text:
True Story, Hardcore, Male/Teen Female, Virginity, Written by women
Author's infos
Gender: female Age: N/A Location: N/A
Posted Sun 23rd of August 2009
It was a very special night on the hood of that car..
Mustang GT350: Innocence Lost
By Samantha G.
It was 1987. The year Bo Didley, Chuck Berry, and Marvin Gaye made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Marvin Gaye was a favorite of my Dad, and Ford Mustangs were a hot topic at our dinner table on most nights, but tonight was extra special for me. It was my 16th birthday. I had my pick for our dinner on this night and, to nobody's surprise, it was my Mom's homemade pizza.
My Mom really didn't have time to do this in one day, so she would start the night before on the pizza sauce. The thick rich aroma of her delicious tomato sauce was wafting through our house all night last night. And, of course, it was Dad's job to stop at Becco's market on his way home from work and select the finest of the Italian sausage. After all, "Nobody knows more about meat than I do!" he always said with pride. And, he had a point, because Grandpa was a butcher in Apache Junction ages ago when Dad was growing up. "I worked in that shop sixteen hours a day!" he would always remind us and me in particular. He also reminded me that he had to walk to school every day, even on Sundays, fifty miles each way, and through buffalo stampedes.
"You know, Sammie," I can still hear his lectures of life," You can be anything you want to be." I always dropped my head down."Oh no, here we go again."
"Yes Dad. I know, I know." I always got The Look when I said those words. He would pull down his large black-framed glasses and look over them at me. "Uhm." The usual reply.
I usually got A's and a few B's in school. I could have applied myself more, but I had a lot of chores to do. Feeding and tending to our horses, fixing broken fences, and working on that damn car.
"So, just what do you want to do with your life?" Dad always kept after me.
"I dunno, maybe waitress at Hooters." That always pissed him off.
He abruptly stood at the table
"Sit down Julius!" My Mom was shaking her head with her back to us, laboring on the sauce for my birthday feast. My Dad was and still is a mountain of a man, six-foot-five and a solid 260 pounds. But Elaine could put him in his place in a heartbeat. My Mom ruled with an iron fist, and we both knew it. In fact, she grounded me for life last year. I came home from a trip to the city with a 'Harley Davidson' tattoo on my left arm.
"I love you, Mom." There, Dad. It's now two against one. My Mom didn't want to be called by her 'chosen' name here at home. Her parents immigrated to America from Vietnam, when she was a little girl. They wanted her to have an American name on her naturalization papers, so they picked Elaine Mae. But she really liked to hear, "Mom."
"You know, tomorrow is a big day, Sammie." My Dad was trying to get on our good side now. He knew he didn't have a ghost of a chance to pursue my employment issues any further.
"Yep, a biggie, Dad. Now I can drive your car." That was just pushing his buttons now. Again, Julius stood up. Only to feel the wrath of Mom's dishtowel on the back of his neck.
"SIT DOWN!" Mom now gave him 'the look'. "You promised her."
"I know Honey," My Dad was still very much in love with her, and it would never fade, only get stronger, as they went on their journey of life together. I could only pray to find such happiness as these two shared. It made growing up something special, to have parents like them.
"Be right back." My Dad got up and walked towards bedroom hallway.
"Your father has a surprise for you." My Mom turned and looked at me.
"What? What surprise?" My heart was now racing. The butterflies in my stomach were overwhelming. I glanced down the hallway.
"Oh My God!!" I was now squirming in my kitchen chair. I could see my Dad coming back into view, his eyes absolutely beaming, and I distinctly heard the jingle of car keys. He had his arms behind his back, foolishly trying to hide my surprise. I sprang at him when he got into range.
"Oh Dad, you didn't!!" I squealed in pure delight, hugging him, trying to reach around him and pry my present from those huge hands. It was no use; he was too big. I stepped back with my hands to my mouth, my dark hazel eyes bulging with excitement. I began bouncing up and down. My eyes glued to his hands as they came into view.
"For you, Sammie." I stood frozen in time, unable to speak. The keys to his Mustang swayed in front of my stunned face. Not just any set of keys. My very own set!!
At first I was afraid of them. They would hold so much responsibility, but I quickly grabbed them anyway and launched a hug that my Dad would never forget. My Mom just stood at the stove and watched us, silently nodding her pretty head with approval. I could hardly get to sleep that night. I couldn't just leave My Keys on the nightstand, nope. I had to hold them again. I grabbed my flashlight from the drawer, and clicked it on.
I laid on my back in my bed with my legs propped up knocking together and held my sweet independence high in the darkness. The beam from the light made them shimmer. They had the Ford logos, and I read "Sammie" embroidered inside a large red heart on the big black leather tab. Everyone will think I drive a Sammie. What the Hell is a Sammie? What kind of a car is that? Maybe it should have said MUSTANG, but it didn't matter to me. I got the car.
That car became a big part of me. So many events in my life would take place because of it. Some were happy, and some were sad. And some would change my life forever, as though that Mustang gave me so many choices at the crossroads along life's journey. It seems like such an easy decision to go straight, or turn left or right, but the path we choose will alter who we are today. To fall asleep on that Thursday night was impossible. And school the next day was just eight wasted hours. I couldn't get home fast enough.
"Happy Birthday, Sammie!" Mom sang as she finally presented the scalding hot delicacy from the oven, the steam blasting my face as she placed it front of me on the table. I squirmed, feeling my keys as they caressed my butt in my back pocket.
Ah, can I get this to go? I silently begged. I had a ton of places to go to, people to see, and things to do!!
We slaughtered the pizza in short order. The only sounds were that of our lips smacking together, and some moans of delight. Dan Rather was on TV, talking about President Reagan and the Iran-Contra stuff, and the Unibomber struck for the second time at a Utah computer store.
"Can I go?" I beamed at my parents. I had wolfed down four big slabs of Moms present. But I was a growing girl, five foot four inches and a nicely toned one hundred and ten pounds.
"What? No McGyvver tonight, Sammie?" My Dad was teasing me. Friday was also our night to watch whatever impossible predicament he'd escape from.
"Go ahead, dear, but be careful." And my Mom's voice was serious, my Dad nodding in agreement. "Be home by midnight, ok?" I kissed them each goodbye.
I grabbed my Phoenix Suns windbreaker off the hook at the back kitchen doorway, and flew out the door. I would come home a totally different person, at three in the morning.
"Holy Shit," I mumbled to myself as I pulled up the doublewide aluminum garage door. I knew they were watching from the kitchen window. The sun setting in the Arizona desert is, for me, always breathtaking. I will always call this place my home. I stood silently and took in this beautiful view. The blazing sunset filled the inside of the garage with a bright orange glow.
My Mustang was parked facing out, looking like a primer gray missile ready for launch. The last rays of sunlight bathed the hungry grill and glared off of the center fog lamps. The small hood scoop was ready to eat some Chevys. I slowly approached my steed, petting the front of the hood, and touching the hood pins whose job it was to keep the damn thing from flying open in event I went five hundred miles an hour.
"Thanks Dad!" I turned and shouted at the kitchen window and the two figures standing at it. The only thing this machine needed was a navy blue paint job and the two big white stripes. It was all-original, matching numbers, with an honest to God 351 Cleveland engine. Hell, I knew more about cars than most of the boys in school or the entire valley.
I guess that's why the gear heads sought out my company at school. I was born and raised by a father that was a racing nut besides teaching at the University. Ever since I was 10 years old, I helped him on most Saturday afternoons putting this beast together. When most teenage girls were at the mall flirting with older boys, looking for anyone to say how beautiful they were, I was bent over a fender, tightening header bolts or pulling an alternator off, or working on the jets to that fucking carb. We just couldn't get it to idle quite right. The three-quarter race cam had some to blame, but it was supposed to idle rough.
And thanks to that unreliable Holley carburetor, I would find out about very real sex, on this very special night. The night of my 16th birthday.
"Thanks again, Dad!" I opened the door and climbed in. I got my butt just right, and leaned forward sliding that key in, pressed down the clutch pedal and the heavy duty Hayes clutch we had just put in, and I turned it. The beast roared to life. I was honest to God, WET!
There are two aromas that can really get me going, my Mom's homemade pizza, and the sweet smell of high-octane exhaust. And I had a tank full of 104, courtesy of the small airport down the Interstate. I put the animal in first gear. Dad said it dyno'd at 450hp.
Four years ago, my Dad began to teach me how to drive. Hours and hours of driving up and down our long gravel driveway at first, so I had mastered how to dirt track in the corners and slide without spinning out, and all that crap. I gradually worked up to the super speedway events on the asphalt Interstate that ran by our land. I could speed-shift with the best of 'em, as my Dad would say. He would sit in the passenger seat and cheer if I laid rubber in all four gears.
But town is waiting for you, Sammie, I thought, and slowly eased out of the garage. At the end of our gravel road, I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed how different I looked. I had a more sensual look in what used to be girls eyes. I had just a little eyeliner on, but it made me look really sexy now.
There's nothing in the world that compares to cruising down the Interstate at 85 miles per hour with the Mustang's deafening growl and the music of TOTO's "Hold the Line" blaring out of the sound system. I was on my way to being an independent woman. The windows were rolled down, even though it was only about fifty degrees outside. I just wanted my long black hair to flow out the window.
I blew by a semi and the driver hit his horn in approval. "There goes a hot chick," he would have said. The lights of town were slowly coming into view as the Mustang roared down into the valley.
My headlights picked up on the reflecting railroad crossing sign, and then it died. My Mustang, chugged a few times, sputtered, and went quiet. I was almost downtown too. I coasted to a stop just a few blocks away from Donavan's Speed Shop.
"Shit, that's a break." I rolled up my windows, locked the doors and got out.
Donavan's is where everyone goes to get the hottest hop-ups. Clyde Donavan, the owner passed away some years ago, so his oldest son Jason took it over. Jason was a high school star athlete until he got partially paralyzed in a real bad car wreck when he was drag racing through town a few years ago. With any luck, he'd still be open. I began walking into town.
Oh good! He's still open. I could see Jason sweeping out the big stall in the garage. As I was running towards the open garage door, Jason spotted me and suddenly stopped sweeping and dropped his broom. I jogged into the stall, and stopped a few feet from him. "Still open?"
I've had a crush on this guy ever since I saw him play football in high school. Jason could have gone to any college in the southwest to play defensive back or wide receiver, but when his dad died, he took over his family responsibility, and kept the shop going. My Dad really didn't care for him that much, only because, "Donavan's Shop had high prices on everything!" I've always liked Jason and considered him a good friend to share Ford racing secrets with.
