Ode to Shipper's Old and New!

A new ship is something fantastic.
It's hot and thrilling and ecstatic.
And since all of the above
Are like falling in love
The best ships have a chemistry that's erotic.

Hah my very first Limerick!!! Do I rock or what??

Herewith clips of a my newest ship!

Sorry spot but you just took too long to catch up... now you gonna have to figure it out, but trust me watch the show just for the amazing fun that is Leo!!! hehe

Horror movie therapy!

Pet recently wrote a post about things that stick with you for a lifetime, and the songs that make an impact and retain their specific meaning in your life forever.  I don't seem to have one!  I have some songs that I no longer listen to because they remind me of events I would rather not remember!  However, every now and then (read: weekly) I have a song that seems to fit my current mood, or current events in my life, and listening to this song helps me through.  


This week’s song is Florence’s ‘Shake it out’
Here, listen:
Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn


And, when I’m depressed and feel like everything is just happening too fast, everything is just going wrong and one fuck-up seems to follow another (very dramatic I know, but I should add that PMS is kicking my ass too and making me believe things are much worse than they actually are!), I find myself a good (or bad, or fucking stupid) chomp-chomp horror movie!  This is like therapy (actually, being a bitch is my therapy – nudge-nudge-wink-wink), for many reasons:

1. That poor sod desperately trying to outswim a great white shark has issues that are definitely more dire than mine!
   
   
   
2. The idiot who just recently lost his arm to a tiger shark, and has now decided to go back in the water to avenge his arm, or girlfriend (I forget which), because he comes from the hood, and in the hood they firmly believe in revenge, is definitely making a decision much worse than any decision I have ever made! (in case you’re interested, the shark killed the one-armed idiot. Apparently the shark’s ‘eat or be eaten’ belief far outweighs any beliefs they have in the hood!)
   
   
   
3. The fuckwitt who decides to stand in front of a tree screaming as a crocodile chases him down, instead of climbing the tree, which results in him getting eaten, is a much worse problem solver than I am!
   
   
   
4. The poor bastard who comes face to face with a hoard of huge piranhas, who then eat, regurgitate and re-eat his penis (yes, it happened!!), finds himself, without a doubt, in a more scary situation than I am currently in!
   
   
   
5. And, the hero who hunted down the monster crocodile and killed it with a sharp stick, while inside its mouth, will definitely need a lot more therapy than I ever will (no, this is not debatable!

Back to Florence, I'm still depressed :(



D

Mama said I'd have days like this!!

What she did not say was that, the hardest part of those days would be not doing this...to everyone breathing!!!

Love the Hulk!!

Because .....

And because I didn't get any comments for my last two posts! .... MHUWAHAHA!!

Man I love Philip Glenister/Gene Hunt... and yes I realize that I am completely alone in this love, (except for maybe his family...). But it is Twoo Wuve! 

This one is Season Finale for Hart of Dixie, good show, another one where the writers are horribly manipulating the fan's with two possible hotties to get into our Girlfriends undies... and my ship came in, in a big way. Next season they are going to rip that apart, but I will enjoy the moment while I can . :D

I have often been heard stating loudly and long, that the writers of this show loved their fan's enough to change the end when the show was cancelled. Here is the added on bit for the fan's and lets be honest here, he's so not hard on the eyes! 

These two because I am awed by a woman that uses a man's own belt to strangle him with (and he's twice her size), and because I do believe she would have gotten further!!

If you have to ask why this one .... eeesh!

Sometimes a writer must know when to stop.

As hard as it is, and as much as you have grown to love your characters, a writer needs to let them go, let them live out their lives in the fantasy land, in peace, and let your readers have their illusion of happily ever after.

I know this is probably the very wrong place for this rant, and I should be putting it up on Goodreads, but that is too public a forum and as much as I need to rant about this, I don’t want to do it openly. The reason for it is that I will explain in due time.

To start I need to give a very brief summary of those books I said I love so much, Anne Bishop’s Black Jewel trilogy. Rest assured D and A, I do not expect, or actually want you to read the books. This is just me trying to get something out of my head that has been eating at me and you two are unfortunately my Peep’s, which is just another word for mine to torture.

