There hasn’t been any “copying and pasting of news” this week – it’s been a busy one with a lot of deadlines. It’ll return come Monday. I also went to the launch on Baker Street last night of Trading Places, a new book by award-winning photographer and all-round good chap Steve Bloom. Also my dad. So that’s why posts have been scant: but it’s Friday, so I thought I’d cheer you all up with a few tips on how to survive the Christmas do…

The Christmas party: that perfect time to let your hair down and throw your reputation to the winds. What other time of year can you mock your boss, flirt with your co-workers and dance in your knickers, all at once?

But as legions of office drones know, that opportunity comes with a priceless hangover.

A good story was told by Adam, of High Street, Cardiff city centre. Things went wrong at his old job when fire fighters got more than they bargained for in a call-out.

Adam said: “My old work, a now-defunct bank, had a Christmas party in the office in 2003. There was a buffet, an awards ceremony for the year’s work, and karaoke machine, with added smoke machine.

“So the party was in full swing, people singing, people dancing and the smoke machine smoking. After about two hours of this, some men dressed in fireman outfits arrived at the office. Some of the female staff – including managers – assumed these were strippers.

“They started, well, gyrating around the men, trying to take off their ‘outfits’. The thing is though, they were actual firemen: the smoke machine had set the alarms off.

“Not surprisingly, that was the last Christmas party we were given in that office.”

So how does the humble worker bee prevent getting into pickles like these? Here are some ideas. Which type are you?

FOR THE NEW GUY

You have got to be extra-careful. For you have just entered a parallel world, in which your every move will be scrutinised to fit with the ‘banter’ of man-all-man employees who’ve been spending longer with each other than their wives for several decades.

So if you’ve been waiting for that perfect time to share your secret love of musicals, discuss French theatre, come out as gay or, worse, as a vegan, your first Christmas party isn’t it.

And beware, because it will seem like a good idea when you’re nine pints down and standing on the table without trousers or dignity.

Instead the best policy is cower in the corner, if possible with other trainees, and talk about ludicrously safe subjects.

Think along the lines of cars, ties (not shoes), bitter (not lager) and possibly politics, but make sure you tow the standard line: “Just how bad is that Gordon Brown?” Or you could stick to the ergonomic management keyboard:

FOR THE NEW GIRL

You’re over here. The punch is over there. In the middle is overweight Gwyn from accounts who always puts himself deliberately between you and the photocopier so you have to squeeze past.

This should be as good a hint as any not to drink anything. You’re young, fresh-faced, intelligent and unknown to you most people in the office are competing to be you, or worse, especially in Gwyn’s case.

So if they get you drunk, you’ll slowly turn into them: following the downward course until spring, when someone even younger and prettier comes in and sure enough, you want to be her.

Or, worse, you’ll canoodle in the corner with lovestruck Gwyn who, come 2010, will make sure he’s not only blocking the photocopier, but also the vending machine, water cooler and door.

But you’ve not got the same option as the New Guy. You can’t lurk in the corner with the fairer sex and a G&T, because unlike office guys, who mumble into their pints and keep eyes on ties, office girls will make sure they’re heard.

So it’s a no-go, especially if they have any gossip on Gwyn. The best bet is to flirt briefly with everything in the room – and walk away with your head held high.

FOR THE SAD HACK IN THE CORNER

You’re the only person older than the boss, so to rub in the fact you didn’t succeed even more you’ll be asked to toast him/her. If you’re sober, this will be an excellent exercise in brown-nosing. If you’re not, it’ll be an exercise in damage limitation.

You will be inclined to make a cruel joke. Do not bend to this temptation. It will probably come out wrong, meaning after 26 years of the same old story at the office do, you’ll be repeating yourself again in the new year. Someone else will get that promotion, and you’ll be stuck counting down the days on your free calendar to the next party.

You’ll also be inclined to do your famous boss-impression. Unfortunately, its fame is probably due to an in-joke among your younger colleagues, and isn’t actually funny. Plus, impressions at office dos are seldom better than that dance Ricky Gervais did in The Office. Often, they’re worse.

So don’t do it. And especially, please, don’t try and impersonate Ricky Gervais. Just no.

FOR THE BOSS

Finally, if you’re the boss and you’ve not been told about the office party, it could be a surprise do for you.

Be prepared to walk through that door after ‘urgent business’ calls you in to be greeted with party poppers and bubbly by the whole staff. By the time they’ve finished stroking your ego you won’t be able to get your head through the door.

But it more likely means you’ve not been invited.

So a word of caution: have a good think about how well-liked you are. Do you bend, bad breath and all, over the hunched shoulders of your well-meaning employees and whine you-could-probably-do-this advice in their ears?

Do you give motivational speeches standing on tables where you use star-charts and words like “self-fulfilment”? Do you keep everyone on past 5.30pm in the name of “building a community spirit”?

