Water Tubing Quotes

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According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul. But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough. I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. 'I'm sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.' 'Me too,' he said. 'But it isn't,' I said. 'I know,' he said. 'There are no bad guys.' 'Yeah.' 'Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
Log Entry: SOL 118 My conversation with NASA about the Water Reclaimer was boring and riddled with technical details. So I'll paraphrase for you: Me: "This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and check the internal tubing?" NASA: (After about 5 hours of deliberation) "No. You'll fuck it up and die." So I took it apart.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
Hi, I’m at the Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an ambulance. The great love of my life has a malfunctioning G-tube.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
I suppose that is what every man must tell himself in war.” His voice rasps and he sucks again on the water tube. “That there will be an end, and when it is done, enough of himself will remain. Enough to be a father. A brother. A lover. But we know it isn’t true. Don’t we, Darrow? War eats the victors last.
Pierce Brown (Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4))
I can't go to Amsterdam. One of my doctors thinks it's a bad idea." He was quiet for a second. "God," he said. "I should've just paid for it myself. Should've just taken you straight from the Funky Bones to Amsterdam." "But then I would've had a probably fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam, and my body would have been shipped home in the cargo hold of an airplane," I said. "Well, yeah," he said. "But before that, my grand romantic gesture would have totally gotten me laid." I laughed pretty hard, hard enought that I felt where the chest tube had been. "You laugh because it's true," he said. I laughed again. "It's true, isn't it!" "Probably not," I said, and then after a moment added, "although you never know.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.
Robin McKinley
Water splashed over my jeans, and I yelped as something burned my skin. We examined my leg. Tiny holes marred my jeans where the drops had hit, the material seared away, the skin underneath red and burned. It throbbed as if I’d jabbed needles into my flesh. “What the heck?” I muttered, glaring into the storm. It looked like ordinary rain—gray, misty, somewhat depressing. Almost compulsively, I stuck my hand toward the opening, where water dripped over the edge of the tube. Ash grabbed my wrist, snatching it back. “Yes, it will burn your hand as well as your leg,” he said in a bland voice. “And here I thought you learned your lesson with the chains.” Embarrassed, I dropped my hand and scooted farther into the tube, away from the rim and the acid rain dripping from it. “Guess I’m staying up all night,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “Wouldn’t want to doze off and find half my face melted off when I wake up.
Julie Kagawa (The Iron King (The Iron Fey, #1))
Leo gestured to the empty core. “The syncopator goes here. It’s a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The dozen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful, dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad’s forges. This murky stuff here? That’s water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational.” Leo tapped the digital clock, which now read 65:15. “That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we’ll get a very nasty reaction.” Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he’d been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he’d used English.
Rick Riordan (The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus))
Two packets of pocket tissue, one 30-centiliter bottle of water, one first aid kit, one packet of wipes, one wallet, one tube of hand cream, one lip balm, one phone, one tampon, one rape whistle. Basically, the essentials for every woman.
Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer)
There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love. The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love. The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre'd marl - says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, 'I am home.
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
Exposure to nature - cold, heat, water - is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real - the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you've ever been before. Not so with nature. At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your sense fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that stat you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction - an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
Western doctors are like poor plumbers. They treat a splashing tube by cleaning up the water. These plumbers are extremely apt at drying up the water, constantly inventing new, expensive, and refined methods of drying up water. Somebody should teach them how to close the tap.
Denis Parsons Burkitt
Like any stage of the hydrologic process, we have our own peculiarities, our organs making us nothing more than water pools or springs of bizarre shape, filled with pulsing tubes and chambers.
Craig Childs (The Secret Knowledge of Water)
There's your problem," Leo announced. Jason scratched his head. "Uh.... what are we looking at?" Leo thought it was pretty obvious, but Piper looked confused too. "Okay," Leo sighed, " you want the full explanation or the short explanation?" "Short," Piper and Jason said in unison. Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The doxen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful,dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad's forges. This murky stuff here? That's water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational.... That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we'll get a very nasty reaction." Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he'd been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he'd used English. "Um..." Piper cleared her throat." Could you make the short explanation shorter?" Leo palm-smacked his forehead. "Fine. One hour. Fluids mix. Bunker goes ka-boom. One square mile of forest tuns into a smoking crater." "Oh," Piper said in a small voice. "Can't you just..... turn it off?" "Gee, I didn't think of that!" Leo said. "Let me just hit this switch and - No, Piper. I can't turn it off.
Rick Riordan (The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus))
These people were building homes for the rich, but they lived in tents covered with blue tarpaulin sheets, and partitioned into lanes by lines of sewage. It was even worse than Laxmangarh. I picked my way around broken glass, wire, and shattered tube lights. The stench of feces was replaced by the stronger stench of industrial sewage. The slum ended in an open sewer - a small river of black water went sluggishly past me, bubbles sparkling in it and little circles spreading on its surface. Two children were splashing about in the black water.
Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger)
Music was a kind of penetration. Perhaps absorption is a less freighted word. The penetration or absorption of everything into itself. I don't know if you have ever taken LSD, but when you do so the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and their adherents ceaselessly remind us, swing wide open. That is actually the sort of phrase, unless you are William Blake, that only makes sense when there is some LSD actually swimming about inside you. In the cold light of the cup of coffee and banana sandwich that are beside me now it appears to be nonsense, but I expect you to know what it is taken to mean. LSD reveals the whatness of things, their quiddity, their essence. The wateriness of water is suddenly revealed to you, the carpetness of carpets, the woodness of wood, the yellowness of yellow, the fingernailness of fingernails, the allness of all, the nothingness of all, the allness of nothing. For me music gives access to everyone of these essences, but at a fraction of the social or financial cost of a drug and without the need to cry 'Wow!' all the time, which is LSD's most distressing and least endearing side effects. ...Music in the precision of its form and the mathematical tyranny of its laws, escapes into an eternity of abstraction and an absurd sublime that is everywhere and nowhere at once. The grunt of rosin-rubbed catgut, the saliva-bubble blast of a brass tube, the sweaty-fingered squeak on a guitar fret, all that physicality, all that clumsy 'music making', all that grain of human performance...transcends itself at the moment of its happening, that moment when music actually becomes, as it makes the journey from the vibrating instrument, the vibrating hi-fi speaker, as it sends those vibrations across to the human tympanum and through to the inner ear and into the brain, where the mind is set to vibrate to frequencies of its own making. The nothingness of music can be moulded by the mood of the listener into the most precise shapes or allowed to float as free as thought; music can follow the academic and theoretical pattern of its own modality or adhere to some narrative or dialectical programme imposed by a friend, a scholar or the composer himself. Music is everything and nothing. It is useless and no limit can be set to its use. Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise. Music makes me write this sort of maundering adolescent nonsense without embarrassment. Music is in fact the dog's bollocks. Nothing else comes close.
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
In the cage is the lion. She paces with her memories. Her body is a record of her past. As she moves back and forth, one may see it all: the lean frame, the muscular legs, the paw enclosing long sharp claws, the astonishing speed of her response. She was born in this garden. She has never in her life stretched those legs. Never darted farther than twenty yards at a time. Only once did she use her claws. Only once did she feel them sink into flesh. And it was her keeper's flesh. Her keeper whom she loves, who feeds her, who would never dream of harming her, who protects her. Who in his mercy forgave her mad attack, saying this was in her nature, to be cruel at a whim, to try to kill what she loves. He had come into her cage as he usually did early in the morning to change her water, always at the same time of day, in the same manner, speaking softly to her, careful to make no sudden movement, keeping his distance, when suddenly she sank down, deep down into herself, the way wild animals do before they spring, and then she had risen on all her strong legs, and swiped him in one long, powerful, graceful movement across the arm. How lucky for her he survived the blow. The keeper and his friends shot her with a gun to make her sleep. Through her half-open lids she knew they made movements around her. They fed her with tubes. They observed her. They wrote comments in notebooks. And finally they rendered a judgment. She was normal. She was a normal wild beast, whose power is dangerous, whose anger can kill, they had said. Be more careful of her, they advised. Allow her less excitement. Perhaps let her exercise more. She understood none of this. She understood only the look of fear in her keeper's eyes. And now she paces. Paces as if she were angry, as if she were on the edge of frenzy. The spectators imagine she is going through the movements of the hunt, or that she is readying her body for survival. But she knows no life outside the garden. She has no notion of anger over what she could have been, or might be. No idea of rebellion. It is only her body that knows of these things, moving her, daily, hourly, back and forth, back and forth, before the bars of her cage.
Susan Griffin (Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her)
The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history. I've always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresey. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once. The machines of the new technology, I understand, perform in much the same way: all knowledge is stored, to be summoned up at the flick of a key. They sound, in theory, more efficient. Some of my keys don't work; others demand pass-words, codes, random unlocking sequences. The collective past, curiously, provides these. It is public property, but it is also deeply private. We all look differently at it. My Victorians are not your Victorians. My seventeenth century is not yours. The voice of John Aubrey, of Darwin, of whoever you like, speaks in one tone to me, in another to you.
Penelope Lively (Moon Tiger)
One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings.
Ng Yi-Sheng (LONTAR #5)
I picked up an old microscope at a flea market in Verona. In the long evenings, in my imitation of life science, I set up in the courtyard and examined local specimens. Pointless pleasure, stripped of ends. The ancient contadino from across the road, long since convinced that we were mad, could not resist coming over for a look. I showed him where to put his eye. I watched him, thinking, this is how we attach to existence. We look through awareness’s tube and see the swarm at the end of the scope, taking what we come upon there for the full field of sight itself. The old man lifted his eye from the microscope lens, crying. Signore, ho ottantotto anni e non ho mai Saputo prima che cosa ci fosse in una goccia d’acqua. I’m eighty-eight years old and I never knew what was in a droplet of water.
Richard Powers (Galatea 2.2)
In the water’s reflection she saw only loving scenes from her childhood, countless memories, her mother kissing her good night, unwrapping a new toy, plopping whipped cream onto pancakes, putting Annie on her first bicycle, stitching a ripped dress, sharing a tube of lipstick, pushing a button to Annie’s favorite radio station. It was as if someone unlocked a vault and all these fond recollections could be examined at once. Why didn't I feel this before? she whispered. Because we embrace are scars more than our healing, Lorraine said. We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone?
Mitch Albom (The Next Person You Meet in Heaven)
Today, what's normal is being redefined: from vaginal birth to surgical birth; from 'My water broke,' to 'Let's break your water;' from 'It's time' to 'It's time for the induction.' As medical anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd writes, 'in the early twenty-first century, we do not know what normal birth is.' Most practicing obstetricians have never witnessed an unplugged birth that wasn't an accident. Women are even beginning to deny normal birth to themselves: if 'normal' means being induced, immobilized by wires and tubes, sped up with drugs, all the while knowing that there's a good chance of surgery, well, might as well just cut to the chase, so to speak. 'Just give me a cesarean,' some are saying. And who can blame them? They want to avoid what they think of as normal birth.
