The Warm Glow

Being a woman is a beautiful feeling. You get to experience the best cosmetic products such as high-quality nail polish, dipping powders, and other beauty enhancers. If men start feeling jealous, that should not be a problem at all. As a woman, you should enjoy the best years of your life in enhancing your overall beauty. Nail polish plays a significant role in the process.

Though conventional nail polish methods have been in existence since time immemorial, recent innovations like dipping powder polish have caught the eye of modern-day women. Besides enhancing the beauty of the nails manifold, dipping powders are comparatively safer than conventional gel and acrylic polish. However, one should take care to ensure to use the best products like Kiara Sky dipping powder.

When on this topic of dipping powder, let us go through the elaborate process of applying dipping powder to your nails.

The Dipping Powder Procedure – Explained in detail.

As a thumb rule, one should go to a salon and let the expert do the job. However, applying dipping powder is comparatively easy to gel or acrylic polish. Therefore, one can also try out the procedure at home. (more…)

Painting our nails goes more than just expressing ourselves, it is a form of releasing stress, feeling confident and beautiful no matter the situation is. But have you ever wondered why women just love decorating their nails? Well, for one, mixing different color nail dipping powder on the nails are just fantastic, it lets you use all your favorite color and create your own ombre nail design. Take a look at these wonderful designs that you can DIY at home and let your imagination run wild.

1. Coral Blue and White Ombre with Sugar-Coat Design

The name may be long, it may look very complicated but actually, they are very easy to make. Just create an ombre effect using LDS D27 Blue or green and LDS D50 Ladyfingers. Then create your very own free-hand design using a black DND DC gel. Drizzle it with  LDS D164 We Could Runaway for a glittery sugar-coat effect. These are dramatic nails but the color profile keeps the look professional. Anyone would be able to wear these nails, night or day.

2. Simple Blue Stylish Ombre with Free-Hand Design

Just like the first nail design, create an ombre effect using LDS D27 Blue or green and LDS D50 Ladyfingers. Only this time, the ombre is on opposite ends. Then create your very own free-hand design using a black polish. This time instead of creating a tribal design, go for shapes and figures. Drizzle it with LDS D164 We Could Runaway for a glittery sugar-coat effect.  The design would not be that difficult to achieve at home, any design will do it is up to you which one look great on you. When you wear this design, you’ll get lots of compliments.

3. Orange Ombre with Crystal Accent

Want nails with a spicier look? Then these could be perfect for you. Here we have orange ombre nails using LDS D101 Fantatastic and LDS D49 Imperfectly Perfect that have one accent design. The accent nail has small, sparkly crystals. Even though there are rhinestones, it is still a subtle and minimal look. Nails like these are easy to recreate, you just apply the gems with gel top or place them on the nail while your topcoat is still a little wet.  The secret to keeping this technique longer-lasting is by curing the decorated nail under UV/LED Light for 30 seconds to keep the gems rightfully in place. We love these nails, they will catch the light beautifully and it will make a good nail art perfect for summer or any day of the year.

Buying chicken feeders/waterers is an essential part when you have poultry business or even if you are dealing with raising chickens at home, in your backyard. A healthy, easy and safe way to feed and water your chickens is never possible without using the right tools, and things.

Buying chicken feeders or waterer is surely an essential part for those chicken caretakers and breeders who want to stay mess free and still feed chickens easily.

There are many things that chicken keepers may have in their mind. There could be place issues, size problem, the design and other things that people would see in order to be sure that they will be having the right kind of chicken feeder and waterer for them to use in their chicken farms and containing rooms.

The 4 main factors that make sure that you will be having the right kind of chicken feeder or waterer are:

The right materials:

Definitely, you have to be sure that when you are buying a feeder or a waterer for use in your backyard for the chickens, this should be sturdy and non-rusting. The only solution to this issue is to make sure you have the feeder that is made of plastic or nonrusting material. It is important because if the feeder rusts or gets dirty quickly, this may cause bigger issues when dealing with the health issues in chickens.

It is important to understand that you need to buy a lasting, mess-free feeder.

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Having and maintaining a youthful and glowing skin is a very crucial thing to do especially if you don’t have any idea what your skin needs. Thus, knowing your skin type can be very crucial to acknowledge in choosing the right beauty products in the market. Our skin makes a huge part in building an impression of ourselves to others. Sadly, many of us failed to consider that the most important step in accomplishing a healthier, smoother skin is to differentiate your skin type particularly in dealing with certain conditions as well as seasons. With these, we’ve listed a few signs to look out for to get you aware of what skin type you have and what skin care products that are essential for your skin.

