Cyclop Twins. aka The New Subnormal, part 33 ¾: Compliance is Freedom.
NB. The System (aka The Man, aka Them, aka The Masters of the Universe), really doesn’t personally need to punish you for your unorthodoxy. That task has been outsourced to the Little Servants of the New Canon, the innumerable groups and grouplets that police though and attitude and will cancel you if they don’t like what you think, never mind saying what you think.
Weekend soooon come. Have a splendid one.

Nostra Signora dei Gatti. This is a memorial and homage for Aura, the Spanish lynx that brought back the species from the brink of extinction. Well done girl! May your particles keep on purring and growling and generally bringing joy to the Void.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/10/iberian-lynx-aura-that-helped-save-species-from-extinction-dies-aged-20
https://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/naturaleza/muere-aura-lince-iberica-mas-longeva-espana-que-tenia-900-descendientes_19084
https://www.eldiario.es/andalucia/sostenibilidad/muere-aura-ejemplar-lince-iberico-longevo-programa-conservacion_1_9695014.html
I further dedicate this to don Attilio El Caffarenito, the famous cat chronicler.
I’ve been meaning to do something like this for nearly two decades -better late than ever, I daresay. Even a devout atheo-agnostic needs a god of sort to pray to in moments of dire megrims or to thank for, say, England not winning the Euro-cup or things like that. Most of the time this role falls to the delicious Bumba and his exquisite Mother, but Our Lady of the Pussycats also is a pretty powerful juju. I recommend her to all cat lovers. She doesn’t require any burnt offering or any other visible forms of propitiation but she quite likes Irish coffee, in case you feel like treating her. Also, being kind to stray kittens is a form of worship which she very much appreciates.
Have a purrrrrrfectly furball-free week. And un po’ di feline mu’, of course.
https://middermusic.com/songs-about-cats/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eobhM1_4qv8
https://genius.com/The-lovin-spoonful-henry-thomas-lyrics

Enanos y Cabezudos. Because I’ll have no truck with giants. There.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processional_giant
On a totally uncharacteristic impulse, I looked up quotations about birthdays. Most of them where vapidly inspirational. I acknowledge, I get easily bored and can’t stand inspirational stuff either, but I liked this one by Mark Twain:
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Nice one, Samuel! I wish I could live up to it. Unfortunately the matter is becoming so rebelliously crappy that it’s beginning to affect the mind. That is, I grow progressively stroppy. But, hey! Who cares? I’m still all the way with Mehitabel.
Have a fab weekend and un po’di mu’ (and dance, look you!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCl6DzH2Ggs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz9Kc935EyE

Stalked. A spectre is haunting the world -the spectre of fragmented uniformity. All the powers of this old planet have entered into an unholy alliance to bring about the universal triumph of this noxious spirit.
It’s s nowhere and everywhere and it’s fast sinking into every consciousness, sharp or dull, and erasing any trace of resistance and thus any prospect of freedom from The Canon.
Voices cry out in the wilderness, where the indignant desert birds scream and call their love calls and sound the alarm to no avail.
Subtlety is being bred out of the species and soon will be utterly eradicated. Before that it will be declared elitist ergo taboo.
Meanwhile nuance and meaning are being turned into objects of scorn and condemnation and any time soon they will be criminalized.
Thus the apotheosis of Millán-Astray’s “¡Muera la inteligencia! ¡Viva la Muerte!” will come about and reign supreme and hold dominion over the entirety of mankind.
Along with the Red Death, of course.:-)
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Have a spiffing weekend, when it comes, if it comes.

With a Heavy Heart. Julian Beck said, back when: “We live in a system that manufactures sorrow.” And also: “…uprising is the reversal of the system, and revolution is the turning of tides.”
Personally I never cared much for Mr. Beck, whom I regarded as a bit of a tosser and not at all trustworthy but hey! even the village idiot can come out with pearls of perceptive wisdom now and then. And he was dead right on that one. We live inside and under a system that breeds nothing but solid wretchedness and delusional happiness (aka Happyness). Oh, well…
A small word on broken hearts. Mine has broken scores of times, and I’ve put it back together as many. By now it’s mostly superglue so it no longer breaks. But, by gum! it does get seriously heavy on almost daily basis. The malice, the dishonesty, the cruelty that The System excretes constantly and relentlessly is bad enough. Lately, though, what truly really gets me is the stupidity. And the sheer ugliness of it all. Thank Bumba for the foxes and the neighbour’s cats!
Waiting for the tides to turn, have a sponditious weekend. And un po’ di mu’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wTpa0A299I

Into the Vortex. Yes. Of course. By all means. Do. Fragment yourselves into a myriad sub, sub-sub and sub-sub-sub grouplets. Defend your tiny ideological patches ferociously, to the death if necessary. Break up with all those heretics that don’t agree with you 100% and hound them down till you can stand proud over their miscreant carcasses. Feel splendidly virtuous about it. Enhance your inner inquisitor and massage your self-self-esteem. And then obey, unquestioningly, the most trivial directive from Them Above. And when you and your neighbours, and your neighbour’s neighbours are all mince meat, then it’ll be time to integrate with Azathoth, who’s already ascending from the depths of its own hideous pandemonium and…coming to get you.
Divide and be ruled.

Totem Pole 2. Follow the wee totem’s advice: make a stink; protest; object; debunk; expose; whatever. Do it loudly and clearly. Plenty targets out there:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/math-professor-claims-equation-2-2-4-reeks-of-white-supremacist-patriarchy
Or, at the other end of the idiot rainbow:
https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/21/laurence-fox-claims-sikh-soldier-sam-mendes-war-epic-1917-forcing-diversity-viewers-12093965/
Have a spiffing weekend.

Influencers. Navigating The Grid is never a cushy number; or free of peril. It’s riddled with all sort of vacuous, two-brain-cells-and-no-synapse, insipid but nevertheless insidious creatures that will try to sell you stuff you don’t need, want or even fancy, and ideas that should have been dead and buried centuries ago. They will also try and instil in you a feeling of “missing out”, a state of being that seems to be one of the main transgressions in our increasingly amalgamated End Days Crapitalist so-called society. Try and ignore them. Sharpen your cynicism. Beef up your middle finger. Wear Orphic earplugs. And take a Shoggoth with you as a travelling companion. Oh, and a teddy bear. (If you are teddy-deprived you can write to us and we’ll send you one post-haste via Byakhee Express.) No one should be without a Teddy. Ever.
Weekend soooon come. Have a good one. To brighten it, as a bonus ball, have some pandas being extremely silly and terminally cute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQiAqc1MI8

Open Spiral 2. aka The Bubble Eaters. These here be the Bubble Eaters. They eat bubbles. Yes, really.

Butterfly Dancer. Just like the Fish Dancer of old, old days, this one dances butterflies. Not dances with, nor she makes the little fluttering darlings dance. She dances them. And the butterflies just love it. The Sun, on the other hand thinks the whole activity a frivolous display of…fucknowswhat. He’s in rather a bad mood lately, poor mite. Never mind the Sun, though. I’ve half a mind to ask the swingy young miss to come and bloody dance me. I could do with a bit on mystical boogy-woogy.