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Quaranteam – Book 1: Part 6 Andrew Rook continues to grow his family. Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.   Chapter 17 The morning after any good party is generally a challenge to get up and out of bed, but thankfully, they hadn't gone too late into the evening, and so, everyone had gotten to bed at a reasonable hour. And the wonderful smell of a good, late brunch was the clincher to get everyone out of the bed. Jenny had prepared an excellent morning feast for them, but timed it so that it was just before noon when she had it ready, drawing everyone downstairs, although most of the girls were in pajamas still, and Andy stuck to sweats himself. Over a combination of huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos, Niko and Andy explained to the rest of the girls about Andy's upcoming day at poker. Their reactions were much like Andy's initial impressions. Shock at first, followed by concern for the women who were supposed to be showing up on Andy's doorstep tomorrow. "I mean," Andy said, in between bites of his burrito, "it's never come up before, but I technically do have the right to refuse any woman who shows up on my doorstep. Like, for example, if had been too much of a hassle for Lauren, I could've just sent Taylor away." "Which reminds me," Lauren said, bringing a mimosa to her lips, "you need to imprint her today, especially if you're going to be coming home tomorrow night with a whole stable of new women." "I think you girls have a lot more faith in my poker skills than I do," Andy sighed. "And I think you're just being modest to set expectations," Niko said. "I watched you confidently take apart those poor boys last night." "I've known those guys for over a decade, Niko. They've got tells and I've had time to learn them, but you're talking about cold reading a room worth of men, most of whom I've never met." "If Rachel's to be believed, most of them are crap, Andy, so the only person you've really got to worry about is Covington himself." "You mean, I've only got to worry about the one guy I have to beat. Sure, no problem." "Do your best, baby," Niko said to him, squeezing his hand. "That's all I'm asking." That hung in the air for a couple of minutes before Lauren started giggling, and Andy turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. "What's all that about?" "I was just thinking about you saying you had the right to refuse a woman delivered to you, and was trying to imagine you refusing Niko when she showed up." "You know, I still don't remember showing up at all?" Niko said. "I'm serious. The first thing I remember is waking up in the morning sucking your cock. I mean, I remember picking your picture out, and I sort of remember the start of the drive over to the old condo, but showing up on your doorstep? Me fucking myself on top of him in the goddamn dining room? I know you told me I did all that, but I don't remember any of it." "You were pretty out of it," Aisling said. "But it was kinda hot, watching you just pin him down and fucking use him. He wanted to take you upstairs first, but you were too wound up to let him do that, so he had to carry you naked upstairs after he'd filled you up with your first load." "I feel a little robbed that I don't get to remember that first super intense orgasm, though." "If you really want to get something equivalent," Lauren said, "you just need to fast from his cum for a couple of weeks. Right around the point you're starting to break, you'll get that high again, but the pain of waiting that long isn't worth if you ask me." "I agree," Aisling said, "but it's probably worth trying at least once, just so you can know." Niko shook her head. "I remember you telling me about how it felt waiting that long, Lauren, and I don't think I have any need to inflict that much need on myself." "You wait any longer to imprint Taylor," Aisling said, "and she's going to be there herself. She's already having trouble keeping her head clear enough to follow the rules." Niko nodded over at Lauren. "I get that you want to punish her, but she needs to get imprinted, otherwise she's not even going to remember the punishment." Lauren giggled a little. "I know, I know. Let's sic Andy on her after we finish brunch." "I like how much my opinion is being consulted on this," Andy grumbled. "Oh you know you're itching to have a go at her," Lauren smirked, waggling a fork in his direction. "Just remember, one of the three holes is off limits until she's passed the month, and frankly, I don't want you firing that sex bomb of yours down her throat for her first time either." "You've made it pretty clear what you want out of this, Lauren," Andy said. "I won't forget." After they finished brunch, the foursome headed upstairs. Taylor had been given brunch in a bowl while they'd been eating, and she had finished all of it. When they entered the room, she looked up, but didn't move over, as she was trying to take all of her cues from them and not initiate anything on her own. "Alright Taylor," Lauren said, "it's time. Andy's going to imprint you now, so I hope you've internalized all the lessons you've witnessed over the last several days." "Yes Mistress," Taylor said. "May I go and make a few small preparations? Not for myself, but for the Master." Lauren seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded. "Five minutes in the bathroom. We'll be out here waiting." Taylor moved to head into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. "Wonder what she's doing in there," Aisling said, as she moved to sit in one of the big plush chairs scattered around the room. Niko grinned impishly, as she moved to recline on the couch against the wall. "Oh, she told me she's been trying to plan as best as she can to make both Andy and Lauren happy." "I'm not sure I even want to know what that means," Andy said, moving to sit down on the edge of the massive bed. "I'm not sure I'd let her tell you, even if she wanted to," Lauren said. "Oh, you want to try and tell me what to do, Lauren," Niko said, a playful smile on her lips, "and we can see which one of us paid more attention in hand to hand combat classes." "That sounds like fighting words," Lauren giggled, miming rolling up her sleeves. Andy narrowed his eyes at them. "Don't make me bend you both over my knee and paddle your asses red." "Promises promises," Lauren said, blowing him a kiss. Just then, Taylor opened the door and walked in from the bathroom before moving to get down on her knees in front of Andy. She had put on dark, heavy mascara and pulled her platinum blonde hair back into a solid ponytail, held with a scrunchy that looked like it could handle a bit of force. She'd also put on thigh high white stockings that looked like extra long sport socks with red rings around her thighs. It made her look sportier, and also a little bit younger. "Your slut is ready for you to use her, Master, if you are ready." Andy slid from the bed and crouched down, brushing a hand along her face. "This is your last chance to back out, Taylor." Taylor leaned in and whispered into his ear. "I want this, Andy. I want to be part of your family. But my safeword is 'yeti,' if you're really worried." She'd said it quietly enough that he was certain none of the other girls had heard any of it. "I like the mascara," Lauren said, reaching to brush a fingertip along Taylor's cheek. "It's going to run nicely when he's skullfucking your face." "Yes Mistress. I thought you might enjoy seeing that, proof that he's making me cry." "Tears of joy, I hope." Taylor nodded. "Joy, yes. But also from being unable to breathe. I want Master to really use his slut, to make her gag and choke and gasp for air." "Good," Lauren said. "I want you to get him so wound up that he can't think straight, Taylor. I want to see him actively fucking use you, until you're a quivering, brainless heap of well used flesh, lying there in a goddamn puddle on the floor. You think you can handle that?" "For you, Mistress? I can handle anything." Her chin was lifted proudly, displaying that leather collar she'd been forced to wear since her arrival. "Please, Master, may your worthless slut finally taste your cock?" Lauren put her hand on Andy's shoulder, leaning in to whisper into her mouth. "Remember, I don't want you cumming in her mouth. Just in her ass, okay?" There was a tiny amount of trepidation to her voice, as if she wanted to be sure she wasn't overstepping her boundaries, so Andy simply nodded. He felt hands on his waist, and it was clear Taylor had taken the nod to be to her and not to Lauren, but Andy didn't feel the need to correct her. Taylor pulled his sweatpants and boxers down to his ankles, lifting one of his feet for him and then the other, to help him step out of them, before she finally looked at his thick cock before her bright blue eyes. "Your little whore has been thinking about this nonstop since she got here, Master. About how she watches your girls when their eyes roll back in their heads, when their legs twitch and spasm when you fill them up. And even though she knows it's unbecoming of her," she said, looking down as one of her hands stroked his thick cock, "she's been getting more and more jealous of them, of those intense feelings you evoke in them. She knows she needs to be patient and wait her turn, but sometimes, even thinking about it gets her cunt all wet, Master. May she at long last have a taste and begin her process of officially becoming yours? Please, Master? This worthless slut aspires to be better, to be more, to be, yours." They'd been particularly careful not to let her taste any precum of his because even so much as a droplet would prime the imprinting process. It wouldn't fully start until she got her first full load of his jism, but the amount in precum was enough to get the process ready to burst. Taylor had gotten particularly close to the girls when they were playing with Andy, usually at Lauren's insistence, but in her eagerness to rub Taylor's face in it, she'd come dangerously near starting the process early. Andy was about to say that she could when Lauren reached her hand along the back of Taylor's head, grabbing the ponytail, shoving Taylor's face down onto his cock until he could feel the head of it pressing against the back of her throat, forcing its way in, even as her eyes looked up at him with adoration in them, her body literally vibrating at it, as the precum oozed from his mushroom tip into her mouth. Her eyes were fluttering, almost like they were threatening to roll back into her skull, and while she was doing her best to maintain control of herself, he could feel a bit of drool dripping down onto his balls. After what felt like an eternity of keeping his cock buried inside of her mouth, Lauren finally pulled Taylor back, and she gasped hungrily for air, slobbering even as her eyes were starting to water, her chest rising and falling quickly. "Are you  " Before Andy could even continue the sentence, Taylor grabbed onto his hips with both hands and pulled her face back onto his cock until her nose was buried in the thatch of brown hairs at the base of his cock. "Don't just leave her on, Andy," Lauren hissed at him. "Give the little whore what she wants. Fuck that little cheating face of hers until she's a sloppy mess." Andy's hands grabbed onto the side of Taylor's head and pulled her face back, but just when the head of his cock was at the ring of her lips and she was inhaling another lungful of air, he shoved his cock back into her face, pushing it back against her throat once more, evoking a gurgling cough from her, as those eyes started to water hard, a single black tear running down her right cheek. He pulled her back back and off his cock, letting her drink in another swallow of air, a wide smile on her messy lips, precum and spit dangling from them, as her tongue lashed out to try and lap it up before Andy shoved her face down once more. Taylor was doing her best to lean into Andy, but Lauren was mostly controlling the depth she could reach, using her ponytail as a leash, although Lauren seemed to be letting Andy do most of the driving for the moment, partially because Andy had been told not to cum in Taylor's mouth, and it was starting to take some effort to keep himself cooled off. She had a talented tongue, and there was something primal and carnal about seeing his precum smeared all over the blonde's chin, drooling on herself when she had half a moment without Andy's cock in her throat. "Whose whore are you?" Lauren said, reaching forward to slap Taylor across the face, making that mascara run even more. "Yours, Mistress." "Wrong answer!" Lauren shouted, slapping Taylor's other cheek, hard enough to make Andy a little nervous. "Try again. Whose whore are you?" Taylor swallowed a breath of air, looking up with those heavily watered icy blue eyes of hers, realizing her mistake immediately. "His whore, Mistress. The Master's whore." "That's right, you cuntrag," Lauren sneered. "I'm your Mistress, but this man fucking owns you, if you want to live under this roof. You will deny him nothing. You will do whatever he asks of you, and you will do it gladly." "Yes Mistress. Sorry Mistress." "Don't apologize to me, you dumb bimbo! Apologize to him." "Your worthless slut is sorry, Master. She belongs to you, and only you, and will never forget that again." "You know what I think?" Lauren said, her face a wicked angry snarl. "I think you ought to spit into that bitch's mouth, so she knows who fucking owns her." Taylor visibly flinched, but leaned her head back, opening her mouth wide. "That's it, Andy," Lauren goaded. "Get a big mouthful of spit and give it to that vapid cunt." Spitting had never much turned Andy on, and if he was honest, he found it excessive and unneeded, but all of this was about giving Lauren some closure, so he pursed his lips together and started to summon a big mouthful of spit. Just as he was about to spit into Taylor's mouth, she turned her head suddenly and said, "Yeti! God, I'm sorry, yeti!" Andy turned his head and spit onto the floor, as his mind raced, trying to figure out a way to disarm the situation he knew he was about to be in. The imprinting process was already primed, so it was too late to pass Taylor off to someone else, or to send her away, but he suspected the explosion of temper that was about to erupt from Lauren was going to make all their lives living hell for a time. He turned to look at her as he started to speak, "Now look Lauren, there's limits, to,” The look on Lauren's face wasn't one of anger. It was one of, amusement? He frowned and she started to giggle, and pretty soon, all the girls in the room were giggling, including Taylor at his feet. "Sorry, Andy," Lauren finally said, through fits of laughter. "I told you he'd stop if she said to," Aisling said. "No matter how wronged you felt, Lauren, he wasn't gonna lose control." "Damn," Lauren said, "and here I figured I could get him worked up enough to push past it. Guess I owe you twenty." "Excuse me, were, were you gambling over whether or not I'd take a woman against her will?" Now Andy felt like he was the one starting to get angry. "It was just a game, love," Lauren said. Andy stepped away from Taylor and over to Lauren and picked her up, no easy feat considering her height compared to his, moving over to the bed, putting her down and bending her over it before yanking down her pajama bottoms. "What are you going to do, spank me?" Andy welled up his rage into his right hand and brought it down onto Lauren's ass with the hardest spank he could muster. "Ow! Jesus, Andy, that rightly stung!" Wham! His hand clapped down again, just as hard, and he heard her groan, a weird blend of pain and excitement, her whole body shaking. "Strewth, that hurts!" Wham! His hand spanked down once more, the cheek of her ass starting to redden quickly under the power of his slaps. "Fuck Andy!" Wham! "I'm sorry!" Wham! "Bugger, Master, I'm fucking sorry, awlright?" At that, Andy held his hand in the air, not slapping again, but brought his hand down softly to slowly press his fingernails against the edge of the reddened flesh, and then dragged them firmly across that handprint he'd left there, making Lauren quiver, lost somewhere between lust and fear. "You're right you're right, okay, it was a shitty thing to do, and I'm sorry, I'm very fucking sorry. I shouldn't have made her do it." Andy looked back at Taylor. "And you. I ought to just leave you like this." Taylor's face reddened as much as Lauren's ass. "I'm sorry, Master. She told me to do it, and I didn't want to upset her. I do have an actual safeword, but it isn't yeti. I told Lauren what it was, though, and how I didn't think she would need to use it." "And if you're punishing Lauren, Daddy, you probably need to punish all of us," Aisling sighed. "I mean, I took her bet." "Speak for yourself, Red," Niko said. "I told you I thought it was a bad idea." "Well, now we know, I guess," Aisling said. "You okay, Lauren?" Lauren lifted her head up, and there was a strange look on her face. After a moment, it registered to Andy that she was more turned on that he'd ever seen her before in his life, and that included the moment when she'd been in a complete fuck daze after her sex fasting. "That was the hottest thing that's ever happened to me," she moaned, struggling to not drool on herself. "I've been trying to get you to lay into me for months, Andy, and I don't think it's much of a punishment." She grinned, all crazy eyed and wild. "I'm a bad girl." "Well then, you know how I'm going to punish you, Lauren?" Andy sighed. "I'm gonna put you away wet. You can go without a dose until the end of the week now that you're all wound up." "Oh god, that's cruel, you delicious bastard," she purred. "I fucking love it. But that's okay, I've earned this. And now that you're all wound up, it's time you take it out on Taylor." Andy looked from Lauren over to Taylor, who nodded enthusiastically. "This is what I want, Andy. I want my first time to be hard, rough, fucking brutal. I don't want to be treated like 'one of the girls,' because I haven't earned that, not yet." She started crawling over on all fours towards him, doing her best to keep her head raised, so she could see her face while she talked. "After the month, we can do the soft stuff. We can cuddle and lay together gently in bed and I can fall asleep in your arms, or in Lauren's. But I need to pay for my misdeeds." Niko and Aisling both sat up a little bit, although Andy could see that Niko had her hand down the front of her pajama bottoms, clearly rubbing her own cunt. "This time, I'm not one of your girls, not a partner or a girlfriend or a wife or whatever you're calling them, because I'm not there yet." Lauren was looking over her shoulder at Taylor, not moving from her spot bend over the edge of the bed. "You're already doing me a favor by imprinting me, when you don't know if you should yet. But I love Lauren. I love her so much it hurts to know how badly I fucked everything up. So until I can make that right, I'm a worthless fuckhole, a filthy bitch you should batter and plow and fuck within an inch of her life. I want you to drill me so hard that I can't sit down for a week." Taylor turned around and waggled her ass in his direction, leaning her shoulders down to make sure it was upturned, so he could get a good look at her asshole, as well as her cunt that was drenched with fuck cream. "It's yours, Master. I'm yours. Your fuckdoll, your bitch, your worthless whore to pump full of spunk and leave, sore and drenched. I know you aren't going to have my cunt until after my month's punishment, but just look at that tight little asshole I have just for you." "Just for you now," Lauren corrected. "That's true, Master. You won't be my first, but you will absolutely be my last. I will be a good slut for you, loyal in every possible way. You own all of me, from my toes to my head, and you may do whatever you want with any of it." "She talks a big game, doesn't she?" Niko said with a smile. "Whatever you want, Master, I will do. If you'd wanted to parade me naked in front of all your guests last night, I would've gladly done it. I'm not ashamed of how I screwed up before; I'm proud you're letting me make it right. You've had every chance this last week to treat me horribly, and you've never done it. So now I'm asking you, no, I'm begging you. Punish me. Fuck me. Claim me. Mark your territory. Make me your property. Own me. Use me, harder than you have any of your girls, because I need to learn to be better, to be worth better. But you have to accept me first." Taylor placed her face and shoulders down on the floor, and reached behind her to grab the well toned cheeks of her ass, pulling them apart. "I'm all yours, sir, but you need to imprint me. Fucking take me already." "You'll do anything I say, Taylor? Anything?" "Speak and it will be done, Master." Andy finally felt like he was actually in control for the first time today. "Stand up." "Sir?" "Don't make me say it twice," he growled, mostly for effect, but he could've sworn he heard Aisling moan wantonly in response to it. "Yes sir," she said, placing her hands on the ground, moving onto all fours before standing up. "Sorry sir." She kept her hands folded together in front of her, her eyes lowered to the floor. "Here's what's going to happen." Andy saw Lauren was starting to try and shift, so he slapped her ass once more, and her hips shoved forward into the bed once more, groaning, making it clear she now understood she wasn't to move without his say so. "Words are great and all, and I'm glad to hear you've learned how I'm turned on by dirty talk, but I'm going to give you a harder challenge. You need to convince me that you belong to me with a kiss, just one kiss." Taylor started to move towards him, but he raised his hand and she immediately stopped in her place. "Is there more, sir?" "There is. After you convince me with a kiss, you're going to convince Lauren as well, in the same way. But you're going to put all of that sadness, all of that embarrassment, all of that shame, all of that is going to go into your kiss with her, to convince her that you understand how badly you hurt her, and how much you want to make it up to her." "Now Andy  " Lauren started to say, but as soon as he turned to look at her, the expression on his face cowed her into silence. "After that, I'm going to fulfill my promise to Lauren, and I am going to fuck your ass so hard, it'll be sore for a week. I am going to sodomize you so hard, you'll think you've gone to prison, and you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that as soon as I cum in your ass, you are going to feel your mind being blown into a billion fragments, and every single fucking one of them will have my name stamped onto it." Taylor was shivering now, but Andy was almost certain it was with pure excitement. "You are going to wake up tomorrow and feel like a completely new woman. Ash?" "Every single sense you have is going to be on overload tomorrow," Aisling said to Taylor. "It'll be like the volume on your life is turned up to 11. Smells, sights, sounds, tastes, and touches, they'll all be in full overdrive, which means your ass is going to hurt like you didn't even believe is possible. I'm talking the kind of pain that feels like it goes down to your very soul." "And you won't be able to take any drugs for it to mute the pain," Niko said. "No aspirin, no ibuprofen, not even a stiff drink. That pain'll linger for a full day, and there's not a goddamn thing anyone can do to make it go away before it's ready." "By Tuesday, it'll be sore, but it won't feel like it's threatening to overwhelm your body. But for all of tomorrow, you are going to fucking hurt in a way that you can't even begin to imagine. And this is your last chance to walk away from it." Andy knew he was actually lying at this point. Sure, he had to imprint Taylor, but he didn't have to listen to Lauren and go at her as roughly as she wanted. If he didn't, though, there would always be a rift between the two women, and that was something he didn't want either of them to suffer through, so he was doing his best to navigate down this narrow street the two women had built for him together. "So what's your decision?" he said to her. Taylor looked up, a steely resolve to her face, one he'd seen mirrored in Lauren's face more than once before. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him down so that she could press her lips against his, and in the kiss that followed, he could feel all of those conflicting emotions battling inside of her. It was the first time they'd kissed, but it was almost like it was a new first kiss for him, like he was a young man again in his parents' basement, kissing some girl in the dark while a scary movie played on the tv. She held the kiss for a long moment, the heat of the kiss turning up in the middle before backing down a little, so at the end he felt like she was trying to convey her shame at having cheated on Lauren. "Was, Is that good enough, sir?" Andy smiled a little. "And now the other half." Taylor mouthed the words "thank you" to him, out of sight of all the others, before she turned to the bed. Lauren was starting to try and turn around again, but Andy took the palm of his hand and pushed it hard on the small of her back, keeping her pinned there, and Taylor immediately understood what he was doing. She crawled up onto the bed, her pose mimicking Lauren's, bent over the edge of the bed, although to get in line with Lauren, she had to be much further up the bed. She looked painfully nervous, but reached and turned Lauren's face to look at her. Lauren's eyes were still pinched in anger at Taylor, up until their lips met, and Taylor kissed Lauren with everything she'd wanted to say to her for months now, holding onto her, even as Lauren tried to remain impassive and stonefaced at first, but melted shortly to the intensity of desperation that Taylor was giving to her. As the kiss continued, Andy started to position the players the way he wanted to, pushing Taylor as he pulled on Lauren, making Lauren roll onto her back on the bed, and bringing Taylor to straddle her, the two a tangled mess of lips and tongues, Lauren's hand against the back of Taylor's head now, keeping her face mashed against her own. Aisling could see he was maneuvering them, and hopped up, grabbing a couple of pillows, sliding them beneath Lauren's head, propping her up a bit, so that when Andy pulled Taylor down some to get her in position, she could still continue making out with her. Once he had her in place, Andy sawed his cock back and forth across Taylor's feverishly dripping snatch, feeling her ooze cream onto his thick shaft, even as she was trying to shift her hips, making it clear she still wanted to follow Lauren's rules, even now, her mind a dizzying chaos of fucknoise and lust. She reached one of her hands behind her to pull on her asscheek, forcing that pink pucker to expose itself even further. Andy lined the head of his cock up against her asshole, but then paused for a moment. That pause made Taylor break from the kiss long enough to plead with him once more. "Please, oh god please do it, Master. I've always been yours, your wanton fucking whore, I just didn't know it. Show me. Teach me. Fuck my ass and claim what's always been yours. Fucking take your bitch. Claim her. Own me!" That was good enough for him. He pushed his hips forward, feeling her asshole give a little more easily than his other girls had on their first time with him, and he suspected it wasn't Taylor's first time taking a man's cock in her ass. He felt no particular need to be exploring virgin territory, so it didn't bother him. As soon as he was most of the way inside of her ass, he could feel Taylor tense up, both of her hands clutching to Lauren's face, moaning into the other woman's mouth in a loud, muffled shriek, as her body clenched up, and suddenly Andy could feel liquid splashing back off Lauren's thighs up against his balls, as Taylor began to squirt all over the Aussie. He was tempted to ease off a bit, but Lauren had made it quite clear that the one thing he absolutely positively wasn't to do was to go easy on her, so he pushed forward until he was as deep as he could get, then pulled back only to punch forward again with a rough slam. Lauren broke from the kiss this time so that Andy could get an earful of Taylor's whorish moans, her body covered in goosebumps. "I think I'm fucking blind!" Taylor whimpered. "I've never cum so fucking hard in my fucking life oh my fucking god what the fuuuuuuck!" The Australain slapped Taylor across the face again, certainly less hard than before. "What do you say, you useless fuckhole?" "Oh god," Taylor said, as Andy drew back. "Thank you, Master! Fuck me! Fuck your needy bitch in her tight young ass until it's fucking carved in the shape of your cock! You're so fucking thick, it hurts, but your bitch loves how it hurts, so fucking rail her! Plow this bitch, your bitch, until she's cumming her brains out her fucking ears!" Lauren kissed her again, as Andy started to really rail her, shoving his cock hilt deep each and every time, making his balls slap against Lauren's sloppy twat that was still dripping girljizz onto his nuts. But Andy decided if they wanted him to get rough, he would oblige them. His hand grabbed onto Taylor's ponytail and yanked her head back hard, making her spine curve back, a strangled howl of pleasure shredding the air. He couldn't see it, but he was certain each time he drilled into Taylor, her tits were making Lauren's jiggle with them. "What are you?" he shouted at Taylor. "Ohgod," she whimpered, "I'm yours, Master. Your bitch, your whore, your slut, your worthless fuckhole to dump cum into and leave a sodden mess on the fucking floor if you want. I'm whatever you fucking tell me I am, because that's what I fucking what to be, sir." Her words were mostly squealed in between brutally hard shoves of his cock into her asshole, which continued to spasm and clench around his shaft. "Please, Daddy, let me be worthy of your cum. Your bad little bitch needs it, more than she's needed anything in her wasted life. Let her ass receive you. Oh god, your bitch wants your cum so bad it's fucking eating her away from inside! Please, Master, please, give your bitch your cum. Claim what's yours. You own this ass, this cunt, this mouth, these tits,” "I require more," Andy said, as he picked up the pace. He wasn't sure how many times Taylor had cum, but he was fairly certain it had been at least three or four. "Name it, Master, and it's yours." "I want to own that mind and that heart. Prove they belong to me. Confess." "Fuck," Taylor whined, her mascara having smeared all across her face, turning her a hideous mess, before she kissed Lauren once more, hard and fierce, before pulling her face back, looking down into the Aussie's eyes. "I love you, Lauren." Lauren's eyes instantly welled up and she kissed Taylor again before pushing her back, a look of satisfaction on her face, as she kept Taylor looking at her, saying only a single word. "And?" "And,” Taylor said, trying to trail off, a wild spike of nervousness running through her veins, before she muscled up the courage to speak again. "And I love you, Andy. Mind, body and soul, you own it all. I fucking love you, you bastard. Now please, let me, for the love of fucking god, have my fucking cum!" On that last word, one which Taylor was nearly shouting, Andy slotted his cock in nice and deep and finally let loose, a monster of an orgasm blasting a hot sticky load of spunk into her ass, and it was as though Taylor had just touched the face of God, a rapturous moan erupting from her until she forcibly locked lips with Lauren, the sound not stopping, only muffling some, as Taylor's sweat stained body quivered like it was having its own personal earthquake before slumping, almost deathly still, atop Lauren's form, the Aussie wrapping her arms around Taylor, stroking her hair, as the pint sized creature began to burble the word "imprinting" over and over again. Andy's cock had softened and slipped from her ass, as he pulled away from them, pushing them up onto the bed, grabbing a sheet, slowly pulling it up and over the two of them. "I don't have to stay here, Andy," Lauren started to say, before he waggled a finger at her. "You're exactly where you need to be right now, Lauren. Keep our newest family member safe, while the process runs its course." Lauren smiled at him, as if she was seeing him in a new light for the first time. "Yes Master." Chapter 18 The next morning, Andy woke up before anyone else. Taylor had been allowed to remain on the bed, in Lauren's arms, all night, and the two were still intertwined when Andy awoke. He suspected Niko would be up shortly, Lauren not long after that, although she might sleep a bit longer what with Taylor pressed up against her. Aisling wouldn't be up for hours. Andy had gotten decent at extracting himself from the bed, but this morning, it didn't take almost any effort at all. He grabbed some sweatpants and a t shirt, pulled them on and then moved out of the bedroom and onto the balcony, looking out onto his driveway, just as the morning sprinklers turned on, down below him. He sighed, leaning against the railing, shaking his head. "You're still worried," Niko said as she moved out onto the balcony with him. "Worrying's not going to change anything." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Anything I can do to lighten the load?" "Nah," Andy said. "By this time tomorrow, it'll all be done one way or another. So I'm trying not to think about it." They stood together quietly for a moment, before she laughed. "Not working, is it?" "Nah," he said, joining in the laugh with her. "But I'll make it work." Niko decided to take a couple of personal days, and called in to the base, telling them she needed a few days to deal with some private matters. She didn't know when the dropoff was going to be arriving, but she figured that Andy might need some help, and wanted to be around to help him through any chaos. A few hours later, Taylor awoke and was truly in agony, her ass hurting like she'd ripped it open, so Lauren also decided to take the day off and tend to her. She wasn't actually wounded in any serious way, but as predicted, the high sensitivity of her nerves post imprinting process had all the sensations cranked up to a hundred. Andy could even see a little hint of regret in Lauren's expression before she steeled herself back up, to not let Taylor see even a moment of weakness. Aisling offered to help Lauren, but Lauren insisted that Aisling just go about her normal day, so the redhead had gone down into one of the living rooms to work for the day, although she told Andy that she'd come help once the women arrived. All the girls seemed to think Andy was walking on pins and needles, but at this point, Andy was less worried about the women arriving and more worried about the upcoming card game. He spent most of the morning watching poker videos with the hole cards covered, practicing trying to read people's expressions. He hoped it would keep his mind off things, and it mostly worked. It was just after two o'clock in the afternoon when the military truck rolled up his driveway. "Here they come," he said, watching from the balcony as they started to help the two women from the back of the truck. "Oh fuck. Shit. Shit shit shit shitshitshit!" "What's the problem?" Niko asked him. She'd come to join him on the balcony when the truck had been buzzed in at the gate. The first woman to get out of the back was the blonde Nico had described to him earlier, Sheridan, a lithe woman dressed in yoga pants and a sports bra. She stretched as she got out, folding one of her arms behind her blonde mane of hair, bending like he'd never seen before. She looked to be in her mid thirties, and certainly she was a very attractive woman. But she wasn't the problem. No, it was the woman who got out right after her that had sent him into a tizzy. "Shit, I thought you said the other one's name was Teri." "It is," Niko said. "At least that's what she told everyone. Why?" "Back when I dated her, she was going by Erin," he sighed. Sure enough, the second woman looked much like she had when Andy had dated her nearly a decade ago, with a handful of notable changes. She looked older, certainly, but she'd also dyed her hair a dark chestnut brown, hiding those golden locks of hers. She also had a large tattoo on her right shoulder, which he could see through the sleeveless dress she was wearing. It was a stylized bird of paradise, and it appeared that the wings curved back under the dress along her skin. She was a little curvy, but a bit less curvy than she'd been when they'd been together. "You dated her?" Niko blanched visibly. "I'm sorry, Andy, if I'd have known,” "No, I know you didn't know, Niko. But let's just say I won't feel bad at all about passing her on to one of the other men." They walked into the bedroom and headed out into the hallway, starting to head downstairs. "I hadn't been out here long when Erin and I started dating, and we were together for a little over two years, while I was just getting started out here, working in corporate communications for eBay while I was writing the first few Druid Gunslinger novels. She hated them so much, constantly told me I was wasting my time, and that I should just focus on climbing the corporate ladder at eBay." "You're fucking kidding." "I wish," Andy said, as they walked down the stairwell. "After that she started telling me she didn't like the way my friends treated her, which is to say they wouldn't do everything she said without question. I finally got to the point where I was so sick of her bitching at me about how I wasn't living up to her expectations that I broke up with her a week before Valentine's Day. Packed up all her shit for her and threw her out of the apartment." "That's uncharacteristically cold of you, Andy." "Oh yeah?" he said, stopping walking. "She had it coming. The place was entirely in my name, and I'd spent the better part of half a year trying to convince her to put her name down as a co renter on the lease, and she wouldn't do it. I moved out of that apartment at the end of next month and didn't leave a forwarding address, just so the bitch couldn't find me, because she kept harassing me. I didn't just move apartments,  I moved cities. Hell, I moved whole regions of the goddamn Bay. Back when I was dating her, I was living up in El Cerrito, so I moved fifty miles south and hoped I was fucking done with her." "What do you mean by harassing?" The doorbell rang, and it made Andy wince. "She showed up drunk at least a dozen times. Broke into my car a few times. Broke into the old apartment once. Tried threatening my friends to find out from them where I moved to. After that failed, she tried tailing me home from work for a while, until after about a year or so, she finally left me alone." "What a hot mess." "That's an understatement," he said as they headed down the stairs. "Yeah, let me tell you, Erin Teresa Donegal and I are over and done with, and there is no way in hell I am letting that deranged terror into this family." "Ah Andy, love! There you are!" Erin said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I see you've moved up in the world since the last time we talked. I'm so excited to be joining this little family you've been given." "Don't unpack, Erin," Andy said. "You aren't staying." "The hell I'm not!" she said, her voice level raising to an uncomfortable volume. "I was given the option of what man I wanted as a partner, and I chose you, so it's a done deal. No more running away from your problems anymore." "I don't have to accept anyone sent to me, Erin, and I'm certainly not going to bring someone into my family who hates my friends and trashed my car." "Oh my god, are you still upset about that? It happened in the past. When are you going to let it go?" "Considering you never paid me back for the car window or the car stereo you destroyed, I wouldn't hold your breath any time soon." "Uh, are you sending me back too?" Sheridan asked, a confused look on her face, as if she realized she was caught in the midst of a deep historical squabble. "We haven't even met." At this point, Andy remembered what he'd been told to do in the instructions from Covington, and went into the rehearsed speech. "Look, there's a meeting in a few hours, and I can go and see what's going on. Maybe there was some kind of mixup about who was sent to who, so you can stay here for the night, but please don't unpack, at least until tomorrow when we get all this figured out. I should be back before midnight with some kind of clarity over all of this." While he was talking to the two women, Aisling had been using his cellphone to photograph the two for the sake of the poker game. Covington had made it clear that all the players needed to know what the "prizes" were, and so each woman was to be photographed in advance. "There's no mistake, Andrew," Erin said. "I'm exactly where I want to be." "Erin, I'm not the same guy you dated a decade ago," he said, as Aisling handed him his phone back. "You would not be happy here, and I certainly don't think the rest of my family would take to you very kindly." "No kidding," Aisling said as she scowled at the woman, shaking her head. "How could you not like his writing?" Erin sniffed in contempt at the Irish redhead. "They're juvenile, childlike stories, and nobody's ever going to want to read them." "Funny how I've sold half a million books across the series, Erin." "Children have disposable income, Andrew, and while I'm sure your little stories are fleeting distractions for them, nobody remembers them after they're done with them. They don't affect anyone. They're not literature. They don't mean anything." "Jesus," Niko growled, "I'm glad he's not letting you in, otherwise I'd probably have to beat your ass until you were begging me to stop." "I would like to see you try, young lady," Erin sneered back. She was about a decade older than Niko, but Andy would've bet on his partner over his ex."I've been taking self defense classes since I was a child." Aisling smirked and shrugged. "Niko's in the Air Force. My money's on her." Erin shook her head. "I have so much work to do here, Andrew, in teaching these girls respect and  " "Shut up! For fuck's sake, will you shut up and listen for one minute in your goddamn life, you vacuous socialite? This is my house! These are my partners, and they belong here, which is more than I can say for you!" "Andrew! How dare you  " "Stop talking! Oh my god, do you ever shut up, or are you so enthralled with the sound of your own voice that the words have lost all fucking meaning? You never wanted me, you wanted what you thought you could make me into, but whatever docile, kowtowing toady that is, that's not me, and it's never going to be me! I'm done getting pushed around by you. So don't get fucking comfortable!" At that, Andy stormed off, leaving Aisling and Niko to apologize to Sheridan and/or deal with Erin. Andy headed downstairs and into his office, closing the door behind him, moving to settle down at his desk, as his two cats, both of whom had been in his office, moved to claim his lap, demonstrating their affection, trying to soothe the temper of their angered master. As it usually did, the cats cleared his head and cooled him off. He wanted to not think about it, so for the next few hours, he just focused on his writing, getting a few chapters into the next Druid Gunslinger novel, that he was currently calling "The Dryad Always Sings Twice," although he wasn't in love with the title. Some time later, there was a knock at his door, and he sighed. "It's unlocked," he said, hoping it wouldn't be Erin. Niko moved to enter the room, closing the door behind her as she moved in. "You weren't kidding about that girl being a piece of work," she said. "How'd you two even hook up in the first place?" "I mean, she's attractive, and she took an interest in me at a time when I didn't have a whole lot of self confidence. And she wasn't entirely like this back then. The longer we were together, the more her intense desire to have complete and total control in our relationship came out." "Yeah, but pretty girls make graves," Niko said to him, moving to wrap her arms around him from behind. "None of you three have killed me yet. Maybe I've just gotten lucky." "Or maybe you've gotten more refined in your taste since your mishap." She kissed him tenderly. "Anyway, I thought I'd let you stew a bit, but it's getting time for you to head over to Covington's for the poker game. Are you ready?" He chuckled a little. "Not really, but there's no time like the present." He saved his file and shut down his computer. "Is she still being a pain in the ass?" "Nah, Ash basically quarantined them in the pool house out back after Erin demanded to see where the master bedroom was, so she could get unpacked." "Like you said, quite a piece of work." He helped the cats off of his lap and moved to stand up before giving Niko another kiss. "Thanks for keeping her away from me. You can imagine the hard memories seeing her brought up." "No kidding. I mean, the fucking gumption on that bitch." She pet Muninn for a second before Andy opened the door, and she moved to walk with him. "Anyway, I'm coming with you." "Are your sure you want to? There's a chance I won't come back with your friend." She nodded, as they headed down the hall, heading towards the garage. "If you don't, I want to be with you so you know that I'm not mad at you." Niko pushed one of the buttons and the garage door in front of the Tesla roadster. "Hop in, I'll drive." The drive over to Covington's mansion was only about ten minutes, and at least a couple of those minutes were spent waiting at the gate for Covington's security team to let them in. There was a full checkpoint, with a couple of women in military fatigues, each of whom had a M16 at the ready. Covington's mansion was far more decadent than Andy's, and as they drove up the driveway, Andy suspected that Covington might even be the founder of the enclave that preceded New Eden, when it was just a bunch of rich fat cats living in a gated community of their own devising. The house itself was some weird hybrid of European colonial tradition and hyper post modern industrialism, with a statue of Covington himself in the center of the circular driveway in front of the home. The statue portrayed him as a pioneer, with a child on one shoulder, and a dozen women laying around him, each reaching up to him like he was their savior. "Oh. My. God." Niko muttered. "This is extra extra." "Even if I have to cheat," Andy mumbled, "I am going to run this asshole into the ground." Niko immediately turned and shook her head at him. "Don't cheat. Don't. He's caught cheaters before, and they get thrown out and lose everything." "Relax," Andy said, "I don't even know how I could cheat here, even if I wanted to, which I don't. We'll play a nice, fair game of poker. Any tips from your friend?" "The only thing she could tell me is that he has a hard time getting untilted if things start going against him." Andy nodded. "That's good to know. Let's go meet the competition." The two exited the car and headed up the stairs, where a blonde in a French maid's outfit opened the door for them. It was similar to the outfit Nicolette chose to wear, except here the blonde's tits were completely exposed, and the skirt was significantly shorter. Andy was certain the girl wasn't allowed to wear panties either. "You are here for the game?" the woman asked him, her voice accented in heavy French tones. "I am. Andrew Rook." The woman nodded. "Staff and colleagues need to remain away from the card room, so I will escort your woman to join the rest of the chauffeurs." She snapped her finger and another woman, this one in a butler's outfit, except that she wore no shirt beneath the black overcoat, which left most of her tits exposed. "Amber will take you to meet up with the other players." Andy could feel Niko tense up next to him, and took her hand in his. "I'll see you in a bit, okay?" Niko sighed, exhaling the breath, then nodded. "I'm just sad I won't get a chance to see your face when you see all the other stakes in play tonight," a sly smile on her face. "That's a shame, but let me tell ya, I think you're gonna play your absolute best when you see what's up for grabs." She winked as she started to stroll away with the butler. "This way, sir?" the butler said to him and led him down a series of stairs. It felt a little like walking into a lair. The hallways were lined with expensive art, but there was no rhyme or reason to it, no sense of what was important or what had personal meaning. It all felt, well, dumped. Like someone was showing off what they'd acquired, but didn't really care for. In fact, the whole home felt like that. Like the owner didn't enjoy any of what he'd acquired if he wasn't rubbing it in everybody's faces. It made Andy hate him even more. Eventually, the butler brought him to a lounge room with a massive LCD wall filling one entire side of the lounge. But Andy didn't look at it for more than a second, because it was time to size up the competition. "Ah, Andrew!" Covington said. "There you are. I was starting to wonder when you were going to show up. I was afraid that you had chickened out." Andy scrunched his eyes. "You don't know me very well, Mr. Covington  " "Please, Andrew, call me Artie!" he laughed. "Arthur then," Andy started. "You don't know me very well, Arthur, but one thing you should learn early on about me is that I don't spook easily, and I certainly don't back away from a challenge if there's a reason to try and win." "Well, there's definitely prizes worth winning in tonight's pool. Here, Airdrop me the pictures of your stakes and we'll look over all the possible winnings together." Andy paused for a moment, then pulled up his phone, sending the images over to Covington's phone. A few seconds later, the images of Sheridan and Erin joined the others on the wall, like trophies on a wall. The very presentation of it all made him sick, but he needed to look at the faces, to establish some sort of foundation to the stakes in play. He immediately saw why Niko had been teasing him. The wall of faces was full of beautiful women, twelve in total, and both Doctor Charlotte Varma and her daughter Asha Varma were up there, although they didn't look at all how he'd imagined them. Charlotte looked European, and Asha's features were an interesting blend of European and Indian. Asha thankfully looked a little older than the 18 Andy knew she was. Both women were stunning. But they weren't the ones who caught his attention at the onset. There were two faces on the board that he recognized immediately. One of them was Emily Stevens, a British actress who'd co starred in a series of films as a teenager before becoming an L A celebrity in a bunch of well received indie

