Bitching Aliens II Ah, the horrors, the horrors of Identity Politics. This ghastly Divide & Rule game conceived and sponsored by the likes of George Soros that has produced nothing better than division, discord and misery for all and sundry. This most clever of disruptive tools that camouflages itself as a tolerance and human rights issue but in fact has engendered pestilent and doctrinaire Victimhood League Tables. “My suffering is greater than yours! I’m more oppressed than you! Your ideas offend my sensibilities! I’m a real victim, you’re just kvetching! Spain steals from us! Make Britain great again!. And so on. It has all but given quasi-oracular status to con artists like Jordan Peterson and created farcical entities such as the Radical Feminists Against Transgender Men Using Women’s Toilets crusade .“or something very much of that ilk. And it’s giving no signs of declining, on the contrary. Look, even the normally placid and harmony-loving aliens from the planet Zoofoos are at it. Nit-picking like dopes over perceived privileges and imaginary wrongs. We all hope it’s only a temporary outbreak of mental derangement, brought about by excessive watching the wrong stuff on YouTube. We have also sent for Manolito, the Hardy Perennial Alien from the same planet. We are very sorry to interrupt his much-deserved holiday but this is an emergency. Meanwhile, let us all gather our tools and fight back this grisly epidemic best we can.

Befuddled Fish. All through this Brexshit caper I’ve kept aloof and quiet and on the wings. What’s the point of fighting the Inevitable? The Inevitable being, in this sorry ass case, the facts that: a) this country’s become a caricature of itself, b) that is run by morons and c) that “the people. don’t know their own welfare from a hole in the ground. So, next chapter will be the total, wholesale and foreverandever occupation by the WTO despotic doctrines, the compulsory buying your gas from the fucking fracking companies from across the Black Pond and the dancing to the demented music that the maniacs that pull the strings of the whole caboose make.  Bye-bye NHS (this time for real & for good), hello even-more austerity. Well? Someone has to pay for all the bloody money spent in divorce bureaucracy and bribes and jaunts and diners and whatnots. And it ain’t gon’ be the filthy rich, that’s for sure. That’s how they stay filthy rich, innit? Anyways, the Fish are really pissed off.

4Tiles4Yazz. And here be a little something for a friend who’s having not-too-good a time. Cheer up, baby! Things might pick up.

A Rosa Is A Rosa. 100 years ago today she and her poor comrade Karl Liebknecht were captured, tortured for hours on end and finally murdered and disposed of by the Freikorps’ bastard hell-hounds. She was shot and thrown into the Landwerh Canal; he was driven to the middle of some godforsaken where or other and shot in the back.
The ineffable Wikipedia has this to say: Although the circumstances were disputed by the perpetrators at the time, the Freikorps, commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst later claimed, “I had them executed.
Nice one, Waldemar.
Today nobody remembers Captain Pabst. Rosa and Karl, on the other hand, live in our memories and in our hearts. I raise my glass (and my fist) to you both.

Mourning Ghosts. My love of all things Japanese (minus Shinzō Abe) began, more or less, with a film that bowled me over when I was 18 or thereabouts: Masaki Kobayashi’s Seppuku (called Harakiri in the West). I was gobsmacked and in love. Shortly after this revelation I saw Kwaidan and the love became a passion. Recently I managed to find a full version of Kwaidan on YouTube and my love was renewed and refreshed and re!whatever. This is my tribute to him, and to it, and to all the wonders that Japan has given the world of the arts. Doumo arigato gozaimasu, Kobayashi san. May your elementary particles spread endless joy across the continuum.

Bulerí­as. I think is a good strategy to start a new year on a frivolous, cheerful note. There’ ll be plenty of time and opportunity later on for the bile and the rage and the apocalyptic rants. So here goes this little harmless vignette which I dedicate to my mate Zoraida (aka arsaytoma), who loves Flamenco and whose drawings cheer me up no end, whenever we can get them. And to each and every Flamenco singer that’s ever filled my heart with delight. Viva la grasia!
The text translates as:
Little birds, finches, what have you eaten?
Soup from the pot and water from the stream.
And here’s a wee link to the Bulerí­as in question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_foBP_AX9E&app=desktop