Your Basic Arsenal. If you must have weapons choose them carefully and economically. Don’t buy BAE Systems or Lockheed Martin’s crap. Develop your own. And remember the advice given in The Karate Kid: never use them in anger, only as defence. Or deterrent…:-)

Obituary Special. I was saving this here doodle for the weekend but, hey! life is short. Not for the latest not-at-all-dearly departed, though. At the ripe age of 88, after a lifetime of overachievement in the field of calculated mendacity and sadistic obfuscation, not to mention the spewing of fuse-blowing aphorisms, Donald “Duck. Rumsfeld has finally kicked the bucket, and not a day too soon. But no, I’ll not be cracking open that bottle of Beluga Gold Line I’m hiding under the bed. That I’m saving for Henry Kissinger’s demise (Provided the wee bastard doesn’t manage to outlive me, that is.) Meanwhile let us rejoice in a very small way at a very small piece of good news. Of course there’s plenty more where he came from but every little helps, dontyouknow. So today instead of un po’ di mu’, I love you and leave you with a link to some of his best verbal bollocks. Enjoy.

“There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don’t know..

[And, to quote, imperfectly, either The Two Johns (Bird & Fortune) or Rory Bremner: “Then there are the things we know we knew but we no longer know because we shredded them”]

“If you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger..

https://www.azquotes.com/author/12769-Donald_Rumsfeld

Outrage. aka Pots & Kettles. Honestly folks, I don’t know where are we to find the patience to put up with this heap-a-caca. One grotesque evil-looking prat who broke the lockdown rules to “get his eyes tested. rebuking one putty-faced idiot for snogging his bit on the side; and a lumbering tittering, dribbling cretin spewing bollocks at an Olympics level stalking the national psyche (And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?), whilst out there in the wings the pestilent Patel brute bides her time, waiting for the right moment to stage a coup and take over the whole kit and caboodle. It’s as the wee monster calls it: the Kitchenware Wars; a lot of degraded pots calling a lot of noxious kettles black. It’s a pretty crummy state of affairs when small, insignificant worms and monsters know better what’s what than we do ourselves. I mean enough of us did vote for this lot, didn’t they? And while we’re on the subject of smooching!some women must be really and truly either blind, or desperate, or just plain stupid. Or, indeed, thoroughly venal and self-serving. Who on Earth would want to touch Matt Hancock with the ten foot proverbial, let alone snog him, for crying out loud? The mind boggles! ‘ere, ‘ave a po’m and a spiffing week.

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W.A. Auden. Epitaph on a Tyrant

Solstice 2021. So here we go again. The sun has come and now he’s going again, rousing much distress and indignation amongst the light-loving Fuzzies of the Badlands. I do sympathize with the infuriated one but I’m closer to his more philosophical friend. Some things are as they are and that’s that. Bumba speed and many happy returns, old chap. Have a splendid Solstice, although is wet, cold and miserable. Never mind. Toujours gai! Toujours gai!, even in the midst of dire conditions. Resist, bite and swim against the tide.

Entanglement II. The ineffable (and often unreliable) Wikipedia has this to say about entanglement:

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance.

In this here example we can see two snakes indulging in a spot of said funky interacting, much to the stupefaction and even some degree of alarm of the local fauna. And these guys don’t shock easily, I can tell you.

So, if you decide to go ahead and avail yourselves to the new-found “freedom. of hugging (something I heartily recommend), stir clear of any quantum activity zones, just in case.

Have a spooky, long distance hug, a magnificent weekend and un po’ di mu’.

One-Sided Tiff. There. It’s difficult to pick up a fight with someone who does NOT want to fight. Or can’t be bothered. Have a grand rest of the week.