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Lexus LX 470
Shane indicated that conditions (e.g., cars on hand) fluctuate from day to day but that he is always interested in aggressively selling as many cars as possible. His response seemed both reasonable and encouraging to me: reasonable, because he obviously can't predict today what things will be like in January 2001; and encouraging, because he _is_ willing to negotiate (unlike some the situation at some dealers).
The question from xplicitt has been partly answered in the previous LX470 topic. There someone said, "My dealer (who's a friend) swears there will be no substantive changes on the 2001, with the possible exception of side-impact airbags. I grilled him about more HP for 50-80 passing; nav system; etc., to no avail." Another correspondent reported, "The 2001 LX470 will receive a DVD-based GPS navigation system option." Feel free to make your own interpretation of these conflicting reports.
Ron Wyllys
Hello All,
Yes I know where in the hell have I been! Paying for my 470... Ha! Really I have been quite busy lately in fact after visiting Florida for the first time ever to get my 470 from Connie...Plug Plug Plug... I've been back twice for other business. Oh well enough babble! I here to say that a reader put a flame under my but because I promised a very very very small website regarding my trip to Fort Myers. Well it is d--- well not done but a work in progress forever. You may not scoff or ridicule because last time I checked I don't get payed to make nice pretty web sites! Please visit and let me know what you want to know or see on the site I'll do my best to accomodate you if possible. Gotta run for now... Oh yeah the site is www.geocities.com/alandahl
I'll try to add better picutres soon!
See Ya,
mark156 Posts: 1,992I'm going to be getting a 2001 vehicle when I trade my '99 Jeep GCL in. I'm considering an RX and LX. I want the next vehicle to have a navigational system. I'm also considering the Mercedes E wagon for better gas mileage which offers the Nav system. Any feedback on the '01 Lexus vehicles having the Nav system would be appreciated.
melvinsh Posts: 19Are you sure about RX is a long way from LX or E-class wagon? From one day driving?
We own both RX and LX. Extensive drive on both two years ownership on RX, and one year and 4 month on LX. 6 hr. driving to Lake Tahoe, and 6 hr. driving to Santa Barbara. I perfer RX most of the time. I don't mean LX is bad, but here is couple things that is lacking in LX.
1. LX remote features aren't as good. In here CA, sometimes temp. goes up to 100 degree. RX remote allows you to lower all windows, but not LX. Also allow your to close up windows. RX's remote has at least 3 times the range compare to LX.
2. With increasing gas price. I prefer RX's fuel economy.
3. Parking space too small for LX around here. Mine has two dents on the door and the rear fender already.
Regarding the ride, I feel both LX and RX are both good, but with different charastistics. LX's suspension is adjustable rides a bit firmer than RX. With the hardest setting it coners as well as RX. However, I wouldn't recommand anyone in the third role seats. You hurt your back after 30 minutes of ride. With soft setting, third role seats feel as comfortable as second role seats, but you suffer the cornering ability. I often keep the adjustment "bold dot" setting.
My uncle owns a E320 4-matic 4 door sedan. I have to say RX300 really rides better than E320. And a bit quieter. Less pumpy on the road especially on uneven roads. My uncle was surprised on RX300's ride. He told me that he thought all SUVs ride like truck. Apparantly, both RX and LX shows him that SUV does not have to ride like a truck.
Hey everyone:
I currently own a 2000 LX470 with 14000 miles on the odmoeter.
Am looking into possibly selling it to purchase another vehicle due to family changes.
The problem is I don't know how to price it! According to KBB and Edmunds, they only have pricing info on the 1999 model year.
It is fully loaded from the manufacturer. Black with Ivory interior.
Any suggestions? I purchased it new including CA tax / license for $62,000.
Any suggestions? Should I go to the dealer and try to "negotiate?"
Anyone interested??


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Meditation as Medicine
Latest News & Events
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Started in 1972, Collinsville Flea Market has over 800 booths and can find over 30,000 shoppers on a good weather day. Here's a look at Collinsville Flea Market Photos
What can you find at Collinsville?
- Used merchandise
- new antiques collectibles
- produce
- pets
- farm animals
- farm equipment
- furniture
- trees
- shrubs
- Iron works
- lawn furniture
- statuary
- cast-iron pots
- baseball cards
- Avon
- food to eat
- plants
- pottery
- anything you want
My kids find flea markets interesting since they grew up in Iowa where the weather and the lifestyle prevented such things. If you've never been to a flea market, Collinsville is one of the best to go to experience some country living, wheeling and dealing.
Collinsville Flea Market is found on Highway 11 South in Collinsville. Once you're within 30 miles, you can stop anywhere and just ask folks "Where's the Flea Market" and the locals all know what you're talking about and start to answer you even before you finish your question! For more information, you can call (256)524-2127. Be sure and go early to get the best deals. We've gotten there after noon and some of the vendors have packed up and gone home, but with over 800 booths, there's still plenty sellers until 2 o'clock or so.
Collinsville Flea Market Photos
Limestone Flea Market
Antique Shops in Huntsville & Madison
Free Huntsville Newsletter


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Princeton's Hana Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Table - the first Birmingham hospital to offer this innovation -is specifically designed for minimally invasive orthopedic surgery and offers new patient benefits.
With it, surgeons can better position the body to permit smaller incisions, resulting in less muscle trauma and faster recovery times for patients. The new technology also allows for x-ray imaging during surgery to more accurately control implant placement and leg length.
Procedures utilizing the new technology include:
Expected benefits of this new technology include:


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The University
The University of Duhok (UoD) is a fast-growing institution in the city of Duhok. It plays a vital role in developing the community by instigating socioeconomic, cultural, scientific as well as educational progress in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Graduates from the University of Duhok currently contribute to the enhancement and capacity building in the public and private sectors of the Duhok Governorate.
The University of Duhok was founded on 31st of October 1992, following a resolution by the Parliament of the Kurdistan Region to address the increasing demand for higher education in the region. The first colleges to be established in the university were the College of Medicine and the College of Agriculture. Initially, the Medical College had 48 students while the College of Agriculture had 166. During the first two years, the two embargos imposed by the UN on Iraq and by the Iraqi Central Government on Kurdistan contributed to the slow paced growth of the University and the poor economic conditions in Kurdistan. After these hardships had passed, the university found itself in a position to steer towards advancement and fresh growth. It expanded to establish 14 colleges, each with specialized departments.
By 2010 the UoD had 17 colleges and a Higher Institute of Planning. After applying a reform in the Kurdistan Region in 2010, the structure of the UoD has changed to a Faculty System. Today, the UoD has 11 faculties with 22 schools, more than 14000 undergraduate students and 915 graduate students.
The UoD provides facilities such as laboratories, libraries, computing services, sports facilities, housing accommodations and extra-curricular activities to all registered students in order to inspire ambition and excellence in a nurturing learning environment.
The UoD has thus a mission to supply an educated populace to the public and private sectors while conducting value added research. The university depends principally on assistance provided by the government while remaining firm about maintaining an independent status.
The University of Duhok is a member of International Association of Universities (IAU), European Association for International Education (EAIE), and Association of Arab Universities (AARU).


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Quote:Our club just tonight started a Facebook page. I was hoping that some of you are in clubs with successful Facebook presences and could offer a few suggestions on which way to take this. My idea was the standard PSA type stuff about celestial events and notifications about club outings and public nights at our observatory. Then using those to comment on the pages of local news and educational organizations to get the word out. Any other fun ideas you wouldn't mind sharing? I'd also love links to your club's pages so I could poke around too. I'll "like" them, I promise. Clear skies,Rock
Quote:I personally prefer G+ over FB but it doesn't have as many users. I suspect that will change the more FB pursues it's commercial revenue streams. I think people will be bailing once they get a full does of intrusive advertising every time the log on.


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|April 24th, 2007, 07:45 AM
Senior Member
1994 pontiac grand am $600
this is my sister's car; just thought i'd see if there was any interest here.
*1994 grand am; 2 door, 6 cyl
*189k miles, runs great though
*upper end of the engine was rebuilt about 3 yrs ago
*leaky floorboards
*has some brake problems
*surges occassionally (may just need a tune up, or some stop slip in the tranny)
*has a bad wheel bearing
*the tilt steering is all wobbley; you might be able to fix it, or just replace the column
i just listed what she put on her info sheet. there may be more/less wrong w/ the car. you can pm me w/ questions, but it's be easier to call her since i don't see her much.
231-638-7261 her name is cassie; she lives in muskegon also
Last edited by greenmeanie; April 24th, 2007 at 07:49 PM. Reason: wrong engine size
|April 24th, 2007, 05:03 PM
Senior Member
it's probably the single; it's no race car. it's the kind w/ just singal exhaust if that helps out. it's also out by the road at 3020 memorial drive in muskegon (49445) if anyone wants to check it out.
|Thread Tools


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The heart of Californian surfing and the birth of the modern wetsuit by Jack O'Neill. Santa Cruz offers classic surf in iconic surf peaks. The best surfers in the world are coming to town, in the O'Neill's 60th anniversary.
The O'Neill Coldwater Classic 2012 is the decisive stage of the ASP World Championship Tour. The event has been upgraded to the elite division of surfing and will certainly stay in the memory and history of surfing.
Jack O'Neill played a crucial role in the development of surfing, right from that mythical house at Pleasure Point.


