An dieser Stelle möchten wir Euch ein kleines Video vorstellen, das im esten Teil einen witzige Parodie auf “missed connections” (verpasste Gelegenheiten, die man wiederfinden, wiedertreffen oder wiedersehen möchte) enthält. Als Theaterstück im Stil von Shakespear aufgemacht. Schaut es Euch an – ganz nett!

Der zweite, längere Teil ist eine Werbebotschaft für secret-tweets. Auch nicht schlecht gemacht und auch keine schlechte Idee!

Missed Connections & Secret Tweets – INST MSGS | Veoh.

Shakespear had a way with words that was fed by the mind but spoken through the heart. His talent is hard to come by and few have mastered the art of story telling like Shakespear.

But like every rule, there is an exception. Author’s like J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer have produced the best fantasy novels I’ve read – but only 1 author for me can get a spark when it comes to telling real human tales.

Perhaps by now the title has given my favorite author away, but for those who haven’t read his work, he is Nicholas Sparks. You might remember him better if I mention the film adaptation of his novel The Notebook. But far from the Hollywood hype, his tales are those of great human sacrifice and getting back up when the fall seems to have been too high. Sparks is not perfect, there can be some exaggerations in his mode of story telling. But when you pick up his book and flip through the pages you forget where you are and you are absorbed into his world. Flaws are forgotten and the essence of the story is felt. For me, Nicholas Sparks has done what he has set out to do. To tell a tale and keep the reader enthralled.

Every author has his own technique, that special touch to make a story great. For those who love to write I suggest you visit this site:

www.ejournals.ph/index.php/PIJP

Find the article on Speech Acts and Poetry. The article is informative and suitable for all you writers out there.

Have a good one y’all!

I see so many fun ideas at weddings, on blogs, and in shops {online and otherwise}. Some seem a bit far-out, and others are amazingly adorable. So I’ve decided to start a new blog spot for my brides-to-be… Welcome to the first edition of Wedding Wednesdays!

I stumbled across this little dude while browsing the main page of Etsy:

His name is Romeo and his cute bird self is constructed of vintage page(s) from the Shakespeare play. Talk about “fowl” language…

How cute are they?!? This lead me to look at the rest of the  shop and what to my wondering eyes did appear…but a whole line-up of avian cake toppers!

These last two sets are my favorites:

If, like me, you’ve got birds on the brain–you can find more products from the creator/seller cottonbirddesigns at www.cottonbird.co.uk. Enjoy!

This week I made a T shirt design on REdbubble of my Watersoluble oil painting, Midsummer Daydream.

Water soluble oils on gessoed paper. 14 3/4″ x 11 1/4″ 2007.
The wood sprite creates ripples in his refection as he daydreams. Fairies dance on the lily pads and skate across the water while his leaf boat floats away to dreamland.

Dawna’s Gallery of greeting cards, Matted Prints. and T shirts

Dawna’s Fine Art Prints at

Dawna’s Zazzle Gallery of items featuring her Art and Photography

Novità su mycollection.it!!
Anche le parole diventano arredo! Abbiamo aggiunto per voi una nuova sezione di stickers: frasi ed aforismi..
cercate la frase che è più adatta a voi, inserite le misure che vi occorrono ed i colore che desiderate… e decorate la vostra parete! 

Today, Fort Hood (less than 50 miles away in Killeen, TX) was terrorized by 2 men who were apart of the army… 12 were killed and numerous others were wounded. I know of a person who was injured, shot twice in the chest. One of those friend’s of a friend’s of a friend’s of a friend, 4th generation type, but I hope she recovers quickly, along with the other survivors. I wish the best for the families of those who passed. This is surely a tragic event that happened close to home… Rest in peace.

Why can’t there be peace?

On another note…The government has been pissing me off lately. Also my Political Science class. To be brief and to avoid making this a political spiel, I am happy Bush is no longer in office. And Fuck you, NSA and Patriot Act. Just fuck you. Fuck myself for not being more involved, on that note…

Legalize Pot. Right now. Put druglords out of jobs. Kick innocent people out of jail that were convicted for a measly amount of pot. Decriminalize them and pardon them. Allow them to join the workforce. Tax and sell marijuana. Establish restriction laws on marijuana, just as you would alcohol and cigarettes. Boost economy. Get high on the weekends and live a happy life.

Getting happier…I’m reading lots these days. Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I really really love reading literature as a part of my studies. SHF is by choice, but nonetheless, I never want to run out of books to read. I always want a new book!

A random note…The downstairs neighbors have been listening to loud music for hours now. We assume that they’re having sex. Because they DO have a lot of sex. And they’re very loud. It sounds painful or just super tantric. So we are having a battle of sounds. I think we won.

PS. Today is the 5th of November. See V for Vendetta.

PSS. I am sick of anti-bacterial medication. I am sick of this cough. I am sick of my other ailments. I am young, why aren’t I healthy!?!

PSSS. Halloween was a success.

PSSSS. My niece, Samantha Rose Almond was born on October 29, 2009 at 1:47 am to Thomas Almond and Rachel Case. I am so thrilled and excited that I am an Aunt! She is healthy and beautiful and we’re lucky to have her here. Here she is!

I think this is the best way to end a post. Especially one that was angry in the beginning. With a beautiful, innocent baby.

Goodnight.

Does anyone else feel sorry for Gordon Brown? Look up beleaguered in the dictionary and there is a photo of Gordon. Weirdly, I just Googled ‘beleaguered’ to see if I had spelt it right and Gordon Brown came up in a news story as third result. I kid you not…

I can’t help feeling that Brown is a victim of circumstance of Shakespearian proportions. The poor man spent the best part of a decade waiting patiently in the wings as the swarmy, media savvy Blair stole all the glory. Let’s face it Blair had some qualities – he was a great orator, he looked good, masterful at sound bite delivery, the head of a happy family. Okay, he lead us into futile wars based on lies but…

Poor Gordon pops up unelected and the whole world economic order collapses. Initially, right after the crisis Brown was seen as very decisive in being the first to bail out the banks. Other countries followed. Brown’s popularity rose. That was over a year ago. They say a week in politics is a lifetime. A year is an eternity.