If any of these things apply to you, you are probably one of those Hated Bosses you’ve heard so much about. Your best bet would be to stay at home with your kids. They’re too young to realise how irritating you are yet.

Joanna Geary - The Times Something Something Something

Last week we had a talk from twentysomething Times “Web Development Editor” (yup, she says it’s a made-up title too) Joanna Geary.

The motto which skyrocketed her into her dream job, through failing to get onto several courses and eventually becoming a web-savvy Birmingham business hack who had to reapply for her own job, is this: If you don’t know, ask someone who does.

I prefer the wording on her own website – If content is King, collaboration is Queen. But it’s all the same thing, and it’s a theory she really put to the test on the Birmingham Post.

What she did was set up a network of 35 blogs from experts around the city – university professors to sportsmen – on every topic under the sun. All working for free. Her job as a journalist was, in a more pure way than ever, merely to organise the news, not to make it.

And that was in the days before blogs really broke news! Since Freedom of Information became well-known among non-media types, bloggers and sites like Help Me Investigate – again in Brum, they’re really hot on this stuff – have been… Queen. To us Kings, apparently.

And just when I was thinking about this then sure enough, one popped up in my back home back yard – the Ashford Resistance. Follow them on Twitter. While it looks like a bunch of Marxists have just discovered the net (because that’s exactly what’s happened) it’s not just ranting and raving.

In fact, with investigative posts like this and a controversial patch to work in:

• former Times news editor and Tory MP / Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green voted even against his party on gay rights and was briefly famous last year when his office got searched
• and my village, Wye, nearly quintupled in size when council leader Paul Clokie signed a secret ‘concordat’ allowing Imperial College to destroy a vast greenfield site and which was defeated by an internet campaign AND made into a book

… they could be on to something. Watch that space. And breathe after reading that sentence.

But there’s another reason to get on board the blogwagon, too. In these tough times, my notes from the end of Joanna’s lecture say it all.

Nja, inte riktigt så.
MEN!

Under Borås Fashion Days har jag ett något otippat samarbete med Bloom. Bland frisörstolar, makeup och håruppsättningar ska jag sitta och specialdesigna dikter åt den som kikar förbi. Få din egen haiku skriven med dina “Modeord”!

Dessutom skall det pågå två andra små kreativa experiment där som flirtar vilt med begreppet “orddesign” – Välkommen!

Evenemanget pågår kl 14-16 fredagen 27/11 i Blooms lokaler på Bryggaregatan i Borås.

Cindy Bradley is one of the blessed women showered with presents like beauty and a great musical talent. The decision in young years to choose the trumpet now bears fruits. She toured with Pieces of a Dream and performed on events like the Catalina Island Jazztrax Festival, the River Raisin Jazz Festival or the Woodbridge Summer Festival.

She started her career with the self-produced debut album Just A Little Bit (2007). Although she is often compared with Chris Botti and Rick Braun, she claims to have an own style: “I haven’t modeled myself after Rick or Chris, though I think they’re great.”

Her new album Bloom (2009) was released by the label Trippin ‘n’ Rhythm. Respect for Les Cutmore and Jeff Lunt to support a rather unknown talent. All tracks were written, performed, mixed, produced and engineered by Grammy award winning producer Michael Broening.

Cindy comments: “Michael just did such an incredible job with this project. He is not only super talented and good at what he does, but he is one of the coolest, most down-to-earth, humble guys I have met in this business – and that is really key to getting the best out of any artist. He also chose a really great group of musicians to play on the recording”.

Continue reading Cindy Bradley – Bloom

Fridays are rarely the right time for writing a blog post. So my housemate James Franklin and I (see his blog) have decided to set up a podcast from the pub instead.

Today we’ll be giving our take on the new EU presidency, the sell-off of the Big Chill festival and a Tory recommendation to relax media regulations (link not available). Today’s reference was the Guardian – though we promise it won’t be every week. Enjoy!

Get it here.

There are moments in my life when I am irritable and restless, and one of the things I like to do is guided imagery. It is quite relaxing. I love being able to focus and center my energies, so that I can rejuvenate and feel more at peace. I feel like everyone needs these quiet moments of time alone. Maybe this is what I have been needing to do.

Here is a link to once such meditation I have done tonight: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8845129782533837583#

Want to know what “My Quiet Place” looks like?

Its in the middle of a prairie, surrounded by tall blades of grass. The sun is shining and it’s rays are warm to my skin. I can hear the weeping willows branches swooshing in the distance. The birds are chirping their busy talk with one another. I can smell the faint hint of the flowers in full bloom…a trail of sweet peas left lingering in my nose. The quietness of my mind allows me to lay down in the tall grass, eyes closed, and just focus on the beautifulness of my surroundings. There, I am one.