Wish We Never Met wasps? WHO DOESN'T?! Here's what's on the agenda for this episode of WWNM:JUNO-Award-winning jazz pianist and vocalist Michael Kaeshammer joins Amy and Dan to chat about the new season of his music-meets-food TV series Kaeshammer's Kitchen, touring around the world, and why there's much to love about living on Vancouver Island.The co-hosts also discuss the world's collective hatred for wasps (and waspy people!), and ponder why wasps were so bad in Canada these past few weeks. (Amy even got stung while performing at Calgary Pride. Seriously!Looking back on the CCMA Awards, Amy and Dan also talk about how exciting it was to see k.d. lang inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, and how her stage presence is truly unparalleled. Icon status!THANK YOU for listening to this episode of Wish We Never Met! New episodes are released every Thursday afternoon.Give this new podcast some love by clicking "follow" on Spotify or Apple, and consider leaving a five-star review too!FOLLOW the podcast on social media - @wishwenevermetpodcastDo YOU have someone you wish you never met? Something you wish you never said? A place you wish you never went?Email your story to wishwenevermetpodcast@gmail.com and Amy and Dan might just have you on an upcoming episode!

Rachel Khong joins Eric Newman to discuss her latest novel, Real Americans. Divided into three parts that each trace the experiences of different generations of a Chinese American family, the book delves into the thickets of identity, exploring how cultural strictures and the chaos of love shape our reality. The first section, set in 1999, recounts the romance between Lily, a second generation Chinese American media intern in New York, and Matthew, the WASPy private equity investor of the company where she struggles to eke out a living. The second section transports us to Seattle in 2021, where Lily's son, Nick, is navigating the end of high school and early college years with his father, Matthew, conspicuously absent. When Nick reconnects with Matthew through a DNA ancestry test, old wounds heal even as new ones are opened up in the wake of long-buried family secrets. In the final section, Nick's grandmother reflects on her experience fleeing Mao Zedong's China to make a new life in the United States, while trying to reconcile with a tattered and scattered family in present-day San Francisco. As these three lives are woven together and torn apart, Real Americans moves propulsively through questions of race, class, and gender as its characters work to understand their relationship to inheritance, variously conceived, around the tripwires of silence, desire, and pain. Also, Erik Davis, author of Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium, returns to recommend Dale Pendell's Pharmako Trilogy.

