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Both House Director Pat Montesian and Don Gately's A.A. sponsor like to remind him how the new Ennet House resident Geoffrey Day could be an invaluable teacher for him, Gately, as Staff.
"So then at forty-six years of age I came here to learn to live by clichés" is what Day says to Charlotte Treat right after Randy Lenz asked what time it was at 0825. "To turn my will and life over to the care of clichés. One day at a time. Easy does it. First things first. Ask for help. Thy will not mine be done. It works if you work it. Grow or go. Keep coming back."
Poor old Charlotte Treat, needlepointing primly beside him on the old vinyl couch that just came from Goodwill, purses her lips. "You need to ask for some gratitude."
"Oh no but the point is that I've already been fortunate enough to receive gratitude." Day crosses one leg over the other in a way that inclines his whole little soft body toward her. "For which, believe you me, I'm grateful. I cultivate gratitude. That's part of the system of clichés I'm here to live by. An attitude of gratitude. A grateful drunk will never drink. I know the actual cliché is 'A grateful heart will never drink,' but since organs can't properly be said to imbibe and I'm still afflicted with just enough self-will to decline to live by utter non sequiturs, as opposed to just good old clichés, I'm taking the doubtless hazardous liberty of light amendment. Albeit grateful amendment, of course."
Charlotte Treat looks over to Gately for some sort of help or Staff enforcement of dogma. The poor bitch is clueless. All of them are clueless, still. Gately reminds himself that he too is probably still mostly clueless, even after all these hundreds of days. "I Didn't Know That I Didn't Know" is another of these slogans that look so shallow for a while and then all of a sudden drop off and deepen like the lobster waters off the North Shore. As Gately fidgets his way through daily A.M. meditation he always tries to remind himself daily that this is all an Ennet House residency is supposed to do: buy these poor yutzes some time, some thin pie slice of abstinent time, till they can start to get a whiff of what's true and deep, almost magic, under the shallow surface of what they're trying to do.
"I cultivate it assiduously. I do special gratitude exercises at night up there in the room. Gratitude-ups, you could call them. Ask Randy over there if I don't do them like clockwork. Diligently. Sedulously."
"Well it's true is all," Treat sniffs. "About gratitude."
Everybody else except Gately, who is lying on the old other couch opposite them, is ignoring this exchange, watching an old movie whose tracking is a little messed up so that staticky stripes eat at the picture's bottom and top. The Ennet House Director, Pat M., encourages new Staff to think of residents they'd like to bludgeon to death as teachers of patience, tolerance, self-discipline, and restraint. She can always tell when Gately's exercising tolerant restraint, because of the slight facial tic that betrays his effort of will, and makes it a point to praise his willingness to grow and change when the cheek starts to spasm.
Day isn't done. "One of these exercises is being grateful that life is so much easier now. I used sometimes to think. I used to think in long compound sentences with subordinate clauses and even the odd polysyllable. Now I find I needn't. Now I live by the dictates of macramé samplers ordered from the back-page ad of an old Reader's Digest or Saturday Evening Post. Easy Does It. Remember to Remember. But for the Grace of God. Turn It Over. Terse, hard-boiled. Good old Norman Rockwell–Paul Harvey wisdom. I walk around with my arms out straight in front of me and recite these clichés. In a monotone. No inflection necessary. Could that be one? Could that be added to the cliché pool? No inflection necessary? Too many syllables, probably."
Poor old Charlotte Treat, all of nine weeks clean, is looking primmer and primmer. She glances again over at Gately, lying on his back, taking up the living room's whole other sofa, one sneaker up on the sofa's square worn-fabric arm, his eyes almost closed. Only House Staff get to lie on the couches.
"Denial," Charlotte finally says, "is not a river in Egypt."
"Hows about the both of you shut the fuck up," says Emil Minty.
Geoffrey (not Geoff, Geoffrey) Day has been at Ennet House eight days. He came in from Roxbury's infamous Dimock Detox, where he was the only white person, which Gately bets must have been broadening for him. Day has a squished blank smeared flat face, one requiring great effort to like, and eyes that are just starting to lose the nictitated glaze of early sobriety. Gately tries to remind himself that Day is a newcomer and still very raw. A red-wine-and-Quaalude man who finally nodded out in late October and put his Saab through the window of a Malden sporting-goods store and then got out and proceeded to browse until Boston's finest came and got him. He'd taught something horseshit-sounding like social historicity or historical sociality at some Jr. college up the Expressway in Medford and came in saying in his Intake interview that he also manned the helm of a scholarly quarterly. Word for word, the House Manager had said: "manned the helm" and "scholarly quarterly." His Intake indicated that Day'd been in and out of a blackout for most of the last several years, and his wiring is still as they say pretty frayed. His detox at Dimock, where they barely have the resources to slip you a Librium if you start to D.T., must have been real grim, because Geoffrey D. now alleges it never happened: his story is he just strolled into Ennet House on a lark one day from his home five-plus miles away in Malden and found the place too hilariously egregious to want to leave.
It's the newcomers with some education that are the worst, according to Staffer Eugenio M. They identify their whole selves with their head, and the Disease makes its command headquarters in the head. Day wears chinos of indeterminate hue, brown socks with black shoes, and shirts that the House Manager had described on the Intake form as "East-European-type turtleneck shirts." Day's now on the vinyl couch with Charlotte Treat after breakfast in the Ennet House living room with a few of the other residents who either aren't working or don't have to be at work early, and with Gately, who'd pulled a night shift down in the front office till 0400, then got temp-relieved by Johnette Foltz so he could go to work down at the Shattuck Shelter till 0700, and then came and hauled ass back up and took back over so Johnette F. could go off to her N.A.-convention thing with a bunch of N.A. kids in what looked like a VW bus without a hood over the engine, and is now, Gately, covering Johnette's half of the day shift until somebody else gets here, and is trying to unclench and center himself inside by tracing the cracks in the paint of the living room ceiling with his eyes. Gately often feels a terrible sense of loss, narcotics-wise, in the A.M., still, even after all this drug-free time. His A.A. sponsor over at the White Flag group says some people never get over the loss of what they'd thought was their one true best friend and lover; they just have to pray daily for acceptance and patience and the brass danglers to move forward through the grief and loss, to wait for time to harden the scab. The sponsor doesn't give Gately one bit of shit for feeling bad: on the contrary, he commends Gately for his candor in breaking down and crying like a baby and finally telling him about it one A.M., the sense of terrible loss. It's a myth no one misses it. Their particular Substance. Shit, you wouldn't need to give it up if you didn't miss it. You just have to Turn It Over, the emptiness and loss, Keep Coming, show up, pray, Ask for Help. Gately rubs his eye. Simple advice like this does seem like a lot of clichés—Day's right about how it seems. Yes, and if Geoffrey Day keeps on steering by the way things seem to him, he's a dead man sure. Gately's already watched dozens come through here and leave early and some of them die. If Day ever gets lucky and breaks down, finally, and comes to the office late at night to clutch at his pant cuff and blubber and beg for help, Gately'll get to tell Day that the clichéd directives of recovery are a lot more deep and hard to actually do. To try and live by instead of just say. But he'll only get to say it if Day comes and asks. Personally, Gately gives Day like a month at the outside before he's back tipping his hat to parking meters. Except who is Gately to judge who'll end up getting the Gift of the program v. who won't, he needs to remember. He tries to feel like Day is teaching him patience. It takes great patience and tolerance not to want to punt the guy out into Commonwealth Ave. and open up his bunk to somebody that really wants it, desperately, the Gift. Except who is Gately to think he can know who wants it and who doesn't, deep down. Gately's arm is behind his head, up against the sofa's other arm. The VCR is on to something violent Gately neither sees nor hears. He can sort of turn his attention on and off like a light. Even when he was a resident here, he'd had this pro housebreaker's ability to screen input, to do sensory triage. It was one reason he'd been able to stick out his nine residential months with twenty-one other newly detoxed housebreakers, hoods, whores, fired execs, subway musicians, beer-bloated construction workers, vagrants, cirrhotic car salesmen, bunko artists, mincing pillow biters, North End hard guys, Avon ladies, pimply kids with nose-rings, denial-ridden housewives and etc., all jonesing and head-gaming and desperate and grieving and basically whacked-out and producing non-stopping output 24/7.
At some point in here Day says, "So bring on the lobotomist, bring him on I say!"
Except that Gately's counsellor when he was a resident here, Eugenio Martinez, one of the volunteer alumni counsellors, a one-eared former boiler-room bunko man and now a cellular-phone retailer who'd gone through the House under the original pre-Pat founder and now had about like ten years clean, Eugenio M. had lovingly confronted Gately early on about his special burglar's selective attention and about how it could be dangerous, because how can you be sure it's you doing the input screening and not the Spider. Eugenio had called addiction the Spider instead of the Disease, and dispensed his advice in terms of like for example "Feeding the Spider" v. "Starving the Spider" and so on. He'd called Gately into the House Manager's back office and said what if screening his attention's input turned out to be Feeding the Spider and what about an experimental unscreening of input for a while. And Gately had said he'd do his best to try and had come back out and tried to watch a Celtics game while two resident pillow biters from off the Fenway were on the couch having this involved conversation about some third fag having to go in and get the skeleton of some kind of fucking rodent removed from inside his butthole. The unscreening experiment had lasted half an hour. This was right before Gately got his ninety-day chip and wasn't exactly wrapped real tight, still. Ennet House this year is nothing like the freak show it was when Gately went through. Gately has been Substance-free for four hundred and twenty-one days today.
