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Author St. John's Book Annie has a limp and is confined by her parents in a wheelchair. Her parents do not want anyone to see Annie's deformity and therefore allow Annie no freedom. Annie met Luke when she was 10 and he gave her a ride on his horse. She has loved him and he has loved her. But after the ride, and after her brother busted Luke's lip, Luke was forced to go away. Twenty years later Luke has returned to make something of himself and for Annie.... The Doctor's Wife How could she say yes? People like Ellie Parrish did not get proposals of marriage from someone like Dr. Caleb Chaney. Even if his offer was the answer to her prayers, a man as decent and kind as Caleb didn't deserve a woman whose past was a lie. Caleb Chaney could see that Ellie Parrish was a woman with a troubled soul. But he could also see a woman with a heart big enough to love his infant son as though she were his mother, and big enough to teach... The Tenderfoot Bride Widowed, pregnant and homeless, Linnean McConaughy thought she found happiness in a job as a cook and housekeeper on a Colorado ranch. However, to her employer, Will Tucker, she's simply not suited for the grueling work the job requires, even less so when he discovers she's pregnant. As Linnean proves herself time and time again he realizes he doesn't want to live without her and her child, but can Linnean see past Will's rough exterior and her own fear ... View these reviews in summary mode Cheryl St. John Message Board 6/28/2005 9:05:24 AM Talk about the novels, new and used books that St. John has written!

- Current Issue SIGN IN to access the Harper’s archive ALERT: Usernames and passwords from the old Harpers.org will no longer work. To create a new password and add or verify your email address, please sign in to customer care and select Email/Password Information. (To learn about the change, please read our FAQ.) Car bombs in Damascus killed more than 50 people in advance of nationwide Internet and telecommunications blackouts, attributed by many to President Bashar al-Assad’s administration, that crippled Syrians’ capacity to self-report on the country’s civil war. Hacker collective Anonymous attacked the websites of Syrian embassies, and the Syrian military relocated chemical-weapons stockpiles, prompting the United States to threaten intervention. In Hillah, Iraq, bombings at a roadside campsite for Shia pilgrims left at least 29 dead, and in Bahrain police fired teargas on protesters condemning Kim Kardashian’s visit to promote a new branch of her milkshake franchise. The United Nations held a day of solidarity with Palestinians, on which its general assembly voted 138–9 to recognize the state of Palestine. In response, Israel announced that it would build 3,000 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and would withhold more than $100 million in tax revenue raised for the Palestinian government, dealing what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called an “almost fatal blow” to the prospect of peace. The U.S. Navy was planning to reduce its reliance on dolphin labor, and an international coalition of researchers concluded that more than 4 trillion tons of ice in Greenland and Antarctica have melted in the past twenty years, causing the world’s sea level to rise by 11 millimeters. Iceland exported over two tons of ram penis to China, and North Korea’s state news agency reported the discovery of a unicorn lair in Pyongyang. President Barack Obama introduced a proposal to prevent the United States from falling over the “fiscal cliff.” The plan, which includes such measures as higher tax rates on wealthy citizens and a $400-billion cut to federal health programs, caused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to burst into laughter. “Right now, I would say we’re nowhere, period,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), outside whose office nude activists protested potential cuts to HIV programs. “I think it’s important Congress acts now, I mean right now,” said Vice President Joe Biden at the opening day of the first Costco in Washington, D.C. “I’m looking for pies.” Obama and Mitt Romney met for the first time since the U.S. presidential election, over a luncheon of turkey chili at the White House. eBay pulled a listing for Obama in Pee Pee, an artwork by conservative television host Glenn Beck that features a bobblehead of the president purportedly submerged in Beck’s urine, and Bill Clinton disclosed that during his presidency he sent only two emails, one to troops in the Balkans and the other in response to a message sent from space by astronaut John Glenn. “We have gone almost a third of the way around the world in the time it has taken me to write this letter,” wrote Glenn. “The rest of the crew is waiting.” Scientists determined that lying increases the temperature of one’s nose, that having a lot of Facebook friends leads to anxiety, and that hyperparasitic wasps, which lay eggs in parasitic wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars, are sometimes parasitized by other hyperparasitic wasps. Germany moved to criminalize sex with animals, leading zoophilia lobbyist Michael Kiok, who lives with an Alsatian named Cessie, to threaten legal action. “We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification,” said Kiok. “We don’t force them to do anything.” A Florida woman was arrested after she assaulted her boyfriend for climaxing first. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge[*] announced that they were expecting a royal baby, and a lexicographer published arguments that Robert Burchfield, a former Oxford English Dictionary editor popularly credited with overcoming the dictionary’s Anglocentrism during the 1970s and 1980s, had actually expunged thousands of English words with foreign origins. “If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves,” said the lexicographer. “If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves.” The Associated Press eliminated homophobia from its stylebook, and four gay men filed suit against JONAH, a Jewish conversion-therapy office in Jersey City, New Jersey, for defrauding them of thousands of dollars spent on such allegedly curative techniques as visiting bathhouses and beating effigies of their mothers with a tennis racket. “Our therapy,” said JONAH’s co-director, “is very conventional.” Dear Harper’s Magazine, I am a fervent subscriber (if there can be such a thing) to your excellent magazine: we have nothing equivalent in England, and I am very grateful to you for being so challenging and thought-provoking. However, the English pedant in me is reeling at your otherwise excellent Harper’s Weekly in which you announce that “Prince WIlliam and Princess Kate” are having a baby. Yikes! They’re the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. She’s not Princess Kate, as she’s not a princess in her own right; she’s Princess William of Wales, otherwise known as the Duchess of Cambridge, until the Prince of Wales dies, when she’ll be the Princess of Wales, and not Kate, Princess of Wales. Sigh. I know I am fighting a long and hopeless battle. Even British journalists can’t get it right these days. Yours sincerely, and with much admiration for your continued superlative magazinistic efforts, More from Justin Stone: Years of consideration preceding the inclusion of the word “phat” in Random House’s 1996 Compact Unabridged Dictionary: Scientists created crash helmets that stink when cracked and fruit flies to whom blue light smells delicious. In Belize, a construction company bulldozed a 2,300-year-old Mayan temple to make road fill. Subscribe to the Weekly Review newsletter. Don’t worry, we won’t sell your email address! “This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”

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YA COLFER, E. When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll. YA WOOD, M. On a bike trip in Ireland trying to recover from a broken heart, sixteen-year-old Morgan is transformed, not only by the others on the tour, but by her visits to the past, where she is believed to be the legendary half-goddess Morganne, sent to help end a faery curse. YA FALLON, L. Instantly drawn to a mysterious, alluring boy in her class, teenaged Megan, an American living in Ireland, discovers that they are linked by a supernatural destiny that gives them powers Megan never knew she possessed. YA THOMPSON, K. Bobby lives a reckless life smoking, drinking, and stealing cars in Dublin. So his mother moves the family to the country. But Bobby suspects their cottage might not be as quaint as it seems. And spooky details of the history of their little cottage gradually turn Bobby into a detective of night creatures real and imagined. YA DOWD, S. Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and with the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person. YA THOMPSON, K. Irish teenager JJ Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into Tir na nOg, the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out a lot about his family history, the music that he loves, and a crime his great-grandfather may or may not have committed. YA FOLEY, J. It’s 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she’ll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life-altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all– live. YA LENNON, T. Neil Byrne, a teenager in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1990s, comes to terms with the fact that he is gay and seeks acceptance from his friends and family. YA MELLING, O. Two teenage cousins, one Irish, the other from the United States, set out to find a magic doorway to the Faraway Country, where humans must bow to the little people. YA SF MCKINTY, A. Thirteen-year-old Jamie is overjoyed when a bequest sends him and his mother to live on an Irish island, where he and his newfound friend Ramsay travel back in time to help a young girl save her people from certain death. YA DOYLE, R. Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky twelve-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Gran is dying. But Gran can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Gran, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. YA NAPOLI, D. Fifteen-year-old Melkorka, an Irish princess, is kidnapped by Russian slave traders and not only learns how to survive but to challenge some of the brutality of her captors, who are fascinated by her apparent muteness and the possibility that she is enchanted. YA KIERNAN, C. After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they’ve summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. Itʹs there that the ghost appears, a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die while their overwhelmed parents can’t even see whatʹs happening. Isolated and terrified, Pat needs to keep his brother’s cover while figuring out how to save him, drawing clues from his own dreams and Nan’s long ago memories, confronting a mystery that lies between this world and the next, within the Grey. Chloe: If I Stay by Gayle Forman Katie: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien Movies and TV Reese: Duck Dynasty Chloe: Earth to Echo Matt: Black Ops (XBOX 360) Will: Oblivion (XBOX 360) Reese: The Escapists (PC game) Pick up one of this action-packed novels to get your heart racing again! YA MARSDEN, J. When Ellie and her friends go camping, they have no idea they’re leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But a week later, they return home to find their houses empty and their pets starving. Something has gone wrong–horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded, and the entire town has been captured–including their families and all their friends. Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight. YA GEBHART, R. Thirteen-year-old Tyson sneaks off with his roughneck, but ill, grandpa to go on his first elk hunt, amid reports of a stalking man-eating grizzly. YA STIEFVATER, M. Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. YA LAYBOURNE, E. Trapped inside a chain superstore by an apocalyptic sequence of natural and human disasters, six high school kids from various popular and unpopular social groups struggle for survival while protecting a group of younger children. YA COLFER, E. In Victorian London, Albert Garrick, an assassin-for-hire, and his reluctant young apprentice, Riley, are transported via wormhole to modern London, where Riley teams up with a young FBI agent to stop Garrick from returning to his own time and using his newly acquired scientific knowledge and power to change the world forever. YA MY LANE, A. In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously “unwell,” fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain. YA SMITH, R. A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. YA SF LORE, P. In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a fifteen-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien. YA PATTERSON, J. After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the “bird kids,” who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose. YA HOROWITZ, A. After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle’s dangerous work for Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6. YA DEUKER, C. Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk. YA CARTER, A. A group of teenagers uses their combined talents to re-steal several priceless paintings and save fifteen-year-old Kat Bishop’s father, himself an international art thief, from a vengeful collector. YA SF MULLIN, M After the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano destroys his city and its surroundings, fifteen-year-old Alex must journey from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Illinois to find his parents and sister, trying to survive in a transformed landscape and a new society in which all the old rules of living have vanished. YA CLINE, E. In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the Oasis. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines – puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win – and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. YA MY RITTER, W. Newly arrived in 1892 New England, Abigail Rook becomes assistant to R.F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with the ability to see supernatural beings, and she helps him delve into a case of serial murder which, Jackaby is convinced, is due to a nonhuman creature. YA SF MORGAN, K. When 100 juvenile delinquents are sent on a mission to recolonize Earth, they get a second chance at freedom, friendship, and love, as they fight to survive in a dangerous new world. YA CARRIGER, G. In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is surprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage. YA SF SANDERSON, B. At age eight, David watched as his father was killed by an Epic, a human with superhuman powers, and now, ten years later, he joins the Reckoners–the only people who are trying to kill the Epics and end their tyranny. YA SF YANCEY, R. Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them. YA SF CHARBONNEAU, J. Sixteen-year-old Malencia (Cia) Vale is chosen to participate in The Testing to attend the University; however, Cia is fearful when she figures out her friends who do not pass The Testing are disappearing. YA SF GRANT, M. In the near future, the conjoined Armstrong twins, under the guise of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation, plot to create their own version of utopia using nanobots, while a guerilla group known as BZRK develops a DNA-based biot that can stop bots, but at risk of the host’s brain. Yesterday morning the Youth Media Awards were held at the American Library’s Association’s Midwinter Conference. These awards are held annually and recognize some of the best books written for the year for kids and teens. Check out the recording of the awards ceremony and then take a look at the winning Teen books below! Given for excellence in literature written for young adults. Four Printz Honor Books also were named: This One Summer also was named a Caldecott Honor Book: the Randolph Caldecott Medal is for the most distinguished American picture book for children. Given for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens. Four other books were finalists for the award: Four other books were finalists for the award: The Family Romanov was also named a Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book, for most distinguished informational book for children and teens: These books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both quality literature and appeal to teens, while comprising a wide range of genres, styles and subjects. Click here to find the full list! Top Ten list from the final selections: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley Vango by Timothee de Fombelle The Story of Owen Dragonslayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely We Were Liars by e. lockhart The Young Elites by Marie Lu I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson Jackaby by William Ritter Noggin by John Corey Whaley Coretta Scott King Honor Book: The Coretta Scott Kind Book Award recognizes an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults: John Steptoe New Talent Author Award: The John Steptoe New Talent Award recognizes new talent and is determined by the Coretta Scott King Task Force: Schneider Family Book Award’s Teen Selection: for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience: Stonewall Honor Books: given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience: Check out the books, movies, TV shows, and music that come highly recommended by our Teen Advisory Board Members! Will: 1984 by George Orwell Veronika: Empty by Suzanne Weyn Ashley: Insurgent by Veronica Roth Movies & TV Will: Once Upon a Time Julia: Law & Order Chloe: If I Stay Barbara: FourFiveSeconds by Rhianna, Kanye, and Paul McCartney; I Need You by M83 Kelsey: Symphony Soldier by The Cab, Pirates of the Caribbean film scores by Hans Zimmer Julia: The Big Bang by Rock Mafia Katie: The Heart Wants What it Wants and My Dilemma 2.0 by Selena Gomez; Sledgehammer by Fifth Harmony; Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake; Something Big by Shawn Mendes

