Music Memories + Songs

On guitar easy songs

2012-02-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

Another novel popular on the Kindle I read recently was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I don't quite understand why it's so incredibly popular, but it is a good story well told. And the writing is pretty specific and detailed. One problem I had was the way it kept introducing new innovations from the future to threaten the heroine. That's especially true of the dogs that seemed to be the already dead competitors at the end. How could that be? And I just didn't find the whole premise to be credible. The United States -- no mention of the rest of the world -- has collapsed and been replaced by a tyranny wielded by one city over the rest of the country, divided into sectors where people are worked like feudal farmers, for the benefit of the city. The heroine doesn't spend time playing guitar easy songs.

On web video conferencing

2012-01-28T20:22:00.001-08:00

So as part of having downloaded a huge number of public domain books for free or nearly free to my Kindle, I actually read or re-read Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Perhaps it's because I also grew up close to the Mississippi River, though not in Hannibal. Though it's no guide to web video conferencing, it's still fun to read. One thing that confused me was the age of Tom Sawyer. It's never given. Early on in the book he seems very young. Perhaps it's because of the concern over marbles and other useless geegaws. By the end of the novel he seems quite a bit older. He's seen his own funeral and saved himself and Becky Thatcher from being lost in the old cave, and with Huck Finn found a treasure in gold. I sure didn't remember that.

On storage cabin

2012-01-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

The overall setting and background of Deception Point by Dan Brown is interesting. NASA is said to discover a huge meteorite buried in a thick flow of ice near the North Pole. It sends a crew there to investigate, and they manage to raise it, then take samples finding fossils inside of things that look like ancient Earth insects. The President plans to use this proof of extraterrestrial life to boost his flagging re-election campaign. Of course, that's just the beginning. There's nothing to hide away in a storage cabinets. But we're already wondering why Special Forces operatives killed a geologist in the opening of the book.

On Dutch Master

2012-01-21T17:32:00.000-08:00

So I finished reading DECEPTION POINT by Dan Brown, one of the two thrillers he wrote before coming up with the art history and symbolism character of Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code, which has made him a big time success. Like all his books, it's well-researched, or at least seems to be to me. However, it concerns science only, not a fusion of science and art as in his popular series. Nobody in it knows or cares about any Dutch Master or Italian or whatever painters. In some ways, though, it's predictable in its twists and turns. The final villain is not a surprise, given their closeness to the events, and if you've read his other books, where he makes the least likely person nobody suspects be the true villain.

On welding supplies

2012-01-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

Just recently finished reading The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. Thanks to free and low cost downloads on the Kindle, I think the classics have been revived. It was kind of fun, not really a novel in the sense of having a cohesive plot, but like it used welding supplies to hook together various incidents. And the style was not so modern, in that the humor came from the sarcasm and irony of what the author/narrator says. But I did not fall in love with the characters as much as other readers have. It does contain elements prefiguring later books. For example, there's a story within the story of a mean grave digger who's taken by goblins on Christmas Eve and kicked until he realizes he's missing the best part of life by being so mean. Obviously prefigures A Christmas Carol but obviously is not nearly so well done.

On medical computer carts

2011-12-17T20:04:00.000-08:00

The framing story of 1001 Arabian Nights is that two brothers, each kings of separate kingdoms, each discover that when they're away, their wives are having sex with black guys. After killing the women and their lovers, they journey by themselves in grief, and encounter a genie and the beautiful woman he stole from her wedding to be his own wife, so he'd have a woman all his own. He doesn't even need medical computer carts. When the genie goes to sleep, the woman tells the two brothers to have sex with her or she'll wake the genie and have him kill them. When they're finished, she demands their signet rings for a souvenir, and shows them she has almost 200, even though the genie thinks she's never had another man. They're so astounded that the genie -- far more powerful than they -- cannot keep his woman loyal, they stop feeling sorry for themselves and return to their kingdoms. Then the older brother begins the practice of killing each wife after taking her virginity the night before, so she has no chance to cheat on him.

On Rockford Fosgate

2011-11-20T19:16:00.000-08:00

A researcher at UCLA has announced the discovery of a breakthrough, delivered by mouthwash, that can eliminate cavities totally. I think that's great. I do know that cavities are caused by bacteria in the mouth, so it really helps now to keep mouth clean, though it's hard to brush after every meal when you're working and on the go a lot. And having a mouthwash to make that even more effective for Rockford Fosgate is even better. I hope that it will also affect the progress of gum disease as well. My gums started receding in my 20s, probably because I didn't brush my teeth regularly as I should have. I had to learn the hard way.

On MSR snowshoes

2011-11-20T19:09:00.000-08:00

Another controversial issue raised in Without Remorse is that of American POWs in North Vietnam. It posits a what if the North Vietnamese were keeping high value officers captured in a separate camp, away from the official Hoa Lo camp that the world knew of and was called Hanoi Hilton, even going so far as to report they were dead although they were not? Then using them to manipulate the Soviet Union into supporting them? In the book Without Remorse, thanks to Jack Ryan and Robert Ritter, the prisoners are reclassified as alive and taken to the Hanoi Hilton from their secret prison camp, and so are released at the end of the along with the others. But in that case they would have done it to John McCain, who was the son of a high-level American admiral. They couldn't escape through the jungle in MSR Snowshoes, so other POWs may still be in Vietnam. That's been an issue for years. The Vietnamese claim they have no more. Are they lying? Only they know for sure, and it's even possible, as I've seen speculated, that remote villages keep their own American soldier without informing the central government.

On new mom gift idea

2011-11-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

I just read an interesting book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp, an outline of how people can overturn dictatorship. Supposedly it and his other books have helped activists in the Arab world and the former Soviet block to overthrow dictatorships. Maybe Chinese dissidents are using it now. Maybe Iranian activists, because in a government propaganda video Gene Sharp is allegedly a CIA agent plotting with George Soros and John McCain in the White House. Sharp makes the interesting case that dictatorships must depend on the efforts of the people to run the country, and so can be removed if enough people stop cooperating. Getting the country to that point is the difficult part. It's not like coming up with a new mom gift idea. He advises democratic activists to formulate a long range plan specifically for their country.

On spinal surgery

2011-10-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a novel by Stephen King, another writer I've neglected for the past decade or close to two. I actually did read a very long pretty recent novel of his, The Dome, about a year ago. But in the early 1990s his writing changed. He got politically correct a really obnoxious extent, creating a character Dorothy Claibourne who was detestable in my opinion though presented as a hero. Then there was Gerald's Game, which had a terrific setup, but after making his politically correct point, he abandoned the story, as though he couldn't figure out how to get the woman out of the handcuffs before the maniac came upon her and killed her. He avoided the confrontation he'd been leading up to as though bored by such books. But such books are why he's so successful, not spinal surgery.

On carpet cleaners raleigh nc

2011-10-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

The story I found most interesting in John D. MacDonald's collection The End of the Tiger is the longest one, about the trap of gold. He's saying that corporations of the time -- late 50s to early 60s expected their executives to maintain too high of a lifestyle on too small of a salary. The executive main character is in line to be CEO someday, and now gets around $25,000 which was a terrific salary then, but he and his wife are expected to maintain a certain status lifestyle, and the strain becomes too much for them. We think of thrift as an old-fashioned virtue, and they did what they could, but were still required to buy things too expensive for them. They couldn't just use any old carpet cleaners raleigh nc, especially since they lived in an expensive suburb in Connecticut even though he worked in New York City.

Call of cuty modern warfare

2011-10-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

One thing about Hellfire Club is the killer. Straub had a pretty good idea for him, though I'm not sure if it's plausible. To compete with how Hannibal Lector is so smart about scents and things, this guy knows makeup and women's clothing and hair better than they do themselves, or at least the protoganist who is presented as too practical to be concerned with such feminine things. The killer knows more about being a woman than she does, which I guess is Straub's way of saying it's all a fake. But he's a side issue. The book is more about storytelling, and an old secrets which eventually comes to light, and when it does is sort of a let down. It's a bad thing, but given that it's hardly unusual seems meaningful now only for its literary consequences, though it's still not clear to me exactly who wrote the book within the book. Oh, well, time to play call of duty modern warfare 3 ps3.

