Variation Use Local Business

From: Robert Larsen
Subject: RE: Collection Issue....Please Reply‏

Thanks getting back to me. I represent Larsen Fabrics Limited and we are based in United Kingdom. We request your representation to counsel us in litigation and enable us collect a debt owed to us in the amount $900,000.00USD by a delinquent seller in your jurisdiction.

Screenmakers Northwest
3925 Martin Luther King Jr Way
Seattle, WA 98108-1545

We are of the opinion that once our presence is established in your state via a legal representative, our seller will have no option but comply with payment request and accompanied with legal action and litigation will push for the accounts to be paid to effectively.

We happened to have place an order of Machinery Equipment worth $1,800,000.00, and they demanded we pay 50 percent of the funds before delivering our products. Payment to the seller was made in August of 2010 and our calculation shows that delivery is above three Months late, for the regular purchase agreement requires seller to effect goods not later than 60 days upon payment or legal action may be enforced if delivery delay exceeds 90 days.

It will be very helpful if we receive your retainer agreement for review. This will enable our board decide on the conditions of the retainer in our next board meeting. Also once we have reviewed your agreement I will forward you supporting documents i.e., proof of payment, sales invoice, wire transfer slip. This will enable your firm start working on this case. I will also call you to follow up on this matter once your firm has agreed to take on this case.

We thank you for your business as we look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,
Robert Larsen.
President
Larsen Fabrics Ltd
19-23 Grosvenor HilL,
London, UK W1K3QD.
www.larsenfabrics.com
Tel:+447035968345
Fax:+448447747789

MPRE....in the words of the ever relevant Mortal Kombat, FINISH HER!!!!!!!!

So I'm taking the MPRE this Friday, and haven't done very much in way of studying aside from taking a class in Professional Responsibility. Which I didn't do nearly as well on as I would have hoped. Which is the test I cried over after I finished (you can read about that here). So I may just have a mental block against it. Or maybe I'm just not ethical. Or maybe I think ethicality (call me Palin, cause I just made up a word) can be summed up in one sentence: if you have to question whether it's ethical or not, it isn't. And if you're just not a very ethical person and don't pause to consider the ramifications of you actions, KARMA will get around to you.

Isn't that so much easier than requiring me to sacrifice a few hours of a perfectly good Friday to take this test? And sacrifice even more days hours trying to cram a bunch of wacky rules into my already packed brain?

Not to mention weathering the ramifications of potential flashbacks due to my overwhelmingly negative experiences with this subject?

I should sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Success, Sales, Sorry and Solder

A bit of a mixed bag today:

I was fortunate enough to win Helen Yendall's mini-saga competition and you can read my entry and the runner-up on her blog here.

I've learnt that 100 Stories For Queensland has gone on sale in bookshops in Australia. It probably won't happen in the UK but it still gave me a buzz to see a picture of a book featuring one of my stories sitting next to the latest James Bond.

Next – an apology. For quite a while now Blogger has stopped displaying my Followers. I can't see anyone else's Followers either. The space is there but no icons with your lovely smiling faces. I know there are some new visitors who have left comments so if some of you have become Followers and are a bit miffed that I have not returned the compliment then rest assured that I have created a folder in the Favourites section on my browser for your links.

Carol of Carol's Corner has been giving me some tips, when we meet at NWC, on how to get my Followers back but so far nothing has worked. I've been on the Real Blogger Status site but that seems to assume I know all about domains and layered security (what?). It's not my computer because I get the same problem on my wife's laptop and the machines down the library. So if anyone out there has any ideas then all contributions are welcome. Being an engineer I'm a bit ashamed at my inability to sort out a technical problem. My excuse is that my degree in electronics was taken before all this computer black magic came along and when we were barely out of the valve era. Any faults could usually be fixed by a dab of solder. In fact, when my dad taught me how to solder, the soldering iron wasn't even electric. You had to place the tip in an open flame in order to heat it up. How I long for those simple days...

Shadow People

Shadow people are human shaped forms that can be seen out of the corner of your eye at almost any time.  They are dark and move quickly, and when you turn to face them, they vanish into the ether.  Occasionally, shadow people have been described as moving forward or interacting with people, but usually they don't interact with the observer at all.   Shadow people seem bound to the peripheral vision.  Shadow people are often linked to a feeling of dread or horror and are commonly believed to be malevolent spirits or ghosts.  They  are sometimes caught in pictures and are almost always said to be negative entities.  Hundreds and thousands of people tell stories of shadow people and the terror they associate with be haunted by shadow people.  Mythology is filled with stories of these shadow people.  There is even a website cache dedicated to nothing but shadow people stories, but what are these shadow people really?

Ghostgear.com argues that shadow people are completely different from ghosts and they list several reasons for this.  They argue that shadow people are too fast moving to be ghosts,  shadow people are very solid rather than ephemeral as a ghost would be,  and although many ghostly encounters are positive, encounters with shadow people are never positive.  They argue that shadow people are probably some form of demon.  This seems to be the common belief surrounding the presence of shadow people.

