morgaine_x: (Harbour night)
( Nov. 21st, 2011 06:05 pm)
Dear friends who are collecting Christmas card addresses (or for _insert_winter_celebration_here).

I would love to receive from any or all of you e-cards or notes. Please don't send me paper cards. I don't send any - I take the money I would have spent and give it to a local soup kitchen.

I will happily send you e-cards or similar - comment if you would like one. (Comments screened in case you want to discreetly give me an email address)

Thanks!
Jo xxxx
The music meme from [livejournal.com profile] hano... you all know how it goes. Comment and ask for a letter and you too can write your own five-song (or six. Or seven. Or whatever...) playlist beginning with that letter. Or not. If you like.

So.... it's HOT. The water is green and wind is up and I am drained. Sufficiently that I am not even feeling guilty about lazing around, oozing off the sofa occasionally to top up on liquids. Just as an FYI: I haven't started drinking alcohol yet, but it can't be far off.

Pride and Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughan. A summer song from my past... the summer I first remember hearing this was probably the last of my teens and hot, with not a lot of money, nor of responsibility. We drank and danced and played and oh, that seems a long time ago now. Not long after I moved to the UK, I saw SRV in Manchester one hot night when the power kept cutting and he kept playing as best he could, occasionally pausing in disbelief as everything ground to a halt. Still quite the show. I'm not a comfortable, relaxed dancer, but this will drag me onto the floor and make me forget everyone is there, if I have a partner who feels the same way. I recall me and someone I shouldn't have even been with put on a bit of a show one other hot summer night, dancing to this in a club in Bolton...

People Who Died - Jim Carroll How did I run into this? I don't know, but Keef giving it the thumb's up couldn't have hurt. Heard it, went on to read his book ("The Basketball Diaries"), never saw the movie (Leo diCaprio? I mean... as bad as Tom Cruise being cast in "Interview with the Vampire"...) and now, so many years later, I could probably write my own list. RIP Chris. And Brendan. And you too, Jim.

Perfect Skin - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions Because I was never that girl.

Paint It, Black - Rolling Stones And because this one, I was. And we can argue about the comma later...

Pay Me My Money Down - Bruce Springsteen Workers of the world, unite... or something... there is a delicious irony when this pops up on random - it's always when I'm at work, hot, tired and probably flustered. But I love the way it sounds.

And, of course, then you go, but what about the others? And it's true, some can't be left out, like...

Pure by the Lightning Seeds A lovely bit of wistfulness

Pagan Lovesong - the Virgin Prunes Because sometimes you need blokes in dresses and makeup. No, really, you do.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light Weren't expecting that, were you? It's the heat.

And I can't find links for these - one not unexpectedly - but Eddi Reader singing "Please Don't Ask Me to Dance" and Blair Harvey and the Dregs' "Paddy Pissed the Bed Again" off his brilliant "Gutter Be Gutted" (local boy there).

And finally - because I can - Rush doing A Passage to Bangkok.
morgaine_x: (Default)
( Jun. 29th, 2010 02:38 pm)
And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be.
All I do is keep the beat... and bad company.
morgaine_x: (Harbour)
( Jun. 3rd, 2010 08:57 pm)
The haul:

Chapters:

"The Canadian Press Stylebook"
"A Companion to Wolves" - Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear
"The Serpent's Tale" - Ariana Franklin
"Whiskey and Water" - Elizabeth Bear
"Ink and Steel" - Elizabeth Bear
"Crooked Little Vein" - Warren Ellis
"Swallowing Darkness" - Laurell K Hamilton
"Generation Loss" - Elizabeth Hand
"The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook"

A blank pocket journal
Some gorgeous black & white wrapping paper

Winners:

A red leather mini filofax
A cased set of watercolours (I've been threatening to pick up a brush again)
A seagrass filing basket
A set of chrysanthmum-embroidered placemats in nile blue shantung
A set of white sheets with black sea motifs - coral, seahorses, scallop shells, starfish...
A pretty desk folder with week planner sheets, post-its, reminders, etc.
morgaine_x: (starry trees)
( Jun. 3rd, 2010 08:58 am)
I'm probably going book-shopping this evening. Anything new and wonderful anyone can recommend? Or indeed, old and probably missed.
morgaine_x: (witchcraft)
( Apr. 23rd, 2010 04:44 pm)
The Witches’ Brew

