10 September 2011
09 September 2011
How to find, and keep, the man or woman of your dreams, by Ovid
How to be a Latin lover
· Extracted from Latin Love Lessons: Put a Little Ovid in Your Life by Charlotte Higgins, published by Short Books. . All English translations are from Peter Green's The Erotic Poems by Ovid (Penguin Classics).
Forget all those modern guides to dating. If you want to find a partner, the ancient Romans can tell you all you need to know. In an extract from her new book, Charlotte Higgins explains what we can learn from Ovid's Ars Amatoria
The Guardian, Tuesday 25 September 2007
How to find your dream lover ... Liz Taylor as Cleopatra.
Bookshops teem with guides to grabbing the perfect partner. How to find a husband after 35; why men are from Mars and women are from Venus; what grisly Rules to follow to catch yourself a man. In reality, the only advice you will ever need is from the original and best Latin lovers: the Romans. The Romans invented lots of things: straight roads, underfloor heating, excellent sewage systems. But more importantly than that, they invented romantic love.
The Greeks may have written wonderfully about desire, but Catullus was the first classical poet to write about the joy and heartbreak of relationships. And Ovid left us a detailed, scandalous, hilarious, cynical, explicit and still user-friendly handbook on how to go about finding, and keeping, the man or woman of our dreams.
This fabulous poem, the Ars Amatoria, or The Art of Love, was first published around the time that Jesus Christ was teething. And it's still up to the job better than the stuff in the self-help section of the local bookshop.
The Ars is the ancient equivalent of a how-to book. It is a didactic poem - that is, a poem meant to teach you something. Its forebears in the genre of didactic poetry tended to be about respectable things such as farming and the natural sciences. Ovid's Ars Amatoria is quite a different proposition. Instead of teaching you the right time to prune your vines or how atoms work, it is full of brilliant information on sexual positions and how to apply makeup to maximise your pulling power. Ovid had taken a serious, learned literary genre and done something daringly racy and sexy with it.
Alas, the poem was off-message as far as the emperor was concerned. Augustus, despite a youth full of exuberant philandering, had become rather obsessed with family values by the time it was published, probably between 2BC and AD2.
In I, Claudius, the 1976 television epic adapted from Robert Graves's novels, Augustus, in the booming tones of the mighty Brian Blessed, is heard to utter of Ovid: "I've never liked that man. All right, his poetry's very beautiful. But it's also very smutty. A lot of it's downright indecent. Frankly, I wouldn't have him in the house ... Write poetry, yes, but write about nice things, things that you'd like your family to hear."
Total invention, of course, but not entirely implausible. In AD8 Augustus made his disapproval felt by banishing poor Ovid to the remote and deeply provincial Tomis on the Black Sea. This is now the Romanian resort of Constanta and still not necessarily a place you would want to spend a decade of your life. Although his wife stayed in Rome, lobbying for his pardon, Ovid never made it back, and died there in AD18.
But that is enough history. It's time to get down to the important business of how to find a partner, Roman style.
1 Get ready
As every marketing expert knows, attractive packaging is half the battle when it comes to selling a product. So it is time to consider a makeover:
et nihil emineant et sint sine sordibus ungues,
inque caua nullus stet tibi nare pilus.
nec male odorati sit tristis anhelitus oris,
nec laedat nares uirque paterque gregis.
cetera lasciuae faciant concede puellae
et si quis male uir quaerit habere uirum.
Keep your nails pared, and dirt-free;
Don't let those long hairs sprout
In your nostrils, make sure your breath is never offensive,
Avoid the rank male stench
That wrinkles noses. Beyond this is for wanton women
Or any half-man who wants to attract men.
I think we'll draw a veil over Ovid's little dig at boys who like boys. What he is going for, generally, is a sensible middle path between unwashed he-man and the wilder shores of David Beckham-style metrosexuality. In the passage preceding this one, he warns against going over the top with the boy beauty regimen: "sed tibi nec ferro placeat torquere capillos/nec tua mordaci pumice crura teras" - "Don't think it's a good idea to style your hair with curling irons, or depilate your legs with stinging pumice."
Where he would have stood on moisturising and manbags is, alas, unclear, but my sense is that he would probably have poured mild scorn upon them. His perfectly cogent advice is that a fellow who wants to attract the ladies should have high standards of personal hygiene, be turned out stylishly and (I think we can all raise a glass to this) definitely come minus nasal hair.