Now Gordon looks quite a sad character. He looks unhealthy. Dustbin liner sized bags under his eyes. A pale, flaky pallor. Worries lines etched in all directions like a map of failure. His nervous twitch of pushing his bottom lip with his toungue is even more accenuated of late.  Snubbed by Obama. Not having the confidence of his own party. Rejected by The Sun (wot might win it). He looks like he needs a good hug.

That’s the thing. I like Gordon. I can tell he’s a man of integrity. His dour, non-celebrity friendly manner strikes an honest chord with me. I trust the man. It’s just clear that these values don’t do it in the cut and thrust, short memory span world of politics.

Cela faisait un petit moment que je n’en parlais plus, la revoilà, la marque de Gothic/Sweet/Pirate Lolita. Alors, que se passe-t-il en ce moment ?
J’avais déjà parlé de l’ouverture du centre commercial “NEW PEOPLE” et au deuxième étage, en compagnie de Black Peace Now, SOU・SOU et 6% DOKI DOKI, Baby The Star Shine Bright !

Quelques photos de l’inauguration ( en grande pompes il semblerait ! ) :

Les dernières collaborations en date, Baby The Star Shine Bright s’associe à Hello Kitty ( comme beaucoup d’autres marques en ce moment ) pour son 35 ème anniversaire et créé une Jumper Skirt et un Bow :

La marque s’associe aussi avec LE CHANTEUR ( c’est a précisé ) Kaya, le jeune frère de la chanteuse Nomico. Pour son nouveau single “Ophelia” ( inspiré du fameux personnage de Shakespear, il porte donc l’OP ” mariage de la princesse”, bientôt disponible,  dont je tairai le prix … :

Son Site Officiel

Son Nautiljon

Le single Ophelia

Et pour finir, Baby fait désormais .. Des téléphones portables, enfin, des décoration de téléphone portable, une grande mode au Japon chez les Decora, les Gals est les Lolita.

Voilà, c’est tout ! ( mais c’est déjà pas mal )

Volgende week staat er weer wat moois op het programma. Een weekje Bristol.
Een week vol muziek bij en met de verse vrienden van Avacate, de band uit Bristol die in september in Nederland was.

Avacate, dat altijd op zoek is naar nieuwe elementen, andere invloeden en frisse ideeën is meer dan een band. Een smeltkroes van creativiteit. Klonken ze vorige keer rock? Dan moet je niet raar opkijken als ze een andere keer bijna trip hop klinken. Het kan alle kanten op.

Inner City Grit Records, het kunstzinnige label dat een week of twee geleden een mooi verzamelalbum uitbracht met bands uit Bristol, maar ook Nederlandse bands (waaronder Cradle), is nu via Avacate op het spoor van The Weak And The Strong gekomen.

Lang verhaal kort: The Weak And The Strong maakt nu ook deel uit van het bonte gezelschap artiesten dat gehuisvest is bij Inner City Grit Records. Het gevolg daarvan is dat ik komende week in het vliegtuig stap en vervolgens vier optredens en een studio-opname kan gaan doen in Bristol.
De Lakeside Studios wordt gerund door niemand minder dan Dave Lewis, een multitasker in muziekland. Speelde ooit in de legendarische punkband The Slits, was o.a. jarenlang roadie voor Pink Floyd, U2 en zelfs Tina Turner. Opmerkelijk: was ooit samen met Ian Curtis één avond vrijwillig roadie voor The Popgroup.
Speelt tegenwoordig in meerdere bands, produceert en geeft muzieklevenslessen. Een vak apart…

Bristol dus… Stad van Portishead en Massive Attack. Stad van ICG, Avacate en Dave Lewis’ intieme Lakeside Studio: Here I come!

The Weak And The Strong: Bristol Tour-poster

Inner City Grit: Acoustic Showcase-night

De modo genérico, é possível definir a Tragédia como um caso particular do embate homem versus Natureza – esta composta pela somatória de todos elementos, orgânicos e inorgânicos, que excedem-lhe o corpo -, onde o indivíduo é esmagado. A comédia, em contraponto, seria uma exaltação à felicidade: nada importa e tudo é risível.

Via de regra, prefigura a existência humana um caráter tragicômico, cabendo ao vivente balancear mais uma ou outra face da moeda. Ressalto, no entanto, que a clarividência é atributo de Édipo e Hamlet.

So, its been a while. I’ve missed you old friend.

To explain the long intermission, I’ve had inconsistent internet access and not much time to actually check my internet accounts with the exception of email and the like. Today is a special day in that I sprained my ankle and I’m currently nursing my injury over at Mike’s.

Many things have happened. I’ll start with the most recent:

1. I got a bike and sprained my ankle. I’m working on selling it and getting a newer one that will fit my body better…Needless to say, the bike is meant for a man about a foot taller than me. Its also a racing bike, so it isn’t very sturdy in construction.
2. Started classes last week. I’m taking a Shakespeare course, Political Science, Intro to Archaeology, and Biological Anthropology! I’m pretty excited about these classes, but sometimes they can tend to be tedious.
3. I went to my first A&M game last week with my Dad and my Uncle. You can check out my pictures on Facebook. I actually enjoyed myself quite a bit, considering I’m pretty ignorant/apathetic to the game of football.
4. Everyone thought I was a whore, but that’s all been settled since then.
5. I had a birthday on August 31st. I’m 19 now.
6. Mike and I decided not to talk ever again. But we’re on better terms obviously since I’m at his place using his internet access. He still seems pretty reluctant since he has  not unblocked me from Facebook or added my number into his address book into his phone (I’m not a stalker, I know the latter because I looked through his recent calls list to see if there the number to Double Dave’s. I know the former because he is gray on wall posts).
7. I partied insanely and never got one hungover.