When we were at the Country Living Fair, my sister went nuts over a few different aprons. At one booth, one of the “sales” ladies had made aprons for each girl working the booth that weekend. Quite cute and crafty! Anyhoo, Sissy did not find one that she liked well enough to purchase.

So when thoughts of what to do for my sis for her birthday started swirling in my head, I knew what I wanted to do! Make her an apron and use a pattern I had seen at a fabric store a few months ago.

I went to Field’s Fabrics in Kalamazoo, since I knew I could definitely find the halter style pattern I wanted to use. Even though it was about 5 months ago when I had seen it on display, I was sure (sincerely hoping!) someone would remember what I was talking about. Turns out that it was a Heather Bailey pattern, Daily Spice Halter Apron. I purchased Amy Butler fabric to use for the apron.

Interestingly enough, one of my favorite booths at the CL Fair, Homegirl, had products using Amy Butler fabric and I overheard the owner saying that she knew Amy Butler. I was jealous. She is just too cool, in my opinion.

On the Saturday before my sissy’s birthday I started on the apron. Yep, I am a procrastinator. But I had all the required materials. Between tracing the pattern (note to self and others: next time purchase large sheets of tracing paper so you do not resort to wax paper, which seemed like a great idea at the time but was a pain because of its slipperiness) and transferring it to the fabric (I had previously pre-washed it) and cutting it out and then sewing it all together (which used new techniques that I scratched my head over for a couple minutes) and pressing it, it took me about 10 hours. Is that bad?

I thought I did fairly well, considering this is the first time I used a pattern and that this project was above my skill level (and possibly the skill level of my sewing machine…). It is certainly not perfect like the one on the pattern cover, but it works. I had fun and enjoyed the process. And the best part–my sister squealed with delight when she opened her gift.

The Daily Spice Halter Apron

Close-up of halter detail

Hubby said now that I know what I am doing, it should only take me half the time to make another one. Sometimes his optimism surprises me.

The armed forces remain a mystery to a huge section of UK society. I thought this quite strongly when our bus rattled over the cattle grids at Caerwent training area yesterday.

As us 10 trainee journalists skidded along the rain-soaked roads of the 1,500-acre site, we got held up by marines with tired-looking black and green faces and their guns. Smashed-up warehouse buildings and barbed wire lined the roads while skeletal sheep grazed the tufts of grass around them. It was like entering another world.

We were there on a Senior Command Course to watch marines Non-Comissioned Officers – the forces’ real on-the-ground elite – compete for promotion from corporals to sergeants. We were herded around on patrol, ‘embedded’ with the military to test their skills in keeping us alive. Read on to find out if they managed it.

But we also had to test our skills as journalists – whether we could pick through the miles of jargon and chaos, and of course, darkness and freezing rain, and come out with a usable story on the other side.

The military and the press have always been at odds. Journalists take risks; they don’t fall into line, and the soldiers looking after them have to risk their necks to pull them back, like children, from the side of the road.

But it’s worse being a freelancer. If you’re not embedded with a unit you have the advantage of uncensored copy – but the disadvantage of being blown up or kidnapped at any second, as the case of Javed Yazamy proves. According to the International News Safety Institute, 23-year old Mr Yazamy, a freelancer who contributed to the Canadian Press, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kandahar City, Afghanistan on 10 March this year. He was in his vehicle at the time. There are countless cases like his.

So the MOD’s line recently, especially since Iraq, has been that they’re in support of the press. “It’s part and parcel of being in a liberal democracy,” Major Andrew Ferguson told us.

“Some journalists, once they’re embedded, decide to go against the military to get the story they want. But the individual will be ostracised – and they won’t be allowed to work with the military again.”

The two of us, he said, must work under the same sense of brotherhood the forces work with themselves. And surprised though we were, once we were on patrol with the marines they treated us like family.

The troop, made up of 38 corporals from all over the UK, took us under their wing and showed us round. The men in their mid-thirties, all with years of operational experience, were spending the 10-day period camped out in one of the deserted buildings. They lived on an hour or so of sleep every 24, and 7000-calorie ration kits which included dehydrated lamb dinners, unbranded milk chocolate and even tiny bottles of tobasco sauce.

It was few days in and they were already exhausted; five had dropped out from an original 43, one due to appendicitis. While they sat around and told us their war stories, the November wind whipped through the broken windows of the old ammunition factory where they still are now.

The time came for orders – their briefing - and they all gathered in a darkening corner of the warehouse where a model of little cardboard boxes and crepe paper had been put up. We sat on a cot bed along the wall and were introduced as “our friends in the media”, which earned us a curt nod from around the room. The report points on the model were given names like Kate Adie and Trevor McDonald, in honour of us.

