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Salman Rushdie Surrenders
I have in mind a plot for a satirical tale on the subject of literary courage. It goes like this:
A young and prominent Asian-born English writer with fashionably left-wing views, the son of a Muslim family and a consistent defender of third-world causes, publishes a novel containing passages that spoof the origins of Islam. There is nothing particularly scurrilous about them, just the suggestion that Muhammad was human like the rest of us and similarly attracted to money, power, and sex. The Muslim world, however, reacts to such blasphemy with an unanticipated fury that starts with book burnings and ends with a death sentence passed on our author by the head of an oil-rich, fundamentalist Islamic state. So great is deemed to be the danger to his life that he is forced to go underground and live in hiding.
Meanwhile, the international literary community rallies around him. It sends him fervent letters of support, issues statements defending his right to free speech, and petitions democratic governments to act against the Muslim leader who has put a price on his head. The world's statesmen ignore these appeals, and meet with withering scorn for their cowardly surrender to economic and political interests. The affair makes headlines; our author is compared to Socrates, to Galileo; like them, he is viewed as a brave martyr in the age-old struggle against tyranny.
In his various hiding places, isolated from society and friends, our author has plenty of time to write, and the results are eagerly looked forward to. What literary riposte will he deliver to his persecutors, what irrefragable proof of the truth that the pen is mightier than the sword? Several years go by and he publishes a children's book, a slim parable about a good kingdom that makes stories and an evil kingdom that wars against them. And still the world waits.
And then it comes: the long-awaited novel. It is set in our author's native land, and it tells the story of the loves and hates of a single fierce-willed family, and of the modernization of a vast, sprawling, harmoniously diverse society whose traditional, easygoing acceptance of difference is subverted by the twin forces of religious nationalism and capitalist greed. Panoramic and ambitious, the book might seem inspired by our author's experience—were it not for a curious fact. Or rather, three facts: there is not a Muslim character of importance in it; the forces of religious nationalism are represented by a hypocritical and sinister Hindu politician; and those of rapacious capitalism, by a power-mad Jew.
Our author's new novel is well-received by the reviewers, who praise its rich imagination. None of the writers and intellectuals who formerly championed him questions the casting of its characters. There are no protests by Jews, and in India nothing worse than a ban on the novel's importation. The successors of the Islamic head of state, who by now has died, have apparently lost interest in our author's case. Lionized as a literary hero, he emerges from hiding and resumes his old life.
It is a tale, of course, that I will never write, for (although he is unlikely to write it, either) it is the property of Salman Rushdie, whose The Satanic Verses brought down on him the wrath of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1988.
Rushdie's new novel, The Moor's Last Sigh,1 is too intricate and thickly populated to be easily summarized; but its two villains, locked in a titanic combat, are indeed a cynical Hindu demagogue and a ruthless Indian-Jewish businessman and crime boss. Also central to the story are the Jew's wife, a leading Indian painter and the wealthy heiress of a Christian family descended from the famed Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, and the couple's only son Moraes, nicknamed "Moor," who narrates the novel.
As even this abbreviated list of characters indicates, The Moor's Last Sigh—the opening section of which is set in the southern port town of Cochin, the traditional home of India's native community of Jews, the Bene Israel—takes place in a cosmopolitan world whose unraveling lies at the novel's heart. Laced with a heavy dose of the fantastic, like nearly all of Rushdie's work, the book begins with Aurora da Gama's childhood in an eccentric aristocratic household and with her rebellious teenage marriage to Abraham Zogoiby, a handsome Jewish clerk twice her age who is employed in the family business. The action then shifts to Bombay, where Aurora launches a successful career as an artist and bohemian socialite and Abraham expands the da Gama spice trade to a wide range of legal and illegal activities. It continues with the raising of the Zogoibys' children, of whom Moraes, the youngest, is born with a genetic defect that causes him to age at twice the normal rate. It then tells how this sexually precocious child grows up to be the model for a series of his mother's paintings known as "the Moor pictures"; becomes a political goon in the I employ of Raman Fielding, the Hindu demagogue; and discovers the true enormity of his father's criminal empire, which is engaged in helping an unnamed Muslim country build an H-bomb. It ends with Aurora's death, Fielding's murder by Moraes, the latter's escape to Spain, his imprisonment in a castle where a stolen painting of his mother's reveals that she was murdered by his father, his killing of his captor, and his flight.
Although Moraes comes to fear and hate his father, his troubled love for his mother—"a great beauty," as he describes her, "who was also the most sharp-tongued woman of her generation"—endures. Despite her overweeningness, Aurora is the novel's one heroic figure, an emblem both of artistic integrity and of that fecund and multifarious India which Fielding and Abraham Zogoiby would destroy. She is also the chronicler of that destruction, a painter of large, Breughelesque canvases of historical and social commentary that literally and figuratively grow darker as she ages.
When she first begins to paint Moraes, Aurora models him as Boabdil, the last Moorish king to rule from the Alhambra in Granada before the Muslim defeat. The "golden age" of medieval Spain, an age of Muslim-Christian-Jewish coexistence, serves her as a visual trope for the old India:
The Alhambra quickly became a not-quite-Alhambra; elements of India's own red forts, the Mughal palace-fortresses in Delhi and Agra, blended Mughal splendors with the Spanish building's Moorish grace . . . and the creatures of Aurora's imagination began to populate it—monsters, elephant-deities, ghosts. . . .
Commenting on this work to her son, Aurora, in the daffy Anglo-Indian speech that is one of the novel's most entertaining features, remarks:
Call it Mooristan. . . . Place where worlds collide, flow in and out of one another, and washofy away. . . . One universe, one dimension, one country, one dream, bumpo'ing into another, or being under, or on top. Call it Palimpstine. And above it all, in the palace, you.
Yet by the end of The Moor's Last Sigh, when she returns once more to Moraes after many years of not painting him, this vision has collapsed:
It was in a highly fabulated milieu, a kind of human rag-and-bone yard that took its inspiration from . . . the great slums and chawls of Bombay. Here everything was a collage, the huts made of the city's unwanted detritus, rusting corrugated iron, bits of cardboard boxes, gnarled lengths of driftwood, the doors of crashed motorcars, the windshield of a forgotten tempo; and the tenements built of poisonous smoke, out of water-taps that had started lethal quarrels . . . out of kerosene suicides, and the unpayable rents collected with extreme violence by gangland Bhaiyyas and Pathans; and the people's lives, under the pressure that is only felt at the bottom of a heap, had also become composite, as patched-up as their homes, made of pieces of petty thievery, shards of prostitution and fragments of beggary. . . .
And the Moor-figure: alone now, motherless, he sank into immorality, and was shown as a creature of shadows. . . . He appeared to lose, in these last pictures, his previous metaphorical role as a unifier of opposites, a standard-bearer of pluralism, ceasing to stand as a symbol—however approximate—of the new nation, and being transformed, instead, into a semi-allegorical figure of decay.
That half of the responsibility for this decay should be semi-allegorically incarnated in The Moor's Last Sigh in a Muslim-baiting Hindu demagogue like Fielding is not unnatural; Hindu nationalist politics have done their share in turning Indian society against itself. But that the other plenipotentiary of what the narrator calls "the new god-and-mammon India" should be a Jewish mafioso of satanically colossal proportions, a member of an ethnic group that numbers barely a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of 1 percent of India's population, would seem to call for an explanation.
Salman Rushdie himself, to be sure, does not think so. He has been quoted as saying that since there are Jews living in India, there is nothing strange about one turning up in his novel—and oddly enough, the critics seem to agree with him. Of the dozen or so reviews that I have read of The Moor's Last Sigh, nearly all laudatory, only two have perceived a problem in Abraham Zogoiby's Jewishness, and both have apologized for doing so. Norman Rush, in the New York Times Book Review, thought it "an overreaction on my part" to find
something off-putting about the casting of Abraham Zogoiby, the patriarch, as a kind of Jewish Professor Moriarty of subcontinental crime, a controller of Muslim gangs, a drug kingpin, a plotter involved in creating the Islamic bomb, a procurer of little girls.
And in a rare negative review of the book, in Commonweal, Sara Mait-land confessed to its being "my own fault" that "I could not suppress a curiosity as to whether Jews would find themselves gravely offended" by the character of Zogoiby.
And yet the apologies are out of order, and not only because as a writer Rushdie is too much in love. with the symbolic potential in words and things for anything or anyone simply to "turn up" in his work. They are also unnecessary because, while there may be nothing very Jewish about Abraham Zogoiby (who severs all connections with the Bene Israel community after his marriage), Rushdie never stops playing on his ancestry. At various points in the novel Zogoiby is compared to Moses, to a scion of Shy-locks, to Abraham sacrificing his son; but most systematically and significantly, he is compared to the Jewish God Himself.
I cite three of these passages, whose tone increases in intensity as the book nears its end:
