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Dysfunctional Families
What do we know about parents from maltreating families? They are often socially isolated, and have little emotional and financial support. Depression is a common factor in the neglect of children; Chaffin and colleagues found in a study of over 7,000 parents in five major cities that depressed parents are 3 times more likely to neglect their children. They sometimes were abused or neglected themselves as children. Jaffe says that 30% of abusive parents were themselves abused as children. Mothers... more
"Dr. Laura" – The Mental Health Demon
Media personality "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger once wrote a commentary Evil Among Us in March 1999, and discussed it on her radio show. This was her response to a research study about child sexual abuse, conducted by a scholar named Rind, and published by the American Psychological Association. "Dr. Laura" stirred up fans, who contacted politicians, who started talking about congressional hearings, and eventually did pass a resolution condemning child sexual abuse. The controversy... more
Corporal Punishment in Children – What Does It Accomplish?
How Many Parents Spank Their Children? Gershoff reports that Straus and Stewart (1999) found that 94% of American parents spank their children by the ages of 3 or 4. Primarily they spank children up to age 5, one to two times per month. Gershoff notes too that the US Department of Health and Human Services (2001) indicated that 13 of every 1000 children are abused or neglected. Thinking that spanking leads to abuse, Gershoff investigated the effectiveness of spanking by conducting a meta-analysis.... more
Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare – review of child protection data by Dorothy Roberts
Shattered Bonds is a thoughtful essay in three parts regarding the gap between what we as a society think we mean by child "protection" and "welfare," and what actually happens as a result of the Child Protective System and the Welfare System. While you might not agree with all of her conclusions, she cites a wealth of studies (many regarding children here in Illinois and in Chicago) showing serious breakdowns in the system. Roberts' premise is basically this. First,... more


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Lawrence County Man Sentenced To 19+ Years In Prison For Child Exploitation Crimes
PITTSBURGH, Pa. - A Lawrence County man has been sentenced in federal court to 235 months in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, on his conviction of child exploitation crimes, United States Attorney David J. Hickton announced today.
United States District Judge Nora Barry Fischer imposed the sentence on Patrick Joseph Kofalt, 56. According to information presented to the court, on or about Dec. 2, 2009, Kofalt received, possessed and accessed material depicting the sexual exploitation of a minor. Judge Fischer specifically found credible the accounts of vulnerable child victims who reported years of sexual offending by Kofalt and found Kofalt to be a serious threat to children.
Assistant United States Attorney Soo C. Song prosecuted this case on behalf of the government. In connection with the sentencing, Ms. Song presented evidence that disclosures by a six-year-old child in 2009 prompted the seizure of more than 1,000 images of child pornography which had been carefully encrypted and saved by Kofalt in computer files. Three additional sexual assault victims of Kofalt were eventually identified by law enforcement.
U.S. Attorney Hickton commended the Federal Bureau of Investigation, together with the Pennsylvania State Police, for the investigation leading to the successful prosecution on Kofalt.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

subset: commoncrawl


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Question of the day: CityPlace or Gardens Mall? Or both?
In recent weeks, I've been hearing a lot of talk from people making comparisons between CityPlace and The Gardens Mall.
For instance, earlier this week, I stopped by the Palm Beach Mall to get a new battery for my watch (yes, I still wear a watch even though most of my friends use their cell phones to check the time).
The man at the counter kept telling me about how, when CityPlace was first being created, he never thought anyone would want to go to it since The Gardens Mall already offered upscale shopping; now, he says, he goes to CityPlace all the time, and will go even more now as they start adding retail chains that he knows.
Indeed, business columnist Alex Clough wrote recently about how CityPlace is working to add more well-known brands to its lineup to bring people in. Stores like Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret have recently opened in the outdoor mall.
What do you think? Do these two shopping locales offer different enough experiences and stores to warrant shopping at both places? What do you think of the idea of CityPlace adding more established brands to its tenant list?
Sound off and let me know what you think below.


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Thanks to all for your kind words about our new bibliography of children's books about evolution and Darwin. Glad to hear it's useful.
Special thanks to Ian for pointing out a mistake in the bibliography. The upcoming movie "Creation" is not based on the book "Charles and Emma" by Deborah Heiligman but rather on Randal Keynes' biography of Darwin titled "Annie's Box." I fixed the bibliography and re-posted.


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Well, this update is a few days late, but we're back from our Hawaii vacation. We have many hundreds of pictures, and many hours of video to sort through, but when we have time we'll put some of them up.
For those of you who are following us on Facebook, you've already seen some pictures from our trip, which we took on our iPhones! But don't worry, we'll have pictures and videos for everyone soon.


