Category Archives: Books

V for “Visits Washington”: rally alert November 14th!

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V at the DoJRush right out to your local Tesco, Superstore, or WalMart (okay, maybe not WalMart. Target) and stock up on V masks, wigs, and devilishly sexy cloaks in time for the big V rally in Washington this Tuesday, November 14th. Hat optional.

quarsan dropped this in a comment on Guido‘s site;  it seems that V has visited the White House. Not only the White House, in fact, but several other important sites including the Department of Justice, and brought along a cameraman to document the whole, lamentably fireworks-free yet historic event.

V draws a small, and small-arms armed, crowdAnd what did the masked man encounter? A round dozen security personnel everywhere he went, virtually all of whom were supportive and polite. Whodathunkit? Then again, it’s a New Day in America, Rumsfeld is on pogey, Britney is getting divorced, and the Democrats have arisen after spending their last several Midterms in darkness.

Anything could happen. This is what did:

“V” Meets The Secret Service
 
Accepted As The Vox Populi

On Monday, November 6, 2006, “V” visited security check points at the White House, the main Treasury, IRS and Justice Department Buildings and the Capitol. “V’s” purpose was to deliver the People’s Petitions for Redress of Grievances relating to the Government’s violations of the war powers, tax, privacy and money clauses of the Constitution, and to inform key Government officials that at least 100 more “Vs” would be at their doorstep on November 14th expecting a response to the Petitions. 

At the White House about a dozen Secret Service agents appeared on foot, bicycles and car to meet “V.” While virtuously assuring the security of the state, they were curious about the image of “V” and asked many questions. Most, when asked if they had seen the movie “V for Vendetta”, smiled their approval.

V chez WWhen an agent asked if “V” would remove his mask for identification purposes, “V” explained that would defeat the very purpose of the mask, which was to give expression to the fact that the nation was becoming a police state, that too many people were becoming afraid to be identified as dissenters or protestors, and that this was not in the long term interest of a free people.  The agents accepted the veracity of “V’s” message and refrained from veering “V” from his vanguard visit as the vox populi.

Bestill my foolish heart! I’m a sucker for a politically active anarchist who’s a whiz with alliteration.

poem o’ the day: They Feed They Lion

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from which my friend they lion takes the name of said blog.

They Feed They Lion
by Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

the biggest, bestest Bond Girl of all

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kiss kiss bang bang 

And with the best chest, if you ask me.

In the realm of carnal beauty there is no shortage of icons. From Helen of Troy to Brigitte Bardot to Carmen Electra, the competition has always been brutal and the loser taken hindmost…or, wait…you know what I mean.

At the very pinnacle of sexual desirability are the Bond Girls. From the blonde, slinky Honey Ryder to the brunette, slinky Vesper Lynd, Bond Girls have always been seen as the very definition of female hotness, driving men cooler than Bond into raging hormone frenzies and irrationally long wait times at NetFlix. Their faces and bodies have launched a million suavetés, convincing Red State palookas and sub-Arctic lumberjacks alike that all they need to do is look good in the monkey suit and drink Martinis and the ladies will come swarming.

Bond and girlsAnd we will, you know.

I was at the Urban Mixer West End Martini Tour, along with a hundred perfect, and perfectly friendly, strangers, and quite a variety of garb was on display; we had some people in jeans, we had many in suits and cocktail dresses, and we had one man in a tuxedo.

And he was surrounded by women, all night. Are you taking notes, boys?

For the record, my Bond Girl name is Faith Mountain. Dayum, I could do better than that; lessee, um, uh, well, how about Jeanine Tonique? Butter Tartt? Pandora Box?

In any case, I ran across this on the Guardian site, and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in ages. As always with Jeanette Winterson, I’m not sure I agree but I do enjoy. It’s well-written, it’s witty, and it is very well-informed. The research must have been gruelling, poor thing.

And as anyone ’round these parts could tell you, if you want an honest evaluation of girls, ask a lesbian.

The Biggest Bond Girl of All:

My mission, and I chose to accept it, was to watch Bond movies and summon up some firepower on the Bond women. I could gun down the pathetic sexism of early Bond, or the patronising raised eyebrow of mid-Bond, and we could detonate the tortured hero of Brosnan Bond, and, guess what? I will. But first, let’s agree that Bond movies are fabulous fun.

I don’t know which I enjoy more – the cars or the girls. I didn’t buy my 3-litre BMW because I saw Goldeneye, but I was very upset when Bond got the Z8 in The World Is Not Enough. Why? I can’t afford to spend £80,000 on a car, even though I long for a champagne cooler under the handbrake. Driving round Cheltenham without one is a mini-roundabout too far. If I knew there was a Dom Perignon ’53 ready to drink on touchdown in the multistorey car park, I would feel less like machine-gunning Burger King, as I pass it for the 20th time in a traffic labyrinth that could have been devised by Dr No…

South Pacific mystery island pix

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As we’ve previously, and somewhat floridly, reported, a new island has surfaced in the South Pacific, between Tonga and Fiji at approximately the location given by esteemed American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft for his accursed cyclopean sunken city of R’lyeh.

The crew of the yacht Maiken were the first to discover a strange phenomenon; the surface of the sea was literally covered in a blanket of floating stone. Volcanic pumice is very light, and as you can see from the pictures here, has the appearance of a rocky desert when in fact it’s more like a deceptively solid-looking and treacherous foam.

August 12, first sighting of the pumice sea
August 12, 2006, first sighting of the Stone Sea

the edge of the pumice sea

Bizarre, eh boys and girls? I’m wondering if CS Lewis ever saw something like this before writing the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They’re not lilies, but it’s very reminiscent of the scenes at the end of the world, with slightly more ominious overtones.

The next day, as the Maiken pushed forward, clear of the strange illusory desert at last, they saw smoke on the horizon and, being inquisitive sorts to say the least, investigated.

smoke on the horizon, August 13, 2006
Could it be?

a lava blast from the new island
A lava eruption from the new land.

the birth of a new island, August 13, 2006
Now THAT is eerie, ladies and gentlemen. That is eerie.

Imagine how many people, in all of history, recorded and unrecorded, have had the opportunity to watch the birth of a new land. I’m glad the crew of the Maiken had the courage and curiosity to move forward when so many would have turned back. The mysteries of the earth are profound and glorious, and “awe” is, after all, the root of the word awful. Those who would look upon such things are marked forever.

Maiken‘s photoblog, with much more, here.

further proof that the end times are upon us

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Octopus vs Scottie

There you have it, nothing less than solid proof that the Cthulhoids have arisen. Not only has R’lyeh broken the surface once more, freeing Cthulhu to stalk once more among men, slavering with bloodlust and howling with madness, but His legions on the ocean bottom have seized control of the distilleries the Scots, so foolish, so blind, located together on a remote island, hemmed in by fog and shunned by mainlanders; a strange, lonely, broken-down place, where the very air corrodes the greyed stone from which the town is hewn. The townsfolk, isolated and inbred as they are, provided little resistance, arming themselves only with bulky helmets and a peculiar, non-Euclidean weapon consisting of a bizarre and abhorrent arrangement of pipes and airsacs. Their precautions were as nothing against the powerful arms and ravenous beaks of the briny legions, although the invaders did have to stuff their earholes with kelp against the terrible assault of the sonic waves.

Make mine a double, but I think I’m sticking with something further inland: tequila. That’s made from cactus, right?