Fetch. I agree, it’s pretty unsettling to come face to face with your dead ringer (they do have such a bad press, poor things), but I’m sure that the experience is equally uncomfortable for the fetch itself. Think about it and spare a thought for these much maligned entities. Have a sponditious week. And a snippet of gloriously goofy comedy and un po’ di high energy mu’,

Memo to myself: I must remember to send the silly comedy link to my very own darling Cthulhu Brothers. I’m sure that’d make them giggle.

Four Worlds. Four worlds and then four more with a nest of sneaky possibilities all around for good measure. And we the people stuck in the middle in Fifth World, surrounded by clowns, jokers, psychopaths and idiots, with no way out in sight other than global cataclysm and extinction. (Where is a good old sipapu when you need one?) Never mind. Stick by the Mehitabel Paradigm, swim against the tide and have a consistently beautiful, healthy, fulfilling, harmonious, serene and long life full of fun, wisdom, modesty and dancing coyotes.

Hozho: Dine’ Concept of Balance and Beauty……”Consideration of the nature of the universe, the world, and man, and the nature of time and space, creation, growth, motion, order, control, and the life cycle includes all these other Navajo concepts expressed in terms quite impossible to translate into English. The synthesis of all the beliefs detailed above and those concerning the attitudes and experiences of man is expressed sa’a naghai, usually followed by bik’e hozho….. The concept of sa’ah naaghaii bik’eh hozho is more commonly known as hozho in the shorthand. Sa’ah naaghaii bik’eh hozho consists of two distinct phrases that together form a unity. The whole phrase exemplifies a model of balance in living. At the core of its meaning, hozho is about balance. It is about health, long life, happiness, wisdom, knowledge, harmony, the mundane and the divine. For the Navajo people, hozho represents a synthetic and living description of what life on the surface of planet Earth should be, from birth until death at an old age.”….http://www.robertsdrake.com/files/Hozho.htm

Defy & Dance. So life is mostly shit and the future looks increasingly bleak, both at the personal and the planetary level; and the bedlam, mayhem and wanton destruction continue apace; and anytime now Priti Patel will take over the country and then we’ll be really & truly fucked; and the journey up the cypresses’ path creeps closer and closer with each passing day. But the spirit of Mehitabel is still alive, look you! We dance naked in our minds (out in the garden is far too cold and besides it would upset the foxes), we drink home-made lemonade and we make as much merry as we possibly can get away with.

Have un po’ di mu’ to gladden the old earholes and the weary soul:

Fuzzy DingDong. In this wretched universe there are sad, sad folks whose lives seem to be so mindless and so hollow that the only way they can feel good about themselves is by insulting people gratuitously and, apparently, at random. By and large they are clumsy and dull in their approach; they also seem to be totally devoid of any sense of humour, irony and anything reassembling subtlety. Douglas Adams came out with Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged as an approximation to what I’m talking about. (see: http://hhgproject.org/entries/wowbagger.html ) Only Wowbagger had a certain grandeur, since he was the man-with-a-mission type of geezer. The one in the picture isn’t; ergo, hasn’t. He’s just pathetic. He jumps abruptly upon travellers along the Gran Via Gloriosa and gives them an unsolicited piece of his fatuous mind. To their credit, most the thus assailed passers by either totally ignore the poor blighter or they give him a good what for in return. He (the poor blighter) has a small captive balloon (globo cautivo in Spanish) that wishes to hell it had a digestive system so it could eat so it could defecate and therefore be able to shit on it’s captor’s silly head from a great, great height.

This here doodle is dedicated to You Know Who.

Stay sane. Stay cracking. Have a resplendent weekend.

Prickly Peer. Meet Beatrix Baldovina Ermengarde Benicia Leonora Endorina de Stroopp Dampmantel-Grouchevsky, Betty Boo! to her friends and Batty Betty to her foes.

She’s a peer of the realm of Grumpinghastia and seventy-third in line to the Most Exalted Cranky Seat. Her chances of ever ascending the Eleven Razor Steps leading to the highest office in the land are, consequently, well beyond slim. And that’s fine with her; her comparatively low position leaves her with all the time in the world to devote to her favourite pastime, namely ranting, railing and haranguing. Her best friend and current monarch, queen Manuelita Theodora II the Unexpected, never tires of telling her how flipping lucky she is not to have to be queen and having to go to formal zombie parties and meet doddering ambassadors and attend public inaugurations of state-funded orphanages and give interviews to brainless society columnists from Hello! Magazine and the utterly insufferable life-style gurus of The Guardian.

Betty believes every word Manu has to say on the subject of augmented responsibility. She and Manu grew up together as children and together they survived school, uni, polishing seminary and boot camp. As unattached, wild, bright young things they used to have heaps of fun, getting up to no end of no good and into many and varied scrapes, not to mention all sorts of soups. Nowadays they’re lucky if they can meet once a month for a sneak greasy kebab and a cuppa.

Betty has suggested once or twice that Manu should abdicate in favour of her idiot cousin, Clarence Elmer Duffy Hefty-Plankett and Manu is seriously tempted by the notion. After all, she muses, it’d be high time Grumpinghastia had a king. Just because the female of the Grumpinghastian political species is cleverer and more capable than the male, it should not follow that the girls have to carry the burden of administration most of the time. Then…she thinks of her cousin, she sighs deeply, shakes her crowned bonce slowly and says: “I can’t. I simply haven’t the heart to inflict Clarence on the wretched country!” and she soldiers on with her tarsome royal duties. And so it’s left to Betty to carp for the both of them. There, that’s a true friend for you.

The whole point of this quasi-shaggy-dog story is that Betty-the-Raver is so skilful and so keen that she’s willing to do anybody and everybody else’s ranting for them. So, if you’re too tired, or despondent, or lazy to do your own a-bitching and a- bickering, just ask her and she will produce the goods, tailor made, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. Stay well, stay groovy, stay sane.

In The Forest. Here goes yet another chapter of that old caper, the Crappy Movies Rehabilitated series, Brief Encounter sub-section. Like all the previous incarnations, this is a small mystery tale. Why is the mother flower in such a hurry that she has no time to exchange a bit of tittle-tattle with the local fauna? Is she fleeing from a cloak-and-dagger menace? Is she in a foul mood and feeling highly antisocial? Is she rushing to catch the 3.10 to Yuma? Are the jumbo worms all they seem to be? Do psychic leeches lurk in the tall grass? Is the painted backcloth sky going to turn an abrupt somersault and reveal its other side? Is there life before death? Questions, questions! and hardly any answers. What a bummer. Well, never mind. Have a glorious weekend and stay out of trouble and, to be on the safe side, out of the tall grass

Going Viral. Here they are again our old friends the viruses with a few opinions on the latest governmental “policies. (to used a charitable word for them) and snippets of virus-wisdom. Have a lovely weekend.