To make up for the sniveling...

A bit of "old school" Angelina Jolie never fails to perk up my day!

And the shit flies on...

And here is where I begin moaning. Shut up - at least I moan in an organized fashion. Let's see you try it sometime. It ain't easy.

• One of our tenants is leaving us.
  

• My furnace is broken, and I am afraid that the $900 energy bill payment I just sent off will bounce AGAIN if I so much as buy an eyelash between now and next payday.
  

• The holidays are looming dead ahead. I guess I'd better stock up on matches and Elmer's glue so I can make everybody a handcrafted Eiffel tower ornament for Christmas.
  

• The tenants that are moving out just told me that their wonderful cat, the one that was best buddies with our outside cat, got hit by a car and killed last week. No wonder our cat has been sad lately...
  

• I went to work dressed in my Professor McGonagall outfit today, and had a blast. Everyone loved it! From the FedEx guys to the people in town (I went out for a strut at lunch), everyone broke out in a grin when they saw me. Unfortunately, my pantyhose had a big hole in the inner thigh area, which rubbed a raw spot on my leg that was so painful by the end of the day that I could hardly walk upright. I doubt Professor McGonagall ever got the chaff. Of course, she could have just waved her wand and said, "goldbondio" and it would have fixed itself...
  

• My sister is in town for an entire week and has not even put me on the list of people she is going to visit. I find this extremely insulting, especially when she doesn't hesitate to call her good friend Marcheline when she needs a favor... but apparently I'm not a good enough friend to visit. Hmmph.
  

• My dad is really getting ill. His blood cancer is getting the better of him. All the usual treatments have stopped working, and now they're putting him on experimental treatments. He looks like a dried up leaf. There's nothing I can do to make him well again.
  

• Hemorrhoids are a pain in the ass. Don't ask me how I know. I've already said too much.
  

• I have lost over ten pounds on this South Beach-esque diet. And now I am losing interest in all the foods I'm allowed to eat. I want me some serious sugar right about now. It's fuckin' Hallowe'en, peeps.

Okay, I'll spare you further howling... I have a date with Bear to watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas" tonight!

This is what I'm thinking about right now

This is what the bottom of
my wallet looks like this month



How might it be possible to paint

the walls of an extremely small house
that is cram-packed with furniture?

What does one say to an acquaintance
whose 23 year old son committed suicide?

How pathetic is it to get all excited about cheating

on your diet because you're going to eat
cherry flavored Jell-O?

Why do the people we love the most in life
also annoy the living shit out of us?

If I tell everyone that I have renounced Christmas gifts
this year because of my disgust for the overwhelming
greed and commercialism, will everyone know
that it's really because I'm too broke
to buy them anything?

Missing Angie

I am getting tired of this endlessly-exhausted-looking Angelina.

And I am getting tired of Brad Pitt, too.
I can't believe I just said that.
But I am.

I miss this Angelina.
The one who wore her heart on a
blood-soaked chain around her wrist.
And yes, I even miss Billy Bob Thornton.
The man is to acting what a genius is
to the thinking world.

I miss this Angelina.
The gun-toting, cliff-diving, hang-gliding,
ass-kicking hot mama of Tomb Raider fame.
I miss this one a lot.

I miss this Angelina.
The freak-show poser and queen of
the devil-may-care attitude.




I even miss this Angelina.
The fashion magazine pinup girl who
always looked as if she would happily
take your money, but you could never
pay her enough to actually
buy into the bullshit.



It's strange how, when she was
dangerous, dark, and wild,
she always had a sparkle in her eye
and a ready smile.

I hope her next incarnation brings her back to life,
instead of draining all the blood out of her
like this one has.

Weighing In

Dumbledore Comes Out of the Closet!

I know that a lot of people couldn't give a rat's patootie about the Harry Potter series, much less the sexual proclivities of its fictional characters. However, since this is my blog, and I happen to adore all things Harry Potter, I am going to weigh in briefly on the recent news story regarding what J.K. Rowling said about Hogwarts' headmaster and all-around wise and wonderful guy, Albus Dumbledore.

