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  1. Places to Fish/Fishing Reports
    Put my kayak in at the car-top launch on the South West part of the bay last night, and paddled up North of Snyder Island to the next set of docks. I got a late start, only ended up with an hour or so to fish, and only boated one fish. I had several bites on senkos and tubes around the docks...
  2. Places to Fish/Fishing Reports
    I wanted to take my motor boat out on Monday, but there were T-storms forecase in the early afternoon, and early evening - so, I snuck in a quick trip on my kayak between storms. There was no charge to launch a kayak at the launch at the north end of the Bay. I went through the inlet, and...


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Nancy Crampton

David Foster Wallace, New York City, 2003

D.T. Max’s short biography, the first to be written about David Foster Wallace, comes out of an article he wrote in 2009 for The New Yorker. The article, which contained a compressed account of Wallace’s life, was primarily about his struggle to write another novel after his virtuosic Infinite Jest, published in 1996. In expanding the article into a longer account of Wallace’s life, Max offers much new, engrossing information, though he has lost some of the tension of the original: Wallace’s problem was what to do after you’ve written the best—and also the most ardently beloved and influential—avant-garde novel of recent decades. Infinite Jest, Max wrote in The New Yorker, was a

vast investigation into America as the land of addictions: to television, to drugs, to loneliness. The book comes to center on a halfway-house supervisor named Don Gately, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, who, with great effort, resists these enticements. “What’s unendurable is what his own head could make of it all,” Gately thinks near the end. “But he could choose not to listen.”

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story is steadily chronological, following the trail of Wallace’s life from his birth to his suicide in 2008 at age forty-six. Although Max discusses the writing that Wallace was working on at a given time, the weight of the book falls on the detailed, factual account of events, pieced together from Wallace’s archives and interviews with his family, friends, colleagues, and students.

But there’s an odd moment when Wallace’s fiction suddenly looms out of the background and occludes Max’s facts. It happens when Max is introducing a person in Wallace’s life called Big Craig. Big Craig was a supervisor at Granada House, a Boston-area halfway house where Wallace lived in his late twenties, after having had a breakdown, dropped out of the graduate philosophy program at Harvard, and completed a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at McLean Hospital. His four weeks at McLean, Max writes, “changed his life.” Wallace, a heavy drug user since his teens, had first joined AA several years earlier, but sobriety hadn’t stuck. Only at McLean did the staff convince him that “if he didn’t stop abusing [drugs and alcohol] he would be dead by thirty,” and further convinced him that he couldn’t simply return to his old life after four weeks in rehab and expect to stay sober. Wallace followed the advice of the McLean staff after his program ended and moved into Granada House.

Here, we learn from Max, Wallace was quick to apprehend the literary possibilities of his situation. Residents sat around for hours talking about their lives. Wallace listened and took copious notes. Big Craig was a recovering Demerol addict, former burglar, and ex-convict from a working-class family on Boston’s North Shore who came to Granada House as an ordinary resident and then stayed on as a staff member—and he became the inspiration for Don Gately. Gately is the hero of Infinite Jest, the character through which Wallace was able to project his most humane, intelligent sympathy, and also to reach his highest pitch of world-sadness. Gately’s character also offers a kind of moral key to Wallace’s later work—he could be said to be the presiding spirit over everything Wallace wrote from Infinite Jest on.

There was clearly something about Big Craig that unlocked Wallace’s moral imagination. What was it? An Infinite Jest fan can’t help but go a little slack-jawed with wonder: What is Big Craig like? But Max keeps Big Craig mostly under wraps. Instead of, for instance, an eyewitness physical description of Big Craig, Max substitutes Wallace’s description of Gately from Infinite Jest (“less built than poured, the smooth immovability of an Easter Island statue”). Instead of a description of the actual Granada House, Max quotes a passage from Infinite Jest about the fictional Ennet House. We wonder just what Big Craig made of Wallace, but his observation is hidden in a one-sentence footnote, albeit a majestic one, in which Craig says that he didn’t trust Wallace when he first met him: “My suspicions were that he was looking for material for a book.” It’s as though Max and Big Craig are colluding to send us back to the novel—an inadvertent tribute to the power of Wallace’s fiction, which seems to scramble the biographer’s attempts to pin down the verifiably real.

Yet we long to see more of Big Craig precisely because, when it comes to the way that life intertwines with fiction, this passage in Wallace’s life is fascinatingly dense and knotty. The halfway house and the AA meetings that its residents are forced to attend are the moral center of Infinite Jest. But Wallace is not simply writing about sad, desperate people in trouble. If his recovery at McLean and Granada House transformed Wallace’s life, he in turn transformed the process of substance abuse recovery, and especially the AA program, into a kind of vessel for his new ideas about the future of fiction.

Not long after leaving Granada House (at about the same time that he was hitting his stride in the novel that would become Infinite Jest), Wallace wrote an essay on television and fiction for The Review of Contemporary Fiction. During certain periods of his life Wallace spent a lot of time (six to eight hours a day, according to Max) watching television. Television’s allure, its transformation of American audiences, and the kinds of pressures it puts on American art were all subjects of great interest to him. In the long, densely argued essay, Wallace writes that avant-garde fiction is in a moral crisis. He cites a number of 1980s and 1990s novels and story collections—A. M. Homes’s The Safety of Objects, Michael Martone’s Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler’s List, Mark Leyner’s My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist—that attempt new ways of depicting the pop-culture-saturated consciousness of Americans who grew up with television. Some invent private lives for public figures, or portray the intense relationships between “real” human characters and mass-culture products or characters. They build on some of the tactics of Don DeLillo (in Great Jones Street) and Robert Coover (in Burning).

Wallace uses the term Image-Fiction for this kind of writing, and he argues that, while it is smart and inventive, most of the time it “doesn’t satisfy its own agenda. Instead, it most often degenerates into a kind of jeering, surfacey look ‘behind the scenes’ of the very televisual front people already jeer at….” The problem for these writers is that they

render their material with the same tone of irony and self-consciousness that their ancestors, the literary insurgents of Beat and postmodernism, used so effectively to rebel against their own world and context. And the reason why this irreverent postmodern approach fails to help the new Imagists transfigure TV is simply that TV has beaten the new Imagists to the punch. The fact is that for at least ten years now, television has been ingeniously absorbing, homogenizing, and re-presenting the very same cynical postmodern aesthetic that was once the best alternative to the appeal of Low, over-easy, mass-marketed narrative.

Citing numerous examples of television shows and commercials from the 1970s and 1980s (an episode of the hospital show St. Elsewhere about a lonely mental patient who watches too much TV and comes to think he’s Mary Tyler Moore; commercials for Pepsi and Isuzu that make fun of TV commercials and the consumers who fall for them; the whole television-mocking apparatus of Saturday Night Live), Wallace shows how broadcast television mastered and made ubiquitous a certain attitude of knowingness, a winking, ironic mockery of both itself and its viewers.

The challenge for the novelist of the 1990s was to stop relying on an overfamiliar cynical tone that could now say little more than, Hey, isn’t this absurd? You and I are in on it, but what can we do but go along for the ride? “The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the ‘Oh how banal.’” Wallace quotes critic Lewis Hyde (writing about John Berryman): “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”

But how does a novelist actually get outside the familiar stance of “self-consciousness and hip fatigue,” as Wallace puts it? How can he lodge a more powerful criticism of his television-enthralled times, a criticism that takes into account the corrosive effects of television-stoked cynicism itself? The experience of addiction and recovery allows Wallace to be able to imagine a situation—a type of private experience—in which dropping one’s self-protective ironic stance might be a pressing matter of survival. Through the stories of his addicted characters in Infinite Jest, Wallace dramatizes the moral urgency of simplicity and sincerity, and the potential hazards of overintellectualization and cynicism.

Infinite Jest is well known for having a many-stranded, complex, and partially unresolved plot, set (mostly) in near-future Boston and toggling between two main sets of characters: students at an elite, high-pressure tennis academy and the much more downscale residents of Ennet House, a drug rehabilitation halfway house operating on the edge of the tennis academy’s property. Much of the Ennet House sections is told loosely from the perspective of Gately.

Among his other staff duties, Gately shepherds Ennet House residents to their mandatory AA meetings. AA meetings in Infinite Jest are a kind of theater. And the audience of recovering alcoholics has a particular sensibility:

The thing is it has to be the truth to really go over, here. It can’t be a calculated crowd-pleaser, and it has to be the truth unslanted, unfortified. And maximally unironic. An ironist in a Boston AA meeting is a witch in church. Irony-free zone. Same with sly disingenuous manipulative pseudo-sincerity. Sincerity with an ulterior motive is something these tough ravaged people know and fear, all of them trained to remember the coyly sincere, ironic self-presenting fortifications they’d had to construct in order to carry on Out There, under the ceaseless neon bottle.

