Two main events are approaching. On 16th it’ll be two years since my friend Ash went and left us. Bummer, bugger and blast. This is for him. As mourning cards, or memorials, or whatever it is you call these things, it’s not particularly orthodox, but Ash would have liked it, and, more to the point, would have got the joke. Peace to your particles, baby! On the 21st it’ll be the Solstice, the return of the light. I’ll be then uploading my yearly whoopy-olay-olay card. Update 13/12/14 Here’s a wee bit of economics for people who find difficult to understand economics. The story so far: Accused of fickleness and blamed for the high cost of living by Mrs Worm, her children and all her market comadres, the poor Pound makes a feeble stab at self-defence. Have some heart, folks. Update 17/12/14 The Solstice is nearly upon us, poor light-starved peasants. I know it won’t make much difference to the amount of daylight to be had, not for a while anyways. But my blood will know the end is nigh. And soon, soon, soon it’ll be February and the first almost invisible buds will pop out and the air will smell better even if it’s pissing down. And all that. So, here’s the seasonal greetings. Have a nice Solstice, folks. If you feel like it, sacrifice a few bastards to Mrs WinteryWitch, in whose cosmic brewing womb stars nest and nothing is wasted. Ií¤, ií¤ Shub-Niggurath! (For good measure.) Update 26/12/14 Nearly there. Another year come & gone & all that & what have I got to show for it? Well, there’s the deck, of course. And the New Style, which nobody seems to like except the usual suspects (ie El Caffarenito and the Arcurioso) and, perhaps, the delightful Maiden on the Boat. Other than that, Flickr maintains a stony silence and Ipernity’s little better in the way of plain feedback -let alone stimulation. (Mind you, nothing could be worse that that “LOL! Cute.” of DevianArt sad fame. I’m seriously considering getting out of Ipernity just as I left DeviantArt. And I think I will as soon as I reach the freebie upload limit. Flickr’s paid for another two years, alas, so I might as well hang on on to it.) And my back aches like fuck and I’m slowly starving for the lack of intellectual nourishment, and… Ah, enough with the bitching. Remember what you need to remember and get on with it, girlie. Here be the latest. Meet young Svengali the Mesmeric Monster and his compliant Bubbles, and a couple of (old) Shoggies who know how to travel in style. Would that I was half as sorted as they! Oh, well… Update 31/12/14 So, indeed, coming soon…another year. And so it goes. Here’s the customary end-of-the-year card, hosted this time by the deck’s Hermit, as it’s only fair & proper; it has been their year. Well done cards. Let’s hope 2015 might be the year of the Shoggies. A girl MUST dream! Happy New Year everyone.
Coming Soon
Toujours Gai, Toujours Gai
As Mehitabel used to say. Mostly to be contrary, you understand. Not that there’s much to be merry about, but it’s the thought that counts. Here be the latest batch. One is a wee Remembrance of Wonderful Women Past. 95 years, 1 month and 20 days ago darling Rosa was murdered by a bunch of fascists and dumped in the Landwehr Canal, like she was so much rubbish. Gone but not forgotten. Not by a long, long chalk. The other is a brief update on the mini revolution Tampopo and her pal, the Puff Fish have started in the deeper depths of the Great Deep. Which only goes to show that you’ll encounter the forces of reaction anywhere and everywhere. Or as the Spaniards say: En todas partes cuecen habas. Coming soon: Fascinating Archaeological finds! Update 01/12/14 Two important dates approach. Dec. 16. Second anniversary of the death of that superb Master-Ranter and beloved compadrito, Ashok Chandra Patel. Still massively missed. And Dec 21. The Solstice. The Return of the Light. Sorrows begin to feel less sorrowful once past this time-mark. So, waiting for these events to come and go we eat, drink, are merry, make silly pics and tell crappy jokes. What else can a girl and her Monsters do? So, here’s 1) the promised archaeological find. (This is for Beth, fearless traveller and reader extraordinaire.): Zippy Stardust, that intrepid explorer and beauty consultant (and a good friend of the Family), has just returned from one of her jaunts into the darkest, farthest reaches of our Earth’s past. And she’s brought us back a photograph of a most wondrous muriel she found in some forgotten antediluvian cave township somewhere in the environs of Uluru (Ayers Rock to the sadly uninformed). See? Tarot reading goes back quite a long while, as I’ve always suspected. This proves my theory beyond the shadow of a doubt. So there! 2) a little Bull Dancer. She dances with bulls. The story so far: Smitten by her rotund charms and her artless grace, the Sun has climbed down from his fiery chariot to court the little one. He’s trying to seduce her with promises of this, that, the other and a few corny lines from Zorrilla’s Oriental II. The little Bull Dancer is nobody’s fool! and 3) a wee reflection on slavery and the practice of it. Weep not for any idiot who tries either to buy or to sell slaves, if (and hopefully when) they get taken for a ride. Update 11/12/14 To end on a reasonably angry note, here’s a wee photoshop work done on the likeness of a good friend who also loathes photos (not to mention selfies). It took all my powers of persuasion to get him to send me this one but he also appreciated the photoshopping of it. Cheers, babes. ¡No pasarán!
