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"A Clever and Entertaining Dramatization"
What a remarkable radio dramatization of H. G. Wells??? classic novel The War of the Worlds Orson Welles and company made! They effectively distilled the essential elements from the novel into an American context, producing a concise 59-minute program that made me feel that I was listening to an intense night of terror followed by days of existential wandering and wondering.
After a voice proclaims that we are listening to a Mercury Theater presentation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, Orson Welles intones a condensed version of the brilliant opening of the novel, and then quickly sets up the conceit of the first part of the broadcast, that we are listening to a radio program of innocuous dance music that is repeatedly interrupted by eye-witness news flashes from this New Jersey farm where a strange meteor has landed. From there Welles and company use a variety of voices (newsmen, astronomers, farmers, crowds, military men, etc.) and sound effects to create the illusion that the attack of the Martians, complete with heat rays, giant mobile tripods, and poison gas, is happening in real time as we listen to the radio.
After an ???intermission,??? the second part of the dramatization changes from the ersatz radio broadcast to the first person narration by Welles of his professor character???s journal, depicting his attempts to survive and make sense of the invasion. Welles ???out of character??? closes the program by saying that the Mercury Theater was just shouting ???boo!??? at listeners on Halloween Eve and that ???we didn???t mean it.???
Fans of science fiction, of Wells??? novel, of vintage radio theater, and of American culture generally should listen to this program; despite (or due to) its savory slightly static-y quality, it???s well worth the $5.95 ($3.95 for members) price of admission.
"The Uncommon Common Sailor in the Age of Sail"
Two Years Before the Mast (1840/1869) is a slow-paced and absorbing book. In it Richard Henry Dana, Jr. recounts with the aid of his diary entries how he went to sea in 1834 on an American merchant ship called The Pilgrim, sailing south from Boston, going around Cape Horn, and then north to work in the cow-hide trade off the coast of California. He'd left his studies at Harvard University (and his status as scion of an elite Boston family) to work as a novice common sailor to improve his measles-weakened eyes.
Rather than a ripping sea adventure yarn (the only naval action ala Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin being a suspenseful moment when the Pilgrim eludes a suspicious ship flying no colors), Dana intended to fill a void in the sea literature of his day by authentically showing what it was like to be a "Jack before the mast" on a merchant ship in the age of sail, because the norm then was fictional and inaccurate accounts penned by former naval officers and civilian passengers. His "design," as he puts it, "is to present the life of a common sailor at sea as it really is, -- the light and the dark together." So he devotes much of his narrative to detailing the workings of a ship in fair weather and foul on weekdays and Sundays, including accounts of the work done (reefing, furling, and maintaining the various masts, yards, sails, and lines, as well as keeping watch, cleaning the decks, mending clothes, stowing hides, etc.), the food and drink consumed, the power hierarchy obeyed, the indelicate masculine culture endured, the few leisure activities enjoyed, and so on. He also depicts the changing features of the lands, oceans, and climates of the different latitudes and longitudes through which he sailed during his two-year sojourn.
I confess to being unable to clearly visualize Dana's detailed accounts of managing the different parts of the ship's rigging (topgallants, studdings, royals, mizzens, hawsers, cleats, tackles, yards, etc.) and to daydreaming through them. I still don't have a clue as to what a clew line is, but it's not really necessary to follow all the nautical details, because Dana so vividly conveys the challenging, skilful, and crucial nature of the work.
In addition to giving such factual information, Dana achieves by turns a sublime poetry (from endless oceanic vistas to gargantuan ice bergs), a comic touch (for human foibles and salty phrases), a suspenseful flair (during cataclysmic storms involving rain, hail, snow, ice, thunder and lightening, driving winds, and vast swells), and a sanely indignant tone (at the abuses of power by the captains directed at the sailors). And he believes that "We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice." Indeed, Dana's younger self was open-minded, admiring uneducated but brilliant, handsome, or interesting shipmates and making fast friends with the Hawaiians who lived on the California coast to sell their services to the ships plying the cow hide trade there.
As a native of California, I was fascinated by Dana's description of its coast in the first half of the 19th century. Places like San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Juan Capistrano, Los Angeles, and San Diego were all so different from what they are today, being sparsely populated, undeveloped, and colorfully and sleepily California-Spanish-Mexican. I'd always regretted America grabbing California from Mexico by war, but Dana reveals some unappealing aspects of Mexican-Californian culture, how it rigidly divided classes according to skin-color, with the aristocrats at the top being those with "purest" Spanish blood and the Indian serfs (at best) at the bottom doing all the hard and dirty work in return for poor food and shabby loincloths. Not to mention the related unfair application of justice, the need to convert to Catholicism to be able to live there, and the brutal use of horses and avid bull and cock fighting.
Two Years Before the Mast was first published in 1840, but this audiobook is the 1869 revised edition that includes a long epilogue in which Dana revisits California 24 years after he was there as a young man, describing the explosive growth of San Francisco and his feeling of nostalgia for the demise of the California cow-hide trade he loathed so much when he had to labor in it and bringing us up to date on the lives and fates of the ships he sailed on and the men he sailed and worked with.
I really liked Bernard Mayes' reading of Herodotus' Histories, as his gravelly, thin, and dry voice aptly evoked a witty and aged Herodotus, so I was looking forward to listening to his reading of Two Years Before the Mast, but I found myself at times wishing for a younger man's voice for this book, for Mayes' tended to crack and quaver when shouting ship-board orders. But he is in fine form through most of the book and in moments like when an enraged captain flogs two men, roaring with peevish tyranny, "If you want to know what I flog you for, I'll tell you. It's because I like to do it!-because I like to do it!-It suits me! That's what I do it for!"
There are two flaws in this audiobook: it lacks Dana's interesting footnotes and offers occasional faint microphone bumps.
Finally, brief remarkable moments like when Dana observes the white sails of his ship full of quiet breeze like a marble pyramid on a starry night or when he watches a solitary albatross asleep with his head under his wing, rising and falling slowly up and down the heavy swell of the waves make Two Years Before the Mast a classic.
"A Witty & Romantic Psychological Urban Ghost Story"
Jonathan Rebeck, the failed pharmacist-cum-witch-doctor, has been living in the Yorkchester cemetery (half the size of Central Park) in NYC for 19 years, hiding there from the real world of living humanity. His only friends are the profane talking raven who brings him bologna and roast beef sandwiches and the like, and the new ghosts who confusedly appear before him after their bodies have been interred and, he believes, need him to act as cemetery guide, guidance counselor, and friend for about a month, the length of time it typically takes them to forget every aspect of their living lives and so to finally disappear.
Into his precocious first novel, A Fine and Private Place (1960), Peter S. Beagle soon introduces some complications into Rebeck's comfortable life: Michael Morgan, a former history professor who believes that his wife poisoned him but who has to admit that he can't remember whether or not he committed suicide, Laura Durand, a young woman who lived her life with too little confidence and too much longing and delusion until a truck ran her over, Gertrude Klapper, a feisty middle-aged Jewish widow who visits the cemetery to check on the huge mausoleum that she had built for her husband, and Campos, a giant, taciturn Cuban who works the nightshift in the cemetery. The rest of the novel depicts the developing relationships, characters, conversations, and monologues of these ghosts and people as they discuss and search for love and the nature and meaning of death and life.
It's amazing to me that Beagle wrote the book when he was only 19, because he's so good at depicting adults and at opining sagely on life and death, in addition to being a ready-hand with apt allusions to and quotations from various literary works and figures. And he effortlessly captures the voices of gabbing New Yorkers.
In fact, the novel tends to be too talky. Beagle likes to set his characters wittily, metaphorically, and philosophically pattering to each other and themselves, and at times I thought, "Enough already with the humorous comparisons and quotable aphorisms and psychological probings and intense debates! Let's quit showing off and get going with the story now, OK?"