It’s an audience acutely sensitive to emotional honesty. They are turned off by pretensions or cleverness or showing off, but not because they feel competitive or judgmental: they see through cleverness to the terror or callowness or numbness underneath. This audience is, of course, idealized. It’s a model for us as readers, and the ideal audience that Wallace is writing for. It’s a tough crowd, especially for a young writer who has delighted in his dazzling cleverness.

Infinite Jest makes a big point of its narrator’s omniscience. Wallace moves in and out of Gately’s perspective, able at a crucial moment to give us information that Gately himself couldn’t or wouldn’t want to. For example, when his fellow AA group members

presented him, on the September Sunday that marked his first year sober, with a faultlessly baked and heavily frosted one-candle cake, Don Gately had cried in front of nonrelatives for the first time in his life. He now denies that he actually did cry, saying something about candle-fumes in his eye. But he did.

And it’s a recurring joke of the novel that its characters will sometimes wax improbably eloquent, at which point Wallace will insert a footnote saying, for example, “none of these are Don Gately’s terms.”

Wallace is leading us somewhere with all this emphasis on his God-like knowledge of his characters. He is going to stake his omniscience, his authorial authority, on something, a particular point that he wants to put across to us readers above all.

Submission to AA is not easy for a skeptical thinking person, Wallace makes clear. In his early months of sobriety Gately would regularly

raise his big mitt in Beginner Meetings and say publicly just how much he hates this limp AA drivel about gratitude and humility and miracles and how he hates it and thinks it’s horseshit and hates the AAs and how they all seem like limp smug moronic self-satisfied shit-eating pricks with their lobotomized smiles and goopy sentiment and how he wishes them all violent Technicolor harm in the worst way.

The part of the AA meetings that most annoys Wallace’s characters is the repetition of mottoes. New members “are always encouraged to invoke and pay empty lip or hypocritical lip-service to slogans they don’t yet understand or believe—e. g. ‘Easy Does It!’ and ‘Turn It Over!’ and ‘One Day At a Time!’ It’s called ‘Fake It Till You Make It,’ itself an oft-invoked slogan.”

For Wallace, brilliant student, philosopher, novelist, the submission to “goofily simple,” trite, sometimes ungrammatical slogans is the essence of submission itself. There could be no more dramatic symbol of the depth of trouble that the addict is in than his agreement to hear and repeat these truisms. It represents a submission not just to AA methods, but to the idea that you are not different from everyone else, not exempt from ordinary suffering and ordinary consolations.

But it’s not just that these poor addicts are desperate enough to try any fool thing. It turns out that the clichés actually mean something:

The palsied newcomers who totter in desperate and miserable enough to Hang In and keep coming and start feebly to scratch beneath the unlikely insipid surface of [AA]… then get united by a second common experience. The shocking discovery that the thing actually does seem to work.

Wallace risks the credibility he has built up over three hundred–plus pages of funny, irreverent, macabre, showily agile and complex and original prose, to tell us something that we probably didn’t go into this novel expecting to hear: that sometimes clichés are true, and we avoid or scorn them at our peril. This is what Gately discovers, for instance, after a few months of miraculous-seeming sobriety, when he finds himself helplessly remembering all kinds of scenes from his childhood that years of drug abuse helped him to forget. Some of his memories are mundane (the precise look of his childhood home’s front steps and mailbox) and some of them are more obviously emotionally charged (his mother’s nightly passing out in front of the television with a bottle of vodka), but they are pretty much all unbearably painful for him to relive. This, he realizes, is what is meant by the AA talk about Getting In Touch with Your Feelings—“another quilted-sampler cliché that ends up masking something ghastly deep and real.”

That clichés contain truth might not seem like a startling observation in itself, but it’s a startling thing for a novelist of the first order to make a point of telling us—especially this particular novelist. You don’t have to read Infinite Jest for very long to appreciate Wallace’s sophisticated grasp of all kinds of colloquial, visual, pop cultural, and literary clichés. In one offhand clause he can disassemble some familiar phrase or image, draw attention to it, show us its component parts, implicitly chuckle at its silliness, yet also acknowledge its inescapable importance as a mental reference point for his readers. His dense weave of specific and generic pop references—Reebok athletic clothing in particular and the “centerless eyes,” “ravening maw,” and “canines” of horror movie ghouls in general—is worked in alongside spectacular descriptions of New England weather, the acoustics of a boys’ locker room, and other non-brand-name physical details. Infinite Jest is also a novel that relies, much more than it is given credit for, on fine-grained, psychologically realistic portraiture, at least with regard to its two main characters, Gately and the teenage tennis prodigy Hal Incandenza.

Having established that he is hardly someone who would confuse low art for high, or an original insight for tediously familiar received wisdom, Wallace gives us permission to find solace in common self-help truisms without feeling that we have lost our critical faculties. In other words, he cleaves aesthetic standards from moral ones, and shows us that it is possible, and sometimes necessary, to do so.

This, really, was Wallace’s break from his contemporaries and from earlier generations of the American avant-garde. You would not find a statement affirming the truth of any kind of received wisdom in a novel by Pynchon or Barth or DeLillo. In the history of the novel, clichés have usually fallen on the immoral side of the ledger: received wisdom and received language are a threat to the development of sensibility, to the emergence of a thinking, judging, morally responsive self. If you’re a character in a Pynchon or a DeLillo novel you can be neurotic, paranoid, disoriented, deranged, violent. Indeed, you can be drunk. These are sensitive responses to your times. But the idea of submitting fruitfully to some kind of group intervention or therapeutic program is antithetical to the cultural criticism of these novelists. What is such a program but a simple, uniform solution fit for a simple and sheeplike populace?

Wallace’s depiction of AA registers these criticisms but turns them on their head: he uses a program that urges blind submission to argue for thoughtful broadmindedness. For he is not, of course, celebrating clichés in general; he is issuing a corrective, one meant mainly to address the biases—the fixed ideas—of his own generation of readers: don’t be too quick to dismiss what sounds obvious, familiar, or unsophisticated.

In writing about AA, Wallace supplies his own description of the nightmare of addiction, uses his own voice to tell the universal story in a way that is vitally intelligent and self-consciously literary and funny. (And he must be funny, for he has to show that getting away from jeering cynicism does not mean getting away from humor.) “If you sit up front and listen hard, all the speakers’ stories of decline and fall and surrender are basically alike, and like your own,” Wallace writes, and proceeds to sketch the basic outlines of every AA testimony. At first, you have

fun with Substance, then very gradually less fun, then significantly less fun because of like blackouts you suddenly come out of on the highway going 145 kph with companions you do not know, nights you awake from in unfamiliar bedding next to somebody who doesn’t even resemble any known sort of mammal, three-day blackouts you come out of and have to buy a newspaper to even know what town you’re in; yes gradually less and less actual fun but with some physical need for the Substance, now, instead of the former voluntary fun; then at some point suddenly just very little fun at all, combined with terrible daily hand-trembling need, then dread, anxiety, irrational phobias, dim siren-like memories of fun, trouble with assorted authorities, knee-buckling headaches, mild seizures, and the litany of what Boston AA calls Losses…then more Losses, with the Substance seeming like the only consolation against the pain of the mounting Losses, and of course you’re in Denial about it being the Substance that’s causing the very Losses it’s consoling you about—

Wallace is famous for his ear for idiomatic expression, but he is often assumed to be merely listening rather than reconfiguring his generation’s impoverished English at every turn. Jonathan Raban, for instance, has written in these pages of Wallace’s “absolute fidelity to the patterns of [American] speech and thought I hear around me.”* Would that this were the case. In fact Wallace takes our unremarkable, stammering colloquialisms and works them into monologues that are verbally and grammatically complex and highly literary, while also sounding like a real voice speaking to us. But it could only be the voice of one person, and it could only be written. Imagine trying to adapt the above passage for dialogue or voice-over. Could you make the words sound natural if you had to speak them? Wallace has worked a reverse-Promethean theft, taking our humble spoken idioms and delivering them to the gods, to the firmament of high literary art.

If irony is only good for emergency use, the same might be said of clichés. Infinite Jest limns states of personal emergency. In these circumstances, we take Wallace’s point about the need to pay attention to people trying to help us who are saying simple, obvious-seeming things. But what about non-emergency times, when we go about our business suffering no more than ordinary unhappiness?

Wallace’s books after Infinite Jest turned to more or less normal life, to the “trenches of adult existence,” to characters who are able to keep up with domestic and professional demands and moderate their pleasures—if they are capable of experiencing pleasure in the first place. “The Soul Is Not a Smithy,” a story in the collection Oblivion (2004), introduces a subject that Wallace was also pursuing in his new novel (which would be published posthumously in 2011 as The Pale King): the state of extreme, crushing boredom brought on by tedious white-collar office work. The narrator recalls that the look in his father’s eyes when he would come home from a deadening day of actuarial work inspired a series of childhood nightmares about

a large room full of men in suits and ties seated at rows of great grey desks, bent forward over the papers on their desks, motionless, silent, in a monochrome room or hall under long banks of high lumen fluorescents, the men’s faces puffy and seamed with adult tension and wear…. The men’s expressions were somehow at once stuporous and anxious, enervated and keyed up—not so much fighting the urge to fidget as appearing to have long ago surrendered whatever hope or expectation causes one to fidget.

