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editor
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 Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 5:42 pm Post subject: Winning Big-Time |
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WELCOME!
Winning Big-Time:
Lexus
Exclusive Magazine Subscription for
Lexus Car Owners
Full House
Beating the Odds, People Who've Traded Business for Pleasure
By Dina Cheney
January, 2006
| Quote: | Beat the odds against currency devaluation.
Buy real GOLD.
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| Quote: | Play your cards right and you can balance a high-stakes career as one of the world's top poker players and raising four children. That's what Annie Duke, 39, has done. But her path to an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman and the $2 million top prize in the September, 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions was a circuitous one.
In 1992, after graduate studies in psycholinguistics at the University of Pennsylvania (and just a month from defending her Ph.D.), Duke realized that an academic career wasn't for her. Unsure of her next move, she moved to Montana and, on the suggestion of her brother, Howard Lederer (a two-time World Poker Tour champion), began studying Texas Hold'em.
Before she knew it, Duke was playing - and winning - at a local lounge five days a week. The next year, calling herself "just a housewife from Montana," she entered Las Vegas' World Series of Poker, where she placed 13th in the first tournament and third in the second.
After winning more than $70,000 that first year, Duke decided that poker was the career for her. So she moved to Las Vegas, where she began playing high-stakes poker 20-30 hours a week, winning all the way. (-- p. 61) |
Imagine a car so luxurious the company sends you a thank-you gift basket filled with delectable treats, an ongoing stream of invitations to exclusive movie showings and other select entertainments plus a good glossy magazine with articles on like-minded hedonists. Lexus, of course.
| Quote: | Annie Duke
Hardcover
By Annie Duke
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| Quote: | How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed,
and Won Millions - and You Can, Too
Paperback
By Annie Duke
|
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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The Smithsonian
Magazine Subscription
Venezuela steers a new course
As oil profits fund a social revolution, President Hugo Chavez picks a fight with his country's biggest customer - the United States
By Katherine Ellison
Photographs by Pablo Corral Vega
January, 2006
| Quote: | Chavez's image as a symbol of success for the downtrodden strikes a chord with the majority of Venezuelans who were dimissed by the rich for so many decades, Barrera says. "He eliminates the shame of being poor, of being dark-skinned and not speaking the language very well." But improved self-esteem would mean little without more tangible results. In recent surveys by the Caracas market research firm Datos, a majority of Venezuelans said they had benefited from government spending on food, education and health care. In 2004, the average household income increased by more than 30 percent.
Oil, of course, makes it all possible. The gross domestic product grew by more than 17 percent in 2004, one of the world's highest rates. The government's budget for 2005 increased 36 percent, and Chavez also is free to dip into Venezuela's foreing currency reserves for even more soical spending. Officials say they are now moving beyond the showy gifts of La Vega to more transformative achievements, such as creating thousands of workers cooperatives, subsidizing small and medium businesses with loans and steering growth outside the cities. Even the military officers who once posed the most serious threat to Chavez's rule seem to have calmed down after yearly promotions and hefty pay raises.
... Chavez's determination to put Venezuela's poor majority in the limelight has won him support from some unlikely sources. (-- p. 68) |
You go, Hugo!
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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The Irish Times
Irishology: WINNING STREAK
Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of Modern Ireland
Feb. 18/06
| Quote: | | As for the games, they require only that the contestant mumble occasionally in order to win a car, a world cruise and a small fortune. And it has some of the most incredibly convoluted games ever devised. Robots flying over Ireland. Lo Options and No Options. Doublers and Diamond Dilemmas. A few years back there was a game incorporating some sort of space adventure, leading to the sight of a blue-rinse granny who has never so much as changed her TV channell from RTEI, navigating the galaxy like the Last Starfighter. If it had been French, we'd have hailed it as a surrealist masterpiece. But it's Irish. So it's not. (--p. 6, Irish Times Magazine) |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:05 am Post subject: |
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Hot Water
The Autograph Edition
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "But I thought you modern novelists were such devils with the beazels."
Another point struck him.
"What are you doing here, anyway? Your place is by her side."
"She sent me to get some cigarettes and a bottle of wine. She says she's thirsty."
"Is there wine in this house?" asked Packy, interested. "I haven't seen any."
"It's locked up. But the butler can get at it."
"My gosh, how I am going to cultivate that butler! This is worth knowing."
He returned to the point of issue.
