The title of this post is a misquotation of the English title of Luis Buñuel’s biography, With My Last Breath. Things are not quite so drastic with me, these days, but they are pretty crappy all the same. I seem to be loosing sight at a rate of knots and I feel permanently as weak as a kitten. Etc. Ah, life… It’s just as the Spaniards say: like a chicken coop’s ladder: short and full of shit. Still, it goes on. And the Shoggoths keep on coming. Here be the latest crop. One is this year’s YuleTide card and needs no explanation. The other is a take on an old visual icon. Just like the justly famous “Odesa steps” scene in the wonderful Battleship Potemkin, lots of folks have done a take on it. The Shoggies, bless them, decided to carry the concept one step further. They have taken over a deserted rock just off the coast of Magaluf and hoisted their flag (the only flag I can tolerate, along with the Jolly Roger). They’re still there, hurling scathing insults at the holiday makers and singing them rude songs all night long. You gotta love them (the Shoggies, that is, not the vacationing cattle rabble). Update 15/12/13 In my pursuit of all things Ligottian, I came across (in the delicious Lovecraft e-Zine) a most promissing lead. A woman called Nicole Cushing, whose short story, A Catechism for Aspiring Amnesiacs, featured in a recent issue. Said story totally bowled me over. So much so that, trowing caution to the howling winds, I wrote to her saying how much I’d liked it and where could I get some more of her stuff. Some exchange of emails ensued and, to cut this sory short, she send me a wee chapbook containing some of her earlier produce. I loved it and, for reasons that we don’t need to know here & now, it elicited the two following pics. The minimalist one is a small “thank you note” for her. The second is a more baroque elaboration on the first. And it’s true, anyway. The Larvae have been restless, lately. They miss Imogen and Rudolph awfully. They miss the soireés and the Bach recitals on Hideous Flutes and cracked spinets and the bankster’s balls canapes, poor Things. So, Edwina, always ready & willing to soothe troubled spirits whereever they may be found (when she’s not stirring trouble in all the right places), grabbed her trusty guitar, donned her kick-ass boots, enlisted the aid of the Wee Fishis and an obliging Deep One (Defected) and dropped in on the wretched maggots with her Songs of Soothing Anarchy and old Spanish Republican melodies. The Larvae have somewhat calmed down. There. Don’t you love happy endigs? I do. They’re so very rare… Finally, thank you Mike for that great issue of your mag and thank you Nicole for your stories. Please keep them coming! PS. I may try to find a good link to the Catechism… and if Nicole permits it, I may put a link to her site, Laughing at the Abyss. Just for the name is worth a visit, wouldn’t you say? Update 21/12/13 At last, the Solstice. The light will soon return. By all means, sacrifice a Ben Bernanke or two to the airborne BearThing Clones, si le coeur vous en dit. And on sacrifices and tributes, here’s at last a tribute to that landmark of my adolescence, he who contributed to the basisc weirdness of my soul, MR James, master of hairy creepiness. Here’s to you Monty!