Jennifer Block (Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care)
The sad irony here is that the FDA, which does not regulate fluoride in drinking water, does regulate toothpaste and on the back of a tube of fluoridated toothpaste … it must state that “if your child swallows more than the recommended amount, contact a poison control center.” The amount that they’re talking about, the recommended amount, which is a pea-sized amount, is equivalent to one glass of water. The FDA is not putting a label on the tap saying don’t drink more than one glass of water. If you do, contact a poison center… There is no question that fluoride — not an excessive amount — can cause serious harm.
Paul Connett (The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Keep It There)
That maybe I’m the answer,’ I blurted. ‘To healing your heart. I could … you know, be your boyfriend. As Lester. If you wanted. You and me. You know, like … yeah.’ I was absolutely certain that up on Mount Olympus, the other Olympians all had their phones out and were filming me to post on Euterpe-Tube. Reyna stared at me long enough for the marching band in my circulatory system to play a complete stanza of ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’. Her eyes were dark and dangerous. Her expression was unreadable, like the outer surface of an explosive device. She was going to murder me. No. She would order her dogs to murder me. By the time Meg rushed to my aid, it would be too late. Or worse – Meg would help Reyna bury my remains, and no one would be the wiser. When they returned to camp, the Romans would ask, What happened to Apollo? Who? Reyna would say. Oh, that guy? Dunno, we lost him. Oh, well! the Romans would reply, and that would be that. Reyna’s mouth tightened into a grimace. She bent over, gripping her knees. Her body began to shake. Oh, gods, what had I done? Perhaps I should comfort her, hold her in my arms. Perhaps I should run for my life. Why was I so bad at romance? Reyna made a squeaking sound, then a sort of sustained whimper. I really had hurt her! Then she straightened, tears streaming down her face, and burst into laughter. The sound reminded me of water rushing over a riverbed that had been dry for ages. Once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop. She doubled over, stood upright again, leaned against a tree and looked at her dogs as if to share the joke. ‘Oh … my … gods,’ she wheezed. She managed to restrain her mirth long enough to blink at me through the tears, as if to make sure I was really there and she’d heard me correctly. ‘You. Me? HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA.
Rick Riordan (The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4))
We passed Clarabelle," Skulduggery said. "She drank from one of the test tubes she was holding." Kenspeckle's head dropped. "That girl," he said. "One of these days she'll learn. I don't know what she'll learn, but she'll learn and it will be a good day." "Is she in any danger?" He started searching drawers. "Not really. Both tubes contain mineral water. You'd be astonished how many I've given her water and told her it was something else and not to drink it. She always drinks it though. Always. It's a compulsion.
Derek Landy (Dark Days (Skulduggery Pleasant, #4))
The things that will go I to my handbag are laid out on my dressing table. Two packets of pocket tissue, one 30-centilitre bottle of water, one first aid kit, one packet of wipes, one wallet, one tube of hand cream, one lip balm, one phone, one tampon, one rape whistle. Basically, the essentials for every woman.
Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer)
IN 1953, STANLEY Miller, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, took two flasks—one containing a little water to represent a primeval ocean, the other holding a mixture of methane, ammonia, and hydrogen sulphide gases to represent Earth’s early atmosphere—connected them with rubber tubes, and introduced some electrical sparks as a stand-in for lightning. After a few days, the water in the flasks had turned green and yellow in a hearty broth of amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, and other organic compounds. “If God didn’t do it this way,” observed Miller’s delighted supervisor, the Nobel laureate Harold Urey, “He missed a good bet.
Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
He meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient -- nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?
George Orwell (1984)
In the beginning, the earth was without form, and void and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And god said, 'Let there be light.' and there was light. Only, it wasn't good light. Bob created fireworks, sparklers and neon tubes that circled the globe like weird tangled rainbows. He dabbled with bugs that blinked and abstract creatures whose heads lit up and cast long overlapping shadows. There were mile-high candles and mountains of fairy lights. For an hour or so, earth was lit by enormous crystal chandeliers. Bob thought his creations were cool. They were cool, but they didn't work
Meg Rosoff (There Is No Dog)
Remember my experiments with the RTG and having a hot bath? Same principle, but I came up with an improvement: submerge the RTG. No heat will be wasted that way. I started with a large rigid sample container (or “plastic box” to people who don’t work at NASA). I ran a tube through the open top and down the inside wall. Then I coiled it in the bottom to make a spiral. I glued it in place like that and sealed the end. Using my smallest drill bit, I put dozens of little holes in the coil. The idea is for the freezing return air from the regulator to pass through the water as a bunch of little bubbles. The increased surface area will get the heat into the air better. Then I got a medium flexible sample container (“Ziploc bag”) and tried to seal the RTG in it. But the RTG has an irregular shape, and I couldn’t get all the air out of the bag. I can’t allow any air in there.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
tube or 2 of these water purification tablets at your home or in your car. If there was ever a shortage or damage to the city supply, you would
Jon Woodward (Survival Tips)
— If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waes. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddently your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama. The moment our bodies are set to spring open. The immanence that reassembles matter passes through us then disperses into time and place: the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons. The mother who hears her child crying upstairs and suddenly feels her dress wet with milk. Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew before we were loved there, the places left fallow when we’re born, waiting for experience to find its way into us. The night crossing, on deck in the dark car. On the beach wehre night reshaped your face. In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet, moss like velvet spread over splintered forms. The instant spray freezes in air above the falls, a gasp of ice. We rise, hearing our names called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon an escutcheon on the shield of sky. The current that passes through us, radio waves, electric lick. The billions of photons that pass through film emulsion every second, the single submicroscopic crystal struck that becomes the phograph. We look and suddenly the world looks back. A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky. — But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate by the rear-view mirror of the moon; if we continue to reach both for salt and for the sweet white nibs of grass growing closest to earth; if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also driving through the canyon at night, all around us the hidden glow of limestone erased by darkness; if still we sish we’d waited for morning, we will know ourselves nowhere. Not in the mirrors of waves or in the corrading stream, not in the wavering glass of an apartment building, not in the looming light of night lobbies or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen or in the motel where we watched meteors from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open, turned stars to rain. We will become indigestible. Afraid of choking on fur and armour, animals will refuse the divided longings in our foreing blue flesh. — In your hands, all you’ve lost, all you’ve touched. In the angle of your head, every vow and broken vow. In your skin, every time you were disregarded, every time you were received. Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field, mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem. The branch that’s released when the bird lifts or lands. In a summer kitchen. On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.
Anne Michaels
Around his biceps are children’s inflatable water wings, bright yellow with pink duckies. A matching inner tube circles his waist. This is how upperclassmen treat chum-year kids who prove inept at their assignments. They’re forced to wear pink duckies for an entire day.
Rick Riordan (Daughter of the Deep)
Jessica leaned beside him, thankful for the moment of rest. She heard Paul pulling at his stillsuit tube, sipped her own reclaimed water. It tasted brackish, and she remembered the waters of Caladan—a tall fountain enclosing a curve of sky, such a richness of moisture that it hadn't been noticed for itself... only for its shape, or its reflection, or its sound as she stopped beside it. To stop , she thought. To rest... truly rest . It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
Good good. Enough talk. Check breeder tanks, please.' 'Yeah, yeah. Let me get some water first.' He bounces and skitters down his tube to the lab. 'Why humans need water so much, question? Inefficient life-forms!' ... 'Eiridians need water too, you know.' 'We keep inside. Closed system. Some inefficiencies inside, but we get all water we need from food. Humans leak! Gross!' I laugh as I float in to the lab where Rocky is waiting. 'On Earth, we have a scary, deadly creature called a spider. You look like one of those, just so you know.' 'Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
Igor Stravinsky said that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” I’d come across the quote years before, but I only now got it. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative
Jennifer Fulwiler (One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both)
Igor Stravinsky said that “the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself.” I’d come across the quote years before, but I only now got it. When water is confined in a narrow space like a tube or a ravine, it will rush forward with power; when it has infinite room to expand, it becomes a puddle. The same thing happens with our creative juices. If I had had perfect control over my
Jennifer Fulwiler (One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both)
Ivy passed by the same location a few moments later, slowed for a moment, and glanced down the length of the tube. It was possible to see straight down its length, across the spherical Pod, and through its windows to the Earth. Normally this meant the blue light of the oceans and the white light of clouds and ice caps. Sometimes, a lot of green when they were passing over well-watered parts of the world, or some yellow when over the Sahara. Right now the light was orange because the Earth was on fire. People
Neal Stephenson (Seveneves)
I close my eyes and all I can think of is red. So I get a tube of watercolour, cadmium red dark, and I get a big mop of a brush, and I fill a jar with water, and I begin to cover the paper with red. It glistens. The paper is limp with moisture, and it darkens as it dries. I watch it drying. It smells of gum arabic. In the centre of the paper, very small, in black ink, I draw a heart, not a silly Valentine but an anatomically-correct heart, tiny, doll-like, and then veins, delicate road-map of veins, that reach all the way to the edges of the paper, that hold the small heart enmeshed like a fly in a spiderweb. See, there's his heartbeat.
Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife)
All this fantastic effort—giant machines, road networks, strip mines, conveyor belt, pipelines, slurry lines, loading towers, railway and electric train, hundred-million-dollar coal-burning power plant; ten thousand miles of high-tension towers and high-voltage power lines; the devastation of the landscape, the destruction of Indian homes and Indian grazing lands, Indian shrines and Indian burial grounds; the poisoning of the last big clean-air reservoir in the forty-eight contiguous United States, the exhaustion of precious water supplies—all that ball-breaking labor and all that backbreaking expense and all that heartbreaking insult to land and sky and human heart, for what? All that for what? Why, to light the lamps of Phoenix suburbs not yet built, to run the air conditioners of San Diego and Los Angeles, to illuminate shopping-center parking lots at two in the morning, to power aluminum plants, magnesium plants, vinyl-chloride factories and copper smelters, to charge the neon tubing that makes the meaning (all the meaning there is) of Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Tucson, Salt Lake City, the amalgamated metropoli of southern California, to keep alive that phosphorescent putrefying glory (all the glory there is left) called Down Town, Night Time, Wonderville, U.S.A. They
Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang)
In a YouTube video made by actor Ashton Kutcher just after Obama’s inauguration, dozens of Hollywood celebrities pledged “to be a servant to our president and all mankind.”28 It was like something out of an Aztec festival of the gods—if what the Aztec gods wanted was for Hollywood actresses like Eva Longoria to use “less bottled water.” I don’t remember Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope producing a video pledging themselves to be servants of Ronald Reagan. In fact, if anyone had ever made a video with people reading the exact same lines as Demi and Ashton’s friends about a Republican president, MSNBC would be running specials on the rise of fascism in America.
Ann Coulter (Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America)
But there was one occasion when we went down to a village to set up our feeding kitchens and I noticed there was another relief operation there that had the same American supplies that we had who were doing something quite different. They were organizing food-for-work programs so that the people in the village would actually work and be paid in food. And the work they were doing were things that would help the whole village…..building a road or a school…..building a dam to catch the water when the rains came again…..building tube wells to tap deep into the aquifer. So the villagers were given the dignity of work at the same time they were providing something for the infrastructure of the village. I said: “That’s really smart. Who are these people?” Gandhians. They were members of the Sarvodaya Movement….the Gandhian Movement. And I said: “That’s what I want to do.
