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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
What limitations don't I have???
When sitting down to write this entry I was forced to confront truths I have long suppressed:
1 - I am made up primarily of flaws and limitations.
2 - For most of my life I have been blissfully ignorant of these flaws and limitations.
3 - I watch way to much Star Trek - if there is such a thing as too much Star Trek
Let's start with Flaws and Limitations - since we have limited time I will concentrate on the flaws and limitations specifically related to writing - otherwise this will become a really long post.
Right at the top my inability to spell, use proper grammar or even know what proper grammar is and recognize homonyms is a definite limitation. Oh, I also don't really know where you are supposed to put the commas in. My agent is convinced that I must know exactly how to use them otherwise I couldn't possibly use them as perfectly wrongly as I do.
On the other hand - thanks to spell check, a few patient readers, my agent and the copy editors, this limitation has not seemed to hold me back at all. I am free to tell the story, work on the dialogue where grammar is irrelevant because no one uses it when they speak anyway, and others can do the rest.
In fact - I feel like a actually performing a service. If we all wrote perfect prose we wouldn't need copy editors and the unemployment rate would go up a few more notches tipping us back into recession and the possible collapse of Western Civilization as we know it. So really - my inability to spell or use proper grammar may be all that stands between us and Anarchy - fortunately it isn't going anywhere.
And that leads to my second major limitation - ignorance.
You see I got into this writing thing - thinking I could dash off a book in "about a year" and then, once it hit number one on the bestseller lists, start living it up on the French Riviera, gambling at Monaco Casinos, drinking medium dry vodka martini's, shaken not stirred. And then...
Five years passed before I finished my first draft of my first book.
Another five years of learning passed before I had a book good enough to get an agent.
Another two years passed before it was published.
Fortunately, like my inability to spell, my blissful ignorance is also permanent. If you had asked me at any time during those years how far I was from Monaco and my Vodka Martini's I'd have told you "about a year." When it finally happened, it actually felt like it had only been about a year. Ahhh - blissful ignorance.
(PS - still haven't made it to Monaco and I'm more of a Budweiser guy than a Vodka Martini man - honestly there is little more disgusting to me than olives.)
Now - don't let all of this make you think I believe in not evolving as a writer, because one of my other flaws is that every time I get good at something - I want to try something new. And maybe that's the flaw that helps you overcome all the others. Never being satisfied - so yes I'll never be able to spell well and yes, my brain will continue to struggle with the difference between "their", "there" and "they're" but as long as I keep striving for new ways to screw up - no one will have a chance to get bored with the old ways.
Live Long and Prosper
Limning Limitations
Monday, May 30, 2011
My Kryptonite
Sunday, May 29, 2011
No Regrets
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Evil Twin Rebecca de Mornay Project
Reece Hirsch
I have never felt any remorse about killing off a character. In fact, there were a few left alive at the end of my first book that I would have iced without batting an eye if the opportunity had presented itself. But I may still get my chance. That's what sequels are for, right?
Therefore, I'm going to do what several of my fellow Criminal Minds have done this week and take up last week's question. Of these ten things, five are true and five are false. Can you spot the lies?
- I have been in the middle of a mosh pit during a Clash concert in Brixton.
- In middle school, I was the campaign manager for a fictional candidate for class president.
- I have family ties to New Iberia, Louisiana, stomping ground of Dave Robicheaux and James Lee Burke.
- If you've recently received a letter telling you that you may be a victim of identity theft, there's a decent chance that I had a hand in preparing it.
- If you have recently been a victim of identity theft, there's a decent chance that I stole your personal information.
- I was once given the hellish assignment of pitching screenplay ideas for the "evil twin Rebecca de Mornay project."
- I was a contributing writer for Fence Industry magazine.
- I am a pathologically loyal fan of the Green Bay Packers.
- I once spent four hours floating in a white, egg-shaped sensory deprivation tank.
- My mother and grandmother ran an establishment called Reece's in Marceline, Missouri (Walt Disney's childhood home) that is believed to be the model for the soda shop on Main Street USA at Disneyland.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Killing--it ain't easy
For some people, the murderous acts we must commit in our mysteries is the hardest thing for them to do. For some people, it's the whole reason they began writing mysteries in the first place. I admit to being pretty squeamish, and not always supplying all the, um, details about my murders. But do I regret any characters I kill?
Some people use their books to kill off people in their lives that are particularly hideous and horrible. I've never done that. I don't think Lydia McKenzie, my amateur sleuth, would care to investigate if the person who died had been awful. Instead I try to make the person who dies someone who is mourned and missed. So I am full of regrets.
A smart friend once told me that my first book, POSED FOR MURDER, was really about a person in mourning. I really liked that description. Lydia's friend Marie is a talented photographer with a great appetite for life. She loves throwing big parties and traveling. So when she dies, Lydia misses her terribly. And then she finds out she was hiding quite a few secrets. That's a big shock to Lydia, but it doesn't make her miss Marie even less--or wish she was still around.
In DEAD IN THE WATER, the victim isn't a close friend of Lydia's. Glenda is a prostitute and one of the subject's of her photography. But there was something special about Glenda, despite her addictions and craziness. She lived life on the edge and paid the price. Lydia wishes Glenda's life could have been different, and mourns the woman she might have been--a loving mother to her three children, a good friend, and someone who might have had a good job if she'd had all the benefits that Lydia had been given.
Regrets? I've got them. But not enough to go back and change my victims. They lost their lives for the good of my story.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Truth, Half-Lies and Outright Falsehoods
By Kelli Stanley
First things first: the answer to this week's question.
Death in my books is a dark, black thing, the one inescapable tragedy of life. I feel pain when I write about victims ... I feel a sober sense of resolute justice when a victimizer is slain. I don't celebrate death, even when the person is a mass-murderer and evil incarnate. I breathe a sigh of relief, and thank the Fates (and the Navy).
As a writer, I've regretted only the necessity of writing about the death of an innocent person. In CITY OF DRAGONS, one of the murders affected me almost as much as it did Miranda. In CITY OF SECRETS, too, writing about Pandora Blake--her back story--was an emotionally devastating experience.
Because I write noir, the criminals guilty of causing such pain and destruction are not always punished, let alone killed ... in this, the genre tends to mimic real life. Miranda does kill a man in CITY OF DRAGONS ... and he most definitely deserved to die. I had no regrets. Miranda, however, was scarred by the experience. Violence always leaves a mark, and taking another life--even one so resolutely sadistic as this one--leaves a wound.
One she deals with in CITY OF SECRETS ...
So, enough of that question. Let's move on!
Michael really scared me on Tuesday, so I've got to make this harder (especially because I can't remember what I've revealed at Bouchercon bars) ... 8 items below are true, 7 are false. Pick which ones are which!
1. I've sold advertising to an escort agency.
2. I turned down a scholarship to ACT (American Conservatory Theater).
3. I took Greer Garson home after a play.
4. I walked through a wax museum with Jason Robards.
5. I was arrested for disorderly conduct after a political rally.
6. I ate lunch with Robert Downey, Jr. and Leif Garrett during a political rally.
7. In college I earned infamy for spending the weekend at a rich oil scion's ranch.
8. I once judo flipped an Italian on a Florence street.
9. I sang for tips in high school.
10. Anton LaVey (Church of Satan), Nicolas Cage and Robin Williams were customers of our family business.
11. I play the harmonica, piano, and clarinet.
12. I've written my own music.
13. Spiders bother me.
14. In college I hitchhiked through Europe for ten days.
15. I spent a weekend in a Florence hospital because of natural gas inhalation.Let the guessing begin!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Cheating Death
I am cheating this week. I know the topic is have you ever regretted killing a character, but the sad fact is I have not. Everyone one of my characters (that were killed) was a major pain in the ass to those around them and deserved to die.
