Care

Even if you consider yourself a handyman, it is not a good idea to attempt to fix your home appliances on your own. You can actually end up doing more damage than good. This can be dangerous and you may end up doing more damage to the appliance than good. Washing machines should only be worked on by trained, industry professionals. They will have the tools, expertise, and know how to handle any issues with your home appliances.

Help Online

There are many tips you can use to make sure your appliances stay in working order for as long as possible. An example of one of these tips is to make sure your washing machine is sitting on the ground and is level. This will reduce loud noises and the machine from wobbling. Also, by making sure all the faucets are connected properly you will ensure that there are no water leaks occurring anywhere on your washing machine. Choosing to hire a reputable washer repair Jacksonville company is the best thing you can do for the life of your washing machine.

Money Saving Tips

It is a good idea to remember not to do a small load of laundry with a lot of water. Finally, one of the most important things to remember to do is use the right amount of detergent. Too much soap used will clog a machine and cause it to break down. In addition to the above tips, there are many others that could help you save money on your home appliances. In regard to washing machines, for example, it is much more efficient to wash one large load as opposed to two smaller loads. It is a good idea to use warm water when doing a load of laundry instead of cold water. A quality Maytag repair Jacksonville will be able to answer any questions or concerns regarding your washing machine.

Once you have found the best appliance repair in Jacksonville, you can put their contact information on your cell phone so that it is stored for whenever you need it. If you are a homeowner, you know that at some point you will need to hire an appliance repair Jacksonville company to come and perform maintenance or repairs on your home appliances. Instead of waiting for a problem to arise and trying to find a washer repair Jacksonville company, consider finding a reputable same day appliance repair Jacksonville company before you ever need one. By taking this step you will be able to take your time to review and choose a quality company.

Om nom nom nom nom nom!

EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

I’ve been deeply saddened to learn of the death of romance author Monica Jackson. Surgery began her career in 1994, when she spent her convalescence writing her first novel, and now surgery has ended it. On the 19th of April Monica had posted that her health had “taken a funky turn” and she’d be having “surgery in a couple of weeks.” Today her daughter reported that “Her surgery went wrong and she lost oxygen to her brain for like 19 minutes.”

She was funny, outspoken and wasn’t afraid to challenge the status quo. Here’s more about Monica, in her own words:

As a teenager, I loved to read romance, but the underlying message was deleterious to my self-image-you have to fit into a certain mold to find love.  When I was young, only traditionally beautiful white women were desirable in the world of romance novels.  The fact that there are all types of black women portrayed now in a realistic and non-stereotypical fashion is a huge move forward.  So, I’m pleased to have a part in AA romance’s emergence as a viable entity.  Finally major publishers have got it straight that black folks do have romance and enjoy reading about it as much as the average American. (Romance in Color)

In 1994, Kensington Publishing came out with the first black romance novel line. I’d been turned off romance before because it seemed to be a rule in the industry that black folks didn’t have romance, at least en masse. I was very excited about the new line. I had surgery and was off work (I’m an RN). I wrote MIDNIGHT BLUE with a sister having hot romance, just for that line. (LaConnie Taylor-Jones’ blog)

That book, MIDNIGHT BLUE, was produced as a BET television movie of the week in 2000. Nine novels, and eight novellas and short stories later from that first book, she’s a national bestselling author (says so on the books).  (Monica’s website)

It’s exciting when a writer gets The Call from an editor. In many ways the call is only the beginning of an angsty rollercoaster for any novelist. But if you’re a black, you have a special ride reserved just for you.

Writing romance while black means you get a sub-genre of your very own – no matter what the content of your novel. Your special niche is already measured and the boundaries are set on your readership. Your marketing will likely be different than the white author in your chapter, even where your books are shelved in some bookstores. If you decided to attend book signings and other events with your white colleagues, the difference of your reception and audience will be thrown into stark relief.

Because since you’re black, you’re a romance writer that the majority of romance readers will never read. Your readership is defined and limited to only black romance readers by a variety of circumstances outside your control, so your opportunities are far smaller than any white romance writer from the moment you were published, regardless of your talent and determination. (All About Romance)

Monica had both talent and determination.

