Month: July 2008

  • The webnovel so far….

    Tattoo
    the webnovel so far…


    Chapter 1: Blood is Thicker

    Chapter 1.1 in which Glory is not mindful of the store
    Chapter 1.2 in which Glory is made to do something she would really rather not
    Chapter 1.3 in which Glory thinks she might be sick
    Chapter 1.4 in which Aaron makes a mistake
    Chapter 1.5 in which Glory is made to see the error of her ways
    Chapter 1.6 in which the circle remains unbroken

    Chapter 2: A Farewell to Arms

    Chapter 2.1 in which Aaron makes another mistake
    Chapter 2.2 in which Glory reflects on her path
    Chapter 2.3 in which we learn Aaron is not really a nice boy
    Chapter 2.4 in which Glory speculates on the holiness of salt
    Chapter 2.5 in which Glory learns of the necessity for upper body strength, but makes do with  what she has
    Chapter 2.6 in which Aaron tries to make amends, but is still pretty much an ass

    Chapter 3: Small Sacrifices
    begins July 27th


    Swiped this from ourcrazycatlady…

    “The Big Read reckons the average adult has read only six of
    the top 100 books.”


    1. Bold the books you have read.
    2. Italicize those you intend to read.
    3. Underline the books you LOVE.
    4. Star next to the books you’re reading/have read some of.
    5. Copy, paste and repeat.



    1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
    2 The Lord of the Rings
    - JRR Tolkien 

    3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
    4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (I can’t believe this is in the top 100!)
    5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee *
    6 The Bible
    7 Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
    8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
    9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
    10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
    11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
    12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
    14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
    15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
    16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
    17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
    18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger *
    19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
    20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
    21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
    22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
    23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
    24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
    25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
    27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
    28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
    29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
    30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
    31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy *
    32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
    33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    34 Emma - Jane Austen
    35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
    36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis (IMO, should be included with #33)
    37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini    
    38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
    39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
    40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
    41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
    42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown   
    43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
    45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
    46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery *
    47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
    48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
    49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
    50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
    51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
    52 Dune - Frank Herbert
    53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
    54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
    55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
    56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
    58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
    59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
    60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
    62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
    64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
    65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
    66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac *
    67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 
    68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
    69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
    70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
    71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
    72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
    73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
    74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
    75 Ulysses - James Joyce
    76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
    77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
    78 Germinal – Emile Zola
    79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
    80 Possession - AS Byatt
    81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
    82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
    83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
    84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
    85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
    86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
    87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
    88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
    89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton  
    91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
    92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
    93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
    94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
    95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
    96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
    97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 
    98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
    99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
    100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo *

    I can’t believe some of the books on this list. There’s some that I’d definitely add, and definitely some that I’d remove. There are some that are technically on here twice….
    Obviously no accounting for taste with this list…. At least I’m well ahead of the curve with 42 read.





    July 20th


    There are no holy days for July 20th


  • Kween’s Challenge 2008-14: Art and the subconscious

    Kween’s Challenge 2008-14:

    WHAT DO YOU DO TO FEED YOUR ARTISTIC NEED?

    Everyone has some kind of artistic flair.  Is it
    writing?  Drawing?  Painting?  Crafting?  Sewing? Collecting art? 
    Computer graphics?  Everything? Tell us what you do to feed that
    artistic need!

    My “artistic need” is expressed most in my dreams. No matter what else I do… writing, drawing, painting, singing… it begins with dreaming. My dreams are like a mental movie theater. No matter what physical outlet I find for my creativity, it plays second fiddle to my inner creative ability. I don’t have the adequate skill or talent to express the things my subconscious shows me when I dream, though I try. 

    Some scientists and psychiatrists believe that intelligence is a form of insanity, a kind of mania, a fixation on some aspect of what we observe. Creativity then is the expression of that observation, commingled with the synthesis of a new idea from what is already known. But the act of creation is one drenched in emotion and designed ultimately to evoke it. 