For the girls, naturally, a similar attention to detail is required. Let's have no Julia Roberts-style body hair, he advises. "Quam paene admonui, ne trux caper iret in alas/neque forent duris aspera crura pilis" - "I was going to advise you about grim, goaty armpits, and rough, bristling hair on your legs."
As for makeup, keep it discreet, and don't give the gentlemen any hint of all the trouble that went into the creation. Preserve some mystique.
non tamen expositas mensa deprendat amator
pyxidas: ars faciem dissimulata iuuat.
But don't let your lover find all those jars and bottles
On your dressing table: the best
Makeup remains unobtrusive.
Simply emerge gorgeously "done", a creature unlike any other, as that horrible dating book The Rules might say. We're not interested in seeing a lump of marble or what goes on in the artist's studio: just the beautiful finished sculpture.
Hairdos are clearly a bit of a thing for Ovid - if only Vogue's beauty pages waxed as lyrical:
munditiis capimur: non sint sine lege capilli;
admotae formam dantque negantque manus.
nec genus ornatus unum est: quod quamque decebit,
eligat et speculum consulat ante suum.
longa probat facies capitis discrimina puri:
sic erat ornatis Laodamia comis.
exiguum summa nodum sibi fronte relinqui,
ut pateant aures, ora rotunda uolunt.
alterius crines umero iactentur utroque:
talis es adsumpta, Phoebe canore, lyra;
altera succinctae religetur more Dianae,
ut solet, attonitas cum petit illa feras.
What attracts us is elegance - so don't neglect your hairstyle;
Looks can be made or marred by a skilful touch.
Nor will one style suit all: there are innumerable fashions,
And each girl should look in her glass
Before choosing what suits her reflection. Long features go best with
A plain central parting: that's how
Laodamia's hair was arranged. A round-faced lady
Should pile all her hair on top,
Leaving the ears exposed. One girl should wear it down on
Her shoulders, like Apollo about to play
The lyre; another should braid it in the style of the huntress
Diana, when she's after some frightened beast,
Skirt hitched up.
Rome, the epic television series about the last years of the Republic, gives a great sense of the complicated hairdos that were in vogue at the time. Lindsay Duncan, who plays Julius Caesar's mistress Servilia, and Polly Walker, as the hilarious Atia, mother of Octavian (who later dubbed himself Augustus), are always emerging from their bedrooms with heads sporting yet more extraordinary dos topped off with elaborate curls and braids. If you can't manage to source a fabulous wig made from the tresses of some hapless Gaulish captive, I suggest you do what Ovid says (terribly Trinny and Susannah, this): carefully pick a hairstyle that suits you. The Laodamia whom he mentions in this passage, by the way, was married to Protesilaus, the first Greek to be killed in the Trojan war.
The final part of the makeover is mental. Ovid suggests acquiring a smattering of Latin poetry, which, happily for you, is precisely what you are now doing.
2 Get out there
We are not going to find a partner by sitting at home. Get out there, into the city: create opportunities to meet people. Be bold, suggests Ovid: talk to those pretty girls who are hanging out at the temple of Palatine Apollo or in Pompey's portico. And, girls, never, ever, turn down an invitation to a party:
sera ueni positaque decens incede lucerna:
grata mora uenies, maxima lena mora est;
etsi turpis eris, formosa uidebere potis,
et latebras uitiis nox dabit ipsa tuis.
Arrive late, when the lamps are lit; make a
graceful entrance -
Delay enhances charm, delay's a great bawd.
Plain you may be, but at night you'll look fine
to the tipsy:
Soft lights and shadows will mask your faults.
Men, you might just want to factor in that flattering lighting when you are sizing up the girls:
hic tu fallaci nimium ne crede lucernae:
iudicio formae noxque merumque nocent.
luce deas caeloque Paris spectauit aperto,
cum dixit Veneri "uincis utramque, Venus."
nocte latent mendae uitioque ignoscitur omni,
horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.
Don't trust the lamplight too much,
It's deceptive. When Paris examined those
goddesses, when he said, "You Beat them both, Venus," he did it in broad
Daylight. But darkness hides faults, each
blemish is forgiven:
Any woman you name will pass
As a beauty at night.
