Friends in Need. He’s been made redundant by the true monstrosities wot run the world. She’s had her home razed to the ground by same said bastards that made her little friend unemployed. So, they have teamed up for mutual care and company and, leaving behind all things past, they are taking the high road into the unknown, mysterious woods. Her wee dog and a small Shoggoth keep an eye on them quietly and unobtrusively.

Owl & Pussycat. The dashing fowl and the dancing kitty are at it again. A wee bit bored with their Bong-Tree paradise they’ve gone off, once more into the breach & all that. This time they have decided to do without the money .“but not the honey. The pea-green boat having retired, they are using a singularity-propelled Skipping Vortex kindly lent them by the Sun and generated by his pal the Merry Cloud of Mischief. They are also taking a brace of Guide Worms because a) they are great company (and they sing beautifully), b) they have all sort of disreputable contacts in the Badlands and c) they are expert double-entry bookkeepers. We wish them all a safe journey and endless grooviness.

Puppies of Tindalos. Here’s just a little something to keep the juice flowing, now it seems to be back. See the acute Cagnolito of Tindalos and her mate, the Wholly Furious Fish, expressing their considered opinion on the subject of Brexshit, Theresa May, the Tories, that bunch of big girl’s blouses that call themselves the Labour Party, you name it.
Also, a side, snide nod to the 100^th anniversary of the Amritsar Massacre. Since nobody seems to have the basic decency to apologize for it, we’ll do it, although it’s really no skin of our long-suffering snouts. And while we’re at it, also for the Black Hole of Calcutta and the Bengal Famine, and the Chagossians, and for all those weapons Britain is selling to the bleeding Saudis so they can obliterate Yemen. There. Have a maaaarvelous week.

Or that’s what we hope, anyway. It’s taken a sadly predictable event to shake me out of it and I’m only sorry that it was such a(nother) revolting display of unctuous cocksuckery that shook things up. Still, life is as life does and this days you grab, with both feeble hands, whatever chances of intellectual survival it throws at you.
For the quoted Incandescence…take your pick. The Brexshit panto or the arrest of Julian Assange are two good candidates, but, of course, there are plenty others. For as long as we have dribbling evil morons for our rules, we’ll never want for objects of fiery loathing.
And here be a couple of (a)cute quotes.

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hand on hips,
While dribble gushes from his lips.
W.H. Auden

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
John Maynard Keynes

Which is what Marx said, in 1852, in the opening paragraphs of the 18^th Brummaire! , much more graphically and with a strong poetic flavour. But I also like Keynes’ version because it has a creepy hint of infection, of underhand corruption, unsuspected and undetected. Mooooo Ha Ha Ha…
Have a nice weekend.

Shock. Horror, gloom & doom. Away for a few days. Off to dreaded Barcelona. Unwilling and unready but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, worse luck. I just pray to the sweet, patient mother of Bumba that I’ll be able to resist the irresistible urge to incinerate yellow ribbons. Or estelades. Or that red & yellow rag with the chicken in it. Or any other flag, for that matter. See you in a few days. PS. The quotation is from Lorca. There.

The Bug’s Lament. Here, as a free public service, is one of those useful, All-purpose Grievance Indicator tools I love so much. Just enter your gripe of choice along an imaginary line, anywhere you fancy, and you’re off!
Brexshit anyone? Incoming Spanish elections? Carles Puigdemont’s brain .“or lack thereof? Turning Point’s tactics? The choices are endless, alas.
There’ll be another one along very soon so you’ll have even more choice of j’accuse gizmos. Since choices in general are getting fewer and meaner, I dare say this is better than nothing .“if not much, I must admit.
Some info on Turning Point (know thy enemy!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_USA#Turning_Point_UK
And one to mark the passing of a very nice man:
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/894-dump-the-guardian.html
As I was just saying!choices are getting scarce. Farewell, Jeremy.
And this is for the pure joy of it. To remind myself that people can still be kind for the shear sake of being kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOr2O0FfpT8

Anti-Valentine 2019. There must be an irony somewhere in the fact that when I’m in the Great Dumps the best solace comes from monsters, oddballs, dissidents, mutineers and fauna of that ilk. Thus with this year’s Anti-Mawk  Festival. Too despondent to organize the usual alternative merry shindig, I was thinking of cancelling it when the Renegade Uncouth Larvae of the Final Void crawled out of the inter-dimensional woodwork and came to me with a maaaaarvelous idea: Why not have an Universal Day of Lamentation, Detestation and All-purpose Kvetching instead? See what I mean? Such a spiffing notion.
So, that’s what we’ll be having. The event will take place in and around the pond at Vicky Park. (In, literally, just in case the Deep Ones wish to attend .“Bumba knows they have good cause to grumble, poor things) As usual, you’re all invited. You’ll all have free access to food, drink, drugs, shows, poetry recitals, communal defenestrations, workshops, effigy burnings and anything that might be going. This year, as a bonus, there’ll be a competition for the Best Carping of 2018. Prize yet to be decided but the toss is between a Garrote Florido (Flowery Club) and a fortnight cruise for two to the slimy canals that coil around the fringes of Unknown Kadath.
The gaudeamus, or rather the lamentates, will take place tomorrow, Wednesday 13^th. Time to be advised, in Lemurian code, via the Today’s program, just to aggravate John Humphys or whichever State Stodge is presenting it. Keep your ears peeled, folks and see you all there, I hope.
Here, to put you in the mood, have a link to one of Tom Lehrer’s best on the subject of these ghastly “Whatever Day/Week/Year/Century. capers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vm-8eXFgqA