    Words are my palette, emotions my musical scale. I’m an adequate artist when it comes to pencils or paints, but I think that I truly excel in writing. Writing is my one true outlet for my external creative urges. It is the tool I use to share what my subconscious has synthesized while I dreamed. For me, my dreams and my creativity are irrevocably linked. If one day, I stopped dreaming… I think I would also lose my ability to create.



    July 19th


    Isis was honored in Rome until the 4th century AD. In Egypt, this was the Opet Festival, celebrating the union of Isis and Osiris. According to the Egyptian calendar, this is the first day of the month of Thuthi. The festival continued for eleven days and centered on the Ipet (Opet) temple. Amun and his spouse Mut, accompanied by the god Khonsu, were taken in a ceremonial procession to this temple. This was also a feast day of Thoth. Amun, Mut, Khnosu,




    The Adonia occurred in Greece today. It was the sacred drama commemorating the wedding of Aphrodite to Adonis.



  • Cthulhupalooza


    It seems that Xanga just doesn’t like me this week. Do you know how many hours I’ve been trying to get the weblog entry module to work today? At least the power hasn’t gone out, though it did two more times last night. And I’ve checked my computer again and again for viruses, and defragged out the wazoo. But nothing fixes my internet issues. Either it’s my crappy dialup connection or my computer has attained sentience and is offering up a  passive-aggressive resistance ploy to make me stop using it so much.

    Here are the images I sent to the Cthulhupalooza banner contest. I rather like the way the nightgaunt came out in the first banner, but the second, the detail’s a bit too small to make out the little human stickfigures runnying away. In the third icon, Cthulhu looks a bit like a sludge monster. lol But I rather like the star sigil I came up with, both colored and not, though the outer circle is a bit off center. It was good enough for the creator of Cthulhupalooza to swipe for use as her personal image, so I’m probably being over critical. She’s thinking of making some Cthulhupalooza stickers, so even if none of these are used for the site banner, some of them may get a new life as advertisements. heh




    July 18th


    Lu Pan, the Chinese patron of carpenters and builders, was born in 606 BC. He is credited with repairing the pillar of heaven when it was in danger of collapsing. A special visit is paid to his shrine at noon by carpenters and builders in Hong Kong. Feasts are offered to him whenever new buildings are completed.




    John Dee, an English astrologer, alchemist, and mathematician was born.




    The birthday of Nephthys falls on the 5th Epagomenal Day. She is equivalent to Aphrodite. She is the wife of Set and sister to Isis.



  • Thunderstorms, rolling blackouts, and this cop-out post

    So didn’t get to post yesterday, and this post, as you can see from the title, is not going to be much better.

    There was a huge thunderstorm through here about two hours ago which has caused power outages off and on since. So, this post may, or may not make it though. I am NOT signing back on again. lol

    As a means to get out of my funk of the other day, when I was complaining about my job, I cleaned my room. I figured, if I’m going to be my own person and start my own business, I should start working on being more organized. Organization starts with cleaning. I also finished working on several pictures for the Cthulhupalooza icon contest. I may or may not post them tomorrow. I’m not going to chance it tonight.

    Ironically, today I received the course book for the business class I wanted to take at the college. It’s like a sign…

    Also, I finished a young adult book called Hero the other day. It’s about a teenager who is trying to join a league of superheros… The characters are almost blatantly DC. And the main character is gay. I don’t want to give the story away, but it was a pretty good read. The only annoying thing was how naive he was. I hate characters that lack common sense.

    Now I’m reading the Artemis Fowl book, Time Paradox. I don’t know that it is as good as the Lost Colony, but all the Artemis Fowl books have been fun reads if nothing else.




    July 16th


    In Haiti, Voodoo pilgrims seek healing and good health in the holy waters of the Saut d’Eau, a waterfall where the voodoo spirit of love, Erozulie Freda, appeared twice in the 1800s.




    The 3rd Epagomenal Day is the Birthday of Set(h).




