text:
New Balance 574 Athletic Shoe - Little Kid
Style #: 1401687
Pair their active lifestyle with the new 574 Athletic Shoe from New Balance! Rocking streamlined comfort and style, the 574 Athletic Shoe features sturdy textile uppers with a soft lining and lightweight EVA midsole for all-day cushion and comfort.
- Synthetic textile upper with soft textile lining
- Padded tongue and collar for premium comfort
- Lace closure offers a secure fit
- EVA midsole provides cushion and stability
- Durable rubber outsole delivers flexible traction
New Balance began as a Boston-based arch support company in the early 1900's, developed into a specialized shoe manufacturer in the 1970's, and has grown to become a leading global athletic products company. Today New Balance is a family of brands including New Balance, Dunham, PF Flyers, Aravon, Warrior and Brine. Since the days of selling arch supports to police officers and waiters, New Balance has been a brand concerned with meeting the needs of the everyday athlete. Part of producing superior footwear and athletic apparel is manufacturing it to fit all widths and sizes, because a better fit produces better performance. To ensure the best fitting, best performing shoes and apparel, we focus on improving our technology and production methods. We have maintained five manufacturing facilities in New England where we continue to rely on the skills and teamwork of our American workforce to produce a percentage of our athletic footwear. We have also remained strongly committed to a core set of company values that include integrity, teamwork and total customer satisfaction.


text:
Monday, October 8, 2018
Vintage truck
Posted by rico at 2:41 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Christ's coming was prophesied in the Bible 800BC Believe in Christ NOW ..................................... Romans 10:9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
1. One God exists from everlasting to everlasting and expresses Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
2. God inspired people to write the Bible (His Word), revealing His plan and His love for us.
3. God created us all in His image and deserves our love and obedience.
4. Through the decision of one man (Adam) death entered the world, separating us from God. Since then, we're all born separate from God.
5. Through the sacrificial death and resurrection of one perfect man (Jesus, God-the-Son) we can re-connect with God.
6. All we have to do is believe in Jesus to be forgiven of all our wrongs and to spend eternity with God…or…we can choose not to.
7. If we accept this gift from God, He lives in us (spiritually), empowering us to live, love and help others know Him.
8. Christ will return to earth at the end of the Tribulation period and will rule for 1000 years.
9. We are Saved by Grace however Faith with NO works IS dead.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
CHICAGO -- When the final horn sounded in Detroit Thursday night, the work officially and immediately started.
Monte Shubik went to work. While the players got changed and prepared for a flight to Chicago for a first-round playoff series against the Bulls, the team's video coordinator focused on getting his scouting packages on the Eastern Conference's top seed. While he played the odds and had been doing most of his prep work on the Bulls, this was a volume venture.
Doug Collins had 250 offensive plays to scour, seeing what has worked and what hasn't against the Bulls. Assistant coach Michael Curry had about the same amount of defensive possessions to observe.
Saturday afternoon (1, TNT) at the United Center, the Sixers and Bulls open a series against teams that have a lot in common and many ties.
The most-hyped Chicago connection has been the one between Evan Turner and Derrick Rose. They were high-school rivals, with Rose using one collegiate season to catapult him to NBA stardom, while Turner spent three years at Ohio State and in his second year as a pro remains a work in progress.
That hasn't stopped Turner from exuding confidence. He has gotten days of media probing from his native town about his comments in which he said the Sixers 'dodged' the tougher matchup by getting the Bulls instead of the Heat.
'I was asked my opinion, and the worst thing I did was give my opinion,' Turner said of the scrutiny over his comments. 'I would never disrespect an opponent or talk trash before a game.'
While Rose has been dogged by back, groin and foot injuries, he might get an evening of the scales in Game 1 against Turner. During warmups before Thursday night's regular-season finale against the Pistons, Turner felt a twinge in a muscle in his thigh, and it was causing him some discomfort during practice at the United Center Friday afternoon. Add to that Turner's poor numbers against the Bulls this season (4.7 ppg, 27.3 FG pct.) and there's an air of mystery as to what Turner is capable of contributing to this series.
Collins believes the only way the Sixers compete is with Turner delivering.
'Evan's one of our better players,' he said. 'Against Chicago you have to have playmakers, because they play such good defense. He's one of our better rebounders, and the key to the series is going to be rebounding. A lot of it will be on our wings -- Dre's going to have to rebound the ball, so does Evan.
'We might have to use Evan a little bit with his size against Rose. He gives us a lot of versatility.'
Another matchup that will play a big role in the series is that between Andre Iguodala and Luol Deng. They were taken two picks apart in the 2004 Draft and received All-Star selections this year that many have considered long overdue. Deng was taken first by the team in Iguodala's collegiate backyard (Phoenix), then traded to the team Iguodala grew up rooting for in as a kid in Springfield, Ill. If having both the Suns and Bulls prefer Deng over him hasn't fueled Iguodala's motivated play against Deng over the years, then it's a striking coincidence. Deng, who has averaged 16 points per game for his career, is averaging just 14.7 in 21 career games against the Sixers and shot 6-for-36 from 3-point range. In two games this season, Deng is 6-for-22 from the floor with Iguodala often shrouding him.
Iguodala, meanwhile, has averaged 16.6 ppg for his career against Chicago, well above his 15.3 career mark. Iguodala had 19 points and nine rebounds in the Sixers' win over the Bulls Feb. 1.
'It's a fun matchup,' Iguodala said. 'It's like going up against a Paul Pierce -- guys who know the game, a smart player. He can hurt you from a lot of places, and he has a high IQ. Those are the games I get up for, going against a high IQ guy. It's like a chess match.'
'I think anytime Dre plays against a premier small forward, it brings out the competitive juices in him,' Collins said. 'We have seven wins against Atlanta, Boston and Indiana, and if you look at those three teams, that's Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce and Danny Granger. And a big part of that was Dre's ability to guard guys.'
The Bulls don't have an elite frontcourt player, but they have starters in Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer who are a step below there and complement each other well. Coming off the bench, Taj Gibson gives Thad Young problems with his physicality, and Omer Asik is a 7-foot defensive specialist around the rim.
Collins decided to go with rookie Lavoy Allen as his starter alongside forward Elton Brand, with Spencer Hawes coming off the bench. The use of Hawes' high-post shooting and passing skills off the bench could help counteract Asik's role, since he is more of an around-the-rim defender.
The bottom line for any eighth seed taking on the conference's best is this: It will take your A-game to win Game 1. And matchup preferences aside, the Bulls are the overwhelming favorites.
'All I know,' Collins said, 'is that they had the best record in the East. So I don't know if you're getting the prize you're looking for. We're going to have to play our asses off.'


text:
Richters 2014 Seminars
Many are available online. Check the links to the recorded presentations below.
Watch our 2013 presentations here!
With Steven Biggs, Food & Garden Writer
If Steven Biggs could grow only one flower, he would choose Brugmansia, a wondrously fragrant, exotic-looking tropical plant with trumpet-shaped flowers often as long as a wine bottle. It's extravagant, it's voluptuous, it's flamboyant—and this tropical beauty never fails to elicit cooing from visitors. Also known as Angel's Trumpet, it's equally at home as a garden centrepiece, container-bound patio sentry, or in the flower border. In this talk, learn how to grow and overwinter tropical Brugmansia (and its cousin the Datura) in our temperate climate. Steven Biggs is an award-winning food & garden writer who spoke at Richters last year on his passion for growing figs. View the Recorded Presentation
With Tom Stem, DynamicGreens, Stouffville
Many people, including cancer survivors, are relying on wheatgrass juice to jolt the body back to health. Fresh wheatgrass juice is packed with vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids and antioxidants. Tom Stem grows and produces wheatgrass juice on his family farm, located close to Richters, and ships his DynamicGreens frozen juice products to customers throughout North America. As an avid advocate for wheatgrass, and an everyday user himself, Tom will discuss why wheatgrass is such an amazing natural product and why you and your family should consider taking it for better health. View the Recorded Presentation
With Jeff Mason, Mason House Gardens, Uxbridge
Tired of being a watering slave to your garden? Had enough of fighting the garden hose? Jeff Mason, an advocate of low water gardening or 'xeriscaping', shows how to make your garden a water saving paradise. You will learn which plants to grow, how to prepare your soil, and how to protect your plants successfully over winter. Many popular herbs are actually pretty good drought tolerant plants and will fit right in to this style of garden! Jeff, along with his mother Majorie Mason, is owner of Mason House Gardens, an independent garden centre specializing in perennials and xeriscaping plants. View the Recorded Presentation
If your veggie gardening space is limited, why grow the green beans you can easily buy. Instead, paint the supper table with a surprising array of coloured veg including red okra, purple beans, yellow carrots, rainbow chard, and golden beets. Then add an exotic touch with intercultural crops such as bitter melon or Malabar spinach, treats that are hard to find at the supermarket. If you grow veg or want to grow veg, but want to be a bit different, this talk is for you. Steven Biggs is an award-winning food & garden writer who spoke at Richters last year on his passion for growing figs. View the Recorded Presentation
With Johanne Daoust, Design Educator and Urban Gardener
Johanne Daoust micro farms a roof-top vegetable garden in downtown Toronto, a garden which has been described as a "first-class example of both urban food productivity and creative applied research." An advocate for growing food safely in an urban setting she uses a 'square foot, raised bed method' of growing, along with sub-irrigated planter technology to grow her food plants. Sub-irrigated planter technology is like providing "a scuba tank for plants" because it creates an optimal growing environment by delivering water, oxygen and organic fertilizer directly to the roots of a growing plant in a water-tight planter. The system saves water, nutrients and time, and on Johanne's Flickr page you can see how it produces spectacularly beautiful food. View the Recorded Presentation (Download the Sub-Irrigated Planter Handout) (Download the Edible Roof Planting Depths Handout)
With Kyla Dixon Muir, Riverdale Meadow Community Garden
Kyla Dixon-Muir can be found in the garden almost every week of the year, even in winter. She uses a system of 'season extension techniques' to add as many as two months in spring and another 2-3 months in fall and winter to her growing season. Her system of coldframes and raised beds does not cost a lot of money, and Kyla will show you how her system can work with low-cost or no-cost coldframes, many of which do not require construction skills. She developed her system while at the Riverdale Meadow Community Garden in Toronto where she has grown her own organic food for years. Per speaker's request, this presentation was not recorded.
