[can] damo suzuki

[wordless thursday] what's yours?

[one for the boys] get up to speed on your fragrances

Most men are clearly fazed by the range of fragrances [don’t call them perfumes] available at the counters.

Don’t be worried. Introduce it sometime in a discussion with your wife or not-wife and find out what her personal tastes and phobias run to.

Below is a starter to get you up and running.

Perfume is a combination of fragrant oils diluted in a high-grade alcohol in a concentration containing about 15-25 percent oil, the alcohol being about 90-95 percent pure. This is a parfum. Any mixture with a lower proportion of oil to alcohol is an eau (water).

EDC - Eau de cologne is the least concentrated form of a fragrance
(2 - 5% perfume oil dissolved in water and alcohol), then comes...
EDT - Eau de toilette (4 - 10%), followed by....
EDP - Eau de parfum (8 - 15%), and finally the most concentrated....
PARFUM or Perfume (15 - 25%).

Sarah Blackmoore [no link, sorry] categorizes the six types thus:

Earthy or woody type perfumes evoke smells of the forest, and are usually very refreshing. They often tend to appeal to the older generation, and may make ideal gifts.

Oriental fragrances use strong spicy scents, and are ideal for special social occasions, but be cautious giving them to anyone you don’t know well – these intense perfumes can be a very personal choice.

The so-called “greens” are much lighter than the orientals, and are well suited to more casual wear. Because they make a less dramatic assault on the nose, they are also safer to give as gifts!

Modern “oceanic” fragrances are becoming more and more popular, particularly among younger people who appreciate the intense but often quite unusual scents, which instantly bring to mind seaside scenes. Naturally these are an excellent choice in the warmer months when thoughts turn to holidays.

Spicy fruity perfumes are also a good warm-weather choice, and can be a good all-round choice for the woman who wants to wear something with some traditional base-notes but is a little different to the classic floral scents.

Finally, those classic floral fragrances are suitable for almost everyone and any occasion. But be wary of cheaper brands; this most feminine of all the main groups works best when the ingredients used are of high quality, and that means less expensive brands can smell exactly that.

For a longer article on the groupings, this hotch-potch, by Grant Osborne and other writers, could help.

The trouble is, your lady is possibly not going to want most of the above and many women I know have their own specialities which seem to go best with their bodies.

That’s the essential thing.

She might like one grouping for work use, one for evenings and so on. She might like one type but it doesn’t agree with her. The only surefire way is to discuss it with her over a period of time.

Then you can go to that counter and buy with confidence.

[new feudalism] defence might become a consideration

With the accession of the messiah in America, it’s becoming increasingly important over there which firearm to choose to defend your family and your constitution.

Now let me say from the outset that this site in no way, shape or form is promoting the use of guns or saying that you should rush out and buy one.

In fact, in Britain, where everything is completely in order and the government is much loved, where there is no culture of guns, no terrorism and complete racial harmony and if you did buy one, you’d end up incarcerated in a coffin with spikes on the inside, even if you made it that far, my advice is not to even think of purchasing any weaponry, of any sort, under any circumstances, at any time nor to consider, in the least, defending your family.

However, just for interest’s sake, in a lawless land somewhere on a far-off island, these might be your considerations:

Let’s face it, the main decision in your choice of weapon is going to be 9mm or 0.45. Whilst the stopping power of the 0.45 is desirable, the 9mm is far more readily available.

My personal choice would be the Heckler & Koch UMP. Wiki says:

As originally designed, the UMP is chambered for larger cartridges than the MP5. This was done in order to provide more stopping power against armored targets as well as increase the effective range over the MP5.

However, using a larger cartridge results in more recoil, making the weapon more difficult to control when firing in fully-automatic mode.

To counter this effect, the cyclic rate of fire was decreased to around 600 rounds per minute, making it one of the slower submachine guns in the market.

Such a slow rate of fire makes burst-fire settings impractical, yet many users cite the practicality of the 3-round burst or 2-round burst setting as a desirable feature in a submachine gun.

The only other one I’d look at is the HK MP5K. Wiki says:

It is widely considered to be one of the best close quarter battle (CQB) weapons in the world, especially considering its size. Its small size and low weight (2 kg / 4.4 Lbs) allow it to be easily concealed under clothes, in a car, or in a suitcase, and allows for high mobility, even in crowds.