Did you ever see your father's cock, your mother's cunt? Yes or no, doesn't matter, the point is these are mythical locations, surrounded by taboo, put off thy shoes for it is holy ground, as the Voice said on Mount Sinai, and if Abraham Zogoiby was playing the part of Moses, then Aurora my mother sure as eggs was the Burning Bush. Handing down commandments, pillar of fire, I am that I am . . . yes, indeed, she had made a study of the Old Testament god.
Recalcitrant, unregenerate, paramount: The Over World's cackling overlord in his hanging garden in the sky, rich beyond rich men's richest dreams, Abraham Zogoiby at eighty-four reached for immortality. . . .
In May 1991 . . . Abraham Zogoiby . . . chose . . . to brief me on the existence of the secret H-bomb project. . . Abraham became stone. He was ice, and flame. He was God in Paradise and I, his greatest creation, had just put on the forbidden fig-leaf of shame. "I am a business person," he said. "What there is to do, I do." YHWH. I am that I am . . . this shadow-Jehovah, this anti-Almighty, this black hole in the sky, my Daddyji. . . .
It is also part of the symbolic structure of The Moor's Last Sigh that its narrator compares his own self to a God-banished fugitive from Paradise—a metaphor that first occurs early in the novel where Moraes Zogoiby speaks of being "a modern Lucifer . . . hurled from that fabulous garden and plunged toward Pandaemonium." And it is already here, too, that the reader is reminded of The Satanic Verses. That novel begins with the unlikely survival of two men blasted out of a bombed airplane. These two semi-realistically drawn characters are, in fact, a fallen "angel" and "devil"; they are also the symbolic halves of a split self, of an original unity "condemned to [an] endless but also ending angelicdevilish fall."
Indeed, an expulsion from a primal harmony, fracturing a peaceful polymorphousness, occurs in each of Rushdie's novels. We find it in the book that first made his reputation, Midnight's Children (1980), which tells of 582 Indian citizens born on the night of the country's declaration of independence, all magically endowed with special powers and telepathically interconnected, and of the dissolution of this link in enmity and grief. And we find it in his next book, Shame (1983), whose central character is thrust out of a womblike home in which he is raised by three sisters so symbiotic that he never knows which of them is his real mother.
As The Moor's Last Sigh peaks in an apocalypse of flames in an ethnically and religiously warring Bombay, Rushdie's previous novels likewise climax in conflagrations. Toward the end of Midnights Children this takes the form of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war; on the last page of Shame, of a giant explosion, the product of religious and civil strife in a country like Pakistan, which spreads in a "fireball of . . . burning, rolling outward to the horizon like the sea"; in the last part of The Satanic Verses, of bloody riots and torchings in the immigrant Asian ghettos of London.
And again like The Moor's Last Sigh, each of these books is peopled by autocrats who help set such events in motion. In Midnight's Children and Shame, they are politicians. But in the historical sections of The Satanic Verses, a novel that shuttles between contemporary London and Muhammad's Mecca, the tyranny is a religious idea: that of an exclusivist monotheism imposed on a pagan society by a God "Who reigned by terror, insisting upon the unqualified submission of even [His] closest associates, packing off all dissidents to [His] blazing Siberias, the gulag-infernos of Hell. . . ." There are forces fighting this deity, headed by a Meccan businessman who "meets secretly with the [city's] gang-leaders and organizes them all." But against them is Mahound (Muhammad) with "his message: one one one." And the victorious Muhammad is very much a businessman himself, "and a damned successful one at that . . . who handed down the management decisions of this highly corporate, noncorporeal God."
If this sounds curiously like The Moor's Last Sigh, that is because the latter is in many ways a thematic sequel to The Satanic Verses. Both are about the perils of monism—political, economic, theological, and psychological (Rushdie sees these spheres as interlocking)—and about the ways in which puritanical repression in its name leads to the return of the repressed, breakaway splinters of society and self that war on their hosts and on each other. At such times, as Moraes Zogoiby says, it is "not the civil social norm for which men yearn [but] permission openly to become our secret selves." Or in the words of the narrator of Shame:
This opposition—the epicure against the puritan—is . . . the true dialectic of history . . . Virtue versus vice, ascetic versus bawd, God against the Devil: that's the game.
In this game, needless to say, Rushdie is on the Devil's side. True, in The Satanic Verses he attempts to preserve, like a fair-minded parent, a semblance of authorial neutrality. Yet his favoritism is belied by many passages in the novel that make evident his identification with the "devilish" Saladin Chamcha, a skeptical-minded, urbane Anglophile committed to "the pursuit of what is noble without recourse to that old crutch, God." At times Rushdie seems to feel about this "crutch" a bit like the ancient Gnostics, to whom the deity of the Hebrew Bible was real but a usurper, a minor divinity who cunningly fobbed off the myth of his uniqueness on a gullible mankind. Ultimately, though, Rushdie's affinities lie closer to home, with that European critique of religion that begins in the Enlightenment and views the zealotry of the monotheistic faiths and their ideological offshoots as the root evil of our civilization—and the Jews as the sowers of its seed.
Presumably, the author who writes in Shame that Pakistan was "until Khomeini, one of the only two theocracies on earth (Israel being the other one)" would not quarrel with the statement of Edward Gibbon in the 18th century that the Jews were the only people who had "refused to join in the common intercourse of mankind . . . or [in] the religious harmony of the ancient world," in which "the most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other's superstitions"; just as he would probably agree with Voltaire that the worst excesses of Christianity and Islam stemmed from the "absurd and barbarous" Pentateuch. Not by chance does this passage in Shame end with the battle cry of the French Revolution:
Autocratic regimes find it useful to espouse the rhetoric of faith. . . . religions shore up dictators. . . . And then the dictator falls and it is discovered that he has brought God down with him. . . . This leaves only two options: disintegration or a new dictatorship . . . no, there is a third . . . the substitution of a new myth for the old one. Here are three such myths, all available from stock at short notice: liberty; equality, fraternity. I recommend them highly.
There is, thus, within the context of Rushdie's work, a logic in the Jewishness of Abraham Zogoiby; a logic in his name, too, since Abraham, the original Jew and the original monotheist, is in Islamic tradition also the first Muslim. And it is also logical that as between Zogoiby and Raman Fielding, Zogoiby is the greater monster. Fielding is a Hindu, a representative of the world's last great polytheistic culture who corruptly elevates the god Ram to the status of a deity demanding absolute allegiance; Zogoiby is of the race of the corrupter.
But the worst thing about The Moor's Last Sigh is not its attitude toward Judaism, without which the demographically improbable Jewishness of Zogoiby makes no sense. After all, one can in theory be perfectly fair-minded about Jews while considering Judaism a historical disaster; and even though, from a literary point of view, Rushdie has badly miscalculated in seeking to load so much symbolic freight onto so far-fetched a figure, he has not necessarily written an anti-Semitic novel.
No, the worst thing about The Moor's Last Sigh is its cowardice. Had Rushdie's personal history been different, had there been no violent reaction to The Satanic Verses, no fatwa declaring his life forfeit, his new novel would still combine flashes of brilliance with a good deal of less brilliant flashiness. It would be, however, less of a surrender.
But the fatwa was issued and those clamoring for Rushdie's blood were not monotheists in the abstract; they were Muslim fundamentalists coming from a specific part of the world, where they have cowed Muslim society into intellectual submission even as it whispers that they do not represent it. Can it be an accident that, of the 27 statements of support by fellow writers published in The Rushdie Letters, a volume issued in 1993 by the International Committee for the Defense of Salman Rushdie and his publishers, only one is from a fellow Muslim? And while but four are signed by Jews, Salman Rushdie surely knows that had there been—but this is inconceivable—yes, had there been a similar outcry on the part of Jews over The Moor's Last Sigh, 444 Jewish writers would have rushed to his defense in a twinkling.
Imagine that Rushdie had written a novel about the Muslim intellectuals who failed him, delving into their psyches, exposing their hypocrisies, demanding they come to terms with themselves.
That might have been brave.
Or that he had written about his years in hiding, the fears and doubts, the loneliness of his movable prison.
That too might have taken some courage.
Or that he had written something entirely unconnected to his recent experience, telling us: "I have been through a hard time and frankly, right now, I would rather write of other things."
Perfectly legitimate.
But what he has done is to write a novel, obliquely about this experience, that can only warm the cockles of an ayatollah's heart. For in it "the most evil man alive," as his son Moraes calls him, is a Jew, and he is building a bomb to bring about the biblically prophesied Armageddon of which the endings of Rushdie's books are foreshadowings. When Voltaire's predecessor, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, wrote his Discourse against Mohammadanism as a disguised attack on Christianity, he had the excuse that no openly anti-Christian book was publishable in the France of his day. Rushdie's only imaginable excuse for the disguises of The Moor's Last Sigh is the desire to placate his persecutors.
Perhaps one should have expected no more from a man who, in December 1990, two years after receiving a death sentence, pronounced the Muslim confession of faith in the hope of having that sentence revoked. Yet this is also the man who wrote, in The Rushdie Letters:
. . . The most inspiring and strengthening thing about the many open letters [to me] is that they show precisely the kind of will that is required to hold out against tyranny and vilification and murder: the will to win.
In The Moor's Last Sigh, he has lost.
1 Pantheon, 435 pp., $25.00.


