Time machine - wives liviing today in the 50s, 40s, 30s

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1042702/Time-Warp-Wives-Meet-women-really-live-past.html

If I were to choose, I would say get me a wife from the 50s!

I adore cloche hats from the 30s.

Lord & Taylor, on sale @ $24.99

But 50s wife as of from "Mad Men" is the best.
This couple is featured in TV series here:



According to Joanne Massey of the UK show Beehive wives her idea of the perfect day is staying in and cooking for her husband “I love nothing better than fastening my pinny round my waist and baking a cake for Kevin in my 1950s kitchen.I put on some lovely Frank Sinatra music and am completely lost in my own little fantasy world. In our marriage, I am very much a lady and Kevin is the breadwinner and my protector. We’ve been married for 13 years and we’re extremely happy because we both know our roles. There is none of the battling for equality that I see in so many marriages today.”


That was from 2008.

"They never mentioned that I do actually have a job (Joanne works two days a week at Shugborough Hall)."

Joanne was also irritated that neither organisation mentioned her considerable vocal talents. The 36-year-old is better known as her alter ego Lola Lamour, a Forties chanteuse who entertains audiences at dances and re-enactment events across the land.


Read more: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/1950s-loving-Joanne-happily-stuck-past/story-12504774-detail/story.html#ixzz3gOdRlU4A

That was from 2009.

Joanne has three jobs and she enjoys them all. She works part-time in the shop at a National Trust property near where she lives. “Its a great place to work. Its right on my doorstop and I can cycle to work in the Summer on my 1930's push bike! My colleagues at the shop are good fun and lovely people. I also get to meet and chat with the customers and many locals come in for a chat.”


On some weekends she also works for the lord who lives at the property, which is her second job. Joanne said that it has been a great experience for her working there. She also had worked for Lord Patrick Lichfield up until his death a few years ago. “I enjoyed every minute of it. He was a true English gentleman and I miss him.”


Joanne would work at his house whenever he would have a house party, which was every other weekend in the Autumn as it is shooting season. “I was and am a maid. I do the rooms, serve dinner and help in the kitchen. Pack and unpack for guests. It was one of the best experiences of my life as I met many rich and famous people.” Since Joanne began her singing career, which is her third job, she hasn’t been able to work there much.

That was from 2010 - this interview creates a more sophisticated portrait.

Hope to find more follow-up articles and interviews in recent years.

 

Reuse or recycle or die

 

Introducing stainless steel drinking straws. Drinkers who are ecologically
aware won't  use plastic straws. Straws are either natural straws or forget it. But if one can't live a full life without a straw in his glass, metal it be.







And not to get bored after you guests departed, use

Drink Straw Cleaning Brush.  

And next I would like to introduce Wooden 100% recyclable toothpicks for cleaning drink straw cleaning brushes. 

 

Cheers!

Pregnancy with no limitations and childbirth with no pain

In this article -  The psychological trauma behind surrogate pregnancies
- the author makes bold statements regarding the motives of the parents who decide to outsource pregnancy. He suggests they do so in order to avoid the discomfort and physical limitations of  pregnancy and the pain of childbirth.
I suppose many parents for whom hiring a surrogate mother is the only way to have a genetically related baby would disagree.

But let's imagine it's all true and money is the only issue.
Some choldfree don't want kids and it won't matter for them that a painless option exists. Some are afraid of  pregnancy, birth and sleepless nights. If a couple can pay for a surrogate, obviously they can pay for a nanny.  Just curious how many childfree couples may change their view on childbirth if surrogate pregnancy becomes more of a mainstream.

Breivik in court

Declaring himself an "anti-Nazi", Breivik said Knights Templar had made a conscious decision to distance itself from national socialism "because it was quite blood-stained". He added: "We felt it completely essential to do so. For the extreme right to ever be able to prevail in Europe in the future, one had to distance oneself from the old-school ideology."

