Here we go again. Time for the other Solstice, the one that requires the oh-well-what-goes-up-must-come-down kind of philosophical approach and a good deal of defiance. So, here’s an obstreperous maiden to remind me of this. The Noli Me Tangere dictum is more of a warning not so much to touch her (she quite likes a good hug, she does) as a caution not to annoy, irritate, aggravate, vex, break her balls or piss her off. She’s a Snake Woman and the battle axe she carries is her child, flesh of her own flesh, look you. Have a happy transition folks.
State of Play?
Thanks for asking: it’s totally SNAFU and plummeting fast. I ache from the root of every hair to the tip of every toe. And I’m sure I don’t know how, or even if, I’m going to survive another 5 years of Tory Tyranny. And “they” persist on not bringing back Babylon 5. But at least my Worms (or Wyrms) are in scandalously good health. Hey, hey! Menos da una piedra, right?
The Seventy Year Itch
Birthday Blues & Birthday Fluff. So, we got to be seventy. Unbelievable! According to the Indian palmist who read my palm in a deserted train station in a godforsaken town somewhere in South India, I should have been dead good ten years ago (and he considered 60/65 to be a good, long life, too, bless his saintly chappals). So, here we are. Old, fat, shapeless, unseemly, disabled, female, foreign, grumpy, cynical, pessimistic and more fond of puncturing balloons than ever. Hardly anybody likes me and most folk hate my politics. But a couple of amiable souls love me and the Shoggies & Co. love me and, were I to believe in him, Jesus would love me, be it only because he’s supposed to love everybody, even Henry Kissinger. And so, rather than go eat worms, I make friends with them and invite them to tea. And they repay me with their secret jokes and infinite kindness. And although I have more than one regret (sod off, Edith Piaff!) and I know we are born to die anyway, I scorn pomp and defy circumstances and take great comfort in the poetry of a 15th C.Spaniard who really knew his poetry from a hole in the ground. Here’s to you, don Jorge! And here’s to you, young Gorgon. May your next birthday find you as unrepentant. Or find you at all, really, the way things are going… 🙂
Sic Transit and All That Jazz
Girl & Bird in Yellow. On the wasteland just beyond old Carcosa the Yellow Bird and her pal the Girl in Yellow have met to watch the moon rise over Lake Hali and to have a good bitch about transient glories, sundry   heartaches, futile gestures and so on. As soon as the moon is up they’ll have Bucks Fizz and vol-au-vents, but on no account cucumber sandwiches, and they’ll sing selected fragments from the sanctioned dirges. Like the following, one of the best and better loved segments of Cassilda’s Lament, as we call it at home.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.
Cassilda’s Song in the King in Yellow Act 1, Scene 2
I though you might want to read all about good old Carcosa (Bumba knows why, though) so here’s a helpful link to the inevitable Wikipedia.Â
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcosa
Plus the equally inevitable B&W version. What can I say m’lud, I’m a cagadubtes, as the Catalans call people like me who can seldom decide what they like best, except sitting on fences.
http://www.wordreference.com/definicio/cagadubtes
Got The Old Election Blues
Pre-Election Persiflage. See, I was right. Some people would sooner vote for a fish finger than for any of the candidates on offer in this stupid snap* election. I should have listened to my unerring political instincts and started a crowdfunding to run a Tadpole or a Cagnolito of Tindalos as independent contenders. They would have been infinitely more glamorous and far more exciting than an icon of this ghastliest of all ghastly English fares. Still, I might vote for Mr FF myself, dontyouknow, for I notice than even good old Jezza is beginning to sound (finally, alas), like a true politician, what with the nuclear ambiguity and his fatuous pledges of extra bank holidays an’ all. Ah, me! Thus the mighty fall, my masters…
The snake is called Odile, in homage to Odilon Redon, and she’s French, brought up on a diet of Claude Chabrol and Asterix & Obelix, naturally. The Itinerant Eyeball is called Pips.Â
*Didactic note: Snap means, amongst many other things, “worthless; of little or no value”. Indeed 🙂
Time to Panic?
