Teens stabbed at Redondo Beach mall are rushed into surgery www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
Redondo Beach CA Dec 31 2012 The two teenagers stabbed inside the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach late Saturday night suffered serious wounds and have been rushed into surgery.
The boy and the girl were taken to an area hospital, but their condition was not immediately known, according to the Redondo Beach Police Department.

The stabbing occurred in the public area of the mall’s third level, which is where the movie theaters, a food court and various shops are located.

Late Saturday night police said they had found no witnesses. A mall security officer discovered the injured pair and called for help from police who already were in the mall area. Before the boy passed out, he provided a general description of the suspect, said Sgt. David Christian.

Many stores were in the process of closing as the investigation began, and officers did not order a lockdown, but they did stop vehicles as they left. The attacker, however, is still at large.

"We did not have a lot to go on," Christian said. "We basically blocked all the exits for the parking area. We just stopped every car that went by and looked inside with a flashlight and talked to the people inside. It was a lot of cars."

Redondo Beach police were assisted by police from Torrance, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach.

A manager at the movie complex, which was showing such holiday releases as "Les Miserables," "Jack Reacher" and "Django Unchained," told The Times that the mall administration had directed her to close down the theaters.

"We don’t know anything about it," said the woman, who did not give her name. "I don’t know what happened. The mall said you need to close down."

Christian said he was not aware of any order from police to close the cinemas, but he said he thought that, after the incident, the theaters were allowing no further admissions.

Investigators are reviewing mall surveillance video for possible stills or video that might assist their probe. Anyone with information is asked to call the Redondo Beach Police Tip line at (310) 937-6685, or send a text message to (310) 339-2362. Source:LA NOW

Joshua Hineman arrested in Huntsville Walmart robbery www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
HUNTSVILLE, AL Dec 31 2012 
Police said that a suspected shoplifter stopped by Walmart loss prevention is behind bars after police said he got physical with a Walmart security agents.
According to the store security officer, they observed Joshua Hineman, concealing merchandise at the Sparkman Drive location.
When he tried to leave without paying, the loss prevention agent confronted him. Hineman used force in his attempt to flee but security was able to subdue and detain him until police officers arrived.
Hineman has been booked on several charges. No word on what he was trying to steal.

Richmond tow service offering Toast’d Tow to prevent DUI's www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
RICHMOND, VA Dec 31 20102 – During one of the busiest party months of the year, Seiberts Towing is stepping in to help prevent drunk driving. The towing company unveiled it’s Toast’d Tow program this week. This community service offers to get Richmonders and their cars home for juse $50-dollars between the hours of 10pm and 4am.
Toast’d Tow will operate seven nights a week leading up to New Years Day and provides holiday revelers another option for getting home safely – car included. Randy Seibert, President of Seibert’s Family of Companies says “Around the holidays, people often find themselves in situations where they can’t drive home safely. With our new Toast’d Tow program, you don’t need to worry about taking a taxi home at the end of the night and coming back for your car the next day. Our company cares about the community and getting people home safely.”
December is also National Impaired Driving Prevention Month. Each December, automobile accidents involving impaired drivers occur more frequently. In the past five years, the Commonwealth of Virginia had over 1,360 DUI fatalities.
Seibert’s says impaired drivers must be within Richmond city limits to deliver them and their car home safely. Delivery of drivers and vehicles outside the city limits incurs an additional $1.50 per mile charge.
If you have any questions about the problem you can contact The Toast’d Tow hotline from 10pm to 4am daily at 804-233-5757.

source:CBS6

Fired North Carolina employee, robs-kills former boss www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
DUNN, NC Dec 31 2012  (AP) - Harnett County authorities are accusing a 56-year-old man of robbing and killing his former boss.

The sheriff's office says James Davis is charged with murder in the death of 76-year-old Charles Stewart. Additional charges are pending.

Sheriff Larry Rollins accuses Davis of breaking into Stewart's home in Dunn about 10:30 a.m. Sunday, and beating Stewart and his wife before fleeing with guns, jewelry and cash.

Deputies responding to a 911 call found Stewart dead outside. Stewarts' injured, 62-year-old wife was found inside and taken to Betsy Johnson Regional Hospital.

