Here be the first installment. I’ve wanted to do something on the Venus of Willendorf for yonks. So I did, just to prove myself that the rabbid flu wot’s been plaguin me for the past few days hasn’t got the better of me. Hai! And here she is, in conversation with her comadre, the ineffable Shub-Niggurath, she who becomes more ineffable wich each passing day. (The Shoggoths are deeply suspicious of this recent partiality. Suspicious; not jealous. They know my heart belongs to them and them only.) Please note that the Young  in attendance seems to be about to fall in love with a frivolous companion-star of Milady’s; and that Fiffi’s totally gob-smacked at the size of such powerful bosoms. Size zeros the world over, look upon Milady’s bulk and tremble! Now, go get a bacon buttie… Update 09/04/13 To celebrate the death (if not the real passing, alas…) of the Ghastly Thatcher Creature, here’s a bit of colour and silliness. If you ever feel the need to restore your mental and intellectual health, please feel at liberty to book yourselves for a free fortnight at the Really Funny Farm. The Savant Onions and Molesworth will see you right in no time at all. Salut! Update 12/04/13 Ah, lovely black & white… And bad poetry! What a winning combination. Nothing like it. Sorry folks… Update 22/04/13 Faithful to my tradition of never waiting to finish a project (in this case The Story of Oops) to start with a new one, here be the new one: Return to Kadath. Synopsis: Randolph Carter, bless his little restless socks, weary once more with the “real” world, and seeing his beloved Boston going to the Hounds of Tindalos of Crapitalism under his very eyes, decides to revisit the Final Void’s peripheries, namely the Cold Waste and Merry Old Leng, and as a side-dish, perhaps, clear some pending accounts with Nyarlathotep. All hell breaks loose. Battlelines are drawn. Enemies and allies gather their armies. Let the battle commence! Olay and oyvay… Here goes the first three chapters. Prologue pending.

Loses. Back in December my friend Ash, aka The Bacterium, MasterRanter Extraordinaire, went and died on us. Bummer. I do miss him a lot and I find myself talking to him whenever Max Keiser says something particularly amusing, or when a revealing piece of news comes up confirming our worse suspicions on the subject of the mental health of politicians at large. Oh dear…life does suck, sometimes. And Gains. On the plus side, out of the deep blue of the Unexpected, that intrepid publisher my Tarot deck had long despaired of ever finding, …found us! Hey! Hey! That was the last good news I managed to share with Ash (he was the first to know) only 24 hours before he went and departed this vale of chaos. He was so happy for me, poor darling. Oh well… Not being a believer, I have no hopes of him watching the cards emerge into the world of matter from a vantage point (say Andromeda, for instance). But I do hope he’s still out there, if only in stardust form, giving all the other particles a hard time. Bye bye, toots. Update 26/02/13 Just a quick visit to upload the latest Shoggothic sortie. In their brand new ship, the Icecreamnik, they have gone visiting their old pals, the slaves of the RottenEgg-Monster of Blingo, to a) invite them to a hedonistic cruise and b) irritate the R.E.M. And there’s very little the said creep can do about it because this time the Shoggies are armed with (apart from their staggering chutzpah and their natural bulk) the Sacred Cricket Bat. Ha! Update 03/03/13 I’ve been reading H.G. Wells for the fort time in my life. (Thank you free e-books sites!) I read The Island of Doctor Moreau, which I enjoyed a lot in spite of the barely veiled casual racism & antisemitism. What most stuck in my silly mind was a bit where the eponymous doctor says that “you can educate a pig“. Indeed. Here be proof. Update 08/03/13 And here’s his also-educated mate, aka “One More Piggy for the Road”. Now I must, really must, get back to the book. Uffff… NB. Behold! The also-ineffable GorgoMormo seems to have developped a massive crush for the cultured hog! And me thinking, all these years, that she was just another pretty face and a mere frivolous good-time girl. Ah, well…Update 16/03/13 Advanced Happy St. Patrick and a bit of local colour.

