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Man On The Run by Laird Long

We all dream of escaping sometimes — but there’s more than one way to get away.

The big cab was pushing forty when he slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to an icy stop in front of her, its mammoth bumper nodding gently against her knees. He pulled his foot out of the floorboards and cursed. She walked alongside the car, tugged open the rear door, and slid in.

“Lady, I’m off-duty. You gotta … get out.” He wasn’t steeped in subtleties.

“Light’s on, bub.”

“What?” He checked the dashboard and saw that she was right. His heavy face wrinkled in anger. “Dammit!” He had forgotten to switch his sign off. He switched it off. He draped a thick arm over the back of the bench seat and craned his neck around. He looked at her and tried to smile; but smiling gave him a headache so he gave it up. “Okay, my mistake. You still gotta leave, lady. I’m off-duty whether the sign says so or not.” He waited for her to move. She didn’t have the looks to be a hooker — unless she was the coin-operated kind.

“Light was on, bub.”
“Yeah, it was. We signed the treaty on that one, already. Now it’s off, so pack up your charm and beat it. I got somewhere I gotta be.”

“1750 Cleveland Avenue. And punch it. Save the excuses for the old lady.” She pulled her shabby coat together.

“Look, driver! I’ve got to get home, and the only bus running at three in the morning is yours. So, point your face at the windshield and weigh anchor.”

His eyes narrowed to gunslits. “I’ll haul you as far as the pay phone on the corner. Then you’re gonna call a friend. My garbage detail’s over for the night.”

“Friend.” She snorted. “Do your duty, cabbie. Get it in gear.”

“You ain’t gonna beat it?”

“I don’t even know you.”

He frowned. “You gonna get out or I gotta strap on the rubber gloves and toss you out?”

“I’m not leaving this metal mansion until you bump the curb at 1750 Cleveland Avenue.” She stared into his face. “Clear ‘nuff?” She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand.

He turned around to the windshield. He glared at her pasty reflection in the huge rear-view mirror. “You wanna go someplace?”

“Now you’re getting it — slowly but surely.” She laughed. “You must make a fortune, cabbie — the passengers have to coax you into driving. Thank God you got your figure.”

He peered through the cracked glass and into the ice-fogged Twin Cities night. He didn’t get very far. He hesitated, thinking about something. But thinking was something that gave him little comfort. “I bet you’re gonna blow without payin’,” he said.

She grinned at his angry eyes. “I got money, bub — don’t think I don’t. You start using your hands and feet instead of your mouth and maybe you’ll see some of it.”

Her voice was a pain in the ass. Her tired face was thin and sharp — a face to cut your lips on — and her hair was lank and dirt-blonde. She had a thin, blue coat wrapped around herself like a blanket, a pair of faded blue jeans, and the over-all look of a smart-ass teenager teetering on the jagged edge of an ugly adulthood. He made up his mind and threw the car in gear; the vehicle surged forward.

“There you go — like riding a tricycle,” she sneered.

He tramped his boot down on the accelerator and the car jumped, then slowly gathered speed. “We’re goin’ for a ride,” he muttered under his bad breath. “Me and the bitch are goin’ for a ride.” His face settled into grim, uncompromising lines and his knuckles glowed on the steering wheel.

She glanced around at the spacious back seat and her thin lips framed a scowl. “You need to own an oil company to drive this pig?”

“It’s a Checker,” he said tonelessly.

“Checker cab! Checker Motors Corporation — Kalamazoo, Michigan, ’23 to ’82.” His shoulders relaxed a bit, his hands stopped choking the huge, black steering wheel. “Built ‘specially as a taxi — lots of room.”

“Yeah? You could rent this back seat out as a motel room. You probably started your family back here.”

He replied by hanging a hard right off of Washington Avenue onto Fifth. She held tight to the armrest on the door. A chill wind knifed through the thin crack between his window and the door frame and raked the side of his head. He cranked the window shut, wishing it was that easy with women. It was twenty degrees and dropping like a snowball outside, but inside the cab it was warm — a mobile refuge from the frozen dirt of the street, ‘til someone opened the passenger door.

“Hey, cabbie, where the hell are you going?” She blew on the frosted window, wiped some of the ice away with her sleeve. “Falcon Heights is across the river. East. Your visa just expire, or what?”

“I ain’t goin’ east!”

She rubbed the window with her bare hand. “What’d you mean?” She glanced nervously at the twin rolls of fat hunkered on the back of his plug neck.

“Use those spitholders you call ears, sister,” he said. “I told you I ain’t goin’ east — and I ain’t goin’ across the river. You can make it if you take a roll out the door and start swimmin’.” His breath came hard and quick.

“What the hell are you talking about? Where’re you taking me? You’ll be one bean short of a sackload if you try anything! I’m warning you!”

“You wanna know where I’m goin’? That it?”

She shrunk slightly on the edges of his heavy anger. “Yeah. I want to know.” Her voice grew distant. “1750 Cleveland Avenue is in Falcon Heights — across the river.”

He grinned ominously. His red face shone ferociously in the glow of the dashboard lights. “I’m headed south, lady! South! Away from the goddamn cold and the goddamn snow. Away from the scramblin’ day to day just to make enough money to pay the bills! Away from the f’in’ grind of workin’ for your car and your house and your goddamn ungrateful family! Workin’ for what? For what!?”

He jerked the cab onto the 35W entrance ramp and gunned it. The car roared through the cold, early-April morning trailing noxious clouds of grey exhaust. Dirt-crusted snowpiles shunted along the sides of the interstate started flying by.
She stared at his coarse, grey-peppered hair. “You don’t have to yell,” she said to herself.

He drummed his cigar-thick fingers on the steering wheel as the cab shot through the gloom. He glanced at her in the mirror, but she looked away from his glistening eyes. “Listen careful, lady,” he said. “I got a full tank of gas and a full auxiliary tank of gas — thirty-five gallons of go-juice. At, say twenty miles to the gallon, that’s seven hundred miles from here to there. I’m gonna top it up one more time and then drive ‘til the gas runs dry. Where the cab stops, so do I.” He turned his block of a head around to look at her confused face. His neck cracked. His face was crusted with sweat.

She pointed at the road.

He turned back around with a grim look of satisfaction.

She kept quiet for awhile, then said: “When’d you figure all this out?”

“About five minutes before you jumped in front of me,” he replied. “Been thinkin’ about it probably my entire workin’ life. And I ain’t turnin’ back now. Ain’t stoppin’ but twice — otherwise I won’t make it.”

She folded her arms together, watched blandly as Richfield, Bloomington, and then Burnsville drifted by.

They traveled in a tense silence, the car holding steady at sixty-five. The lights of the city ended and the frozen countryside opened its black mouth and swallowed the cab.

“You wanted by the cops?” she finally asked, when she saw the Iowa welcome sign. “Kidnapping, maybe?”

He shook his head, cleared his throat — his mouth was dry and cracked and begging for booze. “Nothin’ like that,” he said. “I’m just sick and tired of the way things been goin’ and I’m gettin’ out. There’s gotta be somethin’ better down the road somewhere.” He sighed. “Look lady, I’m sorry about you—”

“Don’t turn to jelly, driver!”

He stared at her ghostly reflection.

She looked out the window, at nothing. “Don’t start blubbering to me,” she said. “You’re kidnapping me. That’s what you’re doing.”

He shrugged his doughy shoulders. “I told you to get lost, you wouldn’t. You wanted to go somewhere, you’re goin’ somewhere. You’re a stray I took in for awhile, that’s all. You can blow when I stop for gas. Stay to the end of the line and you can keep the cab. I ain’t gonna need it no more.” He gave her a tight smile, the issue resolved in his own mind.

She laughed. “Yeah, just what I need — a thirty-year-old beater. Sounds like my last boyfriend.” She wiped her nose. “You could’ve told me what you were up to and let me get out. You didn’t, so it’s kidnapping.”

He frowned.

“Why’re you stopping the once for gas, anyway?” she asked.

“I ain’t throwin’ everything away just to pick it up again in Council Bluffs.” He stared into the lightening dark. “Why don’t you stuff your mouth with sleep for awhile? You got a long ride ahead of you.”
“It’s not going to be that easy, cabbie. You kidnap me, drag me down your yellow-brick road to fantasyland, then you’ve got to pay the price. I’ll speak my mind even if it means losing yours. You should be more careful about who you hijack.”
He rubbed his face, then studied his shiny fingers. “What’s your name, anyway? You look like somethin’ that might have a name.”

“None of your business.”

He nodded. “You’re a fun girl. You oughta be in a circus.”

