Lord, for my salvation. I receive it in a new and fresh way from you and I declare that nothing can separate me now from the love of Christ and the place I shall ever have in your kingdom. “. . . and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God . . .” Holy Spirit, show me specifically today the truths of the Word of God that I will need to counter the assaults and the snares of the Enemy. Bring them to mind throughout the day. “. . . And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” Finally, Holy Spirit, I agree to walk in step with you in everything—in all prayer as my spirit communes with you throughout the day. (6:13-18)