The difference between him and Hitler, he said, was that "the pillar of National Socialism is expansionism; I am an isolationist". He was also "more liberal on ethnicity" than the Nazis, he added, suggesting he could accept it if "around 2%" of Norway's population was "non-indigenous".

Source: The Guardian, Anders Breivik prefers execution over 'pathetic' jail term

If health reform bill goes thru...

The new increases in Medicare taxes will apply to individuals making more than $200,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples.
The measure, set to go into effect next year, is estimated to raise more than $200 billion over 10 years.
Roughly 4 million households -- or 2.4% -- will be affected by the increase initially, according to new estimates from the Tax Policy Center. By 2022 that number will grow to 8.3 million, or 4.6%.

Source: Health reform's tax bite By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney March 30, 2012

Euro / kg to USD / lb --> Iceland

While  visiting a new country I feel more comfortable if I have a simple way to estimate how much I pay for my "market basket".
For example, what it costs me to buy bread, milk, cheese, farmers cheese, yoghurt, seasonal fruits and vegetables, fish and meats for 3 days.
Since prices / selection are drastically different in convenience stores and supermarkets in US, I would do basic research to locate supermarkets in designated location. It may works the other way around in the foreign country (family stores are cheaper than supermarket chains), but I assume for simpicity sake that life in Europe is similar to American way.

Let's assume we talk euro. I suppose all I need then is the ability to convert euro-kilos and euro-litres into dollar-pounds and dollar-quarts.
This way according to today's conversion rate  10 EURO / KILOGRAM = 6 USD / LB.

As I read further through pick-up in Iceland, the author suggests that due to high prices for groceries you cook each and every meal at home (in your rental apartment).  In such case we mean Iceland Krone.
1000 ISK / KILOGRAM = 17.4 USD / LB.


Grocery stores
Forget dining out for every meal.  This is especially true when you leave Reykjavik.  There are numerous small towns outside of the capital city and while many of them have restaurants, they are usually more like truck stop cafes with very simple menus.  My suggestion is to stock up on supplies at the various grocery stores.  The cheapest of which are Bonus and a store called Kronan.  Stock up on the basics: bread, cheese, Skyr (an Icelandic dairy product similar to yogurt), deli meats, etc.  Buy local greenhouse-grown vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and peppers. Almost everything else is imported.  If you have a place to cook your own meals, your options will increase.  In that case, I recommend buying fish.  It’s fresh, clean, reasonably affordable and doesn’t need any fancy sauces or condiments to be tasty.

Still can't find information on staple food prices.
    

Random on gender and procreation

Awards for reproductive responsibility - perm contraception decisions such as vasectomy or tubal ligation:
golden snip award - if you never had children, silver - if this was an afterthought.

Benjam, 23, Helsinki - - what a guy!
More on fashion.

Bonus: Pick-up in Iceland

Iceland and pick-up (3): "One month into my Iceland stay I forgot what it was like to experience basic human warmth"

Iceland and pick-up (2)

The problem with ordering drinks in a bar is that the serving size is a joke. I estimate it's about half of the "official" serving size in the States...
To combat these problems, my drinking strategy was to knock back some scotch at home while pumping myself up to misogynistic rap music, then moving to beer once I arrived at the bar. 

***************************************** What I want you to understand is that  good chat is not valued by Iceland girls. They really don't care about your status back home, your vast experience, or your accomplished humor.


The paragraph below made my heart go out for the guy:

The night I went to see a Brazilian singer with a Russian girl about one month into my trip was eye opening. The Russian was chatty about life and travel while the Brazilian singer was charming, smiley and graceful. The fact that the Russian girl asked for my opinions almost blew my mind, because even Icelanders didn't give a fuck what I thought of their country. One month into my Iceland stay I forgot what it was like to experience basic human warmth. 

I believe this guy is sincere. He is not talking about many bangs with easy Icelandic girls he got in Iceland. In fact, he got two in two months. So much for apartment near the bar zone, smart afterparties pick-up line, and two months in the dark cold winter with not much of human touch.