On Database Administrator jobs

2011-10-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not even sure what Leonard's part regarding Hollywood is. That it's full of egotistic people seeking more money and power. That even the geniuses are screwed up in some way? So what? I guess the main point was that the story of the original screenplay was just used as a take off point. Everybody involved and not involved had their own opinion of it, and wanted to change it their way. The loan shark changes it to his story, which is most of the story of the book. No scripts have anything to do with Database Administrator Jobs, but I'm sure Leonard has seen more than his share of scripts with stories changes to something that barely if at all resembles the original -- especially of his own novels.

On plus sized maternity clothes

2011-09-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

None of the participants wear plus size maternity clothes, at least while on video, but it's interesting that there's a war -- or at least a controversy -- on Youtube between polyglots over what is the best way to learn other languages. Steve Kaufman calls himself a linguist because he knows about ten different languages, and says you need lots of input. Bennie the Irish polyglot says you need to start talking right away, especially with native speakers. My own reaction is, gee, couldn't it be both? As Kaufman points out, before you can speak a word of another language, you must know that word, and so he attacks language learning "hacking," which is a term Benny likes. They both sell books that are probably interesting but which I haven't read yet.

On PSP

2011-09-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe I didn't like The Black Dahlia as much as some others, despite the intensity of how he portrays LA and Mexico of the time, because his main character is not Philip Marlowe. He's sympathetic sometimes, but other times just seems emotionally and mentally screwed up, as Kay agrees. For a long time he stays away from Kay, to stay loyal to his partner, shades of Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. But Spade at least turns in his partner's killer. OK, so does Bucky, but not the Dahlia's killer. And the portrait of Mexico brutalized by its police force instead of drug gangs is quite vivid, though I'm not at all sure I really believe they had bars where sailor jacked off in the open while eating pussy. Still, with or without psp, it's impossible to go back in time now and figure out how places as that really were 60 or so years ago. Rough, I'm sure, though.

On Promise Ring Etiquette

2011-09-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

I've just finished one of the best Dean R Koontz books I've read recently, Dark Rivers of the Heart. It's a little over the top and certainly ultralibertarian in its politics, which are much more explicit than most of his stuff. But his depiction of the crazy agent of a nameless federal agency was terrific -- over the top, but terrific nonetheless. Yet it's dark, dealing with fascism threatening the United States plus a serial killer. It's a far cry from reading about promise ring etiquette. I have to admit the main hero and his romance with the woman does not come off credibly, and since I'm not a big dog fan I get tired of Koontz's wonderful dog companions. Yet it manages to keep up a lot of suspense, and the Utah store scene seems designed with the movies in mind.

On payday loan

2011-08-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

It doesn't have much to do with payday loan, but there's a science story out today that's kind of interesting. Many thousands of years ago our ancestors must have had sex with Neanderthals and Denisovans, another line of people who died out like the Neanderthals, and that means we have genes from those two groups that help strengthen our immune systems. Presumably it came about from Neanderthals and Denisovans living with humans, or else the genes would have died out with the others. So human men took Neanderthal and Denisovan wives, though whether by choice or violence the article says cannot be said. I'm sure that young men of those times probably did a lot of girl stealing from other groups, because when you're a fifteen year old guy living in a group of 10 to 30 people you wouldn't have much choice, and very often probably no choice of a girl close to your age.

On Claw Tub

2011-08-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

So I finished The Cabinet of Curiosities by two authors recently, and was pretty impressed as I was reading, but somehow lost it at the end. It does well at setting up a background of the past, back when people still took a bath in a claw tub, but somehow the suspense got lost in the present. It did have an interesting background of natural history displays -- cabinets of curiosity -- in the late 1880s, though they got put in the American Museum of Natural History, and that background was very interesting. The romance between the archeologist and the New York Times reporter didn't congeal for me. I never figured out Pendergast, an independently wealthy FBI agent who just comes along, and discovers the truth, because it's related to his family.

On ping pong table

2011-07-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

Another story in Veteran is also pretty good. An American tourist in Italy is suckered by an older hippie pretending to be a German who was a doctor during the war, and saw the ghost of a nun from four hundred years ago come to help save the lives of the wounded soldiers he was treating. Fascinating story, and I was beginning to wonder if Forsyth maybe really wanted to write a "ghost story," since that's not his usual thing. Then the hippie gets the tourist to donate $500 toward helping out local orphans, instead of buying himself something such as a ping pong table, but of course it's all a lie, and so more typically a Forsyth story, because about a scam, though an interesting one to read.

On depression rehab treatment centers

2011-07-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Funny, I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid, but to the best of my memory, no author ever thought of the threat of space junk -- the pieces of destroyed satellites etc that are orbiting the Earth, and which threaten the safety of ships going up such as the shuttle. And, now, the space station where the shuttle is docked. I guess it's a symptom of the assumption that the universe is big enough to take all humanity's junk and just somehow get rid of it. That's pretty true for small time groups. It's less true for cities. And even less true when we're all over the planet. Yet people still dump stuff into the oceans and the other main waters. They seem big -- they are big -- but still cannot just dissolve all that stuff. Space is much bigger, but the debris is not headed out toward space, or falling into the sun, it's just orbiting the Earth. Someday we'll have to put some depression rehab treatment centers to treat people who are missing the Earth.

On wholesale insurance dot net

2011-07-10T19:42:00.000-07:00

Well, times may be tough for some people, but isn't it great to know that Prince Harry and Kate had a great welcome visiting Hollywood? I guess the rest of America is pretty useless and boring to them. But they wore formal outfits and visited with Hollywood stars. So it's great that they had a good time and met J-Lo and Nicole Kidman and the stars met them. It must have been so nice and exciting. I'm all for the wealthy enjoying their wealth but something about these people just showing up to show off, and the royal couples meeting Hollywood stars only, just grates on me, though. However, it's interesting that some of the photos clearly show that the prince's hair is thinning on top. Not yet as bad as mine, but enough to be noticeable. I remember when he was born and already he's getting old. Where does that leave me? Oh well, he serves in Iraq so he deserves a lot of respect for that. Maybe he lost hair from the stress. But maybe he was covered by www.wholesaleinsurance.net.

On Samsung LCD

2011-07-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

You don't need to watch the financial news on a samsung lcd to be concerned about what is happening there. Greece managed to be rescued despite the rioting of its people, who I guess have gone home now. But Italy is next on the list of countries, with the most debt. It's also demographically in trouble. Italians aren't having enough babies to replace the dead, meaning that the population is getting older on average, and Italy as we know it could be gone by the end of this century. No doubt they'll be replaced by Muslims from North Africa. Who are not supposed to pay interest. That'll be great for government bonds. Zero interest. Of course, most of the world has near zero interest bonds now. And trending toward zero principal as well.

On Polaris RZR Accessories

2011-07-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

One thing I liked about Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy was that it portrayed what he deems the "First Economic War." It's done by Japan in cooperation with China, and in conjunction with their military moves, and it's pretty credible. Mainland China has banks in Hong Kong -- about to revert to being part of China again -- sell a huge bundle of US T-bills. Other such sales follow, putting pressure on the US dollar. Then a mutual fund family owned by the Japanese plotter sells off a huge chunk of Citibank, because a bank stock is hurt by weak dollar. Other such sales soon follow, sending the entire US stock market into a tailspin. Then the plotter has hacked software wipe out record of all transactions after 12:00 PM that day, thinking that will totally knock out the economy. But it gives our hero Jack Ryan the idea of how to overcome the total problem, with cooperation from European central banks. Thank God for Jack Ryan. Where would the United States be without him, right? Whether he uses polaris rzr accessories or not, it doesn't matter. It's his advice that saves us. What's scary is that in real world now, Japan and China have more than enough T-bills to sink the dollar if they started selling them all off. It wouldn't take any fancy tricks or sabotage.

On utility knife

2011-06-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

Another thing that bothered me about Shibumi is sort of technical, but reveals the gaps in his research and thinking. Nicholas is continually described as a man of no country, and that's why the CIA could do whatever they wanted to him. His mother was a Russian refugee and his father a German officer, both in Shanghai, and during the war a Japanese benefactor sent him to Japan. However, although he is not ethnically Chinese, he was born in China and that makes him legally a citizen of Chinese. If there is some legal loophole at the time that excludes people not ethnically Chinese, Trevanian should have mentioned it. Given his friendship with Japan as well as his race, it would be plausible for the Chinese not to fight to help him, but that's not how Trevanian presents it. He writes so well of what he knows, but chooses not to know some things or just makes assumptions that aren't true, even with a utility knife.