As for actually striking up a conversation with someone you fancy? Easy, says Ovid. Here's an example. You are sitting next to a pretty girl at the races ...
hic tibi quaeratur socii sermonis origo,
et moueant primos publica uerba sonos:
cuius equi ueniant facito studiose requiras,
nec mora, quisquis erit cui fauet illa, faue.
at cum pompa frequens caelestibus ibit eburnis,
tu Veneri dominae plaude fauente manu;
utque fit, in gremium puluis si forte puellae
deciderit, digitis excutiendus erit;
etsi nullus erit puluis, tamen excute nullum.
some excuse to engage in friendly
conversation,
Casual small talk at first -
Ask, with a show of interest, whose are those horses
Just coming past: find out
Her favourite, back it yourself. When the
long procession of ivory
Deities approaches, be sure you give
A big hand to Lady Venus. If some dust should settle
In your girl's lap, flick it away
With your fingers; and if there's no dust,
Still flick away - nothing.
A potential seducer could give a broad hint as to his intent by enthusiastically applauding Venus, the goddess of love, when the procession of images of the gods passes. The daring might even try to cop a feel. That old flicking-away-the-dust trick - a sturdy and trusted method, even in AD2.
3 Get on with it
You have made overtures to a potential lover: but how actually to ensnare the target? Ovid's advice is that victory is all about self-belief. Imagine yourself invincible, and chances are you will be.
prima tuae menti ueniat fiducia, cunctas
posse capi: capies, tu modo tende plagas.
uere prius uolucres taceant, aestate cicadae,
Maenalius lepori det sua terga canis,
femina quam iuueni blande temptata epugnet;
haec quoque, quam poteris credere nolle, uolet.
The first thing to get in your head is that every single
Girl can be caught - and that you'll catch her if
You set your toils right. Birds will sooner fall
dumb in spring time,
Cicadas in summer, or a hunting-dog
Turn his back on a hare, than a lover's bland inducements
Can fail with a woman.
Not actually true in the real world, gentlemen. But the point is: be bold, be resolute and, if you expect success, you will be pretty likely to meet with it.
Keeping in touch with a new love interest requires special skill. Ovid may have been talking about letters written on wax tablets, but exactly the same applies to email. Used carefully, correspondence can be a great part of your battery. Used badly, it can scupper your chances. Don't be too highfalutin in your writing style: it should be clear and conversational. "Sit tibi credibilis sermo consuetaque uerba,/ blanda tamen, praesens ut uideare loqui" - "use everyday language, familiar yet flattering words, as though you were there, in her presence."
On the other hand, write carefully. Illiterate communications are a major turn-off. Ovid, quite rightly, warns against a barbara lingua, "a barbarous style". I am going to take a giant leap and suggest that this includes the use of all emoticons in electronic communications. People, don't. And don't reply absolutely at once. You don't want to look desperate, do you? "Postque breuem rescribe moram: mora semper amantes incitat" - "Write back after a little delay: delay always fires up lovers," says Ovid.
By this time, if you have followed all the poet's steps faithfully, you should have pulled. If not, keep trying. Persistence is everything.
Here, he is talking about the famously faithful Penelope. While her husband Odysseus was away fighting the Trojan war for 10 years, and then for another decade trying to make it home to Ithaca across the Mediterranean, she was assailed by suitors trying to get her to marry them.
quid magis est saxo durum, quid mollius unda?
dura tamen molli saxa cauantur aqua.
Penelopen ipsam, persta modo, tempore uinces:
capta uides sero Pergama, capta tamen.
What is softer than water,
What harder than stone? Yet the soft
Water-drip hollows hard rock. In time, with persistence,
You'll conquer Penelope. Troy fell late,
But fall it did.
Remember: Rome wasn't built in a day.
· Extracted from Latin Love Lessons: Put a Little Ovid in Your Life by Charlotte Higgins, published by Short Books. . All English translations are from Peter Green's The Erotic Poems by Ovid (Penguin Classics).