2012 has been a pretty crappy year. Physical pain ratings: off the scale. My new computer malfunctioned repeatedly. World (social, political and economic) scene: below Mariana Trench levels. And a good friend of mine has just gone and died. Massive bummer. But a few good things have happened. I ended up with two computers. The creative flow has been fairly steady. And I had a spontaneous-unrehearsed offer from a publisher for my wee Tarot deck. So, no, I will not jump into the Thames yet. Also, I got myself an e-reader wot came preloaded with a most primitive drawing tool. It was … interesting to experiment with it. Here be, then, a few samples (put, naturally, through the refining mill of Flash). Also also, the fact that it has been a vomit-inducing year for me doesn’t exclude the wish for a better one for me and my mates. Including the one that died. Perhaps he’ll be spared further horrors to come. Bon voyage, Ash-baby. I’ll miss you. Update 29/12/10 More PrimitiveDevice-Flash stuff. Update 03/02/13 The official po’m for illustration No. 4, Travellers, can now be read in it’s full inglory on the poetry section, Wilfred & The Shell-Shocked.

Here’s the good news: one of the Shub-Niggurath’s Thousand Young decided to strike out on its own, to travel and see the Void. OK, so she’s still has 999 left to get rid of. But it’ a beginning, innit? Here’s the first two installments of the story of the intrepid youngster, then. Update 28/12/12 Waiting for Part III to gel together, here’s something completely different. The tireless protoplasmic dears have had another go at soap opera. Knowing that they’re really not  very good at it. Heroic, I call this attitude. The earstwhile budding director call is something pretty rude. Update 07/01/13 And the ship sails on and the saga continues… Update 23/01/13 And continues. And then stops for a wee while. I need to tidy up my storyline, wot seems to be growing out of any reasonable boundaries. Quick Update 25/01/13 Just another of those “semi-primitive” thinggies. I thought I’d start a new series called Eldritch Tourism, or something.

And so it came to pass that on the fifth year of the Great Debacle not a single one of those truly responsible for it had been held responsible (let alone punished for it), except by some of us plebs and the divine Stacy Herbert. But we don’t count because we are …well, plebs, innit. So it was up to the Rubbery Darlings to show the True Way, as usual. May Bumba shower them with an infinite ammount of Smarties! Update 06/11/12 Don’t ask me why but I feel in a pre-New Year mood. Makes no sense, really, since I don’t expect the next year to be any better that this dying one. Especially if Romney wins the election. And as for my health…don’t get me started. Still, I feel in a festive mood. So here is a pre New Year card. The two dancing girls have strayed from a funky land made up of ancient Greece, Australia and somewhere in Africa. ??? And look-see, my first attempt at a really repulsive monster: The Dread EggMonster of Blingo! The Shoggies have set their hearts on winding him up -as well as “corrupting” his poor wee slaves with drugs, sprits and fresh fruit. Please note that there seems to be some interesting chemistry going on between the red slave and Edwina (who’s coming along very nicely, recently). And, dare I say it?, a hint of a rapprochement between the Shub-Niggurath and the Shoggies. The Shubby hates the EggMonster even more that she hates the Shoggoths, and she’s delighted at his shock, awe and irritation. Besides, she does have a closet admiration for the rubbery darlings. She’s always respected their gumption and their bloody-minded courage. Mind you, she’d sooner have another 1,000 Young rather than admit to it, but there you have it. It’s there. So…who knows? Not that the Shoggies are all that ready to forgive and forget. They weren’t born yesterday, you know. Update 14/11/12 To celebrate this wonderful epidemic of general strikes all over wretched Europe (well done, Greece, for starting the trend!) and to remember a man who nobody seems to remember anymore (but I do and so so the Shoggies…), here’s my latest offering. Keep trucking, señor Juez! Update 04/12/12 It’s been a rough year for the poor old Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. First there was the unprecedented success of her erstwhile slaves, the Shoggoths, in discriminating and refined circles (like Flickr, for instance). Then all her attempts at getting rid of some of her supernumeray Young through placements and internships failed miserably (even Azathoth packed his lot back to sender for uncommonly bad behaviour). And lately she attended a party thrown by the splendid GorgoMormo and she…actually enjoyed herself! Shock! Horror! What’s the Final Void coming to? Still, one wee piece of good news: one of her Young has decided to strike out on its own. But that is another story. Update 08/12/12 Just a little “filler”. Once in a blue moon I do something with the dread word Xmas in it. Just to express what I think of the whole dread thing. This is one of those somethings. Not my best, but I quite like the rabbid bunny. And the Komodo dragon. He looks very happy. So would I, if my dreams came true…

