So time for some more Vladimir Kush stuff on the hoof. Talking of which, the above is called 'Black Horse'.
Not sure what this is called..
Hat Tip to Mike - link to left. Plus - with Hat Tip to Obnoxio The Clown via Charon QC here is a take from Hong Kong on our beloved Prime Minister and his alleged bullying activities. All becomes clear...
I couldn't help myself here. Nicked from Memphis Steve who nicked it from someone else...
Debbie Harry caused a great deal of - erm - excitement to gentlemen of a certain age. As a gentleman of a certain age, I'm saying nothing apart from 'nice fish!' Plus 'what is Darth Vader doing in this clip?'
Here is our heroine and pals on German TV, fortified by a slug on a bottle.
A lot of 'embedding disabled by request' for Blondie stuff but here's another that sneaked under the bar.
The fish in the first clip put me in mind of this nice piece of surrealism. I know I said no more spoof posters. I lied. maybe just one more. I promise I'll really stop after this. Jus one more lil poster can't do any harm...
That was totally definitely the last one. I promise to seek professional help. Clifford Singer, the guy who has been doing the My David Cameron stuff has decided enough is enough too. He gives his reasons in the linked piece.
The rabbit has been careering up and down the country with far too many very early starts for his liking so blogging has been a bit perfunctory of late. Here are a few more early Biff cartoons to keep the show on the road before I can re-charge the brain for more substantial stuff.
Do you know you've got your elbow in your lasagne? You hum it, I'll play it!.... Sorry, couldn't resist that one.
This last one is for Kaz who is apparently under the weather after medical persons have been prodding and poking her. Hope this cheers your Kazness up!
Just one sort of serious piece. There is a new book out called True Blue: Strange Tales From a Tory Nation by two guys called Chris Horrie and David Matthews in which our intrepid investigators set out to offer their services to various Conservatives to see if the brand had been really detoxified as 'Dave' would have us believe.
Guess what? Well let the Conservatives speak for themselves. Campaigning against Susan Kramer, Liberal Democrat MP, the dynamic duo were told endlessly to emphasise that she was an 'outsider' and 'foreigner'. When asked how so the answer was 'she’s a Jewess (sic) but we aren’t allowed to say that. So all we can say is that she got off the train from Hungary'.One particular charmer was Ian Oakley, former Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Watford (former everything now he has copped a suspended prison sentence for offences of harassment and criminal damage but not before unburdening himself of the announcement that he planned to make many trips to Israel where he would take a machine gun and a flame-thrower to destroy Palestinian villages.
Finally for now, I blogged about Dave Stooge Joanne Cash and her travails with the Westminster North Conservatives on the 11th of this month but did not at that point know the views of the local party agent, Jonathan Fraser-Howells, 'it makes me sick seeing pregnant stomachs around'. Ms Cash is pregnant.
Lovely people. These grotesques in government will be Blair/Brown's legacy - or a part of it.
To maintain this blog's universal recognition as being at the cutting edge of - um - legal stuff here are (again, I put this up yonks ago but I'll just do two of my personal faves this time) extracts from real courtroom exchanges from Disorder in the American Courts by Charles M. Sevilla. Bear with me if you've seen these before, they've been round the block a few times.
I just typed something so pretentious I have instantly deleted it. Biff has that effect...
There ya go - Biff meets Bertie Wooster. For the full kit and caboodle, take a look via the link.
This one is quite irresistible. there's something strange about Blair's teeth, though. Perhaps they have been photoshopped too.
I have to confess that I like to listen to the Danny Baker programme on Radio 5 Live on a Saturday morning. Danny Baker is a corpulent Millwall supporter, a sub-species generally to be avoided but he does a very witty and entertaining programme, mostly about football. Today he was musing about the Everton supporters singing 'Fat Spanish waiter/you're just a fat Spanish waiter' to Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez (for the footballingly challenged, Everton are also a Liverpool club - although I think they identify themselves as Merseyside generally - and rivalry is - erm - intense). Baker commented he wondered how many of them knew that the tune they were was using was Guantanamera, which he described - not entirely accurately methinks - as a folk song with political overtones.
Still it's a good song and here it is. There is a wider topic as regards what songs are cannibalised for terrace songs, a lot are nursery hymns but my personal favourite is 'Neville, Neville - your face is a mess' to the tune of David Bowie's Rebel Rebel.
The Six Nations rugby is under way and so my mind returned to the subject of National Anthems. The United Kingdom has a national anthem - God Save the Queen - and there is a universal consensus that it is rubbish. Three parts of the British Isles have brilliant anthems, First Flower of Scotland - damn - this is as good as it gets. Feast your eyes and ears - you don't need a drop of Scottish blood for a lump in the throat.
