morrigan the raven, celtic goddess

morrigan the great, queen of phantoms and the dead, queen of the demons rules battle and strife. over the battle she flew as a carrion crow. sometimes she showed herself as a lean and nimble hag, leaping unharmed over spears and shield. as the washer at the ford, she washed the clothes of the men who would fall that day in battle, thereby chosing who would live and who would die. she could also become a raven. she was worshipped by warriors and appeared to heroes, sometimes trying to convince them to marry her for she could appear as a beautiful woman.

she is a triple goddess, each aspect having her own name. she was very powerful and not necessarily considered bad despite the darkness with which her realm links her. however, i don't know that makes her necessarily good. then again, battle itself is not good. one aspect of morrigan has to do with birth and she is a goddess of fertility. she symbolizes both life and death.

modern pagans (of which i know little) sometimes worship morrigan. she is considered a strong goddess and favored by those who consider themselves on a warrior path whether it is literal or metaphorical. they sometimes will have a shrine to her with black feathers or red cloth (washer at the ford). they may also offer her bowls of blood or brine. sometimes, as befitting morrigan's mother aspect, the blood used may be menstrual blood. o.k., they SAY they do this... i really don't know if anyone has. i don't know any worshippers of morrigan IRL.

my instinct about morrigan is she is perhaps not a goddess to mess around with.. she is probably best left to history. i'm not saying there really is a morrigan. i'm just saying i wouldn't want to be leaving weird offerings like that around my house because i'm not sure what sort of thing that would attract (bugs?). but, suffice to say, she was important to the celts and her legend has not died. some people, hilariously, consider her a sort of "girl power" goddess. boy, those people don't want to meet her in a dark alley! i don't know that she would be amused. and, given what the celts had to say, she enjoyed conflict. true, she tended to hang around heroes and not deluded people picking up slogans from the spice girls, but i digress...

why am i talking about morrigan all of a sudden? well, because i recently saw a very interesting photo that ran in parade magazine. i don't actually read parade, but i used to.. and it's a pretty boring publication. i wouldn't expect anything too odd there.

not from parade, but a nice drawing i found of morrigan in her "beautiful woman" guise. note her lovely black hair and the black feathers she wears.

this accompanied the "how i've changed" article, summer 2010. no this blog is not supposed to be about angelina jolie. but, wtf is this if not morrigan? which, btw, is yet another vampire reference for angelina. (there are recent fictional stories where morrigan is queen of the vampires). also, yet another death reference and yet another reference to blood. how is any of this a "change"? (off topic, i think this is one of the best photos i've seen of her. heavily photoshopped, but better than the parade cover. she looks really pretty. and she looks like she's having fun.)

is angelina jolie as beautiful as the legendary cleopatra?

i saw an article today that questioned whether cleopatra was actually even a great beauty. but, when i clicked on the link, it was mostly touting angelina jolie taking on the role in an upcoming movie. i don't know how angie jo will feel about that article since that can be interpreted as saying she's not pretty.

i think it's safe to say cleopatra looked pretty damned good since we are still hearing about her NOW. people have forgotten a lot of gorgeous women between then and now, so either she lived up to the hype or she had the best p.r. team the world has ever seen.

that considered, there may not be any actress in the world who can live up to such a high standard of beauty. i think there are prettier actresses than angelina, but i know many people would disagree with that and i don't know that those actress would suit the role. also, what do i know? haha

angelina, they're gushing, has the "perfect look". and, coincidentally, brad pitt has the "perfect look" to play mark anthony. hmmm... how convenient. so, where to find julius cesar? from angie's former loves or former costars (there's a fair number of names on both lists).

i have tried to watch the elizabeth taylor version. i just can't with it. i think it's got so much going on that it gets really cluttered on a television. so, if i had access to a really fine movie theater so i could see it in its intended glory, i might have a different opinion on that.

angie jo's freaky neck

today, the internets are abuzz due to a couple of photos that show a broadly smiling angelina jolie has some odd muscles or something protruding from her jaw to her neck (where it meets, in front of the ear).

um, this has been noticed before? it's more noticeable in these recent pictures, but in one she was turning her head. so, duh, it's her muscles.

I can't be the only one who has noticed angelina sometimes tightens up some muscles in/around her jaw for some of her facial expressions (at least in movies, see tomb raider box art).

the skin is thinnish there anyway especially since angelina is super skinny. and someone said makeup artists put tape in that area sometimes for movies/photo sessions and that'd accentuate the area after the tape was removed.

it looks a little weird, but she has some other oddnesses (not that she's the only one, lol). whatever they are, half the world's constantly drooling over her...so, they must be o.k.

then there's the fact that real life doesn't look like photographs! hello! probably if you were sitting by angelina irl, this would barely attract your attention. and it'd be obvious what it is.

if you use photoshop a lot, you know photographs are freaky things. you'll see a lot of things that look freaky weird... even in pictures that were just taken (and you saw them BEING taken).

that's part of what you can use photoshop for... to make the photo look more like what you just saw irl.

um, obviously, I didn't ever photoshop angelina. but, I have photoshopped people of all ages and good looking to not so good looking. everyone wants to look good in their pictures.

what is odd is to have to photoshop yourself. haha!

oh, and there are pictures of angelina's neck muscles from rival photo agencies and everyone says "they haven't been photoshopped!" REALLY?

bullshit. for print EVERY PHOTO GOES THROUGH PHOTOSHOP! you may not take out your toolbox and start with the alterations, but you do sizing and all of that (rgb to cmyk, etc.).

as you manipulate a photograph digitally (whether you purposely try to make it look different or not), things happen to it. in fact, that's something you specifically watch for to make sure the colors still look normal, etc.

the internet allows you to post pictures directly. but, jpgs are your next to shittest way to save a photograph. this means it throws some stuff out of the data.
so, if the lighting is exaggerating an area, this is goes to make it more extreme. there have been several people (michaelk, for example) noting there are fewer pixels in the odd-looking area. this is a symptom of that.

so, maybe angelina needs someone to find her missing pixels. hehe :)

I miss photoshop. sometimes it's fun.