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I gave my paint tool box away.
It was one of those plastic tool boxes for about five bucks that I'd modified for carrying paints and paintbrushes. I didn't have a permanent shelf or place to store my stuff at the time. It had enough room for several brushes and most of the colors I used, and the tray carried extra carving blades, small wood pieces, random beads, and electrical tape because I learned the blades were sharp before I invested in gloves and used the electrical tape to wrap around my fingers and thumb to protect them at the time.
The tool box had been gathering dust for awhile now. I still used it on occasion for travel or working in another location and it made a decent foot stool a lot of the time. My brushes are scattered everywhere, the paints are mostly corralled in a drawer unit, and I still have random pieces of wood here and there.
Well on Friday night I kept an eye on my cousins while my aunt & uncle had an evening to themselves for dinner & shopping. I won't call it babysitting because they're old enough to take care of themselves, really. I just hung out to make sure the boys didn't set the house on fire or throw cupcakes at the dogs.
One of the boys is kinda quiet compared to the other two, and really good at the science fair stuff and has an interest in painting. They're all three sharp, just different interests. Anyway, he was showing me stuff he'd been working on but had run out of green paint.
So I cleaned off my tool box, tossed a couple of newer brushes in there and picked up some new paints for him, just basic colors to get him going. When I felt better on Sunday I took it over, telling him it wasn't a Christmas present, it was a gift from one artist to another. I told him what I'd done to modify it years ago & showed him the brushes and paints and a few board canvases if he wanted to paint pictures for someone else for Christmas, he could.
It was a little hard. To let go. Of something I didn't use anymore, I know. But when I was in kind of a turmoil-y place once, and I used art as a stability, and I picked up wood carving and took to it nearly every night, well, it was a grounding thing. Carry tools, foot stool, sitting stool, drying dock, everything.
But I know it's gone to a good home now. Pass along something that he can use to make his own art with. And that makes me proud.
The photos are some of the wood pieces.
Tonight I picked up my detail brush and started working on them again. I haven't touched them in over a year and a half, since before eye surgery the summer before last. Because before that all I could see was up close. Details and tiny cuts were so easy. I've partly been afraid to try since, and have kept myself busy with other things. The lines are not the same. The details are not the same. But it felt so damn good to pick up something that I remember and have a groove with.
I apologize for the craptastic clarity, or lack thereof, of the pics. I used the phone camera because I could send them straight to the computer without having to dig out wires and download my camera. I'm lazy like that. And was busy being productive anyway.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The ones you make yourself hold the most meaning
I gave my paint tool box away.
Friday, December 19, 2008
17th of December, Part 4
...Part 1, Part 2, Part 3...
This series has been harder than I thought.
The writing has been therapeutic, yes. It's only further proof that some things never completely heal, and some things will continue to surface long after their time has past.
This night was a turning point for me and I'm reminded of it every time I look in the mirror. The difference now is that while these physical scars have healed, there are days when I wonder about the person I've become since then.
I changed how I travel. I still prefer to drive and I love to travel, but now I give myself plenty of time to get anywhere and stop for naps if I feel I need it. I got my motorcycle license last year and love riding. There is a freedom and balance to being on a bike that feels like flying.
I quit wearing a watch. Time didn't matter. Time doesn't matter.* Yes, I have a lead foot and like speed, but I don't care if I get anywhere on time. I'll get there when I get there.
Family matters. A lot. My cousin was killed instantly in a car wreck just a few years before. This scared my family, dealing this and me. It scared me, the thought of losing all this support and love.
I survived something I shouldn't have. Those pictures my parents took of the truck? I saw one, once. I've never seen them again. That one photo showed a small green pickup truck that looked like it had been picked up and twisted in different directions by the Jolly Green Giant. It's hard to explain other than I saw that photo and cried. How in the world did I survive that? I don't know.
But it let me know I'm still here on this earth for some reason. And I've spent the last eleven years trying to find my way on my path.
Just over a year later I moved to San Antonio. I had a wonderful experience with theatre there and formed a long lasting relationship. I traveled all over the state for auditions and commercial things. I later moved to Ft. Davis and met my best friend.
Then came Massage Therapy classes where I learned so much and loved it all. Yes, the human body is freaking amazing and yet so very fragile.
And I've dabbled in everything that catches my interest since then. Why not? Life is short enough, right? So I might as well try things out and see if I like them. I like to think I've continued to jump in there to take those chances, but sometimes I know I haven't.
Fear will stop things before they have a chance to begin. If the worst that could happen is something I've lived through, then I tell myself to go try it out.
I meet fascinating people and have great conversations this way. I once asked a parking lot painter if I could paint a stripe but he said he'd rather not see me mess up my skirt as we were on our way to the bar. Seriously. Ask Amber.
I took the leap for nude modeling and loved it. I leaned in to kiss a guy during a cold audition and landed the role. I flew out to Charleston to meet someone I'd only talked to for six weeks and that turned into a relationship. I submitted my writing for several projects and landed a few of them, some of which continue now as I develop more skills. I took the motorcycle classes because I really, really, really wanted to learn to ride and wasn't dating anyone with a bike anymore. I took a chance on a personal ad, drove to El Paso a week later to meet the man I will eventually marry.
I've played it safe plenty of times, too. Having a steady paycheck is nice, it's the draw of a desk job.
But the part of me that knows something is off, knows. And I've taken a few steps toward the next leg of this path I'm on, figuring out what still fits and what doesn't.
All in all, I'm an artist. I love creating. I love whimsy. I love helping make people feel better whether by massage or by finding answers. I love the human art form and expression. And I love passion.
The scars are still here. Reminders of what happened. Reminders of where I've been. It's always moving forward from some point. It's a long, winding path with many detours. My life is a journey. When I pay attention and see the signs, I stay on the road, when I don't, things get all topsy-turvy.
Thank you for letting me express a bit of myself here. I hope you come back on occasion to see where I'm at next.
*"Only life matters." - Guess what movie that's from?
decorated by Heather @ 12:00 AM 3 stopped by
Labels: family, friends, meaning, scars are souvenirs, traveling, writing
Thursday, December 18, 2008
17th of December, Part 3
...Part 1, Part 2...
The Hospital
Backboards suck. I was coherent, in pain, scared, could barely see, cold, strapped down, and nobody had called my parents yet. So I was also pissed.
When I'm in pain my very obnoxious, very dark, very annoying, and very twisted sense of humor shines through. This is true when I stub my toe as much as when I hit my funny bone. So multiply all the tense whiplashed muscles, lots of blood, and pieces of my body that were not in their rightful place, and I was quite venomous with the bad jokes.
I wanted off that backboard. I knew my back was fine. I could sense it in my body. When I tried to tell the poor nurses or doctors who were working on or around me, they did. not. get. it. "My back hurts, please let me off here!" "If your back hurts, it may be broken, please lie still." "NO! It hurts because I'm strapped to this godforsaken FLAT piece of wood and my spine is not FLAT! It curves! How do you not know this? Didn't you take anatomy?"
See? I was annoying. Even better:
"Hello? I'm cold. Please, a blanket or something?" "Here, here's a warm towel, is that better?" Well, it was ok, for a few minutes until the warmth was gone and it was a cold towel barely covering my knees. "Hey, I'm cold again." "Here, here's another warm towel. Is this better?" "No. I tell you what, you take those towels out of that warmer and just put me in there, ok?"
No one laughed but me. I tell you, I have a warped sense of humor.
The rest I remember parts of. Fuzzy parts here and there. I know they took X-rays sometime. I know my parents were finally called, somewhere around midnight or one am. My parents were working two jobs each at the time, both too exhausted to make the drive right then, so they came down the next morning.
Doctor, Doctor
The X-rays came back and a doctor started to tell me what was wrong with me according to that see through piece of paper. "It looks like both your ankles were broken, and..." I cut him off. "What? No, they're not! My ankles are fine!" And I proceeded to roll them both this way and that, up and down, as far as I could while being strapped down. He said, 'Well, I guess that must just be scar tissue then." "Yeah, I jumped off of a lot of fences when I was a kid. Also took dance." I was not so confident in this doctor at this point.
I asked if my shoulder was dislocated because it hurt so bad. "No, it's probably just whiplash from being pulled on by your seat belt." "But it's my right shoulder." "Yes, it was probably from your body straining against the shoulder strap of your seat belt." "But IT'S MY RIGHT SHOULDER." "Yes, it's probably from your seat belt. When it held you in place, your body strained against it, it'll be fine."
I gave up. Yes, my right shoulder has a slight permanent shift to it, a slight dislocation that even massage can only quell so much. And it was not from the seat belt that was going across my left shoulder.
My hand was smashed. My left hand. It was bloody and hurt pretty bad and sorta numb, too. They couldn't tell what was broken and since they were just an Emergency Room, they just wrapped it up in a whole lotta gauze.
My left eyelid was cut going back toward my temple. My right ear had been sliced nearly off. I had dried blood and broken glass all over me.
Another doctor came in, apparently a plastic surgeon on night call. He was there to stitch me up. To sew my ear back on. To sew my eyelid back together.
When you're at a broken & beaten point, strapped to a effing backboard, dried blood in your eyes, one eye swollen closed, and someone is leaning over you with a needle, what do you do?
I chose to scream.
It's not like I didn't warn him. I told him I know what he's doing, I know he has to do this, and I know it's not really like my eyeball, just my eyelid, but I'm going to scream anyway. And I do. And I have a damn good scream. He says knock her out.
According to the bill I got for those stitches though, I must have screamed good. He charged a thousand bucks a stitch.
I was still on that gurney or whatever the next morning when I came to. A family friend who lived in San Angelo came by to check on me, my parents had called him, he was like my other dad. My parents came in. They moved me to a hospital room. They explained their version to my parents.
Sometime in there they gave me lemonade with Barium in it (I still have a tough time choking down a glass of lemonade because of this), and sent me for another test, I guess to see if I was bleeding internally. The thing is, I'd been strapped to that board for however many hours overnight, I'd probably had a large bottle of water or two as I usually do on long trips and had not stopped for a bathroom break yet. I was planning on stopping in San Angelo, another 10 minutes down the road... but I never got there. And now a plastic cup of lemonade? My bladder was full. I told them this before we left the room.
They put me on that machine for an MRI or CAT or whatever anyway and I told them I needed to pee. So they brought me a bed pan.
Have you ever tried to pee into a bed pan? I'm not male, I can't aim like that. I was in too much pain to be too embarrassed, and I'm not proud of it at all, but I peed all over myself and that pan and whatever gurney or machine I was on.
This is another reason why they should listen to the patient.
Anyway. No internal bleeding. They kept me in the hospital for the next four days because my "blood was too low." I told them to "quit coming in to take it every other hour" and it would be fine.
My iron count was too low - I was anemic. Didn't matter to them that I'd pretty much always been and that I'd just finished my period a few days before. They pumped me full of these very toxic iron pills until my levels were to their liking before they could release me.
I slept a lot. I couldn't see anything because they'd taken my contacts out and I didn't have my glasses. Not that that mattered, I couldn't wear them anyway, the stitches on my ear and a broken nose. Oh, yes - a broken nose. From the damned airbag. I hate those things. Seat belt saved my life, an airbag broke my nose.
Anyway, yes. My body was beaten and bruised, so I slept, a lot. My parents stayed with me, I think sleeping in the chairs. I asked for peanut butter and bananas, a comfort food. The cafeteria or nurses station only had peanut butter crackers. My dad offered to scrape the peanut butter off the crackers for me. Turned out the peanut butter crackers they had were separate, so he didn't have to.
Somewhere in those days my parents went to get whatever was left of my personal stuff from the wreck. They went out to the site. My mom told me they could tell where it was from the smashed bottle of nail polish across the ground. Also the broken glass and bits of truck. They took pictures. Of the site. Of the truck. Or what was left of it.
Sunday came, they said I could go home as soon as the doctor released me. The doctor was apparently busy watching the Cowboys football game that day. I was antsy. I was feeling better enough and I wanted out of there. I'd had enough rest and wanted to go home. My body was ready.
He finally came, signed the forms, we loaded up to go. They gave my mom the iron pills I was 'supposed' to take. My body smelled like rust from that stuff. I didn't take them.
We went home. My mom took me to a couple of doctors over the next week to check the stitches and my left hand. They unwrapped it for the first time since it had been wrapped on Wednesday night of the wreck. Several days of dried blood, major bruising, and broken glass. It smelled bad and hurt worse. It was three sizes too big, purple, green, yellow, blue, and disgusting. I joked that someone had removed my hand and replaced it with a prop from a bad 'B' horror movie.
One bone broken though. In all that mess, just one broken bone. A tiny one, a metacarpal. But the rest was swollen and bruised badly. I'd had my hand on the steering wheel as I rolled, smashing it. So I got a soft cast and six weeks of showering with a plastic bag over my hand.
I slept a lot more. I couldn't drive for awhile. I relied on my family for so much.
Things changed for me that night.
Tomorrow I'll expound further.
decorated by Heather @ 12:00 AM 0 stopped by
Labels: family, scars are souvenirs, traveling, writing
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
17th of December, Part 2
Part 1 here...
Rollover on the Highway
I had a truck. A little Ford Ranger. Green. It had a crack in the windshield from a rock chip from the resealing of city streets the past summer.
I was tired. I'd been awake since sometime around 4am. I'd taken some form of over the counter sinus stuff the day before for allergies. (Did that play a role, hardly, but I've since gone homeopathic & don't touch the over-the-counter stuff at all.) I'd driven the six hours out to Austin, done the audition, and driven more than halfway back home. I wanted to be home.
But I was tired. And I couldn't tell that the street lights up ahead were for a different road that went one way while the road I was on curved the other.