They drove on. He listened to the miles slowly clicking by. That’s all he wanted to hear — the miles slowly clicking by. Foul-mouthed women like the one in the back were called family where he came from — as depressing as varicose veins and stretch marks. He settled into his seat and watched the road ahead. He had skipped town at the sagging end of a twelve-hour shift, but he wasn’t feeling the least bit tired. Occasional trucks and cars sailed by on the other side of the interstate — rushing lights in a tunnel of inky nothingness. It was the end of the tunnel he was looking for.

She shifted around, grudgingly trying to get comfortable, her face sullen. She didn’t want him thinking for a minute that he wasn’t imposing a massive, undeserved hardship on her. “What’s your route? Longest distance between two points?”

“I35 south. Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Forth Worth, and then … we’ll see. I’m not sure where—”

“Got that right!”

He turned a question loose on her. “What do you do to make ends meet — besides kiss your ass?”

“Ha, ha. It’s funny that you’re nothing more than a nut on the end of a wheel.”

“C’mon, seriously, how do you pay the bills?”

“None of your business.” She stared out the window, into the blackness, avoiding his eyes.

“C’mon. Your face says radio. Am I right?”

“I’m a goddamn waitress! Okay?”

“Okay.” He jostled his head in a friendly manner. “That’s—”

He ran a nicotine-stained finger along the side of his large, broken-veined nose. “Maybe you ‘n me ain’t so different.”

“Yeah, we’re both talented mutts, all right. Make no mistake, cabbie — I’m not running.”

“Sure you are,” he said. “Everyone is from somethin’.”

“The philosopher hack driver — step right up, folks! Just don’t feed him.”

The small towns of northern Iowa flowed by — Woolstock, Webster, Williams, Hubbard, Story City; left in the churning wake of the cab.

He gritted his teeth when she spoke again. “You aren’t going to get away with it,” she said.

Des Moines exit signs whistled by as the sun’s weak rays revealed the aching emptiness that the night had only briefly hidden.

“Huh? Get away with takin’ you? Who the hell’s gonna miss you? I sure wish the cab hadn’t.”

“I’m not talking about me! I’m talking about trying to escape the past and start something new. Your old-life crisis.”

“What about it?”

“It’s not going to work, that’s what. You aren’t going to make it.”

“Yeah, I thought you might say that.”

“I’m telling it like it is, cabbie. Your past’ll catch up with you.” She pulled her hands out of her pockets — they were red and raw, the nails chewed down. “You’re going to grind to a halt in Dirtsville, Texas, have a good time ‘til all your money runs out, say a week, go hungry for awhile, say an hour, then start pushing a hack again. It’s all you know how to do, right? So you drive so you can eat — you got that taken care of. Then you get lonely because you’ve probably never lived by yourself before. So you team up with some leathery cowgirl whose husband has disappeared like a Panhandle river come summer — so you got that taken care of.” She snorted. “And you know what you got? You’ve got the same old life you left behind in Minneapolis moved to Texas. You put fourteen hundred miles under your can only to pick up where you left off. Same crap, different map.”

“You don’t know—”

“And you probably won’t even know it, cabbie. That’s the pathetic part. You probably won’t even know it until it’s way too late.” She brushed some greasy hair out of her eyes. “Places change, people don’t. You’re wasting time and gas is all you’re doing.”

He frowned, hunched his shoulders. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“Yeah, I mind.”

He pulled a crumpled pack of Camels out of his breast pocket, shook one free, stuck it in his mouth and lit it. “What the hell do you know about people? You probably never even lived with any. How old are you, anyway? Thirty? Thirty-five? Try—”

“Twenty-one, wiseguy!”

He coughed on his smoke. “Old enough to drink and vote; in that order. Try drivin’ hack for twenty years — then you can shoot your mouth about people. Until then, don’t write any advice columns.”

“Truth hurts, huh? You can’t get away from yourself. That’s the problem. You can drive halfway around the globe if you had the brains, but all you’ll find is yourself waiting at the other end. You got to eat, you got to make money, and, from what I can see, you got to have someone to look after you. Your life is a dead, dull certainty.” She smiled triumphantly.

He smiled back. “Let me hear your accomplishments, then maybe I’ll unplug my ears.”

“I’m young.”

“I ain’t hearin’ anything I don’t already know.”

She didn’t respond.

“I thought so.” He checked the gas gauges — still a long way to go.

Wick, St. Charles, Osciola, Van Wert. They crossed the Missouri border around nine. The countryside rolled into hills and the trees and bushes grew tentative leaves. The sun was warmer.

He rolled his window half open and tasted the air — soft and mild.

“How many kids have you got?” Her voice cut through his calm.

“I bet you’ve got a whole big, fat family.”

“Most of ‘em are grown.”

“Aren’t they going to miss you?”

He considered that. “Maybe — some of ‘em.”

“You ever going to see them or talk to them again?”

“Maybe.” He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He knew that she knew that. “What the hell is this — twenty questions?”

“It sure as hell ain’t twenty answers,” she responded. “Just curious. You know, so I have some background information for the cops.”

“You think I shouldn’t’ve run out on—”

“Whoa! Back it up, cabbie. I don’t know nothing about people, remember?”

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, wishing it was her chicken-neck. His face glistened ugly in the sun’s cutting rays. His stomach growled. She laughed — a coarse, irritating laugh, like a smoker’s cough; more an opinion than a laugh. He caught her eyes and held them. “So what’s your story? You waitin’ tables the rest of your life or you expectin’ a call from Prince Harry?”

“Watch where you’re going,” she said, gesturing at the road.

He eased the big car back into the right hand lane from where it had drifted, ignored, halfway into the left hand lane. A buzzcut teenager in a colossal pick-up zoomed by and gave him the finger. He could’ve plugged every dike in Holland with all the fingers he’d taken over the years. “So, how ‘bout it?”

“Take the kid’s advice, cabbie.”

“Uh-huh! You make fun of me, but you can’t even answer one little question about yourself! At least I’m—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth!”
“Okay, that’s all—”

“I want to be a writer, okay? Make with the laughs and then shove ‘em up your ass!”

“A writer? What’d you mean, like a reporter or somethin’?”

“A writer! You know, books, stories — fiction. You ever read a book? Or do the blind read to you?”

He laughed, satisfied at having gotten her goat. “Yeah, I read this book once about an obnoxious, flat-chested, twenty-one-year-old—”

“It’s all crap, anyway! The only writing I do is in library books. There’s a big horse-laugh for you. I write my initials in library books.” She stared at the back of his head, tears of rage and self-pity suddenly sparkling in her grey eyes. “Pretty impressive, huh?” She twisted her head back towards the dirty window and the wooded hills beyond, blinking rapidly, her cheeks flaming an unhealthy red.

He listened to her dry sobbing. It sounded like she was being sick. He didn’t know what to do — never did. After a few minutes, he asked: “Why do you write your initials in library books?”

“Why the hell do you think? It’s the only way I’m ever going to get my name in a book — with my talent. The only way I’m ever going to be remembered.” She folded her arms together again. “Why the hell do you think?”

He pushed his hand through his hair and grunted. He couldn’t figure women if he had the instruction manual.

They drove on; Eagleville, Ridgeway, and, finally, Kansas City. It was eleven in the morning when they motored past Kansas City.

He calculated that they could probably do another two hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty miles before they’d have to stop for gas. After that, the home stretch — when the tanks went empty a second time, that’s where his new life began. It’d be warm at least, probably hot; because once they crossed into Kansas, summer was there to meet them.

They drove through Lawrence and Topeka and down the Kansas turnpike bound for Wichita. The terrain flattened out again — flatter than it had ever been before. The fields lay freshly plowed and planted. Fully-realized leaves stuck to the branches of the few trees and bushes that rimmed the almost-vacant highway. The noonday sun beat down hard on the big, yellow cab. He rolled his window all the way down, let the warm air rush in.

She kept her window sealed shut. “Aren’t you going to miss your family?” she started in on him again.

A vague smile dried up on his face, leaving a white line. “Yeah, maybe. Sometimes. Why don’t you give the family a rest, eh? They could use it.”

She laughed harshly, stared into his mirrored brown eyes. “You’re a pretty selfish sack of meat, aren’t you? Well, maybe not pretty. But selfish.”

Dust from the stripped fields blew into the cab. He rubbed a red-rimmed eye. “When I want your opinion, I won’t ask for it, okay? You don’t know—”

“You abandon your wife and kids in arctic Minneapolis while you take a joyride into the sun.” She leaned forward as he threw up his hands in exasperation. “How’s your family going to live without the so-called man of the house around?”

“You deaf as well as dumb? I told you already — most of the kids are grown; they can look after themselves. They don’t need their old man. They’ve made that plenty clear.” He sprayed water onto the windshield, turned on the wipers — succeeded in clouding the glass with streaks of dirt. “My wife’s got a job. She’ll get by. Maybe I’ll send money, if I can.”

