Siamese Fan Birds. One is naí¯ve. Her twin is shrewd and knows what’s what. And a good thing, too, otherwise the naí¯ve one would have poisoned herself long ago. Today I dedicate this here doodle to the latest wave of Russophobe opportunist paranoia. Oh, this convenient bundle of nervous gas/hot air! ! It will run, and run, and run, I can tell. And here’s a little po’m for to gladden your heart on this hot summer day.
In Praise of Crookedness
Novichok, Novichok
How I love you Novichok.
So elusive
All-inclusive
Massive panic at a stroke!
I went down
To Porton Down
To have a little shufti
But they wouldn’t let me in
Nerves were frayed and patience thin
And the labs a little fusty.
Go away from here, young Gorgon,
Grinn’d the sicario with glee.
There’s really nothing for to see
Unless you want to see my gun.
So I promptly did take off
With a discreet little cough
And in a bit of mild shock.
May you prosper, Mr Spock,
Let us all go for pot luck.
Oh, I love you Novichok!
Novichok, Novichok, Novichok.
Health Advice
Mystical Zoology
Bubbles B&W. Meet the Celestial Squid .“aka Cosmic Calamari. They live here, in this beautiful, fluffy and unstable bundle of bubbles. They swim and sing and dance all day long ! when they’re not plotting the downfall of Crapitalism. They eat seaweed and sundry debris. And Smarties, whenever the Shoggoths send them some. Sometimes they sell their babies into slavery as a means of infiltrating the enemy lines. A rather harsh but highly effective reconnoitring tactic.
Vacas!
Cow Girls. They are chubby and happy with it. They love cattle, crappy jokes and the wines of Valdepeñas. They worship no one and they have no master. (Or mistress, for that matter.) But they are on excellent terms with a demi-Viking demiurge who is distantly related to the Morrigan (who knows a thing or two about livestock). They have horns and will travel. They are NOT meek. Stop Press. In view of the latest shenanigans regarding that bunch of assholes known as La Manada (they’re out, set free by some ghastly judicial brainless bastard – look it up, I can’t be bothered with links and things), I dedicate this family pic to them. May they know, someday, somewhere, somehow, what being chased with intent and ravaged by a bunch of rabid freaks feels like. And may they rot in Hell, of course. Always.
Invasive Lifestyles
Diptych. aka Crap Options. The hare does not choose to be hounded and, therefore, made to run. Given half a choice, the hare would like to stay at home and munch the grass and have baby hares and play in the sun. And most hounds also would prefer to laze in the sunshine and chase rubber balls and chew a nice juicy bone. But they are trained to hunt. That’s the price of being owned. This is for all those “swarming. refugees currently fleeing from the corporate hounds that are hunting them out of and destroying their habitats in the name of freedom and democracy. De-mock-cracy, more likely. May the sweet Mother of Bumba protect the poor beleaguered fortuitous exiles. And a pox on the hounds and their masters!
Escapades
Coming Through! Young Lilly, the trans-dimensional Tadpolette has just broken through the Hyper Barrier Lapidary that separates her turf from other regions, real or imaginary. Determined at the outset to flirt shamelessly with the first thing/being she met on the other side, she’s now batting her velvety eyelids at Emiliano, who was just passing by the Wall Divider on his way to the pub. He’s in for a rough ride, the hapless palmiped: Lilly is infamously fickle, not so much out of malice but because her attention span is crap and her memory extremely poor, thus she’s prone to forgetting who she’s dallying with from one moment to the next. Suitors beware.
Transporter of Delight
Mr Chubby. His mystic ice cream sometimes he sells and sometimes he gives away for free, according to criteria that nobody has hitherto managed to decode. He runs his wares out of the boot of a battered Ford Fiesta (really) which he parks, erratically and at frequently impossibly inconvenient times, near selected tube stations between Bethnal Green and Theydon Bois. And that’s another enigma: how the hell does he manage to store 73 different flavours of ice cream in the boot of a small car? Me, I think is best not to enquire too closely. I’ve enough trouble trying to second guess his next parking spot as it is. But I can assure you, the effort of blind-chasing him and his damned gelato all over East London/Essex is well worth it.