Rachel Khong joins Eric Newman to discuss her latest novel, Real Americans. Divided into three parts that each trace the experiences of different generations of a Chinese American family, the book delves into the thickets of identity, exploring how cultural strictures and the chaos of love shape our reality. The first section, set in 1999, recounts the romance between Lily, a second generation Chinese American media intern in New York, and Matthew, the WASPy private equity investor of the company where she struggles to eke out a living. The second section transports us to Seattle in 2021, where Lily's son, Nick, is navigating the end of high school and early college years with his father, Matthew, conspicuously absent. When Nick reconnects with Matthew through a DNA ancestry test, old wounds heal even as new ones are opened up in the wake of long-buried family secrets. In the final section, Nick's grandmother reflects on her experience fleeing Mao Zedong's China to make a new life in the United States, while trying to reconcile with a tattered and scattered family in present-day San Francisco. As these three lives are woven together and torn apart, Real Americans moves propulsively through questions of race, class, and gender as its characters work to understand their relationship to inheritance, variously conceived, around the tripwires of silence, desire, and pain. Also, Erik Davis, author of Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium, returns to recommend Dale Pendell's Pharmako Trilogy.

In this world, where everything is available all the time and everywhere, those who know know shops and goods that are only available in one place. These companies don't sell wholesale, they don't make masses of products, they are exclusive and unique, and they have a loyal following and recognition beyond their immediate area. They represent taste and style. They are iconic and recognizable… sort of like Hermes used to be…. I am referring here to the ones you can only purchase at the source and have become cult classics… those brands you see around and immediately think… “That person knows…” There are many others that I am so looking forward to discovering, especially some in the menswear area, but this is the list of some of my favorites: Things: Belgian Shoes. New York, NY. They started as evening slippers to wear at home; they are so comfortable that they soon became the prepiest of all shoes. You can only purchase them in their store; they will not take phone orders. In this same category, I would add Fosters & Sons in London and their bespoke velvet slippers. Peter Beaton. Nantucket, RI. Open only during summer months, their straw hats are so elegant and wearable… the wide ribbon is always perfection. Jar Jewelry Paris. is made by Joel Rosenthal in Paris. Practically entering his boutique by appointment only and with a recommendation of an existing client. Now, collectible pieces are only available through high-end auction houses. T. Anthony, New York, NY. Their luggage is instantly recognizable and super Waspy, but I only use their tote bags. The suitcases, rollers, and all the other leather and canvas goods practically fall apart on your first trip to the airport. More Things: Casa Gusto, Palm Beach, FL. Frankly, anything from Casa Gusto will elevate any room in your house, but the collections of plates, prints, and small accessories are just dreamy. Vladimir, You'll know it when you see one of his truly divine ceramic flowers. Beautiful collectibles. El Tenderete, Sevilla Spain. Handmade ceramics by a mother-son duo are unique, collectible, and oh-so-charming—even Carolina Irving orders from them. This is it for today. Sincerely,The Serial Hostess Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

In this world, where everything is available all the time and everywhere, those who know know shops and goods that are only available in one place. These companies don't sell wholesale, they don't make masses of products, they are exclusive and unique, and they have a loyal following and recognition beyond their immediate area. They represent taste and style. They are iconic and recognizable… sort of like Hermes used to be…. I am referring here to the ones you can only purchase at the source and have become cult classics… those brands you see around and immediately think… “That person knows…” There are many others that I am so looking forward to discovering, especially some in the menswear area, but this is the list of some of my favorites: Things: Belgian Shoes. New York, NY. They started as evening slippers to wear at home; they are so comfortable that they soon became the prepiest of all shoes. You can only purchase them in their store; they will not take phone orders. In this same category, I would add Fosters & Sons in London and their bespoke velvet slippers. Peter Beaton. Nantucket, RI. Open only during summer months, their straw hats are so elegant and wearable… the wide ribbon is always perfection. Jar Jewelry Paris. is made by Joel Rosenthal in Paris. Practically entering his boutique by appointment only and with a recommendation of an existing client. Now, collectible pieces are only available through high-end auction houses. T. Anthony, New York, NY. Their luggage is instantly recognizable and super Waspy, but I only use their tote bags. The suitcases, rollers, and all the other leather and canvas goods practically fall apart on your first trip to the airport. More Things: Casa Gusto, Palm Beach, FL. Frankly, anything from Casa Gusto will elevate any room in your house, but the collections of plates, prints, and small accessories are just dreamy. Vladimir, You'll know it when you see one of his truly divine ceramic flowers. Beautiful collectibles. El Tenderete, Sevilla Spain. Handmade ceramics by a mother-son duo are unique, collectible, and oh-so-charming—even Carolina Irving orders from them. This is it for today. Sincerely,The Serial Hostess Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

In this world, where everything is available all the time and everywhere, those who know know shops and goods that are only available in one place. These companies don't sell wholesale, they don't make masses of products, they are exclusive and unique, and they have a loyal following and recognition beyond their immediate area. They represent taste and style. They are iconic and recognizable… sort of like Hermes used to be…. I am referring here to the ones you can only purchase at the source and have become cult classics… those brands you see around and immediately think… “That person knows…” There are many others that I am so looking forward to discovering, especially some in the menswear area, but this is the list of some of my favorites: Things: Belgian Shoes. New York, NY. They started as evening slippers to wear at home; they are so comfortable that they soon became the prepiest of all shoes. You can only purchase them in their store; they will not take phone orders. In this same category, I would add Fosters & Sons in London and their bespoke velvet slippers. Peter Beaton. Nantucket, RI. Open only during summer months, their straw hats are so elegant and wearable… the wide ribbon is always perfection. Jar Jewelry Paris. is made by Joel Rosenthal in Paris. Practically entering his boutique by appointment only and with a recommendation of an existing client. Now, collectible pieces are only available through high-end auction houses. T. Anthony, New York, NY. Their luggage is instantly recognizable and super Waspy, but I only use their tote bags. The suitcases, rollers, and all the other leather and canvas goods practically fall apart on your first trip to the airport. More Things: Casa Gusto, Palm Beach, FL. Frankly, anything from Casa Gusto will elevate any room in your house, but the collections of plates, prints, and small accessories are just dreamy. Vladimir, You'll know it when you see one of his truly divine ceramic flowers. Beautiful collectibles. El Tenderete, Sevilla Spain. Handmade ceramics by a mother-son duo are unique, collectible, and oh-so-charming—even Carolina Irving orders from them. This is it for today. Sincerely,The Serial Hostess Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

In the final episode of their special “Rom Com Road-Trip” series, Madison invites everyone to join her corn cult while Chelsea spins a sapphic tale fit for the new year: Two suburban households, both alike in WASPy sensibility, and their queer middle children on the precipice of tearing their mothers' New Year's letters to shreds is where we lay our scene. These gays do nothing but gab, and our leading ladies (Dianna Agron and Daisy Ridley) may just kick the infamous rom-com miscommunication trope to the curb as the clock strikes midnight. Connect With Us - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loveatfirstscreening/ - Email: loveatfirstscreening@gmail.com Production - Hosts: Chelsea Ciccone and Madison Hill - Music: Madison Hill - Artwork: Chelsea Ciccone --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/loveatfirstscreening/message

Growing up in South Louisiana, all I wanted was a White Christmas and WASPy cut out sugar cookies with a perfect presentation. But, we were usually wearing shorts and t-shirts on Christmas Day and because my Momma is 110% Rajun Cajun, we never did those cute little holiday cookies. We made Cajun candy (pralines and gold brick fudge) which tasted great but looked like alligator poop. After years of fighting my heritage and wanting something that looked like magazine perfection, I've finally learned to embrace it and share the candy (and love) with my "Yankee" boyfriend and friends here in New York and New Jersey. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/whosdatphatgirl/support

This week, we go way back to revisit the original Scooby-Doo! Scooby-Doo Where Are You debuted in 1969 to answer a call for Saturday morning cartoons with less violence and more humor. The Hanna-Barbera production spawned dozens of TV shows and movies.  Before our full review of the original animated TV series, we have our non-sponsored snack, Sixlets: a candy that tried to be better than M&Ms! We talk about our memories of Scooby-Doo, and Steve calls Megan "pretentious" and Megan calls herself, "kind of WASPy."  Was Megan being pretentious? Did we appreciate the nuances of the mystery as much as we did as kids? Were the Sixlets better than M&Ms? Listen to find out! Links to listen can be found at www.stopruiningmychildhood.com    #1970sTV #1970s #ScoobyDoo #ScrappyDoo #CaseyKasum #Cartoons #Sixlets #Shaggy #Velma #Daphne #Fred #MysteryMachine #stopruiningmychildhood #80s #1980s #1980smovies #1980sCartoons #SaturdayMorning #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #tbthursday

This week, we go way back to revisit the original Scooby-Doo! Scooby-Doo Where Are You debuted in 1969 to answer a call for Saturday morning cartoons with less violence and more humor. The Hanna-Barbera production spawned dozens of TV shows and movies.  Before our full review of the original animated TV series, we have our non-sponsored snack, Sixlets: a candy that tried to be better than M&Ms! We talk about our memories of Scooby-Doo, and Steve calls Megan "pretentious" and Megan calls herself, "kind of WASPy."  Was Megan being pretentious? Did we appreciate the nuances of the mystery as much as we did as kids? Were the Sixlets better than M&Ms? Listen to find out! Links to listen can be found at www.stopruiningmychildhood.com    #1970sTV #1970s #ScoobyDoo #ScrappyDoo #CaseyKasum #Cartoons #Sixlets #Shaggy #Velma #Daphne #Fred #MysteryMachine #stopruiningmychildhood #80s #1980s #1980smovies #1980sCartoons #SaturdayMorning #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #tbthursday

Hey Closeteers! This week is a throwback to a classic episode: Part 1 of our two part event with Matteo's cousins Megan and Kelly, and the LEGENDARY Aunt Cindy! Emma gets a chance to compare notes on her WASPy upbringing to the Lane Family's Italian everything. Plus, stories about Matteo's childhood!  Remember to rate and subscribe, follow us on Instagram, and subscribe to our Youtube channel for the full video of the podcast! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WASPy witness Cassidy Hutchinson testified that President Trump threw his lunch and threw down with the secret service. Also, parents in Colchester, CT want their kids to see a sexy man so they can make it to the Tolerance Hall of Fame. Find us at burnbarrelpodcast.com Email us: burnbarrelpodcast@gmail.com Follow on Parler: @burnbarrelpodcast On Gab: @burnbarrelpodcast Facebook: facebook.com/burnbarrelpodcast And Twitter: @burnbarrelpod Rumble: rumble.com/c/burnbarrelpodcast YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCWhLuhtutKdCmbHaWuGg_YQ Follow Tom on Twitter: @tomshattuck You can follow Alice too: @aliceshattuck More Tom stuff at tomshattuck.com Tom's "Insta" as the zoomers say: instagram.com/tomwshattuck Join us at Locals: burnbarrel.locals.com (subscriber based) Join us at Patreon: patreon.com/burnbarrel (subscriber based) The opening theme music is called Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet. The closing theme music to this podcast C'est La Vie by Derek Clegg. Excelsior

Veteran Democratic media consultant Neil Oxman is one of the most interesting people working in politics. In addition to his years helping elect Democrats at all levels, he caddies on the PGA tour for golfing legends including Tom Watson. In this discussion, Neil talks the history of political ad-making from the 1950s to today and goes deep inside several of his own high-profile races including PA Governor Ed Rendell, Philadelphia's first Black mayor Wilson Goode, Al Gore's 1988 presidential campaign, and more throughout his career that show the ways TV can help win (and lose) political campaigns. Neil's full presentation on the history of campaign ads was recorded by C-Span in 2016 and can be found here. IN THIS EPISODE…Neil's Philly roots and unusual law school experience at Villanova…Neil gets his foot in the door in politics in the summer of 1976…What leads to Neil opening his own media firm in 1980…Neil talks the roots of television advertising in political campaigns…The 1969 television ad that Neil believes kicked off the rise of political ads in non-presidential campaigns…Neil compares ads from the 70s/80s to political ads of today…The races on which Neil starts to come into his own as a media consultant…Neil helps Wilson Goode beat Frank Rizzo to become Philadelphia's first Black mayor…Neil's role on the Kentucky Senate race in 1984 and the strategic mistake that led to Mitch McConnell's first win…Neil's role as ad-maker on the Al Gore 1988 presidential campaign…Neil's connection to then-mayor of Cincinnati Jerry Springer…Neil helps Ed Rendell become Philly Mayor and Governor of Pennsylvania…The last ad that Neil thinks actually mattered in a presidential race…Neil talks his habit of watching 100s of movies a year…Neil talks moonlighting as a caddy on the PGA tour for greats like Tom Watson…Who's the best golfer in politics?Neil's advice for those who want to get into political media…Neil's recommendation for the best political movies…AND 215 media markets, Roger Ailes, Altoona, Doug Bailey, Birch Bayh, Abe Beame, Homero Blancas, Ed Brooke, Pat Caddell, Frank Capra, Hugh Carey, Bob Casey Jr, Bob Casey Sr, Frank Church, Citizens United, cocktail parties, the Columbus Dispatch, Bob Colville, the Daisy ad, John Dierdorf, David Doak, Mike Dukakis, Dwight Eisenhower, Mike Ford, David Garth, gerontocracy, gigantic piles of polls, Wilson Goode, Bob Goodman, Bill Green, Michael Harrington, Anita Hill, Richard Holbrooke, Dee Huddleston, HUT levels, Andi Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, Julian Kanter, Robert Kennedy, Ed Koch, John Lindsay, the Louisville Courier Journal, Willie Maples, McDonalds, George McGovern, Jack McGregor, Mark Moskowitz, Ralph Nader, Jack Nicklaus, Dan Quayle, process questions, Mark Putnam, Robert Redford, regional agoraphobia, Rosser Reeves, Jim Rhodes, Frank Rizzo, Nelson Rockefeller, Buddy Roemer, Nolan Ryan, Rick Santorum, Mike Schmidt, Allyson Schwartz, Joe Sestak, Bob Shrum, Mark Singel, Arlen Specter, Bob Squier, Clarence Thomas, Danny Thomas, Lee Trevino, troglodytes, Harry Truman, Paul Tsongas, Paul Tully, WASPy establishments, Doug Wilder, Tiger Woods, Tom Wolf, Lynn Yeakel & more!

KMac & Yek, everyone's favorite hop-heads of haute couture, are swiggin' away at suds and swingin' at fashion again. This time it's a team tussle on the catwalk with everybody's favorite B-Squad super teams strutting with the West Coast Avengers vs. the Justice League Europe. Listen in to hear us breakdown who wore it better in the both teams' initial 1980s kickoff arcs. You know there will be some sweet Daisy Duke's action, but did you expect it to be on those stunning Wonderman ionic thighs?   Categories:Leaders: The stick shooter takes it. AWC: HawkeyeJLE: Captain AtomInitial Line-Up: JLE gots too much flava!AWC: Mocking Bird, Tigra, Wonderman, Ironman (Rhodes & Stark), Wildcard: The Shroud?JLE: Elongated Man (Sue Dinby coming along), Animal Man, Power Girl, Rocket Red, Metamorpho, the Flash (WW), Wildcard: Where's Wonder Woman?Base: Grillin' & chillin', West Coast 4 Life.AWC: LA Beachfront CompoundJLE: Parisian Embassy that cannot keep out smelly Frenchmen.  Best Married Couple: WashoutAWC: Hank & Bobbi Barton, super spies!JLE: Ralph & Sue Dinby, crime solvers!Da Man: JLE's sponsor is actually evil, not just playin'.AWC: Janet Van Dyne, acting all Waspy.JLE: Max Lord IV, bringing that big Hollywood production hate switcheroo.  Ladies Man: Wonderman ain't play, he just crush alto.AWC: Ironman / WondermanJLE: The Flash / MetamorphoVillains: Even villains like LaLa land.AWC: Graviton! Ultron! Grim Reaper!JLE: Queen Bee & the Global Guardians (Even Captain Planet is hatin')Costumes: More skin, more shiny for the win!AWC: Silver & Red armor! Cat thong bikini! Expedition jacket! Jorts!JLE: Metamorpho looks kinda of fun. Nuthin' wrong with Power Girl's costume Winner:AWC look so much finer at 5, 2, & 1 over JLE! Beers: KMAC: Nothing Lasts Forever, deBine Brewing Co., Palm Harbor, FLStyle: Berliner Weisse, 4.1% ABV, 5 IBURating: Lemon sharp like Captain Atom, Blackberry flava like Tigra & Power Girl Yek: That New New, Solace Brewing Company, Sterling, VAStyle: IPA, 6.2% ABVRating: Sunny smooth as a Wonderman in jorts! Not Beers:KMAC: Bud Light Lemon Lime Seltzer, Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, MOStyle: Hard Seltzer 6.0% ABV, 0 IBU Yek: Strange Beast, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, CAStyle: Hard Kombucha, 7.0% ABV

Tara Palmeri joins Peter to discuss D.C.'s lingering media challenge, which lies beneath its WASPy, white-teeth clenched smile culture. And ace marketing whiz Alex Bigler swings by to share some exclusive reader feedback.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Serena is back and less medicated than ever to revive Let Me Ruin Your Life! She explains why she will be in attendance at Bitcoin Miami, illustrates her adoration for Julia Fox, and recaps Caroline Calloway's going-away dinner parties. Advice includes finding love in a hopeless place (dating apps), breaking the news to your WASPy lover that you go to a state school, and dealing with a friend spreading rumors about you all around town! You can find Serena on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter at @glamdemon2004, and you can follow the podcast Instagram at @letmeruinyourlifepod. DM for questions and requests or send them along to letmeruinyourlifepod@gmail.com! XOXO --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/let-me-ruin-your-life/support

New episode of the podcast. I'm back with fan-favorite Rebekah Panepinto. We cover: Scientology why I'm intimidated by Waspy people naked skydiving skiing Dominique Strauss-Kahn The Tinder Swindler Creating a cult Britney Spears IQ testing Ukraine Much more --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theleeshow/support

In this episode we get amongst a few cracking tunes, cover wasp bites, more camp drama, a bit of news and sport and the carry on call line has produced some quality content, enjoy.Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code ALPHABLOKES at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod

Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford are an affluent WASPy couple experiencing empty nest syndrome and… a haunting? Join Pace and special guest co-host Allyson Waldon as we talk about the 2000 film What Lies Beneath as we take a deep dive into memory and revenge beyond the grave. Also, what's with all the beige clothing? Find out all of this and more in this episode of Horror Nerds at Church! Content warnings: sanist language and discussion of domestic violence relating to the film Books mentioned: -The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike -The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Support us on Patreon! Buy some merch! Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for all the latest updates about upcoming films, news, and other announcements. And don't forget to comment, rate, and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast provider!

Caitlin has soared to TikTok fame with her comedy videos making fun of all the people you hate AKA fitness influencers, WASPY moms, the girl who bullied you in high school, the coworker you hate on zoom, and even the precocious child in a British rom com because kids can be assholes too. She cracks me up and we learn a lot more about what makes her "tik" on this episode in hell. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/berninginhell/support

James and Jon tuck in and take a bite out of the hot potato that is Covid Passports.   What are they?  How do we feel about it?  How do we think it is going to impact our Industry and are they here to stay?    As you have come to expect, the boys have an opinion and also how all of this could impact on their own businesses.  Further toppings were added with the appearance of a very large Mr Waspy,  who brought a small amount of excitement into the mix.As always, the SurveYOUR podcast is a joy to produce, and this episode is a brilliant opportunity for James and Jon to do what they do best… have a jolly good chat! Please leave us your comments and don't forget to subscribe.    Enjoy    Links  www.survpod.com  www.twitter.com/survpod  www.instagram.com/survpod

Kevin & Chris kick off Girls with Ghost Month with the supernatural domestic-thriller, What Lies Beneath (2000). The 'mos talk Michelle Pfeiffer & Harrison Ford's marital distress, Hitchock homages galore, empty nest syndrome and WASPy dinner parties, an Ouija Board-induced séance (with wine), red herring jewelry, an iconic bathtub sequence and more. Bonus topics include favorite after-they-were-famous horror performances, millennium era horror trends, and hints about the rest of this month's spooky film line-up. Connect with us on Patreon and social media for updates! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/homosonhauntedhill Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homosonhauntedhill Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hohhpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/hohhpodcast

This expletive filled episode  features Australian love, high flying heroines, and a sex doll turned children's toy! First, Emily tells the story of Hazel Ying Lee, a daring pilot who became the first Asian American Woman to fly for the U.S. Army (even if they wouldn't acknowledge her veteran status and that of thousands of other women.) Then, Kelley shares the origin story of childhood favorite, Barbie and Ruth Handler who invented her! Place your seats in the upright position and get ready for some mommy words, because we're wining about herstory!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/winingaboutherstory/overview)

Welcome to the WASPy 90s nightmare world of Swans Crossing.