"Cigarettes? Wine? Why, this looks great. It's the old Omar Khayyam stuff. You must have been going better than you thought. You're probably one of those fellows who don't say much but do it all with the eyes. I shouldn't worry about not being able to think of things to say. Just continue swinging that alluring eyeball of yours and you can't lose. (-- p. 169) |
Hot Water
Audio CD
Narrated by all-time champion Wodehouse reader,
Jonathan Cecil
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| Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Temporary Shelter
Short Stories
Hardcover
By Mary Gordon
| Quote: | | It was after Maria had given Joseph her grandmother's necklace that she got the idea: they must go into the synagogue. He could imagine how she'd thought it up, alone, at night in bed, her eyes wide open in the dark, awake and lying on her back in the first cold of automn. It must have been then she decided that she would ask Moe Brown. Moe Brown who owned the candy store and loved her. He always gave her an extra soda free, and he gave one to Joseph too. She'd told Moe both her parents had been born Jewish. "But they gave it up," she said, as if it was a car they had got tired of. It frightened Joseph to hear her say it like that, so lightly, when it was the most important thing Dr. Meyers had ever done, had won for himself the salvation of his soul, the fellowship of Christ, a place in heaven. (From the title story at p. 13) |
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| Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:47 am Post subject: |
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Tales From the Drones Club
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'You couldn't lend me between twenty and twenty-five, or, better still, thirty quid, could you?' he said.
I said 'No, I couldn't,' and he heaved a long, low, quivering sigh.
'And so it goes on,' he said. 'That's Life. Here I am with this unique opportunity of making a stupendous fortune, and crippled for lack of esential capital. Did you ever hear of a chap called (Ceferino)Garcia?'
'No.'
'Skinned the Monte Carlo Administration of a hundred thousand quid in his day. Ever hear of a chap called Darnborough?'
'No.'
'Eighty-three thousand of the best was what he pocketed. Did you ever hear of a chap called Owers?'
'No.'
'His winning streak lasted for more than twenty years. These three birds of whom I speak simply went to Monte Carlo and lolled back in their chairs with fat cigars, and the Casino just thrust the money on them. And I don't suppose any of them had a system like mine. Oh, hell, a thousand curses,' said Bingo. (From All's Well With Bingo at pgs. 162-163) |
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| Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:38 am Post subject: |
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The Man with Two Left Feet
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | I was surprised to find the streets quite full. People were bustling along as if it were some reasonable hour and not the grey dawn. In the tramcars they were absolutely standing on each other's necks. Going to business or something, I take it. Wonderful johnnies!
The odd part of it was that after the first shock of seeing all this frightful energy the thing didn't seem so strange. I've spoken to fellows since who have been to New York, and they tell me they found it just the same. Apparently there's something in the air, either the ozone or the phosphates or something, which makes you sit up and take notice. A kind of zip, as it were. A sort of bally freedom if you know what I mean, that gets into your blood and bucks you up, and makes you feel that -
God's in His Heaven:
All's right with the world,
and you don't care if you've got odd socks on. I can't express it better than by saying that the thought uppermost in my mind, as I walked about the place they call Times Square, was that there were three thousand miles of deep water between me and my * Aunt Agatha. (From Extricating Young Gussie at pg. 31) |
| Quote: | * A few words about Bertie's venerable Aunt Agatha:
| Quote: | ... When I came in she looked at me in that darn critical way that always makes me feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. Aunt Agatha is one of those strong-minded women. I should think Queen Elizabeth must have been something like her. She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson, a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie's mother. And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point.
I dare say there are fellows in the world - men of blood and iron, don't you know, and all that sort of thing - whom she couldn't intimidate; but if you're a chappie like me, fond of a quiet life, you simply curl into a ball when you see her coming, and hope for the best. My experience is that when Aunt Agatha wants you to do a thing you do it, or else you find yourself wondering why those fellows in the olden days made such a fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition. (Ibid., pg. 26) |
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| Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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From Gambling Activists:
The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
The Financial Page
Synergy with the Devil
By James Surowiecki
Jan. 8/07
| Quote: | Chavez's rhetoric might not be out of place in "The Little Red Book," yet everyday life for many Venezuelans today looks more like the Neiman-Marcus catalogue. Thanks to the boom in the price of oil, many Venezuelans have been indulging in rampant consumerism that might give even an American pause. In the past year, auto sales have doubled, property prices have soared (mortgage loans are up 300 per cent), and, thanks to this buying frenzy, credit-card loans have nearly doubled. And while Chavez has done a good job of redistributing oil revenue to the Venezuelan poor, via so-called misiones, designed to improve education, health care, and housing, and has forced oil companies to renegotiate contracts, there has been no nationalization of industry, relatively little interference with markets, and only small gestures toward land reform. If this is socialism, it's the most business-friendly socialism ever devised.