In short, she said that he was gay. Here is my point of view on this subject. From three perspectives.


As a (fantasy) student of Hogwarts:

Wow, no kidding, really? We all knew that AGES ago!

As a reader:

This comes as no surprise, given Dumbledore's complete lack of romantic relationships with women throughout the series.

As a writer:

This is one of the most ingenious ways that an author has ever driven home an excellent point to so many people at once. She spent seventeen years making us fall in love with Dumbledore. We loved his wisdom, his loving spirit, his efforts on Harry's behalf - even when it caused him excruciating physical and emotional pain. We knew his foibles, but we loved him anyway. And now, after the series has ended, and we've all wept over the death of the greatest headmaster Hogwarts has ever known, J.K. Rowling tells us that he was gay!

If you think about statistics alone, it stands to reason that some portion of the millions of Harry Potter fans in the world are homophobic or anti-gay, whether from fear of the unknown or as a result of religious brainwashing. Here is where J.K. Rowling's genius lies. The fans already love Albus Dumbledore. It's a done deal. You can't un-love a character that you have spent years getting to know. And now all those fans are forced to come to the realization that open-minded and open-hearted people everywhere have already discovered.

It.

Doesn't.

Make.

Any.

Difference.

"Alas. Ear wax."

Take a Walk with Marcheline

Marcheline's Haints

On Sunday, the first day that Bear and I really had to relax together for over a week, we went up north on the island to an old cemetery that we had so far only talked about exploring. As soon as we pulled into the nearly hidden drive, between two old sections of wooden split-rail fencing, I knew we'd hit pay dirt (so to speak).

I hadn't been graveyard-hopping in a while, and I was itching to start taking pictures as soon as we parked the vehicle. Of course, in order to park, we first had to maneuver around a young couple who had decided to smoke pot canoodle in the graveyard, and had parked their car dead center in the only driving path, and were not even slightly motivated to offer to move their car so that we could drive by.

Bear went off-roading for a couple of seconds and we got 'round the heads and found a good spot to park - underneath the largest tree in the boneyard. Having a central location that's easy to find is the first rule when photo-spelunking with someone else. This way no one has to follow anyone else around - you always meet up back at the ranch.

The following pictures were taken by yours truly, and I indulged in Photoshopping galore when the mood took me... enjoy! (Bear's photos can be seen HERE - they're pretty darn spooky too!)

Creepy Hangover

Vales from the Dark Side

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Wheat of the Dead




Sanguine Tree

One of my favorite poems...

Here, the veil between the worlds is the thinnest

For all you Harry Potter fans....
although the dates are wrong

Headstone art detail

Boneyard Rose

The world soon follows on

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Corn of the Dead

Fire on the stone

Says who? You?
Oh, sure - but you're not dead, ARE YA?

Think on the glass that runs for thee....

Boneyard Rose II

Duskfire

Acorns of the Dead

Cairns for Joan

Taken by Marcheline at Loch Cluanie, Scotland 1999

My friend Joan of Walk This Way fame has recently posted some lovely pictures of a traveler's cairn on her website, and this is my response post, as it were. I encountered the cairn above in the mountains on the way to Glen Coe. The weather was windy and cold, and there wasn't another living soul to be seen in any direction. If one wants to be alone with one's self, there is no better destination than Scotland. But of course if you ask me, no matter what - there is no better destination than Scotland.

The beauty of cairns is not as much in their haphazard architecture as it is in the physical proof that others have gone before you... in the most magical, hard-to-reach corners of the world, adventurers reach out to each other by the simple act of placing a stone on the cairn. Each stone touched by the flesh of another kindred spirit, each stone a validation of the pull of places more beautiful than words can describe.

