text:
(Gay) Identity and Future
They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
I of course replied
here inside
Cannot be denied
04/01/2002 - 05/01/2002
05/01/2002 - 06/01/2002
06/01/2002 - 07/01/2002
07/01/2002 - 08/01/2002
08/01/2002 - 09/01/2002
09/01/2002 - 10/01/2002
10/01/2002 - 11/01/2002
11/01/2002 - 12/01/2002
12/01/2002 - 01/01/2003
01/01/2003 - 02/01/2003
02/01/2003 - 03/01/2003
03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003
04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003
05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003
06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003
07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003
08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003
About this blog
This is my first blog. It's a mixture of weblog and journal, with postings about my life as a gay man, and gay issues I care about. The idea is to talk about my own identity, and about what "gay identity" is now - and is becoming.
The relationship between gay sexual feelings, gay sex, and the rest of life, has always been one of tension and conflict -- within individuals and between gay people. The places where these differences show most acutely are in views and decisions about "coming out" and "equal rights". But what it is to be gay, and what it means to live openly as a gay person, have changed. They're enormously more varied. And so the meanings of "coming out" and "equality" have changed too.
John Adams (
Thomas Ades (
Julian Anderson (
Harrison Birtwistle (
Hans Werner Henze (
Magnus Lindberg (
Colin Matthews (
Peter Maxwell Davies (
Thea Musgrave (
Esa Pekka Salonen (
Kaija Saariaho (
Mark Anthony Turnage (
June 30, 2002
We are going up to London later today to see the new Gibert and George exhibition --
The Dirty Words Pictures
(1977) -- at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens:
The Dirty Words Pictures, 1977 juxtapose graffitied swear words and slogans with disturbing images of urban life and the bleak presence of the artists themselves.
Created the year of the Silver Jubilee, all 26 works are brought together for the fist time -- a "gesture" in the year of the Golden Jubilee. Not, somehow, that I think the Queen and members of the Royal Family are going to be lining up to get in (and G and G themselves have said they would never have been exhibited at the Serpentine while Princess Diana was still alive and its patron). Even 25 years on the bold graffiti of "cunt" and "bollocks" are capable of shocking -- though they are inevitably somewhat in the shadow of the great, scandalous "Naked Shit" collection of 1995 and
Fundamental Pictures
of 1996.
W. and I thoroughly enjoy Gilbert and George's works
and try to get to their new shows. The recent collection based on gay escort ads at the
White Cube Gallery
in the East End in 2001
was very funny, but perhaps not quite as visually arresting as usual, but the
Rudimentary Pictures
which opened the Milton Keynes Gallery in 1999 (yes, Milton Keynes!) was brilliant -- W. and I were particularly taken with "The Flying Shit Wheel of Death"!:
...no-one can forget their infamous Naked Shit pictures that they exhibited in 1995. Those elements are still used today together with other human elements such as blood, sweat, sperm, tears in their work.
In Their Element
is another scatological classic featuring a double naked Gilbert & George over a background of magnified flies, bird droppings and gum. Or
The Flying Shit Wheel of Death
featuring 8 splattered bird droppings with a dead pigeon as its axle.
It will be interesting to see a full-blown (
) retrospective.
We're also planning to catch
The Lawless Heart
, which has just opened: "When a man dies unexpectedly, his boyfriend, his father and a close friend have to reassess what they want from life."
The Guardian
This is one of the best new British films I have seen in the past few years. Writer-directors Tom Hunsinger and Neil Hunter have contrived a funny, touching, cleverly constructed and beautifully acted film about three men and their lives, in a small Essex town. Douglas Henshall is a chirpy Michael Caine-ish Cockney bloke back from foreign parts; Tom Hollander is a recently bereaved gay man; Bill Nighy is the reticent, emotionally stilted partner in a stagnant marriage. Relationships, gay and straight, are explored with marvellous intelligence and delicacy, Nighy gives a jewel of a performance and Tom Hollander just gets better and better.
I have high expectations! (Showing at: Duke of York's Cinema Brighton; Cambridge Arts Picture House; Filmhouse, Edinburgh; Glasgow Film Theatre; Curzon Soho, W1; Odeon Camden Town NW1; Clapham Picture House, SW4; Rio, E8; Odeon Covent Garden, WC2; Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle).
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June 29, 2002
picks up on a June 27th
Metafiler thread
about gay marriage (arising from an ACLU lawsuit in New Jersey). The quality of the argument is pretty good and the various perspectives are a challenge --- well, it's a change from Andrew Sullivan!
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I just came across this amusing comment left on a political weblog (reported
with further discussion):
In a post 9-11 world, I feel it's my duty as a woman to wear clingier clothing, flirt more outrageously, have more orgasms, and get on top more often. In short, anything that's taboo to the islamofascists.
But what kind of sex play could gay men indulge in to throw sand in the islamofascits' faces? As far as they are concerned, can anything make homosexuality "worse" ?
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We're having a week's holiday on the
North Cornwall coast
. Fixing it up took about an hour on the net, and phone calls to villages all around Padstow, to find a suitable cottage (that is, not any of: sleeps 6-8, children welcome, beach <4 miles, sleeps 10-12, near to piggery, or
already booked
). We'll be away 5th-12th July, and are much looking forward to walking, beaches, wildlife and visiting the
Eden Project
). Of course, there's the
great surfing
... which attracts the most hunky -- and friendly -- young guys. I love talking about waves.
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June 28, 2002
Everything has finally overwhelmed me like one huge wave. I have just slept for 16 hours straight. I feel another bout of slumber coming on. See you all next time I emerge....
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June 27, 2002
Behaving in a less than saintly manner (Rant 1)
Telephone Conversation:
I'm calling about my recently deceased mother's pension and elderly person benefits. Do you deal with that?
Yes. Can you give me the name and reference number?
[Provides details].
Thank you. How can I help you?
Well, my mother died on June 14th, and one of the forms I was given when I registered her death said I should get in touch with your department as soon as possible to cancel get her pension and benefits.
Oh, I see. Have you ever been in touch with us about this matter before?
Have you ever contacted us about this matter in the past?
My mother hasn't died before.
Oh yes, of course.
Shall I start again?
Perhaps you'd better.
I was absolutely astonished that responses of such total brainlessness could occur. I should not have been, though, I suppose. I was dealing with the state
. This is the real face of government. Not all the fancy project launch announcements and public target reports -- those are just made up whenever it's convenient.
You need only look at the jobs ads in the local newspaper to see where the latest fad in government intervention (and waste) is located. The are simply hundreds of positions for "community regeneration" workers in the £25,998-£36,752 range (pay scale upward adjustment pending). It doesn't take long to find the self-propelling bureaucratic tentacles of the
Neighbourhood Renewal
initiative, the
Regeneration Programmes
and the
Community Empowerment
divisions of the
Urban Renaissance
unit everywhere. The tasks these projects have set themselves are grand and open-ended, their scope universal, their ambition vaulting, the reality all too predictable. British bureacracy is hardly capable of removing the skin from a rice pudding, so the idea they can do all that is ludicrous. Imagine the phone calls between London and the inner-city council office complexes...
National Programme Administrator (Level 6)
Have the people of this particular urban area experienced multiple deprivation at these nationally defined levels before?
Local Neighbourhood Management Facilitator
NPA (Level 6)
Has this specific part of the city ever gone down the shit-hole in the past?
LNM Facilitator
This part of the city is a new administrative unit -- it didn't exist till you created it two weeks ago.
NPA (Level 6)
Oh yes. Know anything about getting the skin off rice puddings?
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June 25, 2002
Tuesday. Today was the funeral.
It was held at the crematorium, in a beautiful wooded area outside town. The sun shone, the birds sang as beautifully as I have ever heard. My mother had stipulated a private funeral of family and closest friends – and I greeted this tiny crowd, some of whom I had never met before. W. by my side, meeting my relatives for the first time at my mother's funeral. But they clearly knew just who he was, taking him into their group and talking to him about my mother, and family things, as if he had always been one of their number. I was very touched – whatever they had known or guessed in recent years, they had had no prepartion for meeting, and on such on occasion as this, too.
The hearse drew in. The frock-coated undertakers lined either side. The flowers looked beautiful on the coffin – a huge bunch of white lilies from me, a vast spray of country garden flowers – stocks, wallflowers, pinks, lavendar, roses – from W. When the back door of the hearse was thrown up to take out the coffin, clouds of heady scents enveloped me, almost overpowering, almost painful in their sweetness. The minister appeared and we walked, stiffly but in no special order, behind the coffin into the chapel. I felt absolutely nothing. I sang the hymns loud and feelingly, but their words, that can provoke a tear at almost any time, left me quite dry-eyed. I walked forward and delivered my tribute over my mother's coffin. I began with her name,
mother, friend. You have been taken from me so suddenly. No more shall I kiss your cheek when I say hello, no more wave up to your window after I say goodbye. How then can I thank you, for all your loving kindness, your sacrifices for me, your hands that held me and helped me? And how shall I remember you when today's most poignant feelings fade. I can thank you and remember you only by living as you lived – by
finding inspiration everywhere and in every thing around and
bringing enthusiasm to every task and plan and idea
living honestly and doing right
sharing joy and laughter
discovering new places, in the world and of the mind
giving love without measure
seeking happiness
caring for others
striving to overcome adversity and pain, and never giving up, and
most of all, holding on to hope, keeping alive a simple hopefulness, just hoping.
Farewell, I love you always.
I returned to my seat. I had felt nothing. I had said what I knew I believed was true when I contemplated her life beside her bed in the hospital; when I had wandered round her empty flat, looking at the physical remnants of her life. But I had no certainty just then. Perhaps, I thought, as the minister read the lesson, said the prayers, committed the body for cremation, what I'd said was just romantic invention. It had not been an inspirational life, not elevated or especially wise, nor content. She'd just lived her life as best she could. Wasn't that good enough? A lot of pain, a good measure of happiness; some good chance, a lot of miserable luck; altruism and resentment; warmth and bitterness; compassion and hard-heartedness… Happy memories obliterated this downward spiralling precision, and then recollections of failure, conflict, wasted time and regret returned. What had she thought of her own life? I do not know. The last hymn had been sung, we walked out into the sunshine.
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Well, I couldn't hold out any longer.
and many others have all done it, so...
Charlie is one of the most highly regarded chefs in America today
Charlie is currently looking for new writing assignments
Charlie is the King of all mankind
Charlie is not alone
Charlie is an XML application framework claiming to overcome some limitations of current web application architecture
Charlie is the real star
Charlie is my darling
Charlie is gay
Charlie is known all over the world
Charlie is a grown man who is the son of parents who "loved too much"
Charlie is in his mid-40's, a successful software engineer
Charlie is good at making you laugh, and after you finish laughing, you think, "that's really true"
Charlie is one of my favorite people
Charlie is a bad boy
Charlie is for getting back to the basics
Charlie is available for adoption
Charlie is fighting centuries of stereotypes
Charlie is recognized as a leader who bridges the gap between political parties
So don't fuck with me, right?
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June 24, 2002
An item in today's
on rising alcohol consumption among British MPs concludes with several anecdotes. One features George Brown, the leading member of Harold Wilson's Labour government in the 1960s, who was notorious for his drunken behaviour -- usually decribed in the press of the time as "tired and emotional". Apparently, on an official trip to Peru he approached someone in a splendid, brightly coloured frock and asked them to dance. The reply came: "First, you are drunk. Second, this is the National Anthem. And third, I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima."
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June 23, 2002
Right, since we seem to be into balancing today, here is the totally tasteless
Uncle Vronsky's Guide to Orgy Etiquette
which prepares one for the Scandinavian cool springs of Ralf's
-- only in Sweden could such a superb site (with a weekly photo diary) be the work of a train-driver. But then only in Sweden do train-drivers look like Ralf.
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Gay Muscle Gallery
is a personals site worth visiting! Over 4,500 photos of real-life hunks, with profiles, and links to home pages. At random (from the "A" section) is
A Boy Muscle
from Rome, Italy. Time-saving (not that I really want to) recommendations are welcome.
And to balance things a bit, I've just come across the
London Gay Reading Group
: "Since June 2001, once a month, a group of gay guys of all ages meet up in central London, have a drink and discuss a book of gay interest (most of the time fiction). Each month, the book is chosen by a different member of the group." A reason to live in London!
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June 22, 2002
I'm really eager to get down to the huge
Lucian Freud retrospective
that has just opened at
Tate Britain
(it runs till 22nd September, so I should manage it). There are over 150 works arranged chronologically from the 1940s to the present, including the large series Freud painted of his mother, the impact of which I am especially interested to feel given my current circumstances. As the
BBC programme
on the exhibition shows, critical comment on Freud is limited - partly because of the artist's own reluctance to discuss his work, and partly, I think, because all his works are portraits. Look at the massive response to Bacon (his friend) who was far more expansive in life, and on canvas.
