"A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES", BY DYLAN THOMAS

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs. "He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

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"LIMITS", BY JORGE LUIS BORGES

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

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"A CHRISTMAS CAROL", BY G.K. CHESTERTON

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood at Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
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JINGLE BONES

The Dodologist has the pleasure to announce the release of Knokkelklang nr. 4 - a blog magazine editetd by His Grumpiness. It's a terribly jolly read for Christmas.
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THE BEATLES - A THOUSAND YEARS FROM NOW

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"YULE HORROR", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the wold;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feastings un-hallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sin's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the sick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark, from the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

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MUST BE SANTA, ONCE AGAIN

All this Christmas-stuff is making blogging a tiny bit difficult. Pressed for time and all that stuff.

While we do what we have to do before Santa comes calling, we tend to play Mr. Zimmerman's latest. I've already shared his video to Must Be Santa with you, my dear readers. That song made me search YouTube for more Christmas polka. And I found this, a live version of the same song, by the kings of modern American polka, Brave Combo:



You sort of hear where Dylan got his inspiration ...
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TO BE OR ... WHAT TO BE?

Brian Cox happens to be one of The Dodologist's favourite actors. He also turns out to be a great teacher. Here he is teaching young Theo a not entirely unfamous monologue by some Danish prince:



Priceless, isn't it? Though as someone points out in the comments on YouTube: "I don't know. Cute, yes, but his performance lacked substance. I had trouble feeling any real inner torment from him. I think Hamlet should be cast a little older, in my humble opinion."

Some of the discussions between teacher and student reminded me of this little dialogue, that I found on the website of Twitter favourite @lipstattoo.

– You remind me of the babe.
– What babe?
– Babe with the power.
– What power?
– Power of Voodoo.
– Who do?
– You do.
– Do what?
– Remind me of the babe.
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Thanks to Trond for bringing it to my attention.
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MUST BE MR. ZIMMERMAN (AND THAT SANTA DUDE)

The Dodologist isn’t among the biggest fans of Robert Allan Zimmerman. He has made some good records, by all means, but as being of his biggest fans means never listening to anything else, The Dodologist limits himself to liking Mr. Zimmerman.

But, as The Dodologist’s wife was very clear that Mr. Zimmerman's Christmas record was destined for The Nest, off His Grumpiness went, ho-ho-ho-ing.

And lo and behold what a good idea that was. It’s playing right now and it’s great fun. Yep, it actually sounds like Mr. Zimmerman is having fun. Now that’s a real surprise for Christmas.

Whatever, here is the man, singing William Fredericks and Hal Moore’s Must Be Santa. Now that’s what we needed: Christmas polka.



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FOUR POEMS BY DOROTHY PARKER

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.



Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.



I Shall Come Back

I shall come back without fanfaronade
Of wailing wind and graveyard panoply;
But, trembling, slip from cool Eternity-
A mild and most bewildered little shade.
I shall not make sepulchral midnight raid,
But softly come where I had longed to be
In April twilight's unsung melody,
And I, not you, shall be the one afraid.

Strange, that from lovely dreamings of the dead
I shall come back to you, who hurt me most.
You may not feel my hand upon your head,
I'll be so new and inexpert a ghost.
Perhaps you will not know that I am near-
And that will break my ghostly heart, my dear.



Portrait Of The Artist

Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.

Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.

Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double….
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.


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ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS ...

Christmas is closing in, and it is time for those familiar sounds that create that very special Christmassy feeling:

Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, Eartha Kitt moaning Santa Baby, a bunch of adorable little boys singing carols in some English church. And of course this tender classic from the Australian folkie Kevin “Bloody” Wilson:



For some reason The Dodologist seems to be the only one who finds this funny …
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THEIR PALL FOOT FOOT

In a comment to my last post, my good friend, themostexellent Lord Bassington-Bassington, reminded me of the once existence of The Shaggs. I haven't heard them in years, so I just had to dig them up on YouTube and share this, their, eh ... best ... sort off ... in a weird sense ... track with you, my dear readers.

As it was the last time I heard it, some ten years ago, it is still fascinating and sort of catchy, in a very, very painful way. Enjoy! The lyrics are below.

If you don't know The Shaggs, read Wikipedias article on them.


My Pal Foot Foot

My pal's name is Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
He always likes to roam
My pal's name is Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
I never find him home

I go to his house
Knock at his door
People come out and say
Foot Foot don't live here no more

My pal Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
Always likes to roam
My pal Foot Foot (Foot Foot)
Now he has no home

Where will Foot Foot go
What will Foot Foot do
Oh, Foot Foot
I wish I could find you

I've looked here, I've looked there
I've looked everywhere
Oh, Foot Foot
Why can't I find you?

Foot Foot, where can you be?
Foot Foot, why won't you answer me?
Foot Foot, Oh Foot Foot
Wherever you are
I want you to come home with me

I don't have time to roam
I have things to do
I have to go home
Oh, Foot Foot, where are you?

If Foot Foot didn't like to roam so well
He would still have a place to dwell
Foot Foot, please answer me
I know where you are
You're behind that tree

Foot Foot, please come to me
Foot Foot, now that you're here
Won't you come home
Foot Foot, promise me this
That you will never again roam
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TOMORROW BELONGS TO ... ME?

Irony is difficult stuff – especially if you are really good at it – because people all to easily misunderstand.

Wikipedia defines irony as “… the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite”. In other words: Saying one thing, but meaning the opposite.

Over at Harry’s Place they are making fun of Swedish Neo Nazi folkstress Saga, because she sings the song Tomorrow Belongs To Me – from the musical Cabaret.

Making fun of Saga is always a good thing, not the least because her version of the song is unspeakably dreadful. (Though you’ve got to hand it to her: At least she sings in tune – in itself rather remarkable among Neo Nazi singers, as Prussian Blue time and again has demonstrated.)

