night-raven

Spain Rodriguez

the man has popped his mortal coil at 72..
I wasn't a big fan, his take on CHE was excellent..shine on ~

there's a hole in my shoe..??

lifted with thanx ~

in toay's encore excerpt - astronomers and physicists are now grappling with evidence that suggests, even with the most powerful telescopes, we can only observe four percent of the universe. The rest, they posit, is dark matter and dark energy:

"In 1610 Galileo announced to the world that by observing the heavens through a new instrument -- what we would call a telescope -- he had discovered that the universe consists of more than meets the eye. The five hundred copies of the pamphlet announcing his results sold out immediately; when a pack­age containing a copy arrived in Florence, a crowd quickly gathered around the recipient and demanded to hear every word. For as long as members of our species had been lying on our backs, looking up at the night sky, we had assumed that what we saw was all there was. But then Galileo found mountains on the Moon, satellites of Jupiter, hun­dreds of stars. Suddenly we had a new universe to explore, one to which astronomers would add, over the next four centuries, new moons around other planets, new planets around our Sun, hundreds of planets around other stars, a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, hundreds of billions of galaxies beyond our own.

"By the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, astrono­mers had concluded that even this extravagant census of the universe might be as out-of-date as the five-planet cosmos that Galileo inher­ited from the ancients. The new universe consists of only a minuscule fraction of what we had always assumed it did -- the material that makes up you and me and my laptop and all those moons and planets and stars and galaxies. The rest -- the overwhelming majority of the universe -- is ... who knows?

" 'Dark,' cosmologists call it, in what could go down in history as the ultimate semantic surrender. This is not 'dark' as in distant or invisible. This is not "dark" as in black holes or deep space. This is 'dark' as in unknown for now, and possibly forever: 23 percent something mysterious that they call dark matter, 73 percent some­thing even more mysterious that they call dark energy. Which leaves only 4 percent the stuff of us. As one theorist likes to say at public lectures, 'We're just a bit of pollution.' Get rid of us and of every­thing else we've ever thought of as the universe, and very little would change. 'We're completely irrelevant,' he adds, cheerfully. ...

"The 'ultimate Copernican revolu­tion,' as [astronomers] often call it, is taking place right now. It's happening in underground mines, where ultrasensitive detectors wait for the ping of a hypothetical particle that might already have arrived or might never come, and it's happening in ivory towers, where coffee-break conversations conjure multiverses out of espresso steam. It's happen­ing at the South Pole, where telescopes monitor the relic radiation from the Big Bang; in Stockholm, where Nobelists have already be­gun to receive recognition for their encounters with the dark side; on the laptops of postdocs around the world, as they observe the real­time self-annihilations of stars, billions of light-years distant, from the comfort of a living room couch. It's happening in healthy collabora­tions and, the universe being the intrinsically Darwinian place it is, in career-threatening competitions.

"The astronomers who have found themselves leading this revolu­tion didn't set out to do so. Like Galileo, they had no reason to expect that they would discover new phenomena. They weren't looking for dark matter. They weren't looking for dark energy. And when they found the evidence for dark matter and dark energy, they didn't be­lieve it. But as more and better evidence accumulated, they and their peers reached a consensus that the universe we thought we knew, for as long as civilization had been looking at the night sky, is only a shadow of what's out there. That we have been blind to the actual universe because it consists of less than meets the eye. And that that universe is our universe -- one we are only beginning to explore.

"It's 1610 all over again."

Author: Richard Panek  
Title: The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (hardcover), Mariner (Paperback)
Date: Copyright 2011 by Richard Panek
Pages: xiv-xvi

The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality

by Richard Panek by Mariner Books

Julian and Sandy - Bona Bookshops

the fairy queen is in hard-back ~

          

New Earth

Ronnie Lane and Slim Chance - Anymore For Anymore

late of this parish..it's ironic, fat chance & slim chance,,mean much the same,,enjoy your day out _

Anymore for Anymore (Lane, Lambert)

Hey, won't you come on with me
I hear the neighbor's dogs is barkin'
And soon the country all around him
Will come to look the same
There's a place from where they came

Bring out your goods and chattels
And all your treasures that can travel
I'll fix the wheel and oil the axles
To see another day
We're leaving come what may

Anymore for anymore
Hear those angels cry
But it's not his to sell to me
And it's not mine to buy

Hey, won't you come on with me
I hear the mister's voice is callin'
And soon the country all around me
Will come to look the same
There's a place from where I came

Anymore for anymore
Hear those angels say
But anymore's too much for me
I'm goin' on my way

Pile up the chairs and the table
And put the tinder to the timber
We'll light the night sky
Leave the ember
To fade with yesterday
We're leaving come what may

               

'allo-allo' ~

wot an English education & 80,000€'s  a week can do for ya,,
shine-on!