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'Mob City' brings '40s L.A. to life
By Jeanne Jakle : December 3, 2013 : Updated: December 4, 2013 4:05pm
Milo Ventimiglia (left) and Jon Bernthal star in "Mob City," a new TNT crime drama set in 1940s Los Angeles.
Photo By HANDOUT/McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceGeena Davis plays the chief of psychiatry at a hospital where she's conducting genetic research in an attempt to find a cure for Alzheimer's disease in A&E's new two-part thriller, "Coma," premiering on Sept. 3. (MCT)
Photo By Scott Garfield/APThis photo provided by TNT shows Jon Bernthal in a scene from the pilot episode, A Guy Walks Into A Bar" in the new TNT drama series, "Mob City."
Photo By Doug HyunJon Bernthal in the "Mob City" episode "Red Light" / Ep 103
Photo By Scott GarfieldThis photo provided by TNT shows Alexa Davalos in the pilot, "A Guy Walks Into A Bar," from "Mob City." Davalos stars in the new TNT drama series debuting Dec. 4, 2013, for a three-week run. (AP Photo/TNT, Scott Garfield) ORG XMIT: CAET599
Photo By Doug Hyun"Mob City" Milo Ventimiglia "Stay Down" / Ep 106
If you love getting lost in the dark, smoky worlds of films such as "Double Indemnity," "The Big Sleep" and "Sunset Boulevard," you're in for a TV treat.
The man who brought us television's zombie hit "The Walking Dead" once again delivers a drama with heat, danger and atmospheric mastery.
However, the genre is much different and the villains are flesh and blood. Frank Darabont's "Mob City" is a sensational slice of film noir made for the small screen.
Specifically, writer-director-producer Darabont captures the pulpy feel of late 1940s Los Angeles, where a driven police chief and his squad take on famed gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen. His six-part series for TNT debuts with a two-hour block at 8 p.m. Wednesday and continues in the same double-episode fashion through Dec. 18.
Darabont, who stuck his toe in the late 1940s when he directed the moody prison movie "The Shawshank Redemption," now immerses us in that era. Think crisp, catchy dialogue a la Raymond Chandler, craggy men of the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, "dames" with the style and edge of Barbara Stanwyck and Lauren Bacall, and sultry nightclub sounds courtesy of live orchestras.
The setting is "post-war, when L.A. was a boomtown and it was expanding," Darabont told TV critics recently on the L.A. set of "Mob City." "The mob wanted to get in here and control it. Corruption in the police department was so rampant that more cops were on the mob payrolls back then than not. What's not to love about that? It's Hollywood. Hollywood!"
For source material, Darabont said he used the book "L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" by John Buntin. It details L.A. Police Chief William Parker's efforts to free the city of Siegel (Ed Burns) and Cohen (Jeremy Luke).
However, Darabont's "Mob City" journey actually began with a character of his own creation, one he always wanted to flesh out for TV. That's Joe Teague, an ex-Marine and World War II hero who's now a detective for the LAPD. He's neither a white hat nor a black hat, as Joe puts it in the opener, but "somewhere in the middle. We live in a world of gray hats."
Fans of "The Walking Dead" should be happy to see one of the more memorable faces from the show's initial two seasons, actor Jon Bernthal (aka "Dead's" Shane) playing Joe. Bernthal said he's thrilled to be working again for Darabont, whom he described as "one of the greatest storytellers our country ever had."
"When Frank brought 'The Walking Dead' to the world, I think it was very much an effort to bring a genre piece to television that had never really been done before and sort of sell this genre to a mass audience," Bernthal said. "And I feel that's really what we're doing here."
Bernthal's Joe is the strong, silent type that men respect and women swoon over. His direct opposite is another character who dominates the first episode, mouthy comedian Hecky Nash, played with an American accent by Britain's Simon Pegg ("The World's End," "Shaun of the Dead").
Nash, who's in deep trouble with the mob because of unpaid gambling debts, approaches Joe with a blackmail scheme. The comic tells him he's got the goods on a high-ranking mobster and hopes to get a payoff that would be his ticket out of Los Angeles, a town that's finished for him. He offers Teague $1,000 for protection while Nash meets the gangster's henchmen in a remote oil field and swaps the incriminating info for moolah. As good as Bernthal is, guest star Pegg is even more mesmerizing.
The episode ends in a twist that not only sent me to the edge of my seat, but made me hungry for more.
The second installment didn't disappoint. It not only introduces us to Nash's girlfriend, played with mysterious elegance by Alexa Davalos ("The Mist"), but also the gripping back story of Police Chief Parker.
"Mob City," with its wealth of characters and strong cast that includes icy Neal McDonough ("Captain America") as Parker, sturdy Jeffrey DeMunn (another "Walking Dead" alum) as the head of the police mob task force, and creepy Robert Knepper ("Prison Break") as gangster Sid Rothman, promises plenty of engaging stories.
However, its most seductive feature is its ambiance, Darabont's meticulous attention to detail — from the vintage typewriters to the wide ties to the stocking seams up the back of women's gams — that so effectively carry you back to the film era that was noir.
Jeanne Jakle's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays in S.A. Life, and she blogs at Jakle's Jacuzzi on mySA.com. E-mail her at email@example.com.