But there are many great lines in the novel, among them:
"Death is something that has to be learned. Just like life, only you don't have to learn so fast because you've got more time."
"Heaven and Hell are only for the living."
"He [a sanguine squirrel hitching a ride on a truck] drew himself erect on the tailgate, as if he were facing a firing squad, having just rejected blindfold and cigarette."
"Her hands moved in her lap like captured butterflies. 'Death has been very good to me,' she said finally."
"I will love you all the days of my death, however few or many they may be. As long as I can remember love, I will love you."
"Love is no excuse for bad taste."
"I think the only way to become real is to be real to yourself and to someone else. Love has nothing to do with it."
"So they strayed around the cemetery, trying hard to look like an average middle-aged couple, and secretly believing that anyone could look at them and tell that they were very unusual people who were about to do a very unusual thing."
"Asking a favor of Campos, Rebeck thought, was like praying to a jade god with blind onyx eyes."
"The dead do not appreciate the importance of gestures to the living."
"Sainthood is not for me, nor wisdom, nor purity. Only pharmacy, and such love as I have not buried and lost."
And the novel movingly treats the transitory nature of life and love (even for the dead!).
I like Peter S. Beagle's reading voice and manner. It sounds appealingly New Yorkish, warm, nasal, and deep. Although he hardly changes his voice for different characters (female, young, male, old, raven, squirrel, living, dead, etc.), so that his reading is as far from that of an actor like Tim Curry as it's possible to get, being the author of the novel he sure understands the meanings and moods of his words, story, and characters and reads with perfect pace, and when a character is angry or sad or happy or introspective, his voice expresses the emotion just right. And he has a savory Spanish singing voice, too.
Fans of light urban fantasy and psychological ghost stories with a melancholy, philosophical, romantic, and NYC backbone should enjoy A Fine and Private Place.
"The Memoirs of a Mistress, a Thief, and a Penitent"
The sub-title of Daniel Defoe's novel Moll Flanders (1722) says it (almost) all:
"The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums."
It sure is an odd book! I suspect Defoe of having his cake and eating it too, of presenting Moll's story as a cautionary tale replete with Christian moral lessons, but also writing what was for its era a titillating, suspenseful, and social novel. After a rather slow first half or so, in which Moll recounts her birth in Newgate Prison, her childhood, her youth, and her romantic relations in a well-to-do family, as well as her marrying of the first two or so of her several husbands, her story becomes more involving and exciting as she begins thieving. This second half is more compelling because it is morally disturbing and darkly revealing of human nature, and because Defoe gets the reader to root for the careful, quick, and lucky Moll as she frankly recounts doing wicked criminal acts that must psychologically and financially hurt her victims. She tells us of robbing a little girl of a gold necklace and even contemplating killing her to silence her, of robbing a woman whose house is on fire by pretending to be there to help her, and of tricking a host of gullible or unobservant maids, tavern boys, shopkeepers, traders, gentlemen, gentlewomen, justices and constables, and even fellow thieves. Defoe must have done a lot of research into the practices of pickpockets, shoplifters, and scam artists.
We know from the sub-title of the novel and hints that she sprinkles about that Moll will be caught, and one of the pleasures of the novel involves anticipating and then finding out how things that we know will happen to her (like marrying her brother) will come to pass. Despite gaining enough money from her thieving to live comfortably on and despite seeing several colleagues collared, imprisoned, and either transported to the colonies or hanged, Moll continues her criminal career, offering up moral lessons about how we should be more observant when among strangers and about how the devil, fate, poverty, and avarice can lead people into wickedness. Moll is a fascinating character: fearlessly honest to her reader in narrating her exploits and cannily dishonest to nearly everyone she encounters, from her victims to her confidante-mentor "governess" and her husbands and son.
Defoe establishes the authenticity of Moll's story by saying that he has edited her "memorandums." And it is easy to read Moll Flanders, like Robinson Crusoe, forgetting about Defoe and believing in the reality of his fictional autobiographical narrator. Although Moll is a very different person from Robinson, being more sinful and less pious, as well as being more reliant on society than on nature to make her living, both characters are intelligent, resourceful, and strong-spirited in the face of exceptional adversity.
The imagination necessary for Defoe to write in the voice of Moll Flanders as a "real" woman must have involved a good deal of empathy for women and sympathy with their plight in the male-dominated and morally corrupt early 18th century. A woman like Moll born in Newgate Prison had few opportunities to make something of herself, and she was lucky to wind up in a relatively nurturing and comfortable place, but even if she were fortunate enough to find a good husband, he would automatically possess any of her assets which she hadn't previously hidden. The end of the novel was partly disappointing, because it seems as if Moll (and Defoe?) has forgotten her many victims as she complacently lists her and her "gentleman" husband's plantation wealth and luxury objects almost as though they are heavenly rewards for having become "penitent." But throughout the novel Defoe does express through Moll many devastating insights into human nature, among them the fact that in time anyone may become used to hell, as Moll and her fellow inmates come to accept living in Newgate Prison.
Davina Porter is a clear and engaging reader, with a rich and gravelly voice, especially for men's lines, and she's quite good at inflecting her speech for wit, grief, fear, or love (though all her men sound pretty much the same).
In short, if you are interested in the early 18th century (especially in their treatment of women and criminals) and in vivid novels about frankly wicked women of a certain age and experience, you should give Moll Flanders a try.
"A Lengthy Time Travel Detective Comedy of Manners"
In Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), 21st century historians at Oxford University use time travel to conduct eyewitness research into the pasts of their various specialties. Unfortunately for them, the wealthy and domineering Lady Schrapnell has temporarily bought their entire department by promising a vital endowment on the condition that their entire staff devotes itself to her pet project, the recreation in Oxford of Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before being fire bombed by the Germans during World War II. Single-minded, she cares nothing for the delicate aspects of time travel, such as the condition of "time-lag," extreme fatigue and disorientation caused by too many time "drops" into the past in too quick succession, or the natural laws of "the time continuum" and "the conservation of history" that prevent historians from changing historical turning points by blocking access to the time machine-like "net" or by forcing into their time drops temporal or spatial "slippage" to different times and or places so as to avoid "parachronistic incongruities" (time paradoxes). It is ostensibly impossible to bring objects or living creatures from the past into the present, which has led big corporations to abandon the technology and yield it to academics.
Ned Henry has recently done so many drops for Lady Schrapnell that he's suffering from a bad case of time-lag, which causes him to hear the wrong words, to hallucinate, and even to fall in love at first sight with Verity Kindle, a fellow researcher. Lady Schrapnell has mobilized the Oxford staff to find the "bird stump" (an "atrocity" of Victorian art) belonging at some point to the Bishop of Coventry Cathedral, because the artifact apparently inspired her ancestor Tocelyn "Tossie" Mering to change her life for the better, and the deadline for the 21st century consecration of the "new" cathedral is rapidly approaching. Ned is sent by his teacher Mr. Dunworthy back to Victorian Oxford in June of 1888 to hide from Lady Schrapnell and to rest and recover from his time-lag and also to return a cat that Verity unthinkingly rescued from drowning and brought back with her into the 21st century, thereby risking intense and potentially far-reaching parachronistic incongruities that might cause Germany to have won WWII before the time continuum is able to repair itself. The rest of the novel follows the comically frustrating attempts of Ned and Verity to find the cat (Princess Arjumand) and to return it to the pretty and spoiled Tossie and to ensure that she marries the right man and hence that the Victorian past follows its proper course to the proper 21st century.