"Hi Sammie! Is that you?" He looked surprised to see me. He struggled to pick his broom back up. His right leg and hip were bolted together after being shattered in the wreck. It took more than just his football career away; girls didn't want to date a cripple. But to me, he was my hero. I had had countless, intimate encounters with him in my privacy of my bedroom.
"Hi Jason." Jason could always get me to smile. "I got major problems."
"I told your dad to get a new Holley for the GT," His voice was crackling.
"Well you know my Dad, save a dollar, spend a penny."
"Where's the car, Sammie?" He was trying not to make eye contact, which I thought was strange.
"A couple of blocks away." Now I moved to get in his vision. Again he looked away.
"Ok, let's go get it." He dropped his broom against the workbench and I followed him to the tow truck outside.
"Hey, Sid! I'll be right back," he yelled to his little brother, who was busy cleaning the front office area. "Ok Jas," the little 12-year-old yelled back. We climbed into the truck.
"Shitty thing to have happen on a birthday." I looked at him for an eye to eye. He slowly turned and looked at me.
"No shit? It's your birthday?"
"Jesus, Sam, you're really growing up fast." He was blushing and trying desperately to hide the fact.
"Let's go get the car." He quickly glanced down at my legs in the skintight jeans.
Jason did all the work hooking up the tow strap to my car. He was still in fantastic shape. He had really muscular arms and a big chest. He looked a lot like a young Paul Newman.
I couldn't get enough of watching him, or how the cool desert breeze made his blond hair flow so sensuously. I could look at him as a sexy man now. He was only six years older than me, so that made it all right.
We pushed my car into the far right stall, and Jason hit the button to drop the garage door shut. I could see out the back door window from this stall. His mangled wreck of a car was still in the yard. Its engine was pushed into the front seat from the impact of hitting the train on that night. His brakes failed because of a bad fitting and all the fluid leaked out. The streetlight from the alley served as a reminder that the Angel of Death took only his car that night.
"Got to go, Jas!" Sid yelled from the office. And we heard the door slam shut. We were alone now. Jason pulled the hood pins out and raised the hood.
"What have we here, Samantha?" He didn't call me Sammie? I watched him take the air cleaner off. Then I leaned in right next him.
"That's the whole problem uh Jas?" I leaned a lot closer to him pointing to the front of the carburetor. I had my right breast rub against his arm. They weren't very big, but they were breasts. I could feel my nipple become instantly hard, and he knew right away that I wasn't wearing a bra!
Jason stood up quickly and forgot he was under the hood of my car. He almost knocked himself out.
"Oh shit, Sammie! What the heck are you doing?" He stepped back and sternly looked at me. He rubbed the top of his head. "Jesus Christ, Sammie." He checked his hand for blood. He didn't even notice the look of utter despair in my eyes.
"I'm sorry Jas," My voice was weak and sad. My Boyfriend just yelled at me.
"You trying to get me in trouble?" I felt terrible. How could he say a thing like that? His face sank when he saw the tears beginning to well in my eyes.
"I'm sorry, Sammie," He now came to comfort me," I just thought you were-"
I quickly turned and ran into the office, sobbing all the way. I slammed the door behind me and, leaning against it, I began to really cry. Jason stayed in the work stall tending to my car.
"How could I be that stupid?" I scolded myself in his dark office. "You think he'd be interested in a kid like you??" I looked at the big clock on the wall behind his desk. It was nearing ten o'clock.
"Just great." I sat in Jason's chair at the desk. "Happy birthday, Sam." I stared out the huge store window and pouted, the distant streetlight trying to put me on a stage so everyone could see my foolishness.
"Hey everyone, look! It's little Sammie," an imaginary carnival barker was announcing. "Look how she moves through the night, like a sensuous snake, about to strike it's preyed."
"Oh, fuck you," I debated the carnival barker. My big night lay in ruins. I imagined my ideal night would have been to ride around town with my Jason, just a little while, so everyone could see I was with him. He could be driving my car, and I would be sitting on the console right next to him with my arms wrapped tightly around him.
"Jason? Please take me home and make love to me." His apartment was right above me, right above this very shop.
"I'll just wait here till he's done with my car." I saw the lit numbers to his nearby radio. I reached over and clicked the FM button. Suddenly the whole office and shop was filled with music. The band Journey was on, and they were singing the song "Don't Stop Believing." The words to the music went straight to my broken heart.
"Almost got it, Sammie!" Jason yelled from his distant workplace. I quickly looked at the big clock, 11:15. Cinderella's night is almost over. I felt sad again.
I heard my car roar to life. Excited, I quickly left Jason's chair and ran back to the shop.
Oh my God, what a sight! Jason leaning against my car with a huge smile of satisfaction with his big arms folded across his chest in triumph. I shyly walked towards him, hiding my happy face. My car rocked as the race cam did its stuff.
"I replaced the carb jets, Sammie, and adjusted the floats," he said as he twirled a screwdriver. "Call it a birthday present." He had a look of concern. "OK, Sammie?" I stood directly in front of him, afraid to look up. He lightly tapped my nose with the screwdriver, trying to get me to look at him. I couldn't hear him. The engine was too loud. Jason turned and shut off my Mustang.
"I said I replaced those bad jets, but don't tell your dad." He reached out and gently held my shoulders. I slowly looked up. My boyfriend didn't want me. He saw the trails of my tears. He knew I wanted him. Music was softly filling the garage. It would be hopeless to escape this pending seduction.
"Jason?" My voice was shaky but I had to know." Do you think I'm pretty?"
"Yes!" he exclaimed and went to the front of my car, gently closing the hood.
"Sammie," he continued as I walked to him at the front of the Mustang. "You could be on the cover of Vogue." Wow! I didn't know he read that magazine.
"You've got the senior girls beat by a mile." We stood side by side, looking at the front of the car. I felt him turn to look at me. "You're the most beautiful girl in this valley." There was a hint of sincerity in his voice. Maybe it was that he liked what I knew about cars.
"Happy birthday, Samantha," Jason bent down to kiss my cheek just as I turned to face him. Our lips met.
There's an eternity of time to that very first serious kiss. Every pair of lips that would touch mine from that day forward would be compared to Jason's. And for a girl of 16 to get that first very special kiss from her biggest fantasy, it's pure heaven.
We stood together frozen in time. I slowly put my arms around his neck and quietly pressed against him. He dropped the screwdriver. I felt his hands around my waist. My mouth opened as his soft warm tongue brushed my moist lips. Jason was breathing so fast and heavy it was triggering a hunger deep inside me. I wasn't afraid of where this was going. My knees shivered in weakness, his strong hands were at my small firm breasts.
Jason didn't know about my parent's collection of porno, that I had found and studied. For two long years, I read all the magazines and watched every movie, hundreds of times. I had a library of sex at my disposal. And I knew he didn't have a girlfriend and since I had a crush on him for so long, I wanted him to be with me. I wanted him to make love to me. I needed him to be the one.
He moaned in complete surprise as my hands pressed from his neck, down to the front of his jeans. He followed suit, by gently rubbing my damp pussy through the crotch of my anxious skin tight Levis.
My hands were at his crotch, rubbing and grasping. I moaned long and loud, feeling his rock hard penis that was trapped in his jeans. My first ever, very real penis. And his was very erect.
"My tight jeans, quick pull them off!" The words wouldn't come out. I unzipped his greasy jeans. He groaned. His hands were now at my own jeans, working to release them. My hand was going inside, sliding under the band of his jockey shorts. I felt his rich pubic hair, and the heat from his groin.
"Sammie," he whispered, his lips worked around my cheek to my ear. My jeans were going down my legs. His hands held my butt, squeezing my small firm cheeks. My hand found his beautiful naked cock. It was so smooth and rock solid. My fingers slowly grasped it.
"Jason," I quietly whispered his name. He pushed his jeans and underwear down to his knees. I watched his manhood spring straight out. It looked huge. Not nearly as big as some of those actors in the pornos, but for a sixteen-year-old virgin, it was big.
This scene of innocence lost will be forever stamped in my mind. A dimly lit service garage, in the farthest stall two people standing and facing each other. One with his jeans and underwear around his knees, his rock-hard penis sticking straight out. He was holding my shoulders. He had his eyes closed and his head tilted back, because I was stroking his cock with my hand. My fingers were squeezing and pumping his ridged shaft. I'm looking down in awe at this sight. My own jeans are around my ankles, but my panties are still on, and so is my jacket and tee shirt. To me, it looked like two lonely people finding each other on a dark, cool February night in the Arizona desert.
"Oh, Sam, Oh," Jason was whispering. I stepped out of my jeans and knelt on them. His beautifully hard cock throbbed as I held it. I slowly took his penis into my mouth, closing my warm wet lips around his smooth velvety head. My hands held onto his hips. I could feel the poor attempt the surgeons did to reconstruct it. I slowly moved my mouth back and forth on his erect cock.
"Oh, sweet Jesus!" I heard him whisper out loud. I could make him mine forever. After all, I learned a lot watching those movies. But I didn't consider the end result of my expertise. He held my head and began to pump his cock in and out of my mouth faster and faster. I could barely hold his hips now. I grabbed the base of his wet stiff penis and pumped it feverishly.
"Oh, Oh," I felt his ass tighten, as his penis swelled in my mouth. He stopped moving. The flood of hot cum poured onto my tongue, and hit the back of my throat. Instinctively, I tried to swallow, but there was way too much. It just kept pumping out. I had a huge load in my mouth as I released his penis, and it was still flying out of the tip, landing on my jacket, my cheek, and in my hair. The bittersweet salty taste overwhelmed my full mouth. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and gulped it down as he gently held my head in his shaking hands. I could feel his warm cum dribbling onto my naked thighs.
He brought me to my feet and began kissing me, as I began to slide myself out of my drenched black panties. I held onto his still very erect penis, to keep my balance and also to remind both of us that this wasn't over yet.
"Losing My Religion." I heard the R.E.M. song on the radio at the very moment that I lay on the hood of my car, naked from the waist down with my legs spread wide. Jason approached, his hard cock swayed towards my hot young pussy.
"This is MY man, Jason," I told myself. My heart began to beat out his name. He gently held my hips and pulled me down to the front of the hood. His hard cock bumped the inside of my hot smooth thigh, making me gasp in excitement and finality. His eyes were shut as he rubbed the head of his stiff cock around my sweating pussy. My head was swimming with excitement and raw lust. He found the tight opening, hot, wet and slick.
"Ohhh," I felt the head go in just a little. Arching my back, I sat up and wrapped my arms around his neck. Desperately seeking his sweet kiss at this moment in my life.