Davis was found at an abandoned home in Clinton about 7:45 p.m. The Stewarts' stolen van was also there.

Rollins says Davis used to work for Stewart before he was let go about a year ago.

 

Time Square security tight for New Year's Eve celebration www.privteofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
NEW YORK NY Dec 31 2012 AP— When revelers pack Times Square for the annual New Year's eve celebration on Monday night, police will observe a tradition of their own: giving them lots of company.
Each year, the New York Police Department assigns thousands of extra patrols to festivities — in ways seen and unseen — to control the crowd and watch for any signs of trouble. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are expected to pack into the bow-tie stretch of streets in Midtown Manhattan to see the crystal ball drop and ring in 2013.

"We think it's the safest place in the world on New Year's Eve," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told The Associated Press ahead of the holiday.

Security in Times Square has become an obsession for the NYPD in the post-9/11 world, especially since the botched attempted car bombing there in the summer of 2010. More recently, details emerged in another case in Florida saying that one suspect considered Times Square as a potential target.

"Times Square is an iconic location that draws a significant number of people every day," Kelly said. "New Year's Eve is the apex of that, so we have to plan accordingly."

Kelly stressed that there are no specific terror threats related to a celebration televised across the globe. But believing that the so-called "Crossroads of the World" is always in the crosshairs of would-be terrorists, the nation's largest police department has turned securing the event into a science.

Hotels are a particular concern. The department has worked closely with managers, urging them to guard against anyone who might seek to check into a guest room and use it to launch a sniper or other type of attack.

"We ask them to monitor people coming into the hotels very closely," Kelly said.

In terms of crowd control, police noticed last year that revelers starting flocking to Times Square earlier in the day to hear rehearsals of performers scheduled for various telecasts.

"At one o'clock in the afternoon, there was a significant crowd," Kelly said. "It was really packed with people."

So this year, the department will adjust by posting more officers on the streets before nightfall, the commissioner said.

Along with the army of additional uniformed officers, police will use barriers to prevent overcrowding and for checkpoints to inspect vehicles, enforce a ban on alcohol and check handbags. Visitors will see bomb-sniffing dogs and heavily armed counter-terrorism teams. Rooftop patrols and NYPD helicopters will keep an eye on the crowd as well.

Other plainclothes officers are assigned to blend into the crowd. Many officers will be wearing palm-size radiation detectors designed to give off a signal if they detect evidence of a dirty bomb, an explosive intended to spread panic by creating a radioactive cloud.

The bomb squad and another unit specializing in chemical and biological threats will sweep hotels, theaters, construction sites and parking garages. They also will patrol the sprawling Times Square subway station.

The NYPD also will rely on a network of thousands of closed-circuit security cameras carpeting the roughly 1.7 square miles south of Canal Street, the subway system and parts of Midtown Manhattan.

Another annual practice: Sealing manhole covers and removing mailboxes to prevent anyone from using them to conceal an explosive or other device.

In 2010, Faisal Shahzad left a Nissan Pathfinder outfitted with a crude, homemade propane-and-gasoline bomb on a block teeming with tourists. The explosive malfunctioned, but the near-miss spread a wave of fear across the city. Authorities say Shahzad was backed by the Pakistani Taliban,

Shahzad was arrested and, after a guilty plea, sentenced to life in prison. But he warned, "Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun."

Surfing the Web ... It's all in a day's work.

To contact us Click HERE
My main project for the summer is basically the dream of any soon-to-be job-seeking college student (like myself). I am working with Human Resources to research and develop a social media strategy for recruiting, observing what kind of cool new methods other companies are implementing. The best part of this job is that my research consists of looking at company websites, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, facebook pages and YouTube accounts all day long. Lately, I’ve been too busy to keep up with my research, but now that our presentations are going to be here oh so soon (exactly two weeks from now) I have to make time so I can be fully prepared to explain what’s going on in the exciting world of recruitment.

Here is a little peek of what I’ve been working on …

twitter – Lots of companies are using their twitter feeds to publicize job openings in addition to sharing information about their culture or their employees, so I follow anyone and everyone from our main competitors to companies like Starbucks and Google. One thing I’ve learned: Recruiters love to tweet … all the time.

