Respectable and elite careers are of no interest to the Old Soul who is much too tired to join in with the “my house is bigger than your house” games of society. If the Old Soul has to work, any job will usually do. It's very uncommon to find Old...
Somewhere along the line, Made in China began to sound like a bargain. (...) When an importer told a retail buyer that an item was quoted at 65¢ and made in the USA, the buyer figured it could be purchased somewhere cheaper. When the same product wa...
My idea of Heaven has nothing to do with fluffy clouds or angels. In my Heaven there's butter pecan ice cream and swimming pools and baseball games. The Brooklyn Dodgers always win, and I have the best seat in the house, right behind the Dodger's dug...
But in that moment when my brother took the field, all that washed away, and everyone was proud... I looked up at my dad, and he was smiling. I looked at my mom, and she was smiling even though she was nervous about my brother getting hurt, which was...
I pull on her tether all the time but it won’t sink in. I have a feeling I’m using too much magic. I can’t hold so many under my control and pull them in deep. Dean is the only one I have fully immersed. I am the puppet master. I am the only pl...
Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume." On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?" Splendidly. Ba...
...leaning over the bright display among the back aisles of a forbidden arcade, rows of other players silent, unnoticed, closing time never announced, playing for nothing but the score itself, the row of numbers, a chance of entering her initials amo...
Falling for someone can be a lot like playing roulette. You don't know what will happen when you place that bet, but you can take a deep breath anyway and put all the chips out there. And when the ball spins around and around, you pray it lands on yo...
As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on m...
If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays ...
Most players who play tennis love the game. But I think you also have to respect it. You want to do everything you can in your power to do your best. And for me, I know I get insane guilt if I go home at the end of the day and don't feel I've done ev...
Do you think Charlotte will let me handle the investigation?" "Do think you can be trusted in Downworld? The gaming hells, the dens of magical vice, the women of loose morals..." Will smiled the way Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell f...
As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playi...
It’s not just tougher out there. It’s become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name. There’s no...
It’s widely noted that among players currently eligible for the Hall of Fame, Maris and Murphy are the only two-time MVP recipients not enshrined at Cooperstown. In a previous book I argued Maris should be in the Hall of Fame—here I’d simply po...
[George] Foster lacks the name recognition outside of Cincinnati that other members of the Big Red machine maintain, but that doesn’t diminish his contributions to the club—he followed his MVP campaign with three more seasons of 20-plus home runs...
If the clicker became useless in grown men's hands, no games to watch, no highlights shown, ESPN left with only test patterns and re-runs of Rudy, wouldn't the indignation level be a whole lot higher? If sports, all sports, all levels, were shut down...
All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. As with the banking sector, they play games with th...
If You Can Stand It, Play the Long Game . . . What I mean here is that you have to remain committed to the ultimate goal, which isn’t to win the immediate approval of the online world, or dazzle a workshop, but to improve your storytelling day by d...
Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces, they promptly approac...
Who but the sports-mad [Norman] Mailer would liken the battle between God and the Devil to a game of American football? The contest, for sure, has with [ ] own laws (so that after God and the Devil 'tackle a guy, they don't kick him in the head'), bu...