On http://www.wholesaleinsurance.net

2011-05-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

One of the stories in Space on My Hands by Fredric Brown assumes that someone has been able to make hypnosis so powerful with a machine that they can make large numbers of people believe almost anything. It starts out as a murder mystery on Callisto, but becomes far more than that. It does have some entertainment value in how the police detective is lead around, fooled and bewildered, but it's hard to really get into and believe. There's a government controlling the entire solar system that has cracked down on unorthodox political opinions, yet these books and reels are sold under the table. They live on various planets and moons but don't have the Internet and so nobody knows addresses such as http://www.wholesaleinsurance.net .

On cellulite treatment

2011-05-21T20:48:00.000-07:00

And I haven't yet mentioned being in a vehicle accident last night. Fortunately, nobody was hurt and the damage to our pickup was slight. Also fortunately, the driver of the other vehicle pulled over and stopped, and has agreed to the police to pay to fix the damage. I was sure that the cost would come out of my pocket. I might as well pay for cellulite treatment. It's possible that our insurance might help pay for it, but they could be a deductible, so let the other driver it. It was his fault, though everybody here drives like a maniac, my driver included unfortunately. I've seen him take many chances, but this really was not his fault. The other driver pulled over into his lane right in front of him. I watched it all but could do nothing in the back seat. One advantage of lots of traffic is that we were all going at a slow speed.

On order cigars

2011-05-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a fairly tough but I guess basically productive week. On Friday I got some kind of stomach trouble, I believe related to something I ate. It wasn't as horrible as I've heard food poisoning is, so I guess I didn't have food poisoning, but something was in my digestive system that my body didn't like, and so gave me diarrhea, especially that night but continuing into yesterday. I'm glad that nobody near me would order cigars, because I needed clear air as well as rest and Sprite and bananas, which are supposed to be good for diarrhea. Even doctors say that as well, bananas and apples, I guess from the fiber in them.

On Black Diamond Z Poles

2011-05-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

I'm still reading The Return of the King. It's fascinating to see the characters move around the land. I don't recall noticing the first two times I read it just how fascinated with landscapes that Tolkien is. There are many passages of wild, amazing geographical features that the characters have to defeat even without using Black Diamond Z-Poles. Of course, what they lack modern technology and fabrics, they make up with Elvish magic. There's a technological assumption they know metal working quite well. I guess that is consistent with the basically medieval life style.

On gifts for Mother's day from kids

2011-05-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

So far as I can tell, gifts for Mother's Day from kids are not much of a custom here. Most kids don't have enough money of their own, especially since their parents don't have enough. I know the local National Book Store does carry Mother's Day cards. I'm not sure what my kids would think if I gave them some money and told them to go shopping for their mothers. It would require a lot of coordination. Maybe next year. I'm still trying to get oriented myself, and too many projects have required immediate attention. I've got a lot more books to write, for one thing.

On discount office supplies

2011-05-01T01:49:00.000-07:00

If you want to buy some land here and they don't have one of those special titles guaranteed by the government, then there's always a chance of a problem. These special titles here go back to 1903 but only a part of the land here has them. In other places, people just pay the taxes and retain control. But you never know what can happen. I've seen strange situations in the US, so here it can be even stranger. You could buy and have relatives appear out of the blue with claims to the property, able to hire crooked lawyers to squeeze you in court. So buying real estate here is not like getting discount office supplies. Plus, if you don't retain close control or occupy the land, squatters may do it, and once established they have the legal right to remain. It's a scam often done by organized criminals.

On creatine powder

2011-05-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

I've also spent some time researching local real estate practices and discovered something interesting I'd never heard of again. There's a kind of title here named after a guy in Australia who started it. Rather than relying on title companies in the US to keep track of a long list of owners going back to the founding of the country, the title is kept up to date by the state records and they verify it's correct, though only after some proof is provided to them. Then you cannot sell the land until all necessary expenses, including any capital gains and sales taxes which ordinarily in the US would be considered later problems of the owner and buyer. You have to take some creatine powder, be strong and pay all these taxes up front to get the name on the title changed, but then it's bulletproof.

On Branson real estate

2011-04-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to Branson Missouri for over 35 years, and in that time it was a small town and the only attraction beside the nearby Lake of the Ozarks was a kind of carnival, as I recall. I don't believe it had any music then, or we didn't take it in. That was before country music broke out of the confines of Nashville and became a mainstream form of commercial media entertainment. In my day, kids in the cities didn't listen to country music. It wasn't cool. Only rock and commercial stuff on the radio, but not country. So it's amazing that Branson real estate is now so valuable. As I recall, there's not a whole lot of it, at least that's level, because it is in the Ozarks so it's a hilly area.

On motorhome repair

2011-04-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

The weather is nice and sunny today, though windy. It had been cloudy quite a bit. Warm but cloudy and overcast, threatening rain but only sometimes carrying through on the threat. I'm in a nice house, though it's fancier than its underlying quality in some ways. Stuff is getting a little out of joint. But I'm not in a trailer so I don't need any motorhome repair. Across the street I can see from my window people a little nipa hut in the yard, and there're flowers elsewhere. The fronds of the palms trees and waving quite a bit. I meant to go out for a walk, but didn't quite get to it. Tomorrow, for sure.

On multivitamins

2011-03-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

Salambo the woman is portrayed on the cover as a very sexy dancer, but the actual novel is a lot less salacious. She does do a dance to entertain the city's mercenaries during a feast given to thank them for their service, but priests provide the music. She's not some common dance hall girl at all. She's an aristocrat and very sheltered. She devotes most of her time to devotions to Tanit, a goddess of some sort in Carthage at that time. There's one scene where she goes to the head of the mercenaries, but may have been on multivitamins, because if they had sex it's barely hinted at.

On commercial playground

2011-03-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Salambo and Madame Bovary are nothing alike. The copy on the cover of the paperback edition I bought used many years ago makes it seem like it will be full of sex. Not true at all. It is full of fighting and battle scenes, so it'd make a great movie, though Hollywood probably won't be interested because it would be expensive, and who has heard of Carthage? It's not a commercial playground. It was an enemy of Rome, an important center of naval power and commerce in the Mediterranean Sea. They had a number of wars with Rome, but eventually were conquered by Rome and leveled, though later Rome rebuilt its own city on that site.

On mimio

2011-03-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting book on the flight over here, which apparently nobody else has heard of, even though it's by Gustave Flaubert, the author of the acclaimed novel Madame Bovary, which is considered one of the greatest novels ever written. Salambo is about hard time in an ancient empire called Carthage. If there was a date of the period, I failed to see it. Of course, nothing in the book is about mimio, because that came a lot later, in modern times, not ancient times. Carthage was apparently an enemy of Rome, but the time of the novel appears to be BC, because there's no mention of Christianity.

On medical job search

2011-02-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

I recently finished a somewhat interesting book on how people started using language, Adam's Tongue. The author is a linguist and he does not believe the standard Noam Chomsky line that people are born with the potential to use language. At least, he believes that this had to be evolved the same as anything else. We have bigger brains now than we did two million years ago, thanks to using language. He makes a good case for language arising from the need of scavenging humans on the African savanna to convince other people to go help them get the meat from dead big animals such as the ancestors of elephants. It took many people to fight off the ancestors of lions, hyenas and others who also wanted that meat. Today doing a medical job search to find a way to make our living is relatively simply. But humans back then had a lot more problems and harder time feeding themselves.

On plus sized bridesmaid dresses

2011-02-20T09:54:00.001-08:00

We're going through a peculiar time in history. I think it's a transition period from being dominated by our environment and our biology to learning how to take control of our destinies. That is, we're learning so much about how we work and how the world around us works, but we have trouble applying that in large numbers. There's a growing demand for plus size bridesmaid dresses. Technology and our tendency to eat too many carbohydrates is making us fatter in large numbers, but it's also true that in laboratories we're learning a lot more about the process. How it works, how damaging it is, and what we can do about it. However, most people don't apply that knowledge. They remain victims happy to eat whatever the large food companies push on them, because it tastes good and they don't have time to eat better.