She licked her lips. “You’re a classic,” she said. “You’re running away to get away and now you’re sending money back home. What’s the point? You’re your own square peg and square hole.”

“Yeah, well, not all of us have our shit together like you, I guess. Lemme see if I got a book here for you to autograph.”

“Shut up!”

He leaned over, fumbled around in the glove compartment. “Oh, yeah, here’s one. The Bible. You wanna take credit for that?”

“Shut up.”

He laughed, shoved the book back into the compartment. He glanced out the window at the fertile soil stretching endlessly to the horizon. He hadn’t thought a lot about what he was going to do when he got to where he was going. Or what he was going to do about his family. That was the point — had he thought everything through he never would have done anything. His flight had been the first impulsive thing he had done in fifty hard years of living. Sweat gathered in the thick folds at the back of his neck and his head started to pound. He felt the heat for the first time.

El Dorado, Wichita — the Kansas towns and cities shimmered in the distant under a broiling sun.

By the time he drove over the Oklahoma border, his brain was boiling with memories — some good, some bad; all fighting for room inside of his splintered head. Memories of a young bride, a new-born child, a first car, some more kids, his tenth wedding anniversary, the guys at the garage, neighbors, family, friends, relatives. Milestones and landmarks littering a life slowly built and hastily discarded — a simple life grown to frustrating complexity with the many people and responsibilities it encompassed.

“You’re probably getting low, driver,” she said. “On gas.”

He blinked a few times, then glanced down at the gauges. He would have to stop at the next town and re-fill the tanks — she was right.

The next town was Braman, Oklahoma; a small, work-deserted town in the middle of a hot, dusty nowhere. White clouds scudded aimlessly across a pale, blue sky, pushed around by a sharply rising and falling wind.

He steered the car into a decrepit, two-pump filling station a mile off of the interstate. The gas pumps were as old as the guy who emerged from the small, grey-weathered, wooden building. A faded windsock flopped around helplessly on a pole on the top of the building. The man wore a cowboy hat, a flannel shirt, and jeans. His face was brown and cracked like the topsoil that carpeted the surrounding fields, when it wasn’t blowing around.

The man stared at the car for a long moment, then slowly ambled over to the driver-side window. “Woo-wee! That is some kinda old-time metal you is hauling around, son! You ain’t come all the way down from New York City have you? I declare! Ain’t seen nothin’ like this since the Korean War ended and they turned all them Shermans back into nickels. Fill ‘er up with the regular or does she drink the diesel like a real tank?”

“Yeah, regular,” he replied. He undid a couple of more buttons on his shirt. The sweater his wife had knitted him and he had worn religiously the entire winter lay discarded on the seat next to him. “Hot, eh.”

The man pushed back his cowboy hat with a bent thumb and chuckled. His laugh was warm and gentle and timeless, and came from deep in his throat. He spat into the dust and steadied his blade of a body against a sudden gust of wind. “Mister, this here is a cool spell compared to what we’re gonna get.” He shuffled off to the pump, chuckling to himself as the dust swirled all around.

“You gettin’ out?” He turned around to look at her when she didn’t answer. He hated to break her quiet. “I told you that you could beat it when I stopped for gas, and now I’m stopped.”

She looked at him distrustfully. She spoke quietly: “What am I supposed to do — get Tex Ritter there to give me a ride back on his burro?”

“You can hitch a ride back with me if you can stand the company.”

She frowned, her lightly glazed eyes firing back to life. “What?”

“Yeah, I’m headin’ back to Minneapolis. The road to freedom is closed for repairs up ahead.”

“Minneapolis!?” She leaned forward, grabbed the back of the front bench. “What’d you mean? I thought you were going to keep going south?”

“Yeah, so did I — for awhile, I guess.” He shrugged. “But now I’m thinkin’ better. Maybe the hot air’s cleared my thick head. I dunno. I’m turnin’ around and—”

“You gutless bastard!” Her lips trembled and her blanched face flushed a fevered scarlet. “You stupid, gutless bastard! You drive all this way only to turn around when your guts run out!”
His face hardened. “Yeah, maybe. I dunno. I guess you were right about—”

“I was right!?” Her clutching fingers blazed white on the scarred, black upholstery. She gulped for air like someone near to drowning. “What about your goddamn idea about starting over someplace new?” She choked on her words, tore her face away from his.

The old cowboy looked in at them through the dusty back window, his face serene and knowing.

“Hey, take it easy. It was just a pipe dream. You said so yourself. Things ain’t really so bad back—”

“You gutless bastard!” she screamed a final time, then fumbled open the heavy door and stumbled out into the scorching afternoon.

“Howdy, ma’am,” the old man said. He touched the blackened brim of his cowboy hat.

She shoved past his courtesy, her brutal, trailing laughter tinged with hysteria. She staggered through the brilliant sunshine, ran across the lot and out onto the service road.

The old man pulled the dripping nozzle out of the cab, hitched it back onto the pump, and strolled over and said: “Feisty little gal, huh? Married me one just like her — long time ago.”

“Did you fill the auxiliary tank?” he asked, staring after her. She ran awkwardly down the road — tripping, falling, picking herself up, running again. Like a child. He couldn’t figure her out. He’d thought she’d be happy about his going back.

The old man scratched the dry stubble on his beef jerky face. “You got one of those, too? I declare. Didn’t know you had one of those.”

He nodded impatiently, watched her retreating figure until she reached a curve in the road and her small body was lost behind a line of trees and brush.

When the tanks were finally filled, he paid off the old man and left him hanging in mid-sentence and a cloud of dust. He tore out of the station and shot the cab down the service road. Hot air thundered through his open window and his face dripped with sweat. He’d pick her up and haul the both of them back to Minnesota where they goddamn well belonged. It was too damn hot here anyway. The car rocketed forward and he grimly hung onto the wheel and shook his head. What the hell had he been thinking, running away like he had? There were plenty worse off than him. He saw them every day.

The big cab was pushing forty when he rounded the bend in the road and slammed on the brakes. Something had darted out of a clump of bushes directly into his path. He fought the steering wheel over hard to the left, but he wasn’t nearly quick enough. A sickening thud resounded in his crimson ears.

He jammed the car to a stop, slammed the gear shift into park, and fell out the door. He was instantly crushed by the towering heat and smacked around by the angry wind. He ran jerkily down the cracked road to where her body lay mangled. Her legs were twisted grotesquely, and thick, black blood leaked out of the side of her head and onto the hot asphalt. She wasn’t moving. He collapsed next to her, frantically dug into her thin neck with his shaking fingers — desperately searching for a pulse. He found nothing. He looked down at her staring, accusing eyes and her broken mouth. He retched over and over, his stomach heaving empty. His swelled head was lacerated with searing pain and scalding tears streamed down his burning face. He felt himself blacking out, then somehow pulled it together.

He glanced up and down the empty, windswept road. He swallowed hard, staggered upright, and then carefully dragged her body into the grassy ditch. She was amazingly light — easy to handle; and he did so tenderly. He walked quickly back to the big cab, climbed inside, and drove south — a man on the run.

Long pounds out fiction in all genres. Big guy, sense of humor. Writing credits include: Blue Murder Magazine, Hardboiled, Thriller UK, Damnation Books, Bullet, Robot, Eternal Night, Another Realm, Ennea (9), The Dark Krypt, Albedo One, Baen’s Universe, The Forensic Examiner, and stories in the anthologies The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunits, and The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries.

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post #66 of (permalink) Old 02-01-2013, 03:00 PM
Obsessed? Maybe
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Louisville, KY
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I can't tell from your photo but that's normal when you're adding uncured live rock to any tank.

Shutting it down may not be a bad idea if you're constantly trying to change things around and are uncertain about what you want in it.
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Okami HD Dated for North America and Europe

September 20, 2012 Written by Alex Osborn

Capcom has finally revealed the released date for the HD port of their PS2 action adventure classic, Okami. The game will launch on October 30th for PlayStation Network users in North America and one day later in Europe.

Thanks to its artistic use of cel-shaded visuals, this game has aged incredibly well and benefits from a high definition upgrade like no other game. HexaDrive, the studio behind the visual improvement has done a remarkable job of bringing this game into the HD era.

The game will be priced at $19.99 and will feature PlayStation Move support. The publisher also released a number of screenshots to celebrate its upcoming release. Check out the stunning new images below.

Will you be downloading Okami HD when it arrives on the PlayStation Network next month? If so, will you be dusting off that Move controller to play this game? Let us know in the comments below.


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Posts Tagged ‘Armored Core: Verdict Day’

Tomorrow on US/CA PlayStation Plus: April 29th, 2014 – Velocity Ultra Free

Pre-order Wolfenstein: The New Order on PS3 or PS4 to save some money.