Oily skin

As the name says it all. You’ll know if you have an oily skin if you often find yourself getting all shiny and greasy that you just can’t help but wash your face all throughout the day. This is because your pores are larger as excess sebum production is at peak. With these, your pores may clog up easily which makes you more prone to black/whiteheads, pimples and acne. Hence, moisturizers and lotions for oily skin play a big role in your beauty regimen. Choose a product that can minimize and shrink your pores while reducing redness and you’ll be surprised that your problems will fade away in no time. (more…)

The most professional nails are done at Cindy’s nail shop. It is the favourite best nail shop near me. Unlike in most of the other places, this place has a very skilled technician who is always willing to listen to you and do the styles that you request for. They are also willing to make corrections for the mistakes that may exist. You only have to say it and your request is granted. It is just like magic. The skills possessed by these technicians are fascinating.

Have you been out looking for a nail shop near me? For a very long time, I have had my nails done poorly in a number of places until I lost hope of catering for my nails. However, the looks on other people’s nails made me jealous and I had to look harder for a place where I can feel comfy when being attended to. In no time, my efforts bore fruits when I came across Cindy’s nail shop. The place is in one of the tallest building in town. Its location at almost the middle of the building is not as strategic as one would expect since you have to be keen looking up on top of the building to notice the lights pointing towards the place. I heard this inner voice asking me to check out the place and then in no time I found myself in an elegant looking and beautifully furnished room. At the waiting bay, there was this welcoming attendant smiling at everyone. Well, this is what they do before you pay and when you do, the services can never be to the standard you expect. (more…)

Louie is tired. He is tired in every sense of the word. Tired in the most relatable way possible as the sensation of being “rudely awoken by the dustmen”, as Phil Daniels once described it, is utilised to hilarious effect in the brilliant opening scene of the long-awaited comeback of Louie. The cacophony of noise from the New York garbage men wakes Louie up and degenerates into the exact kind of committed surrealism that this show does so well. The descent into full-blown chaos as the bin-men smash through Louie’s bedroom windows and destroy the place as he lies in bed has a visual poetry which matches anything this show has done before. The character of Louie is tired but the show is back with a very literal bang.

But this tiredness doesn’t stop with just bodily fatigue, as the double-bill of episodes progresses there is a very definite world-weariness on display. Louie is tired of life, tired of his kids, tired of conventional masturbation, tired of never getting the girl, tired of getting old and perhaps most importantly tired of the looming spectre of death.

In season opener ‘Back’, Louie, whilst attempting to purchase a vibrator to liven up his “alone time” (a scene I could have done with a lot more of incidentally), puts his back out and has to be assisted into a taxi by a frail, elderly woman. A typically surreal exchange with a Doctor follows (played excellently by Charles Grodin, mercifully selected ahead of Gervais) in which the disinterested practitioner puts Louie’s back pain down to an evolutionary failing of the entire human race, “we were given a spine that was meant to function as a clothesline and we’re using it as a flagpole”. This isn’t a hacky look at how our bodies fail on us as we get older, it’s a reminder that every single one of us, regardless of our age, is doomed.

Fittingly, the second part of the double-bill, ‘Model’, plays out perhaps the biggest doomsday scenario possible for a show about a stand-up comedian, whilst opening for Jerry Seinfeld at a benefit for heart disease, Louie bombs. Hard. It’s not his fault, he’s an unclean comedian trying to do clean comedy (chickens are dumb) to an audience he’d never usually play to in a venue he’d never usually play. I love the device of physically taking Louie out of his and the show’s safe haven of New York for an episode. Getting out of the city puts us on edge as an audience and does the same to Louie here. The technique has been employed brilliantly before in the episodes South, Miami and Dad and a few others.

This unwanted trip outside of his comfort zone turns into an unexpected success story for Louie though as a beautiful blonde woman, amused by his failure picks him up and takes him back to her place for a one-night stand. This, being Louie though, can’t possibly end well and after the deed is done and he’s finally beginning to loosen up, Louie accidentally elbows her in the face after flinching away from being tickled (a scene eerily familiar to me but we won’t go into that). Things go from bad to worse as the wealthy family (Buzz Aldrin) of the model take legal vengeance and Louie is ordered to pay $5000 a month in damages. At least he gets an effective anecdote to tell the ladies though which is perhaps the closest thing to a happy ending as we’ll see on this show.

