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Patrick Combs
A story of Man v Bank as superb storyteller Patrick Combs recalls how he deposited a fake $95,093.35 junk mail cheque into his bank account as a joke – and it cleared.
March 4-16. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE. 7.15pm; £10-£15. sohotheatre.com.
Bill Bailey
Warm-up for the comic's Qualmpeddler show, which features feelings of unease and apprehension, religious dubstep and 'Horntallica' and even, it's rumoured, a dub version of Downton Abbey.
March 6 & 7. Leicester Square Theatre, 6 Leicester St, WC2H 7BX. leicestersquaretheatre.com.
Give It Up for Comic Relief
Giant comedy gig. Giant venue. Giant cause. Some of the biggest names in comedy, including Simon Amstell, Frankie Boyle, Russell Brand, Doc Brown, Jimmy Carr, Noel Fielding, Eddie Izzard and Jason Manford bring the laughs alongside music from Jake Bugg, Paloma Faith, Noel Gallagher, Kasabian, Jessie J, Rizzle Kicks, Emeli Sandé and Nicole Scherzinger.
March 6. Wembley Arena, Arena Square, HA9 0AA. 7.30pm; £54. rednoseday.com.
War Child Comedy Night
Top comedians supporting War Child tonight include Seann Walsh, Stewart Lee, Tony Law and Ava Vidal.
March 8. Shepherd's Bush Empire, Shepherds Bush Green, W12 8TT . Doors 6.30pm; £22.50.-£28. o2shepherdsbushempire.co.uk.
Andrew Lawrence
The Stand Up For the Week regular is back on the road following a 50-date tour of the UK, with show Andrew Lawrence: Is Coming to Get You.
March 11-30. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE. Doors 9/9.30pm; £10-£17.50. sohotheatre.com.
Loretta Maine
Downtrodden comedy banshee Maine returns with a batch of hilarious new songs – numbers like These Ain't My Tits and Chicken Shop – and plenty of fresh mascara running down her cheeks.
March 12-16. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE. Doors 9.45pm; £10-£15. sohotheatre.com.
David Baddiel
The British comedian, novelist and television presenter heads to Soho for Fame: Not the Musical, a series of work-in-progress shows and his first proper stand-up for 15 years.
March 18-23. Soho Theatre. 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE. sohotheatre.com.
Louis CK
The first UK show from the cult US sitcom star since 2009, during which time he has won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing For A Comedy. Refreshingly, these two gigs are arena-sized but with a reliably low ticket price
March 20 & 21. The O2, Peninsula Square, SE10 0DX and Hammersmith Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, W6. Doors 6.30pm; adv £35. theo2.co.uk.
Teenage Cancer Trust Benefit
If ever there was more proof that comedy is the new rock 'n' roll, Oasis's Noel Gallagher has assembled a knock-em-for-six line-up of stand-up talent. Russell Brand and Noel Fielding head up the bill.
March 20. Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, SW7 2AP. Doors 6.45pm; £170 (gold fan package). teenagecancertrust.org.
Paul Tonkinson
The Yorkshire man, marathon runner and double award-winning Time Out Comedian of the Year, Tonkinson takes to the road for the very first time, with his eagerly-anticipated debut tour, Fancy Man.
March 22-24. Leicester Square Theatre, 6 Leicester St, WC2H 7BX. Doors 7pm; £10-£12. leicestersquaretheatre.com.
Doctor Brown
The "malevolent Mr Bean", aka Phil Burgers's silent character Doctor Brown, returns with his Befrdfgth show. Evening Standard's Bruce Dessau said of its Edinburgh debut last year that it was a "barnstorming wordless performance" and one of the most "fearless full-impact" festival appearances of recent years. Don't miss.
March 25-April 20. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean St, W1D 3NE. Doors 7.30pm; £12.50-£20. sohotheatre.com.
Viv Stanshall's Seventieth Birthday Party
Rave-reviewed stage show based upon Vivian Stanshall's classic 1978 LP, featuring a complete performance of Sir Henry At Rawlinson End, plus sundry recollections and interjections from Neil Innes and other special guests.
March 25. Bloomsbury Theatre,15 Gordon St, WC1H 0AH. Sold Out. thebloomsbury.com.
Harry Hill
Two, rare stand up appearances from slapstick hero Harry Hill in his latest show, Sausage Time. He's joined by his show band The Harrys and TV Burp characters, Harry's fictional son Gary and grandson Sam.
March 26 & April 11. Hammersmith Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline St, W6. Doors 8pm; £30. hammersmithapollo.
- More about:
- Bill Bailey
- Comedy


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Barbara Palvin looks chic and glam in 1940's inspired photoshoot for Vogue Australia September. The photographer is Eric Guillemain, who follows the model in afternoon stroll. The stylist, Naomi Smith, chose retrò and romantic clothes from Rochas, Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu, Marni. The return to classicism is obtained with beauty tips from Paolo Ferreira and Tina Rovainen.
Check out these pics:

subset: commoncrawl


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|make 4 cylinder faster?
|Tuning and Electronics This forum is for tuning devices for the 4g eclipse from piggyback systems to full Stand Alones, Fuel Controllers, EGT readings, Data logging, PCM tuning, Air/Fuel readings and data. Discussions of Installations, Wiring & Tuning.
Welcome to the Club4G Forums where you can join fellow owners from all over North America discussing anything related to the 2006+ Mitsubishi Eclipse. You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. To gain access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content, you must register today!
All of this and much more is available to you absolutely free when you register for an account. Sign up today!
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|May 29th, 2010, 07:05 AM
|#1 (permalink)
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2010
Vehicle: 07 mitsubishi eclipse es
Posts: 1
make 4 cylinder faster?
Just bought a 07 eclipse es....it is an automatic due to wife not being a good manual driver..anyways,i wanna make it faster...seems like it dont have like any pick up speed...its not slow but def, know it can be much faster is there a chip u can buy,or would it help if i through a kn air filter and new muffle on it? not very knowledgeable about souping up cars,more basic maintence..anyone please let me know thoughts!
|May 29th, 2010, 09:00 AM
|#2 (permalink)
Senior Member
Name: Mark
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Baltimore, MD
Vehicle: Phantom Black Evo X SE
Posts: 703
here is one link to help you out.
Beginner's Guide to modding
We have a GS specific section too..the best way to gain info. is to use the search tool..
Welcome! =)
|07 eclipse, air, air filter, automatic, buy, cars, chip, driver, eclipse, faster, filter, good, manual, move, pick, quicker, speed
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Seach across 1000's of organizations for the evidence you need & save to your own custom reading lists for reference.
Stay up to date on the latest evidence and research. Subscribe to our issue-based alerts.
Add your organization's publications to IssueLab's distributed network of open access repositories.
For many foundations, collaboration is key to advocating for policy and practice change. But these kinds of partnerships can be challenging to execute well. "Sticking points", like conflicts over decision-making power or competition for resources, can derail advocacy-focused efforts and make even the most earnest collaborator wary. Given the current conversation around philanthropy's role in funding …MORE


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If you like these pricey little bars they sell at Starbucks, here's a deal for you:
Pay $10 (plus shipping) for $25 worth of KIND bars, via Groupon. The boxes they sell on the Web site seem to start at $35. The bars in the boxes are $1.49 each, as opposed to $1.99 retail, the site says, so with the Groupon you'll be getting substantially below what you would pay at Starbucks.
Disclosure: Affiliate link! If you buy, I'll earn credits and maybe I'll use them on a limo tour of Napa! Basically, you better not buy if you want to save me from myself.


