May 16, 2019 at 4:49 pm (Conversations, destinations, Holidays, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling, Weather)
Tags: Fridays, memories, Paris
For only her second post participating in Nadia Merrill’s Photo-a-Week Challenge, she has to go back, waaaaay back, to 30 December 2017. She’d just spent one of the loneliest Christmases ever, in Paris. Lo and behold, when it was time for her to leave, she realized she’d come to feel comfortable in Paris (after spending two weeks holed up in a hotel just a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, where a very discreet hotel staff never asked her a single personal question, and only interfered with her routine once, when they insisted she go to the Louvre on Christmas Day — No lines, Madame!)
This week’s Photo-a-Week Challenge is RAINDROPS.
She thinks that’s what’s going on in these pictures. Or mebbe she was just too tired and it was too early in the morning and her hand was shaking. She was in a cab headed to the airport, where she was going to fly, first, to London, and then to the Philippines.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 11, 2019 at 9:49 pm (Links, television)
Tags: adaptations, Arya, complaints, Cork, disappointment, Game of Thrones, Gendry, previews, Saturday
Dracarys! Dracarys! So bored with Dracarys but whatever, there’s another episode tomorrow, self’s attitude is somewhat tepid. Meh?
This morning, in front of Paradiso, there was a man (who looked exactly like a hippy, even though this is Cork) holding up a sign that said FREE HUGS. It was ADORABLE. There were people actually enthusiastically hugging each other. And self was so slow grabbing her camera that she got nothing.
Anyhoo, back to Game of Thrones. This is a penultimate episode — YES! Who knew that self is almost regretting how much time she had to spend to: a) sign up for HBO Now; b) un-sign-up for HBO Now when she found out it didn’t work in England; c) sign up for Sky TV; d) find out how VPN works (Honestly, before she left the States, she had no idea what VPN was)
She has not yet managed to finish watching Episode 4. It is really, really hard to watch, ESPECIALLY the Brienne/Jamie hook-up which generates NO HEAT WHATSOEVER. Also it is hard to watch Joe Dempsie doing probably the worst acting of his life (Who is that he’s pretending to be? That’s not Gendry! Just an HBO construct! He might be off the show now — except for maybe five seconds in the finale. He might be luckier than Arya, though. SHE has to keep up that stone-cold assassin act all the way to the bitter end. And, girl, you’re doing yourself no favors by suddenly assuming the mantle of Savior of All Mankind. Just look at what happened to Emilia Clarke. Being a Messiah really interferes with a performance)
A Forbes writer was saying something about how easy it was for Euron to kill a dragon, all he had to do was aim his “magical giant ballista” at “a measly dragon” and self does agree that it is pretty ludicrous, twice as ludicrous because it’s EURON and all he does is chew up scenery. It would have been better to have CERSEI aim the “magical giant ballista” but the script has her everlastingly stuck on a stone balcony, bringing her A+ sneer game.
Self will watch the opening credits. If it doesn’t have a particular name, YAWN she won’t bother watching.
Stay tuned.
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May 10, 2019 at 9:22 am (Links, Surprises, television)
Tags: adaptations, complaints, disappointment, fantasy, Game of Thrones, horror
So Arya killed the Night King, stabbing him in the exact same place he was stabbed by the Children of the Forest.
The Children of the Forest haven’t appeared much in the series (hopefully they’ll be in the prequel) but the image of a blade plunging into the chest of a captive man is, you have to admit, super-arresting and chilling.
And here is an image from an article in Den of Geek, which asks: Could the Night King actually have been a Stark?
Which again makes self super-despondent because it reminds her that in the last two episodes EVER of Game of Thrones, the bad guys will be played by the tag team of Cersei/Euron, even though, to self’s mind, the Lannisters are pretty much done (except for Tyrion, who’s turned into such a sad sack)
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 6, 2019 at 5:13 pm (Artists and Writers, Holidays, Links, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: art, discoveries, Dublin, exhibits, Ireland, Mondays
Walked around Dublin with visual artista Jacinta O’Reilly. We were going to check out the Chester Beatty but, disappointingly, the museum was closed.
