contemporary

The destruction of something beautiful can appear so entertaining.

My eyes refuse to let him leave, but he stands still holding my hand, lingering for as long as possible.

Finishing my thoughts aloud meant saying how my dad had passed, and I had failed. How I had smoked joints and lay in bed enabling my hopelessness. I__ been the ugly in my world.

Playdate. (n) A Date arranged by adults in which young children are brought together, usually at the home of one of them, for the premeditated purpose of __laying_. A feature of contemporary American upscale suburban life in which __eighborhoods_ have ceased to exist, and children no longer trail in and out of __eighbor childrens_ houses or play in __ackyards_. In the absence of sidewalks in newer __ated_ coummunities, children cannot __alk_ to playdates but must be driven by adults, usually mothers. A __laydate_ is never initiated by the players (i.e., children), but only by their mothers.In American-suburban social climbing through playdating, this is the chapter you__e been awaiting.

Have you ever believed in something so completely that you were willing to give up everything and everyone in your life to protect it?

The gossip will kill your Great Grandmother.

When you__e used to being in dangerous situations, you develop a sixth sense about your surroundings, about where possible enemies might be lurking, how many steps it will take to reach the next corner on a dead run, the best hiding places if bullets start to fly...

... she was a pudding of immaturity and precocious wisdom that had not yet set into a stable mold.

I congratulate you on your success stealing the painting.

Never run upstairs when someone__ chasing you. Don__ try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent.

It wasn__ playing both sides of the fence _ it was betting against yourself but still playing to win _ and it encapsulated everything absurd and paradoxical that I loved about the French.

In French culture, the best way of buying time or getting off the hook entirely in a thorny personal situation is to claim that it__ complicated. The French did not invent love, but they did invent romance, so they__e had more time than any other culture on earth to refine the nuances of its language.

How can you be kissing at a time like this? Have you no respect for the dead?

The French have a penchant for absolutism, for thinking that things are all one way or all another, which is why their politics are marked by a general inability to compromise and why they tend to hold their personal opinions until the bitter end, even after they have clearly lost an argument.

And I had just kissed my ex-girlfriend, who had cried, while my current girlfriend was in jail. So far, it had not been my best day.

For in America this season is decreed __amily season_. (Eat your hearts out, you pitiable loners who don__ have families!) Melancholy as Thanksgiving is, the Christmas-New year__ season is far worse and lasts far longer, providing rich fund of opportunities for self-medicating, mental collapse, suicide and public mayhem with firearms. In fact it might be argued that the Christmas-New year__ season which begins abruptly after Thanksgiving is now the core-sason of American life itself, the meaning of American life_ the brute existencial point of it. How without families must envy us who bask in parental love, in the glow of yule-logs burning in fireplaces stoked by our daddie__ robust pokers, we who are stuffed to bursting with our mummie__ frantic holiday cooking; how you wish you could be us, pampered/protected kids tearing expensive foil wrappings off too many packages to count, gathered about the Christmas tree on Christmas morning as Mummy gently chided: __kyler! Bliss! Show Daddy and Mummy what you__e just opened, please! And save the little cards, so you know who gave such nice things to you_.

Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn__ in vain, he was able to justify his presence.

Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved. As the weight of responsibility bore down on a person, it could feel like a long list of chores leading up to the final one - figuring out how to die with dignity. But Quincy__ interpretation of his surroundings seemed a truer representation of life__ meaning, or rather, the lack of meaning other than to dazzle and delight and befuddle from cradle to grave.