And I swerved. And I panicked. And I over-corrected. And I tensed up every muscle in my body. And I said "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..." And I remember the track the CD was playing. I remember the song. I remember where in the song. I remember the lyrics at that point in the song. I remember being very, very unhappy at what was happening.
They tell me I rolled several times. My parents told me they unwrapped my dog tags from around my rear-view mirror three times. I went across the median. Into oncoming traffic. Rolling. Rolling across the median. The truck stopped on the passenger side on the other road. Where another car hit my truck and sent me spinning in it.
I was the scene people slow down for. To see what happened. But I couldn't see what they saw.
My view was a very different perspective.
My left eye was bloody and swollen shut. My right eye didn't want to open until the blood covering it dried. My right shoulder hurt. My left hand was excruciating. My feet were cold. And I was in the cab of that small truck looking at a swath of dark red blood across the ceiling above me.
The back window had popped out somewhere on that roller coaster. The front window was smashed. As were the driver and passenger windows. I had enough of my wits about me to turn off the engine. I released my seat belt which let me drop the last few inches so my feet were on the ground through the passenger side window. Good thing I'd waited till the truck wasn't moving anymore, because had my feet drooped through that window before the spinning, they would have been cut off at the ankle. I leaned back on the seat with seatbelt locks digging into my side as voices shouted and hollered outside.
They asked me where I was going. "Home. To Odessa." They asked me where I was coming from. "From Austin." That can't be, they said. I was on the wrong road, they said. I must have it backwards, they said. I must have been going to Austin from Odessa. "NO!" I said. I was hurt, not stupid. I hadn't lost my brain capacity. I was angry.
I offered to try and climb out. They told me to stay put. To wait for the police and ambulance. I told them, someone, anyone, to find my purse. Please. It had a cell phone in it, please find it and call my parents. Just let them know. I know now that no one did.
More questions. Asking what happened, what hurt. Eventually I was told they brought in the Jaws of Life. I figured it must be pretty bad to get that. They put a sheet over my head to protect me from the shards of glass and metal it would be cutting away. Someone placed the neck brace thing on my neck even though I told them my neck was fine. They slid in a back board and strapped me to it. They rolled me to the waiting helicopter and flew me into town to the hospital.
My first helicopter ride involved me being strapped to a backboard, not able to see anything, and was really cold because one door was still open and it felt like my feet were hanging out.
The wreck happened around 10pm. I was on the road into San Angelo, right around a tiny little area called Wall. They've since put up those big yellow arrow signs on that curve, because I apparently was not the only one to not realize the road curved. The sheriff or police officer, I don't even know which, told me I would be given several tickets. Failure to control vehicle. Failure to yield right-of-way or going into oncoming traffic or some such. And something else. I honestly don't remember what else.
It didn't matter to me. I was in pain. And the wreck was just the beginning...
...to be continued...
decorated by Heather @ 12:00 AM 1 stopped by
Labels: family, meaning, scars are souvenirs, traveling, writing
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
17th of December, Part 1
I am afraid. Yet the date comes and goes and I drive the same road several times a year. I persevere.
Some part of you is going to read this, sickly fascinated by what happened, because it's something that draws everyone. It's what makes us slow down to see what happened and be thankful it wasn't us.
And some part of you may have no desire whatsoever to
hear read about a twisted, mangled pain that may have healed to the best of healing ability in the physical manner - but still aches as a reminder.
December 17, 1997.
A Wednesday. Cold enough for Winter in Texas, but not as bad as the sudden 10 inches of snow we would get a year later.
I wanted to be an actress. I'd wanted to be one for years. I did the community theatre, the high school shows, the after school children's productions. I did the modeling and training, the late night rehearsals of Shakespeare and musicals. I wanted Broadway, but being practical about my chances as an actress as I was about college, I didn't go.
A friend wanted New York, too. We decided on Austin as a stepping stone to get to NY eventually. Austin from Odessa was a huge step. We decided to move in the Spring, after the holidays with our families.
I like a plan. Whether I stick to it or not, I like having some sort of framework to go with.
We had a plan now. So when I saw an audition ad for "Angels in America" by Tony Kushner at an Austin theatre, meant to be performed a few months later, I decided this was a shot! A chance to audition for a show and move to a big city and see what I could prove!
So I figured it out. My day job at the time was as a graphic operator or sound tech for the local morning news show. Sometimes commercial stuff like helping to dub or make the phone number go across the screen. This Wednesday I would get off work around 11am. I left and headed out toward Austin, taking Brady and Llano across - a road I'd driven a few times before. I remember stopping to pickup a few things as Christmas gifts for my family. A couple of puzzles for my younger brothers, coloring books for cousins. I'm not sure anymore really.
I remember I had time to grab a sandwich and find the theatre. I remember sitting in the hallway going over the lines before the audition. I remember I wore my best blue t-shirt and a blue denim jacket with my best blue jeans. I guess I probably had tennis shoes on... oh, that's right, I did. White Keds. I remember thinking I did pretty good, but I was nervous, so I knew it wasn't a 'knocked their socks off great' audition. But I wanted that role. I wanted this show to be a sign I should move to Austin.
The drive home
Yes, it was dark, but I didn't think it's be a problem. I'd borrowed my dad's cell phone (because at the time only busy business-type people had one, really), so I was going to call my parents when I got to San Angelo just to let them know I was about two hours out. I also didn't want to use the roaming minutes and San Angelo was close enough it wouldn't.
Good. A plan.
It didn't happen like that. My parents got a call several hours later from either the hospital or the officer, I don't know, to let them know their daughter was in a car accident.
...to be continued...
decorated by Heather @ 12:00 AM 0 stopped by
Labels: family, friends, scars are souvenirs, theatre, traveling, writing
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
to thine own self be true: effort
Where I first off admit I'm not great as staying in touch with people, not only in blogging and commenting, but in the real world where I have friends I've actually hugged before. (a real physical hug, not a facebook app hug) I have a hard enough time mailing a card once in awhile, much less reaching out to visit.
It does require effort. Sometimes more than I can muster, depending on what emotional state I'm visiting. But there are days I call everyone and send letters and can't read and comment enough, it's like air - I breathe in your lives and words and stop by to say hi.
It takes as much effort to update my own blog depending on what I've got going on. I suck at downloading pics to upload to the site, and Rob & I are trying to work on designs for Ride & Rub, trying to figure out how to move forward with that crazy little world. Amongst all these little worlds.
In which I profess love, adoration, and stalker status of the writers that I read in absolutely no order other than I think to write them down because I read them in whatever random order my moods are befitting at the time I open my favorites list:
Havi & Selma - The Fluent Self: An awesome pair who calm people down just by explaining how to calm down.
Scott - Caveat Emptor: Scott tells stories and has conversations that I only dream of having, but then he writes them down, so he has way more markers in the "Writing things down so they will be remembered for generations" category.
Brandon - /thepenismightier\: I do believe this man has far more alias' than I have, and let me tell you, I have quite a few. He often has problems with pants, but then, don't we all? He has a way with words that get down on their knees and beg me to lick them up, just once, pretty please, because these words will never do me wrong again. I've had the honor of having him guest post for me before - and he nailed it.
James - Double Danger: He's over in Midland & he shares writing and insight with his wife Shala. It's nice to have another voice of reason & common sense to connect to in the area, and even though we're no more than 20 miles apart, we haven't met yet!
Gina - Art Tripper: My sister-in-law, so I know her art stuff. She graduates this weekend (yea!) and is intent on developing the art scene here in Midland-Odessa, launching a sales venue & gallery & gathering group to grow the talents we have out here.
Neil - Citizen of the Month: One of the first to comment on my other writing, a huge encourager, a man not afraid to stand in the middle of the street and yell at the people passing by and then post about it because it makes great blogfodder, and yet he's still so vulnerable you just want to make him hot cocoa & give him extra marshmallows.
Jenn - Doktorchik: One of my friends from high school who has blogged about her weight loss surgery & some very yummy recipes, as well as the happenings in her life. She's a friend I need to see again the next time I'm going to San Antonio.
James - d is for delightful: His latest incarnation (this man has more lives than a cat, thank goodness) is open, honest, & thought-provoking to say the least. James, you sir are one of my Gabriel friends, though we've not met in person, our stories have crossed paths.
David - Sparky Firepants: An artist who is making a living as an artist! He has offered an ear if I were to need it, and encouragement to keep making the art happen. He lives by some alpacas, and while I have not made the acquaintance of an alpaca, he claims they have great creative inspiration qualities. I'll take his word for it.
Nathan - Doodleist & Nathan Bowers: A genius at code and wordpress and other web/computer things that I don't understand, but that's ok because he does and that's why he's there. He started doodleist to showcase art, his own drawing & painting and that of those he likes - it's intriguing to see the development process from a different angle. Just from grabbing a pen & some paper. Any paper.
Pam - Escape from Cubicle Nation: Because I'm working on my own plan to get out from behind the desk for someone else and in front of a table saw & canvas like I belong, and she offers great advice as well as daily thoughts and encouragement from her life as she writes her book!
Bobbi - The Gar-Lop-Son Spot: My friend Bobbi who moved to New Mexico to be with her honey & while I miss her, I see that they get to go hiking a lot! (And they got snow today!) She's got a good little family life going & it's inspiring to see. (Now wondering when Amber will get a blog! heehee)
Melissa - They Call Me Crazy: She's not really crazy, but appease her by telling her she is, ok? While we may not agree on a bunch of things, she deals with things I don't, so I shut up & let her talk. It's better that way. Also, her hubby is serving his tour in the sandbox & I give her props for not crying every single day, because I totally would if Rob got deployed.
Maggie - Okay. Fine. Dammit.: A woman who can wrap words around her finger so gently they fall into place like one of her bouncy curls. She's pushing the walls of her mime-box back to make her space bigger and more her own and she shares a lot of great insights along the way.
Yep, I like twitter too - it makes the stalking and networking easier. It has made it easier to meet people I like online and someday I hope to meet them in person.
Oddly enough, Rob & I met online, yet he doesn't spend nearly as much time on the web as I do - it's hard enough to get him to check his email! But I'm glad he was on that one weekend, he's worth it.
Someday I hope to meet lots more. When I actually make the effort to do so, that is...
decorated by Heather @ 10:14 PM 10 stopped by
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Let Them Come To You
Sometimes I find myself wondering if I come across as trying too hard.
Not the anxiety/paranoia situation where I am standing in front of a group explaining something and in the back of my mind is the little voice going "What the hell are you doing? What makes you an expert here? Why are you talking? No one is listening to you anyway. You have sweat stains under your armpits, keep your arms down! Oh, don't bring up that again!"
No, that little voice I'm used to and can ignore with the help of wonderful meditation techniques, homeopathic anti-anxiety tabs, or a glass of wine. Or just barreling through so fast the voice can't get a word in edgewise and nobody understands what I'm saying!
This is the vibe of unreason that says "This person thinks you're trying to kiss their ass." Or "This person feels like you aren't worth their time." Or "What, she got invited to this? What is she doing here? She doesn't know enough to be here!"
This is me standing in a room with strangers and acquaintances alike, conversing with whomever happens to be near as we all swirl around on our 'networking paths'. Where I'm extremely comfortable with the subject or the place and can spend the next hour talking with a handful of people about really cool stuff we're all working on, or I can spend an awkward two minutes and thirty-six seconds talking with a handful of people about projects, the weather, or what so-and-so is up to.
Because the latter is a conversation with someone who seems to think I'm still the 15 year old girl they saw in a play or my education is lacking or I'm not really qualified to be talking about things even if it's just opinions.
It's a weird vibe and I dislike it. I feel like I'm being me, trying to make a conversation, but feel as if they think I'm trying too hard.
But I feel I have to 'play nice' because so many of these people that make me feel this way are influential in many of the business and networking circles in this area*, and as I develop my own brand and portfolio, I need to at least be cordial.
This is not about the former. Those are conversations I'd love to have every day. These are people who know I'm genuine when I ask about their family or plans, they know I'm not there to kiss ass or hope for a few minutes of face time just so I can hand someone my card. I don't play that way. The modeling world, amongst the management and other lives I've lived thus far, taught me that I'd much rather be the real me.
So Rob tells me to just say "Fuck 'em", although he did point out I should not walk around saying it repetitively out loud. He may have a point.
I'm perfectly capable of holding my own in most conversations. I'm fairly well-read, I know the difference between marketing and sales, I have a varied but talented background, and I'm not as young or innocent as I look. I'm content enough in myself to stand to the side and watch others dance the ego-tangos and chat and mock laugh while absorbing the choices in music and food and art on the walls without feeling the need to go stand next to someone so I don't feel left out.
So what if I choose not to interact in a few instances?
Instead of getting the vibe that they think I don't know anything and I'm trying too hard, what if I choose to not bother with them. Does this make them feel slighted? Annoyed? Like I'm a bitch? When in reality I'm off in my own world, which is a place I'd rather be anyway, not trying at all?
It's difficult to navigate this avenue of perceptions and networking while retaining a sense of reality and self. I mean, I'd much rather tell that small voice in the back of my mind to fuck off rather than another person who is treating me like I'm not worth their time.
*Thankfully, not everyone. Just a lot of them. There are some genuine folks who do what they do well, who care, who talk to everyone as equals and are leaders in this area, and I admire them greatly. If you know Bob Rice, you know who I mean.
decorated by Heather @ 11:39 PM 4 stopped by
Labels: conversations in my head, meaning, words


