and introducing...MY PUPPY!!!
This is Chloe, she is seven months old and quite hyper. She loves walks, kisses, watching me read, baths and various treats. She may take a few minutes to warm up to you but the love she will give you is worth the wait.
This is Chloe, she is seven months old and quite hyper. She loves walks, kisses, watching me read, baths and various treats. She may take a few minutes to warm up to you but the love she will give you is worth the wait.
okay, i finally put up my san francisco pictures (still working on the massachusetts/road trip ones) so here is the link: San Francisco Shots .
had a good day. found the axiom funk cd i have been hunting for (been looking close to eleven years) plus i got to see three amazing bands: the invincible czars, white ghost shivers and the octopus project (all austin based bands). please check out and if you can support all three of these bands. they make music worth listening too, shows that beg to be attended and your feet witll thank you for letting them dance.
had a good day. found the axiom funk cd i have been hunting for (been looking close to eleven years) plus i got to see three amazing bands: the invincible czars, white ghost shivers and the octopus project (all austin based bands). please check out and if you can support all three of these bands. they make music worth listening too, shows that beg to be attended and your feet witll thank you for letting them dance.
once again, i am leaving town. this time for massachusett...by car...with my brother-in-law. going to have fun, going to fuck shit up, going to hopefully make it through without killing a hobo or two. see you all soon.
okay, i am heading out ot san fran next week to see me pups and hopefully get some ink while i am out there. these are the three pieces i am choosing from. i really like the first two...maybe both?
sick, just plain sick. i have the aches, the pains, and the dizziness that accompanies such an illness. so today was a no work day, no getting up at 5am or so to get ready. what did i do today? well, i watched "dear wendy", an amazing movie with an equally rockin' soundtrack. i experimented with a cheesecake recipe (which is still cooking as we speak) and i planned dinner (nachos!!! and plenty of fluids). hoping to be welll for this weekend just to try to get back in to my yoga schedule. missing my puppy, i hope she knows i miss her dearly. here's to being able to stand up without being too dizzy to move.
my apologies go out to my friends who i have been away from. i have had a busy week with work, family and sxsw. i have to get up in three hours so this will be brief.
thanks to ms. eger and rev. moose for an unforgetable night. getting to see erase errata, invicible czars, the living end and gogol bordello was just awesome. meeting jolie holland, cut chemist, rob from tubring and elijah woods (and getting my picture with him) put the whip cream on top. the cherry was seeing rev. moose whom i haven't seen in almost 14 years and how amazing he still is.
sxsw continues tomorrow with me getting rest after work before i head up. more later.
thanks to ms. eger and rev. moose for an unforgetable night. getting to see erase errata, invicible czars, the living end and gogol bordello was just awesome. meeting jolie holland, cut chemist, rob from tubring and elijah woods (and getting my picture with him) put the whip cream on top. the cherry was seeing rev. moose whom i haven't seen in almost 14 years and how amazing he still is.
sxsw continues tomorrow with me getting rest after work before i head up. more later.
she thinks i'm an idiot so she lies to me. plaster on her drunken smile and let's loose the flith she thinks i want to hear. but i don't want to hear anything, i don't want anything but for her to be honest,
i shouldn't go see her in april, should use that money for a new car, a new amp, or a six month yoga pass. but i should go, i should see my puppy, i should get ouf of texas even if it is for a few days.
i shouldn't go see her in april, should use that money for a new car, a new amp, or a six month yoga pass. but i should go, i should see my puppy, i should get ouf of texas even if it is for a few days.
The Origins of Valentine's Day
In ancient Rome the festivals of February 14 and 15 overlapped and in the end the first became lost in the second.
JUNO
February 14 was the festival of the Goddess of creative youth and childbirth, Juno Regina. On this day, boys would draw the names of girls and would become the girls' gallants for the next year. This often resulted in marriage.
LUPERCALIA
February 15 was by far more exciting and evidently sucked the festival of Juno into itself. This was the feast of Lupercalia, celebrating the ancient rural God Faunus. Faunus was God of animal life, husbandry,
hunting, and herding, as well as the guardian of the secret lore of nature.
Palatine Hill held a cave sacred to Faunus. According to legend this is where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The Latin word "lupus" means cave; the cave was called Lupercal. Hence the name of the festival.
During this festival the priests of Lupercus, the Luperci, would sacrifice a goat and a dog at the mouth of this cave. Then, with the bloodstained knife, they would anoint the foreheads of two selected young
men, wiping off the blood with wool dipped in milk. Then, according to ritual, the youths would laugh.