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Various aspects of my mother's funeral arrangements have been taking up a lot of my time and emotional energy. I registered the death and got copies of the death certificate, having been through my mother's desk to find her birth certificate and medical card. The minister who'll be officiating at the funeral (which is at the crematorium) came and visited me to talk about my mother's life, and arrange the order of service. I chose the hymns -- which I thought was quite important. An atheist myself, there are still many hymns which resonate from the chapel services of my school days, but also which have words that touch deep down in the emotional well-springs --- and express the awe and frailty of the human condition, and the majesty and incomprehensibility of the material world. I could not bear to have dreary, implicitly self-pitying affairs like "Abide with me" (the most popular British funeral choice apparently) or "The day thous gavest, Lord, is ended". So we shall have
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
by Parry
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.
and end with
Now Thank We All Our God
Nun Danket Alle Gott
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep still in grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next.
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An absolutely brilliant article, by the absolutely brilliant politics and society columnist
Simon Jenkins
of the
-- on the
World Cup
access requires free registration
Please not another single-goal result. The next war may yet break out because of a single World Cup goal. In Russia a single-goal defeat caused a riot. In South Korea a single-goal victory led to national frenzy. Italy's defeat by a single goal yielded catatonic rage. Italy believes it lost not because it was a poor team but through bad refereeing, South Korean duplicity, Fifa corruption and bad luck. In my opinion, it is right...
In football, the single-scoring incidents are so rare as to be mostly if not entirely a matter of luck. Of dozens of shots in the direction of a goal, a rare one goes in the net. Instead we have an increasing number of often bitterly contested penalties. Penalties are now a regular feature of World Cups. In 1986 three out of four quarter-finals were decided on penalties, and the fourth (Argentina versus England) should have been. In 1990 both semi-finals and final were won from the penalty spot, with one of the finalists, Argentina, scoring only five goals in open play in seven games. In 1994 the final was won on penalties.
The essence of sport is the objectivity of its scoring system. The alternative, as in ice-skating or Eurovision songs, is to leave results to judges and referees. Football is moving towards the latter category. Results increasingly turn on a split-second decision by a referee. David Beckham's penalty against Argentina, from a foul that hardly prevented a goal, sent the entire English nation berserk, as if only a god could have scored it. The goal was in effect scored by the referee.
Spider Man
was a really
film - from the stunning opening credits onwards. Visually rich and dramatically paced, it deserved to be taken... seriously. Tobey Maguire fulfilled all the promise of
Ice Storm
Ride with the Devil
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June 19, 2002
The young offspring of the
nesting in the ivy at the back of the house fledged today. Days of beautiful liquid song, and hundreds of trips back and forth with beak-fulls of little insects, have, for the parent birds, been replaced by nervously watching over the fledglings' ungainly attempts to fly, and their naive unawareness of the dangers that lurk everywhere. The little tree next to their nest is full of
other young birds
still being fed by their parents -- blue tits, sparrows, great tits, greenfinches. God help any cat I catch anywhere near!
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The first occasion that something to do with my mother's death has provided me with a good laugh has at last occurred. I haven't seen my father for 20 years, and I don't have any wish to -- something unchanged by the recent news that he has got married again (aged 76). But his name came up when I phoned my mother's cousin, Diana, to break the news about my mother and tell her the funeral details. Apparently my father and his new wife were at a village function that D. also attended, and one of my father's new wife's nieces (who was visiting form outside the area) asked D. how she knew my father's family. D. shot back "Well, your aunt's third husband [my father] was married first to my cousin [my mother], and she was my husband's father's second wife. She gets around, your aunt." D. and I wondered who would be number four.
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June 18, 2002
Rusty went and talked to his mother."I think I want to marry a fireman when I grow up," he said.
Mother laughed uncomfortably. "What a funny idea, Rusty!" she said. "What will the neighbors think if they hear about this?"
Mother talked to Mrs. Brown to see if she had any advice. "I think my little Rusty may be a homosexual," said Mother. "I just don't know what to do."
Mrs. Brown's eyes grew wide. "A homosexual!" Mrs. Brown ran away shrieking. Soon, Mother learned that she had been un-invited from Mrs. Brown's Tupperware party.
"Rusty is a homosexual"
is a delightful illustrated story surreally set in the American suburbs of the 1950s.
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June 16, 2002
Listening to:
O Hum
. This group does it for me like almost no other rock music. Energy, textures, rhythms are all unique, but influences range back from today to classic rock. Anyone into rock should give them a try.
O Hum
in Farsi) are three guys in Tehran, Iran. Prohibited by the government from performing or releasing recordings there, they rely on the internet (a group
from 2001 discusses the music and the obstacles they face). They have a great
, with download pages (and translations of lyrics) for their album
Nahal-e Heyrat
-- every track is brilliant -- plus two
from couple of months ago.
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Much comment by
Disconnected Zeitgeist
visitors about David Beckham (no doubt elsewhere too). So here's a link to a wide-ranging
page of photos
of the national treasure -- including his audition for "Up the Bum" magazine (
), evidence of cut-throat rivalry with Jamie Oliver, and the famous advert for eating disorder charities.
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I was surprised (should I have been?) to come across a group gay porn "professionals" who blog. The prose is not exactly polished nor the sentiments elevated (but photos show that other things are). The (hard)core includes
. The porno-bloggers are all powered by
, so pages are long and photos need reloading. (it seems that Livejournal blogs -- porno or not -- occupy almost another world to the Blogger/Greymatter/Movable Type "bloc" of blogs. What's the reason - technology? education? subject? style? accident?
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June 15, 2002
Thank you to the people who've left comments and who've e-mailed me. Thank you for your thoughts, for your words, for your prayers and wishes. They have been much help when I have felt worst.
At 1.30 pm on Friday the phone rang. It was the hospital – my mother's condition had deteriorated and the consultant wanted to see me as quickly as possible. The phone call and the consultant's request could mean only one thing. I drove as quickly as I could over to the hospital, and was by my mother's bed by 1.50 pm. I could see from the scanner that her blood pressure had completely collapsed. She was breathing fitfully. The consultant -- a big rugby-player looking man with a tanned, moustached, cheery face -- had his "concern" expression on. He thought her heart had simply given in, unable to bear the strain. He essentially explained why further efforts were worthless, looking for my implied consent to withdraw life support. The nurses hovered. I didn't want my mother to suffer. He gave instructions to the nurses, then put his arm round my shoulders for a moment – sympathy, courage – and was gone.
I sat by my mother for the next three hours. I'd left a note at home, and when W. returned from work he came straight over and joined me. I had gone through (I suppose what is) the usual tearful litany – thanks, regrets, apologies, love, devotion. A son taking leave of the mother he loves, who cannot hear him, doesn't know he is there. Eventually I dried up. I sat holding her hand, bending my neck to kiss it from time to time. Crying silently from time to time. I thought only half an hour had passed - it was two and a half. Her breathing came in tiny little gasps, the scanner showed her blood pressure falling towards zero. Then her breathing stopped – only the minimal pressure of the breathing machine inflated the lungs in a slow rhythm. Her head fell sideways, her face frozen. The nurse said she would not turn off the breathing machine until the heart stopped. A few minutes later the scanner showed zero heartbeat, breathing support was stopped. My mother had died. I was still holding her hand. The nurse and W. went out.
I sat alone with my mother's body for a while, leaning over and placing one last kiss on her warm forehead. Then the nurse reappeared and told me the doctor needed to examine the body. I waited twenty minutes and was allowed back for a final communion with the body which my mother's lifeforce had so recently inhabited. They had taken the tubes out, cleaned things up a little, though she still bore the scars and bruises of the needles and plasters and pads and other paraphenalia of the futile efforts of the last ten days. Her lips were a little blue, but otherwise she looked as in life, her hair swept back so beautifully from her forehead. I could have stood there for ever, gazing. Eventually I forced myself to leave, and W. and I drove home, each in our own cars.
Today W. and I went strawberry picking in fields a mile out of town. It is early in the season, and there has not been much sun, but we gathered a basket of ripe fruit -- many a bowl for the next few days. My mother loved fresh strawberries. I would always take her a goodly portion each time we went picking thoughout the summer. She missed them this year by only a couple of weeks. Afterwards we went to her flat. I emptied her fridge and threw away all her food; telephoned friends to tell them the news; took her mail from the box and opened the bills. W. picked up the beautiful Easter cactus and brought it home. On Monday I will need to arrange the funeral.
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June 14, 2002
My mother died quietly this afternoon at 4.50 pm. She had never regained consciousness. I was by her side when she died, and W. was with me. I love her, and I love the memory of her. She will live in my heart as long as I live.
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June 12, 2002
Listening to:
Frank Sinatra -
Songs for Swingin' Lovers
) Too marvellous for words!
"Every gay neighborhood that I have ever been to has been home to the most fabulous of frock shops!" Is this a recent quote from Aleksander Knavs (just before he buried his boot into the crotch of Spasoje Bulajic of the
Hoecakes team
)? No, it's Frankie, aka
Pop Tart
, putting Gay Richmond (VA) on the map. Commercial real estate will never be the same again.
meeting with Elvis Costello is a great story. And checking out my
EC song again, it was a nice coincidence -- given that I just did the
Jung Typology test
-- to come across these lines
Don't start me talking
I could talk all night
My mind goes sleepwalking
While I'm putting the world to right
On the personality test I got the result
. It "checks out" so closely (like the
astrology sign) that it made me laugh out loud, especially when the analysis said:
ENFPs hate bureaucracy, both in principle and in practice; they will always make a point of launching one of their crusades against some aspect of it.
But it was nice to learn that when not "putting the world to right" my kind of personality types
are friendly folks. Most are really enjoyable people. Some of the most soft-hearted people are ENFPs.
So I'm a big softie, OK? And if you don't like it, you can eat shit and die, motherfucker!
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June 11, 2002
has the cool idea of putting up links to his "best looking players" from the galleries on the
FIFA-World Cup
website. Perhaps gay boggers could put their own squads together and then think of some
appropriate way
for them to play one another! Here are the first selections for the
Here Inside team
: Tristan Diego (Sp), Marko Simeunovic (Slov), Raul (Sp) and Aleksander Knavs (Slov) -
click on the photo for details
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I've had an e-mail from
Tarantella Serpentine
(aka Marcus Lanyon). He commented:
I wondered how long it would take before someone made the obvious connections between my artistic stance and the queer ethos, the other and beneath. And yes, the sting is in the tail - Cheltenham Spa! Oh wonderful Conservative Cheltenham, home to little old me, unbeknownst to the population, running around in London and Eurorock in Belgium, causing all manner of consternation. Yum.
Here Inside
has decided to make
Tarantella Serpentine
"musician in residence", and will try to bring regular progress reports.
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June 10, 2002
It's a few hours short of a week now since my mother was taken into hospital. Four days ago I spent some time with the doctor in overall charge of her care, who essentially prepared me for her imminent death. I thought it would come in 24 to 48 hours. But she remained stable, getting neither better nor significantly worse. Over the past few days there have been dips - they had to put her on new medication to support her heart, but today they have felt able to discontinue it. Her blood tests come back every day with poor results, but they aren't deteriorating. Her stomach and kidneys are in failure, but that's unlikely to cause a sudden crisis, and there is some (small) chance they might improve again.
So it's possible that she will be maintained in intensive care for quite some time -- weeks, even months. As long as they do, my life will revolve around going to the hospital at least twice a day, sitting beside her and occasionally talking to her, listening to the machines blip and looking at the tangle of tubes leading in and out of every part of her body, asking the nurses for a daily report -- and being ready at to rush over there at a moment's notice if they call me to say she is a lot worse.
Yesterday I went to her flat with W. We watered her plants -- will she ever come back and see them? Who are we watering them for? Her Easter cactus (which belonged to her own mother, who died in 1980) is in bloom. I wish she could see the lovely little pink flowers on the ends of the broad, shiny green leaves. The flat is so clean and tidy, as she left it, her clothes for the next day laid out on the sofa in the living room. I have left untouched the bed where she was when she became so ill. It reminds me of the extreme discomfort and anxiety she felt then, moaning and calling out, bewildered by the severity of her sickness, unable to stay still. Then I think of her now, calm, untroubled, in the care of others.
I am aware that this "faux serenity" leads me into idealising my memories. She has always been a wonderful, powerful, devoted mother. But when I was young she was so forceful that I had to fight a terrible, failing battle for independence, that only finally achieved success through my distancing myself from her, by moving away and choosing my times for contact. When, many years later, and an adult with much experience of life, I returned to my hometown to live with W., we still had to guard against me being overpowered by her. It was something she never understood, and only quite recently came simply to accept. She could be terribly demanding, and -- enduring great loneliness and increasing disability -- at times resentful. I need to remember these things to balance all the rich loving memories (of support, shared pleasures, and laughter, that were real and frequent and truly worth cherishing) lest I create some soap-opera fantasy to match the unreal TV-hospital world of the intensive care unit, with its high-tech medicine, devoted nurses, heroic doctors, and perfect patients.