Charlotte Treat, with her carefully made-up, ruined face, is watching the static-striped movie on the VCR while she needlepoints something. Conversation between her and Geoffrey D. has mercifully petered out. Day is scanning the room for somebody else to engage and piss off so he can prove to himself he doesn't fit in here and stay separated off isolated inside himself and maybe get them so pissed off there's a beef and he gets bounced out, Day, and it won't be his fault. You can almost hear the Spider of his Disease chewing away inside his head. Emil Minty, Randy Lenz, and Bruce Green are also in the room, sprawled in spring-shot chairs, lighting one gasper off the end of the last, their posture the don't-fuck-with-me slouch of the streets that here makes their bodies' texture somehow hard to distinguish from that of the chairs. Nell Gunther is sitting at the long table in the doorless dining room that opens out right off the old donated VCR and monitor's pine stand, whitening under her nails with a manicure pencil amid the remains of something she's eaten that involved serious syrup. Joe S. is also in there, way down by himself at the table's far end, trying to saw at a waffle with a knife and fork attached to the stumps of his wrists with Velcro bands. A long-ago former C.P.A., Joe Smith is forty-five and looks seventy, has almost all-white hair that's waxy and yellow from close-order smoke, and finally got into Ennet House last month after a summer in the Cambridge City Shelter. Joe S. is making his fiftieth-odd stab at some kind of durable sobriety in A.A. Once devoutly R.C., he's had crippling trouble with Faith in a Loving God ever since the R.C. Church apparently granted his wife an annulment in '91 after fifteen years of marriage. Then for several years a rooming-house drunk, which in Gately's view is like one step up from a homeless-person-type drunk. Joe S. got jumped and rolled and beaten half to death in Cambridge in the storm on Xmas Eve of last year and left to freeze in an alley, and ended up losing his hands and feet. Whenever residents Doony Glynn and Wade McDade are together in a room and Joe S. comes teetering in on his blocky prosthetic shoes, G. and McD. will stand up and shout together: "Hail Joe, Asleep in the Snow!" Repeated threats of Restriction and worse have not broken them of this practice. Doony Glynn's also been observed telling Joe Smith things like that there's some new guy coming in and moving into the Disabled Room with Joe who's totally minus arms or legs or even a head and communicates by farting in Morse code. Which sally earned Glynn three days' Full House Restriction and a week's extra House Chore for what Johnette Foltz described in the Staff Log as "XSive Crulty." There is a vague intestinal moaning in Gately's right side. Watching Joe Smith smoke a Benson & Hedges by holding it between his stumps with his elbows out like a man with pruning shears is an adventure in fucking pathos, as far as Gately's concerned. And forget about what it's like trying to watch Joe S. try to light a match.
Gately, who's been on Live-In Staff here four months now, believes Charlotte Treat's devotion to needlepoint is suspect. All those needles. In and out of all that thin sterile-white cotton stretched drum-tight in its round frame. The needle makes a kind of thud and squeak when it goes in the cloth. It's not much like the soundless pop and slide of a real cook-and-shoot. But still. She takes such great care.
Gately wonders what color he'd call the ceiling if forced to call it a color. It's not beige and it's not gray. The brown-yellow tones are from high-tar gaspers; a pall hangs up near the ceiling even this early in the new sober day. Some of the drunks and trank-jockeys stay up most of the night, joggling their feet and chain-smoking, even though there's no movies or music allowed after midnight. Don G. has that odd House Staffer's knack, already, after four months, of seeing everything significant in both living and dining rooms without really looking. Emil Minty, a hard-core smack-addict punk here for reasons nobody can quite yet pin down, is in an old mustard-colored easy chair with his combat boots up on one of the standing ashtrays, which is tilting not quite enough for Gately to tell him to watch out, please. Minty's orange Mohawk and the shaved skull around it are starting to grow out brown, which is just not a pleasant sight in the morning at all. The other ashtray on the floor by his chair is full of the ragged new moons of bitten nails, which has got to mean that Esther Thrale, who Gately ordered to bed at 0230, was back down here in the chair having at her nails again the second Gately left to go mop up shit at the Shattuck Shelter. Another gurgle and abdominal chug. When he's up all night Gately's stomach gets all acidy and tight, from either the coffee, maybe, or just the staying up. Emil M.'s been sleeping in the streets since he was maybe sixteen, Gately can tell: he's got that sooty complexion homeless guys have where the soot has insinuated itself into the dermal layer. And the big-armed driver for Leisure Time Ice, the quiet kid, Bruce Green, a garbage-head all-Substance-type kid, maybe twenty-one, face very slightly smunched in on one side, wears sleeveless khaki shirts, used to live in a trailer in that apocalyptic Enfield trailer park out near Allston; Gately likes Green because he seems to have sense enough to keep his yap shut when he's got nothing important to say, which is basically all the time. The tattoo on the kid's right tricep is a spear-pierced heart over the hideous name MILDRED BONK, who Bruce G. told him was a ray of living light and a dead ringer for the late lead singer of The Fiends in Human Shape and his dead heart's one love ever, and who took their daughter and left him this summer for some guy who'd told her he ranched fucking longhorn cows east of Atlantic City, N.J. He's got, even by Ennet House standards, major-league sleep trouble, Green, and he and Gately play cribbage sometimes in the wee dead hours, a game Gately picked up in jail. Joe S. is now hunched in a meaty coughing fit, his elbows out and forehead purple. Gately can see everything without moving his eyes at all.
And then Lenz. Randy Lenz is a small-time organic-coke dealer who wears sport coats rolled up over his big forearms and is always checking his pulse on the inside of his wrists. It's come out that Lenz is of keen interest to both sides of the law; this past May he'd apparently all of a sudden lost all control and holed up in a Charlestown motel and freebased most of a whole hundred grams he'd been fronted by a suspiciously trusting Brazilian in what Lenz didn't know was supposed to have been a D.E.A. sting operation in the South End. Having screwed both sides in what Gately secretly views as a delicious fuckup, Randy Lenz has, since May, been the most wanted he's probably ever been. He is seedily handsome in the way of pimps and low-level coke dealers, muscular in the way certain guys' muscles look muscular but can't really lift anything, with complexly gelled hair and the little birdlike head movements of the deeply vain. One forearm's hair has a little hairless patch, which Gately knows all too well spells knife owner, and if there's one thing Gately's never been able to stomach it's a knife owner, little swaggery guys who always queer a square beef and come up off the ground with a blade so you have to get cut to take it away from them. Lenz is teaching Gately a restrained compassion for people you pretty much want to beat up on sight. And it's obvious to everybody except Pat Montesian—whose odd gullibility in the presence of human sludge, though, Gately needs to try to remember, was one of the reasons why he himself had got into Ennet House—that Lenz is here mostly just to hide. He rarely leaves the House except under compulsion, avoids all windows, and travels nightly to the required A.A./N.A. meetings in a disguise that makes him look like Cesar Romero after a terrible accident; and then he always wants to walk home solo afterward, which is not encouraged. Lenz's leg never stops joggling; Day claims it joggles even worse in sleep. Lenz is seated low in the northeasternmost corner of an old fake-velour love seat that he's jammed in the northeasternmost corner of the living room. Randy Lenz has a strange compulsive need to be north of everything, and possibly even northeast of everything, and Gately has no clue what it's about but observes Lenz's position routinely for his own interest and files.
Second-month resident Charlotte Treat has violently red hair. As in hair the color of like a red crayon. She doesn't have to work the usual outside menial job, because she has some strain of the Virus or maybe A.R.C. Former prostitute, reformed. Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian ambitions come flooding out. Charlotte T. has a cut-rate whore's hard, half-pretty face, her eyes lassoed with shadow around all four lids. Her also with a case of the dermal-layer sooty complexion. The thing about Treat is how her cheeks are deeply pitted in deep trenches that she packs with foundation and tries to cover over with blush, which along with the hair gives her the look of a mean clown. The ghastly wounds in her cheeks look for all the world like somebody got at her with a woodburning kit at some point in her career path. Gately would rather not know.
Don Gately is almost twenty-nine and sober and just huge. One shoulder blade and buttock pooch out over the side of a sofa that sags like a hammock. Lying there gurgling and inert with eyes half shut and a tolerant if ticcy smile. Gately looks less built than poured, with the smooth immovability of an Easter Island statue. It would be nice if intimidating size weren't one of the factors in a male graduate's getting offered the male Live-In Staff job here, but there you are. He has a massive square head made squarer-looking by the Prince Valiant-ish haircut he tries to maintain himself in the mirror, to save money. Room and board aside—plus of course the opportunity for Service—he makes very little money as an Ennet House Staffer, and is paying off restitution schedules in three different district courts. He has the fluttery white-eyed smile now of someone who's holding himself just over the level of doze. Pat Montesian isn't due in until 0900, and he can't go to sleep until she shows, because the House Manager has driven Jennifer Belbin to a court appearance downtown and Gately's the only Staffer here; Foltz, the other Live-In, is at a Narcotics Anonymous convention in Hartford for the long weekend. Gately personally is not hot on N.A.: so many relapses and unhumble returns, so many drug stories told with undisguised bullshit pride, so little emphasis on Service or serious Message; all those people in leather and metal, preening. Rooms full of Randy Lenzes, all hugging each other, pretending they don't miss narcotics. Rampant vulnerable-newcomer fucking. There's a difference between abstinence and recovery, Gately knows. Though who is Gately to judge what works for who. He just knows what seems like it works for him, today. A.A.'s tough Boston love, the White Flag group, old guys with suspendered bellies and white crewcuts and geologic amounts of sober time who'll take your big square head off if they sense you're getting complacent or chasing tail or forgetting that your life still hangs in the balance every fucking day. White Flag newcomers so crazed and sick they can't sit, and have to pace at the meeting's rear, like Gately when he first came. Retired old kindergarten teachers in polyresin slacks and a pince-nez who bake cookies for the weekly meeting and relate from behind the podium how they used to blow bartenders at closing for just two more fingers in a paper cup to take home against the morning's needled light. Gately, albeit an oral-narcotics man from way back, has committed himself to A.A. He drank his fair share, too, he figures, after all.