The mission was to make a reassurance patrol in a fabricated Afghan village down the road, with the intention of setting up future civic projects. Those in charge of the various sections ran through a dazzling array of jargon that we tried furiously to scribble down in the near-dark. They explained parts for us, which we just about understood before they moved on again. By the end of the orders we were fairly confident the three of us would just be following the troop sergeant in single file the whole way.

But, as could be expected, the mission didn’t go to plan. We were at the rear of the troop when those at the front came under fire from insurgents (played by members of the army). We were impressed by how we were looked after. They had us sit completely still while supposed chaos unfolded and gunfire rattled overhead.

Some of our colleagues, playing freelance journalists, were locked in a toilet and told to stay there until things calmed down. They weren’t told what was going on; we were. We had various officers retreat from the front line to calmly reel off what they were doing now; even to make some light conversation. Many of them seemed to enjoy having guests in their midst.

Then a corporal from one section was ‘injured’ by a ‘gunshot wound to the leg’ at around 6pm. He was stable, and so it wouldn’t be newsworthy, we were told. As there was a risk of injuring civillians the troop withdrew back to the base. We came back cold, wet, and without a story.

We got back, debriefed, and the men went off to get some kip while we were driven back to our base. It felt like we’d hardly started; and when some young riflemen we got chatting to back at the base went out to play more insurgents at 11pm, and left us to sleep, we felt inadequate.

Before they left, they were a little suspicious – asking if I was hiding a dictaphone under my Times - but more often they were just incredulous about our work, much as we had been towards theirs. Maybe our relationship with the military is not so much hostile as, well, ignorant.

So we could all do with learning a little more about each other - even if the work’s not to our taste. And it seems the feeling’s mutual. As one 21-year-old rifleman said: “Is that all you do? Read papers all the time? I’d rather be shot at any day.”

Indeed, the climax of my obsession in Ulysses occurs in Penelope when Molly says “lick my shit” (642).  This is the point of no return, where the fine line that may or may not have existed between ingestion and excretion is completely obliterated.  I must admit I’ve shied away from the economic nature of this moment (brought up briefly in class discussion) but I will also admit that this passage is the one that I simply cannot ignore any longer.  The fierce intertwining of sex, transaction, and consumption culminate in Molly’s imagining Bloom worshipping her ass and also paying her (£1) for the experience, as she commands him to consume everything that comes out of her.  Bloom obviously prefers this kind of sensual interaction, and Molly’s voice in Penelope shows her revulsion toward it but also her acceptance of it, as she says that she will “let out a few smutty words” that she knows will arouse him.

Looking back at the bread and butter theme, the two are almost always associated with Molly, but she never actually gets around to consuming bread with butter throughout the novel, at least not to my knowledge. In Calypso, Bloom remembers: “thin bread and butter she likes in the morning,” and in Penelope, Molly recalls the day she realized Boylan’s foot fetish, as she was “waggling [her] foot we both ordered a teas and plain bread and butter” (613).  On the next page as she remembers her series of affairs she recalls the “main with the curly hair” she noticed when she was “tasting the butter” (614).  Here, we have butter but no bread, and Molly is actually consuming it.  I’m not sure if this is even remotely relevant, I was just fascinated by the association of Bloom with kidneys/organs and Molly with bread/butter.

This in no way consolidates my thoughts on the subject but in my defense: hey, it’s Ulysses.

And thus we reach the end of Ulysses. In my last post, I discussed the function of gifts as representing the various offerings (lifestyle, future) Boylan and Bloom both exhibit for/give to Molly and what she ultimately decides, represented by her acquiescence to make breakfast for Bloom (a gift in it’s own right, with a cherry on top) and the gradual phasing out of Boylan despite his propensity to give many, many gifts. This structuring of gifts in the last episode brings up a continuous theme of opposition and elaboration used by Joyce throughout Ulysses – namely, a structuring of several extreme (in my case, gifts) at the beginning and end of each chapter that the main character must navigate through. Molly does this in Penelope, when she slowly shifts from Boylan, the material-giver, to Bloom, the family/love-giver (commercial/surface pleasure vs emotional). The other times gifts reprise as a structuring device is in Lestrygonians (the birds and the meal), Cyclops (the not-giving) and Nausicaa (the giving respite), and elements of Episodes 1, 2, and 4 (probably more than that).