When I took my mother to Ireland a few years ago, as a special gift to her (visiting Ireland was one of her lifelong dreams), Bear asked me to place a cairn for him somewhere in the wilds. And so I did, on the great Blasket island, off the coast of County Kerry.



My camera was, unbeknownced to me, suffering from an illness in one of its most-used outdoor shutter settings, so many of my pictures were utterly ruined by big black blurry bits eating up half of the image. You can see here that this picture was in danger of being obliterated by the shutter blight, but happily Mom had positioned the camera so that I and Bear's Cairn were to the extreme right of the shot. My mother, queen of the backdrop effect, had wanted to catch the Irish sea behind the remains of the old stone house, bless her soul! The resulting effect is somewhat creepy and very appropriate - for the sad, ghostly history of the Blaskets fits perfectly with the feel of this picture.

Since I just spent the last twenty minutes going through my plastic bag of assorted photographs from Ireland (some supplied by Mom, to make up for my lost ones), I now have the urge to drag out my travel diary and put them all in a photo album!

A Hallowe'en Tale

It was Thursday night. There we were, my mother and I, curled up in our pajamas on the newly renovated Big Red Sofa. We each had a glass of Pindar Winter White in front of us, and were deep in the bowels of an episode of "As Time Goes By". We had started watching my collection of the complete episodes during her last visit, and she was eager to see the rest of them this week. As for me, a "visit" with Jean and Lionel is never amiss, so I was enjoying the evening immensely.


My cell phone tinkled merrily, signalling the regular evening text message from Bear before he went to sleep upstate at the Zen center, where he's been all week. I answered him back, and he sent back another message. This one said "I love those candy-cane pants that you have". I laughed, because I was actually wearing my candy-cane pajama pants that night! I told him so, and settled back to watch the show. The phone went off again, and this time there was a message that said, "Who said you could show Mom my old books?" I jumped, because I had just taken his old books out to show my mother the day before.

Those of you who have read Mental Meatloaf for some time are familiar with my husband's psychic abilities where I am concerned. He is downright spooky sometimes, getting specific things like names and numbers out of thin air and seeing right through my skull into my brain. Thoughts of this started going around in my head the moment I received the message about the books. I texted him back, "How did you know? Do you have a webcam planted in the living room or something?"


His reply message gave me the cold chills. It said, "Yes. Underneath the Animal Dreams book." I looked over to the coffee table, where the book thusly titled sat atop a pile of other books that my mother had brought with her on her visit. As she had arrived after Bear had left for his retreat, there is no normal way that he could have known she would bring that book.

I jerked my feet off the coffee table and started scanning for little dark eyes belonging to recording equipment. I wasn't too comfortable with the thought that anyone could see anything that went on in our living room, not so much for the sake of Bear's seeing it, but if he could do it, so could someone else!

During this whole exchange, I had not said a word to my mother about it. She was laughing at the crazy antics of Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, as I slowly got more and more freaked out. Suddenly, I had a sane thought. I jumped up off the couch and ran to the front door, pulled it open, and stuck my head outside. Mom jumped and yelled, "What ARE you doing? For goodness' sake!" She clearly thought I'd lost my marbles.



In any case, there stood Bear, just outside the living room window, which had been left open a crack to let in some cross breeze... he had driven the whole six hours from Ithaca without telling anyone he was coming home, for a surprise! I was so excited to have him back home (looking almost skinny, I might add!) that I nearly forgot to smack him and say "DORK!" for scaring the bejeebers out of me.

Nearly, but not quite.

If you don't watch this, you're a big pussy. If you watch it and don't laugh, you're no longer among the living. OR: Why the 80's were great

Today

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur" is Latin for "Anything said in Latin sounds profound." Since your imminent future will require you to be elegant, high-minded, august, and in possession of gravitas -- even if people you deal with aren't any of those things -- I'll provide you with Latin phrases to fit the kinds of situations you may find yourself in. (1) Quod natura non sunt turpia. (What is natural cannot be bad.) (2) Quinon proficit deficit. (He who does not advance, goes backwards.) (3) Quod cibus est aliis, aliis est venenum. (What's food to some is poison to others.) (4) Magna cum voluptate. (With great pleasure.) (5) Sane ego te vocavi. Forsitan capedictum tuum desit. (I did call. Maybe your answering machine is broken.) (6) Revelare pecunia! (Show me the money!) (7) Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri? (How do you get your hair to do that?)