Even stranger, Chavez's demonization of the U.S. has had little or no impact on business between the two countries. The U.S. continues to be Venezuela's most important trading partner. Much of this business is oil: Venezuela is America's fourth-largest supplier, and the U.S. is Venezuela's largest customer. But the flow of trade goes both ways and across many sectors. The U.S.is the world's biggest exporter to Venezuela, responsible for a full third of its imports. The Caracas skyline is decorated with Hewlitt-Packard and Citigroup signs, and Ford and G.M. are market leaders there. And, even as Chavez's rhetoric has become more extreme, the two countries have become more entwined: trade between the U.S. and Venezuela has risen 36 per cent in the past year. (-- p. 26) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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On that delicious all-time big win, revenge:
*Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons
(Opinions)
Hardcover
By Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Hello and farewell to good Captain Kurt, who bailed April 12/07, exhausted from Pall Malls and 84 years of faithful service aboard the sinking ship of unforgiving mortal life.
| Quote: | | * Note: Dear Reader: The title of this book is composed of three words from my novel Cat's Cradle. A wampeter is an object around which the lives of many otherwise unrelated people may revolve. The Holy Grail would be a case in point. Foma are harmless untruths, intended to comfort simple souls. An example: "Prosperity is just around the corner." A granfalloon is a proud and meaningless association of human beings. Taken together, the words form as good an umbrella as any for this collection of some of the reviews and essays I have written, a few of the speeches I have made. Most of my speeches were never written down. (Preface, p. 1) |
| Quote: | PLAYBOY: Early on in Slaughterhouse-Five, you mention getting a little drunk at night and calling old friends long distance. Do you still do that?
VONNEGUT: Not anymore. But it's wonderful. You can find anybody you want in the whole country. I love to muck around in the past, as long as there are real people and not ghosts to muck around with. I knew an obstetrician who was very poor when he was young. He went to California and he became rich and famous. He was an obstetrician for movie stars. When he retired, he went back to the Midwest and looked up all the women he'd taken out when he was nobody. He wanted them to see he was somebody now. "Good for you," I said. I thought that was a charming thing to do. I like people who never forget.
I did a crazy thing like that myself. At Shortridge High School, when I went there, we had a senior dance at which comical prizes were given to different people in the class. And the football coach - he was a hell of a good coach, we had a dynamite football team - was giving out the presents. Other people had rigged them, but he was passing them out, announcing what the present was for each person. At that time, I was a real skinny, narrow-shouldered boy.
PLAYBOY: Like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse?
VONNEGUT: Right. I was a preposterous kind of flamingo. And the present the coach gave me was a Charles Atlas course. And it made me sick. I considered going out and slashing the coach's tires, I thought it was such an irresponsible thing for an adult to do to a kid. But I just walked out of the dance and went home. The humiliation was something I never forgot. And one night last year, I got on the phone and called Indianapolis information and asked for the number of the coach. I got him on the phone and told him who I was. And then I reminded him about the present and said, "I want you to know that my body turned out all right." It was a neat unburdening. It certainly beats psychiatry. From the Playboy Interview, 1973, at pgs. 253-254) |
PE teachers. Ugh! Yes, and apparently Google agrees:
Send this letter to local school officials to end twisted, militaristic, abusive PE classes!
| Quote: | Attention Phys Ed (PE) teachers:
Please review the following two (2) items before issuing without provocation or proper scientific evidence any further verbal assaults in the form of repeated shaming, blaming lectures, insults and/or otherwise war-like personal attacks intended to injure the psyche and undermine the confidence of your charges, captive PE students:
Item #1: (Copy Vonnegut interview excerpt posted above).
Item #2: From a 2003 interview by Dr. Pattie Thomas with the author of The Obesity Myth, Prof. Paul Campos, at BigFatBlog:
The Obesity Myth
Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health
Hardcover
By Paul Campos
| Quote: | Last fall, law professor, columnist and author, Paul Campos, took the time to talk to me about his then upcoming book, The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to your Health, which is available now at bookstores or via the Internet. Paul shared his insights into the infatuation North Americans have with the Obesity Myth, the ways in which the current rhetoric is designed to create a moral panic aimed at fat people and the ways in which we can work towards dispelling this myth and creating a society where body diversity is respected and desired.
Tell me a bit about your background and how you got interested in fat politics.
I am a law professor at the University of Colorado and have been here for 13 years. I teach several fairly ordinary law school types of classes: property, legislation and jurisprudence. I got interested in the whole fat thing initially because I had been doing a conference on the Clinton impeachment and I had to fill in a gap in the program. I had noticed that the word 'zaftig' had been used a lot in the context of stories about Monica Lewinski, so I thought that was kind of interesting. I decided to investigate further and discovered that there were a whole lot of fat issues surrounding the entire Lewinski-Clinton scandal. That prompted me to investigate the larger questions of the role of fat, in America in particular and in the world more generally, today. Well, I got interested not so much in fat as anxiety and hysteria about obesity, hence my current project.
What is your current project?
I have a book, coming out in April 2004, called The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to your Health. It is being published by Penguin/Putnman.
What is 'The Obesity Myth'?
Well, the myth actually has three parts. The first is that weight is a good indicator of health and that you can tell a lot about whether a person is likely to be healthy and to have good life expectancy by just looking at their weight. The second is that significant long-term weight loss is medically beneficial. And the third is that we have some method of producing this result - significant long-term weight loss - that is worth the costs that are incurred in attempting to produce this effect. [u]All three of these assumptions, or, really, more acts of faith on the part of our culture, are false. This is just not the case.
