Questions. Great big bubbles of unreason have appeared in the Continuum. Very big. Very bad. Very refractory. We’ve had to send for Toussaint, the bijou anti-hero, to come and distract them with deliberately futile attempts to reason with them as we despatch a mixed platoon of Shoggoths and Penguins to undermine the bubbles’ base of ops. (And nick their   reserves of Austrian chocolate while they’re at it. Waste not, want not, as we say in the Anti-Grid.) Scribe’s Note: The Shoggies don’t much care for fine chocolate -they prefer Smarties,the silly buggers- but the Penguins and I do. Deeply.

On a completely unrelated vein, I came across this line on Andy Weir’s Artemis. I liked it so much I thought I’d share it with you: “On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?”

And to gladden the eye: Blues! Blues! I need blues! Gimme blues!

Mad Monk. Whatever it is he’s trying to do, I wouldn’t let him. I know bad news when I see it.

Mermaid B&W. Here’s a lass who will never-everever need to add her name to any “#TimesApp. or “#MeToo!MeToo!. mob. She has her own interesting little ways of dealing with assholes. The baby Kraken keeps its musings to itself, unlike the philosophically inclined Black Sole, who is experiencing a fleeting spell of Noventayochismo*. (It’ll pass.)

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/noventayochismo

Anti-Valentine 2018. Love has always been a scarce commodity. I mean real love, not blind lust (nice though it is), or the nature-ordained and equally blind impulse to reproduce and care for any ensuing offspring (useful and pleasant as it may be), or greed (neither nice nor useful). Or sentimentality, ersatz romance, religious fervour, or any other of the socially implanted concepts that are peddled as love. One of our most un-favourite mawk-fest approaches so here we are again with our yearly anti-Valentine carnival. We shall NOT be told when or where or how or who to love! Nor shall be persuaded to buy red roses or Belgian chocolates. We do that all year ’round if we feel like it. We dance where our hearts find us.   But we would entreat you to love your friends and loved ones, if you’re lucky enough to have any, also all year ’round and to hell with invented traditions. Look after them and be good to one another. And spare a kind thought for them who don’t stand a chance of being loved, ever, either on February 14^th or December 25^th or any other time of the year: the Palestinians, the Australian Aborigines, the Yemeni, the Syrians, the Libyans, the murdered women the world over who will never be able to join the “timesup. herd because their time was cut short by some imbecile with a minute brain, a small dick and a massive ego.   The shindig is free for all, no booking needed. Usual times and places (you know the score by now). Goodie bags at the same dead drops as last year but contents to be a surprise. A free copy of Origins of the Family and a “Well Done Laurie Love!. badge to all attending. Free food, drink and shows. This year the Shoggoths have promised to surpass themselves in the spectacle department. As well as the Bach concerts and poetry recitals etc. they are offering a new variety of tableaux: neither vivant nor mourant, they call them tableaux zombie. They refuse to provide more details but, knowing them as I do, I can well imagine. I can’t wait. 🙂

A Sneak. I have one thing in common with Donald “The Quack. Trump: we both despise the soi-disant liberal media; and yet one thing in common with the self-proclaimed free press: we both despise Trump. The Strumpet despises the media and the media despises The Trumper. And I despise both and, were they to know me, they’d despise me. Funny thing this contempt caper, innit? Iain Banks has a rather witty rant about this merry-go-round of disdain, somewhere in Consider Phlebas. If I could be bothered I’d find & quote the full passage, but I can’t. So here’s good old Odile with her take on the subject. This here doodle, by the way, is for ALL of them toxic, mendacious, equivocating and brain-scrambling mediatic outlets but, for one day only, I dedicate it as a specific reference/ad hominem attack to El Paí­s, because it has been specially pissing me off, of late, but which I still rate above the The Guardian because it carries a cartoon by Forges, the One & Only, on regular basis. That deep.

The Dreamers3.2 Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue; never mind the sixpence in my shoe .“for one thing, they don’t make them anymore. This is for Ursula K. Le Guin, who died peacefully in her bed a few days ago, aged 88, after a long life of dreaming and dreaming damned well. Ah, yes, the girl could dream like nobody’s business. So here is my tribute wot contains all the four ingredients for an alchemical marriage that happened a while back, when I was young and foolish and good Si-Fi starved. Borges said once that nobody likes owing anything to their contemporaries. This is, if it is at all, rubbish. We all owe lots of things to lots of people so it’s a waste of time liking the fact or not. Personally I rather owe to of my age group (or near-age group) that to some centuries old geezer whose ideas were dodgy to begin with but yet linger, and linger, and liiiiiiinger (oy vey!), instead of laying quietly in the intellectual elephant’s graveyard where they belong. In fact, for this modest loving homage, I’ve borrowed from myself, look, you! Bye bye, Ursy. Fare thee well, give my regards to the sub-atomic particles and see you soon(ish).

Here, this’s got everything he would have liked: Sun, Moon, wee stars, olive trees, cerros and, more to the point, gloworms, gusanitos luminosos or luciernagas, for short. The only thing missing is a river but you can imagine it meandering its way to the sea, now wild now peaceful, just behind the hills. Here’s to you, me old dead china!

A Singular Mother. Young Oolaloo is introducing her latest offspring to its sisters (the Winged Worm is adopted). The kids are delighted but somewhat puzzled as to the nature of the new arrival, as is Oolaloo herself. She conjectures that the father might, just might, mind you, be that good-looking merman she met at a very nice party at the GorgoMormo’s; or perhaps that brilliant and forensically clever Deep One with whom she spend a grand weekend at the Mother Hydra B&B last time she visited her friends in Y’ha-nthlei. She’s not bothered, really. Determined to emulate the Shub-Niggurath in the family unplanning department and equally firm on the eugenics aspect of her endeavour, she chooses as different fathers for her children as she can, if always within the limits of her rather fussy and elitist taste in men, naturally. But as long as they are healthy, of good stock, bright and good looking and not totally psychotic, as far as she’s concerned they’ll do. And on my usual principle of Por mucho pan…have a B&W version. Life is short.

The Dark Side. If you though that being a monster is all a bed of roses and an endless picnic, think again.

Aliens Too. aka A Stranger Here Myself. They came. They saw. They couldn’t believe their eyes. They are now touring the underground caves of Crapston Parva. They report that the  psychic leeches that dwell in the subterranean streams that link the caves are indeed a pain in the neck, but nowhere near as offensive as the natives they encountered in the Beautiful  South of  England.