Then the Welsh have Land of My Fathers/Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. All together now... 'Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn alwyl i mi / Gwlad bierdd a chantarion, enwogion o fri...' No, I haven't a clue either but brilliant stuff.
The Irish cheated a bit. The Irish Republic has a national anthem - The Soldier's Song - which is standard issue national anthem stuff and doesn't work for the north where the national anthem is - erm - God Save the Queen (the Irish rugby team is an all Ireland one) so they adopted Fields of Athenry as the rugby anthem. Here are the Munster supporters winding up the Sale players with Fields of Athenry. The Sale players look - erm - wound,
Unfortunately, a lot of this is really all about bashing the poor old English pantomime villains - who don't even have a decent anthem - just the gruesome God save the Queen. Now the rabbit has English, Irish and French ancestry so can be promiscuous in his loyalties rugbywise (I take the wonderfulness of the Marseillaise as read) but culturally I am English. where is the decent specifically English anthem? Maybe we don't do anthems.
It's just not English. The best shot is Blake's Jerusalem. It's been tried for cricket but not for rugby as far as I know. Maybe worth a try...
Here is Wild Bill Blake. I like Blake. I like this portrait. He looks what he was - a London artisan dressed up in his best clothes to have his portrait painted.
I do have an aversion for the kind of gleeful Muslim bashing that certain sort of right wing blogs seem to make a life's work of but occasionally something comes up so bonkers that comment is - if not inevitable - at least appropriate.
Say hello to Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman. I wonder if he is any relation to Robert Crumb's Shuman the Human. Anyway our man has a view on St Valentine's day. He is against it. He has called on Muslim youth to 'confront [the] Valentine virus' - which is apparently worse than AIDS or Ebola. Our man elaborated that while 'everything red will become more expensive' for the holiday, 'one red thing will become cheaper: the blood of Muslims. All this is the result of the sins committed by Muslim youth'.
Oh dear! Apparently St Valentine's day 'destroys our relationship with God'. I am beginning to ever so slightly suspect that our man has a talent for exaggeration.
His Shuman-ness is not alone in the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has asked florists and gift shops to remove all red items until after Valentine's Day, calling the celebration of such a holiday a sin.
Unsurprisingly, a black market in red roses has flowered (so to speak).
'As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women', Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, a scholar in Islamic studies, helpfully explained to the Saudi Gazette.
Sometimes a sense of proportion would come in handy. I'll refrain from further comment save to say that St Valentine's day really has become a pile of overblown commercial tosh (but that's all - I'd sooner have Valentine's day than Ebola, thank youuuu...). When the rabbit was a small rabbit, the idea was to send Valentine's cards anonymously to the discreet object of desire who then may or may not have sussed out who the sender was. Now it seems to have become a kind of super Hallmark Holiday to the delight of chocolatiers, florists, restaurants (full with glum looking couples eating in near silence) and of course the manufacturers of greeting cards. The cards are not sent out anonymously to women with whom the sender desires - or dreams hopelessly of - a relationship with any more but rather seem to be sent to renew existing relationships. Sort of like the relationship equivalent of renewing the TV licence or MoT. The rabbit will not be sending Valentine's cards this year. Below is a Victorian Valentine's card.
Oh and for JoJo and Fleur...
I sometimes wonder if everyone else in living in some parallel universe and I am peeping in from the outside. Yesterday and the day before the front page headline in the Sun (a loathsome tabloid 'newspaper' owned by the ubiqitous - and odious - Rupert Murdoch, I explain for overseas readers) concerning someone called Vernon.
I have no idea who 'Vernon' is.
Apparently Vernon has been having textsex (sic) with a page 3 lovely (Tuesday's front page) and 5 other women (Wednesday's front page). Someone called Tess Daly is very upset.
Should I be concerned that I have no idea who Vernon is or why anyone would wish to know this information?
The sense of unreality was acclerated on the concourse at Waterloo railway station yesterday morning where I saw a woman with a pink heart shaped balloon in one hand and dragging a rocking horse behind her with the other.
No, I've no idea why.
I have to confess that however much I despise New Labour and all its works, the prospect of a government led by preppy pillock 'Dave' Cameron fills me with increasing nausea. There is an amusing spat going on the the Westminster North constituency. 'Dave' has the habit of parachuting his mates into winnable seats, mostly pneumatic blondes in early middle age. They would appear to have some sort of production line somewhere. Recently something called the Turnip Taliban cut up rough over the splendidly named Elizabeth Truss being dumped as candidate in some Norfolk constituency when it emerged that la Truss had been at it with some married Tory MP or the other. The equally splendidly named Sir Jeremy Bagge led the unsuccessful resistance.
The latest spat is nothing to do with adulterous liasons but a hate/hate relationship between Conservative candidate Joanne Cash (above) and the constituency big bug and chairwoman Amanda Sayers. The bitchslapping has reached a deafening crescendo and Conservative Central Office has had to intervene. The brawl reached a crescendo when Cash resigned as candidate and then unresigned, tweeting triumphantly 'RIP dinosaurs'.