The structuring aspects of gifts often relate to their ability to characterize, as with Boylan and Bloom in Penelope. Certain exchanges are surface-gifts and reflect negatively on the giver, while some are heart-felt and reflect positively, and some are social, reflecting neither here nor there, but highlighting important expectations the characters of Ulysses’ Dublin operate with. Bad transactions are commercial, with little thought for coming out ahead or being respected in any manner. Characters that adhere to this lifestyle are Mulligan, Boylan, Simon Dedalus, while others engage in this “giving” simply because they have to. Good giving, without thought for the repercussions on oneself or means, is exhibited by Bloom and Stephen (who are both capable of the other giving, as well), though Stephen’s dispensing of money for his “friends” shows how he is casting pearls before swine. Bloom mainly indulges in giving to animals, though Stephen and Molly both feature in his thoughts. Social giving, where it isn’t quite commercial but there is an expectation that the favor given will be repaid at a later date, is utilized by every character encountered in Dublin, with some being more reliable than others in keeping their word.

Aside from this, there are several anomaly gifts. There are “bad” gifts such as diseases and bribes, that come with pain and/or strings attached. An example of these would be the narrator of “Cyclops” suffering from disease and Boylan buying Molly a basket of potted meats while lying about his intentions. There is one example of a consciously ungiven gift that I can think of (there may be others, wasn’t looking for this, it just leaped out since we talked about it): Molly’s gift coat for Rudy. Undelivered to Rudy (while alive), Molly makes a conscious decision (or thinks about it afterwards) to not give the coat to some other child who might need it, but rather uses it to wrap her son’s body up. This tinges of selfishness at first scant scant glance, yet Molly’s dedication to her son heralds ideas of making gifts to the dead – something Stephen is incapable of doing for his mother. Unpack that!

Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece

 by Declan Kiberd (W.W. Norton, 2009)

This book operates much like Blamires, with a chapter by chapter analysis, but it claims to emphasize the “everyman” nature of Bloom and of Ulysses, “rescuing Ulysses from the dusty shelves of rarified literary neglect” (front matter). I find this thesis difficult, because while Ulysses is obsessively banal in its subject matter, it defies simplicity in style as effectively as it embraces the commonplace. Overall, this book appears to be useful for pearls on wisdom, much like Blamires, but instead presents a more wandering, conversational analysis, which engages in reader discussions and makes ranging claims rather than following a clear path.

Chapter 16 – Parenting

Kiberd organizes his chapters around supposedly everyday themes, that for Eumaeus being parenting. Rather than regurgitate his entire analysis of Eumaeus, I’d just like to summarize and comment on a few of his points. One thing he does differently compared to the companion sources we’ve been using is incorporate Joyce’s own life into his analysis of the episode, especially using Stephen to symbolize a young Joyce. He identifies 16 June as being not only the day he “first walked out with Nora,” but special also “because that moment marked his return from the self-hatred and confusions of his youth, back to the sacrament of everyday life” (240). The sacrament in the episode is the bun and coffee that transubstantiate into a brick and “something else,” while Kiberd argues that the beginning of a new life is a gift given by Bloom to Stephen. I find this interpretation to be a bit optimistic as to the success of Bloom’s random bits of guidance, but Kiberd makes a convincing point in relation to the argument that Eumaeus is an anti-climax. He disagrees with the belief that Bloom and Stephen do not find union because that union is not verbalized, asking “in a book which has repeatedly exposed the limits of language, why should the climax be verbal? (243). He emphasize instead the “new psychic layers uncovered by Ulysses,” citing the two men’s blending thoughts, positing that for Joyce, on the other end of a major life change, “Ulysses was not just an example of a high-risk business venture [which so interests Bloom] but also a sort of ‘self-help’ manual, in which an older Irishman teaches a younger one how to live and blossom” (245).

I agree that Bloom and Stephen reach some sort of new level, and while I would not say that the novel ends anti-climactically, I would suggest that the ending which lacks resolution is critical to its aim. Bloom’s story does not resolve at the end of Ulysses any more than mine will when I fall asleep tonight, and to argue that it should or has would be to argue against Joyce’s goal of tracing the intricately minute and beautiful details of any given day.

Winckel, Fritz. Music, Sound and Sensation: A Modern Exposition. Trans. Thomas Binkley. New York: Dover Publications, 1967. Print.

Fritz Winckel’s Music, Sound and Sensation provides a scientifically rooted though easily accessible analysis of human interaction with sound.  Some of the more interesting and relevant concepts are discussed in the final chapter of the book, “The Effect of Music on the Listener.” One such concept is that music (and sound) only exists through variation—disturbances and modulations.  An example Winckel provides for this concept is the fact that “A continual monotonous hum of a machine in a factory disappears from the consciousness and is noticed only when it is turned off” (157).  This same idea can be applied to Ulysses—if the lyrics to a song appear later, they are inherently linked to the previous occurrence, yet the fact that they have been “turned off” (like the factory noise) only to resume later is also significant.  The fact that certain episodes (Sirens) were so reference-heavy made them overwhelming to pick apart, which following this theory of music as variation, means that each specific reference in Sirens is less significant on its own than a similar reference in a more musically barren episode.