Iceland and pick-up (2)

Iceland and pick-up (1)

Icelandic girls are extremely shy, boring and cold (I'd describe American girls as annoying, abrasive and cold).
 """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
(1) The girls are poor conversationalists (2) they love to overdrink (3) they love no-strings-attached sex. ==> Next

Bonus: Twitter. 

Iceland and pick up

Reading "Bang Iceland" by Roosh V.
So far so good. This guide is meant for straight men. No advise whatsoever for straight girls. Or for not-so-straight people. Though Reykjavik is the famous capital for gay clubbing. You've been warned.

...cold rain or fat snow...brutal wind...Summer is better. The average high temperature rises to the 50s, and around the solstice you get to experience nearly twenty-four hours of sun per day
So, let's settle for the summer trip. College girls go away for summer but this is even better.

English is widely spoken,...so there is no need to bone up on your Icelandic (the girls won't even give you bonus points for saying a few words in their language)...free lessons http://www.icelandiconline.is  ====> Next

GÍSLI	Halló! Ég heiti Gísli. Hvað heitir þú?
KATE	Ég heiti Kate.

Plain food is best: ribeye steak & last meal requests

Been following my smart diet tips?


So, which one won you heart?

Port and pickles diet?
Or scratchy grains and soup diet?


Between one thin soup and another and these gigantic bowls of diet popcorn you should enjoy food as much as people who order their last meal do. I doubt they'll go for buckweat. But plain food is best for your tats buds - and for your diet. As a bonus you don't have to part with your life once you are done with your meal.

1. Ribeye steak.

Made it yesterday with the griddle similar to this one.

Medium to mediaum-rare, definitely pink all way inside.
Some salt.
Green salad.
May be a glass of red wine?
That's all you need.


2. Sea bass in coconut flakes

***

Gerald Mitchell, who was executed in 2001, requested a bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers hard candy. Jonathan Wayne Nobles, executed in 1998, ordered the Eucharist sacrament.
In Florida in 1989, Ted Bundy had steak, eggs, hash browns and coffee, according to the Last Meals Project, an online archive of famous inmates' last meals. Timothy McVeigh, executed in Indiana in 2001, ordered mint chocolate chip ice cream.

***

When Lawrence Russell Brewer, a notorious white supremacist murderer, placed his order for his final meal earlier this month...
Brewer, in one last attempted act of defiance, had supersized his request, ordering two fried chicken steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue meat, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice-cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. But as he was led off for his lethal injection, he hadn't eaten any of it*.

"It was too much for Senator John Whitmire, chairman of the Texas senate's criminal justice committee. He halted the state's tradition of granting a prisoner facing execution the right to request their favourite food." September 2011.

 

Killer marketing tool

Target figures out 16-year-old is pregnant before her father & details on how they push your spending buttons

Wow! Data mining along with personal data in your database make a killer marketing tool.

Vegan cosmetics: castor oil Hot Mama Lip Gloss

We here, at The All Natural Face, care more about our customers than we do the bottom line. Our mission is to provide you with truly pure cosmetics. We use the purest form available for each ingredient in our products. We use organic whenever possible...but do not throw around words for sales like a lot of companies do. The word Vegan is used on tons of products. All that really means is that it doesn’t contain animal products. If you are striving for purely vegan products please read the labels carefully. Just because it is vegan does not mean they can’t put chemicals in there…just not those derived from animal sources.

For all you vegans out there….did you know that carmine is ground up African cockroaches!? Love that tube of bright red lipstick? Read the label. If it contains carmine….that is what you are ingesting. To bring that a little more into the light….the average woman ingests 6-10 lbs of lipstick over their lifetime.

We then formulate from there, making stuff from its purest, simplest forms... We then test it on human guinea pigs…no animal testing here! Our products and raw materials are not tested on animals...


