Archive for September, 2010
I have never read a book of Eoin Colfer’s that didn’t impress me; his characters, his wit, and his plots are always excellent. The Artemis Fowl series, however, is Colfer at his best. The story begins with Artemis, a 12 year old Irish millionaire with a genius for crime, ruthlessly pursuing his plot to steal fairy gold. Helping Artemis is his bodyguard, Butler, who is possibly my favorite fictional character of all time. Fighting, cooking, obtaining false papers–you name it, Butler is on top of it. Together, these two kidnap a fairy to hold for ransom. Unfortunately for them, the fairy they capture is Captain Holly Short, of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance squad (that’s LEPrecon for short). Holly has a few tricks of her own up her sleeve (or down her boot). Nor are Holly’s friends back at LEP headquarters to be overlooked. Foaly, the wisecracking centaur, commands technology that’s decades ahead of any competition, and Julius Root, the politically incorrect LEP commander, will stop time itself to get his officer back. So are they too much for Artemis? He doesn’t think so. With combatants like this, there’s no predicting what will happen. And the series only gets better from here!
A Year To Celebrate
The furminator is the best grooming tool in our repertoire for one big reason: the cat loves it. Whenever it comes out of the drawer, the cat comes running to get ‘furminated.’ We also have a ChowChow that tolerates it when his fur is cut for the summer, but when he’s fully fluffed, he actively enjoys a good brushing as well. 5 stars for sturdy construction, ease of use, and kitty friendliness.
Minnie Mouse Shopping Cake
I needed to update from Office 2003 and wanted to take advantage of many new features. I also like the fact that I can upgrade to Office 2010 when it comes out.
Manfrotto 322RS Electronic Shutter
The novel The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger is a powerful novel chronicling the life of an upper class teenage boy, Holden Caulfield during the early 1950’s. Around this time, more and more people were conforming to society, dressing the same, acting the same, and through Holden, Salinger challenges those ideals. The book opens when Holden is expelled from yet another boarding school, because of his awful grades. He finds the world around him to be fake, and those people who demand him to conform to be phonies, not true to themselves. He sets off for New York City on his own, in a journey of self-exploration where he learns about love, life, and sex. As a troubled youth, he is a constant pessimist about the world around him, seeing it to be a mass conformist nation, without any true individuals, except for himself of course. His early life is troubled, and his younger brother’s death shook him badly, and effected him deeply. Some of the pessimism comes from his older brother, a writer who in Holden’s opinion became a prostitute for Hollywood, abandoning his own writing to work for the movies, selling out in the worst way.His parents seem vastly absent in the novel, perhaps suggesting that his parents are not role models for him, and while they may love him, they do not truly understand him. Without this adult guidance he mistrusts the adult world, a cynical view which pervades the whole book. This kind of teenage rebellion is something that the youth of today can easily relate to. Holden himself is an easily relatable character, and modern teens will find something of his character similar in themselves, whether that’s his cynicism, or his constant thoughts about sex. He is confused by sex, but still finds it intriguing, and of course wants very badly to experience it. He goes on a date, with an old friend, and while he tries very badly to be charming, he cannot stand how absolutely fake he feels she is, and this leaves him disappointed with the world in gene
Tiny Blessing Blue Thank
This is a good HDMI cable. No matter what the Best Buy or Circuit City guys try to tell you about the “premium” cables, there is no difference in audio or visual quality between this cable and any of the expensive ones. Don’t waste your money, just buy a few of these and you’ll be set, while saving about 80-90% per cable.
Simply Wild Chicken Brown
I had heard the furminator was a good idea, then I borrowed one. It worked so well, I bought my own. I swear. my Lab looks 5 pounds thinner! It gets out all of the fuzzy undercoat and she doesn’t mind when I use it. She wasn’t too fond of the regular wire brush and the shedding tool just made too much of a mess. This is so much better! I highly reccommend this for anyone with a double coated dog. And the medium is fine…she’s 60 pounds, I don’t think I needed the bigger one.
Garmin Nuvi 260W Nylon
I was surprised, as a 40-year-old woman, reading this book aloud to my young daughter (skipping parts, too), to find myself consumed, sneaking off into the kitchen to read ahead under the guise of doing laundry, etc. Obviously, my position was embarrassing, plus the book was conventionally suspense-heavy and light on literary values; I thought of the middle-aged magazine editor who put it this way: Twilight..always and unapologetically.
As a middle-aged woman, I have the inner resources to analyze my entanglement, to process my response and to cool the fire of addiction. Yet, as a middle-aged woman, the book was more devastating to me than a teen girl could know. Because I know from experience that youth and beauty are irretrievably lost, that you will never find that kind of perfect, melting, life-in-death love (if only all teen boys were really 100 years old and listened to classical music in their Volvos!) but, at best, will rather muddle through humanly with a good man. That, on the other hand, you might not want a perfect love, consuming and obstructing at the same time. That no one will ever “see” you or care about your every breath in the way Edward cares for Bella, not even your mother, even if you’re lucky, and as you age you realize everyone is so consumed with survival and ego, they have no resources left. That, all things considered, there are other profound consolations that come with aging, such as the development of inner resources. But it was the longing for the numinous in an everyday world that upset me the most.
Ultimately, I’m happy that this book is so female-centric in its eros, the slow smoulder that no longer is culturally justified. Young girls should hope to build a life with someone who cherishes them. The teen wish-fulfillment and weaker aspects of the book, such as Bella’s neediness evaporate next to this positive. But I feel for the legion of teen girls who lack the ability to process their literary infatuation, who wear “I
Iomega 10 x ZIP
This is a fabulous product. It really does remove that undercoat of fur, but you have to be gentle and it does “dig” into the fur and can scratch the skin. Our bigger dog does complain some, but we have been able to remove all that old fur with this. I have always heard good things about Furminators and they all ring true. Very happy
Quantitative Approaches in Object