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Tim O'Brien and American
National Identity:
Paper given by Lynn Wharton at a conference on National Identities, held at King Alfred College, Winchester, England, in September 1999
In this paper I shall be examining Tim O'Brien's treatment of both the national and the personal American self in his collection of Vietnam War stories The Things They Carried. I will look at some of the ways in which O'Brien renders frail that veneer of authenticity traditionally associated with autobiographical first-person fiction. I will consider how O'Brien manipulates the reader's customary 'suspension of disbelief' by giving the narrator of The Things They Carried his own name and many of his own biographical details (date of birth, military record, and so on), while simultaneously stressing, throughout the narrative, that all the characters (including the narrator) are fictional and all the stories (including those in which the narrator takes part) are invented. It could be said that, in The Things They Carried, everything is true but nothing is authentic.
This dichotomy is not merely an academic conceit. O'Brien himself has repeatedly made two statements, throughout the text of The Things They Carried and in interview since the book's publication: 'This is a true story' and 'Everything is made up.' In writing specifically about war, O'Brien says, 'To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true'.1 O'Brien thus effectively hampers any significant effort on the part of the reader to distinguish between fact and fiction, reality and imagination in this book. Most apposite to this paper, he hampers any attempts to distinguish between his 'real' self (the author Tim O'Brien) and his fictitious self (the narrator Tim O'Brien - the book's 'I' character). The two personae often give the appearance of becoming intertwined and almost indistinguishable, even in the author's mind. O'Brien's narrator says in The Things They Carried, 'It's not the surface that matters, it's the identity that lives inside' and this does seem to indicate that the 'real' identity of the narrator may not always be as clear-cut as it seems.
Having conducted discussions of the book with a wide range of O'Brien's readers 2, I have noted that some certainly do experience immense difficulty when trying to get to grips with the slippery nature of the so-called 'authenticity' (one might also say 'inauthenticity') of O'Brien's writing. And, of all the devices he uses to blur the boundaries between truth and fiction, it is the identity of this book's narrator which seems to present the most testing difficulties for most readers. It is essential, then, in any commentary on this book's 'made up true stories', to make clear distinctions between Tim O'Brien the fictitious narrator and Tim O'Brien the real, living author. In order to achieve clarity in this respect, I will refer to the former as 'the I-narrator' and to the latter simply as 'Tim O'Brien' or 'O'Brien'.
Tim O'Brien is a twentieth-century author, still living and writing. He was born in 1946, in a small town in Minnesota, part of America's rural Midwest. After graduating from Worthington College, Minnesota in the summer of 1968, he received his draft papers for Vietnam. From February 1969 to March 1970 he served as a foot soldier (a 'grunt' in common US Army slang) in the 5th Battalion of the 46th Infantry, Americal Division. He achieved the rank of sergeant and received the Purple Heart after sustaining a grenade wound. He is known primarily as a Vietnam War novelist.
The I-narrator of The Things They Carried shares these, and other, biographical details with Tim O'Brien, including his name. Clearly, then, in this book Tim O'Brien is presenting, to an extent, a view of himself. Nevertheless, we must return to those repeated statements O'Brien has made, that all the apparently 'autobiographical' stories he relates are pure fiction, and that the I-narrator is merely another player in the book's cast of characters. We may or may not believe what the author says about himself and his work - and, of course, authorial intent presents a treacherous minefield through which many critics would prefer not to walk. However, it is clear from the inclusion of so many verifiable facts about his own life that Tim O'Brien is portraying, in his fictional 'I', a very particularised, re-worked version of his own self.
My contention here is, therefore, that the I-narrator is Tim O'Brien's own imaginary self, a re-invented self who can say, convincingly, 'I've told it before - many times, many versions - but here's what actually happened,' without losing either authorial or fictional credibility. Although he is a fictional component of a fictional work, the I-narrator is nevertheless a very real a part of the personality of Tim O'Brien, who emerges and lives for a short while for the purposes of narrating and linking the book's stories. The I-narrator is not wholly real, but neither is he wholly invented. Similarly, according to O'Brien, the wide range of stories the I-narrator tells never actually happened; the people he names in his narrative do not, he says, exist 3 - although there is evidence to suggest that some are based upon real people. In the disparate, but connecting, selection of stories which make up The Things They Carried, everything about Tim O'Brien's personal experience of Vietnam seems re-shaped and re-worked until the book effectively becomes an ideograph of the representative American Vietnam War experience.
However, O'Brien's writing methods cannot properly be pigeonholed as easily as that. It is also my suggestion that, in presenting an I-narrator called Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried, the author Tim O'Brien is carrying the standard of a well-established and ongoing tradition in American literature - the tradition of reinventing the self. But, again in the tradition of the most effective American writers, O'Brien achieves his re-inventions in slightly different ways from the ways the reader has become used to. He challenges the old familiar expectations of what a narrator really is and what we can expect of him, and that is one reason why so many readers experience such difficulty and frustration when trying to make sense of this novel.
In a sense, of course, O'Brien is doing nothing new. It is quite usual for fictitious characters in American literature to reinvent themselves - or to be reinvented or re-shaped or otherwise changed by circumstance. It is to be expected that fictitious characters will progress and evolve through the course of a book, emerging at the end as different characters, for good or ill. What Tim O'Brien does somewhat differently, I suggest, is to reinvent and re-present his own self by fictitious means, without allowing the nature or circumstances of the fictitious self to change as the book progresses. In other words, the I-narrator stays the same throughout the book. Only Tim O'Brien - the real author - is changed by the book's stories, because the real man is imagined and re-worked into a fictional character (who nevertheless still appears real). This is a complicated notion to grasp. To explain what I mean, it is necessary to jump back a little in America's cultural timescale.
The impulse to regenerate and re-create both one's own individual self and the collective national self is recognisably part of a long, ongoing American tradition. At the same time, the act of re-creating and re-shaping reality into a kind of fictionalised autotype is both a socio-cultural tradition in America and, by extension (since art and social culture are of course interactive), also part of an ongoing literary tradition, from the earliest European settlement of the American continent in the seventeenth century to the present day. This is of course an old familiar idea for American Studies specialists.
In the seventeenth century, the very notion of a 'New World' was exactly that - a new pattern would be inscribed, as it were, on a tabula rasa. It would be an original picture conceived, composed and constructed upon a blank canvas. The American colonies (and later the nation) would represent a true renaissance; everything would, literally, be new. One of the cornerstones of American ideals has been the notion that one can leave one's past behind and forge a new present - and, most importantly, a new future. Each new American citizen (indeed, each new 'America' in all its incarnations from colonialisation to globalisation) can occupy a central position as a 'reborn' entity living out a freshly-reconstructed life. Somewhat paradoxically, America's roots were planted in an early impulse to move: specifically, to move away from European cultural influences and European ideals, creating instead something totally different and peculiarly American. A manufactured nation would thus eventually be forged very deliberately (albeit tortuously) from an ideology which advocated personal and national independence and individuality. And that independence and individuality would be achievable through a perpetual process of personal and national self-definition and re-definition (and re-definition and re-definition . . . however many re-definitions it would take to reach each individual's ultimate goal).
A fundamental, defining myth of 'the American way' - a myth accepted across the world as well as by Americans themselves - is that, in America more than in any other place on earth, anyone can be and do anything. Anyone can achieve any position, any status. Anyone can be President, anyone can make a million, anyone can set up a religion. Success is perceived as resting largely upon the ability to redefine one's own personal self - the ability to imagine oneself into a different form - and then to use the new self in order to pursue one's own personal goal. What you were before doesn't matter. What you are now doesn't particularly matter. What matters is what you will eventually turn yourself into.
This mythic self-regeneration has been a recognised part of the American cultural creed throughout the nation's development. For example, the eighteenth-century French commentator, J. Hector StJohn de Crevecoeur was a European opposed to the notion of America's independence. Nevertheless, Crevecoeur recognised that Americans were 'new men who act upon new principles, ideas and opinions'. That idealised image of the independent-minded American, who pursues a constant forward-moving journey of self-recreation, has persisted as a thread through the whole history of American literature. There are countless examples of a continuing American literary tradition of self re-definition: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Mark Twain's Huck Finn, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby, and so forth. In a cultural ideology which fetes the 'new man', literary examples of the 'character make-over' are too numerous to list. What is important is the underlying shared belief among these characters that the self must undergo a crucial alteration during the course of the text, with a greater or lesser degree of success. In fact, success is hardly the point; the whole idea is to effect some kind of change - any kind of change - for good or ill. In material terms, in terms of social status, in terms of 'rising up' (or 'sinking down') socially and culturally, the basic requirement of the American story is that nobody should stay the same.
All through the development of the American nation and its varying cultural compounds, then, new interpretations of the self have continually taken place, with fiction consistently mirroring reality (and often, we could claim in post-modern times, vice versa). Beginning with a break away from the old British culture, and continuing with the quest to forge a new social, political and cultural order in which 'I' will be a shining example to the rest of the world, the original Puritan ideals (where the self is 'born' and not 'made') gave way quickly to the enduring American ideal that any individual can make of her/himself whatever she/he chooses, through work, talent and/or determination. In other words, at the heart of the American ideal lies the will to be today something 'other' than whatever one happened to be yesterday.
In the interests of brevity, and of staying on topic, I must now make a leap across the centuries and return to the subject of how Tim O'Brien's re-shaping of the self represents a very twentieth-century phenomenon - the tendency to display but at the same time to distort the author's self-image through fictitious means.