subset: commoncrawl


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From Breakfast Television Vancouver – On the Road with Jose Rivera
We spoke to Jose Rivera, the screenwriter who adapted the iconic book "On the Road" for the movies, and asked him about the process, actors, and translating such an important work to the big screen.
Watch the interview HERE
And here is what he says about Garrett:
"We knew early on [who was playing Dean]. Walter Salles, the director, had a lot of casting in New York and very early settled on this actor named Garrett Hedlund. Garrett really has the charisma to play Dean and the chops as the actor, so from the very beginning he was part of the process. So, I wrote that role really based strictly on the book because I didn't think I could possibly imitate that character and so I let Kerouac do all the talking. But since that point on it was really easy to write it because I had Garrett in my mind."
Thanks to KstewAngel on twitter for the link!
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Garrett Update, Movies, On Garrett, On The Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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Estate and letting agents in CF62
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Ice Cream Social, Thursday August 16th 2012!
Ice Cream Social: Hand-Picked and Hand-Packed
Get the inside double-scoop on some original art and original ice cream. Award-winning illustrator Carey Sookocheff introduces some tasty new ice cream-themed artwork. And when you buy a limited edition button illustrated by Carey, you'll get one FREE ice cream sandwich made by Albert Tan (aka Bleezer Ice Cream). The flavours will be unique and different, but always delicious (the inaugural Toronto Underground Market featured Bleezer's smoked salmon and cream cheese ice cream, and his salted buttered popcorn ice cream was at last year's Nuit Blanche).
Follow them on Twitter @CareySookocheff and @BleezerIceCream to get sneak peeks and flavour updates for the Ice Cream Social. And check out our facebook page or Carey's site to see more!
156 Augusta Avenue, Kensington Market
6 to 9pm


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Arturo Fuente Don Carlos Robusto 5 Pack
5 x 50 - Natural - Pack of 5
Special Offer
Special Offer
Can't get your hands on a Fuente Fuente Opus X? The Don Carlos cigars, which preceded them, are awesome and often preferred by aficionados. Expertly handmade with long aged Dominican fillers and Cameroon wrappers for a rich, spicy and velvety-smooth smoke! Get this 5 pack and compare for yourself.
Was a disappointing burn and draw (for the first half of the smoke). The wrapper started coming off and burned down the middle.
I smoke several cigars a week. Rarely will I find a cigar that impresses me as much as this one did. Enjoyable from start to finish. I couldn't put it down. Looking forward to me next one.
Although a little pricey, this has been my everyday cigar for over a year. If I'm pressed for time or just want a quick smoke, my go to is a Hemingway Short Story.
This cigar did not live up to the hype of AF Don Carlos. The appearance was not the best. The burn was uneven although I tried to even it out three times. The draw was O.K. but I've had cheaper cigars that were better. The taste, flavor, aroma were very good in the beginning. The last third of the cigar, became bitter and hot. I won't be smoking this one again.


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A surge of traffic to China's software and security outfit Qihoo is more like a dribble according researchers operating under a faction Anonymous collective.
The company hit the New York Stock Exchange last year promising explosive growth and claimed to have about a third of China's internet traffic pool, more than rival giant Baidu.
It claims to have some 410 million active users of its anti-virus software and web browser.
Traffic was the cornerstone of the empire: It claimed to command top dollar to place links in a cluttered directory page and made additional revenue through online games.
In May, Anonymous researchers spotted a comScore script installed on Qihoo used to independently verify its traffic margins.
Then last month, Qihoo pulled the script without releasing the comScore data.
Anonymous claimed in its report (pdf) to have grabbed the comScore figures from a source and says the traffic count was half of what the company claimed.
Qihoo denied the claims to Bloomberg.
Anonymous speculated that Qihoo had hardcoded the comScore script in order to reverse-engineer its traffic collection system.
Copyright © SC Magazine, Australia
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|Delivering ENG-55 in Europe in October.
|Training Updates and Additions
|Written by Darwin Sanoy
|Saturday, February 16, 2013 9:24pm
Our ENG-55 week is coming to Europe in October (sorry about the headline mailer that said May)! The training will be held at PDS, a half-hour train ride from Amsterdam. Please spread the word to your European collegues! Here are the details... Click here for the event details.


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It's All About Perception
Updated: 03/17/2005 - An image survey of the Meridian area may have some unexpected results.
Updated: 03/17/2005 - An image survey of the Meridian area may have some unexpected results.
Updated: 03/17/2005 - Bond has been set at more than $100,000 for three people facing drug charges in Wayne County.
Updated: 03/17/2005 - The University of Mississippi Medical Center and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are pairing up to manufacture a newly developed medical device.
Updated: 03/16/2005 - Negotiators have signed off on the last part of a plan to keep Medicaid solvent through the rest of the fiscal year.
Updated: 03/17/2005 - The Jimmie Rodgers Foundation has announced plans for the 2005 Festival.
Updated: 03/17/2005 - Lauderdale County's chapter of the American Cancer Society is preparing for June and its Relay for Life. Corporate sponsors were announced Wednesday.
Updated: 03/16/2005 - A defendant accused in three 1964 civil rights murders in Neshoba County is likely to face more surgery following a logging accident.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - Union members for Lockheed Martin voted to accept a new contract agreement and return to work Wednesday.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - Officials in Clarke County have filed charges against a man in a shooting Tuesday in Stonewall.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - The man who turned a Mississippi phone company into a telecommunications empire is facing what could amount to life in prison.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - The latest employment outlook survey by Manpower, Inc. indicates hiring will pick up in the second quarter.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - Recommendations for downtown development in Meridian were made last summer by the Urban Land Institute. The city reported on action and plans Tuesday.
Updated: 03/15/2005 - After almost two years, an arrest has been made in a mysterious death in Neshoba County.
Updated: 04/03/2006 - Brushing your teeth could save you more than time, money and pain at the dentist.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Work could begin soon on the four-laning one of the busiest roads in east Mississippi.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - The Mississippi chapter of the International Association of Electrical Inspectors is holding its annual seminar in Meridian for a third year in a row.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Work continues on a project to overlay Meridian's 23rd Avenue.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Court officials in Neshoba County plan to review the scheduled Apr. 18 trial date for Edgar Ray Killen.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Security has been discussed by the Lauderdale County board of supervisors in the past few months. A deadly shooting in Atlanta has again brought it to the forefront.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Investigators say a number of items stolen from 30 churches throughout the Mississippi have been recovered.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Mississippi lawmakers sent a bill to the governor that will keep Medicaid operating through June.
Updated: 03/14/2005 - Negotiations over the weekend have produced a new contract proposal that will be voted on Tuesday.
Updated: 03/13/2005 - A Federal Elections Commission ruling will allow Indian tribes to operate some businesses that take federal contracts without compromising a tribe's special status afforded by federal election guidelines.
Updated: 03/13/2005 - Gov. Haley Barbour is endorsing a state Senate plan to get quick cash for Mississippi's Medicaid plan.
Updated: 03/13/2005 - Southern Christian Leadership Conference founder called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the most significant legislation of this century.


