I can open jars and take care of spiders just fine, but the one thing I do mind about being single is waking up after a nightmare and not being able (or wanting) to go back to sleep because of the fear and loneliness that seems to sweep through the room. When it's really bad I reach out for one of the stuffed animals that sits on the big wicker chair next to my bed.

Since I've been doing a lot of this lately, I wondered if it's normal to hug a teddy bear so late in the game. When I typed in Google "is it normal to still sleep with a teddy bear?" I actually got lots of reassuring results.

These are just a few of the things I discovered:

*http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/problems-only-adults-who-still-sleep-with-their-bear-will

*Maybe teddy bears are not typically high on the list when it comes to identifying strategies that adults use in coping with life’s stressors. By the time we have reached adulthood, most of us (except perhaps me) have traded in our stuffed animals for more age-appropriate items that we have chosen to comfort us. But whatever we have chosen — and almost all of us have them — these devices serve to offer us solace in times of distress.--from Psychology Today

*This comment made me feel better on gurl.com:

I love to snuggle up after picking up my kids at school with an orange bear named Berry, a Jellycat “Black and Cream Puppy” named Spots, and a blanket I crocheted when I was 7. Back in the day, we learned to crochet at a young age. (If anyone here is as old as I am- I was born in 1966- then you know what I’m talking about!)

*Read more: http://www.gurl.com/2012/11/28/teddy-bear-snuggle-sleep-with-teddy-bears/#ixzz3Gz1o1xfp

A teddy bear (obviously) can't ever whisper words of comfort or hug back, but sometimes having something cuddly to hold on to is almost enough.

 

Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars on American Horror Story: Freak Show

Jessica Lange singing Lana Del Rey's "Gods and Monsters" is about as good as it gets right now. It's not so much that she's a good singer as that she's a mesmerizing one and if anyone else besides Lana is qualified to get the mystical moodiness of the song down it's definitely Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars.

Her normally jaded and suspicious character is so hopeful it's not too late for one more chance at being a fabulously famous entertainer she's all too ready to believe anyone who will tell her there's still time. Elsa's desperation fuels her to hire a fake fortune teller who sees "applause and a man with fierce eyes" in her future.

Each season so far, Jessica has portrayed a completely different woman and it's her superb stage presence, not her singing, that has made both songs ("Life On Mars" from the first episode of "Freak Show" and now "Gods and Monsters") unforgettable.

The actress has said this is her last year of "American Horror Story" and that she will soon be retiring. The show, which reboots each season, will need a strong presence to replace her...Anjelica Huston comes to mind. I think she'd be awesome.

Jessica Lange appears in the November issue of Elle as part of their "Women In Hollywood" issue

Books and Cash on Sunday...



from Uncut magazine...

Anonymous...as seen on Facebook

 



Johnny Cash is about as far from David Bowie as you can get. Even when he ventured into "out there" territory (covering Depeche Mode on his 2002 album, American IV, The Man Comes Around), he made his version the way only he could:

(as quoted in Mojo October 2013) "I heard that {"Personal Jesus"} as a gospel song. And if you think of it as a gospel song, it works really well. We didn't have any major disagreement over that song, I just heard that a couple of people had recorded it, the writer wanted me to try it, and I did, and I loved it. And I went for it."

Some days, music isn't just an interest or a passion, it's a necessity. To go from a sad day to one where you're glad to be alive can be due, in a large part, to music and books. Maybe it's warped to think this way, but when you sometimes find yourself unsure, even afraid, of people music and books take on lives of their own...

 

I find a calming strength in Johnny Cash's voice that I really need today.

 

from Rolling Stone:

 

Born February 26th, 1932 (died September 12th, 2003)
Key Tracks "Ring of Fire," "I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues"
Influenced Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Steve Earle

Johnny cash "sounds like he's at the edge of the fire," Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles. "Johnny's voice was so big, it made the world grow small." The Man in Black's rolling, stentorian baritone is one of the defining voices in American music, from his earliest singles for Sun Records through his commercial prime in the Sixties and Seventies to his Nineties rebirth. He approached novelty songs such as "A Boy Named Sue" and "One Piece at a Time" as seriously as he did gospel music. "I'd been hearing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' my whole life, but when I heard Johnny sing it, it dawned on me what it was about," says his collaborator Rick Rubin. "It took on a whole new resonance and meaning. He said the words in a way that you really trusted them."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-19691231/johnny-cash-20101202#ixzz3GcP4zraA

Saturday night music

Some people come home, put their things away, get comfortable and then pour themselves a drink...others change into their pajamas and put on an appropriate record.

