wallpaper Happy Halloween

I guess it should be no surprise that Barbara loves Halloween. The only problem is that we live in the dark woods and have never had a trick or treater. When the Reimers were here in Topeka we would go over to their house and man the door there or take the girls out for the walk to the neighbors. This year we will probably go deliver treats to some of her friends just to say hi. You know the saying, you can take the adult out of the kids but you can never take the kid out of the adult. I never worry about what she will make as her treats, cookies and cakes are the best.

One of my favorite nieces was born on Halloween. (Just so you know, they are all special to me and I love them all) Barb was over looking through all of her pictures to find one of Jennifer when she was a little girl. It will be on Facebook soon as I just heard the scanner running.

Every year right before Halloween the DirecTV has a run on scary movies. This morning Jamie Lee Curtis was on for the umpteenth showing of Halloween. I like scary movies but every once in a while just want to watch a western. Nothing beats scary like Mongo knocking out a horse. I would even settle for a John Wayne shoot'em up with about a gazillion dead Indians. Nothing wrong with Indians, they were the only enemy we had in the 1860-1880 time frame. There may have been a few enemies out there external but nothing scared farmers like an Apache raid.

You may or may not know that I have been keeping all the short stories about Vietnam that I have posted over the years. The only book that I can find near to it is flavor is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. My experience in Vietnam was a collection of funny , boring and scary short stories. I'll continue to work on the venue to produce the final effect. Not yet though.

Have a scary Day out there.

MUD

wallpaper Happy Halloween TIME: Clocks by Salvador Dali

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These are two works by Salvador Dali, a painter I admire for the techniques he masters, that talks about time.

Time is never enough and one of the reasons for stress.

That is why I did chose time as a theme for this Halloween.

Happy Halloween! The next one is just around the corner and it seems it was yesterday I wrote this post, and this one about last year's Halloween.

wallpaper Paris Hilton love and hate list

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I was concerned that Paris Hilton has never appeared in this blog and, let's face it, a blog that doesn't have a post about this woman is not worth reading.

So here she is! She love presents, pink, chocolate, animals... and puppies and bought many along the years! You can see the beautiful Gucci or Louis Vuitton(?) bag she bought to incarcerate the dog she just bought.

Buying is the verb of this woman an activity she loves and practice very often.

You can notice that all she listed are things and stuffs that are consumable. Friends? Yes, they are supposed to be priceless but some people say that everybody has a price and she said "I love animals better than people." And she like to meet her friends to gossip.

I wonder what happens at a meeting when one of the friends is not there.

She is very sensitive! As you can see she has a great fake crying.

I loved that!

Happy Halloween!

wallpaper Who, What, When, Where and Why; and Spiders

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When I went to school, the teachers said that the first paragraph of a good news story needed to tell the Who, What, When Where and Why (If available). In today's paper, there were so many stories that failed to tell these important points that I felt like I wound up dumber for reading the paper. One story about a shooting in a Nevada WalMart never did tell you in what city in Nevada or the name of the person arrested. There was a quote from a Reno spokeswoman for the Reno Police but darned little info. I won't go on any more but to mention that an editor let the mention of Prostrate Cancer get through the process? That darned prostrate cancer will just lay you low.

Just so you know, Barbara is from the group of people that actually like spiders. She thinks that anything that eats other bugs is just fine with her. Her friend, the Shawnee County Extension Agent, Jamie Hancock wrote an article about them in today's paper. I know that this is the only person Barbara likes more than Martha Stewart. Most of us are really freaked out when we find ourselves directly involved with spiders. I really hate it in the late summer or early fall when they build webs across the path and I have to find them by having my entire body covered with those damned sticky webs and on occasion a spider or two. Dave's wife, Barb Jr. hates spiders and I don't hold it against her.

So, as Jamie and Barbara would say, leave them alone and they will leave you the same way.

MUD

wallpaper Philadelphia

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Great movie and this song by Neil Young touches my soul in a way that I don't have words to express what I feel. The piano is amazing!

Have a great weekend.

Update November, 13

Ken left a comment and reminded that yesterday was Neil Young Birthday.

Happy Birthday Neil Young!