              

the drink coaster, times 2 ~

& friend 

blurtings ~

here on the 'gate ~

know your song well, before u start singing Friday 23 November 2012 _

Four members of the Anonymous collective, one as young as 18, allegedly targeted the online transaction company with distributed denial of service attacks, under the banner ‘Operation Payback’. 

However, the campaign had begun months before in response to a growing anti-piracy lobby, which had tried to shut down The Pirate Bay. 

One of the gang ‘suggested attacking the website of Lily Allen, in retaliation to her stance on anti-piracy’, prosecutor Sandip Patel said at the trial of one of the ‘hackers’, Christopher Weatherhead, 22. 

Anyone who tried to visit sites under attack was directed to a page with the message: ‘You’ve tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung’. 

Weatherhead – who used the online nickname ‘nerdo’ – was a one of a ‘small cabal of leaders’ in Anonymous, jurors heard. 

Mr Patel said the cyber attackers ‘waged a sophisticated and orchestrated campaign of online attacks that caused unprecedented harm’. 

He added Weatherhead posted plans on an Internet Relay Chat channel  encouraging an attack on PayPal, saying hackers should ‘reap’ – thought to mean ‘rape’ – the online payments company. 

Mr Patel said PayPal was forced to buy new software and hardware which, added to a loss of trade, cost it £3.5million. 

Northampton University student Weatherhead is also alleged to have taken part in attacks on other sites including MasterCard, Visa, Ministry of Sound and the British Recorded Music Industry. 

He denies a charge of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers between August 2010 and January 2011. 

Ashley Rhodes, 28, Peter Gibson, 24, and an 18-year-old, who cannot be named, have already admitted their roles in the conspiracy. 

The trial at Southwark crown court in London is expected to last two weeks.

1962

                                          thank U

no change from sixpence ~

Poor Joey

I'm Joey the Budgie, I'm a boy or a girl
I'm probably the most typical caged bird in the world
In Cranham or Hounslow I sit on my perch
Old Mother Nature's left me right in the lurch
This my routine, first I ponder & peck
I look in the mirror & I shit on the deck
I try to fly, I bamg my head
I think of something creative instead
I ruffle my feathers & have a good scratch
Not that I want to be deleted by an owl
I've got to fight this awful situation somehow
Poor Joey, who's a pretty boy then..??
Poor Joey, poor Joe
Poor Joey, a bundle of joy then
Poor Joey, hello

How the ruddy hell does she expect me to speak
With half a ton of cuttlefish stuck in my beak..??
I go into a moody, disdainfully preen
& just to upset her, mutter something obscene
I appreciate the difficulties of owning a pet
Speaking as a budgie, it's like Russian roulette
I was bred for a purpose & I shouldn't complain
I know you'll forgive me when I sing this refrain
Poor Joey, everyone's a bastard
Poor Joey, poor Joe
Poor Joey, every Christmas they try & get me plastered
Poor Joey, hello
Poor Joey, poor Joe
Cheerio.....Ian Dury.

gussied up ~

Vanessa Redgrave, gets her kit off, for the sake of the song..
the money means jack shit _

               you're a immoral woman..NO..I'm an artist dahling _            

low-riders..

            José Guadalupe Posada...the face of G-D will appear ~

sardonical elegance ~

wot a gr8 cover..??

breakfast in the ruins _

Ladies and gentlemen, it is once again time to dust off your feather boas, polish your spats, buff up your finest cufflinks and alert your barber, footman, batman, valet, butler and tailor to a long month of preparations – for the Fourth Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball has been given a date and a venue.

This year, in association with Bourne & Hollingsworth, The Chap will be returning to the Grade-2 listed splendour of the Bloomsbury Ballroom, where in 2010 our guests were dazzled by the original 1930s fixtures, fittings and chandeliers that greeted them at the bottom of a sweeping staircase. As well as its main grand ballroom, Bloomsbury Ballroom features another more intimate cocktail bar, where we will be offering extra sideshows and entertainment.

In the grand ballroom, our headline act will be Albert Ball’s Flying Aces, featuring the delectable Patricia Hammond on vocals. Other acts will include Kwabana Lindsay – a white tie-wearing, fiddle-playing, umbrella juggling tightrope walker; Spacedog – a theremin and saw-playing lady assisted by on-stage automata. In the cocktail bar there will be a real live flea circus; the Flirtinis, who will teach you how to flirt with the damsel or gent of your choice; and Viv the Spiv, who will teach you the ways of contraband cigarettes and nylons.

