A Place To Hide.

From David: Here are a few pix of a nice, snug, hideout, one where you a person can withdraw, yet observe, embrace the peace of the dark, yet still see the light, and one that’s not too hard to get out of when it is time to embrace life again. What a magnificent tree, and a splendid hiding place. I love such places, they have a tangible magic and peace to them. Click for full size!

© David Brindley, all rights reserved.

Black People Excited About Black Panther: BAD!

A dude by the name of Ben Shapiro is all manner of upset about people being excited about Black Panther. Naturally, he misses the point, by a whole damn universe. Most of his screeth* seems to be a lament over the lack of gratefulness being displayed in this excitement. Black people should be grateful, dammit, for all the great and wonderful things white people have done for them! On your knees, slaves! Oh, er…stop being so excited! I’m not going to be able to get everything in, it’s a fairly long screeth, so full of wypipo gone wrong that it’s extremely difficult to take, and that’s a serious understatement. Shapiro is one of those fucking idiots who make you ache for the ability to reach through your screen and smack him into last Sunday. And I’ll just add that I’m over the top excited about Black Panther m’self, but I can hardly share in the excitement born of such outstanding representation, because I’m not black. That said, I don’t have any problems understanding The Excitement.

“Everyone in the media is talking about the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity, or at least since Caitlyn Jenner became a woman—a transgender woman—and that, of course, is the release of ‘Black Panther’. It is so deeply important,” Shapiro said, mockingly.

No, not one single person is talking about the movie as if it were the most important thing ever in the history of humanity, you sniveling dipshit. Black Panther is deeply important – look at how damn long it’s taken to get a mainstream movie comprised of a mostly black cast, especially when no one is able to say that tokenism has gone out of Hollywood.

“We’ve heard it’s deeply important to millions of black Americans, who after all were not liberated from slavery 200 years ago and liberated by the civil rights movement with federal legislation, have not been gradually restored to what always should have been full civil rights in the United States. None of that has mattered up till they made a Marvel movie about a superhero who is black in a country filled with black people. ‘Blade’ was not enough. ‘Catwoman’ with Halle Berry, no. OK, Wakanda is where it is,” Shapiro said.

He continued sarcastically, “This is the most important moment in black American history, not Martin Luther King, not Frederick Douglass, not the Civil War, not the end of Jim Crow, none of that, not Brown vs. Board—the most important thing is that Chadwick Boseman puts claws on his hands and a mask on his face and runs around jumping off cars in CGI fashion—deeply, deeply important. Black children everywhere will now believe that they too can be superheroes who jump off cars in fictional countries.”

Oh my. Hey, sniveling dipshit! You left a little something out – all those things? They wouldn’t have been necessary if white people deciding that forcibly kidnapping people and putting them into slavery hadn’t been done in the first place. You don’t get fucking points for taking centuries to correct your massive mistakes. As for the the movies Blade and Catwoman, you wouldn’t have noticed that outside the main characters, most of the cast was comprised of white people. That’s because you expect to see white people, as far as you’re concerned, that’s only right and proper. What a fucking surprise that people of colour would like to see themselves reflected in the same way, and not always have to settle for tokenism.

“We heard this about Barack Obama when he was elected, too. ‘Now that Obama has been president, black Americans will feel like they too can be presidents. It’s a transformative moment.’ Yet, all we hear now is that America is deeply racist and that black people are still systemically discriminated against and that black people are still victims in America society. So, it turns out it didn’t mean anything,” Shapiro said.

Yes, it was a transformative moment. Just like the portraits too, because generations of children to come will be able to read about a black president, and they will see black people represented in the sea of white in the white house. (White, white everywhere.) Having such transformative moments in regard to representation and the hope of future achievement is not a magic fucking wand, you wannabe Voldemort. Whitemort? Yeah, I’ll go with that one. It does not magically erase systemic racism, localised bigotry, or victimisation. Those are still with us, and unfortunately, with the Tiny Tyrant, we’re seeing a vicious, cancerous rise in hatred. The difference such transformative moments make cannot be accurately estimated; they represent hope, strength, and change. They represent inclusion and acceptance, and you just have to try and take that away, by demeaning black people in every way your tiny, atrophied brain can come up with. You aren’t worth spitting on, Mr. Shapiro.

“Sorry to break it to you folks, Wakanda is not a real place,” Shapiro said. “It does not exist.”

Well, thank you ever so much for that whitesplaination, Mr. Shapiro. I’m ever so sure that not one black person could possibly figure that one out minus your help. What a flaming doucheweasel.