Canned tamales and the mysteries of Reese Witherspoon (ham parties?) with journalist and cookbook author Paula Forbes. And hey: just how WASPy are community cookbooks? You can listen to Smart Mouth on iTunes, on Stitcher, on Spotify. Check out all our episodes so far here. If you like, pledge a buck or two on Patreon. This episode brought to you by Wünder, makers of European-style quark. Go to Wünder Creamery and enter code SMARTMOUTH for 15% off on your first order. Smart Mouth newsletter Smart Mouth merch  Paula Twitter  Stained Page News  Smart Mouth IG Katherine Twitter Related Episodes: Pimento Cheese with Andrew Knowlton  Christmas Cookies with Kim-Joy  Links: Whiskey in a Teacup  White Gloves and Party Manners  Ask a Clean Person  Vietnamese Home Cooking  Emily Nunn's Spice Cake  H-E-B Cookbook  Sources: NPR  Gutenberg Project  What America Ate  The Church Ladies Divine Desserts  Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers: Casseroles, Including Breads  The Gasparilla Cookbook  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology  Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee 

Speaker 1: From his first job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and delivering The Washington Post, Craig Willett counts only one and a half years of his adult life working for someone else. Welcome to The Biz Sherpa podcast with your host, Craig Willett. Founder of several multimillion-dollar businesses and trusted advisor to other business owners, he’s giving back to help business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs achieve fulfillment, enhance their lives, and create enduring wealth. The Biz Sherpa. Craig Willett: This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa. Welcome to today’s episode. I’m excited for today’s episode because I think we’re going to learn from a different perspective. I have a special guest today and he’s going to help us understand accidental success. He’s trained in Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Robert Koagedal—a good friend. Welcome Robert. Robert Koagedal: Hi, thanks Craig, thanks for having me. Craig Willett: Glad to have you today. I’m excited to hear a little bit of your story. Maybe you can tell us a little bit, your training and your background, and then how you ended up in Scottsdale, Arizona with a Chinese medicine and acupuncture practice. Robert Koagedal: Training and background, pretty straightforward; went to school for Chinese medicine in 1995, so I’ve been doing it half my life, went straight from college into graduate school. That part of it led me into all of the things that I do now at my office, practicing acupuncture, all the various therapies associated with Chinese medicine. Craig Willett: Great, and if you had a specialty in acupuncture—I know you do some treatment of some people who are in stage IV cancer—but you also have some other specialties? Robert Koagedal: Yeah, so, well, maybe I can jump a little bit to before all of that came to be, as far as my specialty goes. I jokingly answer that question with, I started my career actually working for the mafia. And this is maybe a little unusual, and I say it tongue in cheek, but after I finished school, there’s not a lot of gigs waiting for you as an acupuncturist. If this is anything for your audience to maybe take home, and when we use the term accidental success—which actually, I like that a lot—this is an antidote to what we would call the business structure. I’m not a business major, I didn’t learn anything about business. I’m a philosopher by training, that’s what my bachelor’s degree is in. So Chinese medicine fell into my lap for a variety of other longer stories, following a bachelor’s degree— Craig Willett: You mean you didn’t intend for that to happen? Robert Koagedal: Yeah, all of this on some level is not based on some genius that I have for structuring a business with the vision of how you’re going to make a lot of money and building into that. This was really taking the way that the waves of life would come at you, and being able to adapt to all the different ups and downs that came. And to the degree that you want to go down those ups and downs and all the fun I’ve had, I’m happy to share those stories too. Craig Willett: Well, I’m excited, and I think that’s of great value to a lot of people because I think we have a philosophy that you come up with a business plan, and you take that business plan to a banker, and the banker blesses it—or an investment group—and they invest in a business to help you start up, and that you’re going to follow this well planned out method. My experience as a CPA, as I’ve talked to a lot of clients, that’s not how it always has worked out. People have an idea. So you’ve got your education and training, and what led you— Robert Koagedal: I did have an idea, so there was an idea there. Then remember—and if I had known this information when I actually went to school for Chinese medicine, I probably would not be sitting here—but at the time of my graduation in 1998, ’99, 5% of acupuncturists went on to have a successful business. Craig Willett: Wow, only 5%? Robert Koagedal: And I didn’t know that at the time, only 5%. So, you can imagine— Craig Willett: Well, they don’t tell you that or you wouldn’t— Robert Koagedal: They do not inform you of that when you call the school and you’re like, “Hey, I’m interested in this acupuncture gig, and it sounds really interesting, there’s a lot of things that are really meaningful, I think this is very interesting.” But they don’t advertise that portion of it, so— Craig Willett: So how did you find your way though? When you did learn that 5%—I mean, it’s quite a statement that you’re— Robert Koagedal: Well, I learned that afterwards, and not knowing something is sometimes better than knowing something. And maybe that’s part of this story is from that—there’s not like there’s a job waiting for you. When you finish school, you hope you hang your shingle, you hope that people actually enjoy your services, they appreciate what you do, they get better and they come back. I mean, that’s a pretty basic business model on that front, but most people, when you go in and you take out loans and you have a nice chunk of change you’re going to be paying back, you’ve got to make some money. But the only place you could get a gig back in 1999 was in New York, and that’s why I jokingly—and not so much—say I got a job working at a pain clinic, basically, in the Bronx in New York City. Packed Mary up—we had kind of befuddled around, and lingered, and didn’t know what to do—and ended up in New York City where I was seeing 50 patients a day. I mean, it was a total factory, but I got it straight out of school, I was getting— Craig Willett: A lot of experience. Robert Koagedal: I was getting $50 an hour and a lot of experience, and one day when the FBI showed up, I said, “See you later.” And that was the end of that. Craig Willett: Let’s hear about that, the FBI, yeah. Robert Koagedal: So that was a little intimidating at that point, but long story short, I went into—and that was one of the next best moves that happened to me, which gets me back to where we got into the specialty, which is that I mostly do—primarily for the last 18, 19 years—I’ve done reproductive health. I’ve seen really thousands of people, and couples looking to start or grow their families, and that’s kind of my niche as it’s been here in Scottsdale. Then as you initially started, there is an area of where I see patients who are going through cancer treatment and we do treatments specifically to help them through portions of the treatment that they are getting. Craig Willett: So that’s a pretty scary start to a career—to have these great ambitions to help people, but to see the FBI show up. Robert Koagedal: Well, exactly, and so the funny part of it is as this WASPy kid from California who imagines he’s a do-gooder and he’s going to fix everyone, and you find out that by the time you see this one guy for the third time, but he has a different name, and you go, “Oh, okay, this isn’t right. He’s not really here to heal anyway.” But it was an interesting adventure, nonetheless. Craig Willett: I think all of our experiences help us. Robert Koagedal: Absolutely, yep. Craig Willett: So I have a question—and against this maybe anti-business plan idea—but I can’t help but ask someone from California, what was your approach to marketing when you came to Scottsdale? Robert Koagedal: So, I got here and funny enough, again, not with any kind of business background, with some basic stuff, I happened to meet—and many of this is again, accidental stuff where I met this gentleman who—this is 2002. And I don’t know if everyone had a website then, you know? Craig Willett: Yeah. Robert Koagedal: I don’t know if anyone was walking around with a website, but I met this guy at Starbucks in Fountain Hills when we first finally landed here. And when we got here I ran into this gentleman and he was a really sharp guy, and he was very kind. He built me a website, and we just became friends. He built me a website and that in and of itself kind of started things going, but— Craig Willett: And that was under the name AcuHealth AZ, right? Robert Koagedal: You got it, exactly, because AcuHealth had been taken, so we had to add the AZ onto it even back then. But more to your point then, how I have built my business from a practical standpoint was I knew on some level that physicians were going to be my friends—and physicians who had moved beyond the only way of thinking of how they’ve learned medicine, but had some understanding that wellness was something they wanted their patients to experience, and that drug therapy isn’t the only answer to a number of the things that we have. So, I went out after getting my new office—had you ever been to my old office? Craig Willett: Yes, yeah. Robert Koagedal: Oh, I’ve known you that long? Craig Willett: Yeah, it’s been a long time. Robert Koagedal: Okay, so you remember that one, and I’m sitting there—this is literally the first or second day—I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “Oh, the phone’s not ringing and I don’t have any patients, I have to come up with $7400 a month for this fancy spot, I better get out here and do something.” So I went out and I just started introducing myself. I literally went office to office, I went to chiropractors’ office, physicians’ office, I started going—this is a long time pre-COVID, so you could just walk in and say hello, and do all that kind of stuff. Literally the next day, I had my first patient, which was a referral, and that guy came and he sent me his aunt, and then it literally just started to grow from there. Craig Willett: That’s interesting because I think so often we think there’s some magic formula to marketing, but I think it’s more about awareness, and then you have to be good because you have to deliver on the expectations that are there. Robert Koagedal: Absolutely. Well, I learned from New York, because after I had to leave the criminal organization and actually go start my practice in New York—which I had for two years before 9/11 and we had to hightail it out and decided to come to Scottsdale—I had had the experience of paying for marketing, paying for guys handing out fliers on the street. I had paid for some other advertisement in some magazine. Nothing, zero, nada, and then after I’d paid this guy—I think I paid him cash and he was handing out fliers and stuff—I went into a bar and I was having a beer after that and this guy was sitting next to me, we started talking, he told me about his back and the next thing I know, that guy became a patient. I knew that this was one-on-one, this was, “I know you.” People are not driving around going, “Gee, who am I going to go see?” It’s because they know you, and they know somebody who knows you, and they were referred and, “Oh, I had that problem, and this person helped me.” That’s how all of this got started. Craig Willett: Right, in fact, that’s how I found you, I had some friends in the horse industry and we were around at a dinner party, and I had moved to Arizona from Utah, and I had been being treated in Utah through acupuncture. I asked, “Does anybody know?” And someone who you treated for something other than what my ailment was, but I was a firm believer. But I came across it in a different way, I was in an accident in France, and I ended up injuring my arm and I was treated in the emergency room with acupuncture. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, how about that? Craig Willett: Who would imagine that that would be mainstream? You wouldn’t see that necessarily in the United States. Robert Koagedal: No, you wouldn’t, not yet anyways, but things are continuing to progress. Craig Willett: And I remember as he was treating me, I was asking him how it works, and he’s kind of looking at me— Robert Koagedal: “Well, you know—” Craig Willett: No, he just said, “You’ll never understand, even though you speak some French.” Robert Koagedal: He didn’t say, “You American.”? Craig Willett: No, he didn’t do that, but you know what? I thought maybe I’d broken my arm, they took an X-ray, no, and then he treated me with acupuncture and I noticed later that day, the swelling went down. I could move my hand again, so my arm was fine. Robert Koagedal: So the French through Vietnam became associated and they picked up acupuncture through that area, yeah. Craig Willett: Yeah, and I thought, “Well, if it’s good enough, they have a good healthcare system.” If it’s good enough to use in the emergency room there, I wasn’t as afraid of it here. But once you become aware of the benefits, then it’s a matter of trusting who you go to as well, because if there’s a reason there’s only 5% that succeed, how do you overcome that? There’s got to be a way that you intentionally make sure you educate your clients. Robert Koagedal: And by succeed, I mean support a family, and support a mortgage, and support—Right, not a hobby, not out of the side of your house, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but where it was the professional practice of Chinese medicine applied across all disciplines of health and was something that was respected and people would come to and pay for. Craig Willett: Yeah, speaking of that—paying for—one of the premises of one of my businesses that I had was that you can own for less than rent and that a professional like you, who spent a lot of time and effort getting an education, should have more to show for it at the end of the day than just a good practice that pays you that you can build a retirement by owning your building. I know you own yours, you didn’t buy it from me because I didn’t develop in Scottsdale. Robert Koagedal: I looked at some of yours. Craig Willett: You did?. Robert Koagedal: I looked at a second clinic down there, yep. Craig Willett: But how did you go about that? What went into your mind to even look? Robert Koagedal: Well, at some level, I knew that Scottsdale was home and I was going to stake my claim here, so to speak, and make my business grow, and have my family here, get it going. Once that had been kind of like, “This is the direction.” Then I knew that I had to build in some type of thing that would allow me to build some equity into something so that I had something at the end of 25 years of doing this to show for it. But again, back to the accidental success part of that, that was, again with some chagrin and maybe a bit of embarrassment, I tell these stories because these aren’t things that you want to necessarily do, but they actually happened— Craig Willett: Well, you may not admit to them either, but the nice thing is they happened, they happen to all of us. Robert Koagedal: They did, and at one point, someone had came to work on my credit card machine, and then somehow, the neighbor, for three months, got all my American Express money, and I was so not cognizant of my ins and outs in this— Craig Willett: You weren’t missing those deposits, apparently. Robert Koagedal: I was, but it was more like I was so focused on other things that those went by the wayside, but there was a point where I went, “What the heck happened here?” And because probably, I’m not the greatest saver and the greatest “how to use structure and do all these things the right way,” that was almost put in a bank account for me, I had no way to— Craig Willett: The forced savings. Robert Koagedal: The forced savings so to speak, and literally, that became the deposit I was able to get an SBA loan for in 2008. Well, one thing, I had a client who like you, was a CPA and a very successful man, and he had come in and six months before the crash in 2008, he told me what was going to happen. He worked in the building industry and knew Pulte Homes, and on the board of all these things, and he’s like, “Robert, I like you, you’re a good guy, I like what you do, but you have a cash business and when the shit hits the fan, you better get yourself ready.” And I was like, “What?” Craig Willett: “What do you mean?” Robert Koagedal: Yeah, and he says, “Basically, in January, this is what’s going to happen.” And for all the reasons we now know that the stuff happened, and so I just wanted to build in something that secured something, and in 2008, I found a property that was the perfect location, perfect size, and I was able to get into that, so it’s been real fortunate. Craig Willett: I think it’s one of those things that you build a retirement because you can’t necessarily plan on selling your practice. There are some businesses that are easily sold, but— Robert Koagedal: No, and you’re right on point there because I’ve discovered, acupuncture businesses are not exactly sellable—saleable?—in the way that you imagine some other successful, like medical doctors sell, a lot of money, this doesn’t translate that way. You don’t get out of 20, 25 years, you don’t get what you put into it. So you better have something else planned. Craig Willett: Right, so there’s got to be more than just earning your living and supporting a family, there has to be assets that are growing. Robert Koagedal: Exactly. Yeah, so on some level, I mean, maybe it was even you on some level that got me thinking on those things, and I can’t go directly to my memory bank. Craig Willett: It was subliminal. Robert Koagedal: Subliminal, yeah. Craig Willett: I don’t know, I doubt it, I doubt it, I think you probably had a good mind and I think sometimes we just have instinct, and sometimes our instincts may serve us. We may be embarrassed sometimes with the things we do, but we have to look at what our strengths are and you have to play to your strengths. I think that’s one thing that you mentioned that you do when you market. You have to instill the confidence of your patients in you, and that’s what generates the referrals. Robert Koagedal: Totally, yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative). Craig Willett: So tell me a little bit about the reproductive—I mean, you’ve got doctors referring you, what types of doctors and what have your experiences been? Because there’s a certain balance to life where we can get out of balance, and I look at Chinese medicine, or acupuncture as a balance issue—balancing out energy, balancing out flow. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, well, I think you’re right on that the principles of Chinese medicine are built around, obviously, those polarities of yin and yang, and that translated also to me—which maybe was a part of what I was thinking about—was always thinking about the balance between running a business and having family life. I think that’s a part of your podcast’s theme is on how do you do that? Maybe as an example, a friend of mine who started and runs two very busy clinics in LA, he decided that working on Saturdays was going to be good for business. But when you have kids that want to play baseball on Saturdays, it’s not so easy to take that time off when you’re seeing 30 patients a day and the income that brings to your business. So I on some level said, “I’m going to be here at these hours, and I’m going to structure it.” I’ve found that people respect those areas if they really want to come in, and they’ll find a way to do it. Craig Willett: I found the same thing, especially for me as a CPA during tax season. People want to come in after-hours late into the night, and I always managed that, “No, not on Saturdays or weekends, and only till a certain time in the evening.” Because I wanted to be home, be with the family. Robert Koagedal: Right, those aren’t easy things to do either. I could be open on Saturdays. Craig Willett: No, because you think, “Oh, I can get more people.” Robert Koagedal: Absolutely, yeah. Craig Willett: But the real secret is, you don’t. You don’t necessarily succeed any more by working more hours, you tend to burn out and you tend to have other things. So isn’t that part of the secret, as you help people get their lives back in order and achieve some of their dreams, if they want to have a family and aren’t having success in conceiving children, how are you able to help them? Robert Koagedal: Well, on some level, that is where the rubber meets the road in the decisions that you make. For example, if I come in at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that means that on some level, I’m doing those health and wellness practices for myself that I would suggest to my patients if they’re stressed out, or not sleeping well, or have whatever issues. Being able to build that in has also, I think, helped me a lot in being able to avoid burnout and all those issues that come up with it. But on the side of the reproductive medicine component, that was really on some level, like a lot of these things, found me and maybe I can tie this back to the— Craig Willett: Accident theory? Robert Koagedal: —the accidental part of it, and maybe it’s not so accidental if you want to get more metaphysical but— Craig Willett: There’s the philosopher coming through. Robert Koagedal: The part of it where I had said, “Okay, no more mafia acupuncture clinics for me.” And I was in New York City, I was crossing the street in Union Square, and I just finished a chapter in the Huangdi Neijing, which is the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, it’s the oldest medical book in the world. In the chapter I had just finished was an outline of the conversation between his chief physician, the Yellow Emperor’s physician, Qibo, and the Yellow Emperor, and in that conversation, they outline the seven-year life cycle transformation. So, women go through seven-year hormonal life cycle transformations. 7, 14—14, the dew of heaven arises—21, the wisdom come in, 28’s the height of your—So I’m standing in Union Square, I had just finished this chapter on seven-year life cycles and I’m standing there, this bus pulls right up in front of me and I read the sign on the side and the Public Health Department had done a public health announcement that says, “Past 35, a woman’s fertility drops by 50%.” And I’m like, “35? 7, 14, 21, 28, 35.” Well, that’s statistically the mean average when endogenous sex hormones begin to drop, and we think of in this culture as 35 is reasonably young, but biologically speaking in terms of your reproduction, they are no longer at the same level as they were even a few years earlier. So there are these tipping points—and the Chinese observed this 3,000 years ago—and so I was there having just finished that chapter, and then I’m looking at that, and then as all this comes to be as per your—I met a guy not long ago— Craig Willett: How many times has this happened to you? Robert Koagedal: This has happened a few times. Craig Willett: Okay, one was in a bar, one was in Starbucks, and— Robert Koagedal: Yep, exactly, one was in Starbucks—well, I mean, yeah, so how do we account for these things, right? Craig Willett: Right. Robert Koagedal: If you’re planning everything, you know? Craig Willett: Right. Robert Koagedal: That guy started probably—I think he even says it on his website, “I have been doing it for 24 years specializing in reproductive medicine.” I met that guy who started a practice specializing in reproductive medicine. Craig Willett: In New York? Robert Koagedal: In New York, and at that same time, that same weekend, there was a woman. Her name’s Dr. Angela Wu, she runs probably the busiest acupuncture clinics on the West Coast for reproductive medicine. I went and took her class and I’m not kidding you, it wasn’t six months later, a study came out on the use of acupuncture in reproductive medicine where then my phone was ringing off the hook. That’s how I got Juicy going in New York, and I had that all kind of going, and Mary and I were even looking at staying there and getting a house somewhere, or going to Brooklyn or whatever. Then 9/11 happened, and 9/11, after that, we were like, “You know what? I think we need to head back, we’re not East Coast folks.” That wasn’t our place— Craig Willett: Right, you’re from California, it’s a whole different lifestyle. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, it’s a different lifestyle, different everything, and we had a great time in New York, but then we were looking for the place, “Where is the Shangri-La of starting a family, building a business?” And I went back to North Carolina, we did a car trip from San Diego to Vancouver, we looked at Oregon, we really looked, we knocked. And we’re sitting at my family’s home in Lake Tahoe, and a website, on realtor.com, and I saw a house and I was like, this is after looking at pieces of junk in the Bay Area that were $700,000, and I was like, “Wow, you get that house for that much?” We drove down the next day, we’ve basically been here ever since. Craig Willett: Wow, that’s amazing. I think what I love about what you’re sharing with us is that really, you can’t plan this stuff, and you have to go with what you know, you have to go with the opportunities that come your way, and I’ve always said this—in fact, I wrote a book, I never published it—“Opportunity Knocks”—and I think you have to look at— Robert Koagedal: I like that title. Craig Willett: You have to be able to look at where those opportunities are coming from and spot them, but you have to be looking and that’s what you did, they hit you on the side of the head— Robert Koagedal: How do you take that, Craig? What is the meaning of that, if we’re not planning, what is it inside of us that intuits, feels, senses, cognizes, and is able to move on and act on that? Craig Willett: It’s a need, right? Robert Koagedal: Yeah. Craig Willett: You were without, you were kicked out of the clinic by the FBI, and you’re trying to figure out, “I’m trying to make it in this world of not very many people succeed in my profession, so how am I going to specialize?” I think you become aware of that, you were reading, you were doing what you always do to advance yourself, and ideas come. Some stand out, and that’s what I believe. I think there’s a certain intuitive nature to us that—we can call it inspiration, and that inspiration comes in many different ways. Why did that chapter stand out to you over—I don’t know how thick that book is—and how did that coincide with meeting the people you met? Robert Koagedal: But I mean, as far as business stuff, how do we listen to that, hear that, and then act on it irrespective of, “I have my plan, here’s the plan.” Craig Willett: Well, the plan gets in the way, I can tell you that. Robert Koagedal: Exactly, and you go left instead of right. Craig Willett: The plan or we live in a world where I think we spell business the same way you could spell busyness, and that is we get so busy, we block that out. I think part of your philosophical background may have led you to that, but I think for our audience if there are those of us who tend to want to check things off on our planner and on our list, but sometimes there’s a benefit to stepping back and being able to observe what’s going on around you, and I think you’ve done that well, which is one of the reasons you’re sitting in the chair you’re sitting in today. Robert Koagedal: Well, yeah, well maybe yeah, that may be an instinct in me, but for your listeners then, yeah, what does that mean for them to step back? What is the stepping back move, psychologically? What does that mean to simply witness, and maybe relax a little, as opposed to trying to put—what is it? A square in a round hole, you know? Craig Willett: Yeah, well, that’s true, but I think part of it is, we have a Biz Sherpa scorecard, and part of it, I try to get people that I consult with to look back and say, “Where am I spending my time, and am I spending time at the things—at least 80% of my time—at the things that make the biggest difference and impact on the lives of my customers or my patients?” If I can do that, then all the other busyness stuff, the other day-to-day really falls by the wayside. I’m able to focus on those things that make the biggest difference and changes in lives because I’m sure your success stories are great motivation to you, more than what you can charge someone for your procedures, it’s got to bring a lot of joy because I’ve been in your office. I see the pictures in the book of the people who got treated by you and now are having families. What’s that feel like to you? Because to answer your question, I’d like you to answer it because I think there’s a satisfaction that comes. Robert Koagedal: Well, there is indeed, and I’d say what your intention is, that is what you want to create—what you’re looking to create, and if that is that on some level, someone who comes in who’s suffering and you are able to provide information that allows them to move forward to move to the highest level of their function, that ties together the key principle within Chinese medicine which when I heard it, I said, “I’m in the right place.” Because it’s a really interesting concept, but the number one thing for—what the practitioner of acupuncture, Chinese medicine is to do is what’s called nourishing destiny. That is if on some level, people don’t feel an alignment with what they are doing in this world, they’ll suffer, they’ll have some type of block, whatever you want to put it. So the highest practice of Chinese medicine is on some level, helping them become aligned with that so that they feel simpatico with something natural inside of them that they want to move forward on. Craig Willett: That’s interesting. So, I think that’s great advice, I think you just gave it right there, we have to step back and feel what’s natural. What are my talents? What are my skills? If I’m not an accountant, why am I trying to do the books in my business? If I’m good at sales, I should be selling, I should be meeting with my customers, not sitting in the back accounting for what came in and what’s going out the door. I think that’s that alignment we all have to find, and I think that takes getting to know what your strengths are. So how do you recommend to business owners, being one, to keep that healthy life balance? Robert Koagedal: Well, a lot of it is you’ve got to play around to see what’s going to work for you, and maybe some people are more ambitious in ways that they do better by going crazy and working it out and doing it, and this is nothing against that, it’s only to the degree that then you’re getting feedback that you’re getting high blood pressure, or you’re not sleeping well and all of those things. Those are pretty clear cut signals that that’s out of balance. Craig Willett: I think I heard at one time from Carol. In addition to my CPA practice and doing real estate development, I was asked to testify in Congress in Washington DC, and was put on a number of boards and Carol said to me, “Our kids are going to grow up really quickly, and they’re not going to know who their dad is.” I think that comment right there made me step back. It caused me to step back and look, “Where am I spending my time? And where does this lead?” It may give me some kudos professionally, but at some point, we have to define our own success, not what the world or other people would define us as. Robert Koagedal: Absolutely, you literally just pulled the quote out of the thing I was thinking about, I have to pull this one out because this is a patient of mine who sent this to me this morning. Craig Willett: Really? Robert Koagedal: I wrote it down just because I was like, “Oh, it was really, really good.” Craig Willett: Oh, I want to hear that then. Robert Koagedal: “The most destructive thing I’ve ever done is believing someone else’s opinion of me.” Craig Willett: Wow, and I think that’s right, we have to know and we have to set our boundaries, and it’s the same thing. How do we define success? You asked the question how do you know if you’re on track, and I think you have to set a number. You had a friend you gave the example of in California, running two clinics and working on nights and weekends. Sometimes I think it’s this matter of saying, “All right, I can control my expenses, and I can, to some degree, control my income, and so I just need to figure out what’s the formula that brings me what I need sufficient for what my needs are and allow me to build a retirement and experience success or happiness.” Robert Koagedal: Where’s the sweet spot? Yep. Craig Willett: Yeah, and I think sometimes, we get clouded because the world would define success as more. Robert Koagedal: Absolutely. Well, again, then you have to, on some level, know what your values are and if you accept the world’s values, that might be not a great idea. Craig Willett: Right because what is more? There’s always somebody who will have more. I always say there’s somebody who’s smarter, somebody who’s brighter, somebody with more money, if you’re measuring against somebody else, there’s always going to be somebody with more than you. I think it’s one of the problems we have in society today, we report earnings and it has to be an increase in sales, are they growing the business? What’s wrong with maintaining the business to some degree? Robert Koagedal: Well, yeah, you’re not going to get hired with that if you’re looking for a corporate job, but— Craig Willett: No, definitely not. Robert Koagedal: But yeah, that would be sanity, yeah, uh-huh (affirmative). Craig Willett: Now, you also mentioned that people need to find the way to take away the destructive, or the blocking in their lives. What role does acupuncture play in helping stress relief and helping find energy? Robert Koagedal: That’s a good question. First, let’s start so that your guests listening don’t think this is any kind of woo-woo way of understanding when we use the term energy, because what do we call a body with no energy? Craig Willett: Dead. Robert Koagedal: It’s called a cadaver, yeah, exactly. So, when you understand biologically that you as an animated living being—what I fancifully called a biodegradable space-time suit—that you have 17 trillion batteries, which we call your mitochondria. It moves through the electricity through the fascial matrix within your body, and acupuncture is a tool—and I think specifically to your question you’re asking about kind of balancing out the nervous system, is that what you’re asking about? Craig Willett: Yeah, yeah. Robert Koagedal: With energy, right? Craig Willett: Energy, yeah, depression, or lack of energy or stress, overload. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, so when you look at this from the point of really physics and evaluate that when we say we have lots of energy, we feel good, we have clear thinking, good appetite, all the different things that we call having energy, those generally translate into quality of health and quality of life. When that starts to become depleted—and especially you could say that one of the places that uncorks how much you can hold a charge in your cells is stress. So the perception of threat on some level, when people walk around with that—either due to a variety of issues, perceived or real, the majority of them are in this case, perceived. They’re kind of structures in the mind in which we perceive and anticipate events that are threatening— Craig Willett: Right, I’m my own worst enemy, I project into the future bad things and so— Robert Koagedal: All the anticipatory fear thinking, and I’d say that’s a habit that on some level is built-in in how we literally train our children, and how we go through the education system. So I think acupuncture then is a fantastic tool that helps do two things. Both as I appreciate and bring to the experience of an acupuncture visit, is really teaching people how to learn how to not follow the habit of anticipatory or fear thinking, and how to learn to have more meditative capacity for surrendering to the unknown and being capable of being in the present moment to the degree that they can really move from there into their life’s experience, as opposed to being in the spinning of their fear thinking. Acupuncture as a physical tool helps facilitate greater communication throughout all systems, but acts on a system called the pregnenolone steal effect, does that sound familiar? Craig Willett: That’s a long statement, help describe that. Robert Koagedal: The conversion of basically adrenaline and cortisol. If you run on adrenaline and cortisol, you systematically shrink blood vessels throughout the entire venous system and obviously, this organ right here requires a lot of oxygen. Now, you do that long enough and you will end up going to see the cardiovascular physician. And so for people who are running on chronic stress, acupuncture acts as a tool to mitigate that so that you actually convert your adrenaline and cortisol to become your endogenous sex hormones. So this is another avenue through which both the stress of infertility affects these things, but overall, quality of life is depleted dramatically when people are in a constant state of anxiety and perceived threat. Craig Willett: I think we all have moments like that in our life, and so it’s being able to identify those moments to either call and get help, or find ways to be able to turn that off and become more present— Robert Koagedal: What’s the point if you have more and you’re stressed out and not sleeping? I mean, so, to be successful then ultimately is finding the mindset that can appreciate the beauty of what’s right in front of you, and if that’s not available to you, I can guarantee you, it’s not going to happen because you have more. Craig Willett: Yeah, so I’m curious as to this whole idea of depletion and being stressed out. If you’re treating patients with stage IV cancer, for instance, what do you learn from them? Because I’m sure they’re going to be spending some time with you, and some of them—you have a good manner about you—I’m sure they start talking about things that are important to them? Robert Koagedal: You bet, yeah. Craig Willett: What are some of the things you’ve learned from some of your patients? Because I admire you, you’re in a key position to hear some really insightful moments. I had a friend that had cancer and he was able to be brutally honest with me about a lot of things in his life, and I learned a lot. It was one of the most educational processes, I became his friend for the year and a half that he had left in his life. Robert Koagedal: Yep. Well, the first thing that you learn is everyone has a story and appreciating that they aren’t cancer in that sense, that they are a living being with a story, and when you behave and respond to them in that moment like that, cancer doesn’t exist. It’s there, obviously, and we’re there to help biologically and help to treat that and do all those things, but when you’re just in conversation with someone and you get to hear their fears or their worries, or concerns, or even get to hear their amazing story of their life, of the things they’ve done in organic farming from people who have been in Vietnam— Craig Willett: Oh really? Robert Koagedal: Oh yeah, just memories pop up and I can tell you of just people who tell me, and you get to be privileged to actually hear their story, and again, with all the hope that I have that what we do is going to be helpful in the context of the treatments they are receiving for them to live healthier, longer, or get the benefit from those things. This isn’t just about them telling me their story, but in that sense, it’s a privilege. And I think I’ve learned to listen more than anything else to just anything that they want to tell me that they find. You get to see some amazing people, and some people that struggle, some people that are afraid or in pain, and all that stuff. Craig Willett: Right, so how do you do that? I mean, I think one of the successes for business owners is building relationships, whether that’s your referral network right at the beginning with your patients or your clients. But how do you establish that rapport? Robert Koagedal: I think the first part of it is listening, and the rapport that someone recognizes that I’m not thinking about something else when I’m about to do acupuncture with them, you know? Craig Willett: That’s interesting, my wife always tells stories about—she can tell whether she’s going to have an interaction with someone or not if they’re reaching out to shake her hand and they’re looking for the next person to talk to. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, “Oh, hi.” Politician style, or whatever it is. Craig Willett: Right. Robert Koagedal: On some level, the only thing we have that’s free as human beings is our attention, and can you place your attention in the moment in a way that you welcome the other person’s presence? And if you can do that, on some level that’s a mutuality, it’s an exchange where people instantly know, “Okay, I’m here.” As opposed to, “I have to be here, I have to do that, I’ve got other things to do.” I’m not saying I don’t get busy and get distracted on occasion, but if you can deliver on that in terms of just—if this is for acupuncture students listening out there—that can be one tool you can use is learn how to not be addicted to your thinking, but just practice being in your body and learning how to use your breath as a way to enter into the present moment so you can just be there. Craig Willett: But I think that’s with anybody in any business. Robert Koagedal: Absolutely, across the board. Craig Willett: Yeah, I think if you sense that someone’s more concerned about what they’re getting out of it, you’re less likely to do business with them. So when you’re genuine and you’re real, they can be genuine and real too, then you understand the need and then you can fulfill that need. Because that’s the basis of exchange. Somebody comes to you when you have a business, whether your business is healthcare or your business is selling suits, if they have a need they come to you to fulfill that need, and if you’re better able to understand that need, you’re going to find something that delivers greater satisfaction to them. Then it doesn’t become about price, it doesn’t become about the transaction, it becomes about the interaction. Robert Koagedal: Sorry, you triggered a memory, now you’ve drawn me back to the Bronx there and it just made me laugh. When I was in the Bronx, this guy would come by, literally, a truck would pull up, in the back this guy would hop off, he’d go, “Suits, we got suits for sale.” This guy would come into the middle of the clinic with the suits and they’re like, “Where’d those come from?”, “They fell off a truck somewhere, we’ve got suits.” I bought one, I bought one. Craig Willett: You bought one, do you still have it. Robert Koagedal: I was Trump for Halloween last night with that suit. Craig Willett: With that suit? Robert Koagedal: Yeah, I was a good 20, 25 pounds heavier back in New York, eating lots of bagels. So yeah, I still have that suit that I bought off the rack of the back of a truck in the Bronx. Craig Willett: That’s pretty funny, I think that’s great. Hey, I’m interested to know because I know you personally and I think this is kind of part of this. What I’ve seen as I’ve interviewed people on this podcast is that a lot of them come back to becoming friends with the people they do business with and their patients, and their clients. While that has its boundaries, you practice something in your personal life and I think it translates to doing that and that is I’ve noticed that you take family vacations, and what role does that play in keeping balance? Robert Koagedal: Oh, well, one, you need to go on vacation, and two, you can’t leave the kids behind to take care of themselves. Craig Willett: “Hey, watch the dog, we’ll be back.” Robert Koagedal: Exactly, “Watch the dog, and try not to get in trouble.” Yeah, I mean, it’s fun, we’ve come up with some good family vacations that we’ve enjoyed over the years, some of them have become traditions, and I’d say planning for those are things I look forward to, the fall break here in Arizona to get out and go to California is one of our favorites because the weather’s so beautiful. So we have a good time finding time to go share some time with the kids and stuff. Craig Willett: I also noticed—I mean, as we’ve visited through the years, as you’ve treated me you’ve talked about golfing with your son, the different sports, basketball, what’s that like? How important is that and what role does that play for you? Robert Koagedal: Craig, I think on some level I don’t fully appreciate that I have it pretty good in terms of when you point these things back out to me I go, “Yeah, that’s pretty good that I can go on a Wednesday if I’m done at 2:00 and we can go play the back nine at the TPC.” Or that those things are available to us, and I hope I don’t take it for granted but those are things that I’ve tried to build in to being able to make that my priority. Craig Willett: I think that’s important because a lot of times, people say, “Hey, I started a business so I can have all this free time.” Robert Koagedal: Well, yeah, exactly and, “I’m going to spend 20 years struggling to get to where I have enough money so I can have the free time.” Craig Willett: Exactly right, but you have to build that in because you can’t— Robert Koagedal: I think so. I think it is kind of—you have to on some level—and again, people sometimes, they can’t leave their office, so I get it, I don’t want to sound like some ignorant acupuncturist. Craig Willett: Right, but maybe there’s some things they can change so they can leave their office. Robert Koagedal: Maybe, and again, I’ve never worked in corporate life so maybe I can’t even comment on how— Craig Willett: No, no, no, this is about entrepreneurship, and so I’m trying to get the people out of corporate life to be able to accidentally succeed. Robert Koagedal: Then to hell with the corporate, if you work at a corporation, get the hell out of there because you ain’t going anywhere, and if you think your money at the end of the golden rainbow is going to save you—no, you’ve got to enjoy it now. If you’re not able to enjoy it now, you’re not going to enjoy it then. Again, building in those things are really reflections of your values, and if you can start to put those into practice—it’s not practice, it’s just life. I want to play golf on 2:00 on a Wednesday with my son. Craig Willett: Right, and look forward to that. Robert Koagedal: Or 3:00 I guess, school ends at 2:35 or something. Craig Willett: Right, but do you see, those things you have to build in and I think that’s part of the balance, and you have to be intentional— Robert Koagedal: I might not have done that when I was starting out. Craig Willett: No, the first two or three years, probably not. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, exactly, and you use your house as a bank account so you can pay your rent. Craig Willett: Right, yeah, there you go. Robert Koagedal: Also, not good business practices. Craig Willett: But I had a guy tell me when I was working for another CPA firm, I went to deliver his tax return to him and when I came out to talk to him—I don’t know why he shared this story—he goes, “I used to be a CPA.” I gave him his tax return and he said, “When I started my practice 30 years ago, 35 years ago,” he said, “I went to get a loan to get a line of credit so that I could make sure I had enough to cover the expenses in the first couple of years. So I gave my pro forma business plan to the banker and the banker a few days later, I stopped in,” and he said, “the banker told me, ‘No, I’m not going to approve your loan.'” And he said, “Do you mind if I ask why?” He goes, ‘Yeah, I don’t see anything budgeted for vacation. I am not going to lend to you if you’re going to burn out.'” Robert Koagedal: That’s pretty good, wow. Craig Willett: Yeah, and so for me, that stuck in my mind, and so I think you’re right, you have to plan for that and you have to allow for that, you allow for it in your pricing, you allow for it in your hours, you allow for it in other ways that can afford you those opportunities, because it does. Business ownership offers great freedom. But you don’t have one boss, you have how many patients? 3,000 patients are all of a sudden your boss, and so you have to be responsive to that. Well, what are some of the things that you do that help you sharpen your focus? Robert Koagedal: Some of the things that help me—well, the last year has not been the greatest with all this stuff going on. Craig Willett: A lot of distraction. Robert Koagedal: A lot of distractions, and a lot of things that again, when this all kind of came about, and I got an email from my brother that, “2.5 million people are going to be dead and you better close your practice, and you can’t see anybody.” When the Oxford epidemiologist came out with all of that, I’m like, “Oh my god, this might be the end of my business.” I mean, I’m a cash business and I’m one-on-one with people, and if that’s not going to be allowable, and if I’m considered to be non-essential,” which I wasn’t, fortunately, “this could put at risk everything I’ve built.” And another point at which— Craig Willett: That’s an awakening moment. Robert Koagedal: Awakening moment, and—I’m sorry, tell me again, what was your question? Craig Willett: Well, I’m just trying to say how do you sharpen your focus? Robert Koagedal: Oh, sharpen your focus. Well, I think sometimes you just double down and work with what was succeeding, but I mean, on some level, there’s luck involved too— Craig Willett: Plus the whole accidental success. Robert Koagedal: I mean, what if I had been deemed non-essential, they close your business, you can’t be open at that point, you put yourself in legal positions, and the fact that I was able to stay open, even though it slowed down—I was probably 60, 70% down—I guess you just go back to maintaining that sense of being hungry and wanting to keep building something and not going to let go of it. So there’s a degree of tenacity I guess in that, and I feel on some level I’m still as hungry as when I jumped into this, maybe even more so, and— Craig Willett: And what is that hunger for? Is that hunger for financial success or is there something more to it? Robert Koagedal: No, again, I think you and I have mentioned this, you can’t put the cart in front of the horse, and if your motivation is that you want to make money, you can only be successful, in my opinion, relative to being interested in what it is you’re doing— Craig Willett: Right, which is making money. Robert Koagedal: —that then leads to that coming in. And in our culture, we teach kids that they need to get a job that allows them to make lots of money even if it’s some crappy job that you’re not suited for and isn’t really something that you enjoy. I don’t know about you, but maybe death is a good teacher, maybe death is a good focuser. Maybe it’s that I remember that this biodegradable space-time suit isn’t going to be here. If you want to be around stage IV cancer patients, they certainly do teach you that. That they were perfectly fine at 46 years old, guy coming in and this is now four months later who had stomach pain, he has three kids, living his life, went into urgent care, they said, “You have cancer everywhere in your body.” He’s already passed, so that’s one way to sharpen your focus. Craig Willett: Yeah, my mother was killed in a car accident at a fairly young age and so, you don’t know when that’s going to come, so I guess that helps sharpen your focus. But I think one thing that you said is it can’t be all in the financial results, there has to be an exchange on a personal level that takes place, that gives you some emotional reward for what you’re doing. I think it’s fair to say in healthcare, maybe that’s more realizable, but I think it’s translatable totally across the board in any business. I think that’s what we should be shooting for, and as we do that, and I think you embody that, I think that’s one of the great strengths to being in business is you get to have that emotional reward for owning that business that made a difference in somebody’s life. Robert Koagedal: It’s a great lesson. Craig Willett: You can do that as an employee too, so I’m not going to totally knock the whole corporate world. Robert Koagedal: You can, you can, and how you’re being of service in ways above and beyond what you do for work, necessarily, but in ways that are in your community and other things too. I have amazing patients that show me things all the time and they do really cool stuff. Craig Willett: Oh, that’s pretty neat. Well, great, well, you can’t come to the Sherpa’s Cave and not leave without having answered one really important question with a follow-up and that is, what is your greatest failure? Robert Koagedal: Greatest failure? Well, I’ve had lots of small failures, but I’d say one that was challenging was after finishing school, I made a concerted effort to try to make it back to California. And part of what was unique in California is you actually had to take a separate test from the national test, which gave you access to practicing basically anywhere in the US. But California had its own licensing exam, and for me to go back to— Craig Willett: Not surprising. Robert Koagedal: Exactly. For me to make it back to California, I had to go take that, and did my thing and studied for it, and went in and failed the first one and missed it by two questions. Craig Willett: Oh, wow, painful. Robert Koagedal: This is after having spent $80,000 and now I have loans coming up and now I’m supposed to be a practicing master acupuncturist and now I’m waiting tables again just trying to make a living, living at my in-law’s house, and really then gearing up to go do it again. I go back again, and I failed it again by two questions, and then at that point, I was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do here.” Craig Willett: Sometimes there’s divine destiny, but I’m not saying going to work for the mafia is the answer. Robert Koagedal: There you go, so it felt like putting, again, what is it? The square peg into the circle, and banging my head against it where then I had to surrender that that wasn’t maybe in my future in ways that were kind of difficult because my kids haven’t grown up with their grandparents and that sort of thing. So there were definitely sacrifices that came with that, but on some level, that was definitely a struggle for a while until something kind of came on and I saw—this was in the newspapers when people read newspapers, a thing where, “Come work for the mafia at this clinic and we’ll pay you $50 an hour.” “Shut case, I’m out of here.” So yeah, and my best friend had moved there so a lot of things worked out afterwards. Craig Willett: So what did you learn from that? Robert Koagedal: I think on some level—you can take it kind of two ways, there are other ways where sometimes you’ve got to keep banging, sometimes you’ve got to go take it a third time, and sometimes maybe that is part of your—if you felt that and if you were into that, and you go take it a third time until you damn well conquer that thing. Maybe I feel like I still, I just didn’t do it or I gave up, but on some level— Craig Willett: But you can’t second guess that. Robert Koagedal: I can’t second guess that now, but it worked out. But I’m blessed that some of these things that have been failures on the surface turned out to be things that played out for me in ways that I’m grateful for. Craig Willett: There we go. There it is, the true lesson of life, the accidental success. Robert Koagedal: Yeah, absolutely. Craig Willett: Your career, you ended up in an area—I would say Scottsdale’s a great area for what you do. Robert Koagedal: Fantastic, yeah. Craig Willett: And great for family time compared to California, maybe the grandparents might be a little farther away. Robert Koagedal: All our friends there, they generally work two jobs, they both come home at 6:00. It’s one of those things, to build a life here, we’ve been very blessed, Arizona is our home and Scottsdale’s been a real blessing for us too. Craig Willett: That’s great. Well, I love your stories, I think they’re great and I think it’s a great demonstration that if you care about people and you have a passion for what you do, that no matter how many times we may stumble, that we kind of find our way and that there is a destiny for us and we just need to find that. Sometimes, we fight against it, but oftentimes if we go with the flow, the accidents lead to greater success, and I appreciate you being here today, Robert. Thanks for taking the time to come in and be our guest. Robert Koagedal: My pleasure, I really enjoyed it, nice talking to you. Craig Willett: This has been great. This is Craig Willett, The Biz Sherpa, thanks for joining us today. Speaker 1: Be sure to go to our website to access the resources related to this episode at www.BizSherpa.co. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends about us, and be sure to rate ou podcast. Craig would like to hear from you, so share your thoughts in the Facebook community at Biz Sherpa.co. Follow us on Twitter @BizSherpa_co, and on Instagram @BizSherpa.co.

