drag, confetti, and toilet paper..oh my!

Dr. Frank-N-Furter 2.0

He's got a little captain in him :-)

Great Scott!! I suffered a very minor rice grain to the eye during the wedding, but this was a rice, confetti, toilet paper deluge and I had my newspaper out for protection!

I had to brush my hair out on the front porch to get all the rice out and my shoes and bra were full as well, but I didn't undress outside. Rice vacuums up just fine! A few butter smears from the toast and a handful of cards for sorrow, cards for pain are all I really ended up with. And we've all decided that if we start NOW, there could be some EPIC costumes for next year!

Oh, and I am no longer a f*%&#ing Rocky Horror virgin!

That is all.

I would have signed it twice if it were ethical to do so!

Defund NPR?! These people are daft and not in a good way like Daft Punk. I absolutely DO NOT listen to any radio stations in the area except WBHM because they don't have anything interesting, enlightening, or entertaining to say. When I want news, that is the station I tune in on all my radios. I am a no-TV household and proud of it. Don't take away my public radio.

Morons. How can anyone honestly take them seriously?

Sign the petition!

poetry parade

I am enjoying my Poems Bewitched and Haunted challenge, but the glut of "women are evil and deadly" selections, while flattering in a very Dexter kind of way, is disheartening too. I really would have like to see it more balanced out with some evil and deadly dudes. I know they're out there. There have been some fairly decent ghost poems and I'll shortly have some favorites picked out to share. At the end, I'll pick out some of my favorites overall and list them here too. The spooky poems have been an enjoyable event, might have to make poetry a permanent feature. I don't read enough of it anyway.

Also, the Kia was retired in a very dignified fashion. This is the new hotness:

It's a 2008 Hyundai Accent hatchback and I'm loving it! So nice to be more confident in the fact that I can get back and forth from work without dying! The poor Kia was just falling apart on me. It was a great car but I drive 80 miles a day, minimum, on crappy Alabama roads. There's just no sane way to make a car last under those conditions and I don't expect it. I shopped via Carmax and had one of my best car buying experiences EVER!

witchy woman

one of my fav Eagles songs

I FINALLY made it through the "Hags and Beauties" section of Poems Bewitched and Haunted. It was a chore. I sure hope men get equal treatment somewhere in this book because it was depressing how hard the woman-bashing went on. I thought, perhaps, somewhere, there would be an empowering sort of hag or beauty but no, they all could have starred front and center on Days of Our Lives or some such show. Powerful, shallow, ignorantly cunning...pshaw! I was glad to get past all that.

The "Dangerous Procedures" section was disappointing. Really, it was merely an extension of "Hags and Beauties," with recipes! Blissfully short.

Now we're getting to some good stuff, "Dangerous Venues!" Edgar Allan Poe's "The Haunted Palace" was pretty good, obviously, but my favorite so far is Thomas Hood's "The Haunted House." I will set it down for you here, but I will also be posting it, a stanza per day, over on facebook. It's perfect for it! Creepy and atmospheric with a gothic spice...good stuff!

Okay, the book only has Part I of this three part poem, in total there are 88 stanzas! It's too long to set down here, but click through if you are interested!

Read scary,
Holley

October challenge

I've set a challenge for myself that, admittedly, has not gotten off to a very auspicious start but I have high hopes for myself and you should too! I have checked out a book of poetry, Poems Bewitched and Haunted, and plan to read it throughout the month, noting down my thoughts here. I counted up the poems to see how many I would read each day to make it last the entire month. I didn't read my 4 poems yesterday and haven't gotten to them today yet either but I WILL READ 8 poems when I get home tonight!

All of them so far have been fairly witch-y in subject. Cold, beautiful, otherworldly women who lure brave men to their death. Blah, blah, blah. I think it goes just as much in the other direction, but I guess that doesn't makes for good poetry?

Several of the poems were about a cold, beautiful, otherworldly woman named Circe, which of course reminded me of the Cercei of the much beloved A Song of Ice and Fire series. She too is cold and beautiful, though not otherworldly. Grasping, manipulative, and vicious, yes, but often devastatingly foolish. Not that that makes her enemies any less dead. And so it goes for the victims of the poetic Circe as well. Quite a few of them end up as pigs. I'm not sure when or why that became the go-to punishment for witches to assign.

Are you reading anything scary???

September reads

I thought I was on track to be reading a lot less than last month, but 16 isn’t too shabby! I’m just a few books away from beating last year’s total and still basically have 3 months of reading to go, including another staycation in November. Would it be too greedy to shoot for 150 books this year? Surely not. Anyway, here’s what I read last month!

Leaving Unknown by Kerry Reichs
Maeve Connelly is a chronic non-finisher. To her embarrassment, she’s just been fired from yet another job and her parents are expressing some heavy disapproval at having to take care of her yet again. In a fit of inspiration, Maeve decides to move cross country from the Carolinas to take up residence with an old friend in California. With her ancient car, a chatty bird, and a sparkling sense of adventure, Maeve feels like nothing can stop her now…except, perhaps, that ancient car. The town of Unkown, Arizona will never be the same again.