With Travis Philp, Greenshire Eco Farms, Lindsay
From fungal blight to raccoons in the night; there's an organic solution to every gardening problem. Growing food without synthetic chemicals can be difficult but it is not impossible as some conventional farmers may have you believe. For thousands of years farmers and gardeners have managed to keep it natural, and given the health and environmental risks associated with chemical farming it's high time we returned to a safer way of growing our food. Travis, a trained environmental and eco management technician, is a resident of Greenshire Eco Farms where he manages the permaculture garden beds and looks after crop planting, maintenance, harvest and the weekly filling of food boxes. View the Recorded Presentation
With Katalin Brown, Certified GAPS Practitioner and Pediatric Dental Hygienist
Lacto-fermentation is the art and science of crafting cultured foods, such as kombucha, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi. Our ancestors knew the value of fermented foods, but with the advent of pasteurization and refrigeration the popularity of fermented foods has fallen away. But lacto-fermentation is making a big comeback. Fermented foods are loaded with live bacteria and enzymes that boost the immune system and promote intestinal wellness. Acetylcholine, a product of fermentation, helps to stimulate peristalsis (the movement of food through the intestine), improves blood circulation, prevents constipation, and helps crank up gastric juices when they are insufficient and down-regulates them when there is too much. For people coping with diabetes, fermented foods make no demands on the pancreas because sugars are already broken down. Katalin Brown, a certified GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) practitioner and a lifelong lover of cultured foods, demonstrates the art of fermentation using the open vessel and closed jar methods to make sauerkraut and a vegetable medley. For more information about Gut and Psychology Syndrome and the benefits of fermented foods, visit Katalin's GAPS Ontario website. View the Recorded Presentation. An added bonus, here is Katalin's favourite lacto-fermented vegetable medley recipe!
With Nicholas Schaut, Hop Farmer and President of the Ontario Hop Growers Association
Nicholas is owner and operator of Bighead Hops, a certified organic farm that grows hops commercially for Ontario craft breweries such as Muskoka Brewery, Great Lakes Brewery, Trois Brassuers, MacLean Ales, and Northwinds Brewing. As a founding member and President of the Ontario Hop Growers' Association, he works with the community of hops growers to develop, support, and research, technical innovations for small scale growing, and helps to market locally grown hops. Nicholas also brews and enjoys the odd beer. View the Recorded Presentation
With Koidu Sulev, Richters Herbs
The artemisias are a diverse group of herbs. They include the ever popular tarragon, the French favourite for sauces, vinaigrette, and fines herbes, and the lesser known mugwort used to flavour rich meats and poultry. Other artemisias are used to flavour venerable liqueurs such as Absinthe, Vermouth, Genepi, Chartreuse and others. Indeed, the classic Martini cannot be made without the flavour of wormwood in Vermouth. And in the landscape, the artemisias reign supreme wherever a silver or grey is needed to create a beautiful, serene effect. Artemisias are also known to be very hardy and drought tolerant, and they adapt well to challenging garden situations. Koidu Sulev, a long time representative of Richters, shows how the artemisias can be a part of your garden, for food, medicine and good looks. View the Recorded Presentation (Download the Artemisia Handout)
With Carmen Lynde, CHT, RH, Vervain Inc.
Most of the artemisias are medicinal. They have been used for thousands of years by herbalists from East Asia and Siberia to Europe and North America. The Greek physicians more than 2,500 years ago noted their useful bitter qualities and how the artemisias can be important for good health. Bitter herbs like artemisia kick-start the digestive system, stimulate the liver, and boost the immune system. Carmen Lynde, a practicing medical herbalist with a full-time herbal clinic in Toronto, will explain why we may need to be taking bitter artemisias like wormwood, santonica and mugwort, as our lives become more sedentary and our body's systems become sluggish. Besides running a busy practice, Carmen is creator of Vervain, an organic plant-based skincare line made by hand in small batches. She also serves as Richters online medical herbs expert. View the Recorded Presentation


text: HKSS.com | Community > Discussion Forum > View topic - My Blog Posts Home Community Superstars Music | What's New | Help HKSS | Search* Discussions | HKE Chat | Reflections of Life | Virtual Cards | Member Galleries Please excuse our mess. HKSS is currently under re-construction and some links/sections don't work yet. What's New: Latest updates | Member Galleries | Music | HKE Chat | About HKSS.com Community Discussions HKE Chat Reflections of Life Member Galleries Virtual Cards* Play Music Superstars Profiles* Galleries* Reviews Gossip & News Other Privacy Policy Terms of Use Link to HKSS* HKSS.com What's New About Contact* Advertise* Help HKSS Links YesAsia yuenStudios Do you like HKSS? My Watched Topics | My Favorites | My Profile Private IMs Register Log in Help | Stats | Members | Groups Search Forum My Blog Posts HKSS.com Forum Index -> Reflections of Life View previous topic :: View next topic Author Message Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:15 am Post subject: My Blog Posts Decided to start a blog thread for myself here -- when the new version of HKSS launches (whenever that may be), I plan on implementing a Blogging system as well for site visitors to talk about whatever. Here's what I've written in the past: Saturday, December 10, 2005 Ever seen "A Moment To Remember" before? Current mood: mellow I watched this Korean movie not too long ago starring a daughter of a wealthy building contractor/engineer who somehow falls in love with a construction worker. The movie starts off, in typical Korean romantic movie fashion, goofy and cute but slowly progresses to more emotional subject matters towards the latter part of the film. Without giving away the plot, a what seems to be perfect marriage suddenly is challenged when the lead actress finds out she's got Alzheimer's and her memories slowly fade away. How does that affect the marriage? I couldn't imagine how devastating something like this would be to ANYONE. It really made me think and it's definitely a movie I'd recommend to someone currently in a relationship. One of my co-workers called me the following morning after watching it: "Mike, I cried for hours last night. Thank you, THANK YOU for sharing the movie with me. I cried when driving to work too!" We had a conversation for a couple hours about the film, and other co-workers who were listening in suddenly wanted to see it too. It was a great discussion. One of the greatest films in recent years... Go watch it with your girlfriend/boyfriend Ciao! MichaelLast edited by Mikey_ on Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:16 am; edited 1 time in total Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:16 am Post subject: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 Life always seems to find a way to work things out Current mood: determined Just read a post by someone who seems to be at the end of her string.... You know how people say that things happen for a reason? That fate dictates who you become? Perhaps. But I've come to believe that people are who they are now as a RESULT of past choices that were made -- failures, successes, and everything in-between. The things you do wrong (and right) prompt you to learn and adapt -- and hopefully improve. As a result, you could become wiser and stronger... and happier. No matter how bad things may have been in life, somehow you always come out better than before. I agree, life can seem tough at times, but then nothing good is always easy. It's the challenges one faces that brings you out on top to enjoy the wonders that surround you and to smell the fresh air that's above all the chaos and pollution. Just don't give up, and if you do, you better slap yourself out of that coma and look for things to improve upon! Kick tough choices in the butt and choose to be strong! As for me, I'm going snowboarding this coming weekend. Mountain High, get ready! Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:16 am Post subject: Sunday, December 18, 2005 Snowboarding at Mountain High West Current mood: cheerful Going snowboarding for the first time this season was a BLAST! Boy, having some cool snow under your feet after a long, dry, warm season has been very welcome. The culture up on the slopes seems vastly different from what you see in daily city life: teenagers all boarding around and trying to show off some snowboarding tricks even if they don't have the skills (yet) to properly do what they tried to do. Then there were those who rode down the beginner slopes in great fear, screams emanating from their wide-open eyes and mouths, only to fall and then laugh about the mishap. Joy, pain, attitude, love, nurture... you name it. Almost every emotion can be found on the snowy trails -- even stupidity (although that doesn't qualify as an "emotion" hehehe) A few of my friends went as well and picked up snowboarding remarkably well. I'm proud of them and look forward to seeing them improve further in about two weeks from now. It's been quite a workout this weekend, and I can only smile from cheek to cheek while reminiscing the events of the past 48 hours Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:17 am Post subject: January 1, 2006 New Year's Resolution? Current mood: amused Don't really have one -- it's the same as it has been every day the past year: Make tomorrow better than yesterday and the day before. Get more stuff done! Simplify things. Relax and grin from cheek to cheek ... like this: Or, hmm... hehehe... I haven't done this for a long time: ( / ) ( | ) ( .. ) ( | ) ( / ) ... Shake my butt at the world's challenges and laugh it all off! haha... Oh, gawd. That's so freaking dorky. Michael Memory Lane Current mood: cheerful I took a drive in the rain this evening -- just for the heck of it. First went shopping for food at Albertsons (chicken, beef -- gonna have a blast cooking them tomorrow!), a helmet at Sports Chalet, and then a drive to Fullerton Community College with Melissa to show her around the campus before her class starts. She's going back to school to get her Bachelor's in Finance (go, girl!) It was quite peaceful as we were walking in the rain (without an umbrella), observing the little droplets drip onto our jackets, down the body, and splashing silently onto the ground. It was a dancing musical of droplets: some danced up, some sideways, some just stayed down. As I was approaching the college's Quad where I used to hang out with a bunch of Vietnamese colleagues back in the late 90's, I noticed how MUCH has changed there. Instead of the student center, there was this grandious structure that was just completed two months ago. It was the new library, and boy, what a change it was. I took a tour through practically every crook and cranny of the small campus, reflecting upon all the cherished memories of that time. It was nice and painful at the same time, particularly when we walked back towards my car that was parked in front of the Machine/Automotive building. I used to walk up and down that path a lot and even remembered where all the professors' classes were at Then I decided to stop by one of my past residences, 2442 E Nutwood Ave. There I was, car parked in the Disabled parking spot facing the apartment window that used to house my brother and myself. In that very same spot, I remember a tragic scene where this tall, Taiwanese guy coldly ignored this female who was crying with a broken heart. Once very close friends used to walk by there often as well. Now there's nothing but shadows and memories that still whisper through the grass growing beside the sidewalks. Even remembered the laundromat I used to go to at that apartment complex, and how much of a shy, introverted person I used to be. Much has changed. That was an understatement... A LOT has changed the past two to seven years. From seclusion to shyness to love to joy to pain to violence to broken-heartedness to slapping myself awake to betrayal pain to finding the strength to take just one more step up that steep mountain of life and finding that light of wisdom, trust, and joy once again... Much pain still lingers within my heart's chambers from the events of the past -- a pain still strong enough to make me cry at times and seek loneliness. At the same time I have received much laughter -- and even love -- that are constant reminders that challenges will always be ahead of you and that decisions you make at those times strengthen the person you have become. Trust. What a powerful word. So many meanings, yet a word so strong it can tear entire civilizations apart. It's something that's hard to come by and hard to find. Some may even wonder whether trust even exists. It takes time to give and receive trust, but it's something so powerful, yet delicate, that it must be cherished. 