dolores666's photos with the keyword: AbsentFriends

aka Absent Friends. This is a generic, all-purpose memorial for all the people I’ve lost in the past few years. Life goes on, indeed, but in a somewhat diminished way. Here’s to you all, me old chinas.

It’ as I say all the time, even ad nauseam: if you’re lucky enough to have any friends, love them and cherish them and be good to them. They will not be around forever; like everything else, they are here today and poof! gone tomorrow. Have a nice life.

Meet Amorosa, the Other Voodoo Poppet. She brings you the latest model of All-Purpose Gripe Indicator: the DIY APGI. Into her lovingly hand-crafted numinous blank vituperative speech bubble you record your beef of choice and Robert Balfour is your father’s brother. Metchik! Word to the wise. Think twice about what you register as your miserere du jour. Like her twin, Poppy, Amorosa she may be by name and by nature but stupid and/or non-discriminating she ain’t. You try and carp about, say, “the crisis of masculinity” or “the migrant problem” or some such shite and she’ll give you very short shrift, she will. You’re welcome. This here doodle is for Ash’s 9th anniversary and for my lovely friend Ms. P.P.

I’ve changed my mind and decided to do yet another Ash Memorial. I still can see him as he was the last time we met, there, standing in my kitchen, arms waving, eyes ablaze, ranting like it was going out of fashion about the absolute need of this wretched country to acquire a constitution. Also the even more urgent necessity to clear out the English language (or any other language, for that matter) of jargon of any kind: legalese, psychobabble, poliflummery, pseudo-science bunk and other though-terminating linguistic evils. I would entirely agree with him on the language thing but I though he was being naive on the first point and I would remind him of all those countries that have constitutions and are still a fucking mess and/or a pain in the gluteus maximus, like the good old USA and Australia. He was undeterred by this last argument, for as well as a master-ranter he was as stubborn as a mule; now and then he would even out-rant me. But we never quarrelled and we always had such fun rearranging the world. Ah well… sic transit gloria us puny humans. And everything else. I hope his sub-atomic particles are having fun, still and forever, somewhere spiffing, where constitutions are not needed and paranoid empires are unknown and cant is regarded a mere joke, something to pass the time in between oscillations. PS. Because o f The Dread Glitch this pic seems a bit on the late side, but never mind. I'll be uploading in strict order of "birth". Or there abouts....

Worm Wisdom. (Ash Memorial Year 7) In the soothing, imperturbable shadow of Yggdrasil, the Níðhöggr and a couple of mates of his debate the endorsing of a possibly desirable early date for Ragnarok. This might well be the last public memorial I’ll upload -for a variety of mostly good reasons. But here goes anyways. I know Ash would have liked this doodle. Ash, me old china, we miss you more than ever but perhaps it was a good thing you went when you did. At least you’ve been spared this latest, the most Hideous Horror Show of all the recent whorish politics of this wretched country. More power to your particles, toots!

A sad Solstice. One of the pillars of my sanity and major luminary of my skyline, William Blum, died on December 9th, aged 85, after a long and fruitful career in the field of calling a spade a spade and tossing spanners into The Man’s propaganda machine. His wonderful Anti-Empire Reports opened many an eye to the facts of political life in the 20th and 21st centuries and strengthened my conviction that no, I’m not mad, bad and dangerous to know and that no, I’m not alone. We all miss him something chronic and I feel, once more, like a serial orphan. Still, the old sun has reached its peak and the young one is pushing its way upwards and onwards. Very, very soon the dreaded seasonal lunacy will be over and before we know it the first buds will be popping their tiny heads out and the snow drops will raise their small voices to say Hey, we’re alive again. Whoopee! Have a wonderful Solstice, comadres and compadres. And carry on best you can. Life is short and often sucks but it’s all we have, really. That and love. Here go a few links to the one and only William “Billy the Kid” Blum, a guy who shot from the hip and hardly ever missed, in case you are curious about what the fuss is all about. His site: williamblum.org His last Anti-Empire Report: williamblum.org/aer/read/160 And his legacy (we hope): covertactionmagazine.com/index.php/2018/12/09/william-blum-dead-at-85

For Ash 6.0 I know the anniversary proper is not for another couple of weeks yet but, as I also say, ad nauseam, I must concede, opportunity is as opportunity does. Who knows what state I’ll be in come the day? So, carpe doodle, deep sigh, big Oh Well… and on with life. Here’s looking at your subatomic particles, kiddo. We still miss you.

Meet the Delvaux twins, Maryse and Jean-Loup. Jean-Loup doesn’t do anything much; he’s a bit of a nogoodnik flâneur, really, but he’s very pretty, very clever and he throws the best tea parties in & around that neck of the woods. His sister Maryse is a professional frog spinner. She spins frogs, that’s what she does. She throws a handful of young frogs (sometimes infant wyrms) into the Vortex and makes them whirl and turn and twirl all the way to the bottom of the funnel until they vanish and reappear in the adjacent dimension, where they are picked up by the Shoggoths and their trusty inter-dimensional minibus, the Colometa, and returned safe and sound to their homes, their mothers and their choir practice. All the girl frogs and girl wyrms love Jean-Loup because of his good looks and his tea parties and his delightful crappy jokes. The boy frogs are not exactly enamoured of Maryse but they submit with good grace to this bizarre practice of being spun because it gives them kudos with the girl frogs and earns them extra cuddles from their mothers and the odd exemption from choir practice. The frog mothers thoroughly approve of this rotating caper, for it’s demonstrated that it fortifies the hide and tones down the superfluous testosterone; also, it gets the kids off their hands for a while without the venomous side-effects of day-time telly. This wee Loony Tune is for my friend Maryse, who loved Mercè Rodoreda and with whom I lost touch some time ago, unfortunately. Here’s looking at you, kid NB. No frogs were harmed in the making of this illustration.

This one, also made entirely with genetically modified nicked clipart stuff I found out there, I’ve dedicated to my darling dead friend, Ash, who was into Norse mythology, especially root-chewing giant worms (or wyrms, as they’re called in old English -or by pretentious people who like to affect an old-fashion mode of expression). He also had a very cuckoo sense of humour and I know he would have pissed himself laughing. I do miss him a lot.