Reminder: The music is not "The streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen.

wallpaper Mention in History

Waiting for a Ride in a Bird Dog

wallpaper Montaignard Village up the road from Ambush Alley
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Convoy at Traffic Control Point in Dak To

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View from back seat of Bird Dog

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I was given a link to the history of the 1st Battalion, 92nd Field Artillery the other day and found out that I was mentioned in the history of the battalion. On the 5th of May 1968 I was flying as an aerial observer and called fire during an ambush of my unit. As usual, the Battalion Commander and the Battalion Signal Officer jumped in a helicopter and rushed to the scene of the clean up as most of the real ambush was busted up by the time they got there. The report went on to mention that the Battalion Commander and the Signal Officer were awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and I got mentioned in the notes. Oh well, the guys in my unit knew who was really there to save their bacon. It really made my day to know that most of my guys there went home safely.

Things like this make me wonder just how many times are we mentioned in some obscure publication and we don't even know. I know the Internet helps us find most of the posts if someone took the time to really enter the information. No, I don't think it is important to go back and try to recreate the past over one small award. The one thing I got home with was my body not poked with any new holes. No Purple heart for the Kid from Kansas and I was glad for that.

I did get home with Malaria and had enough blood taken over that 10 days in the VA Hospital to have filled a blood bank. They used a new medicine on me and I am fortunate to have never had a recurrence of Malaria. I had friends whose dad's had Malaria from WWII and at least once a year went back into the VA for treatment.

The weather here was down right cold yesterday and has turned warmer today. The wind has kicked back up and I doubt that Barb will want to ride if the temp is under 70 or the wind is +10 or over. I did have her bike looked at by our local bike shop to help fix the shifting problem. It was way out of adjustment on the rear wheel shifter and is OK now.

OH well, miles to go and things to do.

MUD

wallpaper Posters of some unforgettable movies

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It's not easy to make a list of movies most people like. I will try.

Hope you like these and name some movies you will never forget.

Thank you!

wallpaper Humor: At the Art Gallery

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wallpaper Gentleman Johnny Lott

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In my time in the service, I met a lot of people that I remember very well. The XO of the gun battery I was first assigned to the 1st Battalion, 92nd Artillery was a fellow we all called Gentleman Johnny Lott. He was from the South and had a very soft drawl and whenever he would talk to the cannoneers in our unit he would say "Gentlemen, listen up." In spite of being one of the dirtiest bunch of guys you would ever want to meet, he always called and treated the guys as gentlemen.

He and I were not in the same place very much. He rotated home and I became the XO of the battery. I wish I could tell you funny stories about John but mostly I heard the stories about how calm he was and much he cared about the men in our battery. I hope he was able to carry the calm intelligent person he was into his later life.

MUD

Melissa Merritt

This sleek and muscled 25 year old from Austin, Texas is Melissa Merritt.
Melissa won the Figure Overall title in Las Vegas at the Fitness America World Championships on November 21, 2008.
Melissa just ran a Fitness Bootcamp with fellow fitness stars Abby Marie and Brenda Mikalajunas.
Abby Marie is also being trained by Melissa.

wallpaper The Moulin de la Galette by Renoir and Picasso

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This is the moulin de la galette where people went to dance instead of watching dancers like in the moulin rouge.

It was depicted by some impressionists like Renoir, right painting, and also by Picasso, left.

"An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature."

August Renoir

"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen."

Pablo Picasso

These quotations explain a little the difference of both painters.

wallpaper Duck's travels

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bottom-left : Flickr By martytdx

bottom-right: Flickr By annkelliott

wallpaper The Halloween 5K ... by C.L. Beck

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It was a dark and stormy night ….

Really, I’m not stealing that phrase, even though it came from famed novelist, Bulwer-Lytton who was known for his purple prose, which, according to the venerable Wikipedia is “prose so overly extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself,” but despite its fancy definition—a definition which reminds me of molasses running downhill on a hot day—I believe it’s a form of writing that’s so terrible it might not even be purple but more like red because that’s what people see when they read writing like that … red like the color of my true love’s hair—except Russ has no hair on top and what’s left on the sides is silvery—or love that’s like a red, red, rose, which, by the way, was written by the Scotsman, Robert Burns, and I’m pretty certain that he never wrote purple prose, but it could be that he wore a purple kilt.

But, I digress … it really was a dark and stormy night. Despite having almost killed myself by inhaling my gum in a previous 5K, in Mona, Utah,  I’d stupidly bravely decided to try again this year. No, not to kill myself—to run another race. So it was, on a dark and stormy Saturday night, that Russ and I ran in the American Fork 2010 Halloween Fun Run.