    July17th


    This is the Japanese feast day of Amaterasu-O-Mi-Kami. From 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., the first procession takes place. This is the Yamahoko-junko, which consists of twenty floats. When Emporer Seiwa of Japan successfully drove an epidemic out of the city of Kyoto in 869, the day was commemorated with a festival. He performed the fete by displaying sixty-six spears before his imperial shrine. Every year after, he paraded the spears through the streets in honor of the gods. This is continued in the Gion festival. The spears are carried in sapling topped shrines accompanied by dozens of musicians led by a boy dressed as a Shinto priest.




    The birth of Isis, wife of Osiris, child of Seb the earth god and Nut the sky goddess occurs on the 4th of the Epagomenal Days. She is the mother of Horus and an agricultural goddess identified with Demeter and associated with the seasonal rise of the Nile river which brought fertile soil up from the river’s bottom.




  • wcfq 13a: Monsters under the bed (in my head)

    What’s under your bed?
    qwertikimafotchy


    Three answers to this question and not one person said… monsters! lol But seriously, my bed is up on press-board crates. This gives me room to stow my art supplies. I also have some ratty old walking-about-in-nature shoes stowed under there and a box with a change of bedding.
    Mostly the underside of my bed is a dust bunny haven though.

    Yeah… I picked the easy question. I’m really wiped out and more than a little disillusioned with my job right now. No matter how much I do, my boss is constantly complaining about what doesn’t get done. Today I told her off, but not really. When I was leaving, she was telling me all the things that no one did all day and I said, in a toneless voice that I was only one person and I have my own work to do, and then I told her all the things everyone else had done today. I told her it wasn’t as if everyone was standing around doing nothing. We were all busy. I didn’t raise my voice, and being as tired as I am, there was no inflection whatsoever. I didn’t say it mean, and I know she wasn’t offended.

    I’ve been running on empty for weeks now. My ankle has started to hurt. It started hurting a couple weeks ago and now, by the end of the day, it is shear, stabbing agony. My mother says it’s arthritis…. Bleh The thing is, they keep cutting our payroll hours, and I know it’s not my boss’s fault, but there’s only so much we can get done in the time allotted any more. If Borders doesn’t care about how shoddily and half-assed things become because they won’t pay us to do our jobs properly then I’m not going to worry any more whether I get things done exactly as they want. I know it’s a terrible attitude, but I’m not going to stress about it. I’m going to do things my way, and I honestly don’t care any more if that jives with what the bigwigs want. They actually wanted me to put cardboard boxes on the front table with merchandise just dumped in it for customers to root through. What are we? Border’s Bargain Basement? Gah! I take at least a little pride in my work!

    My boss is anxious because her boss may, or may not, visit this Thursday. Most likely, not. They usually leave us alone because we’re so far away from the other stores in the zone and even when they do visit, we’re still comparably the best store. They never have any cause to complain. I’ve taken to begging for feedback because 1) I’m never there when they visit and 2) all my boss ever says is “everything was good.” So if everything was “good,” then why the heck can’t they leave me alone to do my job my way?

    I honestly don’t care any more though. Give me more hours or give me more help, but don’t expect me to bend over backwards for corporate or stress about things I can’t possibly control. With the instore changes and their new website, I give Borders a year before all stores are “outlet” stores designed more to facilitate returns from online purchases than actual places to find merchandise. Two years and Borders may be the new Amazon, with no stores if they keep treating their employees so indifferently. And everytime I say something about how I feel, I get called negative. I HATE being called negative. I don’t think it’s fair to call me negative for having a realistic viewpoint about our current situation.

    I’m just so tired.

    Fire me. Please.

    I’d just like to stop feeling like I’m waiting for an end I can already see coming.




    July 15th


    On St. Within’s Day, a Christian version of the Norse sea and storm god Aegir, rain today meant more rain for the next forty days.




    The Day of Rauni is a Finnish and Cornish holy day. The Cornish goddess Rowana or Rauni, guardian of rowan trees, is patroness of the secret knowledge of the runes. Her tree is protective, and its wood, bark, and leaves, used for making protective amulets, are especially effective if cut today. A simple charm consists of binding some leaves and bark up in white or gold cloth with red thread while visualizing the goal of the spell. In Finnish mythology, she is the wife of Ukko the Thunder God. The name comes from ‘ronn’ or ‘raun’, the Nordic names for Rowan.