Nice sentiment from an Irish Catholic lass, eh?
But seriously, they did deserve to die. That's why writing mysteries is so fun! (Well that and the huge financial rewards that inevitably follows.) When you write a mystery, you can finally kill off that girl who plagued you all through high school, or the boss who made you clean his house before a staff event. You are the God and they are your subjects. The nice ones are rewarded and the evils one are dealt with appropriately.
Now before you think I'm some sociopath in need of therapy and a heavy dose of meds, let me be clear. By killing these people off, I let off steam, lower my blood pressure, and am able to "let things go." And, if the nightly news is any indication, this is a major problem for loads of others people in the world.
So. No remorse.
Which leads me back to the cheating part. Because this post is so short, I will take up last week's challenge. Five truths about me and five falsehoods.
2. I can ask where the bathroom is in three languages.
3. I once was stuck in an airplane bathroom for over an hour.
4. I am pretty sure that my cat is trying to kill me.
5. I've never gotten a speeding ticket.
6. I lived in
7. I have a tattoo of the date Pride and Prejudice was published on my left ankle (1813).
8. I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family, the youngest of five.
9. My first book is being made into a film.
10. I was surprised to be alive on May 22.
The first one to correctly answer will receive a copy of my latest book Murder on the Bride's Side. Good luck!
Monday, May 23, 2011
Truth or Dare?
What are true things and five false ones about me?
By Rebecca Cantrell
And one more thing, this one true. I have a paperback coming out TODAY! It's the FIRST THRILLS anthology and it contains my short story "On the Train," along with Kelli Stanley's "Children's Day" and stories by
Killing Regrets: Have you ever regretted killing a character in a novel or short story?
This could wind up being a very short blog post because the answer to this week's question is: no. So now what? I think my blogging buds would be rather annoyed if I ended my post at this point, but that's really all I have to say on the subject. Everyone I've killed deserved to be killed, and I have no regrets.
So how about if I answer last week's question instead? That one asked us to tell five true and five false things about ourselves without revealing which are which. I can do that. Here goes:
1. I can name all of Shakespeare's plays in alphabetical order.
2. I can play 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon in 3 degrees.
3. I can speak three languages fluently.
4. I graduated 32 nd in a class of 803.
5. While still in college, I designed a poster for Sesame Street.
6. I hate peanut butter.
7. I run three miles a day.
8. I'm a USA Today bestselling author.
9. I own a parrot.
10. I backpacked across Europe.
Now, you figure out which are true and which are false.
When Lois Winston isn't playing To Tell the Truth, she writes the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN is available now, and DEATH BY KILLER MOP DOLL, the second book in the series, will debut in January 2012. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at http://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sue Ann Tosses the Bull
If you are reading this, it's safe to assume the world did not end yesterday as predicted by all the Doomsdayers. I was really torn over writing this post. You see, I'm writing it several days in advance, so if the world is going to end on Saturday, this post might be the perfect time and place to let loose with some of the deepest and darkest truths of my life. After all, who would know? And I might feel somewhat purged before I enter the Great Void. Then again, if the world doesn't end before this post goes live, do I really want folks to know THAT about me?
Decisions. Decisions.
Below are 5 lies and 5 truths. Let the BS begin!
1. I have been thrown out of a Denny's for disorderly conduct.
2. I was married once for less than a year.
3. I have performed on stage wearing nothing but a see-through negligee and a red feather boa.
4. I have been arrested more than once.
5. I tried out for one of the first seasons of Survivor.
6. I worked on John McCain's campaign.
7. I once worked in a sewer pipe factory on the production line welding.
8. For my 50th birthday, I gave myself a 24 year old.
9. I've had a boob job.
10. I have published erotica under a pseudonym.
Hopefully, we'll all be here on Sunday and I'll have some explaining to do.
Win a book! The commenter on the Criminal Minds blog today that gets the most right will win a copy of which ever book of mine they choose, including the upcoming Baited Blood or Gem of a Ghost. In case of a tie or ties, the winner will be picked at random from those with the most correct answers. Comments must be placed no later than 9pm PT.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Not Quite the Whole Truth
Understand that as a teller of tall tales, truth and fiction often merge for me. I'm mindful of a story about the late President Reagan who in a particular speech of his would relate seeing powerful documentary footage of soldiers liberating a death camp during World War II. As the years progressed, Reagan, who'd served stateside in the Army's Motion Picture Unit, became one of those soldiers -- recounting in that breathl4ess way of his details of the sights and smells of that day -- liberating the death camp in his speeches.
Make of the following what you will but one thing is true, my brief plug for you gentle reader to check out the retro cool Green Hornet Casefiles out soon from Moonstone. The stories, of which I did one called "Soldanus, the Sultan of Crime," are all set in late '60s, early '70s Motown. Sweet.
Oh, and to set our mood, this cat over to the right is the original Crying Man (take lessons John Boehner), the great fallen televangelist Jimmy Swaggert, first cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis. He had to admit his mendacious ways on the tube. Imagine I'm weeping like him as I tell you the following:
1. I was once wrestling on the roof of a house as a kid, fell to the ground, got up, went home and watched TV.
2. I was once in a party that was shot into. As bullets burst out the windows and people panicked, a couple of screaming individuals grabbed me to use as a shield as they climbed on the couch. Oddly I was calm, time slowed down and I flipped out of the way.
3. Once while pitching a producer on a project, he had some kind of seizure, fell to the floor and figuring this wasn't merely a caustic reaction to my idea, I administered CPR.
4. I was kicked out of the Hair Club for Men
5. Once, while in Cuba, I accidentally busted out the rear window of a bus while riding in it.
6. Down in the Mississippi Delta where my mother's folks came from this small town called Shelby next door to Clarksdale, birthplace of the blues, I stood at the Crossroads and heard, faintly, the wail of Robert Johnson's guitar.
7. Me and a friend once saw a creature waddling along the sidewalk that looked like a cross between a pigeon and a duck with a massive horned bill, grinning at us -- and it scared the holy bejezus out of us.
8. Once while snorkeling in Hawaii with my family, a shark brushed past me. This time I was not oddly calm.
9. I was once chased in a parking structure by two women in wheelchairs
10. When first married, my wife hit me with a folding chair. Then we made crazy love.
Yeah…that's the ticket
Friday, May 20, 2011
Who, Me?
Gabriella Herkert
Catnapped and Doggone
2. My sister and I threw my brother off a train station when he was too afraid to climb back down. He beat us home.
3. Before I was old enough to roll over, my sister painted my nose with fire engine red nail polish so we could play circus and I could be the clown.
7. I have been arrested twice for loitering and once for vagrancy while researching my first book. No convictions.
Thanks for reading.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Lies, All Lies
By Michael
But writing fiction is also a lying game, and it's one that I hope I play better than poker (if for no other reason than that my readers aren't the room with me when I say, "Whoopee!" or "Shit!). So, here's the test: five of the following statements about myself are true and five are lies. Can you tell which are which?
