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Gluten and lactose are not my friends.

Despite the negative attitudes surrounding me from many of those I love best, (cakes, ice cream, hot toast) I decided to become a chef. Not always easy when you live in a bread and milk filled world. I like to think that this has helped me become a better person as I embrace my differences and refuse to let the gluten get me down. I believe InTolerance. I am the InTolerant Chef.

Food should not be about what you can’t eat, but what you can and what you enjoy eating. This blog is about my journey of cooking and eating and discovery. It’s not a definitive guide to allergy awareness nor do my intolerances make me an expert. Your body is your responsibility, not mine. I only know what works for me.

I can tell you this..... No glutens were harmed in the making of this website.

October 24, 2011

Egg and Soldiers

My Dad is a Military Man.

He started off in cadets as a school boy, served his country at war, and retired young as a Colonel to take up Gentleman Farming.

Dad is also a traditional man. Dad did everything outside the home- gardening, growing amazing vegetables, mowing, handyman, even BBQ'ing but rarely anything inside like cooking.

Whenever my Mum was ill, and us kiddies were left to Dads tender mercies, he would invariably fall back on his military roots. You remember MASH, don't you, well remember the chow line? That was our house.
Dad would fire up the electric fry pan, throw in some dripping, rummage through any leftovers in the fridge, chop up lots of cabbage and garlic and fry it all up together.
There would be a stack of plates by his side, the cutlery drawer pulled out, and us kids would line up and file past as Dad ladled a big splat of dinner on our plates.

Dad did have a few more culinary secrets up his sleeve though,- Cockies Joy, Vegemite mixed through mashed potatoes, Chapattis on the BBQ... and Egg with Soldiers.
A perfectly boiled egg with runny yolk and little strips of crisp toast to pull dipping from it's depths and gobbled up in our PJ's before bed. Mmmmmm....
This is a much better food memory of my Dad, than the infamous 'Squish my pills up on a gherkin to get me to eat them' Incident, which got messy- very messy.

This is a twist on the traditional Egg and Soldiers- not for Breakfast, not for Supper, but for Dessert. Yes, Dessert.
A rich and creamy Creme Brulee with shortbread Soldiers, served in the eggshell for fun.

To make the little emptied eggs, crack them very carefully, or use an Egg Topper Tool to make a clean crack around the rim of the egg. Empty the egg and separate as usual. Rinse the shell carefully but don't worry too much as it's going to be baked in the oven.

3 Egg Yolks
50 gr Sugar
250 ml Lactose Free Cream

Place the cram and vanilla in a saucepan on medium heat and bring to the boil, turn the heat down low and simmer for a few minutes to let the vanilla infuse.

Meanwhile beat the eggs and sugar until the sugar is dissolved and they are light and fluffy.

Slowly while beating all the time, pour the hot cream onto the egg mixture. Don't pour too quickly, or stop beating or you'll end up with sweetened scrambled eggs- yuck!

Pour the mix back into the saucepan and heat very gently until the mixture just coats the back of a spoon.

Pour the mix carefully into 6 1/2 cup ramekins, or some cute little emptied eggs.

Place the vessels into a baking tray with a folded kitchen cloth on the base. Make sure the sides of the tray reach to at least 2/3 of their height. The cloth is just to insulate the bottom of the ramekins so they bake evenly, otherwise the metal base heats quicker than the sides once filled with water. For the eggies, I just left them on in their cardboard carton sides as it just happens to be the perfect size for them- go figure!

Fill the baking tray with hot water from the kettle to come halfway up the sides of the smaller containers. The easiest way to do this is to place the tray in the oven FIRST, then moving quickly, pour in the water then shut the door. You can certainly pour the water in elsewhere, but then you run the risk of splashing it into the brulee mix and it not setting well, so why run the risk? The water is to give the little lovelies a nice, gentle bath, without a blast of heat, so they bake slowly and set nicely. Make sure you use hot water, otherwise you'll be waiting hours for the water to heat enough in the oven to start cooking the creme brulees. Trust me, I learnt the hard way.

Bake for about 30 mins at 160*c or until just set but with a soft wobble in the middle. The little eggies take from 15 minutes, but you'll need to keep a close eye on them so they don't overcook, or you'll have the equivalent of hard boiled instead of soft boiled yolks.

When they're done, pull the tray out and let them cool enough to pop into the fridge to cool and set.

Sprinkle the tops with a thin even layer of castor sugar. I prefer to build up my layer of toffee gradually rather than try and melt a thick layer that would be easy to burn before it melted. Use a culinary blow torch to caramelise the sugar so it melts to a crisp layer of toffee.

Pop them back in the fridge for a bit to set again. I never like to rush and serve them straight away, as once I got a creme brulee that had a warm liquidy layer under the toffee that wasn't very nice at all. Just give them a little bit to settle back down.

Serve in an egg cup with little shortbread soldiers on the side for dipping. If you don't have a cute little cutter, just make them into fingers like toast ( Shortbread Recipe coming next post ) Cracking through the crisp toffee is just like cracking the top off the egg with a spoon, but much more satisfying!
Otherwise serve in the ramekin with a spoon, still yummy, but not as cute.

So Dear Readers, so you like cute food and what's your favourite childhood food memory?

  1. This is super cute, especially the soldier shaped soldiers!

  2. wow, this is fantastic! How great - a jazzed up nostalgic dish. & I must say, the gherkin pill incident sounds interesting/traumatising haha. As does the vegemite mixed through mashed potatoes :P gotta love that creativity. My favourite childhood dish? pikelets with jam for afternoon tea. 20% for the taste, 80% for the nostalgia :)
    Heidi xo

  3. I love the story. I didn't realise that it wasn't egg and toast until I kept reading. Very clever you are and my favourite - Creme Brulee Yum!

  4. Love your story, your Dad sounded like quite the man!The creme brulee in the egg shells is a really neat idea. Looks yummy! My favorite childhood food memory (well, one of many) is my grandma's tapioca pudding. Served warm with pineapple. Yum!

  5. This is just divine. My dad was an expert at french toast. I have such fond memories of eating it in pyjamas next to the heater on cold mornings.

  6. Love the military story! Hahaha... and I love the twist on this egg and soldiers :)

  7. This is FRIGGIN amazing, I love it so much!! The literal soldiers too! Hahahaha.. And I like the story at the start you shared of you and your father, it's very sweet. I'm glad food reminds us of good times with the people we love in our lives. Looking forward to more recipes like these. Thanks so much!!

  8. oh how awesome!!!

    My dad's 'secret' to cooking was addding curry powder to everything lol

  9. When I read egg and soldiers, I was thinking of the toast dipped in the soft boiled eggs that I loved as a kid. But this is WAY WAY more fun!! What an adorable idea! ;)

  10. When Mom was ill, my dad could cook everything except desserts. He went to the bakery for those and he got 'fancy' ones. Favorite childhood food? Lots of choices, probably Mom's bread, Dad didn't know there were heels to Mom's bread until I left home. Cause there isn't anything better than the heel of a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven with butter all melted in. I wish I could bake bread like she did!