Armored Core: Verdict Day – E3 Preview

There’s a new Armored Core game in the works, and this time, it’s persistent.

Armored Core: Verdict Day Mechanizes to PlayStation 3 This Summer in North America and Europe

Operator Mode is back.


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The haberdashery, act II

Flaunted on March 12, 2006.

Again, I flopped on by Mr. Thaddeus C.L. Harshbarger’s haberdashery on Wednesday, inquiring as to whether or not he would like to take on an apprentice. Again, he said no. So I begged him, and pleaded with him, and taunted him over his expansive beer gut and fourth chin, and again he said, “hell no.”

So again I stopped by the Ham & Eggs (a triangular sign in one window said they’re renaming the eigencafé to the Crammin’ Pegs next week), and ordered myself a spam sandwich, fourteen truffles stuffed with ham and scrambled eggs, and a roast pig still on the spit. They delivered the pig, but forgot the spit, so I shouted “Blam-damn you splonglers, you unga-bunglers; can’t you get anything right?!” and hustled on out of there without paying one ingot for that “meal.” They weren’t happy and tried to muster a posse after me, but I killed all their assassins one by one (old Sammy Dreckers included!), by beating them to death with an old lampshade attached to an underdog.

The underdog, unfortunately, was killed in action. Its last words to me were: “Woof, woof… woooof.” Poor underdog.

On Thursday, I visited a brothel behind the abortion clinic on Squayzie Avenue, and got arrested. Whatever you read in the newspapers about a brothel bust that netted half a dozen goats along with one Mr. Phillip Årp, dear readers, it isn’t true. Unless you hear it from a horse-monkey’s mouth, nothing is true.


text:
Cutting edge technology could see water being used to cool the next generation of PC chips.

IBM has revealed that its scientists have managed to build a water cooling system into a 3D chip.

The prototype device is layered with thousands of "hair-width" cooling arteries, and these could be used to dissipate the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components.

The heat is the by-product of the movement of electrons through the wires connecting the millions of components on a modern processor.

The BBC explains: "Each 4cm sq sandwich is just 1mm thick but pumps out close to 1kilowatt - 10 times that generated by a hotplate".

"As we package chips on top of each other ... we have found that conventional coolers attached to the back of a chip don't scale", Thomas Brunschwiler at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory told the Beeb.

"In order to exploit the potential of high-performance 3D chip stacking, we need interlayer cooling."

IBM says that the technology could be in products within as little as 5 years.


text:
In the spring, some National Park Service firefighters switch teams.

In the spring, some National Park Service firefighters switch teams.

Last Monday, 12 of them in yellow jumpsuits and hard hats set fires in a Pennsylvania corner of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The palls of smoke they created towered so high that people in New Jersey dialed 911.

Fire Management Officer Cliff Lively listened to the emergency dispatch calls on his hand-held radio, chuckling. Like all the fire and police officials in the park's surrounding area, whom the rangers keep informed during their work, Lively knew.

Lively isn't a pyromaniac, though there is something cool about making something so hot, big and destructive whoosh through prairie grass until it mounts into a city of orange flame.

If he had to pick one over the other, he'd pick starting fires over putting them out.

"It's more challenging," he said. When you set fires, the variables you must track are countless, he explained. Humidity, wind, temperature, locations must be charted, logged and adhered to. When someone or something starts a wildfire, nature keeps the variables to itself.

Every spring, as in other parks, Delaware Water Gap burns about 500 acres to destroy dead vegetation and unwanted plants and keep open, unforested landscapes clear.

With prescription fires, there's a reward in the end. Often within a week of reducing a section of the park to a blackened moonscape, there's a wash of green. After that, the lush ecosystem returns, renewed and unencumbered by the invasive species that had been choking it.

So, throughout the month, the park service will set giant blazes in various spots to give its vegetation room to breathe.

Early Monday afternoon, motorists turning onto River Road in Bushkill watched the serene foothills morph into an angry volcano. A column of black smoke twisted upward, thick enough to block out the sun if you got close enough. Down the winding dirt road, orange signs warned drivers "Caution: Control Burn in Progress."

Closer to the center of the park, small fires among the trees pumped clouds and ash into the road. Here, a handful of hard hats zipped around in Chevy Tahoes and six-wheeled utility vehicles, making little if any effort to douse the flames.

Through the trees, the ground widened into a charred, black plain. Moments before, it had been a field. Moths, bees and birds flitted above a blanket of winter-yellowed big bluestem — a grass that in the summer months can rise higher than a grown man's head.

When burn boss Mike Boss determined the wind, humidity and temperature were just right, he gave the order.

Then, in 20 minutes, about 75 acres of grassland became a coal-colored desert.

At the tree line, the mammoth blaze responsible still burned, though reduced to ankle-high smatterings of orange. Scattered throughout the ground, scorched stalks poked upward in the fog like gray fingers. It's the stalks and not the grass that Lively and his team wanted to get rid of.

In the 1950s, this was a crop field until it became National Park Service property. Today, fields like it are part of 2,000 acres in the park's open space program — a place for pheasant hunters, hikers and others. By burning, park rangers are seeking to preserve the landscape the way it was.

Before the firefighters lit them ablaze, the stalks were shrubs and bushes like autumn olive and Japanese honeysuckle.

Homeowners buy the plants to spruce up their lawns. But seeds from the vegetation are caught in the breeze or within the feathers of a bird and travel great distances. They wind up finding purchase on national park land. And then they take over.

So, every three years, Lively and his crew light the field ablaze to kill off all the unwanted stuff. The wanted stuff — the big bluestem grass — grows back practically instantaneously.

Some of the men and women were Delaware Water Gap employees. Others came from different parks to pitch in. Tom Liogys is an assistant fire management officer from Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City.

"People are surprised when I tell 'em I'm from New Yoik," Liogys said, imitating a Big Apple accent.

In fact, the urban area ranks third highest in the number of wildfire starts in the nation.

Liogys is assistant to Lively, who serves as the fire management officer, or fire chief, for parks in states such as Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.

Mark Birtel, who used to work at the Steamtown National Historic Site near Scranton, is officially retired. But on Monday, he came out to offer his services and man a drip torch.

It's a canister full of diesel oil mixed with gasoline, capped with coiling pipe and a cotton wick. Bertel and other park rangers drop some of the oil onto the ground and light it with a lighter. Then they dip the wick into the fluid and walk along, dribbling burning fluid onto the ground.

Just before dusk, Lively's meter indicated that the relative humidity had risen above 20. He stood at the center of a 120-acre field of yellow brush and thickets with National Park Service Rangers Kevin Reish and Chris Grindle.

Lively held his hands up to test the wind. He instructed Grindle to start a line of fire with his drip torch at the far end of the field.

Grindle marched along, dribbling a line of liquid fire at his feet. Behind him, the fire bloomed and grew into wild rags of flame that blew across the field.

Within minutes, jagged triangles of fire rose feet into the air on all sides of the field. Lively, Grindle and Reish stood inside the trees and watched.

Temperatures soared. Low-hanging limbs at the tree line turned orange and smoked. Warm winds began to blow, and the convection created flame tornadoes, which spiraled at the center of the field.

Then the crackling became a roar, and all at once the fire burned so hot that the men retreated farther into woods. They scaled a wall of rounded river stones a farmer might have built at the edge of the field 100 years ago.

And then it was finished. The yellow brush and thickets were gone. A black desert fanned out where it had once been.

Lively grinned.

"Not a bad day at the office," he said.

Distributed by MCT Information Services


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Global News Podcast

BBC World Service

News & Politics

Chart Positions

Top 200 95
News & Politics 19

The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.

Suicide bombing near Saudi holy site

July 4th, 2016

Episode 1197 of 1670 episodes

Four killed in attack in Medina near the Prophet's Mosque / Israeli PM visits Entebbe, 40 years after hostage rescue / Icelandic football team given rapturous welcome in Reykjavik

Featured Podcast


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triple j

News & Politics, Society & Culture

Shoving the J into journalism, Hack covers current affairs, music, politics and culture with youth in mind. Get our half-hour radio program sent directly to you each weekday.

Hack: Wed 18 June

June 17th, 2014

Episode 5 of 649 episodes

HOOKING UP - DAY 3: if someone told you they had an STI... would you still have sex with them? ...and how does your sex life change if you get herpes or HIV?