No Doors, No Windows by Joe Schreiber
Greeting card writer and frustrated novelist Scott Mast has returned to his tiny New Hampshire hometown for his father’s funeral. His alcoholic brother and vulnerable nephew make the stay particularly uncomfortable in their separate ways and Scott is ready to head out. Before he can make his escape, he stumbles upon an unfinished manuscript of a horror novel begun by his father before his death. Now The Black Wing consumes him and he begins to wonder just what legacy has been left to him after all.

Marked by Elizabeth Naughton
This is the first book in the author’s Eternal Guardians series featuring Greek gods and demi-gods, demons, and, of course, eternal love. Ummm, of the hot variety. I’m sure you understand.

Vampirates: Blood Captain by Justin Somper
This is the third volume in the young adult series about the twins, Conner and Grace, each of whom were rescued by pirates after they were shipwrecked. Conner’s rescuers were human, Grace’s were not. Now Grace’s nemesis, the vampirate Sidorio, is back and amassing power to threaten the human and vampire world alike.

Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker by Syrie James
A further fictionalized tale based on the original fictionalized tale. What *really* happened to Mina and Jonathan Harker and the rest from Stoker’s classic horror story of darkness and obsession. I wanted to like this, I really did, and it was great up until about the last ½ or 1/3 and then she lost me. Dark, sensual, and more than a little depraved. Still good Halloween-ish reading!

Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison
Death broke a cardinal rule when he stepped through the veil of Shadows because of the love he bore Kathleen. Now the dark creatures of Shadow can pass through as well and the wraith menace grows, sucking the souls from humanity. Twenty some odd years after that event, the child created from that union, Talia, is on the run for her life. The wraiths want something from her but she has no idea that she is a banshee. Adam, leader of the wraith research group Segue, knows she may be the key to destroying the menace if he can only keep her alive long enough AND keep from falling in love with her.

Vampirates: Black Heart by Justin Somper
The fourth book in the series. Sidorio just won’t die and now has joined forces with Lady Lola Blackwood, a very dangerous vampire in her own right. Grace and Conner are quickly running out of places to hide and avenues of escape.

Summer at Tiffany: A Memoir by Marjorie Hart
Marjorie and her best friend Marty became the first female floor sales pages when they were hired for the summer at Tiffany in 1945. This is her story of that exciting, life-changing summer when they donned the trademark blue of Tiffany and Co.

A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
A retelling of Sleeping Beauty. No where near as good at the author’s Beastly, but entertaining nonetheless.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Full of the flash and fire of Kerouac’s On the Road, but in Spain. Fishing, bullfighting, absinthe by the bucket loads, and the hectic, mercurial affection of one Lady Brett Ashley.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
Grace has been obsessed by the wolves in the forest behind her house ever since she was almost killed by them when she was a small child. One wolf in particular, yellow-eyed AND the one who saved her life then, keeps her attention now. After one of her school mates is attacked, a group of men from town take their guns in to the woods, determined to rid the forest of wolves. Grace desperately tries to stop them, to no affect. When she returns home that night, she finds a naked, shivering, shot boy on her back porch. A boy with disturbingly familiar yellow eyes.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater
The sequel to Shiver. The third novel in the trilogy, Forever, is due out next July. Linger finds Grace and Sam struggling to acclimate to their new lives, unable to escape the feeling that nothing good lasts forever.

Sabriel by Garth Nix
Sabriel’s father, Abhorsen, is missing. She knows something is terribly wrong because he sent a very weak shadow hand to bring her his magically-enhanced sword and the bandolier of seven bells he used to bind and defeat the dead. Sabriel refuses to believe he is truly dead so she must leave boarding school, cross the Wall back in to the Old Kindgom, and find her father immediately. Something dark is brewing, the dead are rising, the dead creatures that rise with them becoming even more vicious, and only Abhorsen can do anything about it. With the help of the magical creature Mogget, he only *looks* like a small white cat, Sabriel must journey to death and beyond to find her father before it’s too late.

How Did You Get This Number? By Sloane Crosley
Humerous essays by the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Not quite as ascerbic as David Sedaris, but definitely funny!

Vampirates: Empire of Night by Justin Somber
The fifth and most current volume of the continuing adventures of twins Grace and Conner. The twins have learned of their true history and nothing will ever be the same. Hard choices must be made, sides chosen, battles fought…I love this series!

Shadow Fall by Erin Kellison
Sequel to Shadow Bound. Adam and the banshee Talia show up in this book as well, but it focuses on Adam's friend Custo. He has made an unhealthy trade with an adversary he really shouldn't have pissed off but he has to help Adam at all costs. Something is free of the Shadowlands, hunting an innocent young woman, and it's his doing that the creature made the leap into life from the Shadows.

103, and counting!