House Director Pat M. is due in at 0900 and has application interviews with three people, 2 F and 1 M, who better be showing up soon; and Gately will get up and answer the door when they don't know enough to just come in and will say Welcome and get them a cup of coffee if he judges them able to hold it. He'll take them aside and tip them off to be sure to pet Pat M.'s dogs during the interview. The dogs'll be sprawled all over the front office, sides heaving, writhing and biting at themselves. He'll tell the applicants it's a proved fact that if Pat's dogs like you, you're in. Pat M. has directed Gately to tell applicants this, and then if they do actually pet the dogs—two hideous white golden retrievers with suppurating skin afflictions, plus one has grand-mal epilepsy—it'll betray a level of desperate willingness that Pat says is just about all she goes by, deciding.
A nameless cat oozes by on the broad windowsill above the back of the fabric couch. Animals here come and go. Graduates adopt them or they just disappear. Their fleas tend to remain. Gately's intestines gurgle. Boston's dawn this morning was chemically pink. The nail parings in the ashtray on the floor are, he sees, way too big to be fingernail bits. These bitten arcs are broad and thick and a deep autumnal yellow. They are not from fingers. He swallows hard.
Gately'd tell Day how even if they are just clichés, clichés are: (a) soothing, and (b) proclaim a common sort of common sense, and (c) license the universal assent that drowns out silence. And fourth, silence is deadly, pure Spider-food, if you've got the Disease. The older White Flaggers say you can spell the Disease "dis-ease," which sums the basic situation up nicely. Gately should probably also tell him that the only real ultimate relief from the Disease is God, as in finding and cultivating some kind of personally comfortable and worshipable Higher Power; but Gately still can't bring himself to say this kind of thing out loud. Pat has a meeting at the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services in Government Center at noon she needs to be reminded about, since she can't read her own handwriting. Gately envisions going around having to find out who's biting their fucking toenails in the living room and putting the disgusting toenail bits in the ashtray at like 0500. House Regs prohibit bare feet anyplace downstairs.
There's a pale-brown water stain on the ceiling over Day and Treat the exact shape of Florida. Randy Lenz has issues with Geoffrey Day because Day is educated and a teacher and mans a journal's helm. This threatens the self-concept of Lenz, who sees himself as a kind of hiply sexy artist-dash-intellectual. Small-time dealers never think of themselves as just small-time dealers. For Occupation on his Intake form Lenz had put "free lance writer." And he makes a big show of the fact he reads. For his first sober week here in August he'd sat all day smoking and joggling in the northeast corner of the living room, holding open a gigantic medical dictionary and pretending to be reading medical words until Glynn and McDade started busting his balls about never turning the page. At which juncture he quit reading and started talking, making everybody nostalgic for when he just read. Johnette F. had put in the September Log that Lenz would, quote, "get on your very last nerve," which Gately had underlined in a different-color ink. Plus Geoffrey D. has issues with Randy L., too. The dislike is mutual. There's a certain way they don't look at each other. And so now of course they're mashed in together in the tiny three-man bedroom, since last week three guys in one night missed curfew and came in without one normal-sized pupil between them and all refused Urines and got discharged on the spot, and so Day got moved up in his first week from the five-man newcomers' room to the three-man. Seniority comes quick around here. Lenz and Day: a beef may be brewing. Day'll try to goad Lenz into a beef that'll be public enough so he doesn't get hurt but does get bounced out, and then he can leave treatment and go back to Chianti and ludes and make out like the relapse is Ennet House's and never have to confront himself or his Disease. To Gately, Geoffrey D. is like a wide-open textbook on the Disease. One of Gately's jobs is to keep an eye on what's possibly brewing among residents and let Pat or the House Manager know and to try to smooth things down in advance if possible.
The ceiling's color could be called dun, if forced. Someone has farted; no one knows just who, but this isn't like a normal adult place where everybody coolly pretends a fart didn't happen. Here everybody has to make their little comment.
Time is passing. Ennet House reeks of passing time. It is the humidity of early sobriety, hanging and palpable. You can hear ticking in clockless rooms here. Gately changes the angle of one sneaker, puts his other arm behind his head. His head has real weight and pressure. Randy Lenz's obsessive compulsions include the need to be north, a fear of disks, a tendency to take his own pulse, a pathological fear of every form of timepiece, and a constant need to know the time with great precision.
"Day man, you got the time maybe real quick?" Lenz. For the third time in half an hour. Patience, tolerance, reserve, compassion. Gately remembers his own first few straight months here: he'd felt the sharp edge of every second that went by. And the freak-show dreams. Nightmares beyond the worst D.T.s you'd ever heard of. One reason to have a night-shift Staffer down in the front office is so somebody's there for the residents to talk at when—not if, when—when the detox nightmares ratchet them out of twisted sheets at like 0300. Nightmares about relapsing and getting high, about not getting high but having everybody think you're high, about getting high with your alcoholic mom and then killing her with a baseball bat. Whipping it out for a court-ordered Urine and starting up and flames come shooting out. Getting high and bursting into flames. Having a waterspout shaped like an enormous syringe suck you up inside. A vehicle explodes in a bloom of enhanced flame on the VCR, its hood up like an old pop tab.
Day is making a broad gesture out of checking his wristwatch. "Right around eight-thirty, fella."
Randy L.'s fine nostrils flair and whiten. He stares straight ahead, eyes narrowed, fingers on his wrist. Day purses his lips. Gately hangs his head over the arm of the sofa and regards Lenz upside down. "That look on your face there mean something there, Randy? Are you like communicating something with that look?"
"Does anybody maybe know the time a little more exactly is what I'm wondering, Don, since Day doesn't."
Gately checks his own cheap digital, head still hung over the sofa's arm. "I got eight-thirty-two and fourteen, fifteen, sixteen seconds, Randy."
"Thanks a lot D.G. man."
And now Day has that same flared narrow look for Lenz. "We've been over this, friend. Amigo. Sport. You do this all the time with me. Again I'll say it—I don't have a digital watch. This is a fine old antique watch. It points. A memento of vastly better days. It's not a digital watch. It's not a cesium-based atomic clock. It points, with hands. See, Spiro Agnew here has two little arms: they point, they suggest. It's not a fucking stopwatch for life. Lenz, get a watch. Am I right? Why don't you just get a watch, Lenz. Three people I happen to know of for a fact have offered to get you a watch and let you pay them back whenever you feel comfortable about poking your nose out and investigating the work-a-world. Get a watch. Obtain a watch. A fine, digital, incredibly wide watch, about five times the width of your wrist, so you have to hold it like a falconer, and it treats time like pi."
"Easy does it," Charlotte Treat half sings, not looking up from her needle and frame.
Day looks around at her. "I don't believe I was speaking to you in any way shape or form."
"Peace," Gately says softly, his head still hanging over. Joe Smith, upside-down, is having another coughing fit over in the dining room.
Lenz is staring blackly at Geoffrey Day. "If you're trying to fuck with me, brother." He shakes his fine shiny head. "Big mistake."
Day puts his hands up to his cheeks. "Ooh I'm all atremble. I can barely hold my arm steady to read my watch."
Lenz points his cigarette. "Big big big real big mistake."
Emil M.'s contorted way forward in his chair in the way of somebody communicating that he's trying to watch TV around a distraction. "Hows about I give you both a beating if you don't shut up."
A time-killing fantasy Gately has lately is in the middle of bullshit squabbles like this he all of a sudden picks Geoffrey D. up bodily and swings him by his dress shoes and uses him as a bludgeon to beat Randy Lenz's over-groomed head in, freeing up two bunks at once. His progress consists of just entertaining such thoughts now instead of acting on them, which Pat M. reassures him is almost the same as patience. The Ennet House living room has no clock. Gately likes that his cheap watch counts off the seconds: sometimes he just sits and watches the seconds on his big wrist tick digitally off, to remind himself that an interval of time is passing, will pass.
Day has crossed his legs and laced his hands over the knee, a posture they all know Lenz detests for some reason. "So let me get this straight. We're engaged in an argument about whether it's appropriate for you continually to harass innocent watch wearers for the exact time in lieu of buying your own watch, and you win the argument by claiming that my argument is an attempt to quote fuck with you, and by threatening me with physical harm if I don't acquiesce to your argument. This, to you, is winning."
Lenz says, "I ain't got time for this shit."
Charlotte Treat slaps at her needlepoint frame to indicate she's exasperated. "He didn't threaten you."
Emil Minty suddenly stands, making the ashtray topple. "I'm fucking serious."
Gately twists on the couch to catch Minty's eye. Past Minty, down at the dining-room table's end, Joe S. is still coughing, still hunched over, his face a dusky purple; and Nell Gunther is behind him pounding him on the back so hard that it keeps sending him forward over his ashtray, and he waves one stump vaguely over his shoulder to signal her to quit. Gately locks eyes with Minty until the kid sits back down, running a hand over his Mohawk and wearily asking when he can get the fuck out of here.
"I'm just trying to get clear on what's being said here," Day is saying.
Only a couple months ago Gately would have stood up and stood over Minty and physically intimidated him to get him to sit down. Charlotte T. is trying to catch Gately's eye as Lenz sits there joggling and telling Day all he's saying is Day better hope to Christ he doesn't make Lenz have to get up out of this chair right here. Minty is making no move to start cleaning up the ashtray's mess. Gately has no idea where he'll live or what he'll do when his term as Live-In Staff is over.
Day joggles his own foot and asks Gately for his feedback on what's transpiring here, whether Staff can confirm hearing a, how shall we say, he says, menacing aspect to Lenz's tone and/or content. Joe Smith's coughs have taken on your serious cougher's deep slow searching aspect, like he's trying to pronounce something.
"Easy Does It!" shrieks Treat, holding out her absurdly tiny needle, brandishing it.
"Peace on earth good will toward men," says Gately, back all the way on his back, smiling up at the cracked dun ceiling, not even a hint of a tic to betray anything but a tolerant willingness to let it all pass, for the moment. To work itself out, seek its own level, settle, blow over. Die of neglect. He's pretty sure he knows who farted. ♦