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We supply a complete range of goods for the dye sublimation printer. Quality heat transfer presses, premium sublimation inks and a choice of printers together with a huge selection of printable items and accessories.
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Starter Kit F consists of A1 Epson 7890 printer, Multifunction mug press (Twin Element), A1 Pneumatic Press - 30" x 40" (75 x 105cm)
Printer £2495.00
Mug Press £224.00
Heat Press £2999.99
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Starter Kit E consists of A3+ Ricoh SG7100dn printer with multi bypass tray, multifunction mug press (Twin Element) and A3+ (15 x 20) Ultra Deep Impact heat press Price
Printer £699
Multi Bypass Tray £175
Mug Press £224
Heat Press £895
Total £ 1993
Starter kit D consists of A3 Ricoh SG7100dn printer, Multifunction Mug Press (Twin Element) and A3 (13 x 18) Ultra Deep Impact heat press.
Printer £699
Mug Press £224
Heat Press £830
Total £1753
Starter Kit C consists of A4 Ricoh SG3110DN, our new A4 (28 X 39) Swing Head Press and Multifunction Mug Press (Twin Element). Price
Printer £255.00
Mug Press £224
Heat Press £250
Total £729.00
Starter Kit B consists of Ricoh SG3110DN printer and our new A4 (28 X 39) swing-head press
Printer £255.00
Heat Press £250
Total £505.00
Starter Kit A consists of Ricoh SG3110DN Printer Multifunction Mug Press (Twin Element)
Printer £255.00
Mug Press £224
Total £479.00


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Edwardian football fixtures found stuffed up a chimney
Posted: January 05, 2013|
WE thank Alan Oakley of Amblecote, Stourbridge, for bringing along this fixtures list for Stourbridge FC from the 1908-09 season. The large poster, now framed, currently hangs at the football club but for years it was unceremoniously stuffed up a chimney.
It was discovered around 15 years ago by Alan's friend Eric Pitts who runs a tile business in the premises of the former Wheatsheaf pub, Wordsley. He told Alan he had discovered something inside one of the chimneys and Alan went along and found the fixture list. The thick card had been used as an aid to the draught or to stop soot falling back down the chimney.
Despite the many decades of such use the poster was in a remarkably good condition and cleaned up well.
The football club began as Stourbridge Standard in 1876 but by the late 1880s it was known simply as Stourbridge FC. The club's earliest honours appear to be winning the Kidderminster Cup and the Worcester Charity Cup in 1887-88 and the Dudley Guest Hospital Cup in 1891-92. They played in the Birmingham and District League and were runners up in 1901-02 but did not win the league until 1923-24. Stourbridge FC currently play in the Evo-Stik League Southern Premier Division.
The poster is a wealth of information about Edwardian Stourbridge and the football club, not least the list of matches. At that time the Birmingham and District League was arguably the best league outside top-flight football and over the 1908-09 season the club would play matches across the Midlands against some big-name teams, including the reserves teams from a number of First Division clubs.
The list is as follows: 1908: Sep 5, Wellington Town (a); Sep 12, Worcester City (h); Sep 14, Stoke (h); Sep 19, Dudley (a); Sep 21, Brierley Hill (a), Sep 26, West Bromwich Albion (h); Oct 3, Birmingham (a); Oct 10, Halesowen (h); Oct 17, Wrexham (a); Oct 24, Shrewsbury Town (h); Oct 31, Walsall (h); Nov 7, Stafford Rangers (a); Nov 14, Wolverhampton Wanderers (h); Nov 21, Burton United (a); Nov 28, Aston Villa (h); Dec 5, Stoke (a); Dec 12, Crewe Alexandra (h); Dec 19, Kidderminster Harriers (a); Dec 26, Brierley Hill (h).
1909: Jan 2, Wellington Town (h); Jan 9, Worcester City (a); Jan 23, Dudley (h); Jan 30, West Bromwich Albion (a); Feb 6, Birmingham (h); Feb 13, Halesowen (a); Feb 20, Wrexham (h); Feb 27, Shrewsbury Town (a); Mar 6, Walsall (a); Mar 13, Stafford Rangers (h), Mar 20, Wolverhampton Wanderers (a); Mar 27, Burton United (h); Apr 3, Aston Villa (a); Apr 17, Crewe Alexandra (a); a date had yet to be set for the home game against Kidderminster Harriers.
The fixture list looked like a tough proposition for the Glassboys, given their form the previous season. Then they played 36, won only 5, drew 3, and lost 28, scoring 31 goals and conceding 95, giving them a goal difference of -64. However, Stourbridge improved, playing 34, they won 9, drew 10, and lost 15, scoring 49 goals and conceding 57.
Nowadays Stourbridge play in red and white but at the time of this poster their strip was claret and white stripes.
The poster gives the club's headquarters and changing rooms as the Rising Sun Inn, Amblecote. This is one of the lost pubs of Stourbridge and stood to the north of the present day site of the Royal Oak public house.
Before this area was redeveloped in the 1950s there was a pair of cottages at the junction of Vicarage Road and Amblecote High Street, then the original Royal Oak, then a tall building known as High House, which was once the home of Amblecote Training School, and then the Rising Sun, approximately where The Holloway is today.
The fixture list also carries several adverts for local businesses.
There is W.E. Cole, 101 High Street, gents' and ladies' hairdresser; Dunham and Co., 121 and 127 High Street, hatters, hosiers, glovers, shirt-makers and stockists of football shirts and waterproof coats and umbrellas; William Marr, Longlands Store, Clifton Street, for groceries and provisions; Skidmore's, Lower High Street, coal merchants; H. & F. Kelley, proprietors of the Angel Brewery; C.L. Taylor, maltster and corn merchant, with corn stores at 34 and 35 Market Street, Stourbridge and maltings at Vauxhall, Queen Street and Enville Street, Stourbridge, and Furlong Lane, Cradley; T.J. Mason, New Road, plumber, glazer, paper-hanger and house decorator; and well-known shoe chain Freeman, Hardy and Willis, at 143 High Street.
Many of those businesses were features in Stourbridge well into the 20th century and some readers may well remember them.


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Thanks a lot, Tiger Woods. The golfing creeper has once again gone and ruined EVERYTHING (er, we're exaggerating a bit, but still) but stopping ex-mistress Rachel Uchitel's planned Playboy spread. First the guy shatters the illusion that all pro-athletes are G-rated family men and now he's ruining the fantasies of guys with club promoter fetishes. How rude.
Tiger supposedly but the kibosh on Rachel's T&A pics by threatening to end the multi-million dollar settlement he currently forks over to her. She was set to make around $300,000 from the photos, so really that's like comparing diamonds to gravel, in money-gemology terms. The mag apparently wanted Rachel to discuss her relationship with Tiger, who got his lawyers all over that situation faster than you can say Elin Nordegren.
Says a completely trustworthy anonymous source, "The magazine wanted to mention Rachel's relationship with Tiger, but it would have jeopardized the deal she already made with him. They refused to give her complete control of the cover so she could make sure Tiger wasn't mentioned."
So there you have it people! Further proof that Tiger Woods loves ruining everything for everyone. At least VH1 is here to help – you can watch Rachel on Celebrity Rehab starting October 13.
[Photo GettyImages]