I have to admit, I didn’t love everything about the two episodes though. I find the presence of other comedians not noted for their acting prowess (Jim Norton, Sarah Silverman and Jerry Seinfeld in particular) to be occasionally jarring when the casting is usually so spot-on. Additionally, for a show so committed to not falling into the traditional sit-com traps of having regular cast members, catchphrases and set-pieces; I found the return of the poker table chats a little disappointing but these are very minor complaints. Louie is finally back and I can’t wait for the rest of it.

According to Louis CK, the secret to getting your way in a negotiation is to genuinely not care whether you get what you want or not. It was this carefree ambivalence that led to FX handing over an unprecedented level of control to the Hungarian/Mexican Bostonite for his incredible show Louie and could well lead to a whole new breed of television auteurism.

In what will almost certainly go down in TV folklore as a landmark deal, Louis Szekely (CK for short) agreed to do the show on the basis that the money to make it was wired directly to his account, that he wouldn’t have to pitch to anyone and he wouldn’t have to tell anyone what the show was about. What might have initially seemed like a pretty divaish set of demands born out of a frustration for the traditional TV processes, has led however, to one of the most exhilaratingly unique television experiences of all time.

Unburdened of the traditional constraints of US television, Szekely was free to retain complete ownership of his show and, with the help of a longstanding interest and background in filmmaking, has shouldered the responsibility of writing, directing, editing and starring in every brilliantly crafted episode since it began in 2010.

This level of control takes auteur theory to a whole new level. The history of cinema is littered with great writer/directors. From established veterans Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese, Terence Malick and Gus Van Sant to the newer wave of Kelly Reichardt, Rian Johnson and Steve McQueen, their ownership of their art from conception to production has led to some of the all-time great movies. TV however, has never really had an equivalent. Even great “individually-led” shows such as Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm have had co-writers and directors to share the burdens of the creative process.

You only need to watch one episode of Louie for the benefits of this level of control to be immediately apparent. Playing out more as a series of short films interspersed with stand-up than a traditional show, it is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, broad and intelligent, surreal and gritty. No other “comedy” show could turn the broad, relatable situation of preparing for a date into an existential look at the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nature of life by showing a hobo being decapitated after being hit by a truck. No other “comedy” show could do an entirely straight episode about the bleak defeat of confronting a suicidal friend. No other “comedy” show could get away with lurching from the over the top silliness of Ricky Gervais’ obnoxious doctor (a cameo FX had no idea was happening until they saw the episode incidentally) to the crushing loneliness of being a single-father with shared custody of his kids.

It’s the freedom of individual creativity that allows for such a masterfully put together work of art. Szekely spent time as a writer for Conan O’Brian in his younger days and had his own experience of working with a more traditional team of writers on his short-lived HBO series Lucky Louie. These experiences made him well aware of the pitfalls of what he calls “comedy by consensus”. We’re all too familiar with the shortcomings of so many regular TV sit-coms. Every joke is over-written to the point of destruction and the very nature of having a permanent cast too often leads to scenes which only exist so that regular characters have something to do.

Louie, however has none of these problems. Imagine the set-piece where Louie, so horrified by how badly his date is going, leaps into a nearby helicopter and flees the scene ever getting through a writer’s meeting. It would have been shot down in flames before it ever got off the ground (the idea that is, not the helicopter). And far from having to give his cast something to do, Louie goes as far as having the same actress play his date and his mother in different episodes and has two different girls playing his daughter. The character of Louie will have a brother one episode who is never seen again. His ex-wife, who is unseen for the majority of the series, turns out to be a black woman despite his children being played by blonde-haired, blue-eyed actresses. Because who cares? We don’t watch TV for continuity, we watch it to be entertained, challenged, made to laugh, made to cry and to escape the mundanity of everyday life. Louie, through the single-minded vision of it’s creator is the first show in a very, very long time that can genuinely say it does all of those things and more.

Louie returns on May 5th and I’ll hopefully be writing about each episode as it airs.

“Of course i’m dangerous. I’m police. I can do terrible things to people. With impunity.”