While Willis' earlier novel, Doomsday Book (1992), features the same 21st century Oxford University historical time traveling research center, it has a completely different mood, dealing with two horrific plagues centuries apart and being a devastating tragedy of biology, fate, and history. To Say Nothing of the Dog, by contrast, is a time travel detective comedy of manners, featuring many mysteries (Who is the mysterious "C" whom Tossie must marry? Where is the Bishop's bird stump? Just what is the true temporal incongruity and who caused it and why? What is secretary Finch's secret mission?) and references to vintage literary detectives, as well as much satire of Victorian culture and human nature. Willis' characters repeatedly mistake the meaning of their interlocutors and the nature of phenomena, making for droll conversations and scenes. The novel is laced--often wittily--with references to historical personages and events, from important battles like Waterloo, documents like Magna Carta, events like the French Revolution, and figures like Abraham Lincoln. A pair of eccentric Victorian Oxford professors are feuding over the prime movers of history, whether blind natural forces or individual human actions, with Ned figuring that it's both those mixed up with chaos theory (because the time continuum is a "chaotic system" with myriad threads linking everything up). Willis loves history, especially the Victorian era, as well as literature like that by Shakespeare, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Sayers, and Lewis Carroll, and especially favors Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, from which she borrows messing about in boats on the Thames and detailed and enticing chapter sub-titles.
The novel is fun and funny, and there are some hilarious scenes, including a cutthroat croquet match, a church money-raising "fete," a contentious séance, and an appreciation of the crowded, clashing, and mawkish Christian, pagan, and historical motifs of the bishop's bird stump. However, too often I smiled rather than chuckled at Willis' constant humor and even wearied of it. Furthermore, while telling the story from Ned's point of view, she makes it too easy for the reader to divine the identity of "C," which made me impatient with Ned and Verity, who are intelligent young people. And my impatience was exacerbated by the related feeling that, no matter how much Ned and Verity believe they must correct the altered past to preserve history, after all it's only a cat, a marriage, and a bird stump. Especially during the many deliberations and explanations about time and diversions from history and incongruities and strategies for repairing them, I began muttering that finally Willis will just do whatever she wants with history and her story by having the deus ex machina time continuum correct or protect itself anyway, and To Say Nothing of the Dog should have been shorter, and I sure prefer the longer Doomsday Book, which haunted me for days after reading it
Stephen Crossley gives a great reading of the novel, full of wit and personality, and even manages to be humorously convincing when doing things like Tossie's baby talk to her cat and Mrs. Mering's hysterics.
"Maybe Best for Fans of the Books--"
I can't believe no one has written a review of or even rated The History of Titus Groan, the 2011 BBC radio dramatization of Mervyn Peake's wonderful Gormenghast trilogy and his widow Maeve Gilmore's moving fourth book, Titus Awakes. To be sure, it's probably best listened to by aficionados of the original novels, because it might be difficult to follow for someone unfamiliar with them. And yet it retains the grotesque grandeur and beauty of the original trilogy, as well as all of the important plot developments and many of the most memorable lines of Peake's prose, and the voice actors are all top notch. However, although I really wanted to like the radio drama and was caught up in most of it and moved or appalled by some of it, too much of it felt hurried and some of it felt irritating.
The radio production is made of six 50 or so minute episodes, Titus Arrives and Titus Inherits (mostly from Titus Groan), Titus Discovers and Titus Departs (mostly from Gormenghast), and Titus Abroad and Titus Alive (mostly from Titus Alone, with a little from Titus Awake). The adaptation begins with Titus arriving as a young man at an island where he takes up with an artist who has been sketching and painting scenes and figures provocatively similar to ones from Titus' past in the castle of his birth, Gormenghast. And as the young man and the older man talk about the pictures, they begin taking turns narrating the radio drama that follows, Titus setting the scenes and giving first-person psychological insights, the artist speaking the third person poetic and painterly descriptions, so that the narrative dialogue between the two provides the listener with context and imagery with which to understand the action and the lines of the various characters. Carl Prekopp and Miranda Richardson are excellent as Steerpike and Lady Gertrude, while Luke Treadaway and David Warner are perfect as the young adult Titus and the Peake-like artist-writer. And the radio-play is enhanced by sound effects (birds calling, babies crying, doors opening, shoe heels clacking, glass breaking, bells ringing, fires burning, and so on). The music usually works well with the story, but I often wished for it to be more spooky and melancholy and less electronic and hokey, especially when a theremin-like instrument warbles up like some old Doctor Who or Star Trek theme song and clashes with Gormenghast's stony, time-eaten buttresses.
I liked the first four episodes, which depict the birth of rebellious Titus (who as an infant violates the Book of Baptism and drops into a lake the symbols of his role as 77th Earl of Gormenghast) and the climb of amoral Steerpike (who as a youth insinuates himself into the heart of the castle) and the effects that both of these have on the ritual-clotted and hermetic castle culture and its eccentric inhabitants. These episodes also include sub-plots like the violent hatred between Flay and Swelter, Keda's tragic love, and Irma Prunesquallor's quest for a husband. Titus and the Artist work together smoothly as co-narrators, and it's a tribute to both Brian Sibley's adaptation and to the voice actors that the essence and texture of the first two dense novels are expressed in the radio medium. It does require concentration, because Sibley's text is distilled Peake, and if you daydream for a moment, you might miss some signpost for the next direction the adaptation takes. And things felt a bit rushed or sketchy for key story arcs like the flood and the hunt for Steerpike.
The last two episodes, which mainly adapt the third book in Peake's trilogy, Titus Alone, made for difficult listening. The disorienting sense of being in a more modern and science fictional world than Gormenghast is effectively conveyed, both by the text and the sound effects for cars, airplanes, police radios, glass surveillance globes, and the like. But Titus is so self-centered, proud, nervous, confused, and often delirious, that Luke Treadaway is too often reduced to sobby or febrile voice acting, which began making me grit my teeth. As in Titus Alone, the courtroom scene is great, but I missed the missing Under River sequence, and was too relieved when Cheeta's surprise party for Titus ends. But the last fifteen minutes, taken from Gilmore's Titus Awakes, movingly conclude the whole thing and nearly redeem all other problems of the dramatization. Titus and the Artist, character and creator, kindred spirits, recognize each other in a simultaneously voiced "You."
If you've read the Gormenghast trilogy and you like well-produced radio dramas, you would probably like this one. But I prefer Sibley's earlier BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (1981) because it's roomier (13:19) than The History of Titus Groan (5:42) and hence has more of its original novels in it.
"A Sensual, Metaphysical, and Entertaining Fantasy"
When fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from his Tokyo home, he brings with him a supply-filled backpack, a boy called Crow (his "imaginary" friend or "real" alter-ego), and a heavy load of Oedipal baggage. In Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, he begins frequenting a private library staffed by Oshima, the beautiful, well-read, and understanding young man behind the front desk, and Miss Saeki, the middle-aged woman in charge who could be Kafka's mother, who abandoned him when he was a little boy. Meanwhile, back in Tokyo an old man called Nakata tries to find a missing calico cat called Goma. When he was an elementary school student during WWII, Nakata fell into a mysterious coma and woke up from it empty of memory, including the ability to read and write. He therefore receives a government subsidy for the mentally impaired, supplementing that income by finding lost cats, which is facilitated by his coma-granted ability to speak with felines.
In Kafka on the Shore (2002) Haruki Murakami suspensefully and entertainingly merges those two plot strands in chapters that alternate between the protagonists' points of view. And the novel, which begins mysteriously (Why is Kafka running away? Why is Kafka his alias? Why does he hate his father? Why did his mother run off with his sister and leave him behind? Who exactly is the boy called Crow? Is the young woman he meets on the bus his sister? What is Oshima's story? What happened to Nakata when he was a boy? Can he really speak with cats? What is his connection to Kafka? Etc.), is also at first quirkily charming. But it darkens, like a bright dream of flight morphing into a nightmare in which you commit terrible acts and are pursued and prodded by strange forces and fates beyond your will. The novel remains funny throughout, but becomes ever-more thought-provoking, frightening, and moving.