The good thing about it was that unlike last summer in Mona, no dust lingered in the air to clog the sinuses. Instead, rain fell from the sky in torrents, lightening flashed overhead, and voices screeched in the night. Well, maybe that was just the little ol’ lady in front of me trying to clear her throat, but all the same ….

When we finished the first leg of the course, I noticed odd street markers that said things like, “Here lies Betty Joe, who lost her foot in last year’s snow. She ran a Halloween 5K and regrets it, under ground, this day.”

I looked at Russ to see if he’d noticed. He seemed oblivious to the oddness as he ran along in triple layers consisting of long underwear, a bright orange tee shirt that read, “Psych Ward, 666” and a sweatshirt that didn’t have any slogan … unless you include that spot of chicken soup left over from lunch. Perspiration dripped off his bald head and into his eyes. I said, “Don’t you think you’re a little overdressed for running?”

He wiped the sweat from his brow. “I’m keeping my muscles warm.”

I resisted the temptation to ask what muscles, and instead said, “Did you see that weird street sign back there?”

Russ slowed to a walk, which kept him even with me as I ran my hardest. “It wasn’t a street sign, Cindy, it was a headstone. This course runs through the town’s cemetery.”

I shuddered at the thought, which caused me to stumble over my own two feet. “I’m not sure I remembered that when we registered," I muttered, and then wondered if those were the voices of other runners on the wind, or ghosties in the graveyard.

The full moon came out from behind the clouds just enough for me to see the glow sticks fastened around various parts of the anatomies of the other 3,250 runners—the glow sticks being a tribal symbol to signify acceptance of the runner’s spiritual code.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerate slightly. There were only about 250 runners. The other 3,000 were smart enough to come in out of the rain and they’d all stayed home. The glow sticks were so we could see each other, and for the most part, runners fastened them around their necks. That is, all except for Russ, who hung them off his ears.

What can I say? I brought Russ along for comic relief, so that I wouldn’t notice the torturous leg cramps that would inevitably happen because I hadn’t trained for the race.

Knowing how easy it would be to trip in a pothole, I whipped out my trusty flashlight—the one that normally sat in my well-stocked, emergency preparedness kit. (All right, I'll tell the truth, I'd actually bought it at the hardware store just an hour before.) Russ looked over, and if it hadn’t been so dark, I swear I would have seen that gleam in his eye. “Here, let me carry that flashlight for you,” he said, ever so sweetly. I handed it over, thinking what a kind and noble man my bald-headed knight was.

By now we’d struggled up Snob Hill, which actually may have been Knob Hill, but I couldn’t clearly hear the name as the staff shouted it from the side of the road. Why didn’t they use a megaphone? How could I possibly hear correctly over the sound of my lungs screaming for air?

Down the hill we went. Thank goodness the American Fork police had parked a cruiser, with its bright lights flashing, to mark the last leg of the course. Yes, very bright lights. Blinding lights! Spots covered the interior of my eyeballs; I sideswiped the cop standing in the road, and almost turfed it when I ran into the curb.

Righting myself, I zeroed in on Russ’s voice. “We’re near the end, Cin. You can do it. Keep going. We’re going to beat our previous time!”

And that’s when I remembered my resolve to finish ahead of him. I’d almost done it at last year’s 5K and if it hadn’t been for that pesky piece of gum lodging itself in my throat and cutting off my wind, I would have made it.

A toasty glow enveloped me at the thought that I had outsmarted Russ. Either that or I was in the last stage of hypothermia, where you feel warm and then drop dead from the cold, damp air. At any rate, it didn’t matter which. I was bound to beat him because I’d tossed my gum before we even got to American Fork.

The blue, electronic finish light lay only yards ahead. I psyched my mind and strengthened my loins. This was it. My course was clear. I would put on a burst of speed, pass Russ and beat him at the last moment. I would be the fastest runner in the family, I would be ….

Russ whirled toward me, the flashlight in his hands instantaneously blinding me. “Ha ha, I win!” he said, sprinting toward the finish line. Well, I think he sprinted. He could have crawled and still beaten me, because I staggered in circles like a drunken sailor, trying to clear my vision.

Oh, he’s a speedy runner all right, but cunning and stealth beat speed every time.

As I caught up to him after crossing the finish line, we lurched into the recreation center where an official-looking woman said, “Did you win?”

We shrugged our shoulders, and I said, “How would we know?”