The dress code is: Eccentric; Eclectic; Electric; Esoteric. No plimsolls or pantaloons de nimes, obviously.

The 4th Grand Anarcho-Dandyist Ball
8pm-2am
Saturday 1st December 2012
The Bloomsbury Ballroom
Bloomsbury Square
London WC1B 4DA

Rainbow George & the Missing Rainbow Tapes ~

Unlike any other comedian, Peter Cook was funny all the time. He was funny on TV, on radio, in the pub, with friends and strangers; on his own in his front room he would hurl ripostes at his TV screen. He was ceaselessly responding to the comic horror and boredom of the world (a world he once described as being created by God in the grip of a particularly appalling hangover). Sometimes, he would ring up radio phone-ins, creating an impromptu character on air. Sometimes, he would haul passers-by into a pub and harangue them. Cook couldn't stop being funny; he never turned himself off. And there was a terror in this, a hilarious nightmare.

George Weiss - Rainbow George - who's got his own political party of just one member; madcap George who spends his days on endless, impossible schemes and notions; mystic George who, along with thousands of millennarians believes Utopia will happen in 2000, could have been one of Cook's absurdist creations. He is a cross between the extraordinary and the tedious, the wonderful and the worrying. In fact, Weiss was Cook's neighbour and friend. Until the last year or so of Cook's life, they saw each other most days. Weiss would yammer on about his political beliefs and Cook would be his deadpan commentator. Dudley Moore went to Hollywood and Peter Cook went round to George Weiss's house.

On Weiss's mantelpiece, among the balls of dust, are hundreds of labelled tapes. The tapes are why I am here - Weiss is finally planning to give the world access to them. He tells me there are two or three people wanting to write a book about his friendship with Cook (although he will not name names). He slides one into the tape machine and Cook's laughter (laughter that Weiss has edited from various conversations into a continuous cackle and wanted to play at Cook's memorial service) fills the room. We sit and listen to the dead man laughing. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! 'I loved to hear Peter laugh,' says Weiss cheerfully.

Weiss lives in London's Hampstead, in the cobbled Perrins Walk, where Cook had his three-storey house, and 100 yards or so from the house where Cook's wife, Lin, lived in the strange, semi-detached arrangement which suited Cook so well. Weiss's house is rented (he says he is 15 years behind on the payments, and only receives £39.10 a fortnight from social security) and stands out from the others because it is a garish bright green. In the spacious living-room, there are two chairs, one ink-stained sofa, a TV on the floor and a very large phone-fax. There are piles of yellowing newspapers everywhere and all those tapes. He says the tapes are his diary.

After his religio-political conversion to the Rainbow dream 15 years ago, he would tape anyone who walked into his house. He felt that history was in the making in his front-room and so he recorded it. It's a bit like the scene in Seven where the detectives find the murderer's diaries - millions and millions of words; there is simply too much data to interpret. It's also like Peter Cook's long, last years, when his comic genius was everywhere and nowhere, for everyone and no one.

A complicated story follows, during which I struggle to find the plot among the thickets of sub-plots. There's the tale of how Captain Rainbow's Universal Party (Crup) was born out of Peter Cook's What Party, in which George Weiss served as Minister for Confusion. Then there's a bit where Weiss spent four-and-a-half months in prison for selling a few tabs of acid to two reporters from the News of the World. There's the part where Weiss tried to launch a series of 'penny parties' (a penny to get in and £3 to get out) in order to raise cash. And then there was the time he attempted to hire Wembley Stadium (he wanted everyone in the world to spend five minutes thinking about the same thing), and the time he inherited several thousand of pounds and advertised in the press for Rainbow candidates to run in the general election (they mostly took the money and didn't run, of course). Money drips through this ex-diamond dealer's hands like water. From this we slide, out of control, over Weiss's failed love affair (his final relationship, after which he decided to take the mystic's lonely path); his constant calls to radio phone-ins; his conviction that everything he believes will come to pass.

He tells me about the by-election when he stood against Michael Portillo (Portillo pipped him at the post, gaining 16,000 votes to Weiss's 48), and his desire to solve the problem of the Orange marches in Ireland by having Blue men, Purple men, Yellow men too. On another tape, there is his voice, saying, as if he's just made it up, 'In the beginning was the Word', and there is Cook's inimitable tone, responding, 'And the Word God around.' Ha! Ha! Ha!

Weiss has had lots of failures - he's banned from radio phone-ins nowadays and he has decided he is only an apprentice prophet after all. He knows everyone thinks he is crazy (he plays me a tape where he tries to make everyone in the room tell him how mad he is, and again we hear Cook drawling: 'Oh no, we're not going to fall for that one. Ha!'). But he clings to the world he has fashioned, in which he is the hero. