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This is part of the reason why so many people can't listen to Wagner. Due to his pernicious anti-Semitism, the sheer vulgarity of his mind, and his music's association with the Nazi regime, some people don't feel safe listening to his music. Wagner has always disturbed me profoundly, and not just his music, but also the idea of listening to it.

Glenn Schellenberg has pointed out the importance of distinguishing short-term from long-term effects of music. The Mozart Effect referred to immediate benefits, but other research has revealed long-term effects of musical activity. Music listening enhances or changes certain neural circuits, including the density of dendritic connections in the primary auditory cortex.

Effective music--groove--involves subtle violations of timing. Just as the rat has an emotional response to a violation of the rhythm of the branch hitting his house, we have an emotional response to the violation of timing in music that is groove. The rat, with no context for the timing violation, experiences it as fear.

The EEG is exquisitely sensitive to the timing of neural firings, and can detect activity with a resolution of one thousandth of a second (one millisecond). But it has some limitations. EEG is not able to distinguish whether the neural activity is releasing excitatory, inhibitory, or modulatory neurotransmitters, the chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine that influence the behavior of other neurons.

On "Straight Up" there is so much going on, it is difficult ot describe it in words. The drums play a complex, irregular pattern with beats as fast as sixteenth notes, but not continuously--the "air" between drum hits imparts a sound typical of funk and hip-hop music. The bass plays a similarly complex and syncopated melodic line that sometimes coincides with and sometimes fills in the holes of the drum part.

When the announcement comes that there's an assembly, we're all psyched. Why wouldn't we be? It's like a Get Out of Jail Free card for a whole morning of classes. What's the assembly about? Who knows? Who cares? In the auditorium, the big screen is set up. That means they'll be turning the lights out. The perfect chance to catch a nap for a guy who was playing video games until three last night.

Sheer bliss rolls through me when his release soaks my fingertips. He comes on a strangled cry. And keeps coming. And then comes some more. I guess nobody can say he didn’t enjoy himself. When he finally goes still, I collapse on his sticky chest and growl in his ear. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He clings to me, his big alms pressed to my damp back. We lie that way a long time.

After the long bath, the champagne, two orgasms apiece, and a shower, it was a miracle either of us was still conscious. From the way Porter was swaying a little as he took out his contacts and brushed his teeth, he probably wasn't staying conscious much longer. I was no better. The bed really was obscenely huge, and the first night, we'd settled on one side so we could at least reach one of the nightstands.

"But I'm not some new guy. I'm their dad."
"Yeah. But you being here? This apartment? You spending this much time with them without their mom around? That's all new. It's change. There's bound to be some stress there, and when kids get stressed--"
"They act out."
"Sometimes, yeah. So it's not you." I smiled. "Cut yourself some slack. Seriously."

I had to give Porter credit--he knew my kids. At the playground, they still seemed to have plenty of energy, but he didn't change his tune about them running out of steam and they didn't object when he said it was time to go. His five-, three- and one-minute warnings didn't result in any tears or protests. At the end of that last minute, they said goodbye to the other kids they'd been playing with.

So they'd probably be here until two or three in the morning. With Levi and Carter going through their lines again and again at close quarters--sometimes staring each other down, and sometimes touching. Levi arrived an hour or so later, and one glance at him sent Carter's stomach into his feet. Levi looked like shit. He didn't talk to anyone. He kept his eyes down, whether he was perusing the script or not.

For the longest time, they sat there and fished, occasionally reeling in their lines and casting them again, and relaxed. Sitting back, soaking up the sun, listening to the waves slosh against the gently rocking boat. What wasn't to love? And as a bonus, his sunglasses let him steal a few surreptitious glances at Levi, especially when he was leaning over or when he smoothed on more sunscreen.

At least someone had gotten this whole relationship business down. My jaded side worried they'd one day go down the same road as Brad and Jeff, but I hoped not. Like Brad and Jeff, they deserved that elusive happy ending and I sincerely hoped they'd have it together. Oblivious to my inner pessimism, Mike gave Jason the insurance card he needed and then they exchanged a quick kiss and a brief glance before Jason left.

"You thought of everything, Darcy Barrett," he says to me without looking over, and I realize he has always been aware of my staring, dazzled by the light shining through him. He's probably felt this stare for most of his life. I am intensely grateful for how he's erasing that one moment of insanity in the kitchen. I'm not going to l lose him.

He snorts in disbelief. "You'd never get married."
"I would." I hide the littler paper cut his incredulous tone gives me. "Why the hell wouldn't I? Am I too much to take on?" I drag both hands through my hair so it's up and pointy. I hope it's horns. "I just never pictured it."

