text:
: yunho/changmin | pg-13
: yunho adopts himself a zombie
was supposed to be for the homin comm's halloween fic contest last year. it got out of hand and i lost steam. :(
Yunho adopted a zombie against all better judgment screaming, "You're a fucking idiot! He's going to eat your fucking brains!" But trust was the key to all relationships, and Changmin didn't seem to have any interest in him or his internal organs. So, Yunho took him home.
Yunho met him while he was on his way home from work, smelling of tomato sauce and Junsu's secret family recipe smeared across the bridge of his nose to his left temple. Changmin was slumped against a tombstone in the cemetery picking at a fingernail caked with dirt. Yunho thought they both needed a bath, and maybe that they were the same type of lonely people; except, you know, Changmin wasn't really a person anymore.
"Are you lost?" Yunho asked as he leaned over the railing to the cemetery, fingers gnarled around the twisted black frame.
The other shook his head still focused on his muddy fingertips. "No." Then, as an afterthought, "I just really have a shit load of fun hanging out with dead people all night."
"Oh." Yunho assumed he looked entirely baffled, and the man on the ground must have thought it was funny because he was smiling slightly now. "Are you an orphan?"
His brows furrowed in thought, as if Yunho baffled him, which he probably did. "I'm a zombie."
That's where his better judgment first started kicking in, the hairs on his arms raising with every second the other's stare seemed to be on him. Yunho always had a problem hearing that tiny voice that usually let him know when he was getting in over his head.
"So you're an orphan zombie?"
He smiled a bit wider then, head inclining to the side and his hair falling in dirty clumps across his forehead. "Something like that."
Yunho nodded as if their conversation was a normal one you'd have on the streets with a stranger. He rubbed his jaw where the makings of facial hair had already appeared, and he could feel the tomato-and-basil-surprise concoction still present along his hairline. Well, he thought as he stood there rocking on the balls of his feet, at least it wasn't the worst first impression he'd ever given.
"I need to wash this off me," he said a bit begrudgingly motioning quickly to his soiled attire, a frown on his face and his hands reverting back to his pockets. He started walking back down the broken pavement that made up the sidewalk before halting and going back to his previous post at the fence. Changmin seemed amused. "I'll see you around, right?"
The zombie stared back at him, practically through him, and then nodded. "Yeah, I'll see you."
Yunho grinned, walking backwards as his heart rate sped up and raced like a runaway train. The tiny voice in the back of his head quieted down until it could be heard faintly murmuring, "You're an idiot, and you never listen to me. I feel like a neglected girlfriend you bastard."
The first person he talked to about the whole situation was his best friend in the entire living world - because he was sure that his new zombie friend would be his best friend in the, well, nonliving world. Jaejoong wasn't always the most sensible, but he was the easiest to talk to and offered his own version of impartial advice, that much Yunho was thankful for.
"So," he started smoothly, hand on the marble countertop of the kitchen's island. Jaejoong's face remained bored, annoyed that there was nothing better to do at five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. Except get laid, and Yunho was currently cramping his style. "What would you do if you met a zombie?"
"Blow his fucking brains out," Jaejoong answered without a moment's hesitation, and Yunho fancied the thought of Jaejoong already having met a zombie before. "Simple."
Yunho blinked, biting at his bottom lip. "But what if he was friendly - you know, like Casper except he's a zombie instead of a ghost." Jaejoong's facial expression had yet to waver; Yunho flailed. "And he's cute."
"Well," Jaejoong glanced up at the swirls in the ceiling's plaster, musing Yunho's random topic further. "I'd probably have dirty, dirty sex with him," Yunho's face fell, perturbed, "and then I'd shoot him in the head."
Yunho blanched. "You're disgusting." He gathered his notebook of questions in his hands and stuffed it back into his messenger bag, clearly not receiving the answers he wanted. "You're no help. I'm asking Yoochun."
"Good luck finding answers there!" His shout fell in time with the sound of the door slamming.
So it turned out that Yoochun's advice sucked about as much as Jaejoong's did.
"Give him to the zoo?"
Yunho blinked a couple times with his face scrunched in mild confusion. "What the hell? He's not an animal, Yoochun."
Yoochun glanced down to his fingernails. He'd painted them green in honor of his new "go green" attitude. Make love not war, hug trees, something like that. Yunho hadn't cared because he knew that Yoochun's new lifestyle would end within a week and he'd be back to his purple phase.
"Maybe the museum could do something with him or a research facility, you know, like in Resident Evil," he stated with a wave of his hand, ignoring the way Yunho's expression darkened with his suggestions. "What? You're the one that wanted my advice, and this is clearly a hypothetical situation anyway, so why worry."
"But," he paused, unsure of how to explain the lonely begin in the cemetery, "what if this were a real life zombie living in our town and only a few blocks away from where we are right now."
Yoochun's smile wore away into a shocked expression. Then his lips curved into a frown. "We'd blow his brains out!"
"That seems kind of cruel considering he hasn't done anything."
"It's a zombie-eat-human-brain world out there," he remarked flippantly. Yunho rolled his eyes. "And I'd rather it be his brains, you know, as opposed to mine."
Yunho resisted the urge to tell Yoochun that he didn't have any brains to be eaten anyway.
Junsu wasn't supposed to hear about these questions. But he said he heard it through the grapevine, meaning Yoochun.
"I thought I was your friend, too." Junsu huffed, folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight from one Converse-clad foot to the other, clearly pissed off. "Doesn't my opinion matter?"
"Not in the slightest," Yoochun chimed in from the living room with a bottle of green-apple flavored Kool-Aid tucked between his thighs, mouth full of popcorn. Jaejoong sat beside him with one foot in the floor and the other behind Yoochun's spine, letting his best friend toss kernels into his open mouth.
"Get a room!"
Jaejoong grinned, slow and sleazy, and it sent tingles up Yunho's spine. "We already have this one, but thanks for offering."
Junsu rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his windswept brown hair to try and tame it. Jaejoong said he looked like he just got gangbanged by bikers, a comment that went ignored for the most part with the exception of a crude finger gesture from Junsu.
Yunho slung his left arm over Junsu's slighter frame, resting his chin on the other's shoulder, and sighed. "Well, after the answers I got from these two douchebags, I gave up on wondering, really." Junsu turned those brown eyes of his on Yunho, and regardless of how small they were, they still scared the shit out of him at times when leveled with a glare. "But what would you do in case there happened to be a zombie in town?"
Junsu winked at him, shrugging out of the loose embrace. "I'd definitely want the epidemic to spread. How badass would it be to have a zombie apocalypse?"
Yunho faltered in an attempt at speaking against this idea, and Yoochun and Jaejoong were too busy immersed in their soap operas to much care for anything Junsu ever said. Besides it would be kickass to have an influx of the T-virus to take over the world, kind of like those movies where there's always a group of heroes that have fucking awesome guns. Yunho would like to have gun.
"Very badass, Junsu."
So that was how Yunho found himself with a pile of video games and DVDs regarding the matter at hand. He'd played fifty-six hours of nonstop Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead, moving on to Silent Hill just because it seemed fitting. He watched all the classic films from Dawn of the Dead to White Zombie. He even threw in the Stepford Wives because he imagined it related to the matter at hand in some way, and Yoochun's inner feminist wouldn't approve of the film.
He thought of guts and glory and badass machine guns. Exploding heads and staggered walks. Peeling skin and teeth meant for tearing flesh from others. He thought of everything that made zombies so popular to begin with.
Then he thought of Changmin.
He repeated the whole process once more starting from number one.
"So." Changmin lifted those black eyes to him, small smile evident in the faint stream of light provided by the streetlights, or maybe it was a trick of the light and the way Yunho seemed content in his presence. He leaned onto the railing, wanting to be closer to observe Changmin in every possible way. "You don't seem like most zombies, so in that sense, I have to wonder if you're, like, a Stephenie Meyers' version of a zombie."
"I don't really know who the fuck that is," Changmin replied monotonously as he shrugged and glanced back to the wearing away of his shoes. When he sensed that Yunho was going to explain he simply said, "and I really don't give a fuck as to who that is either."
Changmin was beautiful in that eerie kind of way, dark brown hair falling in clumps over his forehead, matted with grime and dirt, and his eyes were as black as the sky hanging over their heads. The glimmer of life was not present. There was nothing at all except a dead boy with a nonexistent pulse. His body was frail, skin an ashen grey, and Yunho wondered if some of the muscle tissue had begun to wear away until the brightest white of bone was all that was left beneath his tattered clothes. Yunho felt his stomach flutter with something akin to butterflies, but he brushed it off as nerves skittering from being so close to someone so potentially dangerous.