Well, right now feels more like diying, but the weather holds fairly decent. I’ve seen worse, I’m sure. To make up for all the shit wot’s going down, the Beastiary’s keeping quite healthy. Here be a latest version of the one & only illustration to my short account of How I Met the Shoggoths (see Fireside Yarns page), and the other two…fuck knows where they come from. I’m not sure I was even there, m’lud. If I was I must heve been sleeping. I rest my case. Update 16/09/12 Some more stuff dug out from the carboniferous depths of my hard drive. It started as a single fish-witch and somewhere along the way sprouted a twin. So now I have ended up with  two water enchantresses, travelling up & down the world’s watery ways, doing their fishy watery stuff, in their splendidly snug and well-appointed semi-organic witchy boats. They are very kind to small scaly creatures, especially the ones in distress (real, perceived or simply feigned). The said scaly organisms often take advantage of this, and use the fact that they are small and often helpless-looking (not to mention cute), to hitch rides and get free drinks on the wonderboats. The boats are slightly miffed at this unecessary largesse but the beldames don’t mind at all. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before the supplies of cabernet sauvignon give over. Update 01/10/12 Just a wee vignette of the Animal Shenanigans type. All true, you know… Update 03/10/12 And to round this post, a wee item for the family album. It was long overdue, I dare say.

Don’t get me wrong. Knowledge is a beautiful thing, no question. It’s just that sometimes, the more I know, the more I loose the will to live. Still, one must carry on, do or die, in any kind of weather. It so annoys “them”… So, this one is: 1) for myself, to remind me of certain things, 2) for Norman “Stormy Normy” Finklestein, who keeps me sane and entertained, and whose new book is called, coincidentally, Knowing Too Much. Isn’t synchronicity wonderful? Useless, as far as I can tell, but groovy all the same. Go get ’em, Norman! PS. The second line of the wee po’m Terry (the Chav Penguin) is declaiming is a tribute to Kenneth Williams and Round the Horne. Cheers! Update 04/08/12 ‘ere, ‘ave a sneak “privada” (as the divine Kenneth would say) of the forthcoming Shogglympiad. Sumo rules! Update 08/08/12  The rubbery darlings, always ready to offer an alternative to most human schemes, arrangements and structures, came out with a brilliant plan of their own to combat those old Olympic blues: Have a Shogglympiad instead, they said. And so we did.       Spikky and The Rats sponsored the nicking of the Smarties, ice cream and the best cabernet sauvignon we could get hold of. Wee Duncan was allowed to strut around, club in hand, looking totally non-dangerous (but he doesn’t know that and you mustn’t tell him). Spot of the Antarctic, “Flash. Harry the Decadent Worm and Jake the Lapsed Golem were given the artistic direction and a very job they’ve done, too. I don’t know how they managed, but they sweet-talked the Shub-Niggurath into lending a few of her unruly offspring to produce the Fashionable Pop Group de rigueur, which is why she’s been invited to the gaudeamus. Not that she needed much persuading, as she’s always anxious to offload any amount of her all too numerous Young to anyone who’ll have them. Besides, as we well know, she likes nothing better than being invited to parties and then squatting there in some corner looking morose and despondent.          In fact most creatures have been made welcome. In the true Riotous-Party spirit of the original Greek Games, old grudges have been put aside (some only temporarily, granted) and lo and behold, even the Yithian Chief Librarian has been given compassionate leave from his detention in the Galactic Security Unit in Betelgeuse and allowed to attend.       And look, see! The Deep Ones are slowly coming out of their solipsistic shell. They will regale the audience with a most wondrous display of like totally unsynchronized swimming. And the Mi-Go will scorch the earholes of any politico unwise enough to eavesdrop. And Gorecho will do the same with his ultra-rude songs, intended to cause maximum offense. And if you think that the Snails are not quite the ticket for the job of usherettes, I’ll say that nobody’s in a hurry. This shindig is likely to run for months and there’ll be endless encores, repeats and reiterations, I’ll wager.        But enough PR! Sit down and enjoy the show. Entry is free and you also get a goody bag, courtesy of the Saintly Farting Nuns of Bilbao, full of esoteric stuff, like digital copies of the Necronomicon, Mi-Go Especial Beauty Lotion and bits of the thigh bone of St. Claw’d of Cappadocia (a very holy saint worshipped by The Lobsters and said to cure most social diseases, like paranoia, intransigence and an specious belief in the Third Way). Cheers! Updates 17/08/12 I. Of all the brain-fried, lily-liver, cowardly weapons loved by macho-posturing sissies, drones rank pretty high with me and the rubbery darlings. Here’s what we’d like to do to/with them. II. And here’s what Ol’ One-In-All-And-All-In-One whispers to me on moonless nights, when the caffard hits the roof. Sometimes it almost makes sense, I swear. Update 21/08/12 I only heard the news yesterday. Pulmonary complications, they say. No surprise there; he was probably chocking on disgust and contemp for what the world has become and is becoming, poor chappie. Well, at least he’ll be spared further horrors to come, but today I feel like a serial orphan. First Howard Zinn, then, a few weeks before Gore, Alexander Cockburn, and now him, the goldenest of my golden boys. Ah, me! Who’s next, I dread to think? I will not think. I shall sit and sulk and mourn his passing, that last scion of the rarest of species; the only aristo I never resented; my brother in rants. One of the main pillars of my sanity. Fare thee well, possum. I’ll miss you horribly but…me quedan tus palabras. PS. The Shoggoths are pretty pissed off, too. They don’t see any need for dying. They think it’s a mug’s game. It’s all very well for them to think so, though. They don’t die, do they? They just subsume into each other, or change into something else, innit?