So many tweets, so little time ...

YouTube – Some companies are using YouTube to promote their company culture and the organization by posting videos of company events and employee profiles showcasing what they love about their jobs. (How cool is that?!)

Since I’m a marketing major, all of this research is showing me how many different ways social media can be used for one company. Also, I will begin looking for my first post-grad job rather soon, and I’m learning how to be as thorough as possible when preparing for an interview. Most people long for the time to invest in this kind of research, and I’m lucky enough to have it be my job!

I couldn’t end this post without a shameless plug for Vera’s company culture or our open jobs … so check out the official Vera Bradley blog, Inside Stitch, for some fabulous posts about life at Vera Bradley, and be sure to stop by our Careers page to see what openings we have at our home office and in our retail stores!

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

To contact us Click HERE
fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

To contact us Click HERE
I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

To contact us Click HERE


While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

To contact us Click HERE
Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

Surfing the Web ... It's all in a day's work.

To contact us Click HERE
My main project for the summer is basically the dream of any soon-to-be job-seeking college student (like myself). I am working with Human Resources to research and develop a social media strategy for recruiting, observing what kind of cool new methods other companies are implementing. The best part of this job is that my research consists of looking at company websites, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, facebook pages and YouTube accounts all day long. Lately, I’ve been too busy to keep up with my research, but now that our presentations are going to be here oh so soon (exactly two weeks from now) I have to make time so I can be fully prepared to explain what’s going on in the exciting world of recruitment.

Here is a little peek of what I’ve been working on …

twitter – Lots of companies are using their twitter feeds to publicize job openings in addition to sharing information about their culture or their employees, so I follow anyone and everyone from our main competitors to companies like Starbucks and Google. One thing I’ve learned: Recruiters love to tweet … all the time.

So many tweets, so little time ...

YouTube – Some companies are using YouTube to promote their company culture and the organization by posting videos of company events and employee profiles showcasing what they love about their jobs. (How cool is that?!)

Since I’m a marketing major, all of this research is showing me how many different ways social media can be used for one company. Also, I will begin looking for my first post-grad job rather soon, and I’m learning how to be as thorough as possible when preparing for an interview. Most people long for the time to invest in this kind of research, and I’m lucky enough to have it be my job!

I couldn’t end this post without a shameless plug for Vera’s company culture or our open jobs … so check out the official Vera Bradley blog, Inside Stitch, for some fabulous posts about life at Vera Bradley, and be sure to stop by our Careers page to see what openings we have at our home office and in our retail stores!

MERMAID AS METAPHOR (a beginning consideration from forkergirl's temporary fish eye lens advantage)

To contact us Click HERE
fish eye lens advantage image from forkergirl's photostream

In this consideration of Mermaid as Metaphor, a point of entry and a point of departure (bifurcation hub) are formed by two elements brought together (in a range of manipulations) forming a third element that is a composite of the two (1 element plus 1 element = a 3rd element [1+1=3], as Rima pointed out in a limited forked multimedia story class). At this hub is a common depiction of mermaids in which two unrelated biological segments of two organisms are brought together in (primarily visual) unification usually depicted as horizontally split halves forming wholeness: a mermaid.

This (visual) wholeness is a form of marriage, an easily imagined evolutionary progression or regression of marriage. Though the one mermaid outcome of wholeness formation is usually offered, there are at least two composites that would emerge from each union in this imagined evolution or regression. Human upper body + fish lower body, and human lower body + fish upper body. This is an answer to where's the other halves? —the human lower body and the fish upper body? An example of this more complete merger outcome scenario supplies the horror factor of The Fly (1958). The human/fly hybrid is created when a teleportation experiment meant to be an exclusively human teleportation experiment becomes a human/insect teleportation experiment when a fly is discovered inside the teleportation chamber with the scientist when the experiment is already underway and no one is there to stop the experiment. Though the human/fly hybrid is an unintended outcome, that the hybrid is an outcome indicates a form of successful, if horrifying, biological union. The film features both composite forms: human body with fly head/hand and fly body with human head/hand. Once the hybrids emerged, the assumption was that capturing the fly body/human head composite and repeating the experiment with both hybrid outcomes in the chamber, would restore the human and the fly to pre-composite forms though other possibilities would have been as likely had the fly body/human head variation not been snared in a web of spider for whom the genetic modifications of the humanized insect changed nothing.