  11. Your dad sounds great and I can imagine it was easier just to have a queue to be fed. It could be daunting otherwise! What are Cockies Joys? I've never heard of those before! :)

  12. Becca, this is a fantastic recipe! And soooo cute! I love the little soldier shortbreads, and how brilliant to bake the brulee in eggshells! You're a creative genius, girl. :)

  13. You are so clever!!! I thought it was boiled egg and toast at first! and I still liked it because the little man was so cute! ...but this is so much better! I can't wait to try my new brulee torch out on this one!

    My dad was exactly the same as yours. Mum rarely got sick but when she did dinner was always a "surprise." It always came out of one frying pan but the washing up afterwards was horrendous!

  14. Oh Bec, this is such a lovely idea - you are very inventive!
    Loved the stories of your Dad, too, especially the chow line. LOL

  15. YUM :) I love these. Such a great tribute

  16. Oh these are just divine! What a fantastic story too! Loved this post :)

  17. These are seriously cute! Nothing better than a googie egg in the morning :D

  18. My dad was in the Reserves, and he cooks the same way - his culinary triumph is a dish composed of hamburger meat, canned spaghetti and scrambled eggs all mixed up in a sort of stew. Mmmmm. :|

  19. Enjoyed reading about your Dad. Thanks for sharing the story with us. Hpw did you get the egg shell so uniform? I love creme brulee and it is fun way to serve them in egg shells.

  20. Your middle name is Heston, right?? :-)
    Very clever, and I love reading about your dad. XO
    from NZ (home of the WORLD CHAMPION ALL BLACKS)

  21. I love the soliders. So much better than my cut up bits of toast where you are forced to use your imagination.

  22. Hello Lovelies! I'm glad we could have some fun with this one, I really enjoyed sharing a little bit of my family with you too :)

    Christie- Thanks! I was so excited to find that cutter too :)

    Heidi- Thanks! I can still taste the mixture if I think about it! The vegemite potatoes actually work really well- belive it or not :) Nostalgia wins over taste any day!

    Leonie- Thanks, I like to play with my food :) Glad it's your favorite!

    April- He is indeed! Thanks! I love tapioca, yummm....

    Tori- Mmmmmmm, French Toast! Yumm!

    Msihua- My dad is very military, and even runs his farm that way with set hours and routines. I just want to have fun :)

    Winston- Thanks so much! It's amazing how food is so connected to memories and nurturing isn't it? You're welcome!

    Lisa- He's a clever man, curry powder can cover a multitude of sins :)

    Kim- Just for grownups- don't tell the kids!

    Judy- I don't remember my dad giving us dessert, you lucky things! My littlej steals them too :)

    Lorraine- He is great! I think it was just army and boarding school institutionalisation being too hard to fight maybe? Cockies Joy is a nickname for Golden Syrup- I was never sure why though, but we loved it more than honey and I still do ;)

    Celia- Thanks honey! I have had that idea in my notebook for ages, just had to get the right tools. Awww shucks!

    GourmetGetaways- I had to buy a quite expensive set just to get my little soldier, but it was sooo worth it :) My husband's the same, uses every tool in the kitchen, maybe its a testosterone thing?

    Amanda- Maybe that's why I rebel and love to do the cheffy 'plate up' for family meals?

    Nic- Thankyou, I think he was a bit embarrased though!

    Anna- Thanks! I'm a story teller at heart :)

    Cassandra- I love googie eggs, cackle berries,chook fruit and bum nuts too!

    JasmyneTea- Maybe we should have a culinary intervention for them both?

    QuayPo- My dad is the best! I have a wonderful little springloaded tool that cuts it perfectly for me.

    JanetNZ- :) Well, we have so many wonderful things in Australia,we don't want to be greedy. We'll let New Zealand have this one :P

    HotlySpiced- Thanks! Mornings are waaaay to early for imagination :)

  23. I think this is an amazing idea, where did yo get the soldier cutter? I love the image of the MASH line. GG

  24. Your dad sounds amazing! I just hope he didn't give you too much of a militrary drill during education ... Some children aren't made for that.

  25. OMG, your dad was a legend- mash potato and vegimite. I decided to brave it, and served it with tonights dinner- absoutly amazing!!!
    The creme brulee in eggs is a fabulous idea!


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McCain Doing Something I Like?!?!?

Call the Pope because hell is freezing over:

Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell are joining forces to reinstate the Depression-era Glass-Steagal [sic] Act of 1933, which separated commercial banking from Wall Street investment banking. According to Newsweek, the two plan to announce the bipartisan McCain-Cantwell bill on Wednesday morning.

The Glass-Steagall law was repealed in 1999, allowing for commercial and investment banking to combine. Bloomberg notes that its repeal has sparked debate as to whether it "helped spawn reckless lending practices and financial speculation that led to the meltdown of credit markets last year and the $700 billion U.S. bailout of troubled banks."

There is something here that really has me scratching my head. Glass-Steagall was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act  in 1999 and proudly signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton. The main author of that bill was Phil Gramm, who also served as the top economic adviser to the McCain/Palin campaign. So Gramm was good enough to advise McCain on economic issues, yet McCain now wants to repeal Gramm’s keystone legislation?

I love the idea of us getting back to real regulation in the banking sector but I really question the motives of McCain on this issue.

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Two Useless Sneaker Technologies in One Shoe: Solebox Reebok Omnizone Pump

Do you find that air pumps on your shoes just don't constitute enough useless, hype-driven technology for your particular piggies? Well, Reebok brings a whole new element of gratutious tech to a new shoe that will be coming our way in the next few months. The shoe maker has teamed with Solebox, a German sneaker shop, to present the Solebox x Reebok Omnizone Pump. Not only do you get Reebok's tongue-mounted pumping system, but you get some bright red LEDs on each foot.

On the plus side, unlike LA Gear Lights that some may remember from the 80s/90s, the Omnizones don't blink and allow you to shut the action off if you want to go stealth. And if I'm being honest they don't look that bad. As far as bright LED lights on your shoes go.

The Omnizones are expected to drop sometime this winter (February or March).  No pricing info just yet, but it'll only be a few months.

Sneaker Freaker  via Hypebeast via Ubergizmo


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FootageBank HD, a Leading Source for Contemporary High Definition Stock Footage, Adds a Trove of New Clips to

FootageBank HD, a leading global supplier of contemporary HD stock footage, has added a raft of new clips to Footage.netâs stock footage search and screening platform. FootageBankâs content joins a rapidly growing assortment of world-class clips on the site, now one of the worldâs largest and most diverse stock footage resources.

Founded by Paula Lumbard in 2002, LA-based FootageBank HD has become a go-to source for professionally shot contemporary stock footage and location shots. Working primarily with scripted television shows, FootageBank content appears regularly as part of primetime television programming, feature films and, more recently, original internet TV shows.

âWeâre always very happy when one of our partners does a major content refresh on our site,â said David Seevers, Chief Marketing Officer. âFootageBankâs collection runs the gamut, from breathtaking aerials to extreme sports to stunning nature footage. Itâs all professionally shot and captured at the highest resolutions. And like all top stock houses, FootageBank pays close attention to their customersâ needs. The result is a tightly curated collection replenished with a steady stream of new material.â

The FootageBank collection is constantly evolving. When Lumbard and her team sense demand rising in a certain footage category, they move quickly to produce or acquire the perfect shots, usually by partnering with one of their network of top-flight cinematographers.