The woman stared at us like this was only our second race and we didn’t know what we were doing, and then said, “It’s on your time card.” She took them from us, looked them over and then handed them back to us. “You’ve won second place in your age group,” she said to Russ over the noise of the crowd.

Russ, the bald-headed, hard-of-hearing knight, looked at me and said, “What did she say?”

Before I had a chance to answer, she gave my card back to me. “You’ve won third place in your age group.” Then she handed Russ’s second place ribbon to me and handed my third place ribbon to Russ.

Russ looked at white ribbon in his hand and said, “So, I guess I took third place in my age group?”

I grinned—a sardonic, "gotcha" grin. “Guess so. And I got a second place ribbon!”

Technically, it wasn’t a lie, because after all, the official did hand me that ribbon. And maybe I’ll eventually tell Russ he won second place. Someday. Before the next race. But in the meantime, I’ll just keep reminding him that cunning and stealth beat speed every time.

------© C.L. (Cindy) Beck------

This blog sponsored by YourLDSNeighborhood.com.

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wallpaper Big Whoopee

Flying Crane bringing Joes and makin' Dust

wallpaper Huey on helicopter pad
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Chonook w/100 rounds and powder

Back in the late 60's, the Military was pushing to build up the "Boots on the Ground" strength in Vietnam to over 500,000. That was what General Westmorland said was the price to win the war. As we all know, there was never a number that would win the war once it was decided that the war was to be fought entirely in South Vietnam. We fought the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong to death in the south. After TET 68, we had the enemy on the run and could have won the war had we been willing to go on the offense. After we withdrew from the active battles in 1972, we were unwilling to go back in and re-join the fight and the North Vietnamese claimed a victory. Don't let any of the revisionists tell you that the Military lost that war, we all did for Political reasons.
Where I wanted to go with this was that the price of having so many soldiers in combat was that there just weren't enough of them to entirely fill the needs in our units. Instant access to the numbers was solved by Project McNamara or McNamara's Project 100,000. Someone finally decided that a hundred thousand of the category 3, or slightly lower intelligence soldiers would fill out our strength and because most of these guys would only serve as Privates and at best Specialist 4's, their lack of ablilty would not inhibit our efforts. In 1967, these draftees began to filter into the Army as Ammo handlers, truck drivers, grunts and Combat Engineers (Spelled with a shovel not heavy machinery).
One of these mental giants showed up in my battery in 1968 and immediately the guys started calling him "Big Whoopee" or Whoop for short. When something really intelligent or erudite was said he would say "Well Big Whoopee." Somewhere there is a football team that could use him as a defensive lineman as he was about 5 foot 8 and 250 lbs. He could also double as a tackling dummy but he would probably hurt too many teammates. His lack of intellect was made up for by his strength. He was a walking testament to leadership. On his own, he would not start any task but once started, he was the last man standing. Perhaps there was enough smarts to know when he was given the most menial tasks, but once properly instructed, he would finish most jobs with relish. There was one problem that his section Sergeant soon found out and that was that Whoop would stay at the old job site at the end of the project unless properly relieved. Not a major hurdle but waiting for a helicopter by the Helicopter Pad all day and night wasn't a good use of time.
Almost all of the guys on the guns hated for the Ammo resupply choppers to come in. Mostly in our 155 unit it was one of those flying cranes (CH-54's) and they could carry four or five hundred rounds at a time. That meant that if there were 10 guys on the detail, they would have to each hand carry 50 rounds at approximately 100 lbs each from the pad over to the guns. On a hot day in Vietnam, you almost can't drink enough water to match the sweat. Most of the guys could/would carry one round at a time and it was backbreaking work.
One day, Whoop claimed that he had hurt his shoulder and could not carry any more of "Those Damned Joe's" (Projectiles, 155mm High Explosive). He nursed that excuse for about 24 hours and it took a trick to get him back on duty. One of the other cannon crewmen said he could carry two projectiles at a time and he bet no one else in the section could. The projectiles came from the factory with a nose plug that had a carrying loop built in. If you had strong fingers, you could get two or three fingers in that loop and carry one with one hand. Most of us couldn't in a normal situation. Whoop. not to be outdone said he could carry four, no sweat. They went back outside and each member of the section tried one in each hand. Only a couple of them could do it. True to his word, Whoop just stuck his fingers in the loops of four rounds and picked them up off the ground. Someone said can you lift them up to shoulder height? He did and that ended the sick call excuse for the remainder of that tour.
During the monsoon season, it would rain day and night without a let up. If a unit was in contact, we would fire for them until they said stop. If you have ever seen a howitzer fire on TV, you would know that the force of the blast would put a lot of weight on the spades on the legs or trails of the howitzer and if the ground was wet it would really bury the spades down in the mud. After one hot contact mission, we awoke to find one howitzer had buried the spades in a big old mud hole. We dug that gun out and filled the hole with mud. There just wasn't gravel to do a proper job. Later on that day we got a fire mission and Whoop grabbed the lifting handle on one trail and began to help shift the gun. When he stepped in the mud hole, he began to be forced down in the mud. He hollered, "Help me, this thing is going to drown me in the mud!" I think he would have hung on to that trail and be forced down in the mud had one of the guys not told him to "let go of that damned trail." I think the sound of "Help Me, help me" was heard around the battery for at least a week. Always followed by laughter I might add.
A couple of weeks later, a strange helicopter landed at our fire base. No, it wasn't a strange helicopter but not one that normally came to our firebase. The only passenger was a Sergeant Major from one of the 4th Division units. I happened to be out by the pad when it arrived and I walked over to meet it. The Sergeant Major that got off what was obviously a command bird (clean and shiny) said he was "Private Johnson's" father and wondered if he could pay him a visit. I had no clue who he was talking about and shouted over to the guns to have them tell PVT Johnson to report over to the pad. Someone hollered back and said, "Which one, the black one or the white one?" "The Black One" the SGM Hollered back. Once I saw who his son was, it was pretty obvious that whoopee was built like his dad. Here came Whoopee at a dead run and picked up the Sergeant Major and lifted him over his head. Then came what would have been a crushing hug and tears from Whoop that he was sure glad to see his father. I left them to visit and finally after an hour or so, Whoop came over and said his dad wanted to talk to me.
When I got back over to the Helicopter pad, the SGM asked me to try to get Whoop through the rest of his tour without him going back to LBJ. LBJ was the Long Bin Jail where GI's served their jail time for minor infractions. It seems that Whoopee liked to smoke a little dope and at least out in the field his supply was very limited. Time in jail didn't count as time in the Nam and Whoop had already been in 'Nam over a year. I spoke with the other leaders in the unit and worked hard to keep Whoop on the straight and narrow for the rest of his tour. To the best of my knowledge, he at least left our unit on the way home. If he got there, I never knew.
I guess life is a lot like that. You will have some young men and women that will do their job to the best of their ability and then you have some that just don't know any better. At least Whoopee had a good attitude and smiled at good jokes. I wish him well where ever he is.

