dolores666's photos

Series Old Wine in New Bottles No 3 Same story but not quite. This is a crude, B & W reworking of a much more colourful and refined version of one of the last vignettes of The Story of Oops, the one and only comic strip I have ever attempted so far and which remains unfinished owing to my back being total crap and refusing to let me sit at my desk for any reasonable length of time and thus use my surviving desktop, where dwells my beloved Flash MX, which is the tool I used to do most of my stuff before my body sold me down the river to the vagaries of osteoarthritis and the like.

And so 2020 passed ignominiously and pathetically, with a whimper and a whinge. Brexshit by the skin of some vampire’s teeth; dodgy vaccines; allegedly novel mutations of the lurgy; culled minks; ice shelves crumbling; divisions multiplying and the Masters of the Universe conquering like it’s going out of fashion; the Left transmogrified into some kind of genetically modified Right and the Right screaming “Marxist!” at the least provocation and always inaccurately (poor old Karl must be turning in his grave…). And, of course, the eternal, canonic Russia/China/Iran trilateral dastardly plot to destroy our wonderful, freedom-loving, democracy-exporting Hollywoodized way of life. (Guantanamo anyone?) Ah, me…! It’s seems almost cruel to wish you all a splendid 2021, as it’s highly improbable that it’ll be any better that 2020 was. In fact, we’ll be lucky if it isn’t much, much worse, but hey, as Mehitabel never tired of saying, whatta hell. Life is short and full of trouble but there are a few thing we can still do to make it less crappy. Use your imagination. Also, resist, bite, dissent, object, rebel, disagree, hug a Chinese, love your loved ones and try and acquire new ones to love and cherish. Love is also mutating, from revolutionary to subversive. Cultivate it. Tend the gardens of your soul. Weed your hearts. Give Them as good as They try to give us. Personally I shan’t complain too much. The Pantomic has affected me far less that has afflicted (when not downright destroyed) the lives of so many other people; and there have been a couple of sponditious bright spots in my life; and for this I’m glad, grateful and inclined to be gracious. Stay sane, stay groovy, stay Gramscian, have a nice life. And un po’ di mu’, of course. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0TiGV_nRtk www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIAsQM_Q2M

Solstice Shubby. Here she is, the one and only, the splendid, the ineffable Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young -currently on holiday in the Plateau of Leng and hence not in the picture. She’s commanding us wretched souls to have a fab Solstice in spite of the all-pervading crap that’s engulfing us. Milady’s cortège think (but not say; not aloud anyways) that she is, indeed, glorious and incomparable and unutterable but she has no social graces whatsoever. I say nobody’s perfect. And she means well, I’m sure. Follow her advice and do try and have a great Transition. Things are very unlikely to get any better but at least Apollo is turning his chariot around and heading back our way. Any time now, snowdrops and wee buds. Menos da una piedra… And un po’ di mu’ seasonal. (I know, I repeat myself. But I love this song and it’s not everyday that a couple of eccentric Scots write a song for me just to cheer me up.) cthulhubrothers.bandcamp.com/track/the-archer Stay sane, folks! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvILFVJMPvY PS. And that's the lot for today. Tomorrow: New Year's Greetings. Better late than never, innit.

Birds of a Feather. Have a little sequel to this year’s Ash Memorial. This is what might (or might not) be going on in that splendiferous place that Ash’s particles might be kicking about right now (or not...). Gossip is rife there and often of the most frivolous kind you can imagine. Here you can see Julian and Sandy, the Shady Birdies, a disreputable pair as there ever was, updating the Mystic Tadpoles on the latest scandals, spurious rumours and bad jokes currently making the rounds in the final void. The tadpole on the right dreads what's coming, for Sandy’s jokes are truly, magnificently and crisply outrageous.

I’ve changed my mind and decided to do yet another Ash Memorial. I still can see him as he was the last time we met, there, standing in my kitchen, arms waving, eyes ablaze, ranting like it was going out of fashion about the absolute need of this wretched country to acquire a constitution. Also the even more urgent necessity to clear out the English language (or any other language, for that matter) of jargon of any kind: legalese, psychobabble, poliflummery, pseudo-science bunk and other though-terminating linguistic evils. I would entirely agree with him on the language thing but I though he was being naive on the first point and I would remind him of all those countries that have constitutions and are still a fucking mess and/or a pain in the gluteus maximus, like the good old USA and Australia. He was undeterred by this last argument, for as well as a master-ranter he was as stubborn as a mule; now and then he would even out-rant me. But we never quarrelled and we always had such fun rearranging the world. Ah well… sic transit gloria us puny humans. And everything else. I hope his sub-atomic particles are having fun, still and forever, somewhere spiffing, where constitutions are not needed and paranoid empires are unknown and cant is regarded a mere joke, something to pass the time in between oscillations. PS. Because o f The Dread Glitch this pic seems a bit on the late side, but never mind. I'll be uploading in strict order of "birth". Or there abouts....