AB’s world revolves around a code, honor, courage and strength. It’s the very foundation of her world, and her characters. The story is set in a land where magic flows through jewels, the darker the jewel the stronger the magic, the more powerful the person wearing the jewel. (oh and the jewels choose the wearer not the other way around)

The land is ruled by Queen’s, witches born with the power to command men. Those men become her court, her circle. She may have men in her circle with far stronger jewels than her’s, and still have complete control over them, because the men are bound by the code of the Blood to serve, no mater what the Queen asks of them. 

The majority of the Blood are a long lived race, not quite immortal as they can be killed, but they can live for thousands and even tens of thousands of years.

Like in all things, Evil has found a footing in this world, in the guise of three very powerful Queens who between them rule all three of the realms. These three Queens have done very bad things and have forced good men into slavery to them. Two of those men are incredibly powerful Dark Jeweled Warlords. 

Born into this time is a young witchling with a power than is almost impossible. She does things that are unheard of and she carries a jewel that no one knew existed. (The darkest jewel being Black,) She carries Ebony (darker than black) and this while she is still only a child. 

Through much pain and hardship and three very large books, this young witch saves the realms, with the help of the warlords and and grows into a very powerful Queen, and marries her beloved Warlord. 

That should be the end of the story... but it’s not. AB would not let it go. Jeannelle ( The good Queen) was mortal, she did not have the lifespan of the others, she had a very normal human lifespan. This could be part of her life or it could be part of AB’s “everything has a price” theme which is very much the spine of her writing. 

Here comes the rant... She made us love her, she made Deamon love her, in one part of her story he realizes that he has waited 1800 years for this woman, to love this one, to serve this woman. Even before that when she is still a child, he swears by all that is in him, with ever fiber of his being that he will protect her, from everything, even himself. And he does that, again and again he fights for her, stands when he shouldn’t be able to.  And when she asks him to do something so terrible it would have killed a lesser man, he does it. No question, no hesitation, because she is his queen. 

When he thought she died, he goes mad, literally insane. He dives down into his own mind (they call it the twisted kingdom and people never come out of there) and stays there for over twenty years, until she finally finds him and managed to bring him out. 

This is a love story that wraps it’s way around your heart, it bores into you and sinks it’s hooks in. At the end of book 3 you are crying through tears, book 4, 5, 6,7,8 are short stories or just little moments in the lives of those characters with the purest light being the love between Daemon and Jeannelle... 

Book 9 she kills Jeannelle!!

They had 70 years together, and she aged while he did not, and he loved her right up to the moment she died...

WTF? Is that supposed to make me feel better? I love AB’s writing, she wrings emotions out of you, until you want to hit the ground and cry uncle. And yes I admire the fact that she didn’t wimp out, that she didn’t make a happy cure for mortality, that she didn’t suddenly give Jeannelle another 1000 odd years or let her become Demon Dead.... but I hate the fact that she did not just leave me to my illusions, that she did not leave this love story alive in my head.

Is that courageous? or just plain stupid? As a writer, is that being true to your craft, or not knowing when to step back and letting go? 

I don’t know, but I do know that I have learnt from this. Sometimes you have to let them go... NOT KILL THEM THE FUCK OFF!!!

The things that stay with us for a lifetime.

I’m heading towards the half century mark in my life, so I feel quite comfortable talking about “a lifetime” since 50 years is exactly that. 

Supposedly, I have moved on through the various stages of a woman’s life, those stages being, child, woman, mother, crone, (though honestly I don’t like the word Crone... makes me sound like a giant black half witch half bird thing.). And am now supposedly (there’s that word again... ) sitting in my rocking chair, content to impart wisdom on the younger generation that surround me... 

Yeah.. don’t hold your breath for that, cause the only wisdom I have to impart is never try to down two liters of Long Island Ice Tea... it makes your legs fall off. True story!

What I can share though is a small list of books, films, and music that have made an impact on me and continue to stay in my mind years later.

Films... there are a few I love and watch contently over and over again, but only two that still haunt my mind like happy ghosts.