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NPD: 90% of game sales during Q3 2009 happened at retail
The NPD Group has revealed that 90 percent of all new and used console sales, add-ons, song packs and rentals were made from physical retail or rental services during the third-quarter of 2009.
Rentals headlines
Belgians not "banning" games rentals, says Belgian
The Belgian Entertainment Association has clarified reports that game rentals are to be banned in Belgium next month, saying that the issue isn't with retailers offering games to rent, rather than with retailers buying games for sale then renting them out. "What's happening is that video rental stores are declining in popularity, and because of […]
Games rentals banned in Belgium
According to this De Standaard piece, games rentals will be banned in Belgium as of December 1. Gamemania – the largest specialist game retailer in Belgium – says in the piece that rentals make up 10 percent of its revenue. Apparently the practice has always been illegal in the country, but has been tolerated until […]

subset: commoncrawl


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Canon Reviews: Canon DSLR Lineup
The first Canon camera, the Kwanon, debuted in 1934, after Goro Yoshida became angry at the high cost of the Leicas dominating the market at the time. That prototype camera was never actually released, but Canon has since then established a reputation for cameras with solid image quality and competitive pricing. That holds true for arguably their most popular options, the Canon DSLR.
Canon's DSLRs are known for being solid professional options, though there's plenty of entry-level options to choose from as well. Video quality is known to have a slight edge, though the gap has shortened in last few years. Most recent DSLR updates have seemed minor, with very few changes while Nikon and mirorless companies like Fujifilm have reworked their sensor design for enhanced detail without the optical low pass filter. Canon is beginning to follow suit though with a handful of models that don't use the filter like the EOS 5DS R and a higher resolution on the T6s and 5DS. Canon also offers one of the fastest DSLRs on the market with the EOS 7D Mark II.
Canon is a solid option for DSLRs--here's the current Canon DSLR lineup.
- Order by:
- Price
- Title
- Grade
- Release Date
Canon EOS 6D Mark II
Canon's entry point into full frame cameras is beefing up with more pro-level specs. The Canon EOS 6D Mark II is the company's gateway to the larger full frame sensors without the big price point of the 1DX and it's stepping up several...
Grade: A Price: $1,499.00
Canon EOS Rebel SL2
Four years after announcing what was at the time the world's smallest DSLR, Canon is finally bringing a much-needed update to the aging Rebel SL1. Meet the Canon EOS Rebel SL2, an affordable, compact DSLR that offers a solid feature set for be...
Grade: B+ Price: $574.00
Canon EOS 77D
The Canon EOS 77D is a mid-range consumer DSLR that sits between the new EOS 7Di and the older 80D, with the same sensor but a mid-level feature list.The EOS 77D sports a 24 megapixel APS-C sensor. That's paired with the Digic 7 processor, an ...
Grade: A- Price: $1,049.00
Canon EOS Rebel T7i
Canon's latest consumer DSLR updates have been mediocre attempts at bringing older high-end features to the more budget friendly line, but the new Canon EOS Rebel T7i uses a new sensor, updated dual pixel autofocus and the company's latest...
Grade: A- Price: $699.00
Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Canon's full frame workhorse just got a pretty significant upgrade with both a new sensor and processor inside the EOS 5D Mark IV, but even that is being overshadowed by the possibility of making slight focus adjustments to RAW files.The cam...
Grade: A Price: $3,549.00
Canon EOS-1D X Mark II
Canon's 2016 flagship DSLR boasts impressive speeds of up to 16 fps, but that's certainly not all the high-end DSLR offers. As Canon's top offering, it's packed with plenty of features for the most demanding professionals.Canon bum...
Grade: A+ Price: $5,499.00
Canon EOS Rebel T6s
Canon's 2015 EOS T6s is making a big splash with the highest resolution sensor the EOS line has seen yet, packing in a 24.2 megapixel APS-C sensor. While it has the same imaging power as the less expensive T6i, it also offers a few extra featu...
Grade: A Price: $549.00
Canon EOS 5DS R
The Canon EOS 5DS R is the 5DS, just without the optical low pass filter--read the full features here then factor in the absence of that filter. The optical low pass or anti-aliasing filter helps reduce moire, but removing it gives images a boost ...
Grade: A Price: $3,699.00
Canon EOS 5DS
Canon doubled the number of megapixels for their EOS DSLR in one fell swoop with the 5DS. While high megapixel count doesn't always translate into better images, with the full frame sensor, the 5DS has a significantly higher resolution than ot...
Grade: A- Price: $3,499.00
Canon EOS Rebel T6i
The Canon EOS Rebel T6i and T6s boasts the highest resolution the popular EOS line has seen yet, thanks to a 24.2 megapixel APS-C sensor. The T6i model is designed for affordability, while the T6s is a flagship model for more advanced users.Both o...
Grade: A Price: $549.00
Canon EOS 7D Mark II
Speed is hard to come by in DSLRs (unless of course you plan on spending about as much as a new car)--which is why the Canon EOS 7D Mark II gets such high marks. Canon's most advanced camera with an APS-C sensor hits 10 fps--add that to a 65-p...
Grade: A Price: $1,081.00
Canon EOS Rebel T5
The Canon EOS Rebel T3 is one of the top selling DSLRs, but its successor hasn't really made many updates from the 2011 model. If you find the Canon Rebel T5 for a low price, it's still a decent camera but the Nikon D3300 and Pentax K-3 bo...
Grade: C+ Price: $549.00
Canon EOS Rebel SL1
Advertised as the smallest DSLR on the market, the Canon EOD Rebel SL1 has received positive initial reviews. The SL1 has the same sensor and processor as the popular but larger T5i, however it's 4 fps burst speed is slightly slower than the T...
Grade: B- Price: $574.00
Canon EOS Rebel T5i
Along the lines of "don't fix what isn't broken," Canon's 2013 EOS Rebel T5i builds on the success of the T4i without making many changes to the popular line. The T5i continues to offer easy photo taking in a capable basic DS...
Grade: A Price: $799.00
Canon EOS-1D X
Canon's top-of-the-line DSLR replaces both the 1D Mark IV and 1Ds Mark III in one fell swoop. With a new full frame 18 megapixel sensor, the 1D X has the resolution to please studio shooters and the frame rate, at 14 fps, to appeal to sports p...
Grade: A Price: $4,375.00


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Posts tagged a virtual pet might be what you want
Benefits of Virtual Pet Adoption
Do you enjoy creating or adopting your own virtual pet? You might have seen the brand new Webkinz plush toys which have a free virtual pet picture of the plush animal. Many youngsters are starting to collect these pets in addition to taking part in the virtual world. Virtual desktop pets offer advantages, particularly if you have children who are interested to get an active indoor pet. They're completely easy to maintain unlike real pets. If you don't wish to need to bother about the irritation of cleaning after your indoor pets and making certain that they're well taken proper care of, a virtual pet might be what you want.
Additionally towards the easy to maintain facet of getting one, for those who have a young child thinking about adopting a genuine pet, then by letting them experience taking care of an online pet, they'll learn to better take care of a pet overall. They'll gain better responsibility and realize that pets require food, shelter, and love and can't be neglected. Most of the virtual pet games will need the owner feed your pet or go ahead and take pet for any walk to enable them to do most of the same or similar tasks that will have to be achieved having a real pet. The proprietors could possibly get additional points or rewards by performing these tasks or can easily see their pet's health or abilities decline to fail to complete operator.
Should you be worried about the price of taking care of a genuine live pet such as the vet bills, immunizations, or food, this is one thing that's completely non-existent. Having a pet can be quite pricey and if you don't have the cash to purchase a dog, you'll be able to think about a virtual pet. You'll find many free pet sites to help you get began.
If money isn't a factor, but you don't want to cope with house breaking or cleaning following a pet, this may be regarded as a benefit too. Maybe your children have severe allergic reactions and can't accept the ticks and flicks that some creatures may bid farewell to. Well, with virtual pets this isn't an issue. While you start to consider adoption, then you'll observe how convenient they're and how they may do well buddies for those alike. In either case, you won't fail together with your choice.


