From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Angua gets a dish of Nutella all to herself.
© C. Ford.
Lucifer (the morning star) represented as a winged child pouring light from a jar. Engraving by G.H. Frezza, 1704.
Rodney Howard-Browne, a certified member of the lunatic fringe has come up with a brand new shtick.
During the program, Howard-Browne warned that the shadowy elites who run the world literally worship Satan and are intent on removing Trump from office, possibly with the assistance of Vice President Mike Pence.
“At the highest levels, these people worship Lucifer,” he said. “What I am talking to you about right now is the Luciferian structure of the globe. These people care absolutely nothing—I believe that with President Trump coming was a last minute reprieve, but we are being set up even now, as we speak, for the coming of that Antichrist one-world religion and one money system.”
Oh yes, the specter of ecumenism. I recall people being quite upsetty about that one way back in my Calvary Chapel days, but y’know, back then, people were absolutely certain the rapture was right around the corner, and a lot of people thought adopting bar codes was the mark of the beast and all that crap. You can rest easy, Rodney. We humans are light years from an ecumenical church and a one money system. For such things to develop, people need to be at peace, and be willing to talk and agree with one another, that cooperation business. We aren’t even close to dreaming about that at this point in time.
I don’t understand why you in the lunatic fringe are always focused on people at “the highest level” and all that elite nonsense. It’s not those who have power and money who fuel revolutions; those people are terrified of the ‘common folk’ deciding they are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. Besides, there are more of us common types than ‘elites’, so I’d think any shadowy movement would be found amongst the hoi polloi. People at a high level with lots of power and money tend to be firmly in favour of the status quo.
The election of Trump, Howard-Browne said, gave the world “a window” of opportunity to fight back against the satanic system before it destroys the world.
Hahahaha, no. The election, such as it was, allowed a minority of vicious bigots the hope of being able to oppress others, and to bring about the fascism they worship.
“What people don’t understand,” he said, “they might not like Trump because he was not a Sunday school teacher, but we didn’t need a Sunday school teacher, we needed a wrecking ball and we have a wrecking ball by the name of President Donald J. Trump. I’m so happy that he is wrecking everything and I say, ‘Wreck on, Mr. President.’ The tweets are important because they are rabbits that he is sending for the media to catch while he is doing something else and we have to pray that God gives us this reprieve because you know if they can’t push the racism thing, if they can’t push the whole, you know, he has lost his mind, then they will take him out. And that is the next thing on the horizon.”
Oh FFS, what a load of bonnaconshit. We needed a wrecking ball like we needed a nice new hole in our heads. There’s no need to push anything – every day, the Tiny Tyrant proves his racism, his shallowness, his fucking idiocy. He is not any sort of genius, who is deliberately tweeting distractions. Unfortunately, his tweets are direct evidence of how his mind works, and that should scare the shit out of every person on the planet. If an assassin has not stepped up, given all the destruction wrought over the past year, it’s not going to happen, Rodney. I doubt an impeachment will happen either, because it seems no one has the fucking spine to follow the law and do the right thing.
Howard-Browne then warned that while he personally likes the vice president, “Mike Pence is a company man, Mike Pence will do what the GOP tells him to do … So we are in a very precarious situation, more precarious now than we can ever even begin to imagine.”
Right. You’re talking about a man with the spine of a jellyfish. Pence excels at kissing ass, I’ll give you that, but that doesn’t make him dangerous. In a bad situation, Pence would fall to his knees and grovel to the Tiny Tyrant. We aren’t talking about some silent man of action, the stereotype you see in too many movies. Pence is Trump’s fluffer, nothing more.
The asp is avoiding the sound of a snake charmer by putting one ear to the ground and putting his tail in the other ear. The snake charmer is protecting himself with a shield and stick.
Text Translation:
Of the asp. The asp, aspis, is so called because it injects poisons with its bite, spreading them throughout the body. For the Greek word for poison is ios, and from this comes the word aspis, because it kills with a poisonous bite. It moves quickly with its mouth always open and emitting vapour. There are various kinds and species of asps which inflict harm with different effects. It is said that when the asp begins to endure a snake-charmer summoning it with music designed for that purpose, to bring it out of its cave, and it does not want to come out, it presses one ear to the ground, and blocks and covers the other with its tail, and deaf to those magic sounds, does not go out to the man who is charming him.