Murakami relishes dismantling the boundary between reality and fantasy, waking and dreaming, the flesh and the spirit, which makes reading his books--like this one--a disorienting experience. On the one hand, his characters navigate a sea of cultural artifacts and signs that would seem to fix them (and us) in the real world, like Radiohead and Prince, Chunichi Dragons baseball caps and Nike tennis shoes, weight-lifting machines and routines, and Japanese noodles and omelets, and his characters perform everyday physical actions like eating, eliminating, washing, and sleeping. On the other hand, they may be led by a talking dog to a fancy house where a madman who is making a flute from the souls of cats asks them to do something awful, meet "concepts" who take the form of cultural icons like Colonel Sanders, wake up in strange places splattered with blood without having any idea of what happened, have sex with ghosts, dreamers, or spirits, or enter hermetic worlds outside time. That juxtaposition between the cultural and sensual and the fantastic and spiritual is one of the appeals of Murakami's fiction.
Finally, though, when Kafka on the Shore ended, I felt somehow disappointed. I felt partly that either I'm not smart enough or careful enough a reader to see all the loose ends tied up or that Murakami left some things a bit too vague. And I felt partly that Kafka is too precocious for 15, knows too much, is too capable, and that Murakami's device of demonstrating his youth by making him easily blush is too pat. When Kafka guesses that a piano sonata is by Schubert because it doesn't sound like one by Beethoven or Schumann, or sees that a man "has three days' worth of stubble on his face," or knows that a pair of soldiers from over 60 years ago are carrying Arisaka rifles, I am jarred from suspension of disbelief. As a result, when Kafka is plunging into a dense forest as he tries to whistle the complex tune of John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" until he reaches the piano solo by McCoy Tyner, I understand that Murakami is amplifying the labyrinth effect, but it strikes me that he's also showing off his cultural knowledge through an unconvincing vehicle.
And that made me think that, although most of the sex scenes in the novel are necessary for the story, for at least one Murakami seems to be indulging a desire to titillate, as when he has a university philosophy student "sex machine" girl perform oral sex on a truck driver while quoting and explaining concepts from Bergson and Hegel. The philosophical ideas tie in with things going on in the novel, but perhaps could have been communicated less raunchily.
All that said, I loved Nakata and was moved by his past and present, and enjoyed his relationship with the ignorant and feckless young truck driver Hoshino, whom I also came to like a lot. And I was intrigued and moved by Kafka's relationship with Oshima. And I am glad to have read Kafka on the Shore. It made me think about things like the ever-decreasing darkness in our modern city nights and the ever-present darkness in the human heart, the relationships between metaphors and the world, and the rooms of memory that we maintain because life consists of losing precious things. It also made me want to read "In the Penal Colony," The Tale of Genji, and The 1001 Nights and to listen to Beethoven's Archduke Trio, to eat broiled fish, and to try again to talk with a cat.
The readers are superb, especially Sean Barrett as Nakata and Hoshino. Listening to Barrett narrate Nakata's strange and sad childhood and life and then deliver Nakata's lines in his aged, diffident, and beautiful voice (as when he says, "Nakata is not very bright," or "Grilled eggplants and vinegared cucumbers are some of Nakata's favorites," or especially "I felt them, through your hands") was very moving. And Oliver Le Sueur is a convincing Kafka, ultra bright, sincere, and thoughtful.
"Charter Knows, a Library Can Be a Dangerous Place"
In Garth Nix' Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), the second novel in his Abhorsen trilogy, Touchstone and Sabriel are now the King and Abhorsen (anti-necromancer) of the Old Kingdom lying north of the Wall that separates their land of magic and pesky undead from the world of machines and countries in conflict (reminiscent of our early 20th century world). And things are not well in their Old Kingdom. An unknown "Enemy" is manipulating Necromancers into attacking villages with bands of undead "Hands" and "Shadowhands," while at Red Lake something ominous is happening that even the clairvoyant women of the Clayr are unable to see.
All fourteen-year-old Lirael wants is to gain the Sight like the other girls and women of the Clayr. Her black hair and brown eyes already mark her as too different the others, while her father is unknown and her mother abandoned her when she was a little girl. And each year on her birthday Lirael has grown older without gaining the Sight while increasingly younger girls have come into their own. Luckily, she is given a job as Third-Assistant Librarian in the nautilus shell-like ancient library of the Clayr, which suits the increasingly anti-social and magically curious girl. But poor Sameth, the teenage son of Touchstone and Sabriel, is pulled out of his elite boarding school south of the Wall and returned to the Palace at Bellisaere, where everyone expects him to train to succeed Sabriel as Abhorsen, when he is physically and mentally unable to even touch the Book of the Dead. Instead, he prefers fabricating magical "toys," like a nifty flying, mosquito-eating frog. Both young people are good young adult fantasy Ugly Ducklings: they believe that they are flawed and cannot fit in and yet are really gifted in ways destined to become appreciated.
Despite his young protagonists' morose moods, Nix writes his novel with humor and imagination. He has carefully constructed his magical world, in which most of the Free Magic that randomly pulses everywhere is ordered by the Charter, a seemingly infinite set of marks a bit like Chinese characters which adepts write on paper or in the air to make magic. Necromancers bypass the Charter to tap into Free Magic to do unnatural things like transform dead people into cannon fodder minions, while Charter Mages access it to protect the Kingdom, and the sole Abhorsen walks into Death (leaving his or her frosty body behind in the world) and then rings any of a set of seven bells to force the undead back down through the gates set in the river of Death till they reach their proper state.
Nix has great fun with that setting, imagining various nearly sentient magical books, constructs, sendings, spells, and artifacts. The most enjoyable such magical things in the novel are a pair of droll and mysterious talking "pets," the hungry, spunky, and loving Disreputable Dog, and the sarcastic, cynical, and sleepy white feline Mogget, both of whom are much more than they appear to be. The great thing about it all is that Nix often describes the magic with magical prose, vivid, sensual, and sublime, to evoke a sense of wonder, beauty, and terror (which are nearly absent from YA magical fantasy like the Harry Potter series).
Take, for example, the time Lirael loses control of a spell and "She tried to scream, but no sound came out, only Charter marks that leapt from her mouth towards the golden radiance. Charter marks continued to fly from her fingers, too, and swam in her eyes, spilling down inside her tears, which turned to steam as they fell." Even when nothing magical is happening, Nix may summon magic, as when Lirael is exploring the Library and finds herself in "a vast chamber, bigger even than the Great Hall. Charter marks as bright as the sun shone in the distant ceiling, hundreds of feet above. A huge oak tree filled the center of the room, in full summer leaf, its spreading branches shading a serpentine pool. And everywhere, throughout the cavern, there were flowers. Red flowers. Lirael bent down and picked one, uncertain if it was some sort of illusion. But it was real enough. She felt no magic, just the crisp stalk under her fingers. A red daisy, in full bloom."
And at his best, Nix writes suspenseful scenes that develop his world and characters and excite the reader, as when Lirael meets a stilken (a woman-shaped Free Magic entity with silver eyes and arms as long as her legs ending in the claws of a mantis), or when his heroes sail beneath a mile-wide bridge-city and are targeted by a crossbow bolt shooting assassin and a fiery Free Magic and swine-flesh construct masquerading as human.
When I read Lirael several years ago, I found it overlong and burdened by mopey characters, but I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the audiobook version, largely thanks to the virtuoso reading of Tim Curry. He deftly balances on the Edge of Too Much, reading with infectious relish lines by foul necromancers gloating over how they're about to kill you or Disreputable mongrels getting ready to sink their teeth into your calf to snap you out of your funk or snarky magical cats asking for fish after just failing to help save your skin. And isn't there a hint of Dr. Frank N. Furter in his Mogget?