Okay, so Bear has just left me.

Keep your pants on, it's only for a week. Only a week of eating alone, sleeping alone, and banging around the house alone with the cats, which technically doesn't count as "alone" but you get what I'm saying.

He's upstate doing a Zen Thing (he knows all the fancy words for it) which he is required to do to get ordained in his Zen Monastery. I think it's really cool, except I wish there was some way he could be teleported back here every evening when I get home from work so we can, you know, eat dinner together, watch movies, find "enlightenment", that sort of thing.

But I am going to use this week to Get Things Done. I have an antique book case to clean and refurbish, an old loveseat to wrestle down the stairs and dispose of, and a wooden chest to empty, wrestle UP the stairs, and then re-fill. And - oh, yes - then there's the antique book case to position, and fill with books and chatchkas. I know I spelled that last word wrong, but I don't give a rat's patootie. And my mother has suddenly decided to come up and visit me (again) so I would really rather get all this stuff done before she gets here. Sunday, I believe, is what she said.

Yes, it's another pressure-free weekend for me. Not.

In a rare "plug your own husband's blog" moment, I am going to insist that all of you go immediately to my blogroll, click on the link with the bear's face on it (top of the blogroll), which will link you to Bear's blog, and get that Orgasm Soup recipe that he posted there.... if you have ever liked soup in your life, you will LOVE this soup, and you will never want to face another October without it. I know I don't.

My new tattoo!

Well, and here it is... my long-awaited Scottish tattoo! The thistle crowns the image, and underneath that nestles the White Rose of Scotland (Bonnie Prince Charlie's rose), and the first line from one of my favorite poems of all time, written by Hugh MacDiarmid. The poem, in its entirety, goes thus:

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet - and breaks the heart.

I had found this poem some years ago, and had decided to have this engraved on my headstone. Then I thought it would be silly to wait until I'm dead to enjoy this wonderful poem to its fullest, and so the thought of the tattoo came to mind. The hardest part was to find someone who realized that the white rose of Scotland was, indeed, NOT like all the typical roses of the world, and, more specifically, not like all the rose tattoos of the world.

I provided my tattoo artist, Stacey Sharp, with botanical photographs of the white rose of Scotland and of the thistle. As I researched this design, I came across many horrible thistle tattoos, in which artists had attached fat, curly leaves to smooth, curving thistle stems. Thistles are all prickles, all the time - no fat leaves or smooth stems to be found - and I wanted it clear that this tattoo was to be as true to life as possible. The white rose of Scotland is, by nature, much flatter of face and contains many more petals per go-round than the average hothouse rose.

I sat down in the chair at 7pm, and at 11:20pm, I arose with my finished tattoo. I will brag that for about 3/4 of that time, I was happily chatting away with Stacey and Bear, and we even watched an entire full-length movie ("Hot Fuzz") on their DVD system, laughing our asses off at the funny bits. At around the last 45 minutes, it started to burn, and every time she wiped my arm off with the paper towel, I nearly jumped out of my skin. My left leg had developed an uncontrollable twitch, and I was getting cold chills as the endorphins, which had been washing through my system during the first phase of the pain, left the building. I was supposed to have eaten something within the two hours prior to sitting down in the chair, but since I came straight from work, that was not the case.

Bear took wonderful care of me the entire time I was in the chair, bringing me cold drinks, providing conversation and company, and afterwards taking me to a late-night diner for a bacon cheeseburger (no bun - South Beach Diet!) which picked me up considerably.