Featured Podcast


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Hospital Records Podcast

Hospital Records

Hospital Records' Award winning podcast, hosted by London Elektricity. Bringing you the hottest upfront Jungle and Drum and Bass and Dubstep dubs, unsigned tunes and fast soul from the UK-based label. Featuring all the news from the world of Hospital, High Contrast, Cyantific, Nu:Tone, Camo and Krooked, Q Project, Logistics, Danny Byrd, Mistabishi, Netsky, Subwave, Med School, S.P.Y, CLS, Fracture, Neptune, Randomer, Trisector, Bop, Icicle, MC Wrec and Landslide, plus the people who have remixed for Hospital including Photek, Dillinja, D.Kay, Bugz In The Attic, Mr. Scruff, Calibre, Makoto, etc. Whilst filling you in on our sensational Hospitality club nights, which have featured special guests Goldie, Randall, Zinc, Commix, Craggz and Parallel Forces, Andy C, Marky, Krust, Die, Clipz, Heist, Roni Size, LTJ Bukem, Matrix & Futurebound, Marcus Intalex, Doc Scott, DJ Lee, Total Science, Annie Mac, Klute, Friction, Subfocus, Fabio, Grooverider, Flight, L Double, Bailey, Nicky Blackmarket, Bryan G, Mampi Swift, Skream, Benga, Rusko, Chase and Status, Noisia, N-Type, Brookes Brothers, Blame, Fresh Plus bringing you all the big tracks from the scene- Ram, Metalheadz, Shogun, lifted, Soul:R, BBK, UKF etc. Also big love to the forum support we receive from Dogs on Acid, Drum and Bass Arena. Thank you for supporting us and helping us win best podcast at the BT Digital Music Awards three years consecutively! Please Head To http://www.hospitalrecords.com/

Hospital Podcast 169 with London Elektricity

March 8th, 2012

Episode 12 of 180 episodes

Camo & Krooked - Lost In The Future - feat Jenna G and Futurebound Hamilton - Deep In My Heart Bulb & Clarity - Her Smooth Love Phuturistix - Feel It Out (Daluq remix) Optiv - Midnight Nation TwoThirds & BadApple (ft. Veela) - Sense Of Being Hydro + Halogenix - Trieste Lung - Accidently On Purpose Royalston - Carnivore Technicolour & Komatic - The Glow Camo & Krooked - Afterlife - BCEE Remix High Contrast - Almost Human feat Clare Maguire Frederick Robinson - Roadtrip Skittles - Dot 2 Dot Bop - Impermanence Sub Zero - Protection Logistics - We Are One - Nu:Logic Remix High Contrast - Wish You Were Here feat Selah Corbin Spinline - Tokyo Subwave - Senses Submerse - Always, Like This Camo & Krooked - Portal - Subwave Remix Gridlok - Enemies Of The State

Featured Podcast


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Listening to inner guidance: March OLW

Screen Shot 2014-03-03 at 12.40.20 PM

I  have focused on health this month, as well as connection and self-care.  Much of what I am “doing” is trying to “not do.” Sure, I’m taking too many e-courses and have been traveling, but largely I am trying to let go, to be still more often, and to be gentle with myself.  I decided early this month to lead my body back to a healthy framework.  I’ll spare you my aha moment from a dressing room at Banana Republic and simply share that we bought a treadmill and threw out all our candy that same day.  When my body moves and feels good, my whole self feels better.  After three weeks of eating better and exercising, I’m 9 pounds lighter.

I know that our ability to love others is directly related to our ability to love ourselves.  I believe that love is the answer to so many questions.  I am more able to give love and compassion to others these days, and more able to view myself with those same eyes.  One huge challenge remains: learning to love the parts of myself that I wish were different.  I’m sure we all face this.  Acceptance can lead to love and that can lead toward either change or simply letting go.

“I am not a hero if I deny rest; I am only tired.” ~ Susan McHenry

OLW self care

I’ve started a list of self-care actions in case, in a moment of need, I need some ideas.

This month’s prompt was to make a vision board.  There is a light within that I am tapping into.  I don’t know how to picture it or how I would represent it on a vision board.  I honestly don’t want to make another vision board because I made this one for my intentions for the year and that feels like enough.  “Cherish” for me means tending to my physical body, but more than that, it means quieting my mind and being still.  It means listening to my inner guidance.  I could never look through a magazine and find images for that.  (Well, maybe a photo of a box of tea or a woman looking out her window, but you get the idea.)

There is nothing physical that could bring me the feeling that I’m looking to sustain.  I’m searching for meaning, wonder, and inner guidance.  Mentioned in this month’s Project Light Year: “It is impossible to be genuinely compassionate towards others if you are not compassionate towards yourself.”  And this is where “cherish” comes in.  I’m not allowing any negativity into my thoughts at all.  If something pops in there that sounds like a judgement, I turn it around actively.  Violence in Kiev? I immediately send a donation and feel that at least I’m creating light where there is darkness.  Someone testing my patience or sparking judgmental thoughts? Practice sending compassion until I feel it myself.  Try it… it works!

I’d like to share with you what came forward for me when I listened to a guided meditation recently:Meditation

If you’re interested, you can read previous One Little Word posts here.  On Wednesday, we’ll be joining in another Photo-Heart Connection and on Friday, we’ll be talking about spiritual parenting. Have a wonderful week, friends! Thanks, as always, for being here.

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12 Responses to Listening to inner guidance: March OLW

  1. Susan says:

    I was fortunate to hear Anita Moorjani speak, the author of Dying to be Me. She had a near death experience (fully documented) and came away with the knowledge that love everything. She talked about teaching our children from the earliest age how to love themselves, that it is only through self-love that we can understand how to love others. Imagine what the world would be like if little girls looked in the mirror and saw how beautiful and accomplished they were instead of wanting to look and be different. Or little boys grew up happy and confident and didn’t need to hurt anyone to prove anything. Some of the people in the audience were aghast that she should suggest that, they equated self-love with selfishness when it’s really the opposite.

    I guess this starts one person at a time. “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me…”
    Susan recently posted…Monkey BusinessMy Profile

  2. Naomi says:

    I would love to hear her speak! How wonderful and powerful that must have been. I have read her book and loved it. I think what she (and what you write here) writes is spot on.

  3. Just wanted to tell you once again what an inspiration you are to me, sweet friend. You are so wise for one so young. Wish I’d learned HALF the life lessons you’ve learned so quickly (HA! in fact I STILL haven’t learned many of them.) You seriously ROCK!
    janet forrest recently posted…New Lens!My Profile

  4. So love this post Naomi! First congrats on the 9 lb loss. That is wonderful! I love all of your self care ideas. You are an inspiration to me!

  5. Debbie Goode says:

    Wonderful post….words I’m finding to be true more and more everyday. You really must love yourself first…..then let that love shine out into the world. It is amazing what happens as that love you send out makes its way back to you….
    Debbie Goode recently posted…Buster WIP FourMy Profile

  6. Naomi says:

    Thanks for commenting, Debbie!

  7. Naomi says:

    Thanks, Stacie. Thank you for the book recommendation you sent too!

  8. Naomi says:

    Ha! I don’t feel very wise. I DO feel that I’m learning so much lately and I know that wisdom comes from learning about my own soul and what it needs. Thank you, as always, for joining me on this adventure.

  9. Hi Naomi:
    Thank you for these lovely words. A wonderful reminder of the power of compassion and importance of having it for ourselves.
    Amy Kathleen Kelsch recently posted…Show Me The Bunny: Fun Easter Basket IdeasMy Profile

  10. ~Christy says:

    Beautiful post! The self care list is so important…when you’re not quite feeling it, not in that space but you need it bad, it helps to have reminders. I look at mine even when I am not in immediate need of it and it brings me peace. Every tool helps. Thanks for sharing this!

  11. What a beautiful, soul-comforting list from your meditation experience. I could read that list over and over. Balm for the heart and soul. <3
    Harmony Harrison recently posted…The Great Corgi Leap! In which real paint is put on real paper. Really.My Profile

  12. Jean says:

    Naomi, your posts always move me in directions and perspectives that I have yet to fully explore. Thanks for being so willing to show yourself, to be present, to be seen, to be… just YOU! Much love to you! ♥

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Desc:If you liked the first one, you'll hate this. They made a third one in 2008, too.
Category:Sports, Trailers
Tags:hockey, gary busey, why, stephen baldwin, horrible sequel infinity
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Of course Stephen Baldwin's in it. Oh look! A gay stereotype!
infinite zest
I'll just assume that was the actual trailer, but I think I just saw the whole movie. Fun fact (which I may have read on here, not sure): Slap Shot was written by Nancy Dowd, the title being a "slap" in the face to all the misogynists in the world of hockey (and moviegoers who probably didn't realize or pay attention that it was written by a woman). It was one of the first "feminist" films in that way, and unlike Bad News Bears, explored more gender boundaries than "hey look, chicks can play a dude sport too!" I watched the movie again about a year ago and it's still great, but a lot more depressing than I remember it being the first time I saw it.

