The Modestly Spooky Dining Room

Though my vacation did not end up being very relaxing or reinvigorating, interesting things did happen.  One of them was that the dining room finally has stuff on the walls.  And it is perfect.  Just perfect.  I love it.  Wanna see?

To the left is a painting that my great-grandma Teck painted.  She read palms.  That hutch is my Grandma A.’s.  Her mother read tea leaves.  The china in it is the china Teckla left me.  The poster on the right is this great piece I first tried to win over at Mrs. B’s and then finally broke down and bought.  Then, on the far right is the single tarot card.

And then there is the amazing mirror my parents brought down ages ago, which is finally hung.  More on that in a minute.

Here’s the poster up close.  The artist, Emily Balivet, has an Etsy shop and all her stuff is really incredible.  This is just the one that I couldn’t do without.

I became a pagan because, once I started getting good at reading tarot cards, I got The Hanged Man in almost every reading I did.  I started reading about various interpretations of what the Hanged Man means and somewhere along the way I came across “I know I hung on the windswept tree nine whole nights” and it was just that lightning moment, where you know you’re hearing words that are going to mean something to you for a long time.  I’m tickled to have him hanging around in honor of that.

Here’s a close-up of the mirror.  As you may recall, I really find mirrors in general to be creepy and I don’t normally like having them in my house.  But a mirror that is already creepy?  Somehow a creepy mirror negates the general creepiness of mirrors and a creepy mirror is always welcome in my house.  This mirror goes on top of a dresser.  Which dresser it goes on top of is unknown, but one that is probably still rattling around the family someplace.

What’s going on here is that this mirror is from back in the day, when they painted silver on the back of glass.  And the mirror is so old and has been knocking around in so many different basements that the silver is starting to tarnish and now you can see the brushmarks left by the person (man, I’m assuming) who hand-made this mirror.

I just love that.

What Did Frank Suffer From?

My Grandma D.’s Dad is Herb Siddall.  His dad is Frank Siddall.  Frank Siddall served briefly in the Civil War.  And then later had to go to a Soldiers’ Home.

The question is–why? (And, also, what religion was he?  “Foot”?)

I can’t read the handwriting, but maybe you can.

Top Ten Film Characters

Joe Powell has challenged me to name my top ten movie characters of all times.  This is a slightly more difficult task than it might seem because I rarely watch movies and, when I do, you can bet I’ve picked out the shittiest movies I can find.

But…

1. Han Solo & 2. Indiana Jones.  I don’t know if there are many women my age who weren’t somewhat fundimentally psycho-sexually shaped by these two characters.  Either you came to want a man with brains and a smart-ass swagger or you wanted to figure out how to be the smart-ass with the brains and the swagger who gets the girl.

3.  Crash Davis.  Kevin Coster is a shitastic actor, but Crash is sublime.

4.  Louise.  I cannot watch Thelma and Louise without bawling.  I usually start when the movie starts.  It’s hard not to love Thelma, with her shitty life, but her enthusiasm for trying something new.  But Louise is my favorite because she knows she’s doomed from the get-go.

5.  Mozelle Batiste Delacroix.  Everything about Eve’s Bayou is a treat, but Mozelle does some work in that movie that just about blew my mind, changed my whole idea about what I could be doing and how.

6.  David from The Lost Boys.  It makes no sense why Michael doesn’t want to join them.  It never has and it never will.  If you can be half as bad-ass and as charasmatic as David, why wouldn’t you?

7.  Nagiko from The Pillow Book.  I don’t know how you talk about Greenaway’s characters or movies, so I won’t really try.  I’ll just say that, though The Pillow Book is nothing like a Quentin Tarantino movie, watching it makes you think that Tarantino only wishes he could write movies about women like this.

8.  Jill from The Whole Nine Yards.  Who doesn’t love a joyful psychopath?

9.  Mark Hunter.  I’m convinced that Mark Hunter is why so many folks my age took to blogging.  That’s right, America, I’m sitting in my room, coming into your homes, and trying to spark a revolution.  Or encouraging you to have masturbatory fantasies about Christian Slater.  Either one.

10.  Lady Cluck from Robin Hood.  Why didn’t she get together with Little John?  Someone answer me that.

Look Upon My Bagworms!

Oh, yes, I am indeed going to show you something so gross that it will give you heebies so big you won’t even get around to getting the jeebies afterwords.

Gaze, gaze, my readers.