Lately, theyâve been focused on expanding their coverage of fully released location shots, including private homes, businesses, hospitals and other localities, which they shoot under all sorts of seasonal conditions, both day and night.

Their strategy has paid off, with FootageBank location shots appearing on a wide range of primetime television shows. For example, the house where Emily Deschanelâs character lives on the show Bones was provided by FootageBank, as was the brownstone on Two Broke Girls where Kat and Beth live.

FootageBank has also amassed a comprehensive collection of footage geared towards use as playback on televisions within scenes. Keeping it fresh, FootageBank recently added another 1000 clips to this growing part of their collection, which includes football and basketball games, newscasters, cartoons, simulated programming, telenovelas, stand-up comedy, and infomercials.

FootageBank's DP Cary Hubbs continues to travel through Europe and Eastern Europe shooting custom stock to service FootageBankâs television and feature clients. This past season, HD clips of locations in Vienna and the French Riviera were captured for the shows Grimm and Gossip Girl. Cary has also covered Paris, Prague, Berlin, London, Madrid, Marseille, the French and Italian Rivieras, Istanbul, and dozens of other cities and rural communities across Europe and the eastern part of the continent. has grown steadily over the last several years to become one of the worldâs largest and most comprehensive online stock footage databases. FootageBankâs new clips will be available for screening through alongside motion content from some of the worldâs most prestigious footage companies.

About is the worldâs premier online resource for stock footage research. Since 1994, has focused on meeting the needs of both footage users and footage providers. Today, remains committed to helping users find the best footage as quickly and easily as possible; generating new leads and licensing opportunities for our member archives; and strengthening the footage licensing industry as a whole. Our dedicated search engine makes it easy for creative professionals to search 40 world-class footage collections simultaneously and view over two and half million clips, many of which are available for download. Our Global Search partners include some of the best-known companies in the stock footage industry, including , FootageBank, Framepool, Historic Films and NBC News Archives, as well as some exciting new specialist collections, such as Skyworks, Critical Past and OceanFootage. is also home to the Zap Email, used every day by creative professionals to send footage requests instantly to over 50 top footage providers. Whether theyâre up against a deadline or searching for an obscure clip, creative professionals rely on Zap Emails every day to initiate their footage research projects, providing our Zap subscribers with a steady stream of new leads.

About FootageBank HD

Since opening its doors in 2002, FootageBank HD has become the premier supplier of large format and HD images worldwide to television, theatrical, mobile, independent, and corporate media buyers. The FootageBank HD library represents more than 120 award winning HD, IMAX, and RED media producers, cinematographers and production companies from around the world. Customers include Warner Brothers Television, Sony Pictures, HBO, Microsoft, Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company.

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Friday Apple Rumors: Apple Streaming Music to Launch in 2013

It will compete with similar services from Spotify and Pandora

daily apple rumors  300x180 Friday Apple Rumors: Apple Streaming Music to Launch in 2013Here are your Apple rumors and AAPL news items for today:

Radio Rivals: An industry analyst firm predicts that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will roll out a new streaming music service next year, CNET notes. BTIG Research issued the forecast after speaking with unnamed music and computer industry executives. Rumors that Apple was preparing to take on streaming services like Spotify and Pandora (NYSE:P) surfaced over the past few months. BTIG noted that Apple added a new feature to its just-released update for iTunes that allows users to tune in Internet radio. BTIG argues that the current slate of Internet radio options aren’t appealing and that Apple could simply issue an update to replace the option with its own service.

AppleLogo Friday Apple Rumors: Apple Streaming Music to Launch in 2013
Apple Mania Spurs New Baby-Naming Trends

Unchained: Smartphone buyers who crave an iPhone 5, but don’t want to burden of a two-year service contract can now purchase an unlocked version of the phone from Apple, PC Magazine notes. The unlocked iPhone 5 is priced at $649 for the 16GB version, $739 for the 32GB version and $849 for the 64GB model. However, buyers hoping to run their new unlocked iPhone 5s on Verizon (NYSE:VZ) or Sprint (NYSE:S) are out of luck. The unlocked iPhone 5s sold on Apple’s online store will only work on GSM networks in the U.S., meaning they can only be used with AT&T (NYSE:T) or Deutsche Telekom’s (PINK:DTEGY) T-Mobile. Only two unlocked iPhone 5s will be sold to each customer.

Arriving Soon: Chinese consumers will get their chance to purchase a flurry of new Apple products starting next week, InformationWeek notes. Apple will begin taking  pre-orders for the iPad Mini and fourth-generation iPad beginning on December 6. A reservation system is in place to prevent the sort of chaos that erupted at Beijing’s Apple Store during the launch of the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5, which was granted a network license by Chinese telecommunication regulators this week, will be available for ordering on December 14.

For more about the company, check out our previous Apple Rumors stories.

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Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus - Who Wins?

The tagline for this flick says it all: "The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea." And we've got the money shot.

This giant monster B-movie is another thing of beauty from The Asylum, the same production company that brought you The Transmorphers and The Terminators, as well as dozens of other brilliant ripoffs and subgenre sensations.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus - Who Wins?

As giant monster afficionado Avery Battles writes on Undead Brainspasm:

Clearly this film embraces several key elements of the Japanese monster-film tradition: descriptive title, really big beasties and monster punch-ups.

Hell yes. Here's the money shot, kids:

Must. Have. Megashark. With laser eyes, pls?

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus via The Asylum


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News Story - Former BAS doctor wins prestigious book prize

Date: 04 Nov 2013

Gavin Francis with his award winning book, Empire Antarctica. (Photo: Alex Hewitt, Writer Pictures)

A GP who wrote a book about his time working as the British Antarctic Survey’s doctor at the Halley V research station has won the Scottish Book of the Year Award.

Dr Gavin Francis was presented with the award, and prize money of £30,000, at a ceremony on Nov. 2nd.

He spent 14 months at Halley V from 2002 to 2004. His book, “Empire Antarctica”, was commended for being both vivid and captivating.

It’s described as being the story of one man and his fascination with the world’s loneliest continent, as well as the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him.

Gavin was competing against three other writers in the Fiction, Poetry and First Book category.

He now works part-time as a GP in Edinburgh and writes the rest of the time. Gavin said “It is such a fabulous validation of what I’m trying to do, juggling a career as a GP and as a writer”.

The Scottish Book of the Year Award has been running since 1970 and is sponsored by the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust.

“Empire Antarctica” is published by Chatto and Windus.


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Maine Anti-Gay Rally That Shut Mainers Out Was Funded by Washington, DC Religious Group

Boy oh boy, you can say this for the anti-gay forces seeking to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law: when they go in for something, they don’t do it by halves.

You may remember that in September of 2009, an anti-gay calling itself “Stand for Marriage Maine” held what they called a “rally” in the city of Augusta to promote taking away same-sex marriage rights in the state of Maine. But oddly enough, the “rally” was closed. Only very particular people were invited, and Mainers who weren’t invited were shut out. Even journalists were excluded from the secret proceedings.

By contrast, in case you were wondering, NO on 1 / Protect Maine Equality has held a series of meetings across the state to which everyone, Mainers and non-Mainers, citizens and journalists, everyone has been welcome to attend.

