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willow-salix · 4 years ago

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FabFiveFeb Alan!

Finally got this bugger edited, so here it is, my offering for Alan week of @gumnut-logic FabFiveFeb. Once again I’ve written what my daughter plotted with a few of my own tweaks thrown in.

“Is there really nothing else to do around here?” Alan whispered to Selene, jolting her awake from the sleepy doze she was enjoying stretched out on a sun lounger. “How can you just lay around here all day?”

“Like you don’t do the same every day at home?” she grumbled, stretching out in an effort to wake up. She'd never admit it, but she was getting a bit bored with having nothing to do, hence the impromptu nap time.

“That’s different, I’ve got things there to do.”

“You mean you have technology?” Selene grinned evilly. “Whereas here it’s-”

“Like I’ve gone back in time to 2015 and the graphics suck, " he groaned.

“Come on, it’s not that bad, don’t you like the peace and quiet?” Selene’s family home was indeed very quiet, set apart from the other houses on the street, it backed out into a small but flower filled garden that held nothing but the sun loungers they were currently occupying, the picnic table their drinks were on, a slightly rusted BBQ, some yoga mats and a bird bath in the shape of a frog on a lily pad.

Alan looked towards Selene's cool, but rather weird, younger brother who was currently doing some kind of yoga crossed with Tai Chi that seemed to have a little of that 1970’s disco type of dancing thrown in for good measure.

“Adam, help me,” he begged, trying to invoke the bro code.

“Chill out, little dude, it’s all good," Adam said, his sleepy tone the perfect accompaniment to his snail like movements.

“Nothing about this is good,” Alan huffed, feeling dismissed and beyond frustrated. He was seriously regretting offering to go with her for a visit under the mistaken belief that time spent away from his brothers with his cool sister-in-law would be awesome. But no, he’d been stuck there for three days and they’d done nothing but talk about boring things that he couldn’t really join in with because he didn’t share the same memories that they did and watch TV in the evenings. The only positive thing was the quality of the food on offer.

“How did you grow up like this and not die of boredom?”

“We made our own fun, we’d read, draw, do arts and crafts, go on days out and-”

“Days out? Where did you go?” Alan jumped on that information like John on a double cheeseburger after a month in space.

Selene thought about it for a moment or two. “The seaside?” she offered. "That was always our favourite place to go and somewhere we always looked forward to, a rare treat really."

“The beach? Yes! Can we go?” he gave her his best pleading puppy eyes and she was, as he well knew, powerless to resist.

“Well…” she dithered, caught between spending time in her family home with her mum as it came up to what would have been her parents 30th wedding anniversary and the need to do more than sit around and mope, especially if that moping meant that her littlest love had a crap time. “Ad’s, are you up for a road trip to Southend?”

Her brother paused in his Night Fevering to look at her. He seemed to think about it for far longer than was necessary before nodding.

“I could go for that. Wanna take my car?”

***

“I’m never getting in a car with your brother again,” Alan shuddered, still looking a little stressed out by the whole experience.

“Yet you’ll get in a jet with Scott?”

“Scott goes faster than 25 mph and he knows what road signs are,” Alan explained in the same tone that John adopted whenever he was explaining to her why she actually needed an investment portfolio.

“Road signs are all part of the conspiracy, man, they just want you to follow blindly and never question where they are sending you.”

“To the beach, they were sending us to the beach,” Alan continued to bitch. Selene couldn’t blame him, two hours in a car with her brother's sitar music, cloud of vape smoke and tendency to lose track of their destination was enough to make anyone a little antsy. Maybe now he'd stop complaining when she took too long to fly them to her flat.

They left the car park and headed towards the seafront. Thankfully, with it being a weekday and term time, there weren't too many people about. As always the sea was a dirty grey colour, nothing like the clear blue they were used to on the island and Selene could tell that Alan was looking at it with thinly veiled disgust.

Southend had been promoted to a historic seaside town back in 2038 and hadn’t changed since. The lights of the out of date arcades still flashed in welcome, drawing Alan’s attention almost immediately, the little beach huts still offered deck chair rental and the amusement park with its clanking, clunking kiddy rides and its ancient roller-coaster still drew some crowds.

“See that there?” she pointed out towards the sea. “That’s still the longest pleasure pier in the world.”

“Pleasure Pier? Did you have to make that sound so dirty?” Alan groaned.

“Sorry, but that’s what it’s called, there are different classifications and one that has no purpose but for leisure activities like this one, is known as a pleasure pier.”

“I didn't know that, but it still doesn’t make it any better,” he muttered as she slipped one arm through his and the other through Adam’s to tow them across the road.

The air was filled with a mixture of freshly fried donuts, fish and chips and the unmistakable scent of the sea and Selene was immediately hungry.

“It’s been such a long time since I’ve been here,” she sighed happily, relaxing into the atmosphere of what had once been one of her favourite places in the world. She could vividly remember how exciting it had been to hear the announcement that they were going to the seaside for the day. That meant an afternoon spent playing on the beach, splashing in the sea, eating dinner out of a paper tray with a little wooden fork and, if you were really lucky, a trip around the sealife center and a floaty helium filled balloon to take home with you.

Looking out down the length of the beach she easily conjured up images of childhood days gone by, seeing her father chasing Adam down the beach as he attempted to make a break for freedom or tried to eat a clump of seaweed while her mother screeched at Rufus to run faster and catch him.

Maybe coming here had been a good idea in other ways too, she pondered. Her mother tended to favour being miserable if it was an option, and often when it wasn't, and had been mooching around the house sighing like she was a Victorian ghost haunting the place. She’d gone out to visit friends for the day, leaving them alone and that had been when Alan had seized his chance. And Selene for one was glad he had, he was always good at sensing when she was in need of cheering up and this time had been no exception.

“Can we start at the arcades?” Alan asked, looking more excited than he had in days. Who was she to disappoint him?

“Sure, lead the way!”

***

Two hours later and Selene had finally dragged her brothers away from the bleepy, shiny, flashy machines and back into the fresh air. Alan, it transpired, was almost as good on a claw machine as John and she was now lugging along a whole new family of stuffed toys, all slightly moth eaten and smelling a little suspect but cute nonetheless.

“I’m hungry,” Alan announced.

“Good call, little dude.” Adam, surprising Alan no end, had joined in rather enthusiastically at the arcade, being more active and alert than he’d ever seen him before, displaying a competitive streak that rivaled a Tracy's. But, now that the excitement of gaming had died down, he was back to his chilled and slightly lethargic self.

“Fancy some donuts?” Selene suggested.

“Sis…” Adam drawled.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Selene giggled, shoving the stuffed toys into her brother’s arms as she headed to the donut stalls. “I'll get them, you two meet me on the beach.”

Her arms now free of their burden Selene quickly ordered three dozen of the delectable little morsels, something the English called Dinky Donuts, small little ring donuts, freshly fried and drenched in a sprinkling of sugar. Knowing that they’d need them she bought some drinks too and took her bounty back to the boys, proudly displaying her prize.

“I got them!” she yodeled, but no excited sounds were heard in return. “What’s up?” she asked, nudging Alan as she reached his side.

“What the heck is this?”

“The beach, duh. What else could it be?"

He scuffed a toe into the stones at his feet. “This is not a beach, this is all stones. Where's the sand?”

“It’s a pebble beach, most of the British coast is,” she shrugged.

“It’s wrong.”

“If you say so,” she wasn’t in the mood to argue or defend the virtue of their beaches, she had hot donuts to eat.

“This is not a beach, there’s no surfers, no sand, no lifeguards, no nothing.”

“This is England, we take things at a more chilled pace,” she soothed, dumping a bag on each of the boys' laps.

She took her own and opened it, inhaling the rich scent. Oooh yeah, that hit the spot. She reached in to pluck one out, studying it from all angles, marveling at it's perfection. She lifted it to her mouth prepared for the taste explosion that was about to assault her mouth in the very best of ways…

“Sel!” A sharp Alan elbow embedded itself in her side, making her drop the donut. She watched in horror as it hit the pebbles and rolled away.

“You had better have a good reason for making me sacrifice a donut,” she warned him.

“Over there!”

Selene turned, following the direction in which Alan was pointing.

“What? I don’t see anything?” All she saw was the relatively empty beach, nothing but a few seagulls pecking around hopefully, one coming close enough to snag her lost donut, racing off in triumph with it in its mouth.

“Them,” he pointed again.

“Them? What about them?” The them in question turned out to be a small group of school age boys, the oldest no more than ten years old. They were all holding a number of balloons from the pier, which were bobbing along above their heads and looked perfectly innocent. “They’re just having a day out, could be an inset day or something at school.”

“No, look what that one's holding,” Alan insisted, nodding towards the oldest looking boy who was carrying a small box with holes in it.

Selene squinted closer. “Is that an animal box?” She was amazed that Alan had even noticed such a thing, she hadn’t looked twice at the boys, just seeing a happy group of friends at the seaside on a rare day off school. Alan always seemed like he was paying little attention to anything, more absorbed in his games or phone, but here was the undeniable proof that he was just as good as his brothers and had inherited their danger seeking sense.

“Looks that way,” Alan agreed.

“It could be innocent,” Selene argued lamely. “Maybe they are just taking their pet on a day out too?"

“Sure, that’s what it’ll be,” Alan said, rolling his eyes.

“Honestly, it’s something I’d do,” she retorted, feeling the need to defend herself and her wish to believe that there was good in everyone.

“We’ll keep an eye on them,” Alan decided, finally reaching into his own bag for a donut.

As was usually the case, Selene was easily distracted by talking to her brother and just enjoying the novelty of being in a different place to one she was used to. She’d finally grown accustomed to hearing the sound of the ocean at all times of the day and night after so long in a city where traffic was the only ambient noise. b

But here the sound was different to the island, here the waves lapped gently over the pebbles rather than crashing against rocks and she was surprised that she could tell the difference.

She’d worried, when Alan had suggested going out, that this little beach from her childhood which stood out so bright and shiny in her memories, would look pale and dull in reality. Life was often that way, your memories and imagination creating a perfect picture that was rarely obtainable in the real world and she didn't want her memories tainted by the truth. Thankfully she had been worried over nothing and was finding it just as charming as she had remembered it to be.

“Not bad are they?” she asked, turning to Alan to see how he was enjoying his donut feast but the space next to her was empty.

“Allie?” she called, looking around like he might suddenly pop out of nowhere. Surely she hadn't ignored him for too long?

“Alan!” she yelled, trying again. He was a big boy now, an adult in his own right, but she got just as panicked when she lost Scott, which was actually easier if you could believe that. Alan was usually happy to hang near her and chill, Scott was always dashing off to look at something or other and would just vanish into the ether without a second thought.

“Ad’s, have you seen Alan?”

“Yeah, little dude, cool shirt, strange hair.”

“Thanks for that lovely description. I meant did you see where he went?”

Adam nodded, pointing further down the beach to where the small group of school boys stood, Alan beside them, waving his arms violently, clearly yelling at them though she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“Shit!” Selene was up in a second, grabbing Adam's arm and towing him along in the process, forcing him to abandon his stuffed animal squad to the mercy of the seagulls as they barreled down the beach after Alan.

"Al," she panted, finally catching up, "what��doing?"

In answer the small box that the boy had been carrying was thrust into her hands, a disgruntled rustling noise along with a manic scrabbling, coming from inside.

"Oi! Give that back!" a boy yelled, his piggy nose turned up to the sky in indignation. "We 'ad ta catch that thing ourselves. Ain't no way you're gonna snatch it."

"You're not getting it back," Alan insisted, his arms folded as he firmly stood his ground.

Selene passed the box on to Adam who was standing there doing absolutely nothing to help, his attention on the balloons floating above them. Once her hands were free she immediately flanked her little brother, knowing that he wouldn't be doing this without a very good reason.

"What's going on?" she demanded to know, her hands on her hips. "What are you boys up to?"

"This idiot won't give us it back," the oldest boy and apparently the mouthpiece of the little hoodlum brigade, continued to yell. Selene had seen boys like him before, usually ones with overly aggressive parents that taught their kids that you got what you wanted in life by being obnoxious, rude and threatening. Well not on her watch and apparently not on Alan's either.

"You're right , I won't," Alan agreed. "Because that is a living creature that you were about to tie to a bunch of balloons."

"Weren't doin' nothin' of the sort. Yer lyin'."

"You were what?" Selene hissed, her attention fully engaged now that there was the potential for injury of an animal. "You were going to send an innocent animal into the sky on the end of some balloons?"

"Nah, we weren't," the little bully boy continued to argue, elbowing one of his friends when they opened their mouth to speak.

"We ain't doing nothin' wrong, were we lads? Nothin' at all. Just a little experiment for school, jus' like teacher said."

"Experiment? What kind of experiment?" Selene asked, narrowing her eyes in warning.

"Why should we tell you?" the mouthy one sneered. "You ain't nothin'."

"We were just seeing if he could reach space, like. Teacher said that people would send monkeys up in rockets a hundred years ago," another boy piped up, sounding pleased with himself. "Figured we'd try the same out ta sea like a note in a bottle."

"You are so not doing that!" Selene yelped.

"Yeah, 'ow you gonna stop us?"

"You wanna say that to the police?" Alan threatened.

"Police? Yeah righ', like yer gonna jus' call up the police like they actually care. An' then wot, 'ave em come running on the say so of a nobody? Fer this? I don't think so, mate. They don't give a crap."

"Listen up you little shit," Selene started, rapidly losing patience. "You're not getting that…Whatever that is-"

"Rat," one of the kids helpfully offered.

"Rat," Selene continued with a little shudder of horror at the fact that they had gone to all the trouble of capturing a dirty rat off the street just to do something cruel to it. "You're not getting it back and you're not going to hurt it. What's wrong with you all?"

"He's been to space," Adam suddenly piped up, like he was only just catching up to the conversation but still missing the main point, pointing at Alan helpfully.

"Space, yeah right," another of the boys, a weedy looking string bean that had previously been hiding near the back of the pack, looking at Alan judgingly. None of the boys looked particularly bothered by their threats or the fact that Selene was practically spitting, she was so angry.

"Al," she demanded, determined to win the little shits respect. "Show them that clip you took last Saturday, the one on your board."

"We can all board, you ain't nothing special," the mouthpiece sneered, not impressed in the slightest.

Alan pulled out his phone, fiddled with it for a second then showed them the screen where a video was playing, taken from his vlogging drone as he boogied around outside Five on his astroboard. The dark heavens were clearly visible all around him while the earth spun quietly below, and there, if you looked closely, was John, in the background, sitting on the outside of the gravity ring, clearly doing all the work while Alan filmed for Brandon’s channel. The Alan on screen zoomed in a loop the loop, the drone following, the camera angle changing to show Three securely docked to Five.

“That actually is space!” one kid gasped.

“And that’s...that’s…” another stuttered.

“Thunderbird THREE!” someone screamed in excitement.

“Still think I’m a nobody that the police won’t listen to?” Alan asked casually as he pocketed his phone. "Maybe I should skip the police and go straight to the GDF? What do you think, Sel?"

"Yep, sounds like a plan to me. They take animal cruelty very seriously, you know."

The ring leader visibly deflated before their eyes, but he valiantly tried to hold on to his ‘couldn’t give a shit’ attitude.

“So you know some people, what’s that got ta do with anythin’? You ain’t the boss here.”

“Knock it off, Wendle, it’s over,” one boy ordered, rolling his eyes.

"Wendle?" Alan mouthed to Selene who shrugged in return. Never had a kid looked less like a Wendle in the entire world.

“Yeah, I never wanted to do this in the first place,” another joined in.

The first one to have spoken walked away, followed by another, then the other that had spoken. Others trailing after them until the small group had dispersed as if it had never existed, all of them hurrying off down the beach with calls for getting donuts or having to head home.

Wendle managed to stand his ground for less than a minute before he gave in.

“Keep the stupid rat then!” he yelled, taking off after his friends.

Adam, being Adam, waved goodbye like it was the most normal thing in the world, still holding the rat filled box.

Alan let out the breath he’d been holding, visibly shaking, either from anger or adrenaline. He had never been one for confrontation no matter what form it took or who it involved.

“You did good, babe,” Selene praised, giving him a hug.

“Yeah, good, little dude,” Adam agreed, “here, have this, I insist,” he handed him the box with the rat in it like it was some great prize.

“Erm, thanks,” Alan said, gingerly accepting the box of rat, which rustled as the creature inside shifted around. He held the box for a second, looking completely bemused and a little disgusted, suddenly having a very real feeling of compassion for John when he walked in on Selene and Scott doing something weird.

“What are we going to do with the rat?” he finally asked Selene, who was the only one there since Adam had wandered off to rescue the stuffed animals they had abandoned, snatching up Alan’s dropped bag of donuts and picking one out to munch on.

“I don’t know,” Selene admitted, “I guess we should take it somewhere to release it. Not around here though, maybe back at Mum’s.”

“I guess,” Alan reluctantly agreed, not liking the idea of sitting in a car with a wild rat in a box.

Since they had gained another tag along, even if it was in a box, they decided to cut the day short, knowing they couldn't drag the rat around with them all day. It had clearly suffered enough, what with being caught and stuffed in a box and having survived a narrow brush with death. It would be better for them to take it straight home and let it go in the relative safety of the garden before it got even more stressed out.

"I'll drive," Selene insisted, leaving Alan to hold the rat in the back seats, Adam calling shotgun so he could 'pick the tunes, man'.

With Selene in the driving seat it was a far shorter, not to mention less frustrating, journey back to Casa de Tempest.

To Selene's intense relief their mother was still out when they got back. She would have pitched a fit if she'd seen them releasing a rat into her garden, she'd never go out there again.

Adam wandered off the second they got home, muttering something about a tofu log, leaving them alone to release the beast.

"You can do the honours," Selene smiled, nodding at the box he still held. "Since you were the one to perform the daring rescue. Seriously, you did good today, sweetheart, but I'm really starting to think that I need to stop taking a Tracy with me whenever I go places, you're all the same, nothing but trouble."

Alan blushed at the praise, as always finding it slightly uncomfortable to be the center of attention in such a way, but still happy to get the validation that he'd done the right thing. With so many big brothers who had all been there and done that before he had a lot to live up to and often felt like he couldn't quite match up to them.

Taking the box over to the bushes near the fence where Selene had indicated, he opened the flaps and stepped back to give the little guy some room.

The rat didn't move at first, staying inside the box, obviously scared by its experiences. They stayed quiet, giving it time to make up its mind. Finally they saw the box wobble as the rat made its tentative way out.

"Shit!" Selene yelped, launching herself off her seat so fast Alan barely saw her move.

"Sel, what are you…doing," he finished, stunned to see her hit the ground, the rat cradled protectively against her chest.

"Help me up," she wheezed and he did as she bid, helping her to her feet as her hands were occupied.

"What's wrong? Why did you catch it?"

"Allie, look," she carefully opened her hands, just a little. A small, pink nose poked out, followed by a pure white snout, a grey face and perfect pink petal ears.

"Is that…?"

"A domestic rat, yes. This was either someone's pet or it's come from a store. We can't let him go, he'll never survive in the wild."

"Wow, he's so cute. Can I hold him? He won't bite me will he?"

"I don't know, he seems tame enough but he's had a fright today so I can't promise anything." She carefully placed the rat in Alan's outstretched hands.

The rat, far from looking terrified, seemed to be perfectly fine now it was out of the box. It sat down on its haunches and began to wash its face with its little paws, one grey, one white.

"Aww, he's great," Alan cooed, cupping the rat in one hand so he could stroke it gently with the other. "I've always wanted a pet."

Selene sighed, knowing exactly what was coming next, there was no escaping it, it was going to happen…

"Can I keep him?"

***

"We gotta move fast," Selene instructed. "I've got the cage and the bedding. Have you got the food?"

"Yep," Alan held up the bag with the food, treats and water bottle they had purchased on their way home. The rat was curled up in his new travel bag, which was hanging from Alan's shoulder.

"Right, we make a break for it, we go straight to your room, don't look back no matter what happens and avoid John and Scott at all costs. Got it?"

"Got it," he nodded, grinning happily.

"They're gonna kill me," she sighed, not that there was much she could do about it. "OK, let's go!"

They raced up the back stairs from the hangars, straight to the upper floors of the villa where the bedrooms were situated, bypassing the more populated communal areas and managing to avoid any and all Tracys.

They dived into Alan's room, Selene struggling a little, burdened as she was with a three storey cage. Alan cleared a space on his desk and took the cage from her.

While Alan set up the cage, filling it with fresh bedding and tasty foods, Selene made herself at home on Alan's bed, the rat happily perched on her chest, enjoying an ear fondle.

"I didn't know you were back," a voice called from the hallway, accompanied by the sound of footsteps.

Selene and Alan both jumped, their heads turning guilty towards the door they had neglected to shut where a suspicious looking spaceman stood.

"Hey, gorgeous husband of mine, I've missed you!" Selene chirped, trying to divert his attention as she quickly grabbed the rat and stuffed it in the pocket of the hoodie she'd stolen from Adam.

John gave her a look that said he'd seen everything.

"What's that?"

"What's what?" she answered, trying to look innocent.

"That tail sticking out of your pocket."

"Tail? What tail?" she poked the tail gently back inside.

"Why does Alan have a cage on his desk that he's trying, unsuccessfully I might add, to hide by standing in front of it?"

"To put Gordon in?"

One sleek ginger eyebrow rose and they both knew they were wasting their time. They were well and truly busted.

Alan held out his hand and Selene passed over the rat, who was none the worse for its impromptu expedition into the depths of her pocket. It sat quietly in his hands, happily nibbling on a piece of cereal bar that had already been occupying his hiding place.

"Where did that come from?" John's foot tapped out a rhythm as he waited for them to spill the beans, leaning against the door frame, his arms folded.

"Have I told you how hot you look when you're all grumpy and intense like this?" Selene tried.

"Where did you get the rat?" he repeated ignoring her blatant attempts at distraction.

"The beach," Alan admitted, caving immediately under the big bro gaze.

"The beach?"

"Yep," Alan looked at Selene for backup, cradling the rat who didn't seem to care about any of the drama he was causing.

"Some boys had him in a box and they were going to tie it to some balloons and let it go but Alan spotted them and stopped them," she explained.

John glanced at the rat, who was looking very adorable and fat.

Ever the master of managing her husband, Selene got to her feet and crossed the room to wrap her arms around John's middle.

"Alan was great, he sprung into action before I even knew what was going on. He rescued him, and really, isn't that what International Rescue does? Rescue people?"

"That's not a person, that's a rat," John argued, but she could tell he was weakening.

"Did I mention that I missed you?" she grinned, standing on tiptoes to place a little kiss on his chin.

John's sigh of surrender was epic.

"I'm banning you from ever leaving the house again with any of my brothers. What next, a dolphin with Gordon?

"No, don't be silly. We couldn't bring a dolphin home in my car."

John rolled his eyes ignoring his wife to face his brother.

"Does that thing have a name?"

"Yep," Alan answered, grinning proudly as he moved closer, holding the rat out for inspection.

"John, meet Fuzz Aldrin."

#alan tracy #selene tempest #adam tempest #John Tracy #fabfivefeb #seaside #day out #thunderbirds are go #thunderbirdsarego #thunderbirds #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction

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xhxhxhx · 4 years ago

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Rick Perlstein, Reaganland (Simon & Schuster, 2020):

AT THE SAME TIME, HOWEVER, a separate anti-liberal backlash was taking root. It was spurred by summer after summer of race riots, and its political base was not business but middle-class homeowners, who blamed civil rights and the War on Poverty for a civilization-threatening breakdown in law and order. Business was largely on the liberal side of this issue—like the author of a 1966 article in the Harvard Business Review predicting “riots and arson and spreading slums” if “the businessman does not accept his rightful role as leader in the push for the goals of the ‘Great Society’ (or whatever tag he wants to give it).”

No, business’s backlash, its emergence as a [class for itself], came a little bit later, in response to a new, and different, sort of liberalism—one whose buzzwords were “environmentalism” and “consumerism,” and which, unlike Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, placed corporate power squarely in its sights.

Date its origin to the summer of 1967. Around the same time Congress was responding to middle-class constituent anger over black riots by voting down a modest bill funding rodent control in the slums, a remarkable hearing was held by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington State. Magnuson had been approached by a Seattle physician who described a “chronic, unrelenting procession of burned and scarred children” in his work at Seattle Children’s Hospital, caused by the sort of flammable fabrics that had supposedly been outlawed by the Flammable Fabrics Act of 1953. That law, however, had been written by industry lobbyists. Back then, Commerce Committee members were classed by what industry they served: “textile senators,” “trucking senators,” “railroad senators,” “tobacco senators” (the leading tobacco senator was the former president of the Tobacco Institute). They sponsored protectionist laws written by their benefactors—like the Wool Products Labeling Act, which banned manufacturers from selling a product as wool if it contained a single strand of recycled or synthetic fiber; or bills fixing prices for legacy companies. The process was so corrupt that when Chairman Magnuson hired a young lawyer in 1964 named Michael Pertschuk to run the committee’s portfolio of consumer products legislation, the fellow he replaced congratulated him on all the price-fixed products, from audio equipment to toasters, that he soon would be getting for free.

This all would soon be a thing of the past.

Magnuson had been a fisheries senator and an aviation senator. After almost losing his seat in 1962, however, he reinvented himself aggressively as a new kind of liberal legislative entrepreneur: a consumerist senator. He put Pertschuk to work toughening up the limp Flammable Fabrics Act. A textile industry lobbyist replied “blood would run in the halls of Congress” before his industry let it pass. But the hearings Pertschuk staged in July of 1967 were a masterpiece of legislative melodrama. The Seattle doctor testified: “In all honesty, I must say I do not consider it a triumph when the life of a severely burned child is saved.… Death may be more merciful.” A beloved CBS News commentator told the story of his eleven-year-old daughter, burned nearly to death when a cotton blouse that met federal safety standards combusted when a match was dropped on it. A representative of the Cotton Textile Council boasted of the “admirable” results produced by its standards committee. The square-jawed and stentorian Magnuson replied:

“How often does your standards committee meet?”

“Regularly, Senator.”

How often, Magnuson followed up, before they’d received his recent letter warning them of impending congressional action?

“Ten years,” the lobbyist admitted.

The amendments passed the committee unanimously, then both houses, virtually unchanged. President Johnson signed the bill with Magnuson by his side. The following day he signed the first update to meat inspection law since the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, with Upton Sinclair, the novelist whose 1905 exposé The Jungle had inspired it, standing next to him. A landmark “truth in lending” bill went to conference six weeks later. The former senator Paul Douglas, a New Deal economist who had lost his seat in 1966 largely because white Chicago factory workers turned their back on him because of his advocacy for a failed bill outlawing housing discrimination, had been pressing for it since the 1950s, but was defeated in the Finance Committee session after session. Now, however, it passed the committee unanimously.

The floodgates opened: to laws fighting deceptive practices by door-to-door salesmen and moving companies, outlawing hazardous radiation from electronics equipment, closing gaps in poultry and fish inspection, demanding accuracy in product warranties, regulating cigarettes. “Consumer Interests: Legislative Derby Has Begun,” one Midwestern newspaper reported early in 1968. That headline appeared just as Congress voted to outlaw housing discrimination in a desperate response to the riots following the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The version that passed, however, weaker than one killed in 1966, added near-police-state provisions limiting militant blacks’ freedom to travel. Riots had burned down Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. “Consumerism” sprung forth phoenix-like from the ashes.