(1) Like all good PIs, I carry a fragment of a bullet in my jaw.
(2) In the late 1980s, I wrote scripts for a series in which
(3) While working in a former job as a political writer, I sometimes integrated out-of-context lines from Allen Ginsberg's Howl into politicians' speeches just for the fun of it.
(4) My first job was picking cherries alongside migrant fruit pickers.
(5) I went to
(6) I slept with a little-known actress named Candy before I got married (and with her lesser-known sister, Semolina, after).
(7) A Guatemalan congressional deputy once swore at me in Russian.
(8) I practice Zen Buddhism.
(9) I'm afraid of airplanes.
(10) My middle name is Staley.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
To tell the truth
1 - I have allowed the supplies in my refrigerator to get so low, that all I had to eat was instant bluberry muffin mix stirred into water. Which I subsisted on for three days.
2 -I once spent the night in jail for driving 117 MPH on my way to Lake Havasu for springbreak.
3 - I have slept overnight in the parking lot of the San Diego Zoo.
4 - Jeannie and I once engaged in an Author Smackdown - (Jeannie - you are not allowed to answer this one.)
5 - Shane and I once spilled beer on Lee Child and lived to tell about it. (Shane - no telling.)
6 - I once rode a bull for 3.1 seconds - never again.
7 - I have entered this country illegally by sneaking through a border fence.
8 - I've been from Phoenix, Arizona all the way to Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, LA.
9 - I think blogger is the smoothest, easiest to use program ever!! -okay scratch that, that's too easy. Everyone knows Blogger is the greatest.
9b - I will join the hair club for men if I start going bald.
10 - I was once a passenger on a 747 over the Atlantic when the one engine exploded like a Roman candle. We made a successful emergency landing.
As requested by our imperious leader - five truths - five lies.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Everything's five by five
Monday, May 16, 2011
One of These Things Is Not Like the Other
Sunday, May 15, 2011
My Guilty, Yet Lovely, Pleasure
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Guilty Reading Pleasures
Reece Hirsch
I write thrillers, which some readers consider to be their guilty pleasures. So maybe it takes a lot to make me feel guilty about my reading habits. I'm also a lawyer, which probably only serves to heighten my threshold for guilt. That said, here are two guilty pleasures from my bookshelf.
Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller.
Why I Feel Guilty About It: It's an oral history that dishes copious portions of dirt about the in-fighting and petty jealousies among the cast of the landmark comedy show from the Belushi/Radner days through the beginnings of the Ferrell/Fey era in 2002. My guilt is assuaged somewhat because Tom Shales is a respected television critic (three words that you don't see together too often).
Why It's Great: Sometimes I don't know why I continue to watch SNL, but I do. Maybe it's because I still remember how vitally important it was to see every show during the first few seasons, not only to see what Belushi, Murray, Radner, et al. were up to, but for the musical guests. I found this book irresistible because it distills more than 20 years of the funniest/meanest/most revealing anecdotes from the SNL cast and crew.
Sure, there are plenty of details in this book about who was sleeping with who and what drugs everyone was taking, but there are also some very sweet moments, like this recollection from former boyfriend Bill Murray (a personal icon) about the last time he saw Gilda Radner:
"Laraine had a party one night… there was a collection of like the funniest people at the party… most of us from the show, and Gilda… she was slim. We hadn't seen her in a long time. And she started doing, 'I've got to go,' and she was just going to leave, and I was like 'Going to leave?' I felt like she was going to really leave forever. So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her… Danny did (carried) her for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her, we did it in teams. We kept on carrying her around… just carrying her around and saying: 'She's leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her…' She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there. It was just one of the best parties I've ever been to in my life… it was the last time I saw her."
Chevy Chase is definitely the consensus pick for biggest jerk and his behavior seemed to have been particularly bad when he returned to host the show after leaving the cast. Case in point: cast member Terry Sweeney says that Chase said to him, "Oh, you're the gay guy, right? I've got an idea for a sketch for you. How about we say you have AIDS and we weigh you every week?" After reading this book, I suspect Chase may be uncomfortably close in real life to the inappropriate-remark-spewing character he's been playing recently on "Community."
Blood Sport: A Journey Up the Hassayampa by Robert F. Jones
Why I Feel Guilty About It: This is one demented novel. Bill Crider summed it up well when he wrote, "It's sort of like Hemingway on crack, the ultimate macho surreal fantasy." It's a hard book to recommend because it's definitely not everyone's uber-macho cup of triple espresso.
Why It's Great: Blood Sport is great because it's not quite like anything else that I've ever read, or expect to ever read again. It's part Deliverance, part Huckleberry Finn, part coming-of-age-story, part surreal exploration of the American outlaw mythos, and part Paul Bunyonesque tall tale, with a dash of Peckinpah on the side. This cult book is now available again after being out-of-print for many years, but I've always hung on to my original Dell paperback, which has an amazing full-color cover. The story follows a father and son on a hunting and fishing expedition up the Hassayampa, a mythical river that, according to legend, renders everyone who drinks from it incapable of telling the truth. Along the way, they hunt mastodon and catch fresh-water marlin. Yes, it's that kind of book, and at certain points it gets even more surreal than that.
The son gets separated from his father and falls in with a gang of outlaws led by the immortal bandit Ratanous (a.k.a. Ratnose) and is initiated into the pleasures of sex, drugs and violence. The father pursues the bandits to bring his son back, culminating in a long-distance duel to the death using fishing rods with poison flies across a swirling vortex at the headwaters of the Hassayampa.
Like the early episodes of SNL, this book made a big impression on me as a kid, so much so that I'm not sure I dare to reread it in full at this point. However, from time to time I open it up to the chapter listing "27 Things I Learned About Ratnose" and smile, assured that this book is just as crazy as I remembered it.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Guilty pleasures on my bookshelf
My bookshelf is a work in progress. But there isn't much circulation on its shelves. That's where I put books once I've read them, and occasionally I take them back down again to read again. They are also books that we don't mind sharing with our visitors--at least they're all there for anyone to see.
So where are my guilty pleasures? Mostly I get those from the library. I find it hard to pass up some authors on the new book shelf. I've read all the J.D. Robb mysteries (I know they're all mostly the same, but they're relaxing reads--really), and I pick up the occasional romantic suspense book by Jayne Ann Krentz or Linda Howard. Sometimes, if they plot loses me, I put them down and don't finish them. But they're waiting for me at the end of the day, like candy, if I've finished my word count, and scrubbed the kitchen floor and done everything else I need to do.
