The Big Day Is Here!

AND YOU'RE ALL INVITED!

YES, EVEN YOU ARE INVITED

TO THE PARTY, HRH!

STOP COMPLAINING!

"One Day Late" Sunday Seven

CONSUMED: a tasty lunch of upscale burgers and onion rings with friends at Woodshed Burgers.

ATTENDED: then we went to a book launch event for Into The Midnight Garden, a collection of magical watercolour images and lyrical responses showcasing the work of Barbara Hartmann, illustrator, and Jessica Heine, singer/songwriter. The original framed watercolours were on display and available for purchase, as was the book.

SCRAPED: the passenger side rear fender of my car during the first wet snowfall of the season, when my poor little Yaris slipped and grazed a yellow utility protection pole in my back alley. D'oh! Oh well, now it just matches the other side, LOL.

BOUGHT: a new humidifier for my bedroom. The old one stopped working due entirely to my own negligence in not descaling its heating element in a timely fashion. Lesson learned.

VOTED: in a pumpkin decorating contest held by the property managers in my building. I didn't decorate and enter a pumpkin myself because I was too busy. But these three excellent pumpkins were done by kids in the building. I'm sure they will all win prizes! 

ANNOYED BY: Blogger software which has changed how images are uploaded to posts -- but it doesn't work! I sure hope this pain in the butt gets resolved soon.

BAKED: a batch of yummy Pumpkin Hermit Cookies with raisins and pepitas (pumpkin seeds). It's my Halloween treat to myself!

Friends Fur Life Blogathon -- Rocket Raccoon

Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy and Jim at The Midnite Drive-In are currently hosting a blogathon celebrating favourite movie/TV onscreen critters who are pets, friends or companions to us humans.

Today's post concerns ROCKET RACCOON of the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy superheroes franchise. Starship captain, enhanced warrior and blackmarket purveyor of stolen goods, Rocket Raccoon travels the galaxy with his compatriots, fighting on the side of Truth and Justice. Well, mostly.

In a scenario that is not as unlikely as one might think, Rocket Raccoon is also an ally of Bucky Barnes the Winter Soldier, fighting by his side (literally) during the Battle of Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

The similarities between Rocket Raccoon and the Winter Soldier are not hard to see -- they are both implacable fighters with lots of fur/hair and black raccoon mask/warpaint around their eyes. Each of them adores big weaponry and they tend to be equally armed to the teeth. Plus, the Winter Soldier has a prosthetic cyberarm and Rocket would dearly love to have it for his blackmarket side hustle.

And of course eventually he does, in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022).

But the connection between Rocket Raccoon and the Winter Soldier goes much, much deeper than that. Each has a tragic and incredibly dark backstory with many parallels. Scarred in body and soul, they were both made into what they are against their will and without their consent. Experimented on, surgically altered, genetically engineered, tortured, created simply to be controlled and used. (Their respective horror stories are told in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (2023) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014).

I tend to see the Guardians of the Galaxy characters as kind of a satirical, almost goofy, spin on the more serious, straight-laced Avengers. Yet there's nothing satirical or goofy about the abused antiheroes at their centre. Rocket Raccoon and the Winter Soldier essentially embody the same tragic trope about the evils of science without morality and the denial of free will. Despite being different species, Rocket Raccoon and the Winter Soldier are true brothers.

October Full Moon Altar: Celtic Horse Goddess

This month's full moon altar honours the Celtic Horse Goddess of ancient Europe. She had many names among the various Celtic tribes -- Epona (Britons), Rhiannon (Welsh), Mare (Irish), and Horsa (Nordic/Germanic). She was the only Celtic divinity adopted and worshipped as well by the Romans who conquered those regions.

The Horse Goddess's most unique and powerful attribute was the ability to carry her people safely across thresholds, boundaries and transitional spaces, all of which were central to Celtic spirituality. Such magical, liminal spaces were sacred but also considered very perilous. And they were everywhere -- between physical spaces (like land/sea, earth/sky, fields/mountains, inside/outside of buildings), between temporal spaces (day/night, old year/new year, winter/spring etc.), and between states of being (such as sleeping/waking, illness/health, womb/birth, life/death). The Goddess's protection kept people safe as she transported them across those boundaries.

I chose the Horse Goddess for October's altar because Samhain/Halloween marks the important transition between the Celtic Old Year and the New Year. This is when "The Veil Between the Worlds" is said to be at its thinnest, when people, spirits and ghosts can move more freely between the worlds of the living and of the dead. The Veil is represented on the altar by the sheer purple scarf with its crescent crone moon and pentacle motifs.

Traditionally, the Horse Goddess is depicted naked, as in both these representations. Her nudity represents the wild, untamed nature of the Divine Feminine. Similarly, any horse associated with the Horse Goddess is always a white horse, symbol of purity and freedom.

The Horse Goddess lives on in our modern world in a couple of ways. It is believed that the medieval myth of the saviour-figure Lady Godiva on her white horse harks back to the old pagan imagery in a new Christian world. Most scholars also believe that the prehistoric Uffington White Horse carved into the chalk hills of Berkshire, England honours the Horse Goddess as well.

The two draft horses included on the altar were carved by my father about 35 years ago. I previously wrote about them here.

[Photos #1-3 © Debra She Who Seeks, 2023; Photo #4 from Wikipedia]

Friends Fur Life Blogathon -- Alligator Loki

Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy and Jim at The Midnite Drive-In are currently hosting a blogathon celebrating favourite movie/TV onscreen critters who are pets, friends or companions to us humans.

So here's a post on my most recent critter crush -- ALLIGATOR LOKI from the 2021 Disney+ series Loki. 

Okay, okay, he's not cuddly, he's not furry, but he's a good ally in a fight when you need someone's hand bitten off. And he enjoys a nice drink of wine and a lounge about in the pool just like the rest of us.

Loki, the Asgardian trickster God of Mischief, is a shapeshifter at the best of times, but stick him in the Multiverse and things get even crazier, with endless variants of Loki suddenly popping into existence. (And notice which variant is on the pedestal, of course!)

Alligator Loki lives in The Void, where he is the companion of Kid Loki, Boastful Loki, Classic Loki and President Loki. Alligator Loki was banished there, not because he ate the neighbour's cat, but because he ate the wrong neighbour's cat. An important distinction!

While Alligator Loki's dialogue consists solely of incomprehensible growling, here's a helpful video compilation (best viewed in full screen) with subtitles!

Like all the Lokis, Alligator Loki is simultaneously charming and vicious.

But hey, aren't we all?

My next Blogathon post on Friday concerns ROCKET RACCOON of the MCU's Guardians of the Galaxy superheroes franchise. And look, here's Alligator Loki ferrying him in for his gig right now!

Well, see ya later . . . oh, you know the rest!

Costume Ideas For One And All

Apparently this next meme is true.

Oh Keanu, so far ahead of his time!

And may I present . . . 

HRH's costume this year.

Walk, walk, fashion baby!

What is MY costume this year?