Warning. Transgression is the new law. Edgy is the new norm. Submission is the new rebellion. Internalized masochism rules supreme. The New Doormat is the new heroine. McSex is best. All is topsy-turvy and “we’re loving it.. 
A recent(ish) survey on relationships in Spain amongst the 15/29 year olds revealed that a staggering average of 35% of women saw as perfectly normal/legit to have their boyfriends control their phones and social media. The ration of young males was even higher. I have no reason to expect that the picture this exposes is much better in our “enlightened. latitudes.
Make of this what you will. Meanwhile, as a pre-anti-Valentine card & rant, here’s a modest offering to all the women out there who still refuse to bow down to the new orthodoxies.
Keep the two insolent fingers at the ready, girls, lest you find yourselves, in a not-too-distant future, living in a reality that will make The Handmaid’s Tale look like a romantic picnic. Pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen will be the least of your worries.
https://elpais.com/politica/2015/01/27/actualidad/1422363044_535263.html
https://elpais.com/diario/2008/06/16/sociedad/1213567206_850215.html
https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/social-action-advocacy-and-campaigns/research/girls-attitudes-survey/

Red Teddy. For Venezuela.
Postcard from the icy outer marches.
You know that these are truly bad times when a big strapping MegaTeddy goes around carrying teddy bears of his own.
Indeed, these are times beyond awfulness, what with Brexit looming and the Imperial Mafias going in full tilt for a hard coup d’état in Venezuela.
Another Chile, another Guatemala, another Panama, another country that refused to bow down to the Masters of the Universe is about to be utterly destroyed, as opposed to merely being mortally destabilized over decades.
The vassal states, the European indentured peons of the God-appointed Owners of All the Earth, in a prodigious display of grovelling cocksuckery not seen since the grotesque invasion of Iraq, have all joined in the fun & games and piled up fire, brimstone and wilfully ill-informed condemnation upon (and in the case of our very own Vatican City of London, stolen the gold of) the legitimate government of a country that never was a threat to anybody. All except Italy, Bumba help us. And that’s why times are so bloody appalling, because the only dissident voice in that deadly chorus line is that of rabid fascists like the current Italian body politic.
The Empire is in a very bad shape, no doubt: paranoid, delusional, severely injured and increasingly discredited. The doctrines of Exceptionalism and Full Spectrum Dominance are tottering. The cracks are becoming trenches. And about time, too. But let us never-ever forget that there are few things more dangerous than a wounded, cornered or merely endangered big brute. And prepare accordingly. Предупрежден – значит вооружен, as a good friend of mine said once.
Here’s a very nice, very illuminating link to the current Venezuelan golpista shenanigans. (Thank you, B.!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fV-C1Ag5sI&feature=youtu.be&bpctr=1548617177
And:
https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-guaido-maduro/
PS. Since YouTube has recently joined in the ever-expanding Circus of Censorship of Heretics, you’ll have to sign in to access this lovely doc. But is well worth it.
http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/golpista

Bitching Aliens II Ah, the horrors, the horrors of Identity Politics. This ghastly Divide & Rule game conceived and sponsored by the likes of George Soros that has produced nothing better than division, discord and misery for all and sundry. This most clever of disruptive tools that camouflages itself as a tolerance and human rights issue but in fact has engendered pestilent and doctrinaire Victimhood League Tables. “My suffering is greater than yours! I’m more oppressed than you! Your ideas offend my sensibilities! I’m a real victim, you’re just kvetching! Spain steals from us! Make Britain great again!. And so on. It has all but given quasi-oracular status to con artists like Jordan Peterson and created farcical entities such as the Radical Feminists Against Transgender Men Using Women’s Toilets crusade .“or something very much of that ilk. And it’s giving no signs of declining, on the contrary. Look, even the normally placid and harmony-loving aliens from the planet Zoofoos are at it. Nit-picking like dopes over perceived privileges and imaginary wrongs. We all hope it’s only a temporary outbreak of mental derangement, brought about by excessive watching the wrong stuff on YouTube. We have also sent for Manolito, the Hardy Perennial Alien from the same planet. We are very sorry to interrupt his much-deserved holiday but this is an emergency. Meanwhile, let us all gather our tools and fight back this grisly epidemic best we can.