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Wolfsburg (D)
Monterey Car Week: Volkswagen showcases Atlas Cross Sport and Atlas Tanoak Concept in California
Atlas Cross Sport: series production version of the five-seater Atlas Hybrid concept vehicle intended for launch in the US as early as 2019
Atlas Tanoak Concept: the concept vehicle showcased in Monterey is the first pick-up on the basis of the modular transverse matrix
Atlas on the way to model range: the SUV assembled in the US has the potential of developing new segments
At Monterey Car Week (21 – 26 August) in California Volkswagen will be showcasing two German/US American studies on the basis of the Atlas SUV: the Atlas Tanoak Concept pick-up and the dynamic SUV Atlas Cross Sport. The progressively designed and developed all-wheel drive models illustrate the potential that lies within the Atlas range. Klaus Bischoff, Head Designer at Volkswagen: "Thanks to the Atlas Cross Sport we are introducing a high design standard to the full-size SUV category. The Atlas Tanoak is our version of the American dream – a genuine pick-up with clear-cut Volkswagen elements and a futuristic, digital vehicle interior architecture."
Every year in August the golf course in Pebble Beach (Monterey/ USA) is transformed into the automotive world's hall of fame. Fascinating classics compete with each other as part of the Concours d’Elegance; the most beautiful vehicles of their era are honoured as design and engineering milestones. However, Pebble Beach has long since also become an automotive looking glass into the future. Manufacturers showcase what will and may become a reality – cars like the Atlas Cross Sport and the Atlas Tanoak Concept with drive systems specifically adapted to the corresponding deployment areas.
The Atlas Cross Sport will become a reality. The series production version is scheduled to launch as early as 2019. The new Volkswagen is the five-seater version of the Atlas, a seven-seater, mid-sized SUV that has already been launched in the US. The concept vehicle close to series production scores high marks with a sporty, compact, coupé-style rear section and plug-in hybrid drive (PHEV) with 265 kW/360 PS system output and a purely electrical range of up to 26 miles (EPA). The second version of the concept vehicle featuring a hybrid drive without an external battery charging function (HEV) generates a system output of 231 kW/314 PS. Both Atlas Cross Sport models include temporarily available, zero emission drives and have been perfectly geared towards metropolitan areas, such as San Francisco or Los Angeles. We can confirm that the series version of the Atlas Cross Sport will be produced at the US plant in Chattanooga (Tennessee) in parallel to the seven-seater Atlas.
The Atlas Tanoak Concept may be on the cards. Driven by a 206 kW/280 PS V6 petrol engine, this concept vehicle represents Volkswagen's first pick-up on the basis of the variable modular transverse matrix (MQB). Up to the B-pillar, pick-up and SUV are very similar in terms of their outline. Both versions differ towards the rear of the body: the pick-up's rear doors are not as obvious at first glance as the door handles are almost invisible and have been integrated into the C-pillars; the double cab consequently seems particularly long and therefore elegant. A striking design is also a dominant element of the Atlas Tanoak Concept's large and durable loading area (cargo box). Named after a type of tree native to the US Pacific coast that grows up to 45 metres tall, Northern America's vast landscapes are the pick-up's terrain. The Atlas Tanoak would be launched in Northern America's vehicle class with the highest volumes.
Both studies celebrated their world première in March 2018 in New York, on the East coast of the US. The all-wheel drive vehicles with their striking LED signature lights are now on show in Pebble Beach on the US West coast for the very first time – with the legendary 17-Mile Drive as a backdrop.
Volkswagen Atlas Tanoak Concept (left) and Atlas Cross Sport
Volkswagen Atlas Tanoak Concept (right) and Atlas Cross Sport Concept
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The specified fuel consumption and emission data have been determined according to the measurement procedures prescribed by law. Since 1st September 2017, certain new vehicles are already being type-approved according to the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), a more realistic test procedure for measuring fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Starting on September 1st 2018, the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) will be replaced by the WLTP in stages. Owing to the more realistic test conditions, the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions measured according to the WLTP will, in many cases, be higher than those measured according to the NEDC. For further information on the differences between the WLTP and NEDC, please visit www.volkswagen.de/wltp.
We are currently still required by law to state the NEDC figures. In the case of new vehicles which have been type-approved according to the WLTP, the NEDC figures are derived from the WLTP data. It is possible to specify the WLTP figures voluntarily in addition until such time as this is required by law. In cases where the NEDC figures are specified as value ranges, these do not refer to a particular individual vehicle and do not constitute part of the sales offering. They are intended exclusively as a means of comparison between different vehicle types. Additional equipment and accessories (e.g. add-on parts, different tyre formats, etc.) may change the relevant vehicle parameters, such as weight, rolling resistance and aerodynamics, and, in conjunction with weather and traffic conditions and individual driving style, may affect fuel consumption, electrical power consumption, CO2 emissions and the performance figures for the vehicle.
Further information on official fuel consumption figures and the official specific CO2 emissions of new passenger cars can be found in the “Guide on the fuel economy, CO2 emissions and power consumption of new passenger car models”, which is available free of charge at all sales dealerships and from DAT Deutsche Automobil Treuhand GmbH, Hellmuth-Hirth-Str. 1, D-73760 Ostfildern, Germany and at www.dat.de.
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Romance Returns
By James Southall Wilson
ISSUE: Spring 1925
SardHarker. By John Masefield. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
The Green Hat. By Michael Arlen. New York: George H. Doran Co. $2.50.
Balisand. By Joseph Hergesheimer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $2.50.
The Little French Girl. By Anne Douglas Sedgwick. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company. $2.00.
The White Monkey. By John Galsworthy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. $2.00.
The Spanish Farm. By R. H. Mottram. New York: The Dial Press. $2.50.
The Old Ladies. By Hugh Walpole. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.00.
Arnold Waterlow: A Life. By May Sinclair. New York: The Macmillan Company. $2.50.
Straws and Prayer-Books. By James Branch Cabell. New York: Robert M. McBride and Company. $2.50.
Walter Pater in one fine phrase reconciled the seemingly hostile words of criticism, —classical and romantic. The legitimate contention of all schools of art alike must be “against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.” What I am saying is that romance and realism are in need of the reconciling discernment of a Pater. We think of them as irreconcilable. In the course of the history of fiction, now one, now the other, has seemed ascendent. In truth there are a romance and a realism of spirit and of method, no less than of material, and a mingling of these that produces a realistic romance and a romantic realism. So diverse have been the understandings of the terms that mere readers are content to take their novels as they find them and properly enjoy what is to their taste without precious quibbling about labels.
We were fairly content for some seasons to think the modern spirit a realistic one and to take as they were given us the uncooked meats of fiction, persuading ourselves that the whole stodgy diet was good because it was “life.” Perhaps we were awakened to the discomforts of indigestion or perhaps our confidence in realism was shaken by the emergence, after so many realistic successes of later years had been forgotten, of books like “Green Mansions” or “Henry Brocken” that had been published quietly twenty years ago. Whatever the cause there is obvious a renaissance of romance that intimates another turn of time’s whirligig; and this alike in the popular field of Sabatini, the semipopular one of the delicately artistic “Messer Marco Polo,” and the comparatively esoteric domain of the delightful Mr. de la Mare.
But the bright shawls of romance—including those woven by Mr. Hergesheimer— are worn with a difference. Perhaps here as elsewhere history never so surely repeats itself as by never exactly repeating itself. The mere tale of adventure, the costume novel conscious chiefly of its gay colors, have dropped into—or run up to, if you view it so,— the popular “best seller” class. The serious writer, the artist, works his romance out of realistic stuff or weaves a realistic truth into his romantic story. Even the confirmed realist is pilfering the much decried methods of his romantic brother—at need.
The poetic value is emerging in the play, the novel, sometimes even the essay. And why shouldn’t it when some of the best novels are being written by poets? Could the hand of a de la Mare, of Masefield, of James Stephens, of Elinor Wylie completely forget its cunning because it has turned from rhyme to cadenced fiction?
Mr. Masefield’s “Sard Harker” is a case in point. It has as little apparent relation to his earlier “Multitude and Solitude” as in his verse the strained but powerful frankness of “The Everlasting Mercy” had to the frail delicacies of “King Cole.” Yet of course the relation exists though it be one of reaction. His dedication to the realistic spirit in the verse “Consecration” was no more sincere than his recantation in the preface to his collected poems: when the war is ended, “in that new time” he hopes to tell more of “the images of what England and the English may become, or spiritually are.” He has the romantic gift as he had the realistic. “Sard Harker” begins as a fascinating tale of adventure with an atmosphere of beauty wrought about a ship in the offing and an old house in the tropics haunted by a dream of loveliness and strange fears. Few more vivid passages have been written in recent fiction than those which tell of Harker’s wanderings; and the description of that vast temple in the mountain where water flows in the color of blood over the handiwork of man who wrought in forgotten centuries is beautiful prose. But at the very end, after his Odysseus wins through, for me the interest and the beauty fail. I should prefer to say wane but fail is the word I must use. Whatever of epic quality has marked almost with grandeur the struggle up, up over the impassable mountains, crumbles into an agony of painful melodrama in the later chapters. A forced allegorical meaning clatters mechanically an accompaniment to the cheap opera bouffe effects of the last chapters.
John Masefield is a great poet—I use the adjective deliberately—and the greater part of his novel bears upon its exquisite phrasing the stamp of his poetic imagination. There is an elusive quality achieved that gives it the atmosphere of a mysterious dream. This enveloping sense of dream psychology may hint—in quite a different way from de la Mare’s “Memoirs of a Midget”—at a new development in romance. For Masefield’s story objectively moves with all the life of a simple tale of adventure. The haunting dream quality is sustained throughout most of the story merely by a delicate suggestiveness. All the more then comes the reeling sense of disappointment when at the very close an almost physical brutality turns the story into a melodramatic morality. None the less “Sard Harker” is a book one does not forget nor wish to have left unread.
If Mr. Masefield has failed in giving a new turn to the uses of romance, Mr. Michael Arlen in “The Green Hat” has been successful. But the failure has splendid passages of poetic beauty, the success at its best smacks of cleverness and artistry. Masefield’s climax is a calamity. In Poe’s phrase, he is unsuccessful in mingling the obstinate water and oil of truth and beauty. Arlen uses a sort of theme idea, an easily strung cord from which his story flies straight to his mark. Once our attention is on the arrow we forget to question the validity of the bow that launched it. The plot goes with the speed of its heroine’s car with the flying stork. The author not content with his own wit makes the conversation of his puppets coruscate. The first impact of “The Green Hat” is more pleasurable than the developed impression it leaves. It is an uneven book as though greater pains were taken with some than other parts of it. The climax scene in which Iris March holds her own in a tremendous battle of temperaments is managed with triumphant skill—but one feels that it “is managed.” It is an amusing book if one takes one’s reading lightly: as perfectly constructed to please a public’s taste as Mr. Hutchinson’s seasonal success. As literature it lacks sincerity; its art dwindles to artistry. Not only is it derivative; one feels it to be so. Mr. Arlen,—Dikran Kouyoumdjian, I am told is his name—whatever his nativity, is an Englishman by Portia’s word: “I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany and his behaviour everywhere,”—especially the behaviour.
“The Green Hat” is of course the sheerest romance. It has no actuality, it leaves no sense of reality. The tricks, the material sometimes, of the realist serve Mr. Arlen’s ends. His people talk with dictophonic accuracy to the clever patter he reports. His plot moves through incidents of the sort that make up the conventional unconventionality of the familiar “life novel.” Even the over-conspicuous hole in his heroine’s stocking suggests that he dresses his people in the torn rags of the realistic method. It may all be bad art but it is one more interesting mingling of romance and realism. But the blend is mainly illusion: neither the smell of cigarette and petrol on a woman’s fingers, nor a hole above the heel of a shoe, not even two or three suicides, can turn the author-matic material of this entertaining puppet show into the stuff of which realism is made.
“Balisand” is romance. It is of small moment whether one reader thinks it equal to the best that Joseph Herge-sheimer has done. It may be in its favor that upon one mind it has left the impression of an atmosphere aromatically flavored. Mr. Hergesheimer is always an artist. The echoes of rich negro voices floating across the river, the early scenes of a solitary moody drinker, the duel; these are like memories of events once experienced. Pure romance yet with a difference. Jefferson’s days in Virginia are given with an effort not so much at factual as at intellectual truth, as though the aim were to be realistic to the thought, the spiritual struggles of the time. Perhaps the weakness of the book for some may be found to spring from the iteration of this effort. The politics of a hundred and fifty years ago was no doubt exciting— a hundred and fifty years ago. Let us grant that, if we please: “Balisand” remains a beautiful piece of writing. I have said that “Balisand” is romance. It is: because the best romance has ever been an interpretation of reality through events the terms of which are fixed by the narrator’s imagination. “Balisand” is a novel of Virginia, and yet in no way is it of the type, or even in the tradition, of the familiar historical romances,—of “Mohun,” of “Prisoners of Hope,” of “Red Rock.” There is a setting redolent of old Virginia names and traditions; and a story of patterned beauty of how Richard Bale loved and lost and married, and met his foe. All these matters belong to the familiar historical romance, but not, as Mr. Herge-sheimer has used them. His hero is a haunted man,— haunted by the voices, the memories, the hatreds, the dreams of the past. He is an idealist whose ideals are those of another, a past, day. So the beautiful Lavinia possesses him more completely in death than Lucia, his so human and living wife. Thus the seductive, the haunting beauty of the book gains a universality of meaning. And if one would give to its poetic suggestiveness a specific interpretation, there is an application apposite enough at hand. For here is the very spirit of the old aristocratic Virginia, listening always to a siren voice of departed loveliness; ready to die but not to surrender. The romantic novel of to-day can afford to be judged by the fresh charm of “Balisand.”
Two of the best novels of the year to my taste are Galsworthy’s “The White Monkey” and “The Little French Girl” by Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I take them together for they seem to me to represent a peculiar blending of similar qualities of literature and life. What the little French girl rescued from the wreckage that her mother all unwillingly was making of her life was just exactly the “something” that the white monkey could never get at because he didn’t know what it was. Anne Sedgwick in this book has grown out of the preciosity of say “The Third Window.” This is stronger, more broadly human, though delicacy is still its distinguishing trait. It is more poignant than passionate. The incidents of the story, the characters, the setting, as in Galsworthy’s book, are created with fidelity to the realistic method. Life is here as the authors find it. The selection and arrangement, on the other hand, one feels are ordered and ordered as the author would have them to illustrate a philosophy, even a feeling. Fleur and Mont in “The White Monkey,” the little French girl and Giles, escape life by embracing life: there is a human equation, which no philosophy can analyse, no science destroy, that gives validity to life. The monkey squeezes the orange to pulp and skin, but the aura, the taste, the color that give immortality to the essence of the orange endure in a million million oranges. That constitutes the romantic note: we are to believe these people found the something that the monkey didn’t know was there;—and lived happily ever after.
Though “The White Monkey” continues the story of the Forsytes, it is a pendant rather than a sequel to ‘The Forsyte Saga.” “The Forsyte Saga” is one of the great novels of England. Compared to the richer fabric of Galsworthy’s masterpiece, “The White Monkey” may seem thin: yet compared with the work of almost any other living English novelist, “The White Monkey” is masterful art. It makes a point and a strong one, both for and against the younger generation: there is satire for its follies and recognition of its unvoiced faith. The story of Fleur has its power and significance, quite apart from all the entanglements of Forsyte family history, and scarcely needing the reinforcement of the balloon-seller and the model. Their story, however, helps make Mr. Galsworthy’s point, and pays its own tribute of Australian “blue butterflies” to romance. It says rather loudly, too, that Galsworthy does not think Victorian sentiment nearly so dead as the critics would kill it.