Welcome Comrades to the 25th Edition of the ConquerClub Dispatch! Well it's been 1 year since the newsletter started and 25 editions of the newsletter have been pumped out. It's been interesting watching the newsletter evolve as it has, we started with 5 or 6 people, and now we have more than 20 people and going stronger than ever before. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the newsletter in the past year and thanks to all who will contribute this year, the newsletter would not be where it is today without your commitment and dedication. Also i'd like to thank our readers, you are the reason we keep publishing the newsletter so thanks for your support over the past year. Tell all your friends to subscribe! Editor in Chief Welcome to the 25th edition of this newsletter and it is another jam packed edition for the mess hall. This fortnight we are providing you with have the latest hot topics with ARMY of GOD , an analysis of the assault odds calculator plugin by , more about the nuclear spoils feature by and some valentines day advice, CC style from . If that isn't enough, we also have an interview with everyones favourite off-topic poster , another tale from the elf and a story for all those who have suffered from bad dice by . Hope you enjoy it! Nagerous Hot Topics by ARMY of GOD Hot Topics: 1. Huzzah! The longest thread, thread is FINALLY the longest thread on Conquer Club! 2. Qwert is advertising for some advertising! 3. Hurry! Some people think "New Moon" is the best movie of 2009! 4. Congrats to myself for advertising the General Congratulations thread! 5. Talking about McGill University's social usergroup in the Newsletter was invented by Army of GOD on February 8th, 2010. Plug-ins and Addons: Assault Odds by Minister Masket So you've come round to the fact that you're not being cheated by the dice. Excellent. Now you want to get down to the business of winning all those games you joined. Unfortunately, the luck factor means you can't win every game, but there are things you can do to increase your chances. Take the " Assault Odds" calculator for example. Now before I start (and if you're interested), do open up the link at the bottom in a new tab or window, because - like the Dice Analyser - it's fairly visual based, so you'll understand the description better if you're looking at the thing. Done? Good. For starters, ignore everything but the top three rows. This is the "Quick Calculator" part, and it very handily calculates the odds of success against your opponent(s), as opposed to you doing a quick number-crunch in your head and then subsequentially wondering where it all went wrong. Take the example already there on the calculator. An attacking army of 5 against a defending one of 3 has a 64.2% chance of success. The calculator automatically saves your entries to save you typing them out again, and if you need more, you can click the "Add Calc" button just underneath to add more blank rows. You even get a grand total percentage of winning all the battles you add in. Now what is that comma doing seperating the 8 and the 4 in the second row? Well that's how you add armies from different territories to the calculation, and it works with defenders too. Below this we have the "Pathfinder" section. Whereas the QC works best for single battles, the Pathfinder calculates your odds of successfully attacking a sequence of territories in the same turn. So firstly you choose the territory you're attacking from from the dropdown menu, then add your army number in brackets. Then you choose the valid bordering territory and add it's defenders. This one step will calculate the odds anyway, and you can add your next moves in the rows below. When you're done, you'll be presented with a total percentage of your chance of winning the lot. Finally, at the bottom we have the "Statistics" part. This will use your calculation from the QC part to tell you how many of your attackers are likely to survive, both in "minimum" and "exactly" columns. Don't get too attached to this part though. They are just numbers after all, not real soldiers. And that's it. For tips and the option to download this, here's the link I really hope you clicked on when I told you to: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83451 A word of warning however. At the time of writing you can only use this if you are using either Firefox with Greasemonkey or Google Chrome. So if you use IE or another browser, you're buggered. Next time - Clickable Maps! Valentine's Day Advice CC Style by FoxMists Early last year a.sub started a thread in General Discussion to work on his pick up lines. (Don’t lie, we all know you were really just looking for tips!) I found this to be an interesting idea and delved into what I thought would be moderately amusing and at least give me a heads up for the real desperate sorts that need this sort of help. Well, I was wrong. I was so very wrong. It was not moderately amusing. It was bloody hilarious and as lame as a one legged rabbit (hey! Not that kind of leg, you pervert!). And you know, it’s that time of year! Valentine’s Day! So I now present to you some of the more memorable pickup lines I came across. ( This will also help you avoid certain… people… if you know what I mean) It turned out that some keywords (and names) were practically required usage. "Want to go back to my place and auto-assault?" AndyDufresne “Hi there, I'm KingHerpes Free.” Jpcloet (Honestly “freestyle” was probably the most common. So common that I couldn’t force myself to add them here… Seriously. Painful.) And then there were the creative sorts: “Map Edition Sweetie, I know you are wondering where our relation is headed, and I've had 8 Thoughts about it. I would like to enter your Forbidden City, but don't want to move too fast causing you to Duck and Cover. This may sound like Madness, but please let me Land, and Sea where it takes us. You have shown me a New World of romance, I used to always just Battle for a rack. We've already tried a manage a trois, so maybe we can Conquer 4 and listen to the Wales. And if you were my Spanish buddy, I would want to Rail you, ese. What? I've been too vulgar? Baby don't go! Okay, well I will CCU later...” sully800 (We are now taking donations for the “Hobbies 4 Sully” fund!) Some people were kinda cute with their lameness. This was much appreciated. “How would you like to travel world together? I was thinking maybe E2, S3 or A12, as they are all so beautiful this time of year.” Jpcloet “It'll be worth the 72 hour ban for the things I want to say and do to you.” GENERAL STONEHAM "Babe, I'm not like the other guys. I don't nuke all over myself." AndyDufresne “You're the rainbow in my spoils...” MrBenn “my cards arent the only things that are escalating right now ” a.sub And we can’t forget the ladies! Top two from the girls? “ whoops, sorry baby, was a slip of the finger on the button" clapper011 (We’re guessing she has heard this line before ) AND, “Hey big guy, if you're UP for it, come over here and show me how good you are at Escalating..” Robinette Well. You gotta love a girl that knows what she wants, huh? If y’all are into self-torture, are ridiculously bored, or just plain sadistic, jump over to the thread and share the wealth! Your lameness will be noted and appreciated by others just like you! A Newt's Tale by elfish_lad The Attack of the Clicky-Spiders A couple of months ago I wrote about wanting to expand my horizons from 1v1 Speed Crack (Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!) to team games and game variants. Some call them mutants. The game variants even. It's been an interesting couple of months. Here is an example: I am 8 unique wins away from my first freestyle medal. Which doesn't sound that hard... except that I really, really suck at freestyle and haven't gotten the hang of clickies. At all. Cause I suck. Especially on my laptop. With the small screen. And the stupid mouse pad. And the adrenaline kicks in and then I attack a neutral by mistake after deploying my troops 450 kilometers from where I intended and then I fort 3 senior citizens to their Retirement Villa on an island on the other side of the world, well away from any possible danger. At least with clickies I suck really, really quickly. The Elf's First Date But there was another interesting development recently - I was invited to join a clan. Here is how I think that transpired: I was in a late night speed dubs game with some random dude (another aspect of expanding my horizons) and we were getting smoked. Badly. You know those games. Nothing goes right. Oh, you can blame the dice or whatever, but you just know, deep down, at the back of your primordial cortex, no matter what you do, the fates are against you and soon that big dinosaur is going to be using your femur as a tooth pick. Or your primordial spouse is going to bash your head in with that special pointy rock you found. Either way. End of story. But then The Elf is smacked with the inspiration stick. It doesn't usually work that way. Usually I'm in charge of the stupid stick. That night, even after my random partner was removed from the field of battle, we hammered the other team back and won. Thrilling. Seriously. Here was the other team's response to our come-from-behind victory: "fuuuu...dge" It was brief but heart felt I'm sure. Right on suckers! Coming out of that game I think my random partner from that night figured I was good. And handed my name over to a clan leader looking for a good player. Instead they got me. The guy with the stupid stick. But since I didn't have any other invites to the prom I said sure. I hope they don't think I'm a cheap lay! 'Cause I'm not cheap. Kindergarten Zombies Now, this is no reflection on my clan-mates. At all. There are some great players in our clan, including our leader, but I would not be surprised if, in my brief tenure with them, I have recorded only a couple of wins in clan games. But as our clan has been rebuilding and adding a number of mid-ranked players like me here is what I think was happening in our first few games together: we were all reliving the first week of Kindergarten. Your mom drops you off. Another woman with those breast things is there but she doesn't even remotely smell like your mom. You cry for 25 minutes. You realize suddenly that you have just peed your pants. You punch another little boy in the head who just peed himself and won't stop crying. You take a nap. Eat some paint. And as Post My-Parents-Are-Never-Coming-Back Syndrome sets in, you sit on the carpet with 22 other traumatized youngsters, as if you are bit players in a "Dawn of the CC Dead" movie. Moaning, gnawing and drooling ensue. Then you break for lunch. I figure our clan will get better. We just need to eat more finger paint together. Not An Intergalactic Kegger?!?! And all of this leads me to my closing observation: there really are no short-cuts here at CC to being a good clan, or a good team, or a well rounded gamer. Just a lot of games and a lot of working things out. This was brought home to be by a partner in a dubs tournament recently. I made some initial moves and my partner sent me a very helpful PM afterward. In the message he/she laid out some different strategies critiquing some of my early moves. Pretty helpful stuff and in hindsight I realized that I should have seen this myself. But more importantly it was his/her closing words that really struck me: Five. Percent. When I first got here I would have figured that was nothing. After being in The Pit for six months now? Five Percent? Man. That is the world. doing it this way could increase your win % on this map by 5%. Huh. Maybe, just maybe, someday The Elf will give up the stupid stick for good! ~sees the skeptical stares~ Well. An Elf and dream can't he?!?! That's it for me. Off to eat some more finger paint! E. More Nukes by stahrgazer About those nukes... I mean, Nuclear Spoils. As players investigate the option, some find the setting disturbingly luck based, some find it requires strategy, and others are still choosing to avoid them as though they're afraid of radioactive fallout. For example, the Conqueror's Cup inter-clan tournament is disallowing nuclear spoils, the same as freestyle and speed settings have been disallowed for previous Clan Ladders. Please do not be confused; the Cup is not part of the Clan Ladder, although there exists a potential that the games will count in the ladder. But back to Nuclear Spoils and a few more facts. With this setting, it becomes more apparent that random deals cards like it does the dice: sometimes a terr comes in batches. Whatever terrs are on the map are part of the entire pool, so it is possible for one terr to show up several times in a game, and even possible for the same terr to show up in several or all players' hands; the odds are the same for any card at any time in the game, although I have yet to hear of one player getting the same card twice in one hand. Another interesting point about Nuclear Spoils is that the in-game statistics reveal more than the log will tell you immediately upon blasting an opponent (or oneself) off the map. The log will merely indicate that a territory was nuked, but the stats display immediately shows the number of territories, now reduced by one because of the nuke. The log will not indicate the terr-count change until the player takes the next turn. There are those who believe this is unfair, or untrue to the intention of the stats, which were placed, prior to the Nuclear Spoils setting, with the intention of revealing no more than the log will indicate. Now, the log may be behind the stats for as much as a full round (if you have unfortunately had to nuke yourself); but eventually the log will catch up to the stats display, indicating that the player who had 12 terrs at the start of his previous turn has 11 terrs at the start of the current turn. Is a one-round (maximum) difference enough to make you wish to change something? If so, you can visit the Nuclear Spoils thread and make your point known. I, on the other hand, believe this to be not much different than the ability to read an "owned" terr being cashed in a fog game; because of the +2 extra deploy, the log reveals information the ?? leaves in..errrr...question: which terrs does an opponent own? While the stats will display the terrcount, the stats do not indicate which terrs, but that bonus recipient lets one say, "Aha! Now I know where you are!" Granted, in that instance, the information is immediate upon the cash but.. well.. the stats info on nuclear spoils is equally immediate upon the cash. The stats were not intended to reveal more than the log; fog setting was intended to make only the number of terrs readable by the log. In both instances, cashing a card can reveal a little more information than was originally intended. And? So? To Nuke or not to Nuke, that is the question. Only you can answer it, for yourself. Bon Bombarding! The Invasion by Deathcomesrippin For those of us who have suffered through bad dice, this one's for you.... The Invasion Day 7, Dakar Blue looked out over the shoreline. For the last two days, he had been camped here, with five other blues, awaiting instructions. Africa had been secured a few days ago, and the borders set. Across the stretch of ocean, an entire army of red sat at Sao Paulo, unaware of the plans of the warlords who ran the Great Blue War Machine. On day 5, Blue had been a part of the final push to move Green out of the African mainland completely, although word was they had secured Australia, which could prove to be a thorn in their side for the rest of this damned war. His commanding officer, Blue, had mentioned something to the effect of Flaming going on in some chat between Red and Green. Blue Command was looking to capitalize on this, and hoped to be able to place small amounts of reinforcements on Dakar until the time was right. Then, if all went according to plan, there would be a large influx of six, possibly SEVEN, reinforcements, and the true assault on the bastion of Red would begin. A squawk came over the loudspeakers set up over camp, informing all of the troops that it was time to change the watch. Blue looked one last time towards the ocean, wondering what was in store for him in the next few days. Day 10, Dakar: invasion of Sao Paulo The rumble of the motor came from all around him, causing Blue to think for a moment he was in some sort of living hell. The sides of the plane reverberated with rattling of the stores of ammo, foodstuffs, and other such items, creating a cacophony of clanging and banging. Blue Sergeant stood tall, and told the men about him that this moment would be the turning point, the first of many defeats for their enemies across the water, Red. All told, there were 14 blues on board, a frightening army considering Red's defences was a paltry 6. They were caught completely off guard by this assault. Whispers ran through the ranks of Red being led by a n00b general, a Cook maybe. Blue Command, of course, would never verify those rumours, but a refusal to answer was good enough for the troops. Blue gathered his gear. The final light went off, and the rear door of the plane opened. Below them, there was a field of green, the jungles of South America flowing past. Sao Paulo was lit up like a gigantic casino, flood lights crowding the air searching for the first signs of the enemy incursion. Then, all of a sudden (or so it seemed to Blue), the city was below them, and the order was given. Without another thought, Blue leapt clear of the plane, and freefell into his glory. Combat Results (14 v 6)- RED VICTORIOUS 4, 3, 3 - 6, 4- 2 Blue losses (The screams of the dying will be a sound Blue always remembers…..) 2, 1, 1 - 4, 4- 2 Blue losses (“Dear god, more of them….WHY WON’T THEY JUST DIE?”) 5, 3, 3 - 3, 3- 1 Blue loss, 1 Red loss (“Finally, the turning point. I hope this is where it ends...”) 1, 1, 1 - 6, 2- 2 Blue losses (“Blue’s dead, and Blue, and I saw Blue go down earlier….”) 6, 6, 5 - 6, 5- 1 Blue loss, 1 Red loss (“FALL BACK!!! FALL BACK TO THE BEACH!!!”) 5, 5, 2 - 6, 6- 2 Blue losses (“Blue and Blue were killed in the retreat, sir. Final casualties are still coming in.”) Blue was covered in blue gore. All about him, the bodies of his comrades, blues he had known for his entire life, were scattered like so many dice across a game board. The few left had been lead back to the shore, where they awaited the rescue ship. The fighting had been fierce, but even with overwhelming numbers, It was a lost cause. Out of the 14 who had travelled with Blue, he saw only three and himself. Red, on the other hand, now had an equal number, having only lost two. The first thought for Blue was frustration. The frustration of knowing you had lost, and also, that it might be a loss that you might not come back from. Blue Command was compromised, their troops for the front and borders spent of this assault. Already Green had been making overtures into Europe, and Red was crawling across North America. A bullet snapped sand into Blues' face, waking him out of his daydreaming. He raised his weapon and returned fire, the small sandbar he was by providing meagre cover. The other blues all had the same forlorn look on their faces, like dogs which had lost their masters. Blue hoped his didn't look like that, too. More bullets flew past, and Blue realized Red was making a push. This was it, his final moment. Blue prepared himself, shook the cobwebs out of his head, and tensed his legs for a spring over the sandbar. As he lifted himself up, a blue grabbed his shoulder and pointed out over the ocean. The rescue ship was approaching, slowly yet surely. Day 14, Nairobi Blue stood aside four other blues, the last of his men. Blue Command had given up long ago, and there was talk from the others about going rogue, or "neutral" as it was called by some. Blue didn't think less of them for this. After the epic failure of the invasion of Sao Paulo, Red followed through with an assault that pushed aside the meagre defences left in place at Dakar. Slowly, Red pushed further into Africa, taking Cape Town and Johannesburg, then Cairo. Now, only one area stood, Nairobi. The last word heard from the Blue General was "Red’s Foed". To the east, in Dubai, a sizable army of Green camped, awaiting orders from their enigmatic leader. To the west, the deadly west, a large force of Red sat at Cairo, looking on with a bit of pity on what was left of the once great Blue Empire. Blue looked back at his men, and at the approaching horde. End game. During the last couple weeks of 2009, collected nominations for the Best Tournament of 2009 . After examining the list, 10 tournaments were chosen for a final vote. The Top 3 winners were all very close in the voting, with each officially 1 vote apart. Each winner has received a Contest Medal. The Winning Tournaments: 1.