I’m adjusting to life here in College Station. Its pretty different than what I’m used to. The people here are much nicer than in Houston. 3 separate people pulled over to help me today when I fell off my bike. What would’ve happened in Houston is, someone would’ve stopped, helped me up, and probably made away with my bike. Needless to say, I got medical attention and I’m currently sporting crutches and one of those sock things with the laces and thingie doodles that make your ankle supported. I’m quite a bruised and achy mess.

Everyone gets drunk here too. All the time. Every day if possible. Mostly because this is a college town, but also because its out in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t much to do here except go shopping, study, and drink copious amounts of beer or other alcohol.

I have some good news, my financial aid kicked in and at this point A&M owes ME money! I thought I’d have to owe the University a whole bunch of money, but things worked out beautifully. I’m starting to think that this is a meant-to-be situation, but that’s just the romantic in me trying to comfort me in  my hasty decision to come here. Hasty?  Yes, because people that go here have planned to come here their entire lives. I decided on a whim to apply and by a shred of luck, got in, got some pretty awesome scholarships and grants, and now I’m doing somewhat well. I just wish personal things were in order. Isn’t that funny how life works? When your personal life is doing well, your professional life is in a shambles… And when your professional life is finally taking off, your relationships deteriorate and you begin to realize how good things were before. I’m such a romantic, I really just want to preserve all the relationships I have had. These relationships now seem so infantile, but I’m taking baby steps (did you like my pun?)  and I’m trying to become this person that is in my mind of who I am and who I will be one of these days.

Long time no see, my friend.

Oh, and I’m reading Henry IV Part 1. I’d like to quote it now…..

ESPERANCE!

…The Dogs of ‘Ween.

That is right folks. It is that time of year again and I know it is not too early because I don’t shoot my mouth off until Matt over at X-Entertainment does. The Fall season has begun and all seasonal stuff is now un-tabooed so that means I am free to blog about anything and everything macabre without fear of people thinking that I am weird. But who am I kidding? People think that regardless.

I am going to be doing a lot of reviews this year. To me, my opinion matters and I live in a fantasy world where everyone else believes that too. I read and watch many review sites and more times than not, I trust what they say. So, I figured why not and to kick off the season I will be doing so with the 3rd Annual Fall Beer Review. Of course that will include drunken carving.

Oh the movies we will watch! I think if you have been on here long enough you get the point that I lurve old school horror as much as I do beer. And given the choice between the two, I am positive my head would turn inside out and explode from the fuse blowing conundrum in my brain. I think this week we will start off with an oldie but a goody, House On Haunted Hill. The old version, not the crap from today. Vincent Price was a genius and anyone would want to argue that, I will meet you with pistol on the hill at midnight. You can see this version on Hulu.com. Each week I will highlight a new favorite and try to keep it to those shown on either Hulu or YouTube so everyone can play. Hopefully Canadians can too because Sulya told me Hulu and Disney joined together to eradicate kittens or something and she can’t watch much. Nazis.

I ask, no, demand, that you follow along with the Halloween Countdown over at X-Entertainment.com. Matt has been doing this for years (weird to say that) and when it comes to the king of the season, I think he has held the crown for sometime. Trust me, you’ll get hooked all the way through January 1st. It is a great way to enjoy the seasons with other adults who don’t see Halloween as a time to dress as sluts at parties or burn poop on the neighbor’s doorstep. Okay, so we do that too. But still, it’s a nostalgic good time for all. Click the picture above to go there. I command you.

I told you before I want to bake something and I need your recipes. Allison gave me a good one and I am sure she is good for more. Nothing too complicated because, well, I am a guy. I can put out fires but in my own kitchen, I would rather not. I will post a step by step success or failure and test them on my neighbors. If they croak you’re going under the bus. Just kidding. I would just bury them in a pet semetary on an old Indian burial ground. Like they would comeback…

Borrowed this from Finalgirl. Chech her out. Very good writer!

There might be a vlog. I haven’t decided that fully but I have been leaning that way. Hand gestures just prove to be too important not to use. Recently I have incorporated a bird and a dog into my hand gesturing conversations. You just have to see it. I have not decided this yet because I still like to imagine that you read this in a Robert Goulet voice. You know I hate to disappoint.

September and October are not really about gearing up for the day of Halloween. To be quite honest, by the time Halloween roles around I am pretty burned out and looking forward to Turkey day when all is right with the world with food, beer, football and the Macy’s Day Parade. But I really enjoy the little things about this time of year like the retail market focusing on bats and skulls, silly horror movies on UPN, the bizarre Kraft food Halloween ideas on the back of cheese packs, the change in weather and hunting for the ultimate pumpkin in the most sincere pumpkin patch.  It is nice to focus on life that goes by so quickly and enjoy just a piece of what most busy people never notice. Call me silly but a slice of Heaven is sitting on the back porch with a crisp evening Fall breeze blowing, drinking an Octoberfest beer, watching a candle flicker in a proudly carved pumpkin while Friday the 13th part III plays as background noise. I hope you will join me over the next few weeks. Trust me, they fly.

This production was done in 2008 at the Georgia center in Athens.  My first costuming gig with Rose of Athens.  Shrew was set in the early 1950’s.   The director wanted the look of the transition from the late 40’s …before the teen trend of the poodle skirt look. 

My inspiration came from a Marlon Brando shot from the Wild One. 

from http://www.mptvimages.com/

Straiter skirts, cheery colors for Bianca, drab darks for Kate.  Petruchio and Grumio wore the chucks, jeans and leather jacket/vest.   Sweater vests, ascot ties, hats, and suspenders for the other characters.  The wedding dress for Kate was made from scratch…a really pretty suit with 3/4 sleeves and a headband veil.  The most fun of this production was piecing together crazy outfits for Petruchio and Grumio’s wedding gear.  The idea was multicultural, so there were kimonos, indian pants, a kilt, an animal covered hat, a chinese worker shirt, mismatched shoes and socks, a cowboy boot, um….was that it?

