jeudi 22 août 2013

Mariah Carey Shuts Down Wild’N’Out

Mariah Carey isn't a fan of the segment "Let Me Holla,” on her husband's show Wild ’N’ Out.

During the segment, the comedians of the show had to come up with funny pickup lines but when it was Nick Cannon’s turn, Mariah came out on stage told Nick: "I will shut allllll this s**t down." All in Good Fun. 

Check Out The Clip Below

mercredi 21 août 2013

An Excerpt from The Omega Dog

And now an excerpt from the sequel to PAVLOV'S DOGS...




ZERO
Six Days Ago

"KILL ME!" the Omega Dog shouted.

He lay defenseless at Ken Bishop's feet, lit by the halogen lamps of the sparring cage, just a shaggy torso with one arm and a head. The werewolf's lower intestines steamed in a pile below his gaping abdomen.

Usually the Dogs healed rapidly, but Ken knew Omega Kaiser wouldn't heal. He had witnessed firsthand what the infection had done to the Omega's nemesis, Alpha McLoughlin. The Alpha's golden-haired form now lay decapitated on the concrete behind them, one of many corpses littering the cage—one of many littering the island.

Sick Dogs didn't heal.

Ken should have let the Alpha finish ripping Kaiser apart, should have let him rip the bastard's throat out. But Ken had liked Alpha McLoughlin, before the infection had taken him. So he had put the Alpha out of his misery, he had cut off his head with a sword. Mac would have wanted it that way.

"The messed up thing is," Ken said, still clenching the haft of the executioner's blade, "before this, I would have never met you. But seeing what you've done, I don't have to know you to know that you're a monster."

The Omega's shredded, exposed diaphragm clenched and shuddered at his attempts to draw breath.

"New world," Ken said. "Maybe we're all monsters now." He gripped the handle of the sword in both hands and raised it up.

But something stopped him from bringing it down. This Omega Dog, this pitiful beast before him, had destroyed everything the zombies hadn't. He had enslaved Ken's friends, had pitted them against each other in the sparring cage. He had even pitted Ken against his best friend, Jorge. And for what? For sport?

So even though it had been Alpha McLoughlin who had bitten and infected Ken's girlfriend, Kelly, even though it had been Kelly's germs that had spread across the island like locusts setting upon a cash crop, Ken blamed the Omega Dog for every-thing.

All these stilled corpses, Dog and human alike... Kaiser did not deserve to join them. He deserved to wallow in their shit and gore.

Ken lowered the sword.

"Night," he said. And then he walked out of the sparring cage and latched the gate behind him as Kaiser tried to howl, managing only a wheeze.

* * *

Omega Kaiser lay there for some time after Ken left him in the sparring cage. He stared up at the night sky beyond the halogen lights, up at the uncaring moon. He listened to Ken shouting, echoing, searching. And he felt himself slipping away into deep space.

Lights flashed behind the Omega's eyes, leaving impressions of memories, like sunspots on his retinas caused by radiation from that old Egyptian mirror, the moon.

He saw his Master, Dr. Crispin. Saw him clutching a gaping wound in his throat. Kaiser gulped, tasting the ghost of his Master's blood.

Before his very eyes, the man in the moon transformed, became the gray outlines of Alpha McLoughlin. Infected and unable to heal, the Alpha started healing anyway. Healing, as he was wolfing down chunks he had ripped from Kaiser's body. Chunks like the Omega's leg, and his entire lower half.

Kaiser forced his head up off the concrete. Past his own still chest and everything missing below it, everything spinning and wobbly like the earth, he made out the Alpha Dog's headless corpse, its gory, matted, golden fur.

So that wound hadn't healed. But everything else, thanks to fresh meat...

"Jorge!" Ken shouted, somewhere else on the island. Ears twitching, Kaiser snorted at the sound. The familiar voice helped him reorient himself. The boiling anger helped him find himself.

After all he had done and destroyed, the Omega Dog wanted only to die. But he couldn't now, not like this; he was infected. And more than that, he wanted Ken's head on a plate. Wanted to scoop the brains out with his claws and savor each slippery piece.