“The Spanish Farm” might be taken in its details as a pure type of realism—even continental realism. It is fallacy, outside of mathematics, to suppose that the whole equals the sum of its parts. It is much more in this case. The poetic value here approaches symbolism: the symbolism that typifies a universal by a particular, the truth of classes or nations by its representation through a person. The girl of the Spanish Farm may not be a symbol but she shadows forth symbolically the French borderland. Her French lover is dead, her English lover means nothing to her nor she to him when the war that married their physical lives is ended. Her life now is her farm, her land. A political treatise would not give so clear an exposition of international psychology.
Even the dark shadows of the apartments in which Hugh Walpole’s three old ladies lived are lit by a cheerful romantic light that comes through cracks that the author is careful to make in his dingy old dwelling-place. It is a book of creative originality. It has vividness, beauty, and reality in workmanship. Yet “The Old Ladies” is a slighter bit of work than Walpole is used to give as a novel. They themselves, the old ladies, are real enough; and gloomily realistic the pettinesses that make tragedies of their lives, pettinesses of bits of red amber and little fears and jealousies that gather at last the force of criminal passion. All this is executed with finesse and power: one knows the old ladies and lives in the atmosphere of their lives. And then Mr. Walpole plays a romantic’s winning trick. He has shown you in the beginning the picture of a loving son somewhere in America; you see the author stick the card up his sleeve. With the triumphal flourish of the magician he produces that card in the last chapter and wins his game with life. A pleasant end to the game; but not by the rules according to the realist.
I mustn’t press my point too hard; it may break. But— do I mistake in thinking I see even that hardy privateer, Miss May Sinclair, dipping colors to the romantic ensign?
“Arnold Waterlow” is pure realism in its psychology,—as May Sinclair sees the human mind. Surely though, the ordering of external circumstances to suit the heart’s desire is of the essence of romance. Waterlow is impervious to the cautious conventions of his mother and sister, and the reckless sensualism of his father and brother. He flees with disgust from the allurements of the mere lusts of the flesh. But when he has married the woman he loves, knowing she may leave him for the man she loves better; when after she has left him and he in turn finds another passion that is richer than the old one, only to be called back by loyalty to a pledge given his wife when she, deserted, returns to him; is it life’s method or romance’s to clear the way for the tidy readjustment of household matters? On the formal side there is a hint here, too, of the compelling last-chapter logic of the Victorian romantic.
Mr. Cabell’s “Straws and Prayer-Books” its author calls an epilogue. I use it for mine: for it is both romance and sparkling defense of romance: A delightful book to read, it is stimulating to discuss. It may not only point a moral; it is itself an adorned tale. Having read Mr. Cabell’s stories for over twenty years, I might have counted myself as the original “Cabell man;” only I enjoyed him more as a neglected writer of brilliant individuality than as a canonized classic. I cannot think of him as wearing a halo even in his grandmother’s Heaven; for Mr. Cabell has humor, since he can find it amusing to compare the author of “Jur-gen” with the author of “The Ingle’s Shadow.” The contrast he finds in the young and middle-aged romantics is itself a study in the changing ideals of romance. “Straws and Prayer-Books” is a set of sardonic essays with the author as chief character: and the hero is always a romantic whether he is playing the ape to beautiful dreams, writing beautifully about beautiful happenings or amusing himself in constructing colorfully a whimsical parody of man’s illusions. He has written wittily, he has written artistically— and artfully, he has written with sharp epigram and sometimes with eloquence, in “Straws and Prayer-Books.” If he is moved very occasionally to bad taste and bad puns—both at once—by Mr. Sumner and Dr. Pattee, he cancels the debt elsewhere in full measure with a bountifulness of true wit. It is a keener-edged book than its predecessor, “Beyond Life,” if less “big in circumference,” but no man could like one without capacity for enjoying the other. Cabell is for the man who can be amused at a clever caricature of himself; who laughs with the mind as readily as with the mouth. That after so many years among the “great unread” he should so few years ago have awaked to find himself famous may be as much a symptom of the changing literary taste as the result of his matured craftsmanship. Not since Swift has the machinery of romance been so skillfully turned to the uses of satire. But for all his gibes at realism, surely it is a philosophy of realism that Mr. Cabell has distilled into his sardonic romance of disillusionment. Quite true he presents an overt philosophy of dreams: man “plays the ape to fairer and yet fairer dreams,” but when man is conscious that his dreams are dreams he is no longer dreaming; he is just “kidding himself.” But one mustn’t take Mr. Cabell too seriously if one takes anything else seriously,— except as a maker of literature: as an artist he is always important, and serious enough even when he is playing. I am reminded of the saying of John Randolph, “Men talk to me of serious matters and I see only children blowing bubbles.” Cabell is like that, only he takes a golden pipe and blows more rainbow bubbles than them all. He has the gift of “the word,” he is an artist, he has ideas, he has originality. Yet like Randolph and the “white monkey” there is something he can never get at because he doesn’t know that it is there.
James Southall Wilson
James Southall Wilson (1880–1963) was a nationally renowned scholar, the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and founding editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review from 1925 to 1931.
Issue: Spring 1925 Volume 1 # 1
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More transmission capacity found -- Efficient wires management
Consumers in Denmark saved between EUR 80 million and Pressure from Germany's wind lobby for a relaxation of the safety limits on the full use of existing transmission capacity on the E.ON Netz grid are paying off. During a year of tests, curtailment of wind station output to avoid network overload were reduced by over 80%, says E.ON Netz. Restrictions on transmission capacity are based on safety limits for how hot the wires may become. By constantly measuring the temperature of the wires, rather than relying on statistical estimates of how hot the wires are likely to become, means that transport capacity can be increased.
Pressure from Germany's wind lobby for a relaxation of the safety limits on the full use of existing transmission capacity on the E.ON Netz grid are paying off. During a year of tests, curtailment of wind station output to avoid network overload were reduced by over 80%, says E.ON Netz.
Restrictions on transmission capacity are based on safety limits for how hot the wires may become. By constantly measuring the temperature of the wires, rather than relying on statistical estimates of how hot the wires are likely to become, means that transport capacity can be increased. On a pilot stretch of the E.ON network, the much used 110 kV transmission line between Flensburg and Niebüll in the windy northern part of Germany, the capacity increase at times was at times as much as 50%.
Shortly before E.ON launched its pilot project in September 2006, wind station owners had been preparing legal action against the company over lost income due to overly zealous "generation management" in the name of protecting the network and for failing to provide adequate transmission capacity for wind generation.
E.ON Netz says its temperature monitoring process is "unique worldwide." Temperature sensors along the wires deliver information on weather conditions. The transport capacity is calculated, rising as temperatures drop, and the data used for online control of network transmission capacity.
Applying the pilot
The company is now making preparations, including upgrading transformer stations, to operate temperature monitoring on further 110 kV cables in the Schleswig-Holstein region and is investigating its use on 380 kV cables too. The company notes, however, that "stability requirements of the European high voltage network restrict possible capacity increases of the 380 kV cables."
Despite the capacity improvements achieved through temperature monitoring, transmission network expansion to integrate and transport growing wind power output is still needed, the company stresses.
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Death toll mounts to 102 in flood-hit Kerala
WION Web Team New Delhi, India Aug 14, 2019, 05.51 PM(IST) Edited By: Riya Gupta
An aerial view of the submerged town of Malappuram as floodwater increases after incessant rainfall in Kerala. Photograph:( ANI )
Earlier, chief minister's office tweeted that forecasters predict heavy rainfall in Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur districts.
As rains continue to wreak havoc in Kerala, the death toll has gone up to 102, Kerala State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) informed on Wednesday.
KSDMA has released a district-wise data between August 8 and August 14 till 3 pm in which it stated that 59 people were still missing across the rain-ravaged state while 35 injured due to flood-related incidents.
Earlier, chief minister office tweeted that forecasters predict heavy rainfall in Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur districts.
''Forecasters predict that Moderate to Heavy rainfall with wind speed reaching 35 to 45 kmph is very likely to occur at one or two places in Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur districts,'' CMO Kerala tweeted.
Stay Weather Aware: Forecasters predict that Moderate to Heavy rainfall with wind speed reaching 35 to 45 kmph is very likely to occur at one or two places in Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur districts.
— CMO Kerala (@CMOKerala) August 14, 2019
Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has announced a compensation of Rs 4 lakh for the families of people who lost their lives due to floods in the state.
Telangana reports 150 cases of Swine Flu
JNU dismisses discrimination report against teachers, students of SC and ST category
Citizenship not just about rights but duties towards society too: CJI Bobde
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Watch: Shocking video shows massive pileup on Iowa highway
Updated: 1:58 PM EST Dec 9, 2019
Tisia Muzinga
Warning: The video above may be upsetting to viewersA crash involving as many as 50 vehicles forced a major highway to be shut down in Iowa Monday.Interstate 80 was closed between Altoona and Des Moines due to the crash, which happened just before 11 a.m.The crash involved several semitrucks and passenger vehicles. The roadway closed as emergency crews worked to clear the crash.At least one person was seriously injured. Iowa State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla told KCCI there are up to 50 vehicles involved in the crash.Watch the video above to see the accident as it happened.
Warning: The video above may be upsetting to viewers
A crash involving as many as 50 vehicles forced a major highway to be shut down in Iowa Monday.
Interstate 80 was closed between Altoona and Des Moines due to the crash, which happened just before 11 a.m.
The crash involved several semitrucks and passenger vehicles. The roadway closed as emergency crews worked to clear the crash.
At least one person was seriously injured. Iowa State Patrol Trooper Alex Dinkla told KCCI there are up to 50 vehicles involved in the crash.
Watch the video above to see the accident as it happened.
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KROSMOZ: The Protoflex 2014-03-07 17:00
The Protoflex is the new Sidekick that you can choose to have by your side starting with the next game update on March 18th... But who or what is this Protoflex? Where does he come from? This great robot of a new era…
Of all the strange things that have been found off the Sufokia’s shores, the Protoflex is probably the most enigmatic and the most disturbing fact is not so much the amount of these machines, which have been found in the depths of the region, but especially the fact that most of these "things" are still operational.
In view of some characteristics reminiscent of the infamous Sire Flexington which gives it its name, this machine is clearly carrying the Foggernaut signature, as said by the Foggernaut archaeologists. But not like the Foggernauts which are now roaming our streets and fields.
No, the Protoflex, is a creation of the "original" Foggernauts. It even seems that they date precisely from the time when the Foggernauts were separated into two factions:
On one side those who continued to believe in Oktapodas, and accepted to live their lives with nothing more than a body of flesh and blood.
On the other side, the Foggernauts we know today, those who have mastered Stasis and created mechanical body to receive their conscience and prolong their lives.
Then come the questions that all sciencemages of the World of Twelve have been asking themselves:
Is it a prototype of our Foggernaut mechanical ancestors, or is it from the other Foggernaut faction? Is there "someone" in this complex mechanic? A ghost in the machine? Why were there so many Protoflex? Are these war machines? Are these receptacles for Foggernaut "souls" that haven’t got their "receptacle" yet? How does the Protoflex repair itself? What is their source of energy?
Nobody dared try to take apart an “active” Protoflex, and the rare damaged and inactive “specimens” have almost nothing to give to the "experts" even when disassembled and examined from every angle. The only thing that is for sure is that they do not work on Stasis, as their contemporary "counterparts”.
Remains one last question, raised by a protologue now renamed Asiic Amivos, a question which scientists are afraid to find an answer: Why does an activated Protoflex “links itself” to a person and protects that person, even to the point of jeopardizing its own "existence", as if following some kind of rule, or laws, maybe even the laws of the prototic?
All this still remains to be discovered...
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Ice Hockey: Devils throw it away
COACH Glenn Mulvenna was fuming.
Cardiff Devils 2, Dundee Stars 3
He could scarcely contain his frustration after a match in which the Cardiff Devils outgunned one of the best teams in Britain - and then threw away the chance of victory.
Dundee, forced back for long periods and outshot 38-23, snatched what had looked an unlikely winner following a defensive error with two minutes 33 seconds left.
"It was stupid," blasted Mulvenna immediately after the match. "We are making simple, but crucial mistakes at the wrong time and they are hurting us.
"We put pressure on Dundee, we had most of the play. We were physical and they were backing off the puck.
"Then in the last few minutes we decided to get cute. That's not our style. We've been getting better and we didn't give too much away, but then we made a mistake.
"Dundee are a talented and offensive side, but we shut them down. It's frustrating getting beaten like that. With the score at 2-2 we had to try and do something cute in front of our own net.
"In the last five minutes guys must be aware of what their jobs are."
The Devils were raw, physical and intense in a bloody clash --Mike Ware, Warren Tait and Jonathan Phillips all spilled blood on the ice and played on.
But Cardiff also listened to Mulvenna's plea to `play smart' and stayed out of the penalty box. Skipper Mike Ware and Dundee's Chris Conaboy went in after a fight, but Cardiff kept their hits hard, but fair.
The result in Cardiff's first Findus British National League match of the season was bitterly disappointing, but it was a fiercely contested thriller against the reigning champions.
Dundee's first line of Ken Pristlay, Teeder Wynne and Tony Hand is rated the best in the FBNL and would also be a huge threat in Superleague.
But Mulvenna wasn't interested in talking about how well his team played, saying: "I will never be happy with a defeat. It might as well have been 10-1.
"Dundee have a quality team, but take a look at our roster. We have a team who can and did match them or better. We let our chance slip away, but we'll learn
Wales NewsWales live breaking news plus traffic, weather and travel updates (Sunday, January 19)All the latest news, sport, weather and travel from across the country
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An Exclusive Preview to Boca do Lobo's Legacy & Craftsmanship Magazine
An Exclusive Preview to Boca do Lobo’s Legacy & Craftsmanship Magazine
The Renowned Portuguese Luxury Furniture Brand, Boca do Lobo is one of the best brands when it comes to producing exclusive and innovative furniture, lighting and wall mirror designs. The brand has recently launched the first edition of Legacy, Boca do Lobo’s design and craftsmanship magazine. The testimony is for design professionals and enthusiasts who want to know Boca do Lobo’s challenges and motivation.
—> DOWNLOAD the full issue for free <—
This design magazine pays tribute to all the manual arts that have been struggling not to disappear through the years. By publishing its revelations, the brand wanted to highlight its importance and develop the brand’s legacy to this cultural richness.
Boca do Lobo wanted it to be entertaining and to have an informative character, at times contrasted, but above all useful. Inside, you’ll find a mixture of descriptions, behind-the-scenes pictures, features and testimonies, as well as a wide range of inspirations. The brand hopes that, through this magazine, you’ll get to meet the soul of all the people that work in the daily construction of the brand, because once you’ve done that you have really met the soul of Boca do Lobo.
⇒ Read Also: 7 Interior Design Tips to Take Into Consideration When Using Mirrors ⇐
Boca do Lobo was born naturally, without any strain, without any obligation. It was born as a need and desire at the same time. As a need to represent what no one until the beginning of 2005 had come to do: to duly represent Portugal’s talents and crafts and, as a desire, to create a brand that would endure and flourish through the years into something quite different from the rest.
Amândio Pereira and Ricardo Magalhães, the two design students who absorbed experience and inspiration from the capital of design and fashion, Milan, returned home with a clear objective: they would create a design brand able to break the norms of conventional luxury and find a way to celebrate the use of artisanal techniques by paying a tribute to all the Portuguese heritage and culture.
These were the early beginnings of a brand which, years later, would be distinguished as a brand with a unique design concept, courageous to experiment and too stubborn to give up. The first product and the first collection of Boca do Lobo was Soho. Although it seems quite timid and simple compared to today’s collections, it created a reaction when it was introduced for the first time. A reaction strong enough to include Boca do Lobo in the world of luxury furniture with a unique design.
The head of the wolf defines Boca do Lobo. From a folkloric and mythological background, the wolf has a decisive role in every narrative of native culture linked with courage, strength, loyalty and success at hunting.