Walking round the flat both kinds of memories came tumbling over one another as I looked around, opened drawers, glanced over papers in the bureau. And then I am hit by the sheer mundane quality of it all, far removed from the psychodrama of youth and the hermeneutics of memory -- the rent book, housing association questionnaire, the electricity bills, bank accounts, notes of things to do. I shall soon need to pay attention to these things to keep my mother's "life plants" from dying (though will she need them again?) If she dies, I shall have a million loose ends of her day-to-day life to tie up, pay off, and sort out. That is going to distress me far more than anything in the hospital ward, or in juxtaposing images in my mind. It will be a detailed, unsentimental termination, that will culminate in someone else moving into her flat -- the flat where currently every square inch is saturated in her -- possessions, clothes, efforts, ways of doing things, tastes. I already hate whoever that will be.
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June 09, 2002
Well, I'm not sad all the time (just much of it!). Life goes on -- for me anyway. I still go to Sainsbury's on Saturday (now calm once more), and try to check round my favourite blogs. A propos - I can't resist showing this photo (courtesy of
in Georgia) - now if ever I saw a dumb attempt at police entrapment, that was it!
With the total national saturation in football, I am prompted to report a Channel 4 TV programme I recently discovered. Called
Football Italia
I guess it is just a way of showing more soccer. (It shows how much I follow these things -- according to the
, Italian football has been on Channel 4 "for almost a decade, and is a hit with advertisers seeking to reach a young, upmarket male audience.") But for me, with all those unfamiliar team names and stadia it felt almost like an anthropological investigation. It certainly turned that way at the end. The players run for the tunnel, but the fans are already invading the pitch, desparate for some physical memento of the match and their favourite players -- in fact, their clothes. The only thing the players can do is oblige, and they are literally stripped as they make their way off. Shirt, vest, shorts, the lot. Some of the players were already pulling their clothes off to barter their way across the pitch before a single fan was anywhere near them. Most ended up naked but for their underpants well before the tunnel. I wonder if they ever lose even those! Anyway, it seemed a good reason to watch (despite my lack of interest in football generally), but of course, it's off the screen during the Wor*d C*p. I just wish they would get the Japanese business over and done with, so I can get back to watching Inter and Lazio players forcibly stripped in public!
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June 07, 2002
I've been visiting my mother in hospital several times a day. She is hanging on, but things seem to be getting steadily worse. Yesterday her kidneys began to fail. Today her heart beat is getting irregular. Her blood shows higher levels of infection. She could stay alive for quite a while. But the chances of her recovering and waking again are small, and getting smaller. Only the tubes and blipping machines tell you this is what is happening. You can't tell it from looking at her face. She lies peacefully, her face calm. I sit beside her, and from time to time I talk to her. What can she hear? Nothing I think, and I suppose really I am saying those things for me: "Thank you for being such a wonderful friend. When I need to talk something over, some problem or disappointment, you always understand immediately what it's all about, and what's getting me down. You always say things that show you know just how I feel, but you never try to tell me what to do. You listen to me and support me. Thank you." I talk about all the things she's done to help me. About laughter and good times. And occasionally I tell her I know she'll get better. That I'm there, beside her, and I won't go away. That I love her.
I will miss her so much. But at the same time I know that for her this is a peaceful way to slip away. She has had a long life, and was still living in her own lovely flat, with beautiful views and big light rooms. We recently had such a great holiday on the South Coast. She visited places she knew when she was young, we went for boat trips, walked by the sea. It was perfect. The one thing she feared was to be reduced to utter dependency by a stroke or similar illness, unable to walk or talk, or even feed herself. That hasn't happened. I want her back, now, so much. I want to have my mother to visit and talk to and laugh with. But I can only be happy that what is happening now is not her nightmare.
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June 05, 2002
Suddenly, out of a clear sky...
On Monday my mother phoned me saying she felt ill and needed to be taken to the doctor. It was no problem - she got a prescription and filled it, and I drove her back home. Just over 12 hours later I was awakened by her emergency alert service. I quickly got dressed and went to her home. She was very unwell, and after about an hour I called the doctor. He came quickly and was very concerned. He was unable to get sufficient pulse to take her blood pressure, and had her admitted to hospital immediately. The ambulance arrived in minutes and I followed it by car. It was 8 a.m. On the emergency admissions ward they did a million tests and procedures, and told me to come back in the afternoon. I went over at 4 o'clock and she was ready to go to theatre. I kissed her and told her I loved her very very much. She smiled and said she wished she could swill her mouth out. I haven't been able to speak to her since.
She was admitted straight to the Intensive Care Unit from her operation. She had suffered peritonitis. Her whole system was infected. She has heart trouble for several years and some other conditions that were making her recovery much harder. Her blood pressure was so low she was ice cold to the touch -- hypothermic -- and so she was wrapped in a blanket pumping warm aid round her.
I've been to see her quite a few times in the 24 hours since then. She is on a breathing machine, connected up to monitors and a hundred tubes carrying things in and out of her body. Despite all that, he face is calm and almost peaceful. She is sedated into sleep and lies still, the only movement the steady rise and fall of her chest as the air is pumped in and out. There are more nurses than patients, and each bed is watched over all the time. I spoke to the doctor and he was concerned, espcially about the effect of her other conditions. A very warm and open man, and a powerfully competent doctor, and it was not hard to hear from him that my mother's chances are poor.
I can't talk about my feelings. I don't seem to have many. I can't talk about my thoughts. It would mean telling her life story. I can't talk about what the future looks like - it overwhelms me. I love her dearly, and she has been the most wonderful mother to me, and for the past eleven years to W. as well. He came with me tonight to stand by her bed, and he cried all the time we were there. Although she is not conscious, I talked to her a little and said I knew she would come through, and that when she was better, we would have a really good laugh together. Perhaps her sub-conscious heard me, or recognised my voice. She has fought -- and often against ill-health -- all her life. Perhaps she will pull through. If she gets a lot worse the hospital will call me, day or night. No call yet. I hope there isn't one.
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June 03, 2002
Partner W. adores anything about gardening -- books, TV programmes, magazines, catalogues, shows and exhibitions. The result is that he wants to be Gertrude Jekyll and Alan Titchmarsh and the Chelsea Flower Show. But we have a tiny garden in the front of our house. As a result the contents are constantly being added to and changed, and all kinds of exotic and unusual plants (some of them very large) are crammed in. Every Spring there is a different display of bulbs (one year aliums, another huge concentrations of single-coloured tulips, unusual daffodils) and last Summer there were 250 massive, heavily scented lilies in an area where 50 would look over the top. Bee-attracting plants get total priority, so there is a constant humming noise. I don't know a thing (it takes me ages just to get the plant names right and often we compromise with my jokey next-best efforts) -- and the only reason I watch
Gardener's World
is to see the really cute, very masculine (and very possibly gay) presenter
Chris Beardshaw
(who also has a series exploring gardens
in a helicopter
). At home I just get drafted in to help with re-potting and watering.
But I love the outcome -- I adore it. I'm so proud of W. The thing I like best is that his (our) garden attracts a huge amount of attention. People walking past often stop and look, and couples often point different things out to one another. What I really love is when both of us are doing something -- like today we were re-potting the banana plants - great floppy, tropical things (the plants, not us) -- and people see us together, and there is only one possible way to read it. Two men of the same age in their little garden, absorbed in their work and one another. People sometimes stop and chat and ask what something is, or compliment a particularly fine specimen -- and of course it's W. who immediately starts to tell them about things, and discuss all the different plants. I just stand looking on, glowing with pride, and occasionally chime in with a little comment. And when I'm doing something on my own, like watering, passers-by often ask me something, and I have to say I don't know -- it's all my partner William's work. To me the garden is a coming out, us being together for ourselves but in public. It's positive and attractive, and people are delighted or intrigued, and they move towards us instinctively, becoming part of our world for a little while.
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June 02, 2002
Home Secretary, David Blunkett
, according to the
(1.6.02) explicitly endorses views expressed by assassinated Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn:
The Home Secretary said that like Mr Fortuyn he believed in diversity through integration... and compared Muslim forced marriages to the backward looking practices of the aristocracy in Medieval England.
David Blunkett has always been known as one of the Labour MPs
least supportive
of gay rights -- he did not support lowering the
age of consent
, for example. I wonder if his admiration for Pym Fortuyn means that the next thing he will announce is a complete change in his views on homosexuality; or if he is just hiding behind Fortuyn (conveniently for Blunkett, dead) to make noises that voters will like the sound of. I'm not holding my breath. Assimilation through positive engagement with the dominant culture is a perfectly respectable position. But Blunkett has never been interested in that. His record on immigration issues, and statements about them, is opportunistic and unprincipled. In line with that he doesn't attempt to explain how he understands Fortuyn's political outlook, how he would relate him to British politics, or on what basis he would evaluate him and his views. He rips off Fortuyn's name, but can disown him
as a whole
if (as is probable) Labour MPs complain. We should worry if a shit like that started to say he
want to actively promote gay equality.
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June 01, 2002
I've just spent the last eight hours on my usual Saturday round of drudgery: shopping, washing, ironing, cleaning, watering the garden, gossiping with neighbours (less than 1% by volume). I guess I normally quite enjoy it - it's nice to feel useful, it's a change from more stressful obligations, and my weekly excursion to
is usually an opportunity to gently re-provison the house and flirt with the cute young male staff and check-out boys. Not today. The shop will remain open all over the holiday period; it will be constantly re-stocked; and prices aren't about to rise. None of which stopped hundreds of women (most accompanied by "difficult" children) from sweeping every edible product from the shelves. Some women were pushing two trolleys, one with each hand -- in some cases one was simply filled with piles of sliced loaves and gallons of milk. What's gripping them? Can't they tell the difference between June and Christmas? Do they anticipate nuclear armageddon while the World Cup is in progress? Have they suddenly been gripped by an obsessive need to feed stale bread to birds on Tuesday?
The bakery was stripped bare:
What's the matter? There's ususally plenty of bread at this time.
Store assistant:
I know, and we've baked three times the normal amount today.
So what's the story? Has everyone been gripped with an uncontrollable need to stuff themselves with bread at both ends till they pass out?
Waiting customer:
[Very embarrassed giggle]
Store assistant:
I know... I'm exhausted.
I'm sorry - but I just want to put bread into one end of myself, and in moderate amounts.
She managed to find me a loaf and a packet of 6 wholemeal rolls -- I don't even like wholemeal that much.
The fresh fruit was ravaged. The only pasta was
(and there was an unlimited quantity of that -- clearly an unpopular shape). The checkouts were long lines of groaning trollies jammed so you couldn't get past, and difficult children acting up ("Darling, please don't do that, you know it makes mummy cross." It pushed me close to murder.) Not a hope of a nice little chat with one of the cute Saturday boys, who looked as if they were about to explode. Meanwhile, outside, it was the warmest, sunniest day of the year so far. At the end of it all I had a headache in the back of my head, that got steadily worse, and ruined the ironing (which is usually my favourite job). But then I reminded myself -- all the straight men are sitting round drinking beer and shouting at TV sets -- so I should count my blessings and be thankful, even for days like today.
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text:
Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian's handwriting looks furious, untamed and fake…it has tremendous rhythm.
The long and heavy down strokes (on both K's) convey an 'I don't care what anyone thinks' attitude. No dotted i's show that she prefers to get the big picture and perhaps later get a hold of the details. All of her oval letters are closed —one who does not reveal about her personal life too much—unless very close with the other person; additionally, this type of handwriting, round and slow (arcade) reflects the writer who often puts on a façade.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I like wearing bags cross body.
I hate having to carry then in my hand.
I don't get the wearing them in the crook of my arm type thing.
I can just about manage with carrying them on my shoulder.
Therefore certain models of bags have been off my list, even though I might love the look of them. The Mulberry Ledbury is one of them. Styled like a classic Bayswater but baby-/mini-sized, it would be the perfect alernative to my Alexa. It would also be a nice change in that it's a more structured and therefore smart-looking bag.
Mulberry recently released the Small Bayswater Satchel (SBS), which is pretty much a Ledbury with a long strap and I do love it (especially the oxblood version) but I
a) had my heart set on something in printed oak and
b) thought the price tag of almost £800 was a bit ott, considering you can get a nice preloved Ledbury for around £300.
Imagine my delight, when a lovely and very knowledgeable lady introduced me to something that would allow me to convert a Ledbury into a SBS! So without much further ado - i.e. I'm gonna stop typing now - the transformation!
If you'd like to have a go yourself, you can find these clamps on Cox the Saddler's website.
Just a couple of detail shots, which hopefully show quite clearly how these clamps were attached.
Give it a go and let me know how it goes?