    On the 2nd of the Epagomenal Days, Horus was born.



  • Writers Choice Featured Questions Week 13

    five questions for this week
    (unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from September of 2007)

    What’s under your bed?
    qwertikimafotchy

    What would make the world a better place?
    mikannahh

    If you could be one age forever, what age would that be and why?
    EuGenius1207

    What do you think is completely overrated today?
    neverxland

    What is your stance on drug use?
    aesthetic_distraction




    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming
    week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully
    there is at least one question here for everyone.




    Tattoo
    My webnovel so far…



    Chapter 1.1 in which Glory is not mindful of the store
    Chapter 1.2 in which Glory is made to do something she would really rather not
    Chapter 1.3 in which Glory thinks she might be sick
    Chapter 1.4 in which Aaron makes a mistake
    Chapter 1.5 in which Glory is made to see the error of her ways
    Chapter 1.6 in which the circle remains unbroken

    Chapter 2.1 in which Aaron makes another mistake
    Chapter 2.2 in which Glory reflects on her path
    Chapter 2.3 in which we learn Aaron is not really a nice boy
    Chapter 2.4 in which Glory speculates on the holiness of salt
    Chapter 2.5 in which Glory learns of the necessity for upper body strength, but makes do with  what she has




    July 14th


    The 1st of the Epagomenal Days is the Birthday of Osiris.




    This is Reed Dance Day in Africa.



  • Featured Question #325: Religion

    What is your stance on religion? Are you a religious person?


    Finally, a worthwhile Featured Question to answer… how sad it’s already been replaced by “what’s your favorite comfort food?” This is one of the reasons I started my own “featured questions” by stealing much neglected questions from the featured question chatboard….

    What’s my stance on religion? That’s like asking… what’s your stance on global warming? In my opinion, you can’t have a “stance” on religion. If you’re religious, you support religion. If you’re not, you don’t. Of course, you could be a complete bigot and only support your own religion. I hope and believe that people are becoming more tolerant of other people’s beliefs all the time, despite the very public examples of intolerance and ignorance among the world’s leaders (Dictator Bush, the Chinese government, the Taliban, etc). My stance on religion is that everyone should be entitled to their beliefs providing they don’t attempt to inflict those beliefs on others. Dialogue between religions is wonderful; trying to force others to follow the dictates of your belief system… not so good.

    Am I a religious person? Oh definitely. I never had much use for the religion I was born to. I’m actually the only child in my family to be baptized. Ironically, I knew from a young age that the religion I was born into was not for me. By the time I was eleven I had decided that I was a Pagan irregardless of whether there were others. It was actually a few years after the fact that I discovered there were other people who still believed in the old gods. Up until that point, I hadn’t known there were alternatives to Christianity and its relatives.

    I am a very religious person, but I do not ascribe to any of the major (Abrahamic) religions. So the people who are members of the major religions tend not to look at me as an equal. Heck, it’s hard for them to look at each other as equals. I don’t have that problem. It’s actually one of the reasons I try to post as many non-mainstream holy days here as I can find.

    If someone is religious, no matter what they believe, I respect them. Understand, I have no patience for hypocrites, but a person who is honest about their beliefs and holds a sincere faith is a peer. A person who honestly believes in their own religion will not feel threatened by my faith and won’t feel a need to attack or convert me. Just as I am not made uncomfortable by people of other faiths because I am comfortable in my own beliefs. 

    I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!




    July 11th


    (My brother’s birthday is tomorrow and the first meeting of the horror bookclub is  tomorrow night. Sunday we’re going to see Wall-E and I also have to make my brother’s birthday dinner, so I will probably not post again till Monday. Here are the holy days for today, Saturday, and Sunday.)

    Theano, wife of Pythagoras and a philosopher herself, is sometimes considered the patroness of vegetarians. She was a native either of Crete or Crotona.




    The Naadam, or Three Manly Games, festival of Mongolia is celebrated with horse racing and feats of archery and wrestling. Of course, this is a misnomer. Women and children participate in the races and archery contests.