This was a great and HUGE performance by Rose of Athens.   It was their first at the classic Morton Theater in downtown Athens, and for a cast of 12 or so…there were over 60 costumes!  The theme was classic Shakespearean dress with a sci-fi futuristic twist.   My collegue, Jennie Alvernez was the lead costumer, but with such an overload of designs and limited budget, I signed on to help out.  My main project was the witches.  7 total, but each one had to have at least 2 growing variations of red accents (as the play progressed, the characters fell deeper into evil madness).  The play turned out amazingly and I have to say the witches were my favorite part.  Choreography by Becca Woolbright and live percussion/spooky sounds by Patrick Ferguson made their dances eerily cool.  The hitch to the witches costumes was making long dresses that could be crouched, jumped, and crawled in….did I mention the ROA actors are a very active crew?  I did not get my own photos of the gowns in their finality, but here they are in action.

The close ups and more shots of the whole show are found here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/AthensAlive/MacbethWebalbum?feat=email#

What I basically did was some repurposing of thrift store dresses! 

Each of the 7 witches had to wear black tee shirt and leggings under their costumes for quick changes into soldier or other costumes (by quick, I mean less than a minute!).  I started with some plain black velvet long sleeve dresses, a few black hippie skirts and plain black skirts.  Each one got a bit of the sci fi aspect and the red accents with nifty additions like reversable red to redder leather corsets, sheer gauzy elastic red underskirts, or belts and little red accents.  I made most of these dance-able by slitting the sides to the upper thigh, or by slitting the whole skirt all around in some cases.   The belts and corsets all closed with heavy duty industrial velcro which made for easy on/off.   They all incorporated lots of black tulle and the main witch, Hecate featured Purple to signify her lead role.

Stratford-upon-avon là một thị trấn nằm  ở vùng nam Warwickshire, Anh quốc. Stratford có nguồn gốc Anglo-Axon, tên gọi hiện tại là sự kết hợp của Anh ngữ cổ: strat /…/ có nghĩa là “con đường” và ford /…/ nghĩa là con đường hướng về dòng sông Avon trong thị trấn.

Ở đây hầu hết mọi thứ đều gắn liền với tên tuổi của nhà thơ, nhà viết kịch Shakespear, từ những con đường, gốc phố, nhà hát, thư viện, cửa hàng mua sắm… Chúng ta có thể quay lại 450 năm trước để viếng thăm “ngôi nhà của Shakespear”, cụm nhà hát nổi tiếng của thị trấn, dòng sông Avon thơ mộng, khu vườn Bancroft …

Avon thơ mộng

Khu vườn Bancroft

Ngôi nhà Shakespear

Du khách đang thưởng thức vở kịch Shakespear được trình diễn ngay tại khu vườn nhà Shakespear

- T.H.D -

By Critic Jasper Pennies

Based on the 2003 autobiography by John Titor Time Travel 0, the world’s most famous time-traveler, this blockbuster film fulfills all our expectations of what a movie should be.

This summer’s best flick is billed as a “tragic love story.” I suppose the love is the love felt by John Titor for adventure and thrills!  Movies tend to get ruined when all the good scenes are used up in the trailer. Not so here!

The trailer seems like some chick flick starring Amy McAdams and Russell Crowe’s little brother or something, and then you see the opening sequence.  The director clearly knew what time-travel fans wanted when he depicted Titor hunting Tyrannosaurus Rexes with machine guns while piloting a helicopter.  It becomes quite clear, this is what Titor does for fun.

Soon the movie becomes serious. Titor is the captain of an elite band of commandos entrusted with altering history for the better. After ensuring that no more of our pre-human ancestors are gobbled up by dinosaurs, he heads off to murder Adolf Hitler. This is apparently also a lot of fun, since he goes back and does it a few more times.  I’m really curious as to why he did this. Perhaps Hitler had some dramatic impact on a different time-line we’ll never know about. Oh well.

Shortly after that, he returns to headquarters in the year 2036.  He is informed by his superiors that he’s a loose-cannon and that they’ve had it with his shenanigans.  After small talk, his Commanding Officer informs him of an anomaly in the year 2000.  He practically explodes into action, heading into the past to acquire an out of date computer and post on some message boards for a while.

The rest of the movie is standard time-travel boilerplate. You know, meeting Shakespeare, fighting in the Civil War, saving Jesus and other such predictable but spine-tingling exploits.  I know Titor exaggerated his memoirs some, but I can safely say the man was quite impressive.

Also, his wife is upset with him for some reason.

I give this movie a rating of Very Good out of Infinity Good.

I know what you’re thinking – you all reckon this is going to be some mindless rant against the works of the esteemed play write William Shakespeare. I know exactly how your minds work! It has to be said though, that in this case, you are absolutely right. 

Quality scribe?

The seeds of this unprovoked attack on the legendry Bill were sown early last week after I had just completed my stint of voluntary work. One of the other volunteers mentioned that he was trying to get tickets to see a production of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’, taking place at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, that starred Judi Dench. He seemed really enthusiastic about the whole thing, and for the life of me, I couldn’t really see why.

My memories of that particular play stem from my school days when we were forced to read it during English Lessons. I found it interminably dull going – billed as a comedy, it was a tale about the lives of Fairie folk (and I am talking fairies in the mystical sense of the word here), and its sole joke was having a central character called ‘Bottom’. Admittedly, this was smilingly funny at first, but it soon wore thin over the course of the book. To add insult to injury, they made us sit through a rendition of the play, performed in the school grounds by a troop of travelling thespians. To cut a short storey even shorter, it was far from inspiring.

Another thing about a ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’ is that people just won’t admit how rubbish it really is. Literary types will swear blind that they completely wet themselves laughing every time they see it. Even the slightest suggestion that it is not the most hilarious play ever written will leave you open to the charge of being ignorant and ill educated.