Teach Me Tonight

I was especially pleased to get my hands on the first novel by Friday blogger William Patrick Maynard, The Terror of Fu Manchu, published in 2009 by Black Coat Press. Bill was authorized to continue Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu thrillers and the second volume, The Destiny of Fu Manchu has just appeared, also from Black Coat Press.

I met Bill for the first time at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show two weeks ago here in Chicago, and found him to be an intelligent and entertaining conversationalist. I was fortunate to have the chance to ask him about his novels, and I was treated to an enthusiastic and fascinating lecture on the Boxer Rebellion, the psychology of Yellow Peril novels, and the uniquely global evil of Fu Manchu.

It was one of those moments when you wish you had a recorder. After listening to Bill I was more intrigued than ever to read his novels, and I wished I had a way to share his infectious enthusiasm with our readers.

Eventually I asked Bill to recreate what he told me as best he could in an e-mail message, to post here.

He graciously complied, and here’s what he sent me.

As for my approach to writing my first Fu Manchu book. I knew that I had to stay true to Rohmer but needed to address the imperialist fears that gave rise to the Yellow Peril in the first place. Had I decided to skirt around the racism of the era, it would have been dishonest. I went back to the roots with the Boxer Uprising and its aftermath being the linchpin on which the story was built. I used the character of Reverend Eltham, Rohmer’s missionary character in the first two original novels, as the means to explore the cultural and ideological conflict between East and West.

The second thrust of my narrative was to deal with Rohmer’s love of the occult. Along with Egypt, the occult was Rohmer’s other true passion but one he never managed to work into the Fu Manchu series. Given the timeframe, England before the First World War, this seemed the perfect opportunity to create a Theosophical group which is a mixture of both genuine occultists and con men and have them cross a Limehouse tong by way of prostitution.

The third component of the story I wanted to tell was the damaged father-son relationship that the narrator of the original three books, Dr. Petrie, has in his background. Rohmer never explored Petrie’s background (he never even gave him a first name!), but the first continuation author, Cay Van Ash settled on the fact that he was the son of the historical Flinders Petrie.

Given Dr. Petrie’s mixed feelings for his childhood friend, Nayland Smith (Petrie vaccilates between hero worship and frustration with Smith’s short comings in a fashion similar to Watson with Holmes) and the fact that, to many modern readers, such close relationships between two men are viewed as homo-erotic, I thought it worthwhile exploring his family background.

Like most men of his generation, Petrie would have been raised in boarding schools. If his father was Flinders Petrie, he would have been absent from his life (even more than most fathers) thus accounting for the fractured relationship and explaining the complexities of Petrie’s relationship with Smith. Flinders Petrie was not a typical Englishman in that he would have questioned the very values a Victorian would have taken for granted. This left us with Dr. Petrie having a crisis of faith as a secular humanist cast adrift in Edwardian England.

By involving the occult, I thought it important to give Petrie a climactic insight into a supernatural world he never believed existed. There is no conversion for Petrie at the end (something that bothers some readers) because the experience with forces beyond science has left him with more questions than answers. Given the anti-missionary stance I’ve taken with the Boxer Uprising, a conversion for Petrie would also have been dishonest.

So long story short, I wanted to tell Rohmer’s own story and that of life in post-Victorian England just as the cracks in the Empire were starting to show. The novel sets up the sequel which was just published and brings the same themes to a head at the cusp of the Second World War. But that is another story.

Many thanks Bill!

The Terror of Fu Manchu (246 pages, .95, 2009), and its sequel The Destiny of Fu Manchu (264 pages, .95, April 2012), are both available now from Black Coat Press.

Black Gate

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

In her own words, here is Amy Waldman’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel, The Submission:

 
My husband says he would gladly write a book just to be able to do a playlist for Largehearted Boy. Given how much more sophisticated and eclectic his musical tastes are, you may wish he had. When I’m writing, the more crowded and complicated my head gets, the more I need to simplify the world outside. In the most intense periods, I don’t do well with choice or variety. I can happily eat the same meal three times in a row, and the same few songs are replayed endlessly.