Here’s a little something, a wee pre-Solstice snack to cheat this gut-wrenching hunger for light we feel. Have a grand week if at all possible. Stay sane.

Winged Grub. aka The Grub's Lament. Once more, let the little ones tell you a thing or two about cooperation, connections and survival. Stay sane.

Spiny Forest. The Barbed Borderlands is a strange, dour region. Exceedingly fertile and therefore half impenetrable, its forests tend to bring forth minimalist types of tree and shrubs, all branch, no flowers. To this austere place the tiny One-Eyed Itinerant Babbler has come to try and induce said stern trees to let their hair down and be merry; nay, even frivolous! So far his efforts have met with a small degree of success: two of the severe woody thingummybobs have sprouted flowers. The little birdies are charmed by the youngster. In their collective bird-brained memory lingers the image of a long, long gone Italian geezer who used to talk to their kin on regular basis and once persuaded a wolf to go vegetarian for a while. (The experiment didn’t last owing to the crappy attitude of the local humans who, as usual, mistook grace and goodwill for weakness.) Us, too, is charmed by the wee chatterbox and us hopes that he’ll soooooon come amongst we the masses and convince everybody that life might be like a chicken coop ladder, short and full of shit, but that a) that’s no reason to pout and b) beauty and love still matter. Now more than ever.

Cummings Is Goings. aka Cumming a cropper. I’m still pinching myself in utter disbelief but there you have it. He’s gone. Ding dong the beast is dead! Nice. Get the vodka out of the freezer and animate the will to fight. Still, do keep an eye on Her Indoors, the Symonds creature. Anyone willing to shag Boris Johnson to the point of actually breeding with him is not to be trusted. Eyes peeled, comrades.

Amnesia Sunday. aka Lest We Wake Up … and remember (if we ever knew) the real phoney reasons and mendacious justifications for that most wasteful, unnecessary and criminal of wars. Let the sentimentality and the cheesiness lull you into a sense of saccharine virtue and snug ignorance. Above all, do NOT connect this kind of events with what’s going on in the factual world outside them; and please do not notice that the show was barely on the road when one of our top brasses was already trying to boyscout the nation into being prepared for WWIII owing to the Chinese Virus and Putin’s Interference. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/nov/08/coronavirus-live-news-france-daily-cases-exceed-40000-melbourne-ends-ring-of-steel?page=with:block-5fa79cb98f083df739ba6991#block-5fa79cb98f083df739ba6991 This year I’ll refrain form quoting Wilfred Owen in full for the Nth time. Just this: that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori only as long as the moring is being done by you and your children and not by Them and Their children -and even those don’t take survival precedence over Them Themselves; remember Abraham. PS. If you thought that these yearly rants are indication that I don’t care for those poor buggers who died in that war, and all the other stupid wars of empire bickering, who died only to fertilize the ground for the next conflict, think again. I do care. Deeply and incandescently. It also scares the living shits out of me that that generation bought, lock, stock and stinking barrel, the lies, the propaganda and the mis/disinformation fed them by their elders; just as the troops sent to kill, rape and main in Iraq believed that Saddam has tons of WMD because The Blair Witch and the Guardian said so. Bumba alone knows what this generation will buy. :-( Have a spiffing week.

One of these days a Dies irae the size of a small moon is going to fall on our heads like a sodding ton of bricks. And then both the black sheep and the black-sheep-shooters will run around in panic and despair and there’ll be much gnashing of teeth, although not for long, for the end will be very, very painful but quick. And all the while, the Meat Puppets in No. 10 and its peripheral add-ons are having a laugh and just going with the flow, or, as they call it, “the scientists”. And the good WeThePeople wear their little mostly-useless masks and stay home after dark and buy stuff from Amazon. And in their plentiful spare time they indulge in whatever degree of witch-hunting they can and call the dissenters all sort of unpleasant names. Torches and pitchforks and public Auto-da-fés in Hyde Park next, I daresay. Welcome to the New Subnormal (soon to be Sub-Human). Have a lovely rest-of-the-week. And un po’ di mu’. Long time no un po’ di mu’… :-) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dies.irae.ogg www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOA5Chz3iU4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2xFgwBIATM Te tengo ke ver llorar, descalcito por las calles primo, por lo ke tu me has hecho pasar.

Hound of Tindalos & Little Fox. aka Dogged Fury. Practically paralytic with rage and virtually mute with irritation. Vex to the core. Annoyed beyond endurance. Yet we must endure and Beckett the storm best we can. Since I cannot speak, let the hounds howl and the little foxes gnaw at and spoil the vines of The Man. Resist. Bite. Chew. Have a nice week.