Yunho likened himself to an elderly lady and Changmin as a shady character nearby. But then he thought that that was the most stupid thing to associate themselves with in the world. More like a really hot girl with big boobs and a creepy pervert that lingered in the shadows. He liked that one better.
"I," Yunho paused, gestured between them, "I like you," Changmin raised his head in confusion, nails no longer interesting nor the peeling skin at his knuckles. "I mean, you seem really cool even if you're dead, and I just don't want you to use me."
"In what way would I possibly want to use you? Really."
Yunho faltered, blinked, and answered, "You could be pretending to be the atypical zombie, but really you're just waiting for me to let my guard down so that you can harvest my intestines or whatever you find incredibly kinky and tasty… something like that." He frowned and Changmin mimicked the gesture. "A relationship like that can't end well."
Changmin stood from his sitting position, stepping closer to Yunho's still frowning figure, and said, "First off, do you know what kind of shit goes through your intestines? I'm not fucking with that. Secondly, if I'd wanted to eat you, I would've done so already because I see no point in fucking around while hungry." Changmin leered and Yunho's pulse rate hammered heavily, practically beating through his abdominal cavity and straight into Changmin's hands. "You aren't really my type."
"Oh, well in that case," Yunho smiled again, reaching for Changmin's fingers and tugging them gently, "would you like to come and live with me?"
And when he smiled like that, it was hard to say no. But, then again, Yunho probably would have taken him anyway.
Changmin adapted himself easily to this new lifestyle. Of course, he'd disappear sometimes, maybe off to find food, but Yunho waved it off as unnecessary to ask and just because they were living together did not mean that they had to know what each other was doing every second of every day. Definitely not.
His apartment was small; one bedroom and one bathroom, a kitchen off to the side with a table in the middle, a decent sized living room with a few select pieces of furniture. He had offered his bed to Changmin, saying that he was the guest and that it would be impolite not to offer. Changmin was more comfortable on the couch, or so he said, knees bent over the armrest and one arm dangling over the edge. He didn't look comfortable to Yunho, but Yunho wasn't a zombie so he really couldn't pass judgment.
When Changmin had stumbled upon Yunho's Confidential: Zombie Training Manual he had merely raised an eyebrow to Yunho's embarrassed flailing, flipping through the pages with a small smile on his face.
"Is this really how I'm viewed?"
Yunho faltered and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, swaying from one foot to the other. "The general public is very close minded. I'm sure they'll come around one day."
"Bad reputations are hard to break away from."
"Well," Yunho hummed in thought, taking back his confidential files and hoping Changmin didn't see the really stupid doodled hearts all over the page with his name on it. He smiled at him like he was worth the world and said, "They just need time to see you for what you are!"
"A zombie that has a diet consisting of human flesh and brains?"
He bristled, eyes widened to an extent Changmin found almost comical, and he took Changmin by the shoulders, panicked. "You're more than that! You're good." He could not stress that enough by mere words so he shook Changmin a little, hands tightened on bony shoulders.
And Changmin just shook his head, dark eyes black and cold as they lingered on Yunho's lips for the briefest of moments, and he stepped away. Yunho fiddled with his shirt's hem, nervous under that blank stare.
"Have fun explaining that to the rest of the world."
Yunho was usually a straightforward person. There was no point in beating around the bush, and honesty was always the policy; or, whatever shit his mother had said at some point during his childhood. He didn't like hiding things from his friends, especially Jaejoong because he had large arms and knew how to place a direct hit to his solar plexus.
But coming out about Changmin was difficult, considering the advice his friends had given him prior to him taking a zombie home.
"Your friend looks like he's in need of a doctor," Jaejoong observed from the couch, peering at Changmin through blond highlights. Jaejoong twisted the lock of hair around his finger, flicking his gaze back to his awkward best friend. "Or a mortician."
Yunho laughed. Nervously. Changmin glanced at him from his place on the chair to the left of the entertainment center. Jaejoong's right eyebrow disappeared into his hairline.
"Haha." He fidgeted and threw an arm around Jaejoong, nuzzling his nose into his neck. Jaejoong was not amused, pinching Yunho's side until he removed himself. "You're so funny, Jaejoong. Changmin just gets sick easily, that's all."
"Then he should be under better care than this."
Yunho looked affronted. He shoved Jaejoong's shoulder with both his hands. "I'm taking care of him. He's happier here! Isn't that right, Changmin?" Said person, or zombie, just nodded, engrossed in the way the television seemed to soften out their features. Yunho smiled, victorious. "See? He's fine."
"He looks dead." He bit his bottom lip. "Or, at least like he's dying." He turned his attention back to Yunho, twisting his fingers in his scarf. "Where did you meet?"
Yunho, without thinking, said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "The cemetery, where else would you find a zombie?"
"Holy shit, Yunho!" Jaejoong clambered off the couch and stumbled into the wall, chest heaving and fingers pointing accusingly. "What the hell were you thinking? A fucking zombie, you're out of your damn mind!"
Yunho tried to calm him, but from a distance, waving his hands around frantically. "He's a good zombie, though! You know, with a kind heart -"
"That's a lie, technically," Changmin corrected from the chair, raw pieces of chicken he had found in Yunho's fridge littering the coffee table before him. "I don't have a heart."
Yunho chose to ignore him.
"He hasn't eaten my brains yet!"
Jaejoong sighed, exasperated. "That's because you don't have any to begin with!" He pulled at the ends of his scarf, tossing wary glances at Changmin who refused to move away from his place on the chair. "He could be waiting for the right moment to strike."
"I trust him," Yunho said with a small smile and slight shrug of his shoulders. "It would mean something to me, as my best friend, if you tried to get along with him as well."
Jaejoong frowned. He folded his arms over the white of his t-shirt, shoulders and elbows stiff from the fabric of his beige jacket. "You're using the friend card against me. I never thought you capable of being so low; I blame Junsu for all this, encouraging you like that." He looked down, smiling into his chest. "Whatever, but I'm not happy about this."
Yunho grabbed him by the wrist, lingering over the pulse, and grinned. "You'll get over it."
Explaining to Yoochun and Junsu hadn't been too hard. They had taken it fairly well, and they were more interested in knowing everything about Changmin as opposed to destroying what was left of his flesh, much to Jaejoong's dismay.
"So," Yoochun asked with a large grin on his face, slinging an arm around the back of the couch, barely brushing against Changmin. Yunho huffed. "Do you ever masturbate? Have sex? Are you afraid your dick will fall off?"
"Why the sudden interest in my dick?" he asked instead, and Junsu choked on the herbal tea that he'd demanded be placed in Yunho's fridge in case he ever visited which was all the time. The freeloader.
Yoochun twitched in his seat, considering what he'd say next, before shrugging. "It just seems like it'd be difficult to pull off without losing a limb."
Changmin's eyes fluttered, still dark and dead; Jaejoong said that they freaked him out the most. "Then I guess I'd have to be very careful wouldn't I?"
Yoochun patted his back in understanding, a concerned expression on his face as he tried his hardest to relate. Junsu threw his slipper at Yoochun's shoulder, missing and hitting his cheek instead. Changmin rolled his black eyes to Yunho who just smiled behind the rim of his coffee mug, eyes crinkled at the corners and fingers tapping on the ceramic. Changmin blinked away with a scowl.
Then Yoochun sobered up once again, hand clamped over Junsu's mouth, as he straddled him with his knees to either side of Junsu's hips. His curious eyes remained on Changmin.
"Wait, what would you do if your dick did fall off?"
Somewhere, caught between the weeks they spent together, Changmin became restless, eyes always a hull and fingers constantly twitching. Yunho would try to touch his shoulder and only succeed in having his hand brushed off harshly.
"I don't know what to do," Yunho whined to Jaejoong, perched precariously on the edge of his bed, the hole in his left sock serving as his only source of amusement due to Changmin's sudden bout of anger.
Jaejoong sighed on the other line, a spoon clinking against a glass sounding over it. "You know what they say about caged birds needing to be set free."
"He's not a bird." Yunho paused and wiped his palms over the rounding of his knees, phone cradled in an awkward position against his jaw. "Actually, he doesn't seem too fond of birds."
"And why's that?"
Yunho rubbed at his forehead, tired and not at all ready to remember what he had found in his bathtub the day before. "He leaves their carcasses in the bathroom."
He really didn't blame Jaejoong for ending the call there.
a/n: i wish i finished this :( oh, well. anyway, i'm posting it here regardless! better to be shared in time for the holiday spirit than gather virtual dust on my computer. ♥ i hope you enjoyed this much at least, and have a great time on halloween!
to dongbangsuju20 lj hates me and i just got your recent messages it seems. i'm replying to them now if you're wondering! and working on your yoosu :) ♥