"Owww, Ouch, Ohhhh." He was pushing just a little. I clenched my teeth. It hurt and it burned at the same time. The pressure was painfully sweet. Jason looked down and kissed me, taking my head in his hands, thrusting his hips forward. Jason was making a secret commitment to me. He would never leave my side, "Forever, Samantha."
"AHHH, OH my GOD!!!" The searing hot pain filled my stretching new womanhood. I looked down with tightly clenched teeth. Puffing, and panting, his penis was half way in.
It had broken through. My body was shaking as he slowly pulled his hard penis out a little. I saw my blood and juice coating his glistening shaft. He slowly pushed it back in making me yelp sharply. He was going deeper.
I hung on to his neck for dear life. It was so painful, but also very, very wonderful. He slowly pumped my young pussy. My tightness made him dizzy with lust. Every stroke was more than the one before, as his cock glided effortlessly in and out. My wetness was louder than the music in the background. My butt was riding in a pool of blood and juice on the hood of my car.
"Oh my God, oh my God," I was loudly breathing the words over and over. He held my hips, slowly pumping his wonderful cock. Pain was building; he was going deeper. My hips were a flurry of humping back against his organ. He pulled me down to lay my back on the hood of the car. He wrapped his large arms around my spread thighs, pulling me and plunging his cock in and out. My arms shot straight out, there was nothing for me to grab. My head and hair flung from side to side, as my cries of passion echoed throughout the empty garage. He pumped slow, then fast. His cock went deep, then shallow. My stuffed pussy was splashing with juice
"Oh, what he does with his cock! That wonderful, hard thrusting, pumping, hunk of manhood," my sex glazed mind whispered over and over.
I watched him straighten up and felt him sink the entire length into me. My mouth hung wide open. I was silent. I was full. A great pressure was washing through me. My head was spinning. My whole body was shaking. I couldn't stop it. The tidal wave of a climax engulfed every inch of me. I locked my legs around him, and quickly gripped his strong arms, trying to ride it out, terrified at where this euphoria was taking me. My eyes were closing as the heat in my loins exploded, sending a bath of warmth cascading through every fiber of my gripping vagina. A seductive darkness closed in.
"Oh, Dear God, Samantha," a small voice echoed faintly through my thoughts. I was drifting away. "Don't bother me," I replied to the voice. I was weightless, and drifting. My entire being was warm and tingly. On and on, I drifted so wondrously. Barely conscious of where I was, or that Jason had pulled out of me and was passionately kissing my mouth. I was elsewhere now, in another world, where time didn't exist. The fruits of passion. A woman's orgasm. I faintly felt the heat of his cock pumping out a huge load of cum onto my belly. I was vaguely aware of holding his penis, and stroking it, pulling on the shaft, milking more of his precious seed onto my body.
There's that little voice again. "Sammie?" What the fuck do you want! I'm busy here in ecstasy; I'm getting mad now.
"Sammie!!" I slowly began to remember.
"Sammie?" I felt him. He slowly came into view. My mind was a broken jigsaw puzzle of thoughts. I slowly sat up and hugged my Jason.
He held me so close on that night. We stayed like that for quite a while, sharing touches, and sweet kisses. Until I glanced at the shop clock, 2:45 a.m.
"Holy Shit! I'm going to get killed!" My panic was obvious and urgent. I could just see my Dad waiting at the driveway with his twelve gage shotgun. "I'm sorry Sammie, but we have to shoot you now." And my Mom would be standing right behind him with a rolling pin. "Let me beat her first, OK, honey?"
We quickly got dressed without much talking. I jumped into my car. Then Jason leaned in and kissed me and touched my cheek. My heart began to sing with joy. The love was very deep in his blue eyes at that moment, and it would carry me through the next two years of school. Jason would be my guy.
I lucked out when I drove up the long gravel driveway. The house was totally dark, except for the yard light near the garage. I shut off the car and coasted into my parking place. I quietly snuck into the house. I could hear my Dad snoring. I went to my bedroom and got undressed. I took a long hot shower to wash away the evidence. I crawled into bed and stared out my bedroom window. All I could see was Jason beautiful face.
"What's Jason doing right now? Is he thinking of me?"
"I love you Jason." Was the last fleeting thought my mind would have as I drifted off to sleep.
My Mom was surprised to see me do the Saturday morning wash so early. I had more evidence to destroy. A guy's cum stains are very distinct. And mixed with a virgin's blood, it is a dead giveaway.
"Hey, Sammie?" My Dad came in from tinkering in the garage. Just then a bolt of fear jolted me. He had secret spies follow me all night, and he knew.
"What happened to the car?" Oh good, he had his back to me as he poured himself a glass of water at the kitchen sink. Did he say "the car"?
"The car? What?"
"There's blood on the hood." Oh My God! He knows! Quick thinking will save the day.
"I hit a rabbit." Jesus Christ! Did I just say that? I scratched my head and rolled my eyes.
Dad slowly turned my way, pulled down his big black-rimmed glasses, and peered at me.
I gave him a slight grin and shrugged my shoulders.
"Must have been a tall rabbit, huh?" And he didn't pursue it. He and Mom would get ready for a drive into Phoenix that morning, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my music.
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9 comments
Anonymous reader
2013-08-26 19:01:20
Great writing, my favorite of you stories so far....
2009-09-01 01:17:38
Although this story didnt turn me on at all, it made me smile.
I am a blind guy and the wording of the story was like this story was a movie playing in my head.
it was beautiful
Anonymous reader
2009-09-01 00:42:51
I've been reading dif stories for about a year now on this site. This is the first time I am leaving a note.
Although this story didnt turn me on at all, it made me smile.
I am blind and the way you wrote this, I could follow it, like I was watching a video.
beautiful writing
2009-08-31 13:15:01
hi name is masi
Anonymous reader
2009-08-31 10:27:10
Its amazing how much more of a story a woman writes. It is not just hard dirty sex, you can live what she writes.
Sammie, that was a great story and was perfect in every way
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'Kung Fu Panda 2's' Disappointing Performance Leads DreamWorks Animation's Stock to Hit Two-Year Low
An analyst says "one of the company's few remaining franchises" may be showing "signs of fatigue."
NEW YORK – Shares of DreamWorks Animation fell to their lowest level in two years on Tuesday as several Wall Street analysts called the opening weekend performance of the studio's Kung Fu Panda sequel disappointing.
Early in the trading session, it went as low as $23.09. That was below a 52-week low of $24.38 hit last week and also marked the lowest price hit in about two years.
DWA shares last traded this low in May 2009. On May 13 of that year, the stock went as low as $23.12. A day earlier, it had even hit $22.51.
The stock later recovered a but to close down 3.7 percent at $23.91. The decline came as the broader market rallied after the long Memorial Day weekend in the U.S.
Shares of 3D technology firm RealD dropped even more sharply Tuesday, closing down 11.7 percent at $27.30, still well above their 52-week low of $15.63.
BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield on Tuesday reiterated his "sell" rating on DWA, cut his target price by $5 to $20 and reduced his financial expectations.
"The key drivers of DWA's troubles are that its movies have not lived up to expectations and the global DVD market is in free fall as consumers continue to shift from buying to renting," he said. He also pointed to an analyst day about 18 months ago, during which the company had outlined such growth opportunities as 3D, TV series, live entertainment (Broadway shows) and virtual worlds. "It has become increasingly clear that none of DWA's growth opportunities are going to "bear the fruit" that management had hoped," Greenfield argued.
Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who has a "neutral" rating on DWA shares, called the Kung Fu Panda performance a "disappointment," saying the $68 million box office take through Memorial Day fell short of his $75 million estimate. He suggested that the first-weekend data implies that Panda is on pace to generate $225 million in U.S. box office receipts, below his $245 estimate.
"The film grossed less than its predecessor (opened to $60.2 million) despite the 3D ticket premium, long weekend, and three years of ticket price inflation," Wible highlighted. "This is the latest in a string of disappointments for DWA and is more troubling as Panda has been one of the company's few remaining franchises, which may be showing signs of fatigue."
Reiterating his "neutral" rating on the stock, Wible predicted that "recent film disappointments will overshadow longer-term benefits."
Doug Creutz, analyst at Cowen & Co., said the film had "a very strong international opening," but he still reduced his outlook for the film's profitability and cut his 2011 earnings estimate for DWA. He said he continues to have a "neutral" rating on DWA shares.
"We believe that the soft domestic open further validates our concern that increased competition is hurting the domestic box office potential of individual animated films," Creutz said. "Further, we note that Kung Fu Panda is the only franchise DWA has launched in the last five years that has shown any sort of international box office power, and thus we do not expect the international strength of Panda 2 to be repeated on a regular basis by DWA's future releases."
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This class is closed to further registration.
Here's a chance to workshop your skills and take them to the next level. Our Advanced Musical Improv 4-Week Intensive has been designed for the experienced musical improviser to get back into the class and re-visit skills that make Musical Improv so amazing. The Second City Musical Director Chris New will coach you on: transitions from scene to song, Musical Theatre conventions, duets, "Game of the Song" and much more. Pre-requisite: Level E or Conservatory, Musical Conservatory, Musical Theatre degree, member of a current Musical Improv Troupe


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RIP David Lomon, 1918-2012
2December 22, 2012 by Lydia Syson
When Ellathebookworm from the Guardian Teen Book Club asked me this week what I would have found hardest if I'd been a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, I immediately thought of David Lomon, and what he had endured after being taken prisoner by Mussolini's forces in Spain in the spring of 1938. Richard Baxell interviewed him for his new book, Unlikely Warriors - read more here. Very sadly, David died yesterday.
Category Blog | Tags: David Lomon, Guardian Teen Book Club, International Brigades Memorial Trust, last British International Brigader
News and an offer
0December 14, 2012 by Lydia Syson
Tucked into a corner of King's Cross Station, just beside the sign for Platform 9-and-3/4, there's a newish bookshop called Watermark which is well worth seeking out. Thanks to Laura, its fantastically enthusiastic children's bookseller, that's where just over half my writing group kicked off this year's Christmas celebrations last night.
Category Blog | Tags: Adventure Walks, Atticus Claw, Guinea Pigs Online, Jewish Socialist, Keren David, New Books, Platform 9 3/4, review, Village Books, Watermark, Wrtiers' Forum
Christmas stories
0December 7, 2012 by Lydia Syson
This post was written for Hot Key Books '9 Days of Christmas'
All my childhood memories of Christmas merge into one indistinct blur: it was always the seventies. It was always grey. It never, ever snowed. And later I keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: 9 days of Christmas, A Hundred and One Dalmations, Chanukah, Christmas, Dodie Smith, Laura Ingalls Wilder, memories, On the Banks of Plum Creek, Rumer Godden, snow, Special offer, The Story of Holly and Ivy, traditions


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The Center brings together over 90 of UCLA's faculty Middle East specialists across disciplines, along with students and visiting scholars, forming an intellectual community for scholarly collaboration on the region.