A common argument in favour of the Bard is that his plays must be good to retain their prominent position in English literature, but I think that any author whose books have had around four hundred odd years or so of product placement are bound to do well. If Stephen King had the same amount of publicity, his books would be on the National Curriculum as well.

I can’t say that I have read an awful lot more of Shakespeare, but I would hazard a guess that the rest of his work would prove to be as equally dull and tedious. Call me ignorant if you want to – I am not going to apologise for having good taste.

TheTelegraph 09 augusti 2009

En sarkofag i en engelsk landsortskyrka skulle kunna lösa den hundraåriga litterära debatten om vem som egentligen skrev pjäserna av William Shakespeare.

Församlingsmedlemmarna i St Marys kyrka i Warwick, har sökt tillstånd för att undersöka innehållet i det monument som byggdes av Fulke Greville, författare och samtida med Shakespeare som vissa tror är den verkliga författaren till flera av hans verk.

Med ett eko från den storsäljande boken och filmen Da Vinci-koden, har undersökningen föranletts av upptäckten genom en historiker som fann ledtrådar i Grevilles skrifter, som tyder på att han hade flera manuskript begravda där, inklusive en kopia av Anthony och Cleopatra.

Läs mer:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5995083/Tomb-search-could-end-riddle-of-Shakespeares-true-identity.html

I would die to be your Romeo
but Juliett, Juliette
please listen to me
please don’t die
without that final kiss goodbye.
O Romeo, Romeo, art thou my Romeo?
Do you remember that discussion?
I am, I am, my fair Juliette, and thou art fair.
Thou art fair.

Alright, really REALLY random… It’s inspired off of Shakespear: Romeo & Juliette. You can see how its a song right? It should be read as one, but I don’t really know any music to go with it.
If anybody starts to write the music for it please send it to me!! Thank you.

Since leaving the industrial lowlands a week ago, we’ve more or less been following the old drove roads from one amazing village to the next. The paths we are taking are sometimes no more than a sheep track to look at, but they have been in almost continous use for over 800 years, carrying the armies of invading kings, insurgent patriots, noblemen, and cattle drovers.

The trail from Linwater to West Linton is signposted as Thieves Road, and it takes you high over the equally evocatively named Cauldstane Slap, a barren pass over the Pentland Hills that was part of the favoured route for driving small cattle from the Highlands down to the markets in England. However, to add further to the dangers posed to the drovers by the exposed pass, the hills harboured all manner of thieves and rustlers. It is not known when it officially became known as “Thieves Road”, but I imagine that the Union of Cattle Thieves & Rustlers would have been up in arms and passionately petitioning the local council to give it any other name that didn’t quite so much give their game away.

We plodded our way up and over “The Slap” on a morning that promised very little in the way of sunshine, but by the time we were decending on the small but unbelievably picturesque hamlet of West Linton, the sun was providing enough warmth to encourage, nae oblige, a cold ale on the impressive, if not ambitious, rear deck of the Gordon Arms Hotel, which sits proudly overlooking the top of the town’s Main Street.

The old drove road continued on out of West Linton via a circuitous route past farmland, a small housing estate and a heavily wooded col, which could not have been in greater contrast to the barrenness of the Cauldstane Slap the previous day. Enroute we heard the distressed bleatings of a lamb that had managed to wedge its head firmly between a water trough and the wooden frame that supported it. It was on the other side of a barbed-wire fence-line, so I quickly de-packed, surveyed the situation and bravely pointed out to Jas the best point at which she could scale the fence. As I courageously stood supervising from a vantage point within metres of a bed of stinging nettles lining the fence that she was now across, Jas grabbed two handfuls of wool on the stout lamb’s shoulders, and pulled with every ounce of strength she had left after an already tiring walk. It soon became clear however that the damn thing was stuck fast, and any more pulling might have resulted in Jas lying flat on her back in the middle of the field with a freshly shucked lamb’s wool car-seat cover attached permanently to her fingertips. The situation called for a more scientific approach, so after some careful examination of the sheep’s cranial anatomy, and with plenty of silent encouragement from me, Jas decided that the best thing for it was to tilt his head and finagle his leathery ears out first. Proving her hypothesis, and using the same principle as in childbirth (so we hear), once the ears were out it was over in the shake of a happy lamb’s tail. The lucky little ovine fellow pranced away to the nearest ewe that resembled his mother, received a solid headbut and stumbled backwards, before regaining his composure, and continuing his noisy search as he disappeared over the crest of a hill.
“Well that’s our good deed done for the day!” I said to Jas, although she must have still been concerned for the lamb’s wellbeing because the look on her face did not match my sense of self-satisfaction, as she selfishly tended to her nettle-rash rather than bask in the glory of our mutually heroic endeavours.

We carried on down the trail to the larger but equally charming town of Peebles, where a rest day and a rendezvous with some friends from Glasgow awaited.

Refreshed from our rest, but mildly frustrated from yet another failed attempt at acquiring a decent steak pie, we left Peebles via an easy 12km hike along the very quiet B road to Traquair (pronounce it “Track Where”, or the locals will fire up their torches and sharpen their pitchforks!), beyond which a small log-cabin bothy awaited our arrival. On the way through the village we stumbled upon a hive of activity at the Traquair town hall, as the local cycling club was hosting a control point for an Audax Cycle Race from London to Edinburgh and back (the participants of which were even crazier than us, apparently!). The club had arranged for 40 doormat-sized frosted and cream-filled victoria sponge cakes to feed the more than 300 ravenous competitors on their way through, however, the early withdrawal of 200 of them, and the town hall’s decidedly inconvenient no cycling-cleat policy, had conspired to ensure that supply not just exceeded demand, but positively swamped it. This all worked in our favour as we were sent off to hike up the mountain to the bothy with arms full of cake and a sense of community spirit having done our bit to prevent Traquair from falling into a pseudo nuclear winter as a result of lying in the shadow of a cake-mountain. Upon arrival, the Minch Moor bothy was, regretfully, adorned on every square inch of its interior by the banal and mindless scribblings of a few local, tumshie-heided youths, but provided a dry and comfortable night’s sleep nonetheless.