I suggested earlier that in American literature the changed self has largely been seen to improve throughout the story - often in material and practical terms, but also in social, cultural and ethical terms. The fictional American self usually ends up a better person at the end of the book than he or she was at the beginning. Occasionally, however, the central character deteriorates in some way, through loss of sanity, status or wealth, for example. In the case of the I-narrator of The Things They Carried, it is my belief that the self is neither improved nor degraded; over the course of twenty-two chapters, he is not changed in any greatly significant way. Tim O'Brien presents his I-narrator, at the start of The Things They Carried, as being full of self-doubt, haunted by images of his own and his country's moral inconsistency and tortured by dilemmas about whether it is possible to do right during a 'wrong' war. Even by the time we reach the final page of the book, none of this has changed. The I-narrator achieves neither salvation nor nemesis.
O'Brien's book is full of personal and national images of an American self which simply cannot behave in an altogether ethical way. Each of the characters has his (or her) own way of dealing with Vietnam. For example, one of the 'grunts', Norman Bowker, carries a thumb, taken from a dead Viet Cong boy, which has been presented to him as a gift by another grunt, Mitchell Sanders 4. Should Bowker reject a gift from a buddy, or should he honour the gift and carry a dead man's thumb around with him? There is no 'right' answer. Another character who can find no satisfactory answers is Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who spends much of his time in Vietnam obsessing about his girlfriend, Martha, back home in America. After the death of one of his men, which Cross blames on his own poor leadership, Cross decides to forget Martha and 'comport himself as an officer'. The 'rightness' of this decision is challenged by the fact that, despite Cross's 'obligation to lead', his men continue to die in combat. His decision may have been ethically right but it is ineffectual. There are many other examples through the narrative of this book where a character is quite unable to make a correct moral or ethical decision. The most striking is contained, as we would expect, in the I-narrator's personal story, 'On the Rainy River'. Having just received his draft papers, he flees to a remote part of Minnesota where he has to decide whether or not to slip across the border into Canada to escape en enforced tour of war duty. Should he run to Canada, or should he go to Vietnam and fight? The decision is impossible: A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.' Even after his decision is made (to turn back from Canada, to go to Vietnam and fight for his country), he knows he has not been able to make a pure, faultless decision: 'I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.' 5
In The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien constantly returns to this same dilemma: is it right for a good American to help fight a war when his country tells him to, despite his belief that the war is wrong, or is the correct decision instead to refuse to fight, despite his love and respect for his country? The I-narrator has no clear-cut answers at the start of the book, nor at the end. Unlike so many of his literary predecessors, as the book closes, the I-narrator remains unenlightened about the meaninglessness of war and death. In the book's final story, 'The lives of the dead', O'Brien interweaves two stories, one recounting the death of a childhood friend, the other addressing, yet again, the deaths he witnessed in Vietnam. There is no explanation, no enlightenment, no final exegesis upon which to hang the 'moral' of his book, except the statement that, with a story, 'I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging.'
This notion may seem like a positive ending. All these people have died, for no good reason that we can see, but the author is performing the admirable trick of raising them from the dead to allow them to exist once more, before our very eyes. However, the images are simply that - mere images, with no more substance than a wavering mirage in a desert. Moreover, O'Brien underlines his refusal to give concrete answers by never letting us forget that these are fictional images, not factual ones. His final story implies that, certainly, the author can perform the wonderful miracle of resurrecting the dead, yet there is no suggestion that these dead people ever actually lived. They are not reincarnations of deceased people; they are, as he puts it on the final page, 'like the man who never was'.6
There is no comfort for the reader in the fact that the dead of this book 'never were'. O'Brien denies his readers the reassurance contained in the usual knowledge that, in a novel, all is fiction after all. He refuses to make any of the standard literary implications about war: that is, war is hell but we can leave it when we close the book and return to real life. In the seventh chapter, 'How to tell a true war story', O'Brien tells us unequivocally that, in war, there is no rectitude, no moral explanation of what seems like, and often is, pointless death:
The impulse of much post-Vietnam thinking has sprung from a belief that America's decision to involve itself in the Vietnam War was a tragic, pointless error of judgement. Consistently, through the latter part of the twentieth century - even while the Vietnam War was still being fought - that war has been depicted as a misguided, even an immoral venture. All of Tim O'Brien's books, whether or not they are placed categorically inside a Vietnam War setting, are examples of how this thinking finds a literary outlet. In this respect, The Things They Carried, rather than being a misleading hotchpotch of truth and lies, can be seen to represent a clearly articulated argument against drawing final conclusions about the moralities of war.
In creating his I-narrator, O'Brien has shown how a re-invented, imagined personal self can be utilised in order to encourage a wider re-examination of the nation's sense of self. Tim O'Brien quite intentionally gives no answers. As he said to Martin Napersteck in 1991:
Clearly, the act of questioning alone is adequate to the purpose of the book. By the end of The Things They Carried, the I-narrator is still addressing the same questions which concerned him at the start. He' still full of self-doubt, still haunted by images of his own and his country' moral inconsistency, still tortured by dilemmas about whether it is possible to do right in a 'rong'situation. The I-narrator remains essentially unchanged, just as the world in general remains essentially unchanged by war (because surely, O'rien implies, if war had the power to change people, then surely there would be no more wars).
The I-narrator in The Things They Carried represents, then, a very particularised, personal example of a re-invented self in late twentieth-century American fiction writing. That is to say:
a) He clearly represents at least some facets of the author himself, even though the author may sometimes appear at pains to try to convince us otherwise.
b) He does not change significantly throughout the book, even though, as a character, he does represent a change in the author' self-image.
c) He represents one of the more negative - and, to Americans, perhaps less palatable - sides of the American collective identity; that is to say, he was a foot soldier fighting the only war the American nation has ever seemed to 'lose'.
Tim O'Brien connects his own imagined, re-invented self with a more generalised, collective American self. The way he does this is to present a series of stories, written in the form of a seemingly real Vietnam veteran's memories, while also addressing the wider hypothetical experiences of other Vietnam veterans. Into these Vietnam-based stories, O'Brien inserts and interweaves a reflective philosophical discourse which concerns itself with the more generalised moral dilemmas presented to all humans by the war experience. He uses a real war as a backdrop to tell stories which may or may not be wholly fictional, interspersing them with philosophical musings upon the impossibility of truly knowing the ultimate rights and wrongs, both of war and of human interaction in general. The continuous dialogue between all these disparate but interlinking elements produces a kind of literary refraction, allowing O'Brien to light up the many components of his subject-matter from different angles, leading to an interactive exploration of the human condition, by reader as well as writer.
The historical setting of O'Brien's stories serves to heighten the resulting polemical effect of his complicated writing technique. It is almost too obvious to point out, at this stage, that the Vietnam era was a time of immense personal and national conflict in America. To decide either way - to take either a pro- or an anti-war stance - presented most individuals, as well as the nation as a whole, with grave humanitarian and philanthropic problems. For example, many Americans questioned the validity of inserting its military might into another nation's affairs, a nation whose culture was considered by many Americans to be less 'sophisticated' than that of the West.
O'Brien has never been comfortable with the legitimacy of America's having sent its young men to fight the war in Vietnam. In interview and in his non-fiction articles, largely written immediately after his return from Vietnam , he makes no pretence of ever having felt wholehearted support for America's military action in Vietnam. He repeatedly states that he only went to war because he did not have the courage to refuse to go. Nevertheless, his technique of expressing but not explaining the Vietnam experience in his books can be recognised as an attempt to convey his personal experience of war while refusing to use his stories as a vehicle for proselytising about his beliefs. However, as ever in O'Brien's writing, the matter is complicated by the presence of conflicting 'messages' in the text. The I-narrator says in The Things They Carried:
This seems to offer something of a contradiction. As I said earlier, O'Brien claims that his intention is neither to represent himself in this book nor to preach his own views and beliefs. For example, in interview with Michael Coffey in 1990, when the stories of The Things They Carried first appeared in print as a collection, O'Brien said, 'I wanted to have a book in which my name, Tim, appeared even though Tim would not be me . . . it was something I had to find the guts to do. Similarly, when speaking to John Mort in 1994, O'Brien said:
Nevertheless, some strongly-held personal beliefs are very clearly implied in the above passage from the seventh chapter, 'How to tell a war story'. It is my belief that this is not an accidental inconsistency in O'Brien's writing. Neither is it an adverse reflection upon the verisimilitude of his war stories. It is, rather, a deliberate and systematic blurring of the traditional categorisations which we all work through when reading war literature - whether that literature is autobiographical or purely fictional. When tackling a war novel written by a war veteran, we must constantly ask ourselves: what kind of writing is this, exactly? Is it a mixture of truth and fiction, or of biography and autobiography, or of pure fact, or of completely fabricated invention? The answer, in The Things They Carried, is that it is a mixture of all these elements, in varying ratios for each story.
Tim O'Brien is, through his personal-fictional Vietnam War I-narrator, clearly challenging many of the categorisations of self which American writers and their readers have traditionally used in order to make sense of their cultural identities. Again, the reader is left with questions rather than answers. Who is the narrator? Can he be believed? And, ultimately, does it really matter?
In The Things They Carried, it is clear that the I-narrator is not a faithful, carbon-copy depiction of Tim O'Brien the human being. However, he is representative of a part of O'Brien's personality, as well as of a wider American self - the self, not only of the American Vietnam War veteran but also of the American civilian. Furthermore, O'Brien, in his very particularised method of writing, combines these various 'selves' to paint an even wider picture of the self which encompasses the very nature of American national identity in the late twentieth century.
This paper has attempted to negotiate a route between some of the refrangible elements of Tim O'Brien's depictions of his own self and the wider American sense of itself as a nation. Thus it seems appropriate to end with a quotation from his memoir, If I Die in a Combat Zone:
Lynn Wharton is currently engaged upon writing a Doctoral thesis exploring the work of Tim O'Brien. She is a researcher and tutor in the American Studies Dept., King Alfred College, Winchester, England.