What kind of evidence have you found in examining these myths? Obesity is pervasive topic now.
It is pretty interesting. One of the more shocking aspects of this is that when you actually go looking at the data, when you actually look at the medical literature, you discover the fact that there isn't a very good correlation at all between weight and health and that this correlation disappears completely when you start taking other variables into account. So, for instance, ask the question: 'If you compare thin sedentary people to fat active people, who is healthier'? The answer is that fat active people are much healthier than the thin sedentary people, and they are just as healthy as thin active people, indicating that activity levels are very important to health but that weight really isn't. So as an initial matter, you discover that by looking at the medical literature a lot of the claims and certainly the main, central claim that fuels the obesity media, are not supported by the medical data.
Furthermore, the next thing you discover, and I think this is perhaps the most shocking single aspect of the whole obesity hysteria in our culture, is that there really isn't any good evidence for the proposition that significant, long-term weight loss is medically beneficial. Given the hysteria we have on the subject, and given all the messages that we're getting from government authorities that people ought to be trying to lose weight, you would assume that it had simply been more or less conclusively demonstrated that weight loss is medically beneficial. But in fact it hasn't been demonstrated at all and indeed it hasn't even been tested.
The reason the proposition that significant long-term weight loss is beneficial hasn't been demonstrated as a matter of medicine and science is that we do not know how to produce significant long-term weight loss, and so, therefore, it's not even possible to set up the kind of experimental data that would test this hypothesis. We don't know how to make fat people thin. So when you consider that it appears that things other than weight are vastly more important to health than weight itself, that we don't know if being thinner would actually be good for them, and that we don't know how produce these results, even if it was a good thing to produce, it simply is not rational to have a public health policy that's constructed around the idea of making heavier people thinner. (emphasis added) |
| Quote: | In Conclusion: The at best tentative grasp PE teachers have on the actual FACTS of fitness and weight - to say nothing of the utter lack of creativity with which these awful classes are still taught today - should be sufficiently humbling to preclude ANY injurious comments aimed at students - especially when students HAVE NO CHOICE but to attend. Unfortunately, it isn't.
So be warned: We encourage parents of kids who report verbal atrocities during PE classes to submit the facts to education and legislative authorities for review and reform. Until then, consider the physicians' maxim:
If you can't help them, don't hurt them.
As you can see from the Vonnegut excerpt, the hurtful act was but the mindless work of an instant while the effects lasted long into adulthood - even in the case of a wildly successful writer like Vonnegut, who raised six children on the strength of his intellect!
Wishing you all the luck you deserve, we remain,
Guerilla Parents for PE that Teaches *Reality-based Fitness.
* That would be PE that allows students to choose whether they'd like to go for a walk or a run, follow a video step, dance or yoga class, work out using weights and other fitness machines like those available in local community centres and private gymns, or the joiners might get up a spontaneous game of some ball-based competitive event. Following an initial purge to eliminate abusers, a few gym teachers might be retained as personal trainers/equipment assistants, but only those who can demonstrate with proof that they are not the loud, foul-mouthed, whistle-blowing bullies whose behavior in most high school PE sessions would not be tolerated in any other forum anywhere else in the civilized world. Gym classes should introduce students to methods of achieving and maintaining fitness safely, according to individual choice and ability, throughout adult life. |
| Quote: |
Enclosure: Electronic message from fatmeister Paul Campos in response to the one we sent him outlining our initiative and praising his book, which informs and supports our concerns:
| Quote: | From: Paul F Campos
To: 'editor'
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 4:32 AM
Subject: RE: Thanks again for the Obesity Myth
Thanks!
As the saying goes, those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach teach gym. |
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The PE teacher prototype:
To Sir, With Love
DVD
Featuring the still beautiful octogenarian Sydney Poitier and bygone singing sensation Lulu
| Quote: |
Who can forget the bellowing brute of a whistle-toting gym teacher in this inner-city classroom classic set in mod '60s London. Caution: Dialects of impoverished Londoners might be tricky for ESL students at first. |
From Mystery Gambles:
Cat Among the Pigeons
Hardcover
By Agatha Christie
| Quote: | Mademoiselle Blanche (the cool French teacher) replied politely but with reserve.
Miss Springer (the hated gym teacher) was more forthcoming.
She spoke with emphasis and decision. It might almost have been said that she was giving a lecture. Subject: The excellence of Miss Springer. How much she had been appreciated as a colleague. How headmistresses had accepted her advice with gratitude and had re-organized their schedules accordingly.
Miss Springer was not sensitive. A restlessness in her audience was not noticed by her. It remained for Miss Johnson to ask in her mild tone:
'All the same, I expect your ideas haven't always been accepted int he way they - er - should have been.'