text:
Eleven-year-old Peter Els hears the last movement of Mozart's Jupiter symphony for the first time:
The shuffled half scale gathers mass; it sucks up other melodies into its gravity. Tunes and countertunes split off and replicate, chasing each other in a cosmic game of tag. At two minutes, a trapdoor opens underneath the boy. The first floor of the house dissolves above a gaping hole. Boy, stereo, speaker boxes, the love seat he sits on: all hang in place, floating on the gusher of sonority pouring into the room.
Five viral strands propagate, infecting the air with runaway joy. At three and a half minutes, a hand scoops Peter up and lifts him high above the blocked vantage of his days. He rises in the shifting column of light and looks back down on the room where he listens. Wordless peace fills him at the sight of his own crumpled, listening body. And pity for anyone who mistakes this blinkered life for the real deal.1
Early in this novel, Richard Powers introduces us to the ecstasy available to some people who open themselves to art. The passage actually continues to cover several more minutes of Peter's mystic experience, but at the end, we learn something else about such ecstasy: you cannot regain it by replaying the music. For Peter, this effect comes only from the originality and newness of the experience. Orfeo explores the joy of discovery that can be found in both art and nature. We see gradations of pleasure felt both at understanding and creating. However, such pleasures are circumscribed and opposed by patterns of human meaning-construction and human behavior. Cognitively, we "understand" something by fitting it into a known pattern, and we frequently respond to situations by trying to exert control or force. This opposition of force and ecstasy lies at the heart of this novel.
In the past, most of Powers's novels argue that we should study art or nature so deeply that we can revel in wonder at discovering things that are new to us.2 This can be in scientific research (The Gold Bug Variations), in virtual reality artwork (Plowing the Dark), in music (The Time of our Singing), or in the sheer wonder of life (Generosity). He treats that profound joy as the emotion about which we should reorganize our lives and culture, rather than pursuing the transient and meaningless pleasures of consumerism.
The alternative to ecstasy that Powers usually offers is service: we among the fortunate few should devote ourselves to bettering conditions for the majority who lead damaged and tragically limited lives.3 His social vision is extremely bleak and angry. As Operation Wandering Soul puts it, "the species is clinically psychotic. Pathetic, deranged, intrinsically, irreversibly mercury-poisoned by nature, by birth… Mental thalidomide cases, every last mother's son, as far back as accounts take things" (165). The suffering may come from natural problems (disease), but more often Powers explores racism, war, economic oppression, pollution, and eagerness to exploit scientific study for profit. Even art, as created in Virtual Reality in Plowing the Dark will be exploited by the Military. In Orfeo, concern with oppressed people does flare up over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians at Waco in 1993 (and their historical forerunners at the 1534 Siege of Münster), but they are not prominent throughout. Overall in this one novel, Powers shifts his moral focus away from the dreadful sufferings endured by most of the world's population. As the title Orfeo suggests, music ostensibly takes center stage.
Powers pays particular attention to novelty and to our drive to impose known pattern on anything new. Novelty represents the source of that wonder and joy.4 Pattern is what we impose on all novelty to explain it to ourselves. Give us a new animal or plant and we assign it a genus and species. In doing so, we destroy some of that thrilling newness, and therefore lose some potential pleasure. True, we enjoy discovering how the new item fits a known pattern, and neurocognitively, we survive because of our brain's ability to identify pattern, so pattern is necessary, not an evil in itself; Powers does not create a false binary opposition. However, relying too heavily on pattern can deaden our responses to things observed, particularly in art.5
Beyond novelty and pattern lies power or force or control, the dangerous cluster of closely related terms in this novel's politics. We see power or force exercised when something new and unusual is forced to fit an inappropriate pattern, as when Peter Els is forced to fit the popular idea of a bioterrorist. In The Gold Bug Variations, scientist Stuart Ressler essentially discovers DNA but backs off and gives up science. He argues against the genetic engineering that he foresees, saying, "It's not science. Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery" (411). "The point of science was to lose ourselves in the world's desire" (413). In Orfeo, Powers shows us this interplay of force and wonder in art, and gives us a new version of his angry politics, but he encases it in an Orphic pattern. When we recognize this compositional tactic of meshing the unpalatable with the well-known and cherished, we will see more clearly the failings of his protagonist, Peter Els, who tries to force his audiences to accept new music, something that seems to them unpatterned and therefore indigestible. We will also see the failings of surveillance society when dealing with an unusual but harmless citizen who does not fit known patterns.
Els is a composer of avant-garde music. Indeed, he has succeeded in focusing so intently that he has achieved transcendent moments of wonder and ecstasy in three forms: in his family life, in music, and in science. Since his marriage ends in divorce, let me deal with that brief interlude. Els's source of wonder is his baby daughter. He and she compose on her toy piano and xylophone, and he marvels when she uses the colors on her xylophone keys and spaces between alphabet blocks to create a system of notation, a readable pattern (186). Wonder enfolds him that she does this only a few dozen months away from herself being a single cell. Without prompting, she invents the very idea of notation. He lost that relationship with his daughter and the wonder it generated when his wife divorced him. She was tired of supporting him, and irritated by his refusal to compromise his musical ideals and take a job teaching traditional compositional values and patterns in some local university.6
Music is Els's earliest and primary source of ecstasy. Thanks to his experience with Mozart, he makes novelty unconstrained by expectations the key to his philosophy as a composer. What he wanted to produce in his audiences was awe, surprise, suspense, refreshment, sense of the infinite, fear, change, and beauty (346). Most listeners can no longer derive that from the often-heard classics, so Els thinks to produce it through the unanticipatable sounds that do not obey old rules of form, genre, and pattern. He studies research done on the physiological responses to sound—how some intervals literally make us sad, others, happy; "a six-chord sequence could chill a soul or make it see God" (332).7 He also ponders the political repression of music in the case of Shostakovich and Stalin, and "that endless need to legislate sounds" through history (282).8 Els wants to tap into those musical powers and use them to bring pleasure, but his avoidance of recognizable pattern in his composing reduces his ability to pass these joys on to others.
Els is similarly thrilled by his scientific studies, particularly when they remind him of music. "To Els, music and chemistry were each other's long-lost twins: mixtures and modulations, spectral harmonies and harmonic spectroscopy. The structures of long polymers reminded him of intricate Webern variations" (57). He enjoys learning that people are making music from fractals, the digits of pi, the solar wind, voting records (330). "Brain waves, skin conductivity, and heartbeats: anything could generate surprise melodies. String quartets were performing the sequences of amino acids in horse hemoglobin" (330–331). "Genomics was right now learning how to read scores of indescribable beauty. Els just wanted to hear, before the light in his tent went out" (143). Like Singularity's prophet Ray Kurzweil, who sees computational power in every atom of a piece of granite, Els senses that all Nature is something we should learn to listen to rather than just exploit. A dog splashing in a duck pond produces ripples that "contained enough data to encode an entire opera" (331). He heard "soundtracks extracted from DNA" on the radio (333), and he realized that DNA was the "one durable medium" (333). By coding some sequence—anything—into a bacterium, he will produce a scientific and musical novelty that enchants him, and it will arguably intrigue some future student of that bacterium.
New York Times reviewer Jim Holt eloquently argues that Els's altering DNA for artistic reasons is obscene. The practice, however, has become commonplace, and I detect no revulsion in Powers's description.9 DNA carries enough junk that the music evidently can ride along harmlessly. Els is, after all, creating a new form of art, and many aspects of art involve imposing force of sorts, whether mining and grinding compounds for colored paints, melting ore and casting metal, or shaping landscape in Land Art, as Robert Smithson did in his "Spiral Jetty" or Michael Heizer is doing in his "City." Powers seems to distinguish between using such force for commercial exploitation and enrichment of the creator or industry as opposed to creating art for future viewers to wonder it. Els is not trying to enrich himself, and were he to stumble across something exploitable, he might, like Stuart Ressler, quit science, or switch to something with less applicable potential. At what point force becomes unethical is arguable, but Powers does not seem to be disturbed by Els's tinkering.
Pattern is what Els struggles against in his music, and we might wonder why. He is not personally a law-breaker. His upbringing was conventional, and his one tiny act of teen rebellion (refusing to come when called) seemed to contribute to his father's dying of a heart attack, so one might expect him to shrink back into safe obedience. All of Els's musical impetus, however, goes toward rebelling against the old and creating something new. His most successful work is an opera about the Siege of Münster, in which a religious splinter group desperately seeks transcendence through new forms of worship and governance, and is massacred by the surrounding rulers in the name of political and religious orthodoxy. To him, discovery of the new brings variations on ecstasy, transcendence, and wonder, whether in science or art or religion. What bothers him is the human determination to make everything fit into familiar patterns.
