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.