Winged Grub. aka The Grub’s Lament. Once more, let the little ones tell you a thing or two about cooperation, connections and survival. Stay sane.
Small Good News
Cummings Is Goings. aka Cumming a cropper. I’m still pinching myself in utter disbelief but there you have it. He’s gone. Ding dong the beast is dead! Nice. Get the vodka out of the freezer and animate the will to fight. Still, do keep an eye on Her Indoors, the Symonds creature. Anyone willing to shag Boris Johnson to the point of actually breeding with him is not to be trusted. Eyes peeled, comrades.
Remember Remember
Amnesia Sunday. aka Lest We Wake Up ! and remember (if we ever knew) the real phoney reasons and mendacious justifications for that most wasteful, unnecessary and criminal of wars. Let the sentimentality and the cheesiness lull you into a sense of saccharine virtue and snug ignorance. Above all, do NOT connect this kind of events with what’s going on in the factual world outside them; and please do not notice that the show was barely on the road when one of our top brasses was already trying to boyscout the nation into being prepared for WWIII owing to the Chinese Virus and Putin’s interference.
This year I’ll refrain form quoting Wilfred Owen in full for the Nth time. Just this: that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori only as long as the moring is being done by you and your children and not by Them and Their children -and even those don’t take survival precedence over Them Themselves; remember Abraham.
PS. If you thought that these yearly rants are indication that I don’t care for those poor buggers who died in that war, and all the other stupid wars of empire bickering, who died only to fertilize the ground for the next conflict, think again. I do care. Deeply and incandescently. It also scares the living shits out of me that that generation bough, lock, stock and stinking barrel, the lies, the propaganda and the mis/disinformation fed them by their elders; just as the troops sent to kill, rape and main in Iraq believed that Saddam has tons of WMD because The Blair Witch and the Guardian said so. Bumba alone knows what this generation will buy. 🙁
Have a spiffing week.
Apocalypso Now
Phantom Fireflies. One of these days a Dies irae the size of a small moon is going to fall on our heads like a sodding ton of bricks. And then both the black sheep and the black-sheep-shooters will run around in panic and despair and there’ll be much gnashing of teeth, although not for long, for the end will be very, very painful but quick.
And all the while, the Meat Puppets in No. 10 and its peripheral add-ons are having a laugh and just going with the flow, or, as they call it, “the scientists..
And the good WeThePeople wear their little mostly-useless masks and stay home after dark and buy stuff from Amazon. And in their plentiful spare time they indulge in whatever degree of witch-hunting they can and call the dissenters all sort of unpleasant names. Torches and pitchforks and public Auto-da-fés in Hyde Park next, I daresay.
Welcome to the New Subnormal (soon to be Sub-Human). Have a lovely rest-of-the-week. And un po’ di mu’. Long time no un po’ di mu’! 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dies.irae.ogg
Te tengo ke ver llorar, descalcito por las calles primo, por lo ke tu me has hecho pasar.
The Latest New Subnormal
Hound of Tindalos & Little Fox. aka Dogged Fury. Practically paralytic with rage and virtually mute with irritation. Vex to the core. Annoyed beyond endurance. Yet we must endure and Beckett the storm best we can. Since I cannot speak, let the hounds howl and the little foxes gnaw at and spoil the vines of The Man. Resist. Bite. Chew. Have a nice week.
Fables & Reflections
Entanglement. Once upon a time there was an old lady who wandered the galaxy on a spiky asteroid in the company of two chaos-based drones. One day she came across two beings embroiled in a deep mess of antagonisms. They appeared to be suffering much from this condition and as she could see that the tangle could be easily disentangled she offered the creatures to help them do so. But the whatnots had been in that state for so long that they no longer knew anything else. Thus they freely abused the old woman, called her every name under the stars and told he to mind her own business. The old girl took off as fast as her beautiful asteroid could carry her. Now she lives in Andromeda.