A cautionary tale, to be sure. A scientist accused of playing God to be sure.

Though I hesitate the use the term, this serves, in part, as a, well, deconstruction of the mermaid metaphor. It is a closer look inside what is and isn't occurring in the architecture of the metaphor that a mermaid is, and simultaneously is an invitation to explore what can happen/is happening inside other metaphors, using the outcomes of those explorations to establish other opportunities and forms of expression: the making of other poams (products of acts of making).

In popular depictions of mermaids, biological segments contributed by the human and by the (unspecified species of) fish seem interchangeable, largely because each segment apparently remains intact with crossover of fish into human, human into fish. The fish and human portions of a mermaid hybrid system could be separated easily. It is obvious where to cut. The human and fish segments seem closed systems stitched together (or in some other way held in place) superficially. The forming of human/fish composites seems exceedingly neat with a well-defined boundary separating fish function and appearance from human function and appearance. No transgression of species apparently occurs; nothing, well, fishy in the merger. Mermaids, rather, seem models of respect for species purity despite their being linked. No tinkering with the actual DNA as human DNA and fish genetic code don't mix, but instead exist side-by side. Good neighbors who share much, but not everything. Good spouses who share much but not everything.

If a deeper connection is considered, the external division and separation of fish and human raises questions about function, form, and layout of internal organs. Just how is the mermaid metaphor creature mapped internally? Surely anatomical mingling occurs, or it is difficult to imagine viability of this trans-species as a species distinct from human and fish with its own biological frameworks and systems; the fish, in the more frequent ichthyological bottom half mermaid configuration, would have no heart, no brain, no circulation of human blood in fish areas. If the halves are stitched together superficially and not integrated into a single being, each half would then need separate and contained systems of respiration, systems of ingestion, systems of excretion, etc. A romanticized depiction (and why not such a depiction!) of mermaids does not support contamination of the beautiful, usually, woman, with fishiness. Indeed, the mermaid might even be a purer form of woman for rejecting genitalia in favor of fishtail; with breasts, she may suckle a child and could even seem, depending on who's constructing the idea system, nearly as wholesome and good as Mary, Mother of Christ. In this wonderful anatomical chart (to the right) of a mermaid from gearfuse.com, the internal revelation is still decidedly human in keeping with the biological structure of most mermaids; no doubt a common or typical mermaid is dissected in the well-imagined image of mermaid reality wherever it exists, in imagination, gaming, and/or virtual worlds, for instance. Mermaid Diaries is a blog all about a little mermaid named Natalia Zelmanov and her adventures in second life. Below is a video of a Spore mermaid followed by a video of a Second Life mermaid show:






The common mermaid is uncomplicated, unproblematic in biological terms. She (usually) looks good,
and, in keeping with her fish contribution, is an excellent catch.

Consideration of shared biological functioning is not meant to discredit the mythic or aesthetic function of mermaid systems, and certainly does not undermine an ability of imagination to overcome problems of mermaid existence within shared physical realities. That closed biological and chemical systems can align themselves without sharing structures or circulation, may give a nod to some of the power of imagination as part of the glue maintaining the human/fish alignment. Not that everyone can (or should) use imagination in tis manner; what I refer to as imagination may be referred to differently in other cultural and/or belief systems that configure reality differently, including religions in which what some might consider supernatural is real; prayer connects a human mortal reality with a divine system of existence; prayer and belief function as bridges between these configurations.