2005 was quite a year. The growth that resulted professionally and personally... Thank you. Thank you whoever guided me on the road of wilderness. As one of my close friends stated, this year is going to be a big one for many where the butterfly finally comes out of its cocoon. "A sleeping dragon is in the midst of waking up" (as someone once told me would happen), faced with new days of sunshine (and hopefully snow -- I NEED my snow to snowboard! hehehe) and exploration. This year's looking to be a very bright one, and I look forward to sharing this momentum with those dear to me. Let's do it! Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:49 am Post subject: Thursday, January 05, 2006 Wow, what a night! Current mood: tired Tonight, I drove to Mile Square Park in Westminster right after work (it's only a few minutes away) to take a little stroll, and came across a playground. Oh goodie! Like a little kid did I slide down the ramps, climbed up the ladders, looked through the plastic binocular, trampled on the bridge ... and then I relaxed on the swing, looking up into the starry night. Childhood memories. Nice. What was also nice was when I was sliding down the ramps, static was just about EVERYWHERE. Shock here, shock there hehehe... It was weird. Even saw a spark come out of my shoes when I stepped onto the ground. My hair was standing up too. I later walked to the Gazeebo and looked at the surrounding lake. And there they were: 5 female ducks and a male sleeping along the shore. One of them noticed my presence and woke up right away. It proceeded to swim towards the duck next to her and pushed her awake with her head. That duck proceeded to wake up the one next to her and so on until all ducks were awake. It was cute and funny at the same time. They eventually calmed down and went back to sleep. i decided to sneak up and sit right next to them. They were literally within a hand's reach away from me! It was nice seeing them sleep peacefully right next to you. Oh, one of my favorite quotes: We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. -Lee Iacocca Thursday, January 05, 2006 Things I want to do this year Current mood: nerdy Explore San Francisco, Yosemite/Sequoia/Redwood, Mammoth, Vancouver, Mexico (for a lobster feast when the season comes -- Van, you ready?) Maybe even New England (North East USA), China (for me, that's within the next 2 years), and Australia (within the next 5 years.) Kayaking? Let's do it! Scuba diving? Horseback riding! Dancing classes? (No ballet for me please. Yuck.) Huntington Library in Los Angeles? Getty Museum in Los Angeles? Bonfire. Hiking. More hiking. Camping. Tennis (haven't played that for a while.) Ice skating. Above all: try to do all of the above with the least amount of money spent. I know I can do this. Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:18 am Post subject: Friday, January 06, 2006 Mmmm... Nem Nuong Rice Paper Spring Rolls Current mood: exhausted It was soooo good having them at Brodard's in Westminster again (Brookhurst/Westminster.) Ordered myself 8 pieces and brought some extra ones back for my little bro and Melissa to enjoy before we'd be heading off for workout. Charbroiled pork (Nem Nuong), cucumber, fried egg roll wrapper, veggies, and a special dipping sauce. Going to make them next weekend with a bunch of friends of mine and have a nice dinner together. I'll have to look up a dipping sauce to make instead of using the usual sauce my mom prepares from time to time. My also make a shrimp variation or a BBQ beef one (Thit Nuong), we'll see. Van is going to make her own version as well. It's going to be yummy!!! Oh yeah, I hurt myself at the gym today... could barely walk and drive back. So, for now I'm just exhausted and getting ready for bed. One more thing: I'm very likely going to start my MBA program next week or so depending on if I can work it out with my manager. Hopefully I can also apply the company tuition re-imbursement program towards the classes! Yay! Back to top LexiLunaticJoined: 25 Jul 2004Posts: 185 Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject: Hi Mikey, Glad to hear that you are thinking of perhaps earning your MBA. You don't seem like you really need one though. It was my understanding that in your field, earning various different certificates was more valuable. You seem to know your way around a computer very well without a graduate degree. You should do whatever you deem best though and I wish you all the best in everything you do. I plan to come back at the end of February and maybe we could swap career plan stories when I get back. I am home right now. My mom has been sick and I came home to check on her. I wish I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow and could stay home for good. It's nice to be home. My heart is happy and I get the feeling that 2006 is going to be a great year for me both personally and professionally. I continue to get back into the swing of things and I am just kind of enjoying life. Life is good, Mikey. That's not to say that I have forgotten certain things. Some days are still rough but by and large, I am a much happier camper these days. I read the blogs you posted and as usual, I am sure you know exactly what I mean. Oh! Almost forgot! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I hope that you got everything you wished for this birthday! Mel: I am so glad that you are going to FC! It's a great school and I know that you will love it there. Just take it one day at a time and before you know it, you will be done with school. What are you majoring in? I am so happy to hear that you are going back. I love to see young ladies empowering themselves through education. Let me know how your classes are going when you have time and if you ever need a tutor don't be afraid to ask. Have a nice evening! Back to top mb_rockstarSpecial GuestJoined: 08 Oct 2003Posts: 531Location: Southern California Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 6:58 pm Post subject: Thanks Lexi, Since Fullerton College doesn't have a Finance department, I'm planning on getting my AA in Business Administration and when I transfer, I'm hoping to get my Bachelors degree in Finance. _________________"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Back to top LexiLunaticJoined: 25 Jul 2004Posts: 185 Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 8:14 pm Post subject: That's great, Mel. I came from CSUF's Finance Department. It was a good program and I am sure you will enjoy it. Best wishes! Lexi Back to top mb_rockstarSpecial GuestJoined: 08 Oct 2003Posts: 531Location: Southern California Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject: Thanks!! _________________"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 3:30 am Post subject: Sunday, January 08, 2006 Good day Current mood: amused Went snowboarding today and the evening sky was just GREAT! Tints of purple, blue, white, and black... I have yet to work on the digital pictures and post them one day. Went to Albertsons tonight to buy some drinks and food when the lines were extra-ordinarily long for some reason. Best part: EVERYBODY who waited in line got a 1.75qt Breyers ice cream. Woot! "Brothers Grimm" movie was rather dull. I'm expecting a very odd surprise birthday celebration at work tomorrow (what those girls are going to come up with sort of scares me), followed by lunch at Hooters. Yuck. Don't really wanna go, but I'll go anyway for the heck of it. Could be fun Oh, if you've never been to Hooters before, their chicken wings are pretty good. I only went there twice to pick up take-out orders. Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2006 3:32 am Post subject: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 MBA - Back to School! Current mood: determined Wow, it's a bit scary, yet exciting. I've officially started my MBA class last night and homework is due tomorrow. *zzzzzz* Tired... Back to top violetvvCurious MemberJoined: 15 Oct 2003Posts: 44Location: Texas Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:39 pm Post subject: It's take a lot of time and energy to go back to school...but it's all worth it in the end (as long as you are doing something you love). To make you feel any better mikey.. I have started school on the 17th....My 12 hr clinical days days are long are exhausting. But I love what I do....=) Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 1:58 pm Post subject: Are you on your way to becoming a nurse/doctor? Back to top violetvvCurious MemberJoined: 15 Oct 2003Posts: 44Location: Texas Posted: Sun Jan 29, 2006 7:22 pm Post subject: I'm on my way to becomming a nurse... After a couple of yrs. I found out IT was for me. Back to top Mikey_Life is good. Be inspired.Joined: 04 Oct 2003Posts: 1322Location: Fountain Valley, California (USA) Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 7:59 pm Post subject: And I hope you mean "it" and not "Information Technology" Back to top Display posts from previous: All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First HKSS.com Forum Index -> Reflections of Life All times are GMT - 8 Hours Page 1 of 1 Jump to: Select a forum Entertainment----------------All EntertainmentReviewsGossip and NewsIdol DiscussionsMusicMoviesTV Shows Non-Entertainment----------------General DiscussionsNew MembersFun and GamesReflections of LifeHobbies, TravelFood and CookingHelp!Websites HKSS.com----------------Announcements/ What's New?Help HKSS.comFeedback/ Contact HKSS.comWishlist You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum Back to top Copyright © 1996-2014 HKSS.com™. All Rights Reserved. About | Link to HKSS.com | Advertise | Contact | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use Information and images accessed from this site are protected by international copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. You may infringe these rights if you download, copy, publish, distribute, transmit, or exploit such content without the explicit consent of HKSS.com. > Site design by yuenStudios.com (2006)


text:
Review: Fucked Up, Dose Your Dreams
Dose Your Dreams proves Fucked Up's got a deep enough bag of tricks to make even conventionality sound compelling.3.5
While Fucked Up's prior albums have largely adhered to a more traditional conception of hardcore, the band's second rock opera, Dose Your Dreams, betrays a broader palette, often heard on the group's more experimental EPs and standalone singles. The album—a continuation of the eponymous character's story from 2011's David Comes to Life—is more stylistically and tonally expansive than its predecessor, generously and faithfully exploring non-hardcore genres, from the title track's nighttime funk, to the '90s-style pop-punk of "The One I Want Will Come for Me," to the pure '70s AM-radio gold of the keyboard-driven "Two I's Closed" and "Love Is an Island in the Sea."
With the exception of the obvious My Bloody Valentine take-off "How to Die Happy," Fucked Up acquits themselves convincingly on their stylistic diversions. Still, Dose Your Dreams shines most when the band remains firmly within its wheelhouse—a unique combination of abrasive heaviness and indelible melodicism. The first three songs adhere best to this potent combination: Opener "None of Your Business Man" sees David Comes to Life's once-revolutionary hero shackled to a boring office job, a contrast mirrored in the push and pull between the crushing guitars of the verses and the chorus's huge hook, which is outlined in the background by Mike Haliechuck's guitar.