Once upon a time there was an old lady who wandered the galaxy on a spiky asteroid in the company of two chaos-based drones. One day she came across two beings embroiled in a deep mess of antagonisms. They appeared to be suffering much from this condition and as she could see that the tangle could be easily disentangled she offered the creatures to help them do so. But the whatnots had been in that state for so long that they no longer knew anything else. Thus they freely abused the old woman, called her every name under the stars and told he to mind her own business. The old girl took off as fast as her beautiful asteroid could carry her. Now she lives in Andromeda. This is a modest tribute to Augusto Monterroso and his wondrous mini stories. I include here a quick, pedestrian translation of my favourite, as well as the Spanish version. And thank, you, Señor Botijo, for alerting me to don Augusto's presence. The Black Sheep. In a far away country there once was a black sheep. She was shot. A century later the repentant herd erected an equestrian statue of her that looked very well in the park. Thus, in successive ages, every time there appeared a black sheep, it was swiftly shot, so that future generations of common or garden sheep could exercise themselves in the art of sculpture. La oveja negra. En un lejano país existió hace muchos años una Oveja negra. Fue fusilada. Un siglo después, el rebaño arrepentido le levantó una estatua ecuestre que quedó muy bien en el parque. Así, en lo sucesivo, cada vez que aparecían ovejas negras eran rápidamente pasadas por las armas para que las futuras generaciones de ovejas comunes y corrientes pudieran ejercitarse también en la escultura.

Growing Pains. Listen to the wee monster’s appeal: Please help. Anybody. Your neighbour, your aunty Betty, your beloved, your mates, the sad old geezer down the road. Anyone. Any way you can, no matter how small. As often as you can. Spread understanding and graciousness. Help counteract the tide of nastiness that’s beginning to choke the spirit out of us all. Don’t do “social” distancing, call things by their name, not what the Guardian or the Daily Mail or, Bumba forfend!, the BBC tells you to call them. Stay sane and spread sanity. Have a lovely week. (I know, its a tall order but still, we must try.)

This is for Leo. Por que? Por guapa, por simpática, por canaria. Porque amas los animales y las flores. Porque te gustan los churros. Porque lees, aunque no leamos los mismos libros. Y porque hasta hace poco tu nombre de guerra era Lunática en la Luna. Por muchos años, salerosa! Look see, another Moon Maiden. She follows her moons only and doesn’t give a toss for trends, fashions or mainstream media. She has her own mobile bubbles and two small bearish bodyguards. She will travel. She takes small commissions to and from remote corners of the galaxy. Her bear-like companions sing rude re-workings of Gilbert & Sullivan on demand and the bubbles make a mean chicken soup in dire emergencies.

Here goes yet another of those evergreen, ever-useful All-Purpose Gripe Indicators. Masked Crusaders v “Irresponsible Evil Terrorist” Wot Don’t Mask? Gender Bender Poor Wee Victims v Mind Your Own Business Partisans? Black v White? Black v Non-Compliant Black? White v Blacks, and Jews and Women and Anybody We Don’t Like? Get Fucked By Trump Coterie v Get Fucked By Biden/Harris Binomial Cabal? You v The World? Anything goes. As long as we forget that united we have half a chance and the way thing are going, Towards Mince Meat, we are fast buggered. Go on. Be a devil. Go hug your neighbour. And stay sane.

Sad Garden. aka En un berenjenal*. Questing for Bumba knows what, she’s wandered into the saddest, spikiest garden in the ‘hood. Nothing but fretworks and tall grasses, and only two small miasmas for company. The spiny weeds already have started infiltrating her savage breast. I have dispatched the tiny Savant Onions to offer some help and guidance or, failing that, some superlatively silly jokes to cheer her up and counteract the oppressive effect of the thorny weeds. We wish her the best of luck. Who knows, perhaps the small miasmas are friendly, too, and willing to guide her out of that wilderness she’s got herself into. Avanti popolo! Spanish lesson for the weekend. *Meterse en un berenjenal, Sp. Colloquial. To get one self into a pickle. To bite more that one can chew. The quotation in the pic is from an old Soleá de la Serneta, sung by La Niña de los Peines. In the same song she also sang: Fui piedra y perdi mi centro y me arrojaron al mar y a fuerza de mucho tiempo mi centro vine a encontrar. There. Have two links to that masterpiece of cante viejo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oluYY5aXwiM www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co4n4O6kbGg Por mucho pan nunca mal año, as we always say in my neck of the woods (or spiny gardens, regardless). Have a sponditious weekend.

What else is there to say. Listen to the Bear. Watch the voodoo dollies dance. Stay sane!