So now I'm home, have taken a couple of Tylenol, and my arm is cooling in the night air. It feels like a very bad sunburn, and will, over the next couple of days, behave exactly like one - from the pain to the peeling to the itching. Thing is though, with a tattoo there's no scratching allowed! Just the application of creams and ointments and patience until the thing is all healed up and ready for show.

Pain is only temporary, and unavoidable in this life, and it's completely worth it considering the honor of wearing this beautiful piece of art on my arm henceforth. There is something very empowering about choosing to go through pain as a means to an end. It makes the experience something of a badge of courage. Having set the arena, the date, and the time of the struggle, it gives one an upper hand against the pain, and there is the feeling that if one can handle this, one can handle the next thing that comes along, as well.

I want to thank Bear again for his wonderful gift to me... five years ago we had our Scottish wedding, and this tattoo is as perfect a memento of our fifth wedding anniversary as there could ever be.

Muse-ical Thinking

I am very excited - sorry, the official word is "stoked". Tomorrow after work, Bear is taking me to get a new tattoo! It's based around the first line of a poem from a wonderful Scottish poet named Hugh MacDiarmid, and the theme is most definitely Scottish. I will take pictures and post them as soon afterward as I can. It's been a year or two since my second tattoo, and I've been jonesing for another one since then. Bear is busy designing his next tattoo - a celtic shin shield design.

We also splurged a bit on our anniversary and bought a lovely antique curved-glass fronted book case, which is currently sitting in the middle of the living room floor awaiting a good cleaning and retouching before it's put in its place next to the Big Red Couch. We're going to have to do some serious finagling and rearranging so as not to have to throw too much out.

It's pretty much down to the old loveseat whose arms the cats shredded up in their younger days. That's gonna get hauled out of the computer room, the wooden hope chest that my mother gave me as a wedding present will be moved upstairs to take the place of the loveseat, and the new book case will take the place of the chest in the living room, next to the sofa.

All of this works pretty well on paper, except that it leaves the living room stereo a bit up in the air - literally - since the new book case is about four times the height of the chest, where the stereo is currently residing. Living in a cottage is sometimes a bit like living in a snow globe. You just have to shake everything up once in a while, and it all comes to rest wherever it fits best.

I've been listening to my Type O Negative lately, which always puts me in that Halloweenie mood... I've also dyed my hair back to the blue-black color that I had for so many years. It always makes me laugh the way people's eyes go right to the top of my head the first time they see me after a color change, but almost no one mentions it outright. It's as though they think if they don't mention it, I won't know they've noticed. I wonder if they think I don't know how much different it looks than my old reddish brown color... of course I do! That's the whole point - shake things up a bit - do something different - get out of the rut! It's almost anti-climactic to have people try and ignore it. Even if they hate it, I'd rather they react to it.

The only person that doesn't bother me with their lack of perception is my dad... because I really don't think he notices. Or he's become numb to my brand of wild. Either way, from him it just seems like he loves me no matter what I look like, and that's okay with me.

Tonight Bear and I watched "Copying Beethoven". First off, I have to say that I have a long-standing love affair with Beethoven. One reason is that we were born on the same day (different year, silly). The other is that I've played classical piano since I was 5 years old, and Beethoven's music has always been my favorite to play. Watching this movie was a bit difficult, because I've been enamored of Gary Oldman's Beethoven, from that wonderful flick "Immortal Beloved", for so very long.

In "Copying Beethoven", Ed Harris plays the maestro. The fact that he doesn't have the remotest hint of a German/Viennese accent made it a bit difficult to take, but the hairstyle suited him very well, I thought. As long as I completely put Gary Oldman from my mind, the movie was pretty good, all in all. But it has in no way taken "Immortal Beloved" from its pedestal in my heart.

Well, tomorrow is a gym day, and payday (YAY), and tattoo day... so it's a biggie. I'd best hie mysel' off tae bed and get some much needed beauty rest!