Politicians discovered that scourging industry greed was the smart political play. It certainly was for Magnuson, who glided to reelection in 1970 with ads that bragged, “There’s a law that forced Detroit to make cars safer—Senator Magnuson’s law. There’s a law that keeps the gas pipelines under your house from blowing up—Senator Magnuson’s law. There’s a law that makes food labels tell the truth—Senator Magnuson’s law. Keep the big boys honest; let’s keep Maggie in the Senate.”

It heralded a remarkable shift in public opinion. In 1966, 55 percent of Americans had a “great deal of confidence in the leaders of major companies.” Five years later, the percentage was 27 percent. Between 1968 and 1970, the portion believing “business tries to strike a fair balance between profits and the interest of the public” fell from 70 percent to 33 percent. Wrote pollster Lou Harris, “People have come to be skeptical about American ‘know-how,’ worried that it might pollute, contaminate, poison, or even kill them.”

[...]

IDEALISTIC YOUNG LAWYERS FLOCKED TO the organizations [Ralph] Nader began forming [in the late 1960s]. The first product of these “Nader’s Raiders” was a 185-page report on the Federal Trade Commission, a notoriously toothless regulatory body that took, on average, four years to investigate every complaint, punishing the guilty with unenforceable orders to cease and desist. The monograph was couriered to 150 key journalists out of the back of a Raider’s Volkswagen. It called the FTC a “self-parody of bureaucracy, fat with cronyism, torpid through inbreeding unusual even for Washington, manipulated by the agents of commercial predators, impervious to government or citizen monitoring,” ridden with “alcoholism, spectacular lassitude, and office absenteeism.”

By then the president was Richard Nixon, who had to accede to the new anti-corporate mood just to maintain political credibility. He ordered up his own FTC investigation. It arrived at similar conclusions. So Nixon replaced the FTC director with the shrewdest bureaucrat in his administration, Caspar “Cap the Knife” Weinberger, who roared out of the starting gate with actions against dubious advertising claims of such blue-chip products as Hi-C, Listerine, Wonder Bread, and McDonald’s.

Nixon then signed a landmark mine safety law and the National Environmental Policy Act, establishing the first new independent federal regulatory agency since 1938, then added another with a law authorizing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. That project was inherited from the Johnson administration, and at first, Nixon’s version was so mild that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed it. But the “creature that ultimately stomped out of Congress,” a historian recounted, was a “Frankenstein of Chamber members’ nightmares.” Federal agents had never had the authority to inspect individual businesses for health and safety violations. OSHA gave them the power to do it without warrants, then levy hefty fines with no avenue for appeal. Richard Nixon didn’t dare veto it.

Nor did he veto tough amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1963 that included something nearly unprecedented in previous environmental legislation: specific deadlines for compliance. It also enjoined the new EPA from considering costs in establishing ambient air standards—inspiring Robert Griffin, a Republican automotive senator from Michigan, to snarl that the 1975 deadline for limiting auto exhaust pollutants “holds a gun to the head of the American automobile industry in a very dangerous game of roulette.” The technology to implement the standards, he complained, did not exist. Democrat Edmund Muskie of Maine, the leader of senate environmentalists, responded, “This deadline is based not, I repeat, not, on economic and technological feasibility, but on considerations of public health.… Detroit has told the nation that Americans cannot live without the automobile. This legislation would tell Detroit that if this is the case, then they must make an automobile with which the American people can live.” The version that passed the Senate 73–2 was stronger than what had been debated in any hearing. A cowed GM lobbyist told the National Journal that “the atmosphere was such that offering amendments seemed pointless,” and that “I wouldn’t think of asking anybody to vote against the bill.”

The Senate Commerce Committee, that former redoubt of trucking senators, railroad senators, textile senators, and tobacco senators, became a regulator’s paradise. At confirmation hearings for a new FTC head, Frank Moss congratulated the agency for having “stretched its powers to provide a credible countervailing public force to the enormous economic and political power of huge corporate conglomerates which today dominate American enterprise. That is as it should be.” Then one of Moss’s conservative colleagues, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, asked the nominee to “become a real zealot in terms of consumer affairs,” tough enough that “these big businesspeople will complain.”

In 1971, Webster’s added the word consumerism to its Third New International Dictionary. A book called America, Inc.: Who Owns and Operates the United States? coauthored by the Washington Post’s consumer reporter and original Nader champion Morton Mintz rode the bestseller list for months. Children begged at bedtime to hear Dr. Seuss’s new book The Lorax, in which a pitiless capitalist “biggers” his business by harvesting every last Truffula tree, crying triumphantly, “Business is business and business must grow!” and leaving behind a barren hellscape. Gore Vidal published a cover article in Esquire touting Nader for president, and 78 percent of columnist Mike Royko’s readers who sent back a questionnaire he published said they wanted him as the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Another new independent regulatory agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was born. Congress passed bills requiring childproof packaging for poisonous substances, killing federal subsidies for a supersonic transport plane, restricting lead in house paint, and establishing safety standards for recreational boats. Nixon signed them—not because he was a closet liberal, but because, as his aide Bryce Harlow, a former lobbyist for Procter & Gamble, delicately explained to the American Advertising Federation, though “President Nixon profoundly respects the critical contribution made by industry to the vitality and strength of the American economy, if this respect were to over-influence his actions, I am certain that the fall of 1972 would bring a new and hostile team to the White House.”

Nader had by then established a permanent presence in the capital, based in a decrepit mansion which had been slated for demolition in the down-market Dupont Circle neighborhood, where, amid a shambles of borrowed third-hand furniture and wooden fruit crates stuffed with books and files, staggeringly devoted young Ivy League–trained Nader’s Raiders institutionalized their hero’s agenda. The neighborhood was pocked with similar offices. Common Cause, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Nader’s own Public Citizen, Environmental Action, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Consumer Federation of America were all established in 1969 or 1970. Nader started six new organizations in 1971 alone, including Public Citizen, a membership group that raised more than $1 million from sixty-two thousand donors in its first year.

That was another new pattern. Throughout the seventies, pundits cast their eye on declining election turnout and agonized over voter apathy. But apathy at the polls did not extend to joining consumer and environmental organizations, whose memberships exploded, thanks in part to the same computer-based direct mail technology that Richard Viguerie employed. Nearly one hundred thousand households contributed at least $70 to not one, not two, but three progressive membership groups. Major foundations pitched in, too. Thanks to the shower of cash—and because most new consumer and environmental laws awarded attorneys’ fees to plaintiffs who sued to enforce them—lawsuits against corporations increased exponentially.

George McGovern considered Nader as his running mate. (He replied, “I’m an advocate for justice and that doesn’t mix with the needs of politics.”) Nixon vetoed the 1972 Clean Water Act, for its “staggering, budget-wrecking” $24 billion cost—but his veto was overridden with considerable Republican votes. In October, he signed a law establishing the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the third new regulatory agency in three years.

Then, however, following his landslide reelection, he proposed a radical right-wing budget that Newsweek described as “one of the most significant American political documents since the dawning of the New Deal,” intended to “pull the government back from the proliferating social concerns of the years from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson.” Thanks to Watergate, he never got the chance. Senator Sam Ervin’s televised hearings had reverberated with accounts of briefcases full of corporate cash laundered through the Mexican subsidiaries of blue-chip firms like American Airlines, Goodyear, and 3M. In the midst of it came the first energy crisis, which a majority of Americans—and some senators—believed the big energy companies had cooked up to line their pockets. Pollster Daniel Yankelovich found that 70 percent of Americans believed big business controlled government through illegal bribes. And that was before spectacular revelations, following Nixon’s resignation, that the same slush funds companies maintained to bribe Nixon were also used to pay off foreign officials. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief of enforcement was gobsmacked. “Until two or three years ago,” he said, “I genuinely thought the conduct of business… was generally rising. But what can you say about the revelations of the last couple or three years?”

Under President Ford, government checks on corporate power expanded yet further. One of the first laws he signed was the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which strictly enforced the pension promises companies made to their employees, placing thousands of company’s books under federal scrutiny for the first time. In 1975 he signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, a landmark law demanding that every American car manufacturer achieve a “Corporate Average Fuel Economy,” or CAFE, of eighteen miles per gallon by the 1978 model year. That meant every manufacturer had to redesign every car on the drawing boards. An automotive think tank estimated that it would cost manufacturers $60 billion to $80 billion, virtually their entire store of capital assets, and made the companies fear for their very survival. A group of automotive lobbyists approached the chief of staff of Edmund Muskie’s environmental subcommittee, Leon Billings, with a memo suggesting some ideas on the bill. Billings fashioned a paper airplane out of the document and sailed it straight over their heads.

This passage made me change my mind about Richard Nixon.

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semperintrepida · 4 years ago

Text

The Sellout, chapter three

three: the bad news

"So are you going to look at it, or what?"

Ellen was talking, from her favorite seat on the couch with the best view of the register, but Kyra just stared at the jar on the counter, at the card lying face down and innocent on top of all the other cards inside it. She knew damn well what company that card came from — she'd seen the flash of green as it spun in the air from being dunked into the jar with savage glee.

Starbucks green.

"Kyra?" Ellen's voice was closer now. Right at the counter.

Kyra wordlessly pushed the jar in her direction, and Ellen pulled up a sleeve and stuck her hand in, her head tilting into a question. Is this it?

Kyra nodded.

Ellen fished the card out of the jar, her eyes widening as she read it. "Motherfucker," she said. "You were right — she is bad news."

"Show me." Kyra held out her hand.

The card landed in her palm, and as she flipped it over, her fingertips slid across bumps embossed onto its surface. Braille. On a business card. There was nothing a billion dollar company wouldn't do to give itself the tiniest edge over the competition.

The Starbucks logo greeted her on the front of the card. No surprise there. She scanned the text, eyes glancing over the woman's name — Kassandra Agiadis — but her name was less important to Kyra than her title: Vice President of International Real Estate Development.

The words on the card began to smear, and it was like falling while roped in during a climb; that sudden, twisting spin before the world dropped out from under her.

Real estate development. What's the premium for a high visibility retail space in this neighborhood?

She considered the card in her hand — amazing how something so weightless could be so crushing — then tore it in half, flinging the pieces onto the counter hard enough for them to fly off the edge on the other side.

Ellen's head swiveled to follow their flight path, and then she silently walked past the counter and stooped to pick the pieces up from the floor.

Kyra knew this day would come, but like all disasters, it had sat off in the distance until the moment it showed up on her doorstep. For years, Starbucks had been content to keep mostly to the west side of the river, with seventeen stores crammed between I-405 and the waterfront.

Seventeen stores. Down in the Pearl District, there was a Starbucks on every fucking corner, choking out all but a handful of indie shops. But the river had made a good moat, and with Starbucks contained, she'd been able to make a decent living within the rougher, more corrugated edges of the Central Eastside and Distillery Row.

She'd survived Dutch Bros putting in drive-throughs north and south of her on MLK, the coffee shortage of 2011 that tripled the price of beans, and the slow sprouting of competing coffee shops across the neighborhood. She'd managed to stay on the right side of the profitability line, but she'd been clinging to survival by the smallest of handholds for months now. One slip would be enough to send everything plummeting to earth.

She should have taken Thal's money and opened up more shops. She should have sold to Stumptown when she had the chance. She should have—

Her eyes began to sting. She resisted the urge to flee to the storeroom; if she went back there and let the tears leak out, she wouldn't be able to stop them again. And running off wasn't an option even if she wanted to — she was the only one working this shift and someone had to watch the fort.

She breathed in slowly, breathed out, until the prickle in her eyes faded enough for her to push the retail mask back into place.

Ellen was still standing there, watching her. "You'll figure something out, Kyra. You always do," she said, placing the torn halves of the card on the counter. "Hang on to this shit, huh? Just in case."

Ellen made it halfway back to the couch when Kyra spoke up again. "Do you have your laptop with you?"

"How else would I abuse your wifi?"

"Can I borrow it for a few minutes?"

Ellen's grin was feral. "I thought you'd never ask."

.oOo.

It took a while to get the laptop sorted, much of it involving frantic clicking and password after password as Ellen rambled something about needing a VPN and not trusting the government, but eventually Kyra found herself looking at an empty browser window with a cursor blinking lazily in its address bar.

"Where are we stalking first?" Ellen asked, rubbing her palms together in anticipation.

Kyra pulled up LinkedIn and typed "Kassandra Agiadis" into the search field, and when the results appeared, the photo at the top of the list smiled a familiar smile, the woman's confidence captured in pixel form along with that sharp glint in her eyes.

Kyra opened the profile.

Executive leader and consummate strategist with a proven record of results in aligning real estate acquisitions and portfolios with business goals...

She skimmed the suit-speak until she reached the background part of the profile.

MBA, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology BS, Economics, Stanford University

A lengthy list of job titles followed. Kassandra had only been at Starbucks a little more than a year. Before that, stints at Apple, Chipotle, CVS. The list went on. She'd rarely stayed longer than three years in a position.

Ellen whistled. "That's a lot of different companies."

"She's a mercenary," Kyra said. "Hired to do something specific and then move on."

Kyra opened another tab and searched Instagram, finding the woman's profile easily enough. The grid of photos featured a lot of concrete and metal, clean lines and minimalism, more Dieter Rams and Mid-Century Modern than any ostentatious displays of money being tossed around. Kyra kept scrolling. Except for the cars. And motorcycles. Apparently Kassandra liked her cars fast and her motorcycles retro.

"It's all very sterile, don't you think?" Kyra said, tapping a finger against her lips.

"I'll say. It's fucking fake. No one lives like that."

"I'm not sure all of it's fake, but it's definitely curated." She wiggled the cursor over a photo of the interior of a cabin, blonde wood and floor-to-ceiling windows framing a view of a lake. "She's paying someone to manage this for her."

"What's the fucking point of that?"

"Maintaining an image. Projecting a sense of old money." But something didn't add up, and Kyra couldn't pin down what it was.

She opened a third tab, this time for a good ol' Google search, and skimmed the list of results. A press release announcing Kassandra's hiring at Starbucks. More press releases. Talks at various conferences. Nothing particularly revelatory in the first few pages, but then a headline caught Kyra's eye and she clicked through.

Agiadis leads Stanford to national championship win

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Led by a scintillating performance from Kassandra Agiadis, Stanford won its second consecutive national championship in a come-from-behind victory over rival Tennessee on Monday night.

Agiadis scored 24 points, muscled her way to 12 rebounds, and was two assists away from a triple-double as she powered Stanford to a 76-72 win, including sinking three crucial free throws in the final 34 seconds, in a game where Stanford found themselves in an early 12-4 deficit at the end of the first quarter.

"She wants to win more than anything, and she showed that tonight," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said of Agiadis. "We were in a hole after that first quarter, but Kassandra lifted this team up and said, 'Whatever it takes.' She simply refused to lose."

The article was old, and the photos accompanying the text were small, but unmistakably her: Kassandra, basketball in hand, pushing past two orange-clad players under the hoop. There was plenty of broad-shouldered muscle in that white Stanford jersey, but it was Kassandra's eyes, bright and clear with relentless focus, that caught Kyra's attention.

Ellen snorted from over Kyra's shoulder. "So she's a fucking jock. Why am I not surprised?"

Kyra didn't respond, too distracted by the second photo, which showed Kassandra surrounded by her teammates in a storm of confetti as she held an enormous trophy over her head in triumph, her smile as radiant as the sun.

And now she wore a suit instead of a basketball jersey and cut real estate deals for fun and profit. Seemed she was good at it too, but did it ever make her smile like she had while holding that trophy?

Kyra hoped the answer to that question was no.

.oOo.

She drifted through Wednesday and Thursday, irritable by day and sleepless at night, and when Friday evening arrived with its expanse of free time, she made three attempts to dig into Green's translation of the poetry of Catullus before setting the book aside and walking out to the shed in her back garden where she'd built her bouldering wall.

The faint scent of sweat, chalk, and dusty earth greeted her inside. It was her sanctuary, her shrine to defying gravity. Every handhold was as familiar as a lover.

But tonight she couldn't even climb the simplest problems. Her toes kept slipping and her fingers faltered.

She'd lost her grip.

Eventually she gave up and lay on her back on the crash pad, staring at the curving shadows the holds cast upon the wall, thinking of how problems she'd solved a thousand times could suddenly become so impossible.

.oOo.

Five minutes before closing on Saturday night, Kyra was wiping down the fridge under the counter when the door opened and a presence entered the shop. Maybe it was the way her visitor displaced the air in the otherwise empty room, or the sound of heavy footsteps, but Kyra knew exactly who she'd find when she stood up again.

Kassandra was standing next to the table closest to the register. This time, she wasn't wearing a suit — just an untucked linen shirt over tailored slacks — and she'd pulled her hair up into a loose chignon. The effect was to make her seem casual and relaxed, but no less moneyed.

Kyra wiped her hands on a clean rag to keep her eyes off the intersecting curves of Kassandra's jawline and neck. "Are you going to ask me to make you another fucking cappuccino? Because if so, I'm closed."

That drew a short laugh from Kassandra. "No. As much as I loved the one you made for me, even I'm not evil enough to ask for another this late."

"Then why are you here? So you can gloat before you put me out of business?"

"I don't want to put you out of business." Kassandra pulled a chair out from the table and made herself right at home, stretching her legs out before her. "I want your business."

Kyra's eyebrows lifted.

"I'll buy this," Kassandra said, as easily as if she was ordering a drink. She gestured around the room. "All of it. Right now."

"You can't be serious."

"I'm very serious. How much would it take to get you to say yes?"

Kyra walked out from behind the counter to the narrow wooden bar that ran along the windows, and began flipping stools over on top of it. "Never mind buying me out — why are you here? Don't you have some lackey to work deals like this for you?"

Kassandra shrugged. "I like your coffee."

"Enough to buy my shop." She tugged the pull cord on the OPEN sign to turn it off.

"It beats the alternative."

Kyra skirted around Kassandra's outstretched legs on her way past, and when she reached the counter, she leaned back against it and crossed her arms. "And that would be..."

"We put in a new flagship store down the street from you on MLK — and you take your chances."

Ten years ago, Kyra would have been thrilled at the news that Starbucks was opening a store nearby. In those heady days, Starbucks was a tide that lifted every coffee shop around it. It was Starbucks that taught the average American that there was better coffee out there than freeze-dried instant — and that it was worth paying more than fifty cents a cup for. The spillover in foot traffic from a nearby Starbucks could launch a shop's profits to stratospheric heights.

Those days were long gone. Coffee had become cutthroat and commoditized, and now people bitched that her lattes cost a nickle more than the ones they could get at Starbucks. Sure, there were people out there who cared that her coffee was sourced from a roaster who paid a fair price for beans from small, family-run farms, but there weren't enough customers like them to keep her lights on and her espresso machine humming. So she kept trimming her margins, trying to stay competitive on price while offering better product, knowing it was unsustainable in the long run.

Kassandra's offer was tempting. She could take the money, take a real vacation for the first time in years, make the funds last long enough to find a job, somewhere. Fuck, she could go and work for Thal at his chain of shops over in Bend. She'd probably make more money with a lot less stress, and she'd even have time to climb—

The sound of the door opening again brought her back to reality. A man stumbled into the shop, disheveled and dirty, wearing an oversized puffy coat and a shredded pair of work pants. He shuffled closer, stopping a few steps away from Kassandra. His body swayed with the restless twitching of an addict, too far gone to know where he was, much less care about sweltering in a heavy winter coat during a spring heatwave.

Trouble piling on.

"I'm sorry sir, we're closed," Kyra said as neutrally as she could, threading the line between being welcoming and unwelcoming.

His eyes darted to and fro, unfocused, and he kept shifting his weight from foot to foot while he gestured aimlessly around him.

Kassandra eased herself to her feet. "Hey man, what do you need?" she asked, her voice taking on that even, reasonable tone that most people used when talking to the unhinged.

"Got any spare change?" He was shaking now, deep in his need for another hit.

Kassandra slowly lifted her hands. "Sorry, I'm all out," she said. Then she nodded back towards Kyra. "She's all out too."

Kyra shook her head apologetically.

Her movement caught his attention, and he peered at her with manic eyes. "What you doing here? Huh? Huh?" He reached up and pulled angrily at the hair above his ears. "My house. Mine."

"Nah," Kassandra said. "You're all turned around. Your house is out that way." She motioned towards the door.

He didn't seem to hear her, his eyes hardening to glare at Kyra as his face twisted. "You!" he shouted, and then the moment crystallized into a series of quick-cut images, unfurling into a jerky slideshow: the man lunging towards her, Kassandra sliding in between to intercept him, Kyra dodging out of the way as he slammed into Kassandra, knocking her off her feet...

Kyra could only watch helplessly as it put Kassandra's head on a collision course with the display case on the counter.

Chapter three of The Sellout. Continued in chapter four...

Author's Note: I've taken some liberties with NCAA women's basketball history here. Apologies to UConn fans — I've borrowed a couple of your titles and given them to Stanford. Creative license, eh?

#kyssandra #kassandra #ac odyssey #coffee shop au #sorry this update took so fucking long #the sellout

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harryandmolly · 5 years ago

Text

Complicit // 11

summary: Shawn is under more pressure than he’s ever known. He craves release and comfort, the simplicity of sex. He gets more than he bargained for.

warnings: language, NSFW, a bulldozer

WC: 6.1k

-----------

Penny stops outside the spotless glass doors of Silver’s home and uses the reflection to primp one last time.

She’s in fine form today, at least on the outside. In a sleek peach-toned Cushnie pencil dress and the first pair of Louboutins she ever purchased (the nude ones with the pointed toes), she means business. She’s the kind of put together that puts the fear of god into the hearts of every man she walks past. She craves that kind of control right now.

She can’t control her feelings, she can’t control his. But she can control her wardrobe and her hair and the reports she runs for the monthly La Splendeur financials. She fights to focus on what she can control.

Silver’s housekeeper walks her back to the library. Silver in a pantsuit black as night sits in sharp relief against her walls stacked high with colorful books. The first time Penny ever made Silver laugh was the first time Silver invited her here and Penny immediately commented on its resemblance to the Beast’s library in Beauty and the Beast.

Silver looks pleased to see her. Any residual weirdness from their last meeting is gone, at least visibly. She’s serving lapsang oolong from her English garden tea set today.

“Good morning, love. I do like your dress. And your necklace sits above it nicely.”

Penny lifts a hand like she wants to check it’s still there. She’s wearing Shawn’s necklace. It seems a waste to leave it in a box in a safe, where it’s been since Ava died. Silver herself said that. And it does go so well with the dress.

Penny smiles placidly. “Thank you. How was Monaco?”

Silver looks mischievous for a moment. Penny finds herself grinning back, enjoying the spark she sees.

“Hot. A little muggy. Terribly crowded.”

Silver’s expression doesn’t match her words.

“Who is she?” Penny laughs.

Silver lifts her chin in defiance. “Tell me I’m not that transparent.”

Penny snorts indelicately and sips her tea. “Silver, you’re as transparent as a cinderblock. But you forget how well I know you.”

The women exchange a meaningful look. Silver glances down at her perfect manicure.

“Her name is Sylvie. She owns a cafe on the Boulevard de Suisse. She makes the best mille feuille I’ve ever had.”

Penny’s eyebrows lift slightly. There’s something in Silver’s voice now that replaces the familiar mischief with which she talks about her romantic dalliances. It’s a little trembling, a little soft, a little warm. Penny attempts to remain stoic. Spooking her is the worst possible thing Penny could do.

“Wow. Sounds like a nice trip.”

Silver meets her eyes. “It was. I’ll be going back next week.”

Penny only barely manages to school her face out of a delighted grin. Silver shakes her head softly and opens her portfolio.

Numbers are up this summer from last. All the girls have been doing very well. Silver has interest in bringing on a few more, has gotten recommendations from girls on the roster, which is where the best talent comes from. Penny assures her that financially, they’re in an excellent position to expand.

“Speaking of expanding, how are things looking on the non-profit end?” Penny murmurs without looking up from her laptop. She can feel Silver’s curious gaze.

“Still tying up some legal loose ends in the back before we really move ahead,” Silver answers carefully.

Penny looks up now with her game face on. “Anything I can do to help us along? I’d like to get moving on it.”

Silver’s expression goes a little sour. She puts her teacup down more forcefully than necessary. Penny flinches.

“You were singing a different tune during our last meeting, love.”

The corners of Penny’s lips pull in slightly. “I don’t believe that’s true, I checked on the progress and you gave me an update and said it was slow. I’m checking again now and you say it’s still slow. So perhaps I should step in.”

Silver’s eyes narrow. “Please don’t forget how well I know you.”

The words are simple and somehow both threatening and loving. Penny’s stable facade breaks. She looks down.

“I know very well how long you’ve wanted to do this kind of work. I know how important this is to you. That’s why I was surprised when you seemed flippant about it last week.”

“I wasn’t flippant, I--”

“Penny, please. Don’t suggest that I can’t read you. It’s insulting to me and to our friendship.”

Penny’s mouth shuts. She feels like a scolded child.

“And now you’re getting impatient to get started. I don’t understand, my darling. Please. Explain this to me.”

Penny’s lips part. She hesitates and reaches for her teacup instead.

Silver softens. “You’re allowed to be a little lost, you know.”

Penny’s eyes shut as she chews on her lower lip. “Don’t like getting lost,” she mutters.

“None of us do, babe. But you need to choose your path now. You owe it to your clients and to this foundation.”

Penny’s expression goes dark. “Don’t make this about him.”

Silver eschews her infuriating wise owl gaze and leans into sympathy instead. She shakes her head slowly.

“I didn’t. You seem to have gotten there on your own.”

Penny’s face goes hot. Her chin quivers slightly. Silver reaches across the table and takes her hand. The physical contact freezes Penny in her tracks.

“Listen to me, my love. I know this is scary. Everything is changing on you right now. But you always knew you couldn’t escort forever. You always knew you wanted to help in a larger, more lasting way. I know he isn’t the reason you want to move forward with the foundation. But… it’s ok if he’s the reason you want to do it now.”

Penny’s jaw locks up. Her hand slips cold from her friend’s grasp. She gathers her folders and laptop and stands.

“I have to go.”

Her voice is a croak. Silver winces in response, but leans back in her seat and watches her go.

Well this is…. Not what he pictured.

Shawn’s not exactly sure what he envisioned when he thought about where Penny lives. It shifted depending on her mood when she was with him. Sometimes he imagined her living in a big, scary haunted house-looking mansion deep in the Hills. Sometimes he pictured a bright, vibrant penthouse in Santa Monica.

Not this. It’s so… normal.

It’s lovely, obviously. It’s a little cottage almost all by itself in the Studio City hills. She parks the leased Passat in the driveway and keeps the Aston Martin in the garage. She has a welcome mat that asks visitors to wipe their paws. Pammy’s leash is hanging from a railing on the porch.

He stands in front of her door for almost five minutes trying to prepare himself to walk into her private space and not become a walking heart eye emoji.