“I could never convey just what was so dreadful about this tableau of a bright, utterly silent room full of men immersed in rote work,” the narrator tells us, but, he adds later, “the dream’s bright room was death, I could feel it.” As a vision of office work, or adult responsibilities more generally, this seems precisely childish, touched with a note of hysteria. But you could see it too as an alcoholic’s vision of a life of sobriety, or a vision of clinical depression.

Wallace suffered from depression from his teenage years on, and had several breakdowns, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations. Max writes that after one of these breakdowns, in his sophomore year of college, Wallace described himself in a letter to a friend as “obscurely defective.” Even when he was not in acute crisis, Wallace often had trouble finding a comfortable way to be around other people, to interpret their actions or imagine their internal states, to go with the grain of various kinds of social expectations, or just to be in his own skin.

Reading his story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)and Oblivion, one has a feeling that some part of Wallace just doesn’t believe in normal life. The appearance of normalcy is at best a scrim hiding desperate internal states. And even if some of us are able to lead a decent and maybe even satisfying personal existence, Wallace observes, our national political and civic life is in a state of emergency. The main plot of The Pale King has to do with a struggle within the IRS in the (fictional) 1980s over the possibility of a computer-automated tax enforcement system that would replace a lot of accounting employees. This was part of a deeper struggle “over the very mission and raison of the Service,”

between traditional or “conservative” officials who saw tax and its administration as an arena of social justice and civic virtue, on the one hand, and those more progressive, “pragmatic” policymakers who prized the market model, efficiency, and a maximum return on the investment of the Service’s annual budget. Distilled to its essence, the question was whether and to what extent the IRS should be operated like a for-profit business.

Our narrator, Dave Wallace, who spent thirteen months working for the IRS during this crucial period of upheaval and presents this book as a memoir, tells us that most of the changes at the IRS are not known to the public:

The reason for this public ignorance is not secrecy. The real reason why US citizens were/are not aware of these conflicts, changes, and stakes is that the whole subject of tax policy and administration is dull. Massively, spectacularly dull….

Fact: the birth agonies of the New IRS led to one of the great and terrible PR discoveries in modern democracy, which is that if the sensitive issue of governance can be made sufficiently dull and arcane, there will be no need for officials to hide or dissemble, because no one not directly involved will pay enough attention to cause trouble. No one will pay attention because no one will be interested, because, more or less a priori, of these issues’ monument dullness.

Wallace was an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, and it’s not hard to see the wider political implications of the boredom problem, of our marked collective preference for televised entertainment over muckraking articles about the tax code. While we have been devoting our scant daily hours to professional and personal obligations, and maybe squeezing in a little recreation, there is another category of obligations that has been going unmet, and that is civic ones. There is, we infer, a reason we should vote in congressional elections and join neighborhood councils and take an interest in zoning laws, but the reason is not that doing these things will bring us personal pleasure. It’s that they will improve the character of communal and national life.

This is the moral claim that seems to me to be latent in The Pale King, certainly the most urgent moral claim, although there are fuzzier references to universal brotherhood and the potential “bliss” and “gratitude at the gift of being alive” that will supposedly accrue to us if we practice concentrating on boring things. Beginning with Infinite Jest, Wallace’s writing has had a streak of small-c communism, most clearly visible in his portrait of Gately.

We can think of Gately’s portrait as a triptych, roughly corresponding to the beginning, middle, and end of the novel, that shows the three main elements of his heroism. The first panel shows Gately resolving to change his life and undergoing the trials of early sobriety—a process that every addict who quits must undergo. The last panel repeats and amplifies his heroic commitment to sobriety by posing an extraordinary version of the addict’s dilemma: Gately has been shot while defending an Ennet House resident from two angry thugs, yet because of his narcotics addiction, he refuses painkillers for his nearly unbearable pain.

But the middle panel shows us Gately going about his quotidian duties (“divided pretty evenly between the picayune and the unpleasant”) as a staffer at Ennet House: he cooks the communal evening meals, meatloaf or boiled hot dogs, to the best of his modest abilities, which are usually met with oblique derision by the residents; he makes sure residents are doing their assigned chores and observing the nightly curfew; he works a night shift as an on-call counselor to talk newly sober residents down from graphic nightmares; he supports himself with his job as a janitor in a homeless shelter, where he cleans soiled toilets and showers. He doesn’t especially like most of these responsibilities, but he believes in the halfway house. He takes all these parts of his job seriously and, with a touching vulnerability, tries to do his best at them.

The scenes in the middle panel suggest the highest possible use to which a newly sober life could be put. In a novel in which every parent betrays his child in one way or another, and every child is estranged from his parents, and there are certainly no mutually devoted spouses or couples in love or loyal friendships that do not eventually get sundered, the highest form of human relations is this example of adults who are not related by blood or marriage, or even especially fond of each other, who nonetheless take care of each other with dutiful good humor.

Outside of halfway houses and actual communes, the way that adults unrelated to each other by blood or marriage routinely take care of one another is to participate in the many forms of civic life, from cleaning up after their dogs to running for PTA to voting. These community relationships are not particularly intimate; they don’t usually change anyone’s life or offer intense interpersonal rewards; and they can be quite boring as pastimes go. But they are the well person’s version of making meatloaf for Ennet House residents. I have no idea how you write a good novel dramatizing the urgency of civic responsibility. On the other hand, a plot about sweeping, revolutionary changes in the enforcement of the American tax code that no member of the American public can be bothered to take an interest in is a brilliant start. I join the rest of Wallace’s fans in wishing he had been able to finish it.

This Issue

December 6, 2012

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• Simon Pegg to take on Franchise’s 50th Anniversary with Star Trek 3 Script

    simon peggAfter playing musical chairs with the production team for Star Trek 3, it looks like all the key players are now in place.

    When J.J. Abrams decided to leave Trek for Wars, Roberto Orci (who produced the first two Abrams films) was given both screenwriting and directing duties. That solution was not permanent, however, as Orci made like Abrams and departed the project.

    A moment of limbo ensued. But now it seems that the film has not only found the people for the job, but also renewed excitement in the future of the franchise.

    Taking the helm as director will be Justin Lin, a veteran of The Fast and Furious series. Simon Pegg and Doug Jung have been given the nod to create the script for the film.

    Jung created the TNT series Dark Blue and has written for Banshee and Big Love. Pegg also has plenty of writing chops, having co-written the Cornetto trilogy and comedies such as Paul and Run Fatboy Run.

    What makes this even more interesting is Pegg’s portrayal of one of the main characters in the film: Scotty. How this will affect the script is yet to be known, but there is certainly a lot of speculation.

    The film is set to be released in July of 2016. This will mark the 50 year anniversary of the original Star Trek series. Pegg is saddled with creating something that not only lives up to the big anniversary, but must also overcome the (somewhat subjective) odd-numbered Trek movie curse – something he makes reference to in his own series, Spaced.

    There’s no telling how this will turn out until the film is actually released. But, at least for now, this seems to be the right decision (or at least an exciting one).

    January 22, 2015 • Entertainment News • Views: 3810

  • Screenwriting Instructor’s TV Series Premieres Tonight!

    New York Film Academy screenwriting instructor Jerry Shandy is looking forward to tonight’s premiere of the television show Perception. In addition to his staff writer credits for the series, the NYFA instructor penned an episode called Cipher that will air in August. The crime drama stars Will & Grace’s Eric McCormack as Dr. Daniel Pierce, an eccentric neuroscience professor who helps the FBI to solve complex cases. The show, which also stars Rachael Leigh Cook and Kelly Rowan, premieres after The Closer tonight on TNT.

    Originally from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Jerry got interested in filmmaking because of the wildlife filmmakers that would visit his hometown. He initially attended USC with hopes of becoming a filmmaker, but soon realized screenwriting was the place to be. “I like screenwriting because it’s the creation of the characters,” says Jerry. “I wanted to get into directing, and in the long-term I still want to do that, but I always wanted to be the one generating the story. The filmmakers I admire are the ones who come from that background.”

    New York Film Academy screenwriting instructor, Jerry Shandy

    After working as a writer’s assistant on CBS’ Close to Home, and a series of PA jobs, including assisting producer Lawrence Bender, Jerry got an agent and sold a pilot to USA and Universal Cable. That pilot became his calling card, and the buzz around it got him meetings, and his most recent gig on Perception. He is also developing a feature script with a European production company, and is developing a television pilot with international television heavyweight Endemol.

    Jerry says he loves teaching courses at New York Film Academy’s Universal Studios campus, including One Hour Drama, Pitching for Producers, and Feature Workshops. “I feel like it’s complementary because I’m able to bring in the industry experience, and talk about what’s going on out there. I also get to go over the basics of writing every day. My ideal day is being able to write half day and interact with students the rest of the  day.”

    Ready to make your mark in screenwriting? Check out New York Film Academy’s screenwriting programs today!