And then there are magazines. My library lets you check out magazines. So these days I have copies of Horticulture, Fine Gardening, Bon Appetit, Self, Vanity Fair and Atlantic Monthly piled on my bedside table. I have recently become a gardening addict, and although reading the magazine hasn't transformed my lawn into a perfect showplace, it's both inspiring and fun. So at night I page through the lives of the rich and famous, exciting recipes and yet another way to firm up your abs. I feel vaguely guilty that I'm not reading some worthy tome, brushing up on the classics, improving my French or churning out even more pages. But then I get over it. And have a few gummy bears or some dark chocolate (stashed at the back of the fridge behind the eggs). Now that's a real guilty pleasure.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
"What is the guiltiest pleasure on your bookshelf?" An un-answer to an impossible question
When I was asked to write about "the guiltiest pleasure on my bookshelf," I wandered around looking at book covers and spines, searching for something to confess. If the question hadn't included on my bookshelf, the answer would have been easy: watching the royal wedding on TV (condensed by fast forward) was a true guilty pleasure on a work morning. But finding a guilty pleasure on my bookshelf proved elusive and, finally, impossible.It's true, some of the books that found their way into my life bored me to distraction, and were abandoned to the shelf. Others make me recall a passion akin to a past love affair. And then there are the books that were good for passing the time in an enjoyable way, but that I couldn't summon the energy to either recommend or regret or, sometimes, even remember. Guilt doesn't even factor into it.
The more I tried to answer the question, the more I veered away from it. The real question, I suppose, is what am I reading now that I most enjoy but feel I shouldn't be I wasting my time on. Hmm. Maybe because I write paperback thrillers, I find that question impossible to answer. As a writer, I write for love and money. But as I reader, I read only for love. How can you feel guilty about love?
Even the coffee table book about shoes, stacked in my living room near the TV remotes, doesn't shame me. Nor do the cheap paperbacks shelved beside the literary classics. I don't subscribe to the idea that mass-market paperbacks are bad books—how could I? For me, reading is not about compartmentalizing a market, branding your intellect, or how pretty a book looks in your hand. Reading for me starts with a yearning for that ultimate escape, and I know I can get that anywhere, regardless of the subject or style, shape or look of the genre or package.
A good book is a good book, and in the endless quest to find a new one, I don't discriminate. At the same time, I'm impatient, and if a book doesn't grab me pretty quickly, I move on…feeling only the faintest twinge of guilt. I believe that any book that commands my time and attention should give me pleasure on some level, and if it doesn't, I shouldn't sweat tossing it.
Here's a snapshot of my bedside table right now: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel; The Awakening, by Wendy Corsi Staub; Catching Fire and Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins; It's Kind of a Funny Story, by Ned Vizzini; Unexpected New York, by my friend Sandy Miller; and a few half-finished New Yorker magazines. I'm reading a lot of young adult these days because I may be interested in writing some, and I'm totally enjoying the research. Wolf Hall is quirkily intellectual and fun. Sandy's book is there to enlighten me with random surprises about a city I thought I knew. In short, any book that ends up on the prime real estate of my bedside table is there because I want it there, because it reflects my desires and consciousness at the time I put it there, and just like the children I summoned to life without knowing them at all, I embrace each one with unconditional acceptance. Unlike the children, however, if the book turns out to be no good, it's cast aside…I can be ruthless that way. I've never met a book I didn't want to open, though I've met plenty I was happy to relinquish to that dusty place I call the bookshelf.
And no, I don't feel guilty about it. If a book doesn't please me, it gets the boot.
She said. Spoken like a queen.
The first two thrillers in Katia Lief's new series, YOU ARE NEXT and NEXT TIME YOU SEE ME, were published by HarperCollins in the fall of 2010, and have been called "brilliantly diabolical," "chilling," and "impossible to put down." The third in the series will be published in 2011. They will also appear in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands. Katia is the pseudonymous author, as Kate Pepper, of five previous thrillers. She teaches fiction writing at The New School in Manhattan and lives with her family in Brooklyn.


text:
Titanfall is an online only shooter that takes place in a future in which humans have colonized outside of Earth but have not yet freed themselves of the shackles of violent confrontation. In a government vs. the people type scenario, diplomacy has failed, as it often does, and a violent revolution has broken out and both sides are utilizing mechanical, weaponized armour called Titans to do aid them in expressing their message of discontent.
It would not be all that hard to understand why, to an outside observer, Titanfall might strike them as "just another fps." A standard, run of the mill first person affair replete with fast paced action complemented by a screen covered in rpg-esque numbers and symbols; both of which work to provide immediate and visceral satisfaction and long term addictive behaviour, including the inability to refrain from buying overpriced map packs or a "season pass." Play the game however, and it becomes abundantly clear that Titanfall is more than that. The folks at Respawn Entertainment were clearly aware of the state of the genre and the long term implications of market oversaturation and worked hard to make a shooter that may look like the rest but is actually substantially different (even including addressing the pricing of post release downloadable content).

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Royal Illuminati Bloodline Of Kate Middleton And Prince William
Windsors are very important and powerful bloodline. And Prince William is as illuminati as they come (making corna signs, being part of secret societies, you name it)
Evidence shows that major bloodline families are as obsessed now as they always been through the history with "purity" of their bloodline (probably trying to keep amount of reptilian/annunaki DNA to the maximum).
Is Kate Middleton really a "commoner" as she's portrayed, or is there more to the story? It makes no sense whatsoever that Windsors would ever allow William to marry a real "commoner" and dilute the bloodline.
Evidence shows that major bloodline families are as obsessed now as they always been through the history with "purity" of their bloodline (probably trying to keep amount of reptilian/annunaki DNA to the maximum).
Is Kate Middleton really a "commoner" as she's portrayed, or is there more to the story? It makes no sense whatsoever that Windsors would ever allow William to marry a real "commoner" and dilute the bloodline.
Prince William & Kate Middleton are Distant Cousins
A dark and deliciously murky secret hovers over the continuing relationship between Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton - a skeleton so large that even a vast royal closet would struggle to contain it.
For the Mail can reveal that William and Kate are distant cousins. Not only that, the common ancestor who links the two lovers is a murderous despot whose bloody deeds have been deliberately forgotten by history. Until now.
The man who links William and Kate as kith and kin is Sir Thomas Leighton, an Elizabethan soldier, diplomat and, for 40 years, the cut-throat Governor of Guernsey.
He is William's 12th generation great-grandparent, and Kate's 11th, making them 12th cousins, once removed.
A despot and a dictator, Leighton brooked no argument and made life hell for those he ruled.
'He disregarded civil liberties and kept the people down by main force,' reads a rare account of his life.
This hard-nosed figure was, however, a gentleman; which will come as a timely snub to those critics of Kate Middleton who dismiss her antecedents as being working-class and - extraordinary in this day and age - therefore deem her unsuitable as a future princess.
So Kate may be relieved to learn of her posh ancestor. On the other hand, she might not be too keen to boast over the dinner table about his bloody modus operandi.
So hated was Leighton, that on his death in 1610, the official report on his demise was defaced by angry Guernsey residents. And uniquely for such an important figure in the Elizabethan court - his wife was the Queen's cousin - no portrait of him survives. All were destroyed or lost.
So what makes this gruesome fellow, whose blood courses through the veins of our future king and queen, into such a figure of hatred? Why do historians prefer to ignore his existence?
The answer lies in his despotic, nepotistic rule of Guernsey - a small but crucial stronghold during the days when Spain was amassing its armada against Britain.
Leighton had been a hugely successful soldier, serving with distinction in France and Ireland, and lustily enjoying the quelling of a revolt in northern England in 1569.
Some said he enjoyed the sight and smell of blood just a little too much. An enthusiastic supporter of hanging, drawing and quartering, Leighton never shied away from the meting out of justice, and the bloodier the better.
To reward him, or perhaps just to get this gentleman thug out of her way, Queen Elizabeth gave him Guernsey to govern in 1570 - and so his reign of terror began.