Many people have converted from Bare Minerals, Everyday Minerals, Bare Escentuals, Physicians Formula, and many, many more. The secret is that we use pure natural ingredients here. No bismuth oxychloride, parabens, talc, carmine, silk powder, d &c lake dyes, just to mention a few!



7) Lake lake (lac) dyes: those contain lac, which is rubbery secretion of some insects.

6) Silk powder: obviously non-vegan, comes from cocoons of larvae of silkworms.

5) Carmine: carmine is a  pigment of a bright-red colour obtained from the aluminium salt of carminic acid, which is produced by some scale insects, such as the cochineal scale and the Polish cochineal (wiki). 


4) Talc: how this is non-vegan? Dolomite and silica is one way to compose talc. They contain  bio materials from long long ago. 

3) Parabens: parabens are found naturally in plants, nothing non-vegan about them. The rumour is they cause breast cancer. Scary! Because no matter hat you do in regards to cosmetics, they are still everywhere, like in blueberries!



2) Bismuth: unuasually low toxicity for a heavy metal; used all over the place, in pharmaceutics (Pepto-Bismol etc.), cosmetics. Formerly used to treat syphilis, nowadays used to treat gastric ulcers and like.  Vegan!


1) No animal testing:  I protest. Humans are also animals. No vegan or vegetarian will eat a human or even drink his blood.
Non-vegetarians do eat other humans as pictured in 400+ Cannibal movies.

Price: $4.60 

Ingredients: Cold pressed castor oil, Candelillia wax, Mica, Oxides

Red Hot Mama Lip Gloss

Online shopping kills

Online shopping can be addictive and financially devastating akin to gambling. All these little pretty nothings, egg slicers, cedar moth balls, funky spatulas, honey dippers, as little as they cost - add up to hundreds of dollars on your credit card bill. But whatever.

If we look at online shopping from the other side, we see people slavin g away for $11.50 / hr at warehouses, picking and packing stuff you ordered with few mouse clicks.

The Reality Of Online Shopping

Online shopping. We point, click, and buy. Then what happens? We’ll investigate.
In this Nov. 16, 2009 photo, Reginald Armstead, Jr., of Phoenix, sends a package on its way after packing it at the 800,000 sq. ft. Amazon.com warehouse in Goodyear, Ariz. (AP)

In this Nov. 16, 2009 photo, Reginald Armstead, Jr., of Phoenix, sends a package on its way after packing it at the 800,000 sq. ft. Amazon.com warehouse in Goodyear, Ariz. (AP)

Online shopping is such a breeze. Plug in your credit card. Point, click and buy. It seems like magic. But what happens after that little e-mail that says your order is confirmed? .

Well, here’s what happens. Somewhere in America, likely in a truly giant warehouse, likely at a very low wage, often a temp worker is off like a shot to find that product and send it on its way. And they do that maybe a thousand times a day. Running like rabbits. Fire-able for any reason. Desperate. To bring you fast, free shipping.

This hour, On Point: The new coal miners. Inside warehouse America.

Amazon warehouse




Kiva Systems automated warehouse - could be used by Amazon or any other online fulfilling centre.



Robots may substitute warehouse pickers. Everyone happy now?

Is French parenting really that different from American? Some people are just brats with no manners.

Why American Kids Are Brats

And their parents might be getting just what they deserve

Amidst all the talk this past week about Pamela Druckerman’s new book, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, there was one phrase that immediately lodged itself in my mind. It was in a sidebar that ran with the Wall Street Journal adaptation of her book, “Why French Parents Are Superior,” and it said this: “Children should say hello, goodbye, thank you and please. It helps them to learn that they aren’t the only ones with feelings and needs.”...

Read more: "Why American Kids Are Brats"  by
By Judith Warner | @judithwarner | February 10, 2012

via childfree@livejournal

I thought by the time they enter kindergarten all the little ones know how to behave politely. And if they do not,  the school will teach them in the first 100 days of school and they'll in turn tech their inapt parents.  Am I missing something in modern development, parenting and school education?
I understand why babies cry on the planes but I don't understand why a healthy seven-year old may misbehave in public place. 
 