'One must be prepared for ingratitude,' said Miss Springer. Her voice, already loud, became louder. 'The trouble is, people are so cowardly - won't face facts. They often prefer not to see what's under their noses all the time. I'm not like that. I go straight to the point. More than once I've unearthed a nasty scandal - brought it into the open. I've a good nose - once I'm on the trail, I don't leave it - not till I've pinned down my quarry.' She gave a loud jolly laugh. 'In my opinion, no one should teach in a school whose life isn't an open book. If anyone's got anything to hide, one can soon tell. Oh! you'd be surprised if I told you some to the things I've found out about people. Things that nobody else had dreamed of.'
'You enjoyed that experience, yes?' said Mademoiselle Blanche.
'Of course not. Just doing my duty. But I wasn't backed up. Shameful laxness. So I resigned - as a protest.'
She looked round and gave her jolly sporting laugh again.
'Hope nobody here has anything to hide,' she said gaily.
Nobody was amused. But Miss Springer was not the kind of woman to notice that. (From Chapter 6, Early Days, pgs. 61-62) |
No big surprise ...
| Quote: | 'Meadowbank?' said Detective Inspector Kelsey when his turn came. 'That's the girls' school, isn't it? Who is it who's been murdered?'
'Death of a Games Mistress,' said Kelsey, thoughtfully. 'Sounds like the title of a thriller on a railway bookstall.' (From Chapter 8, Murder, pgs. 78-79) |
A few more notable PE failures:
From the Will to Win:
Hella Nation
Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingut's War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America
Hardcover
By Evan Wright
| Quote: | | Wingnut brags that in high school he failed gym three years in a row. "I don't think a coach would have had much for me unless he showed me how to throw rebar through windshields like a javelin, or showed me how to tackle a cop. I don't see any point in learning competition. I just want to win." (-- p. 100) |
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
I Was a Baby Bulimic
How the New York Times food critic first came to terms with his appetite.
By Frank Bruni
July 19/09
| Quote: | Throwing up wasn’t the first weight-management strategy I tried after I got to Carolina and realized how many pizza deliveries were made to the dorm every hour after noon and how many pints of Häagen-Dazs were scattered through convenience stores and snack bars and how irresistible the South’s biscuits were, especially when cradling eggs, cheese and sausage.
First I signed up for a physical-education class, a twice-weekly regimen of calisthenics that had the additional benefit of fulfilling some requirement. But at the initial meeting of the class, the teacher talked about something called a body-fat index, then produced a contraption with pinchers to grab and measure any folds of fat around our waists. We had to roll up our T-shirts so the measurement could be made. I registered a higher body fat index than half of the other students. And dropped the class later that same day. |
A word about the Olympics:
Five Ring Circus
Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games
Paperback
By Christopher A. Shaw, UBC professor of Ophthalmology with NO GAMES 2010
| Quote: | | I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if they didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympics, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles. ... At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. (From The Sporting Spirit by George Orwell, Dec. 14/45) |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | 'If you are wondering what happened to us all, you might consult the poems of Irving Layton - Leonard Cohen
(From the front page of the Globe Review in the Globe and Mail Jan. 5/06) |
Selected Poems
Paperback
By Irving Layton
Preface by Wynne Francis
| Quote: | Sagebrush Classic
And letting fall, "All life's a gamble,"
I assailed the desert's lush casinos
With craps, blackjack, and even keno.
Swift slung it: civilization is faecal.
So take a flyer. Which I did. Fickle
Or foolish one's luck; though I'd poems to show,
Was tanned-handsome, my movement deft and slow,
Some bunko artist raked my dimes and nickels.
All's shit. Luther protesting from a can,
Down-to-earth dealer dealing twenty-one,
Who clued me into a richer idiom;
Result? I can curse better. Caliban,
Roll those bones. At the end comes fuckface death
- Shows a pair of goose eyes on a green cloth.
(-- p. 86) |
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: Ol' fuckface came finally with its goose eyes for Montreal Canlit staple Layton on Jan. 4/06 when he was 93, and even that Toronto worshipper, The Globe & Mail, saw fit to pay him a worthy tribute. Three days later, on the front page of the Weekend Review, there was a sad little sketch of Irving by his old Montreal pal, Leonard Cohen (to whom the selections above are dedicated), from his next volume of poetry, The Book of Longing, whose wisdom is to be loosed upon us at long last in May, 2006. * There was even a good poem by Canada's poet laureate George Bowering. Cohen towers mightily above the others, of course, but Layton had three or four good ones in a hip flask he kept for special occasions. Here are two favorites: |
| Quote: | On Being Bitten by a Dog
A doctor for mere lucre
performed an unnecessary operation
making my nose nearly
as crooked as himself
Another for a similar reason
almost blinded me
A poet famous
for his lyrics of love
and renunciation
toils at the seduction of my wife
And the humans who would like to kill me
are legion
Only once have I been bitten by a dog.