Els admits late in life that listeners cannot learn to love just anything. He finds that most people are best satisfied with known patterns. Els's brother and boyhood friends once tied him down and forced him to listen to popular music, but where they think that no finer music exists, Els can only hear "harmonic jail" in the boringly simple bass chords (20). Similar resistance would arise for a fan of Finnegans Wake being forced to read a Harlequin Romance; the formulas leading to predictable resolution do not interest someone with sophisticated tastes. Many challenging novels exist, however, between those extremes, and Els seems blind to the potential that an equivalent musical middle ground would offer for educating his audience to relish his preferred kind of music. Evidently, most of us respond to music much the way we do to scientific phenomena; we want to fit both into patterns we have already learned. We may not need to label something a concerto or a septet, but we want to know that this kind of tonal combination will lead to that sort of resolution. Lacking an audience that can listen the way Els himself does, he opts for the novelty of inscribing music into DNA.10
Powers introduces another factor into this apparent war between novelty and pattern and the effects of force. Whereas Els wants ecstasy, that experience has its opposite in anguish. Els is highly susceptible to anguish. Many Powers protagonists are cripplingly sensitive to the suffering of others. Els does not show this trait to the same extent as "Rick Powers" of Galatea 2.2 or Richard Kraft of Operation Wandering Soul, but his sensitivity flares up just as his operatic collaboration with Richard Bonner approaches opening night. The U.S. Government attacks the Branch Davidian compound at Waco and shoots and burns alive a religious group rebelling against orthodox patterns in order to seek transcendence. Els does his best to close the opera down, revolted at what he considers the ghoulish interest that will bring opera-goers to see it specifically because Waco has happened. He does not want to feed their appetite for a horror that feels comfortable because it befalls folks who are not like Metropolitan Opera goers. While he cannot prevent its initial brief run, he refuses to let other opera houses put on productions, a refusal that completely baffles and infuriates his collaborator Bonner, for whom this is also the most effective creation of his life. Bonner is "pure energy" (197), and that energy fuels Els when the two manage to work together. Bonner is also madcap and vicious, and their previous collaboration ended with the drunken Bonner saying that Els's music is only "steamy, creamy, lovely shit" (217). Els gives up composing after their opera disagreement, and his eventual turn to biogenetics lets him compose in a new register. If science and music are somehow twins in his mind, he shifts from one to the other after anguish has made him give up on music.
Force emerges as a key issue toward the end of the novel. Els's grotesquely inept people-skills are misinterpreted by the police. They force on him the label bioterrorist, and he finds himself being hunted by the irresponsible press and gun-happy troopers. The press never retracts stories when they are found to be incorrect, so public hysteria rises. He has few options. He could arrange a quiet surrender and spend the rest of his life and all his money trying to clear his name, and then die penniless and forgotten. His daughter wants him to go this route. After all, Els is guilty of nothing except taking a trip and seeing family and friends when he was warned to stay available in his hometown. What he has done with the bacterium is not illegal. More sinisterly, if he decided to enter the clutches of the law, he would probably be judged guilty and imprisoned, no matter how harmless his activities. The legal system does not resist hysteria very well. Alternatively, he can take Bonner's enthusiastic advice and produce "Killer Theater" (338). Bonner always wants the most dramatic and anarchic actions. Bonner glories in the idea of "Music to panic a whole country" (345). "You have to do this. The largest audience for an experimental piece in history" (347). After releasing tweets to gather a following, Els follows Bonner's advice.
Because of his status as composer and the novel's title, we automatically link this end to the Orphic pattern of sparagmos or dismemberment by a mob. Had Orpheus lived to a ripe old age in connubial bliss (or single, or married for a second time), his legend would not be all that well known. Its dramatic, violent, bloody ending somehow makes his life more valuable, and his oracular role makes it mysterious as well. After all, both Odysseus and Aeneas deal with the underworld, but those episodes are comparatively obscure. The sparagmos intensifies the value of Orpheus and his skills—by robbing us of them. What makes this ending to Els's life meaningful is that it becomes a protest against the government's misuse of power, a protest, however, that necessitates Els's own death.
The Orphic Framework
The tension between novelty and pattern also plays out in Powers's decision to use the very well-known Orpheus story as template for his plot, and thus he imposes such a pattern on someone who hates such pattern. The myth is easier to discuss than Els's music, since readers cannot hear that. Orpheus's story consists of five basic mythemes, and my starting with that statement shows the usefulness of pattern. Without such a framework, I could wander back and forth between the novel and myth, calling attention to possible parallels, but with the pattern, identifying those likenesses is much easier. Pattern lets one build an argument or make a case. These five mythemes or plot situations have appealed to later writers: Orpheus's musical power that extends beyond humans to animals and all nature; his descent into Hades for Eurydice and his return; his invention of homosexuality; his dismemberment or sparagmos at the hands of the maenads; and his head becoming an oracle until silenced by Apollo. Different mythemes have been popular in various ages.
Orpheus's ability to enchant animals and more generally his power over nature as well as humans has been traced in literature since the Renaissance by Elizabeth Sewell in The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History. Powers nods to this motif when he explores animal consciousness of music through Els's dog Fidelio.
If Els held a D, the dog went to E-flat or E. If Els moved to Fidelio's pitch, the dog slid a semi-tone up or down. If a human chorus held a chord, the dog sang a note that wasn't in it. Whatever pitches the pack served up, Fidelio found one that hadn't yet been taken.
In the creature's howling, Els heard the roots of music—the holy society of small discord. (8)
Els wants to understand what Fidelio is doing and why. He knows of other musical dogs, including Wagner's spaniel, which would howl at passages it didn't like in Tannhäuser until Wagner changed them. Els proves that Fidelio hears octave intervals as we do. He admires her focus on the instant: "Not for her, the insatiable need for novelty. She never tired of warhorses, but neither did she recognize anything Els played her, however often she heard it. A permanent, moving dance, in an eternal Standing Now" (9). If humans could temporarily achieve that focus on the instant, they might reach the sublime, and they might enjoy Els's music. Most listeners do not just focus on the moment; they remember what leads up to a passage, and they anticipate (or wish to anticipate) a satisfying resolution, or they get distracted and think of something else entirely.11 Once Els had believed he could create music that would educate listeners to focus on the moment, but by the time Fidelio dies, Els no longer expects to achieve this through normal channels. He decides instead to use the patterns of bacterial DNA to encode some music and let it "play" out into the future. It will pass down through bacterial generations. His music will thus have an effect on Nature as did that of Orpheus, albeit at the bacterial level.
The second mytheme is the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice, her death, his descent into Hades to win her back, his near success but ultimate failure in restoring Eurydice to life. Historically, this is the most productive mytheme. Humans enjoy assurances that something exists after death and most of us like a love story. Even though readers do not believe in the Greek mythological universe or gods, they relish claims that we continue in spirit if not body. The descent into a place of danger and threat serves many symbolic purposes. Romantics, Modernists, and contemporary writers use Hades as metaphor for madness, the unconscious, the suffering of the artist, the dark night of the soul, political dictatorship, the hardships of poverty, and any other sort of oppression or anguish.12 Recent writers have built a minor industry on the Orpheus story. Russell Hoban's The Medusa Frequency offers an instance of the artist's suffering; J. J. Phillips's Mojo Hand shows descent into serious poverty; and Janette Turner Hospital's Orpheus Lost takes on American intelligence work and political torture in Iraq as her form of the underworld, literally tunnels under Baghdad. Furthermore, zombie-besotted popular culture has spawned horror stories of what happens when the Eurydice figure is brought back from the dead.13
Given the fame of the descent into Hades, we naturally see that in the novel.14 Els's panicky flight through the surveillance society in indeed a trip into hell, and Powers agrees with that reading, but then society is always hellish in his novels.15 Els does seek out the only three people important to his former life during his flight: his wife, his daughter, and his one friend, Richard Bonner. In various ways, he asks forgiveness and gets it. They help him in his flight, but do not join him, and he does not expect them to.
Ovid was probably indulging in a passing joke when he said that Orpheus instituted homosexuality because he could find no woman equal to Eurydice. This mytheme seems confined to Ovid, and has not been much developed until the twentieth century, but Powers does make a suggestive gesture in its direction.16 Richard Bonner once says to Els, "Maestro, We work pretty well together, don't you think? It seems to me that half of life's problems would be solved if one of us had a vagina" (154). We know nothing direct about Bonner's sexual preferences, and Els does not follow up if this is an invitation. When Bonner tries to browbeat Els into doing the opera, Els lashes out in resistance, "So what is it? You're a repressed queer? Is that your great secret?" (260)—to which Bonner responds "Oh, fuck off. Queer, straight: Who makes these things up? Is anybody anything?" Els brings up the remark about the vagina in their final meeting and when he quotes it, Bonner "recoils" (349) and calls it a very curious statement. Whatever Bonner may or may not have wished earlier, and whatever Els may or may not have understood (though the line obviously stuck in his memory), the two of them working together produce a kind of intensity that resembles that of sexual attraction. Els's one moderately successful public piece, the opera, comes out of this fraught collaboration. Given Bonner's manic amorality and Els's depressive ethical hypersensitivity, their incompatibility is predictable.