    July 9, 2012 • Academic Programs, Screenwriting • Views: 5150

  • New York Film Academy’s Alumni Spotlight: Jason Liles

    “Before I moved to NYC I was told by many that I was too tall to be an actor,” says New York Film Academy Acting for Film graduate Jason Liles. “However, it seems my height was been the very thing that’s been getting me in the door to this point.”

    The 6’10” actor has booked a number of high-profile jobs since his graduation in May 2010. Jason explains, “The very week after graduating… [I did an] episode of stand-in work for [pro wrestler] The Big Show as he guest starred on an episode of USA’s Royal Pains. That was my first experience on a big film or TV set ever.”

    “About a month later, [I was called] in to audition for a principal role as a tall alien in Men In Black III 3D!” says Jason. “I ended up working as three aliens over several weeks with [7-time Academy Award-winning] special makeup effects artist Rick Baker and his crew. I worked on the film… with nearly the entire main cast. I got all my SAG waivers and made some great connections. It was an incredible experience. I’m very much looking forward to it’s release on May 25.”

    Jason got another lucky break when he got a second callback for a role on a commercial. He recounts, “I was ecstatic… when I found out searching on the internet that it was a PRINCIPAL role in a NATIONAL Allstate commercial… This was my first time ever auditioning in front of the director, and all for a big project like this. MIB’s audition was for a camera. It was so cool to be getting direction from the director himself at the audition and I gave it my all in that room.”

    Jason waited anxiously until he got the news that he booked the role. He explains, “Because of the waivers I got doing Men In Black III, I had to join SAG to do it so I also got my SAG card!!! Meetings with agents were being set up!!! I couldn’t believe it. I was in denial even. I started to think, ‘Okay, it’s a commercial, but it won’t be that big. It can’t be.’ It just seemed too easy and too good to be true.”

    “The shoot went amazing,” he says. “Around 300 extras were cast for the crowd, and about 15 principals including us basketball players. I got to work directly with Dean ‘Mayhem’ Winters and his 11-year stunt double, David Shumbris, all day. It was such a pleasure to work with both of them and I can’t say enough nice things about them. Also getting to work directly with acclaimed commercial director David Gray was really exciting for me. He was nominated for the prestigious DGA Commercial Director of the Year award in 2004 and I believe this was his first Allstate Mayhem commercial.”

    “I had never experienced anything like a 2,000 frames-per-second high-speed camera getting my close-up for a national commercial before,” says Jason. “When we were setting up that shot, I can’t explain the anticipation and excitement for what was about to happen. I was so amped and felt so grateful to be standing on that court surrounded by such talent. After we got my close-up I went over to the monitor and watched it with David. It looked incredible! So epic! I remember standing behind David as he’s pointing at my face on the monitor saying to the assistant director, Peter Jackson, ‘That’s great! That’s perfect right there. Great, let’s move on.’ It was such a compliment for me to come from such a great director like him.“

    The commercial is currently airing on CBS, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Comedy Central, History, Fox, ESPN, and AMC. Jason says, “Another graduate of NYFA, Nick Purdy, said my ‘shocked face is plastered all over Canadian television.’ So evidently it’s showing internationally as well.”

    “I love this business,” Jason says. “Less than a week before shooting the commercial, I knew nothing about it. Persistence is key in anything, and… especially in this industry. I feel so very blessed and so lucky to get this opportunity only a couple years into my career. I can’t thank God enough for the opportunities that have been given to me and can’t wait to see what’s next…. There’s one thing that I’ve come to learn in this business: you never know what’s right around the corner.”

    April 18, 2012 • Acting, Student & Alumni Spotlights • Views: 6835


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Chunky sausage and fennel pasta bake

Celebrate the new season with this tasty spring-inspired recipe

15 mins preparation | 30 mins cooking | Serves 6

  • 2 heaped cups chunky dried pasta
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • 6 meaty sausages
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 fennel bulbs, trimmed, halved longwise, thinly sliced
  • ½ tsp fennel seeds
  • ½ tsp dried oregano
  • 550g store-bought arrabiata-style pasta sauce
  • 1 cup grated cheese

  1. Preheat oven to 190°C. Cook the pasta according to packet directions and drain, reserving ¼ cup of the starchy cooking water.
  2. While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a frying pan and split the sausages lengthways with a sharp knife. Push the sausage meat out of its casings and into the hot pan; discard the casings.
  3. Crumble the sausage meat with a fork or masher, and cook until the meat is starting to brown. Add the crushed garlic and sliced fennel and cook for 5 minutes or until the fennel has become tender.
  4. Add the fennel seeds and oregano and cook for 2-3 minutes, then pour in the sauce and a dash of the reserved starchy water. Bring to a simmer.
  5. Fold in the cooked pasta and pour into a heatproof dish. Top with grated cheese and bake for 25 minutes until golden and melted.

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Refund Policy

Attendees canceling by May 20, 2016 will receive a full refund. No refunds after May 20, 2016.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Kathy Strawn or Amanda Sklavenitis  at 614.228.1593.

Registrations are due by May 2, 2016. Payment must accompany all registrations.

Please make checks payable to OAMIC and mail to:
ATTN: Barbara Grooms


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Digital Advertising—Generate Qualified Leads

Our Pay Per Click Marketing campaigns generate quality leads.

Generate qualified leads with Pay Per Click Marketing

What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising, also called Pay Per Click (PPC), puts your message online with the goal of getting leads and prospects to click to a specific landing page that will help guide them on their buyer’s journey—ultimately to become a client.

Your advertisement can appear on multiple online advertising platforms which fall into 3 broad categories:

  1. Search engines—Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
  2. Social media—Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
  3. Other—Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.

Digital advertising can work for almost any business, whether you are selling services, products, trying to build brand awareness, or attracting top talent. Finding the best platform for your advertising depends on your objectives and your target audience.

Why Choose Digital Advertising?

Here are 5 benefits of digital advertising:

  1. It is a fast way to get your message or offer in front of people who can buy your products and services
  2. You only pay when someone clicks your advertisement
  3. There are clear metrics to show you how your campaign is doing
  4. You can optimize the performance of your campaign based on real data
  5. You can set budget limits to control your adverting spend

There are some risks too. For example, what happens if the wrong people click on your ads? What if people are clicking to your landing page but not completing the action you want (form fill, download or call)?

With excellent targeting, messaging, and conversion landing pages, you can dramatically improve the campaign’s ability to generate high-quality leads and increase the return on advertising investment.

There are also different strategies for advertising through search engine marketing (SEM) versus advertising on social media platforms. It pays to get professional help.

How Can Digital Advertising Impact Your Business?

Contact us to understand which advertising programs are right for your business.

Why Choose Ocean 5 for Digital Advertising?

Clients choose Ocean 5 Digital Advertising for five reasons.

  1. We tie our campaigns back to your business objectives and your sales process
  2. Our fee structure is very transparent
  3. We adjust campaigns frequently as part of our continuous improvement process—we do not subscribe to the “set-it-and-forget-it” mentality
  4. Our digital advertising specialists are qualified professionals and passionate about driving conversions
  5. We provide transparent metrics to measure performance—but without the distracting, overly complex vanity metrics.

Our digital advertising campaigns often include an initial workshop to define goals, objectives, and messaging. Our campaign set-up includes advertisement and landing page graphic design.

Digital advertising is an ideal complement to search engine optimization (SEO) programs.

“I have been relying on Ocean 5 Strategies for both public and private sector marketing activities for over ten years. I have consistently found their work to be of the highest caliber.”

A. Schreiner

Marketing Director, Accelera Solutions

Generate Higher Quality Leads—Find Out How!

Request a FREE Digital Advertising Consultation

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Charlton Glassworks Galleon

Charlton Glassworks Galleon

Item# cha-galleon
Product Description
The Galleon with Stand is handcrafted by Charlton Glassworks. Hand-cut copper, fused between glass layers and kiln-fired.

Each piece is signed and dated.
Dimensions & Care
Care: Hand washing is recommended.

Dimensions: 9" x 21"
Estimated Ship Date
Usually ships in 5-7 business days.
Shipping & Returns
SHIPPING: We provide FREE GROUND SHIPPING, within the 48 contiguous United States.

Please view our Shipping Policies for details.

Please view our Return Policy for details.
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Accident? Victim of negligence? Act now to preserve your rights and get on the road to compensation.

Omar A. Cardenas

Attorney At Law

I have dedicated my legal career to making people whole after an accident or loss. If you live in South Florida and have been injured or suffered loss as a result of another's negligence, let me represent you in your fight for recovery.

Florida State Bar Association
Broward County Bar Association
Broward County Hispanic Bar Association
New Jersey State Bar Association
Attorney Omar Cardenas

"... incredibly knowledgeable, trustworthy and he really cares about his clients."
Maria, an injury client

How can I help?

Click a category to learn more, or click below to see all of my practice areas.

View All Practice Areas

Get your free consultation today.