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Cumberland Times-News
POCAHONTAS, Pa. — A Laurel, Md., woman who wrecked her vehicle on Greenville Road near Piney Run Road early Thursday morning was charged with driving under the influence by Pennsylvania State Police.
Julianne Tyler Earley, 20, was traveling west around 1 a.m. when she lost control of her 2010 Volkswagen Golf, left the roadway, rolled over several times and hit a tree, causing her to be ejected from the vehicle, police said.
Earley was taken to Meyersdale Hospital and later transported to Conemaugh Memorial Hospital in Johnstown.


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Boston Bruins fans, if you were stressing out during that game against the New York Rangers, be comforted by this fact: this is the last time the two shall meet this season. They can only meet again during the playoffs. Only time will tell if that happens, but that may provide a measure of relief after the stresses experienced during the course of the 4-3 shootout loss.
Some Bruins looked like they'd eaten their Wheaties and were ready to play, including the hardworking Rich Peverley, clearly hungry to score his second goal of the season and try to improve his negative rating. Patrice Bergeron also tried hard, especially when he streaked down the ice on a breakaway and tried to foil Henrik Lundqvist to open the scoring for Boston, but fell short. David Krejci slung in the first shot of the game not long after the first puck drop.
But then there were some teammates who did not eat their Wheaties. Defensive coverage proved to be a problem yet again for this team. Andrew Ference and Adam McQuaid were out there when Carl Hagelin took a pass from Rick Nash–the pass that, according to every NHL analyst, is both the most amazing play ever and the sole reason the Columbus Blue Jackets fired their general manager–and scored.
Tyler Seguin looked frustrated at times with his less-than-stellar play, at one point smacking his stick so hard that people who were sitting in the TD Garden balcony could hear it. Dougie Hamilton seemed overwhelmed at times too. I understand he's a young defenseman and still learning the ropes, but this was a most inopportune game for him to get shaky.
Derek Stepan put the Rangers ahead by two in the second period when he took advantage of some fumbling from the Bruins near Tuukka Rask's net, but the third goal from New York was so soft, one could use it as a pillow. Rask basically thought he had it, but then the puck slid right over the goal line. In his defense, he took responsibility for the softness of the second and third goals post-game, though that third one especially must have frustrated him to no end.
But just as it looked like the Bruins were headed for Valentine's Day 2012 redux–when the Rangers shut them out 3-0 at home–something happened in the third period. Krejci happened, backhanding one past Lundqvist with a little help from Milan Lucic and Dennis Seidenberg. Krejci sparked something with that goal because then, after Rask had been pulled for the extra attacker, Nathan Horton scored. With Rask still hanging out on the bench, Brad Marchand kept up his team lead in goal-scoring by putting up his seventh of the season. It was an occasion so joyous and unexpected that Jack Edwards jumped up and down in the broadcasting booth.
Marchand definitely ate his Wheaties too.
So, baffled fans of both stripes watched as the Bruins clawed back from being down 3-0 to force overtime. In the end, they'd fall 4-3 in a shootout after Seguin, Bergeron and Krejci failed to score. Marchand put one away, but so did Nash and Ryan Callahan.
At this point, it's basically not even worth it to talk about the problems of the Bruins on the power play, except to say that Krejci's goal came just one second after a man advantage had ended. It is somewhat of a comfort to know that the Rangers aren't good when they're up a man either.
It's worrying that the team took so long to show up for real in the third period, even though they nabbed a point from this occasion. If they had been playing as strongly all game as they were in the latter stages of the third, this score could have been different and the Bruins may have been able to earn both points.
Boston's road-heavy, game-light February continues when the team trucks to the Buffalo Sabres on Feb. 15 for their third meeting so far this season. Between now and then, the blueliners of the team may be put through some more stringent drills at practice.
Emma Harger is a Boston Bruins and NHL writer for RantSports.com. Follow her on Twitter, like her on Facebook and add her to your network on Google.


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The Paterno family and Penn State supporters scored a win over the NCAA on Tuesday, as some of their claims survived the first round of the legal battle and can proceed to the discovery phase.
The Paternos, in a statement, hailed Senior Judge John Leetes opinion on Tuesday that gives the green light to claims of defamation, civil conspiracy and commercial disparagement as a significant victory. The lawsuit, which includes Penn State trustees, former players and coaches and professors as plaintiffs, seeks to have a jury overturn the sanctions the NCAA imposed on Penn State last summer.
Leete, a retired judge from Potter County, did dismiss the breach of contract claims, saying that they cannot proceed unless Penn State joins the lawsuit within the next 30 days. The judge also dismissed claims that the sanctions harmed two former coaches attempts to find work, though he said the claims can be refiled.
This is a case that deserves transparency and due process, Paterno lawyer Wick Sollers said in a statement. It is a case that can never be resolved until the full truth is known. With this ruling the bright light of legal discovery will finally shine on the facts and records of all parties involved.
A Penn State spokesman declined to comment on whether the university would join the lawsuit. University officials have denounced the lawsuit and the trustees involvement.
The NCAA saw the judges decision as one that upheld the legal merit of the consent decree, which the plaintiffs have said university President Rodney Erickson was forced to sign or face the prospect of seeing the football program shut down.
We are exceedingly pleased that the court rejected the plaintiffs effort to undo the consent decree, NCAA chief legal officer Donald Remy said in a statement. As this was the last remaining legal challenge to the validity of the consent decree, we hope the courts decision finally brings closure to this issue and allows the Penn State community to continue to move forward under the consent decree and the athletic integrity agreement.
The judges decision opens the door for the plaintiffs and the NCAA to proceed with discovery such as subpoenaing documentation and depositions of important individuals they think will help their cases.
The judge threw out a claim of interference with contractual relations but kept in place civil conspiracy and commercial disparagement elements.
The judge still has to deal with the matter of whether two defendants named in the suit NCAA President Mark Emmert and former NCAA executive director Ed Ray can be sued. The NCAA says they cant be defendants because they never set foot in Pennsylvania.
The NCAA imposed the sanctions on Penn State based on the conclusions of the Freeh report. Penn State lost scholarships, was banned from bowl games for four years, saw its wins from 1998 to 2011 wiped from the history books and agreed to pay a $60 million fine.
The NCAA has since relented, easing up on the scholarship sanctions. In addition, the fine is still in litigation as well, with the NCAA defending another lawsuit that would require the money to stay within the state.
But the plaintiffs said the NCAA harmed them in various ways.
For instance, Penn State trustee Al Clemens can pursue the claim that the NCAAs consent decree defamed him as someone who failed to oversee senior university administrators in the 1998 and 2001 Jerry Sandusky abuse allegations.
Former coaches Bill Kenney and Jay Paterno also can pursue a defamation claim. They said they were harmed when the consent decree stated that some unidentified coaches ignored the red flags of Sanduskys behaviors.
All the plaintiffs are still able to pursue the civil conspiracy claims, or the allegation that the NCAA and the investigators on Louis Freehs team worked together to hurt Penn State.
The judge wrote: The plaintiffs allegations that (the) defendants and the Freeh firm recklessly disregarded (the) plaintiffs procedural rights in imposing sanctions in a criminal matter unrelated to recruiting and athletic competition, accepted the flawed Freeh report knowing it was not the result of a reliable investigation, and falsely accused (the) plaintiffs of enabling and causing child sex abuse are sufficient to allege malice.
On Twitter, another Paterno son, Scott Paterno, announced the judges decision.
Ladies and Gentlemen the Court just gave us Discovery in Paterno vs. NCAA, he wrote. Here we go.