- (14 votes) Tournament: 2008 College Basketball Season Tournament Organizer: flexmaster33 Nominator: denominator Keywords for nomination: Fun, keeping players involved. 2.- (13 votes) Tournament: Around the World in 80 Days Tournament Organizer: stahrgazer Nominator: Lindax Keywords for nomination: Different concept with unknown team mates. 3.- (12 votes) Tournament: Battle for Supremacy Tournament Organizer: barterer2002 Nominator: amazzony Keywords for nomination: Huge tournament and well run. Congratulations to the winners and everyone who hosted a tournament in 2009. Hopefully there will be many exciting ones during 2010. This issue features a pop-quiz that pulled on 5 tournament organizers along with some of the tournaments currently taking sign-ups. Enjoy! Tournament Pop-Quiz by amazzony They have had their battles in numerous tournaments; now I decided to test their skill in a quiz. We have 5 participants who agreed to be part of the friendly battle: Tournament Legend [OP], unique tournament titan Optimus Prime [Bart], excellent Tournament Director barterer2002 [Lx], top tournament organizers/winners Lindax [HA] and HighlanderAttack [Blitz]. Don't take the results too seriously, it's just a fun quiz where I asked everybody to answer honestly and not use help of forums/friends. If it was done, stays on their conscience and following data is also added just for statistics (which is also considered the biggest lie by some) and not for serious conclusions. What I know is that HA answered me 3 minutes after opening his message, OP Blitzaholic maximum 10 minutes after opening it, Lx took about 25 minutes to answer, Bart maximum 30 minutes and Blitz a bit under 4 hours. These are the questions that I asked and in the brackets is the amount of points received for correct answer(s). Who is the Head Tournament Director? How many different tournament tags are currently used? Name Top 3 of Multiple Tournament Winners! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournament Games Created! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournaments Completed! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournament Games Played! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] What type of tournaments have been organised the most besides Standard? What is the date (month+year) when first 2 tournaments were completed? What is the date (month+year) when most tournaments were completed? What was the number of tournament completed? [2 - 1 for date, 1 for number of tournaments] Here are the correct answers which are taken from Tournament Hall of Fame [HoF], this topic and Blitz's Tourney LOVERS - most games. Maximum points that can be collected is 18. Night Strike 11 or 3 (as I formed the question badly then there can be 2 answers to this questions: either 11 tags from HoF or 3 tags for joining games: to/tot/game) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack, killmanic barterer2002, JoJo123, Optimus Prime barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic HighlanderAttack, acores2005, amazzony Doubles March 2006 November 2009; 99 (December 2009 is also counted correct because it was mentioned in Issue 23 of the Newsletter that most likely December will beat all previous months). Now to the most interesting part - how did the participants answer! Optimus Prime [6 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) 11 (3) Blitzaholic... JOHNNYROCKET24... Godd (4) Optimus Prime... amazzony... Gilligan (5) barterer2002... Blitzaholic... (6) Gilligan... Godd... vykingsfan64 (7) 1 vs 1 (8) June 2006 (9) April 2009... 79 HighlanderAttack [9 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) I am not sure what this is asking so I will say 2 (3) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack and killimanic (4) Gilligan, Barterer, HighlanderAttack (5) HighlanderAttack, acores2005, Gilligan-not sure of third place (6) HighlanderAttack, acores2005, Gilligan-not sure of third place (7) Assassin (8) 12/2006 (9) 12/2009 Lindax [10 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) Not sure I understand the question, but I'll say: 6 (3) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack, killmanic (4) Barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic (5) Barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic (6) HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic, JOHNNYROCKET (7) Doubles/Team (8) December, 2006 (9) January, 2010, 75 tournaments barterer2002 [13 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) 3 (game, to and tot) (3) Blitz, Killmanic, Highlanderattack (4) Bart, OP and HA (5) Bart OP and HA (6) HA, killmanic, and diminjarstef (7) doubles (8) October 06 (9) November 09 99 tournaments Blitzaholic [13 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) Not sure, maybe 10? (3) Blitzaholic, Highlanderattack, Killmanic (4) If there was a recent update I would guess Optimus Prime, Amazzony, Barterer2002 (5) If there was a recent update I would guess Highlanderattack, Barterer2002, Blitzaholic (6) Highlanderattack, Acores2005, Amazzony (7) Not sure, I would guess doubles (8) Hmmm, maybe around May 2006 for both. (9) December 2008 and 78 completed, however, I would guess somewhere in 2009, maybe the Fall of 2009 this was broken due to an explosion of tourneys created So, here they are - results! All participants did well and I want to thank everybody so much for being my guinea pigs! Currently Taking Sign-ups by superkeener Currently Taking Sign-ups Here is a list of tournaments that still have open spots. Click on the link to sign up or to find more information on the tournament. Haiti Benefit Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=106575 Coordinator: Industrial Helix This tournament aims to raise awareness for the earthquake disaster in Haiti. All games are played on the Haiti map with 8-players in each match. The 8 winners of the first round will battle for the tournament trophy. European Timeline Bracket viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107850 Coordinator: kawe85 A big Doubles tournament that that includes the maps of: Imperium Romanum, Europe 1914, and WWII Europe Darin’s 30th Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107706 Coordinator: Darin44 Darin is celebrating his 30th tournament with style - a tournament with 10 terminator games in each round on random maps. Only open to premium players. Indoor Athletics viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108132 Coordinator: Tupence Inspired by the Indoor Athletics International Match, this 125-player tournament is almost full, so go grab your spot now. The tournament will use a variety of maps. Only open to premium players. Horseshoes and Hand Grenades viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107936 Coordinator: YoursFalsey This tournament will focus on the new Nuclear Spoils, but players will be faced with 1v1 matches, Doubles, Terminator, and Assassin. This tournament has many open spots, and is only open to premium players. Family Game Night Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108780 Coordinator: ask me2 A tournament that stays true to the theme of its name. Maps featured are: Chinese Checkers, Conquer Four, Conquer Man, and Crossword. Circus Maximus Royal Rumble viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107549 Coordinator: kuma32478 Based on the WWE Royal Rumble, this tournament will feature 3-player terminator games on the Circus Maximus map. Doodle Earth Tourny viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108096 Coordinator: iamkoolerthanu This 64-player tournament on Doodle Earth will consist of 4-player games with the winner advancing to the next round. It’s filling up fast, so go and claim your spot now. During the last two weeks there has been much activity in the Foundry, the Germany revamp competition has just ended, but there's already a new competition running. The melting pot seems more active than ever and the first maps begin to advance through the new process. Talking about the process, in this issue, the second part of the Foundry special about the gameplay workshop. Then, we travel again through the History to discover the "hidden story" behind one of the maps on Conquer Club. Finally, as always, the maps currently in development. Vancouver Competition The Winter Olympics come every four years and are a showcase of athleticism. They bring out the best in athletes striving for a bit of gold. In just a few short days, the torch will arrive in Vancouver and the games will begin. From Cyprus mountain to the Pacific Coliseum, the Olympics will also showcase the best of Vancouver, a fine city, worthy of hosting such an event. In order to celebrate this event, the CC foundry is having an contest of its own. Recently, the Vancouver map was put into live play, but now it is having a bit of a revamp. While the original map is a beautiful piece of artwork, the boys in blue thought that it should be spiced up for the games. A contest is being held where mapmakers can take the original Vancouver map, and make it Olympic themed. The winning map will temporarily replace the current Vancouver map in order to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics. You can find more information about the contest here. You can find info about the Olympics here. Foundry Twitter feed Are you always seeking the latest news about the foundry? Don't you want to miss anything foundry related? Don't worry the solution is within reach. Start following the Foundry Twitter feed and you will get the scoop on up and coming maps! http://twitter.com/CCFoundry Beta Maps Fractured America by isaiah40 is available for Beta testing. Atlantis by NemesisChild and Premier2k is waiting to be uploaded. Quenched Maps Our dear chief editor has got his first quenched map. , due to its superb gameplay, is already one of the most popular maps on Conquer Club. WWII Poland After a few small tweaks, the map is now perfect. Congratulations to samuelc812 After a long and careful examination, the was quenched. Third Crusade Map The last update was well received by the community and the new bonuses seem well balanced. With already more than 3000 finished games, the map was finally moved into the viewing gallery. Congratulations to Kabanellas and AndrewB Foundry Special - The Gameplay Workshop by natty_dread Introduction In my last article, I went through the Melting Pot forum where maps are born. In this article we will be focusing on the next step of a map's journey from idea to live play, which is the Gameplay Workshop. Gameplay is probably the most important aspect of a map. A map with balanced and interesting gameplay, even if it is not so interesting graphically, can be a success. But a map with stunning graphics and inferior gameplay will probably be a lot less popular. Of course, the Foundry tries to focus on both aspects of every map. How to start When a map moves from the Melting pot into the Gameplay Workshop, the real development of the map begins. In this phase, most maps already have a clear idea of the direction of development the map is going to take, and a version of the map with all major gameplay features included: territories, bonus areas, legend... In the Gameplay workshop, the whole structure of the map may change several times. This is where the details are honed into perfection. For a beginner mapmaker, the concept may seem frustrating, but it is a necessary part of the Foundry process. First things to consider when designing gameplay for a map are: the number of territories, bonus values, size and amount of bonus areas... which all amount to one thing really: balanced gameplay. Balancing gameplay Balanced gameplay means that games should not be decided by the drop. For example, if you have 48 territories on a map and play a 4 player game, the first one to play his turn will have a clear advantage, as everyone starts with 12 territories, and the first to go can knock one or more players below the limit. But there is more to balancing the gameplay than just deciding the amount of territories on a map. The bonus values need to be considered, and for this several bonus calculators have been developed. Of course the bonus calculator does not give you the absolute truth, and common sense should be used. But it gives the mapmaker an idea where to start. The structure of the map also needs to be considered. Too many bottlenecks for example are not good, but neither is a too open playing field. What can I do to help When it comes to leaving feedback to maps in the Gameplay workshop, mapmakers of course appreciate when you keep your comments to the gameplay side, and ignore the graphics for now. It is not exactly wrong to give comments on the graphics, but gameplay feedback will surely be a lot more appreciated at this point. When giving feedback, think of the map as it would already be in live play. Try to imagine how the gameplay would work on the current version of the map. If you can see any flaws, the mapmaker will surely appreciate you pointing them out, as long as it is done in a polite manner. Iancanton, a moderator in charge of the Gameplay Workshop, has the following to say about leaving gameplay feedback: iancanton wrote: All foundrygoers will have noticed that the main foundry has been split into two workshops: gameplay and graphics. There hasn't been much change of policy, since most maps needed to have the gameplay approved already before the graphics evaluations took place. The split simply makes clearer the current focus of the map: if a map's in the gameplay workshop, then comments on gameplay are most helpful. What's good gameplay feedback? If you're unsure, then have a look first at the guide to giving feedback that's in the tutorials and guides section of the foundry. Early feedback is welcomed by every mapmaker, to prevent him from wasting his time developing something along the wrong lines. If something is wrong with the gameplay, then try to be helpful by suggesting a solution, if you can. The earlier this type of comment comes, the better! gameplayfeedback wrote:i live in ruritania. there are no mountains in the western part of the map gameplayfeedback wrote:48 regions is a bad number for 4-player games. can u merge this and that? gameplayfeedback wrote:let the ship bombard all of the ports, which are too powerful gameplayfeedback wrote:make the auto-deploys start neutral gameplayfeedback wrote:the bonuses are unbalanced. there are too many small bonus zones in the north Not so useful in the gameplay workshop are comments on things that don't relate so much to gameplay. It might sound obvious, but graphics adjustments are best made in the graphics workshop, after the mapmaker knows that the gameplay won't be changing much. Graphics ideas are still welcome, but be aware that the mapmaker may choose to do difficult or substantial graphics changes after he has the gameplay stamp, so that he doesn't have to redraw a fantastic work of art several times just because of gameplay fixes. notgameplay wrote:the borders are pixellated notgameplay wrote:try using a font which looks more medieval notgameplay wrote:put the legend in a wooden frame Now, with all this, you should have a pretty good idea how to help mapmakers who are working on the gameplay of their map. I'd like to urge every one of my readers to visit the Gameplay Workshop, and browse the map threads. See maps that you like? See maps that you don't like? Give them feedback! The Foundry needs your help to produce more quality maps for you to play! That's it for this issue. Stay tuned for the next episode, the Graphics Workshop. History 101 - Route 66 by dolomite13 Route 66 - by oaktown Welcome to Route 66, America's Main Street. This fun map by veteran mapmaker oaktown utilizes an alternate bonus structure of 1 army for every 2 territories held as well as the ability to score a victory by holding the eleven cities along Route 66, from L.A. to Chicago. The visual style of the map takes you back in time to the golden days of Route 66 and makes you feel like your sitting at a diner along that famous road. Be sure to check out this map and get your kicks on Route 66. ROUTE 66 - ROLLING STONES LYRICS wrote:e Well if you ever plan to motor west Just take my way that's the highway that's the best Get your kicks on Route 66 U.S. Route 66 (also known as the Will Rogers Highway, and as "Main Street of America" or the "Mother Road") was one of the original U.S. highways, Route 66, US Highway 66, was established on November 11, 1926. The famous highway originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, encompassing a total of 2,448 miles. It was recognized in popular culture by both a hit song (written by Bobby Troup and performed by the Nat King Cole Trio and The Rolling Stones, among others) and the Route 66 television show in the 1960s. More recently, the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars featured U.S. 66. Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, changing its path and overall length. Many of the realignments gave travelers faster or safer routes, or detoured around city congestion. One realignment moved the western endpoint farther west from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. US 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System on June 27, 1985 after it was decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66". It has begun to return to maps in this form. Some portions of the road in southern California have been re-designated "State Route 66", and others bear "Historic Route 66" signs and relevant historic information. Over the years, U.S. Route 66 received many nicknames. Right after Route 66 was commissioned, it was known as "The Great Diagonal Way" because the Chicago-to-Oklahoma City stretch ran northeast to southwest. Later, Route 66 was advertised by the U.S. Highway 66 Association as "The Main Street of America". The title had also been claimed by supporters of U.S. Route 40, but the Route 66 group was more successful. In the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, the highway is called "The Mother Road", its prevailing title today. Lastly, Route 66 was unofficially named "The Will Rogers Highway" by the U.S. Highway 66 Association in 1952, although a sign along the road with that name appeared in the John Ford film, The Grapes of Wrath, which was released in 1940, twelve years before the association gave the road that name. A plaque dedicating the highway to Will Rogers is still located in Santa Monica, California. Map of Route Route 66 overlaid on Google Maps Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma The Birth and Death of Route 66 In 1857, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a Naval officer in the service of the U.S. Army Topographical Corps, was ordered by the War Department to build a government-funded wagon road across the 35th Parallel. This road became part of U.S. Route 66. Officially, the numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgment as one of the nation's principal east–west arteries. From the outset, public road planners intended U.S. 66 to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course for the most practical of reasons: most small towns had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare. Wigwam motel #6 in Holbrook, AZ. Championed by Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman Cyrus Avery when the first talks about a national highway system began, US 66 was first signed into law in 1927 as one of the original U.S. Highways, although it was not completely paved until 1938. Avery was adamant that the highway have a round number and had proposed number 60 to identify it. A controversy erupted over the number 60. Ultimately Avery settled on "66" (which was unassigned) because he thought the double-digit number would be easy to remember as well as pleasant to say and hear. After the new federal highway system was officially created, Avery called for the establishment of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to promote the complete paving of the highway from end to end and to promote travel down the highway. Traffic grew on the highway because of the geography through which it passed. Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made the highway a popular truck route. The route passed through numerous small towns, and with the growing traffic on the highway, helped create the rise of mom-and-pop businesses, such as service stations, restaurants, and motor courts, all readily accessible to passing motorists. Due to the efforts of the US Highway 66 Association, Route 66 became the first highway to be completely paved in 1938. Several places were dangerous: more than one part of the highway was nicknamed "Bloody 66" and gradually work was done to realign these segments to remove dangerous curves. However, one section just outside Oatman, Arizona was fraught with hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route remained as part of Route 66 until 1953. Despite such hazards in some areas, Route 66 continued to be a popular route. During World War II, Route 66, already popular and fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment. Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri was located near the highway. During its nearly 60-year existence, Route 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns. Increased traffic led to a number of major and minor realignments of US 66 through the years, particularly in the years immediately following World War II when Illinois began widening US 66 to four lanes through virtually the entire state from Chicago to the Mississippi River just east of St. Louis, Missouri, and included bypasses around virtually all of the towns. By the early-to-mid 1950s, Missouri also upgraded its sections of US 66 to four lanes complete with bypasses. Most of the newer four-lane 66 paving in both states was upgraded to freeway status in later years. In 1953, the first major bypassing of US 66 occurred in Oklahoma with the opening of the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The new 88-mile toll road paralleled US 66 for its entire length and bypassed each of the towns along 66. In some cases the new interstate highway not only paralleled the old Route 66, it actually incorporated much of it. In New Mexico, as in most other states, rural sections of I-40 were to be constructed first with bypasses around cities to come later. However, some business and civic leaders in cities along US 66 were completely opposed to bypassing fearing loss of business and tax revenues. In 1963, the New Mexico Legislature enacted legislation that banned the construction of interstate bypasses around cities by local request. This legislation was short-lived, however, due to pressures from Washington and threat of loss of federal highway funds so it was rescinded by 1965. Originally, highway officials planned for the last section of US 66 to be bypassed by interstates in Texas, but as was the case in many places, lawsuits held up construction of the new interstates. The state of Missouri officially requesting the designation "Interstate 66" for the St. Louis to Oklahoma City section of the route, but it was denied. In 1984, Arizona also saw its final stretch of highway decommissioned with the completion of Interstate 40 just north of Williams, Arizona. Finally, with desertification of the highway by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials the following year, U.S. Route 66 officially ceased to exist. Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In Life After Death Some states have kept the 66 designation for parts of the highway, albeit as state roads. In Missouri, Routes 366, 266, and 66 are all original sections of the highway. State Highway 66 in Oklahoma remains as the alternate "free" route near its turnpikes. "Historic Route 66" runs for a significant distance in and near Flagstaff, Arizona. A surface street stretch between San Bernardino and La Verne to the east of Los Angeles retains its number as State Route 66. The First Route 66 associations were founded in Arizona in 1987 and Missouri in 1989. Other groups in the other Route 66 states soon followed. In 1990, the state of Missouri declared Route 66 in that state a "State Historic Route". The first "Historic Route 66" marker in Missouri was erected on Kearney Street at Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. Other historic markers now line the entire 2,400 mile length of road. Many preservation groups have also tried to save and even tried to landmark the old motels and neon signs along the road in different states. In 1999 the National Route 66 Preservation Bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, which provided for $10 mln in matching fund grants for preserving and restoring the historic features along the route. In 2008, The World Monuments Fund added Route 66 to its World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Sites along the route, such as gas stations, motels, cafes, trading posts, and drive-in movie theaters are threatened by development in urban areas, and by abandonment and decay in rural areas. As the popularity and mythical stature of Route 66 has continued to grow, demands have begun to mount to improve signage, return Route 66 to road atlases and revive its status as a continuous routing. Along these lines Route 66 has been established as a National Scenic Byway in Illinois, Arizona and New Mexico with National Scenic Byway status pending in Oklahoma and Missouri as of 2007. More Information Wikipedia.org Route 66 Video 4 Minute Tour of Route 66 Maps in Development To see the full sized preview of the following maps just click on the title of the map, to visit the map development thread Melting Pot Recently Design Brief Submissions: Gameplay Workshop Research & Conquer Mapmakers: OliverFA Maybe the most innovative map currently in development. The map premise revolves about adding the Research concept to "normal" CC gameplay. Some initial discussion about the gameplay, but for now is a rather quiet thread. Macedonia Mapmaker: n.n. Description: 42 regions and a standard gameplay for this representation of the small Republic of Macedonia. First Nations of South America Mapmaker: Tisha Description: After the great success of First Nations of North America, tisha is back with the same graphics to represent the southern part of Americas. The discussion is about the regions number. Graphics Workshop Flanders 1302 Mapmaker: DubWarrior Description: Set in the year 1302, when an army of Flemish peasants defeated the knights of the french army, this map has a standard gameplay and a nice graphics. Few nitpicks for the legend and the signature and the map is ready for the Final Forge CRICKET: Silly Mid On Mapmaker: cairnswk Description: A map about cricket, the first map about a sport which is going through the foundry. Recently stamped for gameplay, there's still some discussion about it. German/Italian Unification Mapmaker: Industrial Helix Description: Two maps about the wars of unification that took place int the last half of the 19th century and saw the rise of the united kingdoms of Italy and Germany. Working on mountains Final Forge Monsters! Mapmaker: dolomite13 Description: As a honored wizard you have volunteered to explore the Caverns of Power and retrieve the Powerstones. Recently stamped for graphics. Xml not yet checked. Japan Mapmaker: RedBaron0 Description: Modern Japan with an ancient graphics styleand a standard gameplay. A nice addition for ConquerClub, when quenched. It looks ready. Germany Revamp Mapmaker: WidowMakers Description: The winner map of the germany revamp competition is now in the final forge. The old Germany map with a new look. Power Rankings: Top 10 Clans by Georgerx7di (TSM) Top Clans on CC By Georgerx7di (TSM) In lieu of the up coming Conqueror’s Cup and the controversy over the ladders, I have decided to do a opinion piece on the top clans on CC and personally rank them. As I write about clan wars, I find myself spending more and more time in the “completed challenges” forum, where I have learned a good deal about our clans. In preparing my rankings, I found that the first two spots were easy to fill based on available information. Spots 3-7 seemed to meld together at first and so I had to add more criteria to help me order them. Spots 8-10 were the hardest to fill, there were at least two or three clans that I had to leave off, who perhaps should have made it. So here are the criteria I used to decide who the best clans on CC are: 1. Clan war record. This gives a good indication of how good a clan has been over the life of the clan. 2. Current CLA Season 2 record for the league. This is a good indicator of how good a clan is at the moment, albeit not a perfect indicator. Most of my top 10 list was derived from these two factors and from my own experiences playing these clans. 3. Who the clans won or lost to in clan challenges. 4. Input from experienced clan players. This is important because there are things that I will not have gotten around to looking at, for example people leaving or joining a clan. 5. Win percentage in clan wars. This becomes important when you have two clans who seem very equal. AOD for example lost a clan war to IA by a score of 11-9, that is a lot different then loosing 16-4 and so should not count so strongly against them. Now without further ado, here is (in my opinion) the top ten clans on CC. Top 10 Clans on CC: 1. THOTA THOTA has a 7-0 record in clan wars, by far the best of anyone. Three of their wins were against top ranked opponents. 32-28 over LOW, 53-47 over Imperial Dragoons and 41-19 over Generation 1. The rest are lesser known clans, but its worth noting that their victory over Death by committee was by a score of 35-5. THOTA is also the champion in the first season of the CLA League. 2. TSM The Spanking Monkeys have a 3-0 record, all against top clans. They have defeated The Legion 25-15, Immortal Assassins 22-18 and LOW 34-26. LOW has kind of been the gateway to the top spots, if one could defeat them, then that clan would be ranked in the top 2 or 3 spots. All three of these have been traditionally considered top 10 clans, although The Legion has lost some good players very recently and will not make this top 10 list. The Spanking Monkeys are also leading division 1B in CLA Season 2 at the time of printing. 3. The Odd Fellows Union TOFU has a 3-0 record over some very good clans. They have defeated The Imperial Dragoons 24-16 and Generation 1 25-15. Their third win came over Mythology by a margin of 30-10. I was hesitant to place TOFU so high on the list however because of the fact that they were placed in Division 2 in CLA League. However they have absolutely dominated division 2A (winning 83% of their games!), in a division that includes O&H, EE, and Divine Domination (more on DD below). 4. Immortal Assassins The Immortal Assassins have a 3-1 record in clan wars, including defeats over AOD and BPB. Their only loss is to TSM (above). IA is also in second place in division 1A in this season’s CLA League, ahead of THOTA who is in third place and behind KORT. 5. Legends of War Their 5 wins are pretty impressive. They won a 36-24 match over Empire (ranked 6th on this list) and a 16-8 win over The Untouchables, who would have been considered for the top 10 if the clan were still in existence. LOW also defeated G1 28-12, and crushed PE 25-5. LOW had a record of 5-2 up till recently. Their only losses had come at the hands of the top 2 clans on this list; THOTA 32-28 and TSM 34-26 and are in second place in division 1B, only a half game behind TSM. With all this they might have been 3rd or 4th out of the top 10, however they were recently defeated, and quite soundly, by O&H (see issue 24 of The CC dispatch). With this 3rd loss, many no longer consider LOW to be at the very top. However, as their defeat of Empire, and their cla performance shows, LOW is still a clan to be taken seriously and that is why they earned my number 5 spot. 6. Empire Empire has an impressive 7-1 record including wins over The Legion, The Imperial Dragoons, Nemesis, BSS and a somewhat underrated Agents of Chaos. Empire blasted Nemesis 41-23 handing them their first loss. There are a few other blowout wins, AOC 38-22, The Worlds of the Wort 15-5, however other wins were not so impressive. Empire defeated Black Sheep Squadron 21-19 and The Legion by an even smaller margin 16-15. None the less, had it not been for their loss to LOW, Empire might be ranked in the top 3. Empire has also not been that impressive in CLA League, they currently have a 34-35 record and are 4th place in division 1A. Not an embarrassment by any means, considering that the clan above them in 3rd place is THOTA. Divisions 1A and 1B are filled with most of the best clans on CC, however to be ranked in the top 5 a clan has to be able to shine against this top competition. Empire gets 6th place for me. 7. Knights of the Round Table The Knights of the Round Table seemed to be an all-star team in the making. They recruited many top players and were expected to take the clan world by storm (much in the way that TOFU has). They are leading division 1A, an impressive feat, above IA, THOTA and Empire, however their clan wars have not been as impressive. KORT has a record of 1-0-1. Their first clan war ended in a 15-15 tie against Generation 1, a 3-5-1 clan with most of its losses coming to top clans. KORT came back to win their next clan war over The Brethren of the Fat Mermaid, (see issue 23 of The CC Dispatch) with a score that is currently listed at 38-17 with 5 games still not recorded. The Brethren are a good clan, with players like BoganGod and Draq, however with an 0-3 record it is hard to gauge the value of KORT’s victory over them. For these reasons KORT gets 7th place. Cla aside, they still have not proven themselves to be top 5 quality. 8. Nemesis After jotting down my top 7 clans, it became more difficult to decide who would get the last three spots. So I made a spreadsheet with a few columns. I put a check in one column for every clan that had a winning record in clan wars. Next I put a check next to every clan that had a winning record in CLA. One thing jumped out at me. There were only two clans who were not already on my top 10 list, who had both winning clan records and winning records in the current season of CLA. One was Nemesis, the other was Agents of Chaos (more on them below). Nemesis has a 3-1 record with wins over Mythology, Imperial Britain and Left4Dead; their only loss coming to Empire (above). They also have a 36-28 record in CLA League, good for 4th place in division 1B. 9. Angels of Death Angels of Death (formerly LOD) has an 9-4 record. Their 9 wins are all over mid-level clans, The Brethren or Mythology perhaps being the best of the bunch. Their losses however are mostly to good clans. They were beaten handily 37-23 by The Imperial Dragoons, however their other losses were all nail biters. They lost 23-22 against G1 and 11-9 against IA! Not a bad showing. Their other loss was a 5-4 loss to Freemium Forces in a 9 game clan war which probably should not count. AOD clearly deserves a spot in the top 10 with this record. However their CLA League performance has been less than stellar, 31-33 in division 1A. For this reason, and the absence of any victories over top ranked clans, AOD gets a 9th place rank from me. 10. Imperial Dragoons This was the toughest clan to place on this list. The Imperial Dragoons have a 3-3 record, the only clan on this list that isn't over .500. Surely I couldn’t put ID above Empire (6-1) who defeated ID. Perhaps I could have put them above AOD, who ID had defeated. ID’s losses were all to top clans, THOTA, TOFU and Empire. Their wins were over AOD, Skyforce and a 13 game win over Murder Inc. Overall not bad, and they beat AOD by a margin of 37-23. They also lost to THOTA 53-47, a pretty good showing. However to be considered a top clan one has to win. It’s hard to put a 3-3 clan above a 9-4 clan. Also, ID has a 32-37 record in CLA division 1A, good for 5th place in that division. This tells me that perhaps ID is not as good as they have been in the past. However should they win their current challenge against IA (it's tied at 15-15), I would have to bump them up a couple of spots on the list, perhaps even above KORT. Honorable Mentions: BPB The Bullet Proof Bandits have had an impressive showing in the CLA League, currently 39-25 and in 3rd place in division 1B. On the other hand, their clan war record is a pedestrian 1-1. They have a win over BSS, nothing to sneeze at, but only by a margin of 21-19. Their loss came at the hands of IA, a clan that I think very highly of. In the end two clan challenges just weren't enough to put them above AOD or ID. O&H The Outlaws and Highwaymen officially show a record of 2-2, however their two most recent victories have not been recorded. They will be at 4-2 when their two clan wars finish, including an impressive win over LOW (see issue 24). On the other hand their CLA League performance is a poultry 16-24 in division 2B. Another problem is their two losses. They lost to BSS (a good clan, but not in my top 10) and Divine Domination, a clan playing in their first clan war. O&H would have to be ranked around 11 or 12 at the moment for me. On the other hand, should they win their next clan war against G1 (they currently lead 5-4), this could solidify them as a top 10 contender. AOC I actually consulted some experts on this one. My final two spots had come down to AOD, ID, BPB, O&H, and AOC, and I was seriously considering putting Agents of Chaos in the 9 or 10 spot on the list. They have a 3-1-1 record and are leading their division in CLA League. So why didn’t they make the top 10. For one thing, their three wins all came against very low ranked clans. They had a tie against Mythology, not bad, but Mythology didn’t make the top 