Winckel also provides a differentiation between speech and singing.  He states that: “Singing is the development of utterances of speech into a cultivated sound through the extension of the vowels in time, mostly on a higher pitch level” (159).  There are, of course, more than just two states (singing and speech) present, and the further variation and extension of vowels as well as other factors advance normal speech in varying degrees towards the singing end of the spectrum.

Going back again to Bloom’s concept of “Musemathematics” it turns out that my previous understanding of musical notation, at least in terms of how notes come to sound like notes, was a bit off.  According to Winckel: “. . . the written note value never corresponds accurately to a defined vibration frequency, but rather to a ‘frequency band’ of vibrations, where the written note simply indicates the average pitch” (161).   This would explain the variation in songs as well as understandings of songs, as there exists on the scientific level distinct variations within each note, which is also compounded by acoustical variations both in the environment of the listener, and also within the listener.  This probably would not serve to explain the differing perception of the bells by Stephen and Bloom in Ithaca, but it does bring instances like it into question.

As a final note, the chapter provides an explanation for why music or sound is perceived in a unique way due to interior differences within the listener.  He states: “. . . impulses are not only sent forth through electrochemical transformation, connected with the nerve fibres, but also exist in the form of electrical fields, which go beyond the limits of the individual neurons and influence their excitability positively or negatively . . . which is further influenced by the hormone regulation of the synapses in the transmission network of nerves” (165).  Although this was a long quotation, I found it necessary to include as I lack a firm grasp of anything scientific outside of what I’ve read for my obsession; but what I gather from this is that the experience of a song or sound is absolutely unique to the listener, and in this logic Bloom’s experience in Sirens (recalling past events, etc.) makes perfect sense in that it was patently different from anyone else’s.

I attended Precept Wine Brands’ annual Holiday Wine Tasting event Sunday afternoon at SODO’s Herban Feast. It’s an awesome chance to go taste & purchase local wines, chocolates, and beers. Finish your Christmas shopping in a day?!? For $10, you get unlimited tastings of hundreds of wines, plus 30-40% off all cases purchased that day. This was my second year attending the event, and I will say this year was even bigger than the last! Britt and I showed up about 30 minutes into the event, and it was packed. However, if you do attend, don’t expect to get much food. They can’t put it out fast enough!

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Last year, I fell in love with a wine, Shingleback’s Sparkling Shiraz Black Bubbles, and I bought several more bottles this year! For $18, you can have one of these lovely, sparkling red (yes red) wines! Served chilled, it goes perfect with red meats or on its own. Try this, I swear you’ll be so spoiled you won’t want to drink anything else. I also discovered a white wine that I actually liked, the Bloom Gewurztraminer. It’s a sweeter (although not dessert) wine with an absolutely splendid finish. It’s so clean and crisp that it renewed my faith in whites. Additionally, there was an amazing Shingleback D-Block Reserve Shiraz that I was dying to purchase. I just couldn’t justify the $40 price tag. Maybe someday!

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So will you be the recipient of one of my wine purchases? I guess you’ll just have to wait for Christmas to find out!

There’s more wrangling on the BBC about the possibility of High Speed Two, an actual, real, cross-country service to improve on the fact that we have a piddling 68 miles of track reserved largely for Eurostar in the whole country. Even if it does go pretty much from my house in Ashford.

The service, which would go roughly from London to Edinburgh/Glasgow through Leeds/Manchester – unless its creators were totally stupid and only took it to Birmingham, as has been suggested – would cost a huge amount of money. Since it’s estimated the Birmingham section alone would take until 2025, I’m not inclined to trust figures. An article only a few months ago says the line would be open by 2023. Heard of inflation at all?

But I think it needs to be done. And why? Because, like with any special commuter time-saving investment, like a bridge (hooray for the £5.40 Severn crossing!) the government makes the money back not just through taxes, but tolls.

Not many outside Kent know Southeastern charges a whopping £8.10 supplement on a ticket that costs around £14 for a young person if you want to ‘upgrade’ to a high speed return – not only have fares in Kent risen more than the rest of the country on average, but you pay on top of them to get what they’re actually paying for, too.

So what’s the problem with investing the money? Just like with the banks (who by the way have received far more than High Speed Two will) it’s an “investment”. They’re not handing money out on a platter – they’re going to get it back.

And besides, if we have a new fares algorithm to get us up to Scotland, then perhaps it’ll spare us things like this. See below. I think I’d rather buy my own train.

Britain's first £1000+ rail fare

Broad overview of Fatherhood:

Stephen obsesses over his mother but there is little or no mention of his father.  Bloom thinks about himself as a father, what that means, and what makes or doesn’t make him a father.  Stephen argues about the consubstantiality of father and son.  Then we get the elevation of androgynous production. Then we see in Eumaeus and Ithaca the actual existence of a father-son relationship.  We see that unfold.  In Penelope something weird happens.  Molly romanticizes her father.  She seems to have made him the epitome of manhood.  She thinks about Bloom “I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man”  A good man in her mind is a man like her father.