A special bag and suitcase have been designed, not only to carry the weapon in, but also to fire it from. Both have a hole in them, from which the bullets are fired. The suitcase's "trigger" is in the handle, but when using the bag, you must open it and grip the trigger as you would normally.

Needless to say, this feature provides near-ultimate stealth.

The only directly notable disadvantage is a seriously decreased effective range (only 25 m / 82 ft), due to its shorter barrel (115 mm [4.5 in] instead of 225 mm [8.9 in]) and lack of shoulder stock (which makes the weapon more difficult to aim).

So it comes down to requirements in the end. Stealth is not something I’d ever be interested in but stopping power under attack is.

Hence my preference for the UMP and in a pistol, the M1911.

In my novels, I thought out the weaponry you’d use in a paired combination with your wife, say, giving her the more versatile close range guns and retaining the ultimate stoppers for yourself, if only on the grounds of weight and size.

Anyway, have a think about it but of course, forget any idea that you’d actually buy any of these, even if you could. Remember, in the coming troubles, you are to be left completely defenceless. That’s what the rule of lauranorder is all about.

For heaven’s sake, if you want to play about with guns, join your local TA.

[culinary gems] let them eat cake

Culinary gem

If you were to be served this menu on a special anniversary, [please excuse the lack of French accenting in the spellings], there would hardly be any great surprise until you came to the wines:

Soup

Imperatice and Fontanges

Hors d’oeuvres

Souffles a la reines

Removes

Fillet of sole a la venitienne
Escalopes of turbot au gratin
Saddle of mutton with Breton puree

Entrees

Chicken a la Portugaise
Hot quail pate Lobster a la Parisienne
Champagne sorbet

Roasts

Duckling a la rouennaise
Canapes of ortolan

Entremets

Aubergines a l’espagnole
Asparagus spears
Cassolettes princess

Desserts

Bombes glacees

Wines

Retour de l’Inde Madiera, sherry
Chateau -d’Yquem 1847
Chateau Margaux 1847
Chateau-Lafite 1847
Chateau-Latour 1848
Chambertin 1846, Champagne Roederer

Aside from the wines, there is much in that menu which might be provided at any special dinner today. And yet *:

Adolphe Duglere: born Bordeaux 1805, died Paris 1884

Duglere was a pupil of Careme’s and is always associated with the Cafe Anglais in Paris. The Cafe Anglais opened in the Boulevard des Italiens. It was named in honour of the peace treaty just signed between England and France, as he made it one of the most famous in the world.

He also managed the restaurant at Les Freres Provencaux and was the Head Chef at the kitchens of the Rothschild family’s kitchen The dishes he is famous for creating are Potage Germiny, souffle a la Anglaise, sole Duglere and the reknowned Anna Potatoes; named after Anna Deslions, a lady of high fashion at the time.

At an historic dinner, which became known as ‘the three Emperors’ due to the attendance of Alexander II, the future Alexander III, Wilhelm I of Prussia and Bismark, it was Duglere who was the Chef Patron. The dinner on June 7, 1867 was an expensive and extravagant affair even for those times.

The menu above was from that dinner. One marvels at how the ordinary mortal today is able to partake of such fare and not think twice about it.

What would the peasants have eaten in those days? Cake?

* I’ve lost the link but the site was “Talleyrand’s Culinary Fare”.

[writing] why would you bother

Currently in a quandary as to whether to leave a character’s wife crippled or else allow her to slowly recover from an initially debilitating injury, it might be time to pause and look at this whole bloody maddening process of writing.

Almost every blogger who gets past the ‘let out all the frustrations’ stage fancies himself as a budding writer. Some even start thinking in terms of selling their wares before they even have the product.

Obstacles before you even start

In no particular order, here are some of the obstacles to overcome, before you even get going:

1. Like dancing, modelling and waitressing, it’s oversubscribed.

2. Everyone fancies himself as a writer but not many have the feedback to put their abilities in perspective.

On this point, literary agents smile when someone tells them that a ‘writer’s’ friends advised him to get his book published becase it is so good. Friends and family are often supportive but all the same, all expect free signed copies and would like to get a mention.