    According to the Egyptian calendar, on the 28th of Mesore the Feast of Min is celebrated.




    July 12th


    This day was revealed as the luckiest day of the year by the archangel Gabriel. Healing, planting, house building, traveling, and war were all supposed to proceed without a problem. Children born today would be wealthy, and students who began their work today would be great scholars. A new job begun today would be successful.




    On the 29th day of Mesore, a festival was held in the Temple of Sokar and in the Estate of Ptah.




    July 13th


    During the three day Buddhist O-Bon festival of Japan, the spirits of the dead mingle with the living. It is a time for family reunions so that the entire family, living and dead, may share in the day’s festivities. After house cleaning is finished, the family moves on to the shrine or grave of their loved ones and fill the site with offerings of herbs, flowers, and food. On the evening of July 12th, the family gathers at the grave-side to greet ancestral spirits and escort them home. Called the Feat of Lanterns by foreigners, the nights are illuminated by lanterns and torches. For the rest of the festival, families feast, laying a place at all meals for their deceased. Celebrants gather outside in parks or squares to participate in the traditional Bon Dance intended to greet and comfort the wandering souls. At the end of the festival, farewell fires are lit and lanterns are set out to help the spirits find their way home. In some areas, little boats equipped with lanterns are also sent out.




    The birthday of Ra occurs on the 30th day of Mesore.





  • WCFQ 12a: Suicide for everyone…

    Is euthanasia (assisted suicide) justified?
    XerOcreativeXD

    I do not believe that any stigma should be attached to suicide and it is the fact that it is morally and religiously condemned that leads to so much suffering. Obviously I think that people should get the help they need to be healthy and happy, but in certain cases, it’s just not possible to fix people. So suicide is a valid choice. For instance, in modern society, we have a habit of maintaining someone’s existence even as the quality of that existence wanes. People are kept on life support long past a point where one would assume that they might get better. If someone is dying and they know they are dying and the doctors know that there is no possible way this person will ever get better, then extending that person’s life is more a cruelty than a blessing. In this case, assisted suicide is really a misnomer. The person is already dying and would die without the aid of machines.

    What I’m really getting at is that every person’s life is their own to do with what they will. We don’t run around telling people who seek hazardous situations that they can’t climb mountains, do extreme sports, or be police or firemen because they might die… how is denying someone the right to die in their own way in their own time any different? I’m not a big advocate for suicide because you’re depressed. Depression is not life threatening and as someone who comes from a whole family of depressives (including myself), I have to say that people who indulge their depression are selfish. (I know I’ll probably catch a lot of flack for that statement…) The thing is, depression can be treated and while quality of life is affected, you can’t die of depression. My regimen of “therapy” when dealing with my own depression is to get up off my butt and do something… whether it’s reading, writing, drawing, surfing the net, taking a walk, going to a movie… whatever. Even if I am not enthusiastic about whatever I decide to do at first, by the time I am done, the depression is usually much less than I began. I occupy my mind so that it doesn’t have time to be depressed. When all else fails, I sleep.

    I don’t think most people consider suicide frivolously. They don’t just wake up one morning and say, hey! I think I’m gonna go kill myself today! But the fact that society condemns people for the desire/need to end their existence ensures that it stays a taboo subject and also that most people who consider it (outside of the terminally ill) do not get the help they need to alter their determination to end things.

    So I do support assisted suicide for the terminally ill, but not specifically for people who are depressed. People who are already dying, but who are not allowed to die thanks to modern medicine definitely deserve the right to choose the more dignified death of euthanasia. People who are depressed also deserve the benefit of a compassionate look at what is making them depressed. Most people who are depressed and consider suicide do it because they have no one to talk to about how they feel. For one reason or another, they are alienated from the rest of society, their families, and their friends. I think assisted suicide should be something that is available to anyone who seeks it, including people with depression. I think that with certain guidelines in place, most depressed people who sought euthanasia would then get the help they needed by having to explain why they wished to die. In that way, most people with depression who sought suicide would end up not killing themselves because of the assistance available.