True Detective arrives on British shores via Sky Atlantic, with an unstoppable wave of hype and a capacity to compel ardent TV geeks to seek out episodes online as soon as they’ve aired in America. How could any show live up to what was arguably one of the greatest TV series trailers in the You Tube era? Quite simply- it does. And then some.

With an obvious antecedent in Seven, where the act of killing and the acts upon the body had meaning in themselves, True Detective also pairs a similarly mismatched detective duo in Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. If Seven had Detectives Mills and Sommerset- the former a naive Detective newbie and the latter being an erudite veteran, True Detective generates its spark from the opposing world views of Detectives Cohle (McConaughey) and Hart (Harrelson).

Over the course of these first two episodes, Cohle is shown to be a brilliant detective- but one plagued by alcoholism, drug addiction, psychedelic flashes and visions, who is haunted by the demons of a broken marriage, a dead daughter and a unique philosophical outlook: “I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution.” In our contemporary world where narcissistic self-obsession has reached hitherto unknown levels of manifestation, Cohle’s words chime: “We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self… programmed with total assurance that we are each a somebody. When in fact, everybody’s nobody.” As they drive back from the scene of the crime they are investigating, Detective Hart’s (Harrelson) response is that of the everyman: stop talking weird shit in my car.

Cohle has a unique and unusual way of talking- it is arched, archaic and makes him seem very much from another time. This anachronistic outsider is out of step with his colleagues, possessed with a fierce intelligence and a scathing nihilism. He is utterly compelling. His colleagues call him the ‘Taxman’, for the black book in which he is always making notes and drawings of what he sees at crime scenes gives him the air of a number cruncher. The reason for the black book is simple though- the Taxman just doesn’t want to miss a thing and fills it with notes and drawings of the scene. An aversion to photographs? Or a wish to capture the scene quickly? If Hart seems repelled by human nature and its capacity for evil, Cohle seems curious about it.

Hart’s car in these first two episodes is frequently shown in long-tracking shots, propelling our two protagonists into the surreal, alien and oddly beautiful Gothic landscapes of the American Deep South. Interestingly, at night, when Cohle drives his car at night, the streetlights and car lights take on strange glows. They act as triggers for visual flashbacks from his time as an addict working undercover in Narco. His descent into addiction is revealed to have begun after the untimely and tragic death of his young daughter, which subsequently led to the breakdown of his marriage. In a common trope of Detective drama, Cohle is shown to be very much ‘married’ to the job.

True Detective doesn’t do things by halves, and rises above traditional Detective drama cliches. With huge HBO-level production values, soundtrack supervison by T Bone Burnett, and a stellar supporting cast, the show creates a rich, gripping and pungent world. One wishes to avoid using the phrase ‘Deep South American Gothic’, but one cannot help it- for this show has it in spades. A murder victim dressed in antlers and painted with strange symbols? Check. A crime scene peppered with strange wooden sculptures? Check. An investigation that throws up links to prostitution, Evangelical Churches, Truck Stops, and Swamp Lands? Check. True Detective isn’t redolent of Southern Gothic- it is steeped in it.

But that’s not to say our induction into this story is easy. The brief flash of a title card in episode one reveals the initial crime took place in the mid 90s, and we are presented with a gaunt,

handsome Detective Cohle and an athletic-looking Detective Hart who possesses a full head of hair. So it is somewhat jarring for the narrative to flash-forward and jump cut to Cohle dressed like a convict with tattoos, long hair and a handlebar moustache, and Hart shown to be a balding, rotund Detective who has seen better days. The chronological shifts are what gives the story tension- a later perspective looking back on the events of the past- Hart and Cohle’s questioning acts as historical narration as we hear them reminisce on the investigation. Cohle and Hart are being videotaped in the present day by two Detectives investigating a similar crime to the one Cohle and Hart are recounting in flashback. Hart still seems to be a detective. Cohle is seemingly drinking himself to death.

Two episodes in, one is already floundering when it comes to trying to dissect what makes this show so great, so utterly unique as there is so much to discuss. This is a show with wide scope, ambition, visual flair, a brooding score, and in Cohle and Hart- it has two characters so utterly absorbing you cannot help get sucked in to their psychology and methodology. The argument for Television becoming the new cinema grows stronger every year, and True Detective has two incredible character actors at its heart who have been mainstays of American cinema for the last twenty years. You can see why Hollywood’s A-List are drawn to TV when the pedigree of production values, writing and ambition are so high.

