PrimaevalRed. Por mucho pan… and all that. ere, ‘ave a slightly more optimistic version. And remember this:
There is, in fact, no way of dealing with these persons; they are the world’s masters, laying the ponderous weight of their foolish and heavy minds upon all subtleties, delicacies and discriminations to flatten them, talking very loudly, firmly and fatuously the while through their hats, and through their mouthpiece, the press. There is no dealing with them; it is they who make England, and indeed the world, what it is.
Rose Macaulay. Told by an Idiot

NewYear26. As usual, the chances that it will be a good, let alone a happy one are practically nil. Still, we resist, we bite, we make of ourselves the greatest possible nuisance and we keep Becketting on regardless and with an incandescent will.
Love, ferrets and a cute quote!
Al cabo de unos años o unos meses el viejo problema revienta los remiendos, provoca una crisis y el partido a la sazón relegado sustituye al que le sustituyó. Y por la misma causa. No sé de un solo gobierno que haya resuelto un problema serio: siempre caen, pero no les preocupa porque sus sucesores también caerán.
(After a few years or a few months the old problem ruptures the patches, causes a crisis and the party formerly relegated replaces the one who replaced it. And for the same reason. I don’t know of a single government that has solved a serious problem: they always fall, but they don’t mind because their successors will fall too.)
Eduardo Mendoza.

Optimism of the Will. Solstice soon come. Have a spiffing one and go along with the Rugose Imp who thinks that a Solstice is as good as a Summer. I’m in no mood to argue the toss with It. At the moment I can do with a wee dose of optimism, no matter how misguided.

Dancing Girls2. To paraphrase, probably misquote and possibly misconstrue Adorno’s quote on laughter, here’s what the Swineherd of Tindalos (plus attendant piggies) has to say to the two dancing black thingummybobs:
Because there’s noting to dance about…dance, dance, dance!
The two dancing black thingummybobs have given up on their erstwhile plan to re-designate themselves as a single white male accountant as a really daft idea. Bully for them.

Remember Remember. For them and for every other “unworthy” victims of the insanity that seems to rule the world, with no end in sight.

Savvy Lizards. There is a witty and chillingly accurate saying doing the rounds at the moment (but no enough and not widely undisputed, worse luck) about the so-called ceasefire: You cease, we fire. Indeed.
Quote for the day.
A policy should never be based on the extermination of the adversary; not only because -and this is a lot to say- it is morally an abomination, but because it is materially unfeasible. And the blood unjustly spilled by the hatred that seeks to exterminate will be reborn, sprouting and giving accursed fruits; a curse that will not be restricted, unfortunately, to those who spiled the blood, but which will be over the very country which -to compound its misfortune- absorbed it.
Manuel Azaña

Reflections2. My advice: be wary of allowing your mirror to talk to strange itinerant mirrors. Things can get truly disorienting, not to say irritating.

Odd Cagnolito. The story so far. A young mutant Cagnolito (formerly of Tindalos Prime) crossing a dicey forest in the Vacillating Shift is suddenly accosted by one of the local talents, the Mafioso Wooden Poppet, with verbose promises of protection from nebulous perils and other equally vague extra-curricular risks. Matilda, on a break from minding Bonny Brown Bunny and doubling here as a spirit guide and paranormal cicerone to the adventurous canine, is counselling the youngster to ignore the overtures of the woody chappie, in part because said offers and threats are mostly hot air and in part because the ligneous laddie is so scatterbrained that he may start trying for intimidation and then switch, for no reason at all, to advice on the best inns, youth hostels, cocktail bars, discos, free swimming pools, restaurants, tapas bars and beauty parlours in the region. Well, that’s the Vacillating Shift for you, innit. Consistency is a word that even if It looked it up in the dictionary it still wouldn’t make sense to It, poor dear. By the way, if you ever find yourself travelling in this most perplexing of districts, I can recommend the Inn of the Seventeen Boons. It’s cheap, cheerful, the sheets are spotless, the food scrumptious and the landlady’s a good friend of mine, so a bit of name-dropping will get you a few free drinks as well.

Target. Poor Bonny Brown Bunny has gone and done it again! She has opened her big loud mouth once more and now she’s being targeted by one of the Righteous Brigades -we are not quite sure which one; is it the Rabid Avenging Shirleys? Is it the Thou-Shalt-Not-Sport-A- Keffiyeh Coterie? Or perhaps is the neighbour next door, who think this country’s being swamped by non-British-born undesirables and that our only hope lays in the deranged neurones of Nigel Farrago? Who knows. They are so many and they all look and sound pretty much of a muchness. Poor old Bun-Bun… As Matilda, the Cynical Birdie, Bunny’s bodyguard and political advisor, keeps on telling her, she’d be well advise to join a lay Trappist order and have a quiet life for a change, but you know what chromatic rabbits are like: obstinate mules one and all. Still, we have started a collection to send Bonny on a fortnight retreat in the beautiful Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, near Ulan Bator.

The Gorgon Film Institute presents: Brief Encounter XII. aka Easy Rider II. Series Crappy Movies Rehabilitated. Here be a nice wee ad hominem attack. Long time no do. Here’s to the real scroungers, the true freeloaders that ride on the back of the misery of the powerless and the unloved and the forgotten, and ask and plead and demand and moan and whinge and rant … and get! My current favourite is that comedian turned clown turned buffoon and now official court jester and village idiot to the political elites, Volodymir “GimmeGimmeGimme!” Zelensky. (Mind you, lately he’s also been getting a lot of stick but then again that’s one of the occupational hazards of a fool.) And as a kind of side dish, the same discourtesy (and more…) is extended to that genocidal parasite, Benjamin Netanyahu, may he burn in Gehenna, sooner rather than later.