Marsha > Recent Status Updates

I closed my eyes and collapsed onto John's futon. I said, "The thing. the wig monster. Does it still come around?"
"No, haven't seen it in months. Except about three weeks ago I was eating a corn dog, the thing appeared, snatched it out of my hand, and disappeared again. Never saw it after that."
"No more of this. Okay? No more chasing after this stuff. They've set up camp inside my head, John. It's gone too far."

There was another announcement in the middle of third period. I didn't listen to it. My bra itched and my back hurt. I wasn't sure why. The bell rang and I went to calculus. Mr. Reynolds grimaced when I walked through the door. "You're late!" he said. But I wasn't. That's just how he greeted me most days. What he meant to say was "I needed your assistance at some point earlier, and you failed to materialize."

"Bertie," I said. He gave no response. "I came across a word today that I think you might like."
"He don't like any words, Mrs. Owen," his neighbour said.
"I know that, Angus, but the doctors only use familiar words. This will be unfamiliar."
"Well, how will he know what it means?"
"He won't. But I'll explain it."
"But you got to use familiar words to explain it."
"Not necessarily."

I was responding to a spelling enquiry, one that had become all too common since the publication of "Ribaldric to Romanite." Why, asked the writer, does the new Dictionary prefer rime when rhyme is so ubiquitous? Habit and good sense insist on the latter. Am I to be judged are illiterate? It was a thankless task as there was no reasonable response.

"Why do you collect all this paper, Essymay?"
"It's not the paper I'm collecting, Lizzie; it's the words."
"But what's so important about these words?" she asked
I didn't know, exactly. It was more feeling than thought. Some words were just like baby birds fallen from the nest. With others, I felt as though I'd come across a clue: I knew it was important, but I wasn't sure why.

All four of her pursuers were male. All tricycle-mounted and all bent to their task with earnest vigor. The closest figure was the smallest and also the least formidable. One could see the ride had taxed him--even Lord Charlington's tricycle-of-tomorrow seemed to lack adequate pedal-to-handlebar clearance for the adult knee. This first fellow huffed and puffed piteously, through his bushy black beard.

On the first of September, James Juniper and her sisters are hidden in the velvet-and-silk halls of Salem's Sin. The air is still summer-hot but there's a brittleness to it, a whisper like the shush of falling leaves on the burrowing of small creatures. Juniper wants to leave, to follow that whisper all the way back to the banks of the Big Sandy, but she stays shut inside the airless perfume of Salem's Sin.

Once upon a time there was a woodcutter whose wife was with child. But she grew very ill, her golden hair turned brittle gray, and in his desperation the woodcutter went to the local hedge-witch and begged for a cure. The hedge-witch told him of a black tower in the hills covered in green-growing vines even at midwinter. Just three leaves from this vine would cure his wife.

Before I slipped out of the White Tiger's cockpit, Yizhi gave me his antiviral kit as well. I take it out of my conduction suit and flick it open to reveal the vial and syringe. Qin Zheng will need some incentive to do what I say. "Your pox can only be controlled, not cured," I say, which isn't a lie. "If you want to keep getting this medication, move to the yin seat."

While doing the same, I bump hard into his elbow. Liquor flies out of his goblet and splatters over the golden tablecloth. I gasp in both real and imagined pain. "Sorry, dear. My wounds..."
"It's okay, Pilot Wu," Gao Qiu says, though his voice slows like slush and his whole demeanor darkens. "No need to get up." He glares at the maidservant and gestures at the mess. I bite my lip as she hurries to bring a few towels.

My stomach was full of flutters during detention. Not because my parents might be mad (they wouldn't, when I explained this was for love. Dad might have something to say about it, but I knew he was a softie at the core). I was nervous about seeing Albert. Or rather, not seeing Albert. He'd said he forgave me, but that didn't mean he'd want to see me anymore. This could be an I forgive you so I can move on.

My hand shook a little as I took a deep breath and grabbed Albert's hand. Technically, hand-holding was already crossed off the Gay Agenda, but this moment felt even more monumental because I had taken the lead, and it was extremely intentional. Was my hand way sweatier than I wanted it to be? Yes. But even still, there was something so magical about standing there with a hot guy's hand in mine.

[T]he author noted how a room-sized 'robot' had transformed the efficiency of the Braun Brothers sausage factory in Troy, Ohio. when fed a stack of punch cards telling it what cuts of meat were available, this device 'hummed softly, its lights flickered, and it riffled the deck of cards over and over again'. After just thirty-six minutes of technological pondering, it spewed out the optimum recipe for making bologna.

Every business naturally wants to create a product that will dominate its market, but if that product so dominates the market that the brand name becomes indistinguishable in the public mind from the product itself--when people begin to ask for a 'thermos' rather than a 'Thermos brand vacuum flask'--then the term has become generic and the owner faces the loss of its trademark protection.