Powers shifts the sparagmos within Orpheus's life so that it merges with the traditional exit from Hades. With Bonner's excited encouragement, Els stages a dramatic and grandiose finale: the novel ends as he runs out of a house toward a band of hysterical cops. He invites their blasting him to shreds by rushing toward them waving a flower vase shaped like a lab beaker. They have labeled him a bioterrorist, so he pretends to be what they fear. Orpheus's maenads were intoxicated and swept up in a Dionysian frenzy; these police have been whipped into trigger-happy panic by the grossly irresponsible news media, and are doubtless frustrated that Els has eluded them so cleverly. Els never achieved much fame with his music, but he will achieve temporary celebrity with this death. Powers himself refuses to interpret the ending: "I would like to think that this is a complex, rich, somewhat mysterious ending. But I feel pretty certain that I would only diminish it by spelling out my own interpretation of it. I have no doubt that people will hear that piece in lots of different ways. That, too, is the beauty of art: you can't control what people will think of or do with it" (Raintaxi interview). Since the novel stops just as Els rushes out, we do not witness his death, but what Powers says about surveillance society leaves no doubt in my mind that Els will indeed by torn apart by bullets.
The oracular head mytheme is less obvious, but may be allusively present in Els's decision to encode some of his music in the DNA of the bacterium Serratia marescens.17 He wants immortality for something he has created, and enjoys thinking of that music "playing" down through the ages in future generations of bacteria. This potential voice of the future is silenced by the cops who unplug the equipment and destroy his experiments. The police who will presumably kill Els are like those who kill his oracular bacteria, but traditionally, Dionysus-crazed bacchantes represent the opposite mentality from that of Apollo. However, while Apollo is normally associated with rational thought and calm behavior, his cracking down on oracles, particularly those associated with female forces, does—in that function—show him as a politically or religiously motivated oppressor. Similarly the police in the surveillance society made legal by the U.S.A. Patriot Act may think their actions coolly rational, but we are invited here to think otherwise. Producing a bacterial receptor for his music is a distant extension of the oracular head, but those bacteria would have carried the potential to utter Els's music down through centuries.
A novelist writing about a composer might well wish to invoke Orpheus. That gives the composer a cultural genealogy and some cultural capital. In doing so, however, Powers reminds us that pattern governs our lives and our literature, and that sense of being constrained by rules and patterns is what his Orpheus-figure, Els, most tries to escape. We as readers welcome the allusions to Orpheus. They raise and gratify expectations, and make us feel sophisticated.18 That very satisfaction at seeing pattern, however, would seem to be what Els despises for most of his life as composer, so why does Powers impose it?
The Role of Force
Consider what we are shown about power or force throughout the novel. Usually, force is bad. Obviously, complex society does not exist without forcing its uses on mineral ores, plants, and animals. We tend to think of art as separate from such imperatives. Disturbingly, however, force dominates Els's own implicit attitude towards audiences and his music. He is a crusader, sure that his offering can bring joy, but he goes about it as if he were forcing medicine on listeners, or as if their resisting was immoral because old harmonies are politically as well as musically retrograde. Els does not recognize the possibility of compromise, of educating them gradually to appreciate new possibilities by embedding those in more recognizable and (to them) enjoyable material. What makes his attitude strange is the fact that he himself was similarly pressured in graduate school and did not enjoy that pressure. Every time he produced something vaguely melodic, he was ridiculed and his work derided. At some level, he must have liked those melodic bits, but he felt forced to recant, forced to feel shame when Bonner calls his scores creamy, lovely shit. Having gone through such treatment, he nonetheless imposes it on others, and because audiences are not advanced students of composition theory, they cannot begin to understand what he is trying to do. We hardly approve when his brother and friends tie the teenaged Peter down and bombard him with their popular music, but that is uncomfortably similar to what he does with audiences, barring the fact that they can walk out. His allegiance to extremes is a kind of force. Because of this refusal to compromise, he never gains a significant audience, cannot get an academic post, and destroys his marriage when his wife gets tired of supporting him and their child while he contributes only minor earnings from temporary and unskilled jobs. We see the penalties he suffered for insisting on force, and tend to agree that they were deserved.
Whereas Powers usually associates power and force with technology, here his sensitivity to interconnectedness lets him show a kind of force operating even in art. Els never altogether recognizes this implicit problem, thanks to his conviction about the importance of novelty. Because his story is embedded in the Orphic pattern, however, we as readers have the comfort of pattern to sustain us as we contemplate an extremely gloomy assessment of our culture and its future. Powers thus presents politically drastic ideas in forms we can tolerate. In doing so, he demonstrates how Els might have approached his audience, but didn't. In the interview with Jian Sun, Powers himself talks about his own writing in ways that suggest what Peter Els should have considered: "For artists, the great challenge is how to use existing categories, to push the boundaries of those categories, without breaking those boundaries" (335).
Since the plot trajectory will presumably result in the police shooting Els, we are primed to see this as an example of such misapplied governmental and media force. Before jumping to that conclusion, however, we need in fairness to ask whether this is suicide as escape for a harmless but ineffectual person, however brilliant. Alternatively, is it an individual's attempt, however feeble, to hit back at the surveillance state and its criminally irresponsible press that forced a mistaken identity upon him? Does Powers offer suicidal acts as a serious political response to the nature of our country?
In one sense, this is an escape. Els is over 70 and retired; he has been diagnosed with brain lesions that interfere with his hearing music, and they will probably get worse. He is estranged from the only people who ever meant anything to him. He does not wish to spend the rest of his life in prison. Suicide as escape, however, could be carried out by filling his pockets with stones and leaping off a bridge, or by other private arrangements that involve only himself. By making his death a deliberate provocation, he invites the state to show the true nature of its power, which makes this death more political than personal, and greatly reduces the import of the escapist element. The reasons he has to wish to escape simply make it easier for him to sacrifice his life.
For all that he stages his demise, he cannot really expect the police to care or to learn anything from his death. Given how little they care for the lives of unarmed black citizens, the death of someone they consider a terrorist nut-case will not change any policies or prick any consciences. Perhaps, though, what we have here is not so much a matter of whom Els is addressing with his choice as of whom Powers is signaling—the reader. As readers, we are being strongly reminded of how power is misused in America, both in terms of police violence and in terms of media irresponsibility. The Orphic overlay enhances reader feelings (not those of the police, who are unaware of Orphic implications), and that overlay intensifies our sense of the wrongness and the loss brought about by the force behind this action.
Are we, as readers, supposed to take this as a demand that we sacrifice our lives to change the attitude toward and exercise of power?19 "The future does not need a midwife. The future needs an abortionist" (Prisoner's Dilemma, 402). "If evolution favored conscience, everything with a backbone would have hanged itself from the ceiling fan eons ago" (Generosity, 19).20 Even if everyone shared these views, I doubt if Powers thinks he will get takers for a mass suicidal gesture, but the negativity about our world is another reason for Peter Els not to regret leaving it. To quote Thomas Pynchon's famous warning, "Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected one to another, the chances for freedom are over for good" (Gravity's Rainbow, 548). That chimes with Powers's assessment of our situation in this novel. Powers considers America to be in dire straits, but sees no practicable solution.
In Els, Powers portrays one of those rare beings who truly values novelty over pattern, and his biogenetic experiments and those of others deriving music from nature do point toward new principles upon which music might be based. Given the hints at how music can affect and even change the structure of the mind, music based on the mathematics of nature might rewire our brains toward a different mindset. That is a radical idea with great potential. While I consider that concept of new music more promising than biogenetic transmission, Els genuinely tries to come up with something new. Unfortunately for him, he is bad at persuading an audience that he is offering them pleasure.
In The Gold Bug Variations and Generosity, Powers has argued that humans would be better off if educated to derive pleasure from observing, studying, and discovering the world rather than from power, money, technological advances, and consumption. He is sure that such an orientation of social values toward wonder and intellectual enjoyment is possible, but has not found a culture willing to embrace such an outlook. Only occasional individuals manage this reorientation so at odds with contemporary values. Els is one of those people, but proves ill-suited to the world we live in. Powers does not supply us with a feel-good resolution any more than Els did in music. Like Els, he makes us look at the mental and political structures that lead to such a catastrophe, including our own readerly desire for pattern. Unlike Els, however, he knows how to present the strange and unpalatable within an Orphic pattern so that we can absorb and contemplate his argument.