(--p. 54) |
| Quote: | The Birth of Tragedy
And me happiest when I compose poems.
Love, power, the huzza of battle
are something, are much;
yet a poem includes them like a pool
water and reflection.
In me, nature's divided things -
tree, mould on tree -
have their fruition;
I am their core. Let them swap,
bandy, like a flame swerve
I am their mouth; as a mouth I serve.
And I observe how the sensual moths
big with odour and sunshine
dart into the perilous shrubbery;
or drop their visiting shadows
upon the garden I one year made
of flowering stone to be a footstool
for the perfect gods:
who, friends to the ascending orders,
sustain all passionate meditations
and call down pardons
for the insurgent blood.
A quiet madman, never far from tears,
I lie like a slain thing
under the green air the trees
inhabit, or rest upon a chair
towards which the inflammable air
tumbles on many robins' wings;
noting how seasonably
leaf and blossom uncurl
and living things arrange their death,
while someone from afar off
blows birthday candles for the world.
(-- p. 24) |
* And here it is:
Vermeer's Light
Poems from 1996 - 2000
Hardcover
By Poet Laureate 2002 George Bowering
| Quote: | Long Night Blaze
When he wore that hat we called him Irving the Greek, a
present participle in the Mediterranean.
They named gas stations after him all over the Maritimes,
high octane poetry at the pump, free air.
He was a short guy with a broken nose, some muse hit him
with her knee early in life.
A good thing - poems came pouring out, songs of himself,
quotations from some Solomon heaven.
He arrived just in time, shouted down law-dee-daw petit
point afternoon verse, faint sighs in clean Westmount.
When he wasn't Irving he was teaching, instructing his
charges to shut up and listen, grab every trout that swims by.
"Brain, heart, valour, lust, / Thought itself fall into dust," he
said, perched on a rooster's back.
But dust is earth we grow from, dirt under the fingernails,
fingers grasping ballpoint pens, Irving living again.
He came naked and circumcised into this world; now he's
naked and hairy in a new one, looking for an editor.
Tomorrow he'll be wrestling an agel, winner gets top
billing and all etermity to read his words from the flame.
(-- p. 136) |
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:07 am Post subject: |
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Bootleg Series
Volume I
CD Audio
Bob Dylan
Listen at bobdylan.com.
and again in:
Older But No Wiser
Clancy Brothers and Robbie O'Connell
CD Audio
| Quote: | Rambling, Gambling Willie
Come around you rovin' gamblers and a story I will tell
About the greatest gambler, you all should know him well.
His name was Will O' Conley and he gambled all his life,
He had twenty-seven children, yet he never had a wife.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
He gambled in the White House and in the railroad yards,
Wherever there was people, there was Willie and his cards.
He had a reputation as the gamblin'est man around,
Wives would keep their husbands home when Willie came to town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Sailin' down the Mississippi to a town called New Orleans,
They're still talkin' about their card game on that Jackson River Queen.
"I've come to win some money," Gamblin' Willie says,
When the game finally ended up, the whole damn boat was his.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Up in the Rocky Mountains in a town called Cripple Creek,
There was an all-night poker game, lasted about a week.
Nine hundred miners had laid their money down,
When Willie finally left the room, he owned the whole damn town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
But Willie had a heart of gold and this I know is true,
He supported all his children, and all their mothers too.
He wore no rings or fancy things, like other gamblers wore,
He spread his money far and wide, to help the sick and the poor.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
When you played your cards with Willie, you never really knew
Whether he was bluffin' or whether he was true.
He won a fortune from a man who folded in his chair.
The man, he left a diamond flush, Willie didn't even have a pair.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
It was late one evenin' during a poker game,
A man lost all his money, he said Willie was to blame.
He shot poor Willie through the head, which was a tragic fate,
When Willie's cards fell on the floor, they were aces backed with eights.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
So all you rovin' gamblers, wherever you might be,
The moral of this story is very plain to see.
Make your money while you can, before you have to stop,
For when you pull that dead man's hand, your gamblin' days are up.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows. |
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2007 10:58 am Post subject: |
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The Light of Evening
Hardcover
By Edna O'Brien
| Quote: | Novelist, playwright, scholar, legendary redhead. Edna O'Brien. Pure Gold. Another sure bet at PokerPulse.
Buy real GOLD.
|
| Quote: | Carts and sidecars had pulled up in the big courtyard of Jacksie's house, horses feeding out of oat bags and a fiddler ignoring the rain, coming out to usher us in. Jacksie was dressed as a bandit, had a patch over one eye, and ran to Cornelius to tell him that twelve tables had been taken, six players per table at five quid a head, packs of cards and grog donated by publicans far and wide, and Red River, as he whispered, in a barn miles away, because with a crowd like that and maybe a bit of jealousy, a horse could get stolen or poisoned or nobbled or anything.
