Finally

Submitted for your approval, a few suggestions for celebrating Mabon this year.

  1. Setting Up Your Mabon Altar: Celebrate the Mabon Sabbat by decorating your altar with the colors and symbols of the late harvest season.
  2. Create a Mabon Food Altar: Mabon is a celebration of the second harvest season. It’s a time when we’re gathering the bounty of the fields, the orchards, and the gardens, and bringing it in for storage.
  3. Honor the Dark Mother at Mabon: This ritual welcomes the archetype of the Dark Mother and celebrates that aspect of the Goddess which we may not always find comforting or appealing, but which we must always be willing to acknowledge. (Hint: virgin sacrifice.)
  4. Mabon Apple Harvest Rite: This apple ritual will allow you time to thank the gods for their bounty and blessings, and to enjoy the magic of the earth before the winds of winter blow through.
  5. Hearth & Home Protection Ritual: This ritual is a simple one designed to place a barrier of harmony and security around your property.
  6. Hold a Gratitude Ritual: You might want to consider doing a short gratitude ritual as a way of expressing thankfulness at Mabon.
  7. Autumn Full Moon — Group Ceremony: This rite is written for a group of four people or more to celebrate the full moon phases of the fall. (Hint: virgin sacrifice.)
  8. Mabon Balance Meditation: If you’re feeling a bit spiritually lopsided, with this simple meditation you can restore a little balance into your life.

Also, this miniseries scared the ever-living shit out of me when I was a wee bastard.

 

Born To Lose

Say what you want about Sid being a shit bassist, he would have made a fucking great front man. Just look at him! And give the RUGGED MAN SONG OF THE WEEK™ a play over there while you’re at it. Horrible live recording, but he had the goods as a rock vocalist.

EDIT: Here it is again, for archiving purposes.

According to ancient punk lore, he actually came very close to fronting a band. Twice. The Damned asked him to audition when they were first getting together. Sneaky Dave Vanian had other plans, and sabotaged the rehearsal so he could try out first. Seems Vanian (or an associate) told Sid the band had canceled at the last minute, while Captain Sensible and the boys just assumed Sid no-showed.

Then one day, Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood were discussing who would make a good lead singer for this new band Malcolm was going to manage. Vivienne suggested one of the Johns who hung around the shop all the time, because he had a great look. Malcolm assumed she meant John Lydon; she really meant John Ritchie – AKA John Beverly, AKA Sid Vicious.

Would the Pistols have had the same impact without Lydon’s brilliant, confrontational lyrics? Arguably not. Still …

BONUS: Here’s an interview Judy Vermorel conducted with Sid for her book, Sex Pistols: The Inside Story. Like most 20-year-olds, Mr. Vicious is in turns insightful and moronic.

How William Gibson’s Long-Lost Alien 3 Script Became 2019’s Most Intriguing Audio Drama

I’m intrigued enough that I will be making a purchase very shortly. From The Verge

Audible Studios’ new audio drama Alien III by William Gibson offers one of those alternate paths for the Alien series. Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive, has his own vision of what happened after Ripley, Hicks, Bishop, and Newt nuked LV-426 from orbit in Aliens. What was once a discarded draft has, in the hands of writer and director Dirk Maggs, become a fleshed-out audio production featuring Aliens stars Michael Biehn (as Hicks, the Marine who showed Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley how to fire a high-powered gun in Aliens) and Lance Henriksen (as Bishop, the “artificial person” who changes Ripley’s mind about working with synthetic life forms). Close your eyes, and it’s like slipping into an alternate universe in which this is the third Alien film, rather than the one we know.

You can pick it up here.