It’s weird that Molly has this view of fatherhood.  I’m not sure what to do with this.  What does this have to do with her marriage? With her feelings about Rudy? about Stephen? about Milly?  What does this do to our perceptions of Molly? Also, I think there’s more to fatherhood in this episode than just this romanticization of her father… but I’ll try to add more about that when I know more after class on Monday and another read through.

The Sparknotes of Ulysses that we have been using in class identifies Lightness and Darkness as a central motif in the novel. While the analysis is very basic, he argument in that the traditional binary of light = good and dark = bad breaks down in Ulysses, with the two main characters being associated with dark through their mourning dress and Boylan, one of the closest characters to an antagonist, is associated with light through his name and manners. While this argument fits well the symbolic correlations I laid out earlier, it also makes an interesting subliminal point, which is that in the scope of the novel, Bloom and Stephen are good and should therefore be associated with light in the traditional sense. However, I think this is a point better left to another discussion. Light in Ulysses is not used to denote good and evil meant to draw on the traditional and archetypal significance of the imagery, but instead as symbols for the characters. The function of light imagery as not only representational of the characters in a single instance but also creating a web of complicated symbolism that gives the characters almost inscrutable depth. This symbolic representation is the main function of light in novel as far as I can recognize, rather than articulating the good/evil dichotomy above or to denote religious imagery.

This is not to say that the light imagery in the novel does not draw on established tropes; the idea of femininity being related to the moon is not a new one, but rather than for example, simple relations like black = bad, the interpretations are much more complicated and nuanced. Bloom and his relation to darkness is a prime example.

Throughout the novel Bloom (and Stephen) is characterized by his black clothing, but this image goes miles beyond the traditional dastardly villain dressed all in black. For Bloom, the meanings of his association with darkness are many, varied, and at times contradictory. For one, his black clothing is a sign of mourning, meant to be a physical manifestation of his respect for Dignam. However, this analysis is challenged by the fact that on several occasions Bloom assures those he meets that it’s nothing, it’s just Dignam. But to add another level to this image, we soon see that Bloom is still very much still in mourning for his son Rudy who died over a decade ago. Complicated yet? Bloom’s connection with darkness has many other layers as well. It is representative of his Jewishness, which marks him as an outsider (Gerty sees him as the dark foreigner, he describes himself as olive skinned) and therefore separate from his Irish brethren. Darkness also associates him with Haines’ black panther, which could be interpreted as anything from a nationalist threat to Buck’s impression of Bloom as an older, threatening, homosexual male. Similarly, his unintentional connection with Throwaway, the black horse who appears from behind to win the race, possibly hinting at the arguably hopeful ending of the novel in which Bloom returns as a contender for Molly’s bed and happiness. In terms of other characters, Molly is also characterized as having a dark complexion, but she does not appear to be ostracized by society and instead is characterized almost exclusively by her sexual appeal. Stephen, who also wears black, but in this case specifically for his mother who has been dead for almost a year, is hailed as a priest, which connects to the web of Catholic imagery around him.

This example illustrates that the interpretation of light imagery often does not begin from the cultural representation and then progress to the character, but instead starts with the character and moves outwards in a web of meaning that overlaps with many other ones. Of course Joyce could not be so simple as to have one image mean one thingJ

Examination of gifts and giving in Ulysses has revealed a regular path: a certain theme gets introduced in one episode to be elaborated upon in subsequent chapters. Evidenced in the first ten chapters is the characterization of gifts and giving, from crass commercial exchange to sympathetic giving. In this phase, gifts fall under the garb of personal to social, usually with an eye toward some kind of return. This range in turn sheds light on (or underscores) the various characters populating the streets of Dublin. In the second phase, chapters eleven through fifteen, extremes of the earlier types of gifts are realized, both in literary form, character, and situation. In the third phase, episodes sixteen through seventeen, the father-son relationship of giving is explored in-depth. Episode Eighteen, Penelope, explores another facet of family exchanges – the husband-wife association, as well as recapping and transforming previous ideals concerning gifts in the prior chapters.

Within Molly Bloom’s rushing interior monologue we find a multitude of gift-forms scrutinized. The episode begins with Molly’s chafing thoughts on Bloom’s request for breakfast in bed. The husband-wife dynamic is highlighted immediately and ranges throughout the episode, and as guilt and social obligation seem to have little to do with whether the requests (from either party) are adhered to, other reasons must be found. There could be a sense of filial duty involved, and this possibility manifests itself, in Molly’s thoughts, in the put-upon woman form to the fleeting wish of a petticoat government, but these irate thoughts of duty are immediately followed by thoughts infused with feeling, or love, which constantly jumbles sense in a non-extreme way. The gift-giving in this dichotomy, then rests in how much the characters love each other, or are aware of their love for each other (mainly speaking about Molly, but some of Bloom’s actions can be traced throughout the day to have similar motivations). Realize that Molly has to work herself into this loving mood for Bloom throughout the chapter, but it ends with her deciding to adhere to his request for breakfast (she’s decided to put a spin on what “breakfast” might entail, which only proves my point).

