Marsha > Recent Status Updates

The camera secretly followed the three bouncers as they patrolled the club lookingn behind couches, under tables, behind curtains; they even got someone to check the toilets. Holly's fmaily laughed hysterically at the scene unfolding before their eyes.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in violence. In other words, it is war without shooting.

Having served as the league's lead counsel before becoming commissioner, Tagliabue eventually adopted the same activist strategy employed by the tobacco industry. He sought to shape public debate by floodig hte market with junk science. The NFL created a "research body" called the Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee. Pause a moment to linger upon the spooky propagandistic frisson produced by "mild, traumatic".

I pulled off the wig. With one hand, popped the snaps on the shirt. Pulled off the suspenders. Shunt handed me some paper towels. I handed him my breasts. I wiped at my face. I could feel the makeup smearing. He leaned over the back seat and covered the troll with a gray blanket. I gouged at my cheeks. I slid the big pants down. I had normal clothes underneath. I turned off the main road. We'd lose any pursuit.

In order to increase the altitude of their orbits, they would have to put on speed. This meant firing their thrusters just the right amount at the six o'clock position. It also meant firing their thrusters again when they reached the shuttle's twelve o'clock position, because if they didn't, they would descend on their new elliptical orbit. The trick was to put on just enough speed to match that of the shuttle.

The fact that the members of an enterprise actually own it jointly (each with one vote) puts certain inherent limits on what these enterprises do. For instance, they do not tend to expand endlessly, since the practical maximum size of a joint-ownership firm seems to be fewer than 300 people--beyond that they tend to break down into bureaucratic, inflexible forms and lose both their profitability and their members.

From what I could determine on my brief shopping spree, the clothes here do not include any nylon, orlon, dacron, or other synthetics. ("I need a couple of shirts, the drip-dry kind." Incredulous clerk: "You mean some kind of synthetic fiber shirt? We haven't sold them for 20 years." Followed by a lecture to the effect that too much electric power and water are required in the production of synthetics.

He wasn't very tall, and looked kind of like a cross between your dorky science teacher and the small kid who always gets picked last for the team. He wore clunky brown shoes and completely unwrinkled tan pants, a tweed jacket, and a bow tie. And Coke-bottle glasses. And behind those glasses, there was nothing but static.
I'm serious. His eyes were like that. No pupils, nothing. Just static.

Hue didn't like the Hazard Zone. He'd popped in to see me once in the middle of a simulation, and I thought he was going to have a coronary--if mudluffs even have hearts. He'd turned a confused grayish, then a few different shades of red or pink, all of which seemed to mean alarmed, then he'd basically turned ito a multicolored disco ball. If anyone in the room had been prone to seizures, Hue would have done them in.

When I returned to school after Thanksgiving break, I had a hard time concentrating. My mind churned with doubts about the Bible, about my future with Angie, and most of all about who I was. So many things I had imagined for my life--falling in love with the right girl, getting married, having kids, becoming a minister, and everything I thought I believed in--now seemed called into question.

I couldn't understand why God hadn't healed my ma. Hadn't Jesus said, Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it? The adults in my life tried to console me. I knew that those grown-ups were trying to reassure me, but their words only stirred doubts. What if the Lord decided he wanted my pa in heaven too? Where would that leave me? And if God didn't answer our prayers, what was the point?

Giles: A, a Slayer slays, a Watcher...
Buffy: Watches?
Giles: He, he trains her, he, he, he prepares her...
Buffy: Prepares me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead? Prepare me.
(Buffy exhales, turns and leaves the library in disgust.)

An episode may contain influences as far-reaching as bawdy Greek farce to brainy post-modern theatre in a steady flow of absurdity that switches from low-brow to high-brow at the drop of a stake. Take most any zinger from the show and it's not hard to connect the dots to a wide range of familiar material: the nonsensical stylings of Groucho Marx--Oz: 'That's great, Larry, you've really mastered the single entendre.'

Knowledge is the product of labour and, unlike much else in the shows, is not 'magical.' Knowledge results from work, from the research and collective experience of the characters. When Willow asks Giles, 'How is it you always know this stuff. You always know what's going on. I never know what's going on.' Giles responds, 'Well, you weren't here from midnight until six researching it.' (1.07)

I set my alarm to wake me up silently, so I could go find Daneca before Sam's up and noticing little things like me yelling at his ex-girlfriend. Before Daneca has a chance to see my good-for-nothing brother again. Before this situation gets even worse.

I step back against the wall, slamming my shoulders against it. "Mom," I moan.
"Baby, what's wrong?"
"Just tell me what you did. Just say it." It is a terrible desperate thing to plead with someone to crush your hope.
"I worked her so that she loves you," Mom says. "She'll do absolutely anything for you. Anything you want. Isn't that nice?"
"Fix it. You have to undo it."
"Cassel, you know I can't do that."