text: The year is quickly coming to an end for us second years. We blinked and its week 6 already. Only about ten weeks to go!!! we have learn't how to walk... Now its time to run!!! Today in class we started to tackel the run which counts as an EAP for our MP... i've roughed out the basic of the little girl run... you will see in the future more detail and inbetweens to sort out the timing.... i hope that basic poses are easily seen in what i have done today... enjoy


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text:
"Waitwaitwait," you say. "A praying mantis? Like as in the insect? You're seriously going to write a Middle Flipper blog about a bug?"
Yes, you incredulous readers! I realize bugs have tiny brains, and we think of them as small robots made of organic matter. I'm no entomologist. I have a handful of fun biofacts about arthropods and their behavior, and a passionate interest in ethology and the scientific method. That is why I'd like to share with you my hypothesis that insects of the same species have different temperaments. My entire sample study is a whopping three individual praying mantises. Mantisi. Mantisouses? Manticies?
|Where the mantiseseses live
About a year ago, I visited Ocklawaha prairie for the first time. This is one of a handful of prairies found in Florida. It's gorgeous, and kind of in the middle of nowhere. There are two ways to view the prairie: from a lookout on a bluff overlooking the entire thing, or by walking across the prairie on a boardwalk.
Well, I had to experience it all. I wanted to see alligators, wood ducks, wading birds of all kinds, snakes, birds of prey, you name it. Armed with my camera, Russ and I set off to explore the prairie at the ground level.
|Ocklawaha Prairie!
When we approached the boardwalk, there were several hypotheses (hypothesises?) my highly scientific mind made in quick succession. First, the boardwalk had not been maintained by human beings in a long time, because it was overgrown by Some Really Cool Grassy Plants.
|Really Cool Grassy Plants (Reallius coolius grassius planticus)
Second, the most common pedestrian upon the boardwalk was the coyote. These coyotes must be from New York City, because a) they walked on the only "sidewalk" in a gigantic natural prairie, and b) they used the sidewalk as a bathroom.
But I digress. My third observation was that due to government downsizing, the state of Florida could only afford to hire Writing Spiders (yes, they are real) to monitor activity along the boardwalk and ensure that everyone was behaving themselves.
|A writing spider hiding behind her work
So we ambled along the boardwalk, taking care not to disturb any writing spiders, break off any parts of plants, or step in large piles of coyote leavings. It was actually pretty awesome, and the view was amazing. I checked every nook and cranny of the boardwalk to find little critters skittering around it. I was especially impressed by the writing spiders though. They spin a web and in it create what is called a stabilimentum, which looks like they scribbled a zig-zag or some kind of alien lettering through the center. I've heard they use it to attract predators to their web (such as bees, wasps, politicians, etc.), but I'm pretty sure they just do it because they're all like, "Look, we all read Charlotte's Web as Required Reading For All Spiders Everywhere. Everyday we're writing stuff in our web, but where's the media coverage? No where. Why? Because the system is corrupt." It's hard being a writing spider.
Then, just when I thought I'd seen everything I could see at the prairie, I see a large praying mantis perched on the railing of the boardwalk. I walked over to her so I could take a couple of photos. She immediately ran for cover. Being the paparazzi I am, and assuming this little creature didn't know any better (you know, the Hairless Ape Hubris we all embody), I pursued her like she was the insect-version of a quasi-celebrity. Nonetheless, she evaded me at every turn.
I felt bad. She probably saw this giant camera with a reflective lens come at her and thought one (or more) of the following things:
3) "Wow, I never knew I had bug eyes."
|The scared mantis, hiding from me (she is actually upside down under the railing handle)
My guilt overcame me and I left the little insect alone. Russ and I had come to the end of the boardwalk, so we turned around to head back. Much to my surprise, I saw another little praying mantis. I approached her more cautiously, but noticed right away that she had no fear of me at all. In fact, she didn't seem bothered by anything. When I got the camera right up next to her head, she turned her head, but didn't react in any other way. I moved around her, wondering why she was so chill and the other mantis had been so eager to get away from me. I chalked it up to my more careful approach, and left the brave little mantis.
|The brave mantis, looking cute with her compound eyes.
|Gorgeous! Work it, girl!
Then, just as we were about to exit the prairie, I saw the Last Mantis. She too stood on top of the railing, looking at me like she just was dying for a photo session. As I walked slowly towards her, she immediately locked eyes (all 3458907345 of them) on me and tracked me wherever I went.
"Wow!" I thought. "Look at how attentive this bug is!"
I got my camera close to her. She stared back at me. She reared her giant ninja scimitar death arms up at me and ATTACKED THE LENS. I jumped backwards and may or may not have screamed a little/a lot. Some expletives came out of my mouth.
This crazy chick (referring to the mantis, duh) wasn't finished with me. She wasn't all bite-and-run. She continued to track me like a jaguar stalks its prey. I stupidly tried to take another photo, and she tried to decapitate me again with her crazy arms.
|"Ima bout to kill you"
Once again my Scientific Mind formulated the most parsimonious of explanations.
My explanation:
The praying mantis (species as yet unidentified by observer) reacts to visual, reflective stimuli in a camera lens. The reflection appears as a conspecific and therefore elicits a territorial reflexive response.
Girlfriend be crazy.
I set the camera down, because I thought it was obvious this insect was responding to my camera lens. I put it down and started walking away (backwards, you know, to keep my eye on this gangster)…AND SHE FOLLOWED ME. I started to job backwards slightly, to which she responded by running faster and then LEAPING from the railing onto the camera bag that was by my hip. I can only describe the reaction I had as "I'm On Fire" and I tried to take the camera bag off of me without killing the mantis but also without letting her saw my head off.
When I took the bag off, she kept turning to face me, no matter how many times I spun her around to face the Wilderness from which she came. I finally shook her off a few inches from the ground, which still didn't stop the madness. She ran down the boardwalk towards me on her skinny little legs and chased my ass off.
As I ran up the stairs, I heard a small voice yell, "YEAH THAS RIGHT".
I couldn't believe it. After experiencing a terrified and a docile mantis, I never expected to be ran down by one. When my heart stopped racing and my mind exited FIGHT OR FLIGHT I'M GOING TO BE MURDERED mode*, I felt humbled and awe-inspired. In one half-hour period, I got to see three completely different reactions from three individuals of the same species. I assumed they didn't really "know" I was there, beyond whatever it is they do to survive. But what I'd actually done is terrorize one, who knows what effect I had on the other (boost her self esteem with my photo session?), and definitely pissed off the last one. The last one taught me the most, though. She taught me that she had a right to be on that boardwalk as much as I did. She taught me that it's pretty rude to stick a giant camera lens in the face of any non-consenting subject, especially if the subject is 89 times smaller than the camera lens itself. And she taught me that I can't just get away with being rude because I'm a giant animal. She took the gloves off and told me what's up. She took my human pride and tossed it onto the boardwalk among the piles of dried up coyote crap, where it belongs.
|Not pictured: My pride.
And I'm pretty sure she told all the writing spiders to scribble a picture of my face in their web, with phrases such as "KEEP THIS MORON OUT" underneath it. Eat your heart out, Charlotte.
* This mode is most commonly experienced by humans when they encounter insects, spiders, scorpions, or strange noises made by inanimate objects but sound like they are a serial killer entering the house.