Well, here’s an update on that strange “Stand for Marriage Maine” “rally.” I put both “Stand for Marriage Maine” and “rally” in quotes, because campaign finance reports released yesterday reveal something rather odd about who paid for the rally. Guess who cut the check to rent the space?

Campaign Finance Report Reveals: Family Research Council of Washington, DC paid to rent the space for the Augusta Rally against Same-Sex Marriage

That’s right: the Christian fundamentalist Family Research Council of Washington, DC picked up the tab. (Source: Maine Campaign Finance Database)

When anti-gay forces close the doors of their meetings to Mainers, and when those meetings are funded from Washington, DC, it sure doesn’t look like an indigenous effort. In Maine, where you can have lived in a town for 20 years and still be referred to as “from away,” that sort of thing especially matters.

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New York Rangers fill holes in acquiring Kevin Klein

On Wednesday afternoon, the New York Rangers traded oft-maligned defenseman Michael Del Zotto to Nashville for defenseman Kevin Klein.

Kevin Who? The Rangers traded a former first-round pick for…Kevin Klein? That’s all they could get?

A fair reaction, to a degree.

Del Zotto is an undeniably talented player, a swift-skating, move-the-puck defenseman who not long ago was drawing comparisons to Brian Leetch. (And thus he was irrevocably doomed.) He’s young, with some growing still to do, and plays the game with a flashy confidence that you either have from the start or don’t have at all. In today’s league, he’s a valuable commodity.

Klein, on the other hand, comes from a more generic mold. He’s a big, stay-at-home defenseman with heavy fists and not-so-soft hands. At 29 years old, he has maxed out his potential as a depth defenseman, and can be counted on for more penalty minutes than points. His numbers through 47 games this season? 1 G, 2 A, 21 PIM.

Kevin Klein might not have the same offensive upside as Michael Del Zotto, but he can help the Rangers in other ways.

With winter descending upon the east coast, let’s turn to the beach. You’re walking the water searching for sea glass and you come across a rare blue shard – a token from an old bottle of Labatt’s. “Ohh, a Del Zotto,” you say with reverence, and drop the piece of glass into your bucket. Moments later, you find a well-weathered brown wedge, soft along the edges from years of wear. “Meh, a Kevin Klein,” you shrug, and toss the glass back into the ocean.

Indeed, there are a lot of Kevin Kleins out there. (Before Bobby Orr, Kevin Klein is actually all there was.) But the Rangers don’t have one. And though Del Zotto is a rarer breed, his stock has fallen tremendously since his breakout 2011-12 season. His value was high once – and still would be in some Alternate Hockey Universe where his skill set was all there was to go by. But the NHL has watched him struggle over the past two years, and scouts don’t look on him the way they used to.

Nor does Ranger coaching. After gaining the favor of John Tortorella in 2011-12, and then basically weathering the storm last season, Del Zotto went plummeting down the depth chart this fall under Alain Vigneault. Reshuffling is inevitable when a new regime takes over, and it didn’t take long for Del Zotto to end up on the bottom of the deck. By November he was in the press box, at which point Vigneault made it pretty clear what he thought of the young defenseman.

“I have been told he is a much better player,” Vigneault said after making Del Zotto a healthy scratch for three straight games. “I have not seen that on a consistent enough basis.” In other words, say what you want, but I don’t think he’s that good.

Del Zotto was scratched seven more times up to Tuesday’s loss to the Islanders, and you get the feeling that if the Rangers hadn’t traded him this season he would have quickly signed elsewhere in the summer. So Glen Sather was smart to get something in return when he still had the chance.

And instead of shipping off Del Zotto for a third-round pick or some unsure prospect, Sather filled a glaring team whole. All season long, the Rangers have struggled to find a right-handed defenseman to play on the bottom pairing. Stand-ins Connor Allen and Justin Falk were left-handed shots; prospect Dylan McIlrath, a righty, wasn’t yet fast enough for the NHL game. And neither Del Zotto nor John Moore could reliably play on the right side.

That’s where Klein has made his living. So he’ll slide comfortably into that third d-paring with John Moore, who should benefit from playing with a more conservative partner. Meanwhile the strong return of Marc Staal and improved play of Dan Girardi help make the Rangers defensive corps one of the best in the league. (No need to mention how good McDonagh and Stralman have been.)

But Klein is more to the Rangers than a right-handed shot. Perhaps just as important, he’s an aggressor, eager to stick up for his teammates by dropping the gloves. The Rangers have been criticized this year for being soft – easy to push around – and though the acquisition of Dan Carcillo has helped, Klein adds another element of fear to the lineup. In this sense, he is a long-overdue replacement for Michael Sauer.

Unlike Del Zotto, who will become a restricted free agent in June, Klein isn’t just a three-month rental. He’s signed through the 2017-18 season with an annual cap hit of $2.9 million, meaning the Rangers, for a relative bargain, just picked up a necessary piece to their puzzle for the next four years. Del Zotto, meanwhile, may be in Toronto by September.

Look at it this way: all the things that Rangers fans hated about Del Zotto – his tendency to turn the puck over, his sudden defensive lapses, his general pretty-boy aura – run counter to every fiber in Klein’s body. He’s smart with the puck, alert in his own end, and doesn’t smile in photos. The Garden Faithful should take to him just fine.

In a vacuum, this trade might look like charity from the Rangers’ end. Frustrated with Del Zotto’s lack of consistency, management threw their hands up and gave him away for nothing. But that would overlook everything operating around the edges: Del Zotto’s fall from favor and diminishing returns, Klein’s right-handed shot and free-swinging fists.

Taken all together, this swap makes sense for the Rangers. Kevin Klein is all they could get, and for this team, he represents a whole lot.

  • 071189

    Klein is not a fighter and is not a physical defenseman. He will however, fight on occasion, like Girardi and make a good account of himself. He’s a minus 11 this season, and MDZ is only a minus 5 playing on his opposite side and benched by Vigneault ONLY when Nash, Callahan, & Hagelin returned from injuries. Vigneault’s intent was obvious from the beginning. He just didn’t like MDZ; he also doesn’t like Hagelin (2nd on the team in even strength goals despite missing a lot of time to an inury) and JT Miller. Cream always rises to the top and in 6 years MDZ will be in his prime & Klein will most probably be in the AHL. With Phil Housley as his mentor in Nashville instead of defensive defensemen Samuelson & Schoenfield, I bet my money on MDZ.

  • mattimar

    Ok, free swinging fists lately… but career penalty minutes are nearly non-existent.. which is good and bad. On the other hand if guys like Klein are so readily available in the league it makes you wonder why the Rangers did not have one like him before. I hope Klein is great because It appears that McILrath (based on what the team has done with him so far) is not going to be ready for quite a while.


text:
NASCAR: ‘Human error’ ends Food City 500 at Bristol, Edwards wins

The rain was not holding back at Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway- two rain delays lasted more than five hours. On top of all the rain, Sunday marked one of the strangest and most disappointing endings of any NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Although, the slippery racetrack did not hold back Carl Edwards from driving through the finish line with his first win of the season. Known for his celebratory back flip, Edwards pulled up to the finish line at the racetrack and climbed out of his window.