These pop undertones become more overt on "Raise Your Voice Joyce" and "Tell Me What You See," which introduce a new lead character—a mystical figure named Joyce—to snap David out of his complacency. Both tracks also feature Sauna Youth's Jen Calleja, whose vocals sound that much sweeter alongside frontman Damian Abraham's throat-shredding growls.
Some of that alchemy is lost during the second half of the album, when Abraham cedes the mic to his bandmates and a veritable cavalcade of guest singers. J Mascis and singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle make a winning pairing on the grungy "Came Down Wrong," but without Abraham's consistent presence, Fucked Up's music sounds almost conventional. Fortunately, Dose Your Dreams proves they've got a deep enough bag of tricks—including a towering throng of endless overdubs and genre detours that sound as massive as the band's ambitions—to make even conventionality sound compelling.
Label: Merge Release Date: October 5, 2018 Buy: Amazon
Review: Taylor Swift's Lover Course Corrects in Multiple Directions
The album attempts to be something to everyone, the surest tell that it's as much reaction as it is creation.3.5
There comes a time in nearly every pop superstar's career when she—and, yes, it's usually a she—is forced to repent for an album that went too far, pushed too hard, or simply suffered from a case of bad timing. The result is often a follow-up that plays it safe or tries to recapture past triumphs, which is then either exalted by critics as a return to form or ridiculed as an attempt at damage control. It's a rite of passage that, with her seventh album, Lover, Taylor Swift seems keenly aware of yet uninterested in subverting.
Swift launched the latest era of her career with the cloying "ME!," a veritable piss take on the bright and shiny pop of her 2014 hit "Shake It Off," accompanied by a social media campaign self-consciously drenched in creamy pastel tones, jewel-encrusted hearts, and fluffy-faced kittens. It's a decidedly stark contrast to 2017's Reputation, which was defined by its combative tone and hard, hip-hop-influenced beats, and which earned the distinction of becoming Swift's lowest selling album to date.
Swift has built an empire, in part, on her ability to harness often self-inflicted personal drama—revolving around former lovers, disloyal friends, and the media—into songs that display equal parts rage, cheeky self-deprecation, and heartfelt sincerity. The prickly Reputation leaned heavily on the former, and like so many pop reboots before it, Lover is an obvious course correction. Swift, however, seems ambivalent about her current station: "I say I don't want [combat], but what if I do?" she muses on "The Archer" before proceeding to carpet-bomb listeners with the kind of pithy confessionals—"All of my heroes die all alone," "All of enemies started out friends"—fit more for a therapy session than your average pop song.
That ambivalence runs through Lover. At times the album seems unsure of whether it wants to be a callback to 1989 and Red, or forge completely new ground for Swift. Opening Lover with a bit of seemingly arbitrary misdirection, "I Forgot That You Existed" is the kind of catty diss track—possibly aimed at Kanye West and/or Calvin Harris—that cemented the very reputation Swift laments in the lyrics. But it feels like a caricature of a Taylor Swift song, a defanged version of more satisfying clapbacks like "Bad Blood" and "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things."
Lover lacks a unified sonic aesthetic, ostensibly from trying to be something to everyone—the surest tell that it's as much reaction as it is creation. The title track, whose lilting rhythm and reverb-soaked drums and vocals are reminiscent of Mazzy Star's '90s gem "Fade Into You," and the acoustic "Soon You'll Get Better," a tribute to Swift's mother featuring the Dixie Chicks, hark back to Swift's pre-pop days, while "I Think He Knows" and "False God" evoke Carly Rae Jepsen's brand of '80s R&B-inflected electro-pop. A full-throated embrace of the latter direction might have made Lover feel less like a capitulation. When it comes to things other than boys, though, Swift has always preferred to dip her toes in rather than get soaking wet; her transformation from country teen to pop queen was, after all, a decade in the making.
Less gradual was Swift's shift from political agnostic to liberal advocate. In the span of less than a year, the singer went from being the Aryan goddess of the alt-right to being called out as an agent of sodomy. They say you can't put a genie back in the bottle, and Swift's once apolitical music is now peppered with references to America's current state of affairs, both thinly veiled ("Death by a Thousand Cuts") and more overt ("You Need to Calm Down"). "I'm so sick of running as fast as I can/Wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man," she sings on "The Man," a track that makes sly reference to those who doubted her #MeToo moment.
"American stories burning before me/I'm feeling helpless, the damsels are depressed/Boys will be boys, then where are the wise men?" Swift ponders on "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince." Of course, in this case politics is a metaphor for heartbreak. The track is her stock in trade, a richly painted narrative punctuated by cool synth washes and pep-rally chants. "It's Nice to Have a Friend" is a similarly evocative portrait of young love whose spare arrangement—choral voices, steel drums, church bells, stately trumpet solo—is a stark counterpoint to the pointillist "Death by a Thousand Cuts," a Pet Sounds-esque aural feast of swirling keyboards and quivering synths. "The Archer" is quintessential Swift: wistful, minimalist dream pop that displays her willingness to acknowledge and dismantle her flaws, triggers, and neuroses.
Some pop stars may be too big too fail. Swift's songwriting suffers from occasional bromides, and Lover can feel both overthought and, at a lengthy 18 tracks, under-edited. But Swift's well-earned reputation for over-sharing, reflective of the generation for which she's become a spiritual envoy, coupled with her newfound egalitarianism makes her not just a compelling pop figure, but an essential one.
Label: Republic Release Date: August 23, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Jay Som's Anak Ko Embodies Bedroom Pop As an Emotional Travelogue
The singer-songwriter balances the musical warmth of her bedroom-pop influences with some heavy emotional stakes.3.5
Even if you've never heard Melina Duterte's music before, the singer-songwriter's third album as Jay Som might still sound instantly familiar. Musically, Anak Ko—which means "my child" in Tagalog—takes inspiration from '90s dream pop, marked by jangly guitars, big, reverb-soaked drums, and mildly distorted vocals. Duterte mines similar sonic terrain as Yo La Tengo, and "Superbike," with its swirling guitars and warm vocals, would feel right at home on the band's 1995 album Electr-o-Pura. The song's lyrics are spare but powerful, infused with a sense of wanderlust shot through with melancholy: "Said you wanted something else…Gonna breathe until you're gone." Duterte balances the musical warmth of her bedroom-pop influences with some heavy emotional stakes.
Though it lacks the immediacy of 2017's Everybody Works, Anak Ko compensates with a more mature lyrical depth, prompted by Duterte's recent move from her hometown in the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where she reportedly found love and quit drinking. Her vocals here are buried in the mix a bit, conveying the hushed intimacy of a late-night conversation. "Did you fall at first glance? Do you think you'll take a chance?" Duterte asks on the standout "Tenderness."
A longing for the freedom of the road pervades the album. Leisurely drums set the tone on "Nighttime Drive," suggesting a meandering trip down familiar backroads with no particular destination in mind. Duterte's voice falls somewhere between a sigh and a whisper as she sings, "We'll be all right." Traveling becomes a metaphor on the track, as she illustrates a tension between freedom and safety. Leaving a place you know opens the world up for adventure, but it means you might also lose some of the things you previously valued.
Anak Ko can feel homogenous, coasting along to the same relaxed midtempo rhythm. Duterte's layered guitar sound and submerged vocals ensure that her songs whir along like background music. The closing track, "Get Well," is the only song that deviates from her dream-pop formula, venturing into country territory thanks to the use of pedal steel guitar. But while it might lack a rave-up pop number like Everybody Works's infectious "1 Billion Dogs," Anak Ko offers plenty of reasons to follow Duterte down whatever road may lay ahead.
Label: Polyvinyl Release Date: August 23, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Bon Iver's i, i Battles Back Against the Dark
The album finds Justin Vernon creeping into an autumnal melancholy and turning his gaze back toward winter.4
Justin Vernon's debut as Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago, attained mythic status both for its content and the circumstances of its creation: a batch of heartrending koans poured out in the solitude of a wooded Wisconsin winter. The singer-songwriter initially came off like Kozelek-come-lately, with a bunch of sadsack songs backed by gently strummed guitars, but he's proven himself to be a remarkably mercurial artist. And on i, i, he draws on rock, folk, electronica, hip-hop, and gospel, enlisting a broad range of collaborators to help build on the emotional directness of his early work without repeating the same musical gestures.
Perhaps the best analogue for i, i is the Byrds's Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which Gram Parsons envisioned as an album-length treatise on the history of American popular music. Though the two albums don't sound alike, Vernon's big-tent group of collaborators allows him to grant himself a similar kind of scope. Vernon has a knack for blending disparate elements with impressive cohesion. On "U (Man Like)," Bruce Hornsby's piano is immediately recognizable, but as Hornsby, Moses Sumney, the Brooklyn Youth Choir, and Jenn Wasner all sing alongside Vernon, their myriad styles effortlessly blend under Bon Iver's singular aesthetic.
Vernon has described i, i as the end of a season cycle. If his 2007 debut represents dead winter, 2011's Bon Iver, Bon Iver the thaw of spring, and 2016's 22, A Million a joyous reverie of summer, then i, i finds Vernon creeping into an autumnal melancholy and turning his gaze back toward winter. This time, Vernon isn't contemplating the bitter disappointments of a failed romance, but the end of all humanity itself. The imagery is sharp and often ghastly: a gas mask hanging on an arm, rising seas and temperatures, and allusions to Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. Throughout, Vernon presents himself as an observer surveying a world on the brink, close to becoming just ruined earth and poisoned sea.
These songs aren't straightforward political diatribes though. Rather, they're small puzzles that exemplify Vernon's peculiar use of language. The tracklist looks like an assortment of Scrabble tiles: "Yi," "iMi," "U (Man Like)." The songs themselves are filled with obscure slang and outright neologisms. Once you start to unravel the threads, however, the lyrics begin to unfold more clearly. "Jelmore" takes its title from the way Vernon sings the first line of the song: "an(gel mor)ning." The song's Metroid-esque synth parts introduce a stark commentary on income inequality and planetary ruin. On the hook, Vernon sings, "We'll all be gone by the fall/We'll all be gone by the falling light," which doesn't evince much hope. When he declares, "I won't lead no Calvary," the clever wordplay almost balances the sense of defeatism.