Presumably, we are supposed to treat this shower seriously as a party of government. The rabbit's pen is dipped deep in vitriol in anticipation.
The bloke above is married to la Cash, went to Eton with 'Dave' and is called Octavius Black. He is one ugly fuck! With all his money, couldn't he arrange for a new face?
Sorry to drag law into this but the US Government are not happy bunnies following revelations in the case of Binyamin Mohammed, a British resident and former Guantanamo detainee, that he was tortured and that MI5 (the British Secret Service) knew this. 'Not helpful' complain the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (sic). The (UK) government had tried to suppress the relevant documents but to its great chagrin failed. The White House pronounces itself 'deeply disappointed'.
The judgement of the Master of the Rolls and all round good thing Lord Neuberger says a number of highly disobliging thisgs about MI5. To such an extent that Jonathan Sumption QC has written to him on behalf of the government seeking the judgement to be toned down. Unfortunately the letter went to other parties to the litigation and the cat is out of the bag. Here is the gist of Mr Sumption's complaint.
Who would have thought such bad things? For those whose idea of as much fun as can be had with your clothes on is reading a very long law report feast your eyes at the link.
In the latest instalment of my plucky but doomed attempts to educate Americans in the delights of cricket, I have been parading for the edification of Mrs Hall (link to left) Ricky Ponting being hit in the face with a cricket ball. Ponting thus discomfited cheers up all people of goodwill greatly so here are two samples: one of our man fielding and one of him batting. The result is similar. A cricket ball in the face. Teehee! Trust me, it hurts. Snuck! (explanation; he is the captain of Australia and thus a total pantomime villain in England. His chippy personality doesn't help in this respect. To put it mildly.
There is an odd belief among Americans that cricket is some soft game for wusses. Trust me, it's not. Try this last clip...
Oh and something for the weekend. Beaker's rendition of Ode To Joy. Very tasteful, I'm sure you'll agree.
Now children, let's see if we can get all the pottymouth out of our systems in one go! This is a respectable and erudite blog, I'll have you know! After the lapse of good taste relating to - ahem - wanking yesterday, Laci the Chinese fluffything (link to left) draws my attention to the Austrian town of Fucking. 
More years than I care to remember I lived in a tumbledown house in Kennington (inner south London for those unacquainted...) There were six bedrooms over four floors and an indeterminate collection of permanent and temporary residents. We once had a complete rock band fom Hull resident on the living room floor but that's another story. Anyway, we inevitably had a huge pool of rock albums, one or two classical albums that sneaked in one way and the other and a black vinyl version of Lullaby of Broadway from Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1935. I haven't a clue where it came from but when people came back over refreshed on the turntable it would go! Quality!
A random factoid I was told by a Crystal Palace supporter yesterday: Neil Warnock (the Crystal Palace manager for the footballingly challenged) is an anagram of Colin Wanker. I have double checked this. It's true.
Erm... Colin Wanker
The death of J.D. Salinger has been widely reported. He was plainly a very strange man but I do owe him a debt of gratitude. I tooki O Level English Literature (that's GCSE young persons - and for overseas readers O Levels were exams taken at 16 by pupils deemed fit to take them - being a smartipants I took then at 15 but that's another story). I had three set texts: Macbeth - which is good fun, the poems of Robert Browning - which I developed an odd liking for. the one I particularly liked was My Last Duchess - we are in psycho central territrory there and David Fucking Copperfield - to give it its proper title. I can't tell you how much I hated that book. Every line was pure misery. I can't even remember why I hated it so much but I did. It's a bit like the worst job I ever had (with apologies to Derek and Clive) which was so awful all I can remember about it was that I stuck it for four days and didn't go back for the fifth, despite being rightly told by a co-worker 'never leave without your wages' - which were due on the fifth day - a Friday.Anyway, after David Fucking Copperfield I just hated novels so much it was four years later when as an undergraduate I could bear to pick up a novel again. It was Catcher in the Rye. As a cure, it worked. I have rarely been without a novel on the go ever since. I mentioned Derek and Clive and The Worst Job I Ever Had. Oh all right then. If you insist... Warning: hugely not office friendly
As a parting shot on Salinger, one strange fact I didn't know until reading an obit today was that his first wife was a Nazi he was sent to arrest as such when he was an officer in Military Intelligence (a contradiction in terms - Boom! Boom!). They had eight months of vigorous nazisex and, thus sated, seperated. Heigh ho.
After this, I promise no more Cameron posters (maybe back to dreadful album covers) but here is one helpfully amended by some wag on behalf of the good people of Hackney.
To which Beau Bo D'Or (link to left) adds for the sake of completeness...