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Grease Monkeys by DG Chichester and Scott McDaniel
One Sentence Overview: In order to entrap the disparate band of villains, Daredevil manipulates their path to Slick Jimmy's secret stash of grease
Now I know what you're thinking. Grease? There's money in grease? This is surely a truly bonkers scenario. In this story, Slick Jimmy sells the excess waste from restaurants on to the makers of animal feed (Skip Ash might take an interest?) but the idea is not completely idiotic. Check out this article from 2006 in the British newspaper, The Independent, about its use in recycling, particularly as a potential biofuel. If only Jimmy had managed to survive so long he may have solved the oil crisis.
If you were wondering how Jimmy came across so much grease he reckoned its worth was half a million dollars, well, wonder no more (I can just imagine you've been fretting about the matter ever since the last post went up). This issue shows Jimmy holding up poor kitchen staff at the bins round the back of their restaurant and forcing them to scoop it into his bags.
Well, every innovative businessman has to make a start somewhere.
This scene sets up the fact that this is a somewhat tongue in cheek story, a tribute to the old Hollywood movie, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". I mentioned last time that I thought it pretty clear that Dan had this movie in mind when putting pen to paper. This issue it's made explicit as the credits that tell us who's the writer, penciller, inker etc. reveal that each contributor is given an 'alias' from the movie cast so Dan is (naturally) Spencer Tracy whilst Scott is Phil Silvers. However, I think letterer Bill Oakley and assistant editor, Pat Garrahy, took the best roles for themselves - as Sid Caesar and Buster Keaton respectively.
Would have liked to have been in the Marvel office the day the divided up the spoils on that one.
Having so many competing villains could have been a mess but Dan has learned his lesson from the lacklustre 'Dead Man's Hand' (see DD309 in particular) and here the sparring is quite delightful. Spit's discovery of his old buddy, Jet's less than macho tattoo is quite amusing.
Better still is his handling of perhaps the darkest character on show here, the Taskmaster*. He demonstrates that edgy ruthlessness with his intent to dispose of the more knockabout Wilbur Day. Luckily for Stilty, Daredevil's billy club gets his hydraulic legs moving just in time as the Taskmaster plays executioner. Great scene!
Elsewhere the Taskmaster has enough wit to deceive the anti-materialist Tatterdemalion into freeing him, by telling the hobo that he's been entrapped by gold.
The combined brains of the seven foes looking for the grease is insufficient for figuring out where Jimmy's hidden his 'treasure' and so it's left to Daredevil to prompt the gang and (with the assistance of Tatterdemalion) lead them into his trap.
It's a highly enjoyable, completely silly read. I guess your enjoyment of this kind of tale is if you're willing to go along for the ride and accept that, despite the usual darkness, this is acceptable Daredevil fare. As I argued in the last review, comedy is not completely alien to the Daredevil canon so I had no trouble with it. And whilst Dan's more at home with horror or 'blockbuster' action, he's also pretty good at comedy (albeit pretty broad comedy). So to my mind, this stupid little story worked. Heck, I'd go much further than that. Darling, I loved it!
Meanwhile, on the letters page With 'Fall from Grace' just around the corner, it's interesting to see editorial give a sense of unease about the future with a nice creative use of 'Devil's Advocate'. Don't know if the story's any good, but that's a nice set up.
And finally, it's time to bid farewell... to the corner box! The joy and delight of my childhood was to see the box in the corner of a Marvel comic. I don't know the rationale for these though I'm guessing it was so that those who were stacking comics on their stall could lay them out in such a way that allowed easy access for potential purchasers looking for their favourite book. Once the specialist comic book stores took over, I guess there was little use for them. But they always had a charm. Yes, they've disappeared before - when Marvel experimented with circles atop their titles in the early 70s - and they kind of make a comeback before volume one concludes, though not in the same fashion and much less attractively. But this is kind of the death knell for this little idiosyncracy in Daredevil. It's a shame (though perhaps oddly appropriate) that the last box does not contain DD but a flamin' cockroach.
Ah, well...
Daredevil/Matt Murdock
Karen Page
Ben Urich
Stilt-Man/Wilbur Day
The Taskmaster
Pete London
Slick Jimmy Norton
Rating: 9 out of 10
* For those who think this guy doesn't suit comedy, please check out his appearances a couple of years back in Avengers: The Initiative.


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The Ramifications of Tax Shelters for America
by The Opportunity Agenda, Thu Aug 07, 2008 at 11:42:28 AM EDT
Our friends at the American News Project have posted a video on the usage of tax shelters by the super-rich. "Super-Rich Tax Cheats" shines a spotlight on the $1.5 trillion currently estimated to be hidden off-shore from the IRS by the very wealthiest of Americans.
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) estimates the resulting lost tax revenue at approximately $100 billion. The video puts this number into context by showing what the government spends on other programs. This is more than the federal government spends on education and training ($89.9 billion). It's triple what is spent on the environment and natural resources ($33.1 billion) and almost five times more than what we spend on temporary assistance for needy families, or TANF ($20.9). Besides looking simply at people clearly breaking the law, the video also has a short segment with Warren Buffet, one of the world's wealthiest men, arguing for tax fairness. This is key if our nation is to be stronger and we are to truly come together as a community.
You can watch the video at the Huffington Post.


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John Olver News
News on John Olver continually updated from thousands of sources around the net.
Jun 4, 2014 | The Phoenix
And the winner is...Republican congressional candidate Nathan Bech , for comedically misrepresenting the comments of his opponent, Democrat John Olver, in a press release titled "Olver to Citizens Facing Cold Winter: Stop Whining."
Popular Stories
Pipeline protest rally set for today
A rally against the planned natural gas pipeline will go on this afternoon, organizers say, despite postponement of a regional informational meeting that was originally scheduled to follow.
Gov. Patrick addressing UMass Amherst graduates
Patrick will address about 5,500 graduating seniors and more than 20,000 expected guests at the ceremony that begins in McGuirk Alumni Stadium at 4:30 p.m. Friday.
UMass prepares for Friday graduation; Gov. Deval L. Patrick commencement speaker
The day before about 5,500 are to receive degrees at the 144th University of Massachusetts Commencement, dozens of workers, some in hard hats, were busy setting the stage.
Updated: Wed Jun 04, 2014 05:08 am
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Stephen Prutsman (piano), Daniel Pollack (piano), Wendy Warner (cello)
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ormond College Choir, Marin Alsop, Douglas Lawrence
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Available now to download.
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11
Chorale for Ascension Day (Easter Chorale)
Symphony No. 2, Op. 19: II. Andante, un poco mosso
Piano Concerto, Op. 38: II. Canzone: Moderato
No. 3. Minuet: Tempo di minuetto
No. 2. To my Steinway (To No. 220601): Adagio
Medea Suite, Op. 23: III. The Young Princess. Jason
Mutations from Bach
Souvenirs, Op. 28: II. Schottische (Third Floor Hallway)
Nocturne (Homage to John Field), Op. 33
Serenade, Op. 1: I. Un poco adagio - Allegro con sprito
Cello Concerto, Op. 22: II. Andante sostenuto
First Essay for Orchestra, Op. 12
Agnus Dei, Op. 11
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News Article
It's becoming a Halloween tradition to unveil a new horror jam from EDM artist Figure (a.k.a. Josh Gard) every October: last year, we hosted the premiere of the track "The Corpse Grinders" from the third album of his popular Monsters of Drumstep series – a record which rightly made our list of Best Horror Albums in 2012 – and Josh is right on schedule this month with the fourth installment, from which we're stoked to present the exclusive new single "Living Dead," which is definitely one of his darkest and most sinister compositions. Listen to the track below, and click "download" for a free copy!
Monsters Volume 4, which drops tomorrow, serves up thirteen new horror-inspired club cuts, plus the bonus track "Child's Play" (which lines up nicely with Curse of Chucky's recent debut on DVD/Blu-ray). This release is also a step up in Figure's sonic evolution, taking on a more overtly cinematic structure than the previous Monsters releases, and stands up best to an end-to-end listening experience.
Atmospheric pieces signal transitions to each act of the album, starting with the stunning intro "Death's Gospel," which combines a gothic symphony arrangement with the vibe of those "Thrills and Chills of the Haunted House" records I loved (and feared) as a kid, continuing with the second- and third-act interludes "Nightmares" (including an excerpt from a vintage Boris Karloff radio play) and "Symphony of the Damned," and closing with the creepy coda "Cocytus." Drenched with atmosphere and often driven by a dark piano motif, any one of these instrumentals could easily translate to a mood-dripping horror film score, and I'll be surprised if Josh's work doesn't make its way onto a retro-savvy horror soundtrack in the near future.
The more directly danceable material on Volume 4 is also top-notch, and includes excellent team-ups between Figure and several guest artists. The strongest of these collaborations include Khadfi Dub laying down some sick high-speed horrorcore rhymes for the caustic, hyper-tempo cut "The Crypt," and Lexi Norton's ethereal vocals make "Are You Afraid of the Dark" one of Figure's most memorably moody creations... spin it below and listen for yourself:
True to the album's title, movie monsters ooze and stomp through cuts like the super-funkified "Giant Eyeball" and the creepy two-parter "The Blob" & "The Blob Returns," which also include some great melodramatic excerpts from trailers for the 1958 version of The Blob and its '70s sequel Beware! The Blob. After the wheezing, agonizingly bent electro squeals of "Ade Due Damballa" (another reference to Child's Play, namely Chucky's voodoo soul-transfer ritual), we finally confront "The Devil" in the form of a jagged big-bass barrage, infused with a spooky trailer voice-over from the drive-in cult classic Race with the Devil.
Photo: Ohdagyo Photography
As consistently heavy hitters in the world of horror-centric EDM, any and all entries in the Monsters series to date are definite must-haves for your Halloween music collection, and Volume 4 is no exception. It's not too late to squeeze some of these creepy, bass-pounding tracks into your party mix, and there's even more prime material to choose from this time around. Jump on it!