3. This is like point 2 in that many amateurs, without a writing background, feel they can do it as well as any they’ve read. It’s like the teaching profession – how many amateurs think it’s a piece of cake – that anyone can do it?

4. How’s your articulation, grammar and spelling? You can’t leave it all to the publisher to proof-read.

5. Can you type? With one finger or ten? How fast? Do yu know hoe publishers like to receive the MS?

6. Are you interesting enough? You might think you are, you might think your story is the bee’s knees but how many share that view? I’m certain that only a miniscule fraction of my target audience would like my work.

Who’s your target audience and is their a market for that type of book? I was asked yesterday what type my book was. I usually say romantic-thriller or thriller-romance. How many people are interested in that combination?

7. It’s time-consuming and wearying. If you’re not knackered after 11 hours of writing, you’ve been coasting. It’s all over the place – inspiration comes in the middle of the night or during the working day. You never know when it wil strike and if you don’t write it down then and there, you’re gone.

8. You become self-centred and anti-social, neglecting family and friends and find yourself having to make excuses to those with a reasonable claim to your time.

9. You have to line up with each of the other 2.5 million ‘writers’ who are looking for a literary agent to accept them.

10. It costs money, not just in getting published but in all the ancillaries, including time lost.

The process itself

1. Are you intending to write fiction or non-fiction, the former harder to get published and far more subjectively received.

2. Do you use a straight line narrative, with lots of ‘and’ and ‘then’; do you have a complex series of sub-plots and do they lead to the inevitable denouement?

3. What’s your intention – to sell the work or just to get something off chest?

4. Are your characters rounded, are there too many of them, should all be developed to the same extent and do you, the author, betray prejudice towards certain characters, not giving them a fair chance?

5. Can you avoid the Mary-Sue, the super-hero, based on yourself, who has all the answers and is a vehicle for your own ego?

The editing drudgery

1. Do you really have your timelines sorted so that you avoid anachronisms and characters who never age?
On this point, I have a character in the second book, named Genevieve Lavacquerie and she starts out, around 2005, as ‘just into her thirties’. Then I thought it would be nice to bring her in near the end of the first book, which put her in 1998. The problem is – she’s meant to be a mature woman and how can you make a 25 year old mature?

It didn’t work, so I had to go back through and in the third book, she’s still prancing about as if she’s 30 but now she has to be 45 or so.

2. Do you have the seasons and weather right? Are you jumping from summer to wineter or haven’t you thought about it at all?
3. How much local colour do you put in? I’m obsessive about details being correct or at least consistent with that town or village and this is one of the most time-consuming editorial jobs.
4. How ‘constructed’ does your anrrrative end up, after all that editing? How natural does it still feel? Doe your book begin to resemble a write-by-numbers collation?

Longevity

How long do you intend writing for? Like national football managers and singers, it’s a notoriously shortlived business and you’re only as good as your last book. Arundhati Roy wrote:

I will only write another book if I have another book to write. I don’t believe in professions.

Promotion

Just how do you intend to get yourself published and/or read?

[discrimination] all right when they do it, isn't it

Andrew Allison:

If a child can no longer talk about heaven and hell and her mother cannot ask her friends to pray for the school without the risk of losing her job, sacred rights and freedoms have been lost.

Amen, brother.

[pro-liberi] have a read of this one

There's a new blogger in the firmament who calls himself Lord T, of all things, and he has a blog called Pro-Liberi [or For the Children].

You might not agree with all he has to say but his ideas on the future are definitely down to earth, practical and sometimes even amusing. What he's about can be found here.

Here's a selection:

On surveillance devices:

I see us dropping sugar cube sized devices in the garden to watch for intruders and they use bluetooth or WiFi to call our phones to warn us. Put one in the frame of your bike and it will shout out if it goes missing. Get the kids to swallow one in the morning so you know where they are every minute of the day.

On DIY doctoring:

I like the idea of doing testing at home. Many people wait and wait, myself included, until we are convinced something is wrong before we go and see a Doctor. By then it may be too late. Home testing however seems an ideal solution such as was proposed here for bowel cancer.

On evolution:

A boy has been born in the US with 24 digits on his hands and feet. Six on each hand and foot. Read the full story here. Now is this a move towards the next stage in our evolution? More fingers would be handy whilst typing and allow a better grip on tools. Not sure about the toes though.