Of course, wishes for commercial gifts are rife in this chapter, as Molly fantasizes over the myriad items she can dig out of Boylan’s gold-lined pockets. In the rest of the novel, this desire for the material would place a character into the “bad” category, or at the least unsavory. Boylan the Rich and Mulligan are the poster boys for this culture of giving, something for something. Molly’s place beside these two, however, is complicated. She indulges fleeting desires of clothes and jewels and attention, but the underlying problem resides again in her pauper-like relationship with Bloom, where the filial duty is going unfulfilled. This means more than simply adhering to or indulging the wishes of your spouse. As Molly points out, she sees herself as a good catch for Bloom yet notes that he is squandering her and aiding their poverty by being unable to hold a job down and constantly moving from one house to another. Interestingly, as the “sentences” continue, this commercial concern starts falling away to be replaced by the greater concerns of living with her spouse. Indeed, Molly herself sneers at the thought of riches and fame in the later sentences even as she craves them in the earlier ones.

Distinguished by their large, beautiful blooms and wide assortment of vibrant colors, gerbera daisies have become a favorite flower choice for expressing cheerful sentiments. The traditional flower, gerbera daisy means beauty and innocence.

Distinguished by large flowering heads that closely resemble those of sunflowers, gerbera daisies come in a vibrant rainbow of colors. Bright pink, snow white, sunny yellow, and ruby red are just a few of the gorgeous colors that these happy flowers boast.

The gerbera daisy was discovered in 1884 near Barberton, South Africa, by Scotsman Robert Jameson. While the flower’s scientific name, Gerbera jamesonii, recollects the name of its founder, the meaning of its common name draws from German naturalist Traugott Gerber. Breeding programs that began in England in 1890 enhanced the flower’s quality and color variations. The gerbera daisy’s popularity soon traveled to growers in the Netherlands which, along with Columbia, is the primary distributor of the flower’s cut version today. The gerbera currently ranks as the fifth most popular flower in the world behind the rose, carnation, chrysanthemum, and tulip.

There are many types of flowers which can help to express our thoughts and feelings for our loved ones, but the gerbera daisy and its meaning stand out as one of the most distinctly bright and merry. With its bold and striking appearance, the gerbera daisy has become the most highly-prized daisy variety. When you send gerbera daisies, know that these fresh flowers convey a deeply meaningful message and make a lively lasting impression. Apart from all, the gerbera variety holds an added meaning of cheerfulness, which stems from the assortment of colors available.

Some Interesting Facts about Gerberas:

• Having a long vase life, Gerbera flowers are widely used in the Cut Flower Industry. Gerberas are great flowers for adding color to any room or garden.
• Gerberas are also referred to as Gerbera Daisies, daisy being a general name for all species in the family Asteraceae, to which Gerberas belong.
• Gerbera flowers often measure 7 inches (17.8 cm) across.
• Gerberas come in a wide range of colors – from light to dark yellow, orange, pink, brilliant scarlet, deep red, and many more colors.
• Gerberas can be used in landscapes as bedding plants for borders and flower beds or as Cut Flowers for table arrangements.
• Gerberas are native to Transvaal, South Africa.
• Hybrid Gerbera varieties cloned through tissue culture are uniform, and have long-lasting flowers with thick peduncles that are not light sensitive; hence, flowers remain open in the dark, lending themselves to indoor use in flower arrangements.

As a Photographer I have an excellent collection of these beauties and I have posted a few of them here that were very popular among my friends in Flickr too. See the Beauty and innocence for your self.

]]> http://highteandresses.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thinking-pink/ Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:06:49 +0000 Yolanda http://highteandresses.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thinking-pink/

In a pink mood this week.  I went to DJs in my lunch break this week in search of a new make up pouch and some blotting paper.  Just my luck I bought Bloom products and an OPI nail polish in Dule De Leche to add to it!  If only I had a dress to show for…it’s been awhile!  But busy saving for a weekend in Sydney with Carlin

Also, I’ve been feeling inspired and bought a hot glue gun, plus a cheap loose shirt I found in SES and a bunch of washers from Bunnings.  Not sure what I’ll be doing with it but the finished product will be posted soon!

Oh and before I forget my awesome friend Jackie bought me this little coin purse from Bloomingdales when she went to NY a few weeks back.  Thanks Jackie!