From the moment he landed at St Peter Port on a blustery May day, he took a hearty dislike to the locals.
For a century or more, the Channel Islands had determinedly maintained international neutrality, but this inspired in the warlike Leighton a deep contempt: 'a people cowardly in their courage and somewhat too kind to the French,' he snorted.
And, in an early warning of what was to follow, he added menacingly: 'I will keep them Her Highness's subjects maugre [despite] the instinct of their hearts.'
With the threat of Spanish invasion just around the corner, and discovering that the island's defences were paper-thin, Leighton started out as he meant to go along - lavishly spending Guernsey's revenues on fortifications without reference to the locals.
Within a year, sensing a growing well of resentment to his profligacy, he used his contacts in London to secure a royal Warrant to endorse his actions.
Voices raised against him were silenced. Civil liberties were curtailed, people were arrested and riots broke out: he responded with gusto, locking his opponents up without trial.
Word got back to London that the gout-ridden governor was out of control. The Bailiff and Jurats - distinguished elders of the community - complained to a visiting Royal Commission that Leighton alone was to blame for the riots.
The root of the problem was his misappropriation of funds, his tyranny, his taste for imprisonment without trial, and his press-ganging of Guernseymen to go to sea against their will to fight pirates (during which many lost their lives).
In fact, the Royal Commission - dispatched by the Queen to answer the locals' complaints - was a fix. The moment its members arrived, Leighton announced he would join their number, thereby sitting in judgment on his own actions.
It came as no surprise to the hard-pressed islanders that when the Commission reported, it exonerated their dictator.
Leighton's intransigence flourished: he dismissed local laws and democracy, turfing out the Bailiff and installing his nephew Thomas Wigmore as a puppet figurehead.
Years later, he made his son a Lieutenant of the island, too.
Surrounded by allies, Leighton felt emboldened to seize four French ships tied up in St Peter Port - even though Guernsey was supposed to be neutral.
The Royal Court in London, embarrassed by this act of brigandry, declared the seizure invalid: Leighton airily ignored their judgment. This was too much for his nephew Wigmore, who accused him of tyranny.
'In 1587 Leighton sailed to England to advise Sir Walter Raleigh on defence. In gratitude, the Queen gave him a knighthood, and her cousin Elizabeth Knollys' hand in marriage'
But Wigmore had miscalculated the power Leighton still wielded - and found himself being hauled back to London to explain himself.
Fearful for his life, Wigmore responded by hiring two hitmen to murder the prosecutor - just the kind of behaviour Leighton himself was capable of - and was jailed for his pains.
Later, Leighton was to dispatch further senior Guernseymen to London for disagreeing with him, their price usually being a spell in jail. Rough justice was the order of the day in Elizabethan times, and to the victor came the spoils.
Exonerated from the successive charges against him, in 1587 Leighton sailed to England to advise Sir Walter Raleigh on defence strategy in the face of the threat from the Armada. In gratitude, Elizabeth gave him a knighthood, and her cousin Elizabeth Knollys' hand in marriage.
Elizabeth Knollys had important connections: not only was she a cousin of the Queen, but also a relation of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. In her Tudor ruff, she rather resembled an early Kate Middleton, and soon became Sir Thomas Leighton's most valuable conquest, on or off the battlefield. Together the couple had three children - their son Thomas, and daughters Elizabeth and Anne.
It is from Elizabeth Leighton's side that Kate descends, while William's ancestor is her sister Anne. Curiously, there is not a single titled person on Kate's side of the family tree, yet on William's side he can count the earls of Rochester, Lords Lisburne, and a few baronets among his ancestors before his forbears marry into the Spencer family.
In fact, Kate's family slid decidedly downmarket for a few generations before picking itself up and becoming respectable again.
Sir Thomas and Elizabeth's daughter married one Sherrington Talbot, a member of an ancient and respectable family of landowners, but in a couple of generations' time, things were beginning to look decidedly iffy.
Sherrington and Elizabeth's granddaughter wed Henry Davenport, after which the bloodline began to sink slowly down society's totem pole until they reached the point at which Henry's great-granddaughter Sarah Davenport married Tom Ashford of Stratford-on-Avon - a lowly ironmonger and 'saddler's bridle cutter'.
The whole family lived in stables in the town - the only legacy Tom could leave his daughter Elizabeth when she married Robert Hobbes in 1800.
Hobbes, who described himself as a gentleman (others might not) was, in fact, an early property developer, buying up properties around Stratford; but the couple's daughter moved things upmarket again when she married an Oxford-educated clergyman, the Rev Thomas Davis.
Their daughter, Harriet, married into the Luptons, a rich upper-middle-class family of merchants and property owners around Leeds - and Harriet's daughter, Olive, married a successful Leeds lawyer, Richard Middleton. Richard's son Peter was a pilot, so too was his grandson Michael - the father of Kate.
For the heralds whose job it will be to come up with a convincing coat of arms for Kate when the Palace finally announces her engagement to William, this latest revelation of near-royalty in the family will come as a relief, given that so many of her ancestors were working men without, as they say, escutcheon.
On the other hand, not everyone would wish to be associated with an ancestor who cared so little for the sanctity of life.
The short official record of Sir Thomas, who is after all the blood-tie between our future king and queen, could hardly be more dismissive: 'Leighton is recalled in Guernsey with . . . rancour. In England, he is barely remembered at all.'
Perhaps that's about to change.
The Illuminati Speaks!- Prince William and Kate Middleton
Prince William and Kate Middleton are Related
Prince William & Kate Middleton Related Thanks to a Tudor Tyrant


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ATRP, first developed by Matyjaszewski in 1995, allows scientists to easily form polymers by putting together component parts, called monomers, in a controlled piece-by-piece fashion. Assembling polymers in such a manner has allowed scientists to create a wide range of polymers with highly specific, tailored functionalities. ATRP has been used to develop cosmetics, coatings, adhesives and drug delivery systems, and is used to develop "smart" materials -- those that respond to environmental changes, such as changes in temperature, light, pressure or pH.
The current study represents the latest in a series of advances Matyjaszewski's research group has made since ATRP's inception that make the technique more precise and more environmentally friendly. In a process they are calling electrochemically mediated ATRP, or eATRP, the researchers used a computer-controlled battery to apply an electrochemical potential across the ATRP reaction.
"This marks the first time that we've paired electrochemistry with ATRP, and the results were startlingly successful," said Matyjaszewski, the J.C. Warner Professor of Natural Sciences at CMU. "We found that by adjusting the current and voltage we could slow and speed up, or even start and stop the reaction on-demand. This gives us a great deal more flexibility in conducting our reactions that should lead to the development of precisely engineered materials."
In traditional ATRP reactions scientists use a copper catalyst to grow a complex polymer structure by adding a few monomeric units at a time to the polymer chain. The process relies on paired reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions between two species of copper -- the activator CuI and deactivator CuII -- where the two catalysts exchange electrons back and forth. Occasionally, one of the exchanges will spontaneously stop, called a radical termination, resulting in the accumulation of CuII. To keep the polymerization going, researchers must rebalance the system by compensating for the excess CuII.