Sabriel is a fresher and more self-contained book, whereas Lirael really makes part one of a duology completed by the third volume in the "trilogy," Abhorsen. But fans of imaginative and dark young adult magical fantasy and of Tim Curry should enjoy this book.
"Looking at the Sea with Loving Relish"
The first meeting between Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin is humorously inauspicious. At a performance by an Italian quartetto in the music-room of the Governor's House at Port Mahon on the island of Minorca near Spain, Jack is so enthusiastically enjoying the music, beating the time with his hand and humming "pum-pum-pum," that Stephen elbows him sharply in the ribs, so that Jack must master his desire to pick up a chair and dash it over the villain's head. Yet after receiving the wonderful news that he's been promoted to Master and Commander of the Sophie, a small sloop, Jack is in such high spirits that when he runs into Stephen around town he invites him to a sumptuous meal, during which he invites him to become the surgeon of the Sophie. (Whereas other naval historical fiction, like the Horatio Hornblower and Alan Lewrie series, begin at the beginning of their heroes' naval careers as midshipmen, O'Brien opens his with the promotion of Jack, who has nominally been at sea since nine and factually since twelve, to master and commander, a proto-captain.)
Jack and Stephen differ in so many ways! Jack, an officer in His Majesty's navy, is tall, robust, tanned, good-natured, and blond-maned, while Stephen, an out-of-work civilian physician-biologist is small, slender, pale, melancholic, and be-wigged (with a weird hair-piece made of wire). Furthermore, Jack tends to speak his mind, often unintentionally offending his interlocutors, is bad at languages (as when he comically confuses "putain" with "patois"), is hot-tempered (which gets him into trouble with authority figures), while the highly educated and intelligent Stephen is more careful in his speech, more philosophical, and is fluent in Catalan and speaks Spanish and French as well. Nevertheless, the two men are roughly the same age (between twenty and thirty), share a love of music (Jack playing the violin, Stephen the cello), and are naturally drawn to one another as boon companions. One of the great pleasures of the novel is beholding their friendship unfold.
Other pleasures involve the exciting scenes of naval action that suddenly pop up, from inconclusive minor skirmishes between pairs of ships to major battles involving multiple ships and shore batteries (for in the year 1800 when the novel takes place England is at war with Spain and France), as well as the occasional brief, vivid, and lyrical descriptions of the world viewed with relish from a ship at sea:
"At almost the same time the sun popped up from behind St. Phillip's fort; it did, in fact, pop up, flattened like a sideways lemon in the morning haze and drawing its bottom free of the land with a distinct jerk."
"The sea itself already had a nacreous light that belonged more to the day than the darkness, and this light was reflected in the great convexities of the topsails, giving them the lustre of grey pearls."
O'Brien also writes many spicy and funny lines, as when some of the Sophie's men comment on the middle-aged Master's obvious feeling for Jack: "Old Sodom and Gomorrah is sweet on Goldilocks." Or as when Stephen looks forward to working on a patient: "It has been a long time since I felt the grind of bone under my saw." Or as when Jack tells Stephen about the poor food he'll have to endure till the Sophie can get better supplies: "Salt horse and Old Weevil's wedding cake for most of the voyage, with four-water grog to wet it."
There are also poignant lines about the difficulties we face in life, as when the conflicted Lieutenant James Dillon says to his fellow-Irishman Stephen, "We understood one another better before ever I opened my mouth." Stephen himself has a philosophical turn of mind, and is often observing and then commenting on human and animal nature, as when he tries to explain to the straightforward Jack how a man might be torn between conflicting loyalties, or as when he intently observes the macabre copulation of a praying mantis couple, during which the male mounts the female and grasps her body with his legs, only to have her bite off his head and eat it, leaving his body still copulating, which leads Stephen to tell Jack that at times a woman doesn't need a man's head and heart. (The depiction of women in the novel is definitely done from a male point of view!)
And of course there are plenty of nautical details in the novel, about the different ships in the age of sail, and of the different sails, masts, guns, crews, officers, punishments, techniques, procedures, protocols, strategies, food and drink, toilets, sleeping arrangements, and so on involved. Some of them remain opaque to land-lubber me, but many of them become more or less clear thanks to O'Brien's device of inserting Stephen, a man with "no experience in naval matters," into Jack's world, so that he may ask questions and make comments on our behalf, so to speak, as when early in the novel he's given a tour of the Sophie by a midshipman. Anyway, the nautical details never get in the way of the story, which is full of psychological and physical excitement, humor, relish, and suspense.
Ric Jerrom reads the novel with clarity, feeling, and wit, modifying his voice effectively for the different seamen, whether common or elite, English or foreign, old or young, drunk or sober, pleasant or nasty, and so on. He brings the book vividly to life.
Fans of the Hornblower or Lewrie books should enjoy Master and Commander, as should anyone who likes historical novels featuring compelling characters and authentic settings and exciting action.
"A Witty & Moving Fantasy about Gender and Identity"
Imagine Jane Austen teaming up with Oscar Wilde to write a historical fantasy featuring class, gender, identity, sexuality, swords, and acting (and the pursuit of single-life rather than marriage), and you catch a glimpse of Ellen Kushner's "mannerpunk" novel The Privilege of the Sword (2006).
The novel is (partly) the coming of age story of Katherine Talbert, a plucky, good-natured, and innocent fifteen-year-old daughter of a country aristocrat family in financial straits. As the action begins, the wealthy and eccentric Duke Tremontaine, AKA the Mad Duke of Riverside (his residence in the bad part of town near the docks), has written to say that if his sister will send his niece Katherine to live with him in the city for six months according to his rules, he will pay all her family's debts. Katherine wants to see the big city and envisions making a stunning appearance at fashionable balls in fine new dresses. Contrary to her expectations, though, Uncle Alec has all of her dresses removed, forces her to wear the clothes of a young man, and makes her take sword lessons from a grizzled master swordsman who calls her, "Duke boy."
The Privilege of the Sword has no supernatural events or magic, no elves or wizards, and no epic wars between good and evil. It is a fantasy by virtue of its well-imagined secondary world, a pseudo Elizabethan or Jacobean place in which the nobility has expunged kings but still lives off the labor of their "tenants," in which people drink chocolate, brandy, and wine and smoke drugs, in which in addition to aristocrats there are poets, scholars, actors, merchants, pickpockets, and prostitutes, and in which the nobles wield the privilege of the sword, the right to decide their feuds by hiring professional swordsmen to duel matters out.
Among the many themes interestingly worked out by The Privilege of the Sword is the difficult but vital need for women to become independent and free to express their true selves in a male-oriented world. The gadfly Duke wants to transform his niece into a swordsman to free her from the usual fate of upper class women, who typically end up having to marry philandering and or abusive husbands. One of the refreshing things about the novel is that Katherine never attempts to hide her gender when she's dressing up in guys' clothes and sporting her sword and dagger. And Kushner writes other interesting female characters who are trying to get by in that man's world, like the Black Rose, a charismatic actress, and Teresa Grey, a "woman of quality" who secretly writes popular plays for the theater.
In addition to gender themes, Kushner expresses an open-minded view of sexuality. Katherine, for example, is attracted to both the Black Rose and to Alec's servant-ward Marcus, and another of the compelling developments in the novel is the frank and humorous awakening of her sexual self. And readers familiar with Kushner's first Riverside novel, Swordspoint (1987), will recall the romantic love between Alec and the master swordsman Richard St. Vier, which The Privilege of the Sword develops eighteen years after the events of the earlier book.