Returns and Renewals
I’ve been experimenting with yet another of these crappy apps/tools you can get for free from the dread google store thing. I must say, sometimes, limitations stimulate…I don’t know, creativity?, resourcefulness? Who cares. The bottom line is that I’m coming out with stuff that often takes me by surprise. Here’s the second of these surprises. It’ll be the second in a most definitely p’litical series (perhaps) of images of what things will be like after we have blown ourselves to smithereens, or poisoned ourselves into agonic extinction, or whatever. And on the subject of overcoming limitations, my compadre don Attilio “El Caffarenito”, has a wonderful quotation from Leopardi. If I can find it again perhaps I’ll post it, for it’s truly beautiful and soothes my savage breast like nobody’s business. Update 24/10/14 Here’s a little something, a wee Fandango de Huelva, for aching hearts anywhere and everywhere. Yo tengo tres corazones. A mi no me afligen penas. You tengo tres corazones. Uno pa’ que vaya y venga, otro pa’ que lo aprisiones y otro pa’ que tu lo tengas.      Por la vereda del cielo la luna va caminando. Por la vereda del cielo. De vez en cuando se para por ve’ el color de tu pelo y los ojos de tu cara. Long live the Fandango de Huelva! (Or anywhere else, for that matter.) Update 16/11.14 This lot here, what can I say? One was meant as a protective juju for a friend’s birthday, although it appears to have backfired. Oh, well… The second is a spot of symp’thetic metchik stroke self-portrait of sorts. Also a juju. For myself. I’m in great need of reminding myself who and what I am, warts and all. And that if some folks don’t like my warts they know where they can stuff them. It’s my party. And their problem. PS. Meet DimDim, the albino Shoggoth. He is part of a trinity of albino Shoggies vaguely related to Moby Dick. Coming Soon: Clever Whales. Update 26/11/14 It never rains. Here’s a double entry, to make up for the long absence. One: the threatened clever whale. She’s Japanese and her name is Tampopo (Dandelion), a tribute to one of my favourite films of all time. She first came into being two illustrations ago but she’s somehow taken over the show. Meaning I’m quite besotted with her. She’s already managed to upset the conservative contingent in the Great Deep, as you’ll see in the next post. Two: a Boxer. This is a protective juju for me, for I’m somehow wobbly, of late, but also for my pal Mr Carlin the Arcurioso, who’s also been in the dumps recently, poor mite.
Domestic Bliss
Here come a few tiles to brighten your day. Or at least mine. And a small tribute to my household gods/defence team. May your plush stay bright. Update 18/10/14 It’s a little known fact that the tiny Composite Creature has a secret twin. Some would call her an “evil twin”, but that would be a shortsighted and crass assessment. The twin simply hasn’t got any of the hang-ups that plague most of us, Composite Creatures included, that’s all. Update 19/10/14 And now, for somethig completely different… ‘ave some Gloom&Doom; ‘s good for you.