In the early ATRP experiments, scientists addressed this problem by adding more CuI to the system. This generated materials with high, sometimes toxic, levels of copper, reaching around 5,000 parts-per-million (ppm). Such levels of copper are hard to remove using current industrial equipment. As an alternative, Matyjaszewski and colleagues developed novel methods for using activators and reducing agents to reactivate the CuII. Most notably, they found that environmentally friendly reducing agents like sugars or vitamin C were highly effective in reducing the amount of copper catalyst used in ATRP reactions.
In the current study, Matyjaszewski and Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Magenau looked to electrochemistry as a means for maintaining balance in ATRP reactions. They found that adding electricity capitalized on the redox reaction by moderating the transfer of electrons. This allowed them to compensate for the radical terminations and reduce the amount of copper needed to run ATRP. As a result the amount of copper in the system was reduced to 50 ppm, a 100-fold decrease. In terms of creating a greener, less toxic form of ATRP, this amount rivaled Matyjaszewski's previous studies that used vitamin C and sugars as reducing agents, but has the added benefit of not requiring the addition of any additional organic or inorganic reducing agents.
The researchers found that applying electricity to the system also gave them more precise control over the reaction. The computer-controlled battery allowed them to manipulate the ATRP process in real-time by changing the current or voltage.
The researchers have used this process to create the standard types of polymers made with ATRP: star, brush and block copolymers. They believe that the meticulous control eATRP gives them over the rate of polymerization will allow for the creation of polymers with even more complex architectures.
Co-authors of the study include Nicholas Strandwitz from the Kavli Nanoscience Institute and Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology and Armando Gennaro of the University of Padova, Italy.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the CRP Consortium at Carnegie Mellon.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations) from materials provided by Carnegie Mellon University.
Journal Reference:Andrew J. D. Magenau, . Nicholas C. Strandwitz, . Armando Gennaro and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski. Electrochemically Mediated Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization. Science, 1 April 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6025 pp. 81-84 DOI: 10.1126/science.1202357


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Many people in India find it difficult to justify or reconcile themselves to the fact that in a culture which worships Saraswati as the Goddess of Learning, so many girls are deprived of even primary education; in a culture which worships Lakshmi as the Goddess of Wealth, so many modern-day Lakshmis live a slavish life of economic dependence; in a culture where male Gods have had to appeal for perfection to the feminine Shakti, women among many communities are not allowed to venture out of their domestic confines without male protection. This bewilderment and guilt has compelled numerous people to pick up cudgels on behalf of women, throwing up important social movements. It is noteworthy that a majority of women's rights struggles and movements in modern India have been often initiated, led and sustained by men.
In the nineteenth century, considered by many as a period of severe erosion of women's rights in India, Vidyasagar in Bengal, Ranade and Phule in Maharashtra, Veerasalingam in Andhra, Lala Devraj in Punjab and a host of others committed their entire lives to the cause of women. In the writings of these social reformers, cutting across regional and caste boundaries, woman as the wronged matri shakti, is a recurring metaphor. A good part of their efforts went into convincing other men that Indian society could not make progress as long as their partners stayed oppressed, that the country's freedom could not be won as long as women were denied their rightful due in the family and in society. To women, their message was that they should recognise their own feminine shakti and become modern-day Durgas without, of course, losing Sita's nurturing qualities.
Sita is considered a very negative role model, the hallmark of wifely slavery for most of those who consider themselves progressives and feminists. Her suffering is seen as a product of masochism, lack of selfhood and supine surrender to patriarchy. Many Indian "modernists " see Sita as an adversary whose influence among people is to be countered. The association of the feminine with nurturing mother figures is seen as a patriarchal conspiracy to put women in restrictive and self-effacing roles.
Needless to say, this projection is altogether contrary to the popular perception of Sita. The Ramayana tells the story of a whole spectrum of voluntary sacrifices and hardships endured by most of the main characters in their resolve to adhere to their dharmic codes. However, it is Sita's sacrifices, and the raw deal meted out to her, that loom much larger in the Indian consciousness than the hardships undergone by any of the other characters in the epic. Sita emerges as the final moral touchstone of the story. Her pain and sorrow hang heavily on the collective consciousness of the Indian people like that of no other character, divine or mortal.
Sita short-changed: The popular obsession with Sita's predicament is rooted in the three episodes after her liberation from Ravana's captivity: her agnipariksha (ordeal by fire), her later banishment by Rama and, in the end, Rama's demand for a second fire-ordeal, which she rejects through an appeal to her mother, Prithvi (Goddess Earth), to receive her back into Her womb. These episodes, as depicted in the Valmiki Ramayana, have disturbed devotees and nondevotees alike throughout the centuries. Rama's treatment of Sita, in the latter parts of the Ramayana, remains immensely controversial and has provoked innumerable attempts by successive generations to critique and rework their relationship. From Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti to Kamban, Tulsidas and contemporary writers such as Bharat Bhushan Agarwal and Maithili Sharan Gupt, authors have challenged Rama's behavior towards Sita or have attempted to reform Rama to make him prove himself a more worthy husband for her.
Who is to blame? This obsession with reforming Rama has to do with the popular perception of Sita as perfection incarnate, so much so that even Maryada Purushottam Rama, the Divinely Perfect Rama, does not measure up to her. Sita is seen as flawless, despite the fact that she brings about trouble for everyone by crossing the magic circle of protection around her forest hut. In this projection, people have voluntarily glossed over those few occasions when Sita behaves unreasonably as in her castigation of Lakshmana, accusing him of lustful intentions towards her at the time he refuses to follow her dictates and go to help Rama in the forest.
Whereas feminists interpret Sita's offer to undergo agnipariksha as an act of surrender to the whims of an unreasonable husband, in popular perception it is seen as an act of defiance that challenges her husband's aspersions. Sita emerges as a woman that even Agni, the Fire God--who has the power to destroy everything He touches--does not dare harm.
My assessment is that while no one in India feels offended if Rama is asked to improve, reform and change some of his anti-women notions, people unencumbered by "isms " are not enthusiastic about Sita being subjected to "improvements " which make her behave altogether out of character. Politically inspired attempts to make Sita lose the very qualities that make her Sita are resented or simply dismissed by those who have some roots in their culture and tradition.
Sita as ally: If we want people to gracefully yield space for our newly acquired ideologies, we have to learn to be tolerant and respectful of those they already hold. There is no need to treat our traditional Gods and Goddesses as adversaries, especially considering that they are willing to come a long way to support our causes. At the heart of this controversy between these two opposing approaches to social and religious reform is the key question: How do we relate to our cultural heritage and define our relationship to our own people and the values they cherish?
Do we disown tradition and position ourselves outside it, or do we accept it as our own, in the way we accept our gene stock? Owning up to our traditions does not imply subscribing to every one of their pathological norms and endorsing harmful practices. It simply means learning to distinguish between inherently unjust practices and those that one doesn't like because one has adopted a different value framework.
Social reformers can be effective only when people see them as caring insiders who have stood by them in their various trials and tribulations. But if we descend as attacking outsiders, focusing solely on practices we disapprove of, we will not make much of a dent. Only by creating a shared sense of right and wrong with the people whose lives we wish to change for the better can we create a new social consensus for a more just and humane society within our respective communities.
Mahatma Gandhi was among the most creative reformers who instinctively understood the creative potential of many of our traditions and values. For example, he used the Sita symbol to advocate the idea of women's strength, autonomy and ability to protect themselves rather than depend on men for safety. His Sita was like a "lioness in spirit " before which Ravana became "as helpless as a goat." For the protection of her virtues even in Ravana's custody, she did not "need the assistance of Rama." Her own purity was her sole shield.