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Military, Products
By By Andrew Drwiega, International Bureau Chief | February 25, 2014
Send Feedback
The U.S. Army ran a test flight of the Lockheed Martin Modernized Day Sensor Assembly (M-DSA) mounted on the newest version of the Apache AH-64E yesterday during AUSA Winter in Huntsville, Ala.
M-DSA is the lastest step forward for the in-service Modernized target Acquisition Designation Sight/Pilot Night Vision Sensor (M-TADS/PNVS), of which over 1,200 have been delivered to the Army and other international customers. It increases designation and ranging capabilities for current and potentially future weapons and imprioves infrared and color imagery on displays in the cockpit. It also incorporates image blending that will let pilots see civilian and military lighting more clearly on a single display, together with a new laster pointer marker.


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Celebrating illustration, design, cartoon and comic art of the mid-20th century.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
The Sweet Smoke: Pipe Tobacco
Its pretty hard to get mad at pipe smoke. Stinky cigar smoke, yes. Acrid cigarette smoke, of course. But pipe tobacco is... pleasant. A wiff of that apple and cherrywood blend conjures up cozy images of kindly older gents, idling away the hours in country stores. Other pipe aromas make one think of drawing rooms in English manors or woodshops, or...artist's studios!
I'll always remember the smell of pipe tobacco from my first visit to my friend, Will Davies' studio. You noticed it the minute you walked through the front door, even though Will's place was at the back, up a flight of stairs and a hundred feet down the hall. I remember being vaguely astonished by the heaping ashtray of spent tobacco on the low materials table by his drawing board.
Several years later, when I had joined that studio, Will mentioned in the course of conversation one day that his doctor had told him a while back to give up cigarettes, so he switched to a pipe and now allowed himself two bowls a day. "I'm thinking about cutting back to just one, in the afternoon," he said.
Cigarettes are indicative of modern society: mass-produced, packed and sealed, endlessly identical - and fast. An efficient drug delivery-system. Cigars are ostentatious, conspicuous in their demand for attention. They speak of an eff-you attitude, they're big, smell bad and last a long time, torturing everyone who has to endure their intrusion.
But pipes and pipe tobacco are all about individuality, contemplation; about pausing with purpose to fill, pack, light and draw on one's personal blend of aromatics. No wonder that, when you look back through history, from one culture to another all over the world, where smoking took place it was typically done with a pipe.
These comic strip ads for Yello-Bole pipes are funny and kind of hokey, but the art is worth a closer look, especially if you have an interest in comic strip advertising, as I do. You'll find all three of today's ads at full size in my Smoking Flickr set.
11 comments:
- Linda3:59 AM
Thanks for the memories! Grandpa preferred Half and Half tobacco--in the big cans. His paraphenalia of pipes and rolling papers and a "cigarette machine" that rolled his smokes was very interesting to a little girl back in the 60s. Still enjoy the (very rare) whiff of that tobacco!ReplyDelete
Thank you! I hope cigarettes die a quick but painful death, but tobacco pipes are a whole other ballgame.ReplyDelete
There is something esoteric about tobacco pipes but even those uninitiated in their ways can appreciate the lovely aromas and images that they conjure.
- Witt4:29 PM
Both of my grandfathers smoked pipes. I hung out with my Boodaddy a lot when I was a youngster, he would drive the country roads and roll his own cigarette while steering with his knees, using the same tobacco for both his pipe and his cigarettes. He used Prince Edward. We would always get bits of tobacco on our legs while we explored under his bed for years after he was gone. Now I'm using his pipe.ReplyDelete
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Student Spring Art Show on Display Through April 18 at USAO
Student Spring Art Show on Display Through April 18 at USAO
CHICKASHA – Art students have selected several pieces for display in the Student Spring Art Show at the University of Science and Arts. The exhibit, which runs through April 18, is the final student art show for the spring semester.
With paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography and more, the Third Floor Art Gallery exhibit demonstrates art students' achievements from the past school year. Many pieces are for sale.
"This year's show is larger than last year with about 20 percent more entries," said Angus Kent Lamar, professor of art. "There is a nice variety of media and students are showing initiative in producing work outside the classroom."
Open to all art students and any medium, the art faculty honored nine select students with Judges Choice Awards.
"Their work truly stood out from the rest in terms of quality, presentation, but most importantly, design," Lamar said. "Their overall studio performance was also a final factor in the selection of awards."
Students selected for the Judges Choice Awards include Chickasha senior Amy Widener, Lexington freshman Robert Cole, Duncan senior Justin Riddles, Oklahoma City senior Chelsea McClanahan, Washington sophomore Katy Ratliff, Oklahoma City junior Jeremy Teel, Woodward senior Chris Castor, Norman post bachelor's Angela Laird and Ponca City senior Erin Smith.
Jacquelyn Knapp, assistant professor of art, said the exhibit gives student artists
an opportunity to react with the public.
"It is a great chance for the students to publicly show their art and receive feedback from the viewer," said Knapp.
The free exhibit runs through April 18 and is open to the public. The Third Floor Art Gallery is located in Davis Hall and is open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.


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KSP activity report
During the month of October 2010, there were 40 traffic accidents investigated by the State Police working in the Post 15 area in the 11 counties of Adair, Casey, Clinton, Cumberland, Green, Marion, Metcalfe, Monroe, Russell, Taylor and Washington.
There were seven fatalities during the month of October in the Post 15 area:
• John Eric Cravens, Albany, was killed in Clinton County on Oct. 2, 2010.
• Shannon Pinkston, Bardstown, was killed in Marion County on Oct. 3, 2010.
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text: |Here's a few free pictures from my official website! On my site, you'll get access to unlimited HD video downloads and super high quality photo sets! You'll also get access to a bunch of other hot pornstars websites from the Pornstar Platinum Network. You'll get full unlimited access to the official websites of hot pornstars like: Yuri Luv, Angelina Valentine, Kita Zen, Gigi Rivera, Charisma Cappelli, Rachel Love, Veronica Avluv and more! Enjoy the pictures!


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Humble pie comes to us all. Last Saturday, near 2 o'clock eastern time SEC East south-bound Kentucky was struck by a north-bound coal train called Florida at sonic speed. 63-5.
By 2:45, as jubilant Gator fans flapped their arms and clamored for more from the Urban Meyer diesels, three things happened.
First, Steve Ortmayer, the special teams coach, got a chin job from Rich Brooks after which he looked as if he'd been hit by a blocking sled.
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Webinar Series
Join our webinar series, as we explore different industry trends and technologies across our diverse product portfolio. Over the coming months, our experts will cover the latest analog, power management and embedded processing topics, across both automotive and industrial applications.
TI Precision Labs - Isolation
TI Precision Labs is the electronics industry's most comprehensive online classroom for analog engineers. The on-demand courses and tutorials pair theory and applied exercises to deepen the technical expertise of experienced engineers and accelerate the development of those early in their career. This modular, on-demand curriculum includes hands-on training videos, covering TI's isolation design considerations with online course work and quizzes.
Power Switching Device Cannot Drive Themselves - Mastering the Art of High Voltage Gate Driver Design in UPS, Telecom, and Servers
We live in a world where designers are constantly pursuing higher efficiencies and higher power densities. Our customers want more power out with less power loss, while achieving smaller solution sizes! They strive to reduce switching losses while maintaining signal integrity. The need for higher efficiency and power density is a trend seen across isolated and non-isolated power systems in Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), Telecom Rectifiers, and Server PSUs.
Know Your Gate Driver
We live in a world where design engineers are on a seemingly constant pursuit for higher efficiency. Everyone wants to do more with less power. Higher system efficiency is a team effort that includes (but is not limited to) better-performing gate drivers, controllers and new wide-bandgap technologies. In this multi-part video series, we will focus on the gate drivers and how choosing the right driver can help your whole system design. You will learn about important gate driver specs, why they're important, and how they can influence the systems around them.
How High-Voltage Isolation Technology Works
Want to understand how high-voltage isolation technology works? Watch and learn about reliability testing for isolation. Filmed in TI's high-voltage lab, this series of videos will focus on capacitive isolation structure, working voltage reliability, withstand voltage capability, methods for testing reliability, and more.
Designing 6.6kW Bidirectional HEV/EV On-Board-Charger with SiC and Embedded Technologies
Anti-tamper Techniques to Thwart Attacks on Smart Meters
Non-technical losses ("theft") account for billions of dollars of revenue loss for utility providers around the world as individuals are able to hack meters to slow or stop the accumulation of energy usage statistics. This loss has driven increased requirements for enhancing the protection designed into new smart meters. This training session will discuss different methods of attacking smart meters and how TI's analog portfolio can be used to detect or even prevent these attacks. In one scenario magnets are used to saturate any transformers present in the system.
2018 South Asia Industrial Webinar Series
The topics will cover system design issue and solution for Building Automation, Power Delivery and Test & Measurement. TI experts introduce the latest technology and innovation system reference design. Discover ways to enhance the time-to-market and create safer and efficient industrial systems.


