Choke

• ISBN13: 9780307388926
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Victor Mancini's a medical school dropout with a problem. He needs to pay for elder care for his mother, who's got Alzheimer's. So he comes up with the perfect scam: pretending to choke in upscale restaurants and getting “saved” by fellow diners who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, offer him financial support.Meanwhile, he cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops and spends his days working at Colonial Dunsboro, where his stoner colleagues are sentenced to the stocks for any deviation from the colonial lifestyle. Oh, yeah, and he's desperate to find the truth of his paternity, which his addled mother suggests may be divine.Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-s! chool dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlic! h.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk terri! tory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pa! ges: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels

Good Dick

• GOOD DICK (DVD MOVIE)

An eccentric and troubled young woman spends her days watching porn in the claustrophobic world of her apartment. An eccentric and troubled young man spends his days cataloguing films and serving her in a claustrophobic video store, before spending his nights sleeping in his car. The harder he tries to give himself to her the more she pushes him away. The farther away he goes, the closer she needs him to be. This impossible situation escalates and threatens to become combustible, just as it starts to become calm.

Levis Men's Faux Leather Aviator Bomber, Brown, XX-Large

• Sherpa lined
• Rugged-look

Faux leather aviator bomber

William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Two-Disc Special Edition)

• Hamlet has the kind of power, energy and excitement that movies can truly exploit,' award-winning actor/director Kenneth Branagh says. In this first-ever full-text film of William Shakespeare's greatest work, the power surges through every scene. The timeless tale of murder, corruption and revenge is reset in an opulent 19th-century world, using sprawling Blenheim Palace as Elsinore and st

The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by George MacDonald is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of George MacDonald then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: UN
Release Date: 14-AUG-2007Media Type: DVDIt's the greatest work of literature, but nobody had ever filmed Hamlet uncut--until Kenneth Branagh went about the task for his lavish 1996 production. The result is a sumptuous, star-studded version that scores a palpable hit on its avowed goal: to make the text as clear and urgent as possible. Branagh himself plays the melancholy son of the Danish court, caught in a famous muddle about whether to seek revenge against his royal father's presumed slayer… the man who now sits on the throne and shares the bed of Hamlet's mother. (Or, as the song "That's Entertainment" summarizes the plot: "A ghost and a prince meet / And everyone winds up mincemeat.") As a director, Branagh (who shot the movie in 70 mm.) uses the vast, cold interiors of a vaguely 19th-century manor to gorgeous effect; the story might scurry down this hallway, into that back chamber, or sprawl out into the enormous main room. With its endless collection of mirrors, the place ! is as big and empty as Citizen Kane's Xanadu.

That ! all work s; what doesn't work is Branagh's tendency to over-direct the big dramatic moments. He indulges in quick cutting and flashbacks as though to fend off the audience's objections to the four-hour running time, and the style sometimes looks like wasted energy. The experienced Shakespearians in the cast come off nicely; Derek Jacobi's Claudius, Richard Briers' Polonius, and Michael Maloney's Laertes are just terrific. Julie Christie is a suitably attractive Gertrude, and Kate Winslet makes the most of Ophelia's mad scenes. Branagh's habit of folding in unexpected American performers is on the mark, too: Billy Crystal is surprisingly good as the Gravedigger, Robin Williams predictably camps up Osric, and Charlton Heston is an inspired choice as the grandiloquent Player King. The biggest irony here is that Branagh himself is not quite spot-on as Hamlet. Of course he speaks the lines beautifully, but Branagh's screen personality radiates certainty and clarity of vision; there's lit! tle of the doubt that might make him Hamlet-esque. Still, tremendous credit for fending off slings and arrows to get the movie made. --Robert Horton

Brother IntelliFax 4750e High-Performance Business-Class Laser Fax

• Super G3, 33.6 kbps high speed fax modem
• Up to 15 ppm laser engine for sharp, fast copying
• 8 MB memory stores up to 600 pages
• 50-page auto document feeder, 250-sheet paper tray
• Parallel and USB interfaces, optional 10/100 baseTX Ethernet

To many people, Big Brother and the Holding Company has always meant Janis Joplin. Big Brother, who gave Janis a platform for success by giving her the freedom and the energy to develop her musical style, were considered amateurish and unprofessional by many reviewers. Simply put, Janis Joplin's fame and glory overshadowed the band. This book tells the band's story, how difficult it was to find an identity separate from Joplin's towering talent. Big Brother and the Holding Company were and are far more than a Janis Joplin backup band. Big Brother were the pioneers of the San Francisco sound and are among the outstanding represe! ntatives of psychedelic music. This book describes the life story of each of the members of Big Brother: where they came from, what their roots were, how they see their time with Janis Joplin, and what they experienced afterwards. It has been written with the close participation of the musicians themselves.

Kinship and partnership united Elie and Harry Susman when they crossed the Zambezi from the south in 1901 and travelled north to buy cattle from King Lewanika in Barotseland. The result was a remarkable family business, Susman Brothers and Wulfsohn, that has flourished for over a century in some of the most logistically difficult, physically challenging and politically problematic environments in the world. An African Trading Empire is a unique diaspora story set against the backdrop of the great themes of European and African history from the Jewish persecution in Europe through colonial Africa to the triumph of African nationalism and decolonization.
Alchemy 2005 : How to Transmutate Silver or Lead Metal into! Created 10KT Gold Coins ? " Gold can be manufactured from other elements by several methods...The transmutation of silver to gold is perhaps the easiest -- or least difficult --" Facts on Lead Metal and its Transmutation into Gold (1) Lead metal has 82 protons & electrons and contains Gold in it already. (2) Lead metal will transmutate into Gold when bombarded with a source of neutrons. (3) It is alleged that Lead naturally transmutes into Gold over millions of years within a vein of quartz chrystals and the piezo electric effect interaction, like coal into diamonds. (4) Certain compounds when added to lead metal , will turn lead into golden color, see " yellow lead . PREVIEW THIS BOOK FREE !!! CLICK THE PREVIEW BUTTONPlain Paper Fax, Brother, IntelliFAX-4750e 33.6K BPS High Speed Laser Fax, PPF4750EThis business class laser fax with 8 MB memory can store up to 600 pages for out-of-paper reception or fax broadcasting to up to 282 separate locations. Dual-access capability and Quick! Scan let you scan faxes into memory as fast as two seconds per page while the unit is busy sending or receiving. Plus, its laser engine prints faxes in sharp detail at up to 15 ppm.

A 250-sheet standard paper capacity (letter or legal), up to 50-page auto document feeder, and 232 station auto dialing (32 one-touch keys, plus 200 speed dial locations) combine with a high monthly duty cycle and high yield consumables to handle demanding business applications. An optional second, lower 250-sheet paper tray is available for handling higher-volume applications, or for loading different paper sizes simultaneously.

Delivering high-speed laser performance and reliability at low operating costs, the 4750e also copies at up to 15 copies/minute, sorts, enlarges, and reduces (50 to 200 percent). Built-in parallel and USB interfaces support future printing needs. A printer driver is available for download at solutions.brother.com. The unit includes super G3 33.6 kbps support a! nd a four-day battery back-up. It is backed by a one-year warr! anty.

0 comments