subset: commoncrawl


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LONDON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - European shares were expected to edge higher on Friday, with encouraging China factory data and growing speculation that the European Central Bank could further ease its monetary policy prompting investors to cautiously buy stocks.
Futures for Britain's FTSE 100 rose 0.3 percent, with the mining-heavy market seen getting support from stronger metals prices after data showed the manufacturing sector in China, the world's biggest metals consumer, grew at its fastest pace in 18 months in October.
However, futures for the Euro STOXX 50, Germany's DAX and France's CAC were flat to 0.1 percent higher, indicating that investors were reluctant to place strong bets on the last trading day of the week and waited for clarity on some major issues.
A surprise slowdown in euro zone inflation has sparked speculation the ECB may take action to bolster the economy, while the U.S. central bank did not sound as alarmed about the state of the economy earlier this week as anticipated, raising concerns a cut in the Fed's bond-buying operations could begin earlier than the end of March.
"With two of the world's major central banks possibly about to go in divergent ways, traders have the difficult task of weighing up which will have the greatest impact on risky assets," Jonathan Sudaria, dealer at Capital Spreads, said.
"The less dovish FOMC statement naturally put a downer on the taper trade but ... signs that the euro zone was hurtling towards deflation and rising unemployment have perked up those calling for the ECB to start enforcing their mandate of price stability," he added in a note.
Societe Generale predicted a 25 basis points cut in ECB Refinance rate in December.
Investors will keep an eye on further data releases, with UK manufacturing purchasing managers' index for October due at 0928 GMT, U.S. final Markit Manufacturing PMI for the current month at 1258 GMT and the Institute for Supply Management's October manufacturing index at 1258 GMT.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Asian shares sag, dollar up after upbeat U.S. data > Wall St ends session lower but posts gains for October > Nikkei up on SoftBank, Panasonic; Sony plunges 10 pct on profit-warning > Bond prices fall as data offers hope on economy > Euro buckles as subdued inflation sparks ECB stimulus hopes > Gold near 2-week lows on stronger dollar, U.S. data > Copper eyes biggest weekly gain in six, China data supports > Brent rises above $109; set for biggest weekly gain in 2 months
U.S. government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae sued nine of the world's largest banks, including Deutsche Bank, accusing them of colluding to manipulate interest rates and seeking more than $800 million of damages.
The head of hedge fund TCI said he is backing the boss of aerospace giant EADS in his "aggressive" approach to slash costs and grow profit, and expects management to announce further cuts in its defence unit soon.
Related news
Royal Bank of Scotland said on Friday it would create an internal "bad bank" to manage the run-down of its riskiest assets after the government stopped short of ordering a full break up.
Spain's Gas Natural Fenosa signed a deal to buy 2.5 million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on a long-term basis from the Yamal plant, which is being developed by Total and Russia's Novatek.
British aircraft parts supplier Meggitt lowered its full-year revenue guidance after trading over the last four months had been slightly below its expectations.


text:
Latest News
- AppSecUSA2016 YouTube Channel
- Recordings of all the talks for AppsecUSA 2016 have been posted on YouTube.
- AppSecUSA with Fedscoop PodCast
- OWASP Global Board Member Matt Konda discuss with host Kevin Greene what to expect from this year's AppSec USA conference.
- AppSecUSA Keynote Speaker Mathew Green Featured in the CyberWire Daily PodCast
- AppSecUSA with OWASP 24/7 PodCast
- In this broadcast of OWASP 24/7, I speak with three organizers of the event
- (Andrew Weidenhamer, Mike McCabe, Patrick Cooley) to get insight as to what to anticipate at the conference,
- the unique qualities of an AppSec USA event,
- and a sneak peek at the sessions that will be given over the 4 day event.
Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel
999 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
Discounted Renaissance Room Reservations
Hotel & City Guide
Register Now and Join us at AppSecUSA 2016
- Join us at AppSecUSA 2016
- Premier security event for application, devops, and cloud security
- Located in the center of our Nations Capital, Washington, DC
- Attended by security professionals, developers, and technologists
- An amazing event in an amazing city
@mpron @WEareTROOPERS @CanSecWest @SANSInstitute @HITBSecConf @RSAConference @SecurityWeek @thotcon @ruhrsec… https://t.co/cqAqg7Mbkb
More top security confs in 2018: @WEareTROOPERS @CanSecWest @sansinstitute @HITBSecConf @rsaconference… https://t.co/6vBbiaUXwu
MODSECURITY AND #APPSEC (S02E19): Interview with @tzaw from @appsecusa https://t.co/o70iR1ZeZa #OWASP


text:
Who Called Us
They call me two times in a row. I looked the number up and I says naturecare pharmacy. I have no reason for anyone to be calling me. No message is ever left! I have tried registering on the do not call list but it does not stop! It will stop for a little while and then start up again!
C. Carpenter
Nov 28th, 2013
Constantly getting phone calls on my cell phone. I am already registered on the Do Not Call Registry, but I am getting these types of calls constantly & I never give my cell phone number out to anyone other than people I know, in hopes to avoid junk calls. How are they able to still bother people when we are all listed on the Do Not Call list?
Oct 24th, 2013
I did not answer. Spam call from what I can tell.
Sep 24th, 2013
3 Comments


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The Horrors is a English based Rock/Pop band formed in 2005. There most recent album, "Skying" have won NME's "Best album of 2012" award.
Birth Of The Weirdos (2005-2006)
The horrors formed in 2005 at the Southend on sea when Rhys Webb meet Faris and Tom through there interests in 60's garage punk. After that the three decided to form a band with Joe Spurgeon and Joshua Hayward and the five recorded two covers, "Jack the Ripper" by Screaming Lord Stuch and "The Witch" by The Sonics. In 2006, they released The Horrors EP and eventually grew attention after they released there first single "Sheena Is A Parasite".
A Strange Debut (2007-2008)
In 2007, The group released there first album, "Strange House", and had a world tour to promote it. The album had five singles (including Sheena is a Parasite) and became 37 on UK charts. During the tour, The Horrors played a number of festivals and even supported the Arctic Monkeys on there short UK tour.
Primary Follow-Up (2009-2010)
During 2008, The Horrors worked on there next album and recorded in Bath during the summer of 2008. They signed to XL Records and released a EP with Suicide and Nic Void called "Shadazz" in 2008, and then the band released there first single from there second full length release, "Primary Colors". The first single, "Sea Withen A Sea" was released on digital formats on March 17th, 2009 and the new album was released on May 2009. The album had critical success, being #25 on some charts and being first place on NME's 50 best albums of 2009. During the year of 2009, Rhys and Toms side project Spider and the Flies (a side project they formed) released an EP entitled "Something Clockwork This Way Comes".
Cat's Eyes and Skying (2011-Present)
In April 2010, Faris announced on the official band forum that the horrors were working on there next album and one of the songs from there next effort, "Endless Blue" was played live on July 2010.In early 2011, Faris Badwin and multiinstrumentilest Rachel Zeffira formed a pop duo called Cats Eyes and released an EP and a album later that year. By February of 2011, the band announced that the new album would be released on July 2011 and the first single, "Still Life" was released on May 24. The new album entitled "Skying" was officially released on July 11th of 2011. The band joined Florence + the Machine during there UK leg tour and Skying won NME's Album of 2012 award.
Musical StyleEdit
During the bands earlier career, they were mostly a mix of Gothic Rock and Garage Punk. For there second album, Primary Colors, they changed to a shoe gaze style. for Skying, They became much more of a Dream Pop group.
Faris "Rotter" Badwin- Lead Vocals
Joshua "Van Grimm" Hayward-Guitar
Rhys "Spider" Webb-Bass, Organ
Tom "Tomethy Furse" Cowan-Synthezer, Bass
"Coffen" Joe Spurgeon-Drums
Studio Albums
- Strange House (2007)
- Primary Colors (2009)
- Skying (2011)
Extended Plays
- The Horrors EP (2006)
- Shadazz (2008)
- Sheena Is A Parasite
- Death At The Chapel
- Count In Fives
- Gloves
- She Is The New Thing
- Sea Withen A Sea
- Who Can Say
- Mirror's Image
- Whole New Way
- Still Life
- I Can See Through You
- Changing The Rain


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The fed_shipnames_regs_by_k_merse.zip file you have requested: Miscellaneous / Federation Starship Database - 28.72kb is not available. Perhaps try browsing all files for the game Star Trek: Armada II and upload any files you want to share or are missing. This is the only information we could locate:
Here is a strange but interesting little file for you, a database of Federation shipnames which will be present in the forthcoming Star Trek Armada II: Evolution.Even though it's not a mod per say, alot of work went into this. Each shipname is accompanied by it's own respective registry number. This little dink of an addition might not be everyone's cup of tea but I for one used to get pretty vexed when I saw duplicate names in ship's odf or even when I ran out of names and everything that came out of the shipyards became 'U.S.S. shipname-A'. This file includes 3,500 shipnames and registries with 107 ship classes, although there are some dud names too like the "U.S.S. Handsome NCC-27001" and the brilliantly named starship " U.S.S. Voodoo" which I think is a great shipname. Even my hometown is in there as a Callisto Class ship but I've never heard of a Callisto Class, and there are hardly any country names in the database, such as "U.S.S. Canada, U.S.S. Ireland, Poland, Outer Mongolia :p...etc".The one thing to note is this is only a text file so these are not inputted in ODFs so you will have to search the text file to add them to whatever ODF you wish to. In relation to the Mod in question, Star Trek Armada II: Evolution, this does seem to give some indication that there will be more new classes and ships in the bag. Download if you wish/ ;)- IKS
We recommend you return to the download list and browse the links from there. If the problem persists, contact us with the details.