Enjoyed this comment since it gives a different perspective:

I'm a Swede living in the French countryside and in my experience the French are not exceptional in their childrearing. Or their diets. Or their clothes. And no matter how often the French tell me it is so, they are not even that exceptional in their beaurocracy. Don't get me wrong, the French are wonderful in countless ways, but in the mostly American western narrative France is the magical negro, only white and not "inferior".

But... to some extent, even clearly spoiled children can appear a little bit more well-behaved here simply because of differences in culture. For example, even if a child spends the whole dinner party playing with a portable gaming device at the table and interrupts his father while speaking, that child (in my limited experience) will dutifully kiss me hello and goodbye, usually without prompting. In Sweden, where little value is placed on greeting anyone, that child would probably be staring at his feet during the whole greeting ceremony and not offer a hand to shake, or at the very best surrender a limp hand with a very pained expression. A younger child might scream "NO!" and run the other way when told to greet grandma, even less kiss a stranger. Being actually greeted by a child would be a sign of great parenting in Sweden, and one with limited experience (such as myself) may begin to surmise that the French are better parents.

Actually, the above article referrers  to more elaborate article from LA Times  dedicated to a new book on parenting.

A little more than a year has passed since the publication of Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" — the paroxysm-inducing guide to raising better children through belittlement, intimidation and tyrannical music practice — and already we have version 2.0. Pamela Druckerman's "Bringing Up Bébé" alleges that it's the French who could teach indulgent, over-scheduling, helicoptering American parents a thing or two about rearing les enfants... 

Read more: "Tiger Moms vs. 'Bébé' moms"  (Meghan Daum, February 9, 2012).

I don't believe it's about national culture. Some kids are just brats with lack of empathy and manners. And some parents are brats with lack of empathy and manners. World is unfair and often they are not connected, parents are not getting what they deserve. I suppose such kids and adults were always around but now with the help of globalization and social diversification at all levels and in all places it becomes more visible. I suspect this book won't get such massive response as Amy Chua's book. Everyone wants to either make a statement: "I am not treating my (present, past, future) kids as Amy Chua" or agree that her approach makes sense. 

What is the way to react to suggestion to teach kids good manners and consideration to the needs of others from early age? You either succeed or you totally or partially fail.  In such case very few will argue that it's better this way. That it was not a failure but intention to bring up free self-confident people. The majority will just keep quiet and go back to their electronic devices and social networks as usual.

So long, comrades (2/2)

Part I 

We never go anywhere. On vacation, in a place that does not look different from home, we yearn for the routine of the days at home. On business trips we run from airports to offices to hotel rooms convinced that work is enabling us to see new horizons, but while in the past we only needed to travel small distances to arrive somewhere, today we spend a day in a plane and we are still in the same place. Our conversations are made of identical phrases. Companion, our existence is so standardized that I could take your place and you mine and nobody at work or at home would notice the swap. We would not notice ourselves. The history of mankind is the history of man in relation to his work. First, there was hard physical labor which was necessary for our mere sustenance. Later, there was repetitive office work that was however recognized as such and which we, the workers, tried to escape either by demanding better working conditions or by at least distancing ourselves from work during our off-hours. Now there is repetitive office work that the system has handed us down in such a way that we think it holds the key to our freedom. 

As if being clones of each other were not enough, we are also clones of the same one-dimensional being. That being maintains that the universe bound by today’s work ethics and conventions is the only possible universe. Our limitations are clear. Our working hours are incestuously tied to our spare time. Our day revolves around work: there is the commute, the long working hours, and the commute. It becomes hard not to think about what occupies such a central part in our life even if instead of working we are meeting a person, watching a movie, or reading a paper. It is understandable: we can make sense of new experiences only by comparing them to known ones. The conversations with the people that we meet, the books that we read, and the movies that we watch are a mirror of our limited experiences. The experiences are limited because for the most part we are surrounded by people like us, who, like us, commute and work and commute. 