It is quite odd, I think, that more mingling apparently does not occur at the juncture of fish and human in a mermaid system of co-dependency to be one being, one creature; why not more raggedness as these halves struggle to come together? In the production of mermaids, if something is occurring biologically, why not more evidence of mutation in the manipulation of humans and fish to produce mermaids? Where are the failures? Where are the monsters of human/fish alliances? Where are the other creature from black lagoons (gill-men) and other evolutionary missing links along the evolutionary road to mermaid? What is it about certain environments that seem to encourage emergence of human/fish hybrids? So much perfection! —similar, it seems (sorry for a lack of statistics) to a rate of perfection in production of angels or other beings embodying some human elements and some divine elements. Something in imagination apparently overcomes potential conflict in human and fish unions —did not George W. Bush say that he hoped the human and the fish could coexist peacefully? In configuring scenarios of this coexistence, some of that peaceful cohabitation would exist within a single body, half human, half fish; the bi-species creature practicing a form of political correctness in blending —indeed, Bush's statement could be construed as a call for transspecies experimentation, phase one focusing on human and fish peacful coexistence scenarios.

Had W seen Shiloh Pepin on a Discovery Channel documentary (Mermaid Girl) when he said that?
Did he realize that there was such a condition as sirenomelia, that humans were sometimes born with their legs fused in a disease commonly called mermaid syndrome, a challenging coexistence that might look peaceful? What hope for the future of humans did he foresee in improving human/fish coexistence? What's in that enhanced coexistence for Americans? for democracy? for capitalism?

In written metaphor also things come together with suspicious ease, perhaps in part because of familiarity with a long history of mythical part human creatures from ancient, classical, and sacred texts ; indeed, even Jesus Christ is a half-human outcome of a human/divine union. Evolutions occur inside metaphor; there is a journey from something to something, and details of the journey are seldom mapped. Mapping of what occurs inside metaphor could be quite revelatory and could lead to other revelatory forms of making, thinking, and/or understanding. To the left, Gort becomes The Stig, and to the right, Sambo becomes Obama in two metaphork evolutions by forkergirl. Much, much (compelling and exciting, among other forms of work) remains to be done.

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

To contact us Click HERE
I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

To contact us Click HERE


While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

To contact us Click HERE
Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

This is actually a response to David's DJ Shadow post down there but the comment wouldnt allow my video

To contact us Click HERE
I was under the impression that John Oswald's Plexure, released in 1993, was the first entire album to depend solely on other musicians' work. Plexure is about 20 minutes of mixed and mashed snippets of pop songs released between, I think, 1980-1990, or at least somewhere in that span of years. It’s pretty disorienting, but also extremely interesting, if you can stand what essentially sounds like somebody fiddling with a radio tuning knob, constantly cycling through radio stations for 20 minutes.

However, I think Oswald has been quick to distance himself from "sampling" in the traditional sense, like what is done in hip-hop. Oswald labels what he does as Plunderphonics (essay: Plunderphonics or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative) and seems to draw the distinction between Plunderphonics and sampling in that hip-hop and other sample-heavy genres, e.g. glitch, normally attempt to fit their samples into an existing peice, or a peice which will exist; either way, the sample is merely a layer among layers. To "plunder" is instead to make music exclusively out of samples, to use the sampling machine as a musical instrument in itself. To create plunderphonic music is then to use such an instrument to recreate "noise" (what we hear around us, natural or unnatural) the same way that composers (Oswald dwells on Ives in particular) create melody out of existing tone scales and public domain pieces (since many of those older composers were creating in a copyright-free era).

It seems that Oswald is aligning himself with Futurist composer Luigi Russolo, who created “music” out of assembled devices which would recreate noises such as whistling, thundering, creaking, etc, and John Cage, whose compositions using radios in the 40s and 50s (I think that’s right) preface Oswald’s own radio-derived pieces. Essentially, Oswald provides an avenue out of the copyright dilemma by asserting that A. “plundering” has been a musical tradition stretching from Bach to jazz to contemporary pop music, and B. the sampler is a unique instrument, just as are pianos, trumpets, guitars, capable of producing music that, though it may be derived entirely from other pieces, is wholly unique on its own and is thus a creation equal to any other musical or artistic creation.

I have Plexure if anybody is interested in hearing any of it, but I won’t post anything from it since I don’t want anybody unwillingly bombarded by such abrasive dissonance. I will, however, post a Girl Talk song; Girl Talk is the pseudonym for DJ Gregg Gillis, who is a contemporary mash-up artist. Mash-up, as a genre, I believe probably comes closest genre-wise to reproducing Oswald’s aims in Plunderphonics, except that mash-up, generally speaking, is party music.