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Hotel Real Zapopan
Select your stay dates to check availability at Hotel Real Zapopan
Hotel Real Zapopan
About the Hotel
Property Location
With a stay at Hotel Real Zapopan, you'll be centrally located in Zapopan, steps from Basilica de Zapopan and Museo Huichol Wixarica de Zapopan. This hotel is within close proximity of Plaza de las Americas and Municipal Palace of Zapopan.
Stay in one of 40 guestrooms featuring flat-screen televisions. Complimentary wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and cable programming is available for your entertainment. Bathrooms have showers and complimentary toiletries. Conveniences include phones with free local calls, and housekeeping is provided daily.
Pamper yourself with onsite massages or enjoy recreation amenities such as a health club.
Grab a bite to eat at the hotel's restaurant, which features a bar, or stay in and take advantage of room service (during limited hours). Quench your thirst with your favorite drink at a bar/lounge. Cooked-to-order breakfasts are available daily for a fee.
Business, Other Amenities
Free self parking is available onsite.
Hotel Facilities
- Free WiFi
- Health club
- Smoke-free property
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Bar/lounge
- Free self parking
- Total number of rooms - 40
- 24-hour front desk
- Restaurant
Room Facilities
- Free local calls
- Private bathroom
- Phone
- Shower only
- Flat-panel TV
- Room service (limited hours)
- Free WiFi
- Free toiletries
- Cable TV service
- Daily housekeeping
Hotel Policy
Know Before You Go
- No pets and no service animals are allowed at this property.
The following fees and deposits are charged by the property at time of service, check-in, or check-out.
- Fee for cooked-to-order breakfast: MXN 50 per person (approximately)
The above list may not be comprehensive. Fees and deposits may not include tax and are subject to change.Show all hotel policy Show less hotel policy


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Tom The Foto Guy Photographer
Aria BellModel Female Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
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About MeHello! I am a sophomore at the University of Minnesota studying Psychology. I am a dedicated student who loves staying fit by rock climbing, running, and weight lifting.
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Rotary Club of Woodside / Portola Valley
P.O. Box 620700, Woodside, CA 94062-0700
Eric Shapira Donna Baranski-Walker
District Governor Club President
The Searsville Scene
Pres. Allen Cary will introduce Dave Hyman, better known as Pres. of The Sunrisers and caterer non plus ultra, will share with us his story of how the U.S. Navy made a SEAL out of him (in his younger days, that is.)
LAST WEEK: Working with dreams
Dr. Jean Schellenberg is a licensed Psychologist practicing in Portola Valley. She has been working with dreams in her practice for the last 8 years. Last year she offered five free seminars to the community on working with dreams, establishing a "safe place" and exploring symbols through sand play. Last week she shared with us some of the content of the dreams seminar. She gave us some homework to study: a dream story and some suggestions and sample questions designed to help us go more deeply into dreams.
The dream story was one told by one of her patients some years ago. The patient graciously allowed Jean to use it in her seminars. The story has been useful in introducing the subject of working with dreams to persons that have not dealt with dreams before.
Jean brought along her friend, Eleanor Angel, to participate by reading the dream. After reading aloud through the dream for familiarization, Eleanor read it scene by scene and we discussed and asked questions about various aspects of the events and characters in the dream. It was a good thinking exercise and many good questions and comments came forth.
President Allen Cary called on Dean Babcock to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance to deliver the invocation. Visiting Rotarian was Jean Cary from the RC of Belmont. Guest of Jean Schellenburg was Eleanor Angel. Ken Hayes spoke of the good work being done by the Girls Club of the Midpeninsula and we discussed providing some financial support for the them.
Allen Cary reported that the RC of Belmont is sponsoring "Walking for Ben." He provided flyers with details on the event. Barbara Schmidt reported that RC of Belmont has funds to match Rotarians contributions towards their Paul Harris award. We are close to being a 100% Paul Harris sustaining club, only need two more.
Dave Hyman announced the St. Patrick's Day Corned Beef and Cabbage Dinner and Silent Auction sponsored by the Menlo Park clubs.
At that point a Barbershop Quartet appeared to deliver singing Valentines to the ladies along with roses. The quartet consisted of Steve - lead, Chuck - bass, Dave – baritone and Mark – tenor. They are members of the Palo Alto – Mt. View Chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.
Happy's were collected from Dave Hyman who was happy he was able to participate as a Science Fair judge at Woodside Elementary School since he flunked 7th grade science as a kid. He's a lot smarter and wiser now. Art Barker was happy to celebrate a birthday of his oldest granddaughter. Sam Sauerbry was happy about the BBS quartet Valentines. Donna Baranski-Walker was happy that she was going to meet a Methodist minister who has shown the Rebuilding Homes film to 158 churches. Bob Buelteman was happy about birthdays. Mary Jane had mixed feelings; they had a contract on sale of their house – sob! She applied to get her job back at American – Yeah! Allen Cary paid a fine because he didn't show for the Science Fair. Jean Carey pulled Barbara Schmidt's number for the raffle. The marble was white, thanks Barbara.
Ken Broome, Joan Fuetsch and Renée Singh
25 February -- Bill Davis of DK Consulting gives an overview of his company's projects including past projects in Latin America and a current project setting up a Palestinian justice system.
17 March – Samantha Dowdall Ph. D. will discuss with us the ever-growing need for safe, affordable housing and social support for the seniors in our community.
21 April– Chris Buja of Portola Valley will discuss his involvement in Summit High School. This is a new charter high school serving Woodside and Portola Valley .
1 May – Seventh annual Pancake Breakfast with Woodside parade and run for charity.
12 September – Pooch Pageant at Portola Valley Town Center .


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I first wanted to focus on the other aspects of EFContrib, but I finally sat down and finished the last missing piece of EFContrib: full inheritance support for both the server bits and the client bits.
Most work was in the serialization actually, since the surrogate classes need to now also serialize the properties of base types.
I'm working on a sample right now that will show off the system in WPF. But you can check out some of the code in the test project. This is the domain I'm using:
In the following code I'm using it.
Lines 31 to 41 represent the client. For testing purposes I created a copy of the domain with the suffix Client. In normal usage this would obviously not be necessary. The client remembers all the original values, which allows the server to build up an efficient graph when it is time to attach.
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© Copyright 2017, Ruurd Boeke


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2nd call for papers
Expand Messages
- Apologies for cross postings
Current Issues in Tourism: Special Issue on "animals in the tourism and leisure experience"
Guest editor: Dr Neil Carr (Department of Tourism, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. Email: ncarr@...)
Call for papers
Animals may be divided into wildlife, domesticated farm and working animal, pet, companion animal, and assistance animal categories. Increasingly, each of these types of creature plays a key role, both as attractions for human beings and consumers of experiences, in the construction and success of tourism and leisure environments. This increase in the importance of animals in the tourism and leisure experience is related to changing patterns in humans' leisure and tourism desires, the changing relationship between humans and animals, and the evolution of concepts concerning the rights of animals. The growth in the interest of leisured people and tourists in animals has been reflected in the expansion of publications focused on 'wildlife' tourism and leisure, incorporating the hunting of these animals for trophies (ranging from the whole animal, to part of it, and the taking of photographs) and the education of tourists and leisured people about the importance and needs of wildlife. This work has been split between zoos and other areas where wildlife has been enclosed, predominantly in locations removed from the natural habitats of the wildlife, and nature-based tourism. However, the position of other segments of the animal population in tourism and leisure experiences remains largely under-studied. Furthermore, there is a need to integrate developing theories of animal rights within the framework of tourism and leisure experiences that have traditionally been designed to cater to the desires of the human population, utilising animals as products rather than sentient creatures with individual 'rights' and 'needs' in the process.
Consequently, to expand the current understanding of the position of animals, both wild and domesticated, in tourism and leisure experiences and the rights of humans and animals in these experiences Current Issues in Tourism presents a special issue on "animals in the tourism and leisure experience". This special issue will contribute to the development of conceptual/theoretical models concerning the relationship between tourists, leisured people, the tourism and leisure industry, and animals. These models will aid the construction of management strategies that ensure the rights and health of animals and humans in the leisure and tourism experiences.
The guest editor invites interested researchers to contribute theoretical and/or empirical papers related to the theme of this special issue. The topics of potential manuscripts include, but are not limited to:
* Preservation of animals and their environments through tourism and leisure
* The role of zoos as tourist and leisure attractions and centres of ecological education
* The presence of animals in tourism and leisure environments
* The relation between gastronomic tourism/leisure and the quality of life of farm animals
* The social, health, and economic costs and benefits of domestic animals in the leisure and tourism experience for humans
* Hunting within the tourism and leisure experience; the rights of animals versus the needs of humans
* The changing role of the farm animal in the context of rural tourism - from food product to tourist attraction
* What happens when human pleasures and animal needs meet
Submission Guidelines
1. In the first instance authors are invited to submit a 300 word abstract for consideration for the special issue. Selected authors will then be asked to produce a full paper based on their abstract
2. In addition to the submission guidelines associated with full papers for Current Issues in Tourism (which can be found at www.currentissuesintourism.com/submissions.html) the following guidelines should be followed:
3. Electronic submissions should be sent by e-mail attachment to ncarr@....
4. Ideally, papers should be sent as Microsoft Word files
5. Articles should normally be between 5,000 and 25,000 words in length. Please note that Current Issues in Tourism especially welcomes substantive papers of between 15,000 and 25,000 words in length.
6. All submissions will be anonymously reviewed by two independent assessors.
Important Dates:
Abstract deadline: 31st September 2007
Submission of full paper deadline: 30th June 2008
Special issue publication: December 2008/February 2009
Your message has been successfully submitted and would be delivered to recipients shortly.


