Beautiful poem...

I came across it while looking for something else, and it's such a beautiful poem, albeit sad. I particularly like the two last stanzas.

W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues

(Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Me, obsessed with men with long hair? Nahhh.

Yesterday I had some time and made two friendship books. One of them is the super complex type I make. The second is much simpler, without a decorated back.

Here are the pictures of the first fb:

The inside, kept simple this time:

The back, which I dare say is better than the front:

And here is the second one I made. I kept it as simple as possible and decorated neither the inside nor the back. Still the front looks good. Hell, Dante from Devil May Cry makes everything look good. ;)

Sorry about the poor quality of photos, but I covered both fbs by plastic before the pictures were taken, for fear of parts of the decoration coming off if I didn't.

The first picture was taken from  here.
The second picture is Sephiroth, taken from here.
And the third one is from my private collection. :)
Enjoy!

Now, that's better.

I am happy with this one. :D

This is the inside.

 

This, again, is the inside. :)

And this is the back! Weeee!

This one has very difficult colours, but I love how it turned out!

Smaller in size= headache

I am used to having lots of space when I decorate. So when I consciously decided to reduce the size of my fbs after my previous blunder, I found myself incapable of using most of my previous material. :( I still managed to produce the following fb. I suppose I'll get better at using a smaller space. Eventually...

So here is the front:

I kept the inside and the back very simple this time:

 

I hope to make a new and better one soon!

Picture taken from this page in Facebook.

More Skarsgard for the masses

This one turned... ummmm... big. :/ But anyway.

 

 The inside:

The back:

My cat seems happy with it! :)

Vacational crafting

So yesterday I made this... :) With the short, fat, ugly, untalented, and humourless Alexander Skarsgard. :P

The inside...

 And the back.

I am about to make a second one, it will all depend on time and mood. ;)

Nice and Neat FBs

I have had no time to make any High Quality friendship books, so I've made quite a few Nice and Neat instead. Contrary to HQ, I can make those at work. So here you are, all made in July and August. Enjoy. :)

 

Poetry

The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,

(This is the end of every song man sings!)

The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,

Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;

And health and hope have gone the way of love

Into the drear oblivion of lost things,

Ghosts go along with us until the end;

This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.

With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait

For the dropt curtain and the closing gate:

This is the end of all the songs man sings.

Ernest Dowson

Dregs

1899

Picture taken from here: http://adalheit.deviantart.com/art/Face-au-vent-255445053

Multitasking, Alexander Skarsgard and Greek summer.

Most people have no idea what it is like to go home, put some water on the stove to make pasta as well as take a bath later on (boiler out of order for the past two years) while feeding cats, packing swaps and making fbs. And watching Criminal minds. All those at the same time. So last night I managed to finish the fb I have been meaning to make for the past one month, with one of my cats half-reclined on my back. As if I needed the extra warmth, thank you very much. I also managed to finish three books in three days, and will continue. As soon as I write the last chapter of my novel, that is. So, Alexander Skarsgard fb. Concentrate Elizabeth.

Choosing gray photos is guaranteed to give hours and hours of cursing pleasure till you find matching colours:

I told myself to keep the back simple, and I kind of made it:

However, the real surprise was the inside:

After that I can safely presume the crafting urge will not resurface again for a few days. :)

Not really a review...

... more like an amalgam of excuses. Off we go.

Weeks ago, I printed photos to make fbs. The photos are still printed and waiting for me to find time, and time and quiet cannot be found even if I used bait, a torch and a GPS. So I have been reading books. These are not exactly reviews, but as close to it as they can be, given the heat and circumstances.

I have over 100 books in one huge pile labeled "unread". Some belong to a friend who wanted to thin out her collection. Some belong to me and I haven't read them. Yet. That is what I say to myself. "Yet." I haven't read them yet, but I will. Most likely when the planet Venus grows a mustache.

When my head feels like mush and I can't really write or do something productive like correcting, I read. I am a fast reader, too. In Greek I manage about 100 pages in one hour. In English it goes down to about 50, maybe a little more lately. Usually I finish a normal book in a day, two at most. But I am so ludicrously busy that reading is reserved for those days I am too bummed out to do anything else.

We begin with...

1. Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell

I just flicked through the first pages to see what it was about, and continued reading, and then read some more, and before I knew it I was halfway through. Imagine Quentin Tarantino meeting ER, or rather, colliding with ER and getting out of the broken and burning jumble none the wiser. The protagonist is an ex-mafia member who presently works as doctor. He looks like “an Easter Island sculpture of a longshoreman”. The book is written in first person and the language reflects the protagonist as the disillusioned, no-decorum, self-sarcastic tough guy he is. He's profane, grumpy, funny and brilliant in his simplicity. 