07 September 2011
What are the leading cognac brands in the United Stetes?
| US - Leading Cognac Brands (thousands of nine-liter case depletions) | ||||||
| Percent Change* | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | Importer | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2008-2009 | 2009-2010 |
| Hennessy | Moet-Hennessy USA (LVMH) | 2,160 | 2,117 | 2,138 | -2.0% | 1.0% |
| Remy Martin | Remy-Cointreau USA | 650 | 560 | 562 | -13.8% | 0.4% |
| Courvoisier | Beam Inc | 440 | 388 | 382 | -11.9% | -1.5% |
| Martell | Pernod Ricard USA | 95 | 82 | 77 | -13.7% | -6.1% |
| Total Leading Brands | 3,345 | 3,147 | 3,159 | -5.9% | 0.4% | |
*based on unrounded data Source: IMPACT DATABANK | ||||||
Cognac Rebounds In U.S. By Expanding Usage Occasions
While capturing big volume gains in emerging markets, Cognac also is refreshing its image in the U.S. by innovating within the tradition-focused category. Producers are busily diversifying their offerings to compete across categories and attract a wider base among younger LDA and female consumers.
Cognac’s consumption trends are shifting, with roughly 70% of all Cognac worldwide now consumed on ice, in cocktails or as a mixer, according to trade group Bureau National Interprofessionel du Cognac (BNIC). Leading brands are playing up their versatility to embrace new drinking occasions. “Innovation has opened us up to broader market opportunity,” says Chris Peddy, Beam Global’s general manager for Cognac.
Beam’s Courvoisier brand has been among the innovation leaders, expanding its appeal in the U.S. with its recent Connoisseur Collection, featuring 12- and 21-year-old expressions, both with prominently displayed age statements. “The Connoisseur Collection is the first major Cognac to launch age statements,” says Peddy. “It’s a new way for consumers to think more about Cognac, and combines it with a wine or Scotch experience.”
Courvoisier has also widened its scope with the launch of Courvoisier Rosé, a lower-alcohol (18%-abv) blend of Courvoisier Cognac and premium French red wine grapes. Priced at $24.99, the new extension has helped Courvoisier leverage the success of wine trends, according to Peddy. “The U.S. is a canvas for innovation, and the question there is, how do we get consumers to reconsider Cognac?” he says. “Courvoisier Rosé creates a new usage occasion, revolving around the summer.” Courvoisier is also eyeing future U.S. launches of more aged Cognacs and plans new expressions of its core brand.
Cognac leader Hennessy also has been active on the innovation front—mainly through Hennessy Black ($39.99 a 750-ml), the brand’s first major product addition in the U.S. in nearly 50 years. Hennessy Black was introduced in 2009 and last year surpassed 100,000 cases. The product is designed to attract younger LDA consumers and has been heavily marketed under the “Done Different” campaign, which promotes its versatility and cocktail focus. Moët Hennessy has targeted the nightclub crowd with Black, taking on bottle-service stalwarts like Patrón and Grey Goose. The effort appears to be bringing new consumers into the category while providing fresh exposure for the Hennessy franchise. Hennessy’s effort to boost its U.S. momentum also includes a partnership with New York-based artist and designer KAWS. Moët Hennessy is releasing a limited number of KAWS-designed bottles of Hennessy VS in September (priced at $29.99 a 750-ml.) as well as a series of the artist’s short films featuring Hennessy.
Number-two U.S. Cognac Rémy Martin, meanwhile, has stabilized following two down years, thanks in part to the market’s recent focus on cocktails. “The rise of sophisticated cocktails has propelled Cognac use to higher levels among new and existing consumers,” says Charles Ho, Rémy Cointreau USA’s vice president-Remy Martin Cognac. Rémy also has a range of celebrity tie-ups under its “Things Are Getting Interesting” campaign, including partnerships with hip hop artist TI, R&B legend Usher and actor Vincent Kartheiser and costume designer Janey Bryant from the television series Mad Men.
After its volume slid by 14% from 2007 through 2009, the U.S. market’s Cognac segment managed a 0.6% increase to 3.37 million cases last year.
06 September 2011
How to track travel rewards / awards
Tracking travel rewards
AwardWallet, an internationally-minded rewards tracker, has both an iPhone and Android app.
From free flights to room upgrades, there are loads of
travel-related freebies and discounts available to people who
participate in frequent flier and other travel loyalty programs.