The song is track number 10, I think, from Gillis' 3rd album, Night Ripper (Warning: Explicit language). The video was created by Concordia University professor Matthew Soar, for the Open Cinema Source Project.

Part of the fun of mash-up music, and Girl Talk's in particular, is also being to recognize all the samples (there's something like 200 or so,maybe more, samples spread out over 16 songs) which relates to a buzzword thats been circulating recently about the "pleasure of the known," in which culture has become so reflexive and referential that part of the cultural experience, and part of participating in society, is being able to place references (think of such fare as Mystery Science Theater 3000, Family Guy, the Simpsons, not to mention tons of poetry, etc). To be a participant and to derive pleasure from participation seems increasingly tethered to knowing sources, and being appreciate the layering of sources (a source referencing a source refering a source). Of course, this is incredibly off topic and deserves a different post entirely.

As for what David said about subdivision, I like the application to text poetry and I agree that prosody seems to be the replacement for the music that would accompany a video poem (I guess that should be reversed: music is the replacement for prosody). Or even for a video poem without music, video itself has a rhythm to it, as Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky noted in his book Sculpture in Time: "The dominant, all powerful factor of the film image is rhythm, expressing the course of time within the frame....[The expression of time]...is the very foundation of cinema...Rhythm...is not the metrical sequence of peices; what makes it is the time-thrust within the frames. Rhythm...is the main formative element of cinema....Rhythm in cinema is conveyed by the life of the object visibly recorded in the frame." (Sculpting in Time, pgs 113-120).

Anyway, I agree that sampling, or plundering involves the subdividing of ideas in a LFT kind of way; the only quibble I have, David, is your statement that "[DJ Shadow] unit[es] others' fragments". Isnt it the other way around, though? Don't his sources, and the sources for most other musical sampling/plundering begin as united, and then the artist/sampler/Dj/plunderer fragments those compositions? At least, that really only applies to music-- not that a DJ couldnt unite out of fragments, I just dont know of any case where a DJ has done so. I think the point you made is still relevant for poets though, and maybe this is where the alikeness between a DJ and a poet ends: a poet can unite fragments or fragment unities and create poetry out of either. We're lucky to have it both ways.

As for what I was supposed to post, about the supposedly French Oulipian idea about how any word has the potential and the weight of all other words (which I think I now actually picked up from Derrida, not Oulipo) I'll get to that this weekend, since what began as a simple "Hey, here's the link" has turned into something else.

DJ Adio at Beachwood Place with Phillip Bimstein's Door music reveal some of the Vibrational Ways of Doors in Augmenting [Limited Forked Theory] Configurable Spaces, including idea spaces, and a fondling of ripples of creation —riding some of those wavy portals

To contact us Click HERE


While at Beachwood Place Mall, looking, as usual, for evidence of interaction (such as shadows and reflections), I came upon DJ Adio in a shop window, positioned where both he and his reflection could be seen on two glass planes on which reflections from passersby also temporarily converged, diverged, then converged again on the second plane. A sampling, if you will, of space, of occupancy; a sharing of moment as he spun red discs of music I could not hear.

The sharing of space as reflections converged seemed to be a visual aspect of what the DJ was mixing; persons he did not know, could not see were becoming part of him, walking through his image, enlarging what his image could contain, just as he was enlarging sonic space and sonic meanings.

DJ Adio was functioning as a door, as a bifurcation point, as an entrance and exit point, an access point —and his gestures seemed to be shuffling what was converging, configuring the sonic and visual geometries of the connections. A fantastic door system that I wanted to highlight and explore further with Philip Bimstein's Door music and added vocal tracks expressing and exploring some gist of my observations that were part of the convergence, part of the collaboration.

DJ Adio Door Ways Ghost Relay: an adventure in vibration studies was a poam outcome of an unplanned investigation of a convergence of DJ, reflection, observation, meaning as transit system, the mixing of elements by a DJ in the configuration of a moment.