Kushner also writes interesting themes relating to identity and acting. Katherine reads a sensational romantic novel, The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death, watches a play based on it, and begins thinking of her own actions and those of her friend Artemisia Fitz-Levy in terms of the characters and the actors portraying them. Lucius Perry, a handsome young nobleman, plays different roles as male prostitute, heterosexual lover, faithful cousin, and noble scion. And to what degree does the Duke feign his "madness" to discomfit his peers? The line between acting and being one's true self is blurry, and not just for professional actors.
At times I tired of Katherine's superficial and hysterical aristo friend Artemisia ("The only time I pick up a book is to throw it at my maid" is her best line), and the climactic showdown between Lord Ferris and Duke Alec discomforted me, but I found the resolution of the story delightful and still continue to savor Kushner's characters.
I had a great time listening to the audiobook version of The Privilege of the Sword.
I really like Kushner's reading of the first person chapters narrated from the voice of Katherine (spunky and clear) and Barbara Rosenblat's reading of the third person narration of the other chapters (husky and androgynous), and the different audiobook "luminaries" who read the voices of the different characters in the "illuminated" sections (specially important or intense scenes). I especially enjoyed Joe Hurly's decadent drawl as the Mad Duke, sounding like Oscar Wilde bathing in a hot tub full of turquoise absinthe.
I have mixed feelings about the occasional sound effects sprinkled throughout the audiobook, door knockings, paper rustlings, owl hootings, boot clackings, sword clangings, and so on. Often these are implied or directly mentioned by the text, as when the narration mentions how Katherine's sword "rattled and clanged," and we hear the sound effect of a sword rattling and clanging. Even moments like when the narration says someone leaves a room and we hear the sound of a door closing, which at least are not redundant, felt more intrusive than immersive. On the other hand, the music beautifully and appropriately enhances the moods of the various scenes, and is more appealing and original than the majority of movie music these days.
In conclusion, fans of Swordspoint would love The Privilege of the Sword, and anyone interested in fantasy that focuses on social customs, psychological conflicts, and witty dialogue should enjoy it.
"Dostoevsky Does Fantasy"
Maybe it was the slightly "Russian" flavor of the highly readable translation by Elinor Huntington, or maybe it was the fearless examination of the human heart, or maybe it was the frequent feel of Russian folktales, but while listening to The Scar (1997/2012) by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, I kept imagining Dostoevski writing heroic fantasy. Typical genre tropes like mages, arch-mages, and sorceresses, creepy apocalyptic cults, powerful and mysterious artifacts, and a pseudo-medieval setting appear, but the Dyachenkos are so fresh in their treatment of the fantasy elements and so ruthless in their exposure of the human soul and so witty in their story-telling and so original in their metaphor-making that The Scar feels like a breath of bracing fresh air cleansing the stale genre.
The novel opens in the martial and macho town of Kavarren, which is dominated by aristocratic families and the Guardsmen to which their privileged sons belong. Each family's home is a fortified castle, and their main forms of entertainment are drinking, wenching, dueling, and boar fighting. The star of the day is twenty-and-a-half-year-old Lieutenant Egert Soll, a handsome hunk of a genius swordsman who has fought two duels ending in deaths, as well as others ending in assorted injuries for his adversaries. He has his way with any woman he wants, throwing knives near willing barmaids one moment and sleeping with the wives of superior officers the next. Egert's hapless sidekick Karver Ott basks in the great young man's glory, but also suffers from his self-centered and callous treatment. Egert is a thoughtless bully and a superficial lothario until into town one day comes a seemingly mismatched couple: the scrawny and humorless scholar Dinar, whose fingers are ink-stained rather than sword-callused, and his fiancée Toria, the most beautiful woman Egert has ever seen. Egert immediately sets about seducing Toria with his bold charm and ready money, but she is immune to his wiles, and seems genuinely more interested in pursuing the scholarly quest she shares with Dinar in the Town Hall's ravaged records, the search for a manuscript written by a legendary mage called the Sacred Spirit Lash who, having gone insane, left behind an army called the Order of the Lash that still exists and is waiting impatiently for the End of Time.
How the Dyachenkos develop their novel from the fateful encounter between Toria, Dinar, and Egert is disturbing, moving, romantic, and unpredictable. They write appealing and complex characters, like the mage Luayan, the Dean of the University of the big city that makes Kavarren look like a provincial backwater, the young student Gaetan, nicknamed "Fox" for his mischievous and clever antics, the beautiful and intelligent Toria, and, of course, Egert, for whom life, after surrendering itself to him so easily for his first twenty years, becomes an existential harrower. The characters get into unpredictable situations that evoke a delicious suspense.
Although some of the Dyachenkos' descriptions and metaphors feel odd, as when Egert's "blades started to move like fish thrown out of the water onto the ground," or wrong, as when a dagger whizzes by his ear like a bullet, even though apparently there are no guns in the fantasy world, most often they are vivid and interesting, as when "An enormous, impudent raven was strutting ceremoniously through the wet university courtyard like a judge" or when Toria "spoke reluctantly, like a doctor assuring a patient who is near death and covered with sores of his imminent recovery." Another neat moment comes during a cold spell, when "Red-breasted robins with white snowflakes on their backs were sitting on girders attached to walls, looking like the guards in their bright uniforms; and presently the guards themselves strolled by, with their tall pikes and their red-and-white uniforms, shivering just like the robins."
Jonathan Davis gives his usual perfect reading of the novel, effectively varying his delivery for the different characters without straining after dramatic effects. His conflicted Egert, wise Dean Luayan, irreverent Fox, and commanding Toria are all perfect.
The Dyachenkos' imagining of the ironic and devastating twists and turns that life and destiny may put us through, as well as their evoking of a rich fantasy world with its own history, make for a compelling read (though after the nearly unbearably suspenseful climax of the novel, the resolution feels too brief and rushed). The Scar stands on its own, but also feels as though there may be an as yet untranslated novel before it and one after it. People interested in unconventional heroic fantasy and Russian (or Ukrainian) literature should try The Scar.


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Some senior Democratic members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus used a private White House meeting Friday to urge President Obama not to unveil his own immigration legislation, for fear of blowing up delicate bipartisan talks, Democratic sources tell CNN.
This is significant for several reasons.
First, because the White House has been telling senators and advocates that they are writing their own an immigration bill, in legislative language. It is incredibly rare for the White House to write its own bill.
Second - Democrats urging the president not to release a bill illustrates how polarizing the immigration issue remains - especially for Republicans who fear that signing onto any legislation that could be seen as authored by the president could invite primary challenges for Republicans.
"It's a tricky thing. We want him to lead, but Republicans are in a difficult position," said a Democratic source familiar with Friday's meeting.
Sources familiar with the bipartisan Senate framework announced Monday tell CNN one of the main reasons they chose to unveil their framework one day before the president's planned Tuesday speech on the subject, was to start the national dialogue on their bipartisan terrain. Politically, CNN is told the senators felt it was crucial for it to be known that there has been a real bipartisan process ongoing that is independent from the president.
In fact, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, did not call the president to inform him of Monday's announcement until Sunday.
In terms of substance, sources familiar with the both proposals, say the bipartisan Senate framework includes a border security trigger that the President's plan does not include; specifically, the path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants would not open up until a council of border officials verifies that the border is secure.
Advocates of a bipartisan approach - the only kind of immigration bill that could pass - tell CNN they are still concerned that the White House will unveil its bill.
"It would be a sabotage of the process," said one immigration reform advocate familiar with internal discussions but not able to speak freely on the record.

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One of the most effective weapons in Dave Letterman's arsenal is his faux-naïve act. Unlike his rival Jay Leno, "The Late Show" host can be a relentless interrogator, but he often disguises his grilling with feigned obliviousness.