text:
high school students + E46
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Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 509
My Ride: 330Ci 6 Spd, 335Cic
View My Garage
Originally Posted by
I WISH I'd had this car in high school.
Make sure you're doing your maintenance and not just doing angel eyes and LED's and HID's and tint, gentlemen.
It doesn't matter whether you worked for $3 an hour mucking horse stalls to buy your e46 or whether your daddy left one in your stocking Christmas morning - you're an e46 owner with all the same rights and responsibilities as the rest of us. Nobody is better that anybody else. In fact, I have great respect for anybody taking on the work of maintaining their car as a high schooler. I probably couldn't at that age.
Thank you! Someone who gets it!
My car is mine if my grades are good and I have a job, if not, it's gone. Since labor is so expensive, I try to do everything I can by myself, and all my money goes to parts, so I have yet to do anything cosmetic such as angel eyes yet
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No.28, Seethammal Road, Alwarpet, Chennai 600 018. Phone:91.44.4265.8552 E-Mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
The academic year of 2006-2007 is the year of inception of our school but if one casts an eye on what our school has achieved in this one year one would definitely not label it as an infant school.
There has been no looking back since the day we had our Homam on June 1st 2006, invoking the blessings of all the gods to help us in our new venture. The orientation programme held for the parents of our tiny tots with Mrs. Aparna Vidyanath, a child counselor and Dr.Jayam, pediatrician, attached to Vijaya Hospital addressing the audience, was a hit with all of them.
There has been no dearth of visitors from abroad wanting to see our school and interacting with our school children. We had a couple of teachers from the Beauchamp College in U.K. followed by three Principals of reputed schools in Singapore whose main purpose of visit was to observe the way English language and mathematics were taught in the Primary classes. The Dance Troupe from The Kantharuby Dance Academy in South Africa left our audience of small children breathless and mesmerized with their hypnotic beat of the drums and their vigorous dancing. We also had the Head Teacher of our partner school (The Edward Richardson primary School, Tetford), Mr. Andrew Hyde visiting us along with a colleague of his, Ms.Angela who teaches the 3rd std. children in the month of March They spent a fruitful week at the school observing, assimilating, and digesting everything around them .They even had an interactive session with the teachers as well as the students wherein they exchanged their viewpoints on the various aspects of teaching and learning that they had observed in our school.
As far as our own shores are concerned we had stalwarts in various fields such as Padma Bhushan Dr Padma Subrahmanyam, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Dr.G.Balasubramaniam, Dr.Mrs.Vijayanthimala Bali, Mrs.Latha Rajnikanth etc visit us sometime or the other and bless us.
As far as cultural activities are concerned it was a BONANZA this year with festivals such as Nagapanchami, Onam,Pongal and Guru purab being celebrated with great fervor and gusto with both the staff and the students participating very enthusiastically. Our Sports Day and The Annual day Celebrations was attended by all the parents and VIPs such as Dr. Mrs. Y.G.P., Ms.Kanimozhi.Ms Joshna Chinappa, the squash Champion, Shri Y.G.Mahendra etc.
We also exposed the children to various aspects of nature and environment by taking them to the snake park and making them participate in a Nature walk sponsored by Air India to make people aware of the dangers facing our environment.
The children were given an opportunity to write the Australian Exam conducted by Macmillan in India and it was a proud moment for us when 3 of our students secured distinctions.
Our Correspondent and Trustee were invited to the Rashtrapati Bhavan where they met our President,Shri Abdul Kalam and apprised him of the various developments in our school After all it was His Excellency who had soft launched our school in December 2005.
With a year gone by, when one looks back, we feel like patting ourselves on our back for a GOOD job done.
YGP©2009. All Rights Reserved
Designed and Developed by Oliverstephenson.com


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YP - The Real Yellow PagesSM - helps you find the right local businesses to meet your specific needs. Search results are sorted by a combination of factors to give you a set of choices in response to your search criteria. These factors are similar to those you might use to determine which business to select from a local Yellow Pages directory, including proximity to where you are searching, expertise in the specific services or products you need, and comprehensive business information to help evaluate a business's suitability for you. "Preferred" listings, or those with featured website buttons, indicate YP advertisers who directly provide information about their businesses to help consumers make more informed buying decisions. YP advertisers receive higher placement in the default ordering of search results and may appear in sponsored listings on the top, side, or bottom of the search results page.
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Hey everybody,
I'm the new guy. I can't legally carry a gun in my state yet,so I don't. Yet. I do, however, currently LEGALLY carry a stungun, and three knifes. One being a larger seathed knife,and two being standard folder type with the pocket clip.
I'm 20 and engaged. My fiancee carrys 4 knifes herself,w00t. I build cars and race them as a hobby,and I'm generally called "crazy" as I am VERY energetic,and outgoing..


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Open daily from 10:00 to 17:45
Open Friday from 10:00 to 22:00
Full of crafting humor and witty allusions, Mendoza's books gained immense popularity among Polish readers. The style of 1960 and 1970 provided inspiration for the whole book series, therefore I used some patterns from that period as a theme. I also used a comic books stroke and lively colors for the illustrations to emphasize the comedy style of the writer. Moreover, this characteristic, cropped frame of the pictures refers to the mystery story and underlines the criminal atmosphere in Mendoza's novels. To complete the project, I chose Tomas Brousil's Fishmonger typeface, designed endpapers and simple page layout.


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FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — The parents of an American woman found dead in her Florence apartment have thanked Italian authorities for having made an arrest in the case as they prepare to bury her in her adopted Tuscan homeland.
Paula and Walter Olsen issued a statement through their attorney Friday, a day after police arrested a Senegalese man on suspicion he killed Ashley Olsen after a night of cocaine-fueled sex followed by a fight.
According to his lawyer, 27-year-old Cheik Tidiane Diaw acknowledged that he had pushed Olsen twice to the ground after she pushed him. But he says he never strangled her and left her alive on her bed.
In the statement, the Olsens thanked Italian authorities "for their swift apprehension of the perpetrator."


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China Recycling Energy Corp. (CREG.OB) Posts FY 2009 Results, Reporting Impressive Hikes across the Board
China Recycling Energy Corp. is a leading provider of industrial waste-to-energy technologies in China. The company recently posted its full-year 2009 financials and offered guidance for fiscal 2010, reporting a 130 percent hike in revenues.
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2009, CREG posted revenues at $44.2 million, up 130 percent from $19.2 million reported for 2008. Product sales contributed $38.3 million, or 86.6 percent, of the total revenue in 2009, compared with $8 million, or 41.9 percent, of the total revenue in 2008.
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2009, income from operations grew 229 percent to $13.5 million, up from $4.1 million reported for 2008.
Net income increased to $9.7 million for the 2009, or fully diluted EPS of $0.21, up from a net loss of $2.2 million, or a loss of $(0.07) per share reported for the year prior.
Gross profit was $10.63 million for the 2009, as compared to $5.22 million for the same period in 2008, representing a gross margin of approximately 24 percent and 27 percent for the year ended Dec. 31, 2009, and 2008, respectively.
The company attributes the solid results to modifications in its growth strategy and said that the positive results are a trend it plans to continue.
"We are pleased to see that 2009 marked a significant year in the execution of our growth plan. We have been successfully continuing developing our Build-Operate-Transfer ("BOT") business model, delivering more comprehensive energy recycling solutions, and growing our recurring revenue bases while diversifying the mix of our customers," Guohua Ku, chairman and CEO of CREG stated in the press release. "Looking ahead, we are more confident in our continued growth in 2010 and beyond, since we are in full swing rolling out our efforts to fulfill the engagement in various phases for all our projects with all partners, including Erdos Metallurgy and Sino Steel Group."
As of December 31, 2009, CREG reported cash and cash equivalents at $1.1 million, compared with $7.3 million at year-end 2008, a decrease of $6.2 million.
The company also gave guidance for 2010, saying that it expects revenues between $68 million and $72 million, and net income between $18 million and $20 million.