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Wanted: Senior Solutions Designer
So I'm thinking I might have to launch a separate blog entirely devoted to "solutions". Thanks to the reader who forwarded me this hilariously vague job advert, which I hereby add to my ever-growing pile of "solutions" submissions.
Senior Solutions Designer, City of London - London City and West End, London
My client is currently recruiting for a Senior Solutions Designer. This is a senior position in the Solution Design team, working closely with external clients and all internal teams. Key requirements: Key to this role is the ability to quickly understand, analyse and document business and user needs across industries and functions. Applying your experience and attention to detail, you will be required to design innovative user centric solutions to these problems, working closely with internal application development teams in an agile environment. You will be able to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of Microsoft based Web 2.0, SOA and OLAP technologies in large scale deployments.
The last line makes me think it's something a bit computery, but I'm still not sure what the person they hope to employ will be expected to do. Are they looking for a chemist? A mathematician? A professional cruciverbalist? What do you think?


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Man About Town (Paperback)
A Novel
Harper Perennial, 9780007156122, 368pp.
Publication Date: April 27, 2004
Other Editions of This Title:
Hardcover (4/29/2003)
A congressional adviser and habitué of a cozy circuit of bars inside the Beltway, Joel Lingeman never quite felt middle-aged. At least not until he was abandoned by his partner of fifteen years and suddenly thrust into a dating scene with men half his age and no discernible trace of love handles. But this unexpected hole in his life inspires Joel's search for a 1964 edition ofan Esquire-like magazine that contained a swimsuit ad that obsessed and haunted him throughout his youth. Determined to find out what happened to the model shown in the ad, Joel slowly begins to understand what has happened to his own life. Sexy, smart, and deftly observed, Man About Town is a new twist on the idea that the personal is political and a must read for anyone who's ever wondered what happened to that first crush.
About the Author
Mark Merlis grew up in Baltimore and attended Wesleyan and Brown Universities. He now lives in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Praise For Man About Town: A Novel…
— David Leavitt
"An unexpected kind of gay fiction, especially with its insider's look at the legislative process...different and ambitious."
— Seattle Times
"Merlis treats both his characters and readers as if they are smart."
— Washington Post Book World
"Washington DC, as Merlis portrays it, is too good a character to ignore."
— Chicago Tribune
"Clever, perceptive and reader friendly."
— The Advocate
"A pungently insightful tale."
— Washington Blade
"Brims with characters, events and ideas that, besides being greatly entertaining, stimulate discussion
— Gay City News
"Merlis is a skilled realist who employs an understated humor-especially in depicting the Washington bureaucracy. "
— Library Journal
"Uncluttered, intelligent…a compelling read."
— Out Magazine
"An uncommonly grown-up fiction by a writer with a keen, affectionate eye for gay foibles and failings."
— Book Marks
"Sings with poignany…[Merlis has] a flair for subtle introspection and keen observation."
— Kirkus Reviews
"Stunningly good…haunting, funny, and masterfully written, American Studies provides keen insight into our own history and our lives."
— Genre
"A book that transcends genre in portraying the abyss that divides one ostracized human soul from all others."
— Los Angeles Times on American Studies
"An unexpected kind of gay fiction…different and ambitious."
— New York Times Book Review
"Sharp and convincing."
— Chicago Tribune
"Merlis deftly sketches two distinct societies in Washington: Capitol Hill…and the city's gay singles scene….compelling."
— New York Times Book Review


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• New Beginnings Assembly of God in Havana is hosting "Living an Extraordinary Life," to help attendees answer the question, "Can my life get any better?" The programs are being held on Sunday morningsat 10:30 a.m.. For more information, call 364-5137.
• Take it to the Streets Ministry Inc. hosts a community Bible study at Carter-Parramore Academy the first and third Monday each month at 7 p.m. Refreshments are served.
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Artist's description:
Original drawing, indian ink on paper.
Reminder: receive a surprise GIFT with any 3 or more of my artworks ordered at the same time!
Please check my store front for available discounts and offers.
Materials used:
ink on paper
Abstract Face #1, 29x41 cm (2009)
Ink drawing by Frederic Belaubre
- Ink drawing on Paper
- One of a kind artwork
- Size: 16.14 x 11.42 in (unframed)
- Signed on the front
- Style: Abstract
- Subject: Abstract and non-figurative
This artwork is sold by Frederic Belaubre from France


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A fresh battle is brewing in Washington over foreign trade, with the White House persevering in its pursuit of free trade agreements while congressional Democrats – some elected two years ago on protectionist planks – appear more inclined to take up trade issues with China than pass new deals.
President Bush is ramping up efforts to get Congressional approval of free-trade agreements (FTAs) already negotiated with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.
Late last month, he dispatched Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Colombia, with a bevy of House Democrats in tow, to renew the push for the Colombia accord, invoking national security interests over economic ones for the agreement.
But with January producing gloomy employment figures and with Democratic House and Senate freshmen looking to toughen trade rules that they can then take to voters in November, the road to any FTA approval appears steep at best.
"We need to call a time out on passage of any more trade agreements," says Tim Schlittner, an aide to US Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill).
Describing Mr. Hare's western Illinois district of farmland and small manufacturing as "ground zero for the negative effects of those deals," he says Hare and other members of the House Trade Working Group want to see improved trade adjustment assistance to workers and action on China trade issues before any new free-trade agreements are considered by Congress.
Yet even as some Congress members raise red flags over free trade's negative impact on US workers – and in some cases, consumers – pro-trade forces warn that a failure to ratify negotiated agreements would alarm US partners.
It could also send new shivers through the global economy, they add – by suggesting, for example, that current multilateral trade negotiations may be doomed.
"We'll either decide we're still going on the path towards openness, or to reject them [the pending FTAs] will be a very strong signal the US is turning its back on the world," says Phillip Levy, an international trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a recent senior trade economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers.
A case in point is Colombia. US officials emphasize Colombia as a "partner" in the war on drugs and as a strengthening democracy deserving continued US support, rather than as a trade partner.
Noting that Colombian goods already flow freely to the US under the Andean trade promotion agreement, they say any economic impact is likely to be in the US's favor, since American goods would enter Colombia freely under an FTA.
But Congressional rejection of the FTA, they add, would send a stark signal that the US is no longer interested in the stability of a country the US has assisted with $5 billion in counter-narcotics, military, and development assistance since 2000.
The US also holds up Colombia as a staunch friend in an increasingly problematic region, and some Democrats accompanying Secretary Rice last month said the growing hostility of next-door neighbor Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez could cause them to consider an FTA with Colombia more favorably.
"If they manage to push this one through, it will be the politics they're voting on," says Sidney Weintraub, an economist and international trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The administration, he adds, "is really pressing hard with this argument that after spending all this money it's not the moment to turn our back on our friends."
The administration did manage to get an FTA with Peru passed last December, prompting some free-trade advocates to conclude that the votes are also there, with a little arm-twisting, for the three pending agreements. But particular problems beset each agreement: for South Korea, it's auto exports and US beef imports; for Panama, the sticking point is the election last year to the national assembly of a man wanted by the US for the 1992 murder of an American soldier.
With Colombia, what sticks in the Democrats' gullet is the alarming number of murders of labor union leaders –the highest such in the world, say labor advocates. The AFL-CIO dropped its opposition to the Peru FTA after its labor and environmental elements were strengthened, Congressional aides note, but no one expects US labor to go soft on Colombia.
Others say the reluctance to send that signal – of a US turning its back on the world – in particular on neighbors in the Western hemisphere might yet salvage the Colombia agreement. But it will take a pointed effort by Colombia, they add.
If Colombian president Alvaro Uribe were to come out strong on the labor issue, says Mr. Weintraub, "he might get enough Democratic votes in Congress to get this through."


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Add timeless sophistication to any room in your home with crystal pendant lighting. Select large pendants to elevate the look of a foyer or formal dining room. Crystal pendant lights are available in a number of colors, styles, and finishes to complement any style.
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NASHVILLE -- The Chicago Blackhawks will look to snap their eight-game losing skid Tuesday against a team that is responsible for two of the defeats.
The Hawks are in Nashville to face the Predators on Tuesday night Bridgestone Arena. The Hawks started their slide with two consecutive losses to Nashville prior the NHL All-Star Game break and are in desperate need of a victory to stop their free fall in the Central Division and Western Conference.
"We need one badly," coach Joel Quenneville said following the morning skate. "It started here right before the All-Star break (Jan. 21). We were gong along pretty good then and we have to recapture that feeling and what it took to win. We need more pace to our game. That's the one thing that's maybe not where it needs to be."
The Hawks have dropped five points back of fifth-place Nashville in the Western Conference.
"They're playing very well," Quenneville said. "They beat us pretty well in those two games we saw them going into the break. They're doing a lot of things well in their game. Our mentality has to be like a playoff game. We have to have a Game 7 mentality to get out of it."
John Scott will play for the Hawks after being a healthy scratch the previous four games. Scott will either be a deventh defenseman or shift to the wing and play on the fourth line with Michael Frolik and Brendan Morrison being scratches.
Ray Emery will be in goal for the Hawks and will be opposed by Pekka Rinne for the Predators.
Twitter @ChrisKuc
NASHVILLE -- The Chicago Blackhawks will look to snap their eight-game losing skid Tuesday against a team that is responsible for two of the defeats.