Click To Call

(855) OMAR-411

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(954) 951-3535

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It all starts with your free case consultation. There's no cost or obligation.

Clients agree: OC Legal delivers five star service. More Reviews

... his in-depth knowledge, wide experience, good heartedness and passion for justice would serve anyone well ...

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... will provide personal attention to ensure you receive the outcome you deserve.

Ross on Avvo

Omar is thorough. He is prompt. He is diligent to the last detail.

G. Thomas on Google

Featured Legal Q&A

Answers to common legal questions about accidental injury, negligence, and insurance.

Unfortunately, Florida has only a two-year statute of limitations in medical negligence cases. Generally, this means that the lawsuit must be brought within two years from ... More

Florida statute 627.737 bars a victim of an automobile accident from recovering damages for pain and suffering unless they can prove to that they have sustained a permanent... More

I’m sorry to hear about your accident. It appears as though your friend’s insurance company has accepted liability for the accident and is trying to meet with y... More

I wish I could tell you that these types of occurrences are uncommon, but the truth is that licensed medical professionals are just as susceptible to human error as anyone ... More

It sounds like you have a strong case for negligence against Lowe's. They have a duty to make sure the playground area is free from any dangerous conditions. By allowing a ... More

File the delayed police report as soon as possible.

Hopefully, you have collision coverage on your own insurance policy. If so, make a claim to have your vehicle re... More

Learn more about your legal options.

Injury or loss? Contact me today for your free, no obligation consultation.

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15291 NW 60th Ave, Suite 107, Miami Lakes, FL 33014

Serving all of Miami-Dade County, including:

  • Miami
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  • Miami Gardens
  • Hialeah
  • Golden Seal Beach
  • Homestead
  • Doral
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Serving all of Broward County, including:

  • Fort Lauderdale
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Serving all of Lee County, including:

  • Fort Myers
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Serving all of Collier County, including:

  • Naples
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When looking for a
like-minded eCommerce partner, don’t shop around.

Ensure your customers have access to an eCommerce payment specialist to bring their money home fast, safely and at a great rate.

Stay connected to the dynamic trends in the online seller community. At OFX, we are continually enhancing our online seller product in response to our customer requests. If your business focus is to grow with the special needs of eCommerce sellers, join with us.

Introduce OFX to your customer base to complement your service and give them additional value

Marketplace compatibility

Work with any of the usual brand names plus more.

55 Currencies (and counting)

Transfer money to 197 countries in all the major and a wide range of exotic currencies.

Local bank account equivalents

Collect sale proceeds in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, HKD or AUD

24/7 online platform and customer service

Track funds or speak to a person at any time.

Perspectives and industry news

Stay ahead with insights from partner experts.

Safe and secure payments

OFX is regulated by over 50 global regulators.

See where a partnership can take you

Whether your core business is fulfillment, inventory management, shipping or product sourcing, if you’d like to team up to support the growth of this burgeoning category, get in touch. Let us provide the best rates for sellers to bring home their sale proceeds to their favored currency, while you do what you do best to take the complexity out of growing a cross border business.

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Associated Student Body

  • All students that are enrolled in and attend Oak Harbor High School are classified as members of the Associated Student Body (ASB).

    ASB Executive Board refers to the group of students elected to represent the entire student body of Oak Harbor High School.
    The Oak Harbor High School ASB pledge is to honor purple and gold while promoting:

    • respect for all persons in and out of school
    • passionate leadership
    • pride in self, school, and community; harmonious interaction between all students and faculty
    • a commitment to responsibilities, scholarship, and citizenship
    • a purposeful relationship between school and community involvement
    • unity, diversity, and acceptance

    ASB Card

    Students that have paid $35 for an Associated Student Body (ASB) card will have an "ASB" sticker on their card.  Remember to bring your card to any home athletic event for free admission for the entire school year.  When traveling to other schools, you will receive a discount on the admission price.  ASB cards must be shown at events to receive card benefits.  If you have not paid for an ASB card you can pay anytime during the school year in the ASB office.

    Student ID Cards needed to attend school dances

    Students must show their school-issued ID cards to gain entry into school-sponsored dances on campus.  Students with ASB cards will receive discounts at some dances, while there may be a flat rate charged for other dances.  Picture IDs will help us ensure only Oak Harbor High School students are attending.

  • Erica Schulle
    ASB Advisor/Spanish & Leadership Teacher

    Jerrod Fleury
    Athletic Director

    Cheryl Harasti
    ASB Secretary/Bookkeeper

    ASB Office Hours

    Monday - Friday
    7:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
    Closed for lunch 12:30 - 1:15 p.m.

    Cashier's Office

    Karen White
    Monday - Friday
    7:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.


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Ms. Debra Vaughn

  • Welcome Message

    Dear Families,

    In our classroom, your student will find a school family. Our team of teachers, para professionals and specialists is focused on delivering instruction that is tailored to each student’s unique strengths and needs. We believe strongly in the inherent value of every person. I hope you will see that in the energy, warmth and care we bring to working with each student and his or her family.

    Our program is a mix of core academics and functional skills that prepare students to live and work as independently as possible. Students in our program receive core academic instruction in our room -- they take math, English, social studies, science and other core subjects just like any student. We also incorporate pre-vocational and vocational training skills in anticipation that students of all abilities will move onto the district’s transitions program, Exceptional Academy, and eventually a job. They also take adaptive PE, fine arts and career and technical classes to fulfill graduation requirements as well as personal interests. In our classroom, we offer a laundry area, therapy room and full kitchen to work on life skills. Students care for a classroom garden. We also travel off campus for community-based learning. We encourage all of our students to become involved in extracurricular activities such as sports and clubs.

    We have an “open door” classroom policy for family. Please feel free to email me or call anytime with concerns or questions.

    Debra Vaughn

    Life Skills Math
    Life Skills English
    Life Skills History
    Life Skills Daily Living

     Ms. Vaughn
    Ms. Debra Vaughn
    Office Hours
    7 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.


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Love Island's Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt were seen having an argument outside a charity event

Jamie Jewitt appears to be angry during the heated moment as he holds up a phone, while girlfriend Camilla Thurlow looks tearful and sad.

And now model Jamie has broken his silence on the row, revealing that the animated discussion was all over internet trolls.

Speaking to, Jamie sad: "I’m a bit frustrated, it’s annoying as you argue in the heat of the moment.

The pair looked loved-up earlier in the evening at the charity event [Getty]

"The argument started because Camilla gets harassed and I get harassed by people saying all kinds of horrible f*****g things on Instagram, and she gets a lot of it, comments and such, and it gets too much."

He continued: "That night I had a lot to do at that event, and I wasn’t being supportive and I was being off-ish and we ended up bickered, then went outside and had an argument, and I was holding her phone and I don’t want to say what I was calling these people but they frustrate the hell out of me."

He continued to reveal that the row between the pair was over almost instantly and the couple are now better than ever.

Vladimir Klitschko and Jamie Jewitt at the Charge II boxing fundraiser at The Lindley Hall [Getty]

He said: "They’re being horrible behind keyboards and then it makes us argue. And I got way too angry. It was over in seconds and we’re absolutely fine."

A representative for Jamie also told "As someone in the public eye, Camilla had been receiving negative messages and comments on Instagram and Jamie was upset as didn’t want her to be hurt or affected by those comments.

"He was angry at the comments and how they had made her upset. But both are ok and are happy and in love."

The pair fell for each other on Love Island [ITV2]
Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt have been dating since Love Island

Jamie and Camilla had attended The Charge II boxing fundraiser at The Lindley Hall in London, where Camilla debuted her brand new bob.

OK! Online has contacted representatives for Jamie and Camilla for comment.


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How I Am Progressing With My Online MBA

, , 1 comment

I have completed six out of the 12 modules (courses) in my online MBA program. And I have seen the results of five already. Despite the last minute tactics I use in completing my assignments/projects, I still managed to get very good grade. I am waiting for the result of the sixth module I completed early this month but the results of the other five are:

  1. Organisations & HR Management    77%
  2. Business Economics 77%
  3. Decision Making Methods & Tools 81%
  4. Strategic Marketing           73%
  5. Financial & Managerial Accounting 89%
The sixth I am expecting the grade of is Corporate Strategy. And I am currently doing the seventh module, Financial Management.

It seems I get great scores in the mathematics heavy courses: Decision Making Methods & Tools (which was more like business statistics) and Financial & Managerial Accounting (accounting mathematics).

If I keep up those grade range, I will be ending up with a distinction in the program. Unfortunately, it won't be of any use to me as I won't be applying for any job with it.

The real (useful) progress I have been making is in my understanding of how business works and should be run. I have learned a lot about business strategy, marketing, organizational management and decision making; areas I knew nothing seriously useful about. I have been forced to analyse my company several times in the projects and assignments I did, which has been very eye-opening for me. I have gone through lots of business cases and strategy analysis that I now have my head stuffed with too much theoretical knowledge.

