Oh, Shit. Here Comes Another Year.

Well, that's another year down the shitter.
If 2011 is anything like as bad as 2010 was I'm cancelling my subscription.

I'm Dreaming Of A Green Spring

Just when I thought we'd seen the last of the bloody snow, it only goes and dumps a dusting on us for Christmas morning.

If any of you are dreaming of a white Christmas, this is the drear, cold, slippery and depressing reality.

Bollocks to that.

Roll on Spring!

Farewell, My Captain

Requiescat in pace the soul of Don van Vliet.

Mmmmm … Stinky Breath

Dammit.

I've become addicted to these little smeggers.

Don't anyone let me breathe near you for the rest of my life.

Sheesh!

Well That Was Fucking Scary

Don't ask me what happened.
A couple of days ago Dear Prudence alerted me to the fact that my blog (yup, this one) had disappeared off the interweb. I tried accessing it but Blogger would not recognise me as owning the site.
I then went through all their "help" options, none of which were any help.
In the end I gave up and mourned the loss of four-and-a-half years of work, writing, photos, relationships with you all, cookery posts, political rants, religious arguments and all of my music.

I have no idea what the fuck happened but mum called me this morning to tell me the blog is back.
For how long I have no idea, so now I've got to spend the weekend copying every single smegging post and burning them onto DVD in case it all goes tits-up again.

Many thanks to Shan, by the way, for offering to save it all for me from her blogroll. What a star.

Anyhoo, I'm back and I'm boring, so look out.

Sheesh!

Okay, Okay, You Guys …

… I grovel apologetically at your feet for having been too busy to blog (and visit) just lately. I've not been over at loathesome Facebook, either. Things have just gone a leetle skeezy of late.
I do intend to get back on the blog horse but until I straighten out my head here are some photos of pretty trees I took on the way to work the other morning. Click on 'em for bigness, as usual.

Enjoy … I'll be back soon. Honest.

Hey, I Got My Own Cartoon!

 

I wasn't the first to hate telephones and I won't be the last.

More Tea?

I mustn't tell you who sent me this or they'll get into so much trouble. Suffice to say there is at least one sane person left north of the Mexican border.

Click this link and may Shan forgive me for giggling (AT the Tea Party and WITH Jesus).

News From The Real World

This (please click the link) tickled me at the weekend.
I love the Sarah Palin gag.
Newsbiscuit seems to have hit a run of form recently.
Here are a couple more that I liked:
Mythological Weapons
Sports Coverage.

Happy Monday.

Let's Go Play In The Dictionary

Start each day with a poo and a poem and you won't go far wrong.

As a general Rule For Living I suppose that ranks alongside my 'Always live east of where you work.'
Half a century of learning from my own dumb mistakes has given me my own set of rules. As for those two: living east of where I work saves me getting blinded by sun-glare off wet roads on my way to and from the office and starting each day with a poo and a poem clears both body and mind ready for whatever horrors the day might throw at me.

Not groundbreaking, I know, but an accumulation of such nuggets helps me stumble along without bumping into too many sharp things.

This morning's poem (I'll spare you this morning's poo) turned out to be Mandrakes For Supper, by James K. Baxter (am I alone in ascribing ludicrous names to people who insert intrusive initials in their signatures? James Baxter has this morning been variously called Kleptomania, Kniphofia, Kimberley and Knickers and it's his own fault).

Anyhoo … His poem:

Mandrakes For Supper

Memory feeds us on a prison diet
Of bits and scraps. 'Remember Mr. X-,
That simple solemn man, so deathly quiet;

'And Sally Z-, compounded of raw sex
And circumstance' - 'Ah yes, her corn-gold hair …'
A land where roams Tyrannosaurus Rex,

The giant lizard, calloused by despair -
In Nowhere I received my education
(If memory can be trusted) mooching there

Like Dante's ghost, among a faceless nation.
The white antarctic Gorgon was my mentor:
Her cloudy arms, her eyes of desolation

Sisterly gazing from the whirlwind's centre,
Received, embraced my naked intuition.
The town of Nilburg too I shrank to enter

(If memory serves me right) and wept contrition
For indistinct all-but-committed crimes
In gelding-rooms and caves of parturition.

Yet undeniably I laughed at times
With those who shared my headless hullaballoo:
Fogeaters, Dwarfs, Green Quims and Paradigms.

Cellars of Nilburg! how I hated you,
Your Ixion wheels, hot frogs and icy toads,
Your existential climate where I grew

Into an adult Mandrake. (Memory loads
My plate with mushrooms.) But I woke at length
And left you, travelling light by mountain roads
To elsewhere; drank at desert wells; gained strength.


I don't know why I like that quite as much as I do. Perhaps the quirky rhyming rhythm, perhaps the freewheeling imagery or the playfully obsessive gallimaufry of punctuation, but more likely my childish word-glee, born of a love for Anglo-Saxon poetry that revels in such words as 'Fogeaters' and capers with the joy of 'hot frogs and icy toads.'
I do love to play with words and this poem set me up rather nicely for the day.

For the year, in fact as I am (according to my calendar and birth certificate) fifty-two today.
Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Or perhaps that should be: 'Oh, bugger! I've wasted another smegging year.'

Either way, I'm off for a swim in the River Lexicon with Fogeaters, hot frogs and icy toads.
Care to join me?