In Babylon. I love synchronicity; is the only spooky thing that ever visits me. But its frequent occurrence more than makes up for the lack of other “psychic” experiences in my drab, wretched life. As I was finishing this here doodle, my thoughts firmly planted in the toxic mire engendered by the latest politico-mediatic jiggery-pokery of the Evil Empire and its minions, I came across an uncannily synchronic article in the evergreen Information Clearing House. Which in turn reminded me of another, older article, which lead me to look for a recent one that contains the quotation the first article brought to mind. Leaner, meaner and more truly useful than the famed 39, I nail these three articles to the door of my miscreant’s shrine. Here be the link to the last one because it’s as close to perfection, both in style and  in substance, as I’ve seen lately.
Update 17/04-17 More Clipart! Here be some GGM (Graphically and Genetically Modified) lobsters I found out there, somewhere, some time ago, dispensing their p’litical wisdom to anyone who cares to listen. It’s a sad time when even humble sea creatures know what’s what better than so very many of us, dontyouthinkso? Plus a little something just for the hell of it. Check the link, do. If you only read one article, this year, read this one. It’s pure gold.
The Misfits
Square Pegs. A modest knees-up in anticipation of Chelsea Manning’s release .“unless the ghastly Orange Duck reverses the decree, Bumba forfend. I dedicate this to each and every whistle-blower, stalwart dissident and defector of the Man’s Machine that ever drew breath, past, present and future. May your kind multiply and prosper. Never mind that you often feel like the last of the great oddballs. You’re NOT alone.
Another Memorial
The Mind Parasites. (Another memorial, this one a little belated, but better late than never. I offer it to the lovely folks at Tom Dispatch for reminding my fuzzy mind of the exact dates. Cheers mates!)
To the faceless masters of the universe and their meat puppets and the puppets’ minions and their minions’ minions. And to the heirs of Edward Bernays and their indentured mouthpieces and their slave trained monkeys in the media and in the classrooms. And to the chattering classes in all the gastro pubs and trendy bookshops and chic vernissages of this wretched world who, like my erstwhile neighbour, think that we should do the same to Iran because its government “oppresses its people”. May they all rot in some hell of their own making and burn in savage bonfires fed by gigatones of compacted back issues of the Guardian, the New York Times and the Daily Mail.
Â
Curious Professions
Vortex. aka The Frog Spinner.  Meet the Delvaux twins, Maryse and Jean-Loup. Jean-Loup doesn’t do anything much; he’s a bit of a nogoodnik flâneur, really, but he’s very pretty, very clever and he throws the best tea parties in & around that neck of the woods. His sister Maryse is a professional frog spinner. She spins frogs, that’s what she does. She throws a handful of young frogs (sometimes infant wyrms) into the Vortex and makes them whirl and turn and twirl all the way to the bottom of the funnel until they vanish and reappear in the adjacent dimension, where they are picked up by the Shoggoths and their trusty inter-dimensional minibus, the Colometa, and returned safe and sound to their homes, their mothers and their choir practice. All the girl frogs and girl wyrms love Jean-Loup because of his good looks and his tea parties and his delightful crappy jokes. The boy frogs are not exactly enamoured of Maryse but they submit with good grace to this bizarre practice of being spun because it gives them kudos with the girl frogs and earns them extra cuddles from their mothers and the odd exemption from choir practice. The frog mothers thoroughly approve of this rotating caper, for it’s demonstrated that it fortifies the hide and tones down the superfluous testosterone; also, it gets the kids off their hands for a while without the venomous side-effects of day-time telly.
This wee Loony Tune is for my friend Maryse, who loved Mercí¨ Rodoreda and with whom I lost touch some time ago, unfortunately. Here’s looking at you, kid!  NB. No frogs were harmed in the making of this illustration.
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