I know it is winter, because my bed is now a nest, and my radio is tuned to Classicfm.

I was bored and feeling mean about the invasion of literaryquotes so I made a community literaryelite.

It would like people to use it.

Death Meme from speedingslug

1. Given the choice would you like to have you personality & memories uploaded to a computer to live on in cyberspace ?
Dear God no. Life in the internet, that's too sad to contemplate. Plus I always think of consciousness as a side effect to the complexity of our biology (Thank you Philosophy of Religion. That course is also the reason I have the phrase "round underneath like a Teddy Bear" forever burned into my brain.)

2. If you could do one thing before you die what would it be ?
Find a cure ;) Stand on top of the sphynx.

3. Would you rather be buried or cremated ?
Buried. Under a tree if possible and not in a coffin.
A funeral pyre does sound like good fun though.

4. If you were cremated what would you like to have happen to your ashes ?
Thrown off a hill. I never did like to be restrained, so an urn sounds awful.

5. If you could meet some dead person from history who would it be ?
Right now, Seneca and Dr Johnston.

6. If buried what one item would you take with you ?
Nothing. A funeral blanket maybe, but I'd hate to think of anything I loved in life rotting with me.
Maybe my least favourite pet then...

7. If you were re-incarnated what animal would you like to come back as?
A human. I like this gig. And not having to wash my genitals with my tongue.

8. What is your meaning of life?
Respiration, reproduction, digestion and excretion.

9. Do you believe in ghosts?
Yes, but not as anything sentient. Tricks of the brain.

10. The song to be played on your exit from this mortal coil ?
A couple. The Miserere mi Deus by Allegri, The Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly and I Don't Want to Live on the Moon from Sesame Street. Everyone is going to be miserable if I have to make them :)

"What's made him like this?"

"Some kind of fear..."



and because it pleases me, why Doctor Who was better in the 70's.



You can't argue with that.

What exactly does field dressing a moose entail?

All unwritten prompt 389 - He got on my nerves

( Read more... )

Says it all really...

♣ My mug, my mug, my beautiful platonic ideal of a mug is gone! A moment of innatentiveness and it is beyond me now, forever!

♣ www.webliterature.net is my new favourite site. It's going to kill my eyes, but it will do until I find my big book of Sherlock Holmes stories (all of the shorts, I don't know how I've even lost it, the thing was like a brick!).

♣ I intend to implement a regime of education and mental training. Henceforth I shall make only the best use of all my vast swathes of unending time. ~cough~ Oh, how I miss you, university library...

♣ Last night I threw some i Ching and came up with trigrams:
41 (for an over view of my situation) - diminishing, concentrating on higher goals and decreasing involvements, imposing a direction on yourself. "This is an enabling trial".
39 (my attitude to my situation) - limping, feeling afflicted by obstacles. Seeing the situation in a new way and gathering energy in order to deal with it. "Limping means hardship, loosening means relaxing."
50 (taking a certain path) - imagination and the transformative power of a sacred vessel. The way to deal is to contain and transform your problem through an image, see deeply into what your problem means and a new security and awareness will come to you. "The way to the source is open. Make an offering and you will succeed."

Margaret greeted her lord with peculiar tenderness on the morrow. Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going.

It was hard-going in the roads of Mr. Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them. "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside." Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catherine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. Amabat, amare timebat. And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

E.M Forster, Howards End

God I miss Hastings. Damn you Christie!

Watched a the end of the debate this morning before bed.

I know McCain didn't mean to be hilarious but "North Korea is the most brutal and oppressive regime on Earth.. the average South Korean is three inches taller than the average North Korean" totally made me snork on my tea.

Also, you'd think he'd be able to pronouce Ahmadinejad.

Can't wait for the VP debates.

This has been in my head since my sister made me watch The Notebook the other night. (OK film but the ending was so sugary I almost went into a coma.)



I love old music like this. There's something so malevolent about it.

I'd love to join you all in that photograph meme that's doing the rounds, but I'm in the middle of dying my hair and have my ducky shower cap on. The beak sticks up at such an angle that I keep making myself think of Barris in A Scanner Darkly (film).


I wish I had dandruff. The sainsbury's own shampoo (good for getting dye off skin) is just about the nicest smell in the world. I want to eat it.

Also, I may be about to commit an act of clarinet inspired stupidity on ebay. I DON'T EVEN PLAY THE CLARINET but I have been learning to knit and read latin.
It's the start of the end I'm afraid. I'm going odd, and that wouldn't be a problem but this is the odd you get when you start from odd.

Cruel and amusing to someone who literally has an internal countdown going until sunday night.

Also, caught the Who Do You Think You Are with David Suchet the other night - what a gorgeous little boy.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

1842
-Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I am so addicted to this poem at the moment, you have no idea.

from iceprincessd

Rules: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring fall. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.

I'm the feckless jobless. I'm too lazy and unmotivated to tag anyone.

1. QI - Peter Cushing Song (this is wiccagirl24's fault.

2. Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire

3. Solomon Burke - Cry to Me

4. Elmore James - It Hurts Me Too

5. Ernie - I Don't Want To Live On The Moon

6. Kings of Leon - On Call

7. Duke Ellington - Don't Get Around Much Anymore

I think this clarinet quartet version of the Super Mario theme is going to get some play though.

~goes to settle in for new Poirot~

♣ Here is the working of a healthy mind: You watch Cold Case.

Here is the working of my mind: You watch Cold Case and note in the back of your mind that Jeremy Ratchford played Banshee in the Generation X made for tv movie. You note that he was pretty hot in 1996.

Then you note that one of Cold Cases ex producers is called Sean Cassidy and let out an unfortunately pitched Geek Shreik. At 2.20 in the morning.

I need a job, my little grey cells are starting to conspire against me. Also, I need for agencies to not ring me and ask me to work that afternoon and the day after in a place I have no way of getting to. That's just cruel. And taunting.

♣ Does anyone on my fl do volunteer work? I figure I have a lot of spare time right now I might as well do something useful with it. Anyone have any experiences/advice they could share?

♣ Now I really want to watch Gen X. It's my favourite of all the superhero movies. It knows what it is and doesn't try to be better and damn it if I don't love it for that.

Nabbed from yezra. It made me lol.

So I was watching Trawlermen (for reasons I feel cleaner not divulging) and they had a seal on. Which lead to me pondering that while I like seals for their big dark eyes and lovely warm fur, I didn't really want to swim with dolphins because I've heard stories of people being molested by dolphin cock.

I only post that to lead into this thread over on the Whitechapel boards which made me laugh and gag a bit and remember decayz post about the monkey using the frog as a sex toy. Dolphins, Bastards of the Sea