text:
Landscape Health Care - Identify, Prevent, Treat
March 23, 2011 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Location: Bay Landscaping - Essexville, MI
Taught by: M. David Sutton, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist, Tri City Tree Doctor/United Tree Service
Preventive medicine is not just for people - your clients' landscapes can benefit from your ability to identify common landscape pests and diseases. At this workshop you'll also learn landscape planning strategies to avoid commonly seen pest, disease and abiotic disorders and environmentally friendly management techniques of common landscape pests and diseases, followed by Q & A. MDA Pesticide Recertification Credits have been approved and ISA Recertification Credits have been applied for.
Cost: MNLA Member $35 Non-Member $49
In Partnership with SVNLA
Registration Code: LHC
Click here to download a registration form! (PDF)


text:
ASML is one of the world's leading manufacturers of chip-making equipment. Headquartered in Veldhoven, the Netherlands, ASML employs more than 21,000 people.
The 2012 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of ASML Holding N.V. was held on April 25, 2012. More information regarding the meeting can be found on the AGM 2012 web page.
|Visit page
|AGM 2012 Shareholder Information
Page updated on 2012-2-13 9:00 CET


text:
We are here to help
The CanWest 2019 show team welcomes your inquiries. Whether you are attending or exhibiting, please contact us with any questions you have about the show.
Your CanWest Team
Please be sure to leave us as much detail as possible in your messages including your name and contact information. We will reply to your requests as soon as possible.
Karen De Jong – Ellery
Show Manager
[email protected]
Michelle Linford
Exhibitor Relations
[email protected]
Stay Connected with CanWest
Follow CanWest on Twitter
Join CanWest on Facebook
The CanWest Hort Expo is managed by the BC Landscaping & Nursery Association.
#102, 19289 Langley Bypass, Surrey, BC, V3S 6K1
General Phone: 604.575.3500; Toll Free within BC, 1.800.421.7963
General Email: [email protected]