In this episode, Kaleigh and Christian review two Hallmark-esque Christmas movies and one tear jerker that was actually good. This episode is filled with Christmas princes, angsty country music stars and all the WASPy stereotypes you can think of. CHECK OUT OUR FALL AND WINTER PLAYLIST: Cronchy Leafs, Wool Socks and Birks Find us on Patreon: Bangs and Beard Our Socials: @bangsandbeardpod @kaleighbasso @christian.avery --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Break out your “Schizos and Serial Killers” trading cards, we watched Addams Family Values (1993) with our friend Andy Ur and we’re all Graceful, Delicate Ballerinas!  As Thanksgiving movies go, this is… really the only one we could think of.  This movie is full of more queer subtext than you can shake a stick at.  Joan Cusack as murderous “Black Widow” Debbie Jellinsky is nothing short of iconic.  Anjelica Huston is service face, face, body, face in Morticia drag and Christina Ricci very nearly steals the show as a pre-teen Wednesday revolting against her WASPy fellow campers.  Keep an eye out for cameos by queer or queer-adjacent celebs like Christine Baranski, Nathan Lane, David Hyde Pierce, Cynthia Nixon and Charles Busch. Hey its Thanksgiving Day!  Eat us, we make a nice buffet! Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes! www.patreon.com/moviesthatmadeusgay Facebook/Instagram: @moviesthatmadeusgay Twitter: @MTMUGPod Scott Youngbauer: Twitter @oscarscott / Instagram @scottyoungballer Peter Lozano: Twitter/Instagram @peterlasagna

Wasp --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hearsay-c/support

Wasps, sprinting, florida, mosquitos all dealt with. Sound if Joels Starts and his disdain for books. Wind was string so apologies for that.

Bob gets caught in the youtube algorithm while Miles kinda saves the day, in a small but meaningful way. COVID-19 messages at https://coco.mediashower.com Call us 314-827-6399  

WASPY churchboys never liked me. #wasp #christianwoman #marriageminded ♡ Need a mentor? I offer 1:1 videochat mentorship sessions. Ask about my fabulous programs, as well! Email: herfablife1@gmail.com Socials - ♛ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/HerFabLife ♛ iTunes Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/her-fab-life-podcast/id1443437685 ♛ Stitcher Podcast: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/her-fab-life-podcast ♛ FB Group (women only): https://www.facebook.com/groups/herfablife ♛ Jenny's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/singjennygirl

While last week’s Wheel Within a Wheel may have been a logistical nightmare, it did result in the fortuitous, yet statistically unlikely combination of The Piano (1993) and The Ice Storm (1997). One is a haunting, hole-filled period polarizer with a brilliant score. The other is a frigid cast-tastic snapshot of WASPy, 70’s Connecticut. What do these films have in common? Why they’re both formative movies from podpal Darren Dewes’ early years! He joins us this week to yack about pee scenes, chunky necklaces, and every imaginable iteration of the Titanic tragedy, this week on Ex Rated Movies!

Your favourite covidiots are back for another round of Covid-eo Killed the Radio Star! On this week's episode, we discuss the perils of going head to head with the Download Festival, explain why anchovies and kippers belong on pizza and provide the usual antics in This is Happening and Covidiot of the Week. Like, subscribe, review! Warning: Explicit content from the outset

The ethical quagmire of the existence of the billionaire gets a bit easier when you're confronted with the reality of Bruce Wayne. Guest Andy Michaels (from our episode on the X-MEN in season one, @StopThatAndy) is here to talk about white, WASPy privilege and, possibly, the need for super-hero therapists. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/fuckboisoflit/message

In this episode, Chris Gassler & Alexandra Izzi, our favorite couple call in and try (unsuccessfully)to take over the show. They fall into place when they realize they are dealing with a PODCAST MASTER. Is there such thing as a SOUL mate?? How many pictures of your dog(s) should you REALLY take in one day?? Is Giant Calamari the only way to satisfy Anthony Quinn's hunger for FOLKLORE?? Have you ever had VICTORY sex after watching Maury?? Do you know any Bigfoot HUNTERS personally?? These not so WASPY questions will be considered on this episode of QUINNSPIRACY.

:35 Krista teases about the “journey” she has been on:55 Katherine announces that the gals will be changing their name in order to get their message out more fluidly.1:30 Their website will be twogalssoulschool.com but they will continue to keep their podcast name as The Holy Fuck Podcast.2:09 Posts can be shared with friends more easily under the name of Two Gals Soul School2:50 The gals also announce they are going to take a few weeks off for Spring Break.3:55 Shamanic Journeys and Plant Based Medicine4:15 Katherine's experience was more natural while Krista's has been more induced.4:44 Krista discusses her judgments about people being able to drink a drink and have a spiritual experience when she had to work so hard to have hers naturally. She decides to do what she's been judging as a way of getting over her ego side.5:37 Krista thought she was going to be able to take a summer vacation and have some Plant Based experiences.6:00 Krista's summer travel plans have been postponed so she finds a way to go on a “trip” in her own bedroom7:25 Krista discusses how female lineage came through in her plant based experience8:00 Missy Eliot appears in Krista's trip8:41 An English, protestant woman appears in Krista's trip9:12 Krista has an awareness of how the angry, rigid old woman has been a part of her decision making.9:43 Krista's Korean daughter “appears” in her trip with a disapproving energy.10:40 An old crone appears in the mirror11:22 Mr. Right Here Right Now performs a clearing on Krista to rid her of the women from her past11:55 Krista puts a necklace on that transforms her into an Egyptian Queen. Her empowered “Self” came through.12:34 Her empowered Queen was here all along but she was buried underneath all the “old” women.13:15 Mr. Right Here Right Now's face continues to morph, showing Krista all of the different personas of his past. Past lives of them together or just his past lives.14:45 The Egyptian Queen represents that life is meant to be enjoyed.15:00 The “old” ladies have been making decisions for Krista's life that feel repressed and rigid.16:22 Krista releases the guilt she feels around enjoying her life during this challenging Covid time.16:54 Katherine reflects that both gals are bringing the Queen energy into themselves and expressing it out to the world through the HF podcast.17:33 Katherine shares her shamanic experience and how grounding it felt.18:30 Katherine has an ancestral experience guided by an Ojai Shaman.19:24 A Scottish Queen appears in Katherine's experience and she has an understanding that it is was war time and the Queen feels helpless. She feels the grief but also stands firm against the forces of darkness20:42 Katherine has lived in war torn places before.21:53 Native American medicine woman appears.22:39 Katherine realizes that the medicine woman represents her deceased, twin sister and the Scottish Queen represents Katherine.23:30 The medicine women had a lot of similarities to Katherine's sister.24:45 Katherine remembers that her lineage includes her family from Oklahoma which might represent the Native American energy that has crept into her DNA.25:37 Katherine laughs that someone in her Waspy family must have been with a Native American woman.26:15 The gals discuss how we create our identities from what we think is our ancestral background.26:40 Krista discusses the difference in her DNA and her sister's DNA even though they share the same parents.28:10 The Scottish Queen felt like Katherine but the medicine woman only felt like a piece of her.28:58 Altered states allow for healing29:25 Katherine discusses the awareness of how the empowered women live inside her whereas Krista's experience was more about letting go of the “repressed women.”30:35 Katherine decides to become a minister after her sister died.31:20 Krista talks about how the repressed energies have stopped her from allowing herself to be sexy and free in the world.31:55 The gals discuss taking their clients through past life healing processes.32:25 Healing happens past, present and future helping us heal our family lineage.33:14 Krista shares how her daughter is unknowingly experiencing the same repressed lineage through her Asian roots.33:48 What can Krista do to help her daughter clear the lineage without having to take the next 20 years to do it.34:23 As Krista heals her daughter can too.34:50 Krista realizes that the Asian lineage and repression caused issues in her marriage.36:36 Family belief systems get passed down through the generations and can be healed and cleared through forgiveness.37:28 Krista didn't want to take off her necklace because she felt so powerful with it.38:00 The gifts of shamanic and plant based experiences and stories.39:14 Krista realizes that she needs to move into forgiveness with the “Old” ladies instead of remaining in judgment towards those aspects of herself. She wants to invite them in with acceptance and embrace them.40:33 Now that the ”journey” is over, the real work begins.41:15 Krista realizes that the African American women in her trip represent the fun, lively side of herself.41:52 The gals go on Spring break and look forward to the mischief they can get into.42:20 Two Gals Soul SchoolAnd of course Subscribe to our podcast at www.holyf*ckpodcast.comFollow us on IG at @holyf*ckpodcast.Spread the love.

Malarie Howard is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and musician who grew up as the only Black girl in various WASPY communities, listening to Christian screamo rock, singing opera, and writing fan-fiction. She graduated from Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara University, where she majored in “not engineering like she should have.” These days, she's working on the CW show "In The Dark". She's also the creator of the dark comedy SPIRALING, which is inspired by her experiences of managing her mental health while working in the tech industry. She tells us about how her mother inspired her love for writing, why she needed to follow her Hollywood dreams.

Like yesterday’s interview of Jim Henderson, today we feature a Christian leader who shoulders responsibility for justice — especially the poor, the widow, and the immigrant alien. Discover the amazing journey of Carl Ruby, pastor and advocate for social justice and refugee rights, when you listen to Bibdig episode 5. Carl tells the story of his efforts to teach principles of truth-telling, fact-checking, and civil conversation within the Christian community.Here are Owen's personal observations of the arc of Carl's spiritual journey:Carl Ruby started as a farm boy in Michigan, born into a conservative Evangelical family. He attended Cedarville as an undergrad, and fit right into the WASPy culture during those years when it had morphed into a "regular Baptist" Ohio college. He enjoyed being involved in his student life leadership program, and when he graduated the college offered him a job. By the time I met him in the mid-80s, Carl was a bright young leader studying for his Ph.D. in Educational Administration. I had the pleasure as a slightly older outside consultant to interview Carl every two years for the Cedarville admissions video. I began to observe something happening to his world-view during the next few years. Perhaps it grew out of his travels with students to help hurricane victims wherever they were needed. Perhaps it came from his efforts to bring contemporary, more culturally diverse Christian voices to student chapel and co-curricular programs. Or maybe it was that appreciation for human freedom which the Apostle Paul observed to be a companion of true disciples of Jesus at the beginning of the Christian enterprise. I can speak from first-hand experience that when Carl accompanied over a hundred CU students each year for a Civil Rights tour across the South, that love of freedom and sadness over American slavery also reached deeper and deeper into Carl's soul. Before I completed my 25-year stint as the Cedarville admissions video producer, Carl became the VP of Student Life. And then I "graduated" and moved to Seattle and then Sitka, and I lost track of Carl.When I finally caught up with him again in February for this interview, we hadn't seen each other for almost a decade. But in that intervening time Carl had left Cedarville, and had spent three years working to bring immigration reform to the United States. I guess he failed at that... :-) Now Carl is Senior Pastor at the Central Christian church in Springfield, Ohio. He is living proof of how a human being’s heart can change profoundly, no matter where we work or worship, and what our circumstances may be. For me, another old white guy who doesn't fit the stereotypes that naturally flow from our upbringing, Carl and I are exceptions that prove spirituality can and often does get transformed by reality.New York Times article on Carl's sudden departure from Cedarville: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/us/a-christian-college-struggles-to-define-itself.htmlCarl's church website is ccspringfield.org

I'm finding it helpful to be consistent, and I'm not great at talking things out. My family is a bunch of wasps lol no one talks about anything (good, bad, or indifferent). No need to "unpack" feelings or unpleasantness - the key is to move forward. Wrong. Let's chat, connect and listen

This week Marlon and Jake delve into the very real lives of very dead writers. From Gore Vidal to Frank McCourt, Ulysses S. Grant to Gabriel García Márquez, they discuss how memory compares to history and whether the trustworthiness of a memoir really matters if the book is a compelling read. Their discussion about WASPy realism leads them to debate whether John Cheever or John Updike is the better writer, and Marlon poses the scandalous question of whether Jane Austen lacked passion (gasp!). Whether they're talking about philandering playwrights or humorous newspaper columnists, Marlon and Jake prove that truth really can be stranger than fiction. Select titles mentioned in this episode: Personal Memoirs by Ulysses Grant Palimpsest by Gore Vidal The Night of the Gun by David Carr Act One by Moss Hart Once in a Lifetime by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez Rabbit Series (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest) by John Updike The Maples Stories by John Updike The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen At Wit’s End by Erma Bombeck If Life is a Bowl of Cherries by Erma Bombeck

When one of Alison's never-seen co-workers gets bounced for dating a client (and losing the agency the business when the relationship went sour), Alison gets a promotion to assistant account executive! She's going to be working with an art director named Amanda Woodward on Maximum Advantage, a men's underwear brand. None of the agency's usual photographers is available, so Alison takes a flyer on Jo, who decides to go in a bold direction with her artistic concept and hang out with the tennis-star model afterward -- at Shooters, so why she is then astonished to piss off Jake in the process is a real mystery because obviously he is also there. Billy agrees to let Michael fix him up on a blind date with Lydia, a nurse at the hospital. He's not into her, and she's not into him either, but they're both so WASPy that somehow they end up on a crappy second date together. And Rhonda is, once again, doubting that she's ready to commit to Terrence -- but this time, she might not let Matt talk her out of fleeing. We discuss it all in our podcast on "Picture Imperfect"! JOIN THE AWT CLUB

When one of Alison's never-seen co-workers gets bounced for dating a client (and losing the agency the business when the relationship went sour), Alison gets a promotion to assistant account executive! She's going to be working with an art director named Amanda Woodward on Maximum Advantage, a men's underwear brand. None of the agency's usual photographers is available, so Alison takes a flyer on Jo, who decides to go in a bold direction with her artistic concept and hang out with the tennis-star model afterward -- at Shooters, so why she is then astonished to piss off Jake in the process is a real mystery because obviously he is also there. Billy agrees to let Michael fix him up on a blind date with Lydia, a nurse at the hospital. He's not into her, and she's not into him either, but they're both so WASPy that somehow they end up on a crappy second date together. And Rhonda is, once again, doubting that she's ready to commit to Terrence -- but this time, she might not let Matt talk her out of fleeing. We discuss it all in our podcast on "Picture Imperfect"! VISUAL AIDSVisual Aids S01.E21DISCUSSION & SHOW NOTESDiscussion and show notes for this episode can be viewed on this episode's page on AgainWithThisPodcast.com.SUPPORT AWT ON PATREONThank you to all our supporters! You can support the podcast directly on Patreon and get access to bonus episodes of “Again With Again With This” as a thank you from us! Check out AWT’s Patreon page today.SUPPORT AWT WITH A PERSONAL MESSAGEWish your friend a happy birthday or just call them a squeef with a AWT Personal Message. It's $50 and helps keep us going. Start on our ad page now! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Morphosis 'Beating The Crates' in a Hong Kong Ping Pong Styleeeeee in association with www.ghettofunk.co.uk with the last show of 2019 featuring some of his favourite tunes of the past 12 months! http://www.facebook.com/hongkongpingpong http://hongkongpingpong.co.uk/ https://www.instagram.com/hongkongpingpong/ http://ghettofunk.co.uk https://nsbradio.co.uk The 'Best Alternative NSB Show' broadcast live on the Breakspoll Award Winning www.nsbradio.co.uk For all booking enquiries please contact: info@hongkongpingpong.co.uk Tracklist: 01 Ben Cocks & Sid Narbom - Unforgettable 02 Padcore - Bird Up In The Sky 03 Max RubaDub - Stop Pressure ft Rocker T & Jamalski (Bluntskull Remix) 04 Koka Mass Jazz - Play The Game (Timewarp Inc instrumental remix) 05 Daytoner - Bebo's Beat 06 Jstar feat Blackout JA - All I Have 07 Sampa The Great - Final Form 08 X-Ray Ted - Get Into It 09 Aldo Vanucci feat Kylie Auldist - Get A Hold On This (Dr Rubberfunk Remix) 10 Stickybuds - The Firestarter feat. Blackout JA (A.Skillz Remix) 11 MKSHFT - Ajeeb Dastan Shftd 12 Balkan Bump feat Gift og Gab - Can U Hear It (explicit) 13 Innereyefull - Night Of The Living Bass Bins 14 Rafael Fernandez - I Don't Know (But This Is Funk) 15 Maha Quest - You Can Try 16 Gramatik & DeFunk - Funk It VIP 17 Krafty Kuts - Right There 18 Youthstar - Middle Finger (feat Taiwan MC) 19 Padcore - Se Peisma 20 A.Skillz - Track Pant Thing 21 The Funk Hunters - Revolution feat. WANZ Def3 SugarBeats (Fort Knox Five Remix) 22 Clozee - Koto (Lazy Syrup Orchestra & Waspy remix) 23 The Fritz - Les Frites 24 Timewarp Inc - Blessed 25 Royal Blood - Bronx Doctor 26 Krafty Kuts - You're The Reason 27 Mr Stabalina & WBBL - To The Ceiling 28 Dillon Francis - Still Not Butter 29 The Funk Hunters & A.Skillz - Body Move 30 Furious 5 - The Message (WBBL Rekt Remix) 31 Slynk & Mr Stabalina - Keep The Party Jumping 32 Shaka Loves You - Disco Weapon 33 Electrogorilla - Renegade Master 34 Prosper & Stabfinger - Boogie Bugi 35 Beat Le Juice - The Power (Scour Records Freemix) 36 ALLTTA feat 20SYL - Under The Water (fg IV) 37 DJ Fresh - Gold Dust (Dephicit Gonna' Keep You Sweatin' Remix) 38 ElectroGorilla - Love Me 39 Mooqee & Beatvandals - Player (2019 Disco Rework) 40 Tuxedo Junction - Mr Business 41 Mo' Horizons - Rhythm Is A Dancer (Bogota Club version) 42 Joluca - Act Right feat. Mz 007 (Smalltown DJs Remix) 43 Hook N Sling Feat The Loose Cannons - Superstars (extended mix) 44 DJ Zinc - Let's Get Together 45 Shade K - Faulty Brain 46 WBBL - Garth Merengue

Show Notes: edmprod.com/112 This week, Waspy from the dance-R&B group Dirty Radio sat down to chat on the EDM Prodcast. They've released three full length albums and a ton of successful singles on labels such as Spinnin', Mad Decent, and Majestic Casual. Dirty Radio has been releasing music for over a decade, so Waspy has a lot to share on what he's learned over that time and looking back, how he would have done things differently. There are three core members of Dirty Radio, so we talk about how they came together, what their roles are, and how those roles have developed over time. Dirty Radio is a songwriting forward project, so we focus in on how they start and develop ideas. A lot of producers open the DAW and wait for inspiration to strike, and Waspy talks about why this is often a bad idea and what he does to start tracks off the right way. Overall, he offers a ton of valuable advice on production, marketing, and networking, especially for those of you that haven't really stepped out of the electronic scene Connect with Dirty Radio: Dirty Radio - Nobody Does It Better: https://lnk.to/nobodydoesitbetter Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dirtyradiomusic Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DiRTYRADiOMUSIC/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/dirtyradiomusic Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dirtyradiomusic/

Morphosis 'Beating The Crates' in a Hong Kong Ping Pong Styleeeeee in association with www.ghettofunk.co.uk http://www.facebook.com/hongkongpingpong http://hongkongpingpong.co.uk/ https://www.instagram.com/hongkongpingpong/ http://ghettofunk.co.uk https://nsbradio.co.uk The 'Best Alternative NSB Show' broadcast live on the Breakspoll Award Winning www.nsbradio.co.uk For all booking enquiries please contact: info@hongkongpingpong.co.uk Tracklist: 01 FunkStatik - Reflections 02 Chinese Man - I've Got That Tune 03 N'Fa Jones - Life Is Just A Game (Tom Showtime Re-Dub) 04 Koka Mass Jazz - Play The Game (Timewarp Inc instrumental remix) 05 Sampa The Great - Final Form 06 X-Ray Ted - Get Into It 07 Chali 2na - Change The World 08 MKSHFT - Ajeeb Dastan Shftd 09 Balkan Bump feat Gift og Gab - Can U Hear It (explicit) 10 AK Sediki & Tack - Funky Swag 11 The Rebel - The Sculptor (feat Illspokin) 12 Mr Bristow - My Life feat Benny Silver (Tom Showtime Remix) 13 Clozee - Koto (Lazy Syrup Orchestra & Waspy remix) 14 Padcore - Se Peisma 15 discObeta - Rare Formz (Jack & Jointz Remix) 16 Calagad 13 - Sajan Christmas Jam (Xtra version) 17 The Swing Bot - Get Up 18 X-Ray Ted - Never Gonna Let em Say 19 Waldeck feat Joy Malcolm - Freedom (Italo Disco dub) 20 Padcore - Intergalactic 21 Roast Beatz ft Kurnel MC - Reach Out 22 Pecoe - Nothing But A Party 23 Alltta ft 20Syl - Under The Water (fg IV) 24 Parov Stelar - Gringo 25 Anna Lunoe - 303 (Jay Robinson remix) 26 Jack Beats - Keep On 27 Joluca - Act Right feat. Mz 007 (Smalltown DJs Remix) 28 Fedde Le Grand - Skank 29 Deibeat - Go For It 30 The Colonel & Rubi Dan - Thunder (Explicit) 31 Digital Base/Andy Vibes - Nightmare In The Club 32 Foals - Sunday (Alex Metric remix) 33 Aries - Herbsmoke (Benny Page remix) 34 Origin One ft Gardna & Nanci Correia - Nice & Easy (T-Kay remix) 35 JFB - Shake 36 Freek & Kit - Calm 37 Dr Meaker - Baddest DJ 38 Serum - Heavy & Dark ft MC Bassman (Serum's VIP) 39 Benny Page - Turn Down The Lights (Benny Page VIP mix)

Pete and Scott are joined by longtime friend and resident mom Moranne Klassen to talk about Baby Boom (1987) - the pearl of mid 80’s baby-movie mania. We clock the first instances of chunky turtlenecks, rustic kitchens and WASPy diatribes that come to be touchstones in a long line of Diane Keaton/Nancy Myers collaborations.  We’re also joined by a real live baby who adds a little bit of credibility to our musings on the working moms of the 1980s.  Grab some homemade Country Baby Applesauce and green clay face mask, sit back and relax as we walk you through Baby Boom - it's Episode 9 and these are the Movie That Made Us Gay! Thanks for listening and don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes! Facebook/Instagram: @moviesthatmadeusgay Twitter: @MTMUGPod Scott Youngbauer: Twitter @oscarcott / Instagram @scottyoungballer Peter Lozano: Twitter/Instagram @peterlasagna

I would like to talk about.... Mary. Fisher. In SHE-DEVIL, Streep gets her first attempt to do comedy. And like all first attempts, we have to accept that failing is sometimes inevitable.  As a proto-Madeline Ashton, Streep gets to indulge her worst WASPy tendencies: pretty, privileged, tall and blonde. A formidable contrast to Roseanne Barr's dumpy, put-upon wife, right? Well... SHE-DEVIL is not so much a comedy as it is the idea of a comedy. Who knew a story of MS stealing Roseanne’s husband could be so flat? Meryl is bad, but it's not her fault. Seán is grinding his teeth from the moment it begins. Surely expert Merylologist Michael Schulman can't like this movie, can he? Can he??!??!!! This truly is Meryl at her BADDEST. Clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks).