“The history of Boca do Lobo is reborn repeatedly, marking each year with a new inspiration, a new challenge, but with the same objective and passion. The restoration of the antique arts of manual work, honouring the art of hand painted tiles, marquetry, joinery, upholstery and metalwork.”
The collections that followed – Coolors, Limited Edition, Private – show emotionally, but also rationally, the evolution of the luxury brand, its maturity to the utmost control of the unexpected. If we symbolically compare the alpha wolf with the leading person (from an ideological and aesthetic perspective) of Boca do Lobo, the latter is Marco Costa.
Marco Costa is responsible for creating the most iconic and important brand products. He believes that the world is a place to be discovered and enjoyed rather than feared, embracing challenges with the ultimate objective to design and deliver products that would delight the public. This perspective, apparently optimistic but deeply audacious, has its roots in all the brand’s physiognomy.
Iconic pieces such as the Pixel Cabinet, Diamond Sideboard, Fortuna Dining Table, Venice Mirror and more go beyond the furniture and its primary function, pushing the object to new levels, blurring the boundaries that would separate functionality with art. Most of the techniques and finishes used by Boca do Lobo throughout the entire production processes are completely artistical and technical “inventions” of the designers.
There is no secret recipe for success, much less for creativity. Everything is taught, gained or improved through practice and experience. Nothing disappears, everything is rooted in the unconscious, to be displayed unexpectedly through the course of a lifetime. When “married” to a so-called creative mind, this inherent ability of human nature naturally generates the steps to the creative process. From the conjunction of the conscious and unconscious to the co-living of the past and present, Boca do Lobo created the so-called “10 Creative Steps of the Brand”, to find more about these magical steps, Download Here the magazine.
CREATE. DESIGN. INSPIRE.
Designing for Boca do Lobo is every designer dream. It’s an inspiring way to create and tell unique stories. The complexity of the detail, the strong features, the classic heritage and the audacity that every piece can take is mind-blowing. It seems that there’s no limit, and to create pieces made to fill up a room… There’s no better recipe.
“I try to recreate and reinterpret each piece, each story, I wanted to continue these design narratives but through my vision. Although Boca do Lobo has a strong identity and a defined style, the ambition of any designer is to leave their personal signature in this brand. I think that it is the richness of design. Boca do Lobo’s success comes from the knowledge from our ancestor, but seen in a contemporary way throughout different eyes and hands”. – Marco Costa.
The fascination in creating the unexpected and defying the boundaries between art and design is what inspires the brand. It’s the strong DNA of the brand that fascinates and conquers the public. Boca do Lobo stays true to its values, the respect for its past and excitement for a bright and challenging future is what motivates the brand. Its culture, the talent of its daring designers, the tradition of working with noble materials, the wisdom of its artisans and the love and dedication of its team keeps pushing the brand always for a better self.
The reinterpretation of the past with a contemporary touch is part of the core values and aesthetic of Boca do Lobo, combining good design with exceptional production skills. The richness and variety of our cultural heritage with centuries of history, the Portuguese legacy couldn’t be more fertile to the designer’s inspiration.
BEHIND THE SCENES – PIECES WITH A STORY
Boca do Lobo is continuously reinventing itself, they come up with new concepts, designs, materials and exclusive pieces that have been inspiring and “shake” the design industry. In conclusion, Wall Mirrors leaves you with an exclusive behind the scene images of how the narrative of this designs starts, you can find all the brands products right HERE.
⇒ Related Article: Boca do Lobo’s Angra Mirror is a Tribute to Portuguese Craftsmanship ⇐
♦♦ Feel free to share your thoughts on this article. If you want to be up to date with the best news about trends, interior design tips, and furniture luxury brands, SIGN UP TO OUR NEWSLETTER and receive in your email, free of charges, the latest and the most exclusive content from Wall Mirrors. Follow us on social networks: FACEBOOK | PINTEREST | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM ♦♦
Source: Boca do Lobo
Boca do Lobodesign legacyexclusive designlegacy and craftsmanshipLuxury Brandsluxury furniture brandsluxury magazinesportuguese design
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Article Words : Elizabeth Atkin | 03 July 2019
Where Dame Judi Dench visited on her Wild Borneo Adventure
Judi Dench fell for Borneo's rainforest and unique wildlife on her travels, documented by ITV's new series Wild Borneo Adventure. Here, we reveal exactly where she visited and stayed during her trip...
Dame Judi Dench swung into our screens last night in the first episode of her well-received two-part documentary for ITV, Judi Dench's Wild Borneo Adventure.
Watching the 84-year-old national treasure is uplifting, and Borneo is breathtaking on screen - but there's a serious message about conservation right at the core of the show: the precious orangutans, all of the rare and unusual wildlife we see and the magnificent rainforest they call home that needs protecting.
No doubt, Judi's journey will have inspired many of us to add South-East Asia's natural wonderland to their travel bucket list. In case that's you, here's where Judi visited and where she stayed, during her time in Borneo...
Here's where Judi Dench's Wild Borneo Adventure was filmed...
Danum Valley Conservation Area
Episode one sees Dame Judi guided by the director of SEARRP, Dr Glen Reynolds, exploring the vast Danum Valley Conservation Area: a well-cared for, 483 sq km reserve of lowland dipterocarp forest.
It's home to over 120 mammal species, 72 types of reptile, and 340 species of bird. You can visit, and stay overnight, in Danum Valley's various lodges.
Borneo Rainforest Lodge, Danum Valley
Judi's accommodation during filming in Danum Valley was the Borneo Rainforest Lodge.
The lodge was built with a sustainable design in mind. Made from recycled wood and locally-sourced materials, to ensure minimum wastage during building.
Expect a luxe experience once you're inside. Unbelievable views of the rainforest, mood lighting and traditional Malaysian cuisine.
Along the Kinabatangan River
Judi visited all along the Kinabatangan River in the northern parts of Sabah.
Mainly, filming took place at the Danau Girang Field Centre, a research facility run by Sabah Wildlife and also a department at Cardiff University in Wales.
The centre's purpose is to research how to slow down the loss of Asia's biodiversity.
Sukau Rainforest Lodge
After a long day of filming, Dame Judi stayed on the banks of the Kinabatangan River at Sukau Rainforest Lodge.
It's right in the heart of the rainforest, and offers guests the chance to immerse themselves in nature, and spot some of Borneo's classic wildlife.
Sukau is also rather luxe, but comfort doesn't come at the cost of sustainability. Sukau works with the local community to introduce and support a variety of green projects.
Gomantong Cave, Sabah
There's no shortage of natural magic in the rainforest.
For something a bit different, venture to Gomantong, a 300 ft tall complex cave system that splits into two entry points: the Black Cave and the White Cave.
Creepy crawlies (cockroaches) are everywhere - so watch your back! Of course, the caves will be home to countless bats, too. Orangutans live in the wildlife conservation area surrounding the cave.
Gaya Island
Dame Judi's Wild Borneo Adventure also took her off the coast of Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, to the glistening Gaya Island, a 15-minute boat ride away.
Part of Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park, Gaya is undoubtedly a dreamy island worth preserving, for the pristine beaches alone. It's a paradise for snorkellers, and is home to some of the world's most colourful marine animals.
During filming, Judi and team stayed at the Gaya Island Resort.
Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre
Since 1964, the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre has been saving orphaned orangutans from deforestation, logging sites, being kept as pets, and even being hunted - and caring for wild orangutans in need of some love.
Now, it's maybe the world's best-known orangutan sanctuary, and worth the few pounds it costs to buy a ticket and watch the feeding. It's easy to visit from Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu.
Judi has made no secret of her love for orangutans, so this filming location, set amongst 43 sq km of lowland equatorial rainforest, seems a no-brainer.
Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC)
The BSBCC is another of Borneo's famous and most crucial wildlife conservation and research projects - created in 2014 to protect the Malaysian sun bear, one of the world's most endangered bear species.
As of July 2019, BSBCC is home to 44 sun bears who had previously been captured, some likely for entertainment purposes. Now, they spend their days climbing in the Bornean sun, and foraging in the sanctuary's forests.
The centre is very close by to Sepilok's Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, so visiting both is essential.
See more of Judi's Borneo trip...
Discover Borneo for yourself:
Wanderlust's complete Borneo travel guide
7 of Borneo's best bits
Amazing Borneo trips - with a twist
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Board index » Outsider » Outsider Discussion
From the Heavens Above (Fanfiction)
Moderator: Outsider Moderators
Hey, I wrote this out in about an hour and I havent edited yet.
With that excuse out of the way. Here's the first part of my story.
Let me know what you think so far.
Happy Fourth Of July.
L-U-C-Y: My Outsider Fanfiction
Re: From the Heavens Above (Fanfiction)
From The Heavens Above
Part I Chapter 1
“You know what to do…”
The voice receded as HT comfortably lowered herself. The walls shook lightly as she did so; their glow flickering as they rumbled quietly along with the humming drone of the engine. HT cursed the sound as she forced herself awake, bracing herself to exit and smell the atmosphere.
Selam stalked along the forest floor as the black dirt beneath grew darker still in the growing shadow of the moonlit canopy. Quickly, her body instinctively fell to the ground, electrically reacting to the roar of sound that impacted through her body as angry red and orange lights sharply outlined the form of the canopy above. Summoning her courage, Selam lifted her gaze upward and saw a blinding light arc across the night air, emptying the sky of its field of stars for an instant as it’s roar receded further and further into the forest.
Eventually, the light disappeared beneath the canopy only visible now through the bright orange reflections of dazzling light that boldly colored roiling clouds until… It just stopped, the sound, the light. As if it had never happened in the first place.
Selam herself might not have believed she ever saw it if it were not for the powerful drumming of her heart and her ringing ears.
The panicked sounds of the birds and beasts continued to drown out the previous silence as Selam ran through the night,
towards that gleaming light from the heavens.
Last edited by White on Sat Oct 21, 2017 11:45 am, edited 6 times in total.
This is ... short.
I don't know the characters, nor why the starship (?) landed on a planet where (at least) some apparently have never seen a starship before.
I lack context, for now.
But please, continue!
Vote for Outsider on TWC:
charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123
A drop of sweat hung off the precipice of Angus’ nose, swinging about with his every movement and causing an itch as he leaned heavily against a nearby tree. His palm pressed against the rough bark as he breathed heavily with his head bent down. Angus’ wet hair stuck to his forehead before a hand came to roughly knead it, squeezing it into his scalp. Angus let his head loll about, rolling with the rough and clumsy shoves the now two hands applied as his scowl deepened.
“Come on,” a young, boyish sounding, voice said from behind him as his head was shoved slightly more roughly forward. “Come on,” the voice said again, in that exact same calm, almost disinterested, yet goading, tone as before. “We don’t have all day, you know,” the voice whined.
Angus breathed deeply through his nostrils, exhaling slowly as he pushed himself away from the tree with his hand and stumbled to a shaky stand.
“Why did I come out here?” he said, leaning over and resting his hands on his knees as he continued panting.
“Why, to get some fresh air and take in the amazing scenery, of course” the voice answered.
“First of all,” Angus wheezed, “a hundred degree heat and ninety-five humidity aren’t what I’d call refreshing,” he said moving one hand from his knee to peel his shirt off of his chest. “Second of all,” he continued, “why did I let you talk me into this?”
“Because I’m your sister and you love me?” the voice answered sweetly as Angus rolled his eyes.
“Aren’t you supposed to be older than me?” he quipped back with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, stop being such a downer,” she continued on, “maybe you’d enjoy this more if you were in shape,” she said as Angus felt a finger poke painfully into his side.
“Ok, that’s it!” Angus reared up, spreading his arms apart, “Get off!” Angus said as he felt his sister's legs unwrap from around his waist.
She fell to the ground with a dampened thud as her boots impacted the black dirt. Quickly, she hopped up onto her toes and posed, awkwardly, with her hands wide apart and in the air as if she were a gymnast.
“And she sticks the landing! Allison Wiley has won gold for the third time this year. It is absolutely unbelievable, folks!” Allison yelled as her landing form promptly deteriorated into an awkward victory jig while her smile morphed into an intense face of excitement as she shut her eyes and bent forward to talk into the imaginary microphone in her grip. Her twirling dance brought her face to face with Angus’ unamused face and crossed arms.
“Oh, come on,” Allison waved her hand at him while leaning forward. “We’re on a safari!” she yelled gesturing with open arms to the grove of trees surrounding them.
“Keep it quiet would you!” Angus hissed as he instinctively shrugged his shoulders and looked about, shyly.
“I couldn’t let you spend our whole vacation at the hotel gym” she giggled. “And there’s no one here, you know.”
“Vacations are supposed to be fun,” Angus replied curtly, “not obligatory.” “Being at the resort,” he continued, “ is fun, and there’s air conditioning there,” he said pumping his shirt with one hand.
“Think of the adventure, though,” Allison continued. “We’ve never been in here before,” she said spinning to look at the scenery around them with wonderment in her eyes,
“We’d never been at that hotel before either,” Angus replied dryly, looking unimpressed at his surroundings.
“Seriously? You need to-” Allison fell quiet as she stumbled in her twirl when she came about to face Angus.
“Angus?” she said looking cautiously at the tree line surrounding the trail as she took tentative, confused steps towards where Angus stood, just moments ago. “Angus, Bro, are you around here?” she said, her voice growing increasingly nervous. “Angus!” she yelled, her voice swallowed by the surrounding forest. The tree line seeming more ominous as it caged her in the trail.
Allison peeked past the bars of wood into the dark, shadowed, undergrowth beyond, searching quietly for her brother.
I'm a bit confused...
Is this a third viewpoint?
Still waiting how the story develops...
(You are starting to make me curious... )
This... feels superfluous.
Okay, "she and her sister" can fly by telekinesis, or similar.
Rather long story for a felt nothing.
First, "she" walks to the shining tree, then she watches her sister and a friend play at the river, then she sttacks her sister by flying with a dirtball over the roof,(why is the sister not outside anymoe? - how much time has passed?)...
The changes are disorienting and too abrupt.
I'm not clear whether all the "she" are even the same person....
This is just disorienting, and uses far too much text to transport some news....
you've opened so many questions already, that I've lost interest in the solutions. I'm feeling overwhelmed by the tidbits of info.
I'll continue reading, it's not as if I'll be very busy readin new Outsider pages...
I'm having a hard time reading this, and I think part of it is the presentation. You've got a lot of run-on sentences, and a lot of excessive use of commas. On top of that, I think you've broken up your paragraphs too much. The prose also gets a little purple for my taste in places. There's also some inconsistency, in one line you describe the character as walking slowly, then two lines later, she's hurrying. They don't really fit together.
In trying to give the story a chance so I could comment on the content rather than the style, I started trying to reorganize it along the lines above. I'll include a snippet for illustrative purposes. I hope this is not presumptive.
She looked ahead in contentment, watching the rolling fields of her homeland stretch unbroken to the horizon. There the rising star painted the blue canvas of plant life in rich hues of red and gold. She walked towards a large and beautifully twisted tree in the distance, it's pure white skin shining in the light of the rising star, intricate set of barren branches almost twinkling. She smiled smiling uncontrollably at the sight, as if in a drugged euphoria, as she ambled towards it.
The air hung in place, warm and drifting slightly. Motes of red dust and sapphire pollen danced lazily to and fro in the current, hanging low over the ground as her movement past pushed them into swirling frenzies, then quickly slowed back into their lazy drifting.
She walked slowly and comfortably along toward the shining tree. Dry and slightly discolored vegetation crunched beneath her feet as the tip of the long and jagged shadow of the tree touched them. Smiling up at the tree, she let the reflected light fall onto her back as she continued towards her goal.
Retracting her senses and quieting her contentment she quickly walked past the invisible boundary of the community, relaxing further as the air of calmness surrounded and coddled itself around her. She traveled the worn path of flattened plant life past several houses and toward the river. She lifted the water to herself for a drink, then turned away from the depths of the clear river to wonder aloud where her sister was.