Should have killed me, the Omega Dog thought.

He wished there was a way he could die and get revenge simultaneously. It would be almost honorable. Atonement for contributing to the horrible downfall of the best man he had ever known, Alpha McLoughlin.

With his one arm, Kaiser pushed himself over so that he could crawl. The movement dizzied him again, and he lay there for some time, staring at the dust covering the concrete. Then he dragged himself forward, hearing his lower entrails dragging be-hind.

The first corpse Kaiser came upon reeked of something far fouler than death and voided bowels. And it very obviously had hemorrhaged from every orifice and pore.

Infected, he thought, and kept crawling, kept sniffing for something fresh. Some human who had died before being spoiled, or some savory bit tossed aside. But his sense of smell had dulled. He practically had to bury his nose in the piles of gore to make a determination.

The sixth dead man Kaiser came upon lay atop yet another dead man. He saw the blood on the topmost one and figured that he, too, had hemorrhaged. Kaiser sniffed him anyway.

He caught a whiff of something different.

Something stronger, richer.

Fear.

The Omega Dog pushed the top body off and suddenly the bottom one opened its eyes. The man's pupils focused on Kaiser, and he whimpered, tried to spring up from his hiding place, tried to scream.

But the Omega Dog was faster.

He pinned the man's head to the concrete with his one black-taloned claw and shot forward, snapping his fangs shut on the survivor's throat. Hot blood pumped and pulsed as if Kaiser held a still-beating heart between his jaws.

Skin and muscle and esophagus and veins stretched and tore as the Omega Dog pulled back. And for the briefest second, the man's scream, now just air whistling out of his ruined neck, stirred the Dog's dark fur.

Kaiser gulped down the meat, mostly unchewed, and then shuddered as his body quickly processed it. Because of enzymes, because of catalysts, and because of a mutant thyroid and probiotics, the Omega Dog's metabolism worked incredibly fast.

Almost as fast was the regenerative process. The stump of Kaiser's missing arm began to grow a new length of bone almost immediately. From marrow to spongy bone to compact bone, and all the blood and lymphatic vessels running throughout, his humerus began to take shape out of nothing.

Magic, Dr. Crispin had once called it. Indistinguishable, anyway.

The Omega's sole regret was that he had been nourished by the blood of a coward.

"Jorge!" Ken yelled again, this time from a different part of the island.

Muscles, ligaments, and tendons latched on to the Dog's new growth of bone, and soon the smooth subchondral tissue of his elbow formed, and then the cartilage. Fat and skin accreted as well, but, layer by layer, the whole miracle was slowing down. And then the new growth started to stink and fill with pus.

No, no, no, Kaiser thought.

His victim had relaxed and had grown still beneath his paw. The coward's gaping windpipe had stopped its wet whis-tling.

The Omega Dog knew there was an essence to life, something fleeting. Something that stayed with a dead body only for so long before the cells powered down, leaving nothing but microorganisms and acids and decay.

He tore off another piece of the man's throat before it was too late and quickly gulped it down, shuddering again as his injured arm struggled to heal and grow around the infection.

It would work, but he still had his whole lower body to re-generate, all those complicated organs, his powerful legs. He was surprised he could digest at all, what with the lower third of his gastrointestinal tract exposed and leaking sludge.

"Marie!"

Kaiser lifted his head, but barely registered that Ken was now calling out a different name. All he knew was he didn't have much time before Ken Bishop was sailing away from the island and out of his clutches.

He needed legs.

Kaiser found his eyes wandering back to Alpha McLoughlin's corpse. Missing head, but the rest of him...

The Omega Dog grabbed one last bite from his prey and left the rest for later, crawling toward the remains of the Dog who had once been his superior, his general, his Alpha.

The Dogs had been trained to fight as one. Kaiser decided to force the issue.




mardi 13 août 2013

Stephen A. North, Author of DEAD TIDE and DEAD TIDE RISING: "Where To Start?"