10 either. The only top clan that they played was Empire, and they lost that war 38-22. Finally, although they are crushing their division in CLA League (27-13), it is division 2B. For AOC to move up to the top 10, they have to beat a top clan and/or win in division 1 CLA. So although they are a good clan, they still have not proven themselves to be at the very to of CC clan competition. A win against an AOD or Nemesis is probably what it would take to vault them up to the top 10. Rising Star Divine Domination I will end with an up and coming clan to watch for in the future. Divine domination has completed 1 clan war, defeating O&H by a score of 33-27, not bad for a clan’s first challenge. Don’t forget that O&H is the clan that just defeated LOW by a good margin. DD is also in second place in division 2A, with a loosing record albeit (19-21), but every clan in that division has a losing record. TOFU is rolling 2A with an 83% win percentage. However, to be in second place behind TOFU is not a bad spot for a new clan, and they are just a few games shy of being over .500. I suspect that this will be a clan to keep an eye on. Final comments It’s unlikely that anyone will agree on the exact ranking of every clan. Some will place more value on players they know in the clan, or how they think the clan will perform in the future. I went with a system that weighed more on the past and more on winning and loosing clan wars because I felt that one cannot guess how a clan will do in the future. A record on the other hand is something that a clan has proven. And after all, winning clan wars is what we all strive for, not winning percentage. I personally would much rather my clan win 3 wars 21-19 then win 1 war 34-16 and loose 2 wars 19-21. So this is how I graded clans, how many wars did they win and how many they lost. As Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots once said, “Stats are for losers, final scores are for winners”. Conqueror's Cup by laughingcavalier (AoD) COME SHOW WHAT YOUR CLAN IS REALLY MADE OF!! demanded Chuuuuck as he launched the first annual Conqueror's Cup, and within hours he had been joined by CC’s finest, keen to take part in the first knockout inter-clan competition. The contest is on an epic scale with 19 clans competing in a bracket competition. Each contest will constitute a clan war in itself, with 48 games played between clans in the early rounds, and 68 games in each semi and the finals – not to mention games to be played in pre-season qualifiers. Adding all that up, you see the size of Chuuuuck’s vision, and what has got so many clans excited. If all goes to plan, by December over 800 games will have been played. The winners might enjoy a similar status to those who take home the much-coveted title of winner of the only comparable competition, the Clan League. Chuuuuck wrote:One thing is constant in the clan forums, people are arguing over the rankings, who is better than who, and how "Clan A" hasn't really played anyone. Everyone seems to agree that the bigger clan wars that most clans participate in are a good way of judging who is better. So I decided a bracket style tournament where clans don't get to choose who they play, and they play each other in larger clans wars might be the best way to settle "who is the best". Chuuuuck’s own Empire were the first clan in, soon joined by all but a handful of the top clans. The Cup thread quickly made its’ way to the top of the clan forum, as CC heavyweights, notably Incandenza and Foxglove, helped out with planning, and others (you know who you are) began the all-important trash talk. Chuuuuck appreciates the enthusiasm and the help he has received from those in his own clan and beyond, especially TheSpaceCowboy who came up with the name the "Conqueror's Cup" and will be helping with the admin once the tourney gets going. Seeding was decided by vote. Clan leaders ranked the participants, with the results counted together to give each clan their position in the draw. THOTA sit at the top, followed by TOFU, Empire and Immortal Assassins. There were enough surprises to launch a heated debate on where each clan will finish ( Conqueror's Cup Predictions), but all agree they will prove their case where it counts, on the field of battle. Chuuuuck himself is quietly confident about the strengths of his own clan: Chuuuuck wrote:Obviously, I am biased. I think some players feel we are over-rated, but I feel Empire has gotten a lot better over the past year and I personally believe we are under-rated. I feel we will make a strong showing and at least make it to the semi-finals. The first round offers some great match-ups. Legends of War are looking to avenge their recent defeat at the hands of the Outlaws and Highwaymen, while Knights of the Round Table and Generation 1 will play it out for a win after their draw last time up. The pre-season qualifiers kick off on February 17th, as the lower ranked teams duke it out to make the first round proper which is scheduled to start in March. We will be covering the games here. A final comment from the tourney organiser: Chuuuuck wrote: A very big thanks to for everything they do for the clan scene, and a big thanks to the clan community as a whole. Their participation and excitement is what makes this tournament truly exciting. show: Interrogation of pimpdave Q. Hey there Pimpdave A. Hey, thanks for doing this, nagerous. You're one of the coolest people here. Also, thanks for all the work you newsletter folks do. It's a real testament to the strength of the community we've all come to value that this thing happens. Q. What's your favourite colour? A. Green Q. Is your first name Dave or Pimp? A. It is actually neither. My first name is Dr. Octavious Pimpdave McAwesomeFace Q. What does Dave think about you pimping him? A. He actually thinks I've done a really good job. Q. What is the best book you have ever read, and why? A. Catch-22. It breaks my heart and fills it back up. Human nature on parade. Q. Did you manage to get Sergei hooked up? A. Fortunately for you, I'm pretty sure Sergei is still single, so you should drop him a line. I'll tell him you are in love with him for you. Because I'm a good friend like that. You can call him at 867-5309. He'd love to hear from you. Q. How many accounts have you had on Conquer Club? A. Current estimates place the number over 9000. Q. By what was your tenure at McGill University marked? A. Inventions, primarily. Q. Why is it the most powerful Uni ever? A. Because power was invented there in 1863. Q.When did McGill University invent you? A. Immediately after inventing the concept of being completely awesome which then was transmuted to me because it had to manifest as something. Q. What is your favourite song? You can tell a suprising amount about a person with just that one question! A. Well, if that's the case, you'll have to let me throw down like, 5, if you're going to read into it so much. That sort of thing changes often, but I can list 5 songs that have resonated with me over the years and that I can sing along to flawlessly. Let Down- Radiohead Big Time- Peter Gabriel Eulogy- tool Geek U.S.A.- Smashing Pumpkins The First Time- U2 Q. What year(s) did you attend McGill? A. Yes Q. In what faculty? A. Executive Vice President of Determining Inventions Q. How many babes did you make while there? A. What does make "babes mean"? Is that illegal? How did you hear about that? I mean, I'm not at liberty to discuss any top secret synthetic babe manufacturing that may or may not have been invented at McGill University during my tenure. Q. Is Canadian beer as good as they say it is? A. It's okay. Q. Who invented hockey? A. Some dudes on Long Island. SUCKERS. Q. Did you know that everything was invented at McGill University, including McGill University? A. Except for hockey and football, you jackasses, yes. Q. Do you think the space-time continuum would be torn asunder because everything was invented at McGill University? A. No, why would it be? Q. Where's Waldo? A. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sll=5 ... 0000000024 Q. You're a GH member now, so I must ask: do you feel lucky punk? A. Not in general. Q. Do you have any diseases or physical traits that hinder you in any way? A. Yes, I suffer from the condition known as "the much too sexy". This presents many beautiful women hindering my path with their pleas for my attention. Q. What are your favorite parts of your body and personality? What are your least favorites? A. All of them. Q. If you HAD to commit suicide, how would you do it? A. If I HAD to commit suicide, it would be because I am a spy who has been captured, so I'd pop a cyanide pill to prevent my breaking under interrogation (everybody breaks). Q. Do you have any deeply disturbing memories? A. Everyone does. Q. What is the purpose/meaning of your life? A. … Q. Have you ever had any thoughts about being a woman? A. Not really. Not like I ever wanted to be one, but I've tried to put myself in their shoes on occasion. Q. What is your favorite song? Band? Singer/songwriter? A. The Roots Q.What is your favorite fast food? Favorite item? A. In N' Out Burger, but that might just be because I only have it when I go out to the West Coast, so it seems more special. As for stuff near me, I like Wendy's, if I have to have fast food, because of the (probably incorrect) perception that it's the most healthful one. I like California style burgers. Q. What is your favorite sit-in restaurant, and item? A. It's not a chain. I eat too much red meat, but my favorite is buffalo, be it burgers, steak or whatever. Buffalo meat is so good and lean. I'm also a big fan of any kind of food I've never tried before. I like trying food from all different cultures and locations. Q. What is your favorite movie? Genre? Director? Actor? A. Heat, Gone Baby Gone, Yojimbo, Three Kings, The Departed. Director: Michael Mann; Actor: They're all cattle, but I have a huge crush Christina Hendricks Q. What is your favorite TV show? Writer? Actor? A. The Wire; David Simon and Ed Burns, especially when Dennis Lehane does an episode. Q. What is your favorite book? Writer? A. Catch-22, as I said. Favorite writer right now is Dennis Lehane. Q. What is your favorite game? Format? A. Memoir '44. Q. If you could choose, what would be your last words? A. I'm going home. Q. If you have one, who is/was your favorite American president? A. Abraham Lincoln. For reasons too personal to post here. Q. What is your favorite war of all time? A. Star Wars. Q. Do you think that you enjoy answering questions more, less, or about as much as Juan_Bottom or Snorri1234? A. Caring about this question was invented at McGill University in the year shut up. Q. Would you trade a blastoise for a pikachu? A. WAT. Would this be before or after I gave you a super-mega-nuclear noogie for being such a huge dork? J/K LOL! SAX ATTAK! Q. What is the average wing-speed velocity of a swallow, either African or European? A. Depends on whether that swallow is above, below, or at the equator, but it's at least 9,000 miles per second. Q. What is your favorite past time altogether? A. Informing the world of all the glorious achievements of McGill University. Q. If you were able to choose exactly, how would you prefer to die? A. Saving someone else's life. And yes, there is someone in particular I wish I could go back and save in my place. Q. If you had to part with a piece of your body, what would it be? A. Wisdom teeth. Oops too late. Q. If you had to live out the plot of a horror movie, what would it be? A. 28 Days Later Q. What is your favorite car? Make, model, and/or year? A. '68 Mustang Boss in Bullitt Green. Since those are hard to come by, I'll settle for a BMW 5 series in black. Q. Do you think MaleAlphaThree's list of question is the list he submits to babes on dating sites? A. I don't know, but I do think it's copypasta. Q. What is your favorite map and why? A. I like New World because it's a cool concept, and I've never won on it yet. I also like Battle of Actium. I don't know why, I just think it's cool. Oh, and the Prison one is pretty cool too, but that's just because Juan_Bottom is a great teammate to have on that map, and I remember the games I've played with him there very fondly. In conclusion, DBC IS GREATEST CLAN IN ALL OF CONQUER CLUB, ALL OTHER CLANS HAVE INFERIOR FUN. Q. If you got randomly selected to go to Mars would you? A. If it meant my name went down in history as a hero like Neil Armstrong, then absolutely. Otherwise, I'd have to think about it. Q. Will you be attending a Muse show during their current North American tour? A. Not this time, but I've seen them live before, and they are awesome. Q. What level is your Blastoise? A. Seriously, I'm gonna give you a wedgie. Q. How many bitches are you pimping currently? A. None. I don't pimp bitches. That is disrespectful to women and I do not do that. (psst, bitches, get at me if you wanna make some money!) Q. What is the nature of your relationship with #1_stunna? A. He's one of my multis. Along with the other obvious ones, like Snorri, killing.44, saxitoxin, and Twill. Q. What are your complete thoughts on the #1_stunna and Beckytheblondie scandal? A. Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old. Q. How many dogs do you own? Cats? Walruses? TVs? Microwaves? Women? J/K LOL! SAX ATTAK! A. One. One. None. One. Nine thousand. Forty two. LOL, I LOVE YOU. Q. Thanks for your time pimpdave! A. Well, I hope I've made you regret spending it reading this! Stay Tuned for the next issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch for an interrogation of . Post any questions you may have for them here --> Interrogation with thegreekdog Submitting Your Own Articles If you have a story you think the ConquerClub Community would find interesting, you can submit your articles to . If the CC Dispatch Team enjoy it than you may just see your article published in the Newsletter! Did you enjoy this Issue? Have you subscribed to the Newsletter yet? If you want each and every issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch delivered right into your Inbox, then Subscibe Here! ConquerClub Dispatch Team

Meeting Mia for her first ever full frontal nude sessions proved to be a happy experience for both model and photographer. At the photo session in Paris, Mia proved herself to be perfect model material. Not only does this playful and sexy young woman have a superb body – with a particularly amazing ass - she also has the brains too. Mia recently moved to Budapest and is studying Public Management. She has plans to open her own model agency and experience in front of the camera is certain to help this ambitious girl on her way. Mia is gorgeous, polite and full of personality. She is the kind of girl you could easily fall in love with. She has the tiniest of appetites... but like many girls Mia just loves chocolate! With brains and beauty this girl is definitely headed for the top!

Well, this weekend ought to be good. Today we’re just going to be relaxing all day, but tomorrow Brian has to work at his part-time job in the evening and I’m going to be going to a free Christian concert with one of my girlfriends from work. I hate to go without my husband, but he said it would be just fine if I went with my friends. Last night we went to Bessie’s house for Friday night movie night and served BBQ spare ribs, bread, chips, cheese, and sushi. It was a great night. Loving on the homeless, prostitutes and gang bangers that we serve. I enjoy my time with my guys and gals, especially when they call me Mama. There’s one young man named Neil, he’s a senior in high school, that I just love to death, he’s like a son to me. Every time he sees me he runs up to me first and just hugs me hard and tells me how much he loves me and misses me, then gives me a kiss on my cheek. Puts a tear in my eye every time. I think he just misses me telling him to pull his pants up. Cause every time I tell him that he pulls them up and laughs. Anyway, we talked to an interesting man last night. His name is Sony and he’s been homeless since he’s been 13 and he’s now 36 years old. He got put in the pen when he was 19 and was in for 10 years, didn’t ask him why it’s not my business. 2 years ago on Independence Avenue at a gas station, he was shot in the face and robbed basically for change. But the coolest part about his story was that he knows Jesus and he finds the joy with his life everyday. He said even though the right side of his face is paralyzed, his right eye is blind, and when he speaks, he drools he can still find joy in the life the God gave him, the second chance that the Lord blessed him with. He speaks with such a passion, it brought goose bumps to my skin listening to him speak about his life and how much he loves Jesus. People like Neil and Sony are who we serve in our Ministry. There are more stories, but those are just 2 from last night that I wanted to share. I love what we do and I wish I could be there full time doing this, but I do work a full-time job. So I help out when I can. Our web page is a little outdated, but you can check it out if you’d like: http://www.hope-outreach.org. Well, I think that’s all for today, I have to go pick up my van and we have to go drop off some food. God bless and take care. How kind the LORD is! How good he is! So merciful, this God of ours! ~ Psalm 116:5, NLT Yep, I have not been around in quite a while. Between work and the ministry, life has been just crazy busy. But last night I did go get my grand-daughter and spend a few hours with her and enjoyed that time. She just makes my heart soar!!! Well, since I’ve been working I’ve been trying to watch what I’ve been eating and not following any diet plan. I feel that if I follow a diet plan and fall off of it, I will fail. So if I just do my own thing, I’ll do just fine and so far it’s working. Brian has jumped on in the last 7 weeks also. So we’ve cut out red meat, pork, and basically anything white. We eat a lot of chicken, turkey, fish, and the nothing white is now whole grain/wheat. I quite drinking milk, mainly because it made too much, not to sound gross, phlegm in my throat. Now I drink Almond Breeze. I’m going to also try Coconut milk. Since I’ve been doing this I’m now down 63 lbs. and in the 7 weeks Brian’s been doing it, he’s down 27 lbs. I still have a lot more to go, but I went to my Drs. about 3 weeks ago, and he said he’s very proud of the way I’ve been doing things. I told him what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been eating and drinking, and he’s just ecstatic about it. Especially since how heavy I was, he’s very proud. I go back in June and I’m hoping to have quite a bit more off and also hoping to have him tell me that I can get off my high blood pressure medication. That would be nice. Today has been a pretty good day so far. I’ve been in my little cubical working on my payables and receivables and while doing that I have all my music I like, mostly worship music, in my computer. So I’ve been listening to it. I enjoy doing that and just praising my Jesus for the glorious day and life that he’s given me. Is my life perfect? Not by a long shot, but I can find the positive in the negatives. Here at work, I’ve had so many people tell me, ” you always have a smile on your face, what’s