These guys had names for every conceivable drinking situation. They liked to have a little eye-opener to get themselves going in the morning, a midmorning bracer before attempting anything serious, a few modest cocktails at lunch, followed by the obl...
When I started researching airline stewardesses, I found that the topic made for amusing cocktail party banter. “You’re writing a book about that? Wow, what fun!” Yes, it was fun, but it was also serious history. Pretty women do not fit into wh...
Carol, a swing-shift cocktail waitress in the Bird of Paradise's show lounge had gotten home (guesswork, here) around 2:15 - 2:30, poured herself a glass of milk, and had opened the back door of the kitchen for reasons unknown. (Fingerprints were lat...
Rainer Wenger: Mr. Wieland! Dieter Wieland: Mr. Wenger. Rainer Wenger: About the project week... Dieter Wieland: Yes, and? Rainer Wenger: Can we switch? I got autocracy. Dieter Wieland: Alea iacta est. The die has been cast. Rainer Wenger: You know I...
These kids spend a majority of their time in school, and if they’re not having a positive experience, they can become depressed. In some cases, they lash out, grabbing whatever weapon is available to them. It can be an assault rifle, a knife, a Mol...
**New business concepts are always, always the product of lucky foresight.** That's right - the essential insight doesn't come out of any dirigiste planning process; it comes form some cocktail of happenstance, desire, curiosity, ambition and need. B...
In the recumbence of depression, your information-gathering system collates its intelligence and reports to you these facts: (1) there is nothing to do; (2) there is nowhere to go; (3) there is nothing to be; (4) there is no one to know. Without mean...
Monday, June 9: People think they know you. They think they know how you're handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you're lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you...
The wisdom of hindsight would reveal that I had no clue how to find myself, no idea how to love myself, and no ability to be myself. Mix all of those three dilemmas, and you’ve created a cocktail that will knock anyone out. Even though I couldn’t...
A biologist with a history of tooth decay invents a symbiotic microbe which lives in the human mouth and feeds by cleaning our teeth. It secreted calcium, which is poisonous to it, controlling its growth and preventing it from eating the teeth themse...
Panic strikes me when I think about a sentence that isn’t given the chance to live because I don’t have a pen in my hand or am not sitting near enough to someone familiar to speak it to. Especially if it’s a particularly good sentence, a senten...
My body was a Pandora’s box of aches and pains. When Grandpa died all the ailments came jumping out. I was forever twitching and shaking. I had a persistent sore throat and had difficulty swallowing except when I was taking nips from my illicit coc...
[just getting into his hotel room, the phone rings and its his mother on the other line] Korben's Mother: You miserable bastard! I never should've pushed you out. Korben Dallas: Ma? Korben's Mother: Oh, so you don't know you won a trip to Fhloston Pa...
I have been seeing dragons again. Last night, hunched on a beaver dam, one held a body like a badly held cocktail; his tail, keeping the beat of a waltz, sent a morse of ripples to my canoe. They are not richly bright but muted like dawns or the vagu...
When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like a zombie from a horror film. I felt a pain so fierce and...
Avi: You got a toothbrush? We're going to London. Do you hear that, Doug? I'm coming to London. [Avi arrives in London] Doug the Head: Avi! Avi: Shut up and sit down, you big, bald fuck. I don't like leaving my own country, Doug, and I especially don...
Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character...
You know that movie, where the little boy says 'I see dead people'? The Sixth Sense. Well, I see them all the time, and I'm getting tired of it. That's what's ruined my mood. Here it is, almost Christmas, and I didn't even think about putting up a tr...
Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heav...
From the standpoint of integrity, I think we all need to own up to our dirty little secrets. I believe that when we are open about our own strange desires or unusual lives, it paves the way for others to do the same. In the past thirty years, gay men...
To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You ...