Mastering the rules of the system has become synonym with being good in a moral sense. But why the stated objective of the system is excellence, the rules that the system has adopted work against the objective. The initial objective itself has been forgotten. The requirement of our job is no longer quality or perfection, but learning perfectly well how the system works. And so we take a course in business practices, a seminar in project management, and at the same that we cannot finish all the mediocre work that we are assigned because on purpose we were given more work that we could handle so that we would not slack off. And we lack the ability of judging critically our assignment. Today, our inability to get away from work and even the lack of a desire to escape show that we are subjugated but content. Our contentment, however, is double-faced. Any day they can hear us bitch in the elevators, in the halls, around the water-coolers about how much work we have, how an ordinary sandwich at lunch break is the highlight of yet another day, and how we do not recall the last time that we saw a sunset live. 

Comrade, you sit on the other side of this partition wall and we are so close that I can hear you breath. We share the same neon light and the same filtered air. We are one body and one soul, in good times as in bad times. I can hear you sneezing and coughing. The same cold that you caught from the comrade sitting two cubicles away from me, I am now catching from you. The flu or a headache, every day sees us here at our combat position. We would come to work even with the chicken-pox or the scarlet fever, if the company let us. There is so much work to be done. Back in college we worked whole nights and we took extra-credit courses so that one day we could have a house in the suburbs. Now we work like dogs so that one day we will be able to play golf in Florida. It is the future what we are living for. I remember when we used to slave away for nights in a row so that we could handle at least those math problems that the professor had assigned during previous midterms. From midterm to midterm the problems kept consistently similar. I doubt that we had a good understanding of mathematics then, like today we do not have a good understanding of the issues facing modern technology. Comrade, I hate to admit it, but we are not very smart. It is not for nothing that we are stuck in a cubicle the size of a rabbit-cage. If it is true that our salary has gone up consistently since we were handed our diploma, it is also true that our increasingly more expensive purchases have kept us in a position where for the next few years we are committed to work just to offset already made expenditures. As soon as we were offered a job, even before receiving the first pay-check, we went out and bought a car. Later with a promise of a higher salary, we bought a larger car and a house. 

Comrade, I look around and I see 156 of us on this floor. I see 19 floors like ours in this building. I see thousands of buildings like ours in this town. I see thousands of towns like ours in this country. Ours is the 14th floor of a new building located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The floor is a perfect square where everybody has a standard-size cubicle assigned to himself, that is, everybody with the exception of those six workers who live in the famed corner offices. How they squeezed 6 corners out of a square is a mathematical mystery. The people in the corner offices are copies of the inhabitants of the cubicles. They are special only in the sense that they are the ones who decide where everybody else sits. They also have other small privileges: we cannot hear their personal phone conversations and they do not catch colds while sitting at their spacious desks - they catch them at meetings. 

One Grammy winner with no name

One Grammy Award You Won't See On TV
February 12, 2012

...Ken Shipley, who's nominated for two of those: Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes.
The album that got him into consideration, where he's up against the likes of Neil Diamond and Paul McCartney, is Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology. It's a compilation of the veteran Chicago soul singer's music. Shipley is one of the founders of the record label Numero Group, which finds and preserves obscure musical recordings.
"Syl Johnson is one of those guys who fell through the cracks of — not only the Chicago soul scene — but the national soul scene as well," Shipley says. "He lived his entire career in the shadows of two of soul music's largest names." He's talking about James Brown and Al Green<...>
Shipley calls the set a "five-year labor of love." Though he's been nominated for a Grammy before, he says it would be special to win one for this project — not least because Syl Johnson himself will be in the audience.


About Numero Group

About Numero

Founded in 2003 as an archival record label by Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier, and Ken Shipley, Numero has evolved into a multi-format media company, devoted to dragging brilliant recordings, films, and photography out of unwarranted obscurity.We re on a dirty, labor-intensive mission... and it's urgent as all hell. Time kills off precious bits of passed-over sound, story, and ephemera every day, just as fast as we can haul this sprawling archive of under-heard recordings along with the musicians, writers, and entrepreneurs who created them out of exile.