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Friday, January 20, 2012 |
Gloomy poet Edgar Allen Poe would have turned 203 years old this week, and for decades, a mysterious figure known as the Poe Toaster arrives at the author's grave in Baltimore on January 19, leaves a gift of three roses and half a bottle of cognac, and then vanishes. Since 1977, Jeff Jerome has been one of the people there to see it. Jerome is the curator of the Poe Museum in Baltimore. But two years ago, the Poe Toaster did not arrive. Nor did he show up the next year. Or last night. Thursday, As It Happens replayed Carol Off's 2010 interview with Jerome about the evident end of this spooky literary tradition, and then followed up with Jerome about what he said would be his last vigil.
"I always maintained that if he doesn't show up, I would spend the night the next two years, and after that I would safely assume that he has stopped, unless I get a phone call or a note from the guy," Jerome said. "But I look at it this way: If I was the Poe Toaster and I was going to stop, I would choose some Poe connection or event, rather than just stopping and not doing anything." The last appearance of the Poe Toaster was in 2009, which was the bicentennial of Poe's birth, so Jerome may be on to something.
In any case, the Poe Toaster has now failed to appear three years in a row (though three Poe Toaster "wannabes" appeared in the graveyard last night, according to Jerome), so Jerome has accepted that the tradition is over. Jerome admitted that the wannabes did make a good effort to look the part, but he maintains that there is only one true Poe Toaster out there, and his reign has ended.
The tradition of the Poe Toaster started in 1949, when a man first put three roses and cognac on Poe's grave. In the early 1990s, the staff at the Poe House received a note with one of the roses indicating that the "torch would be passed." And several years later, they received another note saying that the father had passed away, and that the two sons would be upholding the tradition. "So that's about all that we know, that it is a father and two sons' tradition," said Jerome. But he's given up trying to figure out who the Toaster might be. And now that three years have passed since the last sighting of the mysterious Poe fan, Jerome is retiring even the recent tradition of keeping watch all night to see if the Poe Toaster will return.
"I think it's obvious that the tradition has ended," said Jerome. "I say that with a heavy heart, and I don't take this decision lightly."
And what about all those half-filled bottles of cognac? Thirty bottles have been collected over the years, and Jerome doesn't drink from them. "I have a collection of bottles in the basement of the Poe House," he said. "I have no idea what I'm doing with them, I'm just keeping them."
Read more about Poe's mysterious death, and the tradition of the Poe Toaster.


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The city of Somerset has become just the latest local government to go into business in competition with some of its own taxpayers. What makes Somerset's venture unique is the area of competition it has chosen - gasoline.
The city has opened up its fueling station to the public as a no-frills gas station and is selling fuel basically at cost. It's unethical of course. But it serves the populist purposes of the city's mayor, Eddie Girdler.
Girdler says he is taking the action because fuel prices are just too darn high. That he says is hurting tourism in his community of 11,000 for which nearby Lake Cumberland is a major draw.
We don't think that thesis stands up to scrutiny. Most people with business backgrounds know that retail gas stations sell fuel on the thinnest of margins. They make most of their profit when the person who fills up with gas comes inside to buy a bag of ice and a couple of sodas in their convenience store.
The Somerset city gas station began selling gas at a price of $3.36 a gallon. Four local gas stations nearby were selling gas at $3.39 a gallon. The difference isn't going to make any consumers rich. It's 45 cents on a 15-gallon fill-up. But the city's venture is going to hurt local retailers by reducing the volume on which their fuel sales depend and more significantly, reducing the foot traffic in their convenience stores, where they make the bulk of their profits.
If the city of Somerset was selling gas at a savings of 25 cents a gallon it might have an argument that the local market was out of whack and deserved intervention. But at 3 cents a gallon, the move is not justified.
It's also unfair. The city doesn't have the same costs as the retail stations do, and it doesn't pay the same fees and taxes. It doesn't have to buy insurance for its gas station, because it already has it, courtesy of the taxpayers. It doesn't have to hire employees to operate the station, because it already has those as well, again courtesy of the taxpayers. Workers comp insurance? The taxpayers have them covered. Utility costs? The taxpayers are on the hook for that too.
All the city of Somerset is really accomplishing with this undertaking is to use taxpayer subsidies to try to drive all of the profit out of fuel sales by local commercial gas stations. That's just wrong.
Most communities don't use gas sales as the vehicle for intrusion into the private sector. Rather, the most common route is for city-owned utilities to get into the cable TV business. All of the same principles apply in terms of the unfairness of cities using tax money (or utility rates) to subsidize their labor and infrastructure costs while taxing and - in the case of cable - exacting tens of thousands in franchise fees from their private competitors.
It's bad enough when cities go after cable TV. Cable companies are, after all, big boys with a lot of resources with which to fight. But when cities start to get into operations that can be more of the mom and pop variety, like gas stations and, who knows, tire or repair services eventually, they've gotten pretty far out of their cage.
The interesting thing about Somerset is that politically it tends to be a conservative stronghold. Its fuel station undertaking is decidedly not conservative. In fact it's anti-business. And when it comes to future business recruitment efforts, we're not sure this is something Somerset really wants on its resume.
Check out these recently discussed stories and voice your opinion...


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This film is part sports, and part coming-of-age, but it shows an ex-beauty pageant queen finding herself and what really makes her happy. It's about taking risks, and coming into your own, while finding empowerment.
Reality Bites is all about that period of your twenties when you're completely consumed with self doubt. Lelaina, played by Winona Ryder, wants to become a filmmaker, but has to deal with the harsh realities of being on her own. This film deals with that all too familiar notion of needing to find yourself before you can become what you're meant to be.
On a related note, there's an NBC reboot of the movie set to come to TV very soon… it's the best/worst idea ever.
The Marks family is going through some seriously tough stuff: a mother in a health crisis, failing careers and marriages, insecurity, and having children. It tackles all of the hardships you'll face as an adult, and will help you realize that image isn't everything.
Plus, Jake Gyllenhaal is actually pretty cute in this one.
We all have that fantasy of traveling abroad and meeting a dashing stranger on a train, right? Well, that actually happens in Before Sunrise. It's a movie that proves you should take every opportunity that comes your way, especially if that opportunity involves a day with Ethan Hawke. It also shows that you can meet someone when you're least expecting it, and actually learn something from them. (Even if you don't see them again for years afterward.)
Another Nicole Holofcener film, Walking and Talking is about two best friends — played by Anne Heche and Catherine Keener — living in New York City. Heche's character is getting married, while Keener is dealing with the foibles of singledom. This movie is about finding happiness in yourself, and not relying on other people to make it for you.
Here's the thing about this movie: It's not a love story. Not really. It's about a guy who's stuck at a job he hates, because he's afraid to take a risk and pursue his actual architecture dreams. That is, until he's rejected by the girl of his dreams. Rejection is something we've all faced in our twenties, and that continues to be motivating even into adulthood.
Mike just got out of a six-year relationship, and he's having a hard time adjusting to single life. But after a trip to Vegas, and some L.A. bars, he starts to realize something: You'll only find what you're looking for when you agree to be yourself.
Scott Pilgrim is forced to step out of his comfort zone and experience life in order to fight for his dream girl. If you blink, you might miss the message that even though staying comfortable is easy, the real victory comes when you go out and live your life.
At least once in your twenties, everything will go to shit. Such is the case for Lola, as she suffers a nervous breakdown after her fiancé dumps her before their wedding. With the help of her friends, she attempts to rebuild her life, and realizes that the only way she can do that is if she learns how to stand on her own.
This is a movie that a lot of people love to hate, mainly because of the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing. And, ya know, other stuff. But at the heart of this film is the character of Andrew, who has done his best to numb himself to reality. When he goes back home for his mother's funeral, though, he goes off of his antidepressants and starts to really face his past. In doing so, he's able to move on and find happiness.
OK, hear me out: This film is about Erin and Garrett, who wind up in an unlikely long-distance romance. They're forced to decide how much it's worth to them, and if they're willing to sacrifice certain things to be together. It's a situation that many twentysomethings find themselves facing, and it begs a valuable question: How far are you willing to go for someone you love?
Poor Dewey Finn just wants to be a rockstar. (Don't we all?) But when he's kicked out of his band, he has to settle for plan B: filling in as a substitute teacher. This is a great film for anyone who's questioning why they went into teaching. Yet the real takeaway from Dewey is that you can find your passion in unlikely ways.
The great thing about Beaches is that you get to watch two best friends grow up together, from childhood into adulthood. You watch their twentysomething lives, as they live in a dumpy New York apartment, shift into their more stable thirties. This movie is perfect, because it reveals that life will throw out curveballs, no matter who you are. And even though bad things can happen, it doesn't mean that good can't come out of them. (Side note: You'll weep through most of this film.)
Much like Beaches, we get to see a few stages of life hurdles from the three best friends. First during their teen years, and the second stage as Taye Diggs' character gets ready for his wedding day. When he gets cold feet, it's up to his best friends to snap him out of it, and force him to look ahead instead of constantly looking back.
Post-Georgetown angst is the game of this film. Whether it's dealing with sex, the lackluster job market, or dealing with other people's expectations of what you should be. The lesson you take away is that at some point, you have to move on from college life so you can enter into adulthood.
Oh poor, stubborn, genius Will. He thinks he's soooo smahhht, with his apples, and writing on chalkboards. That is, until Robin Williams basically sets him straight: Book smart is one thing, actually experiencing life is another. Will is forced to face his past and present, even though it's painful. But in doing so, he's able to move forward and go see about a girl. Pretty good life lessons here, folks.
Jack Nicholson is arguably his best in About Schmidt, which follows the story of a retired insurance actuary as he begins to question whether or not he's made a dent in the world. This movie is especially great as you inch closer to 30, and start to wonder how you'll affect the world, and what you want your legacy to be.
Harold is obsessed with death, and dying, and funerals. Until he meets Maude, and then he starts to live his life with a little more hope. She teaches him a lesson in the importance of living life to the fullest, something we could all use a little of in our twenties.
When you sacrifice yourself, some bad things can happen, or so we learn in Waiting to Exhale. This story about four friends whose lives are turned upside down in their thirties almost serves as a cautionary tale. Give up your ambitions, and it may come back to haunt you. Stay stuck in the same spot emotionally and you'll get left behind. The list goes on, and all of it is wonderful.
The problem with going to your 10-year high school reunion, is that everyone expects you to be the person you were in high school. But what we learn from Romy and Michele, is that growing up means you let go of worrying about what other people think, and embrace who you really are. (An awesome fashion designer with great dance moves.)
Read more: http://buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/20-inspiring-films-to-watch-before-you-turn-30