Of a similar nature are the men of this world, who close one ear with earthly desires. The other they block with their deeds, lest they hear the voice of the Lord saying: ‘Whosoever he be of you that foresaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple or servant’ (see Luke, 14:33). Asps do no more than merely close their ears. Men of this world blind their eyes lest they see heaven and are reminded of the works of the Lord.
The dissa is a kind of asp, called situla in Latin, because those it bites die of thirst, sitis. There is a kind of asp called ypnalis, because it kills you by sending you to sleep. It was this snake that Cleopatra applied to herself, and was released by death as if by sleep. The emorrosis is an asp, so called because it kills by making you sweat blood. If you are bitten by it, you grow weak, so that your veins open and your life is drawn forth in your blood. For the Greek word for ‘blood’ is emath. The prester is an asp that moves quickly with its mouth always open and emitting vapour, as the poet recalled like this: ‘The greedy prester that opens wide its foaming mouth’ (Lucan, Pharsalia, 9, 722). If it strikes you, you swell up and die of gross distention, for the swollen body putrefies immediately after.
The spectaficus is an asp which, when it bites a man, destroys him, so that he turns entirely into fluid in the snake’s mouth. The cerastis, is so called because it has horns on its head like a ram’s. For the Greek word for ‘horns’ is ceraste. It has a set of four small horns and, displaying them, it persuades animals that they are good to eat, then kills its prey; for it covers its entire body with sand, so that no trace of it shows, except the part with which it catches the birds or animals it has attracted. It bends more than other snakes, so that it seems to have no spine.
Goshawk, from Charly, click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Kevin Swanson, professional lunatic, was recently ranting about the absolute horror of The Shape of Water, a movie which spelled the end of civilisation as we know it. It seems that wasn’t emphatic enough for Mr. Swanson. There’s another civilisation ender: The Last Jedi. I haven’t seen it, because SW isn’t my thing, but I’ve certainly read enough about it, and I was pleased that at least in this installment, there were women who did more than run after some dude, or end up chained in a bikini. Good for them. That is decidedly not Mr. Swanson’s viewpoint.
“The feminists are head over heels in love with this one,” Swanson lamented. “It’s a bit of a feminist fest with very little artistic story telling involved … It was a great vehicle to continue to educate the world towards feminism, and feminism is ultimately the individuation of the family, the destruction of the family, and the violation of the biblical ordinance that the husband is head of the wife. So that is fundamentally being eroded in the minds of our 13-and 14-year-old girls as they watch these movies.”
Yeah, no. It’s not at all a bad thing, recognizing that the people who make up a family are all individuals, with their own minds and personalities. That’s a healthy thing, because thinking that a ‘family’ is the property of a man is not at all a good thing, and that kind of thinking generally leads to bad acts and a hell of a lot of dysfunction. As for artistic story telling, you think “hey, man owns everyone” is good storytelling, and boy, do I have news for you, Mr. Swanson, that’s a bad story. We’ve had centuries of that plot, and some of humans who happen to be women, we’re damn tired of the same old song.
Who gives a shit if it “violates” a biblical ordinance? That’s only so to a percentage of christians, and as I’m not christian, why would that bit of idiocy matter to me? The bible is one very bad pastiche of very bad stories, many of them stolen and mangled, and I find it beyond silly that I’m supposed to care about anything it contains. All young women do not belong to you, Mr. Swanson, and it’s beyond creepy, this sense of ownership you put out. If you have 13 or 14 year old daughters, then you can use “our”. If they aren’t your children, then no, they are nothing to do with you.
“You can thoroughly expect the unraveling of the Christian family in the years to come if the Christian family is sitting their children at the feet of feminists and receiving the messages,” Swanson said, as he railed against the film for featuring several female characters in lead roles “defending the universe from the bad guys.”
“Friends,” he said, “this is what the last movies produced by a dying civilization look like.”