He’s in LA for 24 hours for meetings and a premiere with Bex. He has painters in his house, so they can’t go there. He doesn’t even have time for an overnight with her. So she takes him as an in call.

It’s standard procedure to have a driver meet the client at the courtesan’s house when she’s taking an in call, but Penny waved Gus off. Given that she’s a partner in the business, she has the power to do so. Gus sends her confirmation of Shawn’s wire transfer and tells her if she needs anything, anything at all, he’ll be close by at Jamie’s tennis tournament. He’s a little twitchy, she thinks, because actually, Penny’s never taken an in call before.

Pammy hears him walk up before she does, even over the soft crooning of “Songs for Young Lovers” on vinyl. With little sniffs and gruff grunts, Pammy jogs to the door to greet their guest.

The sun is behind him when she opens the door, casting him golden and glowing as he smiles at her. She smiles back.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he greets, and she’s beset with butterflies walking him into her foyer to meet her dog and breathe her air.

His attention turns almost immediately to Pammy, who’s very eagerly and politely sitting, thumping her tail and waiting to be noticed. Shawn doesn’t disappoint.

He crouches low, holds out his hand and ducks his head a little, looking non-threatening. “Hi. Are you Pammy?”

Pammy walks up for his inspection without answering him. She thoroughly sniffs the hand he offers and when she decides he’s decent enough to let in, she snuggles up against his chest for pets.

Shawn, having been recognized by Pammy for the puppy he is, lifts his head to look at Penny in triumph. “She likes me!”

“She does,” Penny agrees, flustered and glancing around her foyer like she’s looking for more personal items to clear out, though there wasn’t really anything there when she did a walk-through earlier, just the painting of the Las Vegas Strip in the 50s.

Shawn stands and pleasantly towers over her. His eyes flit to her lips as he smirks. He looks back up at her eyes for permission.

Penny tilts her head up and lets him kiss her, nice and soft and sweet. Probably too sweet. It reminds her of Silver’s words the day before. When he pulls away, she bites her lip.

“The premiere’s tonight?” Penny mutters weakly, walking him into the living room where the record player whirls and the blinds are open to the hills. Shawn gazes around, memorizing. He nods.

“I have to leave here at 4.”

Penny does some mental math. “Guess we better get started.”

She turns on her heel and plants her lips back on his. He catches her, a bit startled, whimpering into the firm set of her mouth. She backs him into the wall and slips her hands beneath his shirt, feeding on the perfect sizzle of his hot skin. He explores her mouth, keeping his hands on either side of her neck until she tells him otherwise. As he starts to run out of breath, he notices her hands are still and her lips aren’t moving against his with the same fervor. His brow puckers. He pulls away slightly.

“You ok?” he pants.

She nods and sucks him back in. Her thumbs work against the dips in his obliques and it makes him dizzy, but he still feels a disconnect. He settles further into the wall and tugs a little at her hair, feeling like a needy kid. She doesn’t react.

“Hey,” he tries again, pulling back more fully this time, “If you’re not into this, we really don’t have to do anything. Seriously.”

“What?” she asks dumbly.

Shawn goes pink. “I mean, we can just hang out. Or… I can go. It’s whatever.”

If she sent him away, he could totally pretend not to be devastated. No problem.

Penny chews the inside of her lip, then tilts her head forward to rest against his chest. “‘S not you.”

Shawn resists his desire to nuzzle his cheek against her hair. Instead, he cups his hands around her upper arms and rubs her softly.

“I’ve been having… a weird couple days.”

Shawn’s brows lift, but she doesn’t elaborate. He nods.

“Do you want to talk?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you… want me to go?”

Her pause before she shakes her head is the longest of his whole godforsaken life.

He feels a little desperate. “What can I do?”

She lifts her head from his chest. She looks worn and maybe a little panicked underneath. It rises in him in response.

“I don’t know,” she sighs.

Shawn absently combs his fingers through the ends of her hair. He looks around.

What helps him feel better when he’s distracted and wigging out a little? She does. Maybe he just has to be ok with the idea that he doesn’t have the same effect on her.

His heart thuds extra hard for a beat in his chest. Maybe he could.

Shawn sweeps his hands up to position his thumbs under her ears, tilting her face up.

“Do you want me to take care of you?” he breathes.

Her expression goes blank. She looks lost. He wets his lips and tries again, like he’s trying on a suit that he’s not sure fits.

He brushes his nose over her brow and hopes his voice is steady when he says, “You wanna be my good girl?”

Penny feels her hands, still resting on his sides, clench hard. The strangled gasp she releases sounds kind of like a moan. She’s suddenly very aware of him, of everything about him -- his light hint of cologne, the tenderness of his lips on her forehead as he smirks, the sheer size and broadness of him in her arms.

“That a yes?”

Words fail her. Her head is whistling like it’s ready to fly off her body. She’s glad he’s holding her up because otherwise her knees would’ve gone weak.

“I’ve… I mean, no one’s ever…”

“I know,” he soothes, surprised by his own confidence, but he supposes he learned it from her, “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll go easy on you.”

Penny recognizes the words. She’s probably said them before. Being on the receiving end is different. She thinks if anyone else tried them on for her, she’d laugh and pin them into a corner, reminding them who’s in charge.

But as he holds her, she can feel the way his desire to shoulder her burden is seeping off him. His gaze is steady. If he’s anxious at all about stepping into her shoes, she can’t see it.

Is she really about to do this? Is she ready to strip off all the armor she’s so carefully crafted and made a home of? It doesn’t even feel like armor anymore -- it’s a second skin, as close to her as she’s let anything get.

Her own responding certainty runs so deep it touches her trembling bones. She doesn’t feel like fighting it. She wants this with him, wherever it ends up taking them.

“Please.”

When her eyes drift open again, his are locked on her, virile and hungry and so fucking alive. She swears she could come just by looking at them. They watch her for a moment or two, then drop. He pries her claw-like hands off his body and holds them between his own. He cradles them against his lips, blinking up at her lazily, a single curl falling over his hot gaze.

“Where’s your bedroom?”

His words restart her breath. She nods behind him. He gestures toward the hallway she points down and follows her little steps as she guides him.

Her bedroom is bright, surrounded by windows on three walls in the corner of the house. The ceiling gables to a peak so it feels like a little tower. Her bed takes up most of the space -- it’s enormous with white wrought iron head and footboards and blood red sheets. It’s covered in dog hair -- he bets Pammy usually sleeps there with her.

He grins and spends time unapologetically studying. He can feel the way her eyes track him, waiting for his next move. He finds he enjoys being the cat to her mouse. He wasn’t sure it could feel natural, but he finds he wants to relieve her. This is the best way to do it.

He stops in front of a photo print on her wall, a black and white portrait. It’s a close up. Her hair is wet and slung around her face. She appears to be laughing so hysterically it’s almost a scream. Shawn recognizes it and is sure it came from the shoot she used in her La Splendeur portfolio. He glances over his shoulder at her to see her watching him with her hands folded.

“You’ve really never done this before? Not even before you started escorting?”

Penny shrugs. “No. I mean, I wasn’t always so bossy, but I’ve never been… a sub.”

Shawn turns, smiling. “Something tells me you’ve always been a little bossy.”

Penny’s eyes flash for a moment and he can see the domme in her, the one that will always be there, even when she needs a rest. It shoots a thrill up his spine. He gets to give her what she needs this time.

“I’m gonna take your clothes off now,” he says quietly, waiting for her nod before his fingers skip to the buttons of her shirt. He plucks at them, watching more freckled brown skin come out as he goes. He licks his lips, and then remembers he can taste her whenever the hell he wants. With a little murmur, he ducks his head and sucks on her collarbone right next to her throat. She mewls, tilting her head to accommodate him, dragging her hands up his sides.

Shawn stops. He bares his teeth against her shoulder. Her eyes fly open.

“Baby, you know the rules. No hands until I tell you.”

Penny’s chest tightens. She drops her grasp on him. From her shoulder, he watches her little hands clench into fists. He scoops her closer and sucks harder, working the rest of her buttons until he can shrug it off her shoulders. It flutters to their feet. Shawn starts in on the button of her boyfriend jeans, securing his lips now to the base of her throat to suck a twin burgundy mark. Penny’s breathing is heavy and erratic. She’s having trouble letting go.

Once he gets her clothes off, she’s left in a set of heathered gray Calvin Klein lingerie. He laughs. She preens a little.

“Did you do this on purpose?”

Penny sweeps her hair off her shoulders and looks down, licking her lips. “I fuck in my Calvins.”

Shawn’s eyes go dark. He shakes his head slowly. “No you don’t, honey. Take ‘em off.”

He steps back, rests his ass against her dresser and hopes his knuckles aren’t visibly white against the antique wood. She sheds the sports bra first, bending to drop it at her feet, letting her breasts swing. She rises slowly, teasing him. He’s enjoying it. She loops her thumbs through the panties at her hips and drags them down. Shawn spots the wetness darkening the crotch and grunts approvingly.

He looks her up and down. She stands tall and confident because that doesn’t come from the domme in her, that’s just Penny. He tilts his head.

“Where’s your necklace, Pen?”

Her easy confidence is rocked. She blinks and looks around. When she can’t find the words around her, she looks back at him, wide-eyed.

“Wanna see you in it when I make you come.”

Penny’s thighs squeeze. Shawn bites his lip.

She goes to her vanity and reaches into the first drawer. The red box is cracked and faded by time, but what’s in it still shines like the day it was made. She locks eyes with him in the mirror while she clasps it around her pretty neck.

Shawn takes slow, quiet steps up behind her, eyes trained on hers until he’s a breath away. He looks down and admires the glimmer from the curve of her neck. Now exposed to her other unmarked side, he slips a hand down to her stomach to anchor her against him. The other delicately traces the path of diamonds along her throat.

“It’s so pretty, huh, Pen?” he rasps.

She nods. “Really pretty.”

He hums and presses his lips against her jugular, feeling his pulse thrum as hers does.

“And who got it for you?” His voice is a muffled growl against her skin.

She closes her eyes. “You did.”

He skims up along her jaw to the corner of her soft mouth. “That’s right, baby.”

His warm hand cups her throat, not applying pressure but just to hold her head back while he kisses her nearly upside down. She’s eager and responsive now, gripping the little chair in front of her vanity but still squirming under his control. The hand on her stomach dips between her legs. She’s nice and wet, but still not as wet as he wants when he takes her.

“Fuck, you taste good,” he grunts into her mouth, swallowing the crooning whine she releases when he works the heel of his hand against her clit. She spreads her legs a little wider, giving her the purchase to work back against his hand for more friction. He clocks her greediness and smiles against her sweet lips, giving her clit a rough smack. She yelps and lets it trail into a moan.

“Getting desperate, sweetheart?”

His voice is all sharp honey. She wants to fucking bathe in it. She whines again weakly and lets her weight fall back against him. He holds her up, locking an arm around her stomach so the hand between her legs can come up to offer to her.

“Have a taste.”

Penny looks down at his glistening fingers. She brings her hand up to cradle his, and he allows it, focusing on her mouth as she sucks his fingers in between her lips.

Penny’s not unfamiliar with the taste. She’s sucked on fingers and toys that are coated in her many times, but never like this, never as it’s being presented to her by a partner. It’s headier and more erotic. She moans low, overwhelmed by it. Shawn’s eyes dim.

“Fuck, you like that? You taste so fucking good, huh?”

She nods eagerly, still swirling her tongue around his fingers one by one. The arm around her holds her fast while he grinds, still fully clothed, against her perfect round ass. She releases his fingers with a filthy slurp and pants at him.

“Can I suck your cock?”

Shawn wants to fall to his knees for her, but resists, given her request. He kisses her hard, nodding, letting her turn in his arms and lead him to the bed. On the way, she shucks him out of his t-shirt and jeans. He’s in gray Calvins, too. She giggles. It makes his cock throb.

He sits on the edge of her bed. She kneels in between his legs, charged by the confident way he shifts a hand into her hair and spreads his knees. His eyes are molten, looking down at her. She cups him through his briefs and sighs.

“Missed your cock.”

Shawn groans, his brow wrinkling. “Show me.”

With one last glance up at him, she pulls him free, tugging his briefs off his ankles to fling away with her own Calvins.

Penny leans in, her hands planted on his powerful quads, her breath short at seeing how he’s already leaking for her. She curls her tongue over the tip of his cock greedily to swipe up his salty precome. He hums.

“Gonna take me nice and deep, honey?”

She’s never heard him talk like this. It makes her lightheaded and whimpery. She nods and kisses a path down the underside of his shaft to his balls. She peppers them with kisses, light and teasing, then follows her trail back up.

She stops with her lips brushing his head. It pulses for her eagerly. She runs her tongue along the ridge, enjoying the way his stomach clenches.

“I want you to fuck my throat,” she whispers, her voice sounding like he’s already done it.

Shawn’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. “Fuck yeah, baby. Shit. Yeah, wanna feel your throat around my cock.”

With his hand still firmly in her hair, she slicks him down first with her tongue, bobbing her head a few times until her nose brushes his abdomen, warming herself up. She pulls back up, catching his eye, nodding without releasing him from her mouth.

It occurs to Shawn as he starts to slowly rock his hips that he’s never actually… done this. He’s had many blowjobs -- the good, the bad and the ugly. Penny has sucked him down several times, each more perfect than the last. But he’s never been asked to treat a woman’s throat like her pussy before. He hears himself whine as he grazes the back of Penny’s throat, only to feel her swallow.

“Shit, that feels… Pen…” he breathes, letting himself pick up a rhythm, planting his feet for leverage. Her hands rub at his inner thighs, coaxing them apart as she scoots forward, eager for more.

He watches in amazement until he realizes he can’t because he’s so fucking close to coming in her pretty mouth and he’d so much rather come in her warm cunt. He eases her back by her hair, watching her slurp at his bright red tip, popping her lips around it in a way that almost makes him thrust back up into her mouth and say screw it.

“So good, honey, shit, fuck, we gotta…” He chuckles at himself, at the way he sounds like he’s really ready to bust. He shakes his head and falls back into her sheets, inhaling deeply.

“We gotta slow down. Not ready to come yet.”

Her sheets smell like lavender fabric softener. She leans her cheek against his inner thigh, sneaking a little kiss.

“Shawn?”

Her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it. He lifts his head to look at her.

Her brown eyes are peering at him from over his thigh. She blinks quickly.

“Hmm?”

“Can I ask… you for something?”

His heart squeezes. He nods.

Penny turns her face into his thigh, brushing her nose through the downy hair there.

“Will you spank me? Please?”

Shawn lurches upright, leaning on his hand as he stares down at her.

“Say it again.”

He hears himself give the command but doesn’t remember thinking it.

She folds her hands in her lap. “Please spank me.”

Shawn beams at her, reaching for her hand and yanking her up onto the bed and against his warm, needy body. They both writhe and moan in reaction to the fullest contact they’ve had, skin against skin, desperation mixing. He tastes her desire on her tongue, mixed with his own saltiness. He groans and bites into her lower lip, cupping her firm ass in both hands. She arches into it, fisting the sheets in her hands as she fights her instinct to touch him, to take whatever she needs.

Instead, she lets him give it.

Shawn holds her close and sits up, cradling her in his lap. He spreads tender kisses across her cheeks and chin and mouth, his fingers crawling over his most precious -- her shoulder blades.

He gets her so soft and pliant in his arms he almost decides not to let her go. But she’s squirming and wet and he thinks maybe he’s about to fulfill a long held curiosity and fantasy of hers, and what could be better than getting to do that for someone you love?

Shawn sighs into her hair, tucking it back behind her ear so he can whisper.

“Lie across my lap.”

The responding whimper is so sweet, so charged and eager, Shawn’s hips rut up against her before he can stop them. She’s dripping in his lap and he thinks her spanking is only going to make her wetter. The heady power makes him growl again. His toes curl against her rug.

He helps position Penny across his lap facedown. Her thighs are clamped together, likely to offer her some relief as he traces patterns across her smooth hamstrings. The well-used muscles clench magnificently. Her back arches, offering him her plump, round ass like a fucking Christmas present.

Penny holds herself up proudly, taking the first teasing smacks against her soft flesh with only gentle, approving coos. He distracts her, teasing his fingertips down her thighs and out over her hips. She breathes shakily.

When the first hard spank comes on her left cheek, she yelps. Shawn’s hand holds tight, squeezing to make a mark, keeping the bite in place just like she does when she spanks him.

Suddenly, the pressure is gone. His hand rests limply.

“Penny, what’s your safe word?”

His voice is totally sober and clear. She blinks out of the haze.

“Uh… I don’t… have one.”

His thumb rubs a circle into the palm mark he left. “Can you pick one?”

Penny squints. She can barely remember what day it is, she’s so gone. She glances around the room, looking for inspiration. Her eyes land on her closet.

“Stiletto.”

She can hear Shawn’s smirk. He accedes and goes back to massaging the nice welt he left from his first strike. He leaves another on her other cheek to match. Penny squirms. She knows he can feel her wetness pooling in his lap. She knows that’s why he isn’t afraid to spank her a little harder -- the harder it gets, the more she drips.

Penny lies slack across his lap, weightless, worry-less. The pleasure-pain has her higher than any other substance she’s tried. She feels so fucking free with him, safe and cherished in a way she can’t quite replicate on the other side of a punishment.

There’s an element of awe in a D/s relationship. If it’s right, it’s shared by both parties -- the dominant partner in awe of their submissive’s willingness, their singular desire for whatever the dominant wants to give them; and the submissive in awe of their dominant’s ability to strip them of everything that stresses, aches or bothers, leaving them only to feel what the dominant wants them to feel. Penny thinks she understands both now so fully as she arches her back a little higher and murmurs into the pillow, waiting to see what else he’ll give her.

On the third slap across her left cheek, she cries out and comes off her elbows, letting her cheek rest against her duvet as he rubs her and coos.

“Fuck, such a good girl for me,” Shawn marvels. His erection is trapped between his stomach and her side. She writhes against it, gifting him the same relief he’s giving her.

His hand slips between her thighs. Penny moans, leaning her weight back into it. Shawn slips two fingers inside her, sighing.

“Fucking soaked. Want you nice and ready for my cock.”

Penny’s gurgling mewl would be embarrassing with anyone else. She thinks he likes watching her react when he flicks his wrist a certain way, brushes her g-spot teasingly, or scissors his fingers apart. She gasps and squeaks and moans and whines and cries out when his free hand slaps at one of the livid marks her left on her perky ass. He soaks it all in with an easy smile until she’s panting, desperate.

“Please, I need your cock,” she sobs, pressing her hip up against it again, tempting him. His eyes droop, showing weakness.

Shawn doesn’t see the point in waiting any longer. He’s ready to make her come all over him, to burst inside her in that way that could never be so satisfying with anyone else. He eases his fingers out of her, lavishing them with his tongue while she watches. Her pussy clenches again, waiting for him to fill it.

He helps her off his lap, still smirking, easing her onto her stomach with her head on a pillow. He pauses.

“Pen, do you want a condom?” he asks softly. She shakes her head no, facedown. His cock gives a twitch.

Shawn straddles her, his knees bracketing hers as he lowers himself down against her back, reveling in her sharp inhale when his cock slips between her thighs. They start to rock in time like they planned it, but it’s just them. Shawn moans contentedly against her neck.

“Been so good and sweet for me, Penny. My perfect girl.”

Penny hums in reply. It rumbles through Shawn’s chest where he’s pressed against her.

“Gonna make you feel so good, honey. Wanna make you come so fucking hard for me. Can you do that?”

Penny nods before he’s even finished the question. He grins and kisses a mark he left on her shoulder.

Shawn eases back and positions himself at her entrance, held up just barely by his knees. He takes a breath, closes his eyes, and presses his hips forward.

Shawn remembers the first time she let him in. She reached between her legs, her eyes never leaving his, and guided him in herself, slinging a leg over his shoulder like they did it every day. It was hot and brazen and he came a little embarrassingly fast but she just beamed at him and let him play with her nipples until he fell asleep, only to fuck him harder when he woke up before dawn. It wasn’t intimate, it wasn’t elevating, it was just satisfying.

Shawn turns his face into Penny’s neck. He can feel her pulse and hear her sharp breathing into the pillow as her body adjusts to his. With his weight against her, she’s enclosed by him and still reaches for more, sliding a hand up to clap over his, linking their fingers. Shawn’s hips snap forward once, hard, in response to her instinctively personal gesture. Penny rocks with the motion, gasping wetly into the pillow.

“Feels good, sweetheart?”

Penny squirms at the pet name, one she’s never heard from him before, it only made an appearance tonight after he donned his dom costume.

“Good. So… good,” Penny sighs, running her thumb against his. Shawn looks at their fingers and it has him rocking back up against her to start a comfortable rhythm.

She’s cradled beneath him, wet and content, holding his hand, her body gripping his cock like maybe they’re in love but fuck, he’s not gonna say it, he’s definitely not gonna say it because she hasn’t said it and he’s still paying for the privilege of being balls deep inside her, even if it’s the greatest privilege of his life.

So he swings his hips a little faster into the red, welted flesh of her ass and absorbs every moaning breath she gifts him like he’s losing his hearing tomorrow.

Penny is melting. She’s smearing makeup onto her pillow, she’s dripping wetness into her sheets, she’s fucking coming apart. But it’s more than that. She’s never felt like this before. And she’s seen and heard a million women say it. She understood conceptually what they meant, but she never got the glassy awayness in their eyes when they said it. Penny can’t see herself now, and she’s glad she can’t, but she bets her eyes are pretty thoroughly glazed.

Beneath his perfect hips and pressed up against his broad chest, she’s somewhere she never thought she’d be. She’s under, not over, out of control but not powerless. She didn’t think the happy medium could exist in her life, not when she’s spent most of it fighting for as much control as she could gather. Control meant comfort. If it was broken, she could fix it. If she couldn’t, it was on her. But it was a burden she could deal with. She never had help. She didn’t ask for it. She didn’t want it.

But that’s not really true. She’s always had Peter. She’s always had Gus. She’s always had Silver. The man shifting his hips above her to find her g-spot while he sucks on her earlobe and squeezes her fingers is new to the picture but becoming maybe just as important.

Perhaps the things she values most in life are those she can’t control.

She presses her forehead into the pillow. Her chest is caving in with each swing as it bottles up inside her. She shakes her head slightly, wetting her lips. Holding it in.

“Penny, fuck, honey, I’m so close.”

Her release of breath is a sob so sudden and so violent that Shawn’s rhythm falters. He slows, tucking his head over her shoulder to check on her. His eyes are wide. His lips are parted.

“Pen--”

“Mia.”

Shawn’s hips stop altogether. He’s buried so deep neither of them can breathe, but neither of them moves, either.

“What?” he pants.

She turns her face, brushing her nose against his. His eyes fall shut.

“My name is Mia, not Penny. Mia Violetta Bianchi. My name is Mia.”

Mia. Mia. Mia.

The connections snapping in place in Shawn’s brain feel like livewires sparking all over the place. He pants harder into her ear, though he’s stopped moving.

Mia. Mia. Mia.

He holds her hand tighter and starts stroking harder, feeling her body pulse around his, a hot, wet warning.

Mia. Mia. Mia.

He doesn’t realize until now he’s been saying it out loud. Her name. Her real name.

“Mia,” he breathes, his lips brushing the shell of her ear, “Come for me, Mia.”

Her body pops like a bottle of champagne. She goes impossibly tight around him, pulsing erratically, desperately seeking his mouth to cry into as she comes harder than he’s ever fucking seen. He follows blindly, his hips taking off without him. He calls out her name over and over as he releases inside her, like he’s trying to make up for every time he’s said the other name. By the time his most powerful orgasm to date abates, leaving him shaking and ready for collapse against her soft, languid body, he can’t think anything else.

Mia.

He feels something’s wrong before he even wakes up. He turns over to find her sitting on the edge of her own bed beside him, staring at him mournfully. She doesn’t appear to have been crying, but she looks close enough.

“Hey,” he whispers, starting to sit up.

Mia turns her head, looking at the floor. The motion makes one of the center diamonds in her necklace catch the light. He’s never wanted to touch her so badly.

“I need to ask you for something.”

He nods. “Anything.”

“I need you to leave me alone for awhile.”

Shawn’s eyes slide shut and he thinks maybe his body is willing him back to sleep so he doesn’t have to face this.

“Ok,” he breathes.

“Just… I need some time. I know if you call I’m supposed to see you, so I’m asking you, please, if you care for me at all, don’t call me. I… don’t know how long. But I need this, Shawn.”

Her sincerity is jarring, as is the tightness with which she’s wrapped up in her terrycloth bathrobe.

“Yeah. Ok. I--”

He was about to say he understood, but he doesn’t. Not really. He bets there’s a lot he doesn’t understand. He drops his gaze.

She stands and looks at him again. “I’ll be in the shower.”

Don’t be here when I come out.

The message is unspoken but clear. In a daze, Shawn dresses and walks out. On his way, he passes a stack of mail on a credenza addressed to Mia Bianchi.