"Hooters!" Daniel yelled. "It's only fifteen miles away! Dad, can we go to Hooters? Can we? Can we?"
I've always admired Hooters. Some backwoods mountain kid probably started it on a bet, and it's become a multimillion-dollar franchise, with restaurants in New York, L.A., Fargo, Alburquerque. Plus, it advertises young, buxom, pretty waitresses in short shorts and tight shirts.

"Are you a virgin?" she asked.
"Of course," I said.
"Well, I lost my virginity the summer between ninth and tenth grades. Don't lose it too soon."
"How about getting to third base?"
"Uh, no," I gulped.
There was silence. I saw what was coming: more questions.
"So you never got laid? Have you ever felt a girl's breasts?"
After each of these, I shook my head, and she looked even more stunned.

The sounds of the War of Greenland quickly disappeared--the tunnel was silent, as if a door had closed behind them. When he looked back, Michael saw that that was exactly what had happened. The trench they'd just escaped was no longer there. Instead there was the same odd purple glow. He turned back around and was relieved to see that he hadn't lost Bryson and Sarah.

When Gavriel was young, Russia was nearing the end of her Golden Age. Revolution was coming, but the aristocracy pretended otherwise, swilling champagne and speaking in perfectly accented French in their gilt parlors. The books of the day gloried in the nobility of suicide, willful decay, and romantic melancholy. At twenty, Gavriel had inherited his grandfather's voluptuous mouth and flashing eyes.

Sometimes there are stories in the news about little kids who do bad things because they don't know any better. Like playing with loaded guns that go off and kill brothers, or lighting matches that accidentally set fire to a whole house. It's not the kid's fault. Except that is, really, only no one wants to say it. Who else is there to blame? The kid is the one who disobeyed.

Out of sight of the gold, I feel ridiculous and stupid. How could I be so foolish, stealing someone's gold, just because I...wanted it?
I slink toward the surface, find a small cavern that fits me perfectly, and curl up inside it. The stone is comforting around me, but not as comforting as gold would be.
I am alone.

Ever since my foot healed, Coach Schwartz has had me jogging with the team before practice and doing push-ups and crunches with them after, so I end up just as nasty as everyone else. I'm pretty close to pre-injury form, I thought about asking Coach P to let me run in the state cross-country meet this weekend, but decided that I couldn't abandon my teammates for the Head of the Hooch.

"There are a couple of calls you need to know before you get on the water," she tells me, pulling her blond curls into a ponytail. We're sitting side by side on a picnic table near the river's edge, watching the rowers run laps around the boathouse. "You obviously shouldn't push off until everyone is ready, so your first call will always be 'number off from bow.'

It is exactly then that you become aware of the lightness of being you, the physical near-nothingness of it. You are not a body, not a kite, but a massive inflatable parade character, and Jack's arm feels suddenly like the thing that is keeping you tethered to this earth. He is, in fact, guiding you, as the two of you newly great and good buddies wend your way, on display, through the crowd.

Cleansing. Now don't you feel foolish? How could you not have wanted this? Foolish, foolish. Clean is good. Clean is very very good. You love that feeling. Make a note, William, to remember that you love that feeling of clean even when getting into the shower seems like too much work.

I am a horrible person.
A horrible horrible person.
I had been ignoring her.
I had been avoiding her.
I had been trying to be nowhere.
Then an aide brought in a piece of paper for Mr. McDog.
McDog stopped talking about integers and studied it for three minutes. All the while, I thought, I wonder if she's dead.

Logan studied the map of Xanadu. His clothes had been whisked through the dryer again, but they still felt stiff and uncomfortable. "I totally get it now," Logan said to Blue. "What's that?" "Why Zoe's clothes are always a mess. I've been here less than a day, and my clothes have been set on fire by a phoenix, drowned by a kelpie, rolled on by a mammoth, nibbled by griffin cubs and drenched in kraken ink."

"You mean you showed them my apartment?"
She said, "Well, they were policemen, and they were so worried about you, and they felt much better when they didn't find that you'd shot your foot or something."
I was glad I'd moved Robertson's body immediately upon finding it in my bathroom.

"How goes it with the ship?" The girl shrugged. "The wind has come up, and every time the masts creak someone wonders whether they will crack. If the wind blows contrary they complain that we're lost, and when it dies they wail that we'll all starve. Ellis and I have cooked up a pot of gruel, by the way. You'll feel better for a little fresh air and a bit of breakfast." Tiriki shuddered. "Not just yet, I think."