I imagine Lord T is going to get quite a bit of comment, positive and negative, with views like those and others.

[chivalry] and the hegemony of feminism [revisited]

I'm running this post again. I was reading this new blogger's comments on gender equality and after a year and a half, the whole damned issue needs looking at again. It really does.


Most people know Michael Bucci's list of chivalrous acts which men should indulge in and I'm right behind the idea. Men should observe good manners and so should women.

Linda Lichter is far more hardline about chivalry:

[Writing of the Titanic] I never had the courage before to openly admire those men or envy the women they saved. At least a decade before the siege of political correctness, I was silenced by the unconscious but relentless intimidation of female friends and colleagues who are educated, self-sufficient, and eager consumers of the latest feminist books.

I am supposed to owe the authors of those books unqualified gratitude for all the hard-won rights the Titanic women never enjoyed.

I would add another [thing here]: that emotional and physical esteem for women is central, not tangential, to manhood. The British statesman Lord Chesterfield, a favorite source of Victorian etiquette writers, believed everyday deference was due to all women because it provided their only shield against men's superior physical strength.

He added, "no provocation whatsoever can justify any man in not being civil to every woman; and the greatest man would justly be reckoned a brute if he were not civil to the meanest woman."

This hits the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned and is central to what chivalry means to me. Though men and women are the same - i.e. we're both human but in different forms - and though there are good and bad on both sides, chivalry recognizes "womanhood" as something to be revered and makes no distinction. You're a bad woman? You'll still be treated courteously by chivalry. It's a safety net, a catch-all and chances are that the person who is chivalrous will be this way with men as well.

Blogger Kelly Mac [and I admit she is vehemently anti-feminist] is reflecting on the early years of feminism:

Namely, where were all the "good" women when feminism started? Why didn't the women who knew they were not being abused do something to stop the misinformation that spread like wildfire? Aren't these women just as deserving of men's contempt as the hardcore feminists who started it all?

Ruth Malhotra gets down to specifics:

The notion of victimhood, that “women are oppressed and exploited,” evokes strong anti-male sentiment.

Many influential feminists demonstrate extreme animosity towards marriage and family life, even likening the institution of marriage to that prostitution.

In Feminism: An Agenda, radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin declared that the home was a dangerous place stating, “Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.”

The feminist agenda is offensive to women. With Eve Ensler and her contemporary cheerleaders in the feminist movement, initiatives such as the "Vagina Monologues" have become a central part of Women’s Awareness Month programming on campuses around the country.

The "Vagina Monologues," often promoted as a wonderfully inspiring event to empower women, is, in reality, nothing more than an atrociously written anti-male tirade, portraying women as pathetic sexual objects who will forever be victims. Such programs are not only blatantly offensive towards women but are vile and vulgar.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese sees it this way:

It has not been easy to acknowledge that feminism has promoted the unraveling of the most binding and important social bonds. Not easy, but unavoidable. Like countless other women who cherish improvement in the situation of women in the United States and throughout the world, I was initially quick to embrace feminism as the best way to secure our "rights" and our dignity as persons. Like countless others, I was seriously misled.

In practice, the sexual liberation of women has realized men's most predatory sexual fantasies. As women shook themselves free from the norms and conventions of sexual conduct, men did the same.

There can be no doubt that women's situation has demanded improvement -- and continues to do so throughout much of the world. But the emphasis upon individual rights at the expense of mutual responsibility and service is not the way to secure it.

Worse, it is destroying the fabric of our society as a whole because it is severing the most fundamental social bonds. Binding ties constrain women, but they constrain men as well. A Danielle Crittenden has noted, the family "has never been about the promotion of rights but the surrender of them -- by both the man and the woman".

Kelly Mac agrees:

It's about the fact that dating today has become nothing but a series of pick-ups and one-night-stands (thank you sexual revolution).

It's the new vulgarity in young women, societally enforced, which upsets me. I don't know if they are trying to shock [and girls are emotionally maturing much later these days, babies or no babies]; it's the lack of graciousness in John Edwards two harpies, for example [here's one of their political comments, courtesy of Michelle Malkin]; it's the desire to be some sort of hard nut hoe for the boys - who knows?