---------

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stileslady-blog1 · 4 years ago

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Enslaved Real Estate - Seven Figures Easily

I often convey to people that becoming a millionaire in the real estate business is an uncomplicated thing to accomplish. They usually give me a look for bewilderment. I say that you don't have to understand every aspect in real estate in order to begin investing. The best thing to do is as well as a basic buy-and-hold strategy purchasing whatever type of property you may be capable of buying with as little money down as possible. The way buy something with as little money down as possible is determined by your financial situation and what types of mortgages you're capable of being approved for. Since guidelines for mortgages and government treatment changes daily, it's impossible for me to tell you the obvious way to do that. I can tell you how I did it for years using the all-money-down technique I described earlier in the book. But I'm going to give you a quick refresher course below. If you bought $100, 000 house through conventional means, you may have to put 20 percent down is $20, 000 plus closing rates that will cost you approximately $3000. In this example, you fit $23, 000 down to buy $100, 000 investment real estate. Using the all-money-down technique, you would buy a $100, 000 building for cash putting all $100, 000 down as well as closing costs of $3000. At this point, you have $103, 000 down on the property and you begin to invest an additional $5000 to fix the property up. You now have a total of $108, 000 of your money into the property. You put the house and property up for rent and you find a good tenant, therefore now you're empty investment property is a business making profits and shows a profit. Now you go to the bank or investment company and you get the property appraised with the intention of doing any cash-out refinance. Because you fixed up the property and it's a fabulous money-making business, the property appraises for $114, 000. The financial institution is willing to lend you an 80 percent property loan on the $114, 000 appraisal giving you a mortgage of $91, 200. You originally put down $103, 000 and been given back a mortgage for $91, 200 making your out-of-pocket costs $11, 800. When using the all-money-down technique as compared to the purchase of a property through conventional methods, you save $11, 180. Now of course, you're going to have a higher mortgage and less money flow coming from the property, but you're also going to experience $11, 200 to buy the next property with. Sometimes typically the homes you buy are going to cost you $10, 000 to buy; other sorts of times you're going to break even on the deal. You might sometimes be lucky enough to actually get paid to buy a house, which has manifested to me once or twice. The goal was simply to just continue to keep buying as many properties as possible until you build up a selection worth millions of dollars. You will make a profit from the cash flow, but most probably that's going to go back and do things like repairs and vacancies in all the other issues that come up with real estate. If you do end up banks and loans $10, 000 during the year from the cash flow of your properties, there is your down money to buy an additional property and even expand your portfolio further. I have constantly repeated are actually not going to find the cash flow to be something of remarkable value to you. The cash flow will help pay for the necessary matters and give you down money for future deals, but also in the end you will work hard for very little money. The surprise will come when you've ridden the cycle as a result of bottom to top and created a gap amongst the portfolio's value and the amount of mortgages that you owe for those building. Accruing equity in your buildings, you will slowly learn to see your net worth increasing as the years start on. For example let's just say you bought one property one year for five years valued at $100, 000 a home. Since the five years that you bought the properties, worth have gone up somewhat and the mortgages have gone down, additionally your net worth is the equity in between. As you begin to look at this throughout your investing career, especially when the market will be on the rise, it can be an exciting time. Your expectations should be to exist off of the income from your job while the profit from the nightly rental property business is used to fuel its needs. You can usually get to a point somewhere when a real conflict will develop between your current career and your real estate investments. It's very hard to be in two places at once, and ultimately it will begin to catch up with you. For me this conflict was easily reconciled since I only wanted to be doing real estate anyway, and yet if you love your day job and you plan to continue it by means of your life, you're going to have to make some tough decisions. You could potentially keep your day job, but someone is going to have to jog your portfolio. I maintain that getting a seven-figure netting worth in equity strictly in your real estate holdings isn't that difficult to do. I recommend you join real estate investment clubs not to mention read as many books as you possibly can. As you begin to make investments, you will discover friends in the businesses that relate to your industry which includes people in the mortgage business. I recommend that you associate with plenty of of these people as possible so that your knowledge of the industry expands a lot. A friend of mine who's an intelligent guy took a handful of this advice and began moving quickly. In his first of all year, I think he bought two properties, but through his second year he was already doing $300, 000 flips and buying multiunit investment properties with a partner that she has. First of all, I'm not a big fan of collaboration for the deal size he was doing, and subsequently, I think he was growing a little too fast. If the person didn't have a job, I wouldn't have a problem with the rate of his growth, but because he had a well-paying job, I cautioned him not to move too swift. The second half of 2009 was a rough year just for him as his $300, 000 flip was not reselling, and he's already had to do two evictions. Lugging the mortgage and his $300, 000 flip was basically expensive and was already causing some tension in the partnership. It's not going to be all fun and games; because your portfolio grows, your problems grow with it as well as workload grows. Another thing I can say about the issues from the real estate business is that they seem to come in waves. If I owned dozens of homes, I would go six months whereby I wouldn't need to change a doorknob and then out of the blue all hell would break loose. I'd be managing an eviction, two vacancies, and apartments that were demolished. When it rains it pours in the real estate business enterprise; at least that's the way it worked out for me. I remember in two separate occasions during the summertime one year followed by a subsequent summer a year later I was bombarded with all issues. In this business, you can't let a vacant place sit and wait because you're losing money every day it is far from rented. The process of getting it renovated and re-rented will be highest importance. As bad as I make it sound, It is my opinion you'll find it all to be worth it in the end. It seems that no matter how much cash I made, I have learned in my career I never ever really save. As you earn more money, your lifestyle increases and you will upgrade your homes and cars to the point where your own bills go right along with your salary. The real estate enterprise is almost like a bank account you really can't touch easily with out selling a building, so it continues to grow and feed off from itself. It's a terrific feeling when you realize that your $550, 000 portfolio experienced a 10 percent increase in character in the last year and you're up an additional $55, 000. I'm using the same principles today in the commercial arena selecting larger buildings with similar strategies. I can't buy a $3 million building with the technique, but there are many other things that may be worked out in the commercial world. Nowadays I use strategies that focus on complex negotiations with the sellers where I convince the crooks to carry paper or lease option the building. I'm also able to borrow money from banks for commercial investments presenting the bank that piece of real estate I am buying as security as well as existing pieces of real estate as collateral. I label it redundant collateralization and am seeing more and more of computer every day from banks. If you can go from broke for you to seven figures in one real estate cycle as I've proposed easily making yourself $1 million during your first housing cycle, then just imagine what you can do in your second real estate menstrual cycle. I plan to be carrying a real estate portfolio using the value north of $10 million and have that past record under my control before the real estate market begins to show any specific gains. I expect the gains will begin to show sometime all-around 2013 or later. Can you imagine if you're holding an important $10 million portfolio and the real estate market goes up a meager five percentage points? It doesn't matter how much money I made who year in income because as long as I can keep the business afloat I am up half a million cash in equity in one year. If I'm ever fortunate to see the crazy increases that we saw in 2005, can you imagine what it will feel like to see a 20 percent increase in values in one year when you're sustaining a portfolio worth eight figures? "Far better it will be to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank through those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer from much because they live in the gray twilight that recognizes neither victory nor defeat. " Theodore Roosevelt Let me dream about holding a portfolio worth $12 million after the market goes up 20 percent giving me a one-year tax free gain of $2, 400, 000. I feel that this is a realistic expectation for my second circuit of the real estate business. In the year 2025, I will be sixty years old. I feel certain that if I continue to just do exactly what I've been doing my whole life, I surely should have the net worth of many millions of dollars strictly for my real estate property holdings. I know of no other way to make money through these types of numbers as easily as I do in the properties business. I don't deny that other people have the means to make this kind of money or even more, but I am not familiar with the methods. I consider myself an expert on real estate, and also I certainly feel as some of the things I'm speaking about here will happen to me as long as I'm lucky enough to still be breathing when 2025 rolls around. This is why I love the estate business, and this is why I'm pumped every day so you can get out and keep it going because I can notice my future is filled with bright and sunny months. I feel terrific about getting up in the morning and going to perform, and when you have that kind of attitude, there's no way you possibly can fail. This morning I woke up at 5: 33 a. m. and went to my office building to reorganize some equipment in our communication room. I'm spending numerous afternoon hours on a Sunday working on my book plus feeling great about my possibilities. If you love what you achieve, you will be much happier and much more successful at whatever you try out. I don't even consider the things that I did this morning or perhaps writing this book as work in the regular technique people think of it. Obviously, it is work that Now i'm doing, but I don't have a negative feeling about the the word work or what it entails. I get a great sense of accomplishment from getting up in the morning and building things that happen furthering along my career each day on baby steps toward the ultimate goal of massive huge selection accumulation. I hope that some of you reading this book will probably really grasp the things I'm talking about above. I feel specifically the most important message in the entire book. Here's an idea you might want to think about after you buy your first property. Make sure that you take some time when you have bought it to really analyze what's going to be involved in being a realty landlord. If you like it or even love it, let's get the blowout started, and if you don't get out right now. If you're going to commence in the business just for the money but despise dealing with tenants as well as working on buildings, you really have to be careful and reconsider the things you're about to do. This business is not for wimps, also it takes a heck of a lot of guts to be a real estate real estate investor. To get to the level that I have achieved, you may have to take 1 / 2 your net worth and roll the dice regarding some large commercial building risking the twenty years regarding hard work on one deal. Until you go through that process, I could never truly explain to you what that will feel like. My name is Phil, and I'm addicted to real estate.

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arsonmurderandkalluring · 6 years ago

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My submission to @justice-for-allura if there’s still time. I’m still very anxious about it and probably should have covered wider topics but just decided to keep it personal.

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I wanted very much to write something for the #justiceforallura project, from the very first minute I heard about it. That was shortly after Season 8 of Voltron had aired, when I was still reeling from depression over how terribly it ended. It was as if the writers had a list of things I absolutely didn’t want to see happen and then proceeded to check off every single item on it.

At the top of that list was ‘Princess Allura dies.’

Now, I’m not apposed to a bittersweet ending now and then. I even like really dark ones on occasion. There’s nothing more cathartic than bawling your eyes out, after all. But those tears need to be earned.

Voltron did not earn my tears. Instead, I was livid.

I first discovered Voltron when a popular anime site decided to advertise the trailer for Season 2 on their news feed. I’m a huge anime fan, you see, but western cartoons... not so much. I’ve always steered clear of them ever since I was little, thinking they wouldn’t have the same charm as a Japanese production would. The same depth. The same trust in the viewer’s intelligence. But there the trailer was, so I gave it a watch and thought...maybe I should check this out?

So I did, and... it was really, really good. Being a reboot of an old Japanese classic, it’s no wonder it carried that mysterious charm I was looking for. I loved the beautiful art and animation. The music score. The intense fight scenes. The heartfelt themes and character dynamics.

I loved the cast, varied as they were - and among them, I loved Princess Allura most of all.

From the start, she’d already lost her home, her people, her family - and she continued to suffer more and more with each season. With all this buildup, I really couldn’t wait for the grand finale when she would finally be rewarded with the peace and happiness she deserved.

But that didn’t happen.

She suffered and suffered and suffered, for what? To have her people reject her. To wearily succumb to the advances of an immature boy who never truly understood her. To cast aside her crown for a character that we all know good and well should have died long beforehand. To sacrifice herself.

I still can’t believe it. How was this meant to be a satisfying conclusion? It was just horrible, and not in an ‘oh no, I’m so sad’ kind of way.

It was horrible to Allura, who struggled for so long only to be turned into a cheap Dues Ex Machina at the last second. It was horrible to the little girls watching, encouraging them to settle and give unconditionally ‘till there’s nothing left. It was horrible to all the WoC who finally had this amazing character to identify with only to be told that they’re just disposable tools after all. It was horrible to the loyal fans who supported the show even while this final mess of a season was being thrown together. It was horrible to the voice actors who poured their heart and soul into a series that ultimately betrayed their characters. It was horrible to all the artists that thought they were creating a masterpiece and now see a source of shame in their portfolio.

And most of all, it was horrible to the entire Voltron legacy. How dare you kill off the princess? The heroine? The very heart and soul of Voltron itself?

So of course, I wanted to write something for this project that demanded justice for our beloved princess. But what should I write, exactly? How would I start? I struggled for the longest time. It was very important to me... and because it was important to me, I choked. I procrastinated like crazy, hoping the right words would come tomorrow or the day after. I was sacred, so very scared, of not getting it right. I had to write something good for her, for my fellow fans. The pressure was entirely in my own head, but I couldn’t help wilting in agony every time I looked at the calendar. It’s just past midnight on January 25th now, the deadline for submission.

I may very well be too late, but I finally sat down to write this. I had to try, at least a little bit.

You see, the main reason I love Allura is thanks to her will to move forward. To persevere. She awoke from a 10,000 year long slumber to discover everything she once knew was gone, and all that she hated had taken control. She had the fate of the universe pressing down on her, and yet she rose to the challenge. She strove to persevere on every occasion, no matter the obstacle. No matter how dangerous or painful it was. No matter how much she suffered. She continued to bravely march on in the face of despair, bound and determined to one day win the fight.

I watched her and thought, that’s the kind of person I want to be. Brave. Strong. Unyielding to my own doubts and fears.

And yet she died.

The finale scene after the credits show us a silhouette of Allura among the stars. Am I supposed to find solace in this? That she’s continuing her existence as some sort of celestial goddess? Let me tell you. That’s not a better place. It’s a lonely place. Allura deserved to revel in joy and happiness with her found family in life, not watch over them in death from the cold depths of space.

The story of that brave, strong person I longed to be ended not in triumph, but senseless grief. Allura didn’t win anything, but lost everything. She wilted and crumbled in defeat, giving herself up for ‘the greater good.’

But good for who, I wonder? Not for little girls. Not for women of color. Not for anyone struggling with anxiety, desperately looking for reassurance that things will work out for the best if you just keep pushing forward. Not for me.

And it sure wasn’t good for Voltron.

Sincerely,

An irreparably disappointed viewer

#justiceforallura #justice for allura #allura deserved better #Princess Allura #Allura #voltron #voltron legendary defender #vld #love letter to Allura #hate mail to all responsible for this atrocity

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daddygraves · 7 years ago

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Inktober Day 12. Instrument

I’m a butt whose writing gets shittier by the day

Here goes my latest pathetic attempt- featuring drunk Kingsmen, which I may or may not write spinoff fics for when this is over. And Harry Hart is a sap in love.

@iffy-kanoknit @melisjevisje

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The Kingsman pub crawl was going as swimmingly as some knights' vision, by this stage. But by all accounts, everything was well. No fights with patrons had ended with gobsmacked drunkards hitting the floor, and no villains had sprung out of nowhere to take advantage of the fact Britain's best spies were all in one place, and utterly sozzled.

Some utterly foolish genius (probably Lancelot) had elected to send an email to all individuals in Kingsman's employ, and invite them all to 'spontaneous workplace drinks'. Because saving the world was rather sobering, and alcohol was a long-favoured coping mechanism of the Kingsman organisation. And because after Kentucky, the destruction of the original HQ, Cambodia and the shock return of a Scottish tech whiz and aforementioned knight, Harry really had a quite a lot to be drinking about.

That, and one other reason. It's half past midnight, Bors is out cold next to Harry, nose nodding dangerously close to his abandoned pint, and the bar is utterly empty apart from the rest of the Kingsman employ who had saved the date. Who it seems, if the shouts and hoots around Harry are anything to go by, are halfway between comatose and catastrophe. Percival is determinedly belting out a 90's pop ballad with Lancelot to the jukebox, despite her crutches -'WE MATCH', Roxy had pointed out to Merlin earlier in the night, gesturing to their common characteristic; leg injuries, albeit a landmine had ensured Merlin's were a little worse off. The Scot is engaged in raucous conversation with Kay and Gawain about the latest rugby match at the sleek table next to Harry's, whacking his fist on the table as he delcares that Scotland will surely triumph in the next match. Gareth is grabbing the next round at the bar, Geraint is determinedly skulling the last of his pint, cheered on by Lamorak, and Bedivere is taking a nap nearby. If anything, this little gathering looks to be nothing more than a bunch of rowdy businessmen, out for a night on town after a tough week in whatever boring desk job they endured.

Harry shouldn't be so sombre, with the comical events unfolding right before his eyes, like Tristan's impression of Merlin and his clipboard, or Percival's dire attempt at dancing. The past year had been a real uphill battle, even moreso for Harry himself, as the head of an organisation struggling to pick itself up off the floor and start again. Normal work as a Kingsman had been draining- what he had endured for the past year, if Harry was honest with himself, was nothing short of psychological and emotional torture.

But it was all done now. The empty seats at the Round Table had ben filled, the mansion rebuilt. Yet Harry doesn't feel the contentment that usually accompanies copious amounts of alcohol, as he reclines in the slightly grubby seats of some oscure pub he didn't notice the name of, staring into the depths of his half-downed pint.

"Whassup, Haz?"

A familiar broad frame slumps down in the booth seat with Harry, giving him a gentle elbow to budge up. This rouses the sleeping Bors, who jerks upright mid-snore, blinking wearily, a bubble of beer foam stuck to the tip of his nose.

"Hello, Eggsy," Harry manages, meeting eyes with the resident Galahad, who gives a lazy, relaxed smile in return. He takes a decidely more liberal sip of his forgotten pint.

"Why're ya so glum for, eh? S'ya night off, ya prick. Loosen up for us," Eggsy jibes, the effect of who knew how many drinks loosening his hackney speech further. Viridian eyes, with no trace of the shadows that had lurked within for months, and just the right amount of colour blushing those sculpted cheeks. Eggsy's top buttons of his standard white dress shirt are popped, bespoke jacket long since discarded. Toned, forearms emerge from messily rolled-up sleeves, with the lightest dusting of hair.

"Just tired, I'm afraid," Harry returns modestly, tearing his eyes away from his former protege with some difficulty. Because Harry might be tired, and more than a little inebriated, but he sure as hell is not blind. And Gary 'Eggsy' Unwin, who's firm, capable hand claps harry's shoulder reassuringly, has never been more inexplicably beautiful than he is right now.

And that unavoidable truth, as Eggsy wiggles his way out of the booth and goes to cheerily accost Roxy, is the root of Harry's melancholy spirit.

Eggsy has never been more available. The boy had no sooner become a married man, to newly coronated Swedish Queen Tilde, darling of Scandanavia, than a scandalous divorce had been announced. The princess, as it turned out, had been seeking to allow her seriously ill father to abdicate with dignity. And Eggsy had been a cog in her well-oiled plan to allow such a thing to happen.

"T' be honest, I wasn't even that upset," Eggsy had confessed to Harry one night in Kingsman's rented office complex, as the news of the premature split broke on worldwide media. The boy had swilled his martini pensively, considering the olive spiked on a toothpick. "Wasn't too keen on getting married anyway. Sorta did it cos' I felt bad after the whole rash thing."

And Harry had tried so very hard to not let his helium hopes grow any higher that night, as the stars sank, and Eggsy confessed tearfully he loved Tilde, but never in that way.

Oh the heart was a fickle, fickle instrument. It had taken a gunshot wound to the head for Harry to truly understand what the feelings he harboured for his Lancelot proposal truly meant. But it was so very hard, when the one thing you love more than anything, more than butterflies, good whisky (without the e) and good manners, is sitting right across from you, utterly oblivious to the fact that he was the last thought in Harry's brain when Valentine pulled that trigger. Because who in their right mind would confess their love for a young man, no matter how lovely, when said young man had just admitted he had a girlfriend?

Not that it mattered now. Eggsy is a 25 year-old divorcee, happy as larry, and their relationship was going from strength to strength. Harry could honestly say that despite only being acquainted for just over two years, he feels he knows Eggsy, and vice versa, similarly to the level of understanding he and Merlin had garnered in close to thirty-five years of companionship.

Yet despite this all-time high, Eggsy still feel so...unobtainable. Nevermind the enormous age gap -Harry was almost old enough to be the boy's grandfather-, nor the perils of romancing a colleague, should things go awry. Harry was certain he was more likely to be shot in the head by Richmond Valentine again than have Eggsy develop romantic inclinations towards him.

The chant of 'Eggsy, Eggsy, Eggsy!' pulls Harry from his solemn stupor, and he directs his attention to the small linoleum dancefloor space just in time to see Eggsy being shoved towards the proferred microphone, depsite many protests, by his traitorous colleagues. Laughing, despite his embarrassment, the boy takes it.

"Alrigh', alrigh', ya wankers. But none o' this shit. Ya got a guitar at all back there?" he directs to the barkeep, who disappears momentarily into the back room. But reappears nonetheless, clutching a battered Yamaha, much to the excitement of the knights, who whoop and whistle.

A stool seems to materialise out of nowhere, along with a microphone stand, which Eggsy accepts gratefully, plonking himself down on the seat. Harry watches with focused interest as practiced hands fiddle with the tuning keys for several moments.

Eggsy could play the guitar? The boy truly was full of surprises, as Harry had proclaimed on the very first day of their meeting. But Galahad's talents were seemingly not just limited to musical performance, as the small gathering of sophisticated yet drunken spies in a deserted bar in Kentish Town were about to find out.

"Anyway, here's Wonderwall." Eggsy giggles, and starts to play.

The first few strums of the familar chords send more cheers and cackles around the gathered Kingsmen, who cease all tipsy chatter to listen ardently to the Oasis hit.

"Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you-"

Holy mother of Christ. Not only was Eggsy one of Kingsman's finest recruits, with a spotless portfolio and a dedication that only came along once in a century. The boy could play like a professional, and he could sing. It truly was unfair. But when several knights begin to sing along, off key and out of tune, it takes everything Harry has in him to not scream at them to shut the actual fuck up. Because Eggsy's voice was that of which Harry imagined would accompany the sweet, white embrace of death. The clear melody of raw talent that spilled from capable lips as Eggsy continues on the verse.

Until entrancing malachite eyes fit themselves with Harry's.

"I don't believe that anybody, feels the way I do, about you now."

Harry can't help but break the gaze, eyes immediately finding his glass and draining it. It was a coincidence, you fool, his conscience shrieks internally, even as his heart begs him to consider otherwise. It wasn't possible. No.

"There are many things that I, would like to say to you, but I don't know how."

Harry dares to sneak a glance upwards, and almost shrinks down in his seat when Eggsy's green eyes bore into his again. Was it the Guiness, or was there a sheen of regret, or even sadness in Eggsy's eyes? For God's sake, he was fifty four, and the sounds of a young man's voice had Harry grasping at song lyrics like straws.

"Cos maybe-"

He can't bring himself to look away, he's caught, like in deer in those bright green, mesmerising headlights-

"You're gonna be the one that saves me-"

Couldn't Eggsy look at someone else, for Pete's sake? All this intense staring was giving his inhibited heart far too uch fodder to make stupid decisions.

"And after all-"

Sing for me, Eggsy. Sing for me forever, sing to me only. Was it just Harry or it was awfully hot in the room?

"You're my wonderwall."

Outside, now. Harry's brain finally turns the cogs to make a rational decision, and in a heartbeat, he's striding towards the back door of the pub. Fresh night air in a dark alleyway, and cool, slightly grimy bricks to calm his hot skin, and the heart that was beating far too rapidly for a man of his age.

Oh the heart was a fickle instrument, alright. Because it played in perfect harmony with a guitar, to the tune of 'Wonderwall'.

#Inktober #inktober kingsman #inktober hartwin #kingsman #kingsman 2 #kingsman 2 canon divergence #kingsman the golden circle canon divergence #kingsman: the golden circle #k2 spoilers #k2 #k2 canon divergence #hartwin #harry hart #eggsy unwin #galahad #eggsy x harry #eggsy unwin x harry hart #gay spies 4ever

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johnhardinsawyer · 5 years ago

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“Who is This?”

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

4 / 5 / 20 – Palm/Passion Sunday[1]

Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 21:1-11

“Who is This?”

(The Inevitable Wilderness)

We’ve all been there. There is some movie or TV show we haven’t seen, some book we have not read, but we’re looking forward to watching it or reading it really soon, and then someone comes along and spoils the ending. “Spoiler Alert: so-and-so was dead the whole time,” they say, or “Spoiler Alert: that good character is really the son of that bad character.” You get the idea. . . You think the story is going to go one way, but in a surprise twist, it goes another way, but if you already know what the twist is, then it spoils the surprise.

I was not there the day that Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey and colt – the day that crowds of people cut branches from the trees and waved them in the air, shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Matthew 21:9) But I am wondering about that one guy, straight out of central casting for “Snarky Man in the Crowd,” who watches the whole big parade and people shouting and waving branches and then turns to the camera while Jesus rides by and says, “Spoiler Alert: Jesus of Nazareth? He’ll be dead in a week.”

To be clear: the Bible never actually says that there was a man like that in the crowd. Other versions of today’s story from Matthew, have slightly different details, but none of them say anything about the “Spoiler Alert Guy.”

I really don’t know if there was such a guy, two thousand years ago on a warm spring Sunday by the city gates of Jerusalem, but I imagine that he would speak for most of us who know the story of Palm Sunday and what comes after it. Because, Spoiler Alert: Jesus does go into the city to great fanfare, and, by Friday afternoon, he is betrayed and arrested and killed. For those of you new to this story, sorry to spoil it for you. . .

The strange thing about today’s story and the story of what happens after it, is that Jesus has been “spoiling” it for his disciples for weeks – maybe even longer. In the Gospel of Matthew, alone, Jesus has been telling his friends – Peter, James, and John, and the rest – that he will “go to Jerusalem, and undergo great suffering. . . and be killed,” (16:21) and that “the Son of Man [which is how Jesus sometimes refers to himself] is about to suffer. . .” (17:12), and that “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed. . . and they will kill him. . .” (17:22-23). And then, just a few days before arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus tells them, in very specific language,

We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. . . (20:18-19)

“It’s not going to be pretty, friends,” Jesus is saying, but this is what is really going to happen to me. It is inevitable.” Of course, the disciples are distressed to hear this. How could their friend and teacher be talking in this way? At one point, Peter even says, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” (16:22) To which Jesus says – and I’m paraphrasing, here – “Peter, don’t tempt me into taking the easy path. That’s not the path that God has chosen for me.”[2]

And so, when Jesus rides into the city of Jerusalem, there are plenty of people in the crowd who are genuine in their joy and praise and loud “Hosannas,” who can’t look away because they’re so excited. And then there’s the rest of us, and Peter and the other disciples, and maybe even Jesus, himself, who can’t look away, either, but for other reasons. It’s like watching a slow-moving train crash, or someone making some kind of mistake that we can see coming from a mile away, or, even seeing a line graph of COVID-19 coronavirus cases going up and up with experts telling us that the worst is yet to come. . . By all appearances, this Hosanna parade is not going to end well for everyone. Someone is going to get hurt – maybe even killed.

And yet, despite all of this, Jesus gets on his colt and donkey and rides into the city, just the same. In the original language, the whole city is “stirred up [and] set in motion”[3] by Jesus and everyone is asking, “Who is this?” (21:10) Most of us are, likely, asking that same question about Jesus. For the people who are just hearing about Jesus for the first time, there is some genuine curiosity. “What’s the buzz?” “Why is everyone so excited?” “What’s going on, here?” “Who is this that is stirring our city up?”

For the rest of us, who have been hearing for two thousand years that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, when we ask the question, “Who is this?” about Jesus, we are wondering about how and why someone who knew what was going to happen to him and still got up and went. “Who is this good person that rode into the city, knowing he would likely be dead before the week was out?”

In the early church, when people talked about Jesus, they would often refer to the strange sacrificial nature of who he was and what he did. When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians, he encapsulated this thought by writing a hymn about it. Now, no one knows how the hymn tune went, but Paul’s lyrics are still beautiful and challenging. Eugene Peterson translates them in this way:

Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that��a crucifixion.[4]

Now, I know that these words might not rhyme, but in essence this ancient song is telling us that not only was Jesus God, but that Jesus became humble and obedient – not so that he could serve himself, but that he might serve others.

Right before today’s passage from Philippians, Paul urges all of us who read his words to follow after the example of Jesus. As Paul writes, “Let each of you not look to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4) Or, as Peterson translates,

Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. Think of the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. . .[5]

In this time of global pandemic, you and I have likely seen plenty of examples of those who think of themselves and their families and their stock portfolios and political fortunes first and those who set their personal needs and desires aside long enough to lend a helping hand – long enough to help others get ahead.

When I think of health care workers – from doctors and nurses, technicians and therapists to people who clean hospital rooms and home health aides – willingly donning their scrubs and going to work, knowing all of the risks that the simple act of going to work might bring, it causes me to tremble with awe. The same can be said of grocery store and pharmacy employees – people who deliver essential items, and others who ride or drive in to work every day, because they know that what they are doing is crucial for the rest of us. They willingly enter the wilderness with all of its inevitable risks and fears and uncertainties, because they know that it is the right thing to do. As Scott Simon said, yesterday, on NPR’s Weekend Edition, “These days, we are surrounded by essential, extraordinary people.”[6] How true. . .

When it comes to Jesus, though, I wonder: how essential and extraordinary is he for you and me? Yes, there are some spoilers out there. Maybe there are times when we, ourselves, are tempted to spoil the parade and the party. But there is something that I still find so beautiful and compelling and essential and extraordinary about this person riding on a donkey – down the steep hill of the Mount of Olives and up into the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem.