I guess a sequel makes sense, but with the original, hockey was really just a storytelling device: the movie wasn't really about hockey at all, any more than Prefontaine was about running fast,
That's awesome, I didn't know that! That's right up there with Slumber Party Massacre for "explicitly Feminist films that most people probably don't realize are explicitly Feminist films."

Just one more reason why Slap Shot is one of the greatest movies.

infinite zest
Last time I watched it my housemates were watching Trailer Park Boys and I was like "you've never seen Slap Shot?" This movie looks pretty bad, but kinda like "Color of Money" bad, if that makes any sense, which in some ways was actually pretty good. Or maybe I'm just thinking of Paul Newman. The hockey cinematography if nothing else is pretty interesting. Come to think of it, I think I saw this in a hotel once just because I needed something to pass out to. But I'm pretty sure I thought it was a Mighty Ducks movie, since the swear words were cut out. I dunno, I was pretty drunk.

[Citation needed] on your little title factoid, because that sounds incredibly made up and I can't find anything on it.

For what it's worth (nothing), according to a "Making of" book, Dowd wanted to call it Hat Trick and a producer came up with Slap Shot.

I realize I've wasted time but it's just such an incredibly dumb fact I had to shoot it down.

The Mothership
I didn't see the first one, which is probably why I like this.

should I see the first one?
infinite zest
Short answer is yes. Long answer is, yeah.

Yes, definitely. The first one is great.

It was gold.

I see and raise

Rodents of Unusual Size
The dialogue is excruciating. Is Stephen Baldwin trying to be Martin Short? Because it isn't working.
I have this DVD. It's really not that terrible, just boring.
The first one set the bar pretty high.

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Stripping perf out from kernel source

You may have heard about perf, a tool made by Linux kernel developers to help debugging, benchmarking and profiling.

The problem is you have to download the whole kernel source in order to compile perf. If you are not used to follow kernel developping, most likely you will not have its source. But it’s still possible to compile perf.

As I’m helping to maintain perf package in Archlinux, I made the following script to strip perf from a given kernel version:

function usage() {
    cat - <
This script works fine with latest 2.6.33 kernel. Regularly I'm uploading to this site the stripped version of perf. The latest one, you find here.


text:
Benedict XVI

In an interview with Peter Sewald, our father, Benedict XVI, said humbly that there was a place for small Popes. Whilst he visibly tried to make a bridge between the past of the Church and its continuous, ever-changing present he was and will always be the prophetic theologian of the second Vatican Council in his ‘Introducing Christianity’ and the great harmoniser of her teaching in the ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’.

Vatican II has been called the Council of St Francis, it is the herald of the return to the simplicity of the Gospel of Pope Francis, the first Pope in eight centuries to take the name of the Poor Man of Assisi, despite belonging to the Jesuit Order!

Joseph Ratzinger took name of Benedict, the founder of Europe, but he gave Franciscan theology back to the Church. John Paul II had invited the Church to breath with both lungs - taking in both eastern and western spirituality. Benedict XVI, whilst deeply respecting the contribution of St Thomas to the rational elucidation and defence of the faith, gave back to the universal Church the approach of St Bonaventure to love and truth - to the God who is and who is good.

That Benedict XVI felt very close to us Franciscans, in his writings on Francis, Clare, Anthony and Bonaventure.  And his spirit of povert and non ownership led him to freely give up his authority as Bishop of Rome, even as Francis gave up the government his brothers.

Our life is at the heart of the Church

It is part of our charism as Poor Clare Colettines to pray for the successor of Peter the fisherman. In the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory IX wrote to St Clare:

"You are our one consolation amongst the innumerable, bitter and endless trials by which we are constantly being afflicted .... we put our arms around you in intimate love as our special daughters, and - and it is right so to address you, as you are the spouses of the Lord - our Ladies. Because we are confident you have been made one spirit with Christ, we ask you to remember us always in your prayers...."

In the fifteenth century, at the very centre of the Council of Basle is the image of our mother, St Colette, praying for the healing and renewal of the Church. As she prayed for the fulfillment of hers, we pray for our own II Vatican Council.

Praying for the Successor of St Peter is part of our daily life. But it is more than that. With Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict is the father of the civilization of love; a whole new attitude to life and a culture of truth and joy of which we want very much to be part.

Benedict XVI is perhaps the greatest theologian the church has produced in the last two centuries if you want to know what Christianity is; he has defined it in his book Introducing Christianity which he wrote when he was a university professor!

We have added short versions of his encyclicals Deus Caritas est and Spe salvi. We did these for our own use. They are all invitations to read the full texts!


text:
Donahue | 21 Jul 2002 // 8:00 PM

Donahue was visibly overwhelmed by the venom and ferocity of the guests' attacks against one another.

//Mixed media

Tibet House's 30th Anniversary Benefit Concert Celebrated Philip Glass' 80th

// Notes from the Road

"Philip Glass, the artistic director of the Tibet House benefits, celebrated his 80th birthday at this year's annual benefit with performances from Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Brittany Howard, Sufjan Stevens and more.

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How will FishScription Work?

Poppa’s FishScription offers fresh, local, non local, and seasonal  seafood straight from fishermen and processers to our community.   FishScription boxes are offered to shareholders in regular or small sizes, weekly, every other week, or monthly for an 8 week commitments.

We use Farmigo to process our new shares.  On Farmigo you will create a unique account, be able to track and make payments, and renew your subscription in a few easy steps!  Commitment and payment are on an 8 week basis. We do this because we need to know how many shareholders to order for.

With Farmingo, you will make a pre-payment for your 8 week committment.  Your subscription will automatically renew when your credit account with Farmingo reaches zero, unless you cancel or change your subscription.

We will accept payment via credit cards, debit cards and shortly will be able to accept echecks.  (sorry at this time we will not be able to recieve payment via American Express or by check.)

Becoming a FishScription shareholder means that you pledge to support Poppa’s Fresh Fish Company in its operations by pre-paying a fee in exchange for a share of the harvested seafood.

You have an interest in Poppa’s Fresh Fish Company’s success! Our FishScription boxes are priced competitively or better than store prices. We’ve eliminated the middle men, fuel costs, and extra packaging, while still able to offer a variety of healthful Seafood. Go Green!

Each box will include a variety of items, and will be at a savings of 20-25%  our regular retail pricing.

Your box will be at the specified pick-up location on the designated delivery dates and time. The box is guaranteed during the pick-up hours. If you or your agent, do not pick up during the designated hours, or make acceptable arrangements for pickup, your box will be donated to the San Diego Food Bank.

You are responsible for making arrangements for your box if you are unable to pick up. Please ask a neighbor, friend or family member to pick-up your box for you. We offer one cancellation per commitment period and require one week notice.

Seafood in the boxes will come from available fresh stocks, and will be subject to what is in season and available, boxes may vary box to box.

All seafood will be fresh unless otherwise specified here:  Wild Salmon will be fresh during wild salmon season, and will be “frozen at sea” wild salmon while out of season.  All clams, mussels, oysters, lobsters, and crabs will be live.  Shrimp and scallops will be frozen unless fresh stocks are available.

Shareholders will be allowed to upgrade or downgrade size of share during commitment period.

Shareholders will choose pickup site for their box pickup.

Some Text provided with permission from Suzies Farm (


text:
Chris Schwarz's Blog

A Pause in the Hostilities

I finished yesterday fitting the three bottom drawers to the Campaign Secretary I’m building and I started in on building the gallery – it’s all dovetailed now.

I’d be quite happy with my progress if I weren’t about to get into a car. For the next 10 days I’ll be on the road, taping a couple episodes of “The Woodwright’s Shop” with Roy Underhill, teaching a class in making “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” at his school and teaching another class at the Woodcraft in Atlanta.

I believe I’ll also be giving a free lecture next Saturday night (Feb. 25) at that Woodcraft. Call the Woodcraft store for details. They usually have food, so even if you mean to throw the food at me, it should be a good time for all.

When I return, I’ll have about three weeks to complete the gallery, install the hardware and finish the project before the March 15 deadline.

Piece of pie.

— Christopher Schwarz

10 thoughts on “A Pause in the Hostilities

  1. David4444

    Looks great so far, but it’s hard for me to vision what it’s going to look like in the end. If you have a “Finished project design” sketch, I sure would like to see it.

  2. is9582

    I see eckmane beat me to the question of questions. What is the rationale for no half pin on the bottom of each drawer. Are you just trying to throw us off?? Great dovetails, all in all.

    1. Christopher SchwarzChristopher Schwarz Post author

      Some time I will do an entry on the way I build drawers, start to finish.