text:
First Lieutenant Ben Underwood, current MBA student, talks about time management in our Online Student Commons about taking classes while deployed: "Time management is key for me. I generally know what my assignments are for the week, but I need
Online Student Commons Archive
Student Tips: Have a family? Do you Study with Your Family (and as a Family)?
In WorldClassRoom's Online Student Commons, LTC David Burger wrote on this discussion: "Have a family? Do you Study with Your Family (and as a Family)?". Here are his tips and comments: "I have become a late night warrior so that


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Anyone who reads my blog knows that I consider predominantly online job search efforts as a sole means of searching for a new job as only a half-hearted effort -- by limiting your activities you are limiting your potential for success. The more and varied effort you put forth the better your chances, it's pretty simple. The other key factor is your level of urgency. Do you want a job; do you need a job? The answer to this question guides most of us and influences our actions, real or perceived. But here's the problem I encounter far too often: most people plod around and while they speak about urgency, their actions do not match their rhetoric. Let me explain.
When you see a good job posted, I assure you that companies are deluged with resumes within just a couple of days. Indeed, so many resumes come in that HR will often take down the job post assuming they have plenty to choose from and, as such, within a few days that job post is removed – first you see it, then you don't.
When you find a good job posting, one that interests you, you need to act on it and pursue it then and there – on the very same day. If you're serious don't think about it, don't sleep on it or consider it, but do something about it. Now. I am not here to psychoanalyze the reasons and rationale about why people do or don't do what they need to be doing. I don't care, but I do know that the longer people take time to contemplate a decision, time's ticking. However, in order to be able to react you need to have your resume or CV and a basic cover letter template (with a few adjustments to suit the situation) ready to go. Are you ready, do you have these things prepared to use on short notice? If not, why not?
Years after having served in the military, certain memories stand out in my mind. Others know what I am talking about - little things that stick with you for a lifetime, things that influenced you at a very personal level. And one of those is of a Drill Sergeant screaming at you from your very first day, saying, and I quote, "You better move like you've got a purpose!"
Furthermore, I have often observed human resources and office managers post jobs, then take down the post for a particular job in as little as two days, as soon as they have a handful of respondents they think sufficient to choose from. I recognize that what I am describing is not the case each and every time, but your mindset should assume it is so and that there is a very limited window of opportunity. So when you see something that appeals to you, that you feel is worthy of your attention don't pine away, stop day-dreaming about it and do something, now.
When you are or will be looking for a job and you are serious, you have a purpose so what are you waiting for? When you see something that interests you, react within the same day. If, in your particular situation there is no urgency, I still suggest you apply quickly for another reason; companies look only until they find suitable and qualified candidates. If you arrive late to the party, it's already over.
Let me share with you a prime example of unintended procrastination, but procrastination nonetheless. Recently, I was working on a search for a mid-level lawyer for a good-named law firm. I was referred to someone who is indeed a good candidate with a great reputation. I spoke with him 3 ½ weeks ago, a few days before he was leaving for vacation. Rather than provide me his updated resume and his approval to submit him for consideration he said he'd do it upon his return. Well, that was 2 weeks ago and after he returned he needed a few days to catch up on work, but he shared with me that during his vacation his level of interest had increased and he'd get something over to me soon. That brings us to the beginning of last week when my client called me and said they were satisfied they had enough candidates and closed the process for additional candidates (you see, during this time I was still doing my job, continuing to speak with and recruit others because the process nor the hiring manager was taking a vacation). To make a long story short, the person who was too busy missed out and was surprisingly disappointed. Sadly the person who was too busy was indeed a better candidate than the person selected and hired. But, in fact, was he better? I suggest the better of the two was the person who wanted it more and demonstrated their interest in both word and deed.


text:
All Films.All Above Board.NOW INCLUDES TV SHOWS & TV LISTINGS
Jackie Chan's trademark blend of slapstick comedy and martial arts action gets another airing in this adventure based on a Japanese manga series. Womanising crime-fighter Ryô Seaba (Chan) is assigned to track down a Japanese heiress and his investigations lead him to a sea-bound ocean liner. However, once on-board, our intrepid hero finds he has more to contend with than a simple kidnapping case - the liner is about to be hijacked by terrorists and he is the only man who can foil their dastardly plot.


text:
Panio Horizontal Duplex Deluxe Flat Panel Designer Radiator
Special Features:
Panio Horizontal Duplex Deluxe Flat Panel Radiator
Offering Higher BTU ratings than their standard Panio flat panel counterparts, the Panio vertical deluxe range offers the same subtle and sleek design found with the Panio range. This is thanks to the enclosed top with grill design which is found on the Panio Horizontal Deluxe Radiator; this allows for higher BTU ratings, keeping your room warm. The close off top with grill design provides a secondary function of hiding the brackets and back of the radiator from view and providing a much neater look when viewing from the top down. They can be used with existing hot water central heating systems. Constructed from high quality steel with a powder coated finish and available in a range of sizes. This range of deluxe radiators will make a stylish addition to any modern home.
- Flat panel radiator with top grill
- Increases BTU by 8% on standard duplex flat panel
- Looks great
- Horizontal use only
- Projection only 86mm
- European made with standard UK connections
- Distance from the wall to face front 86mm
- Pipe centres are the width of the radiator less 50mm. Pipe centre 56mm from wall to centre
- Made to order delivery 5-6 weeks
- Fixings for wall mounting included
- Any colour to order
- Prices as white, anthracite + 15% others + 25%
The 4 stock Items below order before 3pm for next day delivery:
595 x 900 White
595 x 1200 White
595 x 1500 White
595 x 1800 White
Available Finishes and Sizes
- White
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|Size (mm)
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|Price (From)
BTU Calculator
Use this handy calculator to calculate the BTU/hour.▼ Open ▼
Delivery Information:
After your purchase you will receive a confirmation of order with your invoice. Next day delivery orders will receive a further email on the day of dispatch with tracking information and numbers to call if required.
Our couriers operate a full day delivery window between 8am – 6pm Monday – Friday. If you have ordered an item which is made to order you will receive an email conformation and invoice. We will then be in contact with you once the order has left the factory to arrange delivery on a suitable day.
Some scottish postcodes are not next day and our 2 man courier operates a 48 hrs services in some areas of the UK. Please see your dispatch email for details.


