Gorgs Graphic Souk

Shock. Horror, gloom & doom. Away for a few days. Off to dreaded Barcelona. Unwilling and unready but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, worse luck. I just pray to the sweet, patient mother of Bumba that I’ll be able to resist the irresistible urge to incinerate yellow ribbons. Or estelades. Or that red & yellow rag with the chicken in it. Or any other flag, for that matter. See you in a few days. PS. The quotation is from Lorca. There.

The Bug’s Lament. Here, as a free public service, is one of those useful, All-purpose Grievance Indicator tools I love so much. Just enter your gripe of choice along an imaginary line, anywhere you fancy, and you’re off!
Brexshit anyone? Incoming Spanish elections? Carles Puigdemont’s brain .“or lack thereof? Turning Point’s tactics? The choices are endless, alas.
There’ll be another one along very soon so you’ll have even more choice of j’accuse gizmos. Since choices in general are getting fewer and meaner, I dare say this is better than nothing .“if not much, I must admit.
Some info on Turning Point (know thy enemy!):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Point_USA#Turning_Point_UK
And one to mark the passing of a very nice man:
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2019/894-dump-the-guardian.html
As I was just saying!choices are getting scarce. Farewell, Jeremy.
And this is for the pure joy of it. To remind myself that people can still be kind for the shear sake of being kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOr2O0FfpT8

Anti-Valentine 2019. There must be an irony somewhere in the fact that when I’m in the Great Dumps the best solace comes from monsters, oddballs, dissidents, mutineers and fauna of that ilk. Thus with this year’s Anti-Mawk  Festival. Too despondent to organize the usual alternative merry shindig, I was thinking of cancelling it when the Renegade Uncouth Larvae of the Final Void crawled out of the inter-dimensional woodwork and came to me with a maaaaarvelous idea: Why not have an Universal Day of Lamentation, Detestation and All-purpose Kvetching instead? See what I mean? Such a spiffing notion.
So, that’s what we’ll be having. The event will take place in and around the pond at Vicky Park. (In, literally, just in case the Deep Ones wish to attend .“Bumba knows they have good cause to grumble, poor things) As usual, you’re all invited. You’ll all have free access to food, drink, drugs, shows, poetry recitals, communal defenestrations, workshops, effigy burnings and anything that might be going. This year, as a bonus, there’ll be a competition for the Best Carping of 2018. Prize yet to be decided but the toss is between a Garrote Florido (Flowery Club) and a fortnight cruise for two to the slimy canals that coil around the fringes of Unknown Kadath.
The gaudeamus, or rather the lamentates, will take place tomorrow, Wednesday 13^th. Time to be advised, in Lemurian code, via the Today’s program, just to aggravate John Humphys or whichever State Stodge is presenting it. Keep your ears peeled, folks and see you all there, I hope.
Here, to put you in the mood, have a link to one of Tom Lehrer’s best on the subject of these ghastly “Whatever Day/Week/Year/Century. capers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vm-8eXFgqA

Warning. Transgression is the new law. Edgy is the new norm. Submission is the new rebellion. Internalized masochism rules supreme. The New Doormat is the new heroine. McSex is best. All is topsy-turvy and “we’re loving it.. 
A recent(ish) survey on relationships in Spain amongst the 15/29 year olds revealed that a staggering average of 35% of women saw as perfectly normal/legit to have their boyfriends control their phones and social media. The ration of young males was even higher. I have no reason to expect that the picture this exposes is much better in our “enlightened. latitudes.
Make of this what you will. Meanwhile, as a pre-anti-Valentine card & rant, here’s a modest offering to all the women out there who still refuse to bow down to the new orthodoxies.
Keep the two insolent fingers at the ready, girls, lest you find yourselves, in a not-too-distant future, living in a reality that will make The Handmaid’s Tale look like a romantic picnic. Pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen will be the least of your worries.
https://elpais.com/politica/2015/01/27/actualidad/1422363044_535263.html
https://elpais.com/diario/2008/06/16/sociedad/1213567206_850215.html
https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/social-action-advocacy-and-campaigns/research/girls-attitudes-survey/

Red Teddy. For Venezuela.
Postcard from the icy outer marches.
You know that these are truly bad times when a big strapping MegaTeddy goes around carrying teddy bears of his own.
Indeed, these are times beyond awfulness, what with Brexit looming and the Imperial Mafias going in full tilt for a hard coup d’état in Venezuela.
Another Chile, another Guatemala, another Panama, another country that refused to bow down to the Masters of the Universe is about to be utterly destroyed, as opposed to merely being mortally destabilized over decades.
The vassal states, the European indentured peons of the God-appointed Owners of All the Earth, in a prodigious display of grovelling cocksuckery not seen since the grotesque invasion of Iraq, have all joined in the fun & games and piled up fire, brimstone and wilfully ill-informed condemnation upon (and in the case of our very own Vatican City of London, stolen the gold of) the legitimate government of a country that never was a threat to anybody. All except Italy, Bumba help us. And that’s why times are so bloody appalling, because the only dissident voice in that deadly chorus line is that of rabid fascists like the current Italian body politic.
The Empire is in a very bad shape, no doubt: paranoid, delusional, severely injured and increasingly discredited. The doctrines of Exceptionalism and Full Spectrum Dominance are tottering. The cracks are becoming trenches. And about time, too. But let us never-ever forget that there are few things more dangerous than a wounded, cornered or merely endangered big brute. And prepare accordingly. Предупрежден – значит вооружен, as a good friend of mine said once.
Here’s a very nice, very illuminating link to the current Venezuelan golpista shenanigans. (Thank you, B.!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fV-C1Ag5sI&feature=youtu.be&bpctr=1548617177
And:
https://www.thenation.com/article/venezuela-coup-guaido-maduro/
PS. Since YouTube has recently joined in the ever-expanding Circus of Censorship of Heretics, you’ll have to sign in to access this lovely doc. But is well worth it.
http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/golpista