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What is probably turning you off from making the change to greener grooming and cleaning is that you don't really know what alternatives are out there. We are being bombarded with advertising by the big cosmetic companies, which makes it "easier" for us to you to choose their products than look for alternatives.
My way of thinking about this issue is pretty simple: Just go back to basics. If the list of ingredients on the product is longer than your arm and you don't even know what the ingredients are, then don't buy it. It is simple as that. You don't have to be a scientist to mix up some home-made, yet equally effective cleaning and beauty products, and you probably have most of the ingredients already in your pantry.
Some basic ingredients to start cleaning green include:
Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) – all-purpose cleaner that deodorises and removes stains. Together with vinegar and hot water, it is also great for unblocking drains. Scrub your bath tub and sink with a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar to remove any soap scum.
White vinegar – cuts through grease, disinfects and removes stains. Mix half water-half vinegar to make an all-purpose spray.
Lemon juice – cuts through grease and also acts as mild bleach. Scrub your chopping boards with half a lemon to get rid of odours.
Essential oils, like tea tree, pine and eucalyptus – they are anti-bacterial and add natural fragrance to your home-made cleaning products. Mix eucalyptus oil with water for a disinfectant, all-purpose spray.
My grooming routines are pretty simple. I like making my own face/body scrub with some honey and raw sugar. Bicarbonate of soda is also a great exfoliator and it's antiseptic. I use coconut oil or almond oil for both cleansing and moisturising my skin. Good old home-made remedies, like oats or avocado face masks can feel much more luxurious those with added synthetic ingredients.
Castile soap is a great natural alternative to conventional shampoos and soaps. Rock crystal deodorants made from mineral salts are a safer alternative to conventional deodorants. Here's a recipe for my favourite home-made deodorant. In anything, just look for plant-based ingredients, and avoid those with a long list of synthetic chemical ingredients.
If you do decide to make the switch to natural and organic products, be aware that not everything that says "natural" is in fact chemical-free. Labelling can be confusing, so do your research before you buy.
Please help yourself with some useful links below. I would also love to hear your best tips and recipes for green cleaning and green beauty!
Tanya Ha's book Greeniology is a great green living guide that covers all areas of life. http://www.tanyaha.com
David Suzuki's list 'Dirty Dozen Cosmetic Chemicals'
Skin Deep – Cosmetics Database www.cosmeticsdatabase.com
WellBeing Magazine's article on DIY Chemical-free cleaning with recipes
'How to Green Your Cleaning'
This post was first published on Foodie.fm


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Page Valet 4 uses mod_validator to deliver the best validator ever! Major performance improvements are coupled with greater accuracy than before (either here or at any other service known to us) and a choice of results formats.
Accessibility Analysis is no longer supported, as this is better accomplished by the companion tool Accessibility Valet.
Why spellcheck? Markup errors are just as ugly and unprofessional as spelling mistakes.
When you publish an invalid webpage, you are relying on error correction in a browser to show your page at all! Another browser may display gibberish, or nothing at all. You may even be breaking the law. More Information.
Page Valet now has catalogue entries for HTML, XHTML, MATHML, SMIL, SVG, WAP/WML doctypes, and DocBook/XML. It should support other document types, but will be slow, as it has to fetch the DTDs over the 'net.
There is no explicit support for non-DTD validation, and any schema used will always be fetched over the 'net.


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Submitting your manuscript online
Note: Before you begin, you should be sure you are using an up-to-date version of Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you have an earlier version, you can download a free upgrade using the icons found at the bottom of the 'Instructions and Forms' section of the online submission web site.
- Please prepare your manuscript in line with the guidance available on the instructions to authors page.
- Note: Before you begin, you should be sure you are using an up-to-date version of Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you have an earlier version, you can download a free upgrade using the icons found at the bottom of the 'Instructions and Forms' section of the online submission web site.
- First, you will need to log into the online submission web site.
- If you know your login details (i.e., you have submitted or reviewed a manuscript in this journal before), use your User ID and Password to log on. (Your user ID will usually be your email address.)
- If you do not know your login details, check to see if you are already registered by clicking on the 'Forgot your password' button and following the on-screen instructions. If you are not already registered, you can register by clicking on the 'Create account' button on the login screen and following the on-screen instructions.
- If you have trouble finding your manuscripts or have other problems with your account, do not create another account. Instead, please contact the journal's editorial office.
- To submit a new manuscript, go to the 'Author Centre', and click on "Click here to submit a new manuscript', and then follow the on-screen instructions. There are up to 7 steps for you to follow to submit your manuscript. You move from one step to the next by clicking on the 'Next' button on each screen or back to the previous screen by clicking on the 'Previous' button. Please note that if you click on the 'Back' or 'Forward' buttons on your browser, the information you have entered will not be saved. At any stage you can stop the submission process by clicking on the 'Main Menu' button. Everything you have typed into the system will be saved, and the partially completed submission will appear under 'unsubmitted manuscripts' in your 'Author Centre'. To return to the submission process you will need to click on the button 'Continue Submission' against the relevant manuscript title.
- When submitting your manuscript, please enter your manuscript data into the relevant fields, following the detailed instructions at the top of each page. You may like to have the original word-processing file available so you can copy and paste the title and abstract into the required fields. You will also be required to provide email addresses for your co-authors, so please have these to hand when you log onto the site.
- When you come to upload your manuscript files via the 'File Upload' screen:
- Enter individual files using the 'Browse' buttons and select the appropriate 'File type' from the pull-down menu. The choices may vary from journal to journal but will always include a 'Main Document' (your manuscript text).
- Upload your files by clicking on the 'Upload files' button. This converts your files to a PDF and may take several minutes. Click on the SAVE button to confirm the upload. Repeat these steps until you have uploaded all your files.
- If you have uploaded any figures or tables you will be prompted to provide figure/table captions and 'file tags' that will link figures to text in the HTML proof of your main document.
- Once you have uploaded all your files, indicate the order in which they should appear in your paper. This will determine the order in which they appear in the consolidated PDF used for peer review.
- After the successful upload of your text and images, you will need to view and proofread your manuscript. Please do this by clicking on the blue HTML button or a PDF button.
- If the files have not been uploaded to your satisfaction, go back to the file upload screen where you can remove the files you do not want and repeat the process.
- Enter individual files using the 'Browse' buttons and select the appropriate 'File type' from the pull-down menu. The choices may vary from journal to journal but will always include a 'Main Document' (your manuscript text).
- When you are satisfied with the uploaded manuscript proof click on 'Next' which will take you to the 'Review & Submit' screen. The system will check that you have completed all the mandatory fields and that you have viewed your manuscript proof. It will also present you with a summary of all the information you have provided and give you a final chance to edit it. If there is a red cross next to any section this will indicate that not all the fields have been filled in correctly. You may either go back to the relevant page or click the nearest 'edit' button.
- When you have finished reviewing this information press 'Submit'.
- After the manuscript has been submitted you will see a confirmation screen and receive an email confirmation stating that your manuscript has been successfully submitted. This will also give the assigned manuscript number, which is used in all correspondence during peer review. If you do not receive this, your manuscript will not have been successfully submitted to the journal and the paper cannot progress to peer review. If this is the case your manuscript will still be sitting in the 'Unsubmitted Manuscripts' section of your 'Author Centre' awaiting your attention.
- If you return to your 'Author Centre' you will notice that your newly submitted manuscript can be found in the 'Submitted Manuscripts' area. The 'Status' section provides information on the status of your manuscript as it moves through the review process.
- Log on to the online submission web site as before and, in the 'Author Centre', click on 'Manuscripts with Decisions'. At the bottom of the screen you will see those manuscripts that require a revision (or that have been revised). Create a revision of this manuscript by clicking on 'create a revision' under Actions. You will now be able to see the editor and reviewer comments and will be able to respond to these.
- You will need to upload the files that constitute your revised manuscript. To facilitate the production process, it is essential that you upload your revised manuscript as a .doc, .rtf, or .tex file, and not in .pdf format. If you wish to finish this another time, you will find the manuscript in your 'Revised manuscripts in draft' list.
- If you click on 'View comments/respond' you will see the editor's letter to you together with the referees' comments. You may cut and paste your responses into the text areas at the bottom of the screen.
Getting help
If you experience any problems during the online submission process please consult the Author's User Guide which provides more detailed submission instructions and 'movie tutorials' explaining how to submit your paper. Alternatively, please contact the journal editorial office who will be pleased to assist you.
Vivian Cook
Jyotsna Vaid
Benedetta Bassetti


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Web Video Deals Target Teens
Media Companies Circle Startups That Have Struggled to Make Profits
Media companies on the hunt for elusive teen viewers are circling startups that produce popular videos for YouTube but have struggled to make profits.
Walt Disney Co.'s March acquisition of Maker Studios for $500 million sparked a wave of merger talks between deep-pocketed acquirers and young content producers.
AOL Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are...