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2 oz Small's gin
3/4 oz lemon juice
3/4 oz framboise lambic reduction*
1 egg white
pickled peach, for garnish
Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake without ice to aerate the egg white. Add ice and shake again. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with the peach. If one doesn't have pickled peaches, garnish with lemon peel.
*framboise lambic reduction:
1 750 ml bottle Lindemans Framboise
1 small stick cinnamon
1 star anise
2 inches ginger, sliced
Combine the beer and spices in a pan and simmer until flavorful and reduced by about a third in volume. Strain out the spices and measure the liquid. Mix with an equal volume of sugar. Bottle the syrup and keep refrigerated.


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With presence on about 500 million computer systems, Microsoft Outlook is by far the most widely used email application in the world. It is more so entrenched in the business community, where it is not only used for email exchange, but also as a personal organizer able to handle just about everything from your email to your calendar and easily transfer tasks, contacts, and more. In a nutshell, Microsoft Outlook enjoys an enormous popularity.
However, being the most popular email application does not necessarily mean it is perfect. In fact, is far from it. One of the glaring omissions is the feature to extract and export emails from Outlook data store to document formats such as Adobe PDF, even Microsoft own proprietary XPS and Word document formats.
PDF or Portable Document Format is an industry standard for document exchange and archiving. In other term, it is an electronic replacement for paper. Converting emails to PDF can serve many purposes. First, PDF format preserves the source file information such as layout, styles and format of the email. Second, PDF exists in compressed form that reduces the size of the file significantly, making it simple to distribute by e-mail or post on a website. This also makes it an ideal to archive and backup emails so that you have a record of your information in a format that can be easily opened in the future. Additionally, because of archiving, mailbox size can be maintained at reduced level. Third, it is very easy to share with other users because of its size and portability. Fourth, PDF files are viewable and printable on virtually any platform, including Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, Linux and mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android etc.
Because of the popularity of PDF, Microsoft started supporting it in Office 2007 via a special 'Save as PDF and XPS' add-in, available as a separate download. With SP2, PDF and XPS support is natively inbuilt into the Office suite. So, now you can easily save your Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents to PDF natively. Unfortunately, Microsoft chooses to leave support for PDF/XPS out of its Outlook application. Whether that was deliberate or limitation in PDF licensing term, we don't know for sure. But what we do know is the devoid of PDF and XPS export feature in Outlook is a big limitation. So, as usual, most of us has to either rely on Adobe Acrobat Outlook plug-in (which means, you will have to buy it and yes, it costs a lot too, $299 for a personal license for the standard edition!) or, make use of a PDF printer driver, to generate PDF document that is not searchable and contents that is not easy to recover or exported to another format. Some even resort to copy-paste of the content of the web page to Microsoft Word and convert to PDF/XPS document, albeit in a crude fashion.
For these reasons, a year back, in an attempt to bridge the gap, I wrote a VBA, that puts a button in the mail inspector window in Outlook, clicking which would feed the HTML version of the email item to Microsoft Word application through command line execution, and convert it into a PDF document. What started as a simple script to meet my own requirement for document generation from emails, has now evolved into a full-fledged commercial add-in application for Microsoft Outlook. It really is a lot nicer. It has a lot of conveniences that make it easy to use, encapsulating all the complex and dirty processes within the familiar Outlook toolbar and ribbon user interface. But in the end it still does that same core function that got it started – it generates PDF, XPS, word documents and web archived pages from any items in Outlook (be it emails, appointments or tasks), with a single click or on its own through automation. These are all achieved, by leveraging your existing investment in Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 suite. There is no requirement to install a PDF printer driver or a third party library or Adobe Acrobat application.
In its new avatar, Document Exporter is a lot more than just being a PDF converter. Once you convert an email to PDF or other document format, generated PDF files of the email and attachments can be named with the metadata information contained in the email item itself, such as date, sender, receiver, subject, etc. This way you don't even need to input and key in the name of the document.
Document Exporter can also convert the underlying attachments of the email to PDF. You have the choice to output each individual attachment to a separate PDF file, or merge all attachments into a single PDF file where each attachment is joined to one another, or merge the email along with the attachments to a single PDF file such that, each attachment is joined and appended to the email PDF. However, the support for converting attachment to PDF depends on the file format of the attachment. Most of the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Web or simply plain text file formats are supported. Here is a list of different file formats supported for converting to PDF: docx, docm, doc, dot, dotx, dot, htm, html, mht, mhtl, rtf, txt, odt, wpd, wps, xl, xlsx, xlsm, xlsb, xlam, xltx, xltm, xls, xlt, xla, xlm, xlw, odc, uxdc, ods, csv, prn, pptx, ppt, pptm, ppsx, pps, ppsm, potx, pot, potm, odp, bmp, gif, png, jpg, jpeg, tif, tiff, pcx, psd
One unique feature of Document Exporter that sets it apart from other PDF converter tool for Outlook is in its support to export emails to other popular document formats such as Microsoft own, XPS (*.xps) and Word Documents (*.docx, *.doc), Rich Text (*.rtf), Open Document (*.odt) and Web archive (*.mht). There are five ways of generating PDF and other document formats from Outlook items:
- Convert individual Outlook item
- Batch convert multiple Outlook items
- Append Outlook items to an existing PDF file
- Merge multiple Outlook items into one file
- Automatically convert new incoming emails
One recent feature addition is the real-time generation of PDF or other document formats from incoming emails. This works by setting Document Exporter add-in to monitor an Outlook folder or mailbox, for new emails. So, when a new incoming email hits the folder or mailbox, Document Exporter automatically processes it to generate PDF or other documents, without any intervention from the user. Now, you can easily maintain a parallel copy or backup of your current Outlook items.
You can also opt to maintain a single PDF file for an Outlook folder or mailbox, such that every new Outlook item received or added to the folder or mailbox will be automatically appended over this single PDF file, containing iteration of pages just like an e-book. This entire process will appear seamless to the user, and you will have a PDF file that has the latest update of your Outlook folder or mailbox.
Finally, you have complete control over the PDF document generation through the Output settings panel. You can customize the default file naming scheme by choosing your own metadata fields, specify the attachments output behavior, choose single or multiple PDF merge options and modify the page setup and layout etc.
The latest release of Document Exporter add-in is version 6 and works with Outlook 2007 and 2010 (32 bit). I have also composed a 15 minutes video demonstration on its capabilities on Outlook 2010, which is now available on the product website. If you have any opinions, feedback or questions on this product, I'd love to hear from you. You can contact me at bahrur dot ipham at assistmyteam dot net.
Product Summary:
Name: Document Exporter for Outlook
Website: http://www.assistmyteam.net/DocumentExporter/
Download: http://www.assistmyteam.net/DocumentExporter/Download.asp
Video Demonstration: http://www.assistmyteam.net/DocumentExporter/Videos/