You can read the whole thing, and watch video at RWW.

*Screeth: screed + froth.

Illustrating Carnival.

Spider costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — <a href="https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A4878" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a> (some potential restrictions on reuse).

Spider costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source (some potential restrictions on reuse).

“D for Dragon” float design by Bror Anders Wikstrom for the “Alphabet” theme, Krewe of Proteus, 1904: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — <a href="https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A4382" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a> (some potential restrictions on reuse).

“D for Dragon” float design by Bror Anders Wikstrom for the “Alphabet” theme, Krewe of Proteus, 1904: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source (some potential restrictions on reuse).

“U for Unicorn” float design by Bror Anders Wikstrom for the “Alphabet” theme, Krewe of Proteus, 1904: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — <a href="https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A4382" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a> (some potential restrictions on reuse).

“U for Unicorn” float design by Bror Anders Wikstrom for the “Alphabet” theme, Krewe of Proteus, 1904: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source (some potential restrictions on reuse).

Coral Polyp costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — <a href="https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A6278" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Source</a> (some potential restrictions on reuse).

Coral Polyp costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source (some potential restrictions on reuse).

Darwin as an ass costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source.

Darwin as an ass costume designed by Charles Briton for the “Missing Links” theme, Mistick Krewe of Comus, 1873: Carnival Collection, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University — Source.

Oh gods, these are beyond fabulous! I am so in love with the Coral polyp costume. Also in love with the bat, so cheerful!

On March 6, 1889, the New York Times breathlessly reported on the recent Carnival spectacles in New Orleans. The Krewe of Rex’s pageant, themed around “Treasures of the Earth”, included a “Crystal” float “attended by figures in gorgeous costumes and prisms by the thousand”, and a “Diamond” float featuring “a rocky diamond dell” through which flowed “limpid streams where nymphs sported and played with the gems”. The Krewe of Proteus, meanwhile, dazzled with their “Hindoo Heavens” pageant, where in one scene appeared Agni “God of Fire” riding a ram that “strides the flames, attended by the fire sprites.” This opulent, and highly exoticized, interpretation of South Asian religion concluded with a tableau where “Vishnu, under the guise of a horse with silver wings, shatters the earth with his hoof and rises to the celestial abode.”

The modern American Mardi Gras owes much of its bombastic revelry to this late nineteenth-century “Golden Age” of Carnival design. From the invitations to the costumes to the hand fans carried by spectators, artists designed entire identities for each Krewe (a group that organizes a Carnival event).

[…]

Mythology, literature, religion, and history, as well as nineteenth-century book illustration and turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau, were remixed into an eclectic excess. Up to the early 1900s, the main Krewes were Rex, Comus, Proteus, and Momus, each with their favorite artist collaborators. The names of these individuals are now obscure, but artists Jennie Wilde, Bror Anders Wikstrom, Charles Briton, Carlotta Bonnecaze, and others now anonymous all influenced the embrace of the fantastic that endures into the present. The greatest publicly accessible resource of their art is the Carnival Collection, part of the Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) at Tulane University and supported by a bequest from the late journalist Charles L. “Pie” Dufour. In 2012, Tulane marked the completion of a two-year digitization project that put over 5,500 float and costume designs in the Carnival Collection online.

You can read and see so much more at The Public Domain Review, every single piece of artwork is utterly amazing and delightful! You can see all the images at a much larger size at the Tulane University source site. If you’re someone always on the lookout for inspired costume design, you cannot afford to miss these.

Thor’s Day Mood.

The Smoke – Tiger & Me. Thanks to rq. ♥

Don’t you wish for a little more from me
Hidden from their eyes we leave
And as the moment dies again
We give the stealing hour to the thieves
And leave the dying light
To the liars and the lovers in disguise

There’s only so much of this that I can take
It won’t be long now before you break me

One by one to the beating of this drum
Out they come, out they come to the howling fire
Moonlight shines on the smoke and funeral pyres
And I long for you

I won’t ask for any more from you
You’ve given all the while you bleed
And as the blackbird flies again
We’ll burn its wooden wings with deceit
If only to provide us
The fire with which we see the dying beat

There’s only so much of this that I can take
It won’t be long now before you break me

One by one to the beating of this drum
Out the come, out they come to the howling fire
Moonlight shines on the smoke and funeral pyres
And I long for you

One by one to the beating of this drum
Out they come, out they come to the howling fire
Moonlight shines on the smoke and funeral pyres
And I long for you

One by one to the beating of this drum
One by one to the beating of this drum
One by one to the beating of this drum
And I long for you

First Crocus.