The album's penultimate track, the grim, thinly veiled "Sh'Diah"—short for "shittiest day in American history"—features the loneliest sax solo since "Baker Street," a plaintive strain that perfectly captures the feeling of wandering the streets of a familiar place that's suddenly stopped feeling like home. It's followed by "RABi," which examines the psychological toll of trying not to be miserable in chaotic times. The song is built around a meandering guitar and Vernon's multi-tracked vocals, the spare arrangement putting the focus on his words, "I could rob I," which, pronoun case error aside, is an economical unpacking of self-deception. As the track ends, he sings, "Well, it's all fine and we're all fine anyway," at full voice before whispering, "But if you wait, it won't be undone." That dichotomy lies at the heart of the album: Time is running out, but what can one person do?
Vernon began his career by staring down the dark, and i, i is an album made for a time when that darkness has grown larger than he ever imagined. Sometimes he's too indulgent: When his delivery leans into rap, he sounds like somebody doing an impression of Frank Ocean at karaoke night. His falsetto occasionally outstays its welcome, and decoding all of his Lewis Carroll-esque private language gestures can be tiring business. But the album seems to suggest that Bon Iver is transitioning from a band in the traditional sense of the word into a looser collective. Despite the album's intense pessimism and anxiety, Bon Iver's organization speaks to the power of forging a community to battle back against darkness.
Label: Jagjaguwar Release Date: August 9, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Sleater-Kinney's The Center Won't Hold Represents a Band in Flux
The album's pop and synth elements mark a radical departure for the seminal rock band.3
By the height of their popularity in the mid-aughts, culminating with 2005's The Woods, Sleater-Kinney had morphed from a scrappy punk band into a rock behemoth capable of spinning out sprawling, almost proggy opuses. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker built complex, blistering guitar parts that intertwined, bounced around, and frequently exploded into full-on Guitar Hero-style pyrotechnics. And all the while, drummer Janet Weiss laid down beats that were equal parts chest-crushingly powerful and playfully inventive.
The pleasure of listening to Sleater-Kinney has always come from hearing these three stellar musicians, each with their own distinct styles, mesh into a cohesive whole. There's never a wasted beat, chord, or lyric in a Sleater-Kinney song. The Center Won't Hold, however, represents a radical departure for the seminal rock band. Under the influence of producer Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent), Sleater-Kinney's ninth studio album incorporates both poppier elements and dark, new-wave-indebted synths into their signature sound, a "new direction" that prompted Weiss to announce that she'll be exiting the group.
The result of this broadening of their sound varies throughout. The title track is the biggest departure on the album—and also its weakest. For the first two-thirds of the song, Brownstein yelps menacingly over a beat that sounds like it's played on found items in a junkyard. "I need something pretty/To help me ease my pain/And I need something ugly/To put me in my place," she growls. The track doesn't take any kind of shape until it's almost over, when Weiss's drums come thrashing in. Tucker howls the song's title repeatedly, but coming from a band that's always been unabashedly progressive, the sentiment lacks teeth.
Other tracks are more musically sophisticated, even if they lack the power of the band's best work. "Restless" is a swooning, midtempo rumination on middle age and relationships in which Brownstein wrestles with the difficulty of asking someone to accept the very things that you don't like about yourself. "Can I Go On" is a straight-up pop song, or at least as close to one as Sleater-Kinney is likely to whip up. It's warm and funny, with a big earworm of a chorus, but the lyrical rhymes range from basic ("tired"/"wired") to groan-inducing ("happy"/"napping"). Elsewhere, Brownstein implores the listener to "call the doctor, dig me out of this mess" over the skittering electronic beat and staccato synths of "Love."
The album's highlights are a pair of Tucker-led songs that achieve the best blend of the band's newfound synth influences and their more punk bona fides. "Reach Out" is built around a synth figure in the verses before building to a guitar-shredding climax, with a shipwreck serving as a metaphor for bodily autonomy. The lyrics are more sophisticated than those of the album's title track, displaying the type of political acumen that Sleater-Kinney has always been known for. "Never have I felt so goddamn lost," Tucker belts on "The Future Is Here." She and Brownstein could just as easily be talking about their band as the larger world when harmonize about how "the future's here, and we can't go back."
The Center Won't Hold clocks in at just over a 30 minutes and lacks a certain spark—a song with the barn-burning intensity of "Entertain" or the heartrending emotion of "One More Hour." In many places, these songs feel derivative in a way that the band's music never has before. The guitar tone throughout "Restless" is more like Real Estate than Brownstein and Tucker's signature sound, while "Bad Dance" is mostly notable for how much the title nods to a much-maligned Prince song. Which makes the moments when the band locks in and delivers the adrenaline-pumping thrills that have been their trademark feel all the more effective.
Label: Mom + Pop Release Date: August 16, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: The Hold Steady's Thrashing Thru the Passion Is a Satisfying Head-Scratcher
While the album may lack instant anthems, it's still a highly consistent and satisfying rock album.3.5
The Hold Steady was hailed by Rolling Stone as "America's greatest bar band" over a decade ago, but only in the last few years have its members begun to treat the outfit like an actual bar band—an outlet for a few booze-fueled weekend hangouts a year between old friends—rather than the prolific touring and recording workhorse it used to be. They haven't mounted a full-length tour since 2014, and since 2012, frontman Craig Finn has released four solo albums to the Hold Steady's one. The arrival of the band's seventh album, Thrashing Thru the Passion, is thus both long overdue and a bit of head-scratcher. As it collects five new songs alongside five of the nine singles the band has intermittently released since 2017, the album has more of the feel of a well-curated B-sides collection.
While it may lack the exhilarating anthems of previous Hold Steady efforts, Thrashing Thru the Passion is still a highly consistent and satisfying rock album. Finn's garrulous wordplay, honed through the complex character sketches of his recent solo work, is as sharp as ever, while the return of keyboardist Franz Nicolay for the first time since 2008's Stay Positive throws into relief how much his contributions have been missed in the interim. Though Nicolay shies away from the arch E Street Band-style breaks he favored during his first stint with the band, from 2005 to 2010, his piano and organ on the woozy ballad "Blackout Sam" and the soulful, swaying-in-the-pews outro to "T-Shirt Tux" access intimate musical textures that haven't been heard from the Hold Steady in years.
Despite the band's growing ranks, Thrashing Thru the Passion is their least grandiose album since their 2004 debut. During the peak of their popularity in the mid-2000s, the Hold Steady was nothing if not ostentatious, with heavily guitar-forward mixes, Nicolay's showy piano and Vaudevillian fashion sense, and Finn's manic stage presence. Here they no longer sound like they're playing to the arena rafters, in terms of both sonics and songwriting. This allows room for the energetic yet melodic warmth of "Epaulets" and "Star 18," two concise tracks that might have been left off of previous albums in favor of more bombastic offerings.
Still, it's hard not to miss the massive guitar riffs of the Hold Steady's heyday. One might have expected the 2010 addition of guitarist Steve Selvidge to bolster the band's already huge guitar focus and result in more of the Thin Lizzy-style dueling leads that founding guitarist Tad Kubler had been overdubbing in the studio. Instead, virtually the opposite has occurred. Kubler and Selvidge are too similar stylistically to create any real back and forth, but it's not like they attempt much high-octane riffage anyway, instead employing mostly jangly arpeggios and chordal pounding (the basic, grinding power chords on "Entitlement Crew" might be the laziest guitar part in the Hold Steady's catalog). The only proper guitar solo on Thrashing Thru the Passion, on "The Stove & the Toaster," is thin and trebly, pushed back in the mix behind Finn's vocals and the brass section that appears throughout the album. Only on "T-Shirt Tux" do Kubler and Selvidge wrap their fingers around the kind of big, thick riff that might have wound up on a Hold Steady album from the 2000s.
Even if the band's guitar work isn't what it used to be, Finn's storytelling prowess certainly is, and along with his usual barrage of smartest-guy-at-the-dive-bar one-liners, an appropriate shift in his perspective as a lyricist is evident. If any of these songs were written with Holly, Charlemagne, the Cityscape Skins, or any his other old characters in mind, it's clear that the glory days are far behind them. One gets the feeling that the subjects of these songs are closer to Finn's age—47—than the kids he used to sing about. They can all get together again for a weekend of boozing and reminiscing ("Entitlement Crew"), but eventually living in the past can just get sad (on "Blackout Sam," Finn warns of "Local legends with the far away eyes"). The drugs and parties don't seem so romantic anymore; now everything's just seedy and tense, like in the deals-gone-wrong tales "You Did Good Kid" and "The Stove & the Toaster."
In short, the album's lyrics feature exactly the kind of logical thematic progression one could have only hoped for from Finn 15 years after the Hold Steady debuted and he started turning stories about pimps and drugged-out bartenders into religious allegory. Like Charlemagne, Finn is still caught up in some complicated things—and after a period of uncertainty, it's a joy that the rest of the band remains willing to go along for the ride with him.
Label: Frenchkiss Release Date: August 16, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Clairo's Immunity Is a Starkly Vulnerable and Inviting Debut
The album is steeped in warm acoustics juxtaposed by austere observations about life and love.4
The bedroom-pop songs that Clairo, née Claire Cottrill, has released since her 2017 breakout, "Pretty Girl," have often seemed like they've been transmitted from behind a glass wall. Mining the pain of adolescence, her vaguely generalized lyrics can have a distancing effect, and the influence of PC music casts a slick veneer over it all. So, it's surprising when the 20-year-old opens her debut album, Immunity, by starkly revisiting the night a friend prevented her from committing suicide: "I lay in my room/Wondering why I've got this life." The rest of the album is just as raw and covered in open wounds.