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Are You A Bully, Tormentor Or Habitual Teaser
What Is Bullying
To be more concise I researched the definition, and found one that I think best suits my idea of bullying. This statement is taken from an article by Dan Olweus, creator of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. I'm quoting Mr. Olweus verbatim, "A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself." Mr. Olweus also added three other components to bullying:
- It's an imbalance of power or strength
- Bullying is aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions.
- Bullying is a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
Before I go any further I'd like to give credit where credit is due. The quotes in this section is taken in large part from a site that I highly recommend. Because I feel this subject needs as much coverage as possible I'd like to encourage readers to go over to the site, OLWEUS, Bullying Prevention Program.
Who's Being Bullied
While doing research for this article, I noticed that the first two pages of Google on the Subject of people dying from bullying centered on boys being teased for being gay. While this is very disheartening, sad and intolerable, there are girls that are summarily being bullied to death. So, to them I'd like to dedicate this article.
Serious Cases Of Bullying
To reiterate, in my opinion, this matter appears to be under reported, so, I'd like to shine a little more light on it. The cases that I'm mentioning here are just a tip of the iceberg.
- The first case concerns 15 year old Phoebe Prince. Miss Prince's body was found hanging in the stairway leading to her family's second-floor apartment in Northampton Massachusetts. She had recently moved to the area with her parents from Ireland. For almost three months she had been mercilessly verbally abused, threatened, and generally harassed, and some of it had been done in the presence of not just the students, but faculty alike, with no actions taken. For more of the story please follow this link, Phoebe Prince.
- The Next case is of Holly Stuckey. One of the saddest things about this is she was only 12 years old. Holly was tormented because she didn't know much about sex. She suffered in silence, not being able to explain her situation to her parents. Only after she died did her parents find a stash of letters revealing her heartbreaking plight. Holly had asthma, but it was believed to be under control, however her father believes the emotional strain of the bullying may have been too much for her heart. At just 12 years old Holly died in her fathers arms. To read more about this story follow this link under Holly Stuckey.
- It's not just the young girls that bullying affects, it can come at any age, as proven by the next situation. This is the case of a 29 year old teacher, Britt Pilton. Ms. Pilton was a young woman that seemed to have it all together. She was engaged to be married in the summer, she was a well loved and popular teacher, but none of that could help her during her torment. She was said to have been tormented and bullied by a co-worker who had a record of this type of action, he had a reported habit of using this technique on others. It was said, "This one person would go round and bully a different teacher until they left and Britt felt she was the next one,' said Kelly Parkin, a teacher at the school and close friend to Ms Pilton." Even though Ms. Pilton was scheduled to marry the love of her life, which should have been the happiness time of her life, the pressure from her tormentor was just too great to bear, she collapsed at school after a particular stressful event. To be fair she did have an underlying problem, however it was exacerbated by the continued bullying of her reported tormentor. For more on this case please research Britt Pilton on the Internet.
These cases are but a few of the many that occur on a regular basis, they don't even touch on cyber bullying, which I won't either at this time.
My Thoughts
When the question is put to you, "Are you a bully, teaser, or tormentor," before you answer consider the ramification of your actions. Some might answer with pride, "yes I am," others with dismay, after learning of the devastating consequences of their actions. In either case, put yourself in the shoes of anyone of these aforementioned young women. Each and everyone of us has something that we would call a shortcoming, over which you have no control. Maybe you're short, tall, wear glasses, big feet, crooked nose, even red hair, (more about that later), or it could be a speech impediment. Just think of what it is that you don't particularly like about yourself, and picture being mercilessly teased about it day after day. Simple analogy, but in some cases that's just how simple it is. However, in a lot of cases there are other things a person is dealing with, before the teasing begins, that would make the torment harder to deal with.
Surveys say that 77% of students are bullied mentally, verbally and physically. What a sad commentary of our society today. Speaking of things over which you have no control, I just heard of something called Ginger abuse, that deals with the teasing and tormenting of anyone with Red Hair, never heard of it until now.
Just imagine, if after you've, "innocently," chided someone on a regular basis about a physical feature, that they already feel bad about, and one day you find out they're dead at their own hands, because of not being able to deal with it. Do you think you could live with that, (just asking)?
Looking back on the three aforementioned cases: In the case of Phoebe Prince, looking at her picture, one wonders what was it that caused her to be teased so badly, it didn't matter, she just couldn't take the pressure. Then what about, Holly Stuckey, 12 years old, how much should she know about sex at that age? And Ms. Pilton, imagine being tormented because of being good at what you do. In all of these cases the torment was just too much to bear.
What about you, who don't tease, bully, or torment, but take no action when you see it done to others, especially if it is in your power to do something. I came across a very interesting statistic on this note, it was dealing with the playground. It's said that every 7 minutes a child is bullied, with 4% adult intervention, peer intervention was about 11%, leaving 85% no intervention. So, are we part of the 85% that stand by and let someone suffer unnecessarily at the hands of another? As was seen in the case of the adult that was bullied to death, the same can be said of this situation, taking no action could lead to the same consequences.
So think twice before you set out to, "innocently," tease someone, it could lead to something worse, stress, depression, or even death. Do you think you could live with the consequences of your actions if this occurs.
Answer This
Have You Ever Been A Victim Of Bullying, Tormenting, Or Teasing
What Would You Do
If You Saw Someone Being Bullied, Teased, Or Tormented
- Bullying Facts: The 5 Essential Bullying Statistics Every Parent Should Know
What are the 5 essential bullying statistics every parent should know? The bully prevention experts at Urban Martial Arts share useful bullying facts in this article.
- What is Bullying? Definition, statistics & Information on Bullying
Get statistics, definitions and information about bullying at Olweus.org. Learn about types of bullies, the bullying cycle & get facts on how a bully affects other students.
It's sad that when someone is bullied they decide to take their own life. We have to stop the madness. Innocent people take their lives everyday to escape the ridicule that takes place due to being a victim of a bully. Great information in your Hub I rated up.
I was never bullied at school. Looking back, though, I sincerely regret not stepping in when I saw it happen. I was almost a black belt at the time, and I could easily have beaten any bully to within an inch of his life after school. Whenever I hear of the other extreme, victims killing their tormentors after years and years, I feel no sympathy for the bullies. What goes around comes around. If I believed in hell, I'd hope that's where they are.
It's so sad that bullying no longer stops in school, adults are guilty of it as well. I was bullied in school and can't stand to hear it when others are the victim of it. I was even bullied by a manager I worked with once but had the maturity at the time to handle it in a proper and timely manner. Believe me, he never bullied me after that. That day really empowered me and I hope and pray that I equip my children with the power to deal with it and confront bullying in a proactive way in the event they are affected by it. Rated this up!
This is an excellent article. My niece was tormented at school and it resulted in her mother home schooling her. Very sad. Thanks for the great information.
Thanks for sharing this helpful hub about bullying.
In my school days I was far from a bully. I was the kid who tried to keep peace between the clicks.
Very good Freta. A topic definitely needing more attention.
I am so bone idle I never could be bothered.
This is a real problem world wide. At first I thought that I just would not get involved but, those being bullied need real help. Now I would think how I could safely help the both of us.
Great article. As former educator administrator, this was high on my list to watch for...
Flag up!
Freta, this is an excellent article on bullying. It should be required reading. It is so unfortunate that it has become some a huge problem.
I was bullied when I was a kid. I had all honors classes. You know the drill..."she thinks she's smart, she thinks she's cute". I was oblivious to the harassment until I was suspended from school because I was accused of breaking a kid's arm. One of the bullies had done it and the kid was too frightened to tell, but that's when I woke up. I passed out a little ass whuppin and then everybody wanted to be friends.
Of course that was years ago. Today, kids are so vicious. what used to work doesn't work anymore. up and awesome.


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Lots of BlackBerry-related headlines made their way around the web this week. The biggest new for those in North America was the launch of the T-Mobile Curve (the next biggest news being the issues many are experiencing with their new 8320s). Belgium also launched new BlackBerrys this week, and Uganda is now on the BES and offering 8800s to service corporate customers. Air Canada ok'd BlackBerry boarding passes, and AT&T experienced difficulty with their EDGE network. Confirmation came that Slingbox is coming to the BlackBerry, an ESPN BlackBerry desktop shortcut was discovered, and RIM's stock broke the $100 mark (wooHOO if you own some shares). FULL HEADLINES after the jump...
1. Air Canada Introduces Electronic Boarding Passes - Available to BlackBerrys and other Smartphones and mobile devices capable of displaying a 2D barcode, you can do away with a paper boarding pass and now check in with an agent at the gate using your phone.
"Introduction of the mobile boarding pass is a key element in Air Canada's initiatives to use the most recent and secure mobile and 2-D barcode technologies to simplify our customers' travel experience," said Lise Fournel, Senior Vice President E-Commerce and CIO. "In addition to the simplification of travel and business processes made possible by the replacement of paper with electronic documents, we're particularly excited about the expanded application of 2-D barcode technology that gives our employees better tools to serve our customers more efficiently."
How it works: Using a mobile device, the customer logs on to http://mobile.aircanada.com and enters the required information: last name, first name, departure city and one of the following: Aeroplan number, credit card number or booking reference. If the device supports 2-D barcode technology and the travel itinerary qualifies for an electronic boarding pass, the customer will be prompted to enter his mobile number to receive the boarding pass. While 2-D barcode technology works on a majority of mobile devices, some older phones or PDAs may not be compatible. If this is the case, it is still possible to use Air Canada's mobile check-in and print a boarding pass at a self-service kiosk or with an agent.
2. T-Mobile Launches BlackBerry Curve 8320 - It actually became available for sale over the past weekend in some retail outlets and existing T-Mobile users could see the phone as an available upgrade in their T-Mobile accounts. Come Monday afternoon, the phone was available at T-Mobile.com, and finally on Tuesday RIM & T-Mobile 'officially' announced the device. CrackBerry.com was quick to get up an indepth review, and during the week many new owners have discovered they are having WiFi/UMA difficulties with the new device.
3. RIM Awarded Common Criteria Evaulation Assurance Level 2 augmented (EAL 2+) validations - The award was announced in ROME this week at the 8th International Common Criteria Conference and was given in recognition of the robust security features in RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry device software. It's all Greek to me, but the takeaway here is that RIM is SAFE. Click on the headline title to read the full release and learn more.
4. Celtel, EMS & RIM Launch the BlackBerry Solution in Uganda - Looks like they get the BES and 8800. Congrats!! Click the title to read the full release.
5. AT&T Difficulties - AT&T experienced difficulties Tuesday morning with their EDGE network. Many users across the United States were affected. CrackBerry.com covered the story as it happened, but it quite short lived. Crazy times though... 3 publicized outages in less than a year for RIM. I'm not sure if it's growing pains or just slip-ups, but this can't become a regular occurrence!
6. RIM's stock Breaks $100! - Good news if you own RIM stock this week... it's still moving up. Remember, this is $100 after the 3 way split a few weeks back. So we're talking over $300 per share pre-split. Some people are saying it's a good time to take profits (if you've owned it for a while), yet others are saying it's still an ok time to buy if you don't have your hands on a piece of RIM yet.
7. Proximus and RIM Launch the BlackBerry Curve 8310 and BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphones in Belgium - The headline says it all. Click the headline for the details.
8. Slingbox Coming to BlackBerry - Pocket-lint.co.uk confirmed the rumors that Sling Media is bringing streaming video to the BlackBerry:
"We are working with BlackBerry to develop a software application at the moment", Stuart Collingwood, VP of Europe for Sling Media told us.
The news means that BlackBerry users across the world will soon be able to stream their television from home to a BlackBerry device anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection.
The news comes on the back of the announcement that Sling Media will be supporting six Symbian OS handsets including the N95.
Sling Media, who are quick to recommend people sign up for a flat rate data package or use the on board Wi-Fi where possible say that people who've seen the application working are "blown away by the performance".
9. ESPN Launches a BlackBerry Shortcut - You can download a ESPN shortcut for your BlackBerry desktop, that when clicked takes you to ESPN's berry-optimized site. Head to http://espn.mobi/bblauncher on your BlackBerry to snatch. We have the same thing for CrackBerry.com - head to http://wap.crackberry.com or and you can download and install the CrackBerry.com desktop shortcut which brings the CrackBerry Blogs, Forums, Wicked Ling Directory and Software store to your fingertips. It's a great way to kill time at the airport (once you have checked in with your BlackBerry instead of a paper ticket!).
Check Out Today's Forum Posts to See What the CrackBerry.com Community is Talking About!
And For More Stories, Check Out the CrackBerry Blogs, Reviews & Forums!