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The political atmospherics surrounding Attorney General Kathleen Kane and Governor Tom Corbett drew the spotlight to the collapse last week of the scheme to outsource Pennsylvania's $3.5 billion state lottery to a British company.
It fell to General Kane, barely two months in office, to review the state's contract with London-based Camelot Global Services. She found the contract did not meet the measure of state stature or constitutional standards, which left the lottery under state employee management and the Camelot contract in a state of confusion.
While the particulars are not trivial and may be argued within the wonkish weeds of legal opinion and revenue policy, there is a big picture measure being missed in the Corbett administration's commitment to privatization.
It takes us back to the "you didn't build it" national divide so frequently chanted at separate party conventions last summer.
Free enterprise enthusiasts emphasize the industrious, risk-taking, pioneering entrepreneurs unleashed from crushing taxation and regulation. They emphasize individualism.
Those who see strength-through-unity emphasize economic progress as the offspring of a social contract that creates the context for individual success through public investment in transportation, education, well being and peace.
Both viewpoints properly borrow from each other. But they should not steal, which, regrettably, appears to be the Corbett administration's definition of privatization.
The governor's policies bend toward the sale or outsourcing to private ownership and management such revenue-generating assets as the state liquor store monopoly and the state-run lottery system and market-capture opportunities that result from compulsory public education.
The very reason these enterprises are attractive to the private investment is that they are state-enforced opportunities. They are brands, markets and value created by laws, regulations and capital extracted and invested under threat of imprisonment.


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Time Warner Cable has sent out notices to subscribers saying that starting on June 24 HBO will only be available on digital channels 201 through 206, not on the analog Channel 5.
A TWC spokesman said the analog duplication is being dropped in anticipation of the much-publicized national conversion to digital in February of 2009.
The dropping of Channel 5 may upset HBO subscribers who receive the pay-cable channel only through that analog channel or who get it on Channel 5 on some of their extra TV sets that don't have a digital box. I know it will mean the end of HBO on two sets in my house.
Do you wish TWC would wait a little longer to make the move? What do you think of it?
-- Alan Pergament


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A motorcyclist was transported to Good Samaritan Medical Center Saturday afternoon at approximately 4:20 p.m. after striking a car at the intersection of Foundry and Eastman Street.
Both Easton Police and Fire officials assisted on the scene.
Car vs. Pole Sends One Driver to Hospital
One person was transferred to Good Samaritan Medical Center Friday night after his vehicle struck a pole near the on Belmont Street.
Police received calls informing them that the driver may be trapped under the dashboard. The driver was assisted by the Easton Fire Department and transferred to Brockton.
Breaking and Entering Reported on Allen Road
On Friday afternoon at approximately 2:50 p.m., police responded to Allen Road where a break-in had allegedly occurred.
Upon arrival, the officer confirmed that the cellar door had been ripped open. The incident is under investigation.
Police Arrest Alleged Shoplifter at Roche Brothers
Easton Police responded to Roche Brother's Supermarket on Washington Street Friday morning at approximately 8:30 a.m. for an alleged shoplifter.
Lynn Raynor, 45, of 2 Summer Street was placed under arrest for the incident.
Suspicious Activity at Sleepy's
A strange occurrence at Sleepy's on Robert Drive sent police to the scene Thursday night at approximately 6:20.
A caller reported a male party that had been in the store for approximately two hours. The caller said the party was making her very uneasy. The party asked to use the bathroom and changed his clothes. He also brought in chocolate cake and "had approximately 20 red bulls."
The caller said the party wanted to write a check for a mattress but didn't want the store to cash it until the next day. The party also had no identification.
The party left while the caller was on the phone with police. Police checked the area but were unable to locate the patron.
Dighton Man Arrested for Assault and Battery on a Police Officer
A Dighton man was arrested after he allegedly assaulted a police officer Tuesday.
Scott Mitchell, 51, of 1838 Williams Street in Dighton was arrested for assault and battery on a police officer after he took off running when police went to question him.
A caller reported a white male with salt and pepper hair, no shoes or shirt and ripped jean shorts walking up Depot Street from Turnpike Street at approximately 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The caller said the party asked her to call his father because his car broke down. The father was not receptive, according to the caller. The caller also informed police that the party may be intoxicated.
Police said Mitchell took off running and assaulted an officer when they arrived. After being pepper sprayed, he was placed under arrest. He refused to give his name immediately.
Mitchell was found to have a felony default warrant out for him.
For a full look at the Police Log, click on the attached .pdf.


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Kids watch TV and see different situations where nearly everyone makes a great salary, lives in a beautiful home and never seems to have money problems. That isn't what happens to most of us.
There should be a class that every student must take that tests them and shows the students and their parents where the child's natural abilities and interests lie, what careers match with those abilities and their earning potential. Kids need to know that some college degree careers pay less than some vo-tech careers. The class also needs to teach kids about everything from checking/ savings account info to credit cards and mortgage- and car-payment scenarios.
I graduated from college in 1977; it took me five years. I changed majors three times, adding a year to college. They didn't have a class like that in 1972, either.
—Scot Campbell, Coyle


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Videos > Katja Kassin > Double penetrated Katja Kassin still has open mouth to be fucked
Brother Undercover This brother is hot on the trail of gorgeous babes who want (or don't want) to feel a dark love length in their pussies. Whatever their preference this horny geek is going to recruit these babes whether they like it or not.
Featured Pornstars:
- Katja Kassin


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In Spanish, you can "have" it all.
That's because tener, the verb meaning "to have" in the sense of "to possess" (haber is the equivalent of the English auxiliary verb "to have") is frequently used in idioms to refer to a wide range of emotions and other states of being. While we may say in English that you are hungry or a person is thirsty, in Spanish we say the equivalent of you have hunger or someone has thirst. Thus "tienes hambre" means "you are hungry" and "tiene sed" means "he/she is thirsty."
Most of the "tener + noun" idioms aren't hard to learn, as they generally make sense as long as you know what the noun part of the phrase means. What can be challenging is learning when their use is preferred. For example, you may be aware that there is an adjective, hambriento, that means "hungry." But you're unlikely to hear a sentence such as estoy hambriento (just as you aren't likely to hear a native English speaker say, "I have hunger," even though the sentence would be understood).
Usually, the "tener + noun" idioms are translated using the English verb "to be" followed by an adjective. Following are some of the most common such uses of tener.
- tener calor, to be hot: Siempre tienes calor. (You're always hot.)
- tener cariño, to be fond: Pablo tiene cariño a María. (Paul is fond of Mary.)
- tener celos, to be jealous: Tengo celos a mi hermana. (I'm jealous of my sister.)
- tener cuidado, to be careful: Espero que tengas cuidado con el libro. (I hope you're careful with the book.)
- tener la culpa, to be guilty or at fault: Mi padre dijo que tengo la culpa. (My father said it's my fault.)
- tener derecho, to have the right: Tengo derecho de votar. (I have the right to vote.)
- tener éxito, to be successful: El jefe tiene un gran éxito. (The boss is very successful.)
- tener frío, to be cold: Hace viento. Tengo frío. (It's windy. I'm cold.)
- tener ganas de + infinitive, to be in the mood for, to feel like doing something: Tengo ganas de comer una hamburguesa. (I feel like eating a hamburger.)
- tener hambre, to be hungry: No ha comido. Tiene hambre. (He hasn't eaten. He's hungry.)
- tener ilusión, to be enthusiastic: Tiene ilusión por viajar a California. (He's enthusiastic about traveling to California.)
- tener miedo a + noun, to be afraid of: Mi hermana tiene miedo a los serpientes. (My sister is afraid of snakes.)
- tener miedo de + infinitive, to be afraid of: Tiene miedo de nadar. (He's afraid of swimming.)
- tener prisa, to be in a hurry: Tengo prisa. El teatro comienza a las ocho. (I'm in a hurry. The play begins at 8.)
- tener razón, to be right: El cliente siempre tiene razón. (The customer is always right.)
- tener sed, to be thirsty: He trabajado mucho. Tengo sed. (I've worked a lot. I'm thirsty.)
- tener sueño, to be tired or sleepy: No has dormido. Tendrás sueño. (You haven't slept. You must be tired.)
- tener suerte, to be lucky: Mi hijo ganó la lotería. Tiene mucha suerte. (My son won the lottery. He's very lucky.)
- tener vergüenza, to be ashamed: Maté a mi amigo. Tengo mucha vergüenza. (I killed my friend. I'm so ashamed.)
Because tener is used so often to indicate mental states, it can be used by itself to ask someone how he or she is doing, especially if you suspect something is wrong: ¿Qué tienes? What's up with you?
Note that the adjective mucho or mucha can be used with the noun portion of the idiom to indicate degree as is expressed by "very" in English: Tengo sed, I'm thirsty. Tengo mucha sed, I'm very thirsty.
Note also that tener is irregular in its conjugation.