Center-affiliated faculty, fellows and visiting scholars publish about a dozen books a year on the Middle East in the arts, humanities, social sciences, law, public health, and foreign languages. They publish hundreds of scholarly articles and play a leading role on the editorial boards of such journals as the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), Journal of Middle East Women's Studies (JMEWS), Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law (JINEL), and the online magazine Jadaliyya.
Recent faculty publications:
The Center's affiliated graduate students specialize in Middle East and North African topics in a wide range of disciplines spanning the humanities, social sciences, and professional schools. We have teamed with students from the departments of Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, Archaeology, Art History, Comparative Literature, Education, Ethnomusicology, French, Geography, German, History, Islamic Studies, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Political Science, Social Welfare, Sociology, Spanish, Theater, Urban Planning, and Women's Studies.
Ziad Munif Abu-Rish, History. Dissertation: Conflict and Institution Building in Lebanon, 1946-1955
Kristina Elizabeth Benson, Islamic Studies. Dissertation: Sources of Authority and Authenticity in American Sharia Law
Eric James Bordenkircher, Islamic Studies. Dissertation: Kings, Queens, Rooks, and Pawns: Deciphering Lebanon's Political Chessboard
Emily Christine Cooper Cole, NELC. Dissertation: Interpretation and Authority: The Social Functions of Translation in Ancient Egypt
Alma Rachel Heckman, History. Dissertation: Radical Nationalists: Moroccan Jewish Communists 1925-1975
Eric Ryan Wells, NELC. Dissertation: Display and Devotion: A Social and Religious Analysis of New Kingdom Votive Stelae from Asyut
Jared Norris Wolfe, NELC. Dissertation: ZU: The Life of a Sumerian Verb in Early Mesopotamia
Anne Eliese Austin, Archaeology. Dissertation: Contending with Illness in Ancient Egypt; A textual and Osteological Study of Health Care at Deir el-Medina.
Joseph W. Lehner, Archaeology. Dissertation: The Evolution of Metal Industries in Central Anatolia during the Bronze Age ca. 3000 - 1200 BC
Sina Rahmani, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Blank Subjects: Orphanhood and the Rise of the British Novel
Cameran Ashraf, Geography. Dissertation: The Spatiality of Power in Internet Control and Cyberwar
Anat Mooreville, History. Dissertation: Oculists in the Orient: A History of Trachoma, Zionism, and Global Health, 1882-1973
Murat Yildiz, History. Dissertation: Strengthening Male Bodies and Building Robust Communities: Physical Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire
Parissa Majdi Clark, Political Science. Dissertation: From El Nuevo Despertar to Nonprofit: Changes in Puerto Rican Political Identity in the US. Since 1961
Shabnam Shenasi Azari, Sociology. Dissertation: Ethnic Visibility, Context, and Xenophobia: A European Perspective
Pamela Pricket, Sociology. Dissertation: The Pious Disadvantaged: An Ethnographic Study of African American Muslims in South Central Los Angeles
Sanaz Rezai, Musicology. Dissertation: Orientalism in Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit"
Claire Gilbert, History. Dissertation: The Politics of Language in Western Mediterranean c.1492-c.1669: Multilingual Institutions and the Status of Arabic in Early Modern Spain
Catherine Elizabeth Pratt, Archaeology. Dissertation: Critical Commodities: Tracing Greek Trade in Oil and Wine from the Late Bronze Age to the Archaic Period
Maryam Wasif Khan, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Translated Orientalisms: The eighteenth-century Oriental Tale, Colonial Pedagogies, and Muslim Reform
Susan McKibben, Education. Dissertation: Learning Solidarity: Activist Pedagogies and Transnational Knowledge Production in Cuban and Iranian Diasporic Democracy Movements
Tina Beyene, Gender Studies. Dissertation: Gender Based Violence & Submerged Histories: A colonial Genealogy of Violence Against Tutsi women in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
Tiffany Gleason, History. Dissertation: Coastal Islam: Religion and Identity among Minority Muslims in the French Colonial City of Porto-Novo, 1889-1939
Shushan Karapetian, History. Dissertation: How Do I Teach My Kids My Broken Armenian?': A Study of Eastern Armenian Heritage Language Speakers in Los Angeles
Patricia Voege, Psychology. Dissertation: The Effects of a Yogic Breath Meditation Intervention on Attention Control and Other Domains of Self-Control
Zeynep Ozgen, Sociology. Dissertation: Schooling, Islamization, and Religious Mobilization in Turkey
Matthew Kelly, History. Dissertation: Crime in the Mandate: British and Zionist Criminological Discourse and Arab Nationalist Agitation in Palestine, 1936-1939
Matthew S. Gottfried, Political Science. Dissertation: The Origins and Consequences of Public Opinion in Coercive Terrorist Crises
Chad Nelson, Political Science. Dissertation: Revolutionary Waves: The International Effects of Threatened Domestic Order
Myrna Angel Douzjian, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Resistant Postmodernisms: Writing Postcommunism in Armenia and Russia
Leah Amelia Halvorson, Political Science. Dissertation: Inflection Points: Agenda Setting and American Foreign Policy toward Islamist Groups
Devorah Sarah Manekin, Political Science. Dissertation: Waging War among Civilians: The Production and Restraint of Counterinsurgent Violence in the Second Intifada
Josh O'Brien, Sociology. Dissertation: Growing Up Muslim in America: Managing Multiple Cultures in Everyday Life
Yehuda Sharim, Culture and Performance Studies. Dissertation: The Rise and Fall of Sephardic-Mizrahi Autonomy: Racial Identities in Palestine from 1918–1948
Sylva Natalie Manoogian, Library and Information Studies. Dissertation: The Calouste Gulbenkian Library, Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 1925-1990: An Historical Portrait of a Monastic and Lay Community Intellectual Resource Center
Amy Tahani-Bidmeshki, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: In the Process of Shattering their Chains: The Emergence of the "New Man" on Six Post-WWII African American and Iranian Anticolonial Novels
Sabah Firoz Uddin, Gender Studies. Dissertation: Navigating between the Religious and the Secular: Responding to the Muslim `Woman Question' in Diasporic Britain
Melis Hafez, History. Dissertation: The Lazy, the Idle, the Industrious: Discourse and Practice of Work and Productivity in Late Ottoman Society
James Michael Petitfils, History. Dissertation: Mos Christianorum: The Roman Discourse of Exemplarity and the Jewish and Christian Language of Leadership
Dris Soulaimani, Applied Linguistics. Dissertation: Orthographies and Language Ideologies: Selecting a script for Berber in Morocco
Nahrain Al-Mousawi, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Clandestine Mediterranean: Arab-African Migrant Literature
Sara Brumfield, NELC. Dissertation: Imperial Methods: Using Text Mining and Social Network Analysis to Detect Regional Strategies in the Akkadian Empire
Hoda El Shakry, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Qur'anic Invocations: Narrative Temporalities in Twentieth Century Maghrebi Literature
Amanda M. Kenderes, Education. Dissertation: Facebook, Political Narrative, and Political Change: A Case Study of Palestinian Youth
Matthew James McKinney, Islamic Studies. Dissertation: Maintaining True Believers: the Evolution and Moderation of Extremist Movements
Krystal Victoria Lords Pierce, NELC. Dissertation: Living and Dying Abroad: Aspects of Egyptian Cultural Identity in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Canaan
Susannah Rodriguez Drissi, Comparative Literature. Dissertation: Between Orientalism and Affective Identification: A Paradigm and Four Case Studies towards the Inclusion of the Moor in Cuban Literacy and Cultural Studies
Annette Suzanne Russell, History. Dissertation: In the World but Not of the World: The liminal Life of the Pre-Constantine Christian Communities
Mir Hayim Yarfitz, History. Dissertation: Polacos, White Slaves, and Stille Chuppahs: Organized Prostitution and the Jews of Buenos Aires, 1890-1939
Garabet Moumdjian, History. Dissertation: Struggling for a Constitutional Regime: Armenian-Young Turk Relations in the Era of Abdulhamid II, 1895-1909
Amanda Kenderes, Education. Dissertation: Facebook, Political Narrative, and Political Change: A case study of Palestinian Youth
David Bennet, NELC. The Spirit of Ahypokeimenonical Physics: Another Side of Kalam Natural Philosophy.
Benjamin Dale de Lee, History. Letters, Diplomacy, and Religious Polemic in Ninth-Century Byzantium: Niketas Byzantios and the Problem of Islam.
Marie Ellen Enright, Romance Linguistics and Literature. Bridging the Straits of Gibraltar: Nationalism, Myth and Gender in Contemporary Peninsular and Maghrebi Literatures.
Rachel Louise Kaplan, Social Welfare. Living with HIV/AIDS in Lebanon: Women's Perceptions of Meaning.
Shawki Ebeid El-Zatmah, History. Aha Gun!: A Social and Cultural History of Soccer in Egypt.
Aaron Michael Moreno, History. Arabicizing, Privileges, and Liturgy in Medieval Castilian Toledo: The Problems and Mutations of Mozarab Identitification (1085-1436).
Liora Russman Halperin, History. Babel in Zion: The Politics of Language Diversity in Jewish Palestine, 1920-1948.
Said Fares Ahmed Hassan, Islamic Studies. Reaching from Within: Establishing a New Islamic Jurisprudence for Muslim Minorities in the West (The Discourse of Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat).
Grace Jeongyeon Park, NELC. The Role of Ki'lm in Orchestrating Contrastive Focus in Biblical Hebrew.
Leila Pazargadi, Comparative Literature. Mosaics of Identity: Reading Muslim Women's Memoirs from Across the Diaspora.
Jennifer Susan Rashidi, Archaeology. Paleoepidemiology of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East: The Impact of Zoonotic Diseases and Population Demographics on Infectious Disease Patterns.
Mariam Medhat Saada, Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Edición y estudio del manuscrito aljamiado-morisco ms. 4963 de la Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid.
Ryan Nathaniel Roberts, NELC. Terra Terror: An Interdisciplinary Study of Earthquakes in Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Hebrew Bible.
Tamar Safratti-Piterberg, History. Les Egyptiens de I'an VI, and the creation of the Descriptions de l'Egypte.
Emily Jane Selove, NELC. The Hikaya of Abu al-Qasim al-Baghdadi: The Comic Banquet in Greek, Latin, and Arabic.