On November 8, 2012 I bought "Personal MBA: Master the art of business" book that advocated skipping MBA (and its expenses) by buying and reading business books. If you asked me then, I was sure I wasn't going to do an MBA. I was confident I could learn whatever it is they would teach me on my own, faster and cheaper.

Now I know better. The main benefit of doing the MBA is the pressure it puts on you to learn a lot more than you would have done on your own. There were weeks I had to write up to 10,000 words research assignments. I would do it from morning to night and not sleep well at night thinking about the assignment. There's no way I would have done that if I was doing self-study! I am sure that if I had enrolled in a paid intensive French class I would now be fluent in French instead of using my laid back self-study approach.

The MBA program has forced me to read materials I would never have come across on my own. They've curated the best (at least way better than what I could have and a million times better than what Personal MBA curated) business and management materials. The courses are synergistic and make you a rounded business man (in theory, first). And unlike the Personal MBA list of books, you end up reading books from professors who have spent decades of their adult life consulting and researching in the field they write about. People like Michael Porter, Philip Kotler, Peter Drucker, Michael Armstrong, Henry Mintzberg and Andrzej Huczynski. Not the for-profit (often, crap) writers that dominate the Personal MBA list.

Finally, you should take my opinion with a grain salt. It is highly subjective. I have been well bribed by good grades and the need to view my MBA expense as a worthy investment. So it's just natural that I be in praise of it. But seriously, if you want to have a well rounded knowledge of business, doing an MBA is way better than learning on your own, even if you have your own business.

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In Admirable Hands

In Priceless Hands

Kate England is the type of angel you take home to Mother. She’s extra-sweet and super-cute with her golden-haired hair and blue eyes. So cute, you may just want to skip mom’s abode and take her home to your apartment. This is what happened the night Kate and her husband took those pictures.

“We were supposed to meet his parents for the 1st time,” Kate said us. “I came over so we could ride together, but we at no time made it without his bedroom. We decided to take those pix, also. We thought they were pretty sexy.”

Hot they are, Kate. We could look at this stylish beauty engulf schlong and get drilled all day. We do hope these 2 make it over to her boyfriend’s folks’ place at some point. They merit to know he’s in admirable hands.

See More of Kate England at NAUGHTYMAG.COM!


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With Promises of Death (Bloodred Vinyl)

Limited Edition 300 copies

Limited edition of 300 in bloodred vinyl

WITH PROMISES OF DEATH was the first new full length album from seminal death industrial legend BDN in 2015, eight years after the 2007 album called "1890" First released in 2015 and comes now as limited vinyl version again in an debossed cover and bloodred vinyl.
Extremly powerfull stuff.

Promises Of Death 6:20
Hate Is For Beginners 5:29
Tempting Murder 6:02
The Cover-Up 4:07
Incomprehensive Evil 5:41
To Die Lullabye 6:00
In The Shadows Of Death 4:57
The End Of Worlds 5:43

23.00 €
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Free Standard Domestic Shipping on All Orders Over $100

Lighted Red Train Christmas Snow Globe with Holiday Santa Scene and Timer – Light-Up Water Lantern Decoration – Tabletop Winter Home Decor with Festive Figurines

  • Celebrate Christmas with our vintage light-up red holiday train Santa snow globe with timer function
  • The lighted scene inside this Christmas train water lantern features Santa in his sleigh with reindeer, as snowy water swirls around them
  • This antique Christmas snow globe also features decorative accents making it a realistic rendition of an old-fashioned train
  • Let this holiday water globe shine from your end table, desk at the office or display this miniature train on your mantle as a fun touch of Christmas
  • Requires 3 AA Batteries. Size: 9.25”H

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Calmerry Online Therapy

Up-and-coming mental health therapy provider, Calmerry, has one steadfast mission: to supply affordable counseling and make it accessible to everyone.

Although Calmerry, established late 2020, is comparatively new to other online mental health providers, at least as of this review, it recognizes and seeks to meet the top three needs that bring people to remote therapy.

  • Affordability
  • Tailored to your schedule
  • Portability (smart phone, tablet, PC, etc.)

After a secure sign up, and a very short questionnaire, you get to choose one of essentially two (I'll explain this later) therapy plans to best fit your needs.

The Calmerry team then analyzes your wellness score derived from the questionnaire, your desired needs you wish to work on, and pairs you with a licensed therapist in your state that best fits your situation.

It's a system without frills, but enjoys a very high success rate: 8/10 people feeling significantly better within a mere month. In fact, Calmerry is so confident they can help, they offer partial and full refunds–case by case–if you're not satisfied with their service.

With that guarantee, what have you got to lose?

Secure and Easy Sign-up

Two Step Sign-up

Before you can complete any assessment about your mental health, Calmerry asks for your email, and to create a password, which will also be used as your login. A three digit code sent by Calmerry will be somewhere in your inbox for you to verify your email account is real. Now, you're ready to begin.

Rounded Assessment

Once you have verified your email, you'll get a fairly quick–and varied–questionnaire regarding your emotional well-being and data which they class as background information.

The full set of questions is roughly around 15-20, and differ in many ways, such as having yes/no answers, to fill in the blank.

Some basic questions:

  • First, last names
  • Age
  • Employment status
  • Phone number
  • State of residence (with a checkmark box where you can note if you live outside the US)
  • Gender identity (with the ability to opt out of labeling yourself, or choosing non-binary, as options)

Whilst a few of the above questions, such as name and state, are to be expected, this isn't the case for others. For example, employment status. Not all online therapy providers ask for employment status, though such a thing may sometimes be pertinent to the individual's mental health status, the purpose of the question isn't particularly clear.

On a fully positive note, however, Calmerry makes an effort to be inclusive of users who may be non-binary, something which although some readers may be unfamiliar with, others will surely appreciate.

Sample emotional well-being questions:

  • Are you currently experiencing extreme sadness?
  • Do you have issues with your eating habits?
  • Have you been feeling depressed/unmotivated?
  • Do you have worries about intimacy?
  • When was the last time you were feeling suicidal?

Questions leaning more toward emotional health differ greatly; users are certain to find it more evident how these well-rounded set of questions provide Calmerry a better sense of your qualms, in order to find your best match possible.

For some, unhealthy eating habits may reflect other mental health issues. For others, problems with intimacy may be causing undue stress and anxiety. Because the array of emotional questions differs greatly, I am confident in Calmerry's vast number of offered therapy types and their counselors.

Note: other services we have reviewed explicitly warn potential users who are suicidal or have recently had suicidal ideations, they will need to seek mental healthcare from a different provider; Calmerry doesn't state this as far as I can see, so I am uncertain of their official stance.

Tailoring Questions:

  • I prefer a counselor with experience in: (can choose multiple answers from depression, anxiety, self-esteem, eating disorders, sexuality, LGTBQ, relationships, trauma, grief, other)
  • Any other preferences for a therapist? (text box to fill in)
  • Please describe your current situation in a few sentences (another text box)

Calmerry's move to grant users the ability to tailor their potential therapist's experience in several subjects, ensures the best of both, remote and in-person, worlds during one of the more painstaking processes in the journey to better mental health.

Therapy in-person allows us to seek out counselors who have experience in one or many specific fields, but it's also very hit-or-miss for a lot of people, because it isn't always apparent whether a therapist will mesh well with our particular needs, based on a name or reviews.

Remote therapy through online platforms, on the other hand, utilizes tech and other methods to pair users with therapists who are likely to fit a lot better than a random therapist from with a four star Yelp review score.

Combining these two factors seems a much more effective and time-saving method of finding a therapist to get you on the road to better mental health.

Survey Summary

After you complete the 15-20-something questions, Calmerry provides you with an emotional well-being score, determined by the answers to the assessment.

Finishing Your Sign-up

When you select the desired therapy package after you view your calculated emotional well-being score, you're also selecting the increments in which you'll pay Calmerry.

Two of the three plan options are paid monthly, one is paid weekly. Once you choose a plan, it's time to pay.

Safe Payment Options & Guarantee

Calmerry provides users plenty of payment options. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and even PayPal. It was a pleasant surprise to see the latter as an option, as many remote therapy platforms do not often grant users the choice to pay via PayPal, which is already a well-trusted service.

How Calmerry Works

Although largely ambiguous in some of their processes, Calmerry keeps their working formula simple.

Once you have paid and selected the plan that's right for you, you'll be paired with a therapist, licensed in your state, within 24 hours by the Calmerry team.

To get started on your personalized treatment designed by your therapist, you are encouraged to send a welcome message to your counselor when one has been assigned to you, but your therapist might just beat you to it and send you one first.

However many messages and video calls you exchange with your match, it will be done through Calmerry's safe, and HIPAA-compliant system.

Anyone interested in getting therapy, in-person, and online, should bear in mind the importance of finding the right therapist for your journey. By the very nature of therapy, most professionals in the field are inherently empathetic and supportive.

That said, not all matches are made in heaven; Calmerry makes it easy to get a different therapist if your match simply doesn't fit your specific journey, personality, and needs.