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The White Horse Inn has had two helpful podcasts in a row about "youth ministry." I encourage you to listen to both. The issues were handled in this first program:
WHI-1204 | Youth Ministry in Crisis.
According to the most conservative estimates, over 60 percent of those raised in evangelical homes end up leaving church at age 18. In some cases the estimates range as high as 90 percent. So what are we doing wrong? Why are we failing to pass the faith on the next generation, and what should churches and parents do to address this crisis? To help answer these questions, I'll talk with J.I. Packer, Christian Smith, Thomas Bergler, Kenda Creasy Dean, and others as we introduce our new series on Youth Ministry.
Some of approaches (most already familiar to Lutherans) were discussed in this followup:
WHI-1205 | The State of Youth Ministry
Is your church's youth group part of the problem or part of the solution? That's the question Kim and I will be discussing on this program as we explore some of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary models of youth ministry. We'll have help from Alex Chediak, author of Preparing Your Teens for College, and Ryan Roach, a youth pastor in San Diego and creator of a blog titled Youth Ministry Reformation.


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Usually we can't get enough sleeping because of discomfort. The wrong mattress plays considerable part in it. If it is rather difficult for you to fall or stay asleep, your mattress doesn't provide you with much comfort or doesn't give you proper support for a complete relaxation. You'll have more refreshing sleep if your body is in its natural position.
It's rather easy to buy some comfortable mattress. Nevertheless, it's getting complicated to buy the best mattress. The choosing of bed frame and quality bed mattress is both important. The right size of mattress plays a great part in getting a proper rest and renewing your body.
When you decide which of the mattresses the best is, only your health is important. According to study results complaints of 4/5 people are related to different types of pain in back. It may be caused by not the most proper form of mattress. Nothing is better than a good night rest.
Your own mattress must be as convenient as possible but yet firm to provide you with the right support all night long. The best for you is one, meeting all the requirements of yours. Don't buy cheap one, buy a proper one. However, let's look at those we have available.
Latex Mattresses
Latex foam mattress is the first of my recommendations. It will surely become the fever in the latest sleep systems in USA, and in Europe it is already on the rise. Choosing it, you can change all your habits in sleeping without a doubt.
Sleeping on comfort latex foam mattresses you'll have no pressure on your body, because it supports your body smoothly. If you could once use such kind of mattress, you would understand that you have wasted a lot of time trying to fall asleep quickly and with comfort.
The latex foam mattress is made of a natural material. It is the sap of rubber trees. A memory foam mattress or a latex foam mattress are just godsend if you have some troubles with your back, insomnia or just want to have a good night's sleep. Having this type of mattresses, you can forget about tossing and turning. Look at mattress reviews this mattress has pressure equalization property. The experience of the highest comfort level of a latex mattress is better by far than what you have with the usual spring mattress. Such big names as Sealy, Serta are famous for their own line of latex mattresses.
When you buy a mattress, it all depends on you. It's you to sleep on it and have good nights or nightmares. When choosing one, you have to sit or lay on it so that you could understand whether it's convenient for you or not.
Buying a new sleep system, you make the biggest investment of your life. You contribute to your health. Nothing can be more important than this. Please, be cautious. Bed mattresses have a lot of features which you will want to know. There are basics and optional, but you have to know them all. Ask a sales manager about them. It's up to you whether you have the best sleep in your life or suffer from insomnia and trying to find a proper position to fall asleep.