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To those who've deconverted from Christianity: when I'm riding to work on the subway, I invariably will see 2-3 people reading what is clearly a long-owned, dog-eared copyof the Bible and/or a weekly devotional guide of some sort. As someone who's never made it through the book (I've tried, but getting through even Genesis is a really hard slog) I've always wondered what they're doing and why. Are they looking for passages that will address a specific concern they have at that point? Or continually re-reading the same sections to reinforce some broad set of guidelines (the Bibles I see frequently are highlighted or have notes in the margins). From what I've read so far, the "rules for living" seem really obtuse, so it's not clear why I'd be reviewing the material at a time I could be reading the newspaper. Any insight?
Views: 654
people read on the bus to be seen to be reading on the bus... cults like jehovah's witnesses actually MUST do things like that and be seen doing things like that to maintain good standing in their church, and yes, waking you up out of a drunken stupor on saturday morning earns them points too!!
LOL! When i was a JW, I remember waking people up that were clearly drunk the night before! Good times! "Wake yo butt up, you drunk! Open your door and listen to me preach!!" You're right, JW's MUST be seen doing "good things", or what they consider to be good. Aside from the actual preach work, it should have nothing to do with being in good standing with the church, & should have been whatever the relationship with you and God would take you, and what you could do. But like most religions that have hard rules, some hard JW bible thumpers would look down on you if you didn't go out on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
I'm really glad that this "cult", whatever that may mean to people with its varying definitions, never asked me for money, didn't believe we walked with dinos and don't believe in hell. They think we were placed here by God to be Earth care-takers. Unfortunately, everything else about the religion, from dis-fellowships to changes in generation teachings, leaves you with an awful taste, as if the religion itself has lost its own faith.
I'd never thought I'd say this, but if you ever have the opportunity to speak to a young JW, now's the time to hammer away at them and bring up the tough questions. It's a ripe time to make them think hard about what they are really teaching (as most youth in this faith don't know about the changes and their own past), since there has been some crumbling of faith.
Anyways, if you're really there God, it's these devil atheist folks making me say that. ; )
Everyone is looking for answers to questions bothering them in life... Since for the religious folk, the Bible is the ultimate source of knowledge, the answers to their day to day worries lie in the Bible... Sometimes people make a choice and try to find the justification in the Bible for their actions... The Bible is such a long and conflicting book, that you cannot remember all of it... By the time you complete the Pentateuch, you will forget who raped Dinah or even who Dinah is... Thus some people prefer to read the Bible in their spare time rather than a newspaper... Sometimes they just open up a random passage and try to infer some meaning out of it, since God does not directly talk to them... Some folks read the same passage over and over again to understand what it means... Try reading Revelation, you will know... Even if these Bible reading folks might not know much about worldly events, they have convinced themselves that they are in an intellectual pursuit that is far greater than reading a newspaper or Wikipedia...
I used to carry "The God Delusion" to work... People around actually thought it is a devotional book, as the title has 'God'... Nobody stopped to read the title again and understand how powerful a word 'Delusion' is...
Try doing the same thing with Hitchens' "God Is Not Great". It wil elicit a somewhat different reaction.
There is a girl at my work who reads her bible in the lunchroom during her breaks. Coming from a christian background myself, I was told that a christian should read the bible every day. Doesn't matter what part, just be sure you do it. Read the bible and pray every day. Kind of like, 'An apple a day keep the dr away.", "a devotion a day keeps the devil away."
I think it's like reading horoscopes. The words (esp. New Testament) are just specific enough to connect with your daily life, but just vague enough to allow for all kinds of invented personal meaning. People are desperate to believe that the All-Powerful is watching over them, has a plan for them, etc. and this is one way to strengthen that sense of security.
Bible reading is also interlinked with going to church, to hear an "expert" spin the same types of wishful applications of the text to daily life. Dollars to donuts those subway Bible readers are re-reading (and trying to retain) the interpretations handed to them from the pulpit (or prayer group).
I'm sure they find it just as tedious to read as we do, but probably feel guilty if they don't put their daily efforts in. You wouldn't want to take time away from something important to read your bible, so why not simply go through the motions to appease your guilt and get it out of the way on the morning commute? That leaves your evenings free to do the things that matter, like spending quality time with your family, in front of the TV, watching Bill O'Reilly. I bet these same people keep a copy by the toilet too.
Reading the bible looking for answers is a desperate act. I don't see anyone doing that here because we are a very secure country.
No self-help books in Denmark.
I fully agree - this is why I have never read nor will I ever read the bible!
Also, which scripture to start with - there are so many different ones equally bad. It's all so silly!


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I searched through the forum and couldn't find anything, so I figured I'd pose my questions to the community.
Does anyone have a link to a good AoS test map? I used to have one, but I lost it along with all my other maps when I uninstalled wc3 after graduating from college.
I was also looking for a JASS tutorial, but I'll go google that if I can't find it here, haven't looked yet.


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Oct. 14 Joe Torre postgame interview
Q. Joe, can you give us your view of the call and what Jeff said to you?
Q. Joe, can you give us your view of the call and what Jeff said to you?
JOE TORRE: The call was ‑‑ well, we saw the replay. First, it looked like he may have whiffed it, and then we saw the replay, and he tagged him on the chest before his hand got in. And Jeff, you know, he talked to the pool reporter, and said that from where he was looking at it, it appeared to him like the hand got in before the tag was made. And you know he saw the replay and he saw that, you know, he made the wrong call.
Q. How much, Joe, does it leave you upset, leave you subdued when something like this happens at this kind of hour?
JOE TORRE: You know, I understand. I understand Joey's frustration. You want everything to be perfect, and it's not perfect. It's frustrating. I can't be upset, it's just the sad part about it is umpires, players, managers, they are all human. And it happens. Certainly we don't mean for it to happen, and the umpires, you have to be in that room to appreciate how the effect it has on an umpire that missed a call, especially in postseason where obviously the chips are on the table.
But it's been part of this game for a long, long time. Right now, you know, with all of the technology we have it gets magnified.
Q. Joe, you probably heard Girardi was in here making a strong call for more instant replay. And you're an influential voice. What is your feeling particularly on plays like that?
JOE TORRE: The interesting part about it, I was with the Commissioner at the All‑Star Game and, you know, replay was brought up, and I asked the question, what do we want replay, which particular thing? And I know we're talking about balls past down the line and trap plays. But it always seems we want the replay to be the last thing that happened.
We are certainly sensitive to it. We are looking into it. We have technology set up in this ballpark and over at Citi Field the last month of the season and looking at the results of that, but that wouldn't have included the play tonight.
But yeah, you know, it certainly goes into the equation when we make the decision. We have to make sure we don't have any knee‑jerk reaction to something that's, you know, already we settle this tag play at second base, and all of a sudden we find, you know, something else comes up and something else comes up, and the game goes on and on forever and forever.
So we're looking into it. We're not saying it can happen, but right now we haven't really come to any conclusion on what's the best way to go about it and not make the game drag and go longer than they are going already.


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Ralph returns from the doctor and tells his wife that the doctor has told him he has only 24 hours to live.
Given this prognosis, Ralph asks his wife for sex. Naturally, she agrees, and they make love.
About six hours later, the husband goes to his wife and says, 'Honey, you know I now have only 18 hours to live. Could we please do it one more time?'
Of course, the wife agrees and they do it again.
Later, as the man gets into bed, he looks at his watch and realises he now has only 8 hours left. He touches his wife's shoulder and asks, 'Honey, please - just one more time before I die?'
She says, 'Of course, dear.' And they make love for the third time.
After this session, the wife rolls over and falls asleep.
Ralph, however, worried about his impending death, tosses and turns until he's down to 4 more hours.
He taps his wife, who rouses. 'Honey , I have only 4 more hours. Do you think we could....?'
At this point the wife rolls over and says, "Listen Ralph, I have to get up in the morning... you don't."
Dying husband insensitive wife
Jokes, Riddles and Trivia. Keep them clean please!
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Dying husband insensitive wife
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Three political committees that fought a 2008 ballot measure banning gay marriage in California have agreed to pay $80,000 in fines to the state ethics agency after admitting they violated campaign finance rules.
The fines come less than a month after the state Fair Political Practices Commission levied $49,000 in fines against ProtectMarriage.com -- Yes on 8 for failing to properly report more than $1 million in contributions.
Altogether, the fines against the four political committees on both sides of the issue represent some of the largest penalties imposed over a ballot measure in California, and a reflection of how hard-fought and bitter a contest it was, officials said.
"An unprecedented number of contributions" hindered the ability of the campaigns to report them all within strict deadlines, said Steve Mele, treasurer for the campaign committee No on 8, Equality for All. That campaign agreed to pay $42,500 in fines for failing to meet deadlines for reporting $724,000 in contributions.
-- Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times