Then Wanda proposed a health. "Health to abandoned wives!" she said. "Well now," I said. "'Abandoned,' that's a little strong." "Pushed out, jettisoned, abjured, thrown away," she said. "I remember," I said, "a degree of mutuality, in our parting." "And when guests came," she said, "you always made me sit in the kitchen." "I thought you liked it in the kitchen," I said. "You were forever telling me to get out of the bloody kitchen." "And when my overbite required correction," she said, "you would not pay for the apparatus." "Seven years of sitting by the window with your thumb in your mouth," I said. "What did you expect?" "And when I needed a new frock," she said, "you hid the Master Charge." "There was nothing wrong with the old one," I said, "that a few well-placed patches couldn't have fixed." "And when we were invited to the Argentine Embassy," she said, "you made me drive the car in a chauffeur's cap, and park the car, and stand about with the other drivers outside while you chatted up the Ambassador." "You know no Spanish," I pointed out. "It was not the happiest of marriages," she said, "all in all." "There has been a sixty percent increase in single-person households in the last ten years, according to the Bureau of the Census," I told her. "Perhaps we are part of a trend.

Mrs. French's cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. "Have you seen Honey?" We've all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Colette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That's Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Colete Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French's cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assasination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to eachother. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen.

The town , wrapped in red and green, greeted him, welcome him home as he drove down familiar streets. Driving his old truck filled Hunter with pleasure. He didn't have to look for IEDs on the side of the road. He grinned all the way to the apartment, enjoying the ride, the peace of the nigh, the old brick buildings on Main Street, the holiday finery, the palpable presence of town spirit. He parked his truck in front of the apartment building that Ethan owned as a side business, and suddenly couldn't wait another second. He hurried up the front stairs, down the inside styaircase, then just about ran down the hallway to his basement-level unit. He had his key in his hand, but the doorknob turned easily as he put his hand on it. Cindy had left the door open for him. He grinned like a fool as he walked in. The loose floorboard in the middle of the living room creaked a familiar welcome as he passed his army duffel bag on the floor where he'd dumped it earlier. Cindy's little pink purse sat on his brown leather couch like a cupcake on a tray. "Cindy?" He strode toward the bedroom in the back, his smile spreading as he anticipated a private party. If she was waiting for him naked in bed, the proposal would have to wait a litt. "Honey?" But she wasn't waiting for him naked. She was waiting for him dead.

He stared down at her for a moment, wanting to heal everycut on her soft skin. But he couldn’t, not yet. He needed to get her,and her car, far from this place so neither he nor Kate would beimplicated in any way with the gruesome murder site.It also meant he would have to drive.In all his years, he had never driven an automobile. The closest hehad come was watching various assistants through the years as theychauffeured him. He wasn’t sure he could even remember how tostart the car, but right now he had no choice.Grudgingly, he got into the driver’s seat, and finding the leverunderneath, he pushed it back so he sat comfortably behind thewheel. After trying three different keys, he found one that slipped intothe ignition.From what he had seen over the past hundred years, driving wasnot a complex operation, and he was an immortal with reflexes farmore keen than a human man.How difficult could it be?He turned the key and nearly jerked the wheel off the steeringcolumn when the car surprised him by lurching forward. The car wentsilent. The engine wasn’t running. What was he doing wrong?He stared at the gearshift, wondering if he should move it. Hisfrustration reared up, but his agitation would not make the car driveitself. He had to keep a cool head.Not knowing what else to try, he pushed one of the pedals at hisfeet to the floor and turned the key again. This time the car didn’tmove, and it roared to life. Grasping the gearshift, he jammed it intothe first position and glanced over at Kate.Why couldn’t she have owned a car with an automatictransmission?Shaking his head, he put some pressure on the gas pedal andslowly released the clutch. Thankfully the car rolled a few feet, butwithout warning it jumped forward. He pressed the clutch back to thefloor before the engine lost power again.Calisto slammed his hand against the wheel, muttering under hisbreath in Spanish. At this rate it would take him all night to drive herhome.The faded yellow convertible pitched forward again, threateningto stall as he continued out of the parking lot, thankful it was late. Thestreets were fairly empty. At least he wouldn’t get into an accidentwith another car. Her car staggered ahead, lurching each time hetried to release the clutch, bouncing and jostling them both until Katefinally stirred and woke up.§“Are we out of gas or something?”Calisto watched her with a tight smile. “Not exactly.”Kate winced in pain when she laughed. “You can’t drive a stickshift,can you?”“Does it show?” Calisto pulled over, finally allowing the engine tostall.She nodded her head slowly to avoid more pain. “Just a little.What happened?”“You don’t remember?”“I remember being mugged. And I remember seeing you, buteverything after that is blank.” She watched his eyes as Calistoreached over to brush her hair back from her face, and his touch sentshivers through her body. This wasn’t how she had hoped she wouldrun into him, but she learned a long time ago fate didn’t always workout the way you expected.