She looked ahead in contentment, watching the rolling fields of her homeland stretch, unbroken, to the horizon ahead, where the rising star painted the blue canvas of plant life in rich hues of red and gold.
She smiled, uncontrollably, as if in a drugged euphoria, at the sight as she calmly ambled along the flat terrain, towards a large and beautifully twisted tree in the distance, whose pure white skin shone resplendently in the light of the rising sun, almost twinkling as it’s intricate set of barren branches reflected light onto themselves.
The air hung in place, warm and drifting slightly. In the current, motes of red dust and sapphire pollen danced lazily to and fro, hanging low over the ground as her movement past pushed them into swirling frenzies before they quickly slowed back into their slow drifting.
She walked slowly and comfortably along toward the shining tree.
The hardy vegetation crunched beneath her feet, dry and slightly discolored, as the tip of the long and jagged shadow of the tree lay at her feet.
Smiling up at the tree, she continued onward, letting the reflected light bathe onto her back as she hurried towards her goal.
Retracting her senses and quieting her contentment, she quickly walked past the invisible boundary of the community, relaxing further as the air of calmness surrounded and coddled itself around her.
Walking past several houses, she traveled the worn path of flattened plant life toward the river, where she lifted the water to herself for a drink.
She turned away from the rocky, shadowed, depths of the clear river and wondered aloud where her sister was.
Atomic Space Race, a hard sci-fi orbital mechanics puzzle game.
Homeworld Fulcrum, a Homeworld Remastered Mod
Fair, the chapter was really only meant to introduce the two characters and there was a lot of fluff. I might have gotten carried away .
As for the writing style, this particular chapter was meant to be written from the point of view of a Loroi, a lot of the setting description is actually a substitution for dialogue. I guess the concept fell flat.
In any case, thanks for the feedback. The Introductory chapters are written, so the story should be moving apace soon.
And the rest of the story should be written from a human pov, so small mercies, I suppose.
Razor One
Three different perspective changes with no interconnection, narrative, or actual story. Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but that's how it reads at the moment.
There's the beginnings of something here, but jumping between multiple perspectives basically kills any potential momentum you might have had going.
I'm a bit too tired for a fully in-depth analysis , but if I were to briefly critique each portion:
What is HT? It's never defined, is too short to be a proper name, and is just... there.
It's a good opening, short, punchy, gets the readers attention, but then...
Change of perspective, with no follow through on the previous part.
We have two humans bantering. That's fine, but we have no sense of time or location. It could be 1948, 2048, or 2148. The only vague reference to a location is one character saying they're on a Safari, which suggests Africa, but you can go on Safari elsewhere too in my experience, so this is suspect at best.
About the only significant development is that one character mysteriously disappears. This would be a good opening too, if it were on its own and not a followup to the prior part which already served its purpose as an opening. Even so...
We get another change in perspective. At this point, any reader would be confused as to what is going on. It doesn't help that there isn't a single character name in this bit, nor is there a single bit of dialogue to break up the narrative. I'm assuming that that's deliberate; that these characters are presumably Loroi and haven't earned their names yet and the lack of dialogue is to signify telepathic communication. Even so, Loroi still have telepathic names even if they haven't yet earned a spoken name, and Sanzai can still be rendered as italicised speech even if it is a fairly dry method in comparison.
I will commend you on the length of this part, unlike the prior parts it's the right length to serve as more than an appetiser for any potential reader, but the apparent lack of direction for the narrative makes it all bit confusing. Are they witnessing the same event as in the first part, or a different event? As with the prior parts, there is no sense of time or location.
The apparent conflict between the two sisters feels hollow and generic without names, a location, history, or a sense of time and place. It's difficult for anyone to really care or relate to nameless characters.
If I had to nail down the main flaw in each of the parts, it's that there's plenty of actors, but very little stage for them to act on. Some worldbuilding would improve things very much, in addition to sticking with a particular perspective until the story has moved forward with them. The thing that crashed from another world or a character mysteriously disappearing is an inciting incident, the first step in a story, and you need to go beyond that first step and take the reader on a short walk that ends at a decisive point, a crossroads, a new mystery, an impending doom, a dilemma for the character to solve or muse upon in the next part. That's the safe point where you can change perspective to see how other characters in a different place are doing. Too soon and you cut things off without reader satisfaction. Too long and you risk exhausting the reader with needless detail.
By all means, continue writing, you get better with practice and I am curious as to where this is going.
This is my Mod voice. If you see this in a thread, it means that the time for gentle reminders has passed.
From The Heavens Above Part II Chapter 1
...like shit. Angus felt like shit.
Feeling as if someone had rubbed onion juice into his eyes, Angus, again, tried to crank his painfully teary eyes open a sliver, glimpsing a blurred landscape before he quickly shut them again, recoiling in pain. Angus hunched forward on his knees, his muscles burning, his organs squeezed in pain and breathing pitiful wheezes through his snot clogged nose as he coughed and fell forward to support himself with his hands. His chest felt tight as if he were being forced to exhale, hold his breath, and take little gasps of air to fill his empty his lungs. His hands pressed into the firm, but deformable ground. Water rushed up to fill the hand-shaped indentations he formed as his tears dripped loudly into the newly formed puddles. Several more attempts at opening his eyes, accompanied with grunts and various curses, made it clear that to him that they weren’t opening.
“Hello?” Angus yelled, more out of habit than hope at this point, as the past however many requests had brought him nothing except silence. Angus grew worried, his heart sinking as he kept a paranoid ear out, and finally accepted that this wasn’t another prank of his sisters. She’d never done anything malicious. Taking a shaky breath, Angus shook his head and tried to think past the roar of pain and discomfort in his head. ‘Focus on your hands,” he repeated to himself, wriggling his fingers in their miniature puddles and making them into fists as he molded the firm, clay-like, substance in between his fingers. Accepting for the moment that his sister had nothing to do with this, Angus tried to assess his situation. Recalling that his sister was dancing around in front of him before he was plunged into blindness and pain, he gathered that his sister either couldn’t hear him or couldn’t respond for some reason. Briefly, he wondered if the lack of response was his sister's attempt at a warning to him that silence was the best policy at the moment. Shaking paranoid thoughts of predators and killers out of his head, Angus focused back on his environment. Keeping an ear out brought nothing but the alien sounds of the jungle. Was he in a sinkhole? Maybe he passed out after he fell into one? Would his sister be alright?
If it were a sinkhole, he thought, it would have to be a shallow one, although it would probably be deep enough to reach some underground water source.
“How deep is the water table in a forest?” he mumbled to himself. Forest soil didn’t trap water well from what he could vaguely remember about tropical forests in his biology class. Although, sinkholes were caused by underground streams, so it wouldn’t necessarily have to be that deep in order for the ground to be this wet. Of course, this was IF he even was in a sinkhole, which he probably wasn’t, he thought dejectedly. ‘In any case, whatever happened, it’s best to stay still and wait for a search party” he thought as he lifted a sleeve to wipe tears from his stinging eyes, bringing the pain, once again, to the forefront of his mind.
“Damn it,” he cursed as his eyes watered further and he moved to put his arm back on the ground.
His hand landed on a slick outcropping of stone sticking out of the ground and slid out violently from under him. Face planting in the wet clay-like substance below him, Angus quickly rose back up, gasping for breath as the water rushed in to fill the cavity his face made in the ground. Blinking his eyes open, Angus’s annoyance quickly subsided as he realized the pain in his eyes was a fraction of what it was before. His eyes widening in comprehension, he rushed to flush his eyes further with water from his makeshift and handsome, in his opinion, waterhole. After several minutes of washing out his eyes and sinuses, he snorted the last of the moisture from his nostrils and rose to breathe in deeply through his now de-clogged nose.
His face soaking with grey, smoky water Angus stood up and looked down, twisting his neck and back to get a good look at himself, his spine cracking in waves of blissful release as he did so. He shivered as he looked at the gash running down his Khaki shorts, imagining what his leg might have looked like if whatever caused that had touched flesh. He stepped forward weakly, as if testing the leg and focused on the rest of his hiking gear. Thankfully, he actually didn’t look too bad. His jacket and backpack looked worn, but serviceable, while his boots looked almost new. Breathing a sigh of relief, he scrunched his nose as he smelled a powerful, almost overwhelming atmosphere of ozone surrounding him.
Looking around at the clearing he stood in, he blinked his eyes as the feeling of wrongness that was always on the periphery of his thoughts faced him, full force. The first things he noticed were the trees. Unlike the towering jungle plants that previously surrounded and shaded him, who’s tangled and intertwining branches weaved together to shadow the forest floor; these trees stood tall and straight, taking a much simpler shape as smooth, tapering logs of wood stuck out of the ground, capped at the top with a wide, green, semi-sphere that shadowed their body like a natural umbrella. With this in mind, he was sure the white bark wasn’t because of girdling. At the base of each tree grew a brambled maze of yellow branches which seemed to make up the undergrowth of this forest.
Oddly enough, he didn’t feel too strongly about this. Everything around him seemed quiet and washed out. Despite this, he felt...no, he knew that the actions he would take from here onward would be of monumental importance to his life and potentially that of countless others. He accepted that he was on a new portion of his life that he never dreamed of having and that it was best to start by putting his best foot forward. Taking a heavy, impactful step on the ground with his hiking boot, he felt the slight shock of the step run up his leg and energize his heart as his pants fell down.
“Damn it!” he cursed as he scrambled down to cover his heart dappled boxers. Hopping slightly on one foot as he squatted down, he struggled to pull his khaki shorts up beyond his boots before his head quickly turned to look at a flash of movement in his peripherals. Focusing his eyes to the shadows under the roof of a domed tangle of dry, yellow branches, he saw a figure hiding in the darkness, lying low and shifting occasionally. Setting his foot down, Angus slowly pulled up his pants, keeping low to keep the figure in sight.
As if figuring out that it had been spotted, the figure rose higher and moved forward into the light. Angus tilted his head and looked at the curious creature. Its skin was yellow, tattooed all over with intricate, twisting, lines of black which never intersected. Its head was smooth, stout and brutish; a large, boxy, braincase slowly tapered into an elongated, very pointed snout sticking out two feet from its body and suspending itself in the air while moving about fluidly. Furthermore, it was eyeless. The snout turned to point at him and the head followed as the rest of the creature came to light. Stripes of light and shadow streaming through the yellow branches above it fell on its short neck and thick, muscular body, which itself tapered into a stiff, tail-like appendage at the rear. A singular, tree-trunk leg fell down from the middle of its body and connected to a large foot. This brought the creature to a height reaching Angus’ pelvis and was twice as long from snout to tail.
Angus bent down further, curiously observing the creature, looking at its chest for any signs of breathing and searching for any trace of eyes along its body. The creature took a short, heavy hop forward and brought more of itself into the light. Angus took a reciprocal step forward and moved his head about, trying to get a good look at the moving, pointed tip of the creature’s snout for any trace of nostrils or some sort of breathing mechanism, as he had yet to see anything on this creature that wasn’t smooth skin.
As if powered by spring steel, the creature's snout burst open, unfurling like a flower to reveal a wet, glistening sapphire surface on the underside of each, tentacle-like, “petal”. Dark black spikes stuck out haphazardly across the underside of the wriggling tentacles which now obscured the creatures face and body. A deep black hole stood in the center of this horror show, where a long, onyx tongue wormed its way out to wave along with the tentacles. Angus gripped onto the edge of his pants with one fist whilst the other waved about in his maniac run towards the other end of the clearing, his body’s aches long forgotten as fear coursed through his heart.
If he’d had the wherewithal, Angus might have noticed that his running was staggered and uneven, each of his steps coming down before he reached the ground before his practiced run cycle quickly adjusted to the slower pace. Of course, Angus’ mind was more preoccupied with cursing and the approaching thudding sound as the creature took off behind him. Still, it seemed as if everything was going in slow motion.
Angus ran past the forest edge and entered into a chaotic mess of blurring tree trunks and a minefield of roots littering the ground. Tightening his white-knuckled grip on his shorts, he rushed forward, daring not to slow down as he could hear the monster tracking him. Angus grew panicked after the second near collision with a tree trunk, his heart jolting as he knew any impact or miss-step would leave him dead one way or another. Suddenly, his heart stopped as his foot caught back on something, tripping him and jerking back at his hip joint. Angus slammed his hands down roughly onto the ground and managed to keep running. His heart beat violently at the thought of falling as his eyes drew themselves to the dangerous tangle of roots and debris littering the floor, obsessing over the dangers that lay there. Angus elected to jump higher with each step so as to minimize his chances of tripping as the monster hissed behind him, piercing his heart with fear.
Focusing back on the ground an instant before he landed, he saw that his foot was headed to land directly onto a small stone. Grimacing prematurely, his body stiffened like a log as slipped out from under him and he collapsed onto the ground, catching himself on his arms. His momentum caused him to slide onward as he desperately tried to get up once more. Falling to his side, his slide slowed to a stop as he looked back and saw the creature accelerate to his position in two hops. Angus froze, his leg shock still in the air as the creature’s tentacles flashed forward and wrapped themselves around it. The creature's leg planted itself in the ground and prepared to jerk back and tear at the object in its maw.
Angus shut his eyes, bringing his shoulder up defensively as he felt the stone cold pricks of the creature’s teeth touch his skin. With fear coursing through his body, Angus made one last desperate wish, to be anywhere but here, to escape the creature which had already caught him, to run away. Warm water rushed up Angus’ body causing him to choke as water flooded into his lungs. Angus instinctively stroked down and broke into the air, gasping for breath before he bobbed back down into the water and settled into equilibrium, breathing heavily as he looked around at the pitch black surrounding him.
Angus gripped tighter onto his shorts as he kicked his legs and stroked with his remaining arm to tread water. He quickly hushed any momentary relief he should have felt as he muted his heavy breathing and looked carefully at the dark surroundings. He stayed still and quiet for an unknown amount of time before the sky parted and revealed a white light surrounded by a ring of thick clouds. The water around him shone to match the moon, reflecting the light in its many ripples as the light twinkled all around him. And despite himself, he felt safe. He knew that the light meant that things could see him, but, after all that he had been through, he liked this. He fell back into a lazy float, calm and smiling as he let the worries and questions fade back to his mind. Despite this, one question echoed gently...
White wrote:
His eyes widening in comprehension, he rushed to flush his eyes further with water from his makeshift, face shaped and handsome, in his opinion, waterhole. After several minutes of washing out his eyes and sinuses, he snorted the last of the moisture from his nostrils breathed in deeply through his now clogged nose.
He just cleared his nose (by snorting the last of the moisture from his nostrils), how can he breath through his clogged nose? Did you mean "de-clogged nose"?
The text would be much, much easier to read if you'd assemble sentences together as paragraphs.
Now, when I want to note something I noticed down, it takes me LONG to refind the spot I was.....
(really follow Siber's hint above)
Also, after finishing:
All that I now read?
Why did you "unmake" Angus' teleport into a new world with another teleport? What was the point of him "waking up" in a world, describing so much of that world, and then just end it without anything else to follow up on?
I'm really asking myself why you do that? What will be the point? Will you ever get there?
Did you mean "de-clogged nose"?
Yes, thanks for the head's up. It's fixed now.
I'll try to edit it to be more readable.
You're making too many assumptions about what happened. I won't give too much away, but I haven't written anything which I didn't feel would add to the story.
Actually, that third chapter might have been overdone but there is a point to what happened in this one.
I assume so, but right now it feels so... superfluous having "had" to read all that and no follow-up....
Part II Chapter 2
“Where am I?” Angus wondered idly before a spark, and the following smoke, quickly drew his attention back and raised his heart rate.