“Runaway,” Kanye West

It is embarrassing how often I played this in the months when I was finishing The Submission. I had newborn twins at home, so at odd, often lonely hours I would go work in an office my publisher lent me. This song was my security blanket; the douchebags and assholes my closest friends. Those first simple piano notes hooked me, as did the throbbing rhythm that suddenly intrudes on them. I loved the contrast between the beauty of the music and the coarseness of the lyrics, and I even liked some of the lyrics — “I just blame everything on you/at least you know that’s what I’m good at” — although I suspect I might not like the man who wrote them. But at some point, my addiction transcended any of the song’s actual qualities. My brain was wired, the neural pathway deeply rutted: I would hear those first notes, settle down, and write.

Ahmad Zahir

I don’t even have a song title, just some numbered CDS (and even a cassette tape) I bought in Kabul. Zahir was an Afghan singer (and sex symbol) who died in 1979, at the age of 33. He wove together Persian poetry and his own, supposedly provocative lyrics — lost on me, unfortunately, since I speak no Afghan languages. His music mixes tabla, accordion and more, seeming to hover somewhere between raga and surf music, although of course it sounds like neither. The music is rollicking and haunting, and I have many memories of listening to him with my Afghan translators on long drives (really the only kind in a country with more mountains than good roads) from one city or town to another. No other music so viscerally transports me geographically.

“It Don’t Worry Me” (written by Keith Carradine)

Nashville is one of my favorite movies, and, in the way Robert Altman cuts among stories, a not-so-implicit model for The Submission’s structure. I love the way this song is reprised multiple times in the movie, lastly by the aspiring country star Albuquerque (Barbara Harris) after the real star, Barbara Jean, has been shot on stage at a political rally in the film’s final scene. Harris, who has spent much of the film struggling to be heard, is first halting, then belting. It’s both transcendent and creepy, the way she gets a crowd that has just witnessed an assassination to clap and sing along with her.

“Nantes,” Beirut

The first time I heard Beirut (thank you, husband!) I was mesmerized by not just the music but the complete originality of their sound. Every time I listen to “Nantes,” and to so many of their other songs, I’m mesmerized all over again. It’s not just the perfect alchemy of melancholy and joy — a funeral procession that makes you glad to be alive. Zach Condon’s voice is so complex and lovely it almost has a visual quality – like swirled marble. And yet, even with his singing soaring above, each instrument, whether violin, tuba, or accordion, is allowed to shine, to articulate its nature so clearly — more like an orchestra than a rock band.

“You Will,” Bright Eyes

I felt, reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, mildly ashamed of my passion for this Bright Eyes song, given Richard’s elaborate mockery of Bright Eyes’ fans (so elaborate it makes me think Franzen’s a fan himself), but I don’t care! That super-catchy “You Will” refrain never failed to knock me out of the writing doldrums, and it’s embedded in some appealingly dark lyrics.

Faust, by Charles Gounod

Opera can be great to write to, although, with its heightened dramatics, I’m not sure it’s good for my writing. Be that as it may, I like letting the emotion — carried by voice and music rather than words, since I rarely (never!) have an English libretto at hand — wash over me. I saw Gounod’s Faust performed in Berlin, and Margeurite’s distillation of grief and guilt after the birth and death of her child still floats in my head.

Radiohead: The King of Limbs

I can write listening to almost anything by Radiohead, for some reason; perhaps the trancy druggy haunting rhythms, or Thom Yorke’s keening voice. This album came out when I was finishing The Submission. Watching Yorke’s twisted-tree-limb dance for the “Lotus Flower” video became my favorite form of procrastination.

Vijay Iyer: “Galang”

A jazz piano cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang” seems almost too good to be true. The piano version is, in some weird way, harder driving than the original— but it also reminds you how great that pounding rhythm is. I don’t know if M.I.A. and Iyer know each other, but they need each other.