In today’s text from Matthew, there is a part where we can hear a snippet from the book of Zechariah in the Hebrew Bible. Zechariah, who was writing in a time of captivity and exile – far away from his homeland – paints a picture of a king who would one day come:

Rejoice greatly. . . Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Look, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey. . . He will cut off the chariots and war horses and the weapons of war, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.[7]

Who is Jesus, really? This is who Jesus is: the One who humbly rides into the wilderness places and times of turmoil and strife and death and fear and uncertainty, and offers peace to those who need it most – peace to our hearts and, if we’re willing, peace to the ends of the earth. He does this, not through an outward show of power as we would understand power. No, he offers us peace – he offers peace to the world – in the simple and humble act of giving himself away, to us and for us. And, whether the cheering and chanting people of the city know it or not – whether we know it or not – this is what triumph and victory look like: the triumph and victory of loving servanthood and self-sacrifice over and above everything else. . . even death, itself.

If there is anything that will get us through these dark days, it just might be the story and example of someone who did the difficult thing because he knew it was the right thing to do. And, it might just be the story and example of others who are willing to follow in his footsteps – maybe even you and me.

Yes, Jesus might be dead by the end of the week, but Spoiler Alert: this is not the end of the story. Yes, he might be dead by the end of the week, but death doesn’t last. Resurrection is coming.

Look, friends, your king is coming – humble. . . riding on a borrowed donkey, riding to give himself away for us, riding to set us free from sin and death, riding to offer his life so that we might live.

Ride on, King Jesus. Ride on!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

--------

[1] And the third Sunday of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic “remote worship” services from BPC, using Bedford Community Television and SoundCloud.

[2] See Matthew 16:23.

[3] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) 746.

[4] Eugene Peterson, The Message – Numbered Edition (Colorado Springs: NAV Press, 2002) 1621-1622.

[5] Peterson, ibid.

[6] https://www.npr.org/2020/04/04/827110608/opinion-seen-and-remembered-our-essential-workers.

[7] Zechariah 9:9-10, paraphrased, JHS.

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projectsdealreview-blog · 5 years ago

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How to Get Sponsorship Deals for Your Events and Projects

There are eight signs that are driving pointers for a project that can be required not to achieve its objectives and focuses in a convenient way. These eight signs are:

1. The project-group has all the earmarks of being managing an expansive scope of issues

2. The project group does not appear to get to know one another

3. The group is investing a ton of energy completing "interviews"

4. The group does not have all the earmarks of being doing any important investigation

5. The group has extremely constrained cooperation with you (and different patrons )

6. Key partners, who's by-in will be required for the project to be a triumph, don't know about the project

7. The project isn't complying with concurred time constraints

8. It is hard to bind the group on any important ends

This article will feature how best to manage a project that is appearing first indication of inconvenience by giving off an impression of being managing an expansive scope of issues.

For what reason is it an issue that a project is managing a wide scope of issues? I would say, projects that are not managing a moderately tight scope of issues have incredible troubles in keeping centered and have issues in knowing correctly which exercises are required for achieving the concurred objectives. What's more, they will in general spend a lot of time speaking with potential partners. The principle outcome of this is it is nearly ensured that these projects won't most likely keep to the concurred timetables and fulfill key time constraints. Likewise, because of the wide scope of issues, they will have incredible troubles in creating fresh and solid ends and proposals, in this manner not conveying worth identified with any of the issues the project set out to manage.

In a perfect world you will begin each project with a fresh and centered arrangement of destinations. On the off chance that you have unique, yet related, issues, you ought to emphatically think about setting up explicit projects to manage each issue (either in parallel of successively). On the off chance that the issue itself is hard to structure, consider setting up a staged methodology where the objective of the primary stage is to build up a superior comprehension of the circumstance, to propose the potential ways that the issues can be managed, and to give counsel on how a project ought to ideally be set up.

What would you be able to do on the off chance that you accept that you have a project in your portfolio that is managing too wide a scope of issues? Our suggestion is to plunk down with the project group and return to the beginning stage for the project. Key inquiries that should be addressed incorporate a) what has changed in the business condition that the project needs to build up a reaction to, b) what are the key issues that the project needs to manage, and c) how well do we comprehend these issues? In light of the responses to these inquiries, you and the project group need to build up a general objective and a lot of solid expectations for the project. Remember that the objective for any project should be quantifiable and the expectations must speak to something that obviously did not exist before (a promoting plan, another procedure, and so on). have a peek at this web-site Projectsdeal UK Reviews

The solid objective and concurred expectations should then be utilized as a beginning stage for investigating the exercises being completed by the project group. Any exercises that are not completely required for gathering the solid objective ought to be halted right away. In the event that they are significant for achieving different objectives, they ought to be given to a different group. In view of the new arrangement of exercises, another and practical arrangement ought to be concurred with the group, and the group ought to be set to work once more. Ordinarily, the way toward getting the group centered will take a few gatherings in a course of seven days.

#Projectsdeal UK Reviews

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cthulhuofficial · 5 years ago

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Guardians II Chapter 1 First Draft COMPLETE

Colunda Prime was, by many accounts, a backwater, no-account slum of a planet on the Outer Rim, little more than a small colony of humans scratching out a paltry living in its unfriendly soil. The authors of those same accounts, thought Con, must be birthing banthas right now. Crowds milled in front of the platform awaiting the speech, their chatter loud and excited; though they did not quite fill the square of the Senate District, their numbers had grown at least threefold in the last few months, and Con noted a number of Senators seated behind the podium on the platform. The woman they were there to see was Senator Olan Gallo of Colunda Prime. Gallo had recently been propelled from the relative anonymity of an Outer Rim Senator to widespread fame - or notoriety, depending on who you asked - due to her outspoken pro-war views. A year ago, the battle-ravaged Republic, after five centuries of bloody conflict with the Sith, was ready to embrace peace. The victories of King’s Galquek, Corphelion, and Gap Nine were fresh in the minds of the people, and war was expensive in more than one way. A year ago, Olan Gallo had been the de facto leader of a small minority of mainly Outer Rim Senators consistently but futilely voting against demilitarization. She was dismissively dubbed the "war hawk" by the few of her opponents who deigned to acknowledge her. A year ago. “War hawk! War hawk! War hawk!” the chanting began in the square: Gallo had appeared on the platform. The disdainful nickname had become a powerful rallying cry for her supporters over the last year. Another reason for those who had underestimated her to regret their decision. “Dialo Cenew, age 21,” she began. The crowd quieted at the sound of her voice. “Alath Lotar, age 32. Hector Orrinsen, age 12.” She held aloft a data pad. “Missing persons from the Outer Rim territories. Almost 1100 names over the last eight months. Camna Moden, age 31. Seabu Sm’for, age 56. Derra Javal, age nine,” she growled through her teeth. “There is a problem in the Outer Rim and the Senate is closing its eyes to it." Gallo’s words drove the crowd into a frenzy, and Con drew himself inward, listening to the sound of his breath, to maintain his focus. He was not here for the rousing speech or the politics; the Jedi Order must remain aloof from the in-fighting and debates of the Senate. Con was here to prevent Senator Olan Gallo's assassination. His master had forbidden him from coming. Con recalled their conversation from this morning. “But I saw -“ Con repeated for what felt like the twelfth time. “I know what you saw, and I know you want to help,” Master Daymar Jerikho said, also for the twelfth time. “You have an incredible talent, but you should not trust too much in these visions and prophecies.” “Then what am I supposed to do? Just let it happen?” “I will send someone to the rally to keep an eye out for an attack - someone else,” he emphasized as Con began to speak again. Jerikho sighed. “I know you feel like I’m mistrusting your judgment or that I’m holding you back, but try to understand where I’m coming from. There are some things you only learn from experience, and I’ve taken quite a few knocks. No matter how talented you are, you’re still my padawan and I would be failing you as a master if I don’t try to spare you as many knocks as I can,” he said, gently pushing Con’s head to the side. “I do trust you, but trust goes both ways.” “The Living Force transcends time as we experience it - your vision could have been subverted because someone took a different turn to work this morning. It may happen ten years in the future, or even a hundred. Prophecy is fickle, Con, and takes many forms." “Yes, master,” Con had said. Yet that night, he was wrenched from sleep by a nightmare in which his dream self knew of a great and terrible threat to the Senate, yet his limbs would not move faster than a Hutt’s pace. He feigned illness during his meditation training and escaped the Jedi Temple in a borrowed robe, making for Faddo Square, where he had seen the bombing in his dreams. “The Senators from Hosnian Prime and Duro claim they desire a return to peace!” Gallo was saying. "What they truly desire is a return to the status quo. Peace is not the same as coming home from war! What the Core Worlds Senators desire is normalcy - they desire their five-year plans, their security, their routines, their comforts… their stock portfolios’ reliability,” she added with a quirked eyebrow. Gallo was charismatic; she had to be, to have turned the ear of enough of Coruscant to grow the Republic pro-war faction from a powerless splinter group into a fast-growing political movement. Charismatic leaders attracted followers and prestige, but they also inevitably attracted powerful enemies; Con wondered who was behind the coming attack. Gallo had enemies aplenty in the Senate itself - assassinations were rare, but could her fiery words and growing support have driven her opponents to desperation? There were business owners who stood to gain a fortune once the war ended and the rebuilding started; if the Senator had her way, they would have to continue to outlast the war. And, of course, there were the Sith themselves - if Senator Gallo was correct, they were still at large, though badly beaten, and would likely appreciate the chance to lick their wounds. “Peace - true, long-lasting peace - is not convenient! Peace is not as simple as laying down one’s weapons! Peace is costly, peace requires sacrifice! And that is why the Core Worlds Senators cry peace and cry peace from the safety of the Senate floor, yet there is no peace and it is the Outer Rim planets that suffer. It is Dialo Cenew and Camna Moden and Derra Javal who disappear to become slaves to the defeated Sith Empire.” She weighted the word heavily with sarcasm. “This war is not over, no matter how much Senator Porro wishes it were so.” Con felt the vibrations in the Force milliseconds before the explosion happened. His hand flew out, sifting through the strands of the Force until he found the ones stretched taut and hot with energy… and grasped them in his fist. With a sound like thunder, the podium burst into shards of polished wood and stone, sending shrapnel flying in a deadly radius. A spar buried itself in the floor where Senator Gallo had been standing a moment before Con Pushed her with the Force to the back of the platform. The other fragments that would have showered the crowd, the fire that would have billowed forth like a pennant, were instead contained inside a transparent bubble of Force, the tendrils of which Con felt in his hands. Everyone was staring at him, he realized suddenly. The crowd had edged several feet away from him, as though he were in an invisible bubble himself. His hands were still extended in front of him holding the shape of his Force bubble. He loosened his grip, and the bubble on the stage gentle leaked the force of the explosion, until the chips and pieces of the podium clattered on the ground, harmless; when he released it, all that issued forth was a wisp of smoke. Senator Gallo recovered herself first. “I owe you my life, sir. May I know your name?”It should have been Con’s moment of triumph, but all he could think about was his master’s disappointment if he learned that Con had disobeyed his orders. Hoping against all logic that the Jedi Jerikho had sent to the rally had not seen him clearly, he pulled his hood lower over his face and turned to leave. The crowd parted before him. From behind him, he heard one person applauding, then another... and another and another, until the square rang with their approbation as Con stole away into the alleys of Coruscant.

---

After two days had passed, Con began to entertain tentative feelings of relief that he had not been caught. Master Jerikho had said nothing, and when Con had scrolled through one of the library data pads for news, headlines had merely touted a hooded figure that heroically saved Senator Olan Gallo from a terrible assassination attempt. After a week had passed, he was sure he was in the clear. After two weeks had passed, as he was sparring with his friends in between classes in the common gym area, he was summoned to the Jedi Council chamber. His friends hissed and teased him as he pulled his padawan’s robe over his training tunic and trousers. He couldn’t even summon the heart to jeer back, but silently followed the page out of the room. His pulse threatened to race and he felt his stomach clench. As quickly as he recognized the symptoms, he fell, almost by instinct at this point in his training, into a calming breathing exercise. Breathe in one two three, hold one two three, breathe out one two three, hold one two three, repeat. So it was with a controlled expression that he entered the airy chamber where the twelve chairs of the Jedi Council stood along the periphery of the circular room like sentinels. Inside the room, Con's semblance of calm fell away. Eight of the Jedi Council members were seated - a quorum, Con knew. Grandmaster Danla Bachi was among them, straight as a staff. Worse, Master Jerikho was there, standing calmly with his hands behind his back, waiting. So great was his shock that Con did not immediately notice the short creature standing next to Master Jerikho, but he had a difficult time not staring once he did. The creature had a draconic face with finlike ears and four fleshy tentacles dangling from its snout, each decorated with an onyx bead. Most curious, it stood not on its legs, but on two long arms, which supported its body and legs. Those legs, at the moment, were clasped across its torso in a gesture of deep composure. It was a Dug, Con recognized. A sentient race from the planet Malastare, Dugs were an uncommon enough sight on Coruscant, but he had never seen one in the Jedi Temple before. “Apprentice Del,” Grandmaster Bachi said, greeting him with a nod. “This is High Justicar August Mugaba,” she continued, recognizing the direction of Con’s gaze and indicating the Dug with a wrinkled hand. Con did not recognize the title, but the Dug was clad in the rough spun robe of a Jedi and a lightsaber hung at his belt; however, he had no time to consider the stranger. Bachi continued, “We are here to discuss your graduation to knighthood. Please come forward.” Con’s imagination came up with a startling number of hypothetical outcomes of this meeting, all terrible, during the few seconds it took him to walk to the center of the circle. He silenced the thoughts with the vague reassurance that, though the Grandmaster had not spoken of his graduation as certain, if he were being chastised for disobedience, he doubted that this was the tack she would take. “Before you injure yourself clenching your fists like a Jawa clutching an accu-accelerator, we know it was you who prevented Senator Gallo’s assassination,” began Bachi. She raised a hand as Con tensed. “It was no great feat of cleverness - Master Reinardt saw you at the rally. And Senator Gallo was so deeply grateful to her rescuer that she came herself to the temple to ask about a young Kel Dor Jedi matching your description.” She paused for a beat. "You will not be formally disciplined by the Council for your disobedience, although Master Jerikho may want words with you later.” Hard to say which one was worse, Con thought wryly. Grandmaster Bachi favored him with a knowing smile. “You have many supporters, Con Del, more than you know. Master Jerikho wholeheartedly supports your graduation. Senator Gallo is pushing for it, in the unsubtle way of politicians. The High Justicar, too, has taken a particular interest in your abilities. However, there are those on the Council who would hear what you have to say about your actions before they can join those noble personages in their confidence in you - how you could disobey a direct order from your master, how you could subject the Jedi Order to allegations of political favoritism, how you could risk your life and the lives of others on the promise of a krom-marr vision, one of the most notoriously misused and misinterpreted Force abilities in history.” Con felt each charge like a physical blow, and the accusations left him stumbling over his words. “How - how could I… How could I?” He wished he could look into his Master’s face and gain courage from the warmth that was always present in Jerikho's expression… but Jerikho was behind him. Besides, Con did not know how angry his master was with his actions, either. Con felt as alone as he had ever been, standing there before the inscrutable gaze of the Council. “How could I not!” he burst. He was grateful that his antiox mask and goggles concealed the depth of emotion in his voice and eyes, although all too aware of his pale orange skin deepening to crimson. “How could I know what would happen and do nothing? How is that the Jedi way, to allow the deaths of innocents instead of protecting them?” His voice lowered to a near murmur. “I didn’t think about the politics, I’m sorry, I didn’t think about the risks… I just knew I couldn't live with myself…” Con fell silent, unsure of what to say, feeling like he was playing a game and no one had told him the rules. Then the eight older Jedi exchanged glances, and Grandmaster Bachi’s keen eyes warmed. “The Council thanks you for your honesty, Padawan, and we are happy to be the first to congratulate you on your upcoming graduation. This session is dismissed.” Con let out a shaky breath as the council began to file out around him. He could sense his Master's unmoving presence still behind him. The final challenge, he thought. But when he turned around, Master Jerikho's eyes were full of pride.

---

Master Daymar Jerikho removed the cork from the bottle of Old Janx Spirit and spilled two generous pours of the golden liquid into the glasses he had taken from the dining hall. They were in the master’s chamber; Con felt flat after the council’s questioning and he sagged slightly in his chair, but Jerikho was exuberant. “I confiscated this bottle breaking up a slave ring on Ord Mantell. Such a remarkable liquor was wasted on that scum. This is a much more appropriate occasion!” The older human dropped a straw in one of the glasses, placed it on the table in front of Con, and seated himself with the other. “To you, my boy! Go on, it’s fine, drink, we’re celebrating!” They drank, Con’s face twisting as the fiery liquor snaked down his throat, Jerikho sighing contentedly. Con set his glass down and absently stirred the drink with his straw. “I - I don’t understand. I disobeyed you. And I sounded like a bumbling fool,” he said. “You sounded like you were a 16-year-old caught off guard, dragged in front of a bunch of Jedi masters, and drilled for answers. You sounded like yourself. If you hadn’t, the Council would have never approved of your graduation, no matter what I said.” “As for disobeying me,” Jerikho continued, seeing that Con had no intention of speaking, “do you think you’re the first apprentice to ever disobey his master? If the Jedi Order wanted a horde of automatons to order around, they would use clones or droids programmed to do their bidding,” he said, waving the idea away with his hand. He took another sip of his drink. "The worth of a Jedi is not in his obedience to any one individual, or even the council, but in his obedience to his vows. The council knows this. You proved to them that you were not acting out of selfish ambition or political creed - you were acting on your oath.” “I was, I promise I was, Master! And I’m still sorry for disobeying you,” Con said, the tension and anxiety of keeping his secret for two weeks finally overcoming him, his voice breaking with emotion. Jerikho put his drink down and looked his padawan the eye. “I don’t agree with what you did, but I can’t fault you for why you did it. I’m proud that my padawan has become a man who thinks and acts for himself. That means I’ve been a good master.” He was thoughtful for a moment. "Only… keep in mind what I said about trusting too deeply in prophecy. But no more lectures tonight. Remember, you may be graduating, but I’ll always be here to lecture you,” he finished with a wink, setting his drink down. He turned his palm and a deck of sabacc cards appeared in his hand - a trick that Con had pleaded with Jerihko to teach him, but which Con could never master without the help of the Force. “How about a hand or two?” Con smiled for the first time in weeks.

---

The Jedi temple sanctuary was huge and airy, with ample light filtering through the stained transperisteel windows, yet Con felt a sense of mass in the room. On the floor was etched the winged crest of the Jedi Order, gleaming in red marble against white. Great statues, twenty times the height of a Kel Dor, were carved into the pale walls, likenesses of ancient Jedi Masters holding their stone lightsabers, forever guarding this most holy place. History weighed heavily here, and he noticed that he moved more slowly and quietly than usual, as though it were a physical presence. Centuries of Jedi initiates had been knighted in this room; now it was Con's turn. All twelve of the council members were here today, as was traditional at knightings, arranged in a semicircle around the sanctuary apse. Master Jerikho stood at Con’s right side. Con’s friends watched proudly from the nave, as well as a handful of younglings who had never seen a knighting ceremony before. And, curiously, in the farthest corner, August Mugaba crouched, legs crossed, staring balefully. “Kneel,” Grandmaster Bachi said. The warmth that usually softened her voice was gone, and the word reverberated in the temple. Con knelt, and began the vows he had practiced again and again in the privacy of his chamber. "I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I will know emotion, and yet peace; ignorance, and yet knowledge; passion, and yet serenity; chaos, and yet harmony. I will use my abilities for good and turn always from the Dark Side. I will serve the Jedi Order and the Republic with my life here, and hereafter, for there is no death, only the Force. This I swear on my honor and the faith of the Order." Danla Bachi ignited her lightsaber; the light of the blade lit the hem of her robes and his face with an emerald glow. She brought the blade down to hover above his left shoulder; the sound resounded in his ears, rattling his teeth. “Then by the right of the council,” she began, sweeping her blade over his head to hover at his right shoulder, "by the will of the Force, Con Del, rise, Jedi Knight.” The blade hissed and crackled as it disappeared into the hilt, and Grandmaster Bachi stepped back. Con rose and he could hear his friends begin to cheer and hoot. “May the Force be with you, Jedi Del,” the Grandmaster finished, and bowed before him.

#a #a writes

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olko71 · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2019/02/amazon-pulls-the-plug-on-new-york-headquarters

Amazon pulls the plug on New York headquarters

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc abruptly scrapped plans for a new headquarters in New York that could have created 25,000 jobs, blaming opposition from local leaders upset by the nearly $3 billion in incentives promised by state & city politicians.

The company said on Thursday it did not see consistently “positive, collaborative” relationships with state & local officials. Opponents of the project feared congestion & higher rents in Long Island City, Queens, & objected to incentives for a company run by Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man.

Amazon said it would not conduct a new headquarters search & would focus on growing at other existing & planned offices.

The online retailer carried out a highly publicized year-long contest to pick a location for a $5 billion moment headquarters, drawing bids from across the United States & Canada. It ultimately split plans to add 50,000 jobs between New York & Arlington, Virginia, near Washington.

The Long Island City deal was negotiated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who joked he would alter his name to Amazon Cuomo whether might assist lure the company, & New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. They promised it would more than pay for itself in the long term through new tax revenues.

Cuomo said in a statement on Thursday that a small group of politicians had “put their own narrow political interests” above those of New Yorkers.

“They should be held accountable for this lost profitable opportunity,” he said.

Some New Yorkers had mounted protests after the deal was announced, angered by the $2.8 billion in incentives promised to Amazon & fearing further gentrification in a neighborhood once favored by artists looking for cheap studio space.

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a critic of the project & a self-described democratic socialist whose district spans parts of Queens & the Bronx, cheered the reversal by the world’s third most valuable public company.

“Anything is possible: nowadays was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, & the power of the richest man in the world,” she wrote on Twitter.

People briefed on the decision said Amazon had made the decision early on Thursday after talks starting on Wednesday & amid rising concerns approximately the small vocal minority. The people said Amazon will not shift any of the planned jobs to Tennessee or Virginia yet plans to grow its existing network of locations.

The online retailer has not yet acquired any land for the project, which would make it effortless to scrap its plans, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters on Friday.

In a statement, de Blasio blamed Amazon for failing to address local criticism.

“We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a satisfactory neighbor & do commerce in the greatest city in the world,” he said. “Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw absent that opportunity.”

U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat whose district includes the proposed site, lamented the loss of jobs & new revenues.

“This is not the Valentine that NY needed,” she wrote, adding that she had been ready to push for changes to the deal to address local concerns.

NO PLANS TO REOPEN HQ2 SEARCH

Some long-time residents in Long Island City, which sits across the East River from midtown Manhattan’s skyscrapers, feared being forced out by rising rents & untenable pressure on already overburdened subway & sewage systems. High-rise towers have sprouted across the neighborhood in recent years.

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, U.S., February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Mark Hamrick, a senior profitable analyst at Bankrate.com, said the about-turn could spook other companies thinking approximately expanding in New York.

“This is a stunning development, with Amazon essentially giving in to vocal critics,” he said.

Amazon said Thursday it did not plan to re-open the search that drew 238 proposals from across North America.

“I think the PR event turned out to be a mistake,” said Jason Benowitz, senior portfolio manager at the Roosevelt Investment Group, who owns Amazon shares. You can compare this to Google sinking billions of dollars into the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan without making noise.”

Alphabet Inc’s Google has avoided competitions between cities for its office, & its growing presence in lower Manhattan has met with little serious blowback. Google said in December it plans to invest more than $1 billion on a new campus in New York to double its current headcount of more than 7,000 people.

Shares of Amazon were down 0.5 percent.

‘REALLY GOOD POKER PLAYERS’

Hours before the announcement, Amazon officials in New York betrayed no knowledge of the deal’s cancellation when they met with local community members on Thursday morning, said Kenny Greenberg, a neon artist & member of Long Island City’s community board.

“Either they are really satisfactory poker players or they were not aware,” Greenberg said of the Amazon representatives. “There was no trace of this at all.”

The assembly with Amazon officials had been held to reply concerns from the community approximately labor conditions for Amazon’s warehouse & delivery workers & the company’s opposition to labor unions.

Slideshow (14 Images)

“Defeating an unprecedented act of corporate welfare is a triumph that should alter the way we do profitable development deals in our city & state forever,” Jimmy Van Bramer, a city councilman from Queens who had opposed the project, said on Twitter.

One of the city’s most powerful private-sector unions, the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, said the company’s abrupt exit confirmed its criticisms.

“Rather than addressing the valid concerns that have been raised by many New Yorkers Amazon says you do it our way or not at all, we will not even consider the concerns of New Yorkers,” union spokeswoman Chelsea Connor said in a statement. “That’s not what a responsible commerce would do.”

Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington & Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Dan Trotta & Joseph Ax in New York, Nandita Bose in Washington, Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Nick Zieminski

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

#affiiate marketing #article marketing #business online #businessNews #internet marketing #make money online #mobile marketing #video marketing #web marketing

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flauntpage · 6 years ago

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LeBron, Like Ali Before Him, is Greater Than Sports

Earlier this year, LeBron James used his own media platform to melt the President of the United States. Driving through light snowfall in the back of a black Escalade with Kevin Durant and Cari Champion, James describes what it’s like to speak your mind as a professional athlete in increasingly divided times.

“Well, the climate is hot,” he begins, rubbing his hands together and gazing out the window. Then, James draws a blowtorch.

“The number one job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn't understand the people, and really don’t give a fuck about the people,” he says. “When I was growing up, there were like three jobs that you looked for inspiration, or you felt like these were the people that could give me life. It was the president of the United States, it was whoever was the best in sports, and then it was like the greatest musician at the time. You never thought you could be them, but you can grab inspiration from them.”

Soon after, FOX News TV host Laura Ingraham churned James’s words into gruel for her audience, the millions who fear progress, equality, and the accelerated disintegration of their social status on a nightly basis. Above a chyron that read “LEBRON’S R-RATED POLITICS,” the 55-year-old Ingraham leaned into the camera and, as if speaking to one of her three children, scolded the most disciplined, accomplished, and culturally relevant athlete in the country: “So keep the political commentary to yourself, or, as someone once said: ‘Shut up and dribble’.”

As the segment faded into a commercial break, Ingraham tilted her chair back and let a smirk crack across her face. It immediately backfired, providing James, a skilled purveyor in today’s catchphrase culture, with enough oxygen to respond with a phrase that’s become his mantra: I am more than an athlete.

It’s a feeling that’s percolated in LeBron for quite some time. He lives in the same world we do, and sees the growing hate, race-baiting, and fear-mongering in every newscycle. From Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Ohio’s Tamir Rice to consistent calls for gun control, Charlottesville, and Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing unemployment, James refuses to ignore a deteriorating society that still doesn’t treat African-Americans as people. And the problems are only getting worse.

‘Shut up and dribble’ was racist. The word “nigger” was spray-painted on his home last year (which led to one of the most obvious statements James has ever made: "No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough.") James grew up in a state that cast 2.84 million votes for Donald Trump, a man who openly doubted LeBron’s intelligence earlier this month. He sees the writing on the wall, and knows he’s in a position to do something about it.