On melatonin

2011-02-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

I recently started reading an interesting book on learning languages, Language is Music, though I didn't remember the author's name. She's a woman from Russia who grew up in the United States, in California. I don't know what age she emigrated. Apparently she was old enough to retain her Russian but young enough to pick up English. And she now speaks six or seven other languages as well, including Spanish and Portuguese. She believes that one reason she finds it easy to hear the sounds of other languages is that she had a peculiar eye condition where she uses only one eye at a time, so always see the work in two dimensions. Both eyes work, but not at the same time - they switch back and forth. She doesn't advocate taking melatonin to learn languages, but to listen to it a lot through songs, radio, TV and movies.

On jack3d side effects

2011-02-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

The main character of Mignon is a man who was a soldier who was wounded in an earlier battle and now out of the Army and seeking to make his own fortune. He's an engineer who want to put down piles to build New Orleans up as a port, which of course someone must have done in real life. I don't know enough about the history of the city to know whether he could be a fictional version of someone real, or is still premature. He has already left a beautiful woman who loves him and who has arranged for him to get the money he needs, to pursue Mignon. Love is always damaging to Cain characters. Her father is tied to the business partner who tried to cheat him. No doubt they are all going to cheat the main character somehow. The only suspense is in seeing just how they do it. It's not about jack3d side effects, it's about how the cotton corrupts people with a hoodoo as his friend Dan in the Army tells him.

On creatine powders

2011-02-20T08:22:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a book Mignon by James Cain who was an old time crime novelist, who was a pioneer of the noir school of crime writing. However, it takes place in New Orleans in 1864, when the Union Army is occupying that southern city, though elsewhere in the country the war is still raging. And he's attracted to a young widow with a father who is seeking to make a fortune by buying cotton in the South and selling it in the North based on some obscure law of the time. That's the trouble with the book. I'm sure it makes sense, but it's not well explained and the context is too unfamiliar to modern readers, who know more about creatine powders than agricultural commerce during the Civil War. I do know that his sexual obsession for Mignon is self-destructive and he'll be lucky to survive - that's par for Cain books.

On Ordinateurs

2011-02-12T08:06:00.000-08:00

The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton is an interesting book even though, in my estimation, he did not make the full connection between our beliefs and the biological actions of our cells, even while we're sitting at Ordinateurs. He does build a good case for the abilities of cells to overlook or choose which parts of our DNA to express. This is the science of epigenetics, and it's mentioned by Mark Sisson of The Primal Blueprint. If we eat in the same healthy way as our prehistoric ancestors and exercise like them, we'll have the best chance to remain health for as long as possible. Sounds good to me.

On Conference calls

2011-01-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

Besides, in Silicon Valley being "worth" a certain amount of money if you own an online company really means what your shares of stock are worth on the stock market at any given moment. This varies constantly, and is not really meaningful. Journalists apply it constantly to Bill Gates, but what if he got off his Conference calls long enough to go out and sell all his shares of Microsoft? Would he get the same market price for all them? Not a chance. Somebody trying to sell so many shares would drive the price down drastically. And once the market figured out that the person selling was Gates, the price would go down even more, because people would figure the company would never be the same (true, and the best case) or that something was really wrong so if Gates was getting out they better also.

On acne products

2011-01-15T07:16:00.001-08:00

I'm attempting to be more organized in my exercising these days. I don't need acne products, but I do need to build up my cardiovascular fitness and general body strength. I'm probably above average in the United States for my age, but average in the US is not good, so I want to be far above average, and definitely am carrying excess pounds that are not good for me. Before, I walked almost every day, and tried to run about three times a week, and did some pushups every once in a great while. On days too cold or full of snow for walking or running, I use the exercise bicycle, but I prefer going outside. Now I have a schedule of days alternating running and pushups, with walking almost every day, except Monday is my rest day when I don't do much - except of course work in front of the computer, but not much physical exercise.

On best fat burner

2011-01-15T07:11:00.000-08:00

So I read The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and I have to admit I was disappointed. According to him, one of the best fat burner is to expose your body to the cold, as in taking cold showers. Also, for men, that will boost testosterone. Oh, that's going to be a popular weight loss solution - not. It's winter here, and I can't bring myself to even try it. I decide that I'll have to depend on eating a good diet and getting a healthy amount of exercise. I know some people also like to take supplements. I assume that healthy supplements will also help me lose weight, somehow. But weight loss supplements that promote a healthy metabolism and hormone balance are okay in my book. It takes a lot of exercise to burn fat the way conventional wisdom says to do it.

On find chromium supplements here

2011-01-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

I've been busy lately sorting through some of the various food supplements available that I didn't even know about. I've read about so many vitamins, minerals, polyphenols and so on, that I tend to think I really know what's available, then it turns out that there's good stuff out there I'd never heard of. If you're looking, you can find chromium supplements here, and there, and that mineral I know has something to do with metabolizing sugar, and therefore it helps people lose weight and reduce insulin, so it's healthy to have the right amounts of it and it's included in many weight loss supplements. Myself I'm more interested in taking what will give me good health and hopefully help me to live a long time, if only because I avoid heart attacks, cancer and other killers for the next fifty years or more.

On pendant lighting

2011-01-15T07:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I tried to get caught up on all the business I've neglected for a while. I paid all the bills, including the one from our lawyer, under the pendant lighting fixture over the kitchen table. Maybe he will find time to take care of our business now that he's been paid for his work for the last month or two. There was a bill from the automobile insurance company for a period that we may not need it, but I paid it because I don't know for sure. Some mail I had put aside to read, and turned out not to be worth much. Some material about the house real estate taxes, but it wasn't a bill, and it didn't apply here any longer, so I could throw that away. Same with a standard printed newsletter from the financial advisor.

On toys

2011-01-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've been checking out new diets or eating plans, which I thought I'd never do again, but I couldn't help it, I'd heard so many good things about diets purporting to be based on what cave people did and ate for several million years, before inventing agriculture about ten thousand years ago. We were hunter gatherers, not farmers. Men went out to hunt and women went out to gather berries, leaves, roots, eggs and insects. Bread wasn't the staff of life - nobody baked bread. Kids got small spears as toys. We ate meat that was hunted down - no grains and no dairy. We ate various vegetables and fruits in season. Yet we were much healthier on average, if we survived childhood.

On kitchen faucets

2010-12-26T09:15:00.000-08:00

I also recently watched The Magnificent Seven for the first time, though the music was so familiar it must have been copied for other westerns. I don't recall seeing any of the sequels or the TV show made from it. But the first movie is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's great movie The Seven Samurai. A small village in Mexico hires seven gringo gunslingers to protect them from a gang of banditos preying on them. It's a story as old as agriculture, actually predating what we'd call civilization, though it has a happier ending than most, since the village survives on its own, without either the banditos or gunslingers becoming their feudal lord. It's a place too poor for its people to have kitchen faucets or any other modern appliances.

Acne treatment creams

2010-12-12T16:10:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Live Free or Die Hard, the fourth in the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis. It was interesting in that it took on the possibility of cyber-terrorism. It avoided political correctness problems by making the villain an American who used to work for the government. He tried to alert them to this possibility, but they wouldn't listen, so he decided to steal the country's financial data and cause chaos as a way of proving he was right to begin with. There's a lot of improbable action. Willis driving a semi-truck that eventually takes out a plane . . . no, too much. And there's a young hacker with Willis who is a prototypical geek who still needs acne treatment creams but knows all about inner workings of all electronics. Fun escapism.

On managed hosting service

2010-12-04T16:12:00.001-08:00

I have had a lot of run-ins with customer service and technical people on the phone, but I also understand that it must be very hard to try to diagnose and solve problems based on what people are telling you. Another friend of my mother's has Internet access through the local cable company. She uses Internet Explorer for her browser, but claims it lacks the basic menu bar of File, Edit etc that I thought every Windows program had to have as standard equipment, as dictated by Microsoft. She also told me that her email program refused to attach files, but she didn't seem to understand that the C drive meant her hard drive, so I'm not so sure she was really accessing the files of the pictures she wanted to attach to her emails. But it's hard to say without really trying to use her computer myself. For the menu bar I suggested she right click and look at what had a check mark and what didn't, and trying to get what she wanted to show. I don't know what they'd do with a managed hosting service.

