September has come, it is hers
Whose vitality leaps in the autumn,
Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves a fire in the fireplace.
So I gave her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has
rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy.
Who has left a scent on my life, and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London littered with remembered kisses.

-Louis MacNeice

So, I finally hopped on the dreamwidth bandwagon (with many, many thanks again to the fabulous tree). You can find me here, though there isn't much to see just yet.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

goodbye_sun gave me 'G,' which turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would.

1. Jack Off Jill - Girl Scout
2. Hannah Fury - Girls That Glitter Love The Dark
3. Voltaire - Graveyard Picnic
4. Rasputina - Gingerbread Coffin
5. Amanda Palmer - Guitar Hero

What the... It's like he's channeling Eddie Haskell. There aren't... I... This cake is a lie?


ETA:
Ok, this totally makes up for everything.

I came across this link in one of the thousand lj comms I'm in and got so excited I had to show you all right away! How cool is this, seriously?!

Also, I hope you've all had a lovely Halloween/Samhain/All Hollow's Eve/Dia de los Muertos! We bought candy (and four fabulous cupcakes with marshmallow frosting - mmmm) but we had no trick-or-treaters, however we also had all the lights turned off so maybe that was a factor. One can never be sure, hehe.

And, to those of you about to jump into the madness that is NaNoWriMo, I salute you and wish you chatty, verbose muses.

And lastly, if you happen to like dark cabaret music, which I love, this is a great site with news and lots of music and of course last.fm has tons of free music for listening happiness as well.

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
lingeringviolet goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Countess Elizabeth Báthory.
aikea_guinea gives you 16 light orange grapefruit-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
angelsfall gives you 3 purple vanilla-flavoured gummy bats.
fated_oph3lia gives you 1 dark green raspberry-flavoured wafers.
goodbye_sun tricks you! You get a rock.
hapsburgxx gives you 2 dark blue grapefruit-flavoured pieces of chewing gum.
liegenschonheit tricks you! You lose 13 pieces of candy!
lithium_lily gives you 15 light orange orange-flavoured gummy worms.
pooklet gives you 18 white blueberry-flavoured jawbreakers.
sixtylilies gives you 15 softly glowing banana-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
tree tricks you! You get a dead frog.
lingeringviolet ends up with 57 pieces of candy, a rock, and a dead frog.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Lieg stole all the candy back that I stole from her and then some. From goodbye_sun I get a rock, how very Charlie Brown of you. But er, tree, a dead frog?!

So I found a couple of interesting links today regarding depression and anxiety.

E-couch "provides information about emotional problems - what causes them, how to prevent them and how to treat them. It includes exercises to help you understand yourself and others better. Even better, it provides you with a set of strategies that might help you to improve your life" and "is co-funded by Australia's beyondblue: the national depression initiative and the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University."

MoodGym, a sister site of e-couch, claims to "deliver cognitive behaviour therapy
for preventing depression."

Has anyone heard anything about them? I'm especially looking at you, aussies-on-my-flist. I've seen a couple online comments from people who say they definitely do get something out of it. Anyway, I signed up for e-couch so far. They ask you to take a couple of short quizzes to help determine your anxiety and depression levels. I thought it was interesting. Will update if I actually find them useful.

( my scores )

I received this poem in my inbox this morning from the Poetry Foundation and I really liked it so I thought I'd share.



For the Tattooed Man by Sharmila Voorakkara

Because she broke your heart, "Shannon"'s a badge--
a seven-letter skidmark that scars up
across your chest, a flare of indelible script.
Between "Death or Glory", and "Mama", she rages,
scales the trellis of your rib cage;
her red hair swings down to bracket your ankles, whip
up the braid of your backbone, cuff your wrists. She keeps
you sleepless with her afterimage,

and each pinned and martyred limb aches for more.
Her memory wraps you like a vise.
How simple the pain that trails and graces
the length of your body. How it fans, blazes,
writes itself over in the blood's tightening sighs,
bruises into wisdom you have no name for.



It also came with this little blurb by Ted Kooser which irritated me:

"Among young people, tattoos are all the rage and, someday, dermatologists will grow rich as kings removing them from a lot of middle-aged people who have grown embarrassed by their colorful skins. I really like this poem by Sharmila Voorakkara of Ohio."

You know, because everyone who gets tattoos are drunken college kids who do it on a whim. *eyeroll*



* I totally stole that from a lovely little tree.