The race was delayed by almost exactly two hours at the start and once the most famous words of NASCAR were said, “let’s go racing boys,” the race began. Drivers made it to lap 124 before the rain started coming down again. This delay was even longer totaling to three hours and 18 minutes.

Rain has not been shy so far this season as the opening Daytona 500 race was stopped for almost six hours because of rain. The threat of rain forces the drivers to do their absolute best during every single lap because they don’t know when the next outburst of bad weather will take over.

With 77 laps remaining, a caution sent just about every driver on the track to pit road, but, Edwards’ crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, chose to leave his driver on the track. This was a risky move by the No. 99 car. But, it gave Edwards the lead on the restart with only 70 laps to go.

And, right before the white flag was thrown, those yellow caution lights came out again right near the 0.533-mile track. Unsure of what the caution was for, once again, the sky opened up and NASCAR officials had no other choice but to end the race while Edwards was leading the drivers. Still, nobody knew what the caution lights came on for and that definitely shook up drivers and teams.

NASCAR announced that someone in the flag stand accidentally leaned on a switch to trigger the lights in the room. NASCAR was forced to issue a full caution “because operation of the lights was comprised.” Human error was the cause of the official end of the race after 503 laps.

Right behind Edwards was Roush Fenway teammate Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who finished second. Aric Almirola from Richard Petty Motorsports finished third as Ford drivers took the top three spots. This was exciting because the day before, the Ford team won the Twelve Hours of Sebring sports car race for the first time since 1969.

Yesterday’s race marked Edwards’ third win at Bristol and 22nd career victory. This was his first win of the season and with the new Chase for the Sprint Cup championship qualifying format, it is the race that will give ensure him a spot.

Because of the abrupt ending to the race, Stenhouse did not get the chance to race his teammate for the win. Many drivers were not pleased with the ending of the race according to sources.

Stenhouse said, “I was thinking that I would use the bumper if the opportunity was there. If you get the win, you’re in the Chase and you can let the rest take care of itself later. That’s what I was really thinking if we went back green. I was thinking about doing whatever I could to win.”

Almirola said, “It’s frustrating because I had one shot to race Carl for the lead, and these races are so hard to win. It was a great day for us, I’m not disappointed at all with third, but when you see it and you can taste it and it’s that close, you wonder what could have went different.”

Tony Stewart qualified 37th and ended up finishing with a season-best spot in fourth.

Marcos Ambrose finished fifth which resulted in both of RPM’s drivers finishing inside the top five.

Denny Hamlin, who took the pole, finished sixth followed by Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne of Hendrick Motorsports. Brian Vickers took ninth place and rookie Kyle Larson took the last spot in the top 10.

NASCAR fans have seen a whole lot of rain so far this season but it would be nice to see more racing.

The Auto Club 400 will take place this Sunday at 3:00 p.m. at Auto Club Speedway.


text:
Friday, 20 May 2011

seems like a big world with a lot of stuff in it

it is not true that i try to climb out of your window when you are sleeping. i am a jellyfish. i am not extinct.

my husband died by tombstoning into the canal with watermills in his pockets. i havent left this bed in ninety hours. i have been trying to tickle myself (i cant).

today is the day we take control of our lives. i'm serious. you think i'm joking but i'm not. i can kill sharks with my nose. we can swim to spain.


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Security Wire Weekly

Jun 18 2008   4:46PM GMT

Security Wire Weekly: Risk management standards, secure software coding

Jessica Scarpati Jessica Scarpati Profile: Jessica Scarpati

Jim Hietala vice president of security at the vendor standards consortium, Open Group talks about a project underway to develop risk management standards. Also, Executive Editor Dennis Fisher discusses the state of secure software development and whether software vendors will ever certify their products as secure.

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Home / Blog / Article

March 30 2011

White House Still Committed to Failing Schools

Sabrina Schaeffer

Today the House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 471, The SOAR Act - or, reauthorization of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. But the White House has already released a policy statement announcing the Administration "strongly opposes" the program and expanding it to new students.

In the words of this administration: "Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve?student achievement."

There was a time not so long ago, however, when the Opportunity Scholarship program helped more than 3,000 low-income D.C. students escape one of the nation's most expensive and ineffectual school districts. It gave students and their families freedom to seek out alternative, private educational opportunities - the same way President Obama and so many members of Congress do for their children.

The results of even this relatively small choice program are impossible to ignore. A federally mandated evaluation found D.C. scholarship recipients were, on average, 3.1 months ahead in reading compared to their public school peers. And the longest participating students in the program were almost two school years ahead of their public school peers in reading. And in addition to improving academic achievement, the program also increased graduation rates.

Perhaps it's no surprise that it did all of this at a fraction of the cost of D.C. Public Schools. And I do mean a fraction. DCPS spend $28,000/student - yes, you read that correctly, $28,000 per student. (Just to put that into perspective, tuition at the elite Sidwell Friends, where the President and First Lady send their daughters begins at $28,000). The DCOS program, on the other hand, costs only $6,600/student.

The hypocrisies surrounding SOAR are almost too many to number. But I'll start with the fact that President Obama himself is a scholarship success story.  He was awarded a private scholarship that allowed him the opportunity to attend Punahou School - an exclusive private school in Honolulu. And, of course, he and First Lady Michelle Obama chose to send their two daughters to one of DC's most elite private schools...right after cutting the Opportunity Scholarship program.

IWF applauds House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for pushing this legislation that saves huge amounts of money, increases student performance, and gives families a say over their children's education.  Too bad the White House is still committed to failure.

Independent Women’s Forum’s mission is to improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty. Sister organization of Independent Women’s Voice.
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Home / Blog / Article

January 15 2013

Real War on Women: Child Marriages

Emily Wismer

While sex slavery has gained national attention for its heinousness, a less-well known crime steals lives, the most basic forms of liberty and autonomy, and leaves abuse and rape in it's wake. It should be considered statutory rape and is eerily similar to human trafficking, yet it receives little public attention.

Child “marriage” may be widely considered a thing of the past. But it is practiced across the globe. In fact, in the developing world, one in three women 20-24 were forced into marriage as children. According to the AHA Foundation, in the United States, “as many as 3,000 known or suspected cases of forced marriage within immigrant communities in the United States in the two years preceding the survey.”

Worldwide, an estimated 51 million girls under the age of 18 are currently married, and in Afghanistan 57 percent of girls wed before they reach the age of 16.

Though many factors contribute to child marriages, poor economic conditions which often leads parents to give away their daughters at a young age in marriage. Girls living in low-income households are twice as likely to marry before their 18th birthday. Parents may give a child away to settle a debt, and many husbands are decades older than the child.

The picture above shows eight year-old Roshan on the day she was engaged to 55-year-old Said in Afghanistan.

Girls married as children are not given the chance to pursue an education or make their own life choices. Evidence suggests child brides are more likely than other brides to experience domestic violence. Some are forced to have sex before they reach puberty, while many are kidnapped and raped by the man before they are wed.

Snejana Farberov with the Daily Mail reports that such premature sex, and thus pregnancy, has significant health effects on the children:

Adolescent wives are more likely to have obstructed labor because their bodies have not fully developed yet. Statistics show that pregnancy death for child brides is double that of women in the 20s, according to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

One doctor based in the Yemeni capital Sanaa listed some of the medical consequences of forcing girls into sex and childbirth before they are physically mature - ripped vaginal walls and internal ruptures called fistulas which can lead to life-long incontinence.