Gandhi's Sita became a symbol of swadeshi or the decolonization of the Indian economy. He asked the women of India to follow her example by wearing Indian homespun and boycotting foreign fineries because Gandhi's Sita would have never worn imported fabric. Gandhi wanted to create a whole army of new Sitas who were not brought up to think that a woman "was well only with her husband or on the funeral pyre." He wanted them to stop aspiring to be mere wives and instead become leaders of men, teaching them the message of peace and social harmony.
Even those who are put off by Gandhi's use of Hindu religious symbols for political mobilization and who have problems with many of his views on women and sexuality do not deny that, more than any other modern leader, he helped create a favorable atmosphere for women's large scale and respectful entry into public life. Gandhi's moral backing legitimized women's right to hold political office without having to wage long-drawn battles, like the Suffragists in the West had to do to. His Sitas were encouraged to break the shackles of domesticity, to come out of purdah, to lead political movements and teach the art of peace to this warring world.
Joshi's movement: In recent years, the Shetkari Sangathana leader Sharad Joshi also used the Sita symbol to drive home a radical message of gender justice among the farmers of Maharashtra. It was in 1986 that I was first invited to come and work out a program of action for the Shetkari Sangathana's women's front, the Shetkari Mahila Aghadi. An important outcome of my inputs and interactions with the Mahila Aghadi was the Lakshmi Mukti Karyakram. That is, the program for Liberating Lakshmis--the Goddesses of wealth. Sita is believed to be an incarnation of Lakshmi. An ordinary wife is also referred to as a Lakshmi of the household--a grihalakshmi. The Lakshmi Mukti Karyakram revolved around the idea that the peasantry could not get a fair deal for itself and would remain exploited by urban interests as long as the curse of Mother Sita stayed on them, that is, as long as they kept their wives or grihalakshmis enslaved by keeping them economically dependent and powerless in the family. The Sangathana announced in 1989 that any village in which a hundred or more families transferred, of their own accord, a piece of land to the wife's name would be honored as a Lakshmi Mukti Gaon, a village which had liberated its hitherto enslaved Lakshmis.
This campaign became the real turning point in my understanding of the powerful emotional hold of certain traditional symbols on the psyches of people of all ages and varied communities in India. During the campaign tours, while I would use images and examples from contemporary life, Sharad Joshi's speeches revolved around the Sita story, which seems to have played a crucial role in striking a deep emotional chord among the Sangathana followers. I quote from his very evocative speech which first establishes a link between the daily privations, drudgery and acts of loyalty of the wives of ordinary, poor farmers and the privations suffered by Sita in Valmiki Ramayana:
"During our struggle for remunerative prices I taught you to calculate the cost of production of farm produce and asked you to get into the habit of noting down each and every item of agricultural work and the cost involved. I would now suggest another exercise: On an off day, just sit down in a quiet corner of your house and start noting down on a long sheet of paper the various tasks your Lakshmi performs from as early as five in the morning to late at night: feeding the cattle, followed by all the chores required for the upkeep of the house and its surroundings, cooking, fetching water, and the care of children. All these by themselves represent a full day's work. But she goes on non-stop.
"After completing housework, she goes to the fields and, at the end of a back-breaking day of work, on her way back home, she tries to scrounge around and collect anything that can be used as firewood for the evening meal. Then she follows with a second round of tasks--cooking the evening meal, looking after little children, feeding the animals and tending to the needs of other family members including the old and sick. From the time she wakes up to feed the cattle to the time she lays down to sleep, she has probably put in no less than 15 hours of work. How do you calculate in rupee terms the love, care and affection that she puts into all these tasks? How do you put a money value on the services of a person who saves the honor of the family by going and stealthily borrowing milk or sugar from the neighbors so she can provide tea for your guests who come at an unexpected hour at a time when the house does not have those provisions? Let us put the value of all these acts of loyalty and love at zero. But shouldn't she get at least as much money as a person working for the Employment Guarantee Scheme gets for simply moving earth from one place to another?
"Let us figure out the value of her labor on the basis of a minimum wage of 12 rupees per day [then us$1]. She works 365 days a year. Let us say she has been married to you for 20 years. Given that she has worked 365 days a year for 20 years, the amount comes to more than 160,000 rupees [$12,700]. She has never tried to demand this amount you owe her, nor sent a notice with a jeep load of people to come, seize and take away your household utensils as the bank officials do when you owe much smaller amounts as agricultural loans to government banks. On the contrary, to save you from other creditors, remember how often she even sold off the little bit of jewellery she was wearing? If we calculate the total, along with the interest, it comes to a minimum of 400,000 rupees [$31,700]. What have you given her in return? Two saris for a whole year and that, too, forgotten if there is a drought. No guarantee of even adequate food. If there is not enough food in the house, the husband's share is not reduced. And a mother will hardly snatch food away from her own children's mouths. She makes do with whatever is left over--a half or a quarter chapati and fills the rest of her stomach by drinking water. This has been her fate so far."
Having thus established the credentials of their wives as no less self-effacing than Sita Mata herself, Joshi goes on to show them that they are emulating a very negative role model and being as ungrateful and uncaring as was Rama:
"That this situation is not new is certain. But how and when did it start? Prabhu Ramchandra is considered a purushottam, the ideal human. But think of how he treated Sita Mata, who joyfully embraced exile in the forest for 14 years to be with him. As soon as Rama was appointed as king, he decided to cast her off. It is not necessary for us to get into a debate on whether it was right or not for Rama to give up Sita. But was it not necessary for him to at least take the trouble of explaining to Sita why, as a king, he was compelled to abandon her? He could have assured her that she need not lack anything after his parting company with her, that she could continue living respectably in Ayodhya. Better still, Rama should have told his subjects: 'If she is not good enough for you as a queen, I will go along with her.' After all that is what she had done when Rama was banished by Kaikeyi who had told Sita she could continue living in the palace. But Sita had said, 'Jithe Rama, tithe Sita'; [ "Wherever Ram goes, there goes Sita "]. Even if Rama was not ready to leave his kingship for her, surely there were less cruel ways to deal with the situation. Sita was pregnant at that time. If Rama had provided her a small straw hut till the time of her delivery, he would not have lost any of his greatness by doing so."
Joshi then links the story to an architectural relic which stands as testimony to the injustice done to Sita in popular imagination: "There is a Sita temple at Raveri village of Maharashtra. The villagers in that area tell you that Sita Mata delivered her two sons on that very spot. She was in such a destitute condition that she went begging for a handful of grains. The people of village Raveri spurned her and refused to give her any. Sita Mata cursed them in her grief. Such was the power of that curse that not a grain of wheat would grow in that village for centuries (until the arrival of the hybrid variety), even though the neighboring villages produced plentiful harvests of wheat. In other words, the poverty of Indian farmers will not go away unless they get rid of the curse of Mother Sita by atoning for the misdeed of Rama. They can do so by repaying their debt to their own Lakshmis and free themselves of her curses. After all the husband of a slave cannot be a free man."