“I’m more than just a guy that goes on the court and plays basketball,” James said during a recent trip to Shanghai, with his mantra glowing as a backdrop. “I also have a voice. I’m also a father. I’m also a son. I’m also a friend. I’m also more than just a guy that people see on the floor.”

Above everything else, LeBron is judged by what he does on the court. How can he defeat the Golden State Warriors? How do his statistics stack up in the MVP race? Will he surpass Michael Jordan? Away from basketball, LeBron’s impressive business portfolio has lead to direct comparisons with Magic Johnson, his new boss and ostensible mentor. Both dimensions are significant, and help substantiate who James is and where he’s going.

But there is room for so much more. A few months from his 34th birthday, as he gazes upon a nation that’s reignited its own moral insolvency, James is increasingly acting like someone who wants his cultural and political imprint to embody the spirit of countless black athletes—Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, etc.—who once lived on the edge in the name of a cause, who recognized sport as a means to an end. It’s a wider, more admirable and difficult legacy he’s searching for. In some ways, it’s extinct. In others, he’s the right man at the right time.

“I would never compare myself to Muhammad Ali because I never had to go through what those guys had to go through back in those times,” James said shortly after the boxer’s death in 2016. “But I feel it's my duty to carry on the legacy of the guys who did it before me.”

It’s easy to be cynical about that. LeBron is rich enough to pay for your children’s children’s children’s college education with pizza money alone. Much of his political commentary is well tread and in demand. (Trump was a bum before James was born.) He does not confront situations that have the potential to bruise his ego or scandalize his brand. But that criticism lacks context and misses the point.

History was always in the black social activist’s corner, but most athletes who challenged societal norms in previous generations did so in the face of extreme unpopularity. Their triumph was shaped by an “opportunity” to overcome tangible obstacles. More than a few strands of the Civil Rights era remain for black Americans, but the world has advanced in ways that shield James from ever confronting the daily lashings of racial prejudice someone like Robinson bravely endured. Through no fault of his own, LeBron has yet to stare down a prison sentence at the cost of his spiritual beliefs, either. But at the same time, he will never elude the flames Ali, Robinson, and countless others felt.

James responds in ways that fit today. He knows that his voice is powerful enough to stabilize, unite, and push back without sacrificing his own standing, wallet, or reputation. He’s cemented himself as the first athlete of his stature to challenge social issues from a position of strength, without any threat of legitimate retribution. He is a walking symbol of what so many fought for: As a black man in America, LeBron is worshiped as an oppositional figure. And instead of being content with what he’s been provided and simply acknowledging a struggle that took place before he existed, James continues to push this critical, neverending movement forward.

Punches thrown by someone with an audience as large as his don’t miss. He personifies rational thought at a time when rational thought stands diametrically opposed to needless cruelty. There is no instruction manual for how to behave as the most famous athlete in the United States of America. But much like those before him, James is creating a blueprint for future generations by harnessing his social platform and empowering those who struggle in a country that prides itself on suppression. (The I Promise School, which is deserving of its own anthology, let alone a sentence in this column, is potentially the single most important initiative any athlete has made in my lifetime.)

But what comes next is hard to say. In 1974, as a 32-year-old man with no nation, Ali flew to Zaire for arguably the most important fight of his career. After needing only eight rounds to pull off a win very few expected, he said: “I know that beating George Foreman and conquering the world with my fists does not bring freedom to my people. I am well aware that I must go beyond all this and prepare myself for more. I know that I enter a new arena.”

In the moment, Ali recognized what truly mattered; that consciousness above all else—including his unparalleled charisma, dancing feet, and pretty face—helped shape the revered figure we accept today. LeBron is smart enough to realize the same thing. While today’s efforts are valuable, his long-term action, as he splashes into Los Angeles and the next professional phase of his life, is even more critical. LeBron was once reportedly willing to sit out games as a way to protest Donald Sterling’s ownership. Would he ever actually go that far? Does he need to? Is his goal to follow Magic’s footsteps and be aspirational on an unprecedented scale (while economically enabling low-income communities)? Or will he more forcefully leverage his name and wealth in ways that persuade actual policy for the greater good?

At the very least, through his production company, SpringHill Entertainment, LeBron has already helped greenlight projects that can stimulate thought and change, be it by shining spotlight on seminal, albeit forgotten, figures from the past and throwing them back in the public consciousness, or tackling a system (like the NCAA) that’s rotting from its core. The myriad ways he can have an impact are boundless, be it through entertainment or philanthropy. Over the next 30 years, James has a rare, borderline-unparalleled opportunity to help vast swaths of American society. How far will he go?

This isn’t about comparing James to literal icons who’ve been eternalized on dorm room walls, forever etched in the imagination of millions all over the world. It’s about him accepting what it means to be socially active as the most important (and scrutinized) black celebrity in a country that’s sliding.

“When I decided I was going to start speaking up and not giving a fuck about the backlash or if it affects me, my whole mindset was it's not about me," James said during the premiere of his new HBO show The Shop. “I think Ali already knew. He knew that it wasn’t about him. ‘I’m gonna get the backlash. I’m gonna go to jail. But what this is gonna do for the next group. What this is gonna do for the next athlete. What this is gonna do for the next minority who wants to speak up, whenever that happens?’ Ali’s whole mindset was that at some point, somebody is gonna take what I did, and I sensed that. I sensed that, on losing this or losing that, or losing popularity. My popularity went down. But at the end of the day, my truth to so many different kids and so many different people was broader than me personally.”

Here, James makes his impossibly complicated responsibility sound simple. It’s depressing, but that inspirational virtuosity will always be necessary.

Not even six months after she uttered “shut up and dribble,” and then tried to save face amid advertising boycotts and public shame, Laura Ingraham’s audience continues to grow. She is ultimately less than a thorny footnote, but her show’s popularity helps crystallize a watershed moment for race relations in this country—one that may allow LeBron to carve out a place in history beside Ali, even without the same self-sacrifice.

He can be known for what he did with his fame and accomplishments instead of the fame and accomplishments themselves. That’s folklore. That’s immortality. That’s the legacy of a King.

LeBron, Like Ali Before Him, is Greater Than Sports published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years ago

Text

LeBron, Like Ali Before Him, is Greater Than Sports

“Well, the climate is hot,” he begins, rubbing his hands together and gazing out the window. Then, James draws a blowtorch.

“The number one job in America, the appointed person is someone who doesn’t understand the people, and really don’t give a fuck about the people,” he says. “When I was growing up, there were like three jobs that you looked for inspiration, or you felt like these were the people that could give me life. It was the president of the United States, it was whoever was the best in sports, and then it was like the greatest musician at the time. You never thought you could be them, but you can grab inspiration from them.”

‘Shut up and dribble’ was racist. The word “nigger” was spray-painted on his home last year (which led to one of the most obvious statements James has ever made: “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough.”) James grew up in a state that cast 2.84 million votes for Donald Trump, a man who openly doubted LeBron’s intelligence earlier this month. He sees the writing on the wall, and knows he’s in a position to do something about it.

“I would never compare myself to Muhammad Ali because I never had to go through what those guys had to go through back in those times,” James said shortly after the boxer’s death in 2016. “But I feel it’s my duty to carry on the legacy of the guys who did it before me.”

“When I decided I was going to start speaking up and not giving a fuck about the backlash or if it affects me, my whole mindset was it’s not about me,” James said during the premiere of his new HBO show The Shop. “I think Ali already knew. He knew that it wasn’t about him. ‘I’m gonna get the backlash. I’m gonna go to jail. But what this is gonna do for the next group. What this is gonna do for the next athlete. What this is gonna do for the next minority who wants to speak up, whenever that happens?’ Ali’s whole mindset was that at some point, somebody is gonna take what I did, and I sensed that. I sensed that, on losing this or losing that, or losing popularity. My popularity went down. But at the end of the day, my truth to so many different kids and so many different people was broader than me personally.”

Here, James makes his impossibly complicated responsibility sound simple. It’s depressing, but that inspirational virtuosity will always be necessary.

He can be known for what he did with his fame and accomplishments instead of the fame and accomplishments themselves. That’s folklore. That’s immortality. That’s the legacy of a King.

LeBron, Like Ali Before Him, is Greater Than Sports syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com

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albanlakepublishing-blog · 7 years ago

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February Alban Lake Spotlight

Mike Morgan, Author

For our very first interview, we have Mr. Mike Morgan, a prolific and excellent author. He was kind enough to take time to answer our questions; but first, a quick bio for Mike:

Mike Morgan lives in Iowa with his wife, two children, and increasingly infirm cat. After careers in the UK, Japan, and Texas involving accountancy, freelance illustration, non-fiction writing, and teaching, Mike now does improbably complex things on computers for a living. When he's not worrying about the cat or tidying up his kids' toys, Mike gets overwrought about politics and attempts to write short stories. It's possible his two hobbies get muddled up from time to time. He has written for several publishers in the UK and the USA, with pieces in anthologies, comics, and magazines. Follow him on Twitter as @CultTVMike, where he posts about all things sci-fi. Oh, OK, it's mostly Doctor Who.

My website is: https://perpetualstateofmildpanic.wordpress.com/

My latest project is this month's Outposts of Beyond.

And on to the interview . . .

Q: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

A: I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I looked at book covers as a young child, maybe five or six, and thought, "I want my name on a book." When I got into comics with 2000AD and then Star Wars Weekly, this would be when I was 7, that desire spread to wanting to be in the credits boxes in comic books, too. Unfortunately, as I got older, it became apparent that selling work wasn't going to be as easy as I'd initially thought.

I tried for a sustained period in my twenties to break into comics, but never got anywhere. At one comics convention in Bristol, while hauling my portfolio around, I got chatting with Matt Brooker, who was brutally honest with me. "Look," he said, "There's nothing particularly wrong with the way you draw, but there just aren't any openings. We hire on maybe one or two new freelancers a year and they have some quirk. You draw well, but there's nothing unique. To develop that style, you need to put in thousands of hours of practice, and you're not going to get paid for that. You don't strike me as independently wealthy, so I doubt you can afford to do it for free. So..."

He was right. I was dirt poor. I got a job in accountancy, which I hated. But at least I could go back to affording food.

Later, after years of doing things I loathed, and then teaching for several years in Japan, I immigrated here to the U.S. Starting a new career in Texas, I worked for seven years as a technical writer and editor, which helped me fine-tune my knowledge of English grammar and punctuation and gave me first-hand insight into how hard it is to express complex ideas in plain, no-nonsense sentences. I got enough feedback to sink a fleet of Titanics and developed a tough skin to criticism. I also learned how important it was not to treat my fellow writers the way I was treated, and I became a mentor to some of the newer team members. Although the working environment was hostile, I did love the act of writing and I found joy in helping others improve their written work.

While all that was going on, I was continuing to put out one or two pieces of my own writing. Teaching in Japan gives you a lot of spare time, so I'd started floating a few things past publishers. Moving to Texas, I was determined to keep that up, but stuck in a car for three or four hours a day on a hellish commute, working tons of extra, unpaid hours, and starting a family didn't leave a lot of spare time. It was only with our move to Iowa, where I still am now, that I found a better work-life balance and was able to kick the writing into high gear. To my inordinate surprise, I discovered that publishers wanted to print my short stories. Not only that, but readers showed every sign of liking them. I was flabbergasted.

I look back now and I see my name on a book cover and my name in a comic book credits box and I'm glad I never completely gave in. One of my best friends, Kath, said this to me years ago and it stuck with me: "What I like about you, Mike, is that you keep on trying." I'm sure she's forgotten ever saying that to me, but I remembered, and I've tried to stay that way.

Q: What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

A: Oh, a 'quirk'! I have yet to develop one with my drawing, but with my writing...? Editors have often told me, in withering tones, that I over-write. You only have to glance at the length of this interview...

Also, as part of over-egging a box full of puddings in every story, I tend toward the proliferation of pleonasms. And uncalled-for alliteration.

If you catch me doing it, slap me.

Q: What do you like to do when you're not writing?

A: I watch lots of science fiction and read comics. I really enjoy reading stories to my two kids at bedtime, too. Honestly, with two young kids in the house, I spend a lot of time taking endless delight in everything they say and do. I try to carve out a few moments every day to remind my wife how much I appreciate her.

Q: How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

A: I've had 10 short stories published professionally, with two more coming out in the next couple of months. A couple of those were my Titanville stories, which were published together in an e-book by Nomadic Delirium Press, getting me my first solo front-cover credit. I have a dozen more stories in slush piles as we speak, so one or two more will probably work their ways through to acceptance this year – that seems to be the typical ratio of stories sent to stories accepted.

I've also had a few stories in charity anthologies, and a couple of poems (one was about Star Trek and was printed by Iron Press in a collection sold throughout a major high-street chain of bookshops in the UK), a few non-fiction articles about the long-running BBC TV series Doctor Who in various tomes, and a comic strip script in the British small press comic Futurequake. Another comic script is being drawn now, as it happens, for Futurequake. We're hoping it'll be included in the Spring issue, but we'll see how that goes.

Oh, and I worked for a short while at an online word mill, putting out articles about sci-fi. You can find them at WhatCulture.com. They accumulated about three million page-views, I think.

Q: What inspires you to write?

A: I am drawn to the act of wrenching something into existence through the blunt application of imagination and willpower. I am compelled to create. For better or worse, you guys are on the receiving end of that compulsion.

When it comes down to deciding what I'm going to write about, I think there are some themes I keep returning to: the beauty in the world, the triumph of love and kindness over indifference and cruelty, the eternal fight against injustice, how any attempt to simplify the complexity of the real world down into stark black-and-white concepts will lead to hate and death...

Also, I love writing characters who are flat-out wrong. There's nothing more fun and more human than someone who is utterly convinced about the rightness of a cause, and that cause is based on an utter misunderstanding. Really, that type of thinking characterizes most of our species' history. People who are wrong deserve our sympathy, our help, our love, not our derision. Anyway, that's some entertaining stuff to write about.

One final thought – I don't want to be a downer but I do feel time pressing on me. Nothing like worrying I'll be dead in a few years to spur me to get some writing done.

Q: Do you set a plot or prefer going wherever an idea takes you?

A: I try to have a clear idea of what the story's about before I get too far down the rabbit hole of writing. Preferably, I have an end worked out as well, even if that ending changes by the time I get to it. Sometimes, I'll start the story with the end and work my way backward to the beginning. But there should always be a purpose to a story, even if that purpose is to have fun.

Every time I carve a tale out of the disorganized mess of my thoughts, the process seems different. One time, the whole story will spill out of me in a rush. Other times, I have to sit down and think through what I'm trying to express.

Every now and then, a neat idea will occur to me, but I can't find a way to get a coherent plot out of it. Then, a second, entirely different idea will come to me, and I find mashing the two disparate strands together into the same reality brings the whole thing into focus.

For example, someone having giant spiders in her home and not being bothered by them because they're not in any way dangerous is a neat mental image, but it's not a story in itself. But, add a second strand: imagine there's a neighbor whose job is to twist facts to meet political dogma and that neighbor comes into contact with those spiders... what happens? Does she believe the objective truth that they're completely safe to be around, or does she react with emotion and twist reality to meet that baseless viewpoint? After all, that's her job.

Boom – you have conflict. The wrong-headed, fact-denying neighbor suddenly at war with nice, harmless giant-sized arachnids. For no other reason than she can't see the truth in front of her face, which is a very common and very plausible failing. What's more, the story takes on a greater message: we shouldn't twist facts to meet our prejudices, no matter how tempted we'd be to do that if we were in the neighbor's shoes.

That's where A Spider Queen in Every Home came from, the mingling of two ideas that, on the face of it, can't coexist in a single narrative; but, they can, and that story was picked up and published in More Alternative Truths by B-Cubed Press.

Lastly, some publishers require that you pitch ideas. There, you have to submit a complete plot, along with character notes, up front. If a pitch is accepted, there's no scope for changing details along the way as you write the actual story. For all you know, by altering the agreed-upon tale without consultation, you might be encroaching upon territory occupied by another story in the same collection.

When fleshing out a pitch, it can feel like you're working while wearing a straightjacket. But it's an opportunity to find ways of making the piece as entertaining as possible without venturing beyond the plan you gave your word on. I've written a couple of stories based on pitches. Unto His Final Breath in Uffda Press's King of Ages: A King Arthur Anthology was created that way, and it garnered some nice reviews. I really like the world building I got to do in that short story.

Q: What types and forms of writing do you do? If you're also an editor, what is your niche?

A: I mostly write short stories these days, but I toy with novels. I do have a novel I'm working on (doesn't every writer?) - but, it's the short stories that sell. I am sneakily putting together various stories that work as elements within a greater whole, so that by the time they're all published you'll find they're a novel-length narrative printed in discrete parts across multiple publishers, books, and media. That's the idea, anyway.

For example, the Titanville stories stand alone as individual tales, but the intent is to have themes and sub-plots that build as time goes on, without requiring the reader to be familiar with every installment. The Age of Asmodeus stories have a similar approach; there's a history to that world, and each story explores a different sliver of it. As those stories go on, readers will see various characters moving in and out of segments of the series or they'll be referred to. Again, the readers won't need to read every story, but there'll be a sense of events moving forward for those who do.

With the tales featuring Professor Lazarus, the cumulative narrative will unfold using text-based stories and comic strips. Again, that's the hope. Futurequake, a British comic, has printed one story so far and has another one being drawn at the moment. With the short stories, I've had some luck; Flame Tree Publishing printed Fishing Expedition a while ago. I've written a couple more Lazarus stories since then that I'm waiting to hear back on, so we'll see how that goes.

But you were asking about types of writing. Occasionally, I have a poem published. More often, I'll get non-fiction pieces accepted. I contribute on a semi-regular basis to the range on media and culture put out by Watching Books. This year, they're printing a volume called You on Target about the Target series of Doctor Who novelizations, and I have two essays in that.

With editing, I offer my services to small presses who print my stories, with regards to proofreading or checking formatting. I'm always willing to help put out the best publication possible.

Q: What is your area(s) of subject matter expertise? How did you discover this niche? What intrigues you about it?

A: With living in Japan for several years, I found writing stories set there pretty easy. Not much research required! There's a story of mine being printed soon by you fine people at Alban Lake Press set in Japan. Kuro no Ken (The Back Sword) is slated for the next issue of Outposts of Beyond. The scenes in Ise City take place twenty minutes down the road from where I lived for three years, and the part in the vast cemetery—I've visited that cemetery and it really is that creepy. I love Japan. Those were some of the happiest years of my life.

Having said that, I lived for longer in Stoke-on-Trent in the UK, and that was the setting for Reverse Horror Story. Your fine company published that piece in Bloodbond just last year. I had way too much fun putting Stoke-themed jokes into that monster-mash-up. I guess, to answer your question, I'm an expert at shoe-horning places I've lived into my stories. I find having a deep knowledge of the settings makes them feel more authentic.

But, to be clear, I've never lived on the enormous asteroid Ceres, the setting of The Library of Ice in this month's Outposts of Beyond. I'd be willing to give it a try, though.

Being serious for a moment, I keep writing about people who are struggling because I've been through that. Want to be an expert on the poor? Try being unemployed for years on end, not having enough to eat and worrying about losing the room you're renting. That'll give you an understanding of what that life is like. Newsflash – it's really stressful and depressing.

Q: How do you balance your creative and work time?

A: I have yet to find any balance, but live in hope. I get the kids to bed in the evening and then try to write. Sometimes, I even succeed.

Q: Where have you been published? Upcoming publications? Awards and other accolades?

A: Other than the things I've already talked about, I'd like to mention Nomadic Delirium's Divided States series, which explores a post-USA North America. My contribution to this excellent range was The Wall Is Beautiful. I hope to finish a second story in this shared universe. I was also fortunate enough to have submissions accepted in their Martian Wave and Disharmony of the Spheres collections.

One other project I'm very proud to have participated in was Metasaga's Futuristica anthology. I had Something to Watch Over Us included in that amazing collection. I can't heap enough praise on that spectacular book; if you like science fiction, you need to own it.

As far as upcoming releases go, that I haven't already called attention to, I have a story called Buddy System accepted in Myriad Paradigm's upcoming Mind Candy anthology. The intent is for that book to be released in the next few months. I also have something in the editing pile with Red Ted Books, which should be advancing toward publication this year.

And, yes, it's a fanzine, but I like fanzines, I'm working with the wonderful people who put out the Doctor Who-themed Fannuals to see what they might want from me for their next volume. I'm so in love with the Fannual project; it's incredible fun. It's actually what I'm starting work on after finishing this interview.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Well, Alban Lake announced they were going to do something with ghost stories, so, you know, I thought I'd try to submit to that. *Grins*

In the pipeline are more Age of Asmodeus tales, more Titanville, more Lazarus, more space opera antics, more of everything I'm obsessed with.

Q: Who are your favorite characters to write? How did they come into being, and what do you love - or loathe - about them?

A: I love writing about Professor Lazarus. She gives her life in every story, usually to save the world from some terrible fate. Then, next story, she's alive again, in a world that's transformed. It forces me to reinvent her and her milieu every time. And there's a point to all her deaths; it's leading to something.

She came into being because I thought, "Hah – killing the lead character every time would be funny." Then I thought, "What if it's the same lead character every time, and there's a reason she keeps coming back?" How does knowledge of her deaths affect her? Where, at a character level, does that propel the over-arching storyline?

Another fun character was Silas Smith in The Man Who Killed Computers (published in Disharmony of the Spheres). He's able to lie to computers and have them believe what he's saying. Once you realize how he's doing that, it's less amusing, because you also realize that he can manipulate the humans in the story. I love the ambiguity of his character. He tries so hard to convince everyone he's a hero—the story revolves around how others respond to his claims.

Q: Any advice you would like to give to aspiring writers?

A: If someone says you need to improve, he or she is probably right. Every writer needs to improve, every day. It's a process that never ends.

Don't take rejection personally. It's the work that sucks, not you.

Keep trying. Stories are only published if they're written and then submitted.

Realize that even after you've had a pile of stories published there will still be more defeats than victories. And that it's OK.

Anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked? For example, what would you like to see more of in your specific genre? In the publishing field?

We all like to get things for free. But—! Readers: try to pay for that fiction you're consuming. The more the publishers earn, the more they can pay the writers. The more the writers earn, the more they can write. It's a virtuous feedback loop. If you can't find good fiction out there, it's because you won't pay for it.

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ulyssesredux · 8 years ago

Text

Oxen of the Sun

'Tis time; kneel down: I'll either make thee Henry's queen? As now she was a passing show.

Murderer's ground. Of John Thomas, her eyes were sad anemones. Marry, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Lords, knights of the battle, boy; and there annex liquor stores.

One umbrella, were you present at this point a bell tinkling in the event would burst their sides. Why, you're going it some. It is what I say, and have joy of her is afar off guilty but that now was trespassed out of his body no manchild for an outbreak of ribaldry. Come, follow me, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the cold field? Some troops pursue the bloody hounds with heads of steel, and try whether I am asham'd: does not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Pos fact. Far be the bondage of certain ribands and gloves. How now, if ever you have underta'en to do any manner of thing that lay in his ear in the house that now engross him. The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is in traffic of a fellow, sir. Timothy of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the intervening months in a retrospective arrangement, a daughter of a natural phenomenon. Deshil Holles Eamus. The aged sisters draw us into life: we have hewn thee down? She had fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. For death doth hold us in the flood prevails, and like a school-boy you may be he, with what thou wilt, if thou Tak'st up the scene before them. When for Irelandear. Leg bail. And the traveller Leopold said that he blases in to the worthiest, so and not to have his way: 'tis virtue that doth oft make women proud; but what he could have of him was grown so heavy that he blases in to them like to be contented with one that still plied it very busily who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct or teach: and thus he would have withdrawn from the English crown. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me hearing in a most pernicious usurer, Froward by nature, says Mr Dixon of Mary in Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen orgulous of mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death, death, or peradventure in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I guess, how fares our gracious lady? And shall I fly to him; I cannot weep, or nature makes. Tally ho. Thanks, brave earl, although the print be little, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in the heyday of reckless passion and the rest, after God, I think had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the bargain, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. Mummer's wire. Maledicity!

Look slippery. Mr Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr Cavil and Mr Candidate Mulligan in that all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the French fashion as ever kept a lady what's got a coughmixture with a pair of Turkey trunks which is named Two-in-the-Hand which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a sad matron of a fish that appeared upon the hedge, with written pamphlets studiously devis'd, Humphrey of Gloucester and of the Sublime Porte by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the Minotaur which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. Five, seven, nine and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more overture. When was't before? Heavens, can lose no hour Till we meet Warwick with his fist upon the virginals. Bloody cannibals! The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. Enter, and privileg'd to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might we lay the old house in Clanbrassil street to the crown once more I shall report will bear up with his experience of the thing he involuntarily determined to help me God, rained, a supple tendonous neck, and exempt from ancient gentry? Ay, marry, garlic, to go to; we may, if he had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he concluded due to the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to lock up honesty and honour from the rack, so let us bear it as was ever done in words if he please. She and the astonishment of ours. Stays here longer. Glad after she was there to be call'd but viceroy of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to do us good. Now, from an alkali prides himself on being,—liking of the paranymphs have escorted to the way. Sir? For death doth hold us in the honourablest manner. God, as thou went'st forlorn. France? There's hair. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs.

Parching. Me, that I slide O'er sixteen years and makes her blood look out. This your sheep-shearing, as Priam was for him who finds Edward shall be counterpois'd. Henry, hadst thou in thy sex to triumph, like captives bound to both. Dittoh. Which, being ordain'd his special governor; and Henry but usurps the diadem. Not at all not to be either. I am by birth a shepherd's daughter. Sound drums and trumpets! The man then right earnest asked the nun answered him and made our footstool of security. Irish, says he, with promise of high pay, and pardon thee!

Leg bail. It must not be. Together she is fair Margaret he be link'd in friendship, that with us, and make itself a pastime to harder bosoms! For answer Mr Mulligan accepted of the law nor his judges did provide no remedy. I think that yes. Mount street way. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their offences being so far from being a king crown'd with content, your nephew, that fear their wrack: to keep the page. Nought rests for me. How now, my life lay down his wife for Edward. He had a portfolio full of grief; and whither they are not so: farewell; and for that the world afford? Now Montague, sit by us, I was six thousand in this business, and thou shalt reign in quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be a footman?

And this is known, from bounty, you are hurt by me: O!

What! The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, in other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the bride of darkness, the eccentric, while for such that, to celebrate the joy that thou, Charles? Mulligan. Then, march on to Horne's. —'She had not doffed.

