KingBonk aka The Radish King. (un) rave. (pl. raves). n. : Catalan for radish. Also, as in the English “snap., something worthless, of little or no value. Like in the saying: “Aixo no m’importa un rave.= I don’t give a toss/I don’t care one bit about that. The quotation is from Salvador Espriu’s Primera historia d’Esther. : Anathema upon him who excites the resentment of the primitive against the supremacy of the spirit. For primitive read the naive, the uninformed, the simple-minded, the wilfully ignorant and the opportunist who thinks he’s being ever so clever.

Oh how I love to do things with borrowed & modified clipart! Here’s a little scene showing the rapture of the inhabitants of the DeepDeepDeep on discovering some unexpected gifts from an anonymous donor. See, nor everything is gloom & doom all the time. Long live frivolity!

Two Idiots. Question: Why is it that the moment anybody starts bandying about the words “freedom” and/or “self-determination” people’s brains seem to turn to mush and collapse into a little heap of uncritical, indiscriminating, romantic, often paranoid sentimentality? Let’s face it, Rajoy IS one of the ghastliest of all vicious, incompetent cretins you’ll ever see, no question, but anyone who thinks that Puigdemont is any better is living in cloud cuckoo land. Nor is the Independentista movement a popular, let alone a progressive, for-and-by-the-people one. It’s a mendacious mental wank dreamed up by a bunch of xenophobic, deluded, utterly corrupt middle-class right-wing prats who have been manipulating the lowest common denominator subliminal layer of feelings of the naive, the feeble-minded and the ill-informed for the longest time. And who now, their backs against the wall and facing a very real possibility of an enquiry into their staggering financial shenanigans (from Jordi Pujol, his sons, his missus, Marta Ferrusola, his heir apparent “King”Artur Mas, all the way down to the current [mis]administration), in a desperate bid to create a diversion, got rolling this gruesome ball that has bloated out of control and into the chaos this hapless region is now living. Oy vey! I say. (By the way, 90%… my Auntie Nelly and her elderly cat!) Have a nice future my erstwhile motherland. You shouldn’t have been caught napping. You should have remembered what Goya put into an unforgettable image: The sleep of reason begets monsters. (El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.) Bon profit, nens…

Update 24/10/17 No quieres caldo… Yesterday’s cartoon has been received with mostly stony silence. Obviously it has grated on the mushy-brained. Never mind. We keep 1) Stubbornly stuck to our guns and 2) Toujours gai! Toujours gai!. Ale op.

 

Maya Misses. Here be a couple of world-wise&weary lassies bringing you a useful, all-purpose caustic commentary on things in general and politics in particular. Use it as you see fit. Change the “he. to a “she. and you can use it on women too, from Hilary Clinton, to Nicole Kidman*, to that good old staple, Theresa May. You’re welcome.  http://www.newsmax.com/US/Nicole-Kidman-Support-Trump/2017/01/12/id/768269/

And here’s a wee picture of some of the things that used to go on (and on) back in the good old days before time, space, relativity, ice cream, Marx  and duck-billed platypuses.

Meet the Mi-No, very distant relatives of our good friends the Mi-Go. More fungoid than crustacean, they wear their chitinous skeletons on the inside, like us meat folks (only our skeletons are not chitinous, more’s the pity). They live in a galaxy so distant from ours that even the Mi-Go have difficulties reaching it, a fact they regret deeply, for they dearly love their several times removed cousins. This here lot have just dropped in for a long visit, having just invented a truly clever transport system that will allow them (and the Mi-Go, of course), to consort on regular basis. The Mi-No have heard of our riotous groovy parties and poetry reading soirées and they are very keen to attend, being as they are, ever so fond of riotousness and poetry and other such lofty matters. The conveyance device operates, Mrs Mi-No tells me, on a system of randomly integrated singularities with a dash of exclusion zones. (It’s all Greek to me but I’m prepared to take her word for it, lest my head explodes with excessive information.) A clever, delightful people, these Mi-No. We all are utterly and hysterically chuffed, we are. The more the merrier is our motto.

Now, this one, I could claim I have no idea where she comes from but I’d be lying. But I won’t bore you with her genesis either. And I do like the textures, if I say so myself. She’s very well behaved, too, for a Gothette. She just sits by the window and sulks elegantly. I’ve seen worse!