Sharad Joshi would conclude his speech by saying that the purpose of the Lakshmi Mukti campaign was to see that no modern-day Sita would ever have to suffer the fate of Rama's Sita because she had nothing to call her own, no house or property of her own. By transferring land to their wives, they were paying off "a long overdue debt " to Mother Sita: "Through this gesture you, my farmer brothers, will be vanquishing that monster of male tyranny which even Prabhu Ram could not vanquish though he slayed a greater warrior like Ravana with ease."
This is indeed a hard-hitting critique of Bhagwan Rama, and yet no one seemed to mind because Joshi was drawing upon popular sentiment on this issue even while putting it far more strongly. In village after village, I saw men reduced to tears as Sharad Joshi retold the story of Sita, adapting it movingly to the context of the campaign. Within a couple of years, hundreds of villages had already been honored as Lakshmi Mukti villages and hundreds more had volunteered to carry out Lakshmi Mukti. Most of the villages that carried out Lakshmi Mukti celebrated it as though it were a big festival. We would find the entire village decorated with buntings, balloons and rangoli (colored floor designs). We would be received with women performing aratis (worship with oil lamps) while men danced to the beat of celebratory drums. Men seemed even more elated than women--some of the men I interviewed described the whole campaign as a mahayagna, a great religious sacrifice.
For as long as it lasted, this unique campaign was able to draw deep emotional response because Mother Sita has the power to guilt-trip the most hard-hearted Hindu men to respond to her plea for justice. Needless to say, this campaign for women's economic rights could take off in rural Maharashtra in large part due to Joshi's charisma and credibility as a leader. However, as the Sangathana gravitated more and more towards electoral politics, it lost a good deal of its power to evoke similar enthusiasm for such nonpartisan, moral causes. Is it because, while people in India have let Lord Rama be dragged into the murkiness of electoral politics, they do not want Mother Sita to be used for such narrow purposes?
Madhu Kishwar, New Delhi, is editor of Manushi, India's leading magazine on human issues, especially women's rights. This essay is a revised version of excerpts from two essays in Manushi--A Journal about Women and Society published from Delhi since 1978: "Of Humans and Divines, Female Moral Exemplars in the Hindu Tradition, " issue 136 of 2003, and "Yes to Sita, No to Ram: The Continuing Hold of Sita on Popular Imagination, " issue 98 of 1997. Both these issues and subscriptions to Manushi can be ordered from Manushi, C1/3 Sangam Estate, 1 Underhill Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054 India. E-mail email@example.com


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4 Nights & 2 Dive Days, City View, high season
Upon arrival in Palau a representative of Fish 'n Fins will be waiting for you at the airport. They will assist you with your luggage and take you to your hotel. In the comfort of your room you will have a good night's rest.
The next morning, on your first day of diving, our driver will be waiting for you in the lobby of your hotel at 7.30 am. Our Representative will bring you to Fish 'n Fins to complete the applications, you will be given your Fish 'n Fins drinking bottle and Government permit. After day 1, your pick up will be at 8.00 am. Don't forget to plan enough time for your breakfast, which is included with your accommodation.
Upon arrival at the diving center on Day 1 you can sort out your dive gear – we will provide you with a weight belt and weights. If you do not have your own dive gear, we will provide you the right equipment for your dive adventure with Fish 'n Fins. Please note that rental dive gear is an extra charge - please check our price list for more details or send us an email.
If you are certified to dive with Nitrox 32, once the tanks are loaded on the boat you will be able to analyze the percentage of oxygen in your tank. When everyone is ready, our dive guides and captains will prepare for departure and off you go - towards your first amazing dive of the day - mantas, sharks and pristine reefs are waiting for you.
After the first morning dive you'll spend your surface interval where you can snorkel, swim or simply enjoy the environment while having your picnic lunch. We are well known for the quality of our food - you'll have different choices for lunch including vegan & vegetarian options.
After a second dive the boat will come back to base, unless you have opted for a third tank dive - please note that a third tank is an extra charge. For booking a third tank please consult with your divemaster or front desk.
During your 2 Dive Days with us you'll do two consecutive dives each day from the boat – your dive day includes two 12 liter/80 cubic foot scuba tanks filled with air or EAN 32 as mentioned, guide, weights, weight belt, water & lunch.
Need help booking? Talk to us!(680) 488 2637 email@example.com


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Video at Dancing with the Stars Cast Reveal
Heidi usually has been covering all the best press that comes out about Dancing with the Stars, but this video was just too funny (Thanks ck410 for pointing it out). I guess Ryan Seacrest sent Security Guard Roger & Radio Show Phone Operator Nelson to interview the new cast of Dancing with the Stars. It made me laugh so hard. I like this type of raw coverage. Enjoy!


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This comes from the same person that sent the first request. If anyone can help him please reply to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Since you people deal with satellites, would you mind asking around? I have a question.
On the island of Malta, north of Africa, there is a place called Anchor Bay. It's where the Popeye movie was filmed. It's in the thin "neck" of Malta, the little triangular notch. I have looked on the Net and looked on the Net, but can't find any place with satellite images clear enough to show the buildings there. I need an "ortho" image, which is to say one flat like a map, corrected for perspective. If I can find one with a size reference, I'd like someday to try and make a paper model of "Sweethaven", the town in the movie. FWIW there is a geocache near it, I wrote down the coords as N35-57.636 by E014-20.521 . "Terraserver" type data is what I am looking for but "Terra" server seems to think the USA is all there is to the world.
Weird to use Terraserver and see your own house with your own car parked out in front. Even weirder to know there is a cache in the Braden Park across the street and about 100 feet up the road from me.
Dwayne Horton
Wilmore KY 40390


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Fresh off of altering the broadcasting universe by placing a game show on top of a very tall building, ABC has picked up yet another new game show idea. This one comes from Russia, and it's called "The Six," which is not to be confused with "The Nine" which starred Tim Daly and was just as puzzling as "Lost," only no one cared. The Hollywood Reporter has all the details:
ABC has given a series order to a classic Russian game show in which teams work together to solve puzzles.
In "The Six" (originally titled "What? Where? When?"), six players must collaborate to solve nontrivia logic games within 60 seconds. ABC has ordered six episodes from Merv Griffin Entertainment.
"When was the last time you saw a group dynamic that wasn't about backstabbing?" Merv Griffin Entertainment TV president Roy Bank said. "Here, there's no voting, no eliminations. You make money only as a team."
The top-rated Russian version of "Six" has been on the air since 1975, the same year Griffin's "Wheel of Fortune" debuted in daytime. The ABC version has tapped U.K. personality Vernon Kay to host. The show seeks to distinguish itself from other quiz shows by its logic-based questions.
The show will also diverge from the original Russian version in many ways. This version will offer cash prizes. On the Russian version, your prize is an empty promise from the government that they won't poison you. Quite a prize. Also, this version probably won't have an owl with a crown in its opening credits.
U.S. & World
I swear those are the original opening credits. And that's really an owl wearing an Imperial Margarine crown. I really wish ABC would retain those elements. As for Vernon Kay, here's the British host (WARNING!) swearing on live radio. I like him already. I do believe he has what Hollywood suits would call a Fergusonish persona.
Production on "The Six" will begin in the summer, and that's likely when it will air as well. The 60-second element recalls current NBC show "Minute to Win It," but perhaps the puzzles and the lack of backstabbing will make for compelling television. So long as the owl stays.