Seriously - there's some sort of paranoid mania going down here where any sort of respect between men and women doesn't get a chance to breathe, where bile and spite constitute debate and the desire of the ordinary person for a normal relationship is mocked and derided.

What's wrong with revering a woman to the point you can't live without her and want to marry her, to have children with her, to do what comes naturally vis a vis protective instincts, without dominating one another, without constantly going on about "rights"? What's wrong with working in tandem and actually enjoying one another? Why does it have to be outside marriage?

What's wrong with normality?

[persistence of delusion] and the obsession with maintaining it

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI, on Sanctifying Grace, states:

Among the adherents of the Augsburg Confession the following view was rather generally accepted: The person to be justified seizes, by means of the fiduciary faith, the exterior justice of Christ, and therewith covers his sins; this exterior justice is imputed to him as if it were his own, and he stands before God as having an outward justification, but in his inner self he remains the same sinner as of old.

This strawman of the Catholics, claiming that Protestants say faith alone justifies, justitia Christi extra nos, was negated by the consequent widespread reading of the bible by the population, as distinct from the interventionist medium of the priest who kept the bible chained to the pulpit and only accessible through the adepts, i.e. the priesthood.

Reading the New Testament yourself and reconciling it with what the Old Testament has to say, there is no disagreement between these two of the three major arms of the church, that grace can result from:

… faith to fear to hope to incipient charity to contrition, with purpose of amendment.

Further:

Without charity and the works of charity faith is dead. Faith receives life only from and through charity (James, ii, 26).

And even further:

Sine caritate quippe fides potest quidem esse, sed non et prodesse.

Interestingly, with the severe curtailment of the number of people actually reading the bible during the past two generations of social engineering, society has now reverted to the pre-Reformation state of ignorance, with the only adepts left being the druids of the New Humanistic Age, possessing the arcane knowledge and meting it out, as is their wont.

The hegemony of Science as the final justification is an aspect of this process and only now, cracks are appearing in the old justification, ‘Well, it’s been scientifically proven …’

It’s understandable that the Catholics imputed the strawman of sola fides justificat to the Protestants because, in one fell swoop, the whole corrupt mechanism of selling pardons and relics for lucre, together with the external mechanism of the rosary beads, the intermediary mechanism of the confessional and the justification for the hoarding of temporal riches oculd now be swept away.

Many Protestants would accept that, in the matter of sin and redemption, just as in any other aspect of life, there are the ignorant laymen, the learned laymen, the professionals and the adepts. Of course a Catholic priest is going to know his theology better than you or I but the levelling tendency of Protestantism merely fails to ascribe to the priest the power to redeem.

Does the doctor heal or does he put in place mechanisms, from his knowledge and experience, which facilitate and accelerate the natural healing process of the body?

Similarly, does the teacher create learning or facilitate it?

Surely we can admire and revere without ascribing divine power to all aspects of the process?

There was a lady I worked with on her presentation skills, who went on to get the job she wanted and she ascribed this to me.

No, all I did was bring some logic and knowledge to the process but it was her own ability and revamped CV which did the rest, along with her natural charm, which was now allowed to come out, in the context of her overall package, at the first interview. All I did was get her confidence going again.

There is a place for the adept to bring the ordinary mortal, you or me, up to speed on what is necessary but that’s as far as it goes.

And what is necessary, for us today, is to see the essential flaw in the illusion of the Tower of Babel. In other words, the humanist says that we have the capability of reaching an ascendant state through ourselves alone but this has been shown oh so many times to be not so.

The times we currently live in, more than any others in the past century, are characterized by an obsessive belief that there is no G-d, no maker, no spirit. The G-d of today is Consumerism and the belief that we are complete in ourself, in our ability to find our own way out of the morass.

Oh really? How are we doing on this just now? Is the society we’ve constructed in a good state? Recession, drugs, the prostituting of children, chavs, widespread unemployment, the list goes on and on.

In place of hope, faith and charity is spiritual emptiness and deep cynicism in everything from the people who govern us to things which used to be held in respect, e.g. the mystery of a woman’s charms. Where is there any mystery today, any respect, any concept that the body is the temple of the spirit?