Where to start?  A good place, I think, would be mentioning that I've served and observed the best and worst humanity has to offer for close to thirty years now.  I spend most of my days in a place that could be described as Jerry Springer's World, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate.  While many of the people I work with, whether customer or fellow employee, could make up several really controversial episodes for Mr. Springer, I don't think those oddball people deserve to be the focus.  They are a visible, not to be ignored, minority, but they aren't representative of the majority of people I have known. 

A friend of mine notices everyone that walks into his field of vision. He has to.  He has a dangerous job, and never knows when someone or something out of the past might come back and bite him.  Consequently, he is hyper-alert to every freak, or strange person that walks by.  I focus on people for a different reason, although it's roots are similar to my friend's.  My job is people-oriented.  I think that focus has benefited my writing.

I have witnessed quite a few people reactions in stressful situations.  These situations could be anything from the spur of the moment to something long term.  So many people lie.  Sometimes it's just to themselves.  Far too often, though, people choose to lie or cheat for convenience's sake.  Whether it is ego, or the simple self protective urge, or God knows what, they decide that fiction is the route to take.

There's a revelation in there somewhere.  Hopefully, most writers are using the artful lie (fiction) to tell an entertaining story, while out in the real world, people are using it to conceal anything from theft to cheating in all its forms, and to even murder.

In the Dead Tide novels, I have endeavored to portray people at their best and worst, set against an apocalyptic backdrop in which it is hard to tell which monster is worse: the living or undead person.  People aren't simple.  So many of us have so many issues affecting how we live, or try to live, and it is hard to predict how each person will react in a life or death situation.  There are a lot of people walking around out there with little to no reason to live, and nothing to love.  Does this make them good or bad?  Does it guarantee that they will always react selfishly or murderously?  Some people have to hit rock bottom before they rise up and become the person they always should have been.  This journey we are all on may end at any moment.  The only real guarantee we have in this world is that everything, eventually will come to an end.  That might be a gift.

I think the image of the undead consumer is apt.  They at least are upfront and honest about what they want.  You can trust them to react in a predictable fashion.  Not so with a living, breathing, conniving human, and maybe not even so with a virtuous, heroic person.  In the world of Dead Tide, Dead Tide Rising, and the nearly finished third book, I attempt to give you an unblinking, unflinching look at humanities monsters, it's heroes, and more accurately, all those who fall somewhere in-between.  Humanity is flawed, but many of us recognize, and have the ability to rise above, or fail and fall, due to those flaws.  Also, sheer laziness might drag down more people than circumstances.

Guess I've rambled a bit.  Let's sum up with this: I've dabbled with blogging here and there over the years, and wrote a lot to blow off steam caused by work or personal life stress.  I escaped into and away from madness, so to speak, by using my writing as a refuge.  Then, and now, if I could take people away from their own problems, and entertain them, then my writing is a success, whether I reach full-time writing status or not.  Hope to do continue to write (and entertain) for many years to come.

Stephen A. North  9:23 PM, Saturday, 8/10/2013

Stephen A. North is the author of Dead Tide and Dead Tide Rising, available now from Permuted Press.

dimanche 11 août 2013

Pilatus...Production and News ...Juillet 2013

Le tableau (non exhaustif) ci-dessous reprend les appareils sortis des chaînes de Pilatus pour essais et vols de réception avant livraison aux clients (N = News - C = Cancellation). Ce document est réalisé grâce aux données issues de l'OFAC (Office Fédéral de l'Aviation Civile Suisse), AMCAR (Wordlwide Register Updates), Air Britain Business Turboprops International, FAA Registry ainsi qu'au croisement de différentes informations.

 
C HB-FSI 13 PC-12/47E 1409 15-juil for Jetfly to LX-JFV
C HB-FSU 13 PC-12/47E 1421 17-juil f/f Buochs/Prestwick  10/07 to N21NX
C HB-HCM 6 PC-7/MkII 702 17-juil ferry Flight to India to P113 IAF
C HB-FST 13 PC-12/47E 1420 22-juil f/f Buochs/Prestwick  15/07 to N420NG
C HB-HCO 6 PC-7/MkII 704 29-juil ferry flight to India to P115 IAF
C HB-HCP 6 PC-7/MkII 705 29-juil ferry flight to India to P116 IAF
N HB-FQB 14 PC-12/47E 1428 30-juil Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG
N HB-FQC 14 PC-12/47E 1429 30-juil Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG
N HB-FQD 14 PC-12/47E 1430 30-juil Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG
N HB-FQE 14 PC-12/47E 1431 30-juil Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG
N HB-FQK 14 PC-12/47E 1437 30-juil Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG


© Photo Stephan Widmer


Pilatus PC-7 MkII :

Plusieurs appareils destinés à la Force Aérienne Indienne à différents stades d'essais au sol (s/n 706 P 117 HB-HCQ, s/n 707 P 118 HB-HCR, s/n 708 P 119 HB-HCS, s/n 709 P 120 HB-HCT)

© Photo Stephan Widmer


Pilatus PC-21 :

Les 4 premiers appareils destinés à l'Arabie Saoudite poursuivent leurs différents essais dont s/n 156, 902 (HB-HWB) et s/n 158, 904 (HB-HWD).

Pilatus PC-12 :

Lors du rassemblement de l'EAA AirVenture à Oshkosh, Pilatus présentait sur son stand le PC-12/47E s/n 1379 immatriculé N79NG.

PC-12/47E sur le stand Pilatus EAA AirVenture Ohskosh 29/07/2013

et sur le stand de PlaneSense c'était le PC-12/47E s/n 1367 N367AF

Pilatus PC-12/47E sur le stand de PlaneSense EAA AirVenture Ohshkosh 29/07/2013
© Photo Alain Genève

Pilatus PC-24 :

Bien que la maquette du fuselage à l’échelle 1 ne soit pas présentée, un effort important par l'équipe Pilatus pour informer la clientèle des visiteurs de ce nouvel appareil, une maquette du moteur devant équipé le PC-24 était visible.



Moteur FJ44-4 TurboFan Engine de Williams International

EAA Venture Oshkosh 29/07/2013


La photo archives du mois :

Pilatus B4
© Photo via Pilatus Aircraft

vendredi 9 août 2013

History Of The Carved Basalt Monolith Commonly Known As The Aztec Sun Stone


 photograph taken by the Frenchman Alfred Briquet in 1889 

The carved basalt monolith commonly known as the Aztec Sun Stone, created by Mexica artisans during the late 15th century, was excavated from the zócalo, the main square of Mexico City, on December 17, 1790. Weighing 24 tons and measuring 12 feet in diameter, it is currently housed in Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology. The stone, often erroneously referred to as the “Mayan Calendar”, features the visage of the sun god Tonatiuh at its center, and was initially displayed on the side of Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral for several decades before being moved indoors.

mercredi 7 août 2013

Pilatus...PC-24

Ça y est Pilatus a dévoilé son nouveau programme lors du Salon EBACE de Genève. Une maquette de ce nouvel avion était présentée sur le stand du constructeur.
 
 © Document Pilatus Aircraft

Ce biréacteur, une première parmi les programmes développés chez l'avionneur de Stans qui jusqu'à présent ne produisait que des appareils équipés de turbopropulseur.

Ce nouvel avion d'une capacité de 4 à 10 places se situe dans la moyenne gamme, mais avec des possibilités d'utiliser des pistes courtes et non revêtues, sa large porte cargo lui permettra d'être utilisé en version combi ou cargo. Il sera motorisé par deux réacteurs FJ44-4 TurboFan Engine de Williams International. Son cockpit sera équipé d'une avionique « Advanced Cockpit Environnement » (ACE) avec 4 écrans de 12 pouces et d'un système de vision synthétique.

Les premiers éléments du Pilatus PC-24 sont en cours de fabrication, le premier vol devrait intervenir dans le courant du 3 ème trimestre 2014 et la mise en service en 2017.

 © Document Pilatus Aircraft

 © Document Pilatus Aircraft


 © Document Pilatus Aircraft

 © Document Pilatus Aircraft

 © Document Pilatus Aircraft



 © Document Pilatus Aircraft

Moteur FJ44-4 TurboFan Engine de Williams International
EAA Venture Oshkosh 29/07/2013

dimanche 4 août 2013