Girls are often too young to understand the concept of reproduction. The doctor said: 'The nurses start by asking, "Do you know what's happening?" "Do you understand that this is a baby that has been growing inside of you?"'

According to Unicef, pregnancy and childbirth results in 70,000 deaths per year in girls 15-19 worldwide, and chances of dying at birth are 60 percent higher for children born to a mother under 16 years of age.

Though illegal, child marriages are practiced in the United States and go unnoticed by law enforcement. In other parts of the world, culture promotes and law enforcement ignores child marriage. Law enforcement at home and abroad must step up and protect children who are vulnerable to become victims of child marriages. Furthermore, cultural education by groups fighting child marriage can have a great impact on shifting perceptions on both women and childhood marriage.

Every girl should have the opportunity have a girlhood, but child marriage takes this from her.

Independent Women’s Forum’s mission is to improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty. Sister organization of Independent Women’s Voice.
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text: To: J3 11-211r1 From: R. Bader Subject: Assumed-shape entities with NULL base address Date: 2011 June 29 References: 11-168r2, N1854 INTRODUCTION: The changes to CFI_establish described in 11-168r1 imply that it is possible to create a descriptor which has the attribute CFI_attribute_assumed and a base_addr with value NULL. This is OK if the resulting descriptor can only be used as an input for CFI_section or CFI_select_part. EDITS to N1854: [16:14-18] Replace the whole paragraph by "CFI_establish establishes a C descriptor for an assumed-shape array, an assumed character length object, unallocated allocatable object, or a data pointer. If base_addr is not NULL, it is for a nonallocatable entity which is a scalar or a contiguous array. If base_addr is NULL, the established C descriptor is for an unallocated allocatable, a disassociated pointer, or is a C descriptor that has the attribute CFI_attribute_assumed but does not describe a Fortran assumed shape array. The properties of the object are given by the other arguments. Note 5.6+: A descriptor with attribute CFI_attribute_assumed and base_addr equal to NULL can be used as the argument /result/ in calls to CFI_section or CFI_select_part, which will produce a descriptor for a Fortran assumed shape array." {This also subsumes the changes in this paragraph from 11-168r1}.


text:
Thursday, January 21, 2010

Supreme Court's 'seismic' decision on campaign contributions

The head of a North Carolina non-profit organization that aims to educate voters about elections and the election process says a U.S. Supreme Court decision this morning will have a seismic effect on Tar Heel politics. That's saying a lot, given how N.C. politics has often been at the center of trends shaping how candidates and campaigns go about their work -- from the bruising campaign between Frank Porter Graham and Willis Smith for the U.S. Senate 60s years ago, to the transformation of national politics with the fund-raising and advertising campaigns by the National Congressional Club to help Jesse Helms, to the redistricting battles here that have shaped campaigns as well as legislatures and Congress.

The Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC struck down restrictions on corporate giving in elections, freeing up corporations including powerful labor unions to spend unlimited amounts in elections. Damon Circosta, executive director of the N.C. Center for Voter Education, said in a news release that the decision makes North Carolina's experiment with public funding of elections even more important as a way to avoid the impact of huge financial contributions on our elections. Here's what Circosta had to say:

"We are disappointed in today's ruling that essentially grants moneyed interests an outsized role in our democracy. When corporations are left unfettered to influence the political process, everyday citizens get left out. If politics is about a level playing field where ideas compete to be heard, the Supreme Court just handed an amplifier to the very folks who already had a megaphone.

"Although there is a great degree of concern among reform advocates that this decision will only exacerbate the 'pay-to-play' system of campaign contributions in exchange for preferential treatment, this decision creates even more urgency around alternative campaign funding models such as public campaign financing.

"We know that public campaign financing works to curb special interest influence and we also know that courts have repeatedly deemed such systems to be constitutionally sound. North Carolina has been a national leader in establishing a public financing alternative. In the wake of this latest decision by the Supreme Court, we expect more support for programs that empower citizens to participate in their democracy."

Anonymous said...

Isn't it sad - and frightening - that not a single mention of this, including a link to this blog, appears on the home page of today's Observer?

Anonymous said...

This ruling only applies to advertising dollars. I can't believe the Democrats are hollering about "special interests" when their own "special interests", namely the major news media, have been mouthpieces for their candidates for years. This just levels the playing field. They hate it when things get more fair.

Mike Licht said...

A landmark Supreme Court decision -- and you can take that to the bank.

Of course, now you'll have to ....

Anonymous said...

Now "foreign" interests can easily control USA elections. All Bin Laden has to do is buy into a USA corporation and run advertisements against candidates he doesn't like.

True conservatives would not be giving foreigners the ability to use money to dominate USA internal affairs.

This maybe the worst Supreme Court decision in a generation or more!

Anonymous said...

If your vote can be decided by what a corporation says in an ad, then have I got some real estate for you to buy.

Anonymous said...

This is what judicial activism truly is and the last thirty years of Republican propaganda brought it to you. The tea-baggers and right wing-nuts are more than happy to sell this country out to any foreign interest with money under the guise of 'personal' liberty. And our democratic leaders did the same by bying into the propaganda of corporate expansionism with NAFTA anc CAFTA. Every time a politician opens his mouth it is to say whatever the lobbyists told him to say and now they can get rid of all that lobby expense by buying their candiate outright. A corporation as a 'person'? The greatest fraud ever perpetrated against Americans.

Anonymous said...

NOTE TO BETTS: Lose the tie dude. You look like Wally Cox. And you are old enough like me to know who that is.

Anonymous said...

And the house recognizes the honourable member of Al Qaeda, TATA, Dubai,The US has just given wealthier foreign interests the green light to legally take control of your democracy.You need to worry less about bombers and more about your politicians and judiciary.The door is open...let us see who walks through.

Anonymous said...

What is sad is that it was not fairly written by McCain Feingold, allowing left leaning oraganizations also Corporations to give millions from Unions organizations such as ACORN, SEIU, Apollo, other front organizations playing the game. Both large corporations and large socialist Union corporations should equally be limited in their influence. Didn't hear the left scream about the left leaning supreme court justices pass eminent domain laws allowing corporations to take private land under the guise of eminent domain in 2005???? You didn't scream about foreign money through P.A.C.'s already existing the left gives money to? Monstrous Hypocrisy!

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Emil said...

well, I think every country needs to have reliable justice for the sake of their citizens. it has bee written last year but the effect will be felt till there is a change on the court. hope someday there will be a person who have string heart and will to stand for the voiceless people which reminds me of 90s youth who give voice to the voiceless at that time is Afro American against their discrimination, miss that day.


text:
back toJacket2

The Internet address of this page is

Stephen Burt
Parallel Play: Poems
reviewed by Michael Aiken
88pp. Graywolf Press. Paperback original. US$ 14.00. 1—55597—437—6 paper

This review is about 6 printed pages long. It is copyright © Michael Aiken and Jacket magazine 2008.