“[Imagine yourself in this scenario: Your partner drives it 310 yards in the fairway, leaving a perfect angle to the flag. Having not hit a full iron shot for two holes, you double-cross it and put him in some bilious bottle dungeon on the left, from where he hits a buried alive, Siegfried and Roy, can't ever be duplicated, miracle pitch to six feet for a potential halve. How badly do you want to make that putt?] I've been on both sides of that equation, ... I've left my partners hanging out to dry, and it's an awful feeling. You're trying as hard as you can and you just can't make it happen. Without fail, it comes down to the crucial shot, and you're not the one playing well and you end up tanking your partner. It doesn't feel much worse than that.”

Even women deeply committed to the emancipatory promises of modernity were alarmed by the "inappropriateness" of unrelated men and omen socializing in the streets. In the women's press, articles exhorted young men to treat women respectfully in public. Other articles encouraged women to act as their own police and to be more observant of their hijab and public modesty.From the beginning, then, women's entry on the streets was subject to the regulatory harassment of men. The modernist heterosocializing promise that invited women to leave their homosocial spaces and become educated companionate partners for modernist men was underwritten by policing of women's public presence through men's street actions. Men at once desired heterosociality of the modern and yet would not surrender the privileged masculinity of the streets. Women's public presence was also underwritten by disciplinary approbation of modernizing women themselves whose emancipatory drive would be jeopardized by unruly public conduct.

I PAINT MY FACE.By Omrane Khuder.Mirror, distorted; I sit, paint my Face,Toxic white Make-up buries my Scars,My Eyes tell lies; Dumbfounded Confidence hides the Disgrace.Place the tragic Vehicle called My Life in to Drive,Sad pathetic Clown; Late for the suppression show,Despair another time; Let the chuckles and defeat derive.I paint my Heart; I hide my True.I paint my Soul; I keep it from You.I paint, I cannot accept; To ignore you the way you ignore Me?I paint my scarred and pitiful Face; No Will left to restore Me.I paint my Face; it’s all I know to do.My painted Face shatters the Mirror, yet still all I see is You.

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any inner life. I see the most superficial person on Earth. This is a guy who has been totally hollowed out by greed and self regard and delusion. The way he talks about himself; if I caught some sort of brain virus and I started talking about myself the way Trump talks about himself, I would throw myself out a fucking window. That barely overstates it. Do you remember that scene at the end of the in The Exorcist where the priest is driving out the devil from Linda Blair and the devil comes into him and he just hurls himself out the window to end all the madness? Well, it would be like that. - Sam Harris

Pain avoidance is part of life. A campaign to minimize hunger and lessen pain drives us to develop systems that will provide us with nourishing food and protective shelter. Pain is a trickster. It can send us true or false signals that confine us to our beds or spur us to roam long and far. Pain has a lifesaving function. Pain can signal us to implement evasive action or attack our problems head-on. Pain has a putative role. Pain can torture us for engaging in careless deeds. Pain performs a restorative role. Pain can tell us when we must rest. Pain is tutor and a healer. Pain implores us to take heed of our physical and mental infirmities, urges us to call out for help, and compels us to adopt modified strategies.