This here furry lass is a bee of a different colour. She not only makes honey, she makes bubbles, look you! And in her spare time, she looks after orphaned wee worms, or gusanitos, as we call them. Her current charge takes the honey for granted, as one tends to do, but he’s most impressed by the bubbles. As am I.

Insect Queen. Here’s a little something to mark the autumn equinox and the start of that lovely, sensuous “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”: a pithy message from one of our Generic Queens. Mind you pay heed to her words, people; insects may not be the cuddliest of animals but without them we’d be all completely buggered. Have some respect!

Update 19/09/17 And here be a little something for myself, cobbled together out of an old Sonny Reader primitive drawing tool doodle and two characters stolen from the ineffable, peerless, semi-divine Hello Cthulhu comic strip. It makes me smile, what can I say, m’lud…

Tadpole&Teddy. When the little mafioso Worm of a few illustrations back showed up at a political gathering in a bowler hat he started a trend. Lately every other small creature that creeps, crawls, wiggles, wriggles, swings, sways and sashays in the Far Borders is sporting one. Panamas and Porkpies, Tops and Trilbies, Bowlers, Boaters, Borsalinos, Fedoras, Pamelas, Cloches, Bonnets and Bergí¨res, you name it, there goes a tiny organism wearing a classic headpiece -in many cases far too big for its bijou frame, but there’s fashion for you: inevitable, insidious and often ridiculous but always good for a laugh. I mean, if you’ve never seen a ladybird in a Cordobés or a jumping spider in a Ten-Gallon … well then, you haven’t half lived, that’s what I think. Minuto, the Deeply Red Teddy, thinks this fashion caper is all an evil plot. A malevolent conspiracy concocted and instigated by the Market Forceps to give the differently-sized a bad name. And we all know how the story goes from this point on, do we not? Once you’ve acquired a bad reputation it soon becomes abominable and therefore it’s easier to start screeching about mortal threats to Our Wonderful Way of Life and therefore talking sanctions and suggesting no-flight zones and proposing jackass boots on the ground and even hinting at nukular missages. Minuto is nobody’s fool.

Just like pushy mothers, heartless bastards are not the sole preserve of our universe. You would not believe the con-fauna that pulullates all over the Middle Grids! As poor Liolí  the BearBat can tell you, much to his chagrin. Last night a couple of itinerant mountebanks accosted him on his way back home from the George & Orange, where we had gathered to watch the season finale of Dimension of Miracles, a spiffing space soap very laxly based on Robert Sheckley’s masterpiece, on the landlord’s brand new ultra–photonic radical-definition holobox. He was, as we all were by the time our host chucked us out, well in his cups and in a jovial, fluffy, indiscriminating mood. Which unfortunate set of circumstances the two said charlatans took advantage of and in less time that is taking me to write this, they had persuaded Liolí  that a onesie was “the” thing to own, wear and show himself in at social gatherings. And there you have it, dear reader. Now, I’m not making a case for abstemiousness, by any stretch of the imagination, but if you’re walking home, late at night and half cut, make sure you don’t do it alone. Ask Selina, the double-decker amphisbaena to walk with you. She’s immune to both high-proof alcohol and cant, hence she can spot mercenary bullshit before it turns the corner. She’ll be happy to see you safely home -as long as you let her prattle merrily on about the agonies and the ecstasies of twofold duality, with its attendant internecine contradictions, cognitive dissonances and the ensuing inner racket.

And here be a couple of ungainly creatures: Mr & Mrs Ugly, at your service. Too ugly for words, granted, but nicer monsters you won’t find this side of the Van Allen Belt, if I say so myself. I’ve attended their literary salons and poetry reading soirees many a time and I’ve always come out ethically uplifted, spiritually well fed and utterly & blissfully drunk. So there.

Fitter, tougher & scarier than Weetabix! And possibly cheaper in the long run. Coming soon to a conflict zone near you -which could very well be your back garden, if ExxonMobil decides it has fracking possibilities. Or you can get them @ Amazon, no doubt, should you want to join in the fun and start your own little sordid war on some crack-brained meretricious grounds. Or no grounds at all. It seems to work nicely for most American presidents. And for Tony Blair, of course.