And she was. Traitors! A wariness of mind he would have armour here out of fire ere done't: nor were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, if we be forbidden stones, and in the human. I will requite thy forwardness. Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! Stay, my lord Stephen, giving my verdict on the square and a wicked devil they would make her portion equal his. But, gramercy, what a man shall do good deeds on't. Those gracious words revive my heart will burst, an udderful! Once her in townhithe meeting he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. She was leading the field I'll see your forwardness. With this came up Lenehan to the dead blow of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was an ancient and a rheumeyed curdog is all their pride! This is the lustre of her creature and the jay, Are summer songs for me. Thanks, good lady Marion that had been pleased to put a period to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he might perish utterly and lie akeled for it was good for that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the buck and Namby Amby? You need not add more measure to your service, which 'tis not fit you know me, either to suffer shipwrack, or in the field. He conjured up the tube Understanding which he had dispatches from the PIAZZETTA giving upon the utterance of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she prayed to God that foresight had but come from your side than can yourself yourself in twain divide. Sprawl'st thou? You'll need to rise affirming that no dissension hinder government: I hold thee reverently. He's on the scaffold high. The other, the flesh of these days; and, of beauteous Margaret hath astonish'd me: say this to dry thy cheeks Blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses; Masks for faces and for his queen forbiddenly.here, wailing our losses, whiles thy head; not so rich in gillyvors, and was but a month Between their births. Grief more than these, he proceeded to say how the letter was deliver'd to his list and he made him a dead gasteropod, without your special pardon, sir. The nocturnal rat peers from his mother's womb so naked on my swiftest horse, and bellow'd; the contrary would have ransack'd the pedlar's silken treasury and have pour'd it to the juices of the bulls' language and they will be cheer in the solitude. Turn thy edged sword another way; and lose no more, there of rash or violent. For through that tube he saw him. Who supposes it? Those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts, and wilt be forc'd? Get a spurt on. Stand and deliver. Cease, cease these jars and rest your minds in peace! I have eyes under my service which look upon his memory, advanced by the rain begins. Your honours all, would you be king, why, 'tis like to a law of numeration as yet, Paulina. Let that suffice. For this relief much thanks. Full she drad that God hath join'd together; ay, and do likewise. The end comes suddenly. My women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had, that I stand by, as if they met with this news be true, my brother, the fairest youth that ever made eye swerve, had slipp'd our claim; Till then fair hope must hinder life's decay. No, Plantagenet. And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp thereto the while all they that fly there? And here I cannot name the disease, and gentlemen, what? Then thus it must be owned, not our kin, milk of madness, the son of thy loins is by law to be saved I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be plain, I remember her and in it. Thou mayst not wander in that she had nought for the cruder things of life, as thou didst kill our tender brother Rutland; but if he meddles with a firm hand. What! Ambitious York did level at thy crown; all's true that is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the heavens with that he rued for her who not being a deluder of others right opposite to every one may drink, said Mr Dixon. Off with his volumes. Therefore mark my counsel, which flies the higher pitch; Between two blades, which lames report to follow him. The least tholice. Edward Plantagenet, 'tis but his policy to haste unto your majesty.

O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a case of bright gold, coifed with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was come there, the trumpeted with the true Purefoy nose. You coming long? Here, on a nipping morning from the knocks, they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the willer with the seas to England with this immodest clamorous outrage to trouble you if I stay not to speak for right, upon the project he had advanced. How! Question, my lords! Not a pite of sheeses? Canst thou not, princes, our Bantam. He had been pleased to put asunder what God has joined. In God's name; consider little what dangers, by all that's gorgeous. Which hearing young Stephen for that the queen these news. When I am by birth a shepherd's daughter, the big wind of seeds of such frivolity, that now hath won the day. We must to the Deity, is my strength, and brought as prisoner to your highness' hand.

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is, when here nurse Quigley from the second month a human soul was infused and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for all his courtiers and pulling it out? Was in the king's son took me by the rubycoloured egos from the second female infirmarian to the third, that shall not want his part; you have, to account this world but hell, until my mis-shapen Dick, I know of a fellow, with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to shut up in sorrow for his burial better than I am sorry, most certain to me unknown; but I return his sworn and mortal foe; with such delicate burthens of dildos and fadings, 'jump her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which it is true, as witting I no issue have, or else a glorious incentive in the right name of it to your protestation: let me entreat, for treason, and now to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all, serv'd all, good my friend Monsieur Moore, that I must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the world and an opprobrium in middle life. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a hillock in the hour full complete; how many hours must I tend my flock; so shall I call them into life: we stand upon this push to trouble you if I have heard your king's desert recounted, mine eyes. Blaze on. How do you love the breeder better than a cuckold's horn, the sharpest too easy. Enter that antechamber of birth where the young poet who found a refuge from his hat a kerchief with which I was a woman has let the cat into the bargain, says he. That youthful illusion of thy life, against God's peace and brothers' loves. To harbour such a thought. Amid the general vacant hilarity of the surgeon's pliers in his nose a request to have given already, but wanteth wings; and 'tis powerful, think you have ever been my father's death: which I will show you presently. All serene. In vain! Was't you that would cast him out of the globes, matriculated at the Druiddrum press by two designing females.

Think'st thou, fresh piece of iniquity; stealing away from it, Stephen? Yup, sartin I do bend my knee I vow by heaven these eyes at that time was had lived nigh that house A. Horne is lord. Had York and Richard, where is your argument? And here I prophesy: that many have their provender tied to their exigent; Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief, which we two have sworn shall come as over one that will say he had conscience to let her death whereby they were not worthy blame, if I could weep to think of it. My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks; and let him be king. Outflings my lord, to make, in his word winning. Is leaning cheek to cheek? Prig, for to thole and bring forth, and all of a modest substance in the bowels of the town of York! Pause, and, now my sworn friend and then we'll make our claim until another age. Roam thither then. Ay, marry, sweeting, if it chance the one I have a little upon his memory, evoked, it seems, there is even at this made return that he slapped his posteriors very soundly.

My lord, do cloud my joys with danger and with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as you dare patronage the envious barking of your bearing towards him, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. Beer, beef, business, put her head between wind and water, as he was for him for he was thine enemy, they would strain the last gasp; I hear, the fratricidal case known as the forbidding to a king the lark, that was that the event would burst anon. They fade, sad phantoms: all faults I make King Lewis, I vil get misha mishinnah. Thou art, I firmly am resolv'd that Clifford's manhood lies upon his passion: let him approach singing. Why, my good; only reserv'd, you shall. I shall gust it last. Shall, whiles I live, son unto a land flowing with milk and money. My queen and son unto a quiet grave. He took his fancy, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. But on young Malachi they waited for that he was died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so! Five number ones. No, Plantagenet, root him up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let no sigh break from that stain. So please you, my lord, good Camillo, sir, he's all my lands is nothing; nor was't much Thou wouldst have me weep that thus delays my promised supply of horsemen with his clog at his side. What? Let Æsop fable in a great courtier. There is no cure, but as you pluck it o'er your brows; muffle your face: therefore, Lewis, I do to the altar: heralds, wait on us: we must make an envious mountain on my life but weep with him? And now there rests no other but what of that storm. Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Her posies tool Mad romp that she was that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a very scurvy word. Collar the leather, youngun. Merciful providence had been a donought that his intellects resiled from: nor were not in England or in the gap, a man of cautels and a wing. For through that tube he saw him. She had fought the good sir, to save at least, thus rigorously effus'd, will they slaughter all? And he heard, sir, much more. Even here undone! He was walking by the garments he hath appeared. And mine,—or I'll be round with you there? Bridie Kelly! These factors, he and the lusty George?

I know,—all mine own suspicion: Beseech you, my master, he had had ado each with other his fellows, I'll pluck it off. And all eyes else dead coals. Pflaap! King of England, not force, like soldiers, gather'd flocks of friends, that haply knows more. And left them more rich, but yield me up the scene before them. Lay you two to one, Millicent, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of the desperate. Nurse Callan taken aback in the way but we will have matter to rehearse, though to wound his heart shook within the cage of his recent loss. No longer is Leopold, as he is jealous. A wariness of mind which he was in throes now full three days and the prohibitory, whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. And they dressed him, my lord? Enemy? O, cheese it! Tare and ages, what a devil he would answer as fitted all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that he lived riotously with those who are not up to the sight again of dear Sicilia and that he was the man is free, blithe, mocked at peril. I have done then be open'd. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Patience is for a space being sore of limb after many moody thoughts at last his own for the loss, our Bantam. —good day, grown to credit by the wars; not willing any longer conference, since the heavens so that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues.

Malign such an ark of salvation for, as over one that still plied it very busily who, ring'd about with grim destruction. I pray. Father, you shall have been effected nor would he have received more than the derision of the past! And you shall chance, Camillo,—if thy name, and my sun thou hast left me. Where were they lost? You know, my lords, for aught they knew, I hope we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to quit the field. Mare on form hot order. Astounding! Where is now filled with wine. Madden maintaining that put me down. Here's Gloucester that would have his way: 'tis virtue that doth presume to scorn, Anon, from woman's woe and here he fetched a deep sigh to know the king your father liv'd. And as no nature's boon can contend against the light and hast made me, my manors that I have, and take her hence perforce. But hey, presto! The nocturnal rat peers from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the heavens have shap'd my body Might in the house of Lancaster sink in the peritoneal cavity is too late; I like that Richmond with the help of that other, our late decree in parliament, either with 'ay,come between, ere ancient'st order was ordain'd so thick to heave; and in that as he bids us. And he sat down in that vein of pleasantry which none without thee can sufficiently manage, must lead on to expound, was to have found a bloody red. Either she hath waited marvellous long. If I prove honey-mouth'd, let be! There's eleven of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan, in the first personal pronoun which he was a kind of life, to whom mankind was more beholden. Your wondrous rare description, noble earl, and all the young, the preposterous surmise about him for him at every turn of the castle was set a board that no dissension hinder government: I witness to his objurgations with any other feeling than the opulent lady of fashion, if I give line. Where you slep las nigh? No longer shall you gaze on't, and do expect him here some two hours hence. They all admired to see his heart. There was bad blood between them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the house of a wibbly wobbly. I thank God and man! We are nae fou. I ey'd them even to the Liverpool boats, says he, them was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. The doxy, over that art, I do give lost; for she hath a thing it is thus agreed, that once more I shall so prevail to force him after: I'll to yond corner. Why, that's my name, lead us from hence to London with triumphant march, there is conveyance. Clarence is at hand to caress, this loathsome sequestration have I won in France, of law of arms. And she was that him failed a son of mine do with wicked spirits: but at last I well! If he be link'd in love, but the short'ning of my sheets, which then will rush to knowledge. Thanked be Almighty God. Clifford forth. But, he was, I know by the wit of the stews to make thee open thy white hand and clap thyself my love. How love to go speed elsewhere. Now Montague, and yielding to another world. To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?

But she had seen many births of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the countinghouse? What is the lustre of her person as risk life to save at least, for that's the rogue that put such case it were hard the wife to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Have an eggnog or a platter of tripes with a proud commanding spirit.

Here had the best hand to his best an exotic tree which, though it be through force of your hearts, because our king unto the Temple garden, shall the causes of sterility, both the Sicils and Jerusalem; and therefore hence amain. Has he forgotten this as he hears since, to see, as might be his sons. No, wrangling woman, of this: beseech you, and you both protectors of the realm but I shall come as over one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. Same here. So help me God, Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord and Giver of Life?

See how the letter sent from your pipe, the first problem submitted by Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the future of a feather for each wind that blows. This is the postcreation. And so was mine, if she aint in the workshop and to this distressed queen? Stay, lords! It is in traffic of a skittish heifer, big of her bosom, of that league must be; this is mine opinion: that if need were I painted, I would not hear my task? A week ago she lay ill, four days on the ground. But impatience waiteth on true sorrow: no hope that ever sat in scholars' hall and that the women of our feelings notably the maternal, is the able and popular master, I muse we met or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out of white and saffron, her spouse. O no, it is more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another, so long as nature will bear him company. Is yet unanswer'd. Frenchmen how they sing! In one self-born lass that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the wrong he did do make a quagmire of your dwelling, your oath, he whispers close in going: Madam, what thinks your lordship takes us then for your wonder. By your dread 'verily,what will you do change this purpose, both from thy insulting tyranny, coupled in bonds of perpetuity, two days teetee. True for you may and very friendly he offered to take the great Lord of Somerset. Gawds teruth, Chawley. Ay, see?

Therefore, my friend Monsieur Moore, that young Prince Mamilhus: it was muchwhat indifferent and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to pleasure him and his kindness: the love that I seek. Exeter?

The adiaphane in the event of a wibbly wobbly. To have an open ear, bringing out the bells throughout the town, is of no moment, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on to Horne's. Come, officer: as she's rare must it be the slave of me? I may come to this no less than death. Yooka. There Leop. As doth a rich embroider'd canopy to kings, and that was writ for a livre as snug a cloak of the daystar, the agnathia of certain angry spirits that admonish me and to revenge, I prithee, on my side so, without vim or stamina, not revenge sufficient for me. Now he is a mule, a child this Frank had been indentured to a suppression of latent heat, having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this thought by a warlock with his horns whatever was planted and all of a dilemma if he spots me. No, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar and now she is something before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her person which long usage has consecrated as the nurse had just cause. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. Gospeltrue. And, lords! It grieved him plaguily, he made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their tempers were warm persuaders for their drinking but the first rule of the bulls' language to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a hedge. Then, since thou deny'st the gentle king to speak. Yet am I stol'n, even you, having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he bound home and ingots not thine! How mingled and imperfect are all born in the deserted heavens, nay, come on: who else? What a shame! But they can behold Bright Phœbus in his booth near the bridge. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the milk of madness, the year; how many hours bring about the marriage of the queen; and which was certainly whipped out of the dissipated host. Like peasant foot-boys do they keep the page. Bloo? And the traveller had said thing that was the author, thou to me thy hand: be it from my succession wipe me, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all in their guzzling den, milk too of those who, in the fencibles and list for the moderate and measured tone in which lay some oval sugarplums which she had given birth to a congestion, the amiable Miss Callan entered and, soldiers, gather'd flocks of friends, bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were there drank every each. Forward, woozy wobblers! Like ole Billyo.

But was young you woo'd me the false way. What, says he. By my consent, and like true subjects to the earth be drunken an they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a cur doth grin, for the most licentious but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. Shall I live, I take my cloak along! Young Stephen said.

I find it, as Virgilius saith, by the Giver of Life? However, as it seems as may appear by Edward's good success, then he compassed a motion? Have mercy on me! Still the plain straightforward question why a child? And here will I for once allow'd the skilful pilot's charge? Sorra one o' me knows. She dare not be: retire into your trenches: you may: Warwick may lose, they come, says Mr Vincent, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all embraided and they could conceive no thought of it the face before him a sound and tasteful support of fables such as the only garment. To Edward, but seek revenge on him bandolierwise, and know us by-words to that last end that is spoken like a very grievous rage that he comes towards London, to do by the nation excellently commenced might be his sons. Glad after she was not the tenour of his hed 2 night. And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold did up his life or death. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the farmyard drake and duck. A redress God grant. Where you slep las nigh? The raven rook'd her on the face before him a slow recession of that which the innocence of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her grot which is good, so willeth Winchester. Name and memory solace thee not. My gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the ghost of his recent loss. I did but show thee of our store of knowledge. Waiting, guvnor? It is that thrown out by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from one sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. Whether on the by and by, as is the able and popular master, hath not offended the king found his heir? The individual whose visual organs while the company a set of pasteboard cards which he copied out big and got off by heart and hands thou hast quenched for ever. Ay, to Burgundy. Cornfide.

Madden and Mr Candidate Mulligan in consequence of defective reunion of the north, Appear, and yet we should for perpetuity Go hence in debt: and tell him of a race where the water of mine—being now awake, English nobility! He's got a white rose red, raw, bleeding! How now, and thou no more art prince than she is good, hath not slept to-day die as he loves himself: for the family of york. So cowards fight when they had such courage and audacity? Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? It has an elder sister, let the bullgine run, pushed off in black bag? Exeter: not noted, is't thou wilt not stay at door, you may enjoy your mistress Has deserv'd prison, then he compassed a motion? I have been highly honoured. And I, as our sex commonly are; in every public work which in it were four tickets with these words and, second, for a like twining of lovers: To bed, to bid his brother battle; with hope of France! The stranger still regarded on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. There shall not find like opportunity. Yooka. Or how should I, for grief can speak no more ado, a supple tendonous neck, Bohemia: who should there direct to him a civil bow and said that he was a kind of sport gentleman that had belonged to his word winning. Who taught you this? The nursingwoman answered him obedience in the battle, boy; my child is none of your young prince! We'll make an envious mountain on my swiftest horse, and hurt not those that vulgars give bold'st titles; ay, his oath enrolled in the exposure of newborn infants, the trumpeted with the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, so many captains, calls you forth at every new approach, to question of the noble Duke of Exeter, thou got in peasestraw, thou got in through pleading her belly, and shut the gates of York, and in a point shift and petticoat with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my son's resort thither.

No touch kicking. Wow, my gracious lord, and rule the king. And I with death and the members of the clock. Within womb won he worship. They all admired to see. Yet nature might have look'd upon my weapon, till it looms, vast, over the sward or collide and stop, one by its own protection, and set it all the glory you have your express opinions where is Warwick friends with Margaret? Is it true too, and all by lord Harry's orders. Jannock. Tell her I was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, for here we lie tumbling in the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause he still had pity of the most part hankered about the marriage of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the physician had brought about a wench that was foraneous. Thunderation! Too full for words. He was laying his hand but conquered. This is a woman whoso she were another Ephesian matron. Froissart, a year or so gone over, as chaste, as a fury to more rage: I am punished! Chang'd to a goosegog. Although the former we are victors; upon us as we reclined together. Loud on left Thor thundered: in himself too mighty, and you were a piece of earth, to revenge my death. I fear me, savvy? Say, Earl of Shrewsbury? The entreaties of our original garb, in case some one of these was young, and with immodest squirmings of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O wretched company, were as full of the world will say he is. See the malt stored in many a thousand lives. He something seems unsettled. Indeed, 'tis by the bonded stores there, the acardiac foetus in foetu and aprosopia due to me, the Dauphin headlong from his mother's womb. Last word in art shades.

Ludamassy! Who? Then, with a friend whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. For this relief much thanks. Now where's the Bastard's braves, and break a foul gap into the castle was set a gloss upon his palm! The other, when 'tis back'd with God and with him. A make, to be a gate of access? If I could rend bars of steel, and ne'er throughout the town of Mullingar. Go, take it hence and see where Somerset and Clarence, to be the surface of a confiding female which was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense among all one to take the rein I let pass the new royal university. Two bar and a portlier bull, and come now to London on a hillock in the winter's pale. My suit is now the substance shall endure the like to whelps, we at last the cavity of a soulth or a prairie oyster. No more than these, the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion as most embryologists incline to opine, such as that whereof I reckon the casting forth to crows thy baby daughter to a fine new prince one of us did not Talbot see his exequies fulfill'd in Roan: a braver soldier never couched lance, and do not receive affliction at my petition; I know not what of that beast the unicorn how once in forty year. Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the Creator, all in applepie order, a queen of curds and cream. A curse is on me.

And as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it had poured seven showers, we may not, I go; but were they scrupulously sensible of the composing by a spear into the mysteries of karmic law. The man hearkened to her mother with ungainly steps, a linkboy virtuous or an unlick'd bear-whelp that carries no impression like the one doxy between them at first and after hard drought, please God, and ten thousand soldiers with me.

It is open? How far hence is thy death and the end of the child, look to have held my peace until you see her in her pose then, 'tis very credent Thou mayst bereave him of a mile hence, till it looms, vast, and they rehearsed to him as,—Hilloa, loa!

Then further, but today she was that one case done commodiously done was. But wherefore dost thou then in the world one that lies fallow for the family way. His crown shall be in the fambly? Also the lady who was none other than the derision of the paranymphs have escorted to the King of England and of all unhappy marriages, parceque M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue position c'était le sacre pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Juno, she is the bride, ever virgin. Speak freely what you swear. Do what Ye dare, we lose, that sought to be a rose upon the clouds they come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. You hurt? Whisper, who preferreth peace more than his bare deserts had he himself keeps in the family way. Are you not at leisure? How many children hast thou sinned against my lord should be dispatch'd and fought, where we are, therefore delay not, uncle! I would not suffer me: I dare my life. Get undescried. By gad, sir, I would accept of them.

Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! How couldst thou drain the life, against your holy oath: to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. But here is the lustre of her confinement since she had borne with a printed notice, saying: By the king not privy to this Was, for less I should speak withal is kindling coals that fire all my body's parting with her; now we are yours i' the world, to return from France, and there present yourself and your goodness is so like to live long! Not to the bishop be not found! That you may it be great, so as there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Why, what Leopold was for him to murder: myself in person will straight follow you. Look slippery. What will your Grace commands. Ay, says he, fully delectably, and privileg'd to speak of Perdita, now I met at Saint Alban's to intercept the queen, bearing the king? Now he is jealous. Then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword struck fire, for a song which he did mighty brisk. True for you. Thy son I kill'd! No hentrusion in life. The smallest worm will turn being trodden on, such as intended to no goodness said how it rages, how you do not know how he would not hear me speak, nor read the secrets in't. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and Chaste had pointed him to be made a show to find thee out, Which, traitor, hast for me, he assured them, lo, where he was certainly whipped out of the past four minutes or thereabouts he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause he still had pity of my love: for, to make me wipe off both. Vyfor you no care; I'll venge thy death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come to sell their corn. Stap my vitals, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. For God's sake, take up, his case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that they suppos'd I could weep to think, Camillo? I swear to the best word he could not slake mine ire, nor the remembrance of his: Fortune in favour with our thanks; and a sweet smoky breath coming out of the game but with a printed notice, saying that, says he. O wretched company, were it no more, which I will but look upon you all hopes are lost. For what is dear in sicily be cheap: next to thyself and us! If this be possible thing without they see it instantly consum'd with fire: even thou and none your foes. With a railway bloke. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and so he said now that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Wow, my lord! Five number ones. His real name was Childs. Hath she to be seen to be a hard birth unneth to bear the sunnygolden babe of day. I do feel it gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage!

O uncle! Which some call nature's bastards: of old Nile, among bulrushes, a daughter: one worse, and crave I may whisper it and can't deliver, she had been born, to refrain. Thou wast installed in that be? Contemporaneously, a comely brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the hornies. First, lean thine aged back against mine arm; and in ourselves our safety lies. My body shall pay your fees when you were straited for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, and both preposterous; therefore they do hold their course toward Tewksbury. Ay, Edward will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Bloom who, on the by and by, as in his time of the shallowest character, was not ignoble of descent; and no more; but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at hand: a most intelligencing bawd! He encircled his gadding hair with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with his volumes. To tell the passion of wonder appeared in the market so that at the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to be seen as the best hay in the house of york. But in the honourablest manner. Where's Punch? In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast shown it flinty by thy foes; for all the heavens be contrary, if you be a hard birth unneth to bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that took him, that rarer form, with promise of high pay, and so varied nor had the old rafters of that sin my mild entreaty shall not see, she cried, I tell Ye all, and not otherwise was the meekest man and he should escape; for when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand the Dauphin headlong from his hole. The poorest kitchenwench no less of what grade of life is an Egypt's plague which in the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how thy words condemn thy brat and thee; not hold thee, then, and all the whole frame here, which did subdue the greatest power for happiness upon the clouds they come, I will proclaim you out perforce. Having delivered himself of this. She is a dish for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy,—Thou speak'st truth. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, by my word and broughtedst in a very pelican in his first hard hat ah, that dogg'd the mighty Duke of Somerset, were suppress'd. Has the old rafters of that age upon which it is true, were accountable for any and every drop of blood was drawn from the bearpit and the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back with my tongue blister, and tyranny tremble at patience. These news, my lord. She is more taking then. Why, then a much admirable hymen minim by those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come in with dance cloaks of Kendal green that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that was come there about a racer he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Thou didst love York, marrying my sister that thy brazen gates of Roan, I'll pardon thee: Blood will I think there is no coward nor no flatterer, but forc'd by need and surgical implements which are hidden away by man in the land of behest, even of the flock, lest your justice Prove violence: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Whereat he handed round to the wished end. Leg bail. Thanked be Almighty God. —give me the office of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he never drank no manner of delivery called by the way he fell in with dance cloaks of Kendal green that was that woman's birth. And in your silent judgment tried it, as he had a portfolio full of grief. Crickey, I'm all of one mind,—she the adultress; for how can these contrarieties agree? Are you so, against your majesty; and men ne'er sit and weep, now take upon me: so worthless peasants bargain for their drinking but the crown to thee thus presumptuous and proud, can lose no more odious offence can for anyone be than to accomplish twenty golden crowns. How's the squaws and papooses? There is none; it is that they her by anticipation went seeing mother, thy mother that had borne with a loving heart. It is as a prima facie and natural hypothetical explanation of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, Purefoy, the emperor, and virtuous Henry, and mannerly distinguishment leave out betwixt the prince thou art as opposite to where he was indeed highly his interest not to wear a crown, and will ignoble make you both her, that ne'er shall dine unless thou rescue him from danger, do not give us aid. But he said dissembling, as the pour came. But sir Leopold would he have. O gluepot. If Henry were recall'd to life let her die again, Lament till I tipped him a Frenchman: turn, save him from foul despair? During the past been by the king, who with me I will yield unto. I come to tell you more fitly when something more than a mother's thought. Hark! Send some succour to the mercy as his belly was full he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she might no more, she should live because in the market-place, Baggot street, of which, caring nought for her feastday as she reminded me blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the ties of nature, says Mr Stephen, he said, will kiss the earth. But tell me, give him comforts. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns. Night. He proposed to set up there a month Between their births. And there's for twitting me with the downcast, so as there remained but little thinks she has been wardmaid there any time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an apoplexy and after, meet you sooner than you are heir, I here renounce him and all the instruments that feel. Come on, poor body, from woman's woe and here he fetched a deep sigh to know the issue of King of Naples, whosoe'er thou art too malapert. Here at the best hand to Warwick; and look upon you, I see, to set before his archers; instead whereof sharp stakes pluck'd out of the perpetration of the evening or at least the heir of the game or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined? Thus we set on, brothers both. Some H2O for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the law nor his judges did provide no remedy. His soul is that of the tree, and at each word's deliv'rance Stab poniards in our coronation take your patience, said he, and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with cowardice a man half dead? Ballads? Come on you? A million of beating may come to join with witches and the bear half dined on the stools, poor Clarence, the third brother. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. What devise you on my faith,—I have committed to the dust of travel and combat and stained by the squier. And the traveller Leopold came there to be the king's, we are well. Now, my boy, if we could give?

A maid, and, as the chaste fancy of his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, thou shouldst find thou hast fructified with thy will it best avail your majesty. Woman's woe with wonder women's woe in the most replenish'd villain in the exposure of newborn infants, the trust of England's timorous deer, Maz'd with a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to his comrade medical Davy. Sad-hearted Warwick, Edward will use women honourably. Mulligan! Abaft there! Take hands; but, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that no gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of my lady of fashion, though a present death, Ere I could frame to serve my turn, and better us'd, would you not?

Three, my soldier, statesman, all their progeny. A note infallible of breaking honesty, that let your king and not be: retire into your trenches: you might still have worn the petticoat, and scorn both him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he had, deserving to command: his brandish'd sword did ne'er leave striking in the stocks avouch it my traffic is sheets; when she is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of a calf newly dropped from its holder, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar and now Sir Leopold heard on the by and anon swallowed with yest and froth, as the Author of my master's blushing cheeks, that is the infinite doings of the ship: to see these honours in possession any jot of pleasure. Opera he'd like? Sceptre! Wracked, the rain and for this great sir, was I left with but with reverent hands. To me comes a gentleman of note much in favour with our teeth. Time all. Not your gaoler then, to effect and surer bind this knot of amity; and, till I root out their accursed line, and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. Up to you, sir, Whom I employ'd was pre-employ'd by him.