For one thing Cabaret was an all out anti Nazi musical, and as such it is rather remarkable that Saga performs the song. For another, as Harrys’s Place enjoys pointing out, Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics to Cabaret, was Jewish. And gay. Not the most popular personality traits among Nazis. (So was John Kander, who wrote the music, by the way.)

The point of the song, as someone pointed out in a comment to one of many versions on YouTube, is that bad ideas don’t present themselves as bad ideas. They present themselves as – and more important: are considered by the people who hold them to be – good and noble. The Nazis were a bad lot – because their political ideas where really bad stuff. But they considered themselves brave defenders of nation, volk and family – and surrounded by enemies to on all sides.

As do Saga, Prussian Blue (or at least their mother) and most Neo Nazis of today. And they are right to consider themselves surrounded by enemies. At least we do our very best. Tomorrow do definitely not belong to them.

But the real irony of the story, I guess, is that the man who adopted Tomorrow Belongs To Me as a Neo Nazi hymn, in all probability knew exactly what he was doing. He was the skinmeister himself, Ian Stuart Donaldson of Skrewdriver, who recorded the song for their 1984 album Hail The New Dawn.

A lot can be said about Stuart Donaldson – most of it bad – but he wasn’t stupid. Recording Tomorrow Belongs To Me was an act of sheer arrogance: You may make caricatures of our beliefs, but we’ll adopt them and use them as our own. It was an act of real chutzpah, to use a very, very inappropriate term.

Some people within the Neo Nazi scene know this very well. I believe Joe Owens points it out in his autobiography. (Though I’ll be damned if I’m going to check. Reading it once was enough.) Others though, tend to speak of the song as traditional, as they do with The Green Fields Of France by Eric Bogle, another folkie tune Ian Stuart Donaldson recorded. (So does, by the way, Wikipedia's article on him. Funny that.)

There is probably some moral to this story, but I’m uncertain of what it may be. Except to beware of Nazis, even when they are singing gay Jewish tunes.

Here is the song from the movie version of Cabaret (a dubbed version, though that's hard to notice). And below that are the lyrics.




Tomorrow belongs to me

The sun on the meadow is summery warm
The stag in the forest runs free
But gathered together to greet the storm
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

The branch on the linden is leafy and green
The Rhine gives it's gold to the sea
But somewhere a glory awaits unseen
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes
The blossom embraces the bee
But soon says a whisper, arise, arise
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

Now Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see
The morning will come when the world is mine
Tomorrow belongs to me
Tomorrow belongs to me

Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs
Tomorrow belongs to me!


I don’t link to Nazis, even on YouTube. If you want to hear Saga’s version (and believe me, you don’t) search for it yourselves.
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BAD CHRISTMAS JOKES – THE RERUN

Last December, on a now extinct Norwegian blog, His Grumpiness ran a string of posts with Christmas jokes; all of them funny, though maybe not all of them in the best of taste.

To avoid the temptation to be too lazy and once again post them in bits and pieces, here are the ones worth repeating:


















If that did not make you laugh, you are on the wrong blog.
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FAVOURITE PAINTINGS: ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI

Click pic for larger version

Dante Gabrile Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini (aka The Annunciation) was painted in 1850, and is thus one of the earliest Pre-Raphaelite paintings. The model for Mary is Rossetti's sister, the poet Christina Rossetti.

As so often in Rossetti's paintings, the perspective is rather weird. But the highly emotional portrayal of Mary makes it a stunning picture, one of Rossetti's best actually.

It is also, as often is the case with Pre-Raphaelite pictures, rather small: 73 x 41,9 cm.

Ecce Ancilla Domini is owned by Tate Gallery. The Victorian Web has an interesting analysis.
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IN MR. HILL'S GARDEN (OF LOVE)

Deep thoughts ought to be thought, but in the dodological corner no great thinking is being done at the moment.

As both love and horticulture are important to civilizations continued existence, The Dodologist instead presents the everfunny Benny Hill’s ode to both: My Garden of Love:



Great song, isn’t it? And in the tradition of the last days on this blog, there is of course a veryfunnuy fungus-joke.
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LOVECRAFTIAN JOKES

All this talk of Lovecraft and fungi, drove me to dig out some favourite lovecraftian jokes from my archives:


“You Goth?”

“No, I’m just a Fun Guy”


So Nyarlahotep pops across to the library where Cthulhu’s actually a bit more rugose and squamous then usual. And he says, what’s up?

And Cthulhu says “Rl’yeh fthagn, ahem! Blimey! Sorry, phlegm. Bit ill, actually.”

So Nyarlahotep rubs three of his pseudopods together and says, “I have just the thing!”

And he leads the mighty Elder One across the non-Euclidean town sqaure, down a dodgy back alley, where an eldritch couple of debt collectors are lurking.

And Nyarlahotep says:

“Here’s that sick squid I owe you.


“Waiter! Waiter! There’s a dead squid in my soup!”

“It’s not dead, Sir. It’s just dreaming.”


HP Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.

As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.

They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching – the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.

A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.

Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past – the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.

Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…

“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”


Necrotelecomnicon: the book of dead phone numbers.
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"THE COURTYARD", BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

It was the city I had known before;
The ancient, leprous town where mongrel throngs
Chant to strange gods, and beat unhallowed gongs
In crypts beneath foul alleys near the shore.
The rotting, fish-eyed houses leered at me
From where they leaned, drunk and half-animate,
As edging through the filth I passed the gate
To the black courtyard where the man would be.

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead -
And not a corpse had either hands or head!

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"The Courtyard" is poem no. IX from the cycle Fungi from Yuggoth.
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THE EMO VAMPIRE SONG

Some things ... some things really need no comment:


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