Spring Fashion News
Sad Girl. Now and then I drop in at the online The Baffler, a self-styled culture mag on the pretentious side of things but containing the occasional gem and, more often, articles of such silliness that they make my day. Some time ago one of those made me aware of a phenomenon I had totally and mercifully missed: the Internet Sad Girl. The article pronounced said curio dead and proclaimed that this was A Good Thing. The embodiment of such grotesque creature was one Lana del Rey. So I went off to the ineffable YouTube to check out the young miss. And boy was I glad I had missed her and her kin. Such vapidness is seldom seen in my neck of the woods (thank Bumba!). Anyways, I thought I could do better than Ms D.R. and came out with this here Sad Girl. Now, she is truly and really a sad case: overweight and unhappy about it, her dormant brain engulfed by Facebook’s contradictory party lines and utterly devoid of dress sense, the poor mite is in a permanent state of dejection. But all is not lost. Rosie and BoomBoom, the fashion fiends of Maison Shogg, are keeping their bulbous eyes on her. Also, planning to abduct her to their Total Reshuffle Spa, treat her to a Mi-Go Molecular Reorganization therapy, give her a few tips on sartorial intelligence and cleanse her brain of any traces of antisocial media indoctrination. After this!watch out, world. Mata Hari will seem like a convent girl compared to her. Long live fluffiness!
Monsters Inc.
Boo! For Patricio. What with the Trumper strumpet and the Netanyahu creature and the ghastly “Spiderman. Williamson and similar fauna creeping all over reality, monsters are well-nigh out of a job in the scaring department so they are reduced to feeble attempts to scare each other, poor mites. Ah me… What a world we live in. PS. For some reason the colour gamut in these here doodle has come out looking vaguely Patrician; as in “my lovely compadre don Patricio Villaroel Borquez”. So with his kind (assumed) permission, I dedicate it to him. Salud compadrito!
Genocides ‘R Us
For Shame. For Gaza. Again!for the Nth bloody time! (No pun intended.) How many more innocent Palestinians will have to be murdered in cold blood before the tide of gutless subservience to Israel’s genocidal mania turns in earnest and people start taking real, effective action against the psychopaths in power? How much longer will this scruffy tail be allowed to wag that flea-ridden scrawny mad dog? How much longer will the Palestinians have to inhabit this gruesome insult-to-injury situation of being blamed for what’s absolutely not their fault? Has the meaning of the word “empathy., let alone “solidarity., been expunged from our common dictionaries? Answers on a postcard from the edge, please.
I know that the tide has been -very gradually and hideously slowly- turning, to the point that this time even the Guardian (but not the BBC, please note) has dared go against the pre-ordered, pre-fab grain and almost call a spade a spade. Blimey! Even the Tory mafia in 10 Downing Street have been tepidly critical of this latest criminal raid, or as the IDF calls it, a spot of “mowing the lawn..
Anyways, if true love and real happiness are in short supply, these days, shame seems to be making it to the top the list of Seriously Endangered Species. So it’s up to us, the Monsters and the Shoggoths and the Worms and the Frazzled Squiggly Things and the Penguins and the Little Fishis to blush ourselves radioactive on mankind’s behalf. Somebody’s got to do it, don’t you know.
PS. I was going to dedicate this here doodle to the dreary subject of the abysmal nomination of the unspeakable crypto-Nazi Quim Torra to the throne of the Virtual Bananas Republic of Greater Catalonia but compared to what’s happening in Gaza right now, the eventual fate of a bunch of prats who have decided to allow this farce to continue and lately settle into this current dangerous circus, seems truly insignificant. After all the Catalans have a choice, if they want to wield it. They can get up, and out into the streets en masse, and get rid of all that fascist cabal, if only they can summon the collons to do it. The Palestinians can’t. If they do as much as squeak a dissent they get murdered, also en masse ! and then some, as the Americans say. Which is not to say I have given up on the Catalan caper. I’ve only reorganized my priorities.
Have a nice weekend. And have some links to keep you up to date:
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2018/05/15/assassin-state/
Family Affairs
Cosa Nostra. Traditions are like everything else, some are good (National Shoggothood Day is lovely) and some are crap (nationalisms of any and all colours are a mug’s game). And some, like female genital mutilation, are downright revolting, to say the least. But here is a nice little family custom: Zorro the Wonderdog, absent from these pages for far too long, has come back to us to fulfill the specific task of inducting his great-granddaughter Morgana into the ineffable and infinitely fun art of Worm Charming. Everybody benefits from this practice; the young wunderkind pooches learn the art of extreme persuasion and the wee worms get charmed into a symbiotic partnership with the spiffing canines. The perritos must have someone to cherish and protect at all times, as it’s in their nature to care for and guard the weak and the helpless, and the gusanitos are forever shielded from all harm, as their vulnerable nature requires. I love happy shindigs, don’t you?
PS. This is a bit of a spoonful of sugar to pre-coat the palate for what is to come. With the autocratic designation (NOT democratic election, I must emphasize!) of the neo-Nazi* Quim Torra to the presidency of the Catalan Generalitat, I can feel the rage and the bile and the fire and the fury raising once more in my belly. Expect vicious ad hominem attacks soon and avert your “sensitive” eyes in good time.
*And if you don’t believe me…
https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/15/inenglish/1526373293_276622.html