Phon phentermine diet pill

2010-11-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, Shahrukh Khan must work pretty hard to keep himself in shape. He plays fairly athletic buys, and does look younger than his real age, though perhaps he has the help of a lot of makeup. But for the Pain of Disco s0ng and dance number in Om Shanti Om he had to lift weights and lose lots of body fat to give himself a real hard body look. Maybe he took something like a phentermine diet pill to help him achieve that highly defined, chiseled look. In one movie he plays a soccer player whose leg is broken in a car accident on the day he gets a $5 million dollar contract, and walks with a limp after that. You'd think he could have had better medical treatment, but perhaps that's an indictment of Britain's health care system, since this took place in London. And he was hit pretty hard, so maybe he had other injuries as well. In another movie he dies young of a heart attack, and we just have to accept that he has a weak heart that can't be fixed, but it's never really defined medically.

On eczema treatment

2010-11-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

Not all Bollywood movies are chick flicks, but many are, and that's a revelation I had the other night watching an old Shahrukh Khan movie. They are entertaining, but many of them outside the action genre are complex stories of love with great overt emotional appeals like a soap opera, together with lots of singing and dancing. Some are more serious and/or action oriented, but Khan movies seem directed mainly at women. But when I was in India and thinking of watching an Indian movie in a theater, the line consisted entirely of young boys roughly thirteen years old, and they were packed belly to back in line. I didn't feel safe or comfortable joining them, so I declined. What if one needed eczema treatment? The last Khan movie I saw, he was man who comes to a troubled family in answer to their prayers, teaches them to love and have fun, then dies of a heart problem. Quite a tear jerker at the end.

On acne wash

2010-11-28T07:29:00.000-08:00

One of the first Bollywood movies I watched was a clearcut patriotic movie glorifying the pilots of the Indian Air Force, and was openly emotional and supportive of the job they did, appealing to patriotism in a way that hasn't been seen in Hollywood movies since World War 2. However, I've noticed lately that many contain a subtle propaganda message aimed at liberalizing Indian society. For instance, there's an old movie with
Sharrukh Khan and Kajol that is still playing in a theater despite being fifteen years old. It's a condemnation of arranged marriages. However, interestingly, it's done with more respect for the elder generation than Hollywood shows. There's noting about an acne wash, but at the end the father relents to the love the Khan and Kajol characters have for each other and allows her to go get married to Khan. Her father is portrayed as wise and loving despite believing he had the right to arrange his daughter's marriage to his friend's son, and he eventually changes his mind because he does love her.

On xbox

2010-11-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

I admit I'd rather watch a good Bollywood movie than play the xbox. Though I also have to admit they're not all as automatically entertaining as they seemed at first. I really like Shah Rukh Khan in Om Shanti Om, and got the impression he was much the same in other movies, but I haven't seen them yet. He is more adept as an actor than many Bollywood movies require, so I have to give him a lot of respect. So far, however, few have achieved the same mix of entertaining story and great music and dancing that Om Shanti Om does. I keep looking to recreate that feeling, and keep being disappointed. I'm like an addict having trouble getting the right fix.

On skin care product reviews

2010-11-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Another Indian movie not typical Bollywood I saw months ago was about terrorism, not skin care product reviews. We see an older man set up a computer and communications devices up on the roof of a tall building, and from there he calls in bombs threats and demands and talks to one Mumbai TV announcer. And we see a police officer race to find the man before anybody is killed. The man demands the release of four terrorists from jail, and directs them to be placed in a certain remote place. The men were all convicted in conjunction with terrorists acts, and they're certain they're about to be released to terrorist friends. However, they're then blown up. It turns out it's all an elaborate plot not just to kill those terrorist, but to dramatize that ordinary people are fed up with the bomb setters. The old man did not set any bombs himself, just used the threat to move the police. In the end, the police officer lets him escape.

On fastest fat burner

2010-11-14T10:05:00.000-08:00

There's another Bollywood movie I saw recently that isn't typical, but interesting though very sad. A young English woman discovers her grandfather's diary - he was a police officer in India in charge of jail where Indian fighters to stop colonialization were housed and eventually executed. She wants to make a movie about this story -- she's fascinated by the revolutionaries -- and goes to India and finds a friend to help her. She's part of a group of friends who get drafted against their wills, because they are modern and don't relate to the revolutionaries willing to give their lives. They make fun of the whole idea, because India is now so poor and corrupt. Yet in the end the roles they play in the movie start to affect their lives, and they go up against the government's corruption. They go from being modern guys looking for the fastest fat burner and drinking and partying and not caring about anything except themselves and their friends, to battling like the revolutionaries of old.

On cheap health insurance

2010-11-14T09:59:00.000-08:00

The first Bollywood movie I watched all the way through was not the best, but good enough to hook me into wanting to watch more. I can't remember the title, which is in Hindi anyway, but it's a tribute to the India Air Force pilots, and it's raw unashamed patriotism, which was good to watch, since I grew up on movies about World War 2 celebrating unashamed patriotism, and that went out of fashion during Vietnam era in the United States. There're two great scenes - one in a bar having a party to celebrate the marriage of one of the pilots (after playing a trick on the bride), who's a poet and unfortunately is shot down later. At the end, the men are racing from Pakistan to the Indian border, and it's coordinated with music and the women making offerings to Indian gods. Having cheap health insurance is not enough to make up for the dangers these guys face. There's even an old pilot who's been jailed in Pakistan since the war they had about 1970.

On medical scrubs

2010-11-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

I can hardly believe it. The guy who is supposed to be repairing my computer at home just told me earlier today that it'll be still another two days. That will make a total of two weeks, even though he told me it'd be just a little over one week. So I don't know if I can even trust this estimate. I wish I could put on IT medical scrubs and fix that computer myself. Unfortunately, I don't believe I would have done the best job. I thought about calling that big name place that runs around in marked cars, but the last time I used them, I had to wait a long time and it was expensive. But they did come out to my place. I wish I could keep my PC at my home until he gets around to fixing it. I couldn't get online, but I could have done a lot of other important work without getting Internet access.

On build muscle fast

2010-10-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

I have to admit I'm not much attracted to the whole idea of bodybuilding for appearance, but I am for strength. I'm not obsessed with the desire to build muscle fast. I have tended to take my muscles and strength for granted. I got them largely from being a swimmer when I was a kid. I went to the workouts because I was on the team. I was on the team because it was a lot of fun. But as a side result, I got pretty strong. Like other swimmers, I am stronger than I look. In the 8th grade we had to take a test in gym class of how many pullups we could do -- pull ups, not chin ups, which are much easier. With pull ups, you hold your hands so your palms face away from you, not toward you -- and I did 8 without stopping, even though much stronger guys on the football team could only do 1 or zero. As I continued, my gym teacher looked at me and said, "swimmer -- you must be a swimmer."

On salicylic acid acne

2010-10-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe, but my own skin condition doesn't seem to be getting any better, though I am taking more 5 Loxin than before. Maybe when I go back on the full Zone diet, instead of being on it just during the day but falling to temptation of too much insulin producing foods once the sun goes down, and sometimes before. However, I don't need salicylic acid acne, just hydrocortisone 1% cream. That seems to help especially in the short run, and sometimes locally in the long run, but the itching seems to pop up somewhere else. Like all I do is encourage it to move from one part of my body to another. It's very annoying, and I often just give in to the itching and scratch although I know I'm not supposed to.

On Easter gift for her

2010-10-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I read a recent Spenser novel by Robert Parker, The Professional -- which was an ironic title because nobody in it fit the title, so far as I could see, including the author. Maybe the attorney who represented the group of wives being blackmailed by the same guy. I can see the influence of Spenser on James Patterson, though Patterson also goes back a long time. Both favor lots of short, choppy chapters with short, choppy dialog that is supposed to be highly meaningful and Socially Significant, and are full of lots of material about the detective's personal life. I will admit, in this instance, Spenser's monogamous relationship with his girlfriend is compared to the Gary Eisenhower and the women. Still, there's too much of him romancing her and their great sex and so on and on and on. If you're looking for an easter gift for her, don't get this book unless you think she'll like to read about tough guys who are also monogamous.