MUD (Ret)

Karen Zaremba

Stay at home Mom, IFBB Bodybuilder, former IFBB Figure Pro and fitness model Karen Zaremba.
Karen was born on January 27, 1964 in Detroit, Michigan.

Contest History:
2003- Michigan Novice Bodybuilding championships- overall
2004- Central States Figure championships- overall
2005- Junior USA's - third place Class A
2005- Junior Nationals- third place class A
2005- NPC National Figure Championships- second place class A, earned IFBB pro card
2007 Europa Super Show - 8th place lightweights

wallpaper Ingres and Goya's works that inspired Robert Ballagh

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Left: The Turkish Bath, 1862, by Ingres

Right: The Shootings of May Third 1808, 1814, by Francisco Goya

As I promises yesterday these are the paintings by Ingres and Goya that Robert Ballagh celebrates (post below). If you want to know more about Goya you can read this article by Kenneth Clark.

wallpaper Robert Ballagh dialog with tradition

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"Robert Ballagh is an Irish artist born in Dublin. He graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology. He is both a painter and designer. His painting style was strongly influenced by pop art and his paintings are often playful and didactic. He began with an apprenticeship to the painter Michael Farrell and taught himself the rest."

Left: it is based on an Ingres work

Right: it is based on a Goya.

Still don't know? Tomorrow they will be here.

wallpaper Party!

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Last night we had a Halloween Party for Austen and Kyler. We carved pumpkins, decorated cookies, grilled hot dogs and brats and went for a spooky walk in the Flying Bat Farm trail and generally laughed the evening away. The Triggs brought their daughter Rikku (3 Months old) and we all had a ball. We expected a few more kids, but it didn't get in the way of having fun. Poor old Dave had to work so he missed this year's edition of fun.

Hope you all have enough fun this fall to fill your hearts with smiles and laughter.