Wild Things
Never can have enough of them, that’s my line. Here is the second in the series of Feral Girls. She brings you the Ripe Red Tomatoes of Retribution. Let them rot nicely and throw them at the Meat Puppets. They stick like glue and the smell lingers for the longest time. Or just make chutney. PS. Somebody warned me recently that throwing the RRTOR at the MPs, could have nasty metamorphic consequences. No can happen. These Tomatoes are special, not subject to the vagaries of causality, ergo quite safe. Go on, throw one. You know you want to… Update 21/09/14 After the minor (planned and expected, of course) heartache of the Scottish results, I felt an irrepressible urge to do something very, very silly. Something that whilst making me giggle would still say something about how I feel about the current contingency, at large and in general. Voilí . Update 24/09/14 And it’s back to the more overtly p’litical stuff. It’s hard for a poor Gorgon to change her scales, what can I say… This Feral Girl is a close relation of the Political Muriel. Only she doesn’t travel alone; she has dragged her bosom pal, one of the offspring of Boris the Bat (still in the oven) into her desperate attempts to persuade people to leave the Matrix and join her Web of Subversive Delight. Fat chance, I fear. I also fear she will die young, too. Whatta life…Observe that the Reservoir ‘Edge ‘Ogs (long time no appear) are back. Are they smiling at her efforts to stop the madness or is it my derranged imagination? Update 28/09/14 Because most of my creatures are, or appear to be “cute”, people tend to assume they have no teeth (and ergo that my politics are fuzzy & bland). This is an attempt to dispel this rather crude misconception. Update 05/10/14 A few days ago one of my mates on Ipernity just upped and dissapeared from the site, overnight and without a word of warning. One day we’re having a friendly dingdong about Gillian Duffy -of “where are all these Eastern Europeans flocking from?”memory- and next day he’s gone; nobody knows why, or where. Lots of upset people all over the site. Me included. So I made a wee bit of sympathetic metchick, in case it helps to either bring him back or, failing that, look after him wherever he is now. Update 10/10/14 Let’s end on a nicely p’litical note. Here’s to Ms. Nuland and her big mouth. There’ll always be someone with a bigger gob than yourself to tell you where you get off, missy. Now go and get Ebola or something.
Gimme Strength!
To carry on. Here be the Uncouth Larvae of the Final Void, again, with their subtly unique take on current politics. It could be called Imperial Diplomacy, I dare say. PS. I appreciate that the “stuff” in “stuf it” is missing an eff, but’s that’s entropy for you… Update 28/08/14. I’ll be brief because I feel like shit microwaved. Besides the pic is pretty self-explanatory. But, there is a funny coincidence here. Although while I was making it the last thing on my mind was my own deck’s 7 of Swords, the meaning of this pic is practically, word by word, so to speak, the same as the card’s. The theme of the Banality of Power must be hoovering around the back of what’s left of my mind full time. Not surprised if it was so, these days… Update 02/09/14 Waiting for the next batch of Feral Girls and their companions to come out of the oven, here. have a tile or two. Good for the soul, especially the B&W one, I think. Update 04/09/14 The new batch of Feral Girls is slow in coming. And they won’t be rushed; why, they might bite me or sommik… So, waiting for them, here be the latest JuJu, the Totem Pole of Conceptual Cleansing. See BoomBoom, kindly acting as the foundation and carrying the Garrote of Intolerance of Mediatic FlimFlam. On top of him stands the Grunting Goblin; he grunts and carries his tools of office, the Double Edged Twin Cricket Bats of Extreme Prejudice to Crapitalist Bollocks. And on the crown, the Fat Creature of Uncertain Origins and Unpredictable Outcomes. She clutches to her furry bosom the Sacred Cup of the Eternal Sunshine of Endless IceCream. There. Now, for some instructions on how to best use this particular Juju tool:Worship at this Totem Pole if you must worship anywhere at all. It’ll bring you wondrous good fortune and you’ll have more fun than by praying to any old crummy angry sky god, I promise. Dance around it naked on a moon-flooded night. Sacrifice an Obama or two, or, better still, a Henry Kissinger, to the tutelary entities that animate it. Groove on peple! Update 15/09/14 To end on a happy note again (old habits die hard), here’s the first in a series of Feral Girls. This be the Scaly Twins and guests, having an ice cream & moolight party. Zero the Badger has invited himself. In other words, he’s gatecrashed. But the girls don’t mind at all. The ice cream is endless and the sea is choppy, just the way they like it. Ask them nicely and they’ll invite you to the next shindig.