text:
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This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.
The compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts made in this blog. All advertisements on this blog are either paid for by the company represented or are an affiliate program.
The owner(s) or staff of this blog are occasionally compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) or staff of this blog receives compensation for posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers' own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.
To our knowledge, this blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.
To get your own policy, go to http://www.disclosurepolicy.org
This policy updated march 25, 2019


text:
Here's an age-old problem: you take your butter out of the fridge, attempt to cut it and spread it over your toast, but it's just too hard. The result is either mangled toast or an inconsistent spread. What's a tired and hungry blogger to do? Warburtons has the answer. The company has come up with the idea of a heated butter knife: pressing a button on the handle will heat the blade to 41.8C, apparently the perfect temperature to melt butter.
Once you activate the heating mechanism, it'll be ready to go in around 30 seconds. When you've managed to scoop up the necessary amount of butter, Warburtons recommends you evenly spread the substance by starting in the middle of your toast and heading towards the edges. You'll be wanting to do that at an angle of 24.5 degrees, by the way.
The knife is powered by two AA batteries found in the handle, with the heating elements positioned at the tip of the blade "for optimum spreading technique." Alas, there's no word on if this will be a product that will actually make it to market, or how much it will cost, as it exists only as a prototype right now. We're sure if enough people starting throwing money at their screens Warburtons will find a way to bring it to market.
[via The Guardian]


text:
Last Tuesday, my brother-in-law Buddy threw a birthday dinner at Conti's in Greenhills. We left the house early thinking we could beat the rush hour traffic. We did, actually, and we were in Greenhills at 5.30 or one hour before the agreed time. Conti's, along Connecticut Street, is not exactly within walking distance of the shopping center and we weren't about to give up our parking slot so we could spend an hour gawking at flea market items. Waiting in the car did not seem like a good idea either. Why not coffee and pastries at nearby UCC Vienna Cafe instead?
Whichever coffee shop we go to, I always order a cappuccino. I can't remember a time when I didn't. So, it was cappuccino (P139.00) for me, a cup of the house blend (P79.00) for Speedy and mocha coolers (P115.00 each) for Sam and Alex.
The coffee was good but the pastries were even better.
Because we went to UCC Vienna Cafe just to kill time and not really to gorge on pastries, Speedy and I decided to order and share a single piece of Toblerone mousse (P155.00).
It was okay but the texture did not impress me. The center was soft but not creamy which could mean 1) gelatin was added OR 2) it contained melted marshmallows. Whichever it was, despite the wonderful flavor of the chocolate, I couldn't really rave about the Toblerone mousse.
The pastries that the girls ordered were the real winners.
Alex's Oreo cheesecake bar (P89.00) was thick, creamy, smooth and just sweet enough to titillate the taste buds. We used to think that only Starbucks had Oreo cheesecake but we all agreed that UCC Vienna Cafe's Oreo cheesecake was loads better than Starbucks'.
The star of the night was Sam's Kitkat mousse (P185.00). It was everything that a mousse should be — rich, thick, creamy and unabashedly decadent. It was glorious!
Although we were tempted to try other items on the menu which, except for the coffee and the sweets, was decidedly Japanese, we had to restrain ourselves because we were, after all, going to a birthday dinner. Good thing though that we decided to have snacks at UCC Vienna Cafe. We had to wait in line to be seated at Conti's and it wasn't until 8.00 p.m. that we were finally able to get a table. But that's another story.


text:
Home > Continuing Legal Education > Audio/Video Products > The New Power of Attorney Law
Product Code 2166
Presented on September 10, 2010
3.0 CLE credits: Skills
The New Power of Attorney law adopted in September, 2009 has undergone major revisions which will become effective in September, 2010. This program
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The Local Government Act 1989 requires all Victorian councils to prepare an Annual Report each financial year.
The purpose of the Annual Report is to:
The report includes copies of the Performance Statement and Financial Statement which are audited by the Victorian Auditor-General's Office. The report is prepared in accordance with the Local Government Act 1989 and the Local Government Reporting Performance Framework (LGPRF).
Designed versions:
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Sam Merrifield Library also keeps hard copies of previous years' Annual Reports.
2018/19 reports:
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For more information on Annual Reports, call our Corporate Planning Officer on 9243 8888.


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As of this Friday, knives will be officially cool. Okay, we know they're already cool, but now everybody else will know it too. The new Discovery Channel series 'Blade Brothers' has it all: acres of tattoos, newly-printed promotional T-shirts, a suspiciously tidy workshop, and faux deadlines and drama galore. Make the jump for the TDC promo video…
'Gun Culture 2.0 has finally spawned 'Knife Culture 2.0' and it's about time. Gun 2.0 has generally been a good thing for people like us, but we've been deluged with gun-themed reality shows like 'Sons Of Gods Of American Pawn Stars Of War Guns' for years. Some of them suck, because they lavish money and attention on total ass-clowns. Others are pretty cool: my personal favorite is Wild West Alaska, because I've met Jim West and Ken Feinman and they're even nicer (and funnier) in real life than they are on TV. I'm also blessed to own one of their customized lever-actions, and it's absolutely the coolest gun I've ever owned.
But I digress. Todd Begg makes some over-the-top 'custom' knives like the oddly-named Bodega Timascus in the title photo. Now he'll have a Discovery Channel film crew hovering over his shoulder as he takes on absurd projects like the 'Klingon Arm-Blade' hinted at in the promo video.
We knew it was going to happen eventually, didn't we? It's not going to be Citizen Kane, but let's just hope it's fun.


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|Surabaya Terminal Container / pp3.co.id
PT Terminal Petikemas Surabaya - TPS or known as "Surabaya Terminal Container" is an Indonesian company that is involved in container terminal services located in Port of Tanjung Perak Surabaya. Its business include container discharge services, container loading service, container receiving services, container delivery services, container freight station services, train services between TPS and Kereta Api Logistik (KALOG). Surabaya Terminal Container is a directly-owned subsidiary company of PT Pelabuhan Indonesia III (Persero) or Pelindo 3 Group, a leading state-owned port operator in Indonesia. According to Pelindo 3 Group's profile as cited by JobsCDC.com, Pelindo 3 Group is the majority shareholder at Surabaya Terminal Container, with 50.50% of ownership. Another 49.00% are owned by P&O Dover (Holdings) Ltd, while the rest by KOPELINDO III (0.50%).
In line with its continued expansion program, PT Terminal Petikemas Surabaya is pleased to announce the following vacancies for immediate recruitment
Operator RTG (POD - 65)
In line with its continued expansion program, PT Terminal Petikemas Surabaya is pleased to announce the following vacancies for immediate recruitment
Operator RTG (POD - 65)
- Maximum age of 25 years old on 1 July 2016.
- Minimum SMA/SMK or equivalent.
- Minimum height 165cm with an ideal body weight and not color blind.
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For further information, please refer official source from Jtanzilcareer on following link below. Should you are interested and qualified, please send your application (Include SKCK, medical certificate and SIO RTG, if any) to Strategic Human Capital Management Consulting Centre - Jl Mayjend Sungkono, Darmo Park 2 Blok 3 No 19 – 20, Surabaya 60225, email: firstname.lastname@example.com. Please indicate the position code on the left side of the envelope. All applications will be handled in strictly confidential and only short-listed candidates that match to the requirements and qualifications will be notified. (JobsCDC.com/Source)