But, it’s the contradictions inherent in Cohle and Hart that make them so compelling: Hart’s deluded hypocrisy that his extra-marital affair is ‘protecting his family’ by allowing him to decompress from the stresses of the job; Cohle’s fixation upon a crucifix not for any particular religious belief, but rather to contemplate the concept of ‘allowing your own crucifixon’. The tension between the two Detectives bubbles to the surface with intriguing results. Cohle makes a comment about Hart’s wife, after Hart arrives in the station the next morning in the same clothes as the day before. This most obvious of deductions results in a physical tussle, where Cohle alarmingly yet calmly warns Hart that it “ain’t worth losing your hands over.” They disengage and Hart storms off. Cohle? He just checks his own pulse at the neck. Have that.

True Detective reinforces Television’s and its audience’s appetite for murder and mystery. As ever, we are voyeurs. Our fascination with death, with killing, with the taking of another human life never goes away- it is the ultimate transgression. We have to know what happened. And why. The first two episodes of this superlative crime drama from HBO are dragging you down into an intoxicating darkness, that explores the extremes of the human condition. So far, we have only been shown what Cohle and Hart have seen. It is a great technique. As Hart says, his job is to search for narrative. As viewers, we are doing the same.

First up, I’d just like to say that I love Girls, and I think Lena Dunham is the best. Season 1 was, to use a cliche, a breath of fresh air. Even moving past the all too sad novelty of a TV show with a majority female cast show mostly written and directed by a woman, it was human, natural, brutal and bloody funny.

Season two started in riotous form; the Donald Glover break up episode in particular reduced me to tears. Then in the middle it had a run of some of the best episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. Absolutely sumptuously crafted and often painfully close to the bone, it was a treat to tune in each week.

However, the season just kind of fizzled out. But not before a particularly galling finale in which the girls of the title seemingly lost all agency and relied on their male counterparts to solve all their problems. Especially in comparison to season one’s heart wrenchingly brilliant finale it felt really out of place and a severe let down.

I started writing this piece before episode 7 of season 3, but it’s just reinforced my thought.

Season 3 has been pretty good so far, took a couple of episodes to get started, and was far too Jessa heavy upfront, but it’s in a groove and a nice mix of funny and touching.

But there’s something that’s really bothering me.

Hannah.

Ms Horvarth has always had an incredible knack for putting her foot in her mouth and making us cringe with embarrassment; for me mostly in empathy and horrid recall of my own social failings. However in season 3 there has been slightly more to it. Hannah has often been just downright nasty.

Part of my distaste towards the end of season 2 was that all the characters became pretty horrible, bar Hannah who was struggling with mental illness and losing her boyfriend and one of her best friends. Sure she was still an absolute fecking eejit, but in the way we all are eejits.

Hannah, Adam and Ray have always been the best drawn characters, and for me the show suffers when they aren’t at the centre. No one ever tunes into Girls and says “Oh goodie, a Marnie episode” (and certainly has never said it about Jessa). Shoshanna is still great but a whole half hour of her unfettered would drive one to eye boggling.

For season 3 though, this means when we’re focused on Hannah, the new found nastiness is really exacerbated. The absolute nadir of which was when she retold Adam the fake dying relative story his sister had relayed to Hannah. I was slack jawed at the pure meanness of it, but I could pull any number of examples. Her behavior at her boss’ funeral, throwing Adam’s sister out (she was dead annoying, but it was pretty harsh), her childish behaviour with her new fellow co-workers and just recently inviting Elijah et al around and ruining Marnie’s party.

The thing that I really don’t get about this is that the show has been calling Hannah out on her behaviour. Her boss’ wife throws her out of the party; in this week’s bloodletting pretty much everyone rounds on Hannah and imparts some choice words, but amid Shoshanna delivering a vocal beat down to anyone in a 5 meter radius.

So if it’s an intentional character development, it doesn’t seem to be coming with any rationale. It could be because she’s happy with Adam now, but if so they haven’t actually set that up as where the show is headed. She just seems to needlessly nasty all of a sudden. And due to the focus on her character it’s making me not enjoy the show as much. I enjoyed endearingly awkward Hannah much more.

As a total aside – did I miss something or did Adam get over his anger about his sister being chucked out really quickly by never mentioning it ever again?