The book begins with him getting mugged on the way to work. He beats his attacker black and blue, then drops him unconscious at ER. He regularly pops Dexedrine tablets as a way to deal with the insane workload of the hospital, while we discover details on his previous life through flashbacks. One of the nurses tells him “You are cute” and Dr. Brown thinks, “If by cute she means brutal and stupid-looking (which from experience, that’s what most women mean), she is right”. When a patient with cancer who's also a mobster recognises him, our doctor realises the witness protection program can't really help him anymore and he must take care of things himself.

Don't expect credibility, although the book has a lot of very interesting footnotes on medical subjects. Expect outrageous, fast and hilarious, with gruesome details on people's insides and the incompetence of the US medical system. If the mere thought of germs makes you scratch yourself furiously, keep away from it.

2. Daemon Eyes by Camille Bacon-Smith

I read five pages. I found missing full stops, missing paragraph breaks, dialogue confusion. Forgive me for being perhaps harsh, but I expect to see that level in a fanzine. Not in a published book. I did not bother further with it; sent it to a friend in Portugal.

3. Review for the Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Read this BEAUTIFUL review on Neil Gaiman's latest book, which I have not bought yet, as I avoid hardcovers for lack of space:

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/211547701.html

Mr. Gaiman says it's his favourite review so far and I can understand why. I wish one day my skill in English will produce such gorgeous, sensitive, elegant language. Until that day I'll struggle with prepositions, tenses and comas. :P

4. Cravings by Laurell K. Hamilton et al.

Let me begin this review by saying that I don't understand why some authors contribute parts of already existent books instead of writing short stories. This is what Hamilton's contribution is in this book, a part from one of her Anita Blake novels. It's funny at first, even sensual. It very soon becomes the well known tiresome charade "I am a good girl, and good girls don't fuck" which is so characteristic of the Anita series. If Anita spent less time trying not to touch someone she feels attracted to and more time fucking the living daylights out of them, it would be much more productive. She's going to fuck them anyway, so what's up with the virgin shtick and the morality working overtime 24/7?

Mary Janice Davidson:

I felt like I was reading a romance story written by a fourteen year old girl desperately trying to sound cool and hype. It was so irritating and the one character so stupid that I managed to read three pages before moving on to the next one. I imagine some readers like that style, each to their own I guess.

Eileen Wilks: 

Begins and then forgets to end. Some interesting ideas, but failed to keep my interest for long. It was dragging on and on.

Rebecca York:

Perhaps the most well written, suffering from the "I make the characters come together, than break up, then come together once more, then have another dramatic break up, then unwilling male protagonist jumps in and saves the helpless female protagonist and they go steady" plot. Complete with a hero with a tortured past and a dark secret.

Gave it away to the same friend from Portugal. Eeeesh. If these are "sensuous stories from today's most provocative authors", I dread to think of the milestone this book represents in modern literature.

Vampire fbs again? I am shocked!

Actually, I am even more shocked for participating in an organised swap. It was done in Facebook, but still. I don't like deadlines and work far too much to take part. Therefore I am not a member in any yahoo! groups for crafting. Not sure if I am going to participate again, but at least, now I can say I did that too. :P

So, I had to make two fbs, one for myself, and one for my partner. I. made a Twilight fb for my partner with pictures she herself chose. Here is the cover of the fb:

 

And here is the back:

I am not a fan of Twilight (with the exception of the first movie) so naturally, I did not make a Twilight fb for myself. Instead I made a Don Henrie one:

  Aaaaaaand the back: (my madness progresses...)

The inside:

To help you understand what I've done, I put a piece of paper under the 'curtain' to demonstrate. I am sure the psychiatrist will use this in my evaluation. XD

And on the back of the curtain, I stuck different flowers to keep them in place: 

Nope, I am not on drugs. I swear.

 Enjoy!

Sephiroth (make me yours)

Amazing how the Japanese manage to provide my brain (and gonads) with so much inspiration. I mean every girl in their right mind would want to date someone with long white hair who can destroy a planet. Or two. But since dating him is out of the question because of the unimportant matter of him existing in a different dimension than my own, I make HQ fbs with him. Reality, why do you frustrate me so?

Here is the front:

The inside:

The back:

Cover art by http://mustesielu.deviantart.com

Back: art by  http://bandeau.deviantart.com/

One more fb dedicated to a dead kitten. Bah. Reality sucks.

Bad movie, nice visual= fb material!

My friend Moonlight reminded me of this movie through an fb of her own. Now, the movie itself is not good, but the visual part of it is very nice. So here you are, an fb based on 'Interview with the Vampire'. It gave me hell just to find pictures online that weren't full of pixels...

The inside, just a simple one this time:

The back of the fb:

I was watching Grimm when I made the cover, but I was too sleepy to be watching anything when I made the back...