Heba Abdel Halim Sewilam, Islamic Studies. The Jurisprudential Problems of the Early Codification Movement in the Middle East: A Case Study of the Ottoman Mejelle and the 1949 Egyptian Civil Code.
Fiazuddin Shuyab, Islamic Studies. "Who's Better than God to Rule?" An Inquiry into the formation of the First Islamic State (622-32 CE).
Sevan Nathaniel Yousefian, History. The Postwar Repatriation Movement of Armenians to Soviet Armenia, 1945-1948.
Wendy Noel DeSouza, History. Scholarly Mysticism and Mystical Scholars: European and Iranian Intellectuals at the Dawn of Modern Sexuality and Gender.
Ayse Taspinar, Music. Identity and the Ottoman Empire: A Musical Synthesis at the Crossroads of East and West.
Saeid Atoofi, Applied Linguistics. Emotions In the Classroom: Teachers' and Students' Affective Practices in a Persian Heritage Classroom in Los Angeles.
Tamar Marie Boyadjian, Comparative Literature. Bridging East and West: A Study of Crusader Jerusalem in the Literature and Chronicles of the Early Crusades.
Michelle Huntingford Craig, Art History. Space: The Mellah of Fez, Morocco.
Thomas Henry Culhane, Urban Planning. Getting Into Hot Water Problematizing Hot Water Service Demand: The Case of Old Cairo.
Haleh Emrani, History. Marriage Customs of the Religious Communities of the Late Sasanian Empire: An Indicator of Cultural Sharing.
David Meron Gorshein, Theatre and Perfomance Studies. Bursting the Bubble: Queer Performances in the Jewish Diaspora.
Whitney White Kazemipour, Anthropology. Revolutions in Microcosm: Migration, Meaning, and Mothering by Iranian-Americans.
Kyle Henry Keimer, NELC. The Socioeconomic Impact of Hezekiah's Preperations for Rebellion.
Ammar Kahf, Islamic Studies. Syrian Authoritarianism: Persistence or Change.
Simon Nash Kenrick, Art History. Art, Medicine and Propaganda in Antoine-Jean Gros' Bonaparte visiting the plague-stricken at Jaffa, 1804.
John Albert Lynch, NELC. Gilgamesh's Ghosts: The Dead, Textual Variation, and the Mesopotamian Scribal Tradition.
Jason Sion Makhtarian, NELC. Rabbinic Portrayals of Persia: A Study of Babylonian Rabbinic Culture in its Sasanian Context.
Keelan Hall Overton, Art History. A Collector and His Portrait: Book Arts and Painting for Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II of Bijapur (r. 1580-1627).
Leyla Ayse Ozgur Alhassen, NELC. Qur'anic Stories: God as Narrator, Revelation as Stories.
Gulian Siassi, Comparative Literature. Un(der)writing Home: The Politics and Poetics of Belonging in Modern Literatures of Iran and the Maghreb.
Tristan Guy Sturm, Geography. The Future is a Foreign Country: Landscapes of the End of the World and Christian Zionists in Israel and Palestine.
David S. Yoon, History. The Restored Jewish State and the revived Roman Empire: The Transmutation of John Nelson Darby's Dispensationalism into Modern Christian Zionism.
Khodadad Rezakhani, History. Empires and Microsystems: Late Antique Regional Economy in Central and West Asia, 500-750.
Madelyn Mishkin Katz, Education. Defining Leadership for the Reform Rabbinate.
Zachery Adam Lasker, Education. The Camp Counselor as Educator and Role Model for Core Jewish Values and Practices of Conservative Movement.
Max Abrahams, Political Science. The Causes of Terrorism: A Reappraisal of the Conventional Wisdom.
Arshad Imtiaz Ali, Education. Finding Home: Formulations of Race and Nationhood among Muslim College Students in Southern California.
Carine Allaf, Education. An Exploration of Higher Graduation Rates: A Case Study of Women in Jordan.
Azzarina Basarudin, Women's Studies. In Search of Moral Communities of Muslims: Gender Justice, Intellectual Activism and Feminist Politics.
Brenna Reinhart Byrd, Germanic Languages. From Opfer to Gangsta: the Evolving Linguistic Representations of Turkish-Germans in the Media.
Julin Elaine Everett, French and Francophone Studies. The Homoerotics of Empire: Blanc-Noir Desire and Domination in Colonial and Postcolonial Francophone Literature.
Marian Helmy Gabra, Comparative Literature. Ethnic Entanglements: A Comparative Study of Arab American and Chicano Literatures.
William Edward Gordon II, NELC. Cultural Identity of the 25th Dynasty Rulers of Ancient Egypt in Context: Formulation, Negotiation and Expression.
Andrea Herschman, Political Science. The Politics of Oil Wealth Management: Lessons from the Caspian and Beyond.
Seth Corcoran Jameson, Comparative Literature. The Desire for History: Algerian Historical Fiction in the 1980s.
Peter Thacher Lanfer, NELC. Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3:22-24 in Early Jewish Interpretation.
Ann E. Lucas, Ethnomusicology. Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions.
John McCampbell Marston, Archaeology. Evaluating Risk, Sustainability, and Decision Making in Agricultural and Land-Use Strategies at Ancient Gordian.
Susan Marie Mokhberi, History. France and Persia in the Age of Absolutism.
Therí Alyce Pickens, Comparative Literature. The Body Speaks: Interrogating the Material Body in Arab American and African American Literature and Cultural Production.
Lawrence Peter Rubin, Political Science. Why Arab States Fear Islamist Regimes: Threat Perception and Soft Power Politics.
Manija Said, Geography. Reinforcing the 'Sovereign' — A Requisite for Empire?: Interrogating the Geopolitics of US/NATO Intervention in Afghanistan .
Edward McCormick Schoolman, History. Civic Transformation of the Mediterranean City: Antioch and Ravenna, 300-800 CE.
Khanum Shaikh, Women's Studies. New Expressions of Religiosity: A Transnational Study of Al-Huda International.
Zeynep Turkilmaz, History. Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire.
Ramela Grigorian Abbamontian, Art History. Armenian-Americans: Art and Diasporic Identity in Los Angeles.
Nezar Ajaj Andary, Comparative Literature. The Consuming Fever of History: A Study of Five Urgent Flashbacks in Arabic Film and Literature.
Nurullah Ardiç, Sociology. Islam and the Politics of Secularism: The Abolition of the Caliphate (1908-1924).
Lisa A. Blaydes, Political Science. Competition without Democracy: Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak's Egypt.
Robert Raymond Cargill, NELC. The Qumran Digital Model: An Argument for Archaeological Reconstruction in Virtual Reality.
Stephanie Chasin, History. Citizens of Empire: Jews in the Service of the British Empire, 1905-1926.
Jean Louise Murachanian, Art History. Léon Tutundjian: Trauma, Identity, and Modern Art in the Aftermath of Genocide.
Roger Sangburm Nam, NELC. Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings.
Ayman Shabana, Islamic Studies. Customary Implications in Islamic Law: the Development of the Concept of 'urf in the Islamic Legal Tradition.
Henry Sivak, Geography. Law, Territory, and the Legal Geography of French Rule in Algeria: The Forestry Domain, 1830-1903.
Laith A. Ulaby, Ethnomusicology. Performing the Past: Sea Music in the Arab Gulf States.
Walter David Ward, History. From Provincia Arabia to Palestina Terita: The Impact of Geography, Economy, and Religion on the Sedentary and Nomadic Communities in the Later Roman Province of Third Palestine.
We are proud of the Center's affiliated graduate students, who specialize in Middle East and North African topics across a wide range of disciplines, including Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, Archaeology, Art History, Comparative Literature, Education, Ethnomusicology, French, Gender Studies, Geography, German, History, Islamic Studies, Law, Management, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Political Science, Social Welfare, Sociology, Spanish, Theater, and Urban Planning.
UCLA graduate students with Middle East specialties are invited to join the Center's activities. To add your name to our mailing list, send an email message.
The federal government's program of Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) provides fellowships to graduate students with excellent records who plan to pursue a degree in a field designated as an area of national need. The 2015 GAANN grant to UCLA was the first ever awarded for Near Eastern area studies.
Wisam is a UCLA doctoral student in sociology, whose research interests are comparative-historical sociology and political sociology. His work focuses on how religious and secular nationalism have affected state-formation and -reformation in Iraq. He hopes to contribute to an understanding of the difference between religion and ethnicity as principles of organization in politics. Wisam's study will investigate the Ba'th Party Records and the Islamic Fundamentalism Collection, both located at the Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Alessandra is a PhD student in the Art History department, where she studies modern and contemporary Arab art with a focus on Palestine and Palestinians in exile. She is broadly interested in exploring the limitations of event-based historical narratives, questions of figuration and abstraction, and institutional links between Palestinian artists and their European counterparts, particularly in the Eastern Bloc during the latter half of the twentieth century. Her minor field is the history of photography.
Jesse is a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, with research interests in Late Antique and Medieval History, Literatures, Theologies, Liturgies and Manuscripts. He works primarily in Armenian and Syriac, with special attention to those branches of Christianity in their divergence from Latin and Byzantine norms, and how they interrelate and interact in Persian, Arab and Turkish milieus. He also is interested in modern Middle East Christianities and their diaspora communities.
A PhD Candidate in the Department of Education, Billy specializes in Comparative and International Studies in Education. His research interests lie at the intersection of education policy and political development in Turkey and the Middle East. Billy's current research focuses on the role of education policy in Turkey and its impact on both the students' political identities and the state's capacity for international and domestic public diplomacy.
Fredrick is a PhD student in the Department of History, with interests in the Modern Middle East, Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Balkans. His research examines migrations and empire shaping in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Ottoman Empire. He is studying the political and social effects of the large-scale movement and resettlement of refugees from the Balkans into Anatolia and Arab provinces under Ottoman rule.
Evan is a PhD student in UCLA's Islamic Studies Program. His research focuses on the social and religious life in the Mamluk Kingdom in Egypt and Syria. He is studying the ways in which former slaves in Egypt and Greater Syria produced and modeled new forms of religious behavior, particularly through the use of drums in religious rituals and ceremonies. The project aims to understand how a group of powerful outsiders made a lasting mark on the practice of Islam in the region.
Michael is a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, where he is investigating the history and archaeology of the Hittite empire that flourished in Turkey and northern Syria during the second millennium BCE. He has worked as a field archaeologist in the excavations at Tell Tayinat (Turkey), Athienou-Malloura (Cyprus), and Idalion (Cyprus). Michael's dissertation examines queenship and power relations within the Hittite court. Drawing upon the rich array of texts from Hittite archives, he investigates the strategies royal women used to wield political and ideological power, and the ways in which the office of queenship was used to support and legitimize Hittite monarchs.