… Unlike the kind pushed by TurboCapitalism and its minion, the IMF. Look-see, The Family grows in a non-profit, non-threatening &  recreational sort of way and nobody’s got to buy into it if they don’t want to. Meet the Squirtle. A distant relative of the Mystical Turtle (featured), it is, as the name indicates, a cross between a squirrel and a turtle. It lives in one of the many borderline territories -or Soft Places, as Neil Gaiman calls them- surrounding the merry old Plateau of Leng and the Cold Waste. A vastly powerful creature, it also suffers from a congenitally kind heart and a compulsively helpful nature. It gets on with almost everybody in the barrio, in part because nobody dares mess with it; if threatened or irritated beyond endurance, the Squirtle can be a terror.  Soft it may be but not dumb. Which doesn’t stop the Shantak birds from pushing their luck when it comes to fucking off to Nyarlathotep’s birthday party and leaving the Squirtle to babysit. Then again, we all know the Shantaks are born chancers, do we not? Update 26/06/12 A break from the Mining Co. It’s Elementary Particles again! Them and their impossible behaviour wot has driven more than one scientist to the bottle. The Observer in the picture has since: 1) resigned, 2) requested political asylum in my cellar (claims the Shoggoths are far, far more tractable) and 3) taken up bird-watching. It’s recovering fine. Slowly but steadily. Update 06/07/12 And here’s some sound advice from Primus. Update 07/07/12 And here’s my tribute to the CERN lot, who knowing they’re fighting a loosing battle, they still fight on. Mind you, I’m sure they’re having a whale of a time doing it. And they’re getting paid for it! Still, I raise my cup to them. And to the wee particles, naturally… Update 11/07/12 I’ve been meaning to do something for Greece and the Greeks. Here it is. Kalispera, folks. Wake up, smell the rot and kick some asses. The right ones, please… Update 16/07/12 And so we come full circle. The Family has a new member. The Errant, or Lapsed Golem. He was made by a slightly dyslexic and highly eccentric rabbi who lives just off the Mile End Rd. An excellent conceptual Kabbalist, he’s nevertheless a bit erratic when it comes to practicalities, so instead of a mouth, he gave his Golem a nose. To cut the story short, all that alephed scroll sticking in & out, got up the poor creature’s nose, pardon the pun. Also, one murky dawn, when he had been sent off to fetch some bagels from the all-night bakery in Brick Lane, he met a bunch of carousing Shoggoths on their way back from visiting some friends who inhabit the Forgotten Places under Liverpool St. Station. They introduced the oversized clay chappie to Emiliano, the Rats and bacon butties, and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. The dyslexic rabbi’s still waiting for his bagels…