Case in point: Wednesday's sit-down with Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, who were in town to promote their latest reality show, or maybe their new line of diet supplements, but really just themselves. Letterman dove right into the subject of Kim's messy personal life by pretending not to know much about it at all.
"Now, you're still married to the former husband, Kris Humphries?" he asked, sounding curious rather than judgmental. When Kim replied in the affirmative, Letterman went in for the kill: "Now, when are you going to wrap that up?"
PHOTOS: Kim Kardashian's relationships and flings
"Well, I'm trying, and it's a process. ... I've been trying for almost two years now, um, to wrap it up, but it's, you know, it's hard," Kim said. (For the record, it's been less than 15 months.)
Undeterred, Letterman pressed on, asking why Humphries wants an annulment rather than a divorce. Presumably, he knew the answer: Humpries claims he was duped into marrying Kim so that she could make a bazillion dollars off of their wedding.
But it was so much better to hear Kim say "He is suing me for an annulment based on the fact that I frauded him into marrying him for publicity."
Kourtney managed to lob a zinger at Humphries -- "if she was going to do it for publicity, she'd pick someone that people knew" -- but the Q&A session wasn't quite over yet.
Letterman also wanted to know about Kim's current relationship with Kanye West, with whom -- in case you are one of the lucky five people on Earth who haven't heard yet -- she is expecting her first child. The host seemed to take exception to Kim's characterization of Kanye as "the funniest person" she knows.
"The last time I heard about him, he went up to Taylor Swift and he ruined the whole show," Letterman said.
Kim explained that Kanye is simply "like, the most passionate person," to which Letterman replied, "Well, he's just a kid, isn't he?"
"He's 35," Kim clarified.
Give 'em enough rope and ... well, you know the rest.
Jennifer Lawrence explains her "I Beat Meryl" line at the Globes
Jon Stewart: Any "idiot" could have seen Armstrong was lying
Oprah says she's "satisfied" with Armstrong's answers


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You must earn 10,000 points to post other members' whiteboard
Congratulations on having the energy to post for 200 consecutive days AGAIN. Keep up the Great Work. Want to become buddies??? Warren {:-)
"More consistent supply= more security" was a good answer to the biased article on the Keystone XL. Thanks for posting. SA
Thank you for your comments on the article I posted about the drunk driver who is suing his friend and the restaurants that served him. I posted my comment about the article not being gas price related just to get that out of the way. While I think the article is of interest to many members, there are a few out there that will complain because they think that all news articles have to deal strictly with gas prices. I just thought I'd get that out of the way for them.
Hi, you made a great comment on today's news item: "Pedal to the metal: gas prices race higher". Here in Tucson, we are up 52¢ in 52 days so far this year!!! But $3.355 is still 6¢ cheaper than a year ago. Want to become buddies??? Warren :-)
1,332,260 total very hood keep up the good work Lets be buddies
again,i disagree with the veracity of your assumption. my responses are too verbose for the limitations of the whiteboard. however i would not mind continuing the discussion
i believe both of your assumptions to be incorrect. so: ok, i got my touk on and some back bacon on the griddle, eh? i got the trans canada pipeline from athabasca to superior wisc. which just doulbed in size two years ago in transmit to the refineries in the greater chicago area.i got the xl pipeline to cushing and the refineries of the gulf coast. i've got the xl expansion from cushing to the gulf coast for export and from athabasca to cushing will be approved this summer, as the eminent domain and state environmental issues are settled. i got the trans canada railroad transporting mile and a half long tanker trains in three days to the east or west coast of canada. i 've got the chinese willing to invest 5 to 9 billion walmart dollars in a pipeline from athabasca as soon as the xl expansion is signed off. i'm thinkin my biggest problem is no longer limited shipping alternatives (your assumption), but, how far the u s currency is dropping against my canadian dollar, from $1.48 from j
ok dr, then raise a pantload of money to build said pipelines out of cushing. keep my posted on how thats working out for ya. i believe you will find no such demand, except for export. you will lose your investors money.
I would very much enjoy having you post in my new "STATE" ranking topic in the "just for fun" topic section. I hope to attract posters from many states. You can find your Ohio/Buckeye state ranking (which includes all 6 Ohio metro areas + the rest of Ohio) at the following website. http://www.hovercode.com/gas/ohio.php If this is of any interest to you, would love to see you post there on a daily basis. You can also post the total number of Buckeye State members which is found at the beginning of the listing. You may also post you metro area ranking at the same time if you so desire. My topic can be found at: http://www.dallasgasprices.com/Forum_MSG.aspx?master=&category=1235&topic=499046&page_no=1&FAV=Y Thanks in advance for your interest. I hope to see you as a frequent poster to this topic.


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I'd rather watch Roger Mason right now instead of Xavier.
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I'd rather watch Roger Mason right now instead of Xavier.
What the **** is Monty doing, no greivas or Anderson. Lets wait till they get lead to it them in
Somebody needs to get me a screen shot of coach eyeballing down the cameraman there.
Henry shouldn't be on the floor ever.
Xavier has gotta go
Wow. When did Aminu get such touch and body control?
Guess who is putting in time at WBOK 1230 AM Talk Radio... Don't guess, it's me. Tune in on Fridays at 12 noon for Sport-a-Talk with Roe Brown and you might just hear me!
Feel free to PM me for details.
Aminu's length continues to make a HUGE impact.
Did anybody else here that weird David Wesely laugh?
Teams:New Orleans Hornets(Pelicans) & Houston Texans
I think thats our 4th def 3 sec violation this season jeezus
Its great we are in the bonus, but gotta make the freebies!
Our zone looks pretty effective. Good choice against this team.
Too much back and forth. Hornets need to get some stops.
So... Anderson can dish it. And Lopez is significantly better offensively than we all though, I think.
These close games are entertaining but nerve racking. Much rather a blow-out
I just want to say I told you so to some of y'all about Lopez.
this is why you need Rivers, been in the penalty and no one is attacking the rim
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Cardinals coach Whisenhunt 'depressed' over minicamp's end
Originally published: Jun 14, 2012 - 12:57 pm
The team held its final practice Thursday afternoon in Tempe, putting a cap on a stretch that included a rookie- only minicamp, OTAs and now the two-a-day-practice minicamp.
Head coach Ken Whisenhunt is sorry to see it all end.
"Depressed," he said when asked how he feels now that it's all over. "It's been a good offseason, it just doesn't seem like it was long enough."
Whisenhunt admitted his feelings are a bit selfish, saying his players worked hard and got a lot done over the last few weeks.
But now the coach hopes his players will be productive over the final stretch of their offseason, being sure not to regress from this point.
"We've made progress," Whisenhunt said. "I don't know how much progress we've made and we still have a ways to go, but the important thing now is...that we don't take a step backwards."
So moving forward, the Cardinals do have some things to figure out, most notably who will be the team's starting QB Week 1 against Seattle.
On that topic, the coach was a little coy, saying that the competition between Kevin Kolb and John Skelton could not really be judged while players were wearing shorts in OTAs and minicamp.
"That's something, after we have some games and we have some practices up in camp, hopefully somebody will take the front in that race."
Arizona Sports' Craig Grialou contributed to this report
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- Tyrann Mathieu making 'believers'
- ESPN: Arizona Cardinals 26th in future power rankings
- Cardinals coach: As of now, Rashard Mendenhall is the starting running back
- Cardinals coach Bruce Arians on Daryl Washington: 'He's walking a very thin line'
- Impromptu Power Poll: Tim Tebow - Monday June 10Doug & Wolf's top 5 reasons why the Patriots signed Tim Tebow.