In place of perspective is pride. An article in a folder here from my pre-blogging days says this about pride:

Overweening pride, arrogance, haughtiness: these have been the stuff of tragedy. Vanity, fussiness, delicacy: the stuff of comedy. These are all forms of self-delusion, and paper-thin masks.

Pride and vanity refuse the truth and substitute illusions for reality. While vanity is mostly concerned with appearance, pride is based on a real desire to be God in our own little circle.

The first requirement of pride is spiritual blindness. Just as a well-lit bathroom mirror shows the flaws in our complexion, so we build up myriad illusions about who we are and what we are about, to paper up the cracks.

We can busy ourselves with career and family, thinking we are being driven by a strong work ethic and moral values. In reality, we may be running away from ourselves and from the reality of our state of grace.

A second requirement of pride, indeed a symptom, is that each challenge to our pride drives us harder to prove our illusion of productivity, sanctity or compassion.

It’s been said that the definition of a zealot is "one who has lost sight of his goal, and so redoubles his efforts." We might say the zealot works twice as hard to keep up appearances.

A strong indicator of pride is competitiveness and resentment of the success of others, jealousy and envy. Our politics today are fuelled by envy, the whole sub-prime mortgage debacle was made possible for the greed of the bankers by the envy of the have-nots, which they liked to call ‘aspirations’.

Human beings do things in response to needs or desires and so, if this is happening:

In contrast to Catholicism, which has a very long historic presence in China but whose growth has been slow, charismatic Protestantism has found its natural element in an atmosphere of official suppression. Barred from churches, Chinese began worshipping in homes, and five major "house church" movements and countless smaller ones now minister to as many as 100 million Christians.

Where traditional society remains entrenched in China's most backward regions, Islam also is expanding. At the edge of the Gobi Desert and on China's western border with Central Asia, Islam claims perhaps 30 million adherents. If Christianity is the liquidator of traditional society, Islam is its defender against the encroachments of leveling imperial expansion.

… then what gap, what niche market is it catering for?

What so many in the west do not realize is that the new gods which the youth of today have had presented to them to follow are morally and spiritually bankrupt – they can’t lead anywhere but to a form of cynical hedonism where parodies of human activity like sexuality are taken well before time and the societal consequences have already started to manifest themselves in world-weary alienation and the snuffing out of hope and life goals of any import.

The Who, long ago, sang of the emptiness of man-imposed structures on the human psyche [905]:

Mother was an incubator
Father was the contents of a test tube in the ice box
In the factory of birth

My name is 905,
And I've just become alive
I'm the newest populator
Of the planet we call Earth

In suspended animation
My childhood passed me by
If I speak without emotion
Then you know the reason why

Knowledge of the universe
Was fed into my mind
As my adolescent body
Left its puberty behind

And everything I know is what I need to know
And everything I do's been done before
Every sentence in my head
Someone else has said
At each end of my life is an open door

Automatically defrosted
When manhood came on time
I became a man
I left the "ice school" behind
Now I'm to begin
The life that I'm assigned

A life that's been used before
A thousand times
I have a feeling deep inside
That somethin' is missing
It's a feeling in my soul
And I can't help wishing
That one day I'll discover
That we're living a lie
And I'll tell the whole world
The reason why

Well, until then,
Everything I know is what I need to know
And everything I do's been done before
Every sentence in my head
Someone else has said
At each end of my life is an open door

Not only are we financially bankrupt today, we’re spiritually bankrupt and like the zealots, determined to insist that we have no need of our Maker, whose spirit can still be found down some corridor, in some room, inside some packing case within ourselves.

We prefer to see society disintegrate and our children destroyed rather than admit the remotest possibility that in our own certainty that our humanistic world view is right, lies self-delusion.

Man, in the context of his Maker and his own well-aligned spirituality, can achieve anything. Anyone who has ever had a relationship where the bonding between the two reached almost mystical proportions, knows that the sexual component of a much bigger picture needed no Viagra.

It takes no great perception to recognize that the greatest achievements of man were based on the fervour of a vision and the people who were bonded together in that vision.

Vision is what drives us forward and upwards but a vision where the spiritual aspect is recognized and accorded respect in its rightful place.

In a human machine where all cylinders are firing, including the spiritual, only then can the sky be the limit.