Travellers. Aka Now Voyager 2.0 I don’t know what’s with me and tadpoles. And wee fishes. Nor do I care. I like them and as I never tire of saying, I’d rather have a tadpole in 10 Downing Street that the monster that skulks around there at the moment. And it could be worse. It could be the BojoBozo Creature, Bumba forfend! Grateful for small mercies? (Some bloody mercies!:-( )

Question Mark. For Ash 6.0  I know the anniversary proper is not for another couple of weeks yet but, as I also say, ad nauseam, I must concede, opportunity is as opportunity does. Who knows what state I’ll be in come the day? So, carpe doodle, deep sigh, big Oh Well! and on with life. Here’s looking at your subatomic particles, kiddo. We still miss you.

Egypt2S. aka Bonding with ‘Bots. Owing to her links with shady creatures of dubious reputation sporting animal heads and such like irregularities, she’s not exactly Miss Popularity around the Delta. But the feral robots love her. No, I don’t know why, either. Feral robots are peculiar at best and highly volatile if pestered with trivial inquisitions.

Angry Alien. It’s not nice to send your children to be slaughtered in some distant land to defend your avaricious dreams of empire, then wrap them in the flag and commemorate their loss with great displays of ersatz sentiment and buckets of crocodile tears. And almost immediately after send a new batch of cannon fodder to fight your next imbecile imperialist gamble!
There.
Something new:
Not a fan of Kipling by any stretch of the imagination but in this case he got it so right:
If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
Something old:
Malditas sean las guerras y los canallas que las apoyan.
Julio Anguita

YouTuber. Trust Rosie to get the right (or wrong?) end of the stick when it comes to nurturing cultural priorities. That’s my girl!

Polemic Tadpoles. For Los Marismeños & Paco de Lucí­a
Fickleness is not the preserve of human beings. Now you know.
And in case you fancy a spot of excellent rumbitas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9eRUBBQxo8&start_radio=1&list=RDU9eRUBBQxo8&t=70

Splatter Bugs. Shock. Horror. Misery, gloom and doom. I’ve got a touch of the dooms! The clocks go back today. Tomorrow, by 5pm it’ll be as dark and murky as Henry Kissinger’s soul. So, to keep the spirits up I invoked whichever jolly entity might be nearest me to come and correct my dejection and lo! the SplatterBugs appeared. I’m a lucky bleeder, I am.
On the subject of this summertime saver caper! I hope the EU gets rid of it before we leave it. It’s total piffle, saves nothing at all and just upsets my rhythms and the imaginary little ones, who can be awfully sensitive.
As for that Brexit Ultra-Nonsense! Oh, don’t get me started.
Have a nice dark-time season, folks.

Shoggy Evolution. The Shoggoths are ten years old this autumn. They burst into my life at the end of a particularly interesting October in 2008, evolved from a Japanese frog that then became my third Cthulhu. But the Great Old Dreamer subsequently acquired a more traditional shape, with tentacles and claws and wings and all things properly Cthulhian.
The Shoggies were in them very brief early days cast in the role of minions of the catnapper of R’lyeh, but almost immediately became self-regulating and took a life of their own, which event delighted me no end. Mind you, it helped that I had re-read At the Mountains of Madness again and finally made up my mind that the Shoggoths had had such a bad press, up to that moment, because H.P. Lovecraft was barking up the wrong tree, the silly old xenophobic bugger.
To cut a long story short, the Shoggoths were re-cast in the part of heroes. My kind of heroes: freedom fighters, rebel slaves, free radicals; a regular bunch of protoplasmic Maroons one and all.
They’ve come a long way since then. They have established their uniquely personal world and taken over mine. They have made art and music, written poetry, developed the Shoggy Brotherhood Tango and invented their own highly unorthodox version of Sumo wrestling. They have morphed into ill-behaved sub-atomic particles, starred in remakes and alternative versions of several movies, including Battleship Potemkin and Spartacus and posed for famous paintings like Velazquez’s Las Meninas and Goya’s Los fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo. Rosie has even written a sequel to Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?
They also triggered a stampede of Lovecraftian spoofy pastiches (collectively renamed Myffos), so that not only Shoggies emerged but also Cthulhus, Shub-Nigguraths, Old Ones, Deep Ones, Yithians, a Mother Hydra, a GorgoMormo and a Yog-Sothoth or two. They have been the best compost my mind’s garden has ever known. They continue to grow and multiply, with no signs of exhaustion in sight.
Happy birthday, my rubbery darlings.
Scribe’s Note. As well as the customary birthday card, I break my own rule of never posting anything longer than the mini rants that often attend my doodles and I’m posting a link to the rejuvenated version of an uplifting, stirring account of how the beloved monsters came into my life, all those ages ago, in another time and another place and when the wench I then was is now not exactly dead but certainly closer to the grave that she’s ever been. Sic transit gloria Gorgon. 🙂
The story so far.
http://www.gorgs.co.uk/gossip-column/
Plus:
The full graphic version.
http://www.gorgs.co.uk/a-brief-history-of-shoggoths-first-cycle/

Ivan the Horrible. Aka The Russian Plot (La trama rusa.)
Here, have a sort of anti-saint to pray to or curse fluently whenever anything goes wrong in your lives. For it’s now official: Russia in general and Putin in particular are responsible for all the ills that plague this feckless world. This, and that “burden of proof. or “innocent until proven guilty. are things of the past (along with privacy and freedom of speech). Our dear leaders have usurped rights and privileges once the strict preserve of emperors or popes and now, when they speak they speak ex catedra. So, if they say that the Russians did it, that’s good enough. Why bother with evidence and forensics and CSIs when you can just pontificate as you please and the people, or at least the Guardian, the BBC and El Paí­s, will say Amen?
I said that this Russophobia saga would run and run and run, didn’t I?
Have a grand weekend!
Love:
Cassandra
Lobby. There’s a new Wise Old Snake in the hood. Very powerful, very big medicine. The frail webby tadpoles have come to plead her support and a favour or two. Make Exxon Mobil vanish without a trace, I shouldn’t wonder.

In the Forest. Oops Ibn Niggurath, our fearless traveller and adventurer, has hit the road again with his faithful companion, Meena the Wee Worm. Today they have reached the forest of the Numinous Muffin Trees where they’ve come upon sundry residents of that most sheltering and comforting of jungles: four refugees from the Great Catalan Catastrophe, an itinerant Unhappy Frog, the twin sister of the White Bird of Moderate Doom and one of the many wise Sneaks (-not-snakes) that are to be found habitually in any place where subtle and sensitive creatures relocate to escape the horrors of End Days Crapitalism and its huge discontents. Meena thinks they should stay a while, as the escalivada at the local inn is unsurpassed and the scrambled Shantak Bird’s eggs ain’t half bad either.

Vindication. Last night the monsters were restless. I could hear them shuffling around in the cellar, muttering indistinct mutterings, so I went down to see what was going on and to suggest some hot chocolate to soothe their savage breasts. The New Arrival was going into one, that’s all. In the end I made coffee for everyone and joined the bash. We all like the New Arrival very much.
This is for the Chagossians, who never ever again will see their beloved Diego Garcia and will die of broken hearts in some shoddy shanty town in Mauritius. And for the Australian Aborigines -or First Australians, take your pick; they still are being slowly but relentlessly exterminated as you read this.
https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2018/01/12/chagos-islanders-bill
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/john-pilger-indigenous-australian-families
https://www.treatyrepublic.net/content/ongoing-aboriginal-genocide-apartheid-australia