Mark Juergensmeyer
Time stops. He lies on his shattered back, looking upward. The dome above him hovers, a cracked shell about to fall in shards all around him. A thousand - a thousand thousand - green-tipped, splitting fingerlings fold over him, praying and threatening. Bark disintegrates; wood clarifies. The trunk turns into stacks of spreading metropolis, networks of conjoined cells pulsing with energy and liquid sun, water rising through long thin reeds, through the narrowing tunnels of transparent twigs and out through their waving tips, while sun-made sustenance drops down in tubes just inside them. A colossal, rising, reaching, stretching space elevator of a billion independent parts, shuttling the air into the sky and storing the sky deep underground, sorting possibility from out of nothing: the most perfect piece of self-writing code that his eyes could hope to see. Then his eyes close in shock and Neelay shuts down.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
When I saw them on the beach, perfectly tanned, or when I watched them twirling in the waves, I grasped the transcendental element in surf music. It was all about freedom from the rules of life, the whole of your being concentrated in the act of shooting the tube. For several years after that trip to L.A. I subscribed to Surfer magazine, and I practiced the Atlantic Ocean version of the sport, though only with my body and on rather tame waves. With my voice muffled by the water I would shout a line from “Surf City.” To me, this was the ultimate fantasy of plenty: “two girls for every boy,” except I sang it as “Two girls for every goy.” Fortunately, Brian has survived the schizoid tendencies that seemed close to the surface when I met him. He’s still performing and writing songs. But it was his emotional battle and the intersection of that struggle with the acid-dosed aesthetic of the sixties that produced his most astonishing music.
Richard Goldstein (Another Little Piece of My Heart: My Life of Rock and Revolution in the '60s)
With the lessons learned from the Mike SSN disaster in the North Sea off Norway, the Typhoon’s captain decided to remain where he was to await rescue. Mack knew the Russian captain had lost his cool; he was now in the South China Sea, where no Russian ships could come to his rescue. What’s more, Cheyenne had finally picked up the last Akula, whose captain had elected to pull off to be able to fight another day and which had managed to distance itself from the fray. Cheyenne was there as the Typhoon reached the surface. The Russian submarine had been severely damaged, but Mack ordered four more torpedoes into the defenseless Typhoon. There was seldom mercy in wartime, and Cheyenne’s and Mack’s orders were clear. If he had allowed the Typhoon to survive, its crew would have cut the missile hatches open with blow torches and completed their launch against Taiwan. The result of the additional four torpedoes exploding beneath the Typhoon caused major seawater system flooding. The ensuing scene was similar to the devastation experienced by the Yankee class SSBN southeast of the Bermudas years before. Only this time there was no capability to protect and remove the crew. Life rafts were put over the side, only to be attacked by the South China Sea shark population, so the crew watched helplessly from the huge, flat missile-tube deck. The oversized submarine started settling slowly deeper, the water level rising to within meters of the missile- tube deck, with the crew topside. The captain—the admiral-to-be-had already sent a message to his North Fleet Headquarters concerning the impending demise of his capital ship and the lack of help from his Akula escorts by name, two of which had been sunk. He had not been given any means to communicate with the Chinese, so he resorted to calling home. After that he went topside to be with his men, sat down, and held hands in a circle as their submarine slid beneath the surface of the sea, sailors to the end, for eternity.
Tom Clancy (SSN: A Strategy Guide to Submarine Warfare)
Before you decide,” MacRieve interrupted, “know that if you were my mate, I’d make sure you had whatever you needed to be comfortable.” Her lips parted when he pulled her bag from behind him and proceeded to dig through it. “Like your toothbrush.” He held up her pink toothbrush. He’d retrieved her things from her car? And rooted through her personal possessions. She’d seen MacRieve’s ferocity, and now she was getting a good glimpse of his sly side, his tricksy side. She could see what Rydstrom had been talking about. MacRieve seemed . . . wolfish. Then she remembered what else she had in her bag. Oh, great Hekate. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. Mari had private things in there—rocket of the pocket-type private things. Like a tube of lipstick that wasn’t really one. “Or this.” He carelessly flicked her birth control patch. “Doona know what it does, but I ken that people who use patches for whatever reason might be eager for a new one.” He displayed her iPod next. “It’s my understanding that females your age canna go long without listening to music or they become irrational and impossible to deal with. And how long’s it been for you, then?” He drew out a blue-labeled bottle and shook it. “You had several bottles of Orangina in your Jeep. Must like it, do you no’?” Not the Orangina! Her mouth watered even more. “And here’s your bit of Mayan gold that you’re probably keen to hold on to.” He held up the weighty headdress. Stunning. She hazily remembered seeing it in the severed hand of an incubus, as if in offer, but she’d thought the piece had been lost into that crater. If MacRieve gave the incubi’s headdress to her, it would be her first payment as a mystical mercenary. No, resist him! To act like his mate? To follow his orders? She could resist the food and the Orangina. She could even resist gold, but there he went digging once more. He’d find it. But maybe he wouldn’t know what it really was— “And your lipstick,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. Oh, no, he knew, and he was playing with her. She was going to die of mortification. Her face grew hot when he added, “You must be in sore need of this after three weeks without.
Kresley Cole (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (Immortals After Dark, #3))
In one department of his [Joseph Black's] lecture he exceeded any I have ever known, the neatness and unvarying success with which all the manipulations of his experiments were performed. His correct eye and steady hand contributed to the one; his admirable precautions, foreseeing and providing for every emergency, secured the other. I have seen him pour boiling water or boiling acid from a vessel that had no spout into a tube, holding it at such a distance as made the stream's diameter small, and so vertical that not a drop was spilt. While he poured he would mention this adaptation of the height to the diameter as a necessary condition of success. I have seen him mix two substances in a receiver into which a gas, as chlorine, had been introduced, the effect of the combustion being perhaps to produce a compound inflammable in its nascent state, and the mixture being effected by drawing some string or wire working through the receiver's sides in an air-tight socket. The long table on which the different processes had been carried on was as clean at the end of the lecture as it had been before the apparatus was planted upon it. Not a drop of liquid, not a grain of dust remained.
Henry Peter Brougham (Lives of men of letters and science who flourished in the time of George III. Volume 2 of 2)
As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop. My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair. Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.
Frank H. Wu (Yellow)
she picked up a jug of distilled water and poured it into a flask, plugging the flask with a stopper outfitted with a tube wriggling from its top. Next, she clipped the flask onto one of two metal stands that stood between two Bunsen burners and struck a strange metal gadget that sparked like flint striking steel. A flame appeared; the water began to heat. Reaching up to a shelf, she grabbed a sack labeled “C8H10N4O2,” dumped some into a mortar, ground it with a pestle, overturned the resulting dirtlike substance onto a strange little scale, then dumped the scale’s contents into a 6- x 6-inch piece of cheesecloth and tied the small bundle off. Stuffing the cheesecloth into a larger beaker, she attached it to the second metal stand, clamping the tube coming out of the first flask into the large beaker’s bottom. As the water in the flask started to bubble, Mrs. Sloane, her jaw practically on the floor, watched as the water forced its way up the tube and into the beaker. Soon the smaller flask was almost empty and Elizabeth shut off the Bunsen burner. She stirred the contents of the beaker with a glass rod. Then the brown liquid did the strangest thing: it rose up like a poltergeist and returned to the original flask. “Cream and sugar?” Elizabeth
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Eyes closed, she imagined the butterflies soaring over the petals, riding the tail of the breeze. She imagined a fairy leading their dance, her wings shimmering in the sun. Then one of the butterflies seemed to come alive in her mind, like a character on the silver screen. Twirling in the sunlight that spilled through the window. She was pale blue, laced with gold, and Libby could see her, inside and out, every detail on her slender body, every color on her wardrobe of wings. Libby released her legs and sprung down onto the rug on her floor. Under her bed was a box with her old sketchbook and colored pencils. She hadn't wanted to draw in a long time. She'd only wanted to be among the flowers and butterflies. But if she couldn't be with her friends, perhaps she could entertain them in her room. The sketchbook in hand, she hopped back on the bed and began drawing the blue butterfly who'd twirled in the lamplight, but her butterfly looked so dull on the paper. Nothing like the butterfly she'd seen moments before. She- Libby Doyle- was a creator, and her creation begged her for more. Rushing to the bathroom, she filled a paper cup with water. In her parents' bedroom were tubes of special paint. And a brush. Mummy once told her she'd kept the paints to remember her father- Libby's granddad- but what better way to remember him than to use his paints to birth another life? 'Life.' She wanted to breathe light and color and life into her friends.
Melanie Dobson (Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor)
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Elite Shower
LOG ENTRY: SOL 118 My conversation with NASA about the water reclaimer was boring and riddled with technical details. So I'll paraphrase it for you: Me: "This is obviously a clog. How about I take it apart and check the internal tubing?" NASA: (after five hours of deliberation) "No. You'll fuck it up and die." So I took it apart. Yes, I know. NASA has a lot of ultra-smart people and I should really do what they say. And I'm being too adversarial, considering they spend all day working on how to save my life. I just get sick of being told how to wipe my ass. Independence was one of the qualities they look for when choosing Ares astronauts. It's a thirteen-month mission, most of it spent light-minutes away from Earth. They wanted people who would act on their own initiative. If Commander Lewis were here, I'd do whatever she said, no problem. But a committee of faceless bureaucrats back on Earth? Sorry, I'm just having a tough time with it. I was really careful. I labeled every piece as I dismantled it, and laid everything out on a table. I have the schematics in the computer so nothing was a surprise. And just as I'd suspected, there was a clogged tube. The water reclaimer was designed to purify urine and strain humidity out of the air ( you exhale almost as much water as you piss). I've mixed my water with soil making it mineral water. The minerals built up in the water reclaimer. I cleaned out the tubing and put it all back together. I completely solved the problem. I'll have to do it again someday, but not for a hundred sols or so. No big deal. I told NASA what I did. Our (paraphrased) conversation was: Me: "I took it apart, found the problem, and fixed it." NASA: "Dick.
Andy Weir (The Martian)
He’s hot—and he’s FBI. Everyone knows you have that Fed fetish. I bet he owns handcuffs,” she adds, with a dramatic wink. “And there is no way he’s bad in bed. No way. You know how you can just tell sometimes by looking at a guy? Just by the way he moves? That’s what you need. A guy who knows what he’s doing in bed. And at the very least this guy is packing.” “Wait. Are you talking about my brother?” Sophie interjects. Sophie has a half-brother I’ve never met. “Obviously, Sophie. How many federal agents do I know?” Everly responds in a ‘duh’ tone of voice. “It’s actually a great idea, but please do not talk about my brother’s junk in front of me. It’s disgusting.” Sophie winces and rubs at her baby bump. “I think Boyd’s a bit of a player though. He’s never even introduced me to anyone he’s seeing. But good plan. You guys talk about it. I’m going to the restroom.” She pushes back her chair and stands, then immediately sits again, looking at us in a panic. “I think my water just broke.” “I’ve got this,” Everly announces, waving her hands excitedly as she flags down the waitress. “I’m gonna need a pot of boiling water, some towels and the check.” “Oh, my God,” Sophie mutters and digs her cell phone out of her purse. “Just the check,” I tell the waitress. I turn back to Everly as Sophie calls her husband. “You’re not delivering Sophie’s baby, Everly. Her water broke ten seconds ago and her husband—the gynecologist—is in their condo upstairs. So even if this baby was coming in the next five minutes, which it is not, you’re still not delivering it at a table in Serafina.” Everly slumps in her chair and shakes her head. “I’ve been watching YouTube videos on childbirth for months, just in case. What a waste.” She sighs, then perks up. “Can I at least be in the delivery room?” “No,” we all respond in unison.