up with that?” I tell them, “It’s because the Lord let me wake up another day.” Then I just usually get a blank stare and I just smile and tell them to have a great and beautiful day too. Take care everyone and have a great and beautiful day yourselves!! I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High. ~ Psalm 9:2, NLT Brian and I have spent quite a bit of time together this weekend and it’s been awesome. I have so much enjoyed going out and being able to serve our brothers and sisters in need on the streets. What a joy that is for me. Actually I think it’s more that the Lord has been letting me know that Brian needs to learn to let go of me a little more each time we go out and let me learn on my own. Brian is very protective of me and I know why. I’m his wife, of course he’s going to be protective of me, I have medical issues, MS with left side weakness, high blood pressure, my eyes go blurry, but when I’m serving and doing the Lords will, I’m strong and HE leads me to where he wants me to go and say what HE wants me to say. So I guess if we’re going to be living in the Northeast area, Brian’s going to have to learn that he can’t be with me 24/7. We’re going to be living in a place where the homeless and prostitutes are going to be able to come in, take a shower, wash their clothes, eat, take a nap, watch TV, etc. and I’ll be there too. He can’t keep me guarded all the time. Now our living quarters will be apart from where they will be able to hang out, but still. I just feel that the Lord is telling me that I need to talk to Brian to let him know that he needs to let go a little more than he normally does. That’s only part of what I have. My son told me last weekend that of course for the Labor Day weekend he’d have a 3 day weekend and come see me. Well, I never heard a word from him. I wound up calling him around 5 in the evening on Monday. He never even thought anything about it. Here’s the thing that bugs me the most. He’s living at his best friends dad’s house in the basement cause Lenny lets him. Fine. Well, he seems to care for Lenny and Melissa more than his own parents. I don’t get phone calls, or text messages. I finally told him last night that if I didn’t get even a text message letting me know that he’s OK, I’m going to go sideways on his ass. He kind of laughed and said, “mom you’re so cute.” I wasn’t trying to be funny or cute, I was letting him know how worried I get when I don’t hear from him for days and days. It breaks my heart and it hurts me terribly. So needless to say while I was trying to eat, I was crying. Well that pissed my husband off so he called Lil’ Brian, our son, and said, “I just want you t0 know that your mother is very hurt that you don’t call or come by and while she’s trying to eat her dinner she’s crying.” LB said, “she was fine while I was talking to her.” BB said, “She doesn’t want you to hear her cry or hear her pain that you put her through, you know how strong of a woman your mother is, but she’s hurt and I just wanted you to know so you have a great night Brian, OK? Good night.” Then he hung up. I haven’t heard from him since. It’ll take him a few days to process. That’s how his brain works. He gets told something, and he doesn’t react right away, he has to process. It drives me nuts. Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Have a great day and God bless everyone!!! I finally told my son that he is selfish and only thinks of himself. He really pissed me off this weekend. Not only was I pissed, but I was just down right hurt. I really wanted to spend time with both my kids this holiday weekend and I asked him a couple of times, are we going to see you at all this holiday weekend? His reply each time was “well, I don’t know.” All I said was, “It’d be nice to spend some time with you since it seems we never get to see you any more.” He said nothing. So last night after he got home, I went to my room and folded the laundry. He followed me and asked me what’s wrong. Well, I let him have it. Everytime he has a new girlfriend, which he’s been dating Kara for about 3 months now, he’s in his own world and has nothing, and I mean nothing to do with any of us, let alone even bring any of his girlfriends around us. Personally I think he’s ashamed of us. That just kills me inside. I told him that when I don’t hear from him it scares me cause he’s so irresponsible. I’m afraid I’m going to get a call or a cop show up at my door and tell me that my son’s dead. I asked him if understood my feelings, he said yes, but I said do you really? All I got was him staring at me. I’m hoping what I said will sink into that thick skull of his. Then he goes and stays with his old best friends parents. I’m glad he likes them, but sorry Bud, I’m not going to allow you to have your girlfriend spend the night in the same bed under my roof and I won’t buy your alcohol. They will. That pisses me off. I’ve asked them not to but why would they listen to me. My son is a 20-year-old man. If they let him drive drunk and get in a wreck, I’ll kill them. Apparently, my son is the only one left of their son’s friends that actually talk to them. Last night before I went to bed, I saw my son laying in the dining room area, in the dark, with his arm over his eyes, sniffing, so I hope what I said got to him. He needs to realize how immature and selfish he’s been. His dad and I have bent over backwards to help him out with letting him live with us in our one bedroom apartment, his dad helping him out with his finances to get him on his feet, helping him look for a new job, which a friend of our told us about a really good company that was hiring and he got a job there, so we’re letting him stay with us till his 60 days is up at his new job and he finds a place of his own. He just doesn’t appreciate what he asked us to help him with and we’ve done. Sorry to rant, but I had to get it off my chest. I know expressing it to him helped out a lot, but I needed to share it with others. I guess my public announcement of how angry I am. Although yesterday evening I did spend with my daughter. We went to go see Eclipse. I really enjoyed it a lot. But then again, I love the Twilight series. I’ve read all the books and now I can’t wait for Breaking Dawn to come out. I wouldn’t mind reading the Short Life of Bree Tanner. But I really wish that Stephenie Meyer would come up with more in the series. She is a good writer and I really like her writing style. Anyway, I better get back to the non-ringing lines here at work. We have about 42 people here at work and there are probably about 15 people here. Have a blessed day. Well, first off of course I had a great day on Saturday with Miss Isabelle. How could I not. She’s the light of my life. I love spending time with her. She’s growing like a weed, and pulling herself up on everything. Now she’s trying to get the whole walking around things down. It’s fun watching her figure it out, but it makes me sad when she bonks her head, or smacks her mouth on the table, but I guess she has to learn some how. Then on Sunday, wow what a day that was. Brian and I headed out to Bessie’s House around 8:30 to be there by 9:00 am. It was so great for me to be there for the first time. Bessie’s is a place for homeless and prostitutes to come in and take a shower, wash clothes, get some food, etc. Anyway, on Sundays they have their own Sunday service outside praising Jesus, they get fed, then Bessie’s House closes down for the day. But I totally enjoyed the day serving and listening to the service and just being welcomed with open arms by everyone that knows Brian and finally got to meet me for the first time they showed me love the way Christ loved the church. It was Amazing. I’m going to go with Brian every Sunday to help serve. I really enjoyed myself and felt at home there. Just seeing a difference from there to where we worship is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with where we worship, but the difference is in the people and how they see Jesus. People on the streets depend on Him more than people who have safety in their lives of living in homes and always having food in their bellies. They just seem to know Jesus more. So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. Deuteronomy 31:6 Here recently I’ve been wondering about my weight with my MS. I know that my weight is a big issue, I mean BIG!!! Ge’ez, I’m BIG, B-I-G!!! So anyway, I’m looking into Lap Band Surgery. I’m going to go to a seminar on it in July to see what it’s all about. There’s a possibility that my insurance could cover up to 100%. I mean when you go through the list, I’m pre-diabetic, I have high blood pressure, my BMI is over 35, I’ve been over weight (or should I say obese) for at least 5 years, you have to be at least 18 (well I’m 40 so I think I qualify for that), your series of weight loss attempts have been short-term (yep, I qualify for that too). I have to do something so I’m going to talk to my Dr. about it on Tuesday when I go in. We’ve been talking about my weight anyway so it maybe something he might approve of. Maybe he’d even write a letter of recommendation to the insurance company stating that it’s a necessity for my health with my MS and all. Anyway, that’s the crap going on in my head these last couple days. But my poor husband has had a stupid summer cold. Now my daughter is getting it and if I get it again, I’m really going to be pissed at someone. I can’t afford to be sick again. I don’t take time off work. The only time I do is to leave early for my Dr. appointments. I accrue 2.3 hours each pay period and after next Tuesday I’ll only have 8.7 hours available. I’m not wasting those. So anyway, I have to keep myself healthy. But an update on my MS meds. I did get the authorization from my insurance company to go with the Copaxone, but I haven’t heard from my Neurologists office yet on when I’ll be starting it or what. But I’m feeling fine since I haven’t been taking anything. That Avonex was some Bad A$$ stuff!!! YUCK!!! Well, I better go and sit here at my desk and answer the phones. Take care & God bless. Well, I got a call back from my Neurologists office yesterday about my Avonex. I guess hearing me cry about it and hearing the pain in my voice got them to decide to change my treatment. So anyway they’re getting authorization from my insurance company and then I’ll be starting Copaxone. It’s an everyday shot, but it apparently doesn’t have the side effects that Avonex has. Do I want to do a shot everyday? No, but I will if it will make me feel better. Believe it or not, I think my body knows it’s Friday cause it’s tensing up dreading what normally happens tonight. Well, I’m not going to take my last shot, it’s going in the garbage. BYE, BYE AVONEX!!! Good riddance!!! I went to my regular Dr the other day and my blood pressure was really high for me. I have always ran normal. Always in the 120/80 range. Not Wednesday. It was 168/102. So needless to say they put me on a HCTZ which is also a diuretic. Yea me, I’ll be peeing a lot!!! LOL Anyway, I let him know that I was going to stop my Avonex and he thought it was a smart idea. I just gave him a look and said ‘really’? He said yea. He said he felt that I should know my body and if it made me feel bad and I hurt with it, then it wasn’t the right “treatment” for me. So this weekend will be fun. I have Isabelle tomorrow and she’s going to the dentist with me. The girls there will be enjoying that. They always loved it when the kids were little and they got to play with them at that time, now they get to play with the grand baby. They still can’t believe that Amanda has a baby. Jeez, I can’t believe Amanda has a baby. LOL. But anyway, it’s never too early to take them to the dentist and show them what it’s like. Get them socially involved with them. So, after the dentist, I’m meeting up with a girlfriend and her kids and going to take pictures of the kids for her. I guess it’ll be one way for me to get my name out there and hopefully get some business for photography and make a little cash on the side. :) Well, better get back to work. Take care and God bless y’all!!! Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself ~Ephesians 2:20

NEVER TRUST A SKINNY CUPCAKE BAKER Book 1 of the Death by Cupcake series GENRE: Cozy mystery A cozy mystery with a heap of laughs, a generous portion of romance, and just a smidgen of suspense. Callie’s life is rather awesome. She owns a successful bakery and teaches German literature at the local university. There’s just one tiny problem. She has no self-confidence when it comes to her body. And then there’s the little matter of her being accused of murdering her pole dancing instructor. There’s no way Callie’s going to risk losing her teaching position and thus she embarks, with her best baker bud Anna, on a journey to discover the real killer. Between stripper auditions and a detective who insists Callie is the woman of his dreams, it’s a roller coaster adventure. Cupcakes not included. I set my menu down. “You’ve never had sushi? Why’d you bring us here then?” He shakes his head. “When are you going to get it into your head that I’d do anything for you?” “The Tokyo earthquake of 1923 brought sushi into restaurants. Before that, sushi was just a street food, but the quake destroyed much of the city and that caused real estate prices to drop so that sushi chefs could afford real restaurants.” I clamp my hand over my mouth when I realize that I am once again spouting weird trivia because Ben’s words unnerve me. Ben grins and shakes his head. Then, he surprises the daylights out of me by leaning over and giving me a hard kiss. “You are the sexiest nerd on the entire planet.” He picks up his menu again as if he didn’t just rock my world. “So, what should I order?” I let his ‘sexiest nerd’ comment drop because there is no appropriate response to crazy. “Is there anything you don’t like?” He shakes his head. “Afraid of raw food?” Another shake. “Okay, let’s order a platter with a mixture of everything.” He sets his menu down and nods. “Sounds good. Do you think it will fill me up?” “Well…” I scratch my head and look at Ben’s massive shape. “Maybe we should order some tempura.” The words are barely out of my mouth before I’m taking them back again. “No wait, that’s a bad idea. I shouldn’t be eating that.” “Why not? Are you allergic?” “No, not allergic. Tempura is fried. I should stay away from anything fried.” I fidget in my seat, uncomfortable with my confession. “Why?” He looks genuinely confused. I roll my eyes at him. “Because I can’t afford to gain any weight. It’s bad enough I run a bakery.” Ben captures my hands with one of his enormous hands and grabs my chin with the other one. “I said no more putting yourself down.” I start to protest, but he pinches my chin to quiet me. “You’re gorgeous. I love your curves. You look like a woman should. Man, you’re so sexy, it was all I could do to not drag you into your apartment and have my way with you when I arrived and saw you in that sexy as all get out dress.” Finally, he’s quiet and I think I can get a word in edgewise. Ben’s not that easily deterred, however. He leans forward and stops any response I would have made with his lips. He nibbles on my bottom lip like I’m some kind of delicacy. When he thinks he’s made his point, he leans back and releases my chin although my hands are still encased in one of his over-sized mitts. I hear a sigh behind me and look over to see Mikki. “Oh man, that was hot. Do not let him go, Professor Muller.” She flips open her order pad. “Now, what do you want to eat?” I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on from my mom’s Harlequin romances to Nancy Drew to Little Women. When I wasn’t flipping pages in a library book, I was penning horrendous poems, writing songs no one should ever sing, or drafting stories which have thankfully been destroyed. College and a stint in the U.S. Army came along, robbing me of free time to write and read, although I did manage every once in a while to sneak a book into my rucksack between rolled up socks, MRIs, t-shirts, and cold weather gear. A few years into my legal career, I was exhausted, fed up, and just plain done. I quit my job and sat down to write a manuscript, which I promptly hid in the attic after returning to the law. Another job change, this time from lawyer to B&B owner, and I was again fed up and ready to scream I quit, which is incredibly difficult when you own the business. Thus, I shut the B&B during the week and in the off-season and started writing. Several books later I find myself in Istanbul writing full-time.

The detours it takes you on are many and varied, and not always within your power to control. The death of my father two weeks ago has provided ample opportunity for me to reflect on this and – not surprisingly – where that journey ultimately ends. His was an inauspicious start in life. Born in Dublin in the 1920s, he grew up in what by today’s standards would be regarded as poverty. He was denied educational opportunities, faced many hardships, and never knew his father. At the age of 17 he got on a boat to England, lied about his age and volunteered to fight in the war, joining the RAF. Like many of the 10,000 or so Irishmen who decided their country’s neutral stance in the fight against Hitler was at odds with their own sense of right and wrong, he struggled to settle in Ireland after the war. And so it was he settled in England and embarked on a long career as a manual worker. At the time I was born, he was working in a car factory, liked a drink and the craic, and was still battling with hardship – from workplace racism in the era of IRA terror attacks, to working unsociable shift patterns that kept him permanently exhausted. My earliest memories are of that holiday. Yet it was a never-to-be-repeated event. Perhaps it’s better that way. After working hard to provide for his family, and (much as it pains me to say it) living in a marriage that didn’t always make him or my late mother happy, he retired as a fit and physically robust man looking forward to a long retirement. Which is what he got – around 20 years of it. After my mother’s death in the late 1990s, he sold the family home and eventually found the love and companionship of a woman who made him truly happy. He had money (although not lots of it), love, and a new large extended step-family network. He took holidays, visited interesting places, rediscovered his faith, did the things that made him happy. Truly happy. My own relationship with him had been strained – practically non-existent in fact – for years. Thankfully, I saw him not long before he died. After years of having nothing to do with him, of effectively denying his presence in my life and that of my sons, I felt it was time I took a detour of my own. So in late December I went to see him during one of his increasingly frequent stays in hospital. In many ways he was not a complicated man. Seeing me turn up at his bedside made him delighted – he was overjoyed and seeing that uncomplicated sense of joy moved me. We didn’t make our peace. We didn’t need to. It was unspoken and that was entirely appropriate. Two weeks later, he was gone. I didn’t get there in time to say my final goodbye. The journey was too long. The time, too short.