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San Francisco Ballet
Program 7: "Silver Ladders", "Damned", "Sandpaper Ballet"
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA
Program 7: "Silver Ladders", "Damned", "Sandpaper Ballet"
War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, CA
April 23 & 24, 2002
The abstract "Silver Ladders" opened the program. Tomasson's remarks in the program note that he had in his mind a depiction of a ritualistic gathering place such as Stonehenge. As I read this to my companion, he said, "It's "Spinal Tap!" referring to the infamous 18-inch Stonehenge incident in the movie "This is Spinal Tap". Sure there were dancing dwarfs, which San Francisco Ballet certainly did not have, but at least "Spinal Tap" had a sense of humour about it. To my eyes, Katita Waldo fared better with the musical dynamics of the Joan Tower score than did Lucia Lacarra, who performed on opening night, and Sherri LeBlanc and Vanessa Zahorian gave brave performances in the trio on each night, but ultimately there's really very little they can do with what they are given. Although Waldo and Lacarra attempted a kind of regal air, they seemed uncertain as to whether they were aliens or princesses, or maybe alien princesses.
Nevertheless, whatever might be said about Tomasson's own ballets, he has never had trouble recognizing a good choreographer when he sees one. Possokhov's second premiere for SFB, "Damned" was without doubt a rousing success. One can quibble about the details of the costumes or the dramatics of a death scene, but on Tuesday night, the audience at the Opera House was on its feet following Joanna Berman's stirring performance as the protagonist, Medea.
Berman was joined by Roman Rykine as Jason and Yuan Yuan Tan as the princess that Jason puts aside Medea to marry. To say that Berman nearly erased thoughts of all the other leads is no small thing. Tan's beautiful line never stopped throughout her opening pas de deux, set to Maurice Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" (the rest of the score is derived from Concerto in D Major for the Left Hand). Her delicacy and grace gave Possokhov's choreography its maximum range. Nicole Starbuck, however, was astonishing dancing the same role on Wednesday with Guennadi Nedviguine as Jason. With a glamorous presence that I have not seen before from her, Starbuck embraced the youth and innocence of the princess making a fine contrast with Lorena Feijoo's dark portrayal of Medea.
Both Feijoo and Berman are somewhat bound by Possokhov's direction. Specifically, he wanted them to use their faces less and allow the drama to originate from the rest of their bodies, through the dancing. Feijoo, however, is a facial dancer, and is not served by keeping that part of her expressiveness in check. Her movement is superb and sometimes eerie, as in the ripples through her back and shoulders when she straightens up from a contraction, but it was not until she began her final solo that she unleashed the full power of her eyes and face.
Berman's Medea was similarly constrained, but more successful at clearly outlining her feelings. Her pas de deux with Rykine quickly deteriorated into a frenzied violent tussle and Berman's sense of purpose and resolve materialized very quickly during their altercation. She emphasized the most delicate moments of her solos with as much ease and drive as she did the most earthy. When she emerged from under her cloak with a positively deranged look on her face, after murdering her two young sons, the deep contrast between Ravel's Pavane and her resigned walk away was riveting.
As with any new work, some things were more successful than others. The stark bareness of the single twisted tree, set in grass as a background, was effective, as was the red poisoned scarf that floated down from the heavens into Medea's hands. But the immolation of the princess in a flare of flame-like silk cloths was perhaps a little too theatrical and abrupt. And while the steps for Jason were wonderful, the development of his character was a bit thin. Rykine and Nedviguine both acquitted themselves well, but Jason's motivations remained unclear at the end. Still, Possokhov has an eye for iconic moments and creates undeniably gorgeous, thrilling choreography.
The loony "Sandpaper Ballet", a Morris homage to kitsch, closed the program. The company performs this ballet so often that for some of the dancers, it seems to be wearing on them a little. Smiles looked a bit forced on the corps, but nevertheless, there were a few standout performances. For the audience, there's always a light giggle even before the curtain goes up as the orchestra begins the first Leroy Anderson tune and this time conductor Jean LeRoux gave us an even more rollicking "Sleigh Ride" overture than usual. On Tuesday night, James Sofranko gave a light appealing performance in the "Trumpeter's Lullaby" section. Michael Eaton had more of a cruising breezy attack the next night. Gonzalo Garcia was irrepressible as always, and both he and Benjamin Pierce had an appealing way of inviting the audience in on their little dancing jokes.
During the "Jazz Pizzicato" though, I really started to think about the impact of Berman's retirement on this company. This section is strictly ensemble; there really isn't a principal in this group of twelve women, who all dance the same steps in tight unison block. Berman is front and center though, and you spot her immediately. Without question, she is the leader, hitting the music dead-on, and flirting joyfully with the audience the entire time. Dancers and audience members alike have noted that in this, her final season, Berman is dancing like never before. More than ever she is the kind of principal dancer that is the glue holding the company together. Her dancing is secure and yet she takes the risky chances that make watching ballet exciting and immediate. I can't imagine the company without her.
Please join a discussion of this performance in our forum.
Edited by Marie.
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Under the Gaze
Released: October, 2004
* Features "Getting Ready for Glory," "Not a Tame Lion" and "This is the Moment"
* Winner* of Multiple Covenant and Shai Awards
*Guest artists* Shari Ulrich and Steve Bell contribute harmony vocals
"Under the Gaze proves Arends' talent as potent as ever. Think Beth Nielson Chapman or Mary Chapin Carpenter. A consummate song writer…beautifully crafted melodies and poetic lyrics."
– Steve Stockman, Rhythms of Redemption
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Lynne R Moore is an artist with a passion for extremes of landscape, whether open moorland, deserted beach or arid desert. The essence of her work is her ability to capture the feeling of freedom, space and closeness to nature.
Her travels to, and her love of wild places and wild animals, be it Lapland or India, Africa or Australia, are evident in the vigour of her recent canvases. From shooting and fishing to house portraits, aircraft to the Cresta Run, gardens to animals, Lynne has undertaken a wide variety of commissions.
©2019 Lynne Moore Art


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27 year-old plus model Iskra Lawrence is an avid militant for body positivity – and she recently partnered with Elle to create a video that shows how posing in certain ways can make one look much slimmer.
On her video:
I wanted to get super real and show u how drastically and instantly ppl can change how they look simply by posing!
Let alone good lighting, high quality cameras and photoshop! I've talked about this a lot in the past but in this video I show you 7 ways in which posing can dramatically change how we look. I myself still pose and there's nothing wrong with moving your body in ways you feel most comfortable or confident but let's be honest and show the actual process. I've been modelling 14years so I learnt some stuff I want to share with you all. Because life's not perfect, social media lives aren't Perfect and neither are us or our bodies. And that's exactly how it's meant to be! Because we are all imperfectly perfect and 100% unique.
P.S.: According to Wikipedia, Iskra is…
Height: 1.75 m / 5'9"
Weight: 192 lb (87 kg)
Watch it below!
Many more of Iskra's posing tricks inside!


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I have Teamed up with Bare Escentuals for a giveaway and to introduce RethinkWhatMatters.com
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8 Am to 6 Pm
Dr. B Sudhakar Subramaniam
Consultant - Anaesthesia
MBBS, M.D Anesthesia
Dr B. Sudhakar Subramanian an alumnus of Annamalai University has been working as a Consultant in the Dept. of Anesthesiology at SIMS since Oct. 2012. He has more than 10 years of experience in the field of Anesthesiology at various institutions in India and abroad with extensive experience in Neuro- Anesthesia and Intra- operative neuro physiological monitoring. He has also been a faculty and delivered Lectures at various national and international anesthesia conferences.
Professional Competencies of your Doctor:
- Indian Medical Association
- Indian Society of Anesthesia
- Indian society of Neuro anesthesia and critical care
- Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical care
- The anesthetist's society
Your Doctor's Area of Expertise:
- Neuro anesthesia and Neuro critical care
- Trans Cranial Doppler
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Web application firewalls (WAFs) are hardware or software devices positioned to monitor website traffic, with the ability to enforce policy on browser/server transactions. WAFs are specifically designed to inspect HTTP(s) traffic and regulate data contained within headers, URL parameters, and web content. On top of that if an attack dose find a way to sneak past a WAF, it still has the ability to prevent sensitive information from leaving the trusted network.
Application firewalls or proxies certainly do offer several advantages over packet filter and stateful packet inspection firewalls. Although these types of firewalls can prevent various network-level attacks, they cannot block the gaping holes found in most Web applications that allow hackers to attack Web sites directly through URL manipulation. However, they can permit or deny specific applications or specific features of an application given a great degree of granular control. Application firewalls can also authenticate users directly. This means, for example, that they can allow or deny a specific incoming telnet command from a particular user, whereas other firewalls can only control general incoming requests from a particular host.
They also provide better content filtering capabilities as they have the ability to examine the payload of the packet and make decisions based on actual content. Having the ability to examine the entire network packet rather than just the network addresses and ports means they have more extensive logging capabilities too, such as application-specific commands, which provide valuable information for dealing with security incidents and policy implementation.
So, given these obvious security advantages why application isn't firewalls the default option? Well, the main reasons are cost and performance. Since all incoming and outgoing traffic is inspected at the application level, it must pass through all seven layers of the OSI model prior to being inspected, whereas packet filtering and stateful packet inspection methods just look at traffic at the network layer. Because the firewall must consume CPU cycles reading and interpreting each packet, the inspection process requires more processing power, which has the potential to become a bottleneck for the network. This means application firewalls are more susceptible to distributed denial of service attack and therefore are less suited to high-bandwidth or real-time applications. The firewall can also be vulnerable to the security loopholes of the underlying operating system.
Another disadvantage of application firewalls is that each protocol, such as HTTP, SMTP, etc., requires its own proxy application, and support for new network applications and protocols tends to be limited. Although most firewall vendors provide generic proxy agents to support undefined network protocols or applications, they tend to allow traffic to tunnel through the firewall, negating many of the reasons for operating an application firewall. Alternatively, stateful packet inspection firewalls, like packet filtering firewalls, have very little impact on network performance, can be implemented transparently and are application independent. Scalability can also become a problem as the number of clients or the number of proxies increases. Application firewalls typically require clients on the network to install specialized software or make configuration changes to be able to connect to the application proxy. This can have quite an impact on larger networks. To reduce the load on the firewall, a dedicated proxy server may be needed to secure less time-sensitive services, such as e-mail and most Web traffic adding to the overall costs.
A mistake in configuration, a signature that doesn't work, or a zero-day attack all can create a hole that attackers could slither through.
Secure Socket Layer (SSL). One of the most crucial things to consider, especially for retailers or anyone with a sensitive site, is how the WAF you choose manages SSL. Because SSL traffic typically is decrypted by the web server, the WAF will must be able to decrypt SSL traffic to check if a data payload has any harmful content. If your WAF can't do this, its usefulness is limited significantly. Typically, WAFs can support SSL in the following ways:
1. The SSL decryption operation is moved from the web server to the WAF. The WAF inspects data and passes only good requests on to the web server.
2. The WAF somehow is embedded in the web server or has hooks that the web server can call after decrypting the data. The WAF then can check the validity of each request.
To conclude this I should say that WAFs don't displace code reviews or vulnerability assessment. WAFs should supplement, not replace, thorough security code reviews. WAFs aren't perfect and can break down; as a result, all software must be developed and hardened properly. For commercial software, that includes evaluating the software with a web application scanner, and performing a thorough security code review of all custom-built applications. A mistake in configuration, a signature that doesn't work, or a zero-day attack all can create a hole that attackers could slither through.
Source by Somnath Guha Neogi