It Never Rains…
Or as the Spaniards would say: ¿No quieres caldo? ¡Dos tazas! You don’t want any soup? Have two cups! So it is with this yours truly and the vexed question of the selective silence of our “wonderful, free, balanced and impartial” media on the subject of the undeserving victims of eastern Ukraine & other unfashionable victims in general. The first one, Rough Trade, subtitled Los Olvidados, is for those Forgotten Ones. You know! the ones the meedja hardly ever mention, because they haven’t been sanctioned as “worthy. by The System, or because they belong to or are somehow involved with the designated enemy-du-jour.Or if they do, is only to add insult to injury by saying that is their fault if they got massacred to bits, like the Wall Street Journal said about the victims of the Odessa burning back in May. (And don’t even get me started on the Australian aborigines, or First Australians, as they are now called. Call them what you will, they’re still being exterminated, even as you read this.):  Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Started by Rebels, Government Says – WSJ     The second, Boycott, is simply more of the same. In the middle of doing these two last doodles, I came across John Pilger in conversation with some guy, and he said what I just said earlier; almost with the same words. Uncanny or what ? Anyways, after that I felt a wee bit less mad, bad & dangerous for children to know. Thanks mate!  http://rt.com/shows/going-underground/177516-western-media-victims-uk/   Have a nice day. Update 09/08/14 It’s not often I can manage a good p’litical poster. Odessa Calling was the last time I felt I had “done it”. Today’s offering is definitely IT. I’m quite chuffed with the way Netanyahu’s come out looking like a scary, unholy cocktail of himself plus Nosferatu plus the dread Blair Witch. May they all rot in hell. Note 08/02/15 I have uploaded the latest version. The text in this one looks much better and flows nicely. Update 10/08/14 “…and suddenly, things got darker.” The previos entry has not been all that well received on Flickr. That is, it has attracted a lot of disapproving, huffy silence. (Giggle.) On Ipernity it has fared better. There, it seems to have roused a few highly fed-up spirits. Nice. Well, it’s the old “lose some, win some”. Here’s the latest. Salut! Update 14/08/14 Ending post on a contray note. 1. Some more of that “soup” nobody seem to want: the mad girl with strong opinions who stands before tanks and dies youg; she has a poem wot might be hung of the poetry section and a twin sister in the offing. 2. A lady wot joggles live Wibbles. And if you think that joggling live, sharply self-aware Wibbles is easy, think again. Even the Shoggies are impressed!
As If!/ If Only…/Magari…
As the non-existent visitors to this site must have gathered by now, I like to end my 6-pack chunks on some note or other; happy by preference but I’ll settle for whatever is going on at the moment. Today I decided to start on an optimistic-contemplative mode. Think of this illustration as a little piece of wishful thinking, a modest attempt at sympathetic magic. I neither live in a cave, nor do I have any need to invoke bison or fallow deer. If I want food all I have to do is walk down the shops. But my vestigial hunter’s soul still longs for the Big Game, it does, poor thing. It also longs for some justice, a modicum of groovy righteousness and merry retribution. But there’s none to be had; not here, not now, not by me, worse luck. So, it’s up to the Ineffable Black Goat of the Foggy Woods of My Mind to enact the reckoning. And for the Flowerettes to rejoice and celebrate Milady’s exploits. Cheers. Update 18/07/14 It never rains…etc. Here be the latest. The first is just a wee please-yourself exercise in tiling. No more no less. The secons shows a family scene: The Mice Queen, with her flaming heart of fire, travelling on her polydimensional vehicle, has come to exchange gifts with her mates the Mice. The Mice are staunch Republicans and the Queen is a devoted Anarchist, but they both like to play anachronistic games, what can I say? It does pass the time and sharpens the old acting skills. And last (BNL): Rejoice! Or weep, as you feel fit. It’s Adopt-A-Lost-Soul-Day again in the delta of the Urook. It comes once a month; it has to, in these unhappy, entropic days. The Flowerette on the right has decided to adopt the little Triangulated Thing, if only on temporary basis, as the LTT is already doing very well -he was last heard attempting to whistle The Internationale. The Flowerette on the left has opted for a “surgically stricken” Palestinian child. Always a plentiful option, alas… Update 31/07/14 A family snap. aka Shindig in the Primal Void. It’s a little known fact that the Mother of Bumba, back in her vertiginously distant yuff, was a wild, wild Thing and very fond of notional ice-cream, dancing and playing pranks on the Other Things. She used to sneak behind the ProtoAzathoth and scream “Order!” Order!” top of her voice. That got the poor bastard every time and made him jump a couple of dimensions to the left. When she grew more solid and sedated, and after she had her only child, the lovely Bumba, she remained very fond of dancing and music. Eventually she went on to invent what later would descend through the aeons and the dimensions and become Flamenco. Here she can be seen sponsoring a juerga with the Turtlelettes and the QuasiSnake Girls. Bumba has just invented the Flamenco guitar, bless his stardust socks. Update 01/08/14 Let’s end on an unhappy, ranty note, shall we? I’ve said my say on Gaza, so it’s back to my ongoing gripe with the Zombi MeejaWhores, and the fuelling of the hot cold war of words, and to kissing American ass, and to trying to drag Russia into open (armed) conflict. I do hope like hell that Putin will continue NOT to buy into the sort of hysterical shit. Nuff said. Here’s our advice to anyone willing to listen.