There are also many scientific explanations for the presence of shadow people.  The human ability to perceive their environment is enormously complicated and one of the most complicated neurological processes we possess is the process of interpreting things we see only partially.   People are capable of seeing only a small fraction of an object and filling in the blanks to understand what the complete object is.  Although this seems natural and simple to us,   it requires and enormously complicated series of neurological and psychological events to achieve this ability.   It is also common for people to use this ability unconsciously, especially when viewing objects out of the corner of their eye in their peripheral vision.   For example, it isn't uncommon for someone to see part of a lamp post  out of the corner of their eye and think it is an animal or a person.   The mistake is quickly rectified when the observer turns to inspect the item.   The observer initially only saw a small portion of the object and the mind automatically filled in the blanks, falsely.   The same thing could be possible with shadow people.  A shadow or passing darkness could be seen out of the corner of the observer's eye and the mind could easily and falsely interpret it as a human shaped monster.   This would explain shadow people's quick movements and the fact that they are always seen out of the corner of the eye in the peripheral field of vision where perceptual errors most commonly occur.

However,  for those who have and do encounter shadow people on a regular basis, these scientific explanations will never fully account for the terror and dread that is associated with an encounter with a shadow person.  So for now,  the complete explanation behind shadow people remains hidden in the shadows from which they emerged. 

The Juniper Tree

My favorite ghost stories blur the line between paranormal and folklore.  They have been told so many times for so long that the real history behind them has been lost and forgotten.  The ghost story lives on in an unprovable realm where you can't really verify all the facts behind the story as true.   People tell the story over an over again and it becomes part of the oral tradition of the area.  The story becomes legend.

The brothers Grimm collected stories like this.   They collected folklore and legends.  However, many of their stories have been cleansed of the paranormal, morbid, haunting, and ghostly for modern audiences.  My favorite Grimm stories are the ones that haven't been cleansed.  They're the ones that remain haunting and filled with ghosts and dark magic.   This is one of my favorite Grimm stories.   It is haunting and ghostly and tells an unforgettable story.

The Juniper Tree

Once there was a rich man who had a beautiful wife, but they couldn't have any children.  Everyday they prayed for a babe but none came.  Finally, one night the wife crept into the garden and into the shadow of the juniper tree.   There, she pricked her finger and spilled her blood into the snow beneath the tree.  She asked the tree to give her a son.  The tree gave her a son and his hair was red as blood and his skin was as white as snow.  Sadly,  the wife died a few days after his birth and the rich man was left alone with his boy.

The widower remarried in time and his new wife had a sweet little girl. The little girl's name was Marlinchen.   The woman doted on her Marlinchen, but was cruel to her step son.  She hated him with a rare fury.  One day Marlinchen wanted to save an apple for the boy and this made her mother even more furious.   The woman put the apple in an old trunk and told the boy to fetch it.   He leaned over to get the apple and the woman slammed the trunk shut cutting his head from his body.  She then blamed the "accident"   on Marlinchen  and forced her daughter to hide the boy's body by cutting him up and baking him into a stew for his father.

Marlinchen wept as she helped her mother and secretly stole away with his bones and gave the boy a proper burial beneath the jjuniper tree.   Soon after,  a phantom bird emerged from the boy's bone and went about the village singing:

         "It was my mother who slaughtered me

          It was my father who ate me

          But sweet Marlinchen found my bones

          And buried me beneath the Juniper Tree."

With his song, the phantom bird gathered objects from the village to help him and was able to drop them on his cruel step mother until she died beneath the juniper tree.  He was reborn from her blood and everyone lived happily ever after



It is Never too Early for Halloween

I am an avid follower of The Frog Queen (http://strangelittlegirlblog.blogspot.com/).   Every year at The Davis Graveyard, the Frog Queen and her crew create an amazing Halloween world in the front yard.  They construct cemeteries and castles and ghouls that dance in the darkness.  I'm nowhere near skilled enough to do anything like the Frog Queen.  However,  this year I plan on making a little cemetery in my front yard and it is never too early to start work on a project of this magnitude. For me,  it is never too early to start thinking about Halloween.  Unlike the Frog Queen,  I am only going to build key items of my graveyard myself.  I began work on my weeping lady this week.   I have based her plan on this statue from Pere Lachaise:

I have only finished construction on her base, but for me, this is an epic accomplishment.   It may take me the next three months between now and Halloween to finish her.   Considering my speed with building projects,  it is nothing short of a miracle that I've even begun.  With construction beginning on my weeping lady,  I have also begun my shopping.  Although I am not great at building projects,  I have amazing shopping skills. There are some beautiful items online for the lazy front yard cemetery connoisseur.  Here are some of the items I am ordering for my lazy graveyard: 

I hope to have the time and energy to make some additional items myself.  I will be making lots of wooden crosses and  am hoping that I will have time to do one more large scale project for the graveyard, but this is a good start.  I can't wait for Halloween already.  Here is a link to the Davis Graveyard for all those who would like to see how amazing a front yard Halloween project can be.   

 The Davis Graveyard



Do It Now

A subject that seems to crop up quite often in the blogs I follow is procrastination and there's a feature on it in this month's Candis. I really must get round to reading it sometime...

No, seriously, I did read it and it recommends The Procrastination Equation by Dr Piers Steel.

We often joke about it but the consequences can be serious if it impacts your health, your finances or your job. Apparently there are three types:

1. Arousal - the thrill of getting close to deadlines
2. Avoidance - fear of failure
3. Decisional - lack of confidence

Fortunately there are techniques to overcome the problem:

1. Find out what's stopping you
2. Put distractions out of sight
3. Break down your tasks
4. Proritise
5. Share your problems with a friend
6. Reward yourself
7. Don't lie to yourself
8. Commit some time to the tasks you should be doing

I shall make a start on that list straight away. Starting with number 6.