Produced by former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij, Immunity is steeped in warm acoustics, a sharp pivot from the synth palette that Clairo has previously favored. Disparate elements—muted guitar strumming, watery piano, harpsichord—are integrated harmoniously throughout the album. Although they employ a variety of timbres, the songs' meticulous arrangements shy away from polyphony, permitting only one instrument to take the lead at the time. The effect is impressionistic, paradoxically austere and lush. Up close, each texture is isolated and distinctly separate from the next, but take a couple steps back and everything coalesces into a seamless, highly chromatic composition.
At the center of it all, though, is Cottrill herself. Her characteristically impassive vocal strikes a poignant contrast with her lyrics. She may be keeping her head cool, but her heart is ablaze. On "White Flag," her voice icily glides over curlicues of reedy guitar and synth as she laments, "I was 15 when I first felt loneliness." Dense synths often drowned out the vocals on her earlier work, but Batmanglij foregrounds Cottrill's voice here, amplifying it through doubling or distorting it with Auto-Tune. Her vocal style eschews genre¬-fication, hinting at R&B on "Sinking," where her voice takes on a honeyed tone and tackles gentle runs, and redolent of trip-hop on "Closer to You," where vocal effects crystalize her belts over sputtering hi-hats.
Cottrill's ability to work outside the mold of indie rock and close-to–the-bone commentary puts her in the same camp as contemporaries Mitski and Snail Mail, but there's something about her aloofness and measured control that feels profoundly unique. Cottrill, who came out as bisexual last year with a tongue-in-cheek tweet, embraces her sexuality for the first time in a way that's pensive and unreserved, with songwriting that feels lifted out of the pages of a diary. "Sofia" conjures a sweet vision of young queer love over a chugging, anthemic guitar: "I think we could do it if we tried/Sofia, know that you and I shouldn't feel like a crime."
Even more moving is Cottrill's articulation of the insecure hesitation of budding same-sex relationships. On "Bags," she navigates the line between friend and lover with a crush who could be straight. Her approach pinpoints ephemeral moments with a wide-eyed recollection: the sensation of fingertips on her back, a mane of hair blowing in the wind of an open car window, a love interest standing in a doorway. You get the feeling that the experiences Cottrill recounts are firsts for her, so vivid and formative are her memories. Throughout the album, a choir of children regularly picks up Cottrill's vocal melody, emphasizing how naïveté renders every experience that much more transformative.
In spite of its title, the central theme of Immunity is fragility. Time and time again, Cottrill reveals how susceptible she is to unshakable loneliness ("White Flag"), the inevitable growing apart of young lovers ("Impossible"), the physical limitations caused by her rheumatoid arthritis ("I Wouldn't Ask You"). But it's evident that Cottrill is done feigning immunity. On "Impossible," she confesses that seeing the face of an ex still shakes her up years after their falling out, but she's resolute when she sings, "But I know, know that it's right/To listen to my breathing and start believing myself." Life, Cottrill tells us, is full of loose ends, lingering emotions, and unfinished business. When reconciling these liminal states proves difficult, if not impossible, Cottrill turns inward to find a sense of certainty to hold fast to.
Label: Fader Release Date: August 2, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: The Regrettes's How Do You Love? Sublimely Ponders the Messiness of Love
The album harnesses the band's infectious enthusiasm for their material to make the familiar sound new again.4.5
Despite the challenges of finding something original to say about romance, How Do You Love? harnesses the Regrettes's infectious enthusiasm for their material to make the familiar sound new again. Though it's not driven by a cohesive narrative per se, the album is conceptually orientated around the birth, growth, and collapse of a relationship, charting a romance as it moves from the first stirrings of love to its painful dissolution.
The album opens with a minute-long spoken-word piece in which singer/guitarist Lydia Night asks the titular question, which is less rhetorical than a direct challenge: How do you love? And in an attempt to answer that question, the band launches into "California Friends," a coiled snake of a song that starts with Night inviting us to "come a little closer." Night's bandmates serve as her internal monologue, shouting "No way!," "Just stay!," and "Okay!" as she weighs the pros and cons of her potential partner. In a moment of self-referentiality and a wink to the time-honored pastime of making a potential partner a mixtape, Night sings about "a band from California" before she offers to "make you a playlist of their songs."
Elsewhere, the lyrics of lead single "I Dare You" detail an illicit young romance: "My mom tries to catch me/But I know all the back streets" is both a clever slant rhyme and a brilliant, specific image that immediately sets the scene. The song paints a picture of a relationship marked by the tension between being supportive and egging each other on: "You're gonna fall, but I'll catch you…C'mon and jump/Well, I dare you!" It's a sublime three minutes, perfectly capturing the heady rush of young love, as the band sing-shouts the last line back and hits the chorus while guitarist Genessa Gariano picks out an angular lead part.
The back half of How Do You Love? traces the part of a relationship that follows the initial headrush, when you realize that maybe the person you fell for isn't "the one." "Go Love You" is a clever exploration of the connection between sex and love, with Night's acid delivery making it clear that "love" is standing in for a different four-letter word. "Pumpkin" draws on pop-cultural touchstones including Romeo and Juliet and The Notebook for its metaphorical unpacking of the moment when you realize a relationship is doomed. The hook has an almost doo-wop feel as Night sighs, "Pumpkin, pumpkin, you're gonna kill me."
By the closing title track, a rave-up with a shout-along chorus, Night has been through the darkness and come out the other side. When she asks, "How do you love?," her voice hitting a melismatic series of high notes on the word "love," the album's emotional arc comes full circle. What began as a direct question, asked of the listener, is now almost—but not quite—out of the singer's reach. The message seems to be that love is difficult, but not impossible, and the rewards are sublime. Throughout, these songs depict human connection in all its messy glory, making the case that the glory is worth the mess.
Label: Warner Release Date: August 9, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Ty Segall's First Taste Is a Blissed-Out Sonic Smorgasbord
The album expands the singer's sound while holding onto the maximalist streak that makes his work so compelling.4
Ty Segall's First Taste is a logical extension of his already-impressive body of work, though the album represents an interesting sonic step forward for the singer-songwriter, as it doesn't feature any guitar. Instead, the album derives its power from a massive synthesizer sound and rhythm section. Segall plays all the drums that appear on the left stereo channel of the mix, while longtime collaborator Charles Moothart plays the right-channel percussion. The instrumentation also features such seldom-heard fare as bouzouki, electric omnichord, and koto. The result is an album that finds Segall expanding his sound while holding onto the blissed-out maximalist streak that has defined his work to date.
As Segall has matured from a West Coast garage rocker into one of indie rock's most reliably protean lifers, it's encouraging to hear that he's still finding new territory to mine. His voice, impassioned and vividly expressive, suggests an instrument itself throughout First Taste, a key element of its overall musical texture, with the music and lyrics achieving a powerful synergy. The lyrical conceits, then, don't come immediately to the forefront, but as you spend more time with these songs, Segall's ideas begin to unfold themselves. The album's first single, "Ice Plant," gently evokes a powerful sense of belonging and home. Segall sings like he's conjuring a memory from the ether as his voice intertwines with that of guest Shannon Lay: "To the oranges that used to be my driveway/And the ice plants that live on the hills."
That's not to say First Taste is entirely bathed in the glow of nostalgia. Opener "Taste" finds Segall shrieking, "Our salivating makes it all taste worse," a grim depiction of the relationship between desire and fulfillment. "I Worship the Dog" is about a rabbit who does exactly that, feeling a kinship with its destroyer, while on "Self Esteem," Segall explicitly tarnishes the warmth he conjured on "Ice Plant": "My memories age/My memories change." Wherever there's warmth on First Taste, darkness lurks just around the corner.
Though Segall's vocals are a key part of the album's sonic architecture, the instrumental "When I Met My Parents (Part 1)"—which pairs a skittering Gang of Four-style bassline with a head-spinning polyrhythmic meter—shows off his brio and inventiveness as a multi-instrumentalist. "Lone Cowboys," which closes First Taste, throws everything at the wall—a smorgasbord of wacky instrumentation that coalesces into a widescreen pop sound reminiscent of the Elephant 6 bands—as Segall shouts, "We can live on our own/We can breathe on our own!" The overall effect, like the album as a whole, invites the listener to turn what they've heard over and over again in their mind.
Label: Drag City Release Date: August 2, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Cuco's Para Mi Is an Unguarded but Under-Developed Self-Portrait
The singer-songwriter's guileless musings serve as a reminder of what young, unjaded love can feel like.3
Since Omar Banos first broke out in 2016, the Chicano musician's foremost appeal has always been his ordinariness. Fresh-faced and bespectacled, the 21-year-old—who performs under the moniker Cuco—cuts an unassuming, almost nerdy figure, and his music, driven by his trademark self-deprecation and endless encounters with heartbreak, is ever so relatable. Although his early mixtapes drifted into garden-variety indie-pop territory, Cuco harnesses his potential on Para Mi, an unguarded self-portrait that, from its unabashed confessionalism to its Spanglish lyrics, is inextricably tied to his identity.
The album exhibits Cuco's fondness for melding the contemporary with the vintage. Like that of bedroom-pop cohorts Joji and Clairo, his music bears the influence of vaporwave. Thick walls of synth fill the album, and the cover art is awash in the garish colors that characterize the microgenre. Likewise, it's difficult to imagine Cuco's music without the sway of 1960s pop: His lyrics are bathed in the love-struck stylings of acts like the Beach Boys and Tijuana's Los Moonlights, and the result is a lovesick concoction that's both forlorn and tripped-out. With lyrics like "I wish you would say/'Baby, I love you 'til I die" on "Hydrocodone," he risks drowning in melodrama, but his earnestness ultimately manages to strike a resounding chord. Sure, he equates heartbreak to the end of the world, but in spite of their hyperbole, Cuco's guileless musings serve as a reminder of what young, unjaded love can feel like.
Throughout Para Mi, Cuco dives headfirst into psychedelia, using it as a prompt to try on more experimental sounds, as well as a lens through which to observe his personal feelings. The dazzling "Perihelion (Interlude)" takes a page out of Neon Indian's Vega Intl. Night School, and the blissful "Love Tripper" owes a great deal to chillwave. "I've been tripping off the tabs in my room/I don't know why, baby, but I'm feeling blue," he half-raps over zany music box-like synths on "Keeping Tabs." On "Feelings," Cuco embraces feeling lost: "I gotta find my way back home," he croons over a silky blanket of horn, synth, and funk bass. Whereas the album's love songs hit on the same thematic beats over and over, these more introspective tracks buzz with intrigue. It's a pity, then, that there aren't that many of them.