“Come onnnnn, come onnnn,” Angus whispered nervously as he tentatively coddled a pile of dry grass, speckled with white spots of shredded paper, between his hands. Leaning in, Angus cupped the kindling and gently blew air into its center, causing the smoking pile of black embers there to glow orange before a light-orange flame burst up softly and spread across the blackening terrain of burning grass and paper.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Angus gently yipped as he quickly stood up, making sure to keep the fire steady and took short, quick steps over to the dried pile of white wood. Quickly dropping the growing fire into his dug-out fire space, Angus stepped back with a satisfied look as the fire quickly grew to encompass the now crackling pile of wood whilst a wave of heat washed over him. Tossing his chrome lighter head into his backpack, he stared at it, fascinated by the squatter arc this planet’s gravity guided it on. Angus turned back and walked over to sit on the log his possessions were piled next to. There, Angus leaned forward and offhandedly examined the taped-up tear on his shorts while allowing his mind to wander. Soon enough, his mind guided him to that question, the one that had lurked in his mind ever since he first arrived here, but one he’d also managed to ignore and distract himself from focusing on.
Where was he?
The exact answer to that, as he found out ever since he landed in that ocean, could change very quickly. Over the past several days he’d been lost in the depths of dark jungles, floating in vast oceans, standing in the howling, frigid whiteness of claustrophobic arctic snowstorms, and standing in the endless plains of grasslands that came in every color, staring at the paper thin horizon in the far distance and feeling decidedly empty of that sense of mystery that had greeted humans before him because, in all probability, he’d been beyond that horizon not too long ago.
After he’d, again, been spooked into teleporting after he felt something rub against his leg in the water, he’d started to look at his new ability and master it, exerting his will and learning to move himeslf with purpose. There was, of course, a limit to the level of control he could exert, and he found this out very soon after realizing his power. The first thing he thought to do, after touring the various terrains and places he could, was to return home and meet back up with his family, maybe try not to exploit his celebrity status too much; this led to nothing much happening as he closed his eyes and strained at invisible muscles he was convinced could teleport him. Meanwhile, his real muscles obliged and nearly gave him a hernia. The second experiment of his, which was faced with a similar failure, was an attempt to return to the clearing he’d originally arrived in. Every attempt to teleport to a known or otherwise specified location ended with him either standing around awkwardly or teleporting to another random location.
Angus wasn’t sure if this restriction was because of an intrinsic limitation in his new power or if he simply wasn’t skilled enough yet to use it. Of course, the one thing he wasn’t holding out hope for was ever leaving this planet; because if the fact that anytime he teleported over water he always found himself “standing” over the surface before falling in, and that he’d never found himself teleported into solid rock told him anything, it was that his teleportation was tied to the “surface” of this planet, or at least that definition of surface which was most convenient to him. Angus shuddered as he imagined his exploded and crushed body parts floating around on an ocean floor somewhere.
Looking around at the grassland near the oasis he had finally settled by, Angus stared at the distant line of trees marking the beginnings of a forest. Angus sat on the ground, placed his pack of materials on his lap, and wrapped himself in a blanket as he took out the final half of his last granola bar. Angus couldn’t help but chuckle as he found himself feeling grateful that his sister was being a lazy ass and had him carry everything for their camping trip; it was what allowed him to sustain himself this long. But he knew that even having a year’s worth of rations wouldn’t help in the end if he didn’t have some way to get new food. And looking around at the blue grass and white trees didn’t bring much hope that he’d see anything from the market.
Just his luck to get lost in a place that made his years of experience watching survival tv shows useless.
Ignoring the looming specter of finding nothing on this alien world that was compatible with his biology and dying by starvation or suicide, Angus thought of what exactly he was allowed to carry when teleporting. His clothes and pack came along with him, as well as his shoes and the dirt on them. So did his sweat, now that he came to think of it. Did something have to be touching him, or just be really close to him? The water that touched him teleported with him, but not the atoms of water that touched the water that touched him. Did it work differently for solids like the dirt on his shoes? Could he teleport a mountain? A continent? Leaving those thoughts aside, Angus looked up and saw the underside of the singular umbrella tree in the area, the one he sat in the shade of. He looked up and saw, several dozen feet above him, the chitinous lattice of support structures lining the underside of the giant leaf that capped the top of the tree. Briefly, thoughts of trying to teleport that tree entertained him. It would feel nice to a baser part of him, to have such power, lifting and moving such a thing, being a strong man beyond imagination. But, he thought, shaking those thoughts out of his head, moving a tree wouldn’t get him much beyond satiating his curiosity. That and leaving this place so soon after he’d become settled to go on another randomized “house hunt” for a location that wouldn’t kill him on his first night there didn’t sound too fun.
No, he’d stay here, for a while at least. He stuffed the last of the granola bar into his mouth and crumpled the empty wrapper in his hand. He threw the wrapper away and rested his head on the pile of cloth he’d placed against the log, lying comfortably in the warmth of the fire as he thought of the future. He’d take things day by day, he thought. Tomorrow he’d taste samples of things that looked edible and hope he didn’t throw up. He'd go collect some more firewood and add it to the pile he’d already made. He’d be fine, he reassured himself. He’d focus his efforts on preparing for winter and, hey, if he couldn’t handle the chill, spring would only be several thousand miles away. He chuckled at the thought. Yeah, he could handle this, all he’d have to do is think rationally. He’d already been given teleportation, and that was basically overkill in terms of survival value.
Angus smiled and settled down to get comfortable, holding his backpack firmly to his chest with one hand while his other gripped his survival knife. Feeling thoughts of that...thing coming back to haunt him, Angus quickly hummed a tune and looked up at the bright moon above. It was the first time he’d seen the full moon, he thought, looking for any images on it’s cratered surface. ‘Is Jesus on this one too? I wonder,’ was his last thought before his eyes fell shut, taking one last glimpse of the moon’s twin rushing across the sky to meet up with its sister.
Groggily, Angus’ eyes blinked open as the sun shone through and pierced his eyelids.
“Damn it, even when the days are longer,” Angus said as he shook his himself awake tiredly, barely mustering the energy to lift his head and look around at his surroundings. The sight shocked him awake. Angus quickly rose, tripping over his blanket as he rushed to take his fallen backpack into his hands and gripping it protectively before stuffing his blanket and pillow in it and placing it on his back. Everything was gone, the pond, the tree, the fireplace, a week’s worth of firewood. The log and his pillow were still there, of course. He stumbled as he walked towards his log, making sure everything wasn’t a mirage as his tired mind slowly worked at categorizing his environment.
He looked at his watch, ran some sloppy numbers in his head to account for the long days on this planet, and saw that he couldn’t have been asleep for more than five hours, yet the sun said it was noon. Looking around, one thought manifested itself in Angus’ freshly woken, cobwebbed mind. In fact, the only thought that could manifest itself in such a situation.
Where the fuck was he?
Last edited by White on Sat Oct 21, 2017 12:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Yeah, not on Earth.
He understood it correctly: say good bye to surviving.
Part III Chapter 1
My name is Angus, and...well...
It was a surreal moment, really.
I’d thought that I’d accepted my strange new reality, was prepared for the unexpected to strike, that I was fully aware of my residence in the Twilight Zone, forever destined to wander across a world all mine as I came in and out of existence, blinking the sole light of consciousness across the lonely surface of this world. Well, forever until I starved to death anyway. Here I was, though.
You’ll have to forgive my rambling attempt at aping someone competent enough to speak. It was a surreal moment after all. Surreal moments have a habit of leaving you not knowing what to do; they never come out with instructions on how to deal with surreal things, especially when those surreal things come in the form of blue elf ladies. As with most things, I suppose the kicker came in the presentation. There was no prophecy or glowing fairy guide that told me I needed to go to blue elf station, third left at the river. They just appeared as most things here do, as a spot on the horizon when a cool wind rushed over me as the sun beat down on the jacket I'd draped over my head. In fact, their appearance was so ordinary, and my eyes so tired, I mistook them at first for one of the numerous outcroppings of rock and umbrella trees that dotted the bright red grassland which surrounded me.
It was soon after that I noticed movement and hauled ass over to their location, eager to see them, to see something. My excitement had me abandon all caution as I hurried to see what they were, and soon enough I stood before the seven of them, huffing as I leaned forward on my knees and found that I had nothing to say. Because, really, I wasn't expecting this much; I was preparing, at most, to teleport away from a group of animals on my run to them, not to make first contact during an evening stroll. Thus, I wasn’t exactly brimming with conversational ideas. I figured that I most likely wouldn’t be able to talk to them anyhow so I settled for observing them at first.
There wasn’t much more to say about their appearance beyond them being blue elves that looked like someone took a stencil to their hair. They all wore what would be drab, utilitarian outfits if they hadn't dyed them like they were lost extras on a Star Trek set. They wore long-sleeved turtleneck shirts along with baggy cloth pants tied around their waists with blue rope, and each carried a featureless, blue, leather bag which they slung over their shoulders. A chrome sphere which reflected the sun so well it hurt to look at was placed as a latch where the cover of the bag closed snugly over. They looked uncannily human, actually. I thought that they were, perhaps, a lost race of man. They certainly looked similar enough to humans that I hazarded to read their emotions when it seemed clear that talking wasn't on the table. While their faces looked surprised, they, thankfully, weren’t panicking. It was the opposite, in fact. They were silent as killers while their faces began to morph into serious gazes which bored into me, as if they were preparing themselves for something. However, I wasn’t sure if it was my appearance that might have shocked them or the fact that a stranger came running over like a maniac to stand and stare at them. Soon, however, they appeared to have gotten over their shock before they turned their heads the slightest bit to give one another silent looks as they began to move around me: circling me so that I could only see three of them whilst I heard the rest stepping behind me in a way that threw up all the red flags someone gets before they’re mugged. I quickly brushed off the strangling sensation that wound itself inside my guts and turned to look calmly down at the tallest one present, a thin woman with crimson hair and a shirt which was yellow on her left side and red on her right. I could teleport after all, so no need to panic, they were probably just scared about the guy twice their weight that came running at them. As the one with the ability to leave unharmed at any moment, it was my responsibility, I felt, to calm tensions and find a peaceful resolution to all this. I had little to lose after all.
Oh, how wrong I was.
After flubbing my first attempt at a speech, I cleared my throat as I brought my sweaty hand to rub my dry, crusty lips while I took a deep breath. Looking back down into the eyes of the elf in front of me, who seemed to be doing a similar calming exercise herself, I exhaled slowly, keeping a fine ear out for any noise behind me. Slowly and deliberately, I moved my hand forward and upward to point at myself. Then, like a bullet, a blur rose out of the elf’s bag before shooting forward in a shallow arc and cracking into my forearm like a whip. My arm was thrown back as my shoulder and body turned to follow it. Instinctively looking at the sight of impact, I saw a fine blue rope decorated with brambles wrapped around my arm. As I said before, it was surreal, even more so with the recent turn of events. I slowly thought through everything in a millisecond as I looked at what seemed to be a freeze frame of my arm. I didn’t feel any pain. It felt like I was watching everything happen from far away, coldly analyzing the scene from a third person perspective, so my first thought at the sight was how nice the contrast was between the blue rope, decorated with sun-bright chrome spheres embedded into its brambles, and the streams of blood glistening down my arm from where those same brambles dug into my flesh and made it slick with crimson.
Soon after, however, I felt my heart stop and my veins chill. Nothing had happened, not even the second time I tried.
I couldn’t teleport.
Last edited by White on Mon Oct 23, 2017 9:18 am, edited 3 times in total.
I never made it a habit to get into trouble.
In fact, it was my number one priority when doing anything not to get into trouble. I was always particularly sensitive to that. Nevertheless, I have gotten into trouble, big trouble at times. And with my expertise on the subject, I can tell you that it feels most raw and brutal when trouble comes to find you when you least expect it, when you feel safe. This is the trouble that was my mom bursting into the kitchen as I stuffed blissful spoon fulls of sugar into my mouth. This is the trouble of when the final boss suddenly got back up to full health to trample over that feeling of victory in my heart. This is the trouble of my car getting towed after a raise. It feels like you have something to lose and you’re about to lose twice as much, and in all my years of getting into trouble, this was perhaps the moment I’d say distilled that feeling into so potent an elixir. The card house my confidence was built upon came tumbling down around me as I stopped my breath and stared at the ground that refused to change.
I didn’t have any thoughts on this matter. Rather, I didn’t think. I ran. Whipping about, without thinking I threw my jacket to intercept the projectile rope of an elf who’d elected to toss hers at me and took off in the direction of the redhead. Looking up as I ran, I saw she’d already started running in my direction. Bursting into a sprint I charged head on towards her. I took advantage of her shock and hesitation to put my hand on her shoulder as I twirled around her and pushed her, hard, into one of her companions. I didn’t stop to look back as I made a mad dash towards the large wall of head-high, red grass that grew to the side of the path I’d been traveling on. Sound turned off as the field of grass drew nearer and nearer still. And then, my foot snagged and I fell forward. Or rather, my foot was caught. Because I’d tripped before, and that frustrating feeling of having a giving force follow your leg along with your descent was something I’d describe as intentioned. Catching myself on my hands I attempted to scramble forward, but I was held back by that annoying snag on my foot. A snag I couldn't seem to be rid of by waving my leg around, almost as if it were following me. Hearing running steps approaching me, however, I dug my toes in and broke past, pumping my arms as I entered into the sea of grass before me.
The grassy field was an area of dimmed light and extraordinary sound. Each movement I made set off a cacophony of brushing noise as I ran deeper into the forest of grass. The sound stilled as I did to think. My hands were numb, as if my arms were clubs, the fingers shaking with adrenaline as they sluggishly and clumsily responded to my commands. In fact, my whole body shook, my legs feeling weak as it did so with my shaking breath, setting off chains of noise as the grass blades around me shook and rubbed against one another. My body grew number as I could hear slithering paths of shaking grass being formed all around me as, no doubt, they came to follow me. Taking a moment to think, I noticed that they would be able to hear me, but they wouldn’t be able to differentiate the sounds I made from that of their partners as long as I moved in that lax, search party pace they seemed to favor. I stepped forward to mimic their movement speed when my hand brushed against the knife which I’d strapped to my right thigh.
I heard the noise all around me stop as the elves stilled. I was also stunned into stillness as the thought of cutting the rope around my arm and teleporting away hit me. The elves seemed to have a similar idea as, quickly afterward, the field exploded into activity as all the snake paths of sound diverged quickly onto my location as I ran forward and took the knife into my shaking hand, attempting to stick it in between my arm and the rope. The elf’s quickly changed direction to run after me and in my panic I cut along my wrist, feeling cool blood wash along my forearm before finally getting the blade underneath the rope and sawing madly at it. The elves drew ever nearer as I felt the rope coming loose and stopped to brace my feet and put my shoulder into the act of cutting the rope away. I could feel the last of the strands coming loose as I felt that light pressure in the back of my mind which signaled teleportation come into being and heard the elves come within feet of me. And finally, the last strand broke off just as a heavy object cut through the grass behind me and wrapped cleanly around both of my legs, smothering that pressure in my mind along with my hope of escape. Quickly afterward, I was tackled down from two sides as one of my arms fell underneath my body, trapped, and the other was held down as my knife was wrenched away from it. The grass in front of me had bent and fallen with us, leaving me lying on a bed of it with sunlight streaming through the clear space we’d created above and reflecting brightly off the chrome spheres I was sure were wrapped around my leg.