#InsideTheCloset is happy to announce our first ever two part event! You've heard about them before, but Matteo finally brought in his cousins Megan and Kelly, and the LEGENDARY Aunt Cindy! Emma gets a chance to compare notes on her WASPy upbringing to the Lane Family's Italian everything. Plus, stories about Matteo's childhood!   Follow Emma - @EmmaWillmann http://www.emmacomedy.com/     Follow Matteo - @MatteoLane https://www.matteolanecomedy.com/   Follow Kelly - @k10neb   Follow Megan - @mbrowley and @Megan Brownley   Follow Princess Cupcake Warrior - @PCupcakeWarrior   Become a Patron - https://www.patreon.com/ITC   Follow us on Facebook at Inside The Closet Podcast, and send your questions to Insidetheclosetpodcast@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we welcome the rakish and talented John Coons (aka Johnny Coonami, aka John the Dog) to help us unravel the baffling fiasco that is Mother’s Boys (1994). Sporting a Clueless-meets-Cruella de Vil wardrobe, Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a WASPy, ranine sociopath who just wants her family back. Like Vanessa Redgrave throwing herself into the role, we tumble headfirst down the stairs of confusion as we sort through a mess of C-section scars, architecture emergencies, and road groceries. One man’s erotic thriller is another man’s sexy shocker this week on Ex Rated Movies!

We watch "The Unicorn and the Wasp" (Series 4, Episode 7) where the Doctor and Donna travel back to 1920's to play a live-action game of "Clue". Arriving at an English country manor, the Doctor plays "Watson" to Agatha Christie's "Poirot" and the WASPy Reverend Golightly turns all Waspy driving Donna on an all out bug hunt. All whilst the British upper crust enact a wacky pantomime involving bastard children, "confirmed" bachelors and a non-magical Unicorn.

Show notes: https://bit.ly/2wsDgC8 Two Week Catch-Up: Robert discovers Kroger Fuel Rewards-- "If you stack up all of the digital coupons right, you can pump gas for as cheap as four cents a gallon!" Nerdy News: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Gets Grilled by Congress Over Privacy Issues Robert: "Assuming Facebook doesn't reveal my personal details to outsiders, I'm totally okay with them tracking and reselling all of my internet traffic data. It's not your data! It's Facebook's! You agreed to the million-page-long Terms of Service. You're not the customer; you're the product-- be prepared for your data to be sold and resold ad infinitum." Jermaine: "I'm not fine with my data being resold to third-parties I don't know about! At what point does one single company have too much power, information, and control?" Jenny: "Your personal information's all already out there. Folks sign the privacy statement-- what are you expecting? I have a 'trash-email' I use to sign up for websites. The websites get nothing!" Trailer Talk: Ant-Man & the Wasp Jenny: "When they shrink the building, wouldn't all the pipes underneath explode with water? How about all of the electrical and plumbing? 3.5 stars." Robert: "I'm with Jenny! Being a silly, superhero movie doesn't exonerate you from having to be internally consistent with the laws of your own universe! Three stars." Jermaine: "I think you guys are thinking too hard about this. The movie's about a guy who can shrink. I'm excited for this! This is Marvel's version of a heist movie and I love that genre. Paul Rudd and Michael Pena are hilarious. Four stars!" Review: Avengers: Infinity War Jermaine: "This a Thanos-movie, not an Avengers-movie. There are 71 characters in this movie! This movie accomplished something for me that hasn't happened since The Empire Strikes Back. Despite all the negative things that happened at the end, it gave me the hope I needed. Brilliantly crafted. Also, think of Thor's people-- only 12.5% of them remain at this point! Recommend." Robert: "I agree as a technical achievement, Infinity War is unprecedented. But there are no stakes! We know Black Panther and Spiderman are returning alive. C'mon-- they've got sequels in the works! No way Disney's leaving billions of dollars on the table! I begrudgingly recommend watching this movie." Jenny: "I don't want to watch movies with you! You're heartless! You've gotta use character knowledge-- not meta-knowledge! With so many stars, I was worried with everything coming together. Also, would there be enough time to highlight all the individual characters? I love this movie; go see this movie. I totally recommend." Recommendations: Jermaine plays A Way Out with Chris-- "It's a great, innovative co-op game that allows you to really create a bond with your partner. We blew through this game in two days!" Robert reads Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson-- "A time travel'ish novel where people from the future can travel back in time to the Civil War era. Lots of compelling ideas and I love RCW!" Jenny watches Sword Art Online-- "A little dated in its animation but it's just fabulous, especially for people who play MMOs. Terrific writing and easy to watch; I totally recommend it." Credits: "Evacuate the city. Engage our defenses. And get this man a shield."

Emily Witt is a freelance writer and the author of Future Sex. “I think I had always thought that—maybe this is coming from a WASPy, protestant background—if I presented myself as overtly sexual in any way, it would be a huge turnoff. That they would see me as a certain type of person. They wouldn’t have respect for me. And I thought this both professionally—I thought maybe writing this book was going to be really bad for my career, that nobody would take me seriously anymore—and also that nobody would want to date me if I was too honest. In both counts the opposite happened.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Wunder Capital for sponsoring this week's episode. @embot emilywitt.net Witt on Longform [02:45] Future Sex (Farrar, Straus & Giroux • 2016) [03:00] "Online Dating Diary" (London Review of Books • Oct 2012) [03:15] Witt’s Archive at The Observer [05:30] Witt’s Archive at Miami New Times [05:45] "Cinema é Luxo" (n+1 • Oct 2009) [sub req’d] [06:15] "Miami Party Boom" (n+1 • Mar 2010) [sub req’d] [06:30] Gus Garcia-Roberts on Longform [09:30] Thy Neighbor’s Wife (Gay Talese • Harper Perennial • 2009) [10:00] "An Evening in the Nude with Gay Talese" (Aaron Latham • New York • Jul 1973) [11:15] "That Room in Cambridge" (n+1 • Mar 2011) [sub req’d] [19:15] "What Do You Desire?" (n+1 • Mar 2013) [38:45] "The Trip Planners" (New Yorker • Nov 2015) [48:00] How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention (Stephen Witt • Penguin Books • 2015) [48:15] Minnesota Monthly [50:45] "Burning Man Diary" (London Review of Books • Jul 2014)

Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter: one's tall, one's short; one's WASPy, one's got a Texan twang; neither is Jodie Foster - but both are in COPYCAT (1995). Released in the shadow of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, this movie features two prestige actresses in a trashy procedural, part of the 1990s vogue for serial killer thrillers. Seán remembers a film about "sisterhood"...or does he? Brian is dubious about it from the start. Join us again on the mean misogynistic streets of San Francisco. All clips from the film presented according to fair use policy. Podcast Theme: "Pipeline" by CyberSDF (https://soundcloud.com/cybersdf/tracks)