Self-deprecation is undoubtedly Cuco's most distinctive artistic trait. (His Twitter handle is @Icryduringsex.) Songs like "Hydrocodone," with such lyrics as "There's always someone better/I hope you find that guy/To make you happy," evoke a naked sincerity. Instead of coming off as pouty or thin-skinned, however, Cuco's confessions succeed for the same reason that sad online culture thrives. Airing out the skeletons in one's closet serves a purpose: There's something palliative about sharing pain publically and feeling like you're not the only one, be it through a tweet, a "same" comment, or, well, a crowd chanting "I'm sitting in my room/I'm all alone now missing you" at a Cuco concert.
Though the better part of Para Mi was ostensibly written with romantic interests in mind, the songs, so anchored to fixed experiences, have come to represent universal lessons learned. They're still rough around the edges—many lack dynamism, fading in and out of monochrome synth passages—but the impression that Cuco put all of himself into the music remains.
Label: Interscope Release Date: July 26, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Of Monsters and Men's Fever Dream Veers Into Bland Pop Terrain
The album streamlines the band's roughhewn sound into a waxy, bland pop.2
Of Monsters and Men's sophomore effort, Beneath the Skin, felt like a qualitative extension of the band's 2012 debut, My Head Is an Animal, hewing closely to that album's densely layered, acoustic-driven instrumentation and the distinctive vocal harmonies of Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Thorhallsson. With Fever Dream, however, the Icelandic quintet emerges from a four-year break with a sound that veers radically from the flannel-textured indie-folk they established on those first two releases.
From Hilmarsdóttir's opening "Hey!," "Alligator" lunges into a full-bodied romp that invokes the feisty vigor of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Throughout, bright electric guitar wails glide over chunky bass riffs and tympanic drumming as she belts out, "Wake me up, I'm fever dreaming!" The arena-ready punchiness of "Alligator" makes the track a promising first impression that, inexplicably, the rest of the album seems determined to walk back.
"You think you know me, but do you really?" Thorhallsson croons on "Ahay," and for listeners surprised by the song's plaintive piano tones, finger snaps, and electronic pops, his question is a fair one. Very little on Fever Dream tethers Of Monsters and Men to their prior work, as the band has streamlined its roughhewn sound into a waxy, bland pop that would feel more at home playing in an H&M store than in the Icelandic backcountry. Gone are the mythological themes that infused their previous songs, and glossed over is the elemental imagery that, in the past, conjured lush sylvan mountainsides and vaulted skies. The fireside warmth that made songs like "Dirty Paws" and "Human" feel so intimate has dissipated in favor of squeaky-clean production, leaving the album feeling generic and non-specific.
"Ahay" is admittedly infectious, and Hilmarsdóttir and Thorhallsson's melodic duet on "Sleepwalker" exudes a sweet, hand-drifting-out-the-window dreaminess. But with little more than beefy basslines to supply them any personality, tracks like "Vulture, Vulture" and "Wars" feel like lackluster impersonations of Depeche Mode-esque pop, with an over-dependence on run-of-the-mill '80s synths. The tremulous vocals of Fever Dream's first single, "Wild Roses," try to mimic the haunting delicacy of the band's 2015 single "I of the Storm" from Beneath the Skin, but a chorus saturated by heavy drums and clubby dance beats smothers the track's airy quiet. Bass-drum thumps and electronic flourishes similarly attempt to give a pulse to the penultimate track, "Under a Dome," but by the time it fuzzes out into Thorhallsson's heavily Auto-Tuned vocals, even the song seems bored with itself.
Despite its bombast and awkward inconsistencies, though, the album displays a keen attention to vocal nuances. Never before has Hilmarsdóttir taken such full possession of her range, and she shows no hesitation in swinging between throaty growls and anthemic screams. On songs like "Róróró" and "Waiting for the Snow," she fleshes out the peeled-back instrumentation with near-whisper fragility and heartbreaking tenderness. In a rare moment for the album, the combination of subtle electronic beeps and slight touches of Auto-Tune on the latter track evoke a strikingly visceral scene of self-reflection and the chill ache of regret.
Thorhallsson, too, tests the limits of his husky lower register, stoking the slow burn of "Stuck in Gravity" into a soaring, soothing ballad. But for all his insistence in the song's outro that his "head is still an animal," it'll take more than a contrived allusion to the past to recover a sense of the cohesion and depth that Of Monsters and Men has jettisoned on Fever Dream. For a group whose songs typically brim with rustic intimacy and traverse the wild, sprawling landscapes of both the head and heart, their latest feels like it sold off those land rights and opted for the lurid electric shimmer of the city.
Label: Republic Release Date: July 26, 2019 Buy: Amazon
Review: Remnant: From the Ashes Mistakes the New for the Noteworthy
Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon Is a Moralizing Buzzkill of a Comedy
Blu-ray Review: William Friedkin's Cruising on Arrow Video
Review: Taylor Swift's Lover Course Corrects in Multiple Directions
Review: Ready or Not Ribs the One Percent with More Laughs than Horror
Review: Mindhunter Season 2 Grapples with Identity and the Power of Words
Review: Taylor Swift's Lover Course Corrects in Multiple Directions
Review: Angel Has Fallen Paints an Incoherent Picture of an Action Hero
Blu-ray Review: William Friedkin's Cruising on Arrow Video
Locarno Film Festival 2019: Technoboss, Echo, & A Voluntary Year
- Games6 days ago
Review: Remnant: From the Ashes Mistakes the New for the Noteworthy
- Film7 days ago
Review: Brittany Runs a Marathon Is a Moralizing Buzzkill of a Comedy
- Video4 days ago
Blu-ray Review: William Friedkin's Cruising on Arrow Video
- Music3 days ago
Review: Taylor Swift's Lover Course Corrects in Multiple Directions


text:
« All Events
Armidale, NSW 2350
Locked Bag 3003
+61 2 6776 5800
+61 2 6776 5830
[email protected]
TAS Facebook
Hoskins Centre Facebook
TAS Twitter
TAS Youtube
© The Armidale School|CRICOS Provider No: 02285K|ABN 17 141 108 241|Privacy and Security Policies
Interested in a TAS education for your son or daughter? Why not make a time to talk to the Headmaster and senior staff when we visit your region and find out what TAS can offer your child.
For more information click on the link provided below or contact the Enrolments Office on 6776 5823 or email [email protected]


text:
Thanks so much for this amazing doll house!
It blew me away honestly!
It was very easy to set up and
the graphics are wonderful.
My 4yr old absolutely loves it.
Your delivery time was
outstanding, I have never got
anything so fast that I have
ordered online 👍👍
Highly recommended 💯%
From Kerry
Thanks to Cara for the extra
Treasure chest with opening lid - size 4.3 x 4.3 cm
Lid opens and shuts
Age: 3+ Years
Size: L 4.3 x W 4 x H 4.3 cm
Compatible with the Le Toy Van pirate ships and castles
Designed in France
Made in China
French company Papo produce highly detailed, authentic, hand painted figurines and their environments.
They take great care in the details and postures, which gives the impression that the figurines are animated.
Quality is their main concern and all Papo figurines comply with relevant safety standards.
Papo toys are designed to stimulate the creativity and imagination of children.


text:
Artist's description:
The photo is printed on a film in vinyl. Ink HP latexes offer a gradation of colors and a resistance to the light without parallel. Our modern technique of printing on aluminum is optimal. She allows to reproduce faithfully the photo in high resolution. The process is complex: the film vinyl is placed on an aluminum composite panelof 3mm of thickness the refined black plastic heart of which strengthens the stability and the durability of your creation.
Your photo on aluminum - quality
Materials used:
The legionnaires (2017)
Digital Art (Giclée) by Alain Gaymard
$331.95Free shipping
- Digital Art (Giclée) on Paper on board
- From a limited edition of 30
- Size: 23.62 x 15.75 x 0.08 in (unframed) / 15.75 x 23.62 in (actual image size)
- Ready to hang
- Signed and numbered certificate of authenticity
- Style: Photorealistic
- Subject: People and portraits
This artwork is sold by Alain Gaymard from France


text:
A whiteout snowstorm hit the Upper Peninsula one hunting season back in the early 1960s and my father, James Watts, tells the story how he killed seven deer that day.
Apparently he drove his car right into a herd of whitetails and killed the entire herd. He told the story how he put two of the dead deer in the car for hunting camp and found the other five carcasses during the spring thaw.
He killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 deer during his lifetime and always donated the venison to family and friends in the Upper Peninsula as the crow flies.
Once he was asked to kill a wild cow that had gone mad and was terrorizing the rest of the herd of cattle, and I still have the cow rug he made from the harvest.
He enjoyed going to Camp Koma in the U.P. in the mid-1950s through the 1990s and loved hanging out with my uncles, Ben Kokko, Ike Malaski and Norm Augustson, and he loved listening to Johnny Cash – 'Sunday Morning Coming Down' was his ring tone.
But over the last 12 or so years he made the trek up north with my brother Jim and I to Camp Finnyard in Rudyard where he found the most joy being with his sons and other members of camp where the days of priceless days at hunting camp commenced.
He didn't hunt much over those years, but he didn't have to. Having our father at camp was his element. He loved being up north – it was where he found real joy
After all, my father was stationed in 1956 at Kinross Air Force Base where a handsome service man met a beautiful Finnish woman and my mother, Martha Kokko. He was transferred to Hamilton Air Force Base in California where my oldest sister, Kathy, was born before he went overseas to Okinawa, Japan during the Korean War.
He played football for Air Force and was named to the All-Military Team and upon return to California he was given a try-out with the San Francisco 49ers where he played in four pre-season games, got hurt and never played again. But was proud of the friendship he formed with quarterback John Brodie.
After his honorable discharge the family moved back to Michigan where my older brother, Jim, was born. My father took his first job as a rookie police officer with the Southfield Police Department. And by 1960 he found a full-time position as an officer with the Ferndale Police Department.