In this investigation, the movements and gestures took on more context as ripples of experience, shockwaves fanning out from a central event: the DJ's role as an assembler of realities within realities; DJ Adio was acting as a hub into which realities fed, a hub of convergence where he reassembled what converged and transmitted alternate versions, more of the other possibilities for the information that converged in his hub. DJ Adio as relay station, as transformer.

"You are mathematical. You don't have to do math; you are math." -Thylias Moss

To contact us Click HERE
Here's a little math I can get with:

“A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal-sized billiard balls.” --Terry Pratchett

Also, I may consider a side-gig in thaumaturgy.

Yes. I think I may.

“I believe anything is possible.
Research into quantum physics
proves that a system changes
simply by someone observing it.
Therefore, all you have to do is be
awake and aware of your environment,
and that enables you to
transform everything around you.
It sounds like hocus pocus, but
scientists are coming to realize that
just thinking about something can
make it happen. Turns out maybe
faith can move mountains.”
--Christine Anderson

It's all about the details ...

To contact us Click HERE
If you feel like your Vera Bradley Store is unique, that's because it really is! They still carry the same products, of course, but the wallpaper, furniture, and other details are all especially coordinated to match the personality and character of the region in which it is located. I was able to see this last week when I attended the Beachwood Place store opening in Cleveland. Our Visual Merchandising team put together, as always, an outstanding display!

One tradition is the presence of an Ira Yeager painting behind the checkout counter. It all started when Co-founder Barbara Bradley Baekgaard lent one of the paintings from her personal collection to the Fort Wayne store at Jefferson Pointe. Ever since, the paintings have been a staple for each location's decor, and they are each hand selected by Barb and Anne, the Senior Visual Merchandising Creative Director.

The Ira Yeager at Beachwood ... absolutely gorgeous!

Each Vera Bradley Store is also designed to look like someone's home, hence the comfy furniture, beautiful light fixtures and foyer. I found myself surprised by how effortless it all looked in person, especially knowing each store has it's own personality. The hope is that guests will walk in, feel comfortable and have a great experience.

This ottoman is my absolute favorite piece in the store, hands down.

This loveseat is perfect for husbands to relax on as their wives shop around ...

What a beautiful vanity, and I love the flowered wallpaper - such a nice touch!

The foyer, complete with red doors and a chandelier.

This stack of books and bunny lamp are in the middle of a display of Boysenberry bags, but they make it look just like it all belongs in someone's home!

The coffered ceiling, crown molding, and chandelier look amazing altogether ...

A hidden treasure that you can always find at Vera Bradley Stores is a beautiful restroom. I'm used to our impeccably decorated bathrooms in the Fort Wayne offices, but this was something I was pleasantly surprised by when I went to the Beachwood store, because I didn't expect it to be this cheery and adorable.

This lamp is just too cute for words ...

Surfing the Web ... It's all in a day's work.

To contact us Click HERE
My main project for the summer is basically the dream of any soon-to-be job-seeking college student (like myself). I am working with Human Resources to research and develop a social media strategy for recruiting, observing what kind of cool new methods other companies are implementing. The best part of this job is that my research consists of looking at company websites, twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, facebook pages and YouTube accounts all day long. Lately, I’ve been too busy to keep up with my research, but now that our presentations are going to be here oh so soon (exactly two weeks from now) I have to make time so I can be fully prepared to explain what’s going on in the exciting world of recruitment.

Here is a little peek of what I’ve been working on …

twitter – Lots of companies are using their twitter feeds to publicize job openings in addition to sharing information about their culture or their employees, so I follow anyone and everyone from our main competitors to companies like Starbucks and Google. One thing I’ve learned: Recruiters love to tweet … all the time.

So many tweets, so little time ...

YouTube – Some companies are using YouTube to promote their company culture and the organization by posting videos of company events and employee profiles showcasing what they love about their jobs. (How cool is that?!)

Since I’m a marketing major, all of this research is showing me how many different ways social media can be used for one company. Also, I will begin looking for my first post-grad job rather soon, and I’m learning how to be as thorough as possible when preparing for an interview. Most people long for the time to invest in this kind of research, and I’m lucky enough to have it be my job!