Families. Love them or leave them, but they’re hard to ignore, innit? That’s what both Wilbur Whateley and the ineffable Shub-Niggurath think at any rate. Here we see young Wilbur a-calling his kith & kin to partake of an evening repast, which may or may not include the odd Alderney cow. And behold! the Shub-Niggurath and some of her many-many-many-many offspring. She’s always desperate to get rid of as many of them as possible, for she has far too many, and she’s forever trying to find placements and/or internships for them, but they are all so badly behaved that they are generally packed back to her before long. Even those who found jobs as blasphemous flute players to the idiot Azathoth didn’t last long and that says all about the little darlings, for good old Az is not only an idiot god but also dumb and DEAF.  Here’s to them. Cheers, kids! Update 01/06/12 The newly-named Gorgonic-Lovecraftian Mining Co. continues to extract the ore. Here be the latest produce. The second one is for my friend Helene. Update 10/06/12 Here, have a couple of Sparts. Salut.

Well, I like mine, anyways. I’ve been re-reading some HPL I hadn’t read in aeons and I find myself enjoying it as much as ever. Just finished The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, which has had the effect of materializing two new members of the Family. Here they be. Behold the ‘Orrid Toad-Like Moon-Creatures -who actually come from and live in the groovy Plateau of Leng, and two of the Shub-Niggurath many Thousand Young. These two have been sent to Leng to perfect their Hideously Blasphemous Flute technique, purportedly under the tutelage and instruction of the said Moon-Creeps. Unfortunately the Moon Toadies have a tendency to spend nearly all of their time bitching and picking fights amongst themselves, and when they’re not doing this, they spend hours boasting to one another about fights they’ve picked with some other creatures/beings/entities/whathaveyous. So the young Shub-Niggureths are not learning shit or perfecting nada de nada. But they are having a wonderful time hunting stray dreamers and hanging them to dry from the upper railings of the Yuff Hostel where they’re stopping. Isn’t the Great Void simply the place to be? Update 16/04/12 The Shoggoths were restless, last night… So they decided to put on one of their delightful historical tableaux vivants for everybody’s benefit and instruction. Recently we have been reading Fernando Garcí­a de Cortázar’s Los mitos de la historia de España. The rubbery darlings were much moved by and taken with the periodically recurring bouts of expulsions from the territories of peoples, groups and individuals that this or that government didn’t like. They chose the exile of  the Jesuits because nobody ever seems to remember them and because they (the Js) seemed to be unrepentant smokers. Nothing if not deep, my Shoggies… Update 17/05/12 Ah bliss! I live again..again. My 15-months old computer conked out for the second time since I bought it. I was computerless for nearly 4 weeks and I nearly went mad. To distract myself from this incipient derangement  I rehabilitated my older machine, who, like the Great Cthulhu, was not dead but merely sleeping in the cellar. And now I have two beasties! Never again will I be left machineless, I swear on the Shoggoths pseudopods. Anyways, here be the latest batch of Lovecraftian loony tunes -this time all devoted to the adorable Mi-Go, plus a Particle Bonus.The Mi-Go series is called The Vermont Triptyc, or Three Vermont Moons. The first one pertains to the (all too brief) adolescent life of the Mi-Go. Like adolescents all over the galaxies, they become quite unruly and prone to mischief,  but they also look truly pretty, with their prawn bodies and butterfly wings. They frequently escape vigilance and off they go  a-fluttering and a-gamboling in the moonligth, scaring the living shits out of the locals -both gentry and peasants alike. The second sheds some light on the allegedly malevolent activities on the crustifungoid darlings and their relations with the natives. The Mi-Go were only trying to help and bring some cheer into the natives’ drab, wretched lives. Ah, uncomprehendid sods! They’ll never know what they missed. (The natives, that is.) The third goes some way into explaining these “unexplained vanishings” of some of the aforementioned locals who “got too close” to the Mi-Go. The fact is that the “disappeared” were mostly farmer’s wives. Having been totally sold to the (extra-curricular) improvement plan proposed by our enterprising Zippy, once they returned from Yuggoth, they squarely refused to go back to their drudgy lives,  crummy old husbands and sullen inbread children, and took up instead with some handsome humanoid alien they met at some social on Yuggoth, or they became particle scientists and landed wonderfully exciting and well paid jobs at CERN. Next post: A Dunwich Tea Party. Stay groovy.