MUD

wallpaper The Great Odalisque by Jean Dominique Ingres

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Left: The Great Odalisque, 1814, by Ingres
Right: Detail

Amanda Latona

Amanda Latona isn't just a fitness model.
She's a print model, M.C., spokes model, host, actress, bikini and fitness model competitor and a singer!
See?
None of these ladies just do one thing.
But this lady has a really diversified past.
Amanda was born on March 24th, 1979 in Pittsburgh, PA.
When she was 15 her family moved to Orlando, she got involved with Universal Studios there when she was 18, then she got involved in an all girls singing group called Innosense.
Innosense may not sound familiar to you, but let me tell you the bands line up.....
The original members were Danay Ferrer, Mandy Ashford, Nikki DeLoach, Amanda Latona, and ....Britney Spears.
Yes that Britney Spears.
Amanda also dated Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean for two years.
Jump forward a bit and Amanda had been working with a personal trainer.
She thought it would be fun to enter a fitness competition and set her mind to that.
You can see from the above picture, she more than succeeded.
As a matter of fact she became a two time Model America Champion, and she'll be in Muscle and Fitness this summer.
I think this lady can do whatever she puts her mind to.

wallpaper Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

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I like this song and, please, take good care of children.

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

Crash Test Dummies

Once there was this kid who
Got into an accident and couldn't come to school
But when he finally came back
His hair had turned from black into bright white
He said that it was from when
The car had smashed so hard

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

Once there was this girl who
Wouldn't go and change with the girls in the change room
But when they finally made her
They saw birthmarks all over her body
She couldn't quite explain it
They'd always just been there

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

But both girl and boy were glad
'Cause one kid had it worse than that

'Cause then there was this boy whose
Parents made him come directly home right after school
And when they went to their church
They shook and lurched all over the church floor
He couldn't quite explain it
They'd always just gone there

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

wallpaper Lions all around the world

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Left: Picture by Ramat gan in Israel
Right: Picture by Per Gunnar Ostby in Botswana

wallpaper The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe: Gothic literature

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The Black Cat is one of the most famous of Poe's short stories and you can read, or reread, it here.

At this site you can find the summary and some aspects of the story in a very informal way.

This is the text about it's Gothic characteristics:

The Black Cat as Gothic Literature

by Caleb Guard

"One of Edgar Allen Poe's most famously read and celebrated stories is "The Black Cat." Like most of his other stories, "The Black Cat" follows the Gothic convention of literature, a style that explores humanity's fear and fascination with the unknown. Although it originated in Germany, it was revived in the 1700's. Gothic literature investigates man's emotions, particularly fear, in the face of forces we cannot comprehend. Typical motifs of this type include darkness, horrid figures, grotesque imagery, illusion, and spaces. Stories of this sort strip us of our understanding, and sensationalize us, giving us a thrilling sense of terror that we enjoy.

Although Perverseness is the theme of Poe's story, he uses the feeling of guilt as a kind of fear. By detailing the decline in the main character's mental state throughout the story, Poe demonstrates the loss of control over one's own behavior and the horrifying effects, touching on the fear of one's own self as fear of the unknown. The narrator beings the tail claiming to be perfectly sane, but over time his account shows that he indeed has a spirit of perverseness that surprises even himself. Through a series of violent acts, he brings about his own destruction. The elements of horror in this tale are very apparent.

One primary element of gothic literature is the superstitious blurring of the line between the normal and the fantastic. Poe accomplishes this in a number of ways. The narrator, for example, is unreliable, being insane. In his account, he claims that the exact shape of a cat hanging on a noose was imprinted on a wall in the ruins of his old home. Although he tries to explain it naturally, it seems that there may be supernatural elements at work. The changing shape of the gallows on the new cat's white spot have similar effects. The narrator's wife even had a suspicion of black cats.

Revenants and haunts from the dead are often prevalent in Gothic literature. In the story, the second cat the narrator happens upon is a double of the first, and represents a revenant or ghost of the first-the one he killed. When the narrator kills his wife and walls her up, he attributes the scream from inside to the cat, although he describes it as sounding very human, as if his wife's ghost had screamed.

Gothic architecture plays with open spaces and depicts the decay and gnarling of human creations. Likewise, Poe explores a lot of psychological space in his story, and takes the reader on an emotional tour through the mind of a madman until reaching his final emotional breakdown and mental defeat. Poe's narrator is so perverse that his mind eventually becomes so twisted it is inhumane. The narrator could almost be described as a Byronic hero, being a flawed and tragic protagonist who is a danger to himself and others. Such a character is again typical of the old Gothic romances.