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The United Kingdom has a tradition of renowned private schools and prep schools. Some of those independent schools are even known across borders. Families from as far away as Asia or Saudi Arabia sent their children to private schools in the United Kingdom to ensure they can get the best education possible.
While one may immediately think that private schools will always be a domain for the rich only, there are prep schools in the UK that can be a great alternative to public schools even for your own children.
Increasingly more families in the UK choose private schools since they finally have realised how the public school system is not always optimal when it comes to their children's education.
No surprise seeing that classroom sizes in public schools can often exceed 40 children. The sheer number of pupils will often make it impossible that teachers can dedicate to individual children.
Then there are those families who want to ensure that their children are taking care of in the best way possible. Especially for single parents or when both are working, this can often be a problem. With private and independent schools in the UK you will always know that you children are in good hands, not only in the classroom but also in their free time.
I personally recommend this local prep school in Hertfordshire, the renowned Kingshottschool. It should be high on your list of options if you look for recommended UK schools in Hertfordshire.
Click here to read more to learn about independent schools Hertfordshire and how it can benefit your children.


text: I was wondering if any other Hustler owners have experienced any blade washer failures that fit over the 5/8 Spindle bolt? When changing over from stock blades to Gators today, I discovered that my Super Mini Zs (w/ 90 total hours) washers were either cracked or broken. Two of the washers were cracked from the center out (or vice-versa). The third washer was actually broken all the way (with segment of washer broken out) with the blade being not all that snug. This change-over of blades was only the third occurrence for this mower. With each of the two earlier blade changes, the bolts were re-torqued to 118 inch-pounds which is what I believe my manual says for me to adhere to correct? By the way, when the broken washers were taken to dealer, the dealer didnt have any in stock shucks! Sooo the grass will hafta be let go til middle of next week some time. I was just wondering if anyone else has come up against this problem season as well??? mb


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Daughters of the Wind on the rise
By Edouard Aldahdah
Posted on June 22nd, 2010 in General
Earlier this month, this little website reached it's 50,000th unique visitor and hit the milestone 1,000,000 clicks a few days later, over the 30 months of its short life.
In terms of comparative rankings, Daughters of the Wind now ranks in the top 250,000 websites in the USA, and in the top one million websites worldwide, up from somewhere in the top 22 millions when it first started. Its readership grew by 360% over the last three months, and now averages 500 daily unique visitors . Not bad for a start-up, solely focused on such a specific and tiny segment of interest: animals, not any animals, horses, not any horses, arabians, not any arabians, asil arabians, not any asil arabians, rare and little known lines.
You can check these stats by visiting websites like alexa.com, which rank other websites in terms of traffic. Just write daughterofthewind.org in the Search box.


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€ 58,00
This Danzo Studio Landscape Valley White storage box is made of an aluminium alloy with a white powder coated finish. These desk boxes are stackable to treasure and organize all your desk related items.
According to a collection of diverse habitats, i.e. landscapes, the organizer is formed. The lids of the landscapes are outfitted with a particular terrain scene. As function follows form, the series contains five different terrains and each provides unique functions for various uses.
Inspired by the rift valley of East Taiwan, Danzo Studio's Valley storage box is suitable for long and wide objects such as a pair of glasses, a smartphone or a stack of business cards. In addition to the storage space within the box, the ridges of the valley also create multidimensional spaces for storage.
Packed in a carton box. Also available in a natural aluminium alloy.
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Designed in Taipei, Taiwan
We dispatch within 36 hours of your purchase on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (weekends and public holidays not included).
After you have made your purchase, you will receive a confirmation. As soon as we are ready to dispatch your purchase, we will send you the shipping details.
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014. Kraft Paper (64pg) TRAVELER'S notebook € 6,00
005. Free Diary TRAVELER'S notebook € 6,00
Legal Envelope Black € 269,00
008. Zipperfile TRAVELER'S notebook € 9,00
010. Double Sided Tape TRAVELER'S notebook € 5,00
009. Repair Kit TRAVELER'S notebook € 10,00
015. Penholder (S) Brown TRAVELER'S notebook € 13,00
017. Free Diary Monthly TRAVELER'S notebook € 13,00
007. Cardfile TRAVELER'S notebook € 9,00
015. Penholder (S) Black TRAVELER'S notebook € 13,00
016. Penholder (M) Brown TRAVELER'S notebook € 13,00
004. Pocket Stickers (3pcs.) TRAVELER'S notebook € 9,00


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Chocolate Amaretti Cake
Amaretti is strictly translates as little bitters, but colloquially it refers to light, airy, crunchy, dome-shaped almond cookies. The cookies are great on their own, but I also love them as an ingredient in a cake; the soft cake batter and the crunchy cookie provide a wonderful contrast.
Active Preparation Time: 5-10 min/Total: 1 hr
- Yield
- Serves 8
- ¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup slivered almonds
- 1 cup (about 2oz amaretti cookies (if you can't find substitute with 1 cup broken savoiardi (crisp ladyfinger cookies) and ½ tsp almond extract
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 tsp freshly grated orange zest
- 4 large eggs
- Garnish: unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9-inch spring form pan with nonstick spray. 2. Microwave chocolate chips in a bowl, stirring every 30 seconds, until melted and smooth. 3. 3. Put almonds and cookies in a food processor; pulse until finely ground. Transfer to a bowl. Put sugar, butter and orange zest in processor; process until smooth and creamy. With machine running, add eggs 1 at a time. Add almond mixture and melted chocolate; pulse until blended. Scrape into prepared pan. 4. Bake 35 minutes, or until top is firm and slightly cracked around the edges and a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack 15 min. before removing pan sides and cooling completely. Dust cake with cocoa stirred through a strainer.
Related Video
Nutritional Info
- Calories390
- Carbohydrates36 g(12%)
- Fat26 g(41%)
- Protein7 g(15%)
- Saturated Fat12 g(59%)
- Sodium68 mg(3%)
- Polyunsaturated Fat3 g
- Fiber3 g(11%)
- Monounsaturated Fat10 g
- Cholesterol124 mg(41%)


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Boss ME-25 Pedal El Reno OK
El Reno, OK
Yukon, OK
Mustang, OK
Bethany, OK
Oklahoma City, OK
Yukon, OK
El Reno, OK
Bethany, OK
Oklahoma City, OK
Tulsa, OK
Boss ME-25 Pedal
BOSS is proud to announce the availability of the ME-25 Guitar Multiple Effects to its popular line of floor-based multi-effects. The compact and durable ME-25 inherits its high-quality sounds from the flagship ME-70, and packs a ton of BOSS tone tools into one amazingly affordable package.
Click here to read the rest of the article from Guitar Player


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FNKASIA is one of the most famous and leading fashion brand of Pakistan.FNKASIA is a fashion label who has launched so many seaosnal and occasional collection and gained a huge response.FNKASIA has launched recently their fall winter collection 2013-2014 for women.
FNKASIA is one of the oldest and Pakistan's largest fashion brand who offers casual wear to formal wear dresses for women in total funkiest stitching styles.FNKASIA has been working in the field of fashion since year 2005 and since then they have launched so many collection for every seasonal and occasional.FNKASIA has launched so many collection and their every collection has designed with simple stitching styles and looks.FNKASIA mostly provides ready to wear dresses for young and independent women.Recently, for the season of fall winter, here is a beautiful collection has launched.FNKASIA fall winter collection 2013-2014 for women has launched just now.In this collection, you will find simple casual wear dresses in aesthetic style.This collection has consists of long and short shirts with trousers and churidar pajamas.The embellishment of different type of embroidery, some lace work, beads work and lovely prints makes them more beautiful and eligible.They all are looking awesome in their cuts and high ends.Just wait a bit here and have a look at them here below:
FNKASIA Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/FNKASIA/49480774996


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Comment on this Motifake
Creator: Sean
Comment using Facebook
agdaniele - October 17, 2009, 12:42 pm,
|You're going to swing around and pick me up after... right? 5L
Sean - October 17, 2009, 8:15 pm,
|After the celebration party is over and the bonuses are divvied up ... sure!
Sean - October 17, 2009, 9:13 pm,
|That's precisely why we fitted you with them waterwings ... on yer ankles.
BoneCD - October 17, 2009, 9:22 pm,
|Oh hell, just throw him a floater ring and call Mo to go pick him up
MO - October 17, 2009, 9:29 pm,
|We're not historically into "Saving" Cubans. Or is he Mexican? I ferget.
agdaniele - October 17, 2009, 9:33 pm,
|LOL... yeah, I'm lucky my girlfriend had a weather-sealed ironing board to get here... USCG was no help!
MO - October 17, 2009, 9:36 pm,
|Right! But once they get "feet dry" we gotta send them all to Nevada. Waterwings....feet dry......that's just bad commenting....im out.
BoneCD - October 17, 2009, 9:38 pm,
|Any who...picking up floaters just doesn't sound right, if you know what I mean