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Restaurant: And_Company_Resto_Bar Mississauga
DISCLAIMER - 2/3 of this meal was provided free of charge to celebrate the introduction of their new spring menu
Nelson @ Square One area: We were invited by Lien Tran to check out &Company Resto Bar's new spring menu. Even though I live a block away, I didn't know this place existed, because it is just off the main road. It looks neat from the outside and I didn't realize how big this place was. Upon entering there is a bar area with TVs, then another larger open space (for dancing) with a bar and then an upstairs area with yet another bar. They have a beautiful outdoor bar patio area that is probably awesome with summer weather.
The item that most stood out on the menu were the Lobster Tacos: Garlic buttered lobster tails with pico de gallo, tomatillo salsa, shredded lettuce and cheddar; served with sour cream and guacamole ($19). I liked the nice touch of having the lobster shell to help spread the sour cream and guac. The best part was the large chunks of tasty lobster in the tacos. Overall they had a fresh taste and it wasn't too heavy. This was my favourite dish of the night. (Andrea: This one was also my favourite, and I was surprised at the generous amount of lobster chunks. I thought it would be more subtle with smaller pieces, but I liked the hearty taste of lobster for each bite I took.)
Next was the Crack Chicken described as "Highly addictive and ultra crunchy, breaded with our signature east-west blend and served with a spicy buffalo butter sauce.($12)" The chicken came out hot and cooked well. There were two surprising things about this dish: dark meat was used (brave, but worked well) and the batter had some spice. The shoestring fries were good but really salty. I liked that buffalo sauce was included and think that more places should use this sauce. (Andrea: I'm not a huge fan of buffalo sauce, so the dip was not a seller for me. However, the crunchy chicken was addictive and it came with a good amount of fries - enough that it took us awhile to finish it up despite the server attempting the clear the dish for us.)
"Cajun Blackened Scallops: Jumbo Nova Scotia sea scallops seared with our blackened cajun rub on a patron tequila succotash with yucca chips and pineapple basil salsa. ($17)" It was nicely presented, but the blackened spice was too heavy in taste for me and drowned out the scallop and the rest of the ingredients. Although the blackened cajun rub tasted good a little less would balance the different elements. (Andrea: I was disappointed with this dish. I really like scallops, and I thought these were way too spicy. At least the corn succotash was delicious and helped (sort of) balance the spiciness.)
"Braised Beef Short Rib: slow cooked and served with celeriac puree, griddled pineapple, asparagus and Jagermeister steeped raisins, toasted walnuts and pearl onions; finished with natural jus. ($16)" Again nicely presented, the beef was very tender. After reading the menu I missed out on the pineapple, raisins and walnuts, but I did like the fried onions which weren't on the menu. Kitty really liked the puree, but I don't think any of us realized it was made of celery root. (Andrea: The piece I ate was either very tender or very fatty, but I really enjoyed it. This one was my second favourite.)
They were very generous and included some drinks as well! Kitty tried the lychee mojito with Andrea had the red wine sangria (lots of fruits!). I was boring and went with a Stella Artois. Drinks were relatively inexpensive!
Kitty also later had a melon martini later that night as we enjoyed a burlesque show. Dinner and Entertainment!
We were getting full already and decided to order just one main. We picked Penne jambalaya with their "spin on a Creole classic, made with chicken, shrimp and spicy chorizo sausage tossed in a sambucca Cajun cream sauce. ($19)" It was really sweet and a bit spicy. I liked the sauce but it did not taste anywhere near a Jambalaya. The only elements that I would say are Jambalaya like are the meat ingredients. The sausage was more salty than spicy. But still a good dish overall if you don't think of a traditional Jambalaya.
(Andrea: A comment on the other main dishes - I think there wasn't much to choose from, and none of the other mains sounded very appealing, so that's why we went with the Jambalaya.)
Cheesecake: served in a mason jar with berries ($10). The cheesecake was really rich and moist with an interesting presentation. Berry flavour went well and overall an excellent dessert. (Andrea: I really love cheesecake, so even though we were so stuffed, we still had to order it and I'm glad we did. The crust was hard to get to, and you really have to dig it out from the jar. Also, the jar makes it harder to share if you're sick, unless you only want one bite. One large bite.)
Brownie & Cookie Stack: white chocolate fudge brownie and dark chocolate cookie tower with caramel, strawberries and vanilla ice cream ($10). I think this was the highlight of the meal. The brownie was excellent, with the white chocolate one very soft and very tasty, while the brownie was a little crispy making for a good contrast. Ice cream on top with the sugar cookie was just a sweet bonus. (Andrea: This was the best part of the meal, and I would come back here just for this dessert. I thought it would have been better to have other textures, such as mousse, in the layers, but the more we ate this, the 2 brownie-like textures grew on us.)
Categories: Appetizer, Beef, Cheesecake, Chicken, Deep Fried, Dessert, Drinks, Lobster, Pasta, Seafood,
Comments: 0 Comments


text: Version 1.2 of XEP-0136 (Message Archiving) has been released. Abstract: This document defines mechanisms and preferences for the server-side archiving and retrieval of XMPP messages. Changelog: Added persistent auto save setting and ability to control settings per chat session; XMPP Council added a statement regarding a future review and simplification of this protocol. (at/yl) Diff: http://xmpp.org/extensions/diff/api/xep/0136/diff/1.1/vs/1.2 URL: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html


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Robbinsdale City Council
Robbinsdale has a Council-City Manager system. The governing body consists of four council members and a mayor elected for staggered four-year terms. Other than residency, there are no specific qualifications that must be met to qualify for these offices. The City Council formulates the city policy. The City Manager is responsible for city administration.
Robbinsdale City Council generally meets the first and third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m., except when conflicting with National Night Out, Elections, or Caucus meetings. Meetings are held at the Robbinsdale City Hall - 4100 Lakeview Avenue North. All meetings are open to the public. Meetings are web-streamed and archived through our membership with Northwest Suburbs Cable Commission. https://ccxmedia.org/ccx-cities/robbinsdale.
At the November 7th, 2017 City Council Meeting, the City Council approved a Resolution indicating support for the state raising the legal age for tobacco sales from 18 to 21 and revisit the issue as a city in 2018. Resolution 7604.
City Council Work Session Meeting:
Typically held the first Tuesday of every month in the Council Meeting Room (rear Council Chambers), 4100 Lakeview Avenue North, Robbinsdale, MN 55422. The next Regular City Council Work Session is scheduled to follow the Tuesday, February 5, 2019 City Council Meeting. This meeting is open to the public.
The next City Council Meeting is scheduled for:
The next City Council Meeting will be Tuesday January 15, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. in the City Hall - Council Chambers at 4100 Lakeview Ave N., Robbinsdale, MN 55422. This meeting is open to the public. Agenda for the meeting: 01-15-19_APK
The first meeting of 2019 will be held on January 8th, due to New Years Day falling on the first Tuesday of the month.
The 2017 Comprehensive Audit was reviewed at the June 19th meeting: 2017 CAFR
City Council Budget Work Session Agendas:
How do I contact my council member?
Contact information for Robbinsdale City Council is here or you may contact the mayor or your council member by sending correspondence to the mayor or council members at City Hall, 4100 Lakeview Avenue North Robbinsdale, Minnesota 55422.
Use the Ward Map to identify your local representative.
The terms for the Mayor and Council Members for Wards I and II expire on December 31, 2020. The terms for Council Members for Wards III and IV expire on December 31, 2018.
The Mayor's salary for 2018 is $10,561 per year and each Council Member receives $8,259 per year for 2018.
The Mayor's salary for 2019 is $10,825 per year and each Council Member receives $8,634 per year for 2019.
The Mayor's salary for 2020 is $11,095 per year and each Council Member receives $8,850 per year for 2020.
City Council Agenda/Minutes:
Link to Archives for Agendas and Minutes
Link to Video Archives of Council Meetings


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PORTLAND—Less than a week after the Cheverus girls' cross country team won the school's first-ever female state championship, Stags senior Audrey Grinnell made some history of her own.
Thursday afternoon, Grinnell signed a national letter of intent to attend and play softball at the University of Connecticut, becoming Cheverus' first female athlete to commit to a Division I school.
"I got recruited by a couple different schools," Grinnell said. "U. Conn just felt right and I really liked the school. It was the most exciting thing ever. I always wanted to play D1 ball, ever since I was little."
Grinnell, an all-league catcher, who previously played basketball and turned heads this fall by excelling in goal for the regional finalist field hockey team (as a first-year starter), said that she considered other schools, but eventually, the Huskies won her over.
"I'd been recruited by the University of Massachusetts and a couple other schools, but U. Conn just grew on me," she said. "It happened really fast and was very exciting. It was just last summer when U. Conn started to talk to me. U. Conn plays really competitive ball. I know in years past they've won their conference. I know I have a lot of work to do, but my goal is to be starting."
Amy McMullin, who coaches Grinnell in softball and field hockey, was thrilled for her player, but not surprised she reached the D1 level.
"(Audrey's) driven and constantly wants to get better and will do anything to get better," McMullin said. "She works hard and won't settle. That kind of determination really drives her. She'll do fine at U. Conn.
"I only coached her last year, but watching her compared to other athletes in the league, she's definitely by far one the best. She was catcher of the year and defensive player of the year last year. She had a great junior year which you need to go D1."
While excited about the future, Grinnell had plenty of praise for those who helped her get to this level and make history.
"The coaches here definitely helped me be the person and player I am today," said Grinnell, who expects to play first base and outfield in college. "I'm really excited to be the first one from Cheverus."
Sports Editor Michael Hoffer can be reached at email@example.com
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Taking a rest from studies with homemade Madeleines and strong tea, I thought I would share these images from an old lookbook by the Danish brand Noa Noa. So whimsical, pastel, layers, and feminine.
However, it is said to be easily too much if you create an outfit just from that brand. But perhaps that is just because it is so far from the normal minimalist uniform here in Scandinavia. It is rare to see someone not wearing edgy and minimalistic clothing, so naturally it would easily be out of Scandinavian women's comfort zones.
Nevertheless, I think the styling of this lookbook is amazing, and I feel very inspired going through it. I also thought it was quite fun that it featured a slight 20s vibe now that everyone is doing that, and the lookbook is from 2006.
Gorgeous lighting and setting. All of it just works in these photos but it would take a a couple of deep breaths if I were to face the world confidently looking like this. Some of the items are wonderful, and I do have a couple of pieces from Noa Noa, but I think they sometimes stuff their collections with too much felt!
Anyways, these are beautiful images and that's the main reason for today's post.
{my scans}


