Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn't have his own way, and he intended to make known his anguish in the solemn solitude that only a stretch of sand, a suspiring sea, and a beetling cliff could provide.
It was the job of people like me to make up reasons, to spin a plausible yarn. And it’s amazing what people will believe. Heavy selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted. So if you didn’t know why the dollar was falling, you shouted out something about Arabs.
Buy potatoes,” he said. “Gotta hop.” Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other than potato farmers think of the price of potatoes in America minutes after the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Russian, but I have never met them.
Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies.
I walked back by way of the sea-lions' enclosure to refresh my eyes with the King Penguin's perfect ecclesiastical tailoring. He was pacing moodily about as usual, in what one felt to be the interval between a marriage ceremony and a funeral service. Much better, I thought, to have left the 2000 a year to him. No harm would then be done, and what perfect episcopal garden-parties he could give with it!
Дали човек е бил умен, това се разбира обикновено едва след смъртта му
She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.
He shouted into the phone, “That is fuckin’ awesome. I mean fuckin’ awesome. I fuckin’ mean fucking awesome. You are one Big Swinging Dick, and don’t ever let anybody tell you different.” It brought tears to my eyes to hear it, to be called a Big Swinging Dick by the man who, years ago, had given birth to the distinction and in my mind had the greatest right to confer it upon me.
Save yourselves!" Percy warned. "It is too late for us!" Then he gasped and pointed to the spot where Frank was hiding. "oh no! Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!" Nothing happened. "I said," Percy repeated, "Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin." Frank stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his throat. "oh no," he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter, "I am turning into a crazy dolphin.
Gideon laughed. "I like to be direct.""Okay," I said. "But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inserutable and generally send mixed messages." "I doubt it.""Human interaction is not my strong point," I told him. "Not seriously.""Seriously," I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn't know. Gideon put his hand on my leg. "What's your strong point, then?""Goats," I told him. "I am excellent with goats.
So what are you supposed to do with it?"He eyed her incredulously. "For real? It's called a butt plug. What do you think you're supposed to do with it?"She scratched her nose and nodded, trying not to let the apprehension show. "Okay. I'll do it. But if it hurts, just let me know and I'll take it out, stat. Don't be a hero."He gaped at her and shook his head. "Aw, no. Sweetie. That's not for me.
So...have you ever thought about dyeing your hair punk-rocker-chick black? As I'm sure you've heard, I have a thing for brunettes and always avoid blondes." "I've heard. And no." "Too bad. Because you're making me rethink my stance about doing my friends' exes." i snorted, not even trying to hide my...incredulity? Surely I wasn't amused. "Your making me rethink my stance on cold-blooded homicide
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something quite different about you, from the last time we were together, what could it be….”Was this my ultra-dose of Intoxicated taking effect?“I know!” said the prince happily. “You’re a national disgrace!”“And do you know what else is interesting,” I replied. “In America, Prince is a dog’s name.
I turned on the television and watched a movie about a girl who’d fallen in love with both a vampire and a werewolf. I’d already seen it a million times, so my eyelids grew heavy, fairly quickly. Ten minutes later I was out cold in my bed and dreaming of Duncan, who turned into a werewolf and was trying to kill my own vampire boyfriend. Every time I tried to see the vampire’s face, however, it was a blur.