From Sillybill: I saw this crocus popping up outa the ground Sunday and thought a small vision of the coming spring might make you smile. I’m not a good photographer, lousy camera, lot’s of hand jitter – I’ll work on getting better. I have to say, I don’t care about the lousy photographer business, because these did make me smile, and more. It’s been ages since I’ve been out in early March to photograph Windflower, the one reliable source which brings the promise of Spring, so I’m going to get out in the cow pastures this year.

© Sillybill, all rights reserved.

Sperm! Everywhere Sperm!

Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of President Obama.

The right wing lunatic fringe is going nuts over the portrait of President Obama. They seem to see sperm everywhere. And all other manner of evil. Don’t see it m’self.

…Corsi was online yesterday when the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama were released, and like so manyothers on the Right, he saw something nefarious in the paintings, asserting that the foliage and flowers in Barack Obama’s portrait were a symbol of “the pedophilia that they’re engaging in.”

“That is one of the weirdest presidential portraits I have ever seen,” Corsi said. “It’s a bizarre picture.”

“It’s a reference to the loss of virginity in terms of a physical sense,” he added. “It’s a very physical reference to loss of virginity … This whole elite globalist pedophilia is a major theme that Q continues to remind us underlies a lot of these globalists that we are dealing with. The fact that they are sitting on flowers and the deflowering could be easily an image of the pedophilia that they’re engaging in or the slavery pedophilia, you know, tend your gardens everybody, their slave gardens.”

Oh, now it’s “slavery pedophilia”. What the fuck? Do these people just sit around and do nothing all day except come up with this garbage? What a way to spend your life. Ugh.

Alex Jones, contributing to the second phase of the ongoing right-wing smear campaign against the artist who painted Barack Obama’s presidential portrait, claimed that the artist purposefully painted an image of sperm on Obama’s face to fulfill part of a globalist agenda to “have everything be a ritual of abomination.”

Today on Infowars, Jones claimed the artist Kehinde Wiley, who was hired to paint Obama, “is obsessed with sperm” and that “all of his paintings have sperm swimming all over everything.” For some reason, Jones also felt the need to clarify that the alleged sperm shape in question was a “GMO sperm” that was “fully formed.”

“You say, ‘But, it doesn’t make sense, it’s so degenerate.’ It’s a religion of degeneracy. It’s what globalism is. It’s what Satanism is,” Jones said. “So there you go, President Obama covered in sperm in new national portrait, and it’s all part of the joke in your face, because they don’t want upright strength. They want to have everything be a ritual of abomination.”

President Obama is covered in sperm. Uh huh. I think perhaps it’s someone other than Wiley who’s a tad obsessed with sperm, Mr. Jones.

You can read the full stories and more, at RWW: Corsi, Jones.

Word Wednesday.

Subfusc

Adjective, chiefly British.

Drab, Dusky.

[Origin: Latin subfuscus brownish, dusky, from sub– + fuscus dark brown.]

(1710)

“Phelan straightened in the pew, then relaxed his spine against the seat’s backrest. He noticed that the church was growing darker around him, the shadows more subfusc. – The Ghosts of Sleath, James Herbert.

No V.D.

I don’t do Valentine’s Day, never have. I prefer a V.D. free life. If you’re a happily romantic or sentimental person who thinks it is just grand and wonderful, sure, celebrate it to your heart’s content in any way you see fit, but do everyone else a favour, and leave it there, please. Don’t foist it or your ideas about it on other people. From where I sit, it’s a burden of expectation, yet another thing you don’t dare forget or you’ll have a pissed off partner[s], and it’s a serious burden on those who are not in a relationship, or just come out of one.

The history is a very old one, and it’s based on the martyrdom of christian saints. Like so much else, it’s now turned into a multi-billion dollar enterprise for everyone except those who celebrate it. Perhaps instead of piling money into the pockets of those who don’t need it, you could do something simpler for a partner, a thoughtfulness based on your actual lives, rather than hearts, flowers, candy and an expensive dinner somewhere. Just a thought.

Or just shed the ‘celebration’ altogether. I don’t need an assigned day to tell my partner I love them, that happens all the time. ETA: Right now, my partner is acting as my primary caregiver in regard to my cancer, they could hardly express their love more than that, which makes me loathe the superficiality of V.D. even more.