Jana Aston (Trust (Cafe, #3))
Lester.” Reyna sighed. “What in Tartarus are you saying? I’m not in the mood for riddles.” “That maybe I’m the answer,” I blurted. “To healing your heart. I could…you know, be your boyfriend. As Lester. If you wanted. You and me. You know, like…yeah.” I was absolutely certain that up on Mount Olympus, the other Olympians all had their phones out and were filming me to post on Euterpe-Tube. Reyna stared at me long enough for the marching band in my circulatory system to play a complete stanza of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Her eyes were dark and dangerous. Her expression was unreadable, like the outer surface of an explosive device. She was going to murder me. No. She would order her dogs to murder me. By the time Meg rushed to my aid, it would be too late. Or worse—Meg would help Reyna bury my remains, and no one would be the wiser. When they returned to camp, the Romans would ask What happened to Apollo? Who? Reyna would say. Oh, that guy? Dunno, we lost him. Oh, well! the Romans would reply, and that would be that. Reyna’s mouth tightened into a grimace. She bent over, gripping her knees. Her body began to shake. Oh, gods, what had I done? Perhaps I should comfort her, hold her in my arms. Perhaps I should run for my life. Why was I so bad at romance? Reyna made a squeaking sound, then a sort of sustained whimper. I really had hurt her! Then she straightened, tears streaming down her face, and burst into laughter. The sound reminded me of water rushing over a creek bed that had been dry for ages. Once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop. She doubled over, stood upright again, leaned against a tree, and looked at her dogs as if to share the joke. “Oh…my…gods,” she wheezed. She managed to restrain her mirth long enough to blink at me through the tears, as if to make sure I was really there and she’d heard me correctly. “You. Me? HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA.
Rick Riordan (The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4))
May I ask you a question? If you have to hold your breath too long, what is it that makes you desperate to breathe again?” “I’m running out of oxygen, I guess.” “That’s the interesting fact. It isn’t the absence of oxygen. It’s the presence of carbon dioxide. Kind of the same thing, but not exactly. The point is, you could suck up any kind of gas, and as long as it wasn’t carbon dioxide, your brain would be happy. You could have a chest full of nitrogen, no oxygen at all, about to kill you stone dead, and your lungs would say, hey man, we’re cool, no carbon dioxide here, no need for us to start pumping again until we see some. Which they never will, because you’ll never breathe again. Because you’ll never need to. Because you have no carbon dioxide. And so on. So those folks started sniffing nitrogen, but you have to go to the welding shop and the cylinders are too heavy to lift, so then they tried helium from the balloon store, but you needed masks and tubes, and the whole thing still looks weird, so in the end most folks won’t be satisfied with anything less than the old-fashioned bottle of pills and the glass of scotch. Exactly like it used to be. Except it can’t be anymore. Those pills were most likely either Nembutal or Seconal, and both of those substances are tightly controlled now. There’s no way to get them. Except illegally, of course, way down where no one can see you. There are sources. The holy grail. Most of the offers are scams, naturally. Powdered Nembutal from China, and so on. Dissolve in water or fruit juice. Maybe eight or nine hundred bucks for a lethal dose. Some poor desperate soul takes the cash to MoneyGram and sends it off, and then waits at home, anxious and tormented, and never sees any powdered Nembutal from China, because there never was any. The powder in the on-line photograph was talc, and the prescription bottle was for something else entirely. Which I felt was a new low, in the end. They’re preying on the last hopes of suicidal people.
Lee Child (Make Me (Jack Reacher, #20))
Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes. I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame. Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away. Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand. 'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away. I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up. When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake. Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.
Jeff Rice (The Night Stalker)
she was. Julie Hubbard tried to speak but the thick cloth around her mouth prevented any movement of her dry, cracked lips. Only a thin whimper in the blackness could escape briefly before the sound died in the tiny cavity in which she lay. She moved her tongue and felt the cold liquid fill her mouth. Water. Cool, thirst-quenching, life-prolonging. She gulped it down, moving her tongue again to cover the small tube sticking through the cloth, knowing instinctively that this
Sarah Flint (Mummy's Favourite (DC Charlotte Stafford, #1))
She was on a roll and everybody knew it. It was what cops and prosecutors called being in the tube. It was a surfing reference. It meant they had ridden the case into the water tunnel where everything was going smoothly and perfectly and was surrounding them in glorious balance.
Michael Connelly (A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7; Harry Bosch Universe, #10))
Oh,” he said, stopping in the doorway. “I should probably warn you. Your beds might take a little getting used to.” “Why?” Tesla asked. “What’s wrong with them?” When Uncle Newt had shown them their room earlier, the beds had looked normal enough. Not that Nick and Tesla had paid much attention to them. They’d been distracted—and horrified—by the posters haphazardly stapled to the wall: Teletubbies, Elmo, Smurfs, Albert Einstein, and the periodic table. (Nick and Tesla had quickly agreed that the first three would “fall down” and “accidentally” “get ripped” at the first opportunity.) “There’s nothing wrong with your beds, and everything right!” Uncle Newt declared. “I’m telling you, kids. You haven’t slept till you’ve slept on compost!” “What?” Nick and Tesla said together. Even Uncle Newt couldn’t miss the disgust on their faces. “Maybe I’d better come up and explain,” he said. Uncle Newt pulled the comforter off Nick’s bed and revealed something that didn’t look like a bed at all. It was more like a lumpy black sleeping bag with tubes and wires poking out of one end. “Behold!” Uncle Newt said. “The biomass thermal conversion station!” Nick reluctantly gave it a test-sit. It felt like he was lowering himself onto a garbage bag stuffed with rotten old food. Because he was. “As you sleep,” Uncle Newt explained, “your body heat will help decompose food scraps pumped into the unit, which will in turn produce more heat that the convertor will turn into electricity. So, by the time you wake up in the morning, you’ll have enough power to—ta da!” Uncle Newt waved his hands at a coffeemaker sitting on the floor nearby. “Brew coffee?” Tesla said. Uncle Newt gave her a gleeful nod. “We don’t drink coffee,” said Nick. “Then you can have a hot cup of invigorating fresh-brewed water.” “Great,” Nick said. He experimented with a little bounce on his “bed.” He could feel slimy things squishing and squashing beneath his butt. “Comfy?” Uncle Newt asked. “Uhh … kind of,” Nick said. Uncle Newt beamed at his invention. “Patent pending,” he said. Uncle Newt was a gangly man with graying hair, but at that moment he looked like a five-year-old thinking about Christmas. Tesla gave the room a tentative sniff. “Shouldn’t the compost stink?” “Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Each biomass thermal conversion station is completely airtight!” Uncle Newt’s smile wavered just the teeniest bit. “In theory.” Nick opened his mouth to ask another question, but Uncle Newt didn’t seem to notice. “Well,” he said, slapping his hands together, “I guess you two should wash your teeth and brush your faces and all that. Good night!
Bob Pflugfelder (Nick and Tesla and the High-Voltage Danger Lab: A Mystery with Gadgets You Can Build Yourself ourself)
Whereas many of the particles inside you are in the constant complex motion that corresponds to your being alive, others move only in less-elaborate ways, such as many of the ones that make up your skin and help keep the other particles from flying apart. This means that your spacetime tube is a bit like those electrical cables where the inner strands are braided together and the shared insulation on the outside resembles a hollow tube. Moreover, most of your particles get regularly replaced. For example, about three-quarters of your body weight is water molecules, which get replaced every month or so, and your skin cells and red blood cells are replaced every few months. In spacetime, the trajectories of these particles joining and then leaving your body make a pattern reminscent of the familiar silk strands attached to a corncob. At both ends of your spacetime braid, corresponding to your birth and death, all the threads gradually separate, corresponding to all your particles joining, interacting and finally going their own separate ways (Figure 11.4 right). This makes the spacetime structure of your entire life resemble a tree: at the bottom, corresponding to early times, is an elaborate system of roots corresponding to the spacetime trajectory of many particles, which gradually merge into thicker strands and culminate in a single tubelike trunk corresponding to your current body (with a remarkable braidlike pattern inside as we described above). At the top, corresponding to late times, the trunk splits into ever-finer branches, corresponding to your particles going their own separate ways once your life is over. In other words, the pattern of life has only a finite extent along the time dimension, with the braid coming apart into frizz at both ends.
Max Tegmark (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality)
I was just beginning to wonder how long I would have to wait when finally a guard sauntered up and said, “Galloway, get your stuff, get your bed.” I ran to my cell to get my stuff and I grabbed the toothpaste. The toothpaste was in this clear tube and was clear like hair gel. It had a muted, watered-down mint flavor. Everything you got in jail was made specifically to be as safe as can be. One of the guys told me, “Don’t ever take anything from being locked up. It’s bad luck.” But I told myself, You ain’t coming back. You ain’t getting locked up again, so you’re taking a souvenir. I grabbed that little clear tube and I put it in my pocket and walked out of my cell. As I came out, all of the guys from my cellblock were lined up to say goodbye. The guard had this look on his face like, “What is going on?” I walked down the line shaking each man’s hands. They all told me they were glad they had met me. They told me that I made an impact on them. One guy said, “You came in here and you’ve been to war and back, you’re missing two limbs, but you still had a smile on your face the whole time. You’ve gone through so much and you are able to keep smiling. That motivates me.” I was really touched. I kept going down the line, shaking hands and saying my farewells, and finally I got to Michael Bolton. He said, “Hey, man, I’ve asked people this before and they never follow through with it but I believe you will. Could you print out some TV guides? Because you know we just tell them the number. We don’t know what’s on at what time, what station.” I said, “Yeah, man, I’ll do that.” And I looked around to the other guys and asked, “Does anybody want any crossword puzzles or anything like that?” They all said that would be awesome. “All right, Michael, I’ve got your address so I’m gonna send it to you. And listen, man, I’m gonna give you my email address. When you get out shoot me an email. I want to stay in touch and see how things are going.” I turned to the guard who was still baffled by what was happening and said, “I’m ready.” He rolled his eyes and opened the door. We walked out and they handed me my clothes. I pulled off the orange jumpsuit and tossed it. I changed back into my clothes. I signed everything I had to sign, got some paperwork to take with me, and walked out a free man again. Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was “I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there.” She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, “My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He’s going to be friends with everybody.
Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
She was using the water as she had used the fruit earlier—to calm herself, to assure herself of the possibility of normality. Yet all the time she was thinking: I’m right off balance. I feel as if the atmosphere of this flat were being poisoned, as if a spirit of perverse and ugly spite were everywhere. Yet it’s nonsense. The truth is, everything I’m thinking at the moment is wrong. I can feel it is…and yet I’m saving myself by this sort of thinking. Saving myself from what? She felt ill again, and frightened, as she had on the tube. She thought: I’ve got to stop it, I simply must—though she could not have said what she had to stop. I’ll go next door, she decided, and sit down, and—she did not finish the thought, but she had a mental image of a dry well, slowly filling up with water. Yes; that’s what’s wrong with me—I’m dry. I’m empty.
Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
I remember once in the Arctic, when we were attempting to cross the frozen North Atlantic in a small, open rigid inflatable boat (RIB), that I heard that voice very clearly. We had been caught out in a monster, sub-zero, gale-force 8 storm, 400 miles off the coast of Greenland - and we were struggling. We were reduced to a crawl as we battled up and down huge, freezing waves and crashing white water. It felt like only a matter of time before we would be capsized to our deaths in the black and icy sea during this longest of nights. Each time one of us handed over the control of the little boat to another crew member to do their shift at the wheel, we had an especially frightening few minutes as the new helmsman fought to become accustomed to the pitch and character of those freak waves. If ever we were going to be capsized, it was during these change-over times. We got lucky once. We were all thrown off our seats after the RIB had been tossed up and landed on the side of her tubes, only to topple back, by luck, the right way up. We then got lucky a second time in a similar incident. Instinct told me we wouldn’t get so lucky a third time. ‘No more mistakes. Helm this yourself,’ I felt the voice saying to me. As I prepared to hand over to Mick, my old buddy, something deep inside me kept repeating, ‘Just keep helming for a bit longer - see this team through the storm yourself.’ But we had a rota and I also knew we should stick to it. That was the rule. Yet the voice persisted. Eventually I shouted over the wind and spray to Mick that I was going to keep helming. ‘Trust me,’ I told him. Mick then helped me all through that night, pouring Red Bull down my throat as we got thrown left and right, fighting to cling on to the wheel and our seats. By dawn, the seas were easing and by the next evening we could see the distant coast of Iceland ahead. Finally. Afterwards, two of the crew said to me quietly that they had been so terrified to helm that they were praying someone else would do it. I had been exhausted, and logic had said to hand over, but instinct had told me I should keep steering. Deep down I knew that I had been beginning to master how to control the small boat in the chaos of the waves and ice - and that voice told me we might not get a third lucky escape. It was the right call - not an easy one, but a right one. Instinct doesn’t always tell us to choose the easier path, but it will guide you towards the right one.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
I carefully crawled on to the side of his chest, careful not to knock out his tubes, and fell asleep. I could hear the sounds of his body working. The creaky floor sounds from his tummy. The swish of his blood. The pounding of his heart. It sounded like I was swimming and listening to the sounds of water beneath the surface of my father. This was my dad.
Catherine Hernandez
That or some kind of glass bead or lesser gemstone made to look like a ruby,” Sera said. “It’s hard to tell while it’s still in the dirt.” Josh and Lauren’s animated conversation as they took measurements and recorded data sparked a fire in the pit of Sera’s stomach. It wasn’t like her to be so possessive over a find, but she couldn’t help the jealousy that burned inside, especially because she couldn’t hear what they were saying about the amulet. She dropped her gaze. Gulping half of her water bottle, she choked on the last bit as it went down the wrong tube. Nora gave her a few hard pats on the shoulder to help clear her airway. Sera waved her away as she coughed. Hardly the first time she needed rescuing while doing something as simple as drinking water. Being the opposite of graceful came with risks, a fact Nora knew well when it came to Sera. It wasn’t all that unusual to still be friends with the same people from elementary school, but it was far less common to share similar interests all the way through college. Serafina and Eleanor had formed a lifelong bond the moment they met in their Li’l Archaeologists summer program, despite being opposites in just about every way. Nora was the light to her dark—blonde and outgoing next to brunette and reserved. “Didn’t Chad tell you not to dig in that area? I’ll bet he’s kicking himself so hard right now.
Stephanie Mirro (Curse of the Vampire (Immortal Relics #1))
By a skilful method, based on the fact discovered by Mr. C. T. R. Wilson, that charged particles can serve as nuclei for the condensation of water-vapour, he was further able to determine the value of the electrical charge carried by these particles, which was found to be constant also, and equal to the charge carried by univalent ions, e.g., hydrogen, in electrolysis. Hence, it follows that the mass of these kathode particles must be much smaller than the hydrogen ion, the actual ratio being about 1 : 1700. The first theory put forward by Sir J. J. Thomson in explanation of these facts, was that these kathode particles (“corpuscles” as he termed them) were electrically charged portions of matter, much smaller than the smallest atom; and since the same sort of corpuscle is obtained whatever gas is contained in the vacuum tube, it is reasonable to conclude that the corpuscle is the common unit of all matter.
H. Stanley Redgrove (Alchemy: Ancient and Modern (Illustrated))
He meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient — nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one’s body aged, was it not a sign that this was NOT the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?
George Orwell (1984 & Animal Farm)
Time in his cell passed slowly. A guard brought tubes of rations: protein, oil, water, and vegetable paste. Sometimes it had a nearly homeopathic dose of curry.
James S.A. Corey (Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3))
Anxious to let my features show': Asian American woman shares fear of harassment - CNN - YouTube channel - Comment for this video with broader perspective, Part 2 - India was once perfect culture, our food habits were perfect, whatever we need vitamins, nutrients, carbs, fats everything we tend to obtain from plants and only plants, some yogi(No one) can even live with sun light and water or even neem air, but this 100% traditionality in India or siddha become almost obsolete because of pollution and over population and also spiritual reasons because many people are already trapped in Karmic cycle, which is why They can not even think of escaping it, if they try to escape they will die, and whomever has the solutions for this are mostly disregarded (Like , ok myself, Saddguru, Sarnam Singh, Somnath Bandyopadyay, Prabhakar Sharma, Ritika Rajput, Shalini Chouhan, they are disregarded because they are north Indians or yogis that speaks lie - this is what most people think, that is why I also being modern and eat evrything and talk everything and do everything so that you will not hate me, If I choose to be 100% traditional which I can, then whomever surrounding me will not survive, If I choose 100 % traditionality, rain will engulf the earth and sun will disappear for years, that is why I choose mixed mode of life with all ideas are considered, Try to respect traditionality at least a little, there is a Tamil proverb, மாதம் மும்மாரி பொழிந்து செழித்த பூமி, which means 3 times rain per month and natural agriculture prospered and people life prospered - This proverb is from ancient Tamil Land, As Kali or Kaali yuga started everyone chose modernity, but try to respect traditionality at least a little to protect this land, you no need to go to temple, you no need to pray god, just protect soil, agriculture and traditional science like planting trees and all, then slowly nature will dominate the earth and even in this Kali or Kaali yuga there will be prosperity for next 5000 years, Because in Kali or Kaali yuga first 10000 (Only 5000 years in Kali or Kaali yuga has passed so far) years are golden period, do not rush this golden period in to hell within 100 years.,
Ganapathy K Siddharth Vijayaraghavan
contained a suture kit, more water purification tablets, Russian aspirin, blood-clotting gauze, an Israeli-style wrap bandage, tweezers, six Russian-style Band-Aids of varying sizes, two antibacterial wipes, a small tube of antiseptic ointment, and an electrolyte drink mix. The fourth and final pouch in the ditch kit was emblazoned with words Harvath didn’t know. Opening it up, he looked inside. As soon as he saw the signal mirror, he knew exactly what this bag was—a SERE kit. In addition to the mirror, there was a compass, a whistle, more stormproof matches, more water purification tablets, a small notebook and pen, a silk scarf printed with panels containing survival instructions, more hextabs, a flint and striker, a packet of sunscreen, and some mosquito wipes. Opening the flare gun case, he examined its contents. In keeping with similar setups from the Soviet days, the kit included the pistol itself and four flares, beneath which was a conversion tube. When inserted into the barrel, it allowed for firing of .45 or .410 ammunition. Two cardboard boxes with five rounds of each
Brad Thor (Backlash (Scot Harvath, #18))
Yes, well, we figured you wouldn't have anything in the house, so these are things at the very minimum we thought you would need." I scan the basket, which, among other things, contains a pot of wild boar paté, a jar of organic Manuka honey, a package each of wild Scottish smoked salmon and venison salami, a tube of geranium and neroli hand lotion, and a lamb's wool hot water bottle cover. "Yeah, it looks like you covered the basics...
Dana Bate (Too Many Cooks)
If you had lived as a new Christian convert during the rule of the Roman Empire, one of your biggest challenges would have been dealing with the pagan philosophical propaganda that surrounded you. I call it paganosophy. In a Greco-Roman city, most statues depicted partial or total nudity. In the gymnasiums, male athletes worked out naked. In fact, the word gymnasium dates back to the Greek word gymnasion, which literally was a “school for training naked.” Pagan Greeks and Romans insisted there was nothing wrong with showing off a well chiseled body. This is an example of what Paul was speaking of when he wrote, “They worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25). Roman bathhouses were a popular place for men and women in the city to gather. There were times in history when men and women would occupy the same rooms in the bathhouse. At other times, cities would make decrees prohibiting it. We uploaded a highly viewed YouTube video that we taped in Beit She’an, Israel at the excavated ruins of this Roman city that was destroyed by an earthquake in the ninth century. The city’s ancient public toilets (latrines) had been unearthed. In Roman times there were public latrines in different cities for the benefit of the citizens, since only the wealthy could afford private latrines. The toilet seats, made of stone, were a couple feet long, with one end connected to the wall and the stones resting upon a base with water running beneath for drainage. There was enough space to allow a person to sit between each stone. No archaeological evidence indicated that dividers were used, and as people sat side by side on stones in a public latrine, they discussed business. Deals and contracts were made at the public toilet. Some of the terms we hear today were coined at the Roman toilet. When a person says they have to “do their business,” they’re using a term that originated from men who literally conducted business at the toilet. The signage at the Beit She’an site indicates that men and women shared the same large room, with men on one side of the room and women on the other. Today, we find ourselves returning to trends from the Roman Empire, where men are allowed to use women’s facilities, if they claim to identify as a woman that day. Attacks against women in their own facilities confirm that many of these males are there to take advantage of a ludicrous idea being promoted by the same spirits of the ancient Roman Empire.