This week on Unorthodox: kosher marijuana, the great bagel scooping debate, and one very WASPy cardigan. Our Jewish guest is Bethany Mandel, author of the Convert's Bill of Rights, which she wrote after learning she was one of the women videotaped by Rabbi Barry Freundel while using the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath. (The Orthodox rabbi was sentenced in May 2015 to 6 1/2 years in prison for filming more than 150 women, many of them converts, using the ritual bath.) Our Gentile of the Week is writer Rand Cooper, who asks the panel the ever-important question, "Is Jewdar real?" We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Chance Encounter: Reality? Ben's the last in line at the convenience store across the street. He appears to be conversing with someone, but no one is speaking to him. These people find better deals here, across the way from that 1-2-3-4-5 star hotel. Better deals on both coffee and cigarettes, Georgie announces. “Shhh. Shut up, Georgie. Get out of my head.” Hotel gift shops are for those in a hurry and for those who don't care much for variety or value. “I never shop there. Guests shouldn't either.” Ben gets a medium coffee and a pack of smokes, along with his change, from the clerk. He tears open the fresh pack of smokes, juggling the medium coffee in his other hand. He steps out the door, glancing at the profile of a woman sitting on the bench outside. She is heartbreakingly beautiful. Suddenly, Ben fumbles. He drops two quarters on the pavement. “What are the chances of that?” she chuckles. You're almost completely blind and deaf. Almost completely, Georgie points out. “I know. Why?” Because, Ben. Because. We're in the presence of a naturally beautiful older woman. It's destiny. Fate. She's the One. “This always happens to me, especially if she's wearing open-toed shoes.” “Excuse me?” the lady murmurs. As she is. “I'd lose my senses completely.” As you have. As you do. “As I am. Oh God, I hope she hasn't got the slightest imperfection of either character or . . . what's the word?” Physique. She is just gorgeous, Ben. Isn't she? Shoot. Here she is coming ‘round the mountain. Here she comes. The lady stands, approaching cautiously. “Are you okay?” she asks. Listen, Ben. Can you hear her? She's got that Plain Jane style, that quietly rapturous voice you crave. Ben suddenly finds himself thrown backwards. I wake up early for once. By 8:30 am, I've already walked the ocean shoreline and am on my way to the convenience store to buy a cup of coffee and a pack of smokes. It is windy. I am almost blown away. I hold onto my bright blue lampshade hat with my left hand for about a block, until I step behind the local hotel and it screens the big ocean breeze. The Sea Port Hotel is right on the water. Some hotel guests are in line before me at the convenience store across the street. They would find better deals there on both coffee and cigarettes. Hotel gift shops are for those in a hurry and for those who don't care much for variety or value. I never shop there. Guests shouldn't either. I get my change and tear open the fresh pack of smokes with a medium coffee in my other hand. Then I fumble the smokes, the coffee, and the change. I drop 50 cents on the pavement. “What are the chances of that?” I hear. I become almost completely blind and deaf. I know I am in the presence of a naturally beautiful older woman. This whole blackout/flashback kick is usual, especially if the beautiful older woman is wearing open-toed shoes. I'd lose my senses altogether if she had the slightest imperfection of either character or physique. “What are the chances of what?” I answer. My own voice echoes strangely in the darkness of my mind. “You were just singing ‘Hotel California',” she says. “I heard you.” It must've been playing on the radio while I showered this morning. She was humming the melody, too. I shut up. I look down. She scrapes something off her heel against the steps. “Aw! I stepped in somebody's gum,” she moans. I pull out a fresh smoke. “I think it's a Lifesaver,” I tell her. She discovers that I am right. “But you were singing the same song as me, weren't you?” she persists. “I don't know,” I explain. “I don't remember.” And here she is. She's brought such a Perplexity into my world. My senses collect every drop of her data. Right then, the bright lights of her jewelry flashes bury themselves in the nostalgic depths of my imagination and memory. “Well, don't be embarrassed,” she suggests. “That's amazing!” “Yeah,” I say. A vintage black Ferrari pulls out of the lot with its top down. Heidi gives it no attention. The male driver (in his 50s) probably suffers from the same premature ejaculation that the car does, backfiring. I grunt at the thought. “Hey, you live down the corner of the next block. You're always smoking cigarettes out front,” she says. I confess, “Yeah. Probably. Maybe.” “I waved to you the other day,” she recalls, “and you just turned away.” She must have recognized the big blue hat. “I'm really groggy in the mornings,” I admit. She smiles. “You're really anti-social.” I correct her. “Not anti-social. Non-social, maybe.” Her face lights up. She starts playing with her hair. “I was just on my way to get my nails done. I've been over at the Sea Port for the past week. God, it's this convention for work. It's so boring.” “What's your name?” I ask. “Heidi Berillo.” Heidi has a nametag on. She must've forgotten. “What's yours?” she asks. “Ben Schreiber,” I say, pointing to her nametag. “I was just checking to see if you were a liar.” I stick my hand out. “You've got a firm grip, Mr Schreiber,” she says. She laughs. Later that afternoon, we are hitting it off like we've known each other for years. “I can't believe you've never given a girl a pedicure,” she scoffs. “Really?” I reply. (I do like feet.) I want to tell her that I am a virgin at making love to feet and toes. Hers are perfect. Heidi's hotel room is strewn with papers and folders. And felt-tip pens. After she lights a joint, she gets a little feisty. Her hair is frizzy and red, and she is wild like my imagination. Like I imagine her imagination. I puff away on my cigarette. I try to read what she is thinking through her huge green eyes. Which eye cries for good things? Which one doesn't? I am simply in the moment. I become an observer of myself, observing myself. I'm not my mind. My mind just works for me. Not the other way around. I am enlightened. For once, normal thoughts slip in, one after another. It becomes easier to focus. I'm not busy judging, analyzing, and making decisions. I am completely focused on Heidi. I think, who's her dealer? Where's this woman from? What does she tell herself about herself? I get the impression from Heidi's eyes that she is experiencing something profoundly empty. Somehow, she is dramatically unfulfilled. She is left with voided hope—perhaps a little like me. She looks me right in the eyes. We have a perfect moment, a true connection. Unfortunately, it ends abruptly. I try not to pry into her life, but I am curious to know more about her. I know I'm not always the best at personal interaction. I'm not sure what is appropriate, sometimes. She asks a lot about me, but I don't say much back. Heidi asks me about all my confusion, about what I want out of my time here on earth. Big philosophical stuff. I tell her all of my needs are already met. I tell her I've already lived my life. “I've had enough experiences with myself. All that crap.” And I tell her about my Pops, who always worked hard and always provided my family with wealth. I tell her about my Pops, who meant the world to me. She calls my ‘I've-lived-my-life-already' bit bullshite, and takes a drag off my cigarette. “Are you happy?” she finally asks. “I'm not sure if happiness is what I'm really after,” I say. I tell her I am trying to actualize myself as “a writer,” a concept that is still completely muddy to me. I have idealized this image of myself in my mind, over the past 10 years, but the image keeps changing. In reality, I am writing mostly in my head, right at that moment. My friends and family want me to put something on paper, to complete something, to achieve something. I don't think it matters anymore. “Why not?” asks Heidi. “It's like I'm too far away, in time, from when I was actively participating in things and enjoying them while they were happening.” “How old are you, Ben?” “Thirty.” Heidi is under the veil of drugs, but she's not paranoid or tripped-out or anything. Inside Heidi, there is somebody genuine, and I can see inside her, just barely make her out. There is somebody real in there. Funny, that's always good to know. The alarm clock radio is tuned to Billy Joel's “An Innocent Man.” Heidi says she has only recently figured out her life, at age 40. I don't believe her, and I tell her so. “I don't believe you,” I say. She says she takes things very seriously. She says that every encounter happens for a reason. “Every situation, every consequence. Everything,” she adds. I wonder what my role in her life really is. Somehow, this woman, whom I've just met, knows me so well already. I've really missed that. People usually take very little interest in other people. But with Heidi, I feel honored and appreciated. Still, I feel like I don't really deserve the luxury. Heidi finishes her joint and pockets the roach. She slips off her open-toed leather shoes and stretches her toes. Her light blue polish has peeled off her nails, like an adolescent girl's. “I need a pedicure,” Heidi says, smiling playfully. “Now!” Toto's “Africa” airs next on the bedside radio: “Frightened of this thing that I've become,” somebody sings. I paint her toes with New Blue toenail polish and she falls asleep. I write a note: “Thank you. Ben.” I watch her sleep for half an hour. Then I write my home phone number below the note in my usual kiddie-print handwriting and walk out, not really knowing what else to do. Heidi has a lecture to attend later on. Later, I sit in my bedroom, still listening to the radio. “Hurry, boy, she's waiting there for you.” The phone rings. The machine picks up. Click. “Hey, Ben, I was just thinking of you.” It's all about me now, isn't it? I can't help it. I take a carefree stroll on the beach, remembering the best parts of growing up. They flood my mind with nostalgia. I try to remain in the present, but I am stuck in the past. The moonshine lights up the sand, and the whitecaps, that break 20 feet out. The tide is low, the rolling is a little choppy, but the wave sounds are soothing. I remember how rich and full my life was before. Before. Before what? I wonder what went wrong. I walk along the water's edge to find some inner peace. I have always enjoyed wandering around, not doing much. I'm comfortable in my imagination, or I'm comfortable nowhere. I think: Has love ever made one whole year of your life miserable? I wonder if my year of misery is approaching. It is nighttime. I start to dream. Heidi and I are lost in our thoughts; we take in all that surrounds us. We are walking the neighborhood sidewalks, holding hands, until we come to the beach where the whitecaps crash right at our feet. Huge seagulls with wide-open wingspans swoop in for their final feast of the day. The next morning, the beach is empty. The sky is gray, flat and still, surreal. The gulls fly low in flocks as the long Pacific rollers wash in and out. We revisit the past. But whose past? Oh my God! The Living Colorful Beauty is so intense. I just can't stand it. I speak on the phone with Heidi. “I was downstairs at one of the lectures. It was sooo boring,” Heidi says. “Boring, huh?” “But I got several compliments on my new pedicure,” she teases. “Thank God,” I say, letting out a sigh of relief. I stand in the empty hotel room that weekend, bewildered. It had been quickly vacated—I could tell. In the bathroom, there is a wet towel lying on the floor, crumpled up from wet feet with a woman's footprints embedded. Empty single-serving soap bottles make a mess on the corner shelf. A Mexican housekeeper readies the room for its next guests. Back at my place, I play the message player back again. “So I thought you might like to know what a great job you did, and on such short notice, too. You were just in time for the only panel discussion I really came here for in the first place.” Her telephone had sat on the unmade bed with a box of tissues beside it. Across the street from me is a fishing pier. A middle-aged couple walks hand in hand to the end of the pier. They stare out at the freight barges sailing into port. There is a snack and bait stand nearby, but it hasn't opened yet. At the base of the pier, a pay phone dangles off its hook. There is some litter rolling around the streets. Not much, though. “I'm meeting some cool people here, but a lot of them are really boring. This whole convention thing is really dull.” The night before, Heidi and I shared a cherry Slush Puppie on the pier. She popped a few Tylenols because, she said, her head was still throbbing slightly from all the boredom and ennui lingering over her past week at the psych conference. I declined the Tylenol. I was still awe-struck by the whirling seagulls and the shooting stars. Only a few fishermen are out with their gear; it's still pretty early. An Asian man pulls up a small fish. The thing must be contaminated—the seawater down below is brown and slimy—but his boy grabs the bucket anyway. That small radioactive fish is a keeper. “So, some of my friends and I wanted to hang out by the bar and talk medicine, but I was hoping we could finish our conversation from last night. I really enjoyed walking the town with you.” After the Slushie, we stopped by my place and shared a Winston. I invited her in, but she declined. We took a drive down the coast under the moon instead. My house is empty; nobody is up yet. The whole neighborhood is still asleep. A white van drives by. A newspaper is tossed on the manicured lawn out front. “At least before I leave tomorrow,” she said. “Oh, and the weather is so much nicer out here.” Sunlight bleeds horizontally through the closed blinds in my bedroom. Pretty soon I am sound asleep. “I was thinking about how brilliant you are,” Heidi told me on the answering machine. “And, jeez, you have so much talent. People look at you and they see big things.” Expect big things. That's what she meant. Big things, little things. It doesn't matter. It's a stress I can't handle, people expecting things. Anything. Not from me. I live in my head. Alone. I buy porno, coffee, and smokes from the snack and bait shop next door, and come home. Jerk off. Alone. I'm okay with that. The clock on Georgie's nightstand reads 10:30 am. I wake up and glance at Georgie. I don't wake him. I crawl out of bed. The sky has cleared up a bit over the beach, and the beach is packed with kite-fliers. A dozen kites glide over the blue-fogged coast, bright with color and wonder. The hotel room next door is clean by now. Ready for new guests. Downstairs, a conference is just letting out. The checkout line is already out the door. Most of the guests wear nametags on their blazers. The bellboys are busier than hell. There are dozens of fishermen on the pier. More men than fish. “What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?” Heidi had asked. “I love that question.” I walk the beach, having no clue how to answer. Most of the neighborhood seems to be outdoors. Most people wear light jackets or hooded sweatshirts. They walk their dogs. (Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Tiny white dogs with brown runny stuff around their eyes. They walk their children. Alley cats run loose on the sidewalks, and slide underneath the cars parked on one-way streets. A few cars pass by slowly, going maybe 10 miles an hour. Pest control trucks park outside at least one house per block, it seems like. There is hardly any crime, violence, or vandalism in this part of the city. Maybe some drugs, some domestics; you know, whatever goes down inside people's private residences—the stuff we never know about. “Grab hold of just one project and get in there with your teeth and see what happens,” she had said. “Why not? If somebody wants a story about you and you're the only one who knows it well enough, then go for it! You would do the world a favor. Hell, do it for me! I'd love to hear about all that crap, as you call it.” A small gate leads to my front door. It is a charming little pad, perfect for a loner like me. “So what if your dad is some big, well-to-do asshole? This is your chance to shine,” she coaxed. “Just go for it!” It was really nice to have some woman cheering me on. It was the closest thing I'd ever known to true love. Heidi mentioned that she'd found the perfect little gift in the hotel gift shop. She wanted me to call her later. The orange sunset flashes between two buildings downtown. I sprawl out on the beach. The sun is setting earlier than usual, I think. Why did I just leave like that? What about going back? Somehow, I just couldn't change my mind about Heidi. Reality hit me really hard, and I was scared to go after her, like a real man. Time stops for just a few exquisite seconds, maybe five or six, until I can't take it much longer. I am self-aware in my newly discovered growth spurt. I am happy, I guess. I'm so happy, I start to cry—just because I am feeling good. Just because I can. Just until I need to stop. I start to really appreciate having met Heidi. Maybe I'm still working through the obsession with Claudia. From the beach, I head back home. I'm already starting to have conversations with Heidi in my head without her being there or being able to answer me. How lucky she is! Is this love? Beep. “Hey, Ben, I was just thinking of you. I was downstairs at one of the lectures.” Beep. “Hey, Ben, ugh . . .I'm just calling. I'm sorry. It's this stupid conference. I'm not going to go to this class I have in 10 minutes. I'm getting so sick of the same thing over and over again. I'm just in my room taking a bath. Anyway, I'm sorry to bother you. Thanks for letting me vent.” Were we just two shattered souls who ended up trying to save each other in some doomed fashion? The door swings shut from inside the house. I never get calls. And when I do, I always miss them. “Hello?” I answer. “Ben?” “You must look so beautiful in that bathtub,” I say. “That's one of the nicest things a guy has ever said to me.” Back at her place, her lovely feet await my attention. She doesn't refuse when I administer an oral foot massage while she is still in the bath. “Right on the arches, Ben,” she cries. I love every minute of it. Her feet quiver with delight. Her toes stretch awkwardly. “I'm . . . sick . . . I'm dizzy,” she moans. “And you're incredible.” Oh, the gibberish we speak in ecstasy, moaning meaningless words. “Sick-dizzy,” she giggles intensely. She giggles her orgasm, gibbers and moans her pleasure. I understand her, in some fucked-up way. Afterwards, Heidi lies quietly asleep, on top of the white bed covers. She is wearing men's pajamas. I head back home. We hadn't made love. She must think of me as the friendly type, like most other women do. But that is fine. I'm used to that. Heidi is a little nutty, but I like that, too. She is a mess. She is so innocently a disaster. She is the little Perplexity in my head. I get home at 3 am. I've always loved the night, when everyone else is asleep and the world is all mine. It's quiet and dark—the perfect time for creativity. All of a sudden, inspiration comes. Things are clearer. My ideas make more sense. I can finally start to type out, with a little passion, some interesting letters on the screen. I'll have to begin the story from here, with me, as ridiculous as that sounds. It's been forever since I actually sat down to write again. Does this mean my writer's block has broken? Or am I just fooling myself again? “I never meant to be such a narcissist,” I cry. “I just can't get away from myself.” I've always wanted somebody like Heidi to love. But I still don't know what I need. Maybe I just need one tiny success, one simple thing. Maybe I just need something in this life that will work out in the long run. Maybe I just need to complete something, to get over some things. Maybe I just need something good to last. God probably took delight in orchestrating me, that day. I'll call it a day of personal growth. I never hear from Heidi or see her again. And now my mind runs wild with quiet confusion. The little affair we had felt so soothing to the senses. I'll wake up tomorrow, thinking about today. The next day I'll wake up thinking about tomorrow. Am I really just a perverted sex addict, like maybe I think I am? Or is this really some kind of love? (You tell me, Dr C. Please.)Dear Diary:I think we are all good souls, all of us, even me, even if only deep down inside.The Emperor Concerto, Second Movement He slaps the snooze button. Half hit. Half miss. It's all gross. He's sweaty and ashamed. He can't even get up. Another fucking horrible day in the life of . . . me. Georgie Gust. And then laziness creeps in. Georgie starts hating himself. He starts to laugh. “Snooze, damn it!” he tells the alarm clock. He always thought a snooze was a good 9, 10 minutes. Georgie actually timed the motherfucker several times. This piece of crap mostly gives him 9 or 10 minutes of extra sleep time. This day, that day, though, the thing can't even give him two. Cheap, damn thing. It's 1:30 pm. Even at this hour, so far into the day, he hesitates to open the shades. He hopes it is not all dismal and gloomy outside. He's trying to picture himself somewhere out there, in the world. But he just can't picture it. Maybe if he just stays in bed someone else will open the shades, and save Georgie the trouble of discovering the day. He closes his eyes, falling half asleep. He finds himself in a non-smoking room at the local three-star hotel. He's hotel-hopping. He needs to get away again. We always need to get away, Georgie and me, even if it's only in our head. Geographical change is the easiest fix. Georgie opens his eyes. He can't figure out where that three-star hotel has gone. He's already forgotten—he's still at home. The next day, our place now clean, Georgie still can't get out of his head. He thinks how much he dreads, how much he resents, the effort it takes to take another shower, brush his teeth, and clean himself up, again and again. He just did that yesterday—he shouldn't have to do it again today. Once should be enough. Once and forever. Now Georgie craves something different. He's desperate for something new. He would kill for something new. We both would. (But who?) This particular morning, the razor burn on Georgie's neck looks like a leper's chafed jock-itch. He can't wait the couple of days for the skin on his neck to heal, but at least he won't have to spend the time and effort to shave again—and that's comforting. After all, the longer he lets his facial hair grow out, the easier it is to shave. After all these years, Georgie still can't find the right shaving method. Currently, he's on a Panasonic electric for the first layer, then a straight edge without lotion for the second part. Back to a smaller electric beard trimmer, level one, for his goatee shadow. No lotion. No cream. No soap. With so much nausea, angst, worry, anxiety, and despair welling up inside him, Georgie is suffocating in life. His pathetic and abused gut keeps getting filled with an extra load of explosive anxiety. It's worse than tickle torture. He hasn't taken any risks for some time now. The rut where he's been trapped has felt so safe. He's had no view; the walls were high, the rut was deep. All Georgie could see was up and out. Up and away. (But away from what? Away where? More unanswerable questions, huh?) Most things and events really don't have much meaning for him anymore. Georgie needs meaning more than anything else. But meaning is exactly what Georgie hasn't got. And he probably won't get it, either. Georgie really doesn't know what the day will bring. The only thing he knows is his sloppy routine of rituals: smoking, shiting, showering, shaving, fixing his hair, flossing, brushing his teeth, taking his meds, and organizing. He uses a ton of paper creating lists of things to do, things to accomplish, so he can feel productive. His father tells him it's important to be productive. So he tries. He really does. He looks at the bathroom mirror with the sticker in the corner that reads: JUST TRUST ME. Right. Like Georgie's going to trust any of the shitey-assed people he calls friends. Georgie's pathetic reflection looks back at him from the empty mirror. He has this huge ego blowing up his head, like an untied condom, until it screwballs up and away. He guesses he looks all right these days. No, really. He looks good. He just doesn't know what to do about it. He's so glam rock; he's so smart. It's like he has Asperger's, or some kind of artistic autism. But he's not sick. His doctor knows that. (Doesn't she, Dr C?) He can't deal with a label like depression or stress. He feels much worse than that. He feels like shite. (Do you have a Latin name for shite, Dr C?) When he shaves, the razor makes love to Georgie's skin. When he pees, he aims for the silent section on the toilet's water edge. Afterwards, he usually farts, shites, and pees again, while he's sitting a little too long on the toilet. Georgie melts into the quality time he takes, thinking on the porcelain tank. His thoughts are trivial. They seem important, but they're nothing he would ever act on. He is on good behavior. It's just a lot of theory. A CD is usually skipping while Georgie's in the shower. In the shower, he strips down to his naked self. He comes into his true element. He can't see a thing without his glasses, and he can't tell you how many wristwatches he's lost because they don't have waterproofing. But that's okay. Waterproof watches are never appealing to the eye.(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Smudged eyeglasses. There's no washcloth. He washes himself by hand with shampoo—not soap. Shampoo works better because Georgie is hairy, like me. But I don't wash with shampoo. I use hand-milled, organic soap from Northern California—Sunset Cedar, from a shop called Patti's Organics. Georgie smiles in the shower because he was born a man. The shower is the one place where he's rarely sexually charged. He thinks of himself as a connoisseur, a connoisseur of filth (so soap does not appeal). Women's dirty fingernails, their smelly anal fetishes, anything nasty—her already-smoked cigarettes for the shrine, the smell of gasoline and melted hair follicles. Filth. Georgie hates dropping the soap. He hates all the bottles in the shower. They confuse him and make him think these products are really useful when he knows they're not.(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Long fingernails. Worse, long toenails. He hates falling in the shower. God, what else? What else can they do to mess up his day? (What else is there to complain about?) They should have a soap dispenser that mixes soap with water, like at a car wash. It would be a time-saving convenience. It would save energy. What an idea! He should patent that, and make a million bucks. Yeah, right, Georgie. Drying off, towels are so coarse and unfitting. Georgie gets water scars in between his toes sometimes.(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Hangnails. Every day, all this, all that. Everything is still the same. Georgie doesn't change. Nothing does. Neither do I. Same shite, different day, we say. Georgie and me. His feet are a size 12. He wears shoes all the time because his feet embarrass him. He wears blue shoes. That way, he doesn't have to think of how disgusting his own feet are. His legs are still in shape but he wears long pants, no matter how hot the weather gets. His legs embarrass him, too. Otherwise, he is your generic, overweight pumpkin. His plump belly sticks out over his belt. Maybe it's cute and huggie-bearish to some single sex addicts, but to hell if Georgie thinks so. He weighs in around 268. His driver's license says he's 168. The driver's license picture doesn't even look like him, but the photo came out pretty nice. He used to be in shape. Now he just recites affirmations. Now he just tells himself he loves himself just the way he is. It's all bullshite, but it works for him. His passport picture is pleasing. He enjoys looking at himself. Georgie dresses up and blow-dries his hair, and then he primps and curls it. He has these highlights. He has a kind of WASPy, honk-Afro look going on. At least his hair is cool; at least his hair is always having a good day. My hair, now my hair is dark and thick with a bit of a permanent wave. My mother always said it was my best feature. And here I always thought it was my cuddly personality. Georgie should've picked out his clothes the night before. All his full-size shirts and comfortable pants are at the cleaners, and he doesn't fit into the 32s anymore. He went from a “large” to an “extra large” in shirts. Georgie's just started leaving the shirttails out of his pants. He used to tuck them in, neatly, and wear a belt. But no longer. Still, he'll keep the smaller stuff in the closet—the shirts and pants don't fit, but some of the clothes remind him of the past. They have a nostalgic meaning for Georgie. In Georgie's case, too, clothes make the man. (But make him what? I want to know.) An hour later, he's finally dressed. Now for the breakfast order. Like everything else in Georgie's world, breakfast is a chore. He washes the dishes by hand to get his mind off everything else. He can't help feeling like things are falling apart in slow motion. Doing things like that, little things, trivial things, reminds him of being hypnotized. Strolling down the supermarket aisles at midnight with the trippy supermarket music and the paradox of choice everywhere around him. In the grocery store, somehow, time feels different. Georgie's out of orange juice, and the milk will give him gas, but milk goes best with microwave pancakes. Georgie likes his food a little cold, and he dislikes cooking. He presses the “cancel/stop” button twice on the microwave when it's down to two seconds. It's not like he's in any rush. He has all day.(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) Fat free = taste free. His keys are in place. He locks the door without really checking. Georgie's sick and tired of always lock-checking, lock-checking, and then remembering I forget important things after he's already out the door.(Parenthetical Pet Peeve) If I return home, I suddenly get the feeling I didn't lock the door, then find that I did after all. Georgie, I think, could very well be a loser, but what's that say about me? That I'd be a loser of a literary character, too? What's wrong with a whiner? A complainer? An agoraphobic with OCD? Is that me? I catch Georgie out of the corner of my eye and wonder what I've done, giving him all these issues. He swears he's not going to check that lock—but he does, anyway, even though he's just going out for coffee and coming right back. It's not like he's going to plan his whole life, sitting at the counter, sipping his cup of Joe. It's not like he is some romantic poet at the Café Paris. Finally, Georgie lights his first cigarette of the day—a Marlboro Light—and he worries about cancer, like everything else. And puffs away. After his first cigarette comes another cup of coffee, and then another smoke—and a couple of more smokes, after that. He brings along his laptop computer, a pad and pen, and a couple of self-help books with the covers torn off, just in case. Just in case something strikes. He rarely uses any of these things in public. Sometimes he drives to the convenience store and sits in the parking lot. He watches people. He likes people-watching. But he doesn't like people. Go figure. Georgie rarely looks forward to actually dealing with people. But he'll end up running into somebody every time. People get in his way, and they are unavoidable—like signs on the sidewalks, or spills in the elevator. Or sometimes Georgie gets caught in some really important check-in with somebody who really shouldn't care what's up with him. (And neither should Georgie.) All this whining and baby shite gets him nowhere, he knows—but he just keeps bitching. He dreads being in line at the coffee shop again. He gets self-conscious and self-critical around the perfect advertisement-model-types in line ahead of him. They pretend they're holding their noses and standing clear of the stench coming off Georgie's stale, smelly sweater. It reeks of the toxic fumes of tobacco pollution. And they're all so nice and friendly, and trivial, and guarded. Now that's a challenge. Dealing with these people, I mean, without freaking out or throwing a temper tantrum. Still, he's half asleep. Georgie's always half asleep. No matter what I do. Except, of course, when he's thinking of Claudia. She's the only goddamn thing that really makes him feel alive. Georgie is next in line at the coffee shop. Tabitha's working the counter, but Georgie's not paying much attention to her. He's thinking of Claudia. What else?Dear Diary:I just let others say and do what they want—I just keep being me. Well, sort of.

This week on "A Way with Words": You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What's the word for that sensation when you're expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like "ratchet" and "dime piece." And the story of a writer who published her first novel at age 73, then went on to win a National Book Award. Plus, the origins of bluebloods, Melungeons, Calcutta bets, Vermont Cree-mees, and a handy phrase used to help buck someone up: Mr. Can't died in a cornfield.FULL DETAILSIs it a good thing to be ratchet? This slang term can refer to a bumpin' party or a girl who's a hot mess. There's nothing like a refreshing gulp of water, unless what you thought was water turns out to be vodka or Sprite. When the expectation of what you'll taste gives way to surprise, shock, and offense, you've experienced what one listener calls cephalus offendo. You might also call it anticipointment. The phrase I see you, meaning I acknowledge what you're doing, comes from performance, and pops up often in African-American performance rhetoric.A listener from Charlottesville, Virginia, is dating a professional golfer who often plays a Calcutta with other tour members. Calcutta, a betting game going back over 200 years, involves every player betting before the tournament on who they think will finish with the lowest score. It was first picked up by the British in and around—you guessed it—Kolkata, also known as Calcutta.When a term paper is due in 24 hours, there's no better tactic than to break open the Milano cookies and procrastineat.Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game for the Mamas and the Papas, with two-word phrases beginning with the letters M-A- M-A- or P-A- P-A-If you say you're not up to this or that challenge, someone might push you harder with the reminder Mr. Can't died in a cornfield. This old saying is particularly evocative if you've ever been stuck in a corn field, because it's easy to think you won't make it out. Another version of this phrase is can't died in the poorhouse.Blue blood, a term often used to refer to WASPy or patrician folks, goes back to the 1700s and the Spanish term sangre azul. It described the class of people who never had to work outside or expose themselves to the sun, so blue veins would show through their ivory, marble-like skin. If someone's a dime piece or a dime, they're mighty attractive -- as in, a perfect 10.What's the difference between drunk and drunken? If you dig through the linguistic corpora, or collections of texts, you'll find that we celebrate in drunken revelry and break into drunken brawls, but individuals drive drunk and or get visibly drunk. Typically, drunken is used for a situation, and drunk refers to a person.Ever seen someone repeatedly around town and made up an elaborate life story for them without actually ever meeting them? In slang terms, that sort of person in your life is called a unicorn.Harriet Doerr published her first novel, the National Book Award-winning Stones for Ibarra, at the age of 73. Don't think about ordering a soft serve ice cream in Vermont—there, it's a Creemee. The term has stuck around the Green Mountain State by the sheer force of Vermonter pride.The term Melungeon, applied to a group of people in Southeastern Appalachia marked by swarthy skin and dark eyes, has been used disparagingly in the past. But Melungeons themselves reclaimed that name in the 1960s. The Melungeon Heritage website details some of the mystery behind their origin. The name comes from the French term melange, meaning "mixture."The initialism LLAS, meaning love you like a sister, isn't a texting phenomenon—it goes back 30 or 40 years to when girls would write each other letters.Diminutive suffixes, Donnie for Don, change the meaning of a name to something smaller, cuter, or sweeter. This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.....Support for A Way with Words comes from Common Ground, the new word game for nimble and knowledgeable minds. More information about how language lovers can find Common Ground at commongroundthegame.com.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2014, Wayword LLC.

IT'S OUR 20TH EPISODE BITCH! Celebrate with Rag and Sponge in typical fashion as Sponge cleans for an aformentioned not-so-hot WASPy guy and Rag looks back on his first summer in the service industry in Provincetown. 

This week on "A Way with Words": You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What's the word for that sensation when you're expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like "ratchet" and "dime piece." And the story of a writer who published her first novel at age 73, then went on to win a National Book Award. Plus, the origins of bluebloods, Melungeons, Calcutta bets, Vermont Cree-mees, and a handy phrase used to help buck someone up: Mr. Can't died in a cornfield.FULL DETAILSIs it a good thing to be ratchet? This slang term can refer to a bumpin' party or a girl who's a hot mess. There's nothing like a refreshing gulp of water, unless what you thought was water turns out to be vodka or Sprite. When the expectation of what you'll taste gives way to surprise, shock, and offense, you've experienced what one listener calls cephalus offendo. You might also call it anticipointment. The phrase I see you, meaning I acknowledge what you're doing, comes from performance, and pops up often in African-American performance rhetoric.A listener from Charlottesville, Virginia, is dating a professional golfer who often plays a Calcutta with other tour members. Calcutta, a betting game going back over 200 years, involves every player betting before the tournament on who they think will finish with the lowest score. It was first picked up by the British in and around—you guessed it—Kolkata, also known as Calcutta.When a term paper is due in 24 hours, there's no better tactic than to break open the Milano cookies and procrastineat.Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game for the Mamas and the Papas, with two-word phrases beginning with the letters M-A- M-A- or P-A- P-A-If you say you're not up to this or that challenge, someone might push you harder with the reminder Mr. Can't died in a cornfield. This old saying is particularly evocative if you've ever been stuck in a corn field, because it's easy to think you won't make it out. Another version of this phrase is can't died in the poorhouse.Blue blood, a term often used to refer to WASPy or patrician folks, goes back to the 1700s and the Spanish term sangre azul. It described the class of people who never had to work outside or expose themselves to the sun, so blue veins would show through their ivory, marble-like skin. If someone's a dime piece or a dime, they're mighty attractive -- as in, a perfect 10.What's the difference between drunk and drunken? If you dig through the linguistic corpora, or collections of texts, you'll find that we celebrate in drunken revelry and break into drunken brawls, but individuals drive drunk and or get visibly drunk. Typically, drunken is used for a situation, and drunk refers to a person.Ever seen someone repeatedly around town and made up an elaborate life story for them without actually ever meeting them? In slang terms, that sort of person in your life is called a unicorn.Harriet Doerr published her first novel, the National Book Award-winning Stones for Ibarra, at the age of 73. Don't think about ordering a soft serve ice cream in Vermont—there, it's a Creemee. The term has stuck around the Green Mountain State by the sheer force of Vermonter pride.The term Melungeon, applied to a group of people in Southeastern Appalachia marked by swarthy skin and dark eyes, has been used disparagingly in the past. But Melungeons themselves reclaimed that name in the 1960s. The Melungeon Heritage website details some of the mystery behind their origin. The name comes from the French term melange, meaning "mixture."The initialism LLAS, meaning love you like a sister, isn't a texting phenomenon—it goes back 30 or 40 years to when girls would write each other letters.Diminutive suffixes, Donnie for Don, change the meaning of a name to something smaller, cuter, or sweeter. This episode was hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett.--A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donateGet your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:Email: words@waywordradio.orgPhone: United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673London +44 20 7193 2113Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donateSite: http://waywordradio.org/Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/Skype: skype://waywordradio Copyright 2013, Wayword LLC.