llaria Turba is a visual artist working mainly with photography, video and animation to create artworks, installations, site specific projects and communication projects. Her works are the result of a personal experience that intertwines visual experimentation with other disciplines: social science, performative art, oral history and very often the result of a collaboration with other artists, artisans and professionals JEST is her first photobook and has been released at the end of 2016 by the Berlin-based publisher Peperoni Books. In January 2018 the first solo exhibition of JEST will open at the Museum l’Atelier in Nantes (FR). JEST originates from Ilaria Turba’s exploration of her own family photo archive: five generations of images dating from 1870 to today are the starting point for a visual search. Photography, manipulated or not, is intertwined with other disciplines like dance, sound and storytelling. The body of work and the exhibition, involving game and action, offers the viewer a new experience of perceiving and seeing. JEST, which means prank, takes shape when, among the many photographs of the family archive, two emerge: the departure of Apollo 11 and a woman carrying a rifle. This combination, born from the case, creates a funny and significant short circuit. Turba takes this accidental invitation to the game, turning it into a pretext to cross the photographic material with a different look and reflect on the meaning of photography today. Looking at the images of JEST is just like riding a roller coaster: as soon as you think you understand where the author wants to lead you, the direction suddenly changes. You just have to do two things: keep asking yourself if what we see is real, and never stop being surprised by the beauty and the magic of what surrounds us.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France), Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political and ethical thinking into new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts. He had a profound impact on people’s way of life; he taught parents to take a new interest in their children and to educate them differently; he furthered the expression of emotion rather than polite restraint in friendship and love. He introduced the cult of religious sentiment among people who had discarded religious dogma. He opened people’s eyes to the beauties of nature, and he made liberty an object of almost universal aspiration. Rousseau’s mother died in childbirth, and he was brought up by his father, who taught him to believe that the city of his birth was a republic as splendid as Sparta or ancient Rome. Rousseau senior had an equally glorious image of his own importance; after marrying above his modest station as a watchmaker, he got into trouble with the civil authorities by brandishing the sword that his upper-class pretentions prompted him to wear, and he had to leave Geneva to avoid imprisonment. Rousseau, the son, then lived for six years as a poor relation in his mother’s family, patronized and humiliated, until he, too, at the age of 16, fled from Geneva to live the life of an adventurer and a Roman Catholic convert in the kingdoms of Sardinia and France. Rousseau was fortunate in finding in the province of Savoy a benefactor, the baroness de Warens, who provided him with a refuge in her home and employed him as her steward. She also furthered his education to such a degree that the boy who had arrived on her doorstep as a stammering apprentice who had never been to school developed into a philosopher, a man of letters, and a musician. Mme de Warens, who thus transformed the adventurer into a philosopher, was herself an adventuress—a Swiss convert to Catholicism who had stripped her husband of his money before fleeing to Savoy with the gardener’s son to set herself up as a Catholic missionary specializing in the conversion of young male Protestants. Her morals distressed Rousseau, even when he became her lover. But she was a woman of taste, intelligence, and energy, who brought out in Rousseau just the talents that were needed to conquer Paris at a time when Voltaire had made radical ideas fashionable. Rousseau reached Paris when he was 30 and was lucky enough to meet another young man from the provinces seeking literary fame in the capital, Denis Diderot. The two soon became immensely successful as the centre of a group of intellectuals—or philosophes—who gathered round the great French Encyclopédie, of which Diderot was appointed editor. The Encyclopédie was an important organ of radical and anticlerical opinion, and its contributors were as much reforming and even iconoclastic pamphleteers as they were philosophers. Rousseau, the most original of them all in his thinking and the most forceful and eloquent in his style of writing, was soon also the most conspicuous. He wrote music as well as prose, and one of his operas, Le Devin du village (1752; “The Village Soothsayer”), attracted so much admiration from the king (Louis XV) and the court that he might have enjoyed an easy life as a fashionable composer, but something in his Calvinist blood rejected that type of worldly glory. Indeed, at the age of 37 Rousseau had what he called an “illumination” while walking to Vincennes to visit Diderot, who had been imprisoned there because of his irreligious writings. In the Confessions (1782–89), which he wrote late in life, Rousseau says that it came to him then in a “terrible flash” that modern progress had corrupted people instead of improving them. He went on to write his first important work, a prize essay for the Academy of Dijon entitled Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750; A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts), in which he argues that the history of human life on earth has been a history of decay. That work is by no means Rousseau’s best piece of writing, but its central theme was to inform almost everything else he wrote. Throughout his life he kept returning to the thought that people are good by nature but have been corrupted by society and civilization. He did not mean to suggest that society and civilization are inherently bad but rather that both had taken a wrong direction and become more harmful as they became more sophisticated. That idea in itself was not unfamiliar in Rousseau’s time. Many Roman Catholic writers, for example, deplored the direction that European culture had taken since the Middle Ages. They shared the hostility toward progress that Rousseau had expressed. What they did not share was his belief that people are naturally good. It was, however, just that belief that Rousseau made the cornerstone of his argument. Rousseau may well have received the inspiration for that belief from Mme de Warens; for although she had become a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church, she retained—and transmitted to Rousseau—much of the sentimental optimism about human purity that she had herself absorbed as a child from the mystical Protestant Pietists who were her teachers in the canton of Bern. At all events, the idea of human goodness, as Rousseau developed it, set him apart from both conservatives and radicals. Even so, for several years after the publication of his first Discourse, he remained a close collaborator in Diderot’s essentially progressive enterprise, the Encyclopédie, and an active contributor to its pages. His speciality there was music, and it was in this sphere that he first established his influence as a reformer. Controversy With Rameau The arrival of an Italian opera company in Paris in 1752 to perform works of opera buffa (comic opera) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Vinci, and other such composers suddenly divided the French music-loving public into two excited camps, supporters of the new Italian opera and supporters of the traditional French opera. The philosophes of the Encyclopédie—Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Diderot, and Paul-Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach among them—entered the fray as champions of Italian music, but Rousseau, who had arranged for the publication of Pergolesi’s music in Paris and who knew more about the subject than most Frenchmen after the months he had spent visiting the opera houses of Venice during his time as secretary to the French ambassador to the doge in 1743–44, emerged as the most-forceful and effective combatant. He was the only one to direct his fire squarely at the leading living exponent of French operatic music, Jean-Philippe Rameau. Rousseau and Rameau must at that time have seemed unevenly matched in a controversy about music. Rameau, already in his 70th year, was not only a prolific and successful composer but was also, as the author of the celebrated Traité de l’harmonie (1722; Treatise on Harmony) and other technical works, Europe’s leading musicologist. Rousseau, by contrast, was 30 years younger, a newcomer to music, with no professional training and only one successful opera to his credit. His scheme for a new notation for music had been rejected by the Academy of Sciences, and most of his musical entries for Diderot’s Encyclopédie were as yet unpublished. Yet the dispute was not only musical but also philosophical, and Rameau was confronted with a more-formidable adversary than he had realized. Rousseau built his case for the superiority of Italian music over French on the principle that melody must have priority over harmony, whereas Rameau based his on the assertion that harmony must have priority over melody. By pleading for melody, Rousseau introduced what later came to be recognized as a characteristic idea of Romanticism, namely, that in art the free expression of the creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures. By pleading for harmony, Rameau reaffirmed the first principle of French Classicism, namely, that conformity to rationally intelligible rules is a necessary condition of art, the aim of which is to impose order on the chaos of human experience. In music, Rousseau was a liberator. He argued for freedom in music, and he pointed to the Italian composers as models to be followed. In doing so he had more success than Rameau; he changed people’s attitudes. Christoph Willibald Gluck, who succeeded Rameau as the most-important operatic composer in France, acknowledged his debt to Rousseau’s teaching, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart based the text for his one-act operetta Bastien und Bastienne (Bastien and Bastienne) on Rousseau’s Le Devin du village. European music had taken a new direction. But Rousseau himself composed no more operas. Despite the success of Le Devin du village, or rather because of its success, Rousseau felt that, as a moralist who had decided to make a break with worldly values, he could not allow himself to go on working for the theatre. He decided to devote his energies henceforth to literature and philosophy. Major Works Of Political Philosophy As part of what Rousseau called his “reform,” or improvement of his own character, he began to look back at some of the austere principles that he had learned as a child in the Calvinist republic of Geneva. Indeed, he decided to return to that city, repudiate his Catholicism, and seek readmission to the Protestant church. He had in the meantime acquired a mistress, an illiterate laundry maid named Thérèse Levasseur. To the surprise of his friends, he took her with him to Geneva, presenting her as a nurse. Although her presence caused some murmurings, Rousseau was readmitted easily to the Calvinist communion, his literary fame having made him very welcome to a city that prided itself as much on its culture as on its morals. Rousseau had by that time completed a second Discourse in response to a question set by the Academy of Dijon: “What is the origin of the inequality among men and is it justified by natural law?” In response to that challenge he produced a masterpiece of speculative anthropology. The argument follows on that of his first Discourse by developing the proposition that people are naturally good and then tracing the successive stages by which they have descended from primitive innocence to corrupt sophistication. Rousseau begins his Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité (1755; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) by distinguishing two kinds of inequality, natural and artificial, the first arising from differences in strength, intelligence, and so forth, the second from the conventions that govern societies. It is the inequalities of the latter sort that he set out to explain. Adopting what he thought the properly “scientific” method of investigating origins, he attempts to reconstruct the earliest phases of human life on earth. He suggests that original humans were not social beings but entirely solitary, and to that extent he agrees with Thomas Hobbes’s account of the state of nature. But in contrast to the English pessimist’s view that human life in such a condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau claims that original humans, although admittedly solitary, were healthy, happy, good, and free. Human vices, he argued, date from the time when societies were formed. Rousseau thus exonerates nature and blames society. He says that passions that generate vices hardly existed in the state of nature but began to develop as soon as people formed societies. He goes on to suggest that societies started when people built their first huts, a development that facilitated cohabitation of males and females; that in turn produced the habit of living as a family and associating with neighbours. That “nascent society,” as Rousseau calls it, was good while it lasted; it was indeed the “golden age” of human history. Only it did not endure. With the tender passion of love there was also born the destructive passion of jealousy. Neighbours started to compare their abilities and achievements with one another, and that “marked the first step towards inequality and at the same time towards vice.” People started to demand consideration and respect. Their innocent self-love turned into culpable pride, as each person wanted to be better than everyone else. The introduction of property marked a further step toward inequality, since it made law and government necessary as a means of protecting it. Rousseau laments the “fatal” concept of property in one of his more-eloquent passages, describing the “horrors” that have resulted from the departure from a condition in which the earth belonged to no one. Those passages in his second Discourse excited later revolutionaries such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, but Rousseau himself did not think that the past could be undone in any way. There was no point in dreaming of a return to the golden age. Civil society, as Rousseau describes it, comes into being to serve two purposes: to provide peace for everyone and to ensure the right to property for anyone lucky enough to have possessions. It is thus of some advantage to everyone, but mostly to the advantage of the rich, since it transforms their de facto ownership into rightful ownership and keeps the poor dispossessed. It is a somewhat fraudulent social contract that introduces government, since the poor get so much less out of it than do the rich. Even so, the rich are no happier in civil society than are the poor because people in society are never satisfied. Society leads people to hate one another to the extent that their interests conflict, and the best they are able to do is to hide their hostility behind a mask of courtesy. Thus, Rousseau regards inequality not as a separate problem but as one of the features of the long process by which men become alienated from nature and from innocence. In the dedication Rousseau wrote for the second Discourse, in order to present it to the republic of Geneva, he nevertheless praised that city-state for having achieved the ideal balance between “the equality which nature established among men and the inequality which they have instituted among themselves.” The arrangement he discerned in Geneva was one in which the best persons were chosen by the citizens and put in the highest positions of authority. Like Plato, Rousseau always believed that a just society was one in which everyone was in his proper place. And having written the second Discourse to explain how people had lost their liberty in the past, he went on to write another book, Du Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), to suggest how they might recover their liberty in the future. Again Geneva was the model: not Geneva as it had become in 1754 when Rousseau returned there to recover his rights as a citizen, but Geneva as it had once been—i.e., Geneva as Calvin had designed it. The Social Contract begins with the sensational opening sentence: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” and proceeds to argue that men need not be in chains. If a civil society, or state, could be based on a genuine social contract, as opposed to the fraudulent social contract depicted in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, people would receive in exchange for their independence a better kind of freedom, namely true political, or republican, liberty. Such liberty is to be found in obedience to a self-imposed law. Rousseau’s definition of political liberty raises an obvious problem. For while it can be readily agreed that an individual is free if he obeys only rules he prescribes for himself, this is so because an individual is a person with a single will. A society, by contrast, is a set of persons with a set of individual wills, and conflict between separate wills is a fact of universal experience. Rousseau’s response to the problem is to define civil society as an artificial person united by a general will, or volonté générale. The social contract that brings society into being is a pledge, and the society remains in being as a pledged group. Rousseau’s republic is a creation of the general will—of a will that never falters in each and every member to further the public, common, or national interest—even though it may conflict at times with personal interest. Rousseau sounds very much like Hobbes when he says that under the pact by which people enter civil society everyone totally alienates himself and all his rights to the whole community. Rousseau, however, represents this act as a form of exchange of rights whereby people give up natural rights in return for civil rights. The bargain is a good one, because what is surrendered are rights of dubious value, whose realization depends solely on an individual’s own might, and what is obtained in return are rights that are both legitimate and enforced by the collective force of the community. There is no more haunting paragraph in The Social Contract than that in which Rousseau speaks of “forcing a man to be free.” But it would be wrong to interpret these words in the manner of those critics who see Rousseau as a prophet of modern totalitarianism. He does not claim that a whole society can be forced to be free but only that an occasional individual, who is enslaved by his passions to the extent of disobeying the law, can be restored by force to obedience to the voice of the general will that exists inside of him. The person who is coerced by society for a breach of the law is, in Rousseau’s view, being brought back to an awareness of his own true interests. For Rousseau there is a radical dichotomy between true law and actual law. Actual law, which he described in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, simply protects the status quo. True law, as described in The Social Contract, is just law, and what ensures its being just is that it is made by the people in their collective capacity as sovereign and obeyed by the same people in their individual capacities as subjects. Rousseau is confident that such laws could not be unjust because it is inconceivable that any people would make unjust laws for itself. Rousseau is, however, troubled by the fact that the majority of a people does not necessarily represent its most-intelligent citizens. Indeed, he agrees with Plato that most people are stupid. Thus, the general will, while always morally sound, is sometimes mistaken. Hence Rousseau suggests the people need a lawgiver—a great mind like Solon or Lycurgus or Calvin—to draw up a constitution and system of laws. He even suggests that such lawgivers need to claim divine inspiration in order to persuade the dim-witted multitude to accept and endorse the laws it is offered. That suggestion echoes a similar proposal by Niccolò Machiavelli, a political theorist whom Rousseau greatly admired and whose love of republican government he shared. An even more conspicuously Machiavellian influence can be discerned in Rousseau’s chapter on civil religion, where he argues that Christianity, despite its truth, is useless as a republican religion on the grounds that it is directed to the unseen world and does nothing to teach citizens the virtues that are needed in the service of the state, namely, courage, virility, and patriotism. Rousseau does not go so far as Machiavelli in proposing a revival of pagan cults, but he does propose a civil religion with minimal theological content designed to fortify and not impede (as Christianity impedes) the cultivation of martial virtues. It is understandable that the authorities of Geneva, profoundly convinced that the national church of their little republic was at the same time a truly