Perry Stone (Artificial Intelligence Versus God: The Final Battle for Humanity)
that, instead of being fused to the skull, hangs loosely beneath the brain case. This enables the upper jaw to push forward and hyperextend open—wide enough to engulf, and crush, an adult bull elephant. As if the size and voraciousness of its feeding orifice were not enough, nature has endowed this monster with a predatory intelligence, honed by 400 million years of evolution. Six distinct senses expose every geological feature, every current, every temperature gradient … and every creature occupying its domain. The predator’s eyes contain a reflective layer of tissue situated behind the retina. When moving through the darkness of the depths, light is reflected off this layer, allowing the creature to see. In sunlight, the reflective plate is covered by a layer of pigment, which functions like a built-in pair of sunglasses. While black in normally pigmented members of the species, this particular male’s eyes are a cataract-blue—a trait found in albinos. As large as basketballs, the sight organs reflexively roll back into the skull as the creature launches its attack on its prey, protecting the eyeball from being damaged. Forward of the eyes, just beneath the snout, are a pair of directional nostrils so sensitive that they can detect one drop of blood or urine in a million gallons of water. The tongue and snout provide a sense of taste and touch, while two labyrinths within the skull function as ears. But it is two other receptor organs that make this predator the master of its liquid domain. The first of these mid-to-long-range detection systems is the lateral line, a hollow tube that runs along either flank just beneath the skin. Microscopic pores open these tubes to the sea. When another animal creates a vibration or turbulence in the water, the reverberations stimulate tiny hairs within these sensory cells that alert the predator to the source of the disturbance—miles away! Even more sensitive are the hunter’s long-range receptor cells, located along the top and underside
Steve Alten (Hell's Aquarium (Meg #4))
A brief look at the role of tested building blocks in technical innovations will help us understand the role of building blocks in the specific case of rule innovation. A scan of history shows that technical innovations almost always arise as a particular combination of well-known building blocks. Take two technological innovations that have revolutionized twentieth-century society, the internal combustion engine and the digital computer. The internal combustion engine combines Volta's sparking device, Venturi's (perfume) sprayer, a water pump's pistons, a mill's gear wheels, and so on. The first digital computers combined Geiger's particle counter, the persistence (slow fade) of cathode ray tube images, the use of wires to direct electrical currents, and so on. In both cases most of the building blocks were already in use, in different contexts, in the nineteenth century. It was the specific combination, among the great number possible, that provided the innovation. When a new building block is discovered, the result is usually a range of innovations. The transistor revolutionized devices ranging from major appliances to portable radios and computers. Even new building blocks are often derived, at least in part, by combining more elementary building blocks. Transistors were founded on knowledge of selenium rectifiers and semiconductors.
John H. Holland (Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Helix Books))
I remember many of us getting together where we sat, each of us holding our cup and mixing the coffee powder with a little bit of water or milk inside. The more you swirled, the better the foam created in the cup. We preferred the tube milk over the fresh milk of the Kibbutz. Mixing coffee with our hands till it foamed  was a kind of a ceremony. Over time it became something of a ritual. I think in those days, there was intense activity of the commercial companies distributing instant coffee among consumers. “Ness café”, they called it. There was a great demand for milk, which arrived to us in tubes. It was imported. Maybe they were manufactured in Holland. Drinking instant coffee with that milk and the foam we created with our own hands using a simple spoon, was the heart's desire of all coffee lovers in the nest. I was moved by the very simple preparation of it – boiling water in an electric kettle, one teaspoon of this new wonder, the instant coffee in the cup, and you have your coffee. It was amazing. I used to compare this action to the method of tea preparation by my mother at home, or the rare preparing of the black coffee for guests, and suddenly I realized how debilitating and complex her job was compared to what we were doing. There in Shomrat Kibbutz I learned to drink and enjoy instant coffee.
Nahum Sivan (Till We Say Goodbye)
You can smash a snow globe with a ball-peen hammer and be disappointed that the glass is actually plastic and the snow actually ground-up Styrofoam. • You can laminate anything by winding it in plastic wrap before a five-minute tumble on Cotton in the dryer. • You can microwave a lightbulb for nearly twenty beautiful seconds as it turns in there like a pink comet before it finally goes supernova. • You can safely remove your Helmet and whack your head repeatedly on the drywall, weaving an orange velvet into your vision, before you manage to leave a dent. • You can cover a wall dent by hanging a masterpiece over it and claiming that you need the work at eye level to properly appreciate it. • You can simulate immortality by sticking a rubberhandled flathead screwdriver directly into the outlet and only trip a breaker. • You can ride the laundry basket down the carpeted stairs like a mine cart four times until it catches and ejects you to the bottom, where you strike your elbow and it swells red as a hot-water bottle. • You can safely light the fluff on your sweatpants with a barbecue lighter and send flame rolling over your legs like poured blue water, leaving a crispy black stubble. • You can halt a fan if you thrust your hand into the blades bravely—only when you hesitate will your knuckles be rapped. • You can stick the chilly steel tube of the vacuum to your belly and generate a hideous yet painless bruise, and these pulsating circles when placed carefully can form an Olympic symbol that lasts well into a second week. Of course his mother’s catching wind of any of
Michael Christie (If I Fall, If I Die)
Gargling with goat urine was one remedy for a person who accidentally swallowed a leech. If that didn’t work, a patient would abstain from water to make sure the leech was thirsty. Then, a hollow bronze tube would be shoved down the patient’s throat. Next, a red-hot cautery iron would be shoved down the tube. Finally, a nice, cold glass of water would be placed in front of the patient, and the thirsty leech would be grabbed when it made its move.
Nathan Belofsky (Strange Medicine: A Shocking History of Real Medical Practices Through the Ages)
Messerschmitt Me 264 with steam turbine In August 1944, the firm of Osermaschinen G.m.b.H. founded by Professor Losel was commissioned to carry out the design and development of a steam turbine power unit for aircraft. The design called for 6000hp at 6000rpm with a weight/power ratio of 0.7kg/hp and a consumption of 190 grams/hp/hour. A Me 264 airframe was to have been placed at the disposal of the firm, but it was destroyed in an air raid. Two forms of propeller were envisaged, one of 17.5ft diameter and revolving at 400-500rpm and the other 6.5ft in diameter revolving at 600rpm. The whole system consisted of four boilers (capillary tube boilers of special design) boiler feed water pump and auxiliary turbine, main turbine, combustion air draught fan, condenser, controls and auxiliaries. At the time of the German collapse many components of the system had been produced, including the turbine blades, and auxiliaries such as the combustion air draught fan and condenser pump were ready for use. A start had been made with the assembly of the auxiliary and main turbine and one boiler had been manufactured in its entirety. The first system was designed to use 65% solid fuel (pulverised coal) and 35% liquid fuel (petrol) but it was intended to use liquid fuel only when it became available in quantity. The advantages claimed for the steam-turbine system are: 1)       Constant power at varying heights. 2)     Capacity for 100% overloading, even for long periods. 3)      Full steam output attained in 5-10 seconds. 4)     The system is not sensitive to low temperatures. 5)     Long life and simple servicing. 6)      Simple and rapid control. 7)      The system lends itself to incorporation in an airframe, since it can be broken down into separate components. The four main boilers are 3ft in diameter and 4ft high. The main turbine is 2ft in diameter and 6ft in length.     Messerschmitt Me 265     Messerschmitt Me 309 fighter A single-seat
Walter Meyer (Secret Luftwaffe Projects of the Nazi Era: From Arado to Zeppelin with Contemporary Drawings)
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distinguish differences, and through these differences and the textures, I see everything I need to see in order to find my clothes. I feel my way to the bathroom, find the toothpaste and toothbrush, and squeeze the tube. Ooh! I’ve squeezed a huge gob of toothpaste onto the bristles, which brings a smile to my face: it seems that my teeth needed some extra help this morning. Then I step into the shower. It’s tricky to understand the differences in bathroom fixtures, where the hot water is, which direction to turn the lever, how
Byron Katie (A Thousand Names For Joy: How To Live In Harmony With The Way Things Are)
How in the direction of nearby services with plumber The disease or damaged sewer somewhere to eat on the needs of the environment of the property or in the office is not immediate. Drinking water supply as a result of the expiry of promoting damage, as a significant drop due to the free flow of H2O or ruin your furniture imported and domestic wood. Therefore, the same under the sink, although the cover or part of the house damaged, is smart, a plumber can choose the rescue and hardened pipes quickly. Even before he published a plumber in the house, the important point is high absolutely certain that the supply mechanically interlocked with H2O is on drunk driving to create, so it does not come through other more harm in the sense of your own home , Or, if this type of pipes has a main valve arranged directly detected water meter. Some require keys, and some just came clockwise at the end of lead in drinking water purchased at home alternative pipeline valves. Today, every time you select a plumber, it is less complicated to the user to check the direction of friends and spouse and children advice. Family and friends are to be generally easier to purchase self-guided tour, and will be used by similar problems, are able to keep track direction when they can to implement fantastic plumber composed. Examine the site and installers who can access services, many alternatives are completely abandoned. Plumbers usually contain effective advantage proposals with their name and ask their previous customers to ensure that their correct answers about the plumber. The first person with specialized potentially provide unique designs, what and who himself is a must. At the time, in fact, to relax tight, you can ask to self has types and issues, as they were only in the organization. Added opinion does not necessarily mean a lot more experience, no matter when. In addition, plumbers constructive part’s sure you as needed to be able to manage the project management. Plumber’s consultant can make sure their professionalism. If your own way, one after another, before the service, appearance and adequate compensation and professional identity can be reproduced in the way see that they treat their business. And most important ideals, what little. At any time to explore alternative wages to leave the direction of the conversation, such as supply and property prices have some people will be surprised to see how you will use the monthly bill too important to save for economic time. That's because each of us the importance of creating knew, of course, considering all costs move towards Bill damage to your account, after the tube to take healed.
Boiler Repair
Unexpected emergency plumbers Unexpected emergency plumber is? If your own group, but probably the same dress isn’t in the middle, where they start imitating the pool, the owner most likely to smoke. This is certainly a task that will require a qualified plumber, clean bathrooms and sinks in each backup, and even the simple addition of a new line of right tubes. Unfortunately, there are elements that do not require any old plumber, but a situation of sudden emergency, like H2O uncontrolled always works with tap water and start flooding the marsh peace. However, they are high quality. How can I tell if other service providers should be, or not? Are you sure you need a plumber crisis? Shortly before speaking to the installer should complete the water supply or the probability that the water line, the rack provides back. It is in order to avoid problems with the drinking water. He is not only very welcome to complete the water flow. After the arrest of H2O oneself've, evaluates the circumstances. If the problem is a bathroom fully equipped, bathroom once, until dawn, so the long-term wear’s each washing. He is a very potential and are reluctant to get up early in the morning when you are ready for self-determination, these solutions makes the kitchen sink, toilet and a lounge. In fact, you can get away from high fire call 24 hours a plumber at night for a few hours or during holidays or weekends to stay. In an interview with an unexpected emergency plumbers Unfortunately, when the time of the suspension of H2O and objective analysis and emergency may not be present, created only for contacting unexpected emergency sanitary and easy and to take concerns in writing to the other include some content his hands to keep the person. Preliminary interviews hydraulic range is trying to understand a lot of the other Box difficulties. Other personal data and many other facts themselves can be better able to assess the management of the crisis and the calculation of the payments change. Is a great addition to the amount pipeline management principle affects many, if not yet in a plumber decision. In fact, bought a lot of contact carrier price quotes can also sometimes significant price differences. Also check out the views of the services is in his hands. Some of the costs only in the room, even if they, after maintenance. Well, the result have, as it in this area before the season and it is surprising simply be a monthly bill. Please ask to get the price of maintenance. 24 hours plumber not calculates the direction of providing greater than a cell phone, and requires separate installation scenario earlier selection. But it can be equipped with a direction to select difficulty of defining and thinking about the cost, if he succeeded in presenting the sewage system in unforeseen emergencies. Ask will differ plumber state and talk about their own crisis normal or common prices. If you need to contact the unexpected rescue tend to check an unexpected emergency plumber to the self to take us in the direction of first, so that you can be your own ready to talk to the plumber, one after another, much better, then you determine the value.