- E. J. Pratt

Perched on a dead volcanic pile,
Now charted as a submerged peak,
Near to a moon-washed coral isle,
A hundred leagues from Mozambique,
Three water-witches of the East,
Under the stimulus of rum,
Decided that the hour had come
To hold a Saturnalian feast,
In course of which they hoped to find
For their black art, once and for all,
The true effect of alcohol
Upon the cold, aquatic mind.
From two Phoenicians who were drowned,
The witches three (whose surnames ran
Lulu, Ardath, Maryan)
Had by an incantation found
A cavern near the coast of Crete,
And saw, when they had entered in,
A blacksmith with a dorsal fin,
Whose double pectorals and webbed feet
Proved—while his dusky shoulders swung—
His breed to be of land and water,
Last of great Neptune’s stock that sprung
From Vulcan’s union with his daughter.
The sisters’ terms accepted, he,
Together with his family,
Left his native Cretan shore
To dig the witches’ copper ore
Out of their sub-aquaceous mines
In the distant Carolines,
And forge a cauldron that might stand,
Stationary and watertight,
A thousand cubits in its height,
Its width a thousand breadths as spanned
By the smith’s gigantic hand,
So that each fish, however dry,
Might have, before the Feast was through,
His own demonstrable supply
Of this Pan-Oceanic brew.
A thousand leagues or so away
Down the Pacific to Cape Horn,
And Southwards from Magellan lay
A table-land to which was borne
This cauldron from the Carolines,
For here, as well the sisters knew,
The Spanish conquerors of Peru
Had stored their rich and ancient wines,
About the time the English burst
Upon their galleons under Drake,
Who sank or captured them to slake
A vast Elizabethan thirst.
With pick and bar the Cretan tore
His way to the interior
Of every sunken ship whose hold
Had wines almost four centuries old.
Upon the broad Magellan floors,
Great passage-way from West to East,
Were also found more recent stores,
The products of a stronger yeast.
For twenty years or thereabout,
The Bacchanals of Western nations,
Scenting universal drought,
Had searched the ocean to find out
The most secluded ports and stations,
Where unmolested they might go
‘To serve their god while here below,’
With all the strength of their libations.
So to the distant isles there sailed,
In honour of the ivy god,
Scores of log-loaded ships that hailed
From Christiania to Cape Cod
With manifests entitled ham,
Corn beef, molasses, chamois milk,
Cotton, Irish linen, silk,
Pickles, dynamite and jam,
And myriad substances whose form
Dissolved into quite other freights,
Beneath the magic of a storm
That scattered them around the Straits;
For this is what the blacksmith read,
While raking up the ocean bed:—
Budweiser, Guinness, Schlitz (in kegs),
Square Face Gin and Gordon’s Dry,
O’Brien’s, Burke’s and Johnny Begg’s,
Munich, Bock, and Seagram’s Rye,
Dewar’s, Hennessey’s 3 Star,
Glenlivet, White Horse and Old Parr,
With Haig and Haig, Canadian Club,
Jamaica Rum, and other brands
Known to imbibers in all lands
That stock from Brewery or Pub.
All these the Cretan, with the aid
Of his industrious progeny,
Drew to the cauldron, and there laid,
By order of the witches three,
The real foundation for the spree.

Online text © 1998-2010 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Witches’ Brew | London: Selwyn and Blount, 1925
morgaine_x: (Out The Window)
( Mar. 14th, 2010 04:10 pm)
It is the most gorgeous day out there! The sky hasn't a cloud - I don't think there's been a day like this until now this year.
morgaine_x: (Default)
( Jan. 20th, 2010 04:45 pm)
Need a Facebook expert - how do I set privacy settings to limit what a friend can see??? - family are intruding and I have no desire for them to see anything other than need to know...
morgaine_x: (Blackwood)
( Jan. 13th, 2010 09:12 am)
RIP Doug Holloway: 1963 - January 12, 2010

To me, he was always a friend.
morgaine_x: (witchcraft)
( Jan. 10th, 2010 12:04 pm)
page of swords
temperance
page of coins (reversed)
temperance
page of wands
the hanged man
.

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