I could feel many things at the moment. I felt the cold of the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around my arm. I felt my leg ache from the sprained ankle, my skin sting with every passing wind from scraping against the deceptively rough blades of grass, and my hands smart from slamming against rough ground while catching my body. I even felt the numbness that came along from having those blue ropes tied tightly around my upper body and legs. I didn’t mind any of that, though. I didn’t mind it because, at the moment, I was more focused on the stomach-knotting vertigo of flying. Well, not flying exactly, hovering. I looked down to see the redhead walk below me whilst wearing an, intricately carved, shiny metal crown with a flat top. Around her, the six other elves walked, keeping relatively in step with her, each of them wearing a rectangular bar engraved with symbols I didn’t make out. Some of them put the bar on a rope around their necks, other’s tied it to a sash around their waist while others still, I guessed, must have had it in a pocket of some sort, or even in their bag. I followed along above them, rising and falling slightly in a sort of rocking motion as they stepped along. I remembered how I’d been caught, cringing at the memory of my naivety but nonetheless looking back and noting that initial strike, how the rope had blasted through the air, zigging toward me. I wondered if that was the same technology they’d used to catch me. Would they keep me in a floating cell? Would they even need a cell made out of Stuff? These were all distractions to me, however. The primary thought in my mind at that moment was the one I’d kept buried. Where was I going? I honestly wondered what it was I’d done to deserve this treatment, and the knot in my stomach only grew tighter as they refused to even acknowledge my existence, much less answer my questions. The dread within continually only grew with each step.
I didn’t sleep the first night we stopped to camp, and neither, it seems, could they. They stayed up all night along with me, sitting quietly around the campfire as they lay me down on my side facing away from them. I stared at the wall of a boulder we were camped next to and watched the shadows made on the wall as large bugs buzzed hypnotically around the fire while the shadow of an elf sitting on a rock behind me continued to look around throughout the night until dawn.
The sunlight streamed onto my face as I was turned over onto my back by that invisible force and chunks of green material were floated down into my mouth. The fact that it’d been three days and five hours since I’d had anything to eat, and the fact that they didn’t seem to want me dead for now, had me all too ready to oblige them. After the rest of my breakfast, I was brought water and we were on the move again. This was the first night in what would be two more days of the same routine. The rest of the day was more travel, now at a quicker pace along a dirt road as the terrain shifted to have fewer trees and less grass as well. Story writers always skip the details of travel because they seem to think them boring, and I was inclined to agree with them as I jerked my legs in their bindings, and flexed my arms against the ropes around them until they hurt. I whipped my head around until I became dizzy and squeezed my stomach in as I thought of songs to sing. I wasn’t trying to escape, mind you; I’d long given up on that endeavor. I was just trying to do something, anything, like a little kid tapping his foot in the backseat of a sixteen-hour car ride. Now, most writers, I would note again, usually skip these details, but in my case, I’d consider my second night the one that every writer ought to make note of because my second night was the night I cried.
I was laid down again, the exact same way as I was the last time. For some reason, it was important to me that it happened the same way, you see. The elves with the bars walked away from the one with the helmet, who remained and did something I didn’t see as I was faced away from them in mid-air, floated over to a patch of ground and gently lowered onto it before being dropped the last couple of inches. The impact jarred me, and it was during this disorientation that tears I couldn't hold back slid down my face. My muscles were restless and there wasn’t even a stone to watch the shadows on this time. This time, I had to stare into the darkness ahead when all I wanted was to run back to the human-seeming shadows I could imagine were real. Left with no tasks, I remembered my sister and my mother and my father, and I desperately wished for guidance from them. Soon, a feeling of tiredness came over me and my eyelids grew heavy as I fell asleep. Perhaps that was a sign that I would need my strength.
The march we undertook the next day was distinctive in a way that I could sense but couldn’t describe. I guess you could say it felt as if the mood had shifted or that the air was weightier, but I wasn’t sure If there was any tangible difference from how our other marches had been previously except for one thing. I saw in the distance, from my vantage point above the others, an elf walking along before us that none of the others acknowledged and, for a moment, it stopped and looked at me. I’m sure it was looking at me. I strained to see something, anything, that might hint at what was in the elf’s eyes as it did so. I wish I’d managed to find out, it might have comforted me for what was to come, or at least given me a hint at the hell into which I was about to descend.
We entered, as the sun fell, past rolling waves of tall grass too constant not to have been farmed and which formed a wall surrounding a settlement ahead. From here we entered into the second circle, where I saw an elf worker, covered in dirt and in chains puke sapphire blood at the feet of my carriers as we passed along. The second circle where I was forced into a hot wave of grotesque the smells of filth and disease. Where I saw an elven child with missing limbs sitting dejectedly in the dirt, keeping her head down as if afraid to look into the eyes of passersby retiring for the knight, where I saw dark mine entrances lined with pure white dust that lines of chained elves were being led out of, dragging along the two corpses of their compatriots chained to them and seeming more annoyed at that fact than anything else, where I saw all elves, ranging from healthy and frightened to starving and hopeless, as if laid out in a timeline, where I heard nothing but the pained groans of the sick huddled away behind walls or under blankets, where I saw their eyes shine up at me with expressions I didn’t fathom. I saw all these things and more as the crowd of elves in front of me parted before us as I was led to the city ahead.
Here in the city, I saw several white wooden houses with blue thatched roofs sitting on fields of blue grass. There was quite a bit of space between each house in the city, a stark contrast to the crowded work fields that surrounded it. I was in shock at this point, not caring for the details as I let all the sights of this new place drift in front of me as if in a dream. Despite all this, however, my eye was drawn, as if attracted, to a large statue rising in the center of it all. An obsidian figure of a female, colored black as charcoal and covered in material the texture of rust. I would note as I got closer that the details of the statue were intricately made; as if I were looking at a living being I could see the lines in her iris and I was sure I saw life in them. The statue itself was standing high atop a gray, stone pedestal twenty feet high and wide. Rising over this pedestal, stuck onto wooden stakes, were three skeletons colored white as if they’d been bleached. Two skeletons were covered in threads of somewhat colored fabric that hung off of them as well as washed out coverings over their feet which stained sections of their bones. It was like someone decided to play dress up with the dead. The third one shocked me still. This one, I hazarded, was far newer than the others. I could tell because it wore a more form-fitting and better held together, if not faded, shirt. It also wort pants which, to me, looked very much like jeans. I cringed as I saw a large gash with rotting, discolored borders run down the front of the skeleton’s shirt. Most shocking of all, however, was a book clutched in the skeleton's bony hands. Bound in red leather with an inch thick spine and decorated with three golden arcs latched on to it at the top bottom and middle of its hollow back case, and on its cover was the word, written in big, bold letters, "praecepta".
Last edited by White on Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:59 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Onaiom
Nice! The quality of the writing improved. First time I read about the Loroi being evil. Keep them coming.
Hey guys, no new chapter yet, but I'm close to finishing the next one. Although, If any of you are interested in beta reading, feel free to message me as I'm running into the most roadblocks when I'm trying to figure out if what I'm writing makes sense.
To be clear, I'm not looking for an editor, just someone willing to read a chapter ahead of time and highlight parts that aren't flowing well.
Doesn't sound too bad, does it?
If you want, I can read it for you.
One thing that was not clear the whole story is when did this happen? Human present or Loroi past?
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Bunnings to launch online marketplace offer
As part of the continued evolution of its digital offer, Bunnings has announced plans to launch an online marketplace to meet the changing needs of customers.
Bunnings’ online marketplace, to be known as MarketLink, will give customers access to an even wider range of home and lifestyle products and is expected to be open for business next month.
Home and lifestyle retailers and manufacturers wanting to sell on MarketLink will need to qualify for its Trusted Sellers Program, taking advantage of the power of the Bunnings website which is the third most visited shopping and classified site in Australia.
Bunnings’ Managing Director, Mike Schneider said they were already in discussions with a variety of home and lifestyle retailers and manufacturers to join the Trusted Sellers program.
“We’ve had a very positive response from sellers and we already have more than 8,000 products ready for launch on MarketLink in November,” he said.
Through MarketLink, Bunnings customers will have access to a wider range of home and lifestyle products not currently available in store including indoor furniture, whitegoods and kitchen appliances, home entertainment, kitchenware and homeware.
“MarketLink will feature a wide variety of products, including well-known brands, that are not currently available in Bunnings stores.”
“This is about creating a highly curated range of products that extends and complements our in-store range, creating a one stop shop for our customers’ home and lifestyle needs – everything from the front gate to the back fence.” Mr. Schneider said.
“While it’s too early to announce the sellers who have signed up, we hope to be able to release these details in the next month or so,” he said.
Bunnings’ investment in data, digital and the in-store experience is focussed on delivering a competitive and relevant offer wherever and whenever customers choose to shop.
Bunnings has a dedicated team working on the project and is hoping to launch the offer in November.
“Our focus is on getting the offer right and we won’t launch until we’re comfortable that the offer is competitive and will be one that is valued by our customers,” Mr. Schneider said.
For further enquiries please contact: media@bunnings.com.au
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Why You Need to Worry About the Pollen Vortex
Prepare for your allergy symptoms to hit you hard and fast.
As if allergies didn't suck already, people are saying that a "pollen vortex" could irritate your allergy symptoms more than usual over the next few weeks. Now to be clear, this phenomenon isn't an actual thing—it's more of a made-up term used to describe the recent high pollen counts, says Estelle Levetin, Ph.D., a professor and chair of biological science at the University of Tulsa. But it is true that you may experience harsher allergies soon.
MORE: 10 Spots in Your Home Where Allergies Can Attack
Due to the extended winter season, certain tree species like cedar—which normally pollinate in February—have delayed releasing pollen until now when other late-blooming trees are also sending more spores into the air, says Levetin. And you can't forget that grass will begin pollinating in a month or so. This means there will be a lot of overlapping pollination (read: bloodshot eyes and runny noses galore)—more so than in recent years.
MORE: Do You Live in One of the Worst Cities for Allergies?
As always, people may experience different levels of allergy symptoms depending on the amount of foliage in their area, says Stanley Fineman, M.D., the former president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. However, if you live in a tree-heavy zone, you may find yourself sneezing a lot longer than usual this year, Fineman adds.
While you can't stop the impending pollen parade, you can take preventive steps to alleviate symptoms and boost your allergy immunity. Read these five tips to help you prepare for allergy season, and check out this surprising way to easy symptoms.
MORE: How Can I Work Out Outside Without Aggravating My Allergies?
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Fanexpo podcast now available
Members of the Writers Guild of Canada returned to FanExpo Canada on August 23 to talk all things horror.
The entertaining and insightful panel "Tales from the Script-Keepers: The craft of creating hair-raising horror," included screenwriters Aaron Martin (creator, Slasher), Jackie May (writer/EP, Van Helsing), JP Larocque (Slasher, Another Life) and moderator James Hurst. They delved into what goes into making a spine-chilling horror series that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, the ins and outs of crafting compelling horror — including where their ideas come from, what tropes to avoid (or even embrace) — the challenges of scripting horror for serialized formats, and why the genre is more popular now than ever.
If you were unable to make the panel or would like to listen again, it's available as a podcast right here.
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NORTHEAST-OHIO
UAW confirms closure of Lordstown GM plant in tentative bargaining agreement
Workers went on strike Sept. 16, crippling the company's U.S. production and costing it an estimated $2 billion.
Author: Tom Krisher (Associated Press)
Published: 1:15 PM EDT October 17, 2019
Updated: 6:15 PM EDT October 17, 2019
DETROIT (AP) — A tentative four year contract with striking General Motors gives workers a mix of pay raises, lump sum payments and an $11,000 signing bonus.
In return, the contract allows GM to proceed with factory closures in Lordstown, Ohio, Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.
Details were posted Thursday on the union website as factory level union officials met to decide if they'll approve the deal.
No decision has been made.
The Detroit Hamtramck plant which GM wanted to close will stay open and a new electric pickup truck will be built there.
Operations at the Lordstown plant ceased in March.
RELATED: The end of an era: GM plant's last full day in Lordstown with final Chevy Cruze coming down the line
There are retirement incentives and buyouts or workers at the closed plants who didn't transfer to other GM factories.
The deal also shortens the eight years it takes for new hires to reach full wages and gives temporary workers a full-time job after three years of continuous work. Workers hired after 2007 who are paid a lower wage rate will hit the top wage of $32.32 per hour in four years or less.
It also has a $60,000 early retirement incentive for up to 2,000 eligible workers.
The deal now will be used as a template for talks with GM's crosstown rivals, Ford and Fiat Chrysler. Normally the major provisions carry over to the other two companies and cover about 140,000 auto workers nationwide. It wasn't clear which company the union would bargain with next, or whether there would be another strike.
The strike at GM immediately brought the company's U.S. factories to a halt, and within a week, started to hamper production in Mexico and Canada. Analysts at KeyBanc investment services estimated the stoppage cut GM vehicle production by 250,000 to 300,000 vehicles. That's too much for the company to make up with overtime or increased assembly line speeds.
GM and the union have been negotiating at a time of troubling uncertainty for the U.S. auto industry. Driven up by the longest economic expansion in American history, auto sales appear to have peaked and are now heading in the other direction. GM and other carmakers are also struggling to make the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's trade war with China and his tariffs on imported steel and aluminum have raised costs for auto companies. A revamped North American free trade deal is stalled in Congress, raising doubts about the future of America's trade in autos and auto parts with Canada and Mexico, which last year came to $257 billion.
Amid that uncertainty, GM workers wanted to lock in as much as they can before things get ugly. They argue that they had given up pay raises and made other concessions to keep GM afloat during its 2009 trip through bankruptcy protection. Now that GM has been nursed back to health — earning $2.42 billion in its latest quarter — they wanted a bigger share.
The union's bargainers have voted to recommend the deal to the UAW International Executive Board, which will vote on the agreement. Union leaders from factories nationwide will travel to Detroit for a vote on Thursday.
The earliest workers could return would be after that.
RELATED: Workers celebrate deal with GM, show union power in industry
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US$20 million government procured medicines and equipments arrive
Jan 14, 2020 | Health
HARARE: Pharmaceutical equipment and essential medicines worth up to US$20 million have arrived in Zimbabwe and will soon be destributed to state owned medical facilities, government said.
This is expected to improve the status of the public health delivery system in the country.
The first consignment under this facility, worth US$2,5 million, arrived in the country on Thursday and Saturday.
A second US$20 million facility of more medicines and equipment is being finalised to ensure supplies keep arriving after the delivery of the full US$20 million first batch.
Speaking about the development, a government official Mr George Guvamatanga said authorities are doing all they could to improve social services.
“Medicines have started arriving in the country and we anticipate more to come in the coming weeks and months, so we are prioritising social services, that is health and education,” he said.
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Write an article on co-education
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The perfect person does good through love. The case of a year-old girl who passed herself off as a saint, refusing food, driving nails through her feet, etc. Everyone has a conscience; everyone hears God's Word, and knows God's Will either from books or from conversation with other people.
Unfortunately, the Eritrean individualism spirit did influence to produce the nature and quality of leadership we have at the helm of power. Cyril of Alexandria Cyril of Alexandria: Your assumptions are your window on the world. Symeon the New Theologian "…should we fall, we should not despair and so estrange ourselves from the Lord's love.
Her unlawful aberrations were regarded as symptoms of her hysterical aberration. Amphilochios, the geronta or "elder" on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement.
The process by which individuals legitimately acquire a political office or authorities could be by succession, or by-elections, or in small forging societies by personal achievements than by-election, and thus, in such societies, individuals may become a leader without a vote.
It means, surely, that the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy is not an end but a beginning. Amma makes herself available to anyone wishing to receive her blessing. And though he that was dead has not sat up on the bier, yet he has found rest in Christ; and if he has not spoken to us, yet he sees those things which are above us, and rejoices in that he now sees higher things than we do.
Internal associations required a longer reaction time than external ones. Return to the Table of Contents On the psychophysical relations of the association experiment. Were you often guests at a sumptuous banquet I doubt that any one of you would be so indifferent that he would fall asleep and only take from it for his own need, and not be anxious before departing to take with him something for the morrow that he would eagerly share with some of his friends or even with the poor.
Return to the Table of Contents A third and final opinion on two contradictory psychiatric diagnoses. Return to the Table of Contents On the psychological diagnosis of facts.
In its broadest sweep, two kinds of change are quintessential to bring change in the current leadership of the existing organizations a the old guard should pass the torch of leadership to our young generations b The young generation should get leadership training on leadership capacity and conflict resolution skills.