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Sorry I missed your call! I had to go out and didn't get your message until tonight, but thank you anyway (and your team) for your efforts. Just send it regularly and we will just get it on Monday. Thanks again for your help and your excellent customer service! I will recommend you to others because you were so nice and willing to help.
Regard, Kristen
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The Haunting In Connecticut


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Six Occupy demonstrators were arrested in Century City on Tuesday for failing to disperse and trying to block traffic in front of Deutsche Bank offices on the Avenue of the Stars.
The demonstrators targeted Deutsche Bank offices because they said the global institution was illegally foreclosing on U.S. homes.
Los Angeles police declared an illegal assembly Tuesday after some activists put up yellow tape across the Avenue of the Stars at Constellation Boulevard, stopping traffic, and several people started "chalking" messages on the pavement. The arrests were made about 3:20 p.m., Los Angeles police Officer Sara Faden said.
About 30 people were involved in the demonstration, and most left when ordered to, she said. The names of those arrested and their booking charges were not immediately available.
Video of the demonstration showed some activists sitting on the street, while others chanted, "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Deutsche Bank has got to go."
Earlier, local activists with the Occupy movement demonstrated against Deutsche Bank practices in front of the German consulate and on Nov. 3 in front of Deutsche Bank Executive Brian Mulligan's home on Commonwealth Avenue in La Cañada Flintridge.
Patch confirmed the home is owned by Mulligan via Blockshopper and Crescenta Valley phone directory. Mulligan alleges LAPD battered and bruised him without cause last spring.
An audio recording of a conversation between a Glendale police officer and Mulligan reportedly captures the La Cañada Flintridge bank executive admitting that he had ingested a hallucinogenic drug two days before the beating.
Patch left a voice message for Mulligan, but it was not returned at the time of publication.
A resident, who asked not to be identified, said the 3 p.m. protest, just south of Berkshire Avenue, lasted roughly 20 minutes before deputies from the Crescenta Valley Sheriff's Station broke it up.


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By Jim Sullivan
---- — Recent Triton graduate Victoria Lojek is a distance runner, running long and hard enough to become her alma mater's first woman to win the Triton Track Ironman Award.
"I've put a lot of work into it, so it is great to be recognized," Lojek said. "It's something I've really been working towards and it makes me happy to think about that."
The Ironman is given to a deserving graduating senior who has completed 12 seasons of a running sport (cross country, indoor, outdoor track).
"She's obviously someone who just loves running," Triton track coach Joe Colbert said of Lojek. "Running is a big part of her life and the amount of time and hours and miles that these kids run in one season is daunting. So, to do it for 12 seasons in a row just tells you what kind of kid she is, she's really committed. And her commitment to her team was impressive. She was really, truly loved by her team."
Colbert made Lojek aware she might qualify for the Ironman two years ago.
"After outdoor track in my sophomore season, my coach came up to me and told me I was going for the Ironman Award," said Lojek. "And that kind of took me aback because I was not expecting it. But from that moment on, it became the goal."
Lojek, started running for the Vikings in sixth grade, racking up a personal best of 6:34 in the mile and a 24:05 in cross-country. Keeping her around year after year was the fact that the track program agreed with her personality.
"Everyone's always supporting each other," Lojek said. "And it's an individual sport as well as a team sport. So, everyone knows what you're going through in your race. The cheering on the sidelines (is great). We also have sleepovers and hang out and stuff. The team atmosphere is really amazing."
Now with her plaque in her possession, the former girls cross country captain can also lay claim to being a Triton trailblazer.
"I knew that I was the first girl to get it," said Lojek. "That's not something that everybody does, and younger girls have come up to me and said, 'That's what I want to do, I want to win the Ironman too.' To hear them say that and to hear that I have opened their eyes to that is really an amazing feeling."
"Distance running is a grind, it's a chore," said Colbert. "It's definitely a lifestyle. So, for anybody to get (the Ironman) is remarkable. And for a young lady to be the first one to get it, yeah, that's a milestone."
Making Lojek, and in fact any Triton runner's accomplishments all the more impressive is the fact that they have been without a home track for the past two years after the track at the Byfield school was condemned.
"It was kind of disappointing when our coach told us that we were not going to have any meets there, because that is our home," Lojek said. "That's where we train every day. But we decided to go with it, we didn't really have a choice. We had to suck it up and take it for what it was."
Currently funds are being raised to meet the $2.5 million needed as part of the Triton Stadium Revitalization Project. But at the moment, no groundbreaking date has been set.
"Not having a home track is obviously disappointing," said Colbert. "It's frustrating for the kids. They never get to participate in a track meet at their home school. Pretty soon, we're going to get to the point where we don't have anybody on our team whose ever had a home track. That's sad. User fees are pretty high and everyone is paying a pretty good amount in property taxes to have kids going to school, and not even have the facility to be able to do this, I think that's pretty disappointing."


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I just listened to the great Doug Drabek speak about the upcoming draft and the Woodlands High team. He went over how happy the team was and how well they were playing and stuff like that for a while..... Then they got into the Draft.
They are not entirely sure, like everyone else, where Drabek will go. It sounded like they have not even been made garauntees that if he is on the board, such and such team will grab him. He was almost entised into saying he would go top 15, but then he didn't. Then they talked about Drabek's stuff. In his fathers opinion his Drabek has a ML curve and velocity with a change and 2-seamer that need work. Sounds like every Texas highschool pitcher ever right? Also he said he loves to throw a knuckler which I thought was funny.
After that the "makeup" issues came up and specifically the article in Baseball America. Doug never denied anything, but nothing was specificaly spoken about. It was approached saying "was it young men being boys" and that is how they played it. He then said the writer put in a lot of time to dig up some things that were spun or made larger than they appeared.
From all that it is probably very reasonable to believe that most of the makeup issues are there, in a much lower capacity. And how much lower or the significance of them is up in the air. My opinion is whoever drafts him will never have a problem with him and they will probably save a million dollars because of a story that may have made him a darker figure than he really is.
Doug was honest and his voice let me know that he was not fibbing IMO. I think he would not have done the show if he had to lie on behalf of his son in his hometown. Drabek will be a steal in the draft.
Also, anyone know where I can get definate information about player options?


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VIERA, Fla. — You may not know the name. You probably couldn't pick him out of an organizational photo. But Carlos Rivero's play this spring may wind up being of some importance to the Washington Nationals.
The Venezuelan infielder is in his second big league camp with the Nationals, claimed on waivers from the Philadelphia Phillies before the 2012 season, and after a strong year in Triple-A in 2012, he is in a somewhat unique position this spring: that of a player with no clear spot on the major league team, but who is out of options.
On the lineup card for Saturday's Grapefruit League opener, Rivero is listed as a possible backup right fielder. Asked Friday if the versatile infielder, who can play third base as well as shortstop, was indeed being looked at in the outfield, manager Davey Johnson said it was no mistake.
"Well he's pretty versatile," Johnson said. "He's played some out there in winter ball."
With Roger Bernadina set to leave the team for the World Baseball Classic and Team Netherlands, and Johnson bringing Jayson Werth along slowly this spring, the manager felt he could use another guy in the outfield. Enter Rivero.
"If I can put a second baseman in left in a big league game, I'm not worried about where I play them down here," Johnson said.
But here's the thing with Rivero, who mostly keeps to himself and spends time with other Spanish-speaking players in the clubhouse, he is out of options. So the Nationals most likely cannot seamlessly pass him through to the minor leagues and keep him as depth.
Could he actually make the team?
"(Only if) Tyler Moore got hurt," Johnson said, opting not to dance around the question and offering his honest opinion.
"We like him. The probability of us losing him is probably pretty good, but I'm playing him, because anybody in that room I'm going to play where I know they're capable of playing."
Rivero, 24, is a career .265 hitter in seven minor league seasons, with an OPS of .709. But with Triple-A Syracuse in 2012 he hit .303, got on base at a .347 clip and slugged .435.
If Rivero plays well this spring, the chances the Nationals will be able to get him through waivers, off their 40-man roster, and into the minors without someone claiming him are most likely slim. But if he plays well enough, he could be used as part of a trade that helps the Nationals in some other way before the 2013 season begins.
"If he looks real good, that opens up more options for (general manager Mike Rizzo)," Johnson said. "And if he doesn't look so good, maybe we can keep him."
Rivero will get his first possible chance to play this spring once Moore is removed from Saturday's game against the Mets as he was slated to take over right field once Moore, the starter there, was done for the day.


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August 1, 2014
March 22, 2013
Residents in Albemarle Co. could soon see a decrease in their water bill.
The Albemarle County Service Authority (ACSA) announced that there will be a 1% decrease in water rates for the next fiscal year.
The lower rates are due to a decrease in the wholesale rates charged by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Company (RWSC).
The RWSC currently charges the service authority $3.46 per 1000 gallons of water. Next year that price will drop down to $3.33.
"Our rates are based on people's use, but for the average customer the rate decreased," says Gary O'Connell, executive director for the ACSA. "That's pretty unusual in the utility business. In recent years I'm not aware of when we've had a rate decrease."
The average customer uses about 3,600 gallons of water per month.