On acai berries scam

2010-10-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

It's a sad thing that so many people have perpetuated the acai berries scam. That's because acai berries themselves are NOT a scam. They're very healthy. They have about the highest strength of any other antioxidant known to humanity. So it's very good for your health to eat them. However, they don't burn weight. That's the scammy part. Acai berries are a great thing to eat for your health, but they won't help you lose weight. If you're on some kind of diet or even if you're not, supplementing your diet with acai berries is a great thing to do. But they don't help you lose weight. For that, you must still eat a weight loss diet and exercise.

On metal detectors

2010-10-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

Although I too dislike dealing with them at airports, I have to admit that metal detectors are necessary. I worked for a government agency that maintains offices in local neighborhoods, and my office was in an inner city, so security was a major concern for us. One of our security guards documented the various items he seized from people, including sharpened screwdrivers and knives, and so we finally got a detector to find such metal objects. One lady once tried to bring in a gun and flew off the handle when it was confiscated and had to be maced. When old ladies tried to come in with weapons in their purses, the guards had to send them out, though they understood the old ladies just wanted to protect themselves while out on the street. Fortunately, nobody tried to bring in a bomb or automatic pistol or submachine gun or anything drastic like that. We did find many small weapons people carried for self protection.

On face cream

2010-09-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

The next two days of my life are going to be very busy, with lots of people coming and going. Possibly some from out of town. There may be people I haven't seen for forty years, and no doubt many I don't know at all or should know but still won't remember despite their face cream. And there'll be more business to take care of Thursday, Friday and Monday. But this is a stressful period of my life and I just have to get through it, to get to better days ahead. Hopefully I won't be in this area for more than about two months, although maybe it will take longer than that to get all the business settled, but I hope not. I don't want to be here in Winter or for Christmas, and to get away by Christmas I'll have to leave early December just after Thanksgiving but before the Christmas travel season.

On wrinkle cream review

2010-09-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

I picked up my niece Catherine and her husband Mike at the East Terminal or Terminal 2 of the Lambert Field Airport tonight. I'd been across the river anyway picking up my new suit at the Men's Warehouse of Clothing on Eager Road in Brentwood. So I was heading back north on 170 when they arrived. Now I finally realized why my sister goes to wait at the departure area -- because it's much easier to get picked up there than at the arrival area where there are shuttle buses and I thought I'd have to go into the parking garage and have to pay to get out, so I went where only shuttle buses are supposed to go, but fortunately they saw me and got into the car and I left before any security guards got on to me. So from now on I'll have people wait at the arrival area, even if they want to do a wrinkle cream review, but it's also true I may never have to do that again. Unless my sister decides to come to take care of business but doesn't want to rent a car.

On diet pills

2010-09-20T20:02:00.001-07:00

My brother in law, who was born in England, and I were discussing British TV tonight a little bit. He told me Benny Hill was a popular show there for many years in the 1960s and 1970s. At one point he went off the air, but then came back on. His last name is Hill, and he said lots of people ask him if he's related to Benny. He wishes he were just for the money Benny made. I realized I didn't think Benny Hill would have been broadcast on American TV if it had been an American TV show. By the time I saw it in the 1970s, that over the top stupid running after women with big tits type of comedy was not being show on American TV. He was energetic, so I guess it was funny to watch him, but I guess it wasn't from taking diet pills, because he was overweight.

On free credit report

2010-09-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

The weather around here in St Louis has gotten much cooler. The man who promised my mother he would trim her trees in July has finally said the weather is cool enough to do it. Sure it was 100 degrees in August, but it's been cool now for weeks, so I think he has been doing a lot of other jobs first. I don't know why he's put my mother off for so long. I know that her yard man who cuts her grass and rakes her leaves wants the trees trimmed before long, while the leaves are still on the branches, because he doesn't want to rake them all up. I can't say I blame him. It's been close to 2 months since the tree man gave my mother an estimate. I have to admit I wonder how he's been eating ever since then, if he considered it too hot to send his workers up the trees for nearly 8 weeks. I wouldn't want to think what his free credit report must look like. I guess I shouldn't talk since I do work inside, and my mother keeps it air conditioned. But if I did work outside, I'd work in the heat, because I wanted the money. I'd be careful to drink lots of water, but I'd do it.

On a hot tub cover

2010-08-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm also done reading an interesting book on the financial crisis, The End of Wall Street. It does have a lot of behind the scenes detail of the peak of the crisis from March to September 2008, instead of focusing on events leading up to that period like some books (some books on the "crisis" were published before September 2008, so they're obviously incomplete, published too soon to take advantage of the subject). The Fed and the Treasury chief and the rest of the government thought they could cap the problem before it got out of hand, like putting down a hot tub cover, but that didn't work. And they couldn't think of all the side effects of their actions, such as how letting Lehman Brothers go bankrupt would affect money market funds.

On medical job listings

2010-08-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

You'd think that one thing that would be virtually recession-proof is medical job listings. People continue to get sick and be in accidents and need medical care, no matter what the economy is like. And I'm sure a bad economy creates certain kinds of problems, if only because people not going to work have more time to run around and do things they shouldn't, and wouldn't if they were on a job. However, hospitals do have to economize and try to make do with as few people as possible, so people with the jobs do get loaded up and overworked. I do think that in general the people who've helped my mother in the past six months have done a good job.

On laptop insurance

2010-08-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

I still confine my computing to a desktop PC, but if I ever do buy a laptop, and I suppose sooner or later I will, I'll have to consider laptop insurance. Given their nature, it's not surprising that they get damaged a lot more often and more than desktop computers. I see my niece, her husband and nephew all sit around using various computerized gadgets in a social setting, and think how weird it is. I have to admit, I kind of prefer my computer use to be confined to one spot. I sit here and use the PC many hours a day, so when I can't be here, then I don't want to waste time. It's much how I feel about cell phones. I don't want to be constantly answering and making calls from anywhere. I'm not much of a telephone user. I am a lot more of a computer user. But still like to keep it under control. And fortunately I don't feel tempted by computer games, which apparently is what occupies my nephew.

On Forex trading software

2010-08-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, it's a sign of the times that ordinary people even have access to the Interbank foreign exchange markets, where banks buy and sell currency crosses nearly 24/7. I think it does close down for part of the weekend. Otherwise, you can sit in front of your computer and make money trading the forex market every minute of every day. Of course. human beings can't do that for long, and human beings make mistakes, so smart programmers have created Forex trading software. If it works with your trading platform or your forex brokerage account, you can let the software do your buying and selling for you, while you play poker online. Or sleep. Or go to your day job. Or even talk to your wife or husband. Or even watch a movie or go out to a party. You can wake up in the morning and find out you made over $1,000 while you were sleeping.

On rugs

2010-08-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

Ultimate Fitness by Gina Kolata is an interesting, informative book, but is far from living up to its title. It's not the ultimate anything on fitness. She mentions yoga once or twice. She goes into lots of detail about Spinning, but doesn't mention Pilates at all. She extols weightlifting, but ignores body weight exercises except to allege Charles Atlas really lifted weight. So according to her you should be at the gym, not home on your rugs. She begins by being scornful of people who want to get fit through slight amounts of exercise. She ends by pointing out studies showing that small amounts of moderate exercise do go the longest way toward improving your health. But does say that if you want greater strength and fitness you need intensity.

On Samsung

2010-07-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

Anyway, in UNDER THE DOME King wants up to believe that a coalition of this small town's three politicians and a hellfire preacher, plus a chicken farmer and funeral home owning family would go into the meth business, and in a big big way. And that they would steal propane from the town to cook it up with, though not on Samsung cookers I'm sure. I could see small town politicians and cops taking bribes from actual meth dealers and makers. I'm sure that happens. But to make these small town guys the biggest meth manufacturers in North America just strains credibility past the breaking point. King is too obviously expressing his personal dislike of hellfire preachers and some small town politicians.