During his 24 years with the Ferndale Police he worked his way up to Detective Lieutenant where he gained the respect and admiration of his men and peers. He framed the many citations and letters he was awarded during those years, and was proud of his public service.
Every person I meet today has a story about my father's time spent as a Ferndale police officer. He loved his men; he cared deeply for the city of Ferndale; and I am told some of the most hellacious young man tales were formed during these years that are now stories of legend.
He was the biggest Detroit Lions fan that ownership had during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Tailgating must have been invented by him. I relish the dozens up dozens of Lions Game Day and Detroit Tigers magazines I have autographed by all the players since my dad knew everyone. Brother Jim and I found ourselves in the Lions and Tigers locker room virtually every game we attended.
Besides Brodie, he was friends with athletes like Lions quarterback Bill Munson, Tigers manager Billy Martin, and first baseman Norm Cash, who my dad pulled over for speeding on his way to Tiger Stadium. He issued Cash a warning.
The 1970s were filled with another chapter in our life – Copper's Cove. Our cottage near Grand Bend, Ontario, was the site of laughter and good times. Virtually anyone who was a family friend spent time with us on Lake Huron where my dad loved watching the sun rise and sun set – all from the cottage deck.
He was the hardest worker I ever seen. He filled his days when not working as a policeman by doing other things. He owned a construction company; he was a partner in a Ferndale restaurant; a manager at Rattle Run Golf Course in St. Clair; and graduated Magnum Cum Laude from Oakland Community College where he taught Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.
After his wife died last June, my dad moved from his farmhouse in St. Clair and retired in Bloomfield Hills where he was surrounded by family and friends every day. People would flock into his condominium on the lake and just listen and enjoy him still telling a joke. He was constantly thanking us for just being with him.
We celebrated our father's life on Friday. I am so grateful to have called him 'buddy' and to know he was such a good friend to so many people.
He taught me how to be a kind person; how to hunt; how to fish; how to be an athlete; how to drink beer; how to be a sports writer; how to work hard; how to love; how not to hate; how important it was to give; and how important it was to be at hunting camp each year with his two sons, uncles, cousins and friends.
He died suddenly on Sunday. He was one of the most unique and kindest men you would ever want to meet. He was one of the funniest men to ever tell a joke. He was James Dayton Watts and he will always be known as 'The Legend.'
Just a reminder The Michigan Boating Industries Association is offering for free the 2013 edition of the Boat Michigan Annual Directory and a Boating Safety Information Kit. To receive a copy, call (734) 261-0123, email firstname.lastname@example.com, or write to the MBIA at 32398 Five Mile, Livonia, MI 48154. Visit www.mbia.org. … The 31st annual North Oakland Ducks Unlimited Chapter Fundraiser is May 1 in Clarkston. Call Chuck Myers at (248) 909-6502. … The 7th Annual Salvation Army Outdoors Sporting Clay Shoot is May 9 at the Detroit Gun Club on Thursday, May 9. Contact Amy Howard at email@example.com. Deadline is Thursday, May 2. … The Rec' Bowl in Mount Clemens will host their 2nd annual Walleye Tournament on May 4-5 with the official weigh-in conducted by the Lake St. Clair Walleye Association. Entry fee is $20. Call Jeff Regulski at (586) 872-1916 or Stan Bydlos at (586) 716-7741 or www.recbowl.com. … Spring turkey season opens April 22. … Trout season opens April 27.
Tom Watts writes a weekly outdoors column for Digital First Media. Contact him at email@example.com.


text:
Well we had our Blooming Great Tea Party. We had a really lovely day. A good few friends, family and neighbours popped in for a cuppa and some home baking and, as it was a beautiful day, we sat in the garden and had a good natter.
And as an extra bonus, we managed to raise just over £300 for Marie Curie Cancer Care so I am delighted.
I kept the baking simple and tried to have something that would appeal to everyone. I also tried to make a mixture of things that could be made in the days leading up to the event so I wasn't trying to do everything last minute.
Here is my baking schedule just in case it helps anyone else who is new to baking and wants to do a tea party.
I started with the cookie doughs. I made two types of cookie (well, Steve made one of them). We did a rye and raisin one from Dan Lepard and a peanut butter and chocolate chunk one from ... We made the doughs then scooped out balls of about 30gs each of the mixture, rolled into balls, froze flat then transferred into bags to keep in the freezer. These could then be just taken out, popped onto baking sheets and baked for 12 minutes to give fresh cookies on the day.
About 3 days before the tea party, I then made shortbread and kept this in an airtight container until needed.
2 days before I made batches of cupcakes from Cupcake Magic (for recipe - see this post), my three carrot cake layers (Dan Lepard - recipe here) and a batch of Mars Bar Squares.
On the day before, I iced and decorated my cupcakes. I must mention here the gorgeous daffodils I bought for the top of my cakes for the Marie Curie theme. I got them from carolsyummybakes which I found on eBay and I have to say that she couldn't have been more helpful and I was seriously impressed with the quality of the decorations.
This was my JustGiving page and if I add all the donations given to me on the day, it comes to just over £300. Very happy to donate to such a brilliant charity.
Thank you so much to all my family and friends who contributed.
Thank you so much to all my family and friends who contributed.
I had a wonderful day and would recommend having your own Blooming Great Tea Party either this year or next year. See the website for details.


text:
23 August till 8 September
View all auctions
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
You can also find us on
Sign in
New user?
Create a free account
Before you can start bidding, we need some additional information.
Complete your details
By browsing Catawiki, you agree to our use of cookies. Find out more about how we use cookies in our Cookie Statement.


text:
Question: How many of us still own a bible?
At work I found, to my chagrin, that I still keep my bible in my locker.
I was having a conversation with a theist, about things that didn't involve religion, and some how he steered it towards how he often reads his bible. I keep a track in my bible, as a book mark, and I started thinking about the contents of the track. For instance: "Do you feel sad?"… read Mathew chapter 5:11 (not the actual wording but…). I always kept the track as a mind fuck for me. I'd say that the bible gave me a road map to how to live my life; as long as I adhered to that little pamphlet that I acquired somewhere in my travels. What bullshit.
When I get to work today I'm giving that guy that bible… What's an Atheist need with a bible? what am I trying to hold on to? Think this is subliminal? Am I trying to hold on to the last visages of my failed stabbed at religion? Yep, started questioning my new found unbelief...
Can't bring myself to throw it away. Don't know why. Guess I still look at the damn thing as something personal, something of value; despite the fact that I think it's all bullshit. I've had it for so long and it's followed me clear around the world and back that I just don't want to just shit can it. But giving it to another human being just don't seem right to my atheist ass… LOL. Quandary.
Views: 1319
I have two,a KJV and a Reina Valeria, they were given to me by Guideon. I usually have them as a project to convert them in skeptic's annotated bible, but i'm too lazy to actually highlight all those verses. Plus, i detest throwing books away.
Hate the idea of throwing away books. Book hoarder from way back here!
My co-worker, one of those non-practicing christians, is now the proud owner of my bible. I asked him to take it, after explaining how long I had it and where it's been, and he said that he'd take it only because it's something that was important to me for so long. He said if I reconsider and reconvert to christianity he'd give it back. I just giggled my ass off at that 'cause LOL- Snowballs chance in Hell!!!...
I have a Bible that was given to me by an old boss. He thought there was a battle going on for my soul so he did an emergency baptism out by the garbage dumpster, and gave me a Bible. I have read it, too. I had as open a mind as I could but after reading it I became even more afraid for humanity.
I don't mind keeping it. I suppose its a good reference book to have around.
I have part of another one that I use to level out my treadmill. For this, it is very useful... just the right thickness. I didn't rip it up by the way. I found it in my possession like that. I know not whence it came, but it must have been sent by the Almighty to make my exercising experience more pleasant.
Even though I am not a Christian I do have a certain amount of respect for religions' holy books. Some of that is that I have respect for books, period. They can be very powerful. I am a bit fascinated how the Bible can be so influential. It's not that good of a book, really.
Ooh! I just remembered I can play "hide the Bible" if I can find one in the hotel I am in! Whoohoo! Let's see...
Yes! Double score! I've got a Bible AND The Book of Mormon! Wow. I will have to glance at the Mormon one before I hide it.
Your boss tried to convert you and then baptized you by the dumpster (presumably against your will)? Wow. You know you could have sued, don't you?
Well it really wasn't against my will. I was at a confusing and vulnerable time in my life and I was not sure that he wasn't correct at that point. Some weird stuff was happening.
I never have even thought once about whether or not I could have sued, not for that anyway. There were other things going on at that job that made being suddenly baptized seem just like another day at work. In the end it didn't make any difference. I moved on and never looked back.
There were other things going on at that job that made being suddenly baptized seem just like another day at work.
Bet those were interesting times.
I have a number of religious books, including a KJV bible that has sections highlit and a couple dozen taped-in inserts filled with notes. They serve as reference material.
I own several Bibles, in several different versions - if a theist says the Bible says something, I want to be able to look it up and see if it's totally true, or taken out of context, in which case, I come back with earlier or later paragraphs, indicating the passage didn't mean what he contended it meant, and destroy him.
You may also notice that I always capitalize the Bible, but not god, because one is a book, and I respect books, which is why I could never burn a Bible or the Quran, though I possibly could recycle them. But if I had an extra, giving it away wouldn't be a problem, it's just a book, and not a well-written one at that.
As an exMormon I still have my bible, and BOM, I hardly notice them but now as an Atheist it's amazing to go back and re-read some passages in both books with a completely different way of looking at them. So I think I'll get em around LOl.
Am I correct, Erik, that those in the BOM represent the 10 lost tribes of Israel? If so, how do they account for the 13,000 year old spear points found in Sandia, New Mexico, when the ten tribes weren't dispersed until 722 BCE?
Yeah, I still have a bible on my bookshelf. Like others have said, it's a great book of reference and I can always go to it when I need a reminder of why i'm an atheist. lol
Interestingly, before I fully came around to non-belief, I worried about which books it was next to. For example, would god be angry if I put the bible next to all my Harry Potter books? Maybe it would be better to put it next to the Chronicles of Narnia. Yeah, that would be better.
Boy am I glad that's over. Now it's sandwiched between all the HP books and my biology textbooks haha