oxford plumber
1. Give your toddler some large tubular pasta and a shoelace.  Show her how to thread the shoelace through the pasta. 2. Take an empty long wrapping paper tube and place one end on the edge of the sofa and the other end on the floor.  Give him a small ball such as a Ping Pong ball to roll down the tube.   3. Give her some individually wrapped toilet tissues, some boxes of facial tissue or some small tins of food such as tomato paste.  Then let her have fun stacking them.     4. Wrap a small toy and discuss what might be inside it.  Give it to him to unwrap. Then rewrap as he watches.  Have him unwrap it again.    5. Cut  such fruits as strawberries and bananas into chunks.  Show her how to slide the chunks onto a long plastic straw.  Then show her how you can take off one chunk at a time, dip it into some yogurt and eat it.   6. Place a paper towel over a water-filled glass.  Wrap a rubber band around the top of the glass to hold the towel in place.  Then place a penny on top of the paper towel in the centre of the glass.  Give your child a pencil to poke holes in the towel until the penny sinks to the bottom of the glass.   7. You will need a small sheet of coarse sandpaper and various lengths of chunky wool.  Show him how to place these lengths of wool on the sandpaper and how the strands stick to it.   8. Use a large photo or picture and laminate it or put it between the sheets of clear contact paper.  Cut it into several pieces to create a puzzle.   9. Give her two glasses, one empty and one filled with water.  Then show her how to use a large eyedropper in order to transfer some of the water into the empty glass.   10. Tie the ends/corners of several scarves together.  Stuff the scarf inside an empty baby wipes container and pull a small portion up through the lid and then close the lid.  Let your toddler enjoy pulling the scarf out of the container.   11. Give your child some magnets to put on a cookie sheet.  As your child puts the magnets on the cookie sheet and takes them off, talk about the magnets’ colours, sizes, etc.   12. Use two matching sets of stickers. Put a few in a line on a page and see if he can match the pattern.  Initially, you may need to lift an edge of the sticker off the page since that can be difficult to do.    13. You will need a piece of thin Styrofoam or craft foam and a few cookie cutters.  Cut out shapes in the Styrofoam with the cookie cutters and yet still keep the frame of the styrofoam intact.  See if your child can place the cookie cutters back into their appropriate holes.        14. Give her a collection of pompoms that vary in colour and size and see if she can sort them by colour or size into several small dishes. For younger toddlers, put a sample pompom colour in each dish.   15. Gather a selection of primary colour paint chips or cut squares of card stock or construction paper.  Make sure you have several of the same colour.  Choose primary colours.  See if he can match the colours.  Initially, he may be just content to play with the colored chips stacking them or making patterns with them.
Kristen Jervis Cacka (Busy Toddler, Happy Mom: Over 280 Activities to Engage your Toddler in Small Motor and Gross Motor Activities, Crafts, Language Development and Sensory Play)
During chemistry, it’s another experiment/observation. Alex swirls test tubes full of silver nitrate and potassium chloride liquids. “Looks like they’re both water to me, Mrs. P.,” Alex says. “Looks are deceiving,” Mrs. Peterson replies. My gaze travels to Alex’s hands. Those hands that are now busy measuring the right amount of silver nitrate and potassium chloride are the same ones that traced my lips intimately. “Earth to Brittany.” I blink my eyes, snapping out of my daydream. Alex is holding a test tube full of clear liquid out to me. Which reminds me I should help him pour the liquids together. “Uh, sorry.” I pick up one test tube and pour it into the tube he’s holding. “We’re supposed to write down what happens,” he says, using the stirring rod to mix the chemicals together. A white solid magically appears inside the clear liquid. “Hey, Mrs. P.! I think we found the answer to our problems for the ozone layer depletion,” Alex teases. Mrs. Peterson shakes her head. “So what do we observe in the tube?” he asks me, reading off of the sheet Mrs. Peterson handed out at the start of class. “I’d say the watery liquid is probably potassium nitrate now and the white solid mass in silver chloride. What’s your assumption?” As he hands me the tube, our fingers brush against each other. And linger. It leaves a tingling sensation I can’t ignore. I glance up. Our eyes meet, and for a minute I think he’s trying to send me a private message but his expression turns dark and he looks away. “What do you want me to do?” I whisper. “You’re gonna have to figure that one out yourself.” “Alex…” But he won’t tell me what to do. I guess I’m a bitch to even ask him for advice when he can’t possibly be unbiased. When I’m close to Alex I feel excitement, the way I used to feel on Christmas morning.
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
These are for you.  You have two choices.  You can use them when Rachel’s gone, or you can wait until she’s back, and I’m sure she’d be happy to help you.” He studied me for a moment then walked out of the kitchen, turning toward the bathroom.  I followed a few steps behind. A startled yelp escaped me when I rounded the corner and caught sight of a naked backside.  Without much thought, I tossed the soap and toothbrush in and slammed the door shut. “You could have waited until I put the stuff in there,” I said through the door as my heart thundered in my ears.  I took a steadying breath and heard the water turn on, the clink of his dog tag hitting the sink, then the shower curtain move. Who would have thought he would even know how to use a shower?  I hadn’t.  On the way home, I’d started to think of all the different things I would need to explain, like making sure to position the curtain inside the tub.  Standing outside the door, still reeling from the view I’d gotten, I realized I might see the same thing again if I didn’t get him a towel. I’d packed two bath towels.  Purchased from a discount store, they both sported gaudy floral designs.  I grabbed one and waited outside the door again until I heard him splashing in the shower.  Then, I knocked. “I have a towel for you,” I said through the door.  “If you’re still in the shower, I can open the door and toss it on the toilet seat.  Okay?”  I didn’t hear anything.  No surprise.  “Okay, I’m coming in.”  I waited a moment for any indication that I shouldn’t enter. When the water continued to run, I cautiously opened the door.  As soon as I saw a clear path to the toilet seat, I tossed the towel.  Standing just inside the bathroom with my hand wrapped around the door handle for a quick exit, I paused.  His new toothbrush rested on the sink. “My toothpaste is the one marked with the pink nail polish on the cap.  I’ll let you use it as long as you promise not to squeeze the tube from the middle.” His answer took the form of an accurately aimed splash of water over the top of the shower curtain.  I barely dodged it. “You’re cleaning that up.” I
Melissa Haag (Hope(less) (Judgement of the Six #1))
He was silent a moment; then he said, "I want a drink of water." She almost laughed aloud, because it was such a mundane request that could have been made of anyone, but then she saw the tension in his jaw and lips and realized that, again, he was checking out his condition, and he wanted her with him. She turned to the small Styrofoam pitcher that was kept full of crushed ice, which she used to keep his lips moist. The ice had melted enough that she was able to pour the glass half full of water. She stuck a straw into it and held it to his lips. Gingerly he sucked the liquid into his mouth and held it for a moment, as if letting it soak into his membranes. Then, slowly, he swallowed, and after a minute he relaxed. "Thank God," he muttered hoarsely. "My throat still feel swollen. I wasn't sure I could swallow, and I sure as hell didn't want that damned tube back." Behind Jay, Frank turned a smothered laugh into a cough. "Anything else?" she asked. "Yes. Kiss me.
Linda Howard (White Lies (Rescues, #4))
Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient – nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one’s body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things, if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different? He
George Orwell (1984)
watched the coffee bubble up through the center tube and perforated basket into the small pale globe. A marvelous and sad invention, so roundabout, ingenious, human. It was like a philosophical argument rendered in terms of the things of the world—water, metal, brown beans. I had never looked at coffee before.
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
We don’t want to get off the main road,” I said. “There’s way too many tack weeds out there.” “Those stickers are worse than real tacks,” said Henny. “Maybe we should leave our bikes and walk. I don’t want to take any chances.” That’s the trouble with having such a nice bike, with so many terrific gadgets. Henny doesn’t like to ride unless conditions are ideal, like maybe around a newly paved parking lot. “Henny,” I said. “It’s definitely time for us to move on. Your inner tubes will be safe if you just stay on the highway. Besides, it will be cooler with a breeze blowing in your face.” Henny got back on his bike and slowly pedaled it up to a speed past wobbly but short of smooth and comfortable. “This is not a breeze,” he called up to me. “This is hot air being forced up my nostrils. This is hot air drying out my already parched throat. Water. I need water.
Brenda Z. Guiberson (Turtle People)
Can the trees and flowers which we see all around us at all times have themselves formed such perfect systems as to bring about a phenomenon such as photosynthesis, some parts of which are still not fully understood, in their own bodies? Did plants choose to use carbon dioxide (CO2), of the gases in the air, to produce food? Did they themselves determine the amount of CO2 they would use? Could plants have designed those mechanisms which make up the root system and which enable them to take the materials necessary for photosynthesis from the soil? Did plants bring about a transport system where different types of tubes are used for transporting nutrients and water? As ever, defenders of the theory of evolution searching for an answer 16 The solar energy trapped by the chlorophyll in the leaf, carbon-dioxide in the air, and water in the plant go through various processes and are used to produce glucose and oxygen. These complex processes do not take place in a factory, but in special structures like those in the leaf in the picture, and which measure only one thousandth of a millimeter across. Sunlight Chlorophyll Glucose 6H2O Water Light Chlorophyll Carbon dioxide + Water Glucose + Oxygen 6CO2 Carbon dioxide 6O2 Oxygen C6 H12O 6 to the question of how plants emerged have resorted to "chance" as their only re m e d y. They have claimed that from one species of plant which came about by chance, an infinite variety of plants have emerged, again by chance, and that features such as smell, taste, and colour, particular to each species, again came about by chance. But they have been unable to give any scientific proof of these claims. Evolutionists explain moss turning into a strawberry plant, or a poplar, or a rose bush, by saying that conditions brought about by chance differentiated them. Whereas when just one plant cell is observed, a system so complex will be seen as could not have come about by minute changes over time. This complex system and other mechanisms in plants definitively disprove the coincidence scenarios put forward as evolutionist logic. In this situation just one result emerges.
