Struggling with deco material

Die, the guitarist of the J-rock band Dir en Grey was kind enough to decorate the cover of this fb, albeit smiling. Die is well known for usually having all the cuteness and pleasant outlook of a hired assassin who has just discovered his entire family has been murdered.

You choose flat deco material and the plastic cover fits nicely and looks good. You choose more bulky stuff because it looks more impressive, and you really regret it. :-( This one has flat decoration, to the degree that was possible... I learned my lesson with the previous one...

The back of the fb:

Some people were kind enough to provide me with bits and pieces of the decoration I used. The list includes Virve and Tiina from Finland, Moonlight from UK and Katherine. Thank you girls! :-)

For your information, Die usually looks like this:

(You can use the photo to scare your kids into obedience, or to make them eat all their food. :-D)

I wish I were an insomniac...

... because there would be an excuse for staying up till 04:30 am to finish this... And it's not done yet...

 

The back of the fb.

 Now I need to tape it... This will be hard to tape as the roses are bulky, but...

My favourite poem by Charles Baudelaire

I could not find a single translation that I liked and therefore used the best parts of three different translations. Talking about about being picky and hard to please.

Conversation (Causerie)

You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!

But sadness rises in me like the sea,

And as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips

The burning memory of its bitter slime.

— Your hand may stroke my breast, but not console.

What it seeks there is but a hole, deep caverned

By women's claws and fangs, and ransacked whole.

Seek not my heart, on which the beasts have ravened.

My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;

They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!

— A perfume swims around your naked breast!...

O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you want it still!*

You with hot eyes that flash in fiery feasts,

Burn up these meagre scraps spared by the beasts!

  *it refers to the heart, that still desires beauty...

Translations I used:

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

— James McGowan, The Flowers of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

 

More Baudelaire at fleursdumal.org/

I think they prescribe medication...

...for people with as serious a "problem" as mine. XD

 Kamijo HQ fb.

The back of the fb. 

Special thanks to Virve, Tiina, Moonlight and Katherine for some of the material I used.

Created while listening to:

In the Woods: Heart of the Ages

Die Verbannten Kinder Evas: In darkness let me dwell.

(Don't try this at home, unless you hate your neighbors.)

Disappointed.

When I am having a bad day (or week, in some cases) I resort to reading. So I got this one last night in the hope I'll escape for a few hours. Haitian painter Angelina returns home in Brooklyn after three months in Africa, only to discover that her house has been used in a Voodoo ritual. Well, I said to myself, there you are. The reviews on the back were good, but that actually means nothing. I've read award-winning books with superb reviews and have been disappointed, so I guess reviews and awards are just some kind of elaborate ritual to pay back favours and promote.

This is such a bad book.

First of all, the female protagonist is living in some kind of depressive mental haze. Page after page I kept reading how depressed she was, how lost, how nothing made sense. Too much of the same thing is not wonderful, especially when the character traits in the beginning do not justify her actions later on or at the ending of the book. It felt like the author added actions randomly, according to what he needed to advance the plot, but that merely creates a bad book with schizophrenic characters and nothing more.

Secondly, the plot was another confusing mixture of unrelated themes. Marrying the occult with political intrigue and conspiracies and dictatorship and mystical passages and assassinations and the angst of being coloured and Jewish... please NO. You have to decide early on if this book is an (auto)biography, fiction, an adventure focusing on the occult, or political conspiracies, or the existence of dictatorship in some parts of the world. Not all of them together. It's like a salad with tuna, strawberries, chili, cream, melon and sardines. That's what if felt like. From a point onward I was no longer reading, just flipping pages to see where it headed, because it did not make sense anymore. Characters appeared just to highlight an opinion the writer had on something, characters changed or continued towards a direction that did not agree with their principles or make sense just so that the plot could advance. And the end effectively demonised the female protagonist but nowhere throughout the book did I see any hints or clues towards that direction, which merely suggested it was a sudden choice to give an impressive ending.

It is a pity, because there was such promise in the beginning, and the writing style is good. The visual part is alive, the atmosphere of horror at the start very convincing. I just wish the author would continue towards the voodoo story and leave political intrigue out. Or involve it less. That would have made a much better and consistent book. Or that's how I felt. Oh well, there are always more books to read...

Too sleepy... but happy.

Nodding off... But I have just finished a HQ fb and want to share! The stunning redhead I used as cover picture is a model. His name is Bartek Borowiec and he is Pole. He has the kind of hair that makes any woman GREEN with envy. Including myself. And the kind of face that makes a very impressive number of women hot and bothered. Again including myself.

Thankfully I have started making the fbs smaller in size... And now I am off to bed and will finish this (inside, back, add plastic cover) tomorrow.

  And this is the back of the fb.

Goths in HQ fbs

I went and did it again. :-) This is the latest one. The cover is Chai Deveraux from Jesus on Extasy. I love goth boys. I can't help it... Blame my aesthetic criteria.

That's the inside of the fb. I used a piece of fabric to cover the sheets and decorated that, too.

And that's the back of the fb. :-)

I probably need a straight-jacket, but I enjoyed myself a lot. This one took me about three hours. More on the way. :-)