      The half tail is a feature I found on several English chests from the 18th and 19th centuries. Sometimes the half tail is angled (as shown) and sometimes it is straight, like a finger joint. The half tail allows you to plow the groove for the bottom very close to the bottom edge of the drawer.

      I use this when I am not using drawer slips (another English feature).

      Hope this makes sense.

    1. Jim McCoy

      So which are harder to make, pies or cakes? For me it’s pie. Harder to get right but way more satisfying.

  3. eckmane

    Chris, it’s interesting how you dovetailed the drawers. What’s the reason for having a half tail vs. a half pin on the bottom of each drawer?

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Review of Naughty Art:

Sometimes something looks so good, there is no way it can be real. The perfect cheeseburger, served to you just how you like it, cooked exactly to order, and plump and juicy for you to eat. I know, it takes a fat guy to make an analogy like that. But hey, it is what it is. I love food and I love women. I can't use my porno example because therein lies the whole thought of this site! Today we look at a site that has all the elements of the perfect picture- but guess what- it isn't real!

Naughty Art is a site that focuses on artistic pornographic shots of ladies. Instead of being shot with a camera, these are images that are painted. Remember the old art school jokes where there are naked models? Well, this is the same thing. Models pose for the picture, and it is put into artistic form. I've talked about artsy porn sites before, but this takes it to a new level!

Moving into the site, the front page is a nice page which has a lot of stuff, indexed in an intelligent manner and seperated nicely. There are two sidebars, one on each side, that links to all different kinds of pages. This is mostly little stuff, but pretty cool nonetheless. I will say that I hoped they could have indexed the content a bit better. It'd be nice to have a seperation between the digital photos and the actual paintings. You can seperate by model and by set but it is hard to kind of navigate around the pictures here. The page looked very professional and very busy, but it was a little hard to get a true feel for everything going on here.

There are some digital pictures, and there are some paintings here. You can sort the pictures by model or by set, but not by the type that they are. Some of the paintings are so good here you can't tell that they are real. When you go for a big picture, you get a new window with the picture. If you maximize that window, they will tell you if its a photo, painting, and what kind of painting it is. That is pretty cool that they tell you. It is really hard to talk quality here. I mean, the pictures look good. Some of the artistic prints are just that, artistic prints. Art can mean a lot of different things to different people. I don't particularly think any of it is erotic, but more like a cool sideshow, but I know some people are into it, so I will leave it at that.

Naughty Art also has a videos section. The videos are more traditional in style, girls posing and playing with each other and stuff. At the end, they showcase a print or two of art taken from the action. I thought this was pretty cool. The artist, Irvin Bomb, is really talented. I imagine he is commissioned by a lot of rock bands and whatnot for covers for their albums, but who knows. If he is not, he should be! Anyway, back to the videos, they are more traditional in style. The quality is decent, but not great. You can bring the videos up to full screen and get a little bit of pixelation and whatnot. The videos are segmented into a few segments each, depending on size. Overall, the videos are a nice area of the site.

The site has a lot of extras as I touched upon earlier. There are e-cards, theres a models page, and there are extra paintings. There is a nice little tutorial on Mr. Bomb's technique, which is an interesting read. You can buy posters and prints and stuff as well. There are some extra, non porn paintings that are just as good and inspiring as the porn stuff!

The stuff on the site is pretty softcore for the most part. Naked girls, light lesbianism, etc. If you are coming here to see stuff painted that you wouldn't want to see done for real, this isn't what it is. It is a nice, softer interpretation of beautiful girls. The girls on here are very attractive through and through. A few of them are recognizable names in the industry, others are just nice looking models I'm not familiar with.

The amount of content and the updates are a little hard to gauge. They really don't use timestamps, and going through the site, it jumps around a bit so its hard to tell how much stuff there is. I'd say theres probably around 20 total video sets, if you take the segments and put them together. For the pictures, maybe 30 galleries? The way the site is set up, its really hard to tell. Although they don't give any specific updates, this site doesn't have staleness or deadness feeling to it at all. They seem to throw stuff up quite a bit, but who really knows these days when you aren't documenting it?

Naughty Art is a nice site, for a couple of reasons. One is that it is a little different than what we normally at. The second is the artist, Irvin Bomb, is extremely talented and has great taste. But looking past that, you really are just getting a softcore site with a cool theme. It's a nice sideshow attraction, for sure, but I'm not sure if there is a lot of teeth to it in the long run.

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Immigration probe leads to three arrests

RAID Police and immigration officers raided 5 Star Nails in Chichester

RAID Police and immigration officers raided 5 Star Nails in Chichester

An appeal has been launched after two suspicious incidents in Portsmouth

Appeal after man approaches women in two suspicious Portsmouth incidents

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A NAIL bar could face a fine of up to £30,000 for allegedly employing illegal workers following an operation by Home Office immigration enforcement.

Officers visited 5 Star Nails, in Old Market Hall Avenue, Chichester.

Individuals were questioned to check if they had the right to be in the UK.

Officers arrested three Vietnamese nationals. A woman, 18, and a man, 21, had entered the country illegally, while a 26-year-old man had overstayed his visa.

The older man was detained pending removal from the country.

The remaining two were placed on immigration bail and will also face removal once travel documentation has been secured.

The business was served a notice warning that a civil penalty of up to £10,000 per illegal worker arrested will be imposed unless proof is provided that the correct right-to-work checks were carried out.

Richard Lederle, from the Home Office Immigration Enforcement team, said: ‘Illegal working has a negative impact on communities. It defrauds the taxpayer, undercuts honest employers and cheats legitimate job seekers out of employment opportunities.’

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Teenagers take a test drive at council site

‘He’s a lying toad’ - Leaked e-mail sparks council row over future of Portsmouth transport service

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BUDDING Lewis Hamiltons got behind the wheel to test their driving skills.

East Hampshire District Council gave young people aged 14 and over the chance to build their car confidence by tackling two tricky courses at Penns Place, the home of the council in Petersfield.

Novice drivers learnt some basic techniques safely and tested their skills in a circuit.

The authority’s leader Ferris Cowper, who holds an International Racing Licence, said: ‘People think racing skills are all about high speed. In fact anyone with nerve can drive at high speed.

‘The skill that wins the F1 Championship is about precision, control, planning and vehicle empathy.

‘Autotest and Autosolo show you just how hard it can be even at slow speed.

‘But if you learn these skills with us you could go on to racing karts and then racing cars like Formula Ford.’

East Hampshire worked with Southsea Motor Club to put on the event.

Winners received a pair of tickets to Butserfest next month.

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The message of Ephesians

I will be speaking at a church in one of the labour camps Friday afternoon. My plan is to explain what Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is all about and why it is worth taking the trouble to read it. I will stress the fact that Ephesians is a straightforward “letter”, written for a straightforward purpose, with a straightforward story to tell, not a timeless treatise on Christian theology or a compendium of proof texts for the benefit of preachers.

But what is the argument or “story” of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians? Of course, since the Protestant Reformation rashly put scripture in the hands of ordinary lay believers, everyone has been entitled to make of the text what he or she wills; and everyone has an opinion on whether that’s a good thing or not. For what it’s worth, here’s my narrative-historical reading of it.

1:3-12 Paul speaks, in the first place, on behalf of redeemed Israel. This is the “we” and “us” of the opening section—that community of Jews which has been chosen “for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ”, who were “the first to hope in Christ”. This community has received the insight that at this critical moment in the story of the people of God all things—”things in heaven and things on earth”—are being united in Christ.

1:13-14 The saints in Ephesus have also come to believe this story about the redemption of Israel through Jesus and have received the Holy Spirit as an experiential guarantee that they too will share in the same “inheritance”. Paul gives little indication here of what this inheritance will consist of or when it will be acquired, but I suggest that it needs to be understood historically, not merely spiritually. At the parousia Christ will be revealed to the whole Greek-Roman oikoumenē, which is the moment when these suffering communities of eschatological transformation will at last inherit the world and—for better or for worse—set about Christianizing the empire (cf. Rom. 4:13).

1:15-23 So Paul prays that these latecomers to the community of redeemed Israel will grow in their understanding of the hope to which they have been called and of the power that is available to them as they make the difficult journey towards the inheritance of the world. This is the same power by which God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him final authority over all things—”all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come”—for the sake of the church. Here we have again the apocalyptic story about Jesus: he has been made Lord not until the parousia only, at the end of the current age, but beyond the parousia, in the age or ages to come.

2:1-22 Paul then explains what has been involved in their change of political-religious allegiance. They were formerly “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”, subject to the judgment that was coming on the pagan world; but they have been “saved” by grace, through believing the good news about what God is doing in this period of eschatological transition; and these saved Gentiles will be a concrete sign of God’s goodness towards the nations throughout the coming ages. They were once alienated from the “commonwealth of Israel”, but Jesus’ death put an end to the “dividing wall” imposed by the Jewish Law, so they are now “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God”—a renewed household established on the specific revelation given to the apostles and prophets that the “Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (3:5-6).