Back in the (sexist) 1960s, everyone who watched a James Bond movie took it for granted that his boss M would have a female assistant like Miss Moneypenny to book travel and track expenses. Nowadays, we all rely on computers, not secretaries, to keep tabs on our budgets and you don’t need to be a globetrotting super-spy to see the world. Here's a rundown of a few cutting-edge digital tools that help monitor your airline miles, credit card points and other reward programs.
Best bill-paying tool that also monitors your mileage program
Web-based, personal finance management services, similar in purpose to Quicken and Quickbooks software, are increasingly adding travel-related features to their offerings. PageOnce, available to US residents, remains the safest online service for bill-paying and managing personal accounts, partly because it does not store your checking account details, so no hacker can potentially come in and steal the information to drain your savings.
It takes some effort to input the membership numbers of your various loyalty programs. But after you've set things up, the site will continuously fetch the latest points balances, expiration dates and reward opportunities from all your flight, hotel, car rental and credit-card programs. Unlike other programs, you can sync PageOnce data with downloadable apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices, allowing you to access your information on the go -- helpful if you want to request an upgrade for a hotel room or airplane at a moment's notice.
Best financial monitoring tool that helps you budget for your vacation
Mint, owned by Quicken, is PageOnce's largest rival, with the same type of personal finance management and data security. Unlike PageOnce, Mint doesn't currently have mileage tracking as a service, though that functionality will be added soon. Yet Mint does uniquely have a tool to help US and Canadian users plan their vacation budgets. Go to the site's vacation budgeting estimator and punch in your destination, the number of days you'll stay, the duration of your trip, number of people travelling and related information. The tool will then estimate how much plane tickets, hotels, rental cars and other major expenses will cost.
Most comprehensive and internationally-minded rewards tracker
Neither of the above mileage-and-points tracking tools is as comprehensive as the specialist site AwardWallet, which supports all of the world's major loyalty programs and is available to travellers worldwide. Founded in 2004, the free tool covers every large national travel company, from Amtrak to American Express to Diners Club, except for Southwest Airlines. AwardWallet alerts you when miles and points will expire, and these alerts are more timely and helpful than Mint's, given the site's actionable advice on how to keep miles and points active. AwardMiles also can also let you manage accounts for multiple family members. It has an unusually intuitive way of displaying any elite status you've earned, too.
Most interesting newcomer is the first ‘cash and reward search engine’
I'm also keeping an eye on new-this-year competitor service UsingMiles, which attempts to offer a similar tracking service to AwardWallet and also e-mails when your miles are in danger of expiring. I like its interface, but am disappointed that it doesn't support award programs for several major travel companies, such as Air Canada, Air France, American Express, Amtrak, Best Western, Hyatt, JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic. (Despite having "miles" in its name, UsingMiles also helps people track hotel, rail and rental car rewards.)
To its credit, UsingMiles tries to outdo AwardWallet by attempting a new trick: becoming the world's first search engine for cash and award travel, meaning that you can enter the name of your airline (or hotel chain or rental car company) and find products on which you can spend your award points. You can also compare the value of using points versus cash to make sure you're getting a solid deal. But the search engine has a similar problem in that it misses several a few major companies (Air France, LAN, etc) and thus misses the complete picture of travel opportunities you may be missing out on.
Best service for beginners learning the loyalty redemption game
One problem with all of the sites mentioned above is that they assume users understand their frequent flier programs and how to max out their rewards. The Travel Hacking Cartel charges a monthly fee (from $15) in exchange for text and e-mail alerts about travel reward opportunities along with marvellously straightforward (and mercifully brief) videos to help you get up to speed on the basics of earning travel points. The site is run by Chris Guillebeau, a writer and entrepreneur who has visited more than 150 countries and thus learned a lot about frequent flier programs.
Best service for folks who understand the basics and want to kick up their award-redemption skills a couple of notches
MilePoint, a site that also debuted this year, offers a similar service as the Travel Hacking Cartel, but for free. MilePoint delivers lessons from Randy Petersen and other loyalty program gurus on everything you need to know to earn and redeem frequent-flier points quickly. The trade off for getting free information is that you have to put more work into making sense of it. The information is presented in a much less user-friendly format than the Travel Hacking Cartel (no videos, no e-mail or text alerts and no step-by-step guides). But it's hard to argue with free.
Sean O'Neill is the tech travel columnist for BBC Travel
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