Amy Waldman and The Submission links:

the author’s Wikipedia entry
the book’s website

Daily Mail review
Financial Times review
Full Stop review
Guardian review
Independent review
Independent review
New York Magazine review
New York Times review (by Claire Messud)
New York Times review (by Michiko Kakutani)
Observer review
San Francisco Chronicle review
USA Today review
Washington Post review

Art Beat interview with the author
The Browser interview with the author
Buffalo News profile of the author
New York Observer profile of the author

also at Largehearted Boy:

other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists

100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film’s soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists

Largehearted Boy

EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

Welcome to Poorly Dressed, where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter!

EPIC FAIL Funny Videos and Epic Fail Funny Pictures

Production

Many people are catching on to the fact that these designer drug manufacturers are using clever semantics to skirt regulation. Thankfully, this is becoming less prevalent as parents are petitioning to get these dangerous drugs out of their local corner stores and gas stations. Yet, bath salts are still readily available for purchase online from various retailers. Bath salts are mainly comprised of MDPV and pyrovalerone. It is not completely understood what else is being put in these drugs because they are not regulated.

Where To Find Bath Salts

Retailers are selling the drug as bath salts and labeling them as being “not safe for human consumption”. This is so they can avoid them from being labeled illegal. They can be purchased at mini-marts and smoke shops around the country or online under names like Ivory Wave and Bolivian Bath. While several states have outlawed their sale, ultimately it will have to be a federal law that takes them off the shelves and out of the hands of young people for good.

Status of Legality

The government would have to say bath salts are a schedule 1 drug to make them illegal. Schedule 1 means the drug has no medicinal value and has a high likelihood for abuse. The United States Drug Enforcement Agency has recently invoked its “emergency scheduling authority” to speed up this process. The DEA plans to make it so the possession and selling of bath salts illegal in the United States. This action will stay in effect for at least one year, during which the government is expected to call for permanent ban.

Effects

The side effects of bath salt use are similar to that of cocaine or ecstasy. Agitation, paranoia, and chest pain are all felt by users. High blood pressure and increased pulse rate is also common. However, currently there is no test to determine if someone has actually ingested bath salts. The only way to determine if someone has taken bath salts is if they tell you.

There has not been enough research on bath salts yet to define what long-term effects it can have on an individual. Today, acute toxicity is the main problem being faced by medical practitioners. If you have are dependent to this new and dangerous designer drug, you should find a young adult drug treatment program as soon as possible.

Glen Thomas has argued that

the [romance] genre’s defenders share the underlying assumption of the genre’s harshest critics that books should do something, whether that “something” entails enabling readers to better understand the vicissitudes of Life (the Leavisite great tradition), stripping away readers’ false consciousness (a Marxist defense of more radical art), or soothing readers with promises of happiness and sensual “joy” (a Marxist critique of popular culture which the genre’s defenders reframe as a badge of honor). (210)

In Thomas’s opinion, the debates between these defenders and critics of romance are “enervating” (210). All the same, recent studies (see, for example, OnFiction’s posts about the effects of fiction), suggest that reading often does seem to do things. Rather than abandon the debate altogether, perhaps we just need to postpone it until we have the results of some more studies?

Today Suzanne Brockmann tweeted about Geoff F. Kaufman and Lisa K. Libby’s “Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-Taking.” They don’t discuss romances or come up with any findings which would put an end to the debate outlined by Thomas, but they do observe that:

Without question, our encounters with characters in fiction present us with a diverse array of personalities, perspectives, events, outcomes, and realizations. In transporting us to another place and time, literature allows us to imagine ourselves as characters who possess personality traits that are distinct from our own (such as the intellectual prowess of Sherlock Holmes or the gregariousness and pluck of the titular heroine in Anne of Green Gables) or who engage in actions or hold ideals that we often aspire to achieve (e.g., Tom Sawyer or Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird). Moreover, works of fiction often let us experience the life journeys of people from backgrounds and identity groups quite different from our own, opening our eyes and minds to the unique struggles and triumphs of individuals we may not otherwise have the opportunity or inclination to encounter in our daily lives. For example, The Color Purple offered Caucasian readers the chance to see and experience the world through the eyes of its African American characters, and Brokeback Mountain allowed many heterosexual readers to step into the shoes—or rather, boots—of a pair of conflicted homosexual cowboys.