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Tag: Murder
"…a face worthy of a murderer" (From Hell)
A page from Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's outstanding graphic novel From Hell, an encyclopedic account of the Jack the Ripper murders. In this scene, our evil protagonist Dr. Gull undergoes a transcendent experience, and appears to William Blake, inspiring The Ghost of a Flea.
I pulled the image of From Hell from this fantastic detailed review by Miguel at St. Orberose (far better than my own my own meager tackle at writing about the book). Plenty more images there, along with a comprehensive analysis of (what I take to be) Moore's best work.
Jason Schwartz's John the Posthumous Is a Dark, Disarming Novella
The strongest and strangest literature usually has to teach its reader how to read it, and, consequently, to read in a new way. Jason Schwartz's new novella John the Posthumous is strong, strange literature, a terrifying prose-poem that seizes history and folklore, science and myth—entomology, etymology, gardening, the architecture of houses, the history of beds, embalming practices, marital law, biblical citations, murder, drowning, fires, knives, etc.—and distills it to a sustained, engrossing nightmare.
What is the book about? Was my list too choppy? Our unnamed, unnameable narrator tells us, late in the book: "Were this a medical, rather than a marital history—you might then excuse so conspicuous a series." (His series, of course, is different from mine—or perhaps the same. John the Posthumous, as I'll suggest later, is a series of displacements).
So, John the Posthumous is a marital history. There. That's a summary, yes? Ah! But there's conflict! Yes, this is a book about adultery, about cuckoldry! ("Cuckoldry, my proper topic . . ."). Adultery is threaded into the titles of the three sections Schwartz divides his novella into: "Hornbook" — "Housepost, Male Figure" — "Adulterium." There's something of a poem, or at least a poetic summary just there.
Do you sense my anxiety about writing about the book? Some need to deliver a summation? Perhaps I'm going about this wrong. How about a sustained passage of Schwartz's beguiling prose. From the first book, the "Hornbook":
The lake is named for the town, or for an animal, and is shaped like a blade.
Adulterium, as defined by the Julian Statute, circa 13 B.C., offers fewer charms, given the particulars of winter, not to mention various old-fashioned sentiments concerning execution. Mutilation, for its part, is more common—the adulterous wife, or adultera, to use the legal term, surrenders her ears or nose, and, on occasion, her fingers—with divorce following in short order. Some transcriptions neglect the stranger, or adulterer, in place of graves—a simple matter of manners, this, not withstanding the disquisition upon the marriage bed. Others relate ordinary household details—dismantling the chairs, and visiting the windows, and departing the courtyard.
A gentleman, remember, always averts his eyes.
Cuckold's Point, near Brockwell, in London, is most notable for its gallows—the red sticks recall horns—and for the drowning of dogs.
Schwartz's narrator's sentences do not seem to flow logically into or out of each other. They seem to operate on their own dream/nightmare logic, as if the words of John the Posthumous were the concordance to some other book. The single line paragraph about the lake (source of its name not entirely determined; its shape best expressed in simile) shifts into a horrific legal history of adultery and then into Cuckold's Point, a bend in the Thames that owes its name to a simile.
Simile is perhaps the dominant mode of John the Posthumous. Schwartz's narrator condenses and expands and displaces his objects, his characters, his themes. Sentences sometimes seem to belong to other paragraphs, as if multiple discursive discussions wind through the book at once. Our narrator tells us that
The common wasp measures roughly two hundred hertz. This is well below the frequency of, say, a human scream. Anderson compares the sound of a dying beetle with the sound of a dying fly. (The names of the families escape me at the moment.) The common bee, absent its wings, is somewhat higher in pitch. (Carpenter bees would swarm the porch in August.) The true katydid says "Katy did" — or, according to Scudder, "she did." The false katydid produces a different phrase altogether, something far more fretful. Wheeler concludes with the house ant and the rasp of a pantry door. Douglas prefers a hacksaw drawn across a tin can. (We found termites in the bedclothes one year.) A sixteenth note, poorly formed, may be said to resemble a pipe organ or a hornet. The children set their specimens on black pins.
Here, entomologists (note how Schwartz always pulls his language from his reading, his research) try to describe the language of insects. Interspersed we get images of mutilation and impalement ("The common bee, absent its wings"; "The children set their specimens on black pins") along with interjections of insects infesting intimate domestic spaces ("We found termites in the bedclothes"). The passage also picks up the novella's motif of sharp objects ("a hacksaw drawn across a tin can"). There's something simultaneously banal and horrifying about the tone of this passage, its language a juxtaposition of scientific observation and cloudy personal recollections—all contrasted with "the frequency of, say, a human scream."
Infestation, violence, and betrayal shudder throughout John the Posthumous, erupting in strange moments of deferral and transference: "When the horse becomes a house, furthermore, termites appear on the floor," reads one bizarre line. "A woman says 'dear' or perhaps 'door,' and then two names—or perhaps only one," we're told. "Even the earliest primers compare the heart's shape to a fist or to a hand waving goodbye," the narrator points out.
At one point, the narrator laments: "how I regret these grisly, inexpert approximations." In context, he's working through a series of etymologies (linking shroud to groom and wishing that dagger had some connection to dowager), but the phrase—"grisly, inexpert approximations"—approaches describing the narrator's program of deferral and displacement.
Etymology repeatedly allows the narrator (an approximation of; an attempt at) a basis of description:
The doorframe disappoints the wall, as the wall disappoints the door. The mullions divide the yard into nine portions. But portions—or, if you like, portion—is an unlovely word. Guest and host, for their part, issue from the same root—ghostis. Which means stranger, villain, enemy—though naturally I had believed it to mean ghost. And the figure in the corner, lower right, is neither my daughter nor her hat, but just a paper bag in the grass.
The passage is remarkable. We begin with the mundane but symbolically over-determined image of a doorframe, along with an equally mundane wall and door—all connected, bizarrely, with the verb disappoints, producing an uncanny effect. The mundane mullions that divide the yard reveal the perspective of our narrator. He is looking out. He seems to be trapped in a house, but the house is always displaced, shifting—it's many houses. Portion leads him etymologically to ghostis (a root I've long been obsessed with), a word that condenses a series of oppositions—and, as the narrator points out, provides its own imaginary ghost. The final sentence shifts us again; it seems to belong to another paragraph. But perhaps not. Perhaps we continue to survey the wall, the door, the mullions—do we look out the window and see the figure that is not (and thus, in the realm of the narrator's program of imaginative displacement, is, or rather, approximates) his daughter or her hat? Is it a photo on the wall? Both?
I'm tempted to keep on in this manner, pulling out passages from John the Posthumous and riffing on them, but maybe that's a disservice to its potential readers, who I think should like to be assimilated by its strange strength on their own terms. Schwartz's narrative doesn't cohere so much as it enmeshes the reader, who must learn a new way of reading, of grasping (or releasing) his series of objects and histories and rumors and rituals.
The novelist and editor Gordon Lish (who has championed Schwartz) famously advised: "Don't have stories; have sentences." Great writing happens at the syntactic level, which cannot be separated from plot—the language is the plot. John the Posthumous embodies this aesthetic, creating its own idiom, composed from the real and the imaginary and the symbolic, an idiom that refuses to yield a straightforward calculus or grammar. The effect is wonderfully frustrating; the novel nags at the reader, confounds the reader, haunts the reader.
Haunt has its own strange etymology, likely deriving from the Old Norse heimta, "to return home," through to Old French hanter, "to be familiar with," popping up in Middle English haunten, "to use, to reside." We can take it all the way back to the Proto-Indo-European root kei — "lie down, sleep, settle, hence home, friendly, dear." Etymologically, all houses are therefore haunted—the series of houses (all different, all the same) in John the Posthumous especially so. This is a horror story, a haunted house story, a story larded with killers and connivers and adulterers. Another passage (I promise just to share this time and withhold remarks):
In the cellar: a pull saw and a hasp, a jack plane, a wrecking bar, and a claw hammer. A tin contains a cap screw and a razor blade. A jar contains the remains of a carpet beetle.
I dismantle the chairs and place all the parts in a crate. I station the broom beside the garden spade.
The killer in the cellar, in folklore, is discovered by a mute child. The prisoner in the cellar survives a fire or a storm—but is later mauled by wolves.
There were fleas last year, and squirrels the year before that.
I feel like I've offered enough of Schwartz's uncanny prose here to appropriately intrigue or repel readers. The vision here is dark and the prose imposes an alterity that the reader must work through. This book is Not For Everyone, but it might be for you—I loved it. Haunting, frustrating, and disturbing, John the Posthumous is one of the best new books I've read this year.
John the Posthumous is new in trade paperback and e-book from OR Books on August 6th, 2013.
The Seventh Trumpet (Book Acquired, 7.01.2013)
The Seventh Trumpet, another mystery from Peter Tremayne. Publisher Minotaur's blurb:
When a murdered corpse of an unknown young noble is discovered, Fidelma of Cashel is brought in to investigateIreland, AD 670. When the body of a murdered young noble is discovered not far from Cashel, the King calls upon his sister, Fidelma, and her companion Eadulf to investigate. Fidelma, in addition to being the sister of the king, is a dailaigh—an advocate of the Brehon Law Courts—and has a particular talent for resolving the thorniest of mysteries.
But this time, Fidelma and Eadulf have very little to work with—the only clue to the noble's identity is an emblem originating from the nearby kingdom of Laign. Could the murder be somehow related to the wave of violence erupting in the western lands of the kingdom? The turmoil there is being stirred up by an unknown fanatical figure who claims to have been summoned by "the seventh angel" to remove the "impure of faith." Fidelma and Eadulf, once again grappling with a tangled skein of murder and intrigue, must somehow learn what connects the dead noble, a murdered alcoholic priest, and an abbot who has turned his monastery into a military fortress. When it appears that things cannot get more complex, Fidelma herself is abducted, and Eadulf must rescue her before the mystery can be solved.
"On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth" — Thomas De Quincey
"On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth" by Thomas De Quincey