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Melissa from Jungle Learners has been working hard organizing an awesome product swap- Stop, Swap & Roll. Be sure to check out the swap for some great ideas and products!
I was lucky enough to be paired up with Pam from Mrs. P's Specialties. She has some really great products!
My kinders LOVE anything playdoh and were really excited for me to add her cute Read & Do Playdough Mats- Spring edition to our literacy stations. Click on the picture below to check it out for yourself!.
This unit is perfect for Spring! The unit contains 18 playdoh mats in the spring theme. Many of the mats offer two versions for differentiating. I found this very helpful when I first tried it out with two of my students. They love reading the instructions and following the directions to complete the mat.
This mat was a favorite of all of my girls. They thought it was so cool to add clouds and a heart to the rainbow!
One of my students that just started to read was so proud of himself that he was able to read this mat on his own and complete it. He had so much fun adding two flowers and a hat to this mat.
I overheard this student tell her friend that they should pick this literacy station everyday! This unit contains a lot of creative contents that your students are sure to love!
The mats below are a great example of the differentiation you will find in this unit. I found that this unit worked great with both my high, mid and low readers. This unit combines reading, fine motor and sensory all in one! Mrs. P is offering not only this unit but also her other three fabulous Read & Do Playdough Mats- Fall, Winter & Summer on sale for the next three days. She also has a bundle unit on sale as well check it out here! Don't wait the sale is going on now through Monday, 4/27!
You can enter to win this awesome adorable unit that your students will love! Pam is allowing me to give one lucky winner her Read & Do Playdough Mats- All you have to do is enter below. Good luck!
Make sure you visit Mrs. P's Specialties to see her review of my Nursery Rhymes Unit.where you can also enter for a chance to win it!. I am also offering this unit at a discounted price now through April 29th.
Check out the other bloggers who participated in the K/1 swap!


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Translation of the farewell poem recovered from the murderer of Theo van Gogh.
Blood and fire
Posted: November 6th 2004 23:24. Last modified: November 17th 2004 19:32
Raven blast
Posted: October 24th 2004 02:08. Last modified: November 20th 2006 12:31
The raven didn't hear me coming, so it broke away from the cliff at the last moment, struggled to remain airborne, and then climbed with a clumsy whooshing of wings out of the shadows and above the ridge, where it found the thermal, flexed its wing-fingers, and hung motionless for an age, the sun glinting […]
Formal analysis
Posted: September 27th 2004 16:09.
Reading (and trying to sing) bits of Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues over lunch, I came across the following in the 118th chorus:
Don't mess with Chinese girlie-men, and other Sumatran colonial tales
Posted: September 2nd 2004 01:50. Last modified: October 9th 2016 23:33
Here, from Emil Helfferich (1878-1974)'s Südostasiatische Geschichten (Jever/Oldenburg, 1966), is an account of what happened to another German-speaker who made light of girlie-men: He was German, early 30s, and came from a forest ranger's family in Hannover. If not poverty, then extreme thrift had probably stood at the cradle of him and his numerous siblings. […]
Sale el sol por la mañana
Posted: May 29th 2004 16:32. Last modified: April 2nd 2007 12:20
This morning in one of Barcelona's beach-side districts, Barceloneta, l'Agrupació Coral HumorÃstica "El Rossinyol", founded 1925, was singing the following ditty, accompanied by a band that in Holland would be referred to as a boerenkapel: Sa-le_el sol por la ma-ña-na, por la ma-ña-na sa-le_el sol. Los bor-rachos por la tar-de, y por la no-che_el ros-sin-yol! […]
Der Volf
Posted: May 21st 2004 18:27.
Waszynski's extraordinary 1937 Dibuk still drifts into the occasional dream. Der Volf was written by another Polish Jewish artist, H Leivick at around the same time as the play on which Waszynski's film was based. Both introduce the supernatural in order to help us understand why it is wrong to do wrong, but where Der […]
Santa Maria de Siurana
Posted: May 12th 2004 22:59. Last modified: February 15th 2011 23:34
With that grace alate/
which thy stool embalms/Shelter neath thy cloak/our humble homes and farms.
Blair in Scotland
Posted: May 9th 2004 17:52.
John at Barcablog claims to have a cunning plan. I do not, but here is a punning clan:
Cricket, lovely cricket
Posted: May 2nd 2004 20:44. Last modified: July 13th 2005 12:35
No help for the beardless wonder in the search for Conan Doyle's Reminiscence of Cricket, but I did find two wonderful poems by South Asian schoolboys. Cricket Teams by Raza Shahban Ali of Fatimiyah Boys School, Karachi would have been an outstanding review of the world scene, had his laudatory couplet about England not been […]
Spring is here (again)
Posted: May 1st 2004 18:07.
I have been up the coast a couple of times this week (off again tomorrow) and I don't think I've ever seen as many spring flowers. Their profusion is partly a consequence of heavy rainfall, and partly of the fires last summer that burnt away heavy shrubbery and young pine woods, clearing the ground. However, […]
A passion called asparagus
Posted: April 12th 2004 12:19.
The kinky Murcian waiters clique is anxious to watch rude muscles bulge and divine blood flow in Mel's Pash and will not be making an appearance today, which means that we need not fear interruption as, for a change, we get random with some really boring stuff.
Posted: February 19th 2004 12:03.
This stuff should be subsidised, not banned, although I can't work out whether the machines used to produce it are translators or generators. Here's something I received this morning (URL omitted): Our soft pensil makes sound. Our noisy round eraser is thinking and our children beautiful spoon arrives. A golden glasses smells at the place […]
Kuffars gittin nekkid
Posted: February 13th 2004 10:58. Last modified: September 15th 2005 12:39
Re the Dirty Kuffar video: although the transliteration changes, radical Islam has been predicting imminent victory over us for quite a long time: And Halid returned to the west of Azahfi, and said to them: - Know that these kafres are disheartened. (Anonymous, Libro de las batallas (1600)) But we aren't, are we, because we […]
Bestiaries (iii) / stags (i)
Posted: January 29th 2004 09:00. Last modified: November 19th 2004 23:43
Like a tree quick, rooted in the wind...
Inquisition in Catalonia
Posted: January 22nd 2004 18:16. Last modified: October 12th 2007 20:54
It may seem childish, but it did please me to discover that Doris Moreno Martínez was supervised for her thesis on the Inquisition in C16th Catalunya by one Ricardo García Cárcel. Having survived his encarcelación in these parts, Abenatar Melo escaped to Amsterdam where he wrote a verse version (1626) of the Psalms of David, […]
Bestiaries (ii): Llull and Orwell
Posted: January 18th 2004 00:13. Last modified: March 22nd 2009 15:53
Through the serpent have come all evils in the world.
The power of love
Posted: September 28th 2003 00:19. Last modified: June 14th 2005 19:23
These two energetic logos are on one of my favourite day-off wanders: from the Plaça d'Espanya through the old backstreets of working class Sants up to Collblanc, then a slalom down through the drab poverty of l'Hospitalet, finishing up with wander down the ceramic-ridden old road back to the Plaça d'Espanya. The first logo adorns […]
Germanic monkey puzzles
Posted: August 13th 2003 19:30. Last modified: June 14th 2011 13:32
Some of the recent obituaries of super-poet Willem Wilmink (1936-2003) managed to avoid mentioning his writings in Twents, despite the fact that this part of his work - he also translated, wrote and rewrote extensively in Dutch - enjoyed a large following in Twente. Let's start by locating the two languages. Linguists classify Dutch and […]


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Dinesh D'Souza's 'America' Movie to Feature Megadeth Founder's Heavy Metal National Anthem (VIDEO)
Inside sources told Alex Wire that Megadeth founder Dave Mustaine's own heavy metal version (ala Jimi Hendrix rendition) of "The Star-Spangled Banner" will be featured in America, Dinesh D'Souza's follow-up to 2016: Obama's America.
Dinesh D'Souza Admits to Errors in Judgment in Personal and Political Life, Says He's Come to Point of Restoration (INTERVIEW)
Producers released the clip earlier this week while final editing touches are put on the film scheduled for release on July 2.
The Hollywood Reporter wrote in its article about the news that "Hendrix debuted his version of the song, also known as the U.S. national anthem, in the summer of 1969 at the now-historical Woodstock music festival, where it was panned by some for its irreverence and heralded by others as an instant classic. Still others assumed it was an anti-Vietnam War statement, but Hendrix simply saw it as patriotic. 'We're all Americans. … It was like, 'Go America!' he said a few weeks after Woodstock."