"Have a tour, have a tour," Jacksie said to me and regretted the fact that since his poor dear mother died, the rooms lacked a woman's warmth, a woman's tough. In the kitchen two big women in cooks' outfits were carving legs of ham and beef for the sandwiches that would be served all through the game, then a big breakfast at dawn.
The players were mostly seated, itching to begin, impatient men shuffling the packs of cards, a center lamp on each table, and a hail of welcome as Cornelius entered. From the moment they started, everything quieted, the faces serious and concentrated, except for two men who were drunk and skittish asking if Red River had been covered by Man 'O War himself.
The players were mostly men, with only two women, a Mrs. Hynes, who kept shouting to her partner to remember more of the red and less of the black - and a Miss Gleason, who had kept her hat on, a pearled hatpin skewering the cloth, the pearling a sickly yellow.
Nobody danced but the fiddle squeaked in fits and starts and the greyhounds slipped in and out under the tables that wobbled as fists were banged in recrimination. Disputes after each round as to how many tricks this person or that person had got, and muting when Miss Gleason got flustered, first reneged on herself, then played her best card, which she needn't have, and her partner, a gruff man, jumping up, calling her a mad Irish eejit and telling everyone, "She can't count, she can't blasted count, she doesn't even know that a five is better than a knave." Poor Miss Gleason mortified, her cheeks the same vermillion as the walls, asking him in a screechy voice to take that remark back and people next to her pulling her to sit down, then Jacksie standing on a chair and in a thunderous voice declared her a liability in any game. She sat frail and sulking, her cheeks scalding, vowing that she would never darken his doorstep again, some hushing her and others sniggering at her disgrace.
Cornelius and Iggy were in the final round and their opponents, who were from the city, displeased and spiteful, not a sound in that room until, at the very zenithy, cries of disbelief as it turned out that Cornelius had the knave, the ace, and the king, each of which he threw down with a braggart air and Iggy pooled the winning cards onto his lap. They were the joint winners. They agreed to toss for it and one of the women from the kitchen, being thought to be impartial, was called in to throw a half crown into the air. She flipped it up with such vigor and the excitement was contagious as we watched and saw it spin through the air, almost invisible to the eyes in its dizzy descent. And then the whirl and rewhirl before it made up its mind to land. She stood with her arms kilted out so that bobody could trespass, her arms the two boundaries around the spot where the coin had fallen, and shouted "harp," which meant Cornelius had won the toss.
"Don't worry lads...I'll give her back... we'll play for Red River another night," and a sudden tide of happiness poured into that room as they lifted him onto their shoulders, four men carrying him to the supper room, tears of pride and joy springing not just from his eyes but from his whole being, and he saying over and over again, "I was afraid I'd win her... I was afraid of that." (From Revel, pgs. 108-110) |
Link to this entry
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editor
Site Admin
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:08 pm Post subject: |
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Good Time Girls
of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush
Hardcover
By Lael Morgan
| Quote: | The city of Fairbanks - well organized from its inception and guided by Judge Wickersham's policy of moderately taxing vice for civic betterment - established a system of monthly fines that served as "license fees" for illicit operations, and welcomed the influx (of prostitutes and pimps). "Are you a lady or a whore?" the city attorney would ask, meeting females off each incoming boat. "If you are a lady, pass on; if you are a whore, seventeen dollars and a half." (footnote omitted)
The take averaged $1,200 a month, according to an informant for the Valdez News, and moralists in the rival settlement were scandalized. (footnote omitted)
"Fairbanks papers are going into ecstasies over the fact that the town has been conducted for the last year woithout levying a property tax. Why the people should be proud of the condition of affairs there is incomprehensible," the Alaskan Prospector editorialized.
"The money, apart from licenses, used for running expenses of the town, has been collected entirely from the sporting class by a system of fines. Every game in operation has to pay monthly tax and the sporting element are assessed a heavy per capita tax. The town is supported by licenses collected from prostitutes and gamblers. ..." (footnote omitted)
Nome's crackdown on prostitutes and gamblers in 1904 and closure of dance halls and gambling dens in Dawson left Fairbanks as the only major gold camp where the demimonde could operate comfortably. (-- pgs. 185-186) |
| Quote: | Unfortunately, Corrine (B. Gray)'s press coverage usually meant trouble, for which she had as strong a penchant as she did for alcohol. And teamed with A.C. Stearns, a diminutive, sixty-five-year-old former physician known as the "Gambler Ghost," she sometimes outdid herself. "Doc" Stearns had broken the bank at Monte Carlo, so he was sually treated with deference, but together they made both the Klondike Nugget Semi-Weekly and the Dawson police blotter on September 27, 1899.