By evening she was totally disoriented, with an almost complete lack of memory, easily provoked changes of mood, megalomanic ideas, stumbling speech, complete insensibility to deep pinpricks, strong tremors of the hands and head, and shaky and broken writing.
However, due to the delayed publication by Princeton University Press of Volume 18 of the Collected Works, the Clearinghouse publication of its abstract volume was postponed. You are saving many from a big disaster. But if you take up a religious publication or book to read, especially one relating to church matters, or sometimes when you begin reading prayers?
All the children—both boys and girls—burst into applause.Our site is for: Adult Adoptees 18 and older / Birth Mothers / Birth Fathers / Birth Siblings / Any Birth Family Members / Adoptive Parents / Any Adoptive Family Members / Adoption Support Information / Adopted Issues / Adoption Search Reunions / Adoption Live Chat / State Adoption Laws / Adoption Registry Gifts / Adoption Online Store / Adoption Triad Members / Search Angels.
Amma simply smiled down at him, nodding her head. All the children—both boys and girls—burst into applause.
The meditation taught was a new version of Amma’s Integrated Amrita Meditation Technique® (IAM Technique®. Jan 01, · AMMA Redundancy Survey • Conducted in January and all AMMA members invited to employees.
AMMA Redundancy Survey 55% of respondents said they were likely to reduce employee numbers over the next 12 months a further 21% responded “maybe” when asked if they were likely arrangements are highly valued.
AMMA is the annual international congress of the Society of Automotive Engineers of Romania (SIAR) and is organized under FISITA patronage by the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca and SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineers) as co-host. Editor's Preface The mission of the National Clearinghouse for Mental Health information is to provide effective dissemination of mental health information by all.
The Secret of the Ankh is a pathway into the Mystery Systems. The Secret of the Ankh leads to the what is called called the God Particle or what is alled the Higgs Particle but told in mythos by the Ancient People of the Nile.
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'Losing My Religion:' What We Can Learn From Celebrity Christians Who Walk Away from the Faith
Charlene Aaron
CIS493_APOSTASY_AM_v2_HD1080_0_247
Two high-profile Christian leaders recently went online to tell followers they are abandoning their Christian faith. The reaction on the internet was viral and has led to a conversation throughout the Church about what it really means to follow Christ.
Joshua Harris author of the best-selling 1997 book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, made headlines when he announced that he is no longer a Christian. Weeks later former Hillsong worship leader and songwriter Marty Sampson shocked the Christian community when he said he's struggling with his faith.
21-Year-Old Christian Celebrity
20 years ago, Harris' book on Christians and dating became a best seller and Harris became an instant Christian celebrity when he was only 21 years old. Harris served as lead pastor at a Maryland megachurch from 2004 to 2015.
He now renounces his earlier teachings on purity saying they "contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry." Harris has also apologized to the LGBT community for ways his "writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry." He recently took part in a gay pride festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Last month Harris revealed in an Instagram post that he has left Christianity altogether. "I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus," he wrote. "By all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian."
"Losing My Faith and It Doesn't Bother Me"
Marty Sampson who wrote music for Australia's Hillsong ministry years ago also recently posted doubts about the Christian faith on issues such as hell and suffering saying, "I am genuinely losing my faith, and it doesn't bother me."
These online confessions quickly traveled the web leading to various reactions.
Truth Over Feelings
John Cooper, leader of the Christian rock band "Skillet" took to Facebook with his concerns, saying we must value truth over feelings. In an interview with CBN News, Cooper highlighted the importance of staying true to God's word.
"Everybody is so confused about what truth is, and the Church is supposed to be invading culture with the Kingdom of God. Instead, we are letting the culture invade the Church, and that's not the way we are supposed to do it. Jesus is the only thing in this world that will never change," Cooper said.
Some say what is playing out is a fulfillment of a prediction from the New Testament book of First Timothy, which says, "The Spirit clearly says that in the latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons."
Part of the Problem: Lack of Biblical Discipleship
Dan Backens pastors New Life Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He told us, "I think this certainly fits into this falling away that the Bible predicts. But you know, there's been falling away throughout history and what's made this a little different is that because of social media platforms it's so easily talked about and shared."
Backens believes part of the problem is the lack of real Biblical discipleship.
"It's not as easy to disciple as it used to be. People don't like to be accountable. These songwriters, their lyrics are shaping the theology of a whole movement of young Christians. And it's not deep enough, in my view, to withstand the pressures of a secular age," he said.
Let Folks Mature Before Giving Them a Platform
Dr. Corne Bekker, a professor of theology at Regent University, one of the troubling things for him as an educator is that Joshua Harris rose quickly in the ministry, but never had any formal training. He was only 21 when he wrote his best-selling book. "We need to wait until folks mature a little bit before we put them on a platform," Bekker said.
Bekker adds that another troubling aspect of all this is the celebrity culture within Christianity. "It's deeply concerning to me, even when he makes this announcement. The way it was made it on Instagram with a mood picture of him contemplating a beautiful pool in nature."
Backens sees this as a wake-up call for the Church. "I think it's a call to intercession. We've got to pray for a spirit of revival in our churches and really go at this thing from our knees and crying out to God for this generation," he said.
Bekker encourages believers to hold on. "The glorious thing about the Christian faith is that it's not located in a human person. It's located in the faithfulness of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. I would say to them, 'hold onto the Scriptures, hold onto Christ, your foundation is firm.'"
'We Need to Value Truth Over Feeling': Skillet's John Cooper Reacts to Christian Leaders Renouncing Faith
Author Joshua Harris Kisses His Faith Goodbye: 'I Am Not a Christian'
'I'm Genuinely Losing My Faith': Hillsong Worship Leader Rejects Christian Beliefs
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Sport Issues
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Fishlake flooding
Author Topic: Fishlake flooding (Read 1033 times)
Delph Cyclist
I don't know if any of the Audax "oldies" have been reminiscing about their rides, what with all the mention of Fishlake on the news. To some, this might have been their first reference to the place, but for an older generation, there was a time when Fishlake, and Doncaster, and SYNDDA, were the centre of the cycling world.
What other places are there that are hardly known by the outside world, but well known to cyclists,? I'm thinking of Church Minshull, and Thaxted, as well as Fishlake, all places that I've passed through dozens of times, but I would never have known about without a bike and Audax UK.
Re: Fishlake flooding
Thaxted is well-known for many reasons other than cycling. It used to have a major morris dancing festival there every year.
Just checked - they still do: https://themorrisring.org/event/thaxted-morris-weekend
I remember cycling out there 40-odd years ago when Dez was a baby and my brother was dancing.
Gustav Holst lived there - although I don't know if he wrote much of his music there.
Conrad Noel (died 1942) was the famous Red Vicar of Thaxted, an ardent socialist who flew the Red Flag outside the church. I think there's a bit of a tradition of left-wing vicars there.
The Guildhall is a very fine old Tudor building and the church is one of the finest in Essex. It can be seen for miles around and is probably the most notable landmark church in Essex (Saffron Walden's is the biggest church in Essex, but is in a valley so can't be seen from far away), with the possible exception of Danbury, and St. Nicholas, Basildon. These last two are much smaller churches but are on the top of much more significant hills.
For me it has to be places in the fens. So Whittlesea, Crowland, Boston, forty foot bank, Bardney, Sleaford etc. I only ever go in the fens on Audax rides, and before Audax never went there as my other main hobby is mountaineering. All Easter Arrows have involved some bits of fenland riding for me.
It's been very strange hearing Fishlake mentioned in the news. For me (and Mrs W) it'll always be Noel Simpson's place; the start of many a DIY or Arrow.
And I cannot tell you the number of times I've ridden past this signpost after riding through Thorne....
As you say, it's probably only has Audax-significance for those of a certain age.
You're only as successful as your last 1200...
Nick Firth
I remember doing Doncaster Wheelers Randonees through Fishlake in the mid 1980's, Bernard Mawson organised them & the usual faces were there, Felicity Beard, Sheila & Noel, Ray Smith, to name a few, it's great cycling country being almost pan flat, but it does have it's problems, there aren't many bridges over the dikes & rivers & yes it floods easily, you have to have good local knowledge to navigate the lanes & canals.
Exit Stage Left
Heather's mum still lives in Thorne and has friends in Fishlake. Fishlake is quite 'posh', by local standards, certainly compared to Stainforth and Dunscroft, both ex-mining villages.
Fishlake is commuter 'barn-conversion' territory. So it's fascinating to hear that a large sum of money has been collected locally to help the relatively wealthy residents of Fishlake.
The flooding was the inevitable result of work to counter the effects of the 2007 floods in Sheffield. It was bound to impact further downstream. High tides were another factor, as it's not much above sea-level there. Heather's mum lives on the 25 foot contour, so is safe.
hellymedic
Much of my Audax career was in that neck of the woods; my first Audax was Bernie's Short Flat One, from Doncaster, in 1993.
I stayed at Noel's place before and after several rides and in 1995 did 200, 400 and 1000km rides based there IIRC.
Noel also arranged a 'surprise' birthday party for Giraffe in 1997, which I marred somewhat by silently going blind in one eye over the Easter weekend there.
I believe the Great Eastern went through Salvatore's home territory.
Fueled by cake since 1957
Quote from: Wowbagger on November 12, 2019, 10:21:38 pm
Thaxted is well-known for many reasons other than cycling.
Dick Turpin's cottage is just to the right of the Guildhall - originally from Hempstead, but trading as a butcher in Thaxted. Debts run up by his wife's hat shop led to his life of crime.
Co-incidentally Soupy was showing me, just the other day, a map of SE England for Polish airmen during WW2 - place names rendered phonetically: Thaxted as Fecstyd, perfect Essex dialect!
I believe the Planets Suite was written there - 'Jupiter' gave us the tune 'Thaxted' to the hymn 'I Vow to Thee My Country'.
RichForrest
T'is I, Silverback.
Marsh Gibbon will always be known by a few as the place Steve kept passing on his 1YTT.
About 20 years ago I was in a café in Thorne & this old geezer told me he was the retired pilot of the Humber dredger & that flooding started when they scrapped the dredging programme around Howden & Goole, The Troops are being brought in to help residents of Fishlake, some people won't leave their homes, this is understandable, things do go missing, it's a lovely village as is Sykehouse, I wish them well.
Look, I know it's mean, but I can't help feeling less than a sense of wonder to hear Fishlake has flooded.....
I can certainly remember the events from Fishlake and Doncaster organised by the late Bernard Mawson and Noel Simpson. One of my favourite 300's started and finished at Fishlake and headed north across the North York Moors and back again.
I can also remember riding events from there with the late Mick Potts and others and visiting Rosies Cafe as a control point near Gainsborough. Just cant remember the routes now though.
My first audaxes started and finished in the Doncaster area. I had seen Fishlake mentioned on the news and started to reminisce even though I have been in Southern exile for 20+ years.
I did the Fishlake (Dales) 400 several times. I also helped out at the Fishlake control on the Great Eastern 1000 when it was run from there - I remember Helly and Teethgrinder riding that one.
Rainmaker3
It is a tragedy for the residents of Fishlake but like the others it did rekindle some happy memories from what seems like a previous lifetime. The outstanding ride from Fishlake for myself was the Paris Brest Precursor on the 11/2/1995, organised by Noel Simpson which went to Bridlington and back. My notes from the event state that "it started raining at 11 am and there was a headwind all the way back from Bridlington, in gale force winds and torrential rain it took 4 hours to get from Thixendale to Fishlake (about 63 kms)".
Sadly many of the AUK stalwarts from that era are no longer with us.
LittleWheelsandBig
Whimsy Rider
My first AUK brevets were post-Noel Simpson but I just caught the tailend of Bernard Mawson’s events.
Wheel meet again, don't know where, don't know when...
Quote from: Rainmaker3 on November 13, 2019, 02:45:08 pm
The outstanding ride from Fishlake for myself was the Paris Brest Precursor on the 11/2/1995, organised by Noel Simpson which went to Bridlington and back. My notes from the event state that "it started raining at 11 am and there was a headwind all the way back from Bridlington, in gale force winds and torrential rain it took 4 hours to get from Thixendale to Fishlake (about 63 kms)".
I rode around there with you a few times.....
I did that one, though. The weather was horrendous and it was cold and dark all the way back from Thixendale. I put a bid dent in my rear wheel hitting a pothole.
Quote from: Jethro on November 13, 2019, 10:09:25 am
I think both Bernie's Short Flat One (300) and Long Flat One (600) visited Rosie's.
Quote from: rob on November 13, 2019, 03:22:52 pm
That ride was very much Type 2 fun. I waited ¾ hour for tea & cake at the Thixendale control and returned with Noel & co. Made me well 'ard...
Quote from: rob on November 13, 2019, 10:46:23 am
Suspect rob's concussion on the 1995 Dales 400 and my 1000k general addlement on the Great Eastern mean our memories of these events are somewhat patchy...
Tiny Flat One, Short Flat One & Long Flat One all visit Rosie's, I've done them many times, to me they're "perm classics" the 600 was also known as the tour of the Power Stations.
<pedant> Tour of the Cooling Towers...
Canardly
I visited the church in Knotting, near Souldrop Beds today whilst on a group ride. A really ancient church with some norman features and tiny very old timber pulpit etc. Knotting seems to have been named after the sons of that Saxon chap Cnut. (Canute). They have a list of rectors going back to 1204. Very worth a look if passing.
Get a bicycle. You will never regret it, if you live- Mark Twain
Quote from: hellymedic on November 13, 2019, 04:11:56 pm
The reunion being in Northallerton this year reminded me that I once spent an afternoon in the A&E there waiting to be rescued by my parents.
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PREVIEW | Yeovil Town v Forest Green Rovers
Glovers aiming for the quarters for second season running
L_Hancock6
Town are aiming to reach a second consecutive Checkatrade Trophy quarter-final this evening.
Darren Way’s men finished top of the group before seeing off Sky Bet League One outfit AFC Wimbledon in the second round.
They go into their meeting with Forest Green Rovers in high spirits following their Emirates FA Cup victory over third tier outfit Bradford City.
Southampton loanee Marcus Barnes netted on his Yeovil debut but will miss out due to being cup-tied, along with new arrival Lewis Wing.
Fellow new recruits Jared Bird and Corey Whelan are available.
Defender Omar Sowunmi and Connor Smith are available after missing the win against Bradford due to suspension.
Striker Francois Zoko could make his 100th appearance for the club.
This term is Forest Green’s first competing in the EFL Trophy.
Mark Cooper’s Green Devils finished second in their group before defeating his former employer Swindon Town to set up tonight’s tie at Huish Park.
Christian Doidge is subject to a lot of interest from Championship clubs, while midfielder Dayle Grubb will also provide a threat after a sterling 2017.
FGR won the first EFL meeting between the sides back in August at the New Lawn.
Fourteen years previous, Town were triumphant at Huish Park on New Year’s Day.
The Glovers ran out 1-0 winners courtesy of a solitary effort from Kirk Jackson.
John Busby will be the man in the middle.
The Oxfordshire-based official has taken charge of 29 games so far this season, awarding 74 yellow cards and four reds.
Busby hasn’t refereed Town this season but officiated three games last term; the 1-0 home defeat to Morecambe, the 2-0 away win at Reading Under-21s and the 2-0 defeat at Crawley Town.
He will be assisted by Andrew Laver (Hampshire) and Justin Amey (Dorset) with Lee Swabey (Devon) acting as fourth official.
If you’re unable to attend the game, live audio commentary is available via the iFollow Glovers service, with the monthly and season subscriptions offering full-match replays from Sunday.
Fans can purchase from the ticket office this evening.