Nada is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department. Her research interests include gender, development, migration, and social movements in the Middle East, specifically in Egypt.
A PhD student in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Cameron is working with Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl in the field of Islamic law. Cameron's research pertains to the relationship between jurists and their followers. In particular, he is concerned with the role of the latter in interpreting the legal verdicts of the former.


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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Back in the late summer, my friend Steve and I, took the 2.5 hour drive north-eastward on an afternoon out to photograph some Red Grouse. With wildlife photography timing is so important when you trying to obtain particular images and the purpose of our trip was to try and capture some images of the grouse amongst a purple sea of flowering heather. As we took the winding road northwards I had visions of images of grouse emerging from an out of focus purple mist.
As we took the familar track up on to the upland moor, a brief pause was required to photograph a small group of Red legged Partidge purposely moving along the top of a scree embankment.
We continued upwards and when we eventually emerged on to the heather blanketed hilltops it soon became obvious that the images that had been swirling around my head were not going to be fulfilled. Some of the heather was in partial flower but it was certainly a way off being in full bloom.
No doubt the plants had been delayed by the unseasonally cold and wet proceeding weeks. We also hoped that the family groups would have dispersed and there would be quite a bit of terratorial behaviour shown by male birds jostling to establish their territories. However, this was also not to be as before us were small family groups of birds moving through the abundant heather while a male took on sentry duty nearby.
So far our plan was not going very well and it looked our critical timing was out by a week or two too early.
On the brighter side it was good weather with clear skies and there were plenty of grouse about despite being after the official start of the shooting season on the 12th. Given the time of year the birds, as expected, were fairly wary so we used the 'mobile Nissan hide' for most of the photography that day.
Cars are so useful for wildlife photography as many animals do not associate them with people and where the roads allow a close approach can be made without disturbance. You do need to keep an eye open for other road users but fotunately traffic was infrequent at this site. Another thing I often look for as we travelled the tracks is for places where the road dips down below surrounding ground level as it allows for an improved low camera angle.
So we spent the afternoon photographing different groups of Grouse and were looking forward to some wonderful, warm soft end of the day light to illuminate the grouse amongst the heather. The weather looked promising to produce the necessary light as the sky had cleared of some earlier cloud. Well nearly cleared except for one cloud and I am sure you can guess where that, yup right across the line of the setting sun and so the best of the light was lost. This was the last photo before the sun descend by the cloud.
Despite the slight failure in our quest it was an enjoyable session spent in good company, within a magnificcent landscape with plenty of beautiful grouse. So I can't really complain and we even came home with a few photographs.
6 comments:
- Kerri said...
~ Outstanding Series ~
- 4:26 pm
- Nancy J said...
The photos are all stunning, and I like the last one so much, the feathers truly glimmer with that low sun. Lovely contrast with the sharp green,and the heather each side,almost as if the bird posed with this in mind. Cheers from Jean
- 4:55 pm
- holdingmoments said...
Just superb Rich.
Not easy birds to capture; I've tried in Wales. These are excellent. - 6:57 pm
- biobabbler said...
Wow. I'm SO glad you mentioned re: driving into low areas to get to eye-level with the birds 'cause that was the burning question. "Just how tiny was your car??" =) Great shots.
So, apparently, what you call red-legged partridge, we (in the U.S.) call chukar (http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Chukar/id), yes? They are not native here; are they also introduced where you were? The guide says they're from southern Eurasia...
=) While your visions were not realized, I love that you got some family groups. When one normally just sees shots of leks, it's easy to forget they have family dynamics beyond the wooing.
Very enjoyable post, with SUCH lovely views of intriguing, stylish creatures. - 8:08 pm
- Rich Steel said...
Thanks for the comments. The Chakar is slightly different but very similar to the Red legged partridge. These partridges are introduced to the UK and I believe originally came from France. They are attractive looking birds though
- 9:59 pm
- Laura Delegal - Leroy Photography said...
Excellent captures. Each one is great.
- 3:37 am


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Teresa of Avila
Teresa of Avila
The Book of My Life
By Mirabai Starr (Translator); Tessa Bielecki (Foreword by)
New Seeds, Paperback, 9781590305737, 346pp.
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
"A cause for celebration. Captures Teresa's conversational enthusiasm most effectively."—Library Journal (starred review)
"Crisp, contemporary language puts Teresa's famous passion for God in stark relief."—Publishers Weekly
"Mirabai Starr's translation is a work for our time. She has given Teresa a presence and a voice in a modern era. Saint Teresa no doubt chose Mirabai, for her talent with language and Spanish translation is pure genius."—Caroline Myss, author of Entering the Castle and Anatomy of the Spirit
"Mirabai Starr's translation makes totally accessible this most famous (and attractive) saint. The writing has such a delightful sparkle you can't help falling in love with Teresa."—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War
"Saint Teresa of Ávila has long deserved a far wider readership than existing translations have secured for her. She wrote, as she undoubtedly spoke, in an unapologetically vernacular Spanish—idiomatic, vivid, and informal—and Mirabai Starr's rendering is all of that. The clarity and vitality of this new autobiography will bring a whole new generation of seekers into the blessed presence of 'La Madre.'"—Carol Lee Flinders, author of Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics and Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action
"Saints' lives are not always page-turners. But Mirabai Starr´s wonderfully fresh translation of the Vida of Teresa of Ávila captures the passionate spirituality, the talent for intimacy, the frankly fallible humanity that attracted her contemporaries to the woman Starr describes, in her introduction, as 'not an obvious saint.' Tessa Bielecki´s deeply-felt foreword is one inducement among many to take this welcome new translation to heart."—Cathleen Medwick, author of Teresa of Ávila : The Progress of a Soul


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Vehicle must be financed using standard financing terms through the Tulsa Federal Credit Union to qualify for payment offer.. Offer void when 7-day Repurchase Agreement is activated. Offer valid 9/1/16 – 11/30/16. No cash advances. Offer not valid for previous Enterprise purchases or with any other offer. Restrictions apply. 1: APR=Annual Percentage Rate. Rates as low as 1.74% APR are available for up to 60 months on 2015 and 2016 model year vehicles with mileage less than 25,000 from Enterprise Car Sales from 12/1/16 – 1/31/17 and financed through Tulsa Federal Credit Union. 0% down payment required for promotional rate. This is a rate buy down. The amount of the buy down may affect the price of the vehicle. Financing for qualified Tulsa Federal Credit Union members. Not all buyers will qualify. Actual rate may vary based on credit worthiness. Offer valid only on Enterprise Car Sales vehicles purchased 9/1/16 – 11/30/16. This offer cannot be combined with any other offer. Used vehicles were previously part of Enterprise short-term rental and/or lease fleet or purchased by Enterprise from other sources including auto auctions, with previous use possibly short-term rental, lease or other. Photo for illustration purposes only. * Limited Warranty begins on the vehicle purchase date and extends for 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever comes first. Restrictions apply. For details, see an Enterprise Car Sales Manager. ** Enterprise 12-Month Unlimited Mileage Roadside Assistance Package is provided by the American Automobile Association (AAA) and its affiliated clubs in the United States and Canada. *** For a period of seven days after the date of delivery or 1,000 miles beyond the odometer reading at delivery, whichever comes first, the vehicle may be returned for the exact price originally paid minus a $200 documentation and cleaning fee (as allowed by law). Restrictions apply. For details, see an Enterprise Car Sales Manager. The "e" logo, Enterprise and "Haggle-free buying. Worry-free ownership." are trademarks of Enterprise Holdings, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2016 Enterprise Car Sales.


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Tunes, says Felicity Dahl, he knew something about, "although we never went to concerts - he was too tall for the seats. But at home, in an armchair, he adored listening to Mozart, to Brahms and especially to Beethoven - his great passion."
Dahl would surely have endorsed his wife's decision after his death five years ago to make music a major focus of the Roald Dahl Foundation, created to raise money for providing grants in the areas of literacy, haematology and neurology. Tunes stand a better chance with her in charge.
The Christmas period brings the best opportunity yet to assess the Foundation's progress so far. Its aim is the development of a corpus of staged or semi- staged musical works based on Dahl's incomparably incorrigible stories and rhymes.
If, as a parent, you can't cope with the odd fart or the sight of frilly knickers in the new video of Paul Patterson's Little Red Riding Hood... then kindly leave the room. Julie Walters stars both as the street-wise, gun-toting Miss Hood and as her bottle-swigging Grandma in this rhapsody on one of the Revolting Rhymes. Danny DeVito lends his voice to the doomed Wolfie.
The video, already attracting substantial orders abroad, receives a BBC2 screening on New Year's Day. The shorter original (the film has been lengthened for the hour-block-conscious US market) is newly available on CD from EMI. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra have both staged live performances of the piece this month, while the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra presents the latest performance of a second Dahl commission, Eleanor Alberga's Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, at London's Barbican Hall tonight. Both works feature narrator and actor parts interwoven with an orchestral score.
Paul Patterson, composer of Little Red Riding Hood, came to his commission with a diploma in Dahl based on bedtime story-telling at home. "As Dahl knew so well, a young child's attention-span is usually short. So I continually re-assessed the effect my music was likely to have at every given moment. Rhythm and vitality are so important. Then I wanted to provide kids with lots to look at in terms of the orchestration. But I was also keen to keep adults on their toes, so there are quotations from, for example, Wagner and Beethoven - like the Fifth Symphony's fate motif when Miss Hood knocks on Grandma's door."
Both Patterson and Alberga have slipped doses of sterner stuff into their scores. In Patterson's case, there's an occasional flavour of Lutoslawski. Alberga's tunes for Snow-White may be appropriately romantic, "but the music for the wicked stepmother is rather atonal - it suits her evil and complex nature. The jockey - who represents the dwarfs - is given a 12- tone fugue, intertwined with the title-music for the show-jumping on television!"
When it comes to performing the Patterson and Alberga pieces, the Dahl Foundation offers promoters the use of costumes, plus advice on staging and lighting. But the organisation's music guru, Donald Sturrock (a freelance TV director who scripted both Red Riding Hood and Snow-White), is anxious that the works are regularly thought out afresh.
"I say to people, for heaven's sake do something different! Orchestras tend to think, 'Oh, yes, this is how we do this sort of thing,' without using any imagination. But I went to a Red Riding Hood in Freiburg which was absolutely zany, with an incredibly fat old grandmother dressed in a bathrobe, riding a motorbike - apparently very adult, but the kids adored it, because they just love anarchy and subversion. Dahl understood that. It's fascinating to see the pieces translated into different cultures." And, so far, Little Red Riding Hood has charmed her way through Scandinavia, Germany, Holland and Australia.