According to that account, "Doc" Stearns, a blasé habitué of the gambling houses and variety halls, and Corrine B. Gray, one of the airy fairies of Dawson's half-world, were ejected from the stage at the Opera House on Monday night... (-- p. 126) |
Link to this entry
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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From the PokerPulse Gambler's Guide to Climate Change:
| Quote: | Telework
The Ultimate Commute Is No Commute
When looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sometimes the best solutions are close to home. Modern, knowledge-based employment relies so heavily on telecommunications that for some people, going to the office everyday is just not necessary. |
| Quote: | The ultimate commuting option. Teleworking focuses on the work performed rather than on the location where it is performed. Both employers and employees enjoy significant benefits from teleworking. In a recent AT&T study, 72 per cent of employees who telework claim they get more work done at home than when in the office. Productivity is enhanced because interruptions are reduced and employees are able to work during their peak hours of efficiency.
Teleworking means less or no commuting time, allowing employees to better use the time they would have spent travelling. That translates into big savings in commuting costs when you consider that Canadians, on average, spend 12 per cent of their income on transportation. (Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/011212/d011212a.htm)
The success of flexible work arrangements, however, depends on supportive employers and good communications within the organization. |
| Quote: | Benefits to employers
Whether the employee works from home one day or five days per week, employers can reap significant benefits.
Increased productivity. IBM Canada has recorded productivity improvements of up to 50 per cent from its 2,300 employees who work from home.
Reduced absenteeism. Statistics Canada says Canadian absenteeism averages about 8 days a year. Teleworking can reduce this number of days where employees are not required in face-to-face meetings at their worksite.
Reduced need for office space. Merrill Lynch reported savings of $5,000-$6,000 per year for each office space eliminated through the use of telework. (InnoVisions Canada: http://www.ivc.ca/part11.html)
Reduced need for parking spaces. For companies located in office buildings with very limited parking, this is a significant benefit.
Increased employee morale and job satisfaction. Improvements can lead to better employee performance and ultimately increased customer satisfaction as mobile employees are better able to serve their customers.
Weather-related work loss is reduced or eliminated.
Business interruption work loss is reduced or eliminated.
Increased employee retention, which is imperative in knowledge-based industries. Employees appreciate working for a company that provides flexible work arrangements.
Telework programs enhance a company’s image for innovation and provide an edge in the human resources marketplace. |
| Quote: | Benefits to employees
Telework is about flexibility and providing employees alternative ways to balance work and family responsibilities.
Improves quality of life - more family time and personal time.
Reclaimed commute time and reduced stress caused by traffic congestion.
According to the Canadian Automobile Association, the national average cost of commuting to work in 2002 was 47 cents per kilometre. Gasoline prices have drastically increased since 2002, making the savings for teleworkers even greater today.
Personal expenditures are reduced for food, clothing, dry cleaning, parking, auto insurance, gasoline and car maintenance.
Fewer interruptions allows for improved concentration and work productivity.
If face-to-face meetings are not required, and work does not need to be completed in the conventional office day, telework provides a viable alternative to travelling to the office.
Promotes job satisfaction and improves morale. |
| Quote: | Benefits to the Community
The most obvious benefit to communities is reduced road congestion. Studies have shown that traffic congestion fuels aggressive driving, resulting in traffic accidents. Teleworkers avoid peak commute times, if they travel at all. The effect on road congestion is similar to the ease in traffic flow over the summer months when a small percentage of commuters are on holidays. In addition, teleworkers positively contribute to a reduction in harmful vehicle emissions and help preserve air quality in our region.
Additional Information About Telework
The Business Case for Implementing Telework (98K pdf)
Telework Overview (2.48Mb pdf)
Transport Canada Article (77K pdf)
(From TransLink - South Coast British Columbia Transit Authority online June 3/08) |
Link to this entry
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:54 am Post subject: |
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Pigs Have Wings
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Monica Simmons was standing at the rail as Lord Emsworth pottered up, a stalwart girl in a smock and breeches who looked like what in fact she, one of the six daughters of a rural vicar, all of whom had played hockey for Roedean. She was not a great favourite with Lord Emsworth, who suspected her of a lack of reverence for the Empress. Of this fundamental flaw in her character she instantly afforded ghastly proof.
'Hullo, Lord Emsworth,' she said. 'Hot, what? Have you come to see the piggy-wiggy? Well, now you're here, I'll be buzzing off and getting my tea and shrimps. I've a thirst I wouldn't sell for fifty quid. Cheerio.'
She strode off, her large feet spurining the antic hay, and Lord Emsworth, who had quivered like an aspen and was supporting himself on the rail, gazed after her with a smouldering eye. He was thinking nostalgically of former custodians of his pig supreme - of George Cyril Wellbeloved, now in the enemy's camp; of Percy Pirbright, George Cyril's successor, last heard of in Canada; and of Edwin Pott, who, holding portfolio after Percy, had retired into private life on winning a football pool. None of these would have alluded to Empress of Blandings as 'the piggy-wiggy'. Edwin Pott, as a matter of fact, would not have been able to do so, even had he wished, for he had no roof to his mouth. (-- pgs. 15-16) |
Link to this entry
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