While waiting for Jacinta, self checked out the Surface Matters exhibit at Dublin Castle. Amazing show. Featured stunning pieces by, among others, Alan Meredith, Cecilia Moore, Jack Doherty, Coilin O Dubhghaill, Ciaran McGill, Mike Byrne, Joe Hogan, Grainne Watts.
The medium used in Picture # 1: wood
- Alan Meredith’s preferred material is the wood of the national tree, Irish oak . . . He turns, hand-distorts, steams, ebonises and fumes his pieces . . .
Took pictures of several “three-of-a-kind.”
Alan Meredith’s “Wood”
Mike Byrne, Limerick Artist
Joe Hogan’s “Venus Figure Pods”
Stay tuned.
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May 5, 2019 at 2:12 pm (Links, Places, Sundays, Traveling)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, Ireland, spring, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Self has an enduring love of windows, which is why she is constantly taking pictures of them.
This week, she joins A Photo A Week Challenge. This week’s prompt: THREE OF A KIND (three photos of the same subject)
Below, three views, same window in the Main House, Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 29, 2019 at 10:20 pm (Links, Lists, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Dublin, London, Mondays
At last! Am able to do a post on a new Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week!
The prompt is BRIDGES.
A Bridge in Dublin, 28 April 2019
Another Bridge in Dublin: 28 April 2019
The last picture isn’t really a bridge: it’s a stop on the London Underground. Which means it IS a bridge of sorts!
London Underground, Russell Square Station: 27 April 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 27, 2019 at 10:20 pm (Books, Links, Recommended)
Tags: history, reading lists, World War II
From Arnhem: the Battle of the Bridges, 1944:
The German occupiers had seized food supplies, coal and other resources for themselves, and more than half a million Belgians had been shipped off for forced labour in German factories.
Out of curiosity, self decides to google the population of Belgium. Here it is:
11,551,442
According to this website.
Stay tuned.
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April 26, 2019 at 4:55 am (Links, Recommended, Salon.com)
Tags: elections, Fridays, politics
Marcotte calls presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg “the Christian right’s Kryptonite” and at first I thought she was going to anoint him the second coming of Senator Lindsey Graham but thank God no!
While the image some may have of white evangelicals is along the lines of illiterate snake-handlers, anyone who has spent time in the community will immediately realize that Buttigieg is, in nearly every way, their ideal man. He’s intelligent and educated, but in a way that reads as traditional and conscientious, instead of challenging or cosmopolitan — he seems like he was more interested in Graham Greene than Michel Foucault in college. He’s artistic, but not in an edgy way, with musical skills more appropriate for a chapel pianist than a rock band. He’s worked as a naval officer and is a devoted church-goer. He’s married to a beloved junior high teacher who tweets about their dogs.
Buttigieg is what most white evangelical couples dream of in a son — except, of course, that he’s gay and married to a man. And because of this, Buttigieg is able, both in his rhetoric and identity, to expose on a daily basis how the evangelical talk about “family values” is simply cover for their mysogyny and homophobia, and how evangelical “sexual morality” is just a weapon to terrorize anyone who isn’t a straight man.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 23, 2019 at 12:26 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, London, restaurants
It’s been a few weeks, at least, since self was able to join Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.
Today, self is in London. She walked around her Bloomsbury neighborhood and took pictures, all with an eye to the current Fun Foto Challenge, SIGNS. Here are a few:
Right outside the British Museum, which self visited yesterday.
Directly across the street from the British Museum: This bubble tea place is always full.
An Alley Off Bury Place
Stay tuned.
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April 3, 2019 at 2:24 am (Books, Links, Lists, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: book lists, favorites, novel, reading lists, science fiction, thrillers
Looking back, self’s February was LIT.
LIT.
She read two of her four Best So Far 2019 in February.
Currently, she’s reading Milkman and she loves it. It is so fraught.
April, BE LIT.
Stay tuned.
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