Every Numero production more than 60 titles in our diverse catalog of LPs, CDs, cassettes, 45s, 12"s, and DVDs is a modest miracle of localized sound creation, shedding fresh light on the efforts of men and women who sang, played, recorded, and peddled to shallow rewards, if any. Each track lives and breathes at the nexus of story and song, preserving human work and hope gone lost into freshly etched grooves. Every recording we unearth is painstakingly re-mastered and carefully researched, with obsessive attention to narrative and factual detail unmatched in the so-called reissue field. By self-imposed law, everything numbered by Numero is a stunning new artifact of image and word, tailored to the sounds it safeguards.

Eccentric Soul, our flagship series, has documented lovingly mishandled soul labels from Columbus, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Miami. Our Wayfaring Strangers compilations collect the privately issued song-fruits of wandering folkies. Each Cult Cargo release visits the sonic shores of some tiny, isolated nation, while Good God! titles seek the spiritual, as enshrined on reels of audio tape neglected until now. And with Local Customs we investigate isolated, mom-and-pop recording outfits, each operated by a homespun Alan Lomax who gave neighbors and friends studio time, a microphone, and a shot at being heard a generation later. We've even crossed the street from time to time to deliver hidden worlds of unsung power pop, kitchen-sink New York disco and rap, kid-group soul, fiery rockabilly gospel, Franco-Belgian electro-samba, phantom blaxploitation funk, psychedelic heartland pop, orchestral UK chanteuse folk, decaying art-soul and Southside funk-blues club life captured in glorious black & white.


This Grammy award winner box set was painstakingly re-mastered by Peerless Mastering / Jeff Lipton. 
No mention in the article, no mention on Numero Group website...


Happy Valentine's Day, Jeff!  

P.S. Lost to Sir Paul McCartney in best Historical album nomination which was a noble competition, to say the least.

Us females

Source: http://campuscanoodling.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/princesses.jpg

So long, comrades (1/2)

Below you'll find e-mail sent to ALL  via UNIX routers. 

ALL not as in "the whole world" but as "Company employees listed in ALL mailing list as of February 4, 1998". As you will see from this go-away letter, it was e-mailed to people not close to the author who was employed with the company for few months. I take the liberty of sharing this historical letter with ALL as in "my readers". I also took the liberty of inserting some line breaks to make reading experience less painful.
 

I looked up the author in Linkedin and since he is apparently not listing the company he left on his terms on 1998 after few months and since there are dozens of people with this name, I kept his signature, so it's up to him to claim this old text as his or completely dissociate himself from it. 

Fourteen years ago. 

If you, the reader, agreed with it back then, what have you done to change your life? If you haven't agreed back then, have you had similar thoughts at one or other point of your professional life? 

Subject: Comrade SendTo: All From: CN=[censored censored]/OU=Ops/O=[censored] PostedDate: 02/04/98 03:25:25 AM  RouteServers: CN=Davinci/O=[censored] RouteTimes: 02/04/98 03:25:25 AM-02/04/98 03:25:28 AM DeliveredDate: 02/04/98 03:26:14 AM Categories: $Revisions: 

When one leaves, there is this irresistible urge to leave a message behind. I always think that the best way to walk out is in silence. I do not possess that much style. Comrade, Good morning. I thought I would beat you to work today, but you are here already. I hear you typing away on the other side of this flimsy partition wall. From the speed of your keystrokes you sound pretty sure of yourself: you know what to say and how to say it. From the power with which you hit the keyboard, it seems that you want your colleagues to notice both your presence and your self-assurance. You do good work; we all do good work. The big boss said it himself, “You have all been working very hard. You have done a great job and I know that you are willing to go the necessary extra mile”.
I am surprised of how successful we are.