From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: the knocking at the gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite one. Ask of any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the laws of that science; as for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest approximation to it. Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is—that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line; a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle, would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but, (what is monstrous!) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life. But to return from this digression, my understanding could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his début on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe, that in one respect they have had an ill effect, by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querulous tone, "There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of." But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders, (that of the Marrs,) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shakspeare has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspeare's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem; at length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this. Murder in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind, (though different in degree,) amongst all living creatures; this instinct therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What then must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him; (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them,—not a sympathy of pity or approbation.) In the murdered person all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him "with its petrific mace." But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion,—jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred,—which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look. Continue reading ""On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth" — Thomas De Quincey"
The Virgin Spring — Ingmar Bergman (Full Film)
The Murderess — Edvard Munch
My Pet Serial Killer (Book Acquired, Some Time in January 2013)
Okay: So I've been meaning to get to this one for awhile, but my review stack has just been too big.
Anyway, Michael J. Siedlinger's My Pet Serial Killer is pretty weird stuff so far, but also compelling and very readable.
At Word Riot, Edward J. Rathke gave the book a favorable review, writing:
My Pet Serial Killer is a psychological thriller as pickup game as college days romance as media study as violent porn as metahorror as the most bizarre and cruelest master/slave relationship I can remember reading since John Fowles' The Collector. Claire Wilkinson, a forensics graduate student, plays the pickup game but she searches for a very specific kind of lover: a serial killer. She finds her Gentleman Killer, tears him apart, and rebuilds him, hoping to mold the greatest serial killer ever, causing a media frenzy, and furthering her own academic career. Twisted without being overly violent, haunting without the ghosts, Claire is a narrator and protagonist that we race along with, burning through pages at a dizzying rate only to see what she does next.
The book also got a good write-up at HTML Giant, which declared "Seidlinger is the sickest of the fucks. Few can compare."
"Cannibals? who is not a cannibal?" (Moby-Dick)
It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.
But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult
From "The Whale as a Dish," Chapter 65 of Melville's Moby-Dick.
"My Favorite Murder" — Ambrose Bierce
"My Favorite Murder" — Ambrose Bierce
Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity, I was arrested and put upon my trial, which lasted seven years. In charging the jury, the judge of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it was one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever been called upon to explain away.
At this, my attorney rose and said:
"May it please your Honor, crimes are ghastly or agreeable only by comparison. If you were familiar with the details of my client's previous murder of his uncle you would discern in his later offense (if offense it may be called) something in the nature of tender forbearance and filial consideration for the feelings of the victim. The appalling ferocity of the former assassination was indeed inconsistent with any hypothesis but that of guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the honorable judge before whom he was tried was the president of a life insurance company that took risks on hanging, and in which my client held a policy, it is hard to see how he could decently have been acquitted. If your Honor would like to hear about it for instruction and guidance of your Honor's mind, this unfortunate man, my client, will consent to give himself the pain of relating it under oath."
The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I object. Such a statement would be in the nature of evidence, and the testimony in this case is closed. The prisoner's statement should have been introduced three years ago, in the spring of 1881."
"In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you are right, and in the Court of Objections and Technicalities you would get a ruling in your favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal. The objection is overruled."
"I except," said the district attorney.
"You cannot do that," the judge said. "I must remind you that in order to take an exception you must first get this case transferred for a time to the Court of Exceptions on a formal motion duly supported by affidavits. A motion to that effect by your predecessor in office was denied by me during the first year of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner."
The customary oath having been administered, I made the following statement, which impressed the judge with so strong a sense of the comparative triviality of the offense for which I was on trial that he made no further search for mitigating circumstances, but simply instructed the jury to acquit, and I left the court, without a stain upon my reputation:
"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich., of honest and reputable parents, one of whom Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me in my later years. In 1867 the family came to California and settled near Nigger Head, where my father opened a road agency and prospered beyond the dreams of avarice. He was a reticent, saturnine man then, though his increasing years have now somewhat relaxed the austerity of his disposition, and I believe that nothing but his memory of the sad event for which I am now on trial prevents him from manifesting a genuine hilarity. Continue reading ""My Favorite Murder" — Ambrose Bierce"
Read "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," a Short Story by Carson McCullers
"A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" by Carson McCullers
It was raining that morning, and still very dark. When the boy reached the streetcar café he had almost finished his route and he went in for a cup of coffee. The place was an all-night café owned by a bitter and stingy man called Leo. After the raw, empty street, the café seemed friendly and bright: along the counter there were a couple of soldiers, three spinners from the cotton mill, and in a corner a man who sat hunched over with his nose and half his face down in a beer mug. The boy wore a helmet such as aviators wear. When he went into the café he unbuckled the chin strap and raised the right flap up over his pink little ear; often as he drank his coffee someone would speak to him in a friendly way. But this morning Leo did not look into his face and none of the men were talking. He paid and was leaving the café when a voice called out to him:
"Son! Hey Son!"
He turned back and the man in the corner was crooking his finger and nodding to him. He had brought his face out of the beer mug and he seemed suddenly very happy. The man was long and pale, with a big nose and faded orange hair.
"Hey Son!"
The boy went toward him. He was an undersized boy of about twelve, with one shoulder drawn higher than the other because of the weight of the paper sack. His face was shallow, freckled, and his eyes were round child eyes.
"Yeah Mister?"
The man laid one hand on the paper boy's shoulders, then grasped the boy's chin and turned his face slowly from one side to the other. The boy shrank back uneasily.
"Say! What's the big idea?"
The boy's voice was shrill; inside the café it was suddenly very quiet.
The man said slowly. "I love you."
All along the counter the men laughed. The boy, who had scowled and sidled away, did not know what to do. He looked over the counter at Leo, and Leo watched him with a weary, brittle jeer. The boy tried to laugh also. But the man was serious and sad.
"I did not mean to tease you, Son," he said. "Sit down and have a beer with me. There is something I have to explain."
Cautiously, out of the corner of his eye, the paper boy questioned the men along the counter to see what he should do. But they had gone back to their beer or their breakfast and did not notice him. Leo put a cup of coffee on the counter and a little jug of cream.
"He is a minor," Leo said. Continue reading "Read "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," a Short Story by Carson McCullers"
I Riff on Dostoevsky's Novel Crime and Punishment
1. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment—
Did I read it before? In high school? Not in college, not in grad school, I'm certain of that.
That I could have read Notes from Underground in full three times, but not Crime and Punishment—how?
I vaguely recall wandering into Crime and Punishment as a young man. All those Russian names though. My attention was on other matters.
And so reading Crime and Punishment this month I repeatedly felt a strange anger or shame at all my younger selves for lacking the attention or the will or the discipline to stick it out . . . and these words, attention, discipline, will, they don't seem like the right words, because the book compels, commands, rewards . . .
2. You are familiar with the plot of course:
Our hero, our anti-hero, young Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker, an old woman; in the rush of the crime, he fails to close the door, and the pawnbroker's innocent sister sees him. So he murders her too. The rest of the novel deals with the psychological fall out of this crime. Sure, there's a sister and a mother, a failed marriage plot, a detective, a friend, and a love interest, a prototypical hooker with a heart of gold, etc.—but that's it. That's the plot.
3. What impels Raskolnikov to murder the pawnbroker?
Perhaps I shouldn't answer here. Perhaps it's better to suggest you just read the book if you haven't yet—because is not this the driving question?
(Oh you've read the book? I'll continue then).
4. Raskolnikov murders the pawnbroker not because he is an indigent student in need of funds. He murders her to test his theory—or rather, he murders her to test his place within the scheme of his theory.
5. Raksolnikov's idea:
I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals—more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can't submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. . . . I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. . . . The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that's their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood . . .
Raskolnikov believes that "extraordinary men" have the right, the duty, even, to transgress law—even to the extremes of murder (even mass murder) in order to bring about a new word, a new idiom, a new philosophy, a new paradigm, a new zeitgeist, even a New Jerusalem.
Raskolnikov wants to know if he is one of these "extraordinary men."
6. But Raskolnikov, like Macbeth or a figure out of Poe, is plagued by doubt, misgiving—and more than a touch of insanity and egomania.
His instability and his psychological and moral dilemma is summed up neatly in only the second chapter of the book:
"And what if I am wrong," he cried suddenly after a moment's thought. "What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it should be."