    July 10th


    Once every four years, the ancient Athenians celebrated the Panathenaea in honor of Athena, their patron goddess, by presenting her with a brilliant new robe. It would first be paraded through the streets before the priests would dress the goddess’s statue with the robe.




    Holda, Hela, and Skadi are northern European goddesses of the shades and underworld. The procession of Lady Godiva once included the images of a white Holda and a black Hela.
    Knut the Reaper is honored today. His symbol, the scythe, is also an emblem of the destroying goddess Skadi, patroness of Scotland and Scandinavia.



  • wcfq 12c: Dream Themes

    What is the best dream you’ve ever had?

    redcrazy


    This is a difficult question for me because I have had so many epic dreams. For instance, one of the earliest dreams I can remember from when I was around eleven: I dreamed that I went to a cemetery and resurrected someone with my science book just so I would have a friend. But when I brought him back to life, I also brought to life an evil snake-thing as big as a house which wanted to take over the world. Kind of had to take the bad with the good. So the snake thing killed my friend and then hid me away because if I died, then it would too, but I didn’t know this. Then the government sent in a crack commando team to killed the snake thing, but they failed. So I used a fork to stab it in the forehead where there was a jewel… it’s only weak point. And as I did this, I heard the theme song from the old Pink Panther cartoons….

    There are other dreams I recall from my childhood, but that’s probably my favorite. Some dreams that I’ve had since starting my Xanga (the more coherent, significant, or entertaining dreams are starred) :
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/29184030/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/29411174/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/29598334/item.html   *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/31793830/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/32857894/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/36230319/item.html   *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/36512901/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/37154147/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/38451917/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/41768428/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/41958523/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/42896533/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/43748453/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/45120543/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/46301866/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/47530318/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/49029948/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/53565379/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/54020350/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/58848949/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/59313449/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/60439875/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/66099253/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/70291777/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/72960638/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/83492384/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/86195862/item.html    *
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/88818747/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/91512102/item.html
    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/97776691/item.html    *
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    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/123424383/item.html   *
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    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/176349960/item.html   *
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    http://weblog.xanga.com/harmony0stars/648202591    *




    July 8th

    (there are no holy days for tomorrow and I may not get to post anything…
    long day at work tomorrow)


    The feast of St. Sunniva was a medieval version of Sunna, the Norse solar maiden.




    This is the second day of the Nonae Caprotinae honoring Juno.




  • Writers Choice Featured Questions Week 12

    five questions for this week
    (unfeatured questions stolen from the featured question chatboard, dated from September of 2007)


    Is euthanasia(assisted suicide) justified?
    XerOcreativeXD

    What would you do if zombies started to take over the world?
    Ethereal_Eyes

    What is the best dream you’ve ever had?

    redcrazy

    What compels certain people to be so cruel to others?
    Ghengis_Gilbert

    Do you know yourself?
    topsecretlove


    Answer any one or all of these questions in the coming
    week. I try to mix the whimsical with the serious here, so hopefully
    there is at least one question here for everyone.





    July 7th


    During Hashi Matsuri or Tanabata, Japanese families mark the reunion of two celestial lovers. Called the Tanabata lovers, they are the stars Vega and Aquila, separated by the Milky Way, the ‘celestial river.’ Vega represents the weaver maiden Zhi Nu and Aquila is the cowherd. Children’s writing samples and personal pleas are affixed to bamboo fronds. Prayers will be answered and the children’s writing will improve.




    The Roman festival of Consualia honored Consus, god of harvests. The Feriae Ancillarum was the Festival of the Handmaids during which maids were beyond the control of their mistresses. The second festival of Parilia honors the Pales. A special feast, called the Nonae Caprotinae (Nones of the Wild Fig), was celebrated in honor of Juno on the Nones of Quintilis (7th of July). Female servants went in procession to a fig tree, carrying on all kinds of sports. Maidservants had charade fights with stones and engaged in other competitions. A feast was enjoyed at the tree, followed by a day of thanksgiving on the 8th.