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- 32 years old
- Date of birth: May 25, 1976
- Place of birth:
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
- Date of passing: Jan 18, 2009
- Place of passing:
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
|Let the memory of B.j be with us forever
1976 and passed away on January 18, 2009. We will remember him forever. He left behind 4 awesome and great kids..... Austin Fabrick,Darrin Fabrick, Kayla Fabrick and Kollin Fabrick who have been through alot since he's gone. We will all love and miss u but will never forget!!!!
Love your wife.....Michelle and all the kids and family
"It's been 8 years since u left us and i don't miss u any less and it hasn't gotten any easier without. U are missed and will never be forgotten"
"Hey babe it's been rough without u I'd do anything to have u back in my life. Missing u and u will never be forgotten.
"Happy 4th of July babe u r still in my heart and never forgotten and never will be if I could rewind time and get u back I would do anything. Love u yesterday, today and always"
"Happy 39th Birthday rest peacefully. Missed but never forgotten love u lots until we meet again"
"Well its been 6 long years since we lost u and u are still missed more than u would ever know and you are still not forgotten and never will be. We love and miss you so much. Rest Peacefully"
"Just letting u know your on my mind and hope you are watching over me giving strength.cause I definitely need it"
"Well holidays are on the way but you are not forgotten by me, your children or friends and family during this time of year or time of year. May you be with us in our thoughts and hearts now and forever.
With love Always
Michelle and Children"
"Rest in Peace missing u and r family so much. Wish I could have it all back u, me are babygirl kayla and are lil man kollin. U always did your best to take care of and provide for are family"
"I did not really have a chance to get to know my dad but from what I remember he was a fairly good dad"
"Always missed never forgotten"
"Rest in Peace"
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As Concert Performer
Tikker's careful preparation of these pieces was apparent, as was his emotional investment.
– The Diapason, December 2011 report on Tikker's all-Liszt concert in the 51st annual Organ Conference at the University of Michigan
Timothy Tikker Perfect on the Ladegast Organ
US Organist Impressive in Concert at the Cathedral
The penultimate organ concert in the summer series in the Cathedral afforded an extraordinary artistic experience. The guest performer was the American organist Timothy Tikker. Locales for his concert tour this year included Paris and Bonn as well as Schwerin. Tikker studied in San Francisco and in Paris with Jean Langlais, among others. Presently he is Organist at the Cathedral in Charleston in the USA.
After his concert on the Ladegast organ in the Schwerin Cathedral, he said that the cathedral that he serves is only a small church, seating about 500 persons. His interpretational favorite is Franz Liszt. The Schwerin instrument appeared to him to be quite difficult. "The Ladegast organ is certainly rather hard to play. One must practice on it longer," said Tikker.
There was certainly no sign of this in his concert. On the contrary. Everything came across as natural and masterful. This was surely due to his technical mastery. It simply flowed thus from his fingers, musically fully-formed, interpretationally flawless, even youthfully impetuous, always to some expressive end.
To begin, Tikker played a work of his own, a composition from the year 1998. Characteristic rhythms run throughout the work, lending it its special character. After the ever-popular Liszt, the Bach jubilee was acknowledged with three chorale-preludes… To conclude: Marcel Dupré's Évocation op. 37 in three movements. An unusual interpretation, unconventional, yet impetuously performed, always masterful. Always perceptible was the urge for expression, distinguished by marvelous registrations of the musical breadths and depths. An impressive evening, which was crowned with much applause.
– Dietmar Unger, Schweriner Volkszeitung, 19 September 2000
"The Lord Is My Shepherd," Gently Consoling Psalm 23
CONCERT: Timothy J. Tikker at the Minster organ
by Fritz Herzog
From Charleston to the Rhine: The young American cathedral-organist Timothy J. Tikker was guest performer at the large Klais organ in the Minster Basilica. In three Schübler organ-chorales, "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme," Wo soll ich fliehen hin" and "Kommst du nun, Jesu" as well as in the Prelude and Fugue in C major [BWV 545] Tikker proved himself, through his joyful playing, to be a well-disposed and well-disposing Bach interpreter, whose real strengths, as he demonstrated in Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on "B-A-C-H" and confirmed in his presentation of Tournemire and Dupré, lay in the transitional period from the Romantic to the modern – with an obvious emphasis on the French repertoire.
Tournemire's "2ème Poeme" is a setting of the consoling Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my Shepherd"), the musical translation of which is thoughtful, rather restrained, gentle and reserved, always in a subdued coloration. Tikker achieved a very sensitive realization of this particular idiom.
The main work of the program, Dupré's large-scaled "Évocation," reached the farthest into modern style. Here an almost epic ethos is required from the soloist; he must bring its manifold formal elements together in the performance unobtrusively so that the work does not become distended – a task which Tikker mastered in very good taste and with sovereign surety.
"Tiento de Batalla sobre el Baletto del Granduca", with its rather charmingly surrealistic title, showed the organist at the outset as a composer in historical style, using the varied capabilities of the Bonn [Minster] instrument to advantage for vivid expression.
– General-Anzeiger, Bonn, 2-3 September 2000
Cathedral Organ Concert
Liszt's Hommage to Bach
Bonn. He came from Charleston, USA, but his program was European and rather dance-oriented: Timothy J. Tikker, composer and organist, performed the ninth concert of the Bonn Minster's Summer Organ Series featuring works of Bach, Liszt, Tournemire and Dupré.
The only exception was the opening work, by Tikker himself, "Tiento de Batalla sobre el Baletto del Granduca," in which archaic melodies were playfully altered, tonally and rhythmically. The typically American facility, which was felt here, also characterized Tikker's interpretations of Bach works: The three chorale-preludes: "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" BWV 645, "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" BWV 646 and "Kommst du nun, Jesus, vom Himmel herunter" BWV 650, he presented in a relaxed manner, in contrasting tone colors, but still transparent, airily, always completely in preludial character. Only the Prelude and Fugue in C major BWV 545 presented itself in a powerful, thunderously emphatic tone.
An emphatic tone with grand gesture, turned towards a romantic expression, also distinguished Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on the Name of B-A-C-H: Tikker's registrations were even more differentiated here, he effortlessly mastered all technical difficulties and also showed himself at his best in phrasing and agogics with the stormy and exciting [gestures] in this completely and entirely non-baroque work, despite its designation. For a change in mood afterwards we heard Charles Tournemires "2ème Poème", a subtle, sensitive, meditatively floating tone-poem, preceding Marcel Dupré's three-movement Evocation, as it were the synthesis of the two opposites which had just been presented: In the dramatic finale extremely energetic staccato chords and tonal contours are juxtaposed. A rousing, virtuosic interpretation, musically enlightened with a fine ear, which was rewarded with mighty applause.
– Niels Ruehle, Bonner Rundschau, 2 September 2000
CSO, soloists nearly perfect in organ series
Friday's Piccolo Spoleto l'Organo series provided spectacular music as the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Samuel Adler, was joined by solo organists Wayne Foster, Timothy J. Tikker and Larry K. Long in a concert that featured two of the best-known pieces for organ and orchestra by Saint-Saëns and Copland, as a new work by Adler himself…
Aaron Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924), written when the composer was in his 20s, is brash in its instrumentation and was considered daring when first performed. The Andante features a long, languid melody for the strings that evolves into a touching duet for violin and organ, while the Scherzo is lithe with dance-like rhythms and a complex interplay between the organ and the oboe. The Finale, marked Lento, is melancholy with a solo for the organ and lots of fanfares for the brass. Tikker played with complete concentration and extraordinary emotional involvement…
– Jeff Johnson, The Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, Saturday, June 10, 2000
Timothy Tikker in St. Elisabeth
Of special interest was the program of the second evening organ concert in the course of the Organ Festival at St. Elisabeth Church, performed by Timothy James Tikker from the USA, consisting exclusively of 20th century works…
[Charles Tournemire's] Symphonie-Choral d'orgue op. 69, as a sort of featured work, he placed at the end of the evening's program. Tikker proved to be its technically masterful and colorfully expressive interpreter, as he had been already at the program's beginning with Max Reger's Toccata and Fugue in D minor from 1901. The nobly archaic Fugue, for example, showed a well-differentiated and convincing development from its subtle development up to its climactic conclusion.
Of particular interest were the three contemporary American pieces, which Tikker performed with great intensity…
Finally, a further focal point of Tikker the interpreter should not be omitted: Olivier Messiaen. From his work he selected the "Chant d'oiseaux," presented in a picturesque, exquisitely multi-faceted interpretation. Much applause for a noteworthy evening.
– Barbara Kaempfert-Weitbrecht, Bonn General-Anzeiger, 25/26 April 1998
Timothy J. Tikker was first on the bench, offering a six-and-a-half minute [improvised] fantasy on one of the specifically composed themes… which he dealt with with humor and astonishing agility… always one sensed an architectural scheme behind the tumult of sound with which he flooded Trinity [Church, Wall Street, New York City]. His response to the scherzando quality of the selected theme, from which he occasionally drew short separate motifs as grist for the mill, was especially praiseworthy. There was a nice variety to the individual variations in his second improvisation, and he worked up a satisfying head of steam with a toccata-like finale…
– Clair Van Ausdall, The American Organist, October 1996
Timothy Tikker's program was in many ways an homage to two of the greatest improvisers of this century [Marcel Dupré and Charles Tournemire]. His account of Tournemire's Victimæ Paschali was marked by security of thought and technique that was so admired by organists of the time. His own improvisations display a thorough understanding of French symphonic techniques, distinguished by a gift for melodic development, a strong sense of color and proportion, and a clarity of musical intent that make his work both attractive and understandable.
– Joseph Adam, The American Organist, October 1995
[In his improvisations] Tikker showed an especially well-developed sense of fugal style in one of his hymn variations, and his free work also used the organ in a highly colorful, scherzo-like style.
– John Pagett, The Diapason, December 1985