Harun Yahya (The Miracle Of Creation In Plants)
You’re looking a little too amused, there, Pete,” she says. She fills her mouth with pool water and spits it from between her teeth at my foot. Damn, that’s hot. But, again, I’m a guy. We tend to get a little orally fixated. She could spit a goober and I’d still probably find it sexy. “What are you going to do about it?” I ask, sitting forward with my elbows on my knees. She looks startled for a second. Then I realize she’s plotting. I can almost smell the gears in her mind burning, they’re working that hard. Gonzo rolls up next to me. They must have warned everyone about Gonzo’s tracheostomy tube because no one tries to get him wet and he’s careful about the edge of the pool. Next thing I know, he’s beside me, and he doesn’t take the same care with me that he took with Reagan. A blast of water hits me in the face. I put my hands up to block him, but dammit, he’s having so much fun with it that I don’t want to stop him. Instead, I let him squirt until the gun’s empty. Then I blow water from my lips and open my eyes. She’s grinning like hell, and Gonzo’s almost as happy as she is. “You so deserved that,” she says. I stand up and point to her. “I’m coming for you, Reagan,” I warn. She squeals and backs away. She looks a little panicky, but then I realize she’s having fun and she’s panicking because I’m going to dunk her rather than because I’m going to touch her. This shit is like foreplay. The really good kind. I go in the shallow end and stalk her all the way to the rope that sections off the middle of the pool. I want to touch her so badly I can taste it. “Come here, little girl,” I taunt. “Let me show you what happens when you mess with a real man.” She laughs and ducks under the rope. She comes up smiling, though. I go under and reach for her, and she almost slides right by me, but I grab her at the last second. I slowly and gently pull her against me. We’re so close together that I can feel her heart beating against my chest. She stares into my eyes, and then her gaze drops to my lips and moves back up. “Pete,” she warns. She kicks her feet to stay afloat. “Reagan,” I mock. “It wasn’t my fault,” she says, but she’s a little breathless. “It was Gonzo. He planned the whole thing.” “Liar,” I whisper. Her face flushes. I tread water with one hand and hold her against me with the other. This feels so good that I don’t want to let go.
Tammy Falkner (Calmly, Carefully, Completely (The Reed Brothers, #3))
But there was something different about this bout of crying. It was calm, facyual crying. Good crying. Water cleansing the tubes, rather like clearing a gutter of leaves and pine needles. A way to get rid of negative energy and make room for something better. It was as if I could feel all the improper thoughts flying away, and new ones taking their place. Better ones. A fresh start.
Jonas Karlsson (The Room)
What do you know about the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory?” “Never heard of it.” “It’s a big, two-million-pound bottle of heavy water over a mile below ground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. The whole thing is surrounded by a sixty-foot-thick array of photomultiplier tubes and is suspended in a huge tank of light water.
Richard Phillips (The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda, #1))
how I see the distinction between sexism and misogyny. When a husband tells his wife, “I can’t quite explain why and I don’t even like admitting this, but I don’t want you to make more money than me, so please don’t take that amazing job offer,” that’s sexism. He could still love her deeply and be a great partner in countless ways. But he holds tight to an idea that even he knows isn’t fair about how successful a woman is allowed to be. Sexism is all the big and little ways that society draws a box around women and says, “You stay in there.” Don’t complain because nice girls don’t do that. Don’t try to be something women shouldn’t be. Don’t wear that, don’t go there, don’t think that, don’t earn too much. It’s not right somehow, we can’t explain why, stop asking. We can all buy into sexism from time to time, often without even noticing it. Most of us try to keep an eye out for those moments and avoid them or, when we do misstep, apologize and do better next time. Misogyny is something darker. It’s rage. Disgust. Hatred. It’s what happens when a woman turns down a guy at a bar and he switches from charming to scary. Or when a woman gets a job that a man wanted and instead of shaking her hand and wishing her well, he calls her a bitch and vows to do everything he can to make sure she fails. Both sexism and misogyny are endemic in America. If you need convincing, just look at the YouTube comments or Twitter replies when a woman dares to voice a political opinion or even just share an anecdote from her own lived experience. People hiding in the shadows step forward just far enough to rip her apart. Sexism in particular can be so pervasive, we stop seeing it. It reminds me of the opening anecdote from author David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College. Two young fish are swimming along. They meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit, until one looks at the other and asks, “What’s water?” “In other words,” Wallace said, “the most obvious realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (What Happened)
less than 300 yards. With Eagle beam-on and at this point-blank range, U73 could not miss. The time was 1315. Aboard Eagle, at 1317, no one had yet thought of jumping over the side from the quarterdeck. Even with dead engines, Eagle’s 21,000 tons momentum still took her through the water at about four knots, two minutes after being hit. If anyone dived over now, they would fall astern and not be rescued. In any case I had no Mae West yet. It was hopeless trying to get to the Island by the normal route. There was only one way. I had used it once before. This was the batsman’s escape route from the flight deck to the main deck, a vertical distance of about 50 feet. It was a pipeshaft, about three feet in diameter, with a rusty ladder fixed inside. It was entirely dark inside and as its lower level on the port side was by now under water and at about 40 degrees from the vertical, once I had started up the ladder, there would be no turning back. Just as I bent down to get into the tube, with my feet already in the water on the low side of the heeling ship, I looked above me. I could see an officer trying to organise the launching of the ship’s whaler. As
R.M. 'Mike' Crosley (They Gave Me a Seafire)
The tang of residual blood, faint as it was, danced along her senses, like a fizzy drink on her tongue. Everything sharpened, came into focus and awareness: The background buzz of the radio tubes in the other room that was usually inaudible nearly drowned out the music. The miniscule cracks in the enamel sink became a web of flaws. The effect was almost dizzying; Callie never felt more alive than when she took in the coppery scent. Every mage had an affinity for a particular element that strengthened and enhanced spells. Fire, air, water, earth… Hers was blood.
Cathy Pegau (Blood Remains)
Mombasah-city, with her brave array of sumptuous palace, proudest edifice, defaced, deformed by fire and steel shall pay in kind the tale of byegone malefice. Thence on those Indian shores which proud display their hostile fleets, and warlike artifice 'gainst the Lusians, with his sail and oar shall young Lourenço work th' extremes of war. What mighty vessels Sam'orim's orders own covering Ocean, with his iron hail poured from hot copper-tube in thunder-tone all shall he shatter, rudder, mast and sail; then with his grapples boldly, deftly thrown, the hostile Ammiral he shall assail, board her, and only with the lance and sword shall slay four hecatombs of Moors abhor'd. But God's prevision 'scaping human sight, alone who knows what good best serves His end, shall place the Hero where ne toil ne might his lost young life availeth to forfend. In Cháúl-bay, where fierce and furious fight with fire and steel shall fervid seas offend, th' Infidel so shall deal that end his days where Egypt's navy doth conjoin Cambay's. There shall the pow'er of man'ifold enemies, — for only stronger force strong force can tire,— and Winds defaulting and fierce injuries of Ocean, 'gainst a single life conspire : Here let all olden men from death arise to see his Valour, catch his noble fire : A second Scæva see who, hackt and torn, laughs at surrender, quarter holds in scorn. With the fierce torture of a mangled thigh, torn off by bullet which at random past, his stalwart arms he ceaseth not to ply, that fiery Spirit flaming to the last : Until another ball clean cuts the tie so frail that linkèd Soul and Body fast ;— the Soul which loosed from her prison fleets whither the prize eterne such Conqueror greets. Go, Soul! to Peace from Warfare turbulent wherein thou meritedst sweet Peace serene ! for those torn tortured limbs, that life so rent who gave thee life prepareth vengeance keen : I hear een now the furious storm ferment, threating the terrible eternal teen, of Chamber, Basilisco, Saker-fire, to Mameluke cruel and Cambayan dire. See with stupendous heart the war to wage, driven by rage and grief the Father flies, paternal fondness urging battle-gage, fire in his heart and water in his eyes : Promise the sire's distress, the soldier's rage, a bloody deluge o'er the knees shall rise on ev'ry hostile deck: This Nyle shall fear, Indus shall sight it, and the Gange shall hear.
Richard Francis Burton (The Lusiads)
The coffee maker was almost ready to bubble. I turned the flame low and watched the water rise. It hung a little at the bottom of the glass tube. I turned the flame up just enough to get it over the hump and then turned it low again quickly. I stirred the coffee and covered it. I set my timer for three minutes. Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character.
Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6))
Water. Drinking water, water purification system (or tablets), and a water bottle or canteen. Food. Anything that is long lasting, lightweight, and nutritious such as protein bars, dehydrated meals, MREs24, certain canned goods, rice, and beans. Clothing. Assure it’s appropriate to a wide range of temperatures and environments, including gloves, raingear, and multiple layers that can be taken on or off as needed. Shelter. This may include a tarp or tent, sleeping bag or survival blanket, and ground pad or yoga mat. A camper or trailer is a fantastic, portable shelter, with many of the comforts of home. If you own one keep it stocked with supplies to facilitate leaving in a hurry, as it can take several hours load up and move out if you’re not ready. In certain circumstances that might mean having to leave it behind. Heat source. Lighter or other reliable ignition source (e.g., magnesium striker), tinder, and waterproof storage. Include a rocket stove or biomass burner if possible, they’re inexpensive, take very little fuel, and incredibly useful in an emergency. Self-defense/hunting gear. Firearm(s) and ammunition, fishing gear, multi-tool/knife, maps, and compass, and GPS (it’s not a good idea to rely solely on a GPS as you may find yourself operating without a battery or charger). First aid. First aid kit, first aid book, insect repellant, suntan lotion, and any needed medicines you have been prescribed. If possible add potassium iodide (for radiation emergencies) and antibiotics (for bio attacks) to your kit. Hygiene. Hand soap, sanitizer, toilet paper, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and garbage bags. Tools. Hatchet (preferably) or machete, can opener, cooking tools (e.g., portable stove, pot, frying pan, utensils, and fuel), rope, duct tape, sunglasses, rubber tubing, and sewing kit. Lighting and communications. LED headlamp, glow sticks, candles, cell phone, charger (preferably hand crank or solar), emergency radio (preferably with hand crank that covers AM, FM, and Marine frequencies) and extra batteries, writing implements, and paper. Cash or barter. You never know how long an emergency will last. Extensive power outages mean no cash machines, so keep a few hundred dollars in small bills, gold or silver coins, or other valuables on hand.
Kris Wilder (The Big Bloody Book of Violence: The Smart Person's Guide for Surviving Dangerous Times: What Every Person Must Know About Self-Defense)
Coming up the stairway was Antonio Bujia. Eban Abbott peered at him. “What are you doing? Where are you going?” “To the bridge. I called you through the telephone and speaking tube and got no answer. Everything is running good. But we cannot stay down there much longer.” The two men looked at each other. Wisps of smoke were drifting around the staircase. “Go back and stand by. I’ll go to the bridge,” said Abbott. With those few words he changed his whole future; he would regret them all his life. Shocked and disoriented though Abbott still was by Captain Wilmott’s death, he had been moving, albeit slowly and in a roundabout way, down toward the engine room. If he had been challenged about his movements, he could defend himself by pointing out that, as chief engineer, it was also his job to ascertain the extent of the fire so that he could organize the water supplies accordingly. But Bujia had brought Abbott head on with the reality of the situation: the engine room, in his assistant’s estimation, had shortly to be abandoned. There was only one course of action open to Eban Abbott. It was to go down to check out the situation himself. Abbott was charged with the responsibility to ensure that the men in the engine room performed their duties fully in operating the fire pumps, lights, and power to steer the ship through the growing crisis. He abandoned this responsibility when he ordered Bujia back down below and rapidly climbed to the safety of the open deck.
Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)