Felicity Dahl bewails the fact that so often adults demonstrate less spark than children. She was forced to be at her persuasive best, she recalls, to ensure the right atmosphere at Red Riding Hood's London premiere, back in 1992.
"It was a struggle getting the orchestra players to wear green waistcoats to look part of the woodland scene. Then there was a reluctance to put the house-lights down - but, immediately you do that, a child's mind is captured. A teacher said to me that she was worried the kids wouldn't be able to find their way to the loo in the dark - I said they wouldn't want to go to the loo if the lights were down."
The Dahl commissions provide a natural focus for education projects. The Bournemouth Sinfonietta presented Red Riding Hood in Aylesbury earlier this year, the players working in local schools beforehand.
"The children set their own 'revolting rhymes' to music and sang them during the actual performance," explains Martyn Kitson, headteacher of Brill village school. "Our version of Jack and the Beanstalk had the giant marrying Jack's mother and a lottery ticket in place of a goose!"
Liz Leckey, music teacher at Bierton School, says the whole exercise "released imagination in children you'd never have thought of as particularly creative. Our Red Riding Hood came out as Two Deaths and a Suicide!"
The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra knows all about Dahl's magnetism: 14 Red Riding Hood performances scheduled for next February and March in a 1,400-seater hall were "all sold out long ago", says director Jorgen Lindvall. "The hall will become one huge mysterious forest through which the actors move - an unsafe environment, because, after all, the world can be frightening and unpredictable. Maybe there's a touch of Nordic melancholy!"
A Snozzwanger to a Doodlesniff that we're at the tip of a new Dahl iceberg. Three other commissions - all based on Dahl texts - are so far lined up, masterminded by Donald Sturrock. In prospect are a Goldilocks from Austrian composer Kurt Schwertsik (already creator of the children's opera The Wondrous Tale of Fanferlizzy Sunnyfeet), a Cinderella from the Russian Vladimir Tarnapolsky and, most ambitious of all, an opera on Fantastic Mr Fox in which the farmyard thief is subversively cast as hero. American composer Michael Torke's score is set for a Los Angeles Opera premiere in 1997. "I've gone for composers I feel can match the Dahl quirkiness," Sturrock explains. "These must be life-enhancing works, full of wit and humour. The message to each composer is simple - at all costs, don't be boring!"
Prepare not to be bored for years to come. Michael Torke's Fantastic Mr Fox promises performing styles from Gwyneth Jones and Eartha Kitt to the dulcet tones of singing tractors and diggers. Some way down the line there will be a ballet score and goodness knows what else. Forthcoming Hollywood feature films of James and the Giant Peach and Matilda will help jolly things along.
The original stories are a currency worldwide, in dozens of translations from Afrikaans to Russian. Felicity Dahl hopes the future for the music will be just as bright.
"Roald used to say that he could knock on the door of any house in the world and, as long as a child answered the door, he'd be given a cup of tea. My dream is that eventually I can knock on the same doors and discover that somewhere in the house is a recording of Dahl music."
n 'Little Red Riding Hood' will be shown on New Year's Day on BBC2 and is available on video, CD and cassette from EMI
nThe RPO plays 'Snow-White', 7.30pm tonight in the Barbican, London EC2 (0171-638 8891)
- More about:
- Bournemouth
- Horse-Riding
- Roald Dahl
- Young People's Literature


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"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."
Albert Einstein
"Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagernes"
David Hume
"As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible."
William Blake
"The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy."
Harold Russell
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children"
Mark Twain
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice."
"Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt."
William Shakespeare


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Hello kwilder, I'm sorry you're having trouble with your site. When I visited your site, I saw an error related to the configuration file. PHP is sensitive about quotation marks. I added a backslash (\) before the single quote in the text of the public $MetaDesc line to escape the character so that the line doesn't get ended by PHP too early. You should now be able to reach your site and the administrator area. Please let us know if you have any additional questions or need further assistance. Regards, Christi N. |
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Is this restaurant family-friendly?
Is this restaurant wheelchair accessible?
Is this restaurant good for dinner?
Is this a diner?
Is this restaurant appropriate for Kids?
Is this restaurant good for dining on a budget?
Is this restaurant good for breakfast?
Is this an American restaurant?
Does this restaurant have waiters and waitresses?
Are the prices at this restaurant low or inexpensive?
Thanks for helping!
More greasy food than gourmet. But the clientel old and established. A listening booth for the locals
Many regulars frequent this place. All american breakfasts and great hamburgers. Oh, don't forget the milkshakes
It was a cold morning in December when we came in for breakfast, and only the space heaters kept us from being really uncomfortable. The place was nearly full, and with good reason: the food is excellent, and portions are large. I had my usual bacon and eggs, with no complaints. I don't know how the one server kept up... More
Jack's is a very popular place in Des Moines. Some mornings you cannot find a place to sit. Down home atmosphere, old style tables and chairs, old pictures on the walls and it is GREAT! I love to go here and feel comfortable and relaxed with all the regulars. Usually I order the chicken fried steak and eggs, or Eggs... More
I love small diners and wanted to like this place. But after two lackluster breakfasts, I,'ve concluded its more a dive than a diner. So so food, dirty decor, all point to the fact that, sadly, this place is in decline. Skip it.
After checking out Jack's on Saturday morning for brunch, I can honestly say that Jack no longer owns this place. The place was nearly deserted when we arrived which was a bad sign but we decided to give them a chance. There were only 3 people running the entire place. A woman taking orders and waiting tables and taking payments... More
I always eat and bring the family here when I'm in the area. Always love/enjoy their food. Would recommend over Denny's or Ihop.
Feels like a bit of nostalgia, small town diner with your basics. Great place for down to earth breakfast, solid service. Atmosphere is your typical small town cafe/diner, nothing fancy gets the job done!
Great breakfast at a low price. A mom and pop store front without a view. Try it, you will love the food.
After one morning of our hotel's included continental breakfast, it was time to search for real food! Jack's is a hole-in-the-wall restaurant located in a strip mall, so don't expect anything fancy in terms of decor or atmosphere. Breakfast was typical fare; eggs cooked to order with choice of meat or their skillets, which were decent sized with plenty of... More
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Saturday was a day for a party. White carnation corsage pinned, up early for breakfast at the off-track, and hours spent waiting for the most eagerly anticipated moment in recent memory: Smarty Jones breaking from the gate at Belmont, poised to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.
And surely, he broke well. But every horse has his best distance, and for dear Smarty Jones, a mile and a half was too much. Instead of a roar from the crowd as Birdstone nosed ahead, there was a wail of despair. The sound was more like the shriek of watching a car accident unfold than the usual joyous cheers heard at a horse race. In a moment, it was over. Longshot Birdstone had won the Belmont.
All my bets hinged on Smarty. And losing the money didn't sting nearly as much as the thought of the Philly Phenom heading home with his win streak broken.
Some folks at the Belmont filled the same despicable role they did when Empire Maker upset Funny Cide's Triple Crown quest last year … they booed and hissed as Edgar Prado and his mount Birdstone entered the winner's circle, just as they did the year before when the Triple Crown contender was upset.
But Birdstone's owner, Marylou Whitney, was as gracious and admirable as anyone could be … she said how much they all loved Smarty Jones, apologized, and wept. Jockey Edgar Prado reminded all that he was "just doing (my) job." Trainer Nick Zito was poised and professional. A native New Yorker, Zito earned his first Belmont win in 12 attempts on Saturday, and longtime owner/breeder Whitney had won her first classic with a homebred colt. Smarty's loss put a damper on what should have been a glorious day for both.
Deep down, nearly everyone was rooting for Smarty. Jockey Stewart Elliott did all he could, and Smarty ran with his whole heart. Nevertheless, it wasn't enough.
But this is not a time to be sorrowful. There is a silver lining to everything, and the Smarty Saga is no exception.
Since he didn't win the Triple Crown, perhaps it is more likely that Smarty won't be retired to "stud duty" right away. Smarty Jones will be a horse the people can follow for awhile, possibly watching him compete later on this year in the Breeder's Cup at Lone Star Park, and then perhaps even onto his four year old season in 2005.
The Chapmans, who own Smarty Jones, have had the ride of their lives. For Roy Chapman, it couldn't have come a moment too soon. Tethered to an oxygen tank, at 78 he has asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis. He went to Smarty's races in a wheelchair.
Trainer John Servis and jockey Stewart Elliott have become household names, and certainly reserved their respective places in racing history. Even Butterscotch, Servis's 23 year-old lead pony, has his place in American hearts.
Bobby Camac, murdered in 2001, has been vindicated posthumously … the former trainer for the Chapmans encouraged breeding Smarty Jones's dam, I'll Get Along, to Elusive Quality. Without his input, Smarty Jones may never have been born.
That the Triple Crown was not achieved is disappointing, but not devastating. This has been a glorious time for the connections of Smarty Jones, and will not soon be forgotten.
I thought no story could be better than that of the "Sackatoga Six," longtime friends who pooled their funds to buy a horse named Funny Cide, who won last year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness. They traveled with their entourage to view the races in a chartered school bus. When Funny Cide lost the Belmont to Empire Maker, I nearly started to cry. It was such a great story, what a wonderful Triple Crown legend that would have been. It was crushed in seconds.
But this year, I realized last year's tragedy was really okay … because with Smarty Jones, there was an even better story: a horse that ran at Philly Park, who nearly died after fracturing his skull in a starting gate accident. He had an unknown-to-the-masses trainer and jockey, and his owners had sold all their horses, save two. He was one. He became the one.
And yet, the Triple Crown was not his, either.
The stories of these Classic champions keep getting better. Frankly, wondering what the next story will be is somewhat exciting in its own right. And the thousands of stories from the backside of every racetrack across the nation are told every day. Everyone knows a special circumstance, a unique opportunity, a devastating setback, a triumph when all seems lost.
Whose stories will enter the starting gate at next year's Kentucky Derby is yet to be known. But rest assured, there will be a great story or two at the very least.
And as for Smarty Jones? His story isn't over. Perhaps it's just begun.
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Results tagged ' Kevin Jepsen '
Big night for Evans, Willits, Wilson
In the ninth inning of Thursday night's 4-3 win in Boston, as significant a victory as the Angels have produced this season in some respects, three September call-ups were on the field in support of Kevin Jepsen and Brian Fuentes – including the man calling the pitches, Bobby Wilson.