This is a modest tribute to Augusto Monterroso and his wondrous mini stories. I include here a quick, pedestrian translation of my favourite, as well as the Spanish version. And thank, you, Señor Botijo, for alerting me to don Augusto’s presence.
The Black Sheep.
In a far away country there once was a black sheep. She was shot.
A century later the repentant herd erected an equestrian statue of her that looked very well in the park.
Thus, in successive ages, every time there appeared a black sheep, it was swiftly shot, so that future generations of common or garden sheep could exercise themselves in the art of sculpture.
La oveja negra.
En un lejano país existió hace muchos años una Oveja negra. Fue fusilada.
Un siglo después, el rebaño arrepentido le levantó una estatua ecuestre que quedó muy bien en el parque.
Así, en lo sucesivo, cada vez que aparecían ovejas negras eran rápidamente pasadas por las armas para que las futuras generaciones de ovejas comunes y corrientes pudieran ejercitarse también en la escultura.
Dissent
Growing Pains. Listen to the wee monster’s appeal: Please help. Anybody. Your neighbour, your aunty Betty, your beloved, your mates, the sad old geezer down the road. Anyone. Any way you can, no matter how small. As often as you can. Spread understanding and graciousness. Help counteract the tide of nastiness that’s beginning to choke the spirit out of us all. Don’t do “social. distancing, call things by their name, not what the Guardian or the Daily Mail or, Bumba forfend!, the BBC tells you to call them. Stay sane and spread sanity. Have a lovely week. (I know, its a tall order but still, we must try.)
More Moon Maidens
Lunatic. This is for Leo. Por que? Por guapa, por simpática, por canaria. Porque amas los animales y las flores. Porque te gustan los churros. Porque lees, aunque no leamos los mismos libros. Y porque hasta hace poco tu nombre de guerra era Lunática en la Luna. Por muchos años, salerosa!
Look see, another Moon Maiden. She follows her moons only and doesn’t give a toss for trends, fashions or mainstream media. She has her own mobile bubbles and two small bearish bodyguards. She will travel. She takes small commissions to and from remote corners of the galaxy. Her bear-like companions sing rude re-workings of Gilbert & Sullivan on demand and the bubbles make a mean chicken soup in dire emergencies.
Sweet Unity
Divided. Here goes yet another of those evergreen, ever-useful All-Purpose Gripe Indicators. Masked Crusaders v “Irresponsible Evil Terrorist. Wot Don’t Mask? Gender Bender Poor Wee Victims v Mind Your Own Business Partisans? Black v White? Black v Non-Compliant Black? White v Blacks, and Jews and Women and Anybody We Don’t Like? Get Fucked By Trump Coterie v Get Fucked By Biden/Harris Binomial Cabal? You v The World? Anything goes. As long as we forget that united we have half a chance and the way thing are going, Towards Mince Meat, we are fast buggered. Go on. Be a devil. Go hug your neighbour. And stay sane.
Ramblings
Sad Garden. aka En un berenjenal*. Questing for Bumba knows what, she’s wandered into the saddest, spikiest garden in the ‘hood. Nothing but fretworks and tall grasses, and only two small miasmas for company. The spiny weeds already have started infiltrating her savage breast. I have dispatched the tiny Savant Onions to offer some help and guidance or, failing that, some superlatively silly jokes to cheer her up and counteract the oppressive effect of the thorny weeds. We wish her the best of luck. Who knows, perhaps the small miasmas are friendly, too, and willing to guide her out of that wilderness she’s got herself into. Avanti popolo!
Spanish lesson for the weekend.
*Meterse en un berenjenal, Sp. Colloquial. To get one self into a pickle. To bite more that one can chew.
The quotation in the pic is from an old Soleá de la Serneta, sung by La Niña de los Peines. In the same song she also sang:
Fui piedra y perdi mi centro
y me arrojaron al mar
y a fuerza de mucho tiempo
mi centro vine a encontrar.
There. Have two links to that masterpiece of cante viejo:
Por mucho pan nunca mal año, as we always say in my neck of the woods (or spiny gardens, regardless).
Have a sponditious weekend.