NIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST!

There I Was, Listening To The Rain

In that poetic turn of phrase Conrad remembers living through at a dark and dismal 24-service bus stop in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell, "The Atlantic has paid a call".  Not unexpected, the heavens have been threatening a deluge all day long.  

     ANYWAY I was looking at a Tweet where Donold Judas Trump was lying about giving every South Canadian $5,000 if the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party survives the mid-term elections.  Nobody would get anything even if they won every seat going: King Piggy would deny ever having made such a statement, then call his recorded speech 'fake news' or 'AI', and then run away to cheat at golf.  Art!

     I then recalled that the Sweaty Swollen Saggy Senile Sepia Sackbutt* is going to be bloviating again at the Dallas convention on Thursday night - tonight as I'm typing this well ahead of posting it - and a new acronym for him popped into my brain: 'Porky And Gross'.  What can I say, I'm just naturally creative.  PAG.  Which triggered a vague memory of a sci-fi novel that had antagonists dubbed 'Pagbeasts', which, I then learned, were super-intelligent predatory animals inimically hostile to Hom. Sap.  Like SSSSSS, except their brains were not made of mashed potato.  Unfortunately I cannot find pictures of what a pagbeast looks like, so - Art!

A placeholder

     NIGHT OF THE PAGBEAST! was born.  We can follow it up with DAY OF THE PAGBEAST!  and DAWN OF THE PAGBEAST! and LATE MID-MORNING OF THE PA - well perhaps draw the line with that one.

     Day One of what others have dubbed the 'Trumplapalooza' proved embarrassing in terms of turn-out, where ticket purchases had been so low the local LWG party reps had resorted to desperate large-scale e-mailings pimping free tickets.  And the venue was still one-third empty.  Ooops.  Art!

"Bow down and worship your Presidential Pagbeast!"

     This is not especially surprising, as other, better-informed observers explained: Wednesday evening was the inaugural kick-off for the South Canadian football games, a major sporting event that the planners seem to have utterly overlooked.

     So, Fat Caligula wanted to make the event all about him him him, celebrating his Pagbeastiness.  Unsurprisingly to no one, bar a subset of politicos I shall come back to, party candidates with potentially tough races to manage chose to stay away.  They don't want to be associated with the bafune who brought in a hike in petrol prices, a tanking economy and an unpopular war with Iran.  They want to fight campaigns based on local issues and instead are having Pumpkinhead shackled to them.  Ooops again.  Art!

     Meanwhile the Pagbeast's recent activity includes, to quote one critic: " The president unleashed an hours-long, thirty-seven-post spree of AI-generated fantasies, including his own face on Hulk Hogan’s body, Trump on horseback beside George Washington, Trump commanding a robot army and Trump laying claim to the moon. He’s hardly projecting strength. He’s a man mentally unraveling in plain view and retreating into a digital fantasy world where apparently the crowds are infinite and the founding fathers gaze up at him admiringly**"

     Why is The Nodfather behaving thus?  Firstly, he refuses to accept that he can ever be wrong or do the wrong thing, which is why he still trots out 'They stole my election!' claim even at this convention.  Art!

     The second reason is that Trump is more concerned with having people he considers loyal around him than anyone competent, which has reduced his inner circle to a very small cadre indeed.  More examples of 'Dictatoritis' in action.  These bootlickers ensure to keep Trump isolated from indelicate things like how much he is actively hated, making sure that nothing bad ever crosses the Resolute Desk, in order to sustain his fantasy world.  Where he can bloviate on social media with AI images that sustain his Zeppelin-ego, you know, huge but fragile.  Art!

It ought to be 'Steven' but I enjoy winding him up

     This is Stephen Cheung, White House Communications Director, and one of the key players in the Keep Trumpy In A Bubble squad by being a media attack dog for Pumpkinhead.  For a Communications Director he is extremely bad at communicating, usually ranting and swearing at the press and journalists, but he's loyal to the Pagbeast so he gets to keep his job, in addition to be the only staffer who makes Donold look slim.  Relatively slim.

     Trump's Maris-Piper-blended-with-butter-and-cream brain may dimly perceive that the world does not dote on him as much as he hopes, so be prepared for a raft of reasons, excuses and lies before November 3rd.  If it does go badly for him, Stephen may be looking for a new job.

     No, this is not Politics, it is Entertainment and I only hope I have enough popcorn laid in.

     Coming soon - SUNSET OF THE PAGBEAST!

Old Man Vindicated

Let us combine two things here, my fear of mispronunciation and the academician and author Sarah Paine.  As mentioned previously, Your Humble Scribe is rather wary of mentioning Latin phrases or the authors of antiquity, for fear of being mocked by someone with a public school education who knows better.  Art!

     A very interesting book, which I re-read every few years.  What do I hear on a clip from 'The Global Gambit'?  Why none other than Sarah pronouncing it 'Thew-sid-id-ees' as I have been all these years alone.  Art!

     She stated that the South Canadian Naval War College has, it's first Case Study, 'The History Of The Peloponnesian War' and examines it from the perspective of Sparta being a Continentalist power, with Athens being a Naval power.

     Old dog validated.

I Am Sorely Tempted

You ought to know Conrad's attitude about all things that comes from his first question: Can you eat it?

     Okay, yesteryon I got a pack of 6 burgers going cheap in the chiller cabinet, except there were 8 when I checked on them later, and they now reside in the freezer, whereas the 4 burgers that were in the freezer are now defrosting.

     That's the background.  Art!

     Cheeseburger pizza.  Enough cholesterol to lay low a herd of brontosauri.

Pennington And On

More artworks from the slideshow 'Sci-Fi Art' put together featuring Bruce Pennington.  Art!

     Conrad not familiar with this one.  Fantasy setting?  Novel cover?  It does have the 'Title Gap' at the top to install the author's name and title, without covering up Bruce's art.  The location is obviously exotic, this isn't Tunbridge Wells or Sneddlepool Magna, and those skulls seemingly sport fangs not canines or incisors.  On the other hand, note the bright colour palette, implying less than loathsome.  Let me dig a little.  

     Nope.  No other copies of it anywhere with any description of it, not even a date.  Art!

     Unsuccessful Google-fu results.  Er - I think the title at lower starboard was acceptable currency before the Seventies.

Back To Those 20 Classic Novels

We are up to Number 16, publication date stretching from 1913 to 1927, an end date more than a decade after Kafka, the 1915 author of 'Metamorphosis'.  I just realised that Ol' Franny was writing his tome during the second year of the First Unpleasantness, when things were bad and getting worse, so you can see the reason his stuff is so bleak.  

     ANYWAY Art!

     'A La Recherche De Temps Perdue' in it's original M8 language.  I've never read it and have no compelling reason to do so, either, especially as it comes in 6 volumes.  I have a vague recollection of Proust's description of eating a madeleine, a type of French cake, which is typical of a man whose first thought is "Can you eat it?".  Supposedly about memory and recollection and guff stuff like that. 

     And with that I'm off to examine the contents of the fridge.  Chin chin!

*  May have to edit this, it's getting unhandily lengthy

**  From journo Miles Taylor, former Trump admin member