Tonight, I've been listening to Station to Station*

 

and it's not that hard to believe, especially when you really listen to the whole album, that the man spent the same year he recorded this doing coke and living pretty much on a diet of peppers and milk.

 

I love David Bowie's music a lot, even if I'm not always sure about the man himself. (There are times I wonder how he's still alive given how many drugs he did in the 70s.)

 

He's, thankfully, not so reliant on narcotics for inspiration these days and has done some of his best stuff in years. The Next Day, released in 2013, was terrific.

 

Right now, I'm reading The Man Who Sold The World to find out more about albums such as Heroes, Hunky Dory, Low, Station to Station and Young Americans.

 

There is a lot of neat stuff about songs from each album, some of my favorite snippets are about "Life On Mars." :

 

It was an epic journey from the single piano note that opened the song to the climax of Mick Ronson's gargantuan orchestral arrangement...Bowie's vocal--also a first take, according to producer Ken Scott--was equal to the majesty of the arrangement, as he hit a high B flat at the end of the chorus and held it for three whole bars. The passion of that climax contrasted with the acerbic, almost nasal tone of the verse...The clash of cynical despair and passionate commitment was almost shocking--not least for what it revealed about how Bowie saw his own role as a star in the making, at the end of this remarkable performance of a deeply unsettling song.

 

Author Peter Doggett considers Hunky Dory Bowie's most commercial album of all his career and feels it could have taken the singer to Beatlesque heights. I love the book's focus on individual recordings.

   

* Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine from allmusic :              

 

Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk.

       

For some gentle unwinding on a late Saturday night, you might want to try this...

The cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" is beautiful and transcendent. It's off of Acid Pauli's Get Lost V and sounds as if Elvis Presley and Chris Isaak somehow merged together to record this. It's just a stunning track.

Another gorgeous song is "Weightlighting" off the album of the same name by Trashcan Sinatras. More than aptly titled, it takes you outside of yourself as if it were inducing some kind of musical astral projection.

weightlifting
i discover the wheel and watch the buildings go by
you talk a little soft, turn off the radio
i just want to hear all the past times
the rushed hours, the endless lives
don’t become a burden
say the word and be free
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting
it’s been a lonely winter hibernating away
you need a little sunlight on that face
how long can you stay in the darkness?
dust round the empty nest?
you could make you way out
if you lay down the load
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
leave it behind, a great weight lifting
you will find a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting

 

 

from Pinterest

It said "people with homosexual tendencies must be welcomed with respect and delicacy," but repeated church teaching that marriage is only between man and woman. The paragraph failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to pass.--Vatican City (AP)
 http://news.yahoo.com/bishops-revise-document-gays-expect-approval-125810087.html

How can something so basic, without any political agenda, be voted against? I refuse to spend another day being upset about the way some conservative Catholics (and other people) see gays and lesbians.

If they don't get that gay people are people too, that's their problem, not mine. I am tired of spending sleepless nights convinced I am going to Hell,  I am tired of being someone I'm not just to be accepted by others. I am tired of homophobes referring to the gay "lifestyle" or thinking it's all about sex. I am just tired.

Even in this day and age, homophobia can be so bad some people still have to hide who they really are...to feel accepted or loved, sometimes to even feel safe.

So if the haters want to hate, let them. I will not hate back. 

If I could change anything, though, I would only wish they'd at least recognize that nobody would choose something that can bring so much pain into her life. I also wish, though this would probably be too much to ask, that they'd understand we fall in love as much as anyone else does. And, this is definitely asking too much, I just wish they'd read up on the topic more before flinging around words that truly can hurt, even devastate.

Sources like this help:

https://www.uml.edu/docs/LGBT_tcm18-60280.pdf