3:1-20 This is the extraordinary idea that Paul is trying to communicate here. He calls it a “mystery”. Israel according to the Law—circumcised Israel—no longer had a monopoly on knowledge of the creator. So again he prays that these Ephesian believers would be able to grasp the full significance of what has happened to them and of what the future holds.

4:1-16 But they also have to understand that this new “calling” necessitates a new way of life, and in the second half of the Letter Paul sets out what this means in three areas. First, if the Ephesians are to be the community of eschatological transformation that they are called to be, they will have to work hard to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”. Gifts have been given to the church so that it may build itself up towards a Christ-like maturity.

4:17-5:21 Secondly, they have left the world of the Gentiles, so they must no longer behave “as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds”. They must put off the old person, be “renewed in the spirit of your minds”, and put on the new person, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness”. The wrath of God is about to come on the world of the “sons of disobedience”. The unrighteous will have no inheritance in the coming “kingdom of Christ and God”. They have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works” and they have to make sure that they do them.

5:22-6:9 Thirdly, as late-coming members of the household of God these Gentiles need to learn how to do household relations differently. The hierarchical structures that prevailed in the ancient Mediterranean world easily lent themselves to abuse: husbands treated their wives as chattels, women despised their overbearing husbands; fathers provoked their children, who in turn showed little respect for their parents; slaves made a show of pleasing their masters, who for their part threatened their slaves with violence. Paul insists that in Christ there is a better way of living within these household structures.

6:10-20 Finally, we are not allowed to forget the eschatological context. Before they inherit the world, the saints in Ephesus are likely to face an “evil day”, a day of battle (cf. Rom. 13:11-12), a day of persecution, when they will need to put on the “whole armour of God” if they are to survive. Why? Because they “do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”.

So what do the labourers of Sonapur need to get out of this? First, a desire to grasp the riches that are theirs in Christ, who has been made Lord over all powers and authorities, including the powers and authorities that directly affect their lives here. Secondly, a commitment to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace as in different ways they take the initiative to build themselves up. Thirdly, a willingness to learn a new way of living, under less than favourable conditions, in keeping with their status as members of the household of God.

I like your view. The question that is left unanswered, however, is “Once the parousia comes, what changes and what remains the same?” Obviously, Jesus continues to rule in the new age - you made that point. But what of these assemblies? Are they to remain, or are the people to go and fill the new earth and multiply?

Well, if we suppose that the parousia was the vindication of the early suffering churches and the victory of Christ over the gods of the pagan world, then history has answered that question for us. The church set about the task of Christianizing the empire and then, after some centuries, extending the reach of European Christendom across the globe. That was how the church continued the story of Ephesians, rightly or wrongly—and I don’t think it was quite as wrong as people tend to think these days.

But what about us, now, after the expansion and contraction of Western Christendom—and the continuing expansion of global Christianity? Where does this ongoing story leave us? I think that we are what we have always been—a people called by the creator God to witness to the possibility of new creation, new humanity, in the midst of, and in the eyes of, the nations and cultures of the world.

Do you see the influence of the early church on pagan Rome as leading to a kind of anonymous Christian as set forth by Karl Rahner?

How come? Are we talking about the difference between a modern self-consciously born-again type of Christian and social Christians? Or do you mean in the ancient context—righteous pagans who were justified before Israel’s God? If the latter, then I would point you to Righteous Gentiles and their justification by works.

since the Protestant Reformation rashly put scripture in the hands of ordinary lay believers, everyone has been entitled to make of the text what he or she wills; and everyone has an opinion on whether that’s a good thing or not

Not the point of your post, I realize, but this was an interesting comment. It strikes me that this move by the Reformers was a lot like the introduction of more democratic forms of government: Blessings in the form of real accountability for the leadership, but at the cost of putting that accountability into the hands of people who often don’t know what they’re talking about. On the whole, better than the alternative, but with real liabilities that Protestants probably ought to acknowledge and address more forthrightly.

I was surprised at how little I found to be objectionable in this summary of the letter, considering my persistent questioning of your position, Andrew, which I continue to feel has problems as yet unaddressed by yourself and most contributors to the site. (Addressing problems is not, of course, the same as wholesale dismissal).

I did wonder to what extent Paul at all highlights his own distinct on-going identity as an Israelite in the letter, as you suggest he does, and therefore to what extent he is actually, in the letter, inviting Gentiles to identify themselves with the God of a Jewish apocalyptic narrative according to your narrative-historical understanding of things. He is, after all, at pains to highlight the “one new man” whose identity is neither Gentile nor Jewish. His own identity is now very far from being Jewish - Ephesians 2:15, Galatians 3:28, Philippians 3:4-9. Or am I misreading you here?

I also found myself asking what is the consistent, repeated focus of the letter? This has to be Christ, and in particular, being found “in Christ”, and the litany of privileges which that affords - to Jew and Gentile alike. The words “Christ”, “in Christ”, “in him” and repeated reference to him are the most frequently repeated words and phrases in the first chapter alone. It’s just a strange feature of the historicist approach (said without any negative connotation), that this focus seems to become somewhat marginalised, and in your summary, drops out almost entirely. Shouldn’t the repeated emphasis of the focus be highlighted in a summary? For me, it’s the key to the letter, with the corollary: how do I get “in” this person in order to enjoy these privileges?

I hope you will not take offence at this comment, and I do wish you well for this afternoon, at the labour camp - about which I would be interested to hear more. Whether it’s some kind of penal camp or not, I’m sure the words of Matthew 25:35-36 will be lived out in you through the visit.

The apocalyptic narrative is an essentially Jewish narrative, but it is a narrative about how Israel’s God claims the pagan world—and ultimately the whole world—for himself. This is Psalm 2 or Isaiah 45 or Daniel 7, not to mention a whole load of Jewish apocalyptic stuff.

I wouldn’t insist that the distinction between “we” and “you” in chapter 1 is a shift from Jewish to Gentile, but it’s hard to understand why he would mark out a group who “first” hoped in Christ otherwise in a Letter in which he so forcefully puts forward his claim to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

I don’t think my narrative-historical approach makes the “in Christ” theme unimportant. In fact, the phrase “in Christ” occurs six times in my short summary (though not always with the same meaning), which is actually about 50% more frequent than in the Letter itself.

The issue is what we mean by “in Christ”. I would argue that for the churches to be “in Christ” meant that they were participating in the apocalyptic narrative anticipated in his death, resurrection and coming parousia. For most people today it is a non-apocalyptic, purely relational category.

The time at the labour camp went very well. We had some antics with some of the guys standing up to represent the various “bodies” that appear in Ephesians, but we got through the whole Letter. Then we prayed for and laid hands on the sick. Things have improved, but construction workers here still have a hard time of it.

Thanks. I’m just up to p.20 of Tom Wright’s “How God became King” - which doesn’t sound too promising from your point of view, and still less from the point of view of the Unitarian contributors to the site! However, I thought you’d be heartened by the sentence where Wright has been complaining, as he does elsewhere, that the creeds reflect one way of seeing Jesus, and the content of the gospels another: “The gospels were all about God becoming king, but the creeds focused on Jesu becoming God”.

Earlier, Wright criticises the traditional way of interpreting things: “It is as though a young man spent all his time proving that he really was his father’s son, and left no time or energy for working with his father in the family business - which would, actually, be one of the better ways of demonstrating the family likeness.”

I thought this was a good way of putting it, though from my point of view (and Wright’s), maybe not yours, the family likeness is indeed that Jesus is YHWH.

A section on Bultmann follows the opening focus on the “missing middle” in the church’s interpretation of the gospels, in which Bultmann is also said to be buying into the same mistake that the church has made: that “the missing middle”, the historical life of Jesus on earth, is of limited importance for ‘the gospel’ itself, and for Bultmann, no importance. Rather, for Bultmann, the church’s beliefs about Jesus were projected onto a mythical canvas of his life, and these were of importance, if they could be found.

The book is not just a populist restatement of what Wright has said elsewhere, but seems to be a more cohesive drawing together of themes around the importance of the four gospels in Jesus’s mission to renew creation.

You can see where you would want to limit some of the things Wright asserts, but it’s getting back to the narrative in a useful way. Funnily enough, it complements something very different which I am doing at the moment: the Bethel ‘Leader Programme’, in which Bill Johnson’s annoyingly anti-theological stance at the same time puts into practice precisely the same theme: God is King and his reign is expressed by interventions of his royal power in our lives. This would chime with praying for healing at construction workers’ camps and wherever else there is the opportunity.