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1-15 of 119 retirement homes & sheltered housing in Fife.
Station Road, St Monans, Anstruther, Fife, KY10 2EA.
Retirement/sheltered housing
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Age exclusive housing
Bute Wynd, Kirkcaldy, Fife, KY1 1QA.
"We will agree a Housing Support Plan with each tenant. This document sets out what housing support Cairn HA is able to provide. Support will be provided primarily in the tenants' own home or as agreed with our staff.
To ensure that the sup..."
St Andrews Street, Crail, Fife, KY10 3UQ.
"This is an Amenity development linked to Hanover Telecare"
Burntisland, Fife, KY3 9AJ.
16 Park Avenue, Dunfermline, Fife, KY12 7HX.
01383 432 893
Email your enquiry
Anderson Street, Leven, Fife, KY8 4QW.
"A warm welcome awaits you at Anderson Court, Leven which offers a safe and secure home designed especially for those aged 60 and over. Our Manager provides a friendly face and ensures the building and amenities at Anderson Court are kept in..."
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Cellardyke, Anstruther, Fife, KY10 3BT.
Markinch, Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 6AH.
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1-30 Huntsmans Road, Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 6RZ.
Cupar, Fife, KY15 4LP.
6-28 Berwick & Fraser Place/Alexander St, Dysart, Kirkcaldy, Fife, KY1 2XU.
Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 6YS.
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Attached files
|DUK - BBC Factual Creative Rights.pdf
|23.76 kb
|DUK- BBC Drama Creative Rights.pdf
|26.27 kb
In April 2012 Directors UK and the BBC announced the launch of the Creative Rights Partnership, which applies to all directors working on in-house BBC productions.
It was a Directors UK-led initiative with Charles Sturridge, Paul Greengrass, Peter Kosminsky and others first speaking to Mark Thompson to discuss the role of the director in television. Since then Directors UK had been in negotiation with the BBC to find a way to address the industry wide issues facing directors which were seen to be eroding the role of the director and inhibiting creativity and innovation. The Directors UK-BBC Creative Rights Partnership is the result of these discussions.
In the Creative Rights Partnership the BBC is acknowledging the significance of the director's role in generating the best quality content. By setting out the rights and responsibilities for directors it will ensure that directors have the creative responsibility on projects to be able to achieve best quality content and to incentivise and inspire them to create the best and most innovative programmes for viewers.
The commitment from both sides was driven by a genuine wish by both parties to support the creative community of directors and by doing so support and develop the creative strength of the BBC and the wider UK television industry.
It is intended that the BBC-Directors UK Creative Rights Partnership will be rolled out to other broadcasters and production companies as the industry standard for directors working on productions. Both ITV and PACT have committed to good faith negotiations with Directors UK on their own versions.
View from Paul Greengrass, Directors UK President
"The Creative Rights partnership is great news for the industry as a whole. For directors to deliver the best work for our audiences we need to be given creative freedom and responsibility. For too long the creative role of the director has been eroded and this is something we at Directors UK were keen to see corrected. Drawing up the creative rights statements with the BBC is a huge step forward and I commend the BBC for recognising the central role directors play in delivering quality in all programmes. My career has been shaped by the support and creative scope I was given as a young television director. I'm delighted that Directors UK has found a way of working with the BBC to allow directors today the same creative rights. I hope the rest of the industry will follow their lead."
The Creative Rights Partnership applies to all genres, with separate documents for drama and factual (click below to download these documents). The documents will sit alongside the existing BBC standard contracts, offering clear statements about what directors can expect when working on in-house BBC productions.
Below is a more detailed analysis of what exactly the Creative Rights Partnership will mean for you - you can click the questions below for more information, or simply read on. However, if you have any questions at all, please contact the office at firstname.lastname@example.com.
What is the Creative Rights Partnership with the BBC?
What does the Creative Rights Partnership mean for directors?
What do the 'Creative Rights' cover?
Why is it important to have a Creative Rights Partnership?
What other issues will you be looking at next?
What shall I do if I believe my Creative Rights are being compromised?
What is the Creative Rights Partnership with the BBC?
View from Paul Unwin, Directors UK Vice-Chair
"We have all been there: late scripts, unrealistic budgets, close to impossible schedules. We have all felt that sense of being put in an impossible position and then having to take the blame when the end product isn't all that it promised to be. And we all know that in a highly competitive industry our strike rate is everything.
I got involved in Directors UK and the Creative Rights negotiation in particular because I felt the situation for directors had become critical. Talent was being abused and, importantly, what should have been good work turned out to be average.
Two and a half years later we have an agreement that goes a long towards changing that. For the first time we have with the BBC – and in time will roll it out across TV generally – a simple and clear way of defining what is expected of us and what is expected of our employers. It will make a difference both to us, and the quality of the work we make.
It is, obviously, an exciting document but it will only be as good or as useful as we make it. It requires directors right across the industry to work with DUK in ensuring that it is properly adopted. The Creative Rights Partnership is not just important, it is fundamental and marks a sea change in our position at work at every level and grade."
What does the Creative Rights Partnership mean for directors?
"This Partnership is great news for directors, for the BBC and for viewers as protecting directors at the centre of programme making will ensure the best possible work is delivered to the audience"
What do the 'Creative Rights' cover?
This Partnership is plain common sense, and in no way indulges the director at the expense of the production. It helps producers get the best and the most from the director, in fact its guidelines are so basic that many producers will find they already comply. Those who don't will benefit from a more joined-up workflow by doing so - not just for the director but for the entire production team as well.
"This excellent joint statement agreed by Directors UK and the BBC has shed a bright light on the grey area of our responsibilities and rights as directors, with a concise set of guidelines for all to see. I can see this only benefiting directors and producers alike."
Why is it important to have a Creative Rights Partnership?
"This Partnership is the single most important step taken to reverse the erosion of directors rights in the last decade. The Creatvie Rights Agreement is the first step in putting directors back in their rightful place: at the centre of the creative process in the British Film and Television Industry.'"
"The Creative Rights Partnership is fantastic news for all directors - in fact for anyone who cares about film and television in Britain. This isn't just the small print on our contracts, its official recognition of the critical role of the director in all productions. The sooner the agreement is rolled out beyond the BBC to all other British producers, the better."
"The Creative Rights Partnership re-establishes basic rights of British directors that had been steadily eroded over the past twenty years and firmly puts the director back centre stage in production. This is a crucial and timely agreement that gives proper recognition to the craft and responsibility of directing "
What other issues will you be looking at next?
"The Creative Rights Partnership is a major step forward for directors, for the first time recognising our vital contribution in the creation of distinctive, successful productions and opening a new chapter in the relationship between Directors UK and the BBC. "
"For too long directors' creative rights have been eroded and diminished and for some time, directors have had serious concerns about the damaging knock on effect this has had on our working conditions and on the work itself. So I am delighted that Directors UK have taken a major step to reverse this situation by initiating a new partnership with the BBC which aims to give clarity and structure to all issues that affect our creative rights in both drama and factual fields. In the future this can only lead to better working relationships with the BBC and a better quality of creative output, allowing us to get on with what we do best. I'm sure I speak for us all in expressing sincere thanks to all involved in getting us to this crucial stage. "
What shall I do if I believe my Creative Rights are being compromised?
"The Creative Rights Agreement with the BBC is a big step in the right direction for the whole team behind the scenes in both factual and fictional programme making - giving the director clear creative guidelines will enhance quality and ensure the best use of resources. The next aim is to extend these principles across the whole industry.'"