Next, the Luperci, naked except a loincloth made of goatskins, would run the circle of Palatine hill, waving strips of skin from the sacrificed goat. Women would throw themselves in front of the Luperci and be
whipped by them on the palms of their hands. This was to produce fertility.(Note - these goatskin thongs were called februa, and this aspect of the ritual was februatio, a possible derivation of "February." Februa
also refers to any expiatory offering. We cannot know which came first.)
VALENTINUS
Valentinus was a Roman and a Christian priest in the days of Claudius II. He gave aid and comfort to the Christian martyrs during the persecution of this time. Of course, this was a crime and he was arrested.
After a year in prison he was taken before the emperor, whom he tried to convert to Christianity. The emperor, in turn, tried to convert him to the Roman gods. He responded, "I say of thy gods none other thing but that they were men mortal and merchant and full of ordure and evil." Valentinus was immediately condemned to be beaten with clubs, then stoned, and finally beheaded.
Legend has it that while awaiting execution Valentinus formed a friendship with the blind daughter of his jailer, whose sight he was able to restore. His farewell message to her was signed, "From your Valentine."
The earliest source of information about St. Valentine, The Nuremburg Chronicles, puts his feast day on the sixteenth of March. When this was translated from Latin to German the date was changed to February 14. The year of his martyrdom is given as 270.
THE SPREAD OF THE CHURCH
When the Christian church began to spread throughout Europe, they tried to make conversion as easy as possible by adopting modified forms of as many old customs as they could. Lupercalia was no exception. The clergy substituted names of saints for those of the young girls. Each was to emulate the saint picked for the next year. As this drawing was on February fourteenth the association with St. Valentine was fixed.
The old custom pairing boys with girls has continued despite the early Christian attempt to stop it. At one point in time the young pairs gave gifts to each other. Later, only the boy to the girl. Finally, we have the custom of sending "valentines."
Description of Valentine's Day from The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson. Written in 1910, published in
1930.
Although St. Valentine's Day is only observed in very few places in the United kingdom, and tends toward a speedy disappearance, it is a custom which, for this reason, is specially worth notice, inasmuch as some of us who are by no means old can remember the days when the sending of "Valentines" by a certain section of society was quite a festival in itself - almost as vigorous as the fashion of 'Xmas cards is at the moment. St. Valentine was a Christian bishop, who is alleged to have suffered martyrdom in 271 A.D., on February 14th. Roman youths and maidens on this day were accustomed to select partners, and the Church, fulfilling its work of replacing heathen divinities by ecclesiastical saints, allotted the day to St. Valentine. Butler in his Lives of the Saints says: -- "To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious customs of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the 15th of February, several zealous Pastors substituted the names of Saints in billets given on that day. St. Frances de Sales severely forbad the custom of Valentines, or giving boys in writing the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them; and to abolish it, he changed
it into giving billets with the names of certain Saints, for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner."
Apparently the effort was not altogether successful, for the specimen Valentine verses that have come down to us from old English times, as well as some of the pictures which used to be flaunted in shop-windows in the last century, testify to the intimate connection between the Pagan idea and its attempted Christian reconstruction. St. Valentine, as a good man, can have no reason to thank the Church for its attention to his name.
Gay has left us a poetical description of some rural ceremonies used on the morning of this day:
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind,
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find
I early rose, just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chas'd the stars away;
A-field I went, amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do).
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune, shall our true love be.
Evidently, the women-folk used to take Valentine's Day somewhat seriously. Witness the following from an old book - the Connoisseur - "Last Friday was Valentine Day, and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Bettie said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers' names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water: and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine. Would you think it, Mr Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house; for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world."
The dying of St. Valentine's Day is a testimony to the growth of a sense of restraint and fine feeling. But even this year (1910) in London one can see the old vulgar Valentine shown in shop windows.
In ancient Rome the festivals of February 14 and 15 overlapped and in the end the first became lost in the second.
JUNO
February 14 was the festival of the Goddess of creative youth and childbirth, Juno Regina. On this day, boys would draw the names of girls and would become the girls' gallants for the next year. This often resulted in marriage.
LUPERCALIA
February 15 was by far more exciting and evidently sucked the festival of Juno into itself. This was the feast of Lupercalia, celebrating the ancient rural God Faunus. Faunus was God of animal life, husbandry,
hunting, and herding, as well as the guardian of the secret lore of nature.