In the morning we climbed further up the mountain to follow the old Minchmoor Road, which has been used by the likes of William Wallace (in fact it passes “Wallace’s Trench”, where the tall patriot with the Hollywood looks laid in wait for the Borderers, who were coming to join the fight), and Edward I of England, with his procession, in his early attempts to subjugate the vacant Scottish Crown (vacant, that is, save for the two year old Margaret, the Maid of Norway, who seemed more intent on splashing about the fjords than travelling to Scotland to take her throne), in the first of a series of events that helped to shape the Scot’s character and which manifests itself today in their overwhelming support for Australia in the Ashes (or as one chap said to me, Australia or anyone who plays England in the Ashes!).

On this day, however, there were no marauding insurgents or power hungry kings on the high ridge crossing the moor, but we did have to contend with a crosswind that was so strong that it could have blown a brown dog off its chain. As a consequence we struggled to stay on the path, and frequently stumbled into the adjacent heather, startling dozens of concealed grouse in the process, who would briefly take flight into the prevailing wind before quickly thinking better of it and executing a supersonic U-turn followed by a barely controlled flight down to the lee of the ridge.

It was by far the worst walking conditions we had encountered so far on our trek, so when we finally wobbled our way into Galasheils with windswept hair and jackets that had barely managed to stay in one piece, there was nothing for it but to dive into the nearest pub (a Weatherspoon’s) to delay our final four mile march to Melrose with yet another attempt to secure a half decent pie.

I am pleased to subsequently report that the Weatherspoon’s “Steak & Abbot’s Ale Pie” was the one that finally broke the drought, being fully enclosed in proper short-crust pastry and the size a shape of a common housebrick. It was the highlight of an otherwise taxing day, and we sat for hours afterwards, struggling to breath with the damned things lodged betwixt liver and pancreas.

If that wasn’t enough, the pride of Scottish piemanship was well and truly restored when we stumbled upon a bespoke butcher’s shop in Melrose which was displaying an innumerable range of proper, structurally correct pies of varying size, shape and content. At only 80p a go, and being completely unfettered by any need to count calories, we set about the task of demolishing as many as we could whilst sitting on the bench seat outside the shop, watching delivery men in white coats hump whole sides of beef from a waiting lorry onto their shoulders and into the shop (are we trapped in an ITV light drama?). It’s a bold statement, but the Scotch Pie, containing just lamb mince and seasoning with a peppery bias is my gastonomic discovery of the year.

Melrose itself is a wonderful place, but to avoid the possibility of being labelled a half-Scottish sycophant, I will merely state that it is sublimely pretty.

The downside of that is that we are firmly back in the tourist zone, resulting in the ever so slightly less genuine friendliness of the locals. This was no better demonstrated by my experience at the Ship Inn, which attracted me in with a sign advertising that they would be showing the cricket from 11.00am, but when I wandered in at 11.01am a humourless and monosyllabic barmaid greeted me like I was wearing a dogshit waistcoat, clearly upset that my arrival precipitated a last minute change to her plans for the first hour of her morning, that being that it would now comprise of one minute pouring me an ale and 59 minutes reading OK magazine and clearing her nose (hands-free, being a marginal blessing), rather than the full 60 minutes doing the latter.

But that’s not enough to put me off Melrose, whose pies have well and truly assisted me in my endeavours to lower my centre of gravity.

(by Stuart Laurance)

*
The Sonnets
*
From fairest creatures
*
But wherefore do not you a mightier way
*
That time of year
*
In loving thee
*
I never saw that you
*
So are you to my thoughts
*
When thou shalt be disposed
*
Cupid laid by his brand
*
The little Love-god lying
*
When, in disgrace with fortune
*
Lake as the Waves
*
That God Forbid
*
Is it Thy Will
*
Against My Love
*
Tired with all these
*
Love is my Sin
*
Where Art Thou Muse
*
I Love Thee not
*
Like as the Waves
*
Let Not My Love be called idolatry

From fairest creatures

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

What you are seeing unfold here is not one party (Conservative) promising to change a failed policy of the party in government (Labour) as a way of fixing the economy, even though that is exactly what it is supposed to make you believe

Read the article and I will explain why after in my comment:

Tory superbank: Osborne to scrap watchdog and give Bank of England powers to stop meltdown

By Sam Fleming and Tim Shipman
Last updated at 4:49 PM on 20th July 2009

Liam Byrne, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: ‘David Cameron and George Osborne can talk all they like about banking reform, but when it mattered, they showed their inexperience and called it wrong.

‘They opposed the Government’s action to protect Northern Rock irrespective of the risks to savers and the wider economy.

“That reform must be based on a clear understanding of what went wrong in the first place and a clear determination to put it right.”

The debt crisis had been “at best ignored and at worst encouraged”, he said.
“For this, I believe the finger of blame points directly at the system of financial regulation established by Gordon Brown in 1997.

“At its heart was the tripartite system; a system in which no-one was looking at the big picture, no-one had responsibility and authority to act and no-one was effectively in charge.

“So those bad debts, those risky loans, the soaring house prices, the systemic risk, the asset price bubble – they all fell between the cracks of the system.
“I’m afraid the Government’s proposals that all we need are a few more tweaks and a little bureaucratic tinkering are totally inadequate and risk preventing a recovery.”The reforms would hand greater powers to the ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ than at any time in its 315-year history, potentially triggering fears of a ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of government, with too much influence handed to unelected Bank officials.

In putting so much faith in the Bank of England, the Tories will be accused of ignoring that institution’s considerable failings in the lead-up to the financial crisis. Mr King was criticised for doing too little to flag up the dangers of the debt bubble and soaring house prices.