On outdoor fireplaces

2010-07-24T07:55:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a recent book by Stephen King. It may even be his latest, though I'm not sure about that, UNDER THE DOME. It's sort of interesting, but far from his best. But it's also far from his worst. It's not as overtly politically correct as some of the book he wrote around the early 1990s, which is a relief -- although he does make it clear where he stands by having the evil main character dislike President Obama -- but it also lacks intensity. For reasons still unknown, a forcefield dome is now covering a small Maine town. It goes high enough to affect the weather, and the air is slowly getting rough. It's not a good time to use outdoor fireplaces, for example, but there's a shortage of propane, because we're asked to believe this town is a huge manufacturer of methamphetamine by its most powerful citizens. Not likely. Not to mention he doesn't mention why people don't smell the lab. They smell a lot, which is why they're often placed way out in the boonies in the Ozarks, far away from other houses.

On lipzene review

2010-07-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

I like to listen to a variety of music, but these days it's off the Internet. When I was still in my apartment and had my own car, I usually checked out about five or six CDs from the local library every week, listened to them and returned them for more, and listened to the radio in my car while driving. I threw away my boom box, however, when I left. When I checked in here, I didn't want to buy a new boom box, so I just listen to KCTunes streaming, or another oldies station that plays a lot more 60s including Motown unfortunately, and sometimes a site that has lots of Indian music, including lots of Bollywood movie soundtracks, which I really like. None of them include a lipozene review, however, but there is a lot of variety. I suppose I could find other sites playing other music I'd like. I tried Filipino radio stations but there was too much talking. All I want when writing here is music.

On wrinkle creams

2010-07-03T10:13:00.001-07:00

I have to admit, I used to think wrinkle creams were a waste of time and money. So long as I didn't need them, I didn't care about them. Now that I'm older and notice my face doesn't look as it did when I was twenty-five or even thirty-five or even forty-five, I'm a lot more concerned about such things. One of these days, when I have more time and money, I plan to investigate them a lot further. I know I don't like the blotches and age spots and blood blisters on my skin, and I'm wondering what I should be doing about them. I know that a good diet, exercise and drinking lots of water help, but are apparently not the full solution, since I'm pretty good about those things now. Also you're supposed to get a lot of rest, and I sleep pretty well at night these days, and rest in the afternoon when I feel like it.

On Lipofuze

2010-07-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

This looks like a very interesting fat-burning supplement. It's not just a collection of the usual suspects of metabolic boosters, legal speed which burn fat by accessing your stored energy, but which your body rapidly adapts to. Lipofuze contains a lot of ingredients I've never heard of, yet have clinical backing of their effect of burning fat on your body. Many of the scientific studies were under conditions of high fat diets. I wonder how well it works when you eat a more rational, lower fat diet (because people trying to lose weight should eat in a healthy manner no matter what supplements they're also taking.) This FAQ on the site does advise people to eat in a healthy way and to exercise as well. I'm glad they didn't go down the more standard "lose weight even though you eat what you want and don't exercise" which by now sounds very scammy or dangerous.

On iphone warranty

2010-06-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

I've finished reading the Alex Cross book Roses are Red, and now I'm close to the end of Violets are Blue. James Patterson is a very cinematic writer, I think. He comes up with quite dramatic plots, and plot twists and turns. Roses are Red has an intriguing premise, and Violets are Blue goes deep into the vampire underground. But the ultimate criminal goes undetected in Roses are Red, and apparently in earlier books. I don't know whether his existence was even hinted at, let alone his identity revealed, in the books leading up to Roses are Red. I don't know. If so, it'd be very frustrating for readers of those books. I felt the same way when I read it. I hadn't planned to read any more Patterson books for a while, but I had to look for Violets are Blue at the library so I could read it right away. They use cell phones, and if those events were taking place now, Alex Cross would need an iphone warranty, because he now has just learned the identity of his enemy, and I know he'll win, because this is not the final book in the series, but not how.

On women's briefcase

2010-06-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

I just got done reading one of those "light" books based on an alleged near death experience. I forget the name. There are others. This was by a woman who allegedly died from a post-surgical hemorrhage back in 1973 and had this very long and extensively involved NDE. She was not the type to carry a womens briefcase. She was more the mother and housewife type. She met Jesus and was taught a lot of things that sound like traditional religious teachings and saw wonderful buildings and scenes from nature and so on. These kinds of things are so obviously cultural determined wish fulfillment and quite likely active lying that it's sad. Yet I have to say that if someone believes her and makes the effort to love more people better, that's certainly not a bad thing. I dislike having the NDE phenomenon misused this way. But others disagree and believe she's sincere, and maybe I'm wrong. That's part of the problem. After they see what's going on around them and go to Heaven, the experience is totally subjective and unverifiable.

On credit card processing

2010-06-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

Recently someone in the Warrior Forum posted the question about whether it was now easier or hard to make money online than it used to be in the earlier years. Personally, I think it's easier, for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there was no Clickbank to do your credit card processing for you. If you wanted to sell anything of your own, you had to get your own merchant account, which was difficult and impossible for many, especially if you didn't have good credit of your own. And Clickbank makes money for many thousands of ebook publishers and even more affiliates who sell those ebooks for them. Nobody sold my book for me when I used Authorize Net.

On Quicktrim

2010-05-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

I look around my room and I see SEASON OF THE MACHETE by James Patterson, and I'm sorry because I had succeeded in forgetting it. I've heard that he was better earlier in his career before he collaborated with so many other writers, but this book is over 30 years old and it seems to me to have his virtues and faults. It's very gory and dramatic, but also confused and un-credible. He didn't even present all his back story. I still have no idea why the husband and wife team did what they did. Or what the CIA and the Mafia wanted them to do. Or why. I think it had some buried message of anti-imperialism, but it was too far buried. It did succeed in grossing you out -- using a machete to kill and chop dead bodies up. They didn't need quicktrim to lose weight. Though, actually, the man killed the people with a gun first. Why? I don't know. Those questions are never answered. Maybe he matured later. I suspect co-writers do most of the work these days.

On best wrinkle creams

2010-05-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that from now on will be a good time to sell the best wrinkle creams, because we baby boomers keep getting older and none of us want to look our age, even us men who are more careless about such things than women. I don't focus on it, but I would like to have the time and money to spend not only on exercise for my heart and lungs and muscles, but on rejuvenating my skin as well. I'm hoping I'm at the nadir of my health, or rather that was June 2009 when I retired from my first job. That's when I stopped eating horribly and went on something close to the Zone diet. I'm not a consistent or thorough as I want to be, but I'm a lot better than the days when I ate a large fast food meal complete with a quart of soda every evening for dinner.

On project management software

2010-05-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

Recently I spent some time doing a description of a course on using architectural software -- not project management software. It was sort of interesting to see how sophisticated this software was in handling all the elements of designing buildings. I wonder how architects did it when they had to use blueprints, especially when they did innovative things. One famous architect used to live in Alton Illinois where I grew up. His daughter Toni Flippo was in my high school class, but I didn't know her. We didn't run in the same crowd at all. I doubt she knew I existed. One relative of his second wife was selling cars at a dealership in Ballwin when I took my mother around to look for a new car.

On migraine treatment

2010-05-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

One thing I'd like to do is re-listen to the email writing seminar Matt Furey gave years ago for AWAI. Although most of it is teaching by example rather than with much in the way of formulas or techniques. And he gave a long talk extra for free the night before that was pretty incredible, especially when he describes what monks in Japan do to achieve some kind of sainthood. It's an incredible series of things such as running many marathons about two out of three days, then going through periods of fasting and going without sleep. It's exhausting just to imagine. It'd be a good migraine treatment, because if you can do all that you're stronger than most diseases. The monk he was talking about actually did it twice, and once had to kill some animal. Snake? Wild pig? I forget.

On Enzyte

2010-05-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Ah, if only I could relive much of my life knowing what I know now. I'd become a highly paid copywriter, author and speaker, making tons of money. I'd invest it in income producing investments and would be worth an incredible fortune by now. Maybe I'd retire even before the Internet came along, and switch to writing horror and fantasy novels while living in The Philippines on a tropical beach paradise with my family. Now I know how frustrating it is for older people to give advice to young people who think they know it all, but are blinded by the present, and don't realize how fast the future comes. All the enzyte in the world won't stop it. But you have to learn these lessons the hard way. You're lucky to learn them in time to profit from them. Lots of people don't seem to ever learn them.

