Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Strange. Even something as momentous as the Scut Farkus affair, which it came to be known, was pushed out of my mind as I struggled to come up with a way out of the impenetrable BB gun web, in which my mother had me trap...
Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve were doing when they got into so much trouble? As I read the story, they were shopping. The forbidden fruit was not scattered throughout the garden, not in many places, not in multiple locations, but one pla...
Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewher...
All at once it was just too much, and Harvey felt something about to snap. He drew back into the shadowy side of the doorway, out of site. Then he slid down the wall to the ground and put his palm over his mouth to hold in his breath and his feelings...
. . . I can see how the issue of exercising corporate control over users content is truly enraging here, on a site significantly made by these contributors. It’s unavoidable that we come to this, in my opinion (corporations always do), and GR/Amazo...
The Post is famous for its investigative journalism. It pours energy and investment and sweat and dollars into uncovering important stories. And then a bunch of websites summarize that [work] in about four minutes and readers can access that news for...
Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, th...
[first lines] Narrator: For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence s...
Above all sins, guard against bold or arrogant ones. You are not beyond the danger of such. If caught in the web of presumptuous sin, call quickly to God for help. If you hesitate, you only give Satan time to entangle you more tightly. But if you cry...
Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of ...
She put her tongue out and felt the raw edges of the torn silk. She looped her tongue around them and drew them into her teeth. Just a little bit, she thought, that's all I need to free my eyelids. She pulled the tasteless web between her teeth and g...
In a lot of ways I am like a duck. I love the water; I have large, web-like feet; and I could never kill a man, unless that man tasted like soggy bread and I decided to eat him.
In the closed world of the gynaeceum, despite the gardens and parkland extending beyong the horizon, despite the insurmountable walls separating pavillions and palaces, the tangled web of our fate was inescapable. Why did these women love each other ...
The idea of reputation, influence, and influencers in the offline world is as old as the hills. It's not new on the web either, but semantic search is creating a portable sense of identity, reputation, and influence that in the days before it simply ...
You've done her a service to teach her that romantic love is largely made of illusion." [said Mina.] "Is it?" Alessandra asked, unable to suppress a worried sigh. Mina looked at her as if she knew exactly what Alessandra was thinking. "I said 'romant...
Occasionally, a flicker of curiosity would urge the pilots to turn their heads and glance out past the sharp metallic casing of their jets to gaze at the distant, inland desert. They could barely recognise anything less conspicuous than the many moun...
Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are ...
Hey, aren’t you that girl from the web?” the new one asked, bending to suck my earing between his teeth. I pulled my head away. “You got the wrong girl.” Mr. Hawaii pulled back to take a better look at me. “No, I think you might be.” To m...
Poetry was not meant to be a workhorse; it was not designed to paint pretty moral pictures of life; it was not brought into being to confuse us with cryptograms, or high platitudes, or pompous pretensions. The poet was meant to be a seer; he was desi...
His guess was confirmed when they approached the well-built harbour of a prosperous town and saw the banners flying from the bastions of the citadel. After the sultry heat of Zarzis, the sailors’ hearts were lifted and refreshed by the airy music r...
Ian looked skyward to see the firedrake soaring overhead. Its mass was a black deluge, an eclipse of aberrant origins, and its wings were tautly wound, like a spider’s web. Scales that shown like bejeweled armor glistened upon its body. Its tail cr...