To counter such concerns, the Tories are explicitly aiming to downgrade the status of the Governor within his own institution by creating a third deputy governor, who would oversee the Bank’s new Financial Regulation wing.
The Tory scheme runs directly counter to Treasury proposals this month to boost the FSA’s authority.

And they also clash with proposals from the Liberal Democrats, who will today argue that the FSA should be retained. The LibDems’ Treasury spokesman Vince Cable will also demand that highly paid bankers disclose details of their pay and he will call for Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds to be broken up before they are returned to public ownership.

In a speech to the London Stock Exchange today, Mr Cable will say: ‘Some aspects of the financial services industry are simply too big for the British economy to manage safely.

Read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1200835/The-Tories-superbank-Osborne-Bank-England-powers-stop-meltdown.html#ixzz0LqI1EzSI

COMMENT

So why is this a bad idea?

As I said above, what you are seeing unfold here is not one party (Conservative) attempting to change a failed policy of the party in government (Labour) as a way of fixing the economy, even though that is exactly what it is supposed to make you believe. You are actually seeing two phases of the same agenda from two parties who are two sides of the same coin.

Shakespeare famously said “All the world’s a stage and the people merely actors”. Well he was not joking. He was warning us of the reality that escapes us. This whole episode is a charade played out for our benefit to gain our support and consent to, if not demand, the next phase of the long term plan. Let me explain how it works.

Since the end of the 1990s the banking regulatory authorities have been weakened by legislation enabling the creation of a huge derivatives bubble which in effect is a bubble with no real assets to back it up. It is simply money out of thin air represented by numbers in a ledger. This de-regulation was going on in the USA starting with Clinton repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 (even with a majority of Republicans in the Houses) thus expanding the limitations of lending by removing a law that prevented the banks from over lending based on their assets. Then GW Bush made this worse by removing all limits on assets to loans ratios and allowing the banks to make investments with money that did not exist. The same process was going on in Britain during the Blair years and in other western nations. So you see how this is a bi-partisan con trick in most countries.

The fact that the financial regulators in all these western countries were seemingly unaware of the impending situation says to us that either they were limited by weakened legislation and powers of enforcement, or they were allowing this to happen and therefore were part of the problem. The fact that they all walked away with golden handshakes and huge pensions, despite their dreadful job performance, should sound alarm bells at least. This must also make it quite obvious to everyone that this could not possibly have been an oversight by such a large number of experienced people

Well, you would be right. The inflation of the derivatives bubble was not a mistake. It was created by design. We know this because it was leaked from the meetings of the rich and powerful over a decade ago and reported in the independent press on-line. More recently it was leaked from the Bilderberg Meeting in Ottawa in 2006, and reported by Daniel Estulin, that the wealthy elites that host this meeting had discussed the deliberate collapsing of the world economy using the derivatives bubble (and to blame the housing market).

The meeting is full of politicians from all western nations and International groups as well as multinational conglomerates, Royalty, and Media Groups. At this meeting in 2006 were the representatives of banks such as:

Timothy F. Geithner, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Dermot Gleeson, Chairman, Anglo Irish Bank Group
Ronald S. Lloyd, Chairman and CEO, Credit Suisse First Boston
Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair, Toronto Dominion Bank Financial Group
Gordon Nixon, President and CEO, Royal Bank of Canada
David Rockefeller, Former Member, JP Morgan International Council
Rudolf Scholten, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Österreichische Kontrollbank AG
Peter D. Sutherland, Chairman, BP plc and Chairman, Goldman Sachs International

Many other banks have been present in years previous and since. However let me take one example in AIB. Dermot Gleeson the Head of Anglo Irish Bank has attended Bilderberg since 2003 to 2009 so has been well aware of the developing plan and his part in it. In 2004 for instance Thomas L. Donilon, Vice-President, Fannie Mae, (and Council on Foreign Relations) was present, presumably to discuss their part in the home loans side show that the US government would blame the crash on. So in the two years since the meeting in 2006 where they decided to inflate the bubble to bursting, AIB doubled the amount of it’s total lending exposure right before the crash in late 2008

Many of the same names re-appeared in the 2008 meeting plus other interesting ones like

Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG
Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System
Harold E. Ford, Jr., Vice Chairman, Merill Lynch & Co., Inc
Seppo Honkapohja, Member of the Board, Bank of Finland
William J. McDonough, Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
Tom McKillop, Chairman, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
Rudolf Scholten, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
Jean-Claude Trichet, President, European Central Bank
Robert B. Zoellick, President, The World Bank Group

Notable are RBS, AIB, Merril Lynch, the companies at the centre of the collapse in the US, Britain and Ireland that was imminent. As well as these men, there were also present many Finance ministers and, for reference to the article above, also present at the meeting were the following attendees indicating the cross party co-operation for this agenda

Edward Balls, Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Labour)
Kenneth Clarke, Member of Parliament (Conservative)
George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (Conservative)

Kenneth Clarke in fact is an ever present participant. George Osborne has been attending for the last 4 years, and Ed Balls has been attending since 2002. So again we see no party lines and long term involvement.

You may ask why we have never heard of any of this considering how important it is. Well the simple answer is because the people who attend this meeting also control your media. A few examples of this are in these recent attendees

Martin H. Wolf, Associate Editor and Economics Commentator, The Financial Times
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
Vendelin von Bredow, Paris Correspondent, The Economist
Adrian D. Wooldridge, Foreign Correspondent, The Economist
Anatole Kaletsky, Editor at Large, The Times
Paul Gigot, Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
Donald E. Graham, Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company
Matthias Nass, Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
Christine Ockrent, CEO, French television and radio world service
Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google
Oscar Bronner, Publisher and Editor, Der Standard (Austria)
Nicolas Beytout, Editor-in-Chief, Le Figaro (France)
Juan Luis Cebrian, Grupo PRISA media group (Spain)
Heather Reisman, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. (Canada)
John Vinocur, Senior Correspondent, International Herald Tribune (USA)
Conrad Black, Telegraph Group