Palatine Hill held a cave sacred to Faunus. According to legend this is where Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. The Latin word "lupus" means cave; the cave was called Lupercal. Hence the name of the festival.
During this festival the priests of Lupercus, the Luperci, would sacrifice a goat and a dog at the mouth of this cave. Then, with the bloodstained knife, they would anoint the foreheads of two selected young
men, wiping off the blood with wool dipped in milk. Then, according to ritual, the youths would laugh.
Next, the Luperci, naked except a loincloth made of goatskins, would run the circle of Palatine hill, waving strips of skin from the sacrificed goat. Women would throw themselves in front of the Luperci and be
whipped by them on the palms of their hands. This was to produce fertility.(Note - these goatskin thongs were called februa, and this aspect of the ritual was februatio, a possible derivation of "February." Februa
also refers to any expiatory offering. We cannot know which came first.)
VALENTINUS
Valentinus was a Roman and a Christian priest in the days of Claudius II. He gave aid and comfort to the Christian martyrs during the persecution of this time. Of course, this was a crime and he was arrested.
After a year in prison he was taken before the emperor, whom he tried to convert to Christianity. The emperor, in turn, tried to convert him to the Roman gods. He responded, "I say of thy gods none other thing but that they were men mortal and merchant and full of ordure and evil." Valentinus was immediately condemned to be beaten with clubs, then stoned, and finally beheaded.
Legend has it that while awaiting execution Valentinus formed a friendship with the blind daughter of his jailer, whose sight he was able to restore. His farewell message to her was signed, "From your Valentine."
The earliest source of information about St. Valentine, The Nuremburg Chronicles, puts his feast day on the sixteenth of March. When this was translated from Latin to German the date was changed to February 14. The year of his martyrdom is given as 270.
THE SPREAD OF THE CHURCH
When the Christian church began to spread throughout Europe, they tried to make conversion as easy as possible by adopting modified forms of as many old customs as they could. Lupercalia was no exception. The clergy substituted names of saints for those of the young girls. Each was to emulate the saint picked for the next year. As this drawing was on February fourteenth the association with St. Valentine was fixed.
The old custom pairing boys with girls has continued despite the early Christian attempt to stop it. At one point in time the young pairs gave gifts to each other. Later, only the boy to the girl. Finally, we have the custom of sending "valentines."
Description of Valentine's Day from The Origins of Popular Superstitions and Customs, by T. Sharper Knowlson. Written in 1910, published in
1930.
Although St. Valentine's Day is only observed in very few places in the United kingdom, and tends toward a speedy disappearance, it is a custom which, for this reason, is specially worth notice, inasmuch as some of us who are by no means old can remember the days when the sending of "Valentines" by a certain section of society was quite a festival in itself - almost as vigorous as the fashion of 'Xmas cards is at the moment. St. Valentine was a Christian bishop, who is alleged to have suffered martyrdom in 271 A.D., on February 14th. Roman youths and maidens on this day were accustomed to select partners, and the Church, fulfilling its work of replacing heathen divinities by ecclesiastical saints, allotted the day to St. Valentine. Butler in his Lives of the Saints says: -- "To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious customs of boys drawing the names of girls, in honour of their goddess Februata Juno, on the 15th of February, several zealous Pastors substituted the names of Saints in billets given on that day. St. Frances de Sales severely forbad the custom of Valentines, or giving boys in writing the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them; and to abolish it, he changed
it into giving billets with the names of certain Saints, for them to honour and imitate in a particular manner."
Apparently the effort was not altogether successful, for the specimen Valentine verses that have come down to us from old English times, as well as some of the pictures which used to be flaunted in shop-windows in the last century, testify to the intimate connection between the Pagan idea and its attempted Christian reconstruction. St. Valentine, as a good man, can have no reason to thank the Church for its attention to his name.
Gay has left us a poetical description of some rural ceremonies used on the morning of this day:
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind,
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find
I early rose, just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chas'd the stars away;
A-field I went, amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do).
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune, shall our true love be.
Evidently, the women-folk used to take Valentine's Day somewhat seriously. Witness the following from an old book - the Connoisseur - "Last Friday was Valentine Day, and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Bettie said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers' names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water: and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine. Would you think it, Mr Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house; for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world."
The dying of St. Valentine's Day is a testimony to the growth of a sense of restraint and fine feeling. But even this year (1910) in London one can see the old vulgar Valentine shown in shop windows.
BLAH!!! i am sick, congested and in need of juice. atleast i got to miss work today, that is one plus in my favor.