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Let's admit it. Blogging is weird and bloggers are weirdos.
At least in the eyes of other people. Our families and friends think we have lost a screw or two somewhere in the center of our head.
Many times people ask me what do I do online – and yes, this has never been an easy question to answer – I try my mightiest to explain it all in the terms they can understand, but all I get back in response is suspicious stares.
I bet they feel sorry for me and my wasted talents.
Regardless of how some of the bloggers have reached the pinnacle of success with blogging, for most bloggers it remains more of a chore that doesn't pay well. It's time consuming, exacting, and earns very little in the short run. Yet we continue to be mesmerized by this elusive genie.
Even though I patiently answer the blogging queries of my family, friends, and acquaintances, here is an imaginary dialog on 5 blogging facts I can't possibly risk having with my wife(to-be).
Her – "Uh.. say what? What do you get back from them?
Me – "Er.. nothing. It pleases me to be of some use to them.. and so what if I don't get anything back, we should be helpful to other people, shouldn't we?" I say defensively.
She squints at me suspiciously.
Her – "OK honey, you must be making a lot of money, that's why you give away so much for free!"
Me – "No darling.. I have to pay my hosting bills from my own pocket. Whatever I earn from my blog, I buy iPods and stuff with it and give it back to my valuable readers in blog competitions"
She stares back at me in shock.
Her – "Uh.. so that's really nice of you to be so good to your.. uh.. oh yeah.. readers. But have you made any real friends with this blog of yours?"
Me – "Yes sweetheart.. I've plenty of friends. I've been counting my friends the other day, and to my surprise, all my friends at Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Sphinn, Twitter, and Facebook add up to a couple thousand." I declare with a proud smile.
She stares at me with gaping mouth.
Her – "OK, this is really weird. What are those Digg and StumbleUpon thingummies?"
Me – "Ah.. now that's an interesting question. These are called social media sites. I go to these sites and add plenty of friends and spend hours promoting news stories as well as submitting new quality stuff.. and no honey, they don't pay me either" I finish reluctantly.
She shakes her head in disbelief.
Her – "Mohsin, I really am getting worried about you. Just one last thing.. where do you get all these ideas to write daily on your blog and all the stuff you submit to those sites you just mentioned?"
Me – "Don't worry honey.. that's just the way we bloggers are. And to answer your question, I have this thing on my computer called feed reader, where I can read all the hundreds of other blog posts and decide which ones to post about or submit to social media sites. This really is addictive.. oh.. hey.. what happened wifey?"
She faints.
How do you explain blogging to your family and pals?
I really enjoyed reading this article! It's so true to life.
My girlfriend is actually pretty cool with the whole blogging thing and gives me ideas for posts all the time. Explaining it to co-workers and friends is a bit more difficult. I just tell them that it's an online magazine for men covering guy things. I don't elaborate on Digg and StumbleUpon communities because unless they know about those site, they just don't get it!
Exactly the things I don't tell my boyfriend! LOL.
Christian, the thing with a few of them is that they insist on knowing more about blogging. And when you explain it to them, they react as though they've just seen the bogeyman!
Pelf, make sure you never do, or he'll start making fun of you. I tell you this from experience lol..
There is a great book by Og Mandito called "The Greatest Salesman in the World." In this book, Og concludes the following – by NOT mixing the two – one's professional life (e.g. blogger life) and personal life (e.g. spouse), one can be happily married to both and have both in one's life…therefore, one must not share intimate details about one's blogger life, lest one's spouse get upset, etc. In a way, our lives are like the Tao – with the yin and yang…both "touch" but ultimately must remain separate for that sacred balance to remain. Regards, Keith Johnson, M.S. Education, Hallandale, Florida
Good point Keith. But the biggest objection people have against blogging is that it's not a profitable profession in the short term. After all, you don't start earning money as soon as you start a blog. It's only after you have developed authority and credibility for yourself in the blogosphere, when the profits slowly start trickling in.
I equate bloggers with artists who can't pay the bills selling their art when they are small, but make millions selling each of their masterpieces when they are renowned and famous.
Very funny. I got a few chuckles because I can relate to it. Like most comedy, it's funny because it's true:-)
This one was comical…I like the off-beat nature to it, but yet it presents a realistic representation of how people misunderstand bloggers and blogging
One person kept calling it "blobbing" and asking how my blob was. It was at that point that I stopped explaining blogging to anyone. Now I just say that I'm a writer on the internets.
So perfect. My Mom and I were just having this conversation over the phone this morning.
And what do you do?
I blog.
I've given up on explaining because just like this post, the weird stare with the mouth slightly open in shock… that's just priceless.
That said, I do appreciate the question that follows "what's a blog?" Sooo you don't get on the Internet too much do ya?
Great post, stumbled and sphunn.
that's so true!
me: "I got a stumble hit!"
her: "a what?"
me: "20,000 visitors in one night!"
her: "wow! how much money did that earn you?"
me: "well, just 3 dollars on adsense, but that's not the point. I got stumbled!"
her: "3 dollars…" (walks off with the non-understanding shake of head.
true story!
this is really funny and hits home as I've had someone in the family tell me I spend all this time on the internet 'in chat rooms' blogging
wish I had seen it before, I just published my weekend list of links..
It is hard to explain to non blogging people. When they look at me with glassy eyes, I try explaining by saying things like "it's like I write a daily column, only it's online, not in a newspaper." That doesn't always work either…
Well, everyone, it's definitely comforting to know that I am not the only one frequently going through this annoying experience.
I love this post!! My family and friends do look at me weird when I tell them what I do at home and I do get some funny looks from people when they ask me what I do at home all day. I love blogging though and will keep doing it , even though I am a weirdo!! Thank you for this post.
hahah OH MAN.. well I dont think they quite get it..
Since my wife blogs it's not too hard to explain to her
Quite true. Although my wife doesn't bother asking anymore, nor does she bother to mention it to others. I think I avoid some of the questions because I have a "real" job in the outside world. LOL
How funny and how true. I've infected two co-workers with the "blog bug" but others just don't understand why anyone would care what you have to say online. Quite frankly, I felt the same way a year ago when I heard about blogging. I've since become a convert and use any available opportunity to preach to the masses.
Great post.
Hi great Article. You nod you head the whole time laughing. I love blogging, it has become a much a part of me as my daily chores. I have tried explainig to my husband who just nods his head, as much to say good honey you have a hobby. I have tried to get him to read my blog now for 6 months and haven't accomplished that. I doubt I will see the day he ever does. But only bloggers really understand the true addiction to quality blogging and the thrill of it.
Thanks for this post. A big thumbs up and I will definately be returning.
Funny Post but Oh so true. It's really hard to explain to non bloggers what this is all about.
Found your blog thru bloggingzoom, enjoyed reading it
Expect the Best,
This is so funny! I still have friends who insist to know the URL of my blog, so they can help me make money by clicking on my ads.
My partner doesn't have anything to do with blogging and internet marketing, although I try hard to drag himm into this, maybe we can travel more. Now we are limited by his vacations.
I read it twice!! and I laughed more than ever in the second time!
great article! stumbled!
That's really a nice one!
Blogging is truly addictive!
Q: How do you explain blogging to your family and pals?
A: I dont. My family wouldn't know what I'm talking about and I'd probably get beat up and a wedgie if I told my friends about my blogging.
Great post.
Hi Mohsin,
I must say you really have a great knack for
being such a hilarious person!
Have you ever thought of doing a
podcast of some sort and then maybe
later make it some kind of online radio talkshow?
LOL. Just giving you a good suggestion.
Keep going bro,
Vern, thanks but I think you won't like my 'desi' accent.
That was hilarious, and oh so true. Just what I don't tell my husband. I'd be all happy about the rise in traffic that I'm getting when I check my stats, he thinks I'm making more money, when in fact I hardly made any.
And then he shakes his head and asks me why I even bother.
Tsk tsk tsk
Ok, I've laughed hysterically imagining every scene as I progressed along. So true.. although the character in the story may be switching from spouse to someone else. ^^ Think you've just sparked an idea somehow. Thanks. Stumbled it.
social media/blogging
Hi, your page is beautyfull Many thanks for sharing.
Dear Mohsin
for some reason people think im crazy. and when people see me always on the computer they get all worried and stuff. And some people dont think im crazy but the people that do are the people who's opinions matter like my wife and my friends and work peers. And when i was around the age of 9 my parents sent me to therapy, then when i got married to my beautiful wife, she even made me go to therapy. Even the therapist thinks im a "nutty butty". And right now im sitting at the one thing that gives me most of my friends… the computer. And here is one of my deepest secrets… my best friend is a dog. =(
P.S. sometimes i think my wife is going to divorce me because she thinks im crazy. Xd
mason im not going to divorce you!
and i dont think your crazy!
fine i am going to divorce you!
and i do think your crazy!
sorry i found someone else
bye bye
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COLUMBIA CITY — While Iotron Industries, USA may have been celebrating its grand opening, it was also playing host for the first time, with the guest of honor being the Whitley County Economic Development Corporation (EDC) and it's annual meeting.
This year's meeting was titled "Outlook 2012".
EDC President Alan Tio began by speaking about last year's meeting and how at the time, the EDC was just welcoming Iotron into the Whitley County fold.
Tio said it was only fitting a year later, the company was hosting the same event while also cutting the ribbon to open its doors.
"Iotron serves as a great case study of the work we do at the EDC," Tio said.
Tio said the EDC has spent the last year working with local businesses, referencing 80/20 and its 90,000 square-foot expansion in the Park 30 Business Center.
Whitley County Council, Whitley County Redevelopment Commission, Indiana Economic Development, WorkOne Northeast and Ivy Tech are just some of the entities the EDC has partnered with over the last few years, according to Tio.
"Over the last four or five years, we've worked very hard to use economic development to support the specific needs of our industry clients, wherever they may be throughout the county," said Tio.