Christian church and a nursery of patriotism, reacted angrily against that chapter in Rousseau’s Social Contract. By the year 1762, however, when The Social Contract was published, Rousseau had given up any thought of settling in Geneva. After recovering his citizen’s rights in 1754, he had returned to Paris and the company of his friends around the Encyclopédie. But he became increasingly ill at ease in such worldly society and began to quarrel with his fellow philosophes. An article for the Encyclopédie on the subject of Geneva, written by d’Alembert at Voltaire’s instigation, upset Rousseau partly by suggesting that the pastors of the city had lapsed from Calvinist severity into unitarian laxity and partly by proposing that a theatre should be erected there. Rousseau hastened into print with a defense of the Calvinist orthodoxy of the pastors and with an elaborate attack on the theatre as an institution that could only do harm to an innocent community such as Geneva. Years Of Seclusion And Exile By the time his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles (1758; Letter to Monsieur d’Alembert on the Theatre) appeared in print, Rousseau had already left Paris to pursue a life closer to nature on the country estate of his friend Mme d’Épinay near Montmorency. When the hospitality of Mme d’Épinay proved to entail much the same social round as that of Paris, Rousseau retreated to a nearby cottage, called Montlouis, under the protection of the Maréchal de Luxembourg. But even that highly placed friend could not save him in 1762 when his treatise Émile; ou, de l’education (Emile; or, On Education), was published and scandalized the pious Jansenists of the French Parlements even as The Social Contract scandalized the Calvinists of Geneva. In Paris, as in Geneva, they ordered the book to be burned and the author arrested; all the Maréchal de Luxembourg could do was to provide a carriage for Rousseau to escape from France. After formally renouncing his Genevan citizenship in 1763, Rousseau became a fugitive, spending the rest of his life moving from one refuge to another. The years at Montmorency had been the most productive of his literary career; The Social Contract, Émile, and Julie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Julie; or, The New Eloise) came out within 12 months, all three works of seminal importance. The New Eloise, being a novel, escaped the censorship to which the other two works were subject; indeed, of all his books it proved to be the most widely read and the most universally praised in his lifetime. It develops the Romanticism that had already informed his writings on music and perhaps did more than any other single work of literature to influence the spirit of its age. It made the author at least as many friends among the reading public—and especially among educated women—as The Social Contract and Émile made enemies among magistrates and priests. If it did not exempt him from persecution, at least it ensured that his persecution was observed, and admiring femmes du monde intervened from time to time to help him so that Rousseau was never, unlike Voltaire and Diderot, actually imprisoned. The theme of The New Eloise provides a striking contrast to that of The Social Contract. It is about people finding happiness in domestic as distinct from public life, in the family as opposed to the state. The central character, Saint-Preux, is a middle-class preceptor who falls in love with his upper-class pupil, Julie. She returns his love and yields to his advances, but the difference between their classes makes marriage between them impossible. Baron d’Étange, Julie’s father, has indeed promised her to a fellow nobleman named Wolmar. As a dutiful daughter, Julie marries Wolmar and Saint-Preux goes off on a voyage around the world with an English aristocrat, Bomston, from whom he acquires a certain stoicism. Julie succeeds in forgetting her feelings for Saint-Preux and finds happiness as wife, mother, and chatelaine. Some six years later Saint-Preux returns from his travels and is engaged as tutor to the Wolmar children. All live together in harmony, and there are only faint echoes of the old affair between Saint-Preux and Julie. The little community, dominated by Julie, illustrates one of Rousseau’s political principles: that while men should rule the world in public life, women should rule men in private life. At the end of The New Eloise, when Julie has made herself ill in an attempt to rescue one of her children from drowning, she comes face-to-face with a truth about herself: that her love for Saint-Preux has never died. The novel was clearly inspired by Rousseau’s own curious relationship—at once passionate and platonic—with Sophie d’Houdetot, a noblewoman who lived near him at Montmorency. He himself asserted in the Confessions that he was led to write the book by “a desire for loving, which I had never been able to satisfy and by which I felt myself devoured.” Saint-Preux’s experience of love forbidden by the laws of class reflects Rousseau’s own experience; and yet it cannot be said that The New Eloise is an attack on those laws, which seem, on the contrary, to be given the status almost of laws of nature. The members of the Wolmar household are depicted as finding happiness in living according to an aristocratic ideal. They appreciate the routines of country life and enjoy the beauties of the Swiss and Savoyard Alps. But despite such an endorsement of the social order, the novel was revolutionary; its very free expression of emotions and its extreme sensibility deeply moved its large readership and profoundly influenced literary developments. Émile is a book that seems to appeal alternately to the republican ethic of The Social Contract and the aristocratic ethic of The New Eloise. It is also halfway between a novel and a didactic essay. Described by the author as a treatise on education, it is not about schooling but about the upbringing of a rich man’s son by a tutor who is given unlimited authority over him. At the same time the book sets out to explore the possibilities of an education for republican citizenship. The basic argument of the book, as Rousseau himself expressed it, is that vice and error, which are alien to a child’s original nature, are introduced by external agencies, so that the work of a tutor must always be directed to counteracting those forces by manipulating pressures that will work with nature and not against it. Rousseau devotes many pages to explaining the methods the tutor must use. Those methods involve a noticeable measure of deceit, and although corporal punishment is forbidden, mental cruelty is not. Whereas The Social Contract is concerned with the problems of achieving freedom, Émile is concerned with achieving happiness and wisdom. In this different context religion plays a different role. Instead of a civil religion, Rousseau here outlines a personal religion, which proves to be a kind of simplified Christianity, involving neither revelation nor the familiar dogmas of the church. In the guise of La Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard (1765; The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar) Rousseau sets out what may fairly be regarded as his own religious views, since that book confirms what he says on the subject in his private correspondence. Rousseau could never entertain doubts about God’s existence or about the immortality of the soul. He felt, moreover, a strong emotional drive toward the worship of God, whose presence he felt most forcefully in nature, especially in mountains and forests untouched by the hand of man. He also attached great importance to conscience, the “divine voice of the soul in man,” opposing this both to the bloodless categories of rationalistic ethics and to the cold tablets of biblical authority. That minimal creed put Rousseau at odds with the orthodox adherents of the churches and with the openly atheistic philosophes of Paris, so that despite the enthusiasm that some of his writings, and especially The New Eloise, excited in the reading public, he felt himself increasingly isolated, tormented, and pursued. After he had been expelled from France, he was chased from canton to canton in Switzerland. He reacted to the suppression of The Social Contract in Geneva by indicting the regime of that city-state in a pamphlet entitled Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). No longer, as in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, was Geneva depicted as a model republic but as one that had been taken over by “twenty-five despots”; the subjects of the king of England were said to be free by comparison with the victims of Genevan tyranny. It was in England that Rousseau found refuge after he had been banished from the canton of Bern. The Scottish philosopher David Hume took him there and secured the offer of a pension from King George III; but once in England, Rousseau became aware that certain British intellectuals were making fun of him, and he suspected Hume of participating in the mockery. Various symptoms of paranoia began to manifest themselves in Rousseau, and he returned to France incognito. Believing that Thérèse was the only person he could rely on, he finally married her in 1768, when he was 56 years old. The Last Decade In the remaining 10 years of his life Rousseau produced primarily autobiographical writings, mostly intended to justify himself against the accusations of his adversaries. The most important was his Confessions, modeled on the work of the same title by St. Augustine and achieving something of the same classic status. He also wrote Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques (1780; Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques) to reply to specific charges by his enemies and Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782; Reveries of the Solitary Walker), one of the most moving of his books, in which the intense passion of his earlier writings gives way to a gentle lyricism and serenity. And indeed, Rousseau does seem to have recovered his peace of mind in his last years, when he was once again afforded refuge on the estates of great French noblemen, first the Prince de Conti and then the Marquis de Girardin, in whose park at Ermenonville he died. Duignan, B., & Cranston, M. (2018, October 15). Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Retrieved January 10, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau

I hardly dare admit it but I’d never made chocolate brownies until this weekend so I decided that Halloween was as good as excuse as any to have a go. These are delicious. They contain more chocolate than can possibly be good for anyone but we’re not complaining. And we made them suitably scary with the addition of these ghoulish sticks of decorating joy. by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr 250g good dark chocolate 200g unsalted butter 200g caster sugar 3 free-range eggs 125g plain flour 50g cocoa powder 100g broken walnuts Pre-heat oven to 160C/gas mark 3. Put 3-4cm water into a saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Break chocolate up, cut up the butter, and place both in a mixing bowl. Put it over the pan of simmering water and turn the heat off. Stir until melted together and smooth. In another bowl whisk the sugar with the eggs, using the balloon whisk, until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Add chocolate mixture to the eggs; mix thoroughly with wooden spoon. Sift flour and cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Stir in walnuts if you have decided to use them. Line the baking tin with a piece of foil and pour in the mixture. Oven gloves on. Place the tin on a shelf in the middle of the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Oven gloves back on. Take the tin out of the oven and stand on wire rack. Leave until cool enough to cut into squares. And to accompany my baking we of course had to have a pumpkin who, carved by my husband, looks like he might have overindulged with one too many brownies. Yes, I’ll enjoy doing some needlework in front of the fire during the cold Winter months. I should have this done in time for Christmas if I do a little bit every night. That was 3 years ago and I’ve done a despairing one line of said Emily Peacock Kiss tapestry and it now sits in a bag on a shelf near the sofa laughing at me. But still I’m determined, and strangely convinced, that I will finish it. One day. Just as soon as I work out the instructions and manage to stay awake past 9pm. I like making things but for some reason I still haven’t learned that I’m not nearly as good as I hope I am and that these crafty things take far more patience than I will ever have. I blame Kirsty and Cath Kidston and all those women I hate to like. I don’t want to be one of them, I’m too busy doing other busy, modern woman about the countryside sort of things. So, as I get ready for another episode of Kirsty’s Homemade Britain which I shall watch whilst lounging comfortably on the piles of envelope cushions which litter my sofa (they’re addictively easy to make once you get the hang of it) I’ve found something else I want to have a go at. These advent calendar kits from Cox and Cox not only look lovely in the pictures but I reckon they’ll look even lovelier when hanging on the wall and my children will think I’m the best Christmas Mum in the world. My husband says I’ll never finish them and he’s seen a chocolate Lego calendar which they’ll like much more. He’s probably right but I’m going to give it a go. I’ll just try the one – they can share, they’ll like that. Who’d want a chocolate advent calendar all made and ready to go, when they can have a half-finished, homemade one filled with whatever I can find lying around the house the night before. No contest surely. Absolutely Nothing but COS by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Buy : Blankets and Throws by Samantha Taylor Absolutely Nothing To Wear : Stripes by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Buy : The Perfect Card by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Cook : Pimp Up Your Pies by Cafe Salvation We’re very excited to have the deliciously clever Helen Creese from Cafe Salvation contributing to ANTW. She will be sharing some of her most popular recipes from their wonderful menu and to start we have everyone’s favourite Winter warmer…..PIES! “I may well regret saying this but at last, it’s cold enough to get some winter warmers on the menu! The woodburners arrival in the café is imminent, so to keep us toastie in the run up to its installation, last week we cooked up our tasty Punjabi Pie. This dish reminds me of my childhood. My Dad is a fantastic cook and I spent most evenings as a kid whiling away an evening in the kitchen, chatting to my Pops whilst subconsciously absorbing everything he was doing. Pops is a fan of spice and loves to experiment with food, adapting recipes to better suit his tastes, and this dish is a prime example of that. Based on our British Classic, Cottage Pie, the secret to Punjabi Pie lies in the spice mix added to the onion and garlic during the first stages of cooking. For 500g of beef, start by frying one red onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic (depending on size of cloves and how much you enjoy the flavour). Add one stick of chopped celery and one diced carrot. When the onion and veg are soft, add a healthy palm-full (sorry, I don’t use measured devices, but if you cup your fingers to create a well in your palm, you’ll have the right amount) of ground cumin, coriander and half a palm-full of turmeric. Stir until aromatic, then add your beef to the onion and spice mix. Season well, add some tomato puree and fresh red chilli (quantity dependent on how hot you like it), and once the beef is browned, add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Half-fill your tin with water and add this to your mixture. Taste and alter your seasoning to suit. Wack in the oven for 30-40 minutes and crack on with your mash topping. Pops would use a mixture of potatoes and swede; I opted for pots and sweet potato (mainly because I like the colour and I eat with my eyes). Boil both veg – about 3 good sized potatoes and one sweet potato for 500g beef – in salted water until soft, drain and mash with plenty of salt and pepper and a generous knob of butter. We like to throw in some grated cheddar (again, it gives the mash a glorious golden colour as well as tasting yummy). Take the beef mixture out of the oven and pop in to your serving dish, spread the mash over the top (make it nice and thick, there’s nothing worse than an anorexic pie topping), and sprinkle on a bit more grated cheddar. Pop the dish back in the oven for about 25-30 mins (depending on your oven: I use an Aga, so in a conventional oven I’d have it on 190 for 25-30 mins). Once your topping is golden and smelling amazing, your pie is ready! Why not Pimp Up your Pies?! You can add a twist to most run-of-the-mill recipes, turning wet, weekday suppers in to dramatic delights, just with the addition of a few spices, fresh herbs, lemon or lime juice….it really can be that simple. I’m looking forward to taking the Punjabi Pie in to another realm: Sherpa’s Pie will involve lamb, fresh ginger, chilli, toasted cumin and coriander seeds, maybe some lentils and spinach…I’m undecided on my mash topping – any suggestions? Our lovely customers enjoyed their slices of Punjabi with some Glorious Green Beans (Granny Smith’s runners always have been, and always will be, the sweetest runner beans I’ve ever tasted) and a delicious dollop of spicy red lentils. Hungry, anyone?” Find Salvation here…… Our opening hours are: Thursday: 0930 – 1500 Friday: 0930 – 1700 Saturday: 1000 – 1700 Lower Mitchell Barn, Nr Ledbury, Herefordshire HR8 1EG T: 01531 636380 I must have appeared rather rude as a child. I hardly ever thanked people in writing for any of the gifts received at Christmas or on birthdays. I’m not sure if I just didn’t see the point, or was just a bit too lazy, or had thanked them in my head and so thought that I didn’t need to actually tell them. It’s no wonder relatives got cross. I’d be furious. So now, be it as an act of guilt or a reaction to email over kill, I love nothing better than sending hand written cards. I have a drawer full of postcards and notecards which I can dip in to at any time when a “Thank You” or a “Welcome to the World” or a “Happy Birthday” is required. And I have a couple of favourite places I go to time and time again to find the perfect card. The first is Archivist. A small and perfectly formed printing press based in Oxfordshire who do the most beautiful letterpress cards as well as a Natural History collection (created from exclusive access to the NH archives) and hand printed notelets. You can buy them online or in selected retailers including John Lewis and Paperchase. The second is Nineteen Seventy Three. An online emporium with some of the most fabulous postcards, greeting cards, wrapping paper, invitations, notebooks and all sorts. With collections from various illustrators and artists including The Good Life, Darling Clementine, Belle and Boo and Sukie, there really is something for everyone. You can buy them direct from their online store or from various retailers. I could go on and on and on and there will be probably be many updates to this post. For now though, thank you very much. I was never really in to stripes for myself until quite recently. I have always been in to stripes for my boys. They just seem to suit them from end to end. Stripes have always been notoriously unflattering, they widen everything – I’m talking horizontal here, vertical is a whole different story and needs to be approached with extra caution. My children were both tiny babies and giant toddlers but regardless I wrapped them both in as many straight lines as I could get my hands on. The stripe – for adult or child – has to be right though and it’s worth investing a bit of time and money in to finding the ones which really do work. When it comes to the children I am a Polarn O Pyret addict. They do a stripe better than any other I know. From leggings – which I absolutely swear by for little boys – to long sleeved tees, all in ones, socks, hats and pants, they are the very very best. They have lasted me through two incredibly active boy babies and are still going strong. So, after years of telling me that stripes made his “eyes go funny”, my husband recently came back from New York with bundles of stripey offerings for both me and the children. I hadn’t asked for anything apart from a denim shirt from Levis – which he found and is perfect – but I did mention that J.Crew might be worth a visit if he did feel guilty for leaving me for 10 days that I might need anything else. That was as much direction as he was given and blimey did he do well. I am now the proud owner of 4 of the very best J.Crew stripey tops I never even knew existed. Each one a little bit different in colour or style and very well considered indeed. I would never have been this generous on myself. I’m in stripe heaven and I may be here for some time. So to end this rather self satisfied post about stripes you might be pleased to know that J.Crew have a UK online store now which is very good news for wardrobes everywhere. And there seems to be a bit of a sale on at the moment so definitely worth a look. Central Saint Martins, the best 4 (college) years of my life. Wish I could go back and do it all over again.