I couldn’t end this post without a shameless plug for Vera’s company culture or our open jobs … so check out the official Vera Bradley blog, Inside Stitch, for some fabulous posts about life at Vera Bradley, and be sure to stop by our Careers page to see what openings we have at our home office and in our retail stores!

Person shot at Gulfport Family Dollar store www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
GULFPORT, Miss. Dec 11 2012 (AP) - One teenager was injured in a shooting Sunday night.


Police Chief Alan Weatherford tells The Sun Herald (http://bit.ly/YT2Tox ) officers responded to the shooting around 7:15 Sunday night. A 17-year-old ran to a Family Dollar store on Pass Road, where employees called for help.

He says the victim remains hospitalized in stable condition and that police hope to interview him Monday. Several people were detained for questioning but no arrests have been made.

The names of the victim and suspects have not been released.

Virginia UPS delivery driver shot during possible robbery www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE


PETERSBURG, Va. Dec 11 2012—A UPS delivery driver was shot this evening and has been taking to the hospital.

Police sources tell CBS 6 that just after 8 p.m. tonight, a UPS driver was shot in what may have been a robbery attempt.

The driver was stopped at Lieutenants Run Apartments when he was confronted.

Sources tell CBS 6 that the driver was shot once.

He was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

If you have any information on this crime, police ask that you contact Petersburg Crime Solvers at (804) 861-1212.


Source:WTVR

Shoplifter threatens security agent's life www.privateofficer.com

To contact us Click HERE
Fairlawn OH Dec 11 2012 A 19-year-old Akron woman was seen shoplifting in Pacific Sunwear in Summit Mall and tried to get away through Dillard's, according to a Fairlawn police report.

When a mall security guard approached the woman as she was leaving, she began yelling and ran through the Dillard's parking lot, the report stated.

The security guard caught up with the woman in the lot and the shoplifter charged the guard a small physical fight started until another security guard intervened, the report stated.

When police officers took the woman away, she told the guard, "I'm coming back for you white (expletive), you ain't safe," the report stated. The woman was also wanted by Fairlawn PD for contempt of court.

When police searched the woman, she had stolen merchandise from Bath & Body Works, American Eagle and Charlotte Russe, the report said. The woman was banned from the mall.

someone else's dread

To contact us Click HERE

and the dread of not knowing if you like a short story, despite its undeniable strain of dread

Two (from the collaborative project Seconds by Adam Simon and Matthew Sharpe)

The meanness of the satirical essay you wrote hit me yesterday like a baseball on the chin. Those Sundays we lay curled up in each other on your hard futon kissing and discussing Marx eventually gave me serious lower back problems but at the time I was having like these day-long orgasms in my brain. You said, "Satire will be an important tool for the revolution," and maybe it will but it also can be a place for someone to hide from the intensity of any real feelings he may have and also to transmute them into a very painful projectile to be hurled at the person he has them about. 

It felt so good to be able to unburden myself to you re my inner conflict over my job at the ad agency, so then to see it lampooned yesterday on your blog in what was basically a "humorous" open break-up letter to me - "I'm hoping my $10 million campaign for the US Army is offset by the fact that I buy only free-range organic granola" - made me feel, well, I don't know, what does Marx say about how it feels to be betrayed by someone you lay naked next to for a cumulative total of fourteen months of your life, someone whom you let pull your hair - hard! - during sex because it game him so much pleasure even though it really hurt you although you sort of liked it but only because of the obviously intense pleasure he was deriving?

Also, do you think those cool hand-printed signs in the window of your bicycle shop aren't advertising?

After I read your thing I had a lot to say and even if you thought you knew what I was going to say and didn't want to hear it from yet another person, it wasn't fair to not let me say it, and the beautiful mixtape you gave me didn't make up for that because if I've gained any knowledge from my time with you it's that beauty is one thing and fairness is another. 

You said, "The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law." So you keep posting those satires of me on your blog from the back of that little storefront were you work and sleep, and I'll climb up to the roof deck of my nice apartment building and advertise to the world till I'm hoarse that i loved you.