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Life insurance tip of the day - June 17
By Mortgage Protection and Insurance Services Inc.
Mortgage Protection & Insurance Services, Inc.
Check online with the individual life insurance companies to make sure that you are using the most current application and that you are using the correct application for that state.
All too often we carry around outdated applications in our brief cases and in our cars. Every time you have to go back to a client for a signature on a form, you are risking the chance of them changing their minds.
Save yourself time and embarassment by keeping your forms inventory up-to-date.


text:
Billiards Digest Forums
Billiards Forum
Cue Chalk Board
> Power draw
View Full Version :
Power draw
I can draw the ball back about half the table. I wonder is the stroke on a power draw the same,other than hitting the cue ball harder.
Scott Lee
Drop 1...There is a significant difference in reaction of the CB, between hitting the CB "harder", which generally translates to a tighter grip and forced 'punch' through the CB; and a loose grip, but higher speed swing (with the proper finish)...which will give you a heck of a lot more action on the CB. In simple terms, you get more action using the weight of the cue and timing, than you get with using force alone.
Scott Lee
Very well stated, Scott. It's hard to get that across to beginners, and even some intermediates.
Use a striped ball for practice. Chalk well before each draw shot, especially around the sides of the tip. Inspect the tip under the light. Make sure there are no dark spots and that you did a good job chalking.
Then shoot the striped ball to far end of table with draw. A typical players draw will get the striped ball to rotate backwards to about halfway down the table, then it will begin to slide, then it will begin a forward roll.
The idea is to keep it rolling backwards all the way down to the end of the table. With the striped ball, you can clearly see if it is rotating backwards, sliding, or has a forward roll.
I've noticed you keep asking about draw shots. This is good. I spent a long time working on my draw shots, and it has paid off big time.
I'll get trashed for what I am about to say, but here goes anyway... I tried out different tips and different shapes of tips for draw. I get the best draw and the most consistent draw with a hard Moori (Q) dime shaped tip which always has the same surface condition.
I always keep it a dime shape, and about once a week I lightly sand the tip with dime shaped sandpaper shaper.
Along with *always* chalking well, I *always* am shooting with a tip which is in the *exact* same shape and condition.
Then next I line up a row of balls across the table near the center pockets. Then place cue ball 1 diamond back. I practice drawing back 1 diamond, 2, 3, half table, full table (comes back to rail then goes back to center of table).
More often than not, in games, I can draw back pretty much the distance I want. 6 inches, 1 ft., 1/2 table, etc. I feel always playing with the same weight cue, same exact tip, and same quality of chalking - along with years of practice is what allows me to be accurate on my draws.
For a power or long draw, what helps me do this is a closed bridge, very loose grip on butt (maybe just two fingers gripping cue), tons of follow through, and a last second "wrist flick" just before the tip hits the cue ball.
So good for you for working on your draw. I got ticked several years ago because I would draw back too far, not at all, or not enough. I spent a *lot* of time and money trying different tips, different tip shapes, different hardness of tips, etc. I was just determined to figure out how draw shots worked and how to do them.
Also note that the cloth on the table, if slow cloth, will not give you as much draw. And some cue balls (in bars) in really terrible condition are difficult to draw. These have a dull look and are pitted all over from years of flying onto the floor. The best draw will be on fast cloth with a brand new cue ball which has been coated with silicone lubricant.
Some good advice has already been posted in this thead.
The only things that really matter are stick speed and cue tip offset at impact. Whatever works best for you to generate stick speed and to accurately hit the cue ball low and consistently without miscuing is the way to go.
FYI, other advice on how to do that can be found in the threads linked under "draw" in the threads summary area of my website (http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/pool/threads.html).

Quote Drop1:
 I can draw the ball back about half the table. I wonder is the stroke on a power draw the same,other than hitting the cue ball harder.

Fran Crimi
I think that the biggest barrier players have to overcome in executing the power draw shot is the psychological barrier. Most people need to feel some sort of control in what they do. Shots like the power draw involve the art of letting go. The more of a control-type personality the player has, the more difficult it will be to allow themselves to let go.
The need for control is simply a manifestation of fear---with shots like the power draw, the fear being to overdo the stroke and maybe, look like a fool, or rip the cloth, or miss the ball altogether.
I see it all the time with players trying to power draw a shot. It's as if I can almost hear them saying to themselves during the stroke, "Okay, that's enough now. Ease up a bit. Don't want to lose control."
Another big control issue is not going low enough on the cb. Go low. Miscue under the ball if you have to until you can overcome that fear. See...the worst happened...you misuced and you didn't die.
My advice is go ahead and allow yourself to let go. Let your stroke all the way out. Try to rip the cloth. It's not going to happen. But what may happen, is that you may wind up drawing the cb back the length of the table.
And don't forget to gauge the results. If you're hitting the ball really really hard and it's not drawing back, then you're not hitiing it low enough.
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Posted at: 01/30/2013 6:04 PM
Updated at: 01/31/2013 9:59 AM
U.S. Steel's CEO, John P. Surma, spent time in Minneapolis on Wednesday, sharing more about the company and their goals.
"What we're about in Minnesota, and what we do, is mine, employ, and invest. We are also trying to be an environmental leader in the taconite industry," he told the crowd of several hundred at the Minnesota Economic Club.
He highlighted the importance of Minntac and Keetac to their operations. "U.S. Steel would likely be a very, very different company without them, if indeed we would be a company at all. That's how important they've been to us over the years."
He and his team brought samples of raw taconite and iron ore pellets for the crowd, many of whom have never been to the mines.
Surma brought up the proposed expansion at Keewatin Taconite, which includes the re-start of an idled line. It would mean 75 new jobs, 25 more years of mine life, and a boost in production for Keetac. This was announced in 2008, before the recession. Now, it remains on hold.
"The project is on hold, while we look at business conditions, and some proposed regulatory standards that would be relevant to the project," he said to the crowd.
When asked if the sulfate standard and NOX levels are a concern at a press conference afterwards, he said those are regulations they are looking at, but that overall, some uncertainty in what's happening in Minnesota is a concern.
He did say that the Minntac extension that's being worked on is really setting up the mine for the long term.
Also, U.S. Steel is going to be part of the new Iron Ore Alliance, which is going to help build more awareness in the state about the importance of mining. The United Steelworkers are also part of the group.
Surma met privately with Governor Mark Dayton, the Range delegation, IRRRB Commissioner Tony Sertich, and other business leaders, from companies like Minnesota Power.
As for the industry outlook, Surma said that we can expect some growth in 2013, but it may not be as robust as earlier in the decade. "We could see some single digit increases in the United States."


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