Types of Therapies Offered

While many remote mental health services offer different treatment options, Calmerry boasts an impressive abundance of therapies their professionals are qualified to treat you with, so users are certain to find a therapy that works for them.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT allows patients to react with less stress and anxiety from factors outside of their control. This therapy uses a combination of acceptance of hardships and stressors alongside the feelings that go with them, and commitment and behavioral changes. Clients foster mindfulness and build reliable coping skills to reframe their thoughts away from negativity and manage stress easier.

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This form of therapy is one of the most prevalent in the field, as it is widely successful across many different issues and clients. CBT essentially works to rewire, or train, your brain away from automatic negative thoughts and responses. This therapy works on several dimensions: nurturing self-awareness and emotional intelligence to help clients differentiate healthy versus distorted or toxic thoughts and feelings. The therapist will also work with the client to develop personal self-control techniques, with the result hopefully being the client develops into a more emotionally healthy individual.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

DBT is a cognitive behavioral therapy, focusing on moving the client away from negative and potentially harmful thoughts and feelings. To combat the factors causing detrimental mental health to clients, DBT focuses on a four-faceted overhaul on each client's way of thinking. Mindfulness, fosters living in the moment; distress tolerance helps the client be able to handle a higher level of uncomfortable or unpleasant feelings instead of avoiding or escaping them; emotional regulation gives clients a plan of action or strategies to manage intense negative emotions; interpersonal effectiveness teaches clients how to have healthier and stronger relationships and communication skills.

Emotionally-focused Therapy (EFT)

EFT a focused therapy most often used for couples or family members looking to improve their relationships or personal emotional situation within a family dynamic.

Through three main steps (though, many models work on nine steps and stages, we are explaining only a few key steps), EFT aids clients with things like, rebuilding trust, helping heal grief, strengthen bonds, and handle trauma. First, EFT works by identifying and then de-escalating the negative cycles affecting the clients. Second, EFT restructures the clients' interactions with one another so they will seek to turn to each other, rather than push the other away. Third, which is consolidation, teaches clients to identify how they arrived at the negative cycles they did, how they broke away from said patterns, and how the clients are able to keep a healthy line of communication in the future.

Gestalt Therapy

Individuals who may get the most out of Gestalt therapy, may have recurring anxiety or stress, and have trouble living in the present as they are too focused on the past. In Gestalt therapy, clients gradually learn to embrace the here and now. They do so whilst simultaneously letting go of past experiences and hardships (which may be causing the client stress and anxiety), by acknowledging feelings the client likely avoided before.

Gestalt therapy places importance on living in the moment by giving your emotions the due respect and acknowledgement. This results in a healthier outlook in life, and a healthier relationship with yourself.

Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT)

IPT is used most to treat mood disorders, and helps clients improve their interpersonal issues and relationships which in turn aid in proper maintenance of distress. The goals IPT seeks to meet to be considered successful are: symptom resolution, improved interpersonal functioning, and increased the quality of their social interactions and relationships.

Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

This approach has wide uses, such as reducing stress, depression, anxiety, and even chronic pain. Mindfulness aims to increase personal awareness of our reactive thoughts and actions, and through that, deter unhealthy reactions that stimulate our stress, and instead, nurture healthier and more positive reactions.

Narrative Therapy

During Narrative Therapy treatment, counselors help clients divorce themselves mentally, to a certain extent, from problems they're afflicted with. With the change in perspective, clients gain the ability to mentally recreate the situation with a new narrative, giving them power to change thoughts and actions that better reflect them at their best.

The use of continued therapy will then present clients with opportunities to reflect the narrative they have worked alongside their therapist to build. With this, they build a healthier, more positive identity and relationship with stressful stimuli.

Psychodynamic Therapy

A sibling of psychoanalytic therapy, this form of therapy is stereotypically known as a lying-on-the-doctor's-couch, talk-based, therapy. It explores the relationships between the client, the external stimuli around them, and how it all affects them.

Response-based Practice

This approach challenges, and encourages clients to take an active role in resisting the various ways in which they may be victimized.

Schema-focused Therapy (SFT)

With SFT, the therapist finds schemas playing a detrimental part in the emotional and mental well-being in their client's life. The client, with the guidance of the therapist, then works on methods of reframing thoughts, and changing the reactions and coping mechanisms. Doing so breaks from unhealthy patterns, paving the way for healthy ones.

Solution-focused Brief Therapy (SFBT)

SFBT moves away from uprooting and healing issues from a distant past, and focuses on the present and future circumstances and goals of the client. With the guidance of a counselor, clients hone in on their goals, know what their problems are, and commit to making behavioral and lifestyle changes to achieve said goals.

Calmerry Plan Options

Whichever therapy you and your counselor believe would be the right fit for you, you'll be able to discuss your options, and more, once you've selected a plan.

Though Calmerry states there is a payment plan to pay quarterly, we only found two payment options: weekly (limited to the messaging plan) and monthly.

There are also only two plans Calmerry offers:

Calmerry Pricing and Plans

Both plans offer unlimited secure messaging with your therapist, who will respond daily. You'll also have a personalized plan of action from your therapist to best serve your mental health needs. Lastly, both plans allow users to cancel any time.

The only difference apart from the price, is that you receive four separate 30 minute long video sessions with your therapist a month. If you or your therapist have issues with the connection, you'll be moved to a different “room” together, within the platform.

Pricing is competitive to other online mental health providers, and Calmerry seems to have offers every so often to invite new customers to try their service.

Customer Service

I contacted a customer service rep through the Live Chat to gauge the friendliness of the staff. I was happily surprised when the agent who tended to me was very helpful and respectful.

True to Calmerry's word, customer support was available at all hours of the day and night–something unexpected in any online service, no matter the business sector.

My Favorite Calmerry Factors

Calmerry's inclusivity at the beginning of the survey tells me the staff likely also seeks to work with mental health professionals who will mirror this.

My second favorite thing about Calmerry is their customer service availability. Their 24/7 live availability is practically unheard of, at the very least certainly difficult to match.

Calmerry Therapists

Every single therapist in the platform has been personally vetted by the Calmerry team. Each therapist in Calmerry has experience as mental health professionals, has a valid license to practice in their state, and is more than capable of providing family and individual therapy.

The Calmerry therapists team consist of clinical psychologists, marriage and family therapists, clinical social workers, and licensed professional counselors.

All therapists in Calmerry have a Master's or a Doctorate in their field, so users can rest well knowing how well-qualified their match is. My own assigned therapist was friendly, approachable, empathetic, and supportive even after disclosing I was writing a review.

It should be noted that, unlike other online therapy services, Calmerry does not display or list their therapists on the website. At the time of this review, it is not known how many therapists are available on the platform as it is not possible to browse through therapist profiles to learn more about them.

Bottom Line

In some ways, Calmerry is ahead of its competitors, many of which were established long before Calmerry launched: a fully live, 24/7 customer service is rare, for example.

The many different therapy types give a calming sense, because you know you're likely to find a therapy best for your needs.

These therapies have been tried and true by mental health professionals in-office, and in peer-reviewed trials, to show progress in people's journey to a healthier, happier life.


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Jamie & Terry

July 6, 2019

Brandi and Phillip have known each other for 20 years!  They became husband and wife at Wild Bluff Golf Course in Brimley, MI, with the reception held at the Wild Bluff Pavillion.

Phillip first contacted me in June of 2018, nearly a year before their wedding.  Most of the time, I deal pretty exclusively with the bride, but Phillip handled most of the music planning.  I think it's great when couples share those responsibilities.  We provided audio and music for their ceremony, as well as music at the reception.

We played a GREAT trivia game to have some fun releasing their tables for the buffet line.


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Bill Frist, the Former 2008 GOP Presidential Candidate

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It's one thing to lie in politics. It's another to be caught in a lie. Bill Frist has been caught in a lie. His political future is over. The immediate question is, can he survive as Majority Leader?

The Tennessee Republican claims he wasnt privy to any inside information leading up to the sale of his stock in Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the countrys largest for-profit hospital chain founded by Frists father, Thomas, and brother, Thomas Jr., weeks before the company reported lower than expected earnings July 13 that sent the stock south.

Now the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the matter, a spokesman for the senator said last week, to determine if Frist broke any laws.
Frists press secretary told the Washington Post last week that Frist decided to sell his stock to eliminate any appearance of a conflict-of-interest due to his work in the senate in shaping the nations healthcare policies. So, the senators spokesman said, Frist drafted a letter to Northern Trust and Equitable Trust in Nashville June 13 advising them to sell all of his stock in HCA, as well as his wife and childrens investments in the company.

Still, the improprieties have been in the making for quite some time. According to an Associated Press report Saturday, Frist received regular updates of transfers of assets to his blind trusts and sales of assets. He also was able to initiate a stock sale of a hospital chain founded by his family with perfect timing. Shortly after the sale this summer, the stock price dived.

In fact, Frist had attempted to have it both ways since he created his so-called blind trust in the 1990s: being intimately involved with his investments that directly conflict with his political work as a senator and then claiming that hes totally unaware of his personal financial investmentsand stock salesbecause its in a blind trust.