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POINT BLANK, TEXAS. Point Blank is at the junction of U.S. Highway 190 and State Highway 156, eighty-five miles north of Houston in northern San Jacinto County. The name originated with Florence Dissiway, a Frenchwoman who moved to the area during the 1850s to be a governess for the R. T. and Henry Robinson families. Dissiway called the spot Blanc Point, which local residents eventually changed to Point Blank. R. T. Robinson reputedly set up the first store; among the community's early residents was future governor George T. Wood, who set up a plantation as early as 1839. Wood was subsequently buried in the Robinson cemetery, where a monument was erected by the state in 1911. A post office was established at Point Blank in 1884. The largely agricultural community remained small, with an estimated population of seventy-five in 1925. The number of residents remained stable until the late 1960s, when the completion of nearby Lake Livingston attracted an influx of tourists and residents. With its population more than doubled to 183, residents voted for incorporation in 1975. By the mid-1980s Point Blank had twelve businesses and 325 residents and was the third largest town in San Jacinto County. In 1990 the population was 443. The population grew to 559 by 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:Ruth Hansbro, History of San Jacinto County (M.A. thesis, Sam Houston State Teachers College, 1940).
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U.S. Week Ahead: Markets on watch for more global turmoil
June 1 - The economic turmoil roiling markets will be in focus next week, as governments and investors monitor developments. And Fed chairman Ben Bernanke faces Congress and questions about QE3.
They disturbingly dismal US jobs report sinks stock markets on Friday pouring more wall on an already fragile world. Come Monday morning we will see how much more fall out markets and governments willing to work. The global economy is teetering on the edge as the engine of China's economy slowed sharply. Europe remains in critical condition and the US staggers. Panicked investors pour money into safe haven assets like this with spines and US treasuries. Driving down interest rates. But stock markets are seeing value erode quickly the NYSE gave up all gains made for the year on Friday. And schools -- life again as investors that jumps back and would -- us to watch for any global hand holding between the I am -- and Europe as well as any new messages from the White House. And -- all the chaos once again will be Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Phoebe -- heard -- monetary maestro will confront a very critical congress on Thursday. His competency will be questions and the value of the fat reassessed. As he is peppered with questions about QE3 and solutions to the economic crisis. There is now an expectation that the -- he even went there arsenal of limited tools will be forced to implement some sort of stimulus program. More critically US economic data will be out with ISM services leading the charge the broad gauge is expected to be on terror changed. According to UIFR from May's 53 point five. While a reading above fifty indicate the economy is still expanding and will also show that the expansion isn't -- Other key data points will be factory orders durable goods and US economy the Beige Book. Focus will also be on Thursday's jobless claims for any sign of improvements and the labor market. And markets and investors will be intensely focused. On all the Fed speakers and whether they will make any surprise announcements about policy. What they want here is how the -- plans to deal with hobbled economy. -- worst poll taken on Friday says Wall Street sees an increase chance the Fed will launch another round of monetary stimulus. Also they see an increase chance that the Fed will extend a current stimulus program called Operation Twist which -- later this month. We'll get a chance to see what the Fed will do when they meet on June 19 and twentieth. Well no wonder that after all this economic news someone is huffing and puffing. A volcano in Mexico -- so much smoke and ash that is worried about an eruption. Are considering evacuating nearby towns and villages. The volcano whose name ironically means smoking mountain lies just southeast of Mexico City. I'm putting on this is Reuters.


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Elham Manea, PD Dr.
Curriculum Vitae
PD. Dr. Elham Manea is of dual nationalities, Yemeni and Swiss. She is an Associate Professor specialized on the Middle East, a writer, and a human rights activist. She is a Fulbright scholar who holds a PhD degree in political science from the University of Zurich, Master degree in comparative politics from the American University in Washington D.C, and a Bachelor degree in political science from Kuwait University. She has published academic and non fiction books in English, German, and Arabic in addition to two novels in Arabic. Her latest publication was a book entitled The Arab State and Women's Rights: The Trap of Authoritarian Governance, London: Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics, June 2011. She works at the Political Science Institute at the University of Zurich and a consultant for Swiss government agencies and international human rights organizations. Recently, she has been appointed by the Swiss Federal Council as a Member of the Federal Commission for Women Affairs.
Research Focus
Comparative Politics of countries of the Arabian Peninsula, with a special focus on Yemen, Saudi Arabian, Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman; Gender and Authoritarian Arab States; Democratization and civil society in the MENA region.


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[I'm taking a small break from the Tizon tizzy. There is also the matter of the recent martial law declaration in the Philippine island of Mindanao, which is getting me worked up too. More on these things later. I need to clear my head. In the meantime, there is this.]
How do you write about growing old? How do you write about coming to terms with your own mortality when your parents are in denial of theirs? How do you fucking write about any of it?
You find yourself sitting in the school auditorium on a Saturday night, waiting for the play to begin. There is loud chatter between parents, the mad dash of younger kids trying to play tag between the metal folding chairs. This is the first play for your oldest and, you suspect, not the last. Your mother leans over and asks about the rest of the visit from your in-laws. You pause and consider what to tell her.
Your in-laws are elderly and in the past year or so, their mental health has declined at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, due to said mental health decline, they are unaware of this and continue to live their day-to-day lives as they always have, believing things are the same as they ever were. Never mind that he got lost coming home from the fitness center that is five minutes away –a drive that he's done for the past twenty-five years-- and it took him three hours to find his way back. Never mind that she asks the same question three times in a span of five minutes. (As you write this, you can already hear Hubs telling you that you are exaggerating about his mother, that you are blowing things out of proportion. Perhaps. But if you are, there is a point to be made: they are not fit to live independently any longer. And we are all in agreement on that.)
It seems your in-laws have not put an aging plan into place. (Whether this is an actual term has yet to be determined, but the basic concept is there.) It is safe to say that they presumed there was no need for such a plan, in which they specify instructions for their care. Perhaps they imagined they would simply pass away in their sleep. No physical complications. No mental health issues. Nothing. Just: one day you're here; the next: you're asleep forever. Ha. If only it were that simple for everyone.
You will not go into detail about the difficult struggles Hubs and his siblings have endured this past year, more intensely over the last week or so… or about the emotional labor and exhaustion this has brought on. It is too overwhelming. You can only pay attention, taking mental notes for when your own parents come to this threshold.
Amid the echo of chatter in the auditorium, you try to tell your mother that things are bad. Really bad. But the noise it too loud for you to go in depth about it. You tell her that they need a plan, that they need to figure out what they're going to do when they're elderly. She shrugs it off as if to say: No, I don't. We don't need a plan. But you insist: Yes, you do. Because we are not going to go through what they are going through right now. You stop short of threatening to abandon them. This needs a more delicate touch.
You know your parents pretty well. You especially know how stubborn your father is. Not "can be", but "IS". He is convinced that he will live forever and in perfect health. He has the vitamins and supplements to prove it. But vitamins can't protect from everything, like, say, car accidents.
But how do you communicate this to people who are set in their ways (which are most of us)? How do you tell them that you've seen firsthand the kind of grief that puts love to the test? That you don't want to go through that test if you don't have to. That a plan will help in some way. That a plan will demonstrate their love for you – that they are thinking of you instead of themselves, a true act of love.
You have no idea.
But you have to try. Try something. Try everything.
Life is unpredictable, but most of us live as if it weren't. Most of us live asleep, on auto-pilot. And while it's not possible to prepare for every scenario, something needs to be in place, especially when it comes to elder care. And that something needs to be put in place now, when all mental faculties are running at full capacity.
And with that, you begin to write down what you're witnessing with your in-laws, hoping that your own parents will see how necessary an aging plan is.
And then pray.
And then pray.