Hmmm. So it’s much better for the universe to go to utter hell and misery than to have women save the day. That’s ever so nice, Mr. Swanson. What a lovely message you’re sending to young women: you’re good for absolutely nothing except being a baby bakery and obeying a man. Why you’re surprised a lot of young women aren’t interested in that little message, I don’t know. A movie which features women as full human beings does not spell ‘dying civilisation’. It spells growth and progress, and those are good things, Mr. Swanson, in spite of your desire to regress back centuries in time. We’re moving right past your anachronistic ass, and can barely bother to spare a glance at you.
The full mess is at RWW.
Cancer Vixen, Marisa Acocella Marchetto.
Warning: below the fold is a photo of my chemo port taken right after surgery. It’s not hideous, looks kinda like a body mod gone wrong, but if you’re sensitive, don’t look.
So, the 19th. My diagnosis was on Dec. 19th. January 19th was medical hell day. I’m starting to dislike 19ths. Yesterday, had to leave the house at 5:45am for a full day: PET scan, radiation doc visit, MRI, and chemo port installation. We finished up all the medical stuff at 6pm. Tired doesn’t begin to cover it.
As indicated by the text, the male viper spits its seed into the female’s mouth. The young gnaw their way out of their mother’s side.
This entry turned into quite the misogynistic diatribe, with a mild smack on the hand to men.
Text Translation:
Of the viper. The viper is so called because the female gives birth with force, vi pariat. For when her belly aches with labour pains, her young do not wait to be released at the right time according to nature, but gnawing through her sides burst forth, leaving their mother dead. They say that the male spits his seed into the female, with his head inserted in her mouth. Mad with lust she bites it off. Thus it comes about that both parents die; the male during intercourse; the female at birth. Saint Ambrose says of the viper that it the vilest kind of creature and more cunning than the whole serpent species. When it feels the desire for intercourse, it goes in search of a lamprey already known to it or prepares to copulate with a new partner. It goes to the shore and makes its presence known with a hiss, inviting her to its conjugal embrace. The lamprey, once invited, does not demur and shares with the poisonous snake the union it seeks.
What should these words signify to us if not that we should put up with the behaviour of our partner, and even if his whereabouts cannot be discovered, we are to behave as if he were present? Let him be harsh, deceitful, uncouth, unreliable, drunken: are any of these things worse than the poison from which the lamprey, in intercourse, does not shrink? When she is invited, she is not found wanting and embraces the slimy snake with sincere affection.
The man puts up with your mischief and your feminine tendency towards triviality. Can you, o woman, not stand by your man? Adam was deceived by Eve, not Eve by Adam. It is right that the woman should accept as her governor the man whom she urged to do wrong, lest she fall again through her feminine disposition. But he is rough and uncouth! He pleased you once. Are you saying that a husband should be chosen on a frequent basis?
A gorgeous Greater Kestrel, giving a clenched talon salute, from “The”. Click for full size!
© “The”, all rights reserved.
This project ought to keep anyone busy for quite a while! The full instructable is here!
This basilisk has a raptor’s beak, a cockscomb, wings, a tail and claws. He is being attacked by a weasel.
Text Translation:
Of the basilisk. The basilisk’s name in Greek, translated into Latin, regulus, means ‘little king’. It is so called because it is the king of crawling things, who flee when they see it, because it kills them with its scent. It will even kill a man just by looking at him. Indeed, no bird can fly past unharmed by its gaze but, however far away, will be burnt up and devoured in its mouth.
The basilisk can be conquered by weasels. Men put them into the caves where the basilisks lie hidden. The basilisk, seeing the weasel, flees; the weasel pursues and kills it. For the Creator has made nothing without a remedy. The basilisk is half-a-foot in length, with white stripes. Of the basilisk, or regulus [continued] Basilisks, like scorpions, seek out dry places; after they have come to water and bite anyone there, they make that person hydrophobic and send them mad. The creature called sibilus is the same as the regulus, or basilisk; for it kills with its hiss before it bites or burns.
Folio 66r – the dragon, continued. De basilisco; Of the basilisk.