We Too Will Be Punished

Stephen Burt first made a splash on the collective consciousness with some bold critical observations delivered in talk straighter than most would have believed the discourse provides for, notable in his contribution to the ‘Poetry Criticism — what is it for?’ conference (reproduced in Jacket #11) and his article on ‘The Elliptical Poets’, a piece he himself says generated more attention than all his other critical publications combined. Burt had, however, been actively making such contributions, along with poems and reviews, for years prior, many of which are accessible from, the webblog he co-authors with Jessica Bennett.

paragraph 2

As is evident across his writing — critical and creative — Burt enjoys both questioning and expounding the value not only of poetry criticism, but poetry itself. His reviews and his collections alike dig into the meat of the western poetic tradition, reusing and reworking traditions of form and theme, drawing sources of subject matter from the vastness of culture high and low. Everything from pop music, tv and comic books to pre-twentieth century painting and classical history are treated with a gamut of forms at his hands. He has a well-publicised zeal for both grassroots U.S. politics and the WNBA, recently joined the English faculty at Harvard and appears to be something of a net junkie. From this broad mix Burt produces a range of poems typically one to two pages in length (plus a couple of tight, single-stanza pieces) that alternately seek to reveal the poetic in this world he peruses or else construct a mytho-poetical riddle from some specific of its contents. And sometimes both.

The first of these types features a number of domestic bliss poems and quietly beatific exultations of the urban environment their speaker inhabits. Poems such as Bluebells and Tenth Avenue revel in their own simplicity and contemporaneity, gently distilling for the reader some essence or essence-like distillate of a particular place at a particular time. Bluebells, for example, sketches out the scattered deposits of the titular flowers along a city block

... they sprint up the length of our street
and back down through a pair of bicycle tires,
then run themselves to ground amid the heat
of broken flag and flagstone and cement.

As with other of Burt’s pieces in this vein, the poem brings out the personal attachment and involvement the speaker feels for the places described with a combination of precision and understatement, the final stanza in Bluebells declaring of a pair of squirrels regularly observed in that same street

Now that we’ve spent
a year on Fairmount Avenue, such heady sights remind
me less of balmy days in Central Park

Those of the second type tend to be the more immediately exciting, though their rewards can often derive from successfully reading the tell-tale cultural signposts imbedded in the text rather than from successfully enjoying what purists might regard as the actual poetry of the piece. Scenes from Next Week’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (originally published in Jacket #10), probably the least entertaining along such lines, drops just the right amount of character names and thematic references to indicate commitment as a viewer without the obsessiveness of an idolator, though the poem’s depressing conclusion that the show only really appeals to viewers because it isn’t the same as their own monotonous lives provides a satisfying juxtaposition to the playful immersion in tv fiction with which the poem opens.

The breadth of scope and the height of the sights Burt sets mean there are both hits and misses aplenty in this collection. Amongst the most enjoyable works are the more intentionally contrived, convoluted puzzles, not only for the tenuous links and leaps of lateral thought, but for the more original and engaging forms that emerge when riddling takes his focus than when he is giving his all to creating a sestina, a villanelle or a rhythmically consistent free-verse.

Disappointingly at times he defeats the puzzles with explication, denuding absolute meaning and excluding plurality. Cleo, for example, ponderously dotes on a cat in a way even sympathetic cat lovers may find pointless. Over Long Island meanwhile engages with a most curious and delighting image, that of the island’s topography as a Buddhist rock garden, but the metaphor is so spoon-fed as to be emetic

The lines of pebbles — roofs — have been made clear:
Their parallels leave rivulets, and bare
Calm soil along one edge, the Sound...

Burt also navigates perilously close to what Milton referred to as ‘the jingling sound of like endings’ in Parallel Play, yet no more than perhaps should be expected in a book offering variations on long standing forms from an author with an avowed interest in assimilating poetic traditions and who cites Lycidas no less as one of his earliest (3rd or 4th grade — he can’t remember) encounters with the thrill of reading poetry.

Like Popular Music, his first collection, Parallel Play treats a range of low and not so low arts to a variety of traditional poetic forms. Burt has gone on the record as saying he does not believe in a high/low distinction, and so we find poems about comic book characters and sci fi pulp alongside ekphrasic treatments of high-brow visual art. Often noted for his use of in-the-know pop culture references, Burt has done this less often in Parallel Play, and less blatantly. His Self-Portrait As Kitty Pryde, for example, does more than just checklist the facts in a bid to prove that he’s hip to the (sub)culture. Lines like

...I will bear
one child, scorn, twenty-five pounds
of technology on my back, & further the weight
of giving orders to a restless band
of misfits who save America from its own rage
but cannot save themselves, and stay up late.

certainly list facts, but the finish of ‘and stay up late’ makes all the difference, worming into the guts of the character’s nuance, recapturing the teen spirit not just of Pryde but of Pryde at this time in her life.

The poem revels in two particular tropes retained from Popular Music — Burt’s fixation on including populist culture in Kulcha and his practice of writing poems spoken by a teenaged confessor, as synthesised in the teen-themed double entendre ‘I am always going through some phase’. There is, however, maturation in such use of pop culture references. Where Popular Music insisted on being of-the-low-culture-for-the-high-culture, most clearly illustrated by its use of extensive notes to explain for the highbrows such low-brow esoterica as what ‘45rpm’ signifies, the only note to Kitty Pryde contents itself with directing the reader to the particular issues of X-men alluded to by the poem.

At times in this collection the impact of the author’s interest in formal traditions of poetics can be an overwhelming presence, no more so than when he consciously attempts to break with such forms yet still comes up direct rhyming. That said, all that mining of tradition and self-conscious exploration of form pays off in poems like Against Fertility, one of the most arresting titles and one of the best poems in Parallel Play. Here Mr Burt strikes brilliant balance between his strengths and interests in rhyme & tradition and experimentation:

17 whose name
was all this settled on us? Can’t we stop

   and take
      good care of what we have? The riotous
French basil Jessie planted still explores

   its own sharp outer reaches; in
      midair, our landlord’s spider-flowers’
lunar-lander platforms lend their bees

   sweet targets for their last
      warm days. That none of them
may come to any harm,

   let school begin today; let everyone pass
      without increase. Let things stay as they are.

With regard to rhythm and rhyme, Burt also performs some admirable feats with potentially unwieldy combinations throughout At the Providence Zoo:

confined if not preserved,
schoolteachers, their charges, vigilant lemurs, wrens
and prestidigitating tamarins,
and dangerous badgers like dignitaries stare
at one another, hot
and concave in their inappropriate coats.

Such Plath-like tumbling echoes of rhymes and rhythms within rhythms furnish the piece with brilliant longevity. Again in this poem he later manages to evoke the poetic of the cumbersome when he describes mating tortoises as ‘a concatenation of anapests’. Such gems are not rare in this collection. Yet on occasion the words can get in the way of the poems:

Nothing is spared.
The prayerful, seemingly rickety high
Radio towers let the wind beseech
Them; their popular waves
Pass through us & do not touch
The prominence of an otherwise-empty
Sky, where they arraign

 — The Road Builders

That load of adjectives — ‘prayerful, seemingly rickety high’ — with the moribund ‘seemingly’ leads this reader away from the image into... nowhere? Obviously such effects can be used for effect, but more than once in Parallel Play the effect detracts from the pleasure of reading.