- Karlos Dansby, Cardinals linebacker - Friday May 10Dansby tells Doug & Wolf how excited he is to be back and how he plans to contribute
- Calais Campbell, AZ Cardinals defensive end - Monday May 6Big #93 talks to the guys about the new coaching staff and becoming more of a leader
- Calais Campbell, Cardinals DE - Friday May 3Campbell talks about his inaugural charity golf tournament debuting this weekend. Also, he gives his
- Andre Ellington, Cardinals RB - Thursday May 2Arizona's 6th round pick joins the show to reminisce on his college career and talk about what he br


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The Sun Herald reports Raldo Booth was sentenced Wednesday on a plea agreement to a charge of interstate travel in aid of drug racketeering.
He was arrested in a sting in July in a parking lot in Gulfport. He had met with a so-called drug dealer in the same parking lot to discuss the purchase of at least 300 pounds of marijuana in April.
Booth was arrested July 14 when he returned to the restaurant and said he had only $20,000 for 50 pounds of marijuana, but would return with the rest of the money in two days.


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There are not words adequate enough to describe my love for this piece of art Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2
So my guess after hearing this guy talk once is we will probably not hear from agents how he's in a pissing contest and wont talk to them. AJ used to piss off agents on purpose. This guy seems more like a business guy who will keep the channels open. No more stone wall AJ!
I am a contrarian. I dont want him fired... His tears cure cancer, at least if he ever cried they would. Give him a Buzz Lightyear extension... You know to infinity and beyond! Eat that haters!


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Rep. Maloney hails full restoration of services at Manhattan VA Hospital
NEW YORK, NY – Today, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12) applauded the news that the 23rd Street Manhattan VA Hospital is fully operational after having suffered major flood damage during Superstorm Sandy. For the past seven months, the hospital has been restoring services and reopening departments gradually, but today the facility announced completion of the first phase of its plan to repair the damages and will be able to provide regular services to its patients. As part of the federal Sandy Relief package, the Manhattan VA will receive $207 million to repair and redesign the facility.


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Wooden Beds
Birlea Denver 4ft Low Foot End Pine Bed
Regular Price: £207.99
Special Price: £159.99
Birlea Denver 4ft White Low Foot End Pine Bed
Regular Price: £220.99
Special Price: £169.99
Wooden bed frames are a popular choice for many people. Wooden beds are available in a lot of traditional and contemporary designs at extremely affordable prices. Wooden beds are the perfect way to give an elegant and stylish look to your bedroom, especially where the room floor is made of wood, these wooden beds complement the rest of the room.
You will find that there is a varied choice of wooden beds in our collection. The reason is that wooden beds can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The wooden beds made from oak and pine have always been popular, but now there are great options of wooden beds which are painted white or stained mahogany, and a great range of wooden beds and bunks for children.
Our World of Interiors offers a huge variety of wooden bed frames from the leading manufacturers. We have every design, colour and price tag to suit everybody's needs, all this coupled with free delivery to your doorstep.


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Hairstyle is one thing that helps to enhance one's personality to a very great extent. This season the trend calls for the long silky hair in a perfect shade of blonde. The way to keep them is on a single side. Brush your hair with a little gel or keep them frizzy, then just pin them up with bay on one side. Use the cute and preppy pins and to give them a more glam look add a little shimmer to your hair. This on is a perfect hair style this season that will help you to keep in style with a chic and elegant look.
For the type of hair, this trend suits every type from the curls to the straight look and from the waves to the layers. To add more style to your look have your hair dyed in the color of the season, blonde, or go in for some light blonde streaks on a dark blonde base. Wear bight colored make-up using shades like deep reds, corals and earthy browns. So, if you want to give this trendy look to your hair this season then pick up your favorite dress from the wardrobe, don this look for your hair and you are ready for the party.
Via: Trendencias


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Manufactured by Nissan. MSRP at launch
2013 Nissan Altima 3.5 SL Review
The Nissan Altima is one of the most popular cars from Nissan not only in our region, but worldwide as well. As cars in this segment normally are, competing with the likes of Toyota Camry and Honda Accord, it's a mid-sized sedan bringing over Nissan's personality of sharp design and focus on performance with award winning engines.
With the new Altima, Nissan seems to have asked their design team to take the existing Maxima, make it slightly smaller in size with more emphasis on curves. The result is a chunky looking saloon that looks like it's trying too hard to please. Certainly an improvement over the previous generations rather bland looks, though.
It seems like as Toyota and Honda are going for sharp edges with aggressive angles, Nissan seems to be going the opposite direction with flowing lines and muscular outlooks.
Inside the new Altima is appropriately spacious with decent legroom for a car in this segment. Our tester came with beige leather seats and upholstery with silver plastic and wood grain trim.
On the center console the new Altima has had a much needed update thanks mainly to the 7-inch navigation system. The screen itself is crisp and very responsive, with one of the fastest Bluetooth connections to my iPhone 5 I've seen in any car recently. Paired with the Bose 9-speaker system, you have some really good audio pumping into the fairly quiet interior of the Altima.
The steering wheel has a full navigation buttons for the system display (Advanced Driver Assist Display) within the speedometer. Media controls along with cruise control are also thrown in for good measure. Driver assists such as blind spot warning and lane departure are clearly visible and easily adjustable on the Advanced Driver Assist Display.
The overall interior of the new Altima is very nice, at least in the range topping 3.5SL, brining it very close to its Infiniti cousins. The general quietness of the cabin, relatively spacious legroom and pleasantly designed panels and buttons make a powerful statement as to how far mid-sized Japanese family sedans have come.
The Drive
Our Altima was equipped with Nissan's legendary VQ35DE engine, so with 3.5-liters this V6 produces 270HP and 350Nm torque. The horsepower is reduced a little to keep the Altima 3.5SL from undercutting Nissan's more expensive VQ35 equipped cars, such as the Maxima which makes 290HP.
As with the previous generation Altima, and most Nissan family friendly cars for that matter, the new Altima comes equipped with a CVT transmission. On the 3.5 SL we get the paddle shifts behind the steering wheel which emulates a 7-speed gearbox.
I must say that while I'm not a fan of CVT transmissions in general, the VQ35DE does a great job of porting the torque quite nicely through the RPM range. In particular city driving with traffic the CVT performs beautifully as the acceleration feels very controlled and smooth. If ever I wanted to drive a bit enthusiastically, simply putting the gear into Sports mode did the job adequately. Of course, the paddle shifts do add that feeling of gears changing.
All said and done, the CVT doesn't hinder the performance of the Altima 3.5 SL, as sporty driving is only a hand-flip away. Oh, and a full tank with completely city driving will give you almost 600km.
So the drive is very subdued, with comfy (but not overly cushioned) suspension, lack of road noise and general sense of speed when you need it at an, admittedly hard, push of the foot. My only complaint is the amount of body roll, although it's not unusual in this segment.
With great fuel economy, nice interior, updated driver assists and navigation system, plus a bold design, the new 2013 Nissan Altima is a compelling buy and excellent value for money if you're looking for a new family sedan.
Review Score
8.8 |
Powerful engine options (for its class) |
CVT transmission isn't exciting, but Sports mode is decent enough, as are paddle shifts on 3.5L models |


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It's the final leg of Ifan's journey – and most likely the most difficult– although he'll be in good company as he's joined by Sennybridge military training squad to travel over the Epynt mountain and the home stretch through Capel Uchaf and Capel Isaf through Pwllgloyw and finally on to Brecon.
County town of the historic county of Brycheiniog (Brecknockshire), Brecon was first established as a military base of the Romans in Wales. On the northern edge of the famous Brecon Beacons National Park, the thriving community welcomes artists and visitors from all over the world every August to the wonderful Brecon Jazz Festival.
© 2010 S4C O Gymru / Made in Wales