Pieces of my past...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...for some reason this last year and the deaths have been especially hard on me. When Michael Jackson died in 2009 it was sad, but it wasn't as emotionally wrenching for me as this past year has been.

It started a year ago with the death of a legend. When David Bowie died 2 days after his 69th birthday of liver cancer. It hit me really hard for some reason? Maybe because I'd always considered him to be one of the most innovative artists of my generation and he was just...gone.

I'd loved watching him in "Labyrinth," hated the ending. I'd so wanted to change the ending and wanted her to fall asleep and have Jarrod show up the next day at her school as the "new kid." LOL Too bad we can't change endings the way we want. He was the best part of the movie. Him and Udo.

With each new name listed and passed around Facebook I felt another piece of my childhood or youth slipping away and gone...Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner from Jefferson Airplane, Joe Alaskey who was Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire, Edgar Mitchell the Apollo 14 Astronaut, George Kennedy, Nancy Reagan, Keith Emerson from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Patty Duke, Merle Haggard, Chyna, Prince, Morley Shafer from 60 Minutes, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Arnold Palmer,  Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, William Christopher, George Michael, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Alan Thicke, John Glenn, Greg Lake from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Janet Reno, Fidel Castro, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russel, Robert Vaughn, Florence Henderson, Ron Glass.  Good, bad, noble, evil all had felt like portions of my life's journey to get here and pieces of my past, now gone. They are connected now only in my memories with how they impacted my life and the lives of so many, many others of these times.

Glenn Frey was the All Nighter...LOL Miami will never seem the same, Alan Rickman made sexy villain in Harry Potter. Dan Haggerty almost made Grizzlies look cuddly. Patty Duke made me believe in Helen Keller. Chyna had attitude to spare and so did Muhammad Ali. John Glenn was a man I could respect and admire and helped build my love of the space program. Fidel Castro made me hate politicians. Leonard Cohen taught me to love composers. Leon Russel to love Southern Fried Rock. We all thought that Florence Henderson would be a great mom. Robert Vaughn almost convinced me the CIA would be a good career path if I could get a partner like Ilia.

Ron Glass as Shepherd in Serenity was played with grace and conviction. Thanks to Carrie Fisher Princesses do their own butt kicking and rescue the rogues, in harem girl outfits with blasters no less! And they can even have dorky donut bun hairdos doing it! LOL Debbie Reynolds is a final memory with my parents at a casino show when she was singing one of her numbers from the "Unsinkable Molly Brown."

There are so many memories of my life wrapped up in these people. So many lives they touched. I'm sure they touched just as many others. This was a tough year for us all. Just remembering the good times they brought...

Gee, really? a violation of copyright? No...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

Unless you've been in a dark hole and haven't listened to much internet/computer news lately or you aren't addicted to facebook, you've probably heard that Mattel and Hasbro are sueing the makers of Scrabulous.

The Indian courts where they sued weren't so sympathetic to the big toymakers however.

The LA Times reported that the Indian courts didn't think the game was a violation of the Scrabble trademark, just the name. :) It seems an interesting take on it, since the rules are exactly the same as on that moldy game that most of us have buried in a closet somewhere...or in the local Goodwill!

I know that's where I got one of the last Scrabble boards we had; I think this one was actually given to us by a friend. We thought it would help the kid's vocabulary to play. After the first 5 or 6 times that mom and dad wiped the board with them, it wasn't a popular game anymore. Surprise! LOL

But this summer, when a good friend was laid up and recovering from some major surgery, I got hooked on playing the email version of this silly @ss, turn based game that I rarely would even bother to pull out of the games closet. Wow! Hasbro and Mattel missed the boat on this one. All that good will and marketing revenue...gone, in the space of a dumb lawsuit. Much better to co-opt the application and buy out the developers.

The old scrabulous site is now gone. With no warning for those of us who had games going...but I've now found Wordscraper a much improved version of Scrabble on facebook that allows you to set your own game rules. :) Now if they just had an email version of the game.

Ha, I just found out that the scrabulous application is going to be lexulous.com and will have the email games back up in a few days. I tried out their solitaire mode just a bit ago and their Java ap killed my firefox sessions...so maybe I'll give it a day or two. :)

from a puzzled goddess who was enjoying improving her vocabulary, even if I had no idea what half those words meant...

This is not the knife you are looking for...but it IS the spoon

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I got into an interesting conversation with the daughter. I was joking around in the kitchen and spouted off with, "This is not the knife you are looking for..." No hand gestures, no funny voice, just kinda talking to myself, and, thought-provoking child that she is, she piped up with, "It is amazing how much of a cultural reference, "Star Wars," really IS.

I had to stop and think. So many movies have become cultural references for our generation. I'm not sure if it's admirable, or sad. What happened to books as a cultural reference? I still think in terms of he's very like Heathcliff, or "My dear Watson," or talking about, "The road less travelled," and "marching to your own drummer." And there are always the biblical favorites and stories of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Good Shepherd.

I think that our parents and the current older generation though are the ones who pass the movie references on. I remember the WWII movies from when I was a kid. The, "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." There is always the "go ahead, make my day."

My friends, strangely enough, are more into, "bring out your dead," "Solyent Green is really people!" and "beam me up Scottie." Somehow, I don't think these will stick for long with our children. Even though adults remember, "Rosebud," I think my children will be remembering, "there is no spoon," and "Red pill... or blue pill."

With the proliferation of books, movies, songs, and video games I have to wonder what our culture will latch on to next. Maybe, "Boom, headshot," as my son would say, or "Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!"

wishing you many cultural conundrums from a puzzled goddess

Neat sh*t and geloscopy....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

sshhh! The goddess shops at Goodwill. The goddess likes shopping at Goodwill, and Salvation Army and any other thrift store I can find. (That's why the goddess' house is buried to the eyeballs in neat sh*t! as her dh says!)

I like seeing what other people once thought was neat sh*t. We like cruising for SCA stuff.

My dd likes to occasionally find the uniquely cool piece of clothing that fits her personal style better than the current Britney Spears/Paris Hilton slut look that's in all the stores.This jacket she wore to a semi-formal awards ceremony at school was one of her finds. (After we'd struck out in all the normal clothing stores looking for something special that wouldn't make her look inappropriate.) It had cool material and loop buttons that go halfway down the front. It looks really cute on her. Sorry my pictures don't do her justice. :(

My ds is usually bored by it all (there are no decent electronics or video games!

But me, the goddess, I LOVE to look at what books people have discarded and see what treasures I can find in their midst. And so I found this one....
The Word Museum by Jeffrey Kacirk. This is such a cool book!

Where else can you find out you're a crastine because you put stuff off from day to day? And that to baffound someone is to stun and perplex them? Maybe I should have been the baffounding goddess? Nah. People are puzzled enough by me as it is!

And to answer the $64K question....geloscopy is to do divination by means of laughter. So hopefully you've gotten a chuckle or two out of this.

I've been known to get my jawing-tacks on board and to kiss the cap, but I've never had a key of the street. :)

blessings from a monsterful and puzzled goddess...