On acne on neck

2010-05-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

I'm re-reading CASH COPY by Jeffrey Lant, a fantastic book on copywriting which I wish I'd fully appreciated back when I first bought it from him. If I'd bought that and his book on marketing and promoting myself, I believe I'd be much wealthier, happier and healthier today. I could have put myself in business as a copywriter back then, and made money from it part time, then full time, and taken advantage of the Internet as so many others have done. Or perhaps I could have wound up working for Boardroom, Phillips, Agora or one of the other big time mailers. Maybe Rodale Press, since I'm interested in alternative health. I didn't appreciate the potential of the opportunity and of my own writing skills. Some people regret acne on neck. I regret not being rich yet.

On pool pumps

2010-05-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm looking forward to having a small swimming pool in The Philippines, but I don't know what kind of pool pumps are available. And the water needs to be purified, but I would prefer not to use chlorine. I know there's some way of doing it with ozone, but I don't know much about it, or whether it would be available, or if it would be the same cost or more expensive. And I wonder if I could buy enough land to make it a full twenty-five yards long, the length I'm used to for working out. I do know of some large pools, but they are connected to resorts. Maybe I could just buy the resort. That may be cheaper than having a new swimming pool constructed, buying the land and all.

On plus size lingerie

2010-05-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

I'm reading another book now by James Patterson, Season of the Machete. Its copyright is dated 1977. I didn't know he went back that far. I don't recall reading or hearing anything about him back then. Maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. Maybe he was still such a new young writer. He hadn't published fifty bestsellers yet. This book takes place on a fictional Caribbean island a few years in the future, with the US government teaming up with the Mafia (which he still called Cosa Nostra, though I don't think people have used that term for many years) and a pair of freelance killers to create some problems on the island, probably to provoke the US government into taking it over, though I haven't gotten that far yet. The hero has been introduced and has a girlfriend, though apparently not one into plus size lingerie, but he has yet to realize he's in danger, though we've been given foreshadowing of it.

On top fat burners

2010-05-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, the top fat burners are vigorous regular exercise and drastically reducing how much sugar, saturated fat and high glycemic load foods you eat. But I realize that's not what people want to hear. There are so many things that will speed up your metabolism so you burn more calories. But of course it's also better to find something that will reduce insulin so your body is encouraged to burn stored fat to supply those calories, because that's the idea, to get rid of stored fat, not just to burn calories using easy to use nutrition but not already stored fat. It's not just about calories. Your body can also destroy muscle fiber and you don't want to do that.

On RV repair

2010-05-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

The weather this spring has been unusually beautiful. I hope that foretells a nice summer, though I'm in no mood to appreciate it as I would have last summer. So this one will probably be very nice, just to spite me, it seems. I'm sure people with recreational vehicles are getting ready to hit the road in record numbers, getting rv repair and maintenance so they're not at risk in breaking down in a strange place. I took a cross country trip once, many years ago when I was very young and thought I could afford to take off work and do things like that. I wanted an adventure, though mostly I just drove a lot. Some fun in outdoors parks. I slept in my car to save money. I didn't want to pay motels.

On weight loss supplements

2010-04-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Prechter author of Conquer the Crash says he's the only one out there warning of deflation. A lot of people are warning of inflation. Money manager and investment guru based in Hong Kong Marc Faber is warning of the Zimbabwe-ization of the US dollar. Zimbabwe is a country in southern Africa, formerly known as Rhodesia which has suffered a lot since the guerilla leader Robert Mugabe took over years ago. It went through a time of incredible inflation. People didn't need weight loss supplements because they couldn't afford to eat. There's a picture online of a Zimbabwe bill for over one trillion dollars.

On anti wrinkle eye cream

2010-04-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

I recently read an interesting book Conquer the Crash by Robert Prechter. It originally came out in 2002 but was recently updated for 2009. He makes a good case for a coming deflationary depression that could make the Great Depression look like child's play. Fortunately, I'm not convinced. For one thing, the 2002 book clearly says that the bull market in stocks that ended in 2000 was the end of the "fifth" wave that means the beginning of the crash. That was ten years ago. Money moved into real estate and it crashed and did rock the economy and increase unemployment, but we're not as bad off as he predicted and he now says all that is just the early stages of what's coming. I can't say he's wrong, though it's not a picture to help make anti wrinkle eye cream effective. It's enough to make you lose any hair you have left.

On TV deals

2010-04-10T06:40:00.000-07:00

For many years my mother had what would now be called old-fashioned TV. It was a fairly nice one for its time, but its time had passed. Finally she went out looking at tv deals and came back with a modern flat screen TV. I'm not convinced its high definition. It has a good picture but not super sharp, and with cable sometimes it's even kind of grainy. I don't know what it would do with Blue Ray DVD, since she doesn't have that. And I'm very behind in TV technology. It's not a really big screen. And she sets it into an entertainment center which I for one hate, but she likes things decorative that way. I'd buy a much bigger screen and set it on the floor or hang it on the wall and wouldn't have anything else near the picture.

On public speaking anxiety

2010-03-27T07:25:00.001-07:00

I've been toying with the idea of making money as a speaker. For some reason, I have very little public speaking anxiety in the normal sense. I've spoken at panels at science fiction conventions. But I guess I'm reluctant to start something that I wouldn't and couldn't take very far. I can't do it in The Philippines. Or could I? Maybe I could give speeches there. Would they pay me much? Probably not. Maybe I'd get business from it. That's a thought. But on the whole I realize I'm most comfortable just sitting in front of a computer writing. I just need to increase the income I make from that. I wish I could find a way to do that without hunting for clients.

On fat burner

2010-03-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

Reading THE FOUR PILLARS OF INVESTMENT by William Bernstein has helped me clarify my understanding the relationship of risk to reward with investments. And one chapter helps validate my own conclusion that it's worthwhile only to invest for streams of income, though he goes on to ignore that conclusion for the rest of the book and preaches index funds and asset allocation. However, to my mind, getting rid of asset allocation as normally practiced is a good fat burner for your portfolio, because selling off expensive assets generates broker commissions and capital gains taxes in taxable accounts. It's better to keep those securities earning more and more dividends and interest. Don't worry about their market values, that's my advice, so long as you receive your checks on time.

On diet pill with ephedra

2010-03-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

What I'd really like to do is have such a secure and large form of residual income that I could get back to writing fiction. Right now, it'd be impossible without abandoning my family and I can't do that. Not even a diet pill with ephedra could make me do that. It's kind of funny. I now have the time and additional income to just live in a small apartment and do nothing but write novels, but I can't do it. I'm still driven for more money. I have dependents I can't ignore. What good would writing do for me if I didn't have them? It would be a sad and lonely life no matter how I tried to reassure myself I was happy or how much fame and fortune I ever earned from the writing.

On diet supplement

2010-03-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Many people should be taking a diet supplement. One of the most important ones, to my mind, is some kind of Omega 3 supplement. Personally I take fish oil at pharmaceutical grade. I'm not sure if any of the vegetarian sources work as well. I know Dr. Al Sears recently discovered something grown in Brazil that also has a lot of Omega 3, and I hope to learn more about it in upcoming weeks and months. I know that another company has an Omega 3 made from krill, and that is probably also a good source. The only way you don't need this is if you eat a lot of tuna or wild-harvested salmon as well as grass-fed beef. And maybe eggs from chickens who are allowed to eat naturally as they roam. I'm not sure how that affects their egg yolks.

On vitamins for men

2010-03-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

Along with my regular multivitamin tablets, I also take vitamins for men, so there's some support for my prostate and other sexual organs. More zinc than I guess women need, though they need some. And I guess they can benefit from the antioxidant properties of lycopene even though they don't need its anti prostate cancer and enlargement properties. But these are specific to men, along with beta-sisterol. So far as I know, there's no reason to women to take that, though I could be wrong. It is present in cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage and cauliflower. Whether God put it there just for men or for women too, I can't say.

On daily multivitamin

2010-03-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

I believe everyone should take a daily multivitamin. I don't always, but I believe it's a good idea. I'm just not able to implement all my good ideas for myself or my family right now. I do have some leftover from a few months ago, a good brand from New Zealand. The owner is very careful to formulate high digestible pills or capsules. He studies how the various nutrients and minerals are digested in our bodies and then designs the best delivery system. Cheap ones just don't care if you digest them or not. Many people defecate their vitamin pills out, but don't realize it because, of course, they don't search their bm to look for stuff they don't want to find. But cheap ones are a waste of money. You get no benefit.