She Lives 1973

I watched that film when I was far too young to even understand half of what I was watching, but my memory of it is so clear that what I didn’t understand when I was 11 I do now. Sadly it never made it onto DVD and I very much doubt it ever will. To this day even the critics are uncertain what they think of this made for TV movie, the acting was  naive, the entire film a little over done, but it had the most amazing music that just brought the whole thing to life... Jim Croce’s Time in a bottle, and Harry Chapin’s All my life’s a Circle, the sad, nostalgic hope filled story did the rest.

The other is “If you could see what I hear” 1982. 

Marc Singer does a realistic job of portraying the blind singer/songwriter Tom Sullivan in this sometimes light hearted story on his life. 

“There is nothing wrong with what you are wearing... it’s your socks. You’ve got them on the wrong feet again.” 

I laughed until I wet myself the first time I watched that, and having found it on Youtube recently, had the same reaction all over again. 

Light heart indeed, but there was also a very dark lesson to be learnt there, and it was incredibly moving when he had to learn it. 

Perhaps not two highly intelligent movies, or deeply epic, or even visually moving. For some not even worth remembering, but they spoke to me, and still do all these years later.

Music.

Ah now that one is difficult, there are so many incredible songs, and songwriters that have followed me through all the different moments of my life, it'd be difficult to pick just two... but I am a singularly simple person, something not a lot of people would agree with, and I like the compliment of that, being considered many faceted, and complicated is an ego boost, but sadly not one I can live up to. 

As a child my favorite song was Master Jack, Four Jacks and a Jill, and strangely enough I still love it, even more now that I actually now understand the lyrics. It speaks of learning and growing, of moving on and letting go. Something I knew far too much of far too young in my life, and my sisters too. 
That’s one of life’s first lessons when you are born of a mother with a Gypsy soul. But .... and let me be very clear on this, while it was a hard lesson to learn, it was met, matched, and passed by the wonder and excitement of seeing so much more of the world, and more importantly the people and cultures in it. I have a diverse group of friends, from all walks of life and all over the world, and I would not trade them for anything.

Nik Kershaw I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me von Celtiemama




Back on track, another of my favorites is “I won’t let the Sun go down on me”, by Nik Kershaw. That song for some reason always makes me pull up my big girl panties, notch up my chin and stand up, no mater how hard life slammed me down. It’s not a particularly clever song, and it really has nothing to do with inner strength or getting up when you’ve been knocked down, but for me it just works.

There are many many more songs that bring me joy when I’m sad and bring me up when I’m down, Jim Croce has to be my favorite singer/songwriter, along with Alanis Morissette, the Bee Gee’s, Rod Stewart (who’s name I could not come up with in a quiz, which I will never live down..) Brian Addams.... the list goes on and on.

Books... oh man, I have an entire wall filled with books, which do not include the 2000 odd books I have on my tablet or the thousands of books I have read and not kept, or lost along the way. 

If by some miracle when my time comes and  I am given a choice on where I wanted to die, I would choose the book room in the British Museum. To end my life there would bring me the greatest joy, because that room has to be the one that fills me with both joy and peace. The very first time I lay eyes on it I burst into tears, I had to let them out, there was no way I could keep that much wonder and reverence inside me. 

Strange then that there are only two sets of books that I consider a my favorites.  The first are The War of Powers and The War of Powers 2  by Richard E Vardeman and Victor Milan. I first read those when my youngest child was a baby, stuck in a small town with very little in the way of entertainment except a very old small cinema that only showed films on the weekends. I found them in the library and was sorely tempted to keep them.  They were the first fantasy books I’d read and they pretty much paved the way for my imagination to find its own world. I spent years trying to find those books, and I can not describe the feeling and gratitude I felt when my sisters found them and gave them to me as a christmas gift nearly ten years later.  

The second is The Black Jewel Trilogy by Anne Bishop. Not everyone can get past the names of the characters, or the world AB has created, and I understand that. A couldn’t they freaked her out a little too much to read the books through. For me it was only a slight issue into maybe the first chapter, after that the characters that bore those names made them their own and I lost myself in their story so completely that it is to this day the only book I have ever actually wept while reading. And while I would love to read it over and over again, the emotional wringer that AB puts her readers through is so intense I find it almost impossible to sleep, eat, or concentrate on anything else for days during and after reading them, my mind constantly filled with the characters, the settings, the story. 

And there it is,