Bitching Aliens II Ah, the horrors, the horrors of Identity Politics. This ghastly Divide & Rule game conceived and sponsored by the likes of George Soros that has produced nothing better than division, discord and misery for all and sundry. This most clever of disruptive tools that camouflages itself as a tolerance and human rights issue but in fact has engendered pestilent and doctrinaire Victimhood League Tables. “My suffering is greater than yours! I’m more oppressed than you! Your ideas offend my sensibilities! I’m a real victim, you’re just kvetching! Spain steals from us! Make Britain great again!. And so on. It has all but given quasi-oracular status to con artists like Jordan Peterson and created farcical entities such as the Radical Feminists Against Transgender Men Using Women’s Toilets crusade .“or something very much of that ilk. And it’s giving no signs of declining, on the contrary. Look, even the normally placid and harmony-loving aliens from the planet Zoofoos are at it. Nit-picking like dopes over perceived privileges and imaginary wrongs. We all hope it’s only a temporary outbreak of mental derangement, brought about by excessive watching the wrong stuff on YouTube. We have also sent for Manolito, the Hardy Perennial Alien from the same planet. We are very sorry to interrupt his much-deserved holiday but this is an emergency. Meanwhile, let us all gather our tools and fight back this grisly epidemic best we can.

Befuddled Fish. All through this Brexshit caper I’ve kept aloof and quiet and on the wings. What’s the point of fighting the Inevitable? The Inevitable being, in this sorry ass case, the facts that: a) this country’s become a caricature of itself, b) that is run by morons and c) that “the people. don’t know their own welfare from a hole in the ground. So, next chapter will be the total, wholesale and foreverandever occupation by the WTO despotic doctrines, the compulsory buying your gas from the fucking fracking companies from across the Black Pond and the dancing to the demented music that the maniacs that pull the strings of the whole caboose make.  Bye-bye NHS (this time for real & for good), hello even-more austerity. Well? Someone has to pay for all the bloody money spent in divorce bureaucracy and bribes and jaunts and diners and whatnots. And it ain’t gon’ be the filthy rich, that’s for sure. That’s how they stay filthy rich, innit? Anyways, the Fish are really pissed off.

4Tiles4Yazz. And here be a little something for a friend who’s having not-too-good a time. Cheer up, baby! Things might pick up.

A Rosa Is A Rosa. 100 years ago today she and her poor comrade Karl Liebknecht were captured, tortured for hours on end and finally murdered and disposed of by the Freikorps’ bastard hell-hounds. She was shot and thrown into the Landwerh Canal; he was driven to the middle of some godforsaken where or other and shot in the back.
The ineffable Wikipedia has this to say: Although the circumstances were disputed by the perpetrators at the time, the Freikorps, commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst later claimed, “I had them executed.
Nice one, Waldemar.
Today nobody remembers Captain Pabst. Rosa and Karl, on the other hand, live in our memories and in our hearts. I raise my glass (and my fist) to you both.

Mourning Ghosts. My love of all things Japanese (minus Shinzō Abe) began, more or less, with a film that bowled me over when I was 18 or thereabouts: Masaki Kobayashi’s Seppuku (called Harakiri in the West). I was gobsmacked and in love. Shortly after this revelation I saw Kwaidan and the love became a passion. Recently I managed to find a full version of Kwaidan on YouTube and my love was renewed and refreshed and re!whatever. This is my tribute to him, and to it, and to all the wonders that Japan has given the world of the arts. Doumo arigato gozaimasu, Kobayashi san. May your elementary particles spread endless joy across the continuum.

Bulerí­as. I think is a good strategy to start a new year on a frivolous, cheerful note. There’ ll be plenty of time and opportunity later on for the bile and the rage and the apocalyptic rants. So here goes this little harmless vignette which I dedicate to my mate Zoraida (aka arsaytoma), who loves Flamenco and whose drawings cheer me up no end, whenever we can get them. And to each and every Flamenco singer that’s ever filled my heart with delight. Viva la grasia!
The text translates as:
Little birds, finches, what have you eaten?
Soup from the pot and water from the stream.
And here’s a wee link to the Bulerí­as in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_foBP_AX9E&app=desktop