As Gothic movement was in part a rejection of neoclassical rationalism, so does Poe defy all logical explanation of the events in his story, his narrator being completely vexed by his own uncontrollable actions. The destruction of his house, and the eerie basement of his new one are representatives of usual structural motifs of Gothic variety. He explores perverseness as a thematic gateway to inner, inexplicable terror. "Terror is not of Germany," Poe once said, "but of the soul." Thus he revitalized in Victorian America a genre that had all but lost popularity until his time."

wallpaper The four dogs

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I just found it at a blog I didn't took note and couldn't help sharing.

Update:

I took this picture from Mariane's anthing goes :)

wallpaper Just a few Things

Some Pictures are worth a Thousand Words

wallpaper I think that is my Yashica Electro 35 from the pre digital days. Erma and Curly Fruits will live in our hearts forever.

- I don't know where you stand on Homosexuals in the Military, and really don't care. I personally have served with at least a couple (That I knew of) and found them able to do their job as well as the next person. I have a lot of love for a couple of homosexuals that are close friends and one is family. It has been my experience that "Don't ask, Don't tell" is a failure in leadership. I would tell everyone that I expect all military person's to conduct themselves as if matters of Race, Religion, Color, Creed, Sex and sexual preference don't matter. The Military has a code of conduct that requires people in uniform to perform their duties and obey the rules. If the POTUS and the Secretary of defense tells the Military to obey the rules or be fired, they will. It might take a few times that the hammer needs brought down but it will happen a lot better than people outside the military know.

- Leonard Peltier was an American Indian Movement (AIM) activist and it is about time that the POTUS sat down with the Director of the FBI and talked about the need to sign a presidential pardon. There has been a lot of doubt in the evidence that convicted him and enough time since his incarceration started that old wounds need to be closed. If we really are going to be a "stand up" Nation, we need to look at ourselves as the world see us. Right or wrong, Leadership needs to start in the White House.

- I want everyone to know that I do not blame Barack Obama entirely for the above items. There has been a Clinton and a Bush or Two that could have taken the high road on these issues. For some reason the Congress must think they must force us to change rather than using their leadership ability. True leaders would help us discover things in such a way that we think it is our idea. John McCain took a lot of flack from the hard Core Conservatives for his reaching across the aisle. Now that Nancy and harry don't they squeal like stuck hogs.

- Dave Ramsey has an interesting approach to savings vs investing. If it is less than 5 years, it should be considered savings. Longer periods should be investing. I would take it one step further in the definition. 5 years or less, I would call it savings/paying off debts. 5 to 15 years I would call it a diversified investment program and 15 years an longer I would call it buying a house. The key to it all is developing an understanding of a budget. I think his idea of paying minimum of all debts until you have a "snowball" built up is a good idea. His attack on the debts from smallest to largest is a good idea. I like his description of Beans and Rice as a great place to start on the road to financial security as good. I have a niece that needed some dental work right in the middle of this process. I think the fact that she acknowledged the need to put a halt in the process to pay that bill as a very adult thing to do. Dave might have wanted her to save up for and cash flow the expense but it wasn't his smile. Barb and I bought Dave's house on a note from the Credit Union and I'm sure that The Debt Doctor wouldn't have agreed. We have attacked this note with a vengeance and it will soon be paid for. If you can't borrow money to make things better, what can you do in the short term? One more time, Income should equal savings and outgo. If you have to exceed that for more than a year, you are in trouble.

MUD

Jillian Michaels

Jillian Michaels is the fitness expert that rose to fame on the NBC TV show The Biggest Loser.
She was the Red Team trainer until 2006, when she was replaced by Kim Lyons.
Jillian returned to the show in 2007 as the Black Team trainer.
She and Bob Harper are also the trainers on the Australian version of the show.

Jillian was overweight as a child, and her mother enrolled her in martial arts classes.
She took hold of that, got herself in shape and became determined to help others get in shape as well.
(She's been practicing Muay Thai and Akarui-Do for 17 years now)

Jillian's workout for her clients blends kickboxing, yoga, Pilates, plyometrics, and weight training together, giving them a total package.

Besides The Biggest Loser, Jillian hosts a Sunday talk radio show on Los Angeles' KFI (640 AM).

Jillian released a video game for the Nintendo Wii called Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 in October 2008.