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"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Front National Leadership Contest Hots Up
Pictured from left to right: Bruno Gollnisch, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
I have been observing developments in the contest to replace Jean-Marie Le Pen as the leader of the Front National with increasing interest.
Mr Le Pen has been the president of the Front National since forming the party in 1972 and is due to stand down at the beginning of the new year. A new leader will be elected at the party congress to be held in Tours on 15th-16th January.
The two candidates competing to be elected as his successor are his daughter, Marine Le Pen, and Bruno Gollnisch.
Candidates in this contest are able to campaign openly for votes. Both are in the process of holding meetings around the country and raising funds for their campaigns.
Each has a campaign website which can be found here and here.
I have my own thoughts on who I would like to see win but I will be keeping them to myself as I think it would be entirely inappropriate and politically unwise for our party to be seen to be more favourably disposed to one candidate over another. (Also, bearing in mind that the FN is alot more successful and 'respectable' than us, such support could even be used against the recipient by the other contender).
Imagine what people would have thought if Nationalist MEPs from other countries had voiced support for one of other of the leadership contenders in the BNP leadership contest that never was earlier this year. I do not think it would have gone down very well and it would have inevitable soured future relations with supporters of the 'wrong' candidate.
I will say simply that I hope very much that the next president of the Front National will build on the success achieved in the past by Mr Le Pen and help take European Nationalism to new heights.
That will not stop me from linking to campaign material from either candidate that catches my eye, however, and below is a great little campaign vid from Mr Gollnisch.
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okay lets say you run your components off the fronts channels and bridge the rear channels to a sub. My question is when you balance from the left to the right shouldn't you be able to hear sound from either channel? Because I'm getting sound from the right side but not the left side.
I switched the rca's around and now I get sound from the left side but not the right side. I'm thinking in bridged mode it's just one channel. The next problem I have is when I fade to the front my sub does not cut out. But yet when I fade to the rear my fronts cut out like they are suppose too.
The only thing I can figure out is my rca's are all out of wack. I have not had much time to trouble shoot it because I just noticed it about a hour ago. I'll see what I can figure out tomorrow. It's always some bull**** like this to keep you pissed off all the time.


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"I received my order today and I think they are just lovely. The card stock has a nice weight to it and the print quality is very good. The design is darling as well. I'm very pleased with these thank you notes and would recommend them."
"This card is so cute, I bought it to use as thank you cards for my baby. It's the perfect size to express gratitude, but not too big to where you would have to write a lot larger to fill up the card ;) I will definitely re-order these when I run out, they're perfect!"
"Never order Thank You cards - and always end up searching for them after the party - which makes me late in sending 'Thank You's'. So grateful that this time - before the party I have the Thank You notes - it will save me so much time and wasted guilt after the party. Plus the quality is super. Never again will I order Invites without adding Thank You Cards!"
"I chose this thank you card since it was more sophisticated and classy. I didn't want kid-like trucks and animals with bold colors for boy. The small photo on the left is subtle. Lovely. I reordered."
"I order these as thank you cards for my son's 1st birthday party, which had a construction theme. These cards are perfect!! They are not too big and the quality of paper and picture are top notch!! Being able to customize the title at no charge is a huge bonus and the shipping was lighting fast. Considering that they were a custom print and I received them in less than 10 days I could not be happier!!"


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In the second area case this week involving counterfeit $20 bills, a 20-year-old man is accused of passing two of them at a Bethlehem bar early Friday and of having another 28 counterfeit $20s in his possession.
He also had what court records say is a false ID listing him as 25. He actually has about eight months before he can legally drink in Pennsylvania.
In the earlier counterfeit case, a Lehigh Township woman was charged Tuesday with using two counterfeit $20s to help pay for merchandise at a Palmer Park Mall store.
Tonya R. Green, 44, also was found with 68 additional $20 bills that police needed to test to see if they were real or counterfeit.
In this recent case, the records say Luilly A. Rollins-Wilson of the city's SouthSide used counterfeit $20s to buy about $30 in beer while at Roosevelts 21st, 21 E. Elizabeth Ave.
His false ID lists him as a man by the last name of Lantigua, age 25. The records say Rollins-Wilson was born Sept. 30, 1992.
Meanwhile, a criminal complaint filed by city Officer Brian Quinn also provides some background information on how to detect counterfeit $20s.
According to the complaint:
Another city officer had Rollins-Wilson in custody when Quinn arrived around 1:20am. The other officer said the suspect bought about $30 in beer with counterfeit bills.
When asked about the false ID, Rollins-Wilson told police he found it "on the ground."
Police found 28 additional counterfeit $20 bills ($560) on the suspect as well as one real $20 bill. Rollins-Wilson told police he got the bills from a friend to whom he sold a laptop computer.
The bills were determined to be counterfeit with the use of a counterfeit bill marker. Quinn examined the bills and observed the lack of a watermark – a faint image of President Andrew Jackson on the bill's far right similar to the main center portrait of Jackson – as well as the absence of security strips.
Also, Quinn wrote that there were only three serial numbers for the 28 bills. Eight had one serial number, 11 had another and nine had yet another.
Real currency, he said, would have a series of different serial numbers on each bill.
The 11 bills with one serial number also had a copy of what appeared to be a handwritten number 24 appearing exactly the same on all 11 bills, Quinn said.
Rollins-Wilson, of 612 E. Morton St., Apt. 2, was charged with forgery, theft by unlawful taking or disposition, receiving stolen property, purchase, consumption, possession or transportation of liquor or malt or brewed beverages, and carrying a false identification card.
He was arraigned at 5:15am Friday by on-duty District Judge Todd Strohe of Bangor and committed to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $3,000 bail


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With only 17 shots on goal against the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday night, Nashville failed to hit the 20-shot mark for the fifth time in 11 games this season.
More importantly, it was the tenth time in 11 games that Nashville was outshot by their opponent.
"We weren't getting pucks and bodies to the net," Nashville forward Colin Wilson said. "We were playing an outskirts game and not getting to the interior."
"We didn't have anybody driving the middle," Predators head coach Barry Trotz said. "We drive wide, put the brakes on and then we're making lateral passes…Sometimes you've got to put it to the net and play off the net more."
The inability to actually put pucks on net has proven to be a bane quite often for Nashville so far this season. Sunday night was the third time Nashville had been shut out in the young season. In those 3 games, Nashville has registered a grand total of 51 shots, or an average of 17 shots a game.
When the Predators do manage to score, as Robby Stanley of Smashville247.net pointed out, they have managed to at least remain tied through regulation, picking up a point in the standings.
As for finding a fix to the shooting woes, Trotz and Wilson both believe that the problem might be more of head-related than chemistry-related.
"It's just a mentality," Wilson said. "You want to get bodies there, but it's just a mentality of wanting to score and wanting to get to the interior position. It's nothing you can practice, you just have to do it."
"It's a mindset – you've got to be determined to get there," Trotz said. "I think it's fun when you're down in their end and creating chances. What I don't think is fun is playing in your own end when you don't get pucks to the net and you turn them over and they go the other way. Defense is hard work. Offense is fun."
Obviously, an inability to register shots generally means that the offense fails to produce much on the scoreboard. In 11 games, the Predators have scored more than two goals just four times.
"It's always frustrating when you can't get offense going, especially when you're playing in the top, upper lines and that's your job," Wilson said. "To not get those shots, not get those chances – it brings down the momentum of the game and it's not as fun to play."
"Everything has to be gritty in this league," Trotz said. "There's not very many pretty things. Patrick Kane can do something pretty, but Patrick Kane doesn't play for the Nashville Predators – unless we trade for him or something. We've got to keep it simple. If you look around the league, the top offensive players – you look at Jonathan Toews or Joe Thornton – they drive to the net hard. It's a working man's league."
"I wouldn't say that it's worrisome," Wilson added. "It's something that you see and you realize that you're going to have to correct. Obviously, we keep seeing it and we still haven't changed. We have to get bodies to the net and pucks to the net and just be a little bit better offensively. I think we've been doing well in the d-zone. We just have to put that offense together and hopefully it will come soon."
Trotz insists that the only way to solve the team's inability to go down the middle is to have the mindset and the willingness to do it. Due to the short season, the team is not able to run practices at the same frequency and intensity that they usually would.
"There's no practice time, forget about practicing anything," Trotz said. "We have four games. We have four games probably all week every week for the rest of the year. We're going to maybe have one practice a week."
In the end, for Trotz, the solution to the offensive woes is fairly obvious.
"We've got to have a lot more traffic, especially in the offensive zone and a lot more net presence."


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Liberal bloggers, who helped spark the rise of Barack Obama, have been somewhat critical of the presumptive Democratic candidate of late.
Markus Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos, took some heat for putting heat on Mr. Obama for moving a bit to the center.
Mr. Obama had said he would fillibuster the wiretapping bill this summer. Instead, he voted for it.
"I don't buy that Obama is a centrist," Mr. Moulitsas said Sunday. "What he did on the intelligence bill was negating a political attack from the right. He did it for political reasons.
"We're going to disagree with Obama" he says. "But he is not going to be like the Republicans who watched George Bush destroy America. We're not going to agree with everything Obama does, but at least he will take this country in the right direction."


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LaTroy Hawkins agrees to one year, 2.5 million deal with the #Rockies to be their closer
New York Daily News "LaTroy Hawkins is likely to be back as the Mets' veteran leader in the bullpen in 2014. The Mets are one of two teams that have contacted the righthander, and a source close to the situation said it is "likely to get done." No numbers have been discussed, but Sandy Alderson made the call to..." November 09
The #mets were one of the two teems that have contacted Hawkins, according to baseball source.
New York Daily News "Tuesday was a little different trip for the three veteran pitchers the Mets hope to rely on this season. On an unglamorous back field at the Marlins' spring training complex, with caged-in dugouts and porta-potties just behind them, Shaun Marcum, Pedro Feliciano and LaTroy Hawkins each made..." March 06