Frozen foods were developed by a small company called Birds Eye, which took its oddly unappetizing name from Clarence Birdseye, a naturalist from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who accidentally discovered the potential of flash-freezing food while out ice-fishing. The first Birds Eye frozen foods came on to the market in 1930, though they weren't called that. They were sold as frosted foods.

Even Margaret Sanger, the esteemed birth-control activist, was motivated not by a desire to give women more control over their destiny but merely by the wish to reduce the lower orders through the new science of eugenics. ‘More children from the fit, less from the unfit – that is the chief issue of birth control,’ she wrote. Never before nor since have intolerance and prejudice been more visible, fashionable.

For a century and a half Pennsylvania German was largely ignored by scholars. Even now it remains relatively neglected as a topic of academic interest, which is a pity because few dialects provide a more instructive example of what happens to languages when they exist in isolation.

Edison's character was not, to put it charitably, altogether unflawed. He connived against competitors, took personal credit for inventions that were not his, drove his assistants to breaking point (they were known as the Insomnia Squad) and when all else failed did not hesitate to resort to bribery, slipping New Jersey legislators $1,000 each to produce laws favourable to his interests.

"Do you want me to open them?"
He nodded, wordlessly handing her the stack.
Daphne moved to a nearby chair and sat, tugging at the ribbon until the bow fell loose. "Are these in order?" she asked.
"I don't know," he admitted. He sat back down behind his desk. It was far enough away that he couldn't see the pages.
She gave an acknowledging nod, then carefully broke the seal on the first envelope.

"Someday I'm gonna find out," Jessica whispered. "Someday I'm gonna find out what's behind the curtain."
For a minute Dale didn't speak. Then, finally, he said, "What if it's something terrible?"
Jessica had started shivering, too. Shivering like the whole world had gone cold.
And they'd never talked about it again. But she had never forgotten the conversation. and she was pretty sure Dale hadn't either.

"That is why the King placed me here, over one of your own." He nods at Moe. "In Scotland we are gaining ground, but of course that is without the complication of Lapps to contend with. I knew we had to meet sooner rather than later, especially after your last correspondence, Absalom. The news of the Lapp, the poppets."

She tries to go about her tasks with her usual care and attention, but the thought of being out of the house has sent something singing through her blood, something restless and hot and almost painful. Though she isn't to go to the sea to fish as they had before the commissioner arrived, it is still a change of scenery, and a place where she had kissed her betrothed and watched over her brother and father.

The Erlking had been hunting her and Parsley. He had mentioned having their heads to decorate his will. But never had it crossed her mind that he might have tortured them first. "The hunt threatens all living things," said Pusch-Grohla, "human and forest folk alike. My granddaughter speaks true. That gold is a weapon in his hands. We cannot allow Erlkönig to capture a god." Serilda looked away.

"That room is yours by right, not mine," Jasimir said grimly, and headed for the door on the other side of the room. "I was saving a bottle of wine in here. She better not have touched it." Fie followed him into the study. Sure enough, Rhusana had clearly made camp in here, but from the way Jasimir was trailing fingers over his bursting, dusty shelves, the queen hadn't had the time or care to clear them out.

THEY RAN FIRST, FOR AS LONG AS THEY COULD WITH CLANKING packs and an unhappy tabby clutched in Madcap's arms. When Fie's band could run no more, they walked as swift as possible, still heaving for breath, still wordless. Fie kept two Sparrow teeth burning, tossing spent teeth into the brush by the side of the road. Each time the orange glow of a campfire blossomed ahead, she lit a third and felt it ring in her bones.

She hadn't any answer by the time she climbed out of the pool, scrubbed near sore and happier for it. she didn't know if she'd have an answer before she reached the Marovar, or even after. They were close. They would beat Tatterhelm to Trikovoi, and Pa would be her chief again, and the prince would be someone else's problem, and Tavin...she couldn't dwell on Tavin.

waldosia - n. a condition in which you keep scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, as if your brain is checking to see whether they're still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day. - From the "Where's Waldo?" series of picture books, in which the reader tries to spot one specific person somewhere in a massive crowd

THERE WERE SO MANY things people whispered about Riadne Lysterne.
Ambitious, they called her--from childhood her sight had been set on obtaining the Bone Crown. She'd trained for it, studied for it, lived and breathed and bled for it, pushed herself to perfection in everything she did and was satisfied with nothing less.
Intelligent, they called her too--the top of every class, the victor of every sparring match.

'Come buy, come buy, no questions asked! No trade denied! Is your neighborhood scheduled for Inspection? Don't want the Falchion to find those old alchemy textbooks you have tucked in your homes? A cursed amulet to dispose of? A bit of vampire blood to spare? We'll take it all--your goods for human cash, ten cents more on the exchange, come buy, come buy, we can't be beat!'

Come buy, come buy, no questions asked! No trade denied! Is your neighborhood scheduled for Inspection? Don't want the Falchion to find those old alchemy textbooks you have tucked in your homes? A cursed amulet to dispose of? A bit of vampire blood to spare? We'll take it all--your goods for human cash, ten cents more on the exchange, come buy, come buy, we can't be beat!