This immersive phenomenon of simulating the mindset and persona of a protagonist is what we refer to as experience-taking. Through experience-taking, readers lose themselves and assume the identity of the character, adopting the character’s thoughts, emotions, goals, traits, and actions and experiencing the narrative as though they were that character [...]. As powerful and transformative as experience-taking might be, however, it is by no means an inevitable occurrence when reading a narrative. To live different lives and to experience novel personas through narratives require that we go beyond positioning ourselves as mere spectators of the events and connect to characters to such an extent that we instead step into their proverbial shoes and experience the story from their perspective, in essence imagining ourselves becoming those characters while we remain immersed in the world of the narrative.

Science Daily has a summary of Kaufman and Libby’s findings about the real-life effects of this type of reading.

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• Kaufman, Geoff F. and Lisa K. Libby. “Changing Beliefs and Behavior Through Experience-Taking.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 26 March 2012. Advance online publication. [Abstract]
• Thomas, Glen. “Happy Readers or Sad Ones? Romance Fiction and the Problems of the Media Effects Model.” New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays. Ed. Sarah S. G. Frantz and Eric Murphy Selinger. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.

The image was download under a Creative Commons license from Flikr and was created by Kristian Bjornard (bjornmeansbear).

Teach Me Tonight

Occupy This Album is a 4-CD box set that contains 99 tracks from 99 artists in a variety of music genres. Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco, and others contribute to this ambitious project that benefits the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Beach House’s Bloom, The Green Pajamas’ Summer of Lust, and Plushgun’s Waste Away are also albums that I can wholly recommend.

If you can’t wait for the domestic My Bloody Valentine remastered album to arrive, these UK imports from the band may suffice: EPs: 1988-1991 and Isn’t Anything.

What new releases are you picking up this week? What can you recommend? Have I left anything noteworthy off the list?

This week’s interesting music releases:

Alexander Tucker: Third Mouth
Andre Williams and The Sadies: Night and Day
Apollo Ghosts: Landmark
Bassnectar: Vava Voom [vinyl]
Beach House: Bloom
Best Coast: The Only Place
Billy and Dolly: Dally Bon Idyll
Carrousel: 27 rue de mi’chelle
Birthmark: Antibodies
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band: One of My Kind [dvd]
Cornershop: Urban Turban
Craft Spells: Gallery EP
The Cribs: In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull
Dave Alvin: Eleven Eleven Expanded
Esperanza Spalding: Radio Music Society [vinyl]
Garbage: Not Your Kind of People
Godsmack: Live and Inspired
The Green Pajamas: Summer of Lust
Guided By Voices: Class Clown Spots a UFO
Hands: Massive Context
Hot Water Music: Exister
Japandroids: The House That Heaven Built
Josephine Foster and Victor Herrero: Perlas
Lee Bains III: There Is a Bomb in Gilead
Little, Big: Pins and Narwahls
Madonna: Hard Candy (reissue) (box set) [vinyl]
Meiko: The Bright Side
Mewithoutyou: Ten Stories
MV & EE: Space Homestead
My Bloody Valentine: EPs: 1988-1991 (remastered)
My Bloody Valentine: Isn’t Anything (remastered)
Parlovr: Kook Soul
Plankton War: Spirits
Plushgun: Waste Away
Richard Hawley: Standing at the Sky’s Edge
Santana: Shape Shifter
Say Anything: …Is a Real Boy (reissue) [vinyl]
Shadows Fall: Fire from the Sky
Simian Mobile Disco: Unpatterns
Sinead O’Connor: How About I Be Me (And You be You) [vinyl]
Slugabed: Time Team
Squarepusher: Ufabulum
Tenacious D: Rize of the Fenix
Tortoise: Millions Now Living Will Never Die [vinyl]
The Tubes: Ouside Inside (reissue)
Tu Fawning: A Monument
Various Artists: Glee: The Music, Season Three – The Graduation Album
Various Artists: Occupy This Album (4-CD box set)
Violens: TRUE
White Fence: Vol. 1 and 2: Family Perfume
Willie Nelson: Heroes

also at Largehearted Boy:

other weekly CD & DVD release lists

100 online sources for free and legal music downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (music from this week’s CD releases)

Largehearted Boy