ALTHOUGH SHE HATED THE idea--what on earth would happen if they were caught? She would be sacked for sure and probably sent back to the orphanage and locked up there till she was fourteen. Then they'd send her down a mine or something--rose couldn't help but agree. it was the only way. "Drat that Sparrow woman," Gus said, as they crept along the corridors. "If it weren't for her, we could ask the master."

"Oh, well." Freddie sighed gloomily. "Fountain probably wouldn't listen to you anyway, he's too wrapped in that hateful Sparrow woman. He's gone batty about her." He shook his head. "I can't understand it, he's only met her about three times. He's got a little portrait of her that he keeps in his waistcoat pocket. He's spelled it to glow, so he can even see her in the dark!" Freddie snorted with laughter.

Some Amish elders do acknowledge that cutting off schooling after the eighth grade limits the children, but that it benefits the community of the sect for the kids to have less ability to make it on the outside and hastens their return to the fold. Do those who return home have a sense of limited horizons or of inadequacy? If they do, they don't express it. Rather, they affect the attitude of "been there, done that."

Norm believes that while a "strength" of the Amish is "that we respect tradition and are slow to change," that strength can function as a drawback when the community and its families must deal with a rapidly changing world and escalating bad influences. The best thing for Amish youth, Norm argues, is "more witnesses from among us who grew up and never did drugs, alcohol, premarital sex."

At age thirteen, after moving with her family from Wisconsin to Middlebury, Indiana, Lydia T has a strange moment: for the first time in her life she is attending an Amish school--just for a year, until she is old enough to graduate. Her entire previous schooling has been in the public school system. The Amish schoolhouse in Middlebury is the smallest school she has ever seen.

"It's the 'cool' kids who drive everything," she opines. "In school, if they're inclined to do well academically, others follow, and everybody does better. Same thing with the band and the choir: once you get the cool kids excited about an activity, it takes off." That's the positive side of peer pressure.

As the party gets into full swing, and beer and pot are making the participants feel no pain, a few Amish girls huddle and make plans to jointly rent an apartment in a nearby town when they turn eighteen, as some older girls have already done. Others shout in Pennsylvania Dutch and in English about how much it will cost to travel to and attend an Indianapolis rock concert.

The patrons of the Braided Beard who chose to fight rather than run were all very accomplished int he skills of wanton slaying and disregard for personal safety. Fia was the best of them when she allowed herself to forget all about her One-Step Program. This wasn't that kind of situation anyway: it was self-defense since the armed brutes had declared their intention to kill her already.

"Who dares disturb my dark ruminations?" a voice croaked, deep and heavy with foreboding. "Give him the basket," Fia whispered out the side of her frozen smile. "Oh, right. The basket!" Smacking Gustave away, Argabella picked up the basket and held it out to the yawning chasm of shadow. "Is that--" the voice within coughed and then spoke in an utterly normal voice that wasn't scary at all. "Is that manchego?"

I was an hour late and as I walked into the kitchen Dirty Steve said, "That's it! You're fired." "Fair enough," I said. "An hour is really late." "Are you developing the ability to own up to your mistakes, oxy Roxy? I never thought I'd see the day. What were you doing, anyway?" I summed up the Hike and Bike Trail debacle for him. "The Creature from the Black Lagoon." He laughed. "That's a good one ."

I have just sipped my way through several more Nest Life videos and interviews with Nina. But I can say that her vision of a world in which all men know how to nurture female sexual energy and apply proper pressure to a clit is laudable. GAH! What's happening to me!? Everett, come home. Let's talk this through.

"Sorry. I parked around the corner." Theo's sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of my porch. His hands are shoved in a hoodie. "I just had to talk to you." "Come in. Everybody's asleep, so you have to be quiet." I turn the knob extra carefully. "Why didn't you say hi to Evita? Or text and warn me you were going to warn me you were going to jump out at me?"

And this is mortifying. Like I'd be so underhanded. Or pathetic. That I'm sitting over here pining over you. And why are you even here? You didn't have anything better to do than crash a movie night with my mom? You were just biding your time before you insulted me and my intentions and my present. Now I don't want to play the quartet, either. Good. Only now I don't know what to say to Lily Ann tomorrow.

David keeps his eyes on the road. I stare out the window at all the cars and buildings that blur as we pass, thinking about that lady who followed me and that cop over and over again. David reaches over to poke my shoulder. "You sure you're okay? Y'know it's okay to not be okay, right?" I keep staring out the window and look up at the starry sky.

Within the moonlight, she could see the life of the night not normally available to her senses. Bugs crawled on leaves, and a bird startled high up in a tree. Beneath the grasses and old leaves, a snake pushed its way toward a mouse, moving the air around it ever so slightly. The whole of the night clicked and purred about her. The moonlight itself seemed to vibrate and bring to life each and every thing.