Yeovil Town vs Forest Green Rovers on 09 Jan 18
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Zaw Towers 4.0
Warren Pilkington's little home on the World Wide Web
Dear Diary... March 2005
Tuesday 29th March - Not An Easter Bunny In Sight
Well, Easter came and went pretty much, actually. I was quite glad really because I had decided not to have any chocolate eggs at all and just generally not try and eat any of the Cadbury's stuff whatsoever. And why? Well, now the work in the bathroom's been done, I did a bit of a changearound in the house so that the office room is more empty like it used to be, and bingo! Out comes the rowing machine after a couple of months of non-service. That with no chocolate should help a bit too! I did around 1200 metres in ten minutes so that was near to what I was getting at my peak, thank heavens I haven't quite yet lost it, phew!
But it was intriguing to see on Good Friday when I was out that it was a mass panic everywhere you went shopping - Easter sales in full swing with hefty discount, and all the supermarkets must have over-ordered on chocolate eggs because Asda went from 3 for £4-50 to 4 for £5 in a desparate attempt to get rid of the overstocks. Also makes you feel bad if you bought them early and hid them for your kids, too. Bah. I guess that with a current aim towards eating healthily and not being obese, something just had to give and it's definitely plenty of cheap and cheerful eggs in the Ooops! section of my local Asda for the next couple of months, methinks. Especially if it was anything like today - got a few of those Muller Vitality drink things packed loosely (must have come out of a multipack by accident) much cheaper than buying the packs, so one of the raspberry ones for the next few days should help me a bit too.
Now that Summer time has officially kicked off clockwise (clocks went forward this weekend of course) it's definitely time for me to start thinking about having a bicycle again. As a kid I used to own a BMX and I used to love going off on my bike (usually with my brother) for a cycle round the park or even up to my nana's in Northern Moor. With the various urban cycle paths (especially the old Fallowfield Loop Line train track being converted into an urban cycleway and being very peaceful) there's an incentive for me to cycle around without having hassle of traffic, something which I really enjoyed in Jersey when I hired a bike for the day. So might have a look at that - who knows, might even cycle to work and save the hassle of getting the bus in the morning if I feel really confident!
Thursday 24th March - Party On!
Well, the few days before Easter was quiet, but I was invited to a work colleague's 40th do tonight. And so I thought to myself: "Well I'm off next week and the Easter weekend is looming, so why not have a good time?" And surprising as it may sound, I did. The colleague concerned is really nice and she looked the part at her birthday, nice outfit and having to whizz around to speak to everyone before hitting the dancefloor and, quite honestly, putting us all to shame. Believe me, if I'm half as active when I get there, I'll be very pleased indeed. I think that rubbed off on everyone that was there as we all stood in amazement while drinking various liquids. Good also to see some people out of work, as you can always chat to them more about things in general. Certainly I felt that, and it was good to converse about non-work stuff, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Blondie's Heart of Glass came on, and I thought "darn, I love this tune" and so my two left feet decided to hit that dancefloor. I didn't care if I looked an idiot (cos to be honest by this time most people were already quite merry anyway) and even if I wasn't looking like one, I didn't care either. Just old school tunes that make you realise just how pathetic the charts are now, really.
Left not that early but not that late either, and it was an interesting walk up to the bus stop home. Think a lot of people had the same idea as me as there were plenty of people out considering it was a Thursday night, and plenty of smily faces from drunken merry people that had got tipsy and were making their own way home too. I suppose it's after when people get violent that makes the place not to be, but still. I think there's a lot to be learned from knowing your own limits and controlling those limits so you still have a good time. I mean a few people were merry at this do but it didn't feel threatening at any point, all good natured fun on the whole. Special mentions must go to a couple of our lecturers, who really got going into things big time and were handy with the cameras so expect pictures on the web at some point ;)
Monday 21st March - Robots - Not Transformers In Disguise!
Well, it was a busy weekend a little, because of one thing or another, but I finally managed to get a decent pair of foldable portable headphones, and they weren't that expensive either, considering. A nice Sony pair is now mine, and they fold up pretty well to fit in my pocket, and nice and lightweight too. I really hate the in-ear type so it had to be over-ear or neckband, and be small enough. And the ones I found were just what I was after. I tried it out both on the PC and also the hi-fi as well as an MP3 player that I had a go of, so that was pleasing. Sometimes it's just better to work later in the evening without the sound of your music disturbing everyone (or you could argue my musical choice is disturbing, but anyway..)
I saw the film Robots at the weekend. Yes I know it's supposed to be more for kids, but animation films are loved by everyone, especially me (after all I did buy The Incredibles DVD on Friday, the first day it was out, so if that tells you anything) and the people who'd written Robots were also responsible for Ice Age, so that was most excellent. And it turned out there were quite a few adults who didn't have their kids as an excuse to go and see it when I headed into the cinema. Sign of the times maybe, and that's why there's so many little quote-ettes that the viewers will understand more than anyone. One of the characters Lug (quite cat-like) has to put tapes into his mouth to work his voicebox. When Rodney Copperbottom announces a plan to repair the robots, Lug finds a tape, puts it in and in true Darth Vader style, announces "the force is strong with this one". Neat touch. Turns out that they got the James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, to do that. How nice?
Also a bit of localisation has gone on with some of the voices, so in the UK for example we get bit parts played by Terry Wogan and Eamonn Holmes - it'll probably be the same with other places around the world, just to make it a bit unique. I guess it makes more sense having a personality people will recognise rather than some American who might be famous in their country, but not internationally. Makes sense. And of course there isn't just that either, but it's a different slant on CGI animation than say Pixar do. Although the trailer for their next one, Cars, looks rather brilliant I have to say..
Thursday 17th March - Everything Happens At Once
Well, it's felt like that this week - thank heavens I'm taking some of my leave off tomorrow. First off there needed to be an updated piece of software installed, because the database that this software happens to use is to be upgraded, and in a really clever move (ahem) it doesn't play ball with previous versions of the software. I can understand it sometimes when stuff gets upgraded, but even Microsoft have the common sense to make newer versions of software read files created in older versions. Might just be me, but that always irks me somewhat and makes me wonder.
Anyway, gripe over. The week in itself has been pretty manic on the whole because of various things happening all around the place I work at - it's end of term, which mean hand ins, which mean lots of questions, which mean you're on your toes constantly. I don't actually mind that, because at least it means that you're able to know what sort of problems might occur and how to try and avoid them in the future (being proactive and all that sort of management-speak that you always hear).
I went a bit old school earlier in the week too and started to compose a little tune on the Commodore 64 - purely for fun partially. Within the hour I'd got back into the loop of being able to use the editor that I'd used for a while once again, and all its little quirks and foibles along the way. I just thought it'd be fun to see what I could manage in the space of a few hours, and even knocked something up I was pretty pleased with overall, so who knows what might happen? This doesn't mean I'm coming back to that computer full time though (see the FAQ) but at least it means that if I ever have the need to be a bit retro, I can just unwind for a few hours and lose myself in all those lovely shorthand codes for voices, arpeggios, slides and the like. Ah.. memories.
Sunday 13th March - Unwinding in the Monolith
Been a quiet few days or so really- not. My brother did turn the big three zero on Friday though, so my Mum invited all the family round last night to celebrate with some food and a few drinks, so that was nice too. I suppose though it has me thinking that I'm getting very old, very soon, as when you're the eldest child you probably feel the age more than anyone because you're watching all your siblings grow up. Just good to see everyone in the family as well and meet up with them - catching up on stuff since the holiday.
Been no holiday if you're a City fan though: my brother'll have his 30th birthday to remember by as Kevin Keegan resigned as City manager. I still have a conspiracy theory that he was pushed more than the actually wanted to, though, but still it doesn't surprise me. The team lacked passion on Monday and the way he was talking in the press this week it almost seemed like he'd given up on being able to mount any form of challenge as a manager - like the top three were destined to be so as they have the most money, and no one else could really touch them ever again. I suppose also though realistically we have stagnated a bit since our 9th place finish in 2002-03, last season wasn't great, and this has been better but also with rubbish Cup runs. So a fresh face is as good as any, and who knows, Stuart "Psycho" Pearce just might be the man. He shouldn't be given just the remaining nine games to prove his worth though: in a way he already has. He took over as assistant manager at the start of the season, and since then our defence has been a lot tighter. No coincidence, methinks.
Comic Relief was also around on Friday night, and that was a great effort all around. I quite liked the Peter Kay music video where he mimed to a Tony Christie number, and lots of celebrities were seemingly either behind him or alongside him along for the ride: even Max and Paddy in one part of the video! It was quite in keeping with his persona, and even his good friend Sally Lindsey (Shelley from Coronation Street) did a bit. Twenty years of Comic Relief though, that's a long time isn't it? And no doubt with all the money raised over the weekend, also so worth it too. And although Edith Bowman deservedly won the celebrity Fame Academy, I really enjoyed the performances of Adrian Edmondson throughout: especially his rendition of "Can't take My Eyes Off You" when he turned into character (Vyvyan from the Young Ones no less) half way through..
Anyway I ventured out today because I needed some bits of shopping, and after a look around a few of the shops I needed some foody bits, so off I went into the rather new and rather large Tesco Extra. And it's massive: with almost everything you could ever need (and they stock the fabric conditioner I like to use, too, yes!) you could very very easily get lost. Plenty of stuff to tempt you to buy though, and when I got to the checkouts there's these self service tills where you scan and pay for everything yourself. Not new, of course, as Somerfield in Piccadilly's had them, but still it's nice to see. And despite a few attempts of having to scan a couple of items it did work well on the whole. But nonetheless earlier on as I sat in the upstairs café bit with a piece of chocolate cake and a very nice medium coffee (at not expensive prices either, I'm pleased to note) you could see how much fascination there is as the people walked around there almost in a trance-like daze looking at all the items and wondering how they were going to pack them into the trolley that they'd got, which was miles too small. Ah well, c'est la vie and all that.
Wednesday 9th March - Blue Is The Colour
Well, I guess I can feel blue for a couple of reasons. Man City lost, deservedly, 1-0 to Bolton on Monday night and it was the right result. We tried to break them down but couldn't, and the best chance they had, they put away. Realistically now it's looking like mid-table at best for us and that's about it. Not really that much progress compared to last season or the season before, with not even a cup run to cheer us up at all either. I guess it's just winding down time till August, probably why the attendances are dropping a little because the expectation isn't there somewhat.
Compare that if you will to Chelsea-Barcelona on Tuesday night. It was a choice of watching that or the Milan-Man U game, and thank heavens I picked the Chelsea one. Five goals in the first half as the overall two legged game swung to Chelsea, with three early goals meaning a 4-2 aggregate lead, then two goals from Ronaldinho (the second one was awesomely struck) meaning 4-4 on aggregate and that meant that Barca would win on away goals. One very dodgy foul on the goalkeeper later in the second half allowed John Terry's header to win the tie, and ironically the best ref in the world, Pierluigi Collina, didn't see it. Makes me wonder what Mourinho said at half time, if anything. Nonetheless though Chelsea showed some character, and compared to how Man U went out with a whimper (Milan were the better side, period) it was such a contrast in the two games. Must admit though it did make the evening complete when Hernan Crespo's header went in :)
Been interested to hear about the leak of the first new Doctor Who episode and all the fuss created over it. In a strange way, and here's the conspiracy theory kicking in, might be the best thing to happen for the BBC. The curious will download it and watch to see if it's any good, and anything that gets it into the news also will raise the hype and awareness for when the show does actually start on Saturday 26th March. I think for the casual viewer also that having a good actor such as Christopher Eccleston is a bit of a master stroke, primarily as he's good, he's appeared in other dramas such as The Second Coming where he came across very well, and also an air of mystique might be prevalent. Jury's probably still out about Billie Piper mind you, but we will see, I'm sure. Wonder which employee leaked it though, cos I'm sure that they are heading for the sack, big time.
Monday 7th March - Techno techno techno phobia
Well, another weekend gone by the wayside, and so quickly it went as well. Of course, with it being Mother's Day yesterday, I went and popped over to my mum's for a while, and handed over the obligatory card and present. I'd managed to get her these china mugs she'd seen in Argos that she liked, and when I went to get them at the weekend the one in Manchester only had two sets left: thank heavens for online reservations, saves lots of hassle and travel. I remember one year my Mum wanted this light fitting, and the only place that had it near me was Argos in Altrincham (I checked all the other ones around Manchester) and even then it was a mad dash from mine to there to make sure the store didn't close on me - made it with something like fifteen minutes to spare or something daft like that.
My mum, bless her, she's such a technophobe, and so when my sister had got her Beaches on DVD, she asked me how to work the DVD player so she could watch it. I didn't mind really: after all we all have to start somewhere with technology, and if you put the fear into people, they'll never give it a go. Needless to say a few minutes later she was one happy bunny as she could work the basics, and so watch the film later on. It also helps that the remote is very similar to both the DVD players that I've got in the house, actually. Well, it is now.
Had to get a replacement DVD player for the bedroom, as the one that I had has started to skip very very occasionally on some discs, and it doesn't even play any of the DVD-R blanks that I use when I'm mastering stuff from VHS onto DVD for my own use. I'd had it some time though, and it'd served me well. No contest I thought: I didn't want to pay loads, as the main Pioneer DV-646A downstairs is for the full-on DVD action with surround, just wanted a good one to play stuff on in the bedroom so if I feel tired I can watch something in bed. Did a scan of the local retailers online, and noticed that Richer Sounds were knocking out the Pioneer DV-370, in multiregion form, for a mere £49-95. Needless to say I printed a copy of the price from their website (which clearly, thankfully, said "in store price") and off I popped to the one in Stockport and got it. Might review it for the site, but suffice to say this: it's a bargain, and even has component video out thrown in. And the remote's the same as my mum's DV-350, so that made life a ton easier on Mother's Day, obviously.
Come on you Blues tonight!!
Wednesday 2nd March - Beware the ides, whatever the heck that means to you
At this time of year, some of you will always hear the phrase bandied around: "Beware the Ides of March". I mean, who are the ides? Do they live in March, Cambridgeshire? Are they something actually to be aware of at this time of year? No, nothing like that, but still, why do also people think it to be the whole month of March when it's supposedly March 15. This BBC article might be old, but it does the job. It's amazing sometimes what you want to find out when, and how sometimes you just can't locate what you need - although thankfully a Google search of the phrase took a few seconds in this instance, sometimes the fact search engines ignore common words like the and and unless you force add it with the + sign (remember that one) can be frustrating.
Anyway, talking of mad happenings, one such thing happened on Monday. There I was at my friend's place sorting out their PC problem (a nasty virus had stopped all the important services like Windows Update and Internet Connection Sharing, which they use) and the game between Norwich and Man City was on. Cue Fanzone. Cue despair from me at there being two goals for their lot within the first fifteen minutes. Cue joy from the City commentator when we made it 2-2 before half time. I started off for home when half time went, hoping to catch the remainder of the game later on Sky Sports News. And when I switched on, nothing of City's late winner to make it 3-2 (Robbie Fowler had a great game, apart from the two goals, incidentally) but instead, none other than Norwich City's owner and chairwoman, Delia "capers and lime in everything for me please!" Smith. She went on to the pitch, ranted about the fans being the 12th man, and then screaming almost "Where are you? Where are you? Come on!" to the fans. Talk about a case of how to make enemies in one fell swoop? If you really want a cringe and a giggle, Sky Sports has it here but it only works with IE - bah! Take note though Murdoch: your websites aren't web standards compliant, learn to hire proper web developers or something, like the BBC do.
And it even snowed in Manchester earlier in the week (okay, a couple of hours where it stuck, but I don't care!) It's really amazing how just the odd bit of snow makes the media believe it to be a blizzard. Maybe they should try living somewhere in Switzerland or Austria where heavy snowfall in Winter is a regular occurrence, and they manage well enough without going into panic overdrive like some people tend to do. Ooh look a bit of snow, better not go into work today as my gas guzzling car can't even make it off the driveway, oh it's so slippy (etc etc). Just makes you think, really.
All text within this page is © Warren Pilkington
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