Reggie Willits was in left field, where Juan Rivera had opened the game, and Terry Evans was in right, which had been occupied by Gary Matthews Jr.
Willits dropped a perfect bunt to set up the winning run in the top of the ninth, scored by Evans as a pinch-runner, and Evans squeezed the final out.
Wilson blocked a few balls that could have been trouble and once again handled himself with confidence and poise at the most difficult position on the field.
"That's big for guys like us," said Evans, a graceful athletic with a lean but muscular frame, "to know they have the confidence to put us out there in a situation like that, a big game on the line. It gives us confidence, as well. It's huge."
Evans had another big year at Triple-A Salt Lake alongside Willits and Wilson, as well as Brandon Wood, Sean Rodriguez, Freddy Sandoval, Chris Pettit and the rest of the Bees' formidable lineup. Evans, Wilson and Wood are out of options, meaning they'll either be with the Angels next season or available to other clubs unless they're included in deals.
"Anything we can do to contribute, we're happy," Evans said. "It can be the smallest thing. For us, that's our role here. We have such a great lineup, we know what our roles are. And it's exciting to get a chance to make any kind of contribution."
Evans and Pettit have been used as pinch-runners late in games, freeing Willits for a role he is beginning to master: dropping a sacrifice bunt in conditions far more difficult than any casual fan would realize.
"It's something he's been great at, and it helps if they can hold him back for those spots," Evans said. "Chris can run, and Freddy can run a little bit too. Reggie can do so many things, he's a good guy to have around late in games. Plus, with Bobby catching, they can save [Mike] Napoli for pinch-hitting situations."
Wilson has caught 11 innings this season, his pitchers yielding two earned runs. He made a game-saving, ninth-inning save of a ball in the dirt in Oakland when John Lackey (nine innings) and Fuentes combined for a 1-0 shutout in 10 innings.
Wilson was sent to Salt Lake after that Aug. 4 game, making it a bittersweet day.
"I love it any time I put on the gear and get a chance to play," Wilson said. "We all want to be in there, and it was great that Terry, Reggie and I were all on the field together."
"Especially," a grinning Willits said, his bunt having set up Howard Kendrick's game-winning single, "when we win."
Evans had gone in to run for Rivera after his leadoff walk against Red Sox lefty Billy Wagner.
"With more bench strength, especially pinch-running," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said, "it's a way to infuse some speed into a situation. The baseball experience of the Major Leagues, cutting their baby teeth, is a big step for these younger players. September is important."
Picking up slack for Shields, Arredondo
In the absence of Scot Shields and Jose Arredondo — the two set-up artists most responsible for getting the ball to Francisco Rodriguez for 69 save opportunities last season — the Angels suddenly are getting some consistent production.
Veterans Justin Speier and Darren Oliver and right-handers Jason Bulger and Kevin Jepsen have been solid in the seventh and eighth innings during the Angels' recent run of high-caliber play, primarily against a National League West that the record shows has been the best of the NL's three divisions this season.
Bulger, who worked two scoreless innings to wrap up Friday night's 12-3 decision over the D-backs, has had 20 clean outings — giving up no runs — in his past 23 appearances. The D-backs first-round pick in 2001, Bulger is putting it together this season, finding consistency with his fastball command and his big curveball with an occasional changeup helping keep hitters off balance.
Bulger's ERA is 4.78 — not where he'd like it to be — but that is mainly a reflection of three grand slams he has yielded. Right-handers are batting only .207 against him.
Speier has shaved his ERA to a more respectable 4.33 by yielding only three earned runs across his past 16 innings (1.69). With 19 of his past 25 outings clean, he has stranded seven of eight inherited runners. That's always a good way to enhance your popularity among teammates.
Oliver, as cool as any pitcher in the game, owns a 3.09 ERA after his scoreless inning on Friday night. Going back to last season, the classy lefty has kept the opposition scoreless in 41 of 52 appearances.
Jepsen, who lost his rhythm while experiencing back issues early in the season, appears to be back in a nice groove, with five of his past seven appearances scoreless. It will take him several months to get his 11.81 ERA down to a respectable level, but he appears to be moving in that direction.
Hoping to find consistent form are Rich Thompson and Rafael Rodriguez, a pair of talented right-handers. The stuff is excellent. It's just a matter of putting it together.


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wikiHow to Calculate Distances With a Mil Dot Rifle Scope
Two Methods:BackgroundMeasuring DistanceCommunity Q&A
Mil Dot scopes are optics which allow users to easily calculate distances to a target without fancy equipment. Originally used by submarine periscopes, it has been scaled and re-implemented for military and recreational rifle marksmen to determine distance objects or to allow for bullet drop compensation. Once the basics are learned, calculating distances can be quick and painless using Mil Dots.
1Binocular and periscope Mil Dots are not the same as rifle scope Mil Dots. They measure the same type of angular distance, but is actually 10 Mils instead of only one, which is more suited for marksmen use.
2A Mil is 1-6,175 of a circle. But to simplify calculations, the U.S. military calculates them as 1-6283 of a circle (previously 1-6400 on older scopes). Russian-based scopes are set to 1-6,000 of a circle. This means there is up to a 3% error in distance calculations.
3When looking at Mil Dots through a scope, one Mil is the distance from the center of one dot, to the center of the next dot (not the space between the dots). Each dot is .2mil and the space between the dots is .8mil for the round army type mil dot reticle.
4Mil distances on rear-plane cross hairs on a variable-power scope usually are only accurate at the highest power.
Measuring Distance
1Calculate the distance to the object by multiplying the height (or width) of the object by 1000 then dividing by the number of Mils that the object spans.
- For example: a six foot tall object (2-yards) which is eight Mils in size is 250-yards away. 2 x 1000 / 8 = 250.
2Calculate as accurately as possible, and any "added error" (by yourself) is error in distance that may not be acceptable.
- Sub-divide the Mil Dots as much as possible, and be as accurate in estimating the size of the object as possible.
- The object is five feet (1.67-yards) wide and spans 2.8 Mils is 596-yards away.
- A guess that the object is 2-yards instead of 1.67 would mean the estimation of over 100 yards difference which could mean a hit, or a miss of over five inches with a standard .308.
- To be in the right mindset, calculate sizes of objects to the tenth of a yard (is that 3.4-yards or 3.5?). Calculate the span in Mils also to the tenth of a Mil. Both of these will take practice, but perfect estimations is the only way to get perfect range calculation.
3Use a calculator if needed. Some equations might get pretty complex, and accuracy is key, but the speed of a calculator may also help in some situations.
Community Q&A
Why do you multiply by 1000 in the formula?wikiHow ContributorMil stands for milliradian, so to get it to radians, you must multiply by 1000.
- If you calculate using the size of objects in meters, the distance to the object will be in meters (for that matter, any measurement system will calculate accurately — size of target in inches to inches to target, kilometers to kilometers, fathoms to fathoms).
- Stronger mounted scope also means you will lose sight of your target after the recoil. Less powerful scopes allow you to aim faster, and make quick follow up shots if needed.
- Being able to keep the scope steady will affect how accurately you can measure the span in Mils of the target.
- The Mil Dots can also be used for bullet drop compensation or windage adjustment.
- For better distance calculations you will want to use high-end scopes on a tripod, because mounted scopes can be bulky, or get damaged if you drop the rifle.
- Another formula you can use is (25.4 x inch of target)/mil reading = distance in meters
- Sloppy range estimate comes from sloppy estimation of size of the target and span of Mils.
- Be sure to follow all state and local laws while shooting. Note that many laws on firearms change drastically from state to state, and can even change between counties or even cities.
- Firearms can be very dangerous and even lethal. They should only be used by experienced firearm users or under the direct supervision of an expert firearm instructor.
Article Info
Categories: Rifles
In other languages:
Español: calcular la distancia con la mira mil dots de un rifle, Русский: рассчитать расстояние с помощью прицельной сетки Mil Dot
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Chemistry 1A California State University, Sacramento |
| |||
This section provides easy access to course communication tools. If you are new to electronic communication you might want to review netiquette guidelines on courtesy, common sense, and general rules concerning language use and abuse. Students enrolled in the course will need to subscribe to the class Listserv/Listproc (discussion group). Group discussions using COW (Conferencing on the Web) require a separate logon name and password which will be distributed via e-mail. The Online Meetings are scheduled CHAT sessions (synchronous, real-time communication where everyone's words appear on the computer monitor). To use CHAT you will need to download the appropriate software for your computer. Refer to the UCCS Web page at http://www.csus.edu/uccs/chat/ to download the software. DEPARTMENT / CSUS Page updated:January 20, 2000 |


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Hi, I just got a droid RAZR which was already rooted. It had superuser but thats it. I installed safestrap and made a backup in the non-safe mode. I then went into safe mode and followed all the steps in installing a new ROM, but whenever i try to boot into it it just stays on a black screen. I left it for a good 20mins but still no luck. Any ideas?
What rom are you trying to install. Are you following the steps that are posted of the rom you are trying to install. BLACK screen means you didnt install a rom.
Im trying to install a MIUI ROM found on the xda site. I wipe data and cache, format system, then clear dalvik cache, then install the zip. I tried with a few other rome as well but still no luck.


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Burger Fest & Balloon Rally
August 11, 2017 - August 12, 2017
SeymourWitness "The World's Largest Hamburger Parade," get your fill at the hamburger eating contest, take the plunge on the ketchup slide and check out the complete burger memorabilia collection at the Seymour Community Museum. Events also include a car show, motorcycle charity ride, bun run, kid's activities, parade(Sat 11am) and live music. Hot air balloons will ascend around 6 p.m. both Friday and Saturday evenings with a balloon glow to follow at dusk each night. On Saturday and Sunday morning, hot air balloons will ascend around 6 a.m. All flights are weather permitting. Hot air balloon rally free, admission for Burger Fest.
Event Date Detail
Aug 11, 2017 - Aug 12, 2017
Fri night Balloon Rally 4-9pm, Balloon Ascension 6pm, glow at dusk, Sat Home of the Hamburger Festival on Depot St noon-9pm, Balloon Ascension 6am.
Fair/Festival Type
- Food & Drink
Adventure Sports Activities
- Hot Air Ballooning


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Shaboom! - Parenting Page
Spilled cereal? "Sorry!" Broken bongos? "Oops!" Overturned plant? "Sorry!" Stolen comic book? Accusations fly and tears fall as the cloud playhouse and Plony home confront the chaos of careless apologies and misplaced blame. A laser beam trap and giant basketball magically help Rafi and Ben learn that sometimes just saying sorry isn't enough.