Living the Blues
For reasons unknown, lately I’ve been craving blues and its relations. Must be the Muse in a wobbly mood. Anyways, here are some. The first is a common or garden mandala, or an anti-mandala. The second is a snapshot of the Fuzzy Demonettes and their Shoggy chums in their beautiful night garden. From it they bring you the Fleurs du Mischief, as the TeddyBear Tree is not in season (it blooms later in the year). Put then on a vase; or make tea out of them (VERY good as an antidote to BBC vibes)…Or put them in your pipe and smoke them; and then wait for the pretty allucinations to beging (highly recomended). Update 09/06/14 It’s back to basic reds, apparently. Don’t ask. Here be The Fish Dancer. He dances fishes, he does. He doesn’t dance with them,or makes fish dance, he dances them. Once the fish have been danced they’re never the same again. Big juju, this being danced by the Fish Dancer. If I were you, I’d make sure you never meet him in a dark alley. Also, an improvised birthday card for the Fenian, born on the 4th of July. Honest. Update 10/06/14 I’m closing this segment on a s-tile-ihs note. Voilí .
Easy Does It
Recently, I’ve come across a guy on Ipernity who uploads pictures of snails on his page. Also, occasional information on the mysterious workings of snail brains. I’ve concluded that he likes snails. So this is for him. As usual, that deep. Update 31/0514 Yesterday I got an email from Schiffer announcing that the 10 complimentary “author’s copies” of my deck are on their way to South Hackney, via Byakhee Express. (No, sorry, it’s FedEx. My mistake.) So, here’s the “poster” announcing the happy event. The Deck is now flesh & blood. Or ink & cardboard, really. Welcome to the family, oh wee bundle. And to round up a day of wonders, behold! young Olufemi’s got himself a girlfriend. Olay! Her name is Adebola; Bolita for short. She just wandered into one of our tactical briefing sessions, out of the deep dark forest, sashayed her way into our midst, batted her eyelids at poor Femi…and the rest is mythology, as they say. And here they be, the happy pair. Olufemi’s showing Bola the newly-minted book and he’s bragging a bit, saying: “I’m in it, don’t you know…” And she’s saying “Blimey! That’s nice.” And “So, who’s the blindfolded bint with the dog, the cat and the rat and the snakes on her bonce, then?” And so on. We’re all are really happy for Femi, who, we all think, works way too hard and has but few distractions. Bola will see to it that he doesn’t overdo it from now on. She’s awfully glamorous and very good-natured, but you can sense the iron claw beneath the velvet paw. (Atta girl!) Update 11/06/14 Waiting for what has to happen to actually happen (oy! am I getting restless…), I sit and meditate. Meditation’s a grand thing they tell me. The Turtlelettes are not quite so sure. Thank Bumba and his darling Mother for the good ol’ faithful, ever-vigilant WakeUp Croc, I say. (The Shoggies are having a laff…) Update 16/06/14 You know how it goes…You do a pic with a croc; someone says “what a nice croc!”; next thing, you’re doing a pic with nothing but crocs. Oh,… you don’t know? OK, only me then. In any case, voilí . Have more crocs. Next time: piggies! (Unless it’s mice, of course.) Update 17/06/14 The story so far. HanuPiggy, riding his chariot of clouds, clad in his best ceremonial dress and carrying his sublime two-headed truncheon, has come to have tea with Calpurnia and meet her babies, who were born a few years ago. The monkeypig is a very busy creature and couldn’t find the time until now but all the same everybody’s awfully glad to see him. The friendship between the Rats and HanuPiggy goes back a long, long way, even to the times when HanuPiggy was an ordinary pig called Tarquin who meditated a little too long on Hanuman, the Hindu monkey avatar, and strange transactional shit happened as a result. And if you want to know why he didn’t get a monkey’s tail as part of the deal, the answer is that who needs a tail when you’ve got twelve pseudopods? (You can only see six in the picture; the other six are hidden behind his enormous bloomers.) Update 21/06/14 Come greet the return of Darkness with the Solstice Wasp-Demonette! Dance around her bonfires. Drink the heady wine of Decline. Sacrifice to her a Warren Buffett or two (if you can catch any); or even an Obama or a Cameron, she’s not fussy. But on no account will she take Nigel Farrages. Even a fiend has got standards, what!
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