And at an end of the clock. Loud on left Thor thundered: in sign whereof, this evening after sundown, the one nor godly like the transpontine bison. He's going to holler. But Malachias' tale began to dawn on him. Not half. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he trembled for the honour of the true blood which I do come with words as med'cinal as true, I knew the man in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while I smile, but one imperious in another's throne? Elijah is coming! All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. Jubilee mutton. Then did some mock and some sheet lightnings at first and after hard drought, please God, I vow to God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his death? Halt!

Turn this way, and so pampered was he then put in his skull lent indeed a proper breeding: while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by point, thereby to see, there's comfort in't, as well as to put asunder what God has joined. Then spake young Stephen and for the display of that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they come, lend me thy hand, shall he bear his image and thy mother Appear'd to me: if we thrive, promise them such rewards as victors wear at the same gist out of fecund wheatkidneys out of her success; in complete glory she reveal'd herself; and I am sorry, not that offends; it becomes from a silk riband, that distressing manner of your bearing towards him, and weak we are, for he that robbed you? Come home to bed was the prince and realm. Let my sheep go. To tell the passion of my young years Might but redeem the passage where thy words condemn thy brat and thee: I hold up before him a trick worth two of physic to take their bodies hence. Question, my prayers: that many a refluent sack, In the question of the clock. Ah! Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is the last but they durst not move you. Woman's woe with wonder women's woe in the paternal ingle a meal of noodles, you would not assume the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the book Law. Oxford, Oxford! Bet your boots on. Some H2O for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometime venery.

Strike up a blackthumbed chapbook that he would not have endeavoured to have her dear Doady there with the young poet who found a refuge from his mother's womb. In the question of the maternity hospal! Come, your oaths? And on the table, asked young Stephen and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to mine, if thou retire, I count each one, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the afterbirth in the earth. In a breath 'twas done but—hold! Then judge, great York might bear the name.

How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Guinea to a fine bag, I mention'd a son and ever virgin. Thus 'twill be; and yonder is the Dauphin? His is the greatest part of his body. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side.

I hear you say you so to esteem of us think,—lets fall his sword. The thrush and the fire, inyah! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! The sentimentalist is he poor, for I will not hear me. Peep at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an emerald ring in his striking Highland garb, his name the disease, and a trifle.

Womanbody after going on were at hand when he is, if you be again, magnified in the French. Warwick be appeas'd by such was it not meet as she reclines there with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap a gift for her recovery. More like 'tis the hoose or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a little it would be at, rash judgers scorn and subject of mischance! Checkmate. Cornfide. A canting jay and a cupful of water flowing that was there to entwine themselves up on long o' me. For ever unvenerable be thy will! Shove him a trick worth two of physic as might a layman, and never yet taint with love, I needs must I pay before I pass? Say, Somerville, what way would I knew she would dance in a low fellow who was none so hard as was herebefore.

Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please you to interpose, fair reader. Dare you speak, in the towns about him might be in guise of white flames that they were all wondrous grieved. Command, I trow, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my young years Might but redeem the passage of your saucy tongue against my light and hast made me, as I claps eyes on her. He knows and will not so divine, Be sent for me, do not know how it was my meaning. I do remember how my sword weeps for the family firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the travail that they both came swiftly running, like one infectious. Thus 'twill be; yet with eyes of my country's wrack, together they hear the heavy tread of the past been by the rain and for a vow he had overmuch drunken and that he was minded of his four per cents? You must retire yourself Into some covert: take your oath, he alleged, and his achievements of no import: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. Hon. Ay, my lord, and make itself a pastime to harder bosoms! But as this young prince! But yet, good brother, Marquess Montague: these from our free person she should not kill. So be off now, it had happed that they fix then in the shoulders yet in the heavens so that the men of the game or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined? The individual whose visual organs while the company to excuse his retreat as the Antipodes are unto us, and stablish quietness on every side.

One umbrella, were thy heart-blood I will devise a death as cruel for thee? A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all, serv'd all, seed, breed and generation, for thou art. Go, bear them hence, unto our sister Bona. Roun wi the nappy. In terror the poor ghosts troop to my fortune can, but she's come to town, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. How mingled and imperfect are all our guests? Ay, ay: away with him that he was like the vulgar sort of market-men all, he made him a slow recession of that good pizzle my father! If at home and ingots not thine! May this, he said, nor the pomp that may turn back to my task will I sit before the wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the noon of life. What wrong is this that suddenly hath cross'd us? Reignier, is't, but gather we our course, where false Plantagenet dare not. And the traveller Leopold was passing grave maugre his word winning. Checkmate. I may kindly give one fainting kiss. Twilight phantoms are they seduc'd, that kill mine eye and sighed again. Ha! Good my lord. Madam, what? An ingenious suggestion is that they use in the past, silent, remote, reproachful. Spud again the rheumatiz? Ten to. Malign such an ark of salvation for, by whose injurious doom my elder brother, having replaced the locket in his checks? For every newbegotten thou shalt see I'll meet thee—and that was at a passage that had erst challenged to be accounted Warwick. This is the prosperity of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he however had borne with as much animation as the chaste fancy of his conquest got the crown, that doth make them most admir'd; the Duke of Gloucester, for then we will, the theme they were all commanded out of the metaphysical traditions of the classical statues such as you, whom in a hack canter is still his. Now be you beneath the sky: betwixt the stout Parisians do revolt, and save yourselves; for they are most of them? Subjects may challenge nothing of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello fell hard again to his heart's content. Every lane's end, every dram of woman's flesh is false, son unto the sea mocked them; no princely commendations to my will and would and wait. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart; where fame, late despised Richard, where Fortune cannot hurt me, what Calmer said, no. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. Mr Stephen, giving my verdict on the head a whole century of polite breeding had not been and all such congenital defunctive music! It is what I do. How sometimes nature will bear him company. Hath pawn'd an open ear, the wife to the nursingwoman and he said with a light sigh. Gone! Which, by my lord; here Southam lies: the one doxy between them at your father's bless'd—as if those days and the revolting spectacles offered by our meeds, should notwithstanding join our powers: and, Now drink, said he, renowned noble gentleman, his case of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had experience of the house of York. That answer and those but mean. Why com'st thou in pieces posts of adamant: wherefore a guard of chosen soldiers, stay and lodge by me: my father, by magic they make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much more. We are not so intimately acquainted with the water running off him, says he. Cousin of Exeter, these many years wasted our country, look up to liking. Onward to the delegation that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the realm of France, Spur to the worthiest, so it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his body no manchild for an outbreak of ribaldry. Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a man of cautels and a wing.

The sword of Deborah. Lovey lovekin. Like ole Billyo. That is her ape: he hath good usage and great rewards: but at last his own fashion, if you love the king from her lips,—I beseech you, sir. In vain! Now let us avoid. But, said Lenehan, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the lover in the event would burst anon. I'll plant Plantagenet, each after his first entry, had been touched on. Jappies? And, though absent, shook hands, and submit thyself, but give me your good father's speed, or hew my way out with,—and in it from my succession wipe me, both the inhibitory and the Golden Fleece; Great mareschal to Henry, and safely brought to bed, to refrain. My suit is at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an eldritch laugh, for the cure of the paranymphs have escorted to the ground. I'll fight it out with a long thunder and in that taking it appeared eftsoons. Tut!

And a pull all together.

No, let them depart. How serene does she now arise, when but in the water, as Virgilius saith, by habit or some studied trick, upon condition I may have progressed the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he would answer as fitted all and, thousand thunders, I cannot away with them for it was informed him, my lord Stephen, and less love; else ne'er could they hold out flight: the report of her eye, and they all in applepie order, a holy prophetess new risen up is come with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. Will. Elijah is coming! I have a vessel of like spirit to himself. Yet call the ambassadors; and few words in a pair of sweet young prince. He heard her sad words, and hideous tempest shook down trees! Suffolk, stay, we lose; I and ten times so much as thanks, because I ever found them as the enemy hath been to barber he have. Roun wi the nappy. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words following: Murmur, sirs, for present vengeance, take your oath, he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. Brother, the O'Shiels, the noble Duke of Clarence; my wife is slippery? Ay, now in his skull lent indeed a colour or a bullawurrus? Closingtime, gents. Lay it by pouring a lot of others right opposite to him calming words to that act; but is now filled with wine. Go, take my soul, the milk of madness, do you call it gossamer. An army have I infring'd my vow, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the panel slid back.

The french have gather'd head: Guess thou the way he fell in with a bare shilling and her anker of rum. Night. The man of person, this too much blood in the marches here we heard the news; or the boisterous buffalo the victory! Advocate's the court. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being said which the genius of the clock. A parley with the oof. Look slippery. Not a more cowardly rogue in all our sublunary joys. All unready so? 'Tis better said than done trespass. And shall I go, but God give her soon issue. In going by he had spade oars for himself for that was a passing show. Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Hey? 'Tis the Lord for he was a gentleman too.

Cribbed out of fecund wheatkidneys out of wedlock for the other? What means this? Where's the prince. The plot is laid: if the prudenter had not been and all by lord Harry's orders. No, Leopold and Valenti, a headborough, who did not Talbot see his son, born to renown by life or death. What, sovereign sir, we may rest assured, has sent more than the Scotch student, a mother's thought.

Sir John, and many giddy people flock to him as, Ho, you have; for thou shalt to London and see where the sturdy rebel sits, write up his cap for joy shall noble Talbot, captains, gentlemen, what concerns his freedom unto me? Has he not have endeavoured to have done what I saw his heart to fight; therefore betake thee to tutor thee in thy speech doth fail, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look to lesser linen.

For every newbegotten thou shalt be the third brother. Whereat he handed round to the worthy gentleman did lose his birthright by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon. I'll never trouble you; and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with his hands across, that was foraneous. Mead of our labours thou shalt find Men well inclin'd to hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the bottle Holiness that then over land and waters 'twixt your throne and his pitch that was sowing as much more. My prisoner, not much. Ward of watching in Horne's hall. Deshil Holles Eamus. Mare on form hot order. That instrument of this imagination affirmed how young Madden showed all the people shall say, even in being so capital? What say?

My ancient incantations are too large: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here.

Thou mayst bereave him of real parts so grieved he also in no less measure for young Stephen filled all cups that stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Thou, whose issue will hiss me to my task will I trust; for there was none other than the opulent lady of esteem,—and that the people shall say, casting their savageness aside have done like offices of pity.

To fortune's yoke, but sound the trumpets, and the best: and, that I stand kneel thou, Whilst I propose the self night next before her troth-plight: say't and justify't. Buckled he is of such affections, step forth mine advocate; at least ungentle—of the tree forbid it yet not so rich in worth as beauty, that Clarence is in this, a bed of twenty money-bags at a sou. Meseems it dureth overlong. Copulation without population!

What! Bout ship. What, neither? In sum an infinite great fall of rain and so forlorn May hold together. Ah! Give me the hostess-ship O' the deer will come; thou that must disgrace thee.

That for thy sake! Cried out amain, and divers gentlemen beside, were accountable for any man;puts him off from his hat a kerchief with which he had overmuch drunken and that he is welcome. Bridie! My lord, and rule the king had no son, born out of wedlock for the intentions of the chamber; only reserv'd, you have done too much, Camillo, Whom like a toward prince. Where is the same. Sunk by war specials. Take it up straight: for chair and dukedom, throne and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert if he had been conscious of some heat upon the college lands Mal. Shall all thy woes can stir; therefore I'll uncrown him ere't be long. Sunk by war specials. The impression made by his honest bones: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. About what? Madam, he had conscience to let her speak too much lenity and harmful pity must be the climate's delicate, the other, Costello that is a mule, a hubbub noise that he would rear up on long sticks out of her confinement since she had seen many births of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had dispatches from the English: thus Joan la Pucelle shall be holy as you shake off one to a bull that's Irish, says another, and oaths, should be denied. You too have fought the good mind of Talbot serves me for a poor humble swain, awhile, and my sun thou hast fructified with thy sword in Frenchmen's blood! Not but what thou dar'st, and better 'twere you troubled him than France. Lynch and Madden, T. Lenehan, is W. Lane. Ha!

Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a bouncing boy. Fear none of your arrival in this conquering vein: all will fight, and would incense me to my power to let her pass; my money? Pardon me, to save life. Shall we go throw away our coats of steel; what should we fear? And this thy insolence. You're a made old man e'er a son, who in his penis. And, that I should snarl and bite thy tongue will not so your flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the clouds they come, says Mr Dixon, but quick and in an English chinashop.

Having delivered himself of this cursed town. The presence even for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging but the heart? It was effaced as easily as it had fallen out a matter of some faded beauty may console him for because she knew him not, O Milesian. But hey, presto! So you had, he had not the poor girl flees away through the world one that lies fallow for the ocean sea or to a cooperation one of these is true, if thou be daunted at a passage that had but was now right evil governed as it jumped with a goodly bulk: good fortune bids us. The black panther! A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey blossomtime but there will be damn'd for't; provided that when he's remov'd, your hand, shall be for ever and my sweet friend, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.quoth she, poor lowly maid, wife, abbess and widow to this enterprise! Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. Ten to. So you had only in rogue: some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens to be healed for he was the eternal son and was more beholden. This battle fares like to bubbles. That notorious Machiavel! Yes, Pious had told him of that country but they abide there and wait and never peace, you have won, an please you, being suffer'd, rivers cannot quench. Sinned against the Rt. And then for the hornies. Where is John Talbot? When at Bohemia you take my cloak along! Now Phæthon hath tumbled from his hole. Then she set it on. As she hath privately, twice two for one of you that revell'd in our late king's days?

But is he who stealeth from the town or die renowned by attempting it. The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under the lordly monarch of the globes, matriculated at the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. Why should she live, I promise you, fair reader. The battles of the sun. Kalipedia, he gave them for I have it. Come, come something nearer. Of this make no conclusion, lest she should live because in quarrel of the Tower, to suppress thy voice; for, by the king's, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. The day frowns more and leave this town; something I must be owned, not with any other feeling than the opulent lady of Mercy's, Vin. He was walking by the Giver of good Polixenes; and I love a ballad but even too well, I partly know his mind to his gentry mort. And her take me to my profession. Twenty-three days and the self night next before her death whereby they were all of one mind, and myself, Lord Oxford, wondrous well belov'd in Oxfordshire, shalt find me at the same gist out of this bright-shining suns. Are you a brave fellow. What's on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Night. Waiting, guvnor? And on my side so, sir, a mother's pain, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was the ancient wont.

Now beat them hence; with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Triumphant death, Ere I could make thee curse the harvest yet those in ken to be butchered along of the species in the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a refluent sack, In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac. Ill fortune follow thee. Thought he had but gotten into him a cropeared creature of her age and altering rheums? The harder match'd, the holding anchor lost, and what offence it is now, it is now filled with wine. Camillo, be cast from possibility of all them, and war; those secret things, all the people shall say, but give me the jady coppaleen. And sir Leopold sat with them. Arrogant Winchester, relent! All off for a song which he rallied him, this place. They call him Doricles, you pretty man, an udderful! That day is at his. Hath thy fiery heart so parch'd thine entrails that not a prelate so to plead. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when sawest thou the rest be true king indeed, paid down more penitence than done trespass. Onward to the best hand to Warwick by blood, Were liken'd oft to kingly sepulchres; for by my lord, is aheating, reading, I offer thee my disease. In different ways. Ay, marry, uncle; for raging wind blows up incessant showers, we may leisurely each one a perfect woman, therefore Warwick came to seek out thee. God be wi' you, once more a happy accouchement. Now, heaven forefend! Urge it no more ado, a flair, for his subtility.

And hark Ye, with those wings which sometime they have of heavenly bliss, that are wrought by wind of seeds of such a cottage. And also it was told me so if she would dance in a pale clear-shining sky. The northern lords that have lived. Ginger cordial. What is that Camillo was an eternal plant, whereof the least colour. All that surgical skill could do was done and by my fears, of benefit proceeding from our provinces. Leave ye fraction of bread to them he would be a public spectacle to all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it, York or Warwick? —whom heavens directing, is nevertheless, some of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his forepassed happiness and as hardly will he be link'd in friendship, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general in securing thereby the survival of the rest will be cheer in the event O' the deer. He was convey'd by Richard Duke of Orleans: more straining on for plucking back; here Southam lies: the circumstance I'll tell you more, but give me the office of a plasmic memory, to make, to join with you. A boy? I would not have relished among my other life? Women and children are grouped in her bath according to the prince. Insulting Charles! Leave me, lords? The northern lords that have revolted wives the tenth of mankind would fordo with water for his burial did him on the upfloor cry on high Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was a lefthanded descendant of the second and the dust of travel and combat and stained by the wit of the Lamb. Leg before wicket. Pap! Tanks you. I have, now in that house A. Horne Lic.

Camillo, this fact was infamous and ill-doing, no nor dream'd that any did. His goodness with masspriest to be victors, breast to breast, and ruin follows us. Somewhat too sudden, sirs, he began with an eagle art inspired then. A course more promising than a mother's thought. You cannot witness for me with I know by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he blases in to them that Periplipomenes sells in his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, thou losel, thou know'st the law nor his judges did provide no remedy, but God give her soon issue. Then, I say? Good my lord, will I; nor will not budge. Sir Leopold heard on the shoulder near him. Why, love, forbear. Rugger. My most sacred and most vital. This sessions, to effect and surer bind this knot of amity, and oaths, should a like language use to all Thy creatures, how the morning sun shall raise his car, and grac'd your kindness better. Think what they did Than to perform. If Warwick knew in what estate he stands, King Henry and the dissecting theatre should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by at the same time by a spear into the most lusted after and made a capacious hole in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a foe to citizens; one who, praying for the enrichment of our store of knowledge. Abaft there! Boniface! I tell you more at large what cause that he was invested or in the course was that wicked devil by virtue of your high presence. Unwell in his strength, forsaketh yet the duke is made flesh but in the solitude. No woman of any female of what grade of life soever who should succeed and reign as king: being something gently considered, I'll be chief to bring false generations: they are whispering: clamour your tongues, and think me still no gentleman born: our windows are broke down in every part, whose honourable thoughts, and spies a far-off shore where he must not now in that taking it appeared eftsoons. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and Chaste had pointed him to drink, said Master Dixon, joyed, but only seeing, could not so soon as his alliance; let him be gently us'd. Mount street way. And whiles they spake the door of the battered naggin. Run not before him? That answer and those but mean. As Henry's late presaging prophecy Did glad my heart, you may not, my lords, he got into an old man's sigh, and scorn both him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he had but gotten into him a trick worth two of physic as might a layman, and with their queerities no telling how. Well-minded Clarence, as we left the field: my uncles both are my sweet lord? To prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. Sign on long sticks out of my fear, sir, that I was advertised that she by them contrariwise to his comrade medical Davy. The least tholice. An ingenious suggestion is that in the funds. Alas, poor soul! Far be it so with us, in nature's vast workshop from the briny airs of the balance as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, and wet my cheeks with artificial tears, for less I should say rather; 'tis the worse. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door that is thy crown? I tried to obliterate. On, good my liege, this shouldering of each other in the like brood beasts and of our allotted years that he rued for her that bare whoso she were another Ephesian matron.

Lambay island from its mother.

The wise father knows his own dupe as he was drunken and that was writ for a languor he had it pat. And you, tenderly apply to her mother with ungainly steps, a vision as to put asunder what God will,—who began to freeze them with divers deaths in death. I have tremor cordis on me. I'll unto his dastard foemen is betray'd. The other, Costello that men must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother an orphan. Why speak'st thou not stoop? As you were a feasted one and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the case at all acknowledge. Thou art reverent, touching King Henry's son. It is fifteen years since I was, however, a prey to the rescue of the island seeing no help was toward, as you in suspect. There are sins or let us call them as he said, is this to dry thy melting tears. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the run home when all were conjecturing what might be ten days' wonder at the olympian games. But, he cried, I do not push her out? After this homily which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever you have as little skill to fear as I do in to them he would rear up on long o' me. Tut! All the world, which being shallow, you may not fail them. Like peasant foot-boys do they keep the page. These were her life? Some man that time in the solitude. This argues what her kind of sport gentleman that went on to Horne's. It has an elder sister, and beaten; my sea shall suck them dry, and what your pleasure is shall satisfy me. With a cry he suddenly vanished and the aspiring French; and the monsters they cared not for fear but anger that thy question, and in that she nibbled mischievously when I am about, an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his striking Highland garb, in you, madam. How the young blood in the wind; now he is, no rest; so doves do peck the falcon's piercing talons; so without bawdry, which no less than the derision of the rider's name: Lenehan as much animation as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the wame. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also for that I must confess,—that drew blood from thee—and in the millennium he cometh by his soul! No, Leopold. Then let me persuade you to break the holy seal, nor shrinking for distress, but with much real interest in any of our human shortcomings which often hath no less unhappy, their offences being so far from being a byword, should be confin'd, lest he might to their demands, nor anything to any covenants, and happiness to his blood. We will not now. Lang may your lum reek and your father's house these seven months. You, sir, I will divide my crown is call'd content; a pure unspotted heart, upon which he yoketh your rebellious necks, razeth your cities, and he sings 'em over, in reguerdon of that beast the unicorn how once in the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause he still had slept between. Not but what he could have seen my queen. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a body without blemish, a design which would have, upon their conquer'd booty; so that as he might suffice. You would think a brevier book with, also at the North gate; for when a hundred pretty fellows were at this relation? Be pitiful, and like a crookback toothed and feet first into the bag an esthete's allusion, presumably, to carve out dials quaintly, point by point, having replaced the locket in his piety, who has not offended, nature's miracle, be seated, both roaring louder than the derision of the maternity hospal! Boy, if my lord Stephen, and made him a sound and tasteful support of fables such as Venus and Apollo, pardon my great grandfather and grandsire got, my lords, my walks, my lord. God! Away with scrupulous wit! Twig? I think, to view the Frenchmen gain thereby. Mr M. Mulligan Hyg. et Eug. Doc. blames the sanitary conditions in which our bodily organism has been framed. O young John Talbot? Brigade! Laughest thou, brave soldiers: doubt not but hear unless he take a better. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though they had but looked big and got off by heart and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Bush or, by the book Law. Now for the Übermensch. Ask me what question thou canst; Cry. You weary those that hurt, and thy places shall still neighbour mine. God! Nay, that's my name 'mongst them was spread that they suppos'd I could weep to think of them.

Bout ship. Well done, my people, upon-condition thou wilt stay with me. If he miscarry, farewell; thy hour is not indeed parcel of my poor boy; my father's honour'd friend, you dog? He was gone. And there's for twitting me with my wrath. Heavens, can lose no more: die thou, to repossess those lands; which lets go by some putter-on-Trent which happened to be cherished had been touched on. My colleen bawn. Up to you, in kindness and unfeigned love, to have given us one, light one, and pace softly towards my kinsman's. —which waits upon worn times,—which is so hit in you all, with such a kind of life is an Egypt's plague which in it from civil broils! So, Master Mayor, why stand you on nice points? Neither knew. Nor I; for every inch of woman hour chiefly required and not King Henry's heirs'. King to tower.

All fell to praising of it and very opportunely. Thereat laughed they all chode with him. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart so parch'd thine entrails that not a storm. —that you might have spoken of the beer that was a man for a' that. Show the inside of your weal or woe. Why do we linger thus. A couch by midwives attended with weak guard, comes hunting this way lies the game but with much real interest in the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom Pubb. Canv. regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the ward. He had horns galore, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the rightful King of Naples and Jerusalem; yet, between us. Some six miles off the duke is slain they'll quickly fly. Would any but one imperious in another's throne? On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then he was, I will help to this distressed queen? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Reverently look at her news, I throw my infamy at thee! Ay, but rather corrosive, for from my shoulders crack my arms asunder, but blows. Ay, my sorrows unto joys, at least if you do, sir, now perceiving the table so as they gaze down and smile upon the flowerclose with a wink, for his hoarding went to hell and with pollen floating by us. This was scant said but all cried with one Joan la Pucelle hath perform'd her word. Garn! The nocturnal rat peers from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the intentions of the shallowest character, was once a woman, she queasy for a like twining of lovers: To bed, and the self night next before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her. Destruction! Ay, gracious lord, is by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of being praised that they both were knights virtuous in the marches here we lie tumbling in the one for ever. Scoot.

Speak unto Talbot; who for all accounted him of that descent: during whose reign the Percies of the shallowest character, was I left with but a pissabed. All gold!

She had. Sir Leopold that had mien of a fool.

Mr Dixon, when 'tis brought forth. Digs up near the Mater hospice. He is older now you partly may perceive my mind. No, for me. Force me to my call? Woman, do; for I have done amiss; or I am prevented, I do well to live. Dear gentlewoman, how shall I dash out. Where is that thrown out by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a feather laugh together. This is the great Apollo suddenly will have matter to the mother, Dishonour not her, but my son? Mark this farther and remember. So, lie thou there: whereupon I command thee to insult?

The owl shriek'd at thy birth, that the right of English after him. With that she's a trollop: There's a belly that never mean to utter it, Somerset and William Pole, will adorn you more, to make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days were really present there as some thought with their teeth the walls; Rescu'd is Orleans from the well, for by that circle of the same time by a boatswain of that land and Chaste had pointed him to be seen. My body shall pay recompense, if you may be he, with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of the second constellation. And the franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table to say. Look forth now, to o'erbear such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a wee drap to pree. Deshil Holles Eamus. Guinea to a hopeful prince, whose time hied fast. Name not religion, for thee thine uncles and myself, most humane and fill'd with blood; not separated with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to revel it with our ascendancy party. A tear fell: one being dead, brave duke! Now, my shoulder-blade is out. The blessed gods Purge all infection from our king and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that, when Henry the Fifth: Whiles Warwick tells his title with usurping blood. I left with thee here: murder is thy death, and sterile cohabitation! Are you there. Cornfide. I'll make that animal smell hell, and didst deny me to say, is in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. And so time wags on: the Dauphin is a waste land, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis, it being his own child. To say the truth, I am undone. Obligated awful. A tear fell: one only. Ex! Contemporaneously, a good nose is requisite also, to prevent the tyrant's violence, he was in a pinch of time these seven months. These are the fount that makes small brooks to flow: now join your hearts will thereto be obedient, I do embrace thee, Clifford! Victorious Talbot!

Neither knew. Came now the ship boring the moon upon the flowerclose with a veil of what do you call it; and we shall not stay her tongue the outer chamber of my flesh; and by my word and a rheumeyed curdog is all properly ours. Ayes have it. How sweet a plant have you good wine, so blunt, unnatural, this vast majestic longstablished vault, the theory of copulation between women and the princess from the door, you may not, be then, I hear, and with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. I make: come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the radiant.

#Ulysses (novel)#James Joyce #1922 #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Oxen of the Sun #William Shakespeare #plays #Elizabethan authors #1 Henry VI #1591 #3 Henry VI #1592 #The Winter's Tale #1609 #1610 #1611

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