all hail king malcom! (Taken with Instagram at The Apartment)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Benedict Cumberbatch — Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?(image)
Can I just have sexy men with sexy accents read things to me at all times?
i have all the boners.
:: melt ::
With the conclusion of SILENT WEEK, i thought i would repost some of the past silent films that have been included in the Great Showdown family. Remember these? oh, man. those were some good times.
..scottc
This is relevant to all of my interests.
Jon Hamm Talks About Rape and the Lack of Positive Male Role Models
Hamm was recently a speaker at the Rape Treatment Center benefit brunch in Beverly Hills where he spoke about his pre-Mad Men employment history — which we will refer to as phase one of your ever-deepening affection.
Apparently, the man behind Don Draper is a former high school teacher and also worked at a daycare center. Hamm said he’s always felt very connected to children, which he attributes to being the child of a single parent —and thus spending “the majority of my life in daycare, after school programs, summer school programs,” which brings us to phase two:
Hamm said, “Having gone through what I had gone through as a child…there were no real male role models in any of these places. There were never any dudes. It was a bummer as a young man to, not only not have a father figure in my life, but no real male figures as teachers or as educators or as afterschool program leaders or anything,” he said.
AND THEN —in what is both phase three and also such an important message that is rarely discussed by men, especially in entertainment— Hamm makes a point of talking about how important it is to reach out to young boys and men and educate them on the “lasting impact of rape”:
Hamm made the point to emphasize the importance of the Rape Treatment Center’s educational outreach, especially for boys and young men. “It is an important thing to instill in a younger generation about the impact of rape, the lasting impact of rape,” he said, adding, “Children from grade school to high school to college are incredibly susceptible and incredibly malleable, as we all know. To get them early, to teach them about the facts and figures and other realities of rape is key. It is an important issue to me as not only a man, but as an educator, as a human being and as a person on this planet.”
All lighthearted jokes about love-deepening aside, this is such an important message and I’m so thrilled he was able to send it.
Rape is not a female issue. Rape is everyone’s issue, which is why it’s often an incredibly powerful thing to have a man stand up and say that. Obviously, I’m not saying it’s any better or worse or that one’s ability to be taken seriously has to be tied to gender but in terms of reaching a larger audience of men, I do think that there’s something powerful about a man —especially a widely respected and beloved man such as Hamm— standing up and encouraging other men to educate themselves and their sons on what they can personally do to prevent rape, instead of continuing to simply tell women to protect themselves or “dress differently” (ugh).
I wish we were at the point where hearing this message coming from incredibly strong people of any gender was enough, but I really feel like we need to be hearing these messages from everyone so that people realize that rape isn’t simply a women’s issue or a heterosexual issue. It truly is everyone’s issue.
Hats off to you, Jon Hamm for shedding light on this fact.
*Thanks to Britany for sending this!
“I’m a Canadian.
We’re a quiet bunch; prone to enjoying hockey, drinking stronger beer than our friends south of the border, and lovers of fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy.
We also, apparently, have an inferiority complex when it comes to being evil dirt bags, because we’ve decided to pass our very own version of SOPA up here.
Only better*
Meet Bill-C11. Formerly Bill C-32. (I think they thought if they made the number lower people would care less about it?)
{…}
But, as innocuous as it sounds, C-11 does a whole lot that SOPA did with a few extra twists you might not find in the Wikipedia write-up.
Like your PVR? You can’t keep it under C-11.
Like ripping CDs to your iPod? Say bye-bye.
Hey, do you want to be able to unlock your $500 smartphone and take it to a provider less dedicated to violating your wallet? That won’t be allowed either.
Did you get accused of internet piracy but no evidence has been presented and a trial date hasn’t even been set? Under C-11 your ISP will now be forced to terminate your internet access.
And people say that governments can’t be bought.
{…}
There are only 14 days left people. Get active.”
Send a letter to your Member of Parliament now. The letters are prewritten, you just need to click send.
Come on non-Canadian people, please signal boost this for your Canadian friends.
Because anything that tries to threaten the internet threatens us all!
(photo & inspiration from Andrea)
We shaved our legs that Summer, remember? Both of us crammed in the stall together in the shower of the (the what, the changing room, is that what it’s called?) at the line of dunes between the house and the shore, fighting over the Lady Bic plucked from your cousin’s suitcase, arguing about how far up we were supposed to go, and with the hair, or against it? I lost my balance and toppled us both, earning each of us a bruise that would draw your father’s unwelcome scrutiny to our newly-smooth thighs— (please oh please don’t look any closer)!
We were still children, though, that Summer. Remember? We would ride our bikes in, spend hours at the stationery store carefully selecting Lisa Frank stickers for our albums (yours— pristine, the work of a strict collector; mine— incomplete, pages torn out, stickers actually stuck on it and on each other, rather than preserved on their original backing sheets), play with kaleidoscopes and push our hands into bins of cool polished stones in that hippie store, try to perform balance-beam routines on the raised wood borders of the landscaping that unified the shops.
We were bad, though, or ready to be, aching for crimes we couldn’t name. Raised without religion, how did we manage to know we wanted to sin? The boys that worked at the stable, tan and freckle-shouldered, with backs and arms and chests that suddenly seemed like of course they ought to be touched? They gave me the first hello (because that was the birthright of the fair-haired-girl in a town like that), but they quickly realized that I was the pretender to the place, and it was your family who belonged. In English tack, you were transformed, Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, perhaps a glimpse of Grace Kelly. The boys we’d watched in secret as they worked, they offered their cupped hands for your riding boot, but you could mount easily by the stirrup, unassisted, and did so without a thought. Did you even know this only heightened your appeal?
Your brother wasn’t there the whole time that Summer, right? Just a week? I don’t think I ever told you that I fucked him a few years later. You were slipping away from me, you had already changed schools, you were better at drinking and smoking than me…I was an embarrassment, and a jinx. I fucked him when all I wanted was to be beside you on the bench seat of the station wagon, laughing and unashamed in the Summer sun.
Remember?
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Everson Poe - Colossus 4
for story time saturday.
i’ve been working on an instrumental EP for several weeks (i’m approximately halfway through), and seeing this picture made me think of this song. it’s not completely finished, but i quite like it.
freema agyeman by paul rider.
My jaw literally dropped open. I didn’t think that was a thing that actually happened.
NNnnnnnnng
i didn’t love her as Martha on doctor who, but she is absolutely stunning.