In fact, when I look around I see the same faces that I used to see in college: the faces of people who would get A’s only because of the professors’ acquiescence, faces who were incapable of elementary work and who called cramming all weekend long studying. Now, stuck with the same faces, we, today’s office workers, are cramming all the time and we revel in being office workers with two degrees of seniority in the same way that we used to be proud of telling a freshman that we were juniors. How can it be that we, mediocre students inept at remembering simple mathematical formulas because unable to master the learning method, are now doing quality work? Bill, the average student, is now our bi-spectacled boss and he tells us how to do the job. He is the one who sets the standard for quality and who tells us that we have done a good job. When he does, we rejoice. Over the years, our two gaping eyes have turned confident as we have restricted our area of inquiry from advanced mathematical concepts to spreadsheets, from what we knew little about to the little that we know about. That problem that we know how to solve, we think we know how to solve it. Unfortunately, behind these confident eyes there is the same thinking power that was behind those gaping eyes during the week of final examinations. Then, the awareness of the magnitude of that power would send us in a panic. 

I am going to the kitchenette to get a cup of coffee and then I, too, will start working. The little personal rituals - coffee as soon as I get to the office, a quick look at the newspaper during lunch - and the standardized practices of the job give me a sense of security. It is in the regularity of these movements that I rediscover the same certainty that characterizes the world that we are part of. We know what awaits us: work, weekends, work, shopping, business trips, work, vacation, work, golf, work, Thanksgiving, work, retirement to Florida, some consulting on the side, more golf. First, we get used to and then we get comfortable with anything that is repetitive. The repetitiveness of the daily routines, which have become as faithful as the rising sun, makes life seem natural, and if it is natural, then it must be right. 

Comrade, your mannerisms get on my nerves: the gurgling sounds that you make when you drink coffee and your habit of occasionally cracking your knuckles. But then, I think that you must have a similar attitude towards my idiosyncrasies : my chronic coughing and my constant bumping of the chair into the desk And then, when I hear your too ready laughter at the big boss’ jokes and your assertiveness when you speak to a subordinate, I recognize you as a brother. In your servility and pretension I rediscover my servility and pretension. You are a good copy of me. Oh, comrade! The capitalist system has succeeded in shaping us exactly the way the communists had planned it but had failed at. It has made us into people who are just like each other, obedient to the rules of the system, and without a will to rebel or the consciousness of their condition. It did all this under the false pretenses of preserving, heightening, and recognizing our individuality. The results: on the job we can be easily replaced and we live unending similar days in identical offices, off-work we walk around dressed alike - blue jeans and sneakers - and we return from expensive weekends and exotic vacations with the same comments and observations. 


Part II which provides more personal details, e.g. the size of the company and location - along with more social critique.

Phobias: fear of not being seen in a Dress, Sitophobia etc.

Fear of not being seen in a dress
I am a 40 something transgendered person.
I have been trans as long as i can remember.
I was married for 18 years to a very non understanding wife and had to try and keep my physical trans state hidden.
Anyway cut a long story short we broke up and i moved out.
Eventually got myselve my own place where i could be me.
Anyway, it got to the point now where i hate going out looking like a fella. I prefer my other side. I am very convincing as a girl and have no problemms passing in the public eye.


Sitophobia (fear of food)
My whole life i have always had this Sitophobia problem that i seem to of come to terms with but the people around me just cant, when i was 2 years old i had a traumatic event where i almost died and from this day i have never eaten or even thought of food like a normal human being should! I eat 1 meal a day which consists of 5 slices of bacon in a baguette, i have had this everyday for 16 years! Some food i cant have anywhere near my face and i know it wont hurt or kill me but im just so terrified and i dont know why!

Actually, I was not looking for phobias or anything weird of this sort. I was trying to find the name of this film where people are getting pleasurable sensations from something like paper balls, carp fish nibbling on ones feet in aquarium, etc.
Numerous lists of top weird films but no luck so far. Help!