The mainstream media, quick to accept Frists statements that hes been in the dark about his HCA holdings, was complicit in allowing the obvious conflict of having a senator who makes national decisions on healthcare that directly benefit the senators fortunes and that of his family, fall off the radar screen.

Indeed, in Jan. 26, 2003, story titled Frists Health Care Votes Reflect Roots, Frist told the Post that he no longer knows how much the (HCA) stock is worth.
But letters sent to Frist by Kirk Scobey Jr., his trustee, and documents filed with the senate contradict the Frists statement.

Frist knew that Scobey transferred three additional blocks of HCA stockworth $750,000to his trust in 2001 and 2002, which came from Frists parents estate. More than $750,000 in HCA stock was transferred into the blind trust during that time period from the estate of his late parents. Public filings show that Scobey sold as much as $8 million of Frists HCA stock between 1994 and 2000, a bulk of which was sold between 2001 and 2002.

Interestingly, Frist knew of these sales, or at least had access to information that these sales took place, reported the Nashville Scene, in an investigative story in July 2003 into Frists so-called blind trust. How? The income from these sales of HCA stock was reported on Frist's annual financial disclosure statements that he filed with the Secretary of the Senate.

"Given the annual reporting of capital gains, it's kind of a crock for Frist to say he doesn't know what he owns because it's in a blind trust," Charlie Gofen, a portfolio manager at Gofen and Glossberg, a Chicago-based investment-counseling firm, told the paper at the time.

Frists office provided the Scene with supporting documents into the senators blind trust. The paper hired an eight-member, bipartisan, unpaid panel of experts in trusts from around the country to analyze it and what the panel discovered was that Frists blind trust "blind" trust isn't really blind at all.
Frists ownership of HCA stock isn't considered a conflict of interest according to Senate rules, the paper reported. But then, according to those rules, almost nothing qualifies as a conflict of interest.
Frist created his blind trust in accordance with the rules of the Ethics in Government Act. That law states that a "qualified blind trust" must meet certain requirements:

* The trustee, who is the individual charged with managing the assets of the trust, must be independent.
* There can be no restrictions on disposing of the trust's assets.
* Communication between the trustee and the politician must be limited.
* And the trust must be approved by the Senate's Ethics Committee.

In 1995, with his holdings in HCA and the senators increasing role in shaping the nations healthcare policies coming under intense scrutiny, Frist first put his assets into a blind trust. Five years later, in December 2000, Frist put his assets into a newer blind trust, prompting the Nashville Scene to ask Why the new trust?

At the time he created his first trust, Frists portfolio included so-called "non-public securities," the paper reported. More than likely, these were private partnerships and the like. Federal laws say such securities cannot be put into a so-called "qualified blind trust"the type of high-end trust that Frist now has. Once these securities were sold the "more stringent" form of trust was created "as soon as practical."

Experts interviewed by the paper said what was likely the key selling point for Frist when he created the new trust in December 2000 was that he given the opportunity to look at his specific financial holdings, including HCA.

Whenever one blind trust is discarded in favor of a newer one, panelists say the blind trust ceases to be blind during the changeover period, the paper reported.

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Suches, GA

Suches GA

Hotel highlights

  • Steps from Chattahoochee National Forest

This cabin places you next to Chattahoochee National Forest and Ocoee River. The cabin includes a kitchen, a fireplace, and a balcony.

The cabin is air-conditioned and features a kitchen, 3 bathrooms, and a balcony, and there's space to spread out with 3 bedrooms. Guests can expect to find a TV with a DVD player. Other standard amenities include a washing machine, a fireplace, and a coffee maker.

Property features

At this cabin, guests have access to features like an arcade/game room. This family-friendly cabin also has barbecue grills.

Room options

Spacious Waterfront Cabin On The Toccoa River

Suches, GA 30572
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Potential Conflicts of Interest and Vote Explanation Documents

Note: Per Senate Rule 3.33(1), the Senate does not require submission of written Potential or Actual Conflicts of Interest. Senators verbally declare a conflict of interest during a committee meeting or a Senate floor session.  The declaration is recorded in the committee recording log, measure history, and the Senate Journal.

SB 16 Heard 3-31-2021Vote ExplanationSenator Dallas Heard3/31/2021SB162021R1


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Our Storm Recovery Plan

When the power goes out, we get to work quickly to ensure your safety and get your lights back on.

Anticipate and Plan

With advanced warning of a major storm, we:

  • Alert our customers who use life-support equipment to make arrangements in the event of possible power outages
  • Top off fuel tanks and stock vehicles with repair materials
  • Notify municipal and state officials of our activity, in case they have special concerns
  • Alert all employees, contractors, and nearby utilities so they'll be ready to respond around-the-clock

Restore and Manage

Large-scale power restoration takes time. Our top priority is keeping you safe by securing downed wires and making sure critical buildings like hospitals, police and fire stations, nursing homes, and water treatment plants get power back as soon as possible. We then work to restore power to the largest number of customers until all the lights are back on.

We coordinate recovery activities:

  • Field reports are received and assessed for severity of damage.
  • Repair crews are dispatched, including those not normally assigned to the storm-damaged area.
  • Local officials are notified of any special problems in their communities.
  • Our liaison employees are deployed to county Emergency Management offices and other key locations to help coordinate public safety measures.
  • Contractors and crews from neighboring utilities are given safety briefings and assigned repairs in communities with a lot of damage.
  • Our Community Response Team members are sent to municipal offices in severely affected communities to provide direct assistance to government officials and customers.
  • The news media are kept updated on damage reports, restoration progress, and safety advisories.
  • After every major event or outage, we hold a "lessons-learned" meeting to further improve our plans.

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January 17, 2021

Why Business CCTV Installation Is So Important?

CCTV installation is not something most companies do themselves. While it’s possible to put up a basic security camera network on your own but it’s also very time-consuming. In addition, you’re going to make many mistakes during an overall CCTV installation, causing poor coverage, un optimized storage, and lack of control. A professional installation service provides you with a turnkey solution that minimizes these problems while putting in place a durable and scalable system for long term use. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you should consider a professional installation service for your CCTV system.

Installing CCTV security cameras is usually the responsibility of an experienced and licensed technician. When you install the system yourself, you’re relying on whoever you happen to be living with at the time that the camera is installed. A qualified technician can check the connection and see if the wiring is adequate, can check the cameras for proper compatibility, and can even make recommendations on the best equipment to buy to maximize security and efficiency.

The first benefit of hiring a professional cctv installation service is the overall effectiveness and durability of the system. You can’t expect a novice to set up and wire your home’s security cameras in a manner that will ensure their effectiveness. A trained technician knows what he’s doing and can ensure that your cameras are set up properly to ensure maximum performance. When a problem arises, such as improper wiring, a technician can quickly remedy the situation and fix the issue. This can be the difference between a functioning home security system and one that isn’t.

Another big reason to trust a professional cctv installation service is the overall cost of installation. Many companies charge by the hour or by the work. Some are a little more diligent about charging an additional fee for some parts, but most offer a flat rate fee that includes the installation of the camera, wiring, and other miscellaneous parts, such as camera mounting hardware. That’s less guesswork for you and allows you to get the job done quickly and efficiently. If you’re paying a bit more for an installation service, take the time to find out exactly how much that labor costs before you hire. Then compare that to other installation services to see which may be more competitive.

A third benefit of hiring a professional cctv installation service is the satisfaction you receive. You’ll know that your security cameras are installed properly, functioning properly, and provide you with peace of mind. Knowing that the company you hire is experienced and that they care about the safety of your family and property makes a big difference in the final product. You’ll also have peace of mind knowing that your home has been properly secured with CCTV security cameras.

Installing CCTV camera systems can be a little tricky if you don’t have experience, so ask around before you hire anyone. Find people who have installed similar products in the past and ask them what kind of advice they can provide you. If you can’t find anyone who can help you, try enlisting the help of someone who is skilled at wireless camera systems. Ask them to come and look at your setup and show you how to properly wire your camera systems. Ask them to drill holes into your walls, run wires, etc… Just so they can show you how it’s done.

When you install CCTV cameras, it’s very important that you buy the right kind of wires and other hardware. Some people try to shortcut the installation process by using old, unused wires and other hardware, but this can prove very dangerous if there are any wires or hardware in places where they aren’t wanted, such as behind soft doors or behind windows and doors. When you’re shopping for CCTV cameras, look for hidden cameras, such as those that are disguised with stickers, decals, or even clothing. These kinds of hidden units will provide you with a safer and more private installation.

Installing CCTV cameras isn’t something that should be tackled by just anybody. You need to hire qualified technicians who know exactly what they’re doing so that they don’t damage your camera or wires. Don’t take the chance and hire some amateur handyman who wants to get his hands dirty. It’s far better to spend a few extra dollars and hire a professional company to install your CCTV system so it will last for years to come. There are many different types of CCTV cameras available to buy today, so make sure that you choose one that will give you the security you need for your business.