7. The word or an iteration of the word psychology appears 25 times in the Constance Garnett translation I read.
Crime and Punishment was published in 1866, when Sigmund Freud was ten years old.
(I am not naively/stupidly suggesting that Freud invented psychology, by the way. I'm just riffing).
8. What Crime and Punishment does so well:
Harnesses the intellect of its protagonist Raskolnikov, shows us his fevered mind in revolution, shifts us through his moods and dilemmas and despairs and strange joys.
9. And it's not just the interior of Rakolnikov's skull we get such access to—Dostoevsky gives our lead a marvelous, taunting foil in the detective Porfiry, a loyal and empathetic counterpoint in friend Razumikhin, a despicable enemy in the poseur Luzhin, and a dark-future forecast in Svidrigaïlov.
Each of these characters represent viewpoints and attitudes about psychology and morality without ever falling into being mere allegorical sketches or mouthpieces for Dostoevsky's ideas.
10. Dostoevsky—unlike certain contemporary novelists I'll neglect to name—doesn't tell us that his character is brilliant (or troubled, or confounded, or fucked up). And he goes beyond showing us—he actually lets us experience the character's psychology.
11. A marvelous, frightening episode that illustrates point 10:
12. This isn't to say that Dostoevsky's handling of characterization is flawless.
His women appear less fully-realized than his men, as if he perhaps cannot inhabit their minds so fully or exercise their brains, their souls, their voices.
Raskolnikov's sister Dunya, for example, is a bold, more perfect, more more moral, more stable version of her brother, a woman who seems able to withstand conflict, disappointment, and misfortune with ease—too much ease. Raskolnikov's mother, in contrast, is something of an idealized blank—not just a mother, but the mother figure: nonjudgmental, loving—her character summed up in her hugging her son and forgiving him for what she cannot forgive.
It's the depiction of Raskolnikov's love interest Sonia that I find most troubling though. Dostoevsky renders her an unsubtle merging of the Virgin Mary with Mary Magdalene. Her alcoholic father forces her into prostitution to save the family, but she never appears bitter or angry or even upset. Dostoevsky rarely affords her a speaking role, and in her biggest scene she reads the entire parable of Lazarus. Sure, she makes the words her own, but she's being ventriloquized. The strings show. She's pure symbolism, really, and stands in stark contrast to the dark, flawed humanity of Raskolnikov.
13. Re: Point 12 above: If Dostoevsky shows a certain weakness in his depiction of women, he perhaps compensates in other areas. For example, Luzhin's roomate Andrey Semyonovitch, a utopian socialist, serves as a mouthpiece for emerging feminist ideas. And if Dostoevsky mocks would-be reformers in his novel, it's not always with vitriol, but sometimes with understanding, and even perhaps love. After all, this is Raskolnikov's pretension—to be a reformer of others, to step over the line of law, to be a great man.
14. But Raskolnikov is a failed reformer, or at least is unable to live with his trespass, his sin. Crime and Punishment's epilogue emphasizes the Jesusian theme of the possibility of resurrection, even as it subdues or complicates that possibility.
We get the final image of Raskolnikov "mechanically" taking up Sonia's copy of the New Testament; he doesn't open it to read, but instead reflects on the possibility of a new life with Sonia, a life that "would cost him great striving, great suffering." Dostoevsky does not let his protagonist off the hook, even as he offers the reader a final comforting vision of "the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life."
15. There's a strong temptation to see the epilogue as tacked on, as a sentimental gesture to the reader's sense of stable morality, as a bit of window dressing that covers the ugliness of the narrative.
And perhaps this is true.
I'd argue though that Dostoevsky gives us a cold, ugly ending in the figure of Svidrigaïlov, who more or less commands the final moments of the narrative, moments that lead inexorably to his suicide—the self-erasing gesture that Raskolnikov cannot commit to. I think that Svidrigaïlov's suicide might stand as a placeholder for Raskolnikov's—an exchange of sorts.
And Svidrigaïlov's death is not without a small measure of redemption—the redemption of other-directedness, of giving, of selflessness. It is far more complicated and troubling than the Jesusian resurrection that Dostoevsky implies as a possibility for Raskolnikov, but it also strikes me as far more real.
Book Acquired, 9.29.2011
Dubious History by P.H. Denson. This sucker is thick; 550+ pages of conspiracy theory driven thriller. I read the first few pages this afternoon; the writing is much better than the swollen publisher's description below—
Drawing on the secretive and intriguing mysteries of the Masonic brotherhood, the fast-paced, brilliantly layered storyline and its fascinating central characters have proved a big hit with readers who like to have their wits challenged and to be kept guessing right to the end. The story begins with what appears to be a hit-and-run 'accident' and moves rapidly to reveal a chilling web of serial murders and a deadly Masonic secret. George Fairfax, a Pulitzer nominee researching the history of a small American town, falls victim to a hit-and-run. When his nephew Zach steps in to complete writing the town's history, he quickly becomes suspicious of his uncle's 'accidental' death. Zach begins to unravel a spiderweb of clues that point to a dangerous Masonic secret which may also be responsible for the mysterious deaths of a number of other members of the Masonic lodge. Can Zach decode the clues to the two-hundred-year-old secret in time to find the serial killer before he claims his next victim? And what twists await at every turn as each clue uncovers more of the shocking truth behind the killer's real end-game?
"We've Gotten Used to Death" — A Passage from Roberto Bolaño's 2666
From Roberto Bolaño's 2666, "The Part About Fate, pages 266-267:
"We've gotten used to death," he heard the young man say.
"It's always been that way," said the white-haired man, "always."
In the nineteenth century, toward the middle or the end of the nineteenth century, said the white-haired man, society tended to filter death through the fabric of words. Reading news stories from back then you might get the idea that there was hardly any crime, or that a single murder could throw a whole country into tumult. We didn't want death in the home, or in our dreams and fantasies, and yet it was a fact that terrible crimes were committed, mutilations, all kinds of rape, even serial killings. Of course, most of the serial killers were never caught. Take the most famous case of the day. No one knew who Jack the Ripper was. Everything was passed through the filter of words, everything trimmed to fit our fear. What does a child do when he's afraid? He closes his eyes. What does a child do when he's about to be raped and murdered? He closes his eyes. And he screams, too, but first he closes his eyes. Words served that purpose. And the funny thing is, the archetypes of human madness and cruelty weren't invented by the men of our day but by our forebears. The Greeks, you might say, invented evil, the Greeks saw the evil inside us all, but testimonies or proofs of this evil no longer move us. They strike us as futile, senseless. You could say the same about madness. It was the Greeks who showed us the range of possibilities and yet now they mean nothing to us. Everything changes, you say. Of course everything changes, but not the archetypes of crime, not any more than human nature changes. Maybe it's because polite society was so small back then. I'm talking about the nineteenth century, eighteenth century, seventeenth century. No doubt about it, society was small. Most human beings existed on the outer fringes of society. In the seventeenth century, for example, at least twenty percent of the merchandise on every slave ship died. By that I mean the dark-skinned people who were being transported for sale, to Virginia, say. And that didn't get anyone upset or make headlines in the Virginia papers or make anyone go out and call for the ship captain to be hanged. But if a plantation owner went crazy and killed his neighbor and then went galloping back home, dismounted, and promptly killed his wife, two deaths in total, Virginia society spent the next six months in fear, and the legend of the murderer on horseback might linger for generations. Or look at the French. During the Paris Commune of 1871, thousands of people were killed and no one batted an eye. Around the same time a knife sharpener killed his wife and his elderly mother and then he was shot and killed by the police. The story didn't just make all the French newspapers, it was written up in papers across Europe, and even got a mention in the New York Examiner. How come? The ones killed in the Commune weren't part of society, the dark-skinned people who died on the ship weren't part of society, whereas the woman killed in a French provincial capital and the murderer on horseback in Virginia were. What happened to them could be written, you might say, it was legible. That said, words back then were mostly used in the art of avoidance, not of revelation. Maybe they revealed something all the same. I couldn't tell you.
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
Even if Phil Spector hadn't given us the recent spectacle of an outlandish murder trial, Mick Brown's Spector biography Tearing Down the Wall of Sound would still make for a gripping read. Brown's biography, simply put, is the definitive Spector book. At nearly 500 pages (including endnotes and an extensive bibliography), Tearing consistently treads the thin line between exhaustive and exhausting, but the source material–Spector's insane life–is simply too compelling to ever earn a yawn. Just when it begins to feel that Brown has given us too much detail, we're rewarded with yet another tale of Spector's lunatic shenanigans. And whether he's pulling a gun on the Ramones, drunkenly berating Michelle Phillips, praising Ike Turner and Yoko Ono, or fighting with the Beatles, Spectors's crazy mischief is exactly the kind of stuff we love to read in a celebrity biography. However, lurid stories never trump the real reason to read this book: Spector as musical genius. There's plenty here to please hardcore audiophiles, including long discussions of the evolution of Spector's famous "wall of sound" and the producer's tumultuous relationship with arranger/songwriter Jack Nitzsche. All the episodes of Spector's life are here–his early teenybopper days with the Ronettes, his "making" of Tina Turner, his battles with the Beatles (both as a group and individuals), his "comeback" shot with the Ramones, and even his late disillusionment with, um, Celine Dion. These segments are bookended with a detailed consideration of Spector's recent troubles, beginning with a secretive Spector secluded in his California mansion right before the alleged murder of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson, and a lengthy, journalistic afterword explaining the events of Spector's much-publicized trial, right up to the September 2007 mistrial ruling. Heady stuff.
Photograph by Brad Elterman
Ultimately, Brown crafts Spector's strange life into a bizarre bildungsroman; he paints Spector respectfully but never reverentially, revealing a Promethean hubris in his subject that veers into self-annihilation. At the same time, Brown's Spector is an utterly American story, a classic reinvention tale. Even when Spector is at his most petulant, paranoid, and downright awful, Brown never lets us lose sight of the man's sheer force of will and his enormous contribution to American music and culture. Brown's book reminds us of the myriad ways Spector transformed our notions of pop music, but he leaves us wondering if Spector will indeed be able to rise like the phoenix from his latest debacle or if his upcoming retrial will be the end of the music.