The best poems of this collection are those from which a definite sense of meaning and tangible object can be made, but which refuse to yield up that meaning too directly, such as Postcard Sent on New Year’s Day: ‘The Ancients remain in our building./ Ash in their air;/ a quota of dead pigeons in our path.’ Conjouring a characterful building in a highly urban space; a paean to a specific residence and its charm that illustrates the experience of encountering the place with sharp, unassuming wit, as when comparing the nature of the brickwork to ‘...a twelve-tone scale: slight/ things, small charms,/ the jagged ones you have to learn to hear.’ There is something of Lorca’s New York poems in such moments, this invigoration and metamorphosis of the urban landscape without resorting to anthropomorphism, complementing pieces like Cathedral Parkway Subway Grate.

In a book containing sonnets, villanelles and other traditional forms (however unconventionally executed), it is exciting to see this experiment in a formal tradition common to the 20th century — spatialised, free-versed urban description highly conscious of rhythm which shirks direct rhyme.

Plurality is rampant in this poem, especially that formalist string of common nouns masquerading as an “objective” location that is the title, the rhythmic resonance of which dominates the entire poem. Much like the Wiggles’ San Francisco Trolley Car, its rhythmic approximation of the subject establishes a driving beat that pushes the body along. Consider the poem’s opening and closing lines:

Like stars      —      like stars
among the shackles and the grid
none of us fit      —      spectacular stars
in the midst of oversized snow
...      —      in the midst
of glint       —      of street above       —       of schedules
...                        — of one night’s
accomplishment —             a train             —            a train      —               a train

Like any good poem and many in this book, Cathedral Parkway Subway Grate rewards repeated reading, the disjoined rhythms resonating more powerfully each time, just as many of the other poems invite, near-incite the repeat-reader to attempt to determine a fixed meaning. Postcard... says

the rewards come slow,/ the difficulties like a spate of glass

an audience aside that readily recalls the most playfully riddle-like poem in Popular Music, Glass, hence all the more acknowledging the game between reader, poem and writer.

we too will be punished

he says, just prior to describing the brickwork you have to learn to appreciate; like a weird scale you have to get into to enjoy, like this poem you have to work at to understand.

We too will be punished, but not yet.

Michael Aiken

Michael Aiken

Michael Aiken is a security professional working in the New South Wales Public Service in Sydney and newly appointed default audio engineer for Darlington primary school’s Parents and Citizens committee. Most recently his writing has appeared in unusual work, Shampoo, Foam:e and snorkel.

Copyright Notice: Please respect the fact that all material in Jacket magazine is copyright © Jacket magazine and the individual authors and copyright owners 1997–2010; it is made available here without charge for personal use only, and it may not be stored, displayed, published, reproduced, or used for any other purpose.


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It’s Tour Finals time, Year 2.

Surpassing last year’s four-tournament series that culminated with the Tour Championship at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley will be a tall order.

“It was exactly what we were looking for,” said David Brown, the CEO of the Jacksonville-based Internet consulting service for small businesses. “Players who you thought were going to make it lost their cards by a stroke and other people came out of the blue to get their cards. We think this year will be more exciting.”

That process begins with first leg of the Finals on Thursday, the Hotel Fitness Championship at the Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Fort Wayne, Ind. There, the top 75 players on the final regular-season Tour money list will join players drawn from Nos. 126-to-200 on the final regular-season PGA Tour FedEx Cup points list to begin their quest for 50 PGA Tour cards for the 2014-2015 season.

After stops in Columbus, Ohio, and Davidson, N.C., the Finals end at the Valley Sept. 18-21.

Half of the Tour cards have already been secured by the players who finished among the top 25 on the Tour money list. They will be playing for priority status next season (which will determine the number of starts they will get before the first re-shuffle), as well as the plum of fully exempt status and an invitation to The Players Championship for the leading earner when combining regular-season and Finals earnings, and another for the player who leads the Finals in earnings.

Two area players, Blayne Barber of Lake City (seventh) and Steve Wheatcroft of Jacksonville (19th) have their cards locked up. Other area players who finished among the top 75 on earnings and are in the Finals are Harold Varner III (30th) and Aron Price (60th) of Ponte Vedra Beach.

Area players in the Finals through their FedEx Cup finishes are David Lingmerth of Ponte Vedra, Jonathan Byrd and Hudson Swafford of St. Simons Island, Ga., and Bud Cauley of Jacksonville. Scott Hend of Ponte Vedra is in the field as a non-member of the PGA Tour who accumulated enough points to finish among the top 200.

The players eligible for the Finals also include 24 past PGA Tour winners who combined for 51 victories, led by major champions Ben Curtis and Y.E. Yang.

Last year’s Tour Championship was filled with mini-dramas as 12 players were in position to earn one of the final six cards available during the final round. Among the highlights: Lee Williams made a 60-foot putt on the 18th hole to clinch his card and knock playing partner Andres Gonzales out of the top 50; Andrew Loupe knocked in a 6-foot par putt at the last to get his card and again keep Gonzales out; and John Peterson shot 67 and won the Finals money title by $567 — after Scott Gardiner finished bogey-par.

“They are life-changing moments,” said Dan Glod, the chief operating officer of the Tour. “You see grown men crying in the locker room because they didn’t quite make it, or you see celebration. There’s pressure because you’re playing to change your life.”

Garry Smits: (904) 359-4362


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Some say he was born in space and he's scared of bells. Some say he is confused by stairs. All we know is he's called "The Stig." Stiggie and "The Hamster" spent this past weekend looking to set the world indoor speed record with a Toyota F1 car. And although it turns out they did — the resulting top speed may surprise you.

More Top Gear [internal]


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Home - The Star
June 10, 2014
Star Entertainment

Demarco delivers Martinique's annual carnival celebrations

Fresh from his musical exploits at May Fest 2014, Grand Cayman and the holy land of Israel where he delivered a pair of concerts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, red hot deejay Demarco went to Martinique where he headlined their annual carnival celebrations on the weekend.

No stranger to the French-speaking island perched in the Lesser Antilles, the blonde-hair singer says he is not intimidated by the language barrier as he has grown accustomed to performing for diverse audiences across the globe.

"I'm not intimidated in the least by the language barrier. Actually, I embrace it ... . Music has no boundaries, so why should I limit myself," Demarco added.

Following his stint in Martinique the Fren Circle singer and his team shifted focus to a second assignment in Antigua before returning to the island later this week to continue work on his online reality series 'Talk Yuh Mind'.

Riding high locally with hits such as Apartment, Loyal, Ride, Lazy Body and Continue Whine, Demarco, only days ago, rolled out the official campaign for his latest street banger Good Book, which has become a staple on the playlist of most top tier jocks.

The Zj Liquid (H2o Records) produced single has been causing quite a stir on the airwaves and party circuit. An official video was also released to rave reviews via his YouTube channel (youtube.com/demarcolife).

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text:
Yoon lands federal job

March 30, 2012

Sam Yoon has left his executive director position at the National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA) in Washington, D.C. and accepted an appointment with the U.S. Department of Labor, according to Frank Woodruff, who took over Yoon’s position at NACEDA.

Yoon is a former Boston city councilor who ran a prominent but unsuccessful campaign against incumbent Thomas Menino for mayor in 2009. He claimed to be blackballed because of that and forced to relocate to D.C. to find a new job.