So you see they have the economic and Financial press sewn up so that they only send out the message the Bilderberg Group wants the public to hear. Even the Director General of the BBC has attended around 2002

You may have noticed something in Europe whereby Britain and Ireland’s Prime Ministers both stepped down before the crash and left their fall guys to carry the can. This is what Gordon Brown and Brian Cowan are, however they will probably be well rewarded for this while Tony Blair will be free to become European President and Bertie Ahern will most probably be given a top job in Blair’s administration

Back to the article then, you can see that in Bilderberg there is no difference between Labour and Conservative, or Republican and Democrat. They are simply working together to carry out an agenda phase by phase. Hence Bilderberg has already decided that Gordon Brown will oversee the crash so that the Conservatives will win the next election, leaving George Osborne to implement the next stage of the agenda which is to remove independent regulation of the banks over to the Bank of England. While in Ireland the government has made a report of “urgent” budgetary measures, but has gone on summer break for 3 months and wont deal with it till autumn. By then the IMF will have taken over the country.

At this point you should also be aware that the IMF and World Banks are also owned by private banking families and the IMF ONLY lends money under the condition that they have a say in how the country is run. You have seen this time and again in Africa and the result is that the country ends up handing over it’s resources and lands to the private bankers in lieu of the IMF loans

What most people in Britain are not aware of is that the Bank of England is not exactly what it says on the tin. It is actually controlled by the Rothschild banking family and has been since the Napoleonic wars when Nathan Rothschild basically took over the country by buying up the stock market after it crashed when he gave out a story that his courier had brought news that Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, which was a simple and effective con. Recently just like Clinton, Brown gave the Bank total autocracy for monetary policy back in 1998 and since then, just like in the US with the autocratic Federal Reserve, certain financial houses have made extraordinary profits while the country heads for hyper-inflation.

George Osborne then will also give full regulatory powers to the privately run Bank of England to oversee the very banking institutions that control it. This is like asking the captain of one football team to referee the match he is playing in.. The net effect being that the Bank of England controllers will tilt everything in their own favour and use their power to absorb other banks and insurance houses to eliminate their competition and give them an unassailable position from which to orchestrate the new world order’s global financial governance agenda into being. This will be done after the nations have suffered massive hyper-inflation due to the policy of printing money to bail out the indebted banks of toxic debt that only ever existed in a balance sheet and never in reality. This bailout money of course gets re-directed straight back to the creditor banks who just happen to be the controllers of the Bank of England

The exact same thing has happened in the USA with Barrack Obama’s Senate colleagues using a procedural rule to block any attempt to pass Senator De Mint’s Audit the Federal Reserve amendment. Also Obama’s House speaker Nancy Pelosi is the one standing in the way of Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed Bill which now has 273 co-sponsors (63% of the House). At the same time Obama has introduced new legislation, the same as proposed by Osborne, to give the Federal Reserve even more power to regulate every aspect of the US economy, including the banking sector, i.e. themselves. Now does that sound like a President who wants CHANGE ? Seems to me to be exactly what Bush Jnr was pushing for.

So now you can see that in both nations the agenda is the same and the party lines mean nothing to them and are simply a play for the electorate to believe they are in control of their leaders. The reality is the people are not. The people are manipulated by the corporate owned press to elect the party the elites of this world want in power to carry out the next phase of their agenda

What is the agenda? One world government, one world currency, all controlled by the banking families that own our governments and who meet in secret at their Bilderberg club. This one world government will be a total control grid surveillance system. A cashless society. All movements monitored. All transactions monitored. All rights removed.

If this is the future you want you can have it but please don’t condemn the rest of us into it.

Having heard that there was then a theatrical company at Chew Magna, and being Shakespearean and silver star bitten, I walked the seven or eight miles, enjoyed a night’s amusement at the play, and the next morning introduced myself to the manager, a very respectable man of the name Phillimore. My business was soon started. I wanted to be an actor, and would be very happy to join his company if they had room for the addition. After some lengthy conversation, he told me that he could offer me no salary as theirs was a sharing scheme. On my avowing my ignorance upon that subject, he explained that every night, after deducting rent, lights and all other expenses from the receipts, the balance was divided into as many shares as might be, the amount generally being far from sufficient for the comfortable support of the recipient. For himself, he explained, he received, besides his share as an actor, a second share as manager, and a third share for the use of his scenery and wardrobe; then his wife and daughter had each a share as actresses, and his little boy (of about twelve) a share as the juvenile tragedian; so that the family managed to live, but how the other five (one lady and four gentlemen) contrived, he was unable to inform me. This was not a very flourishing account, and I must admit that Mr. Phillimore did not attempt to obtain my addition to his company by false pretences or exaggerated anticipations; and with my eyes wide open, I elected to throw in my’ lot with them. Of course I assumed another name; and at Chew Magna, South Brent, Axbridge, Glastonbury and Shepton Mallet were witnesses to my histrionic pretensions; which amounted, barely, to something more than nothing; and my career was bought to a summary and unexpected close at the latter. town, in the following way.

At the close of one of our performances at Shepton Mallet, and when we were all very busy cleaning our faces and transmogrifying ourselves into decent looking civilians, one of the corps expressed his surprise that a gentleman was still siting in the auditorium and did not manifest the slightest intention of vacating his seat. After an interval, the manager enquired of him his object of remaining, and was informed that he wanted to see me. A peep through a convenient slit in the curtain, revealed to me an old and worthy friend of the family, Captain Bessell, of the Hon. Artillery Company and Secretary to the General Steam Navigation Company, whose cordial greeting I reciprocated. Rather that we had all (except the Phillimore family) been on short commons for some weeks, and I sniffed the probability of a substantial supper. Adjourning to his hostelry, I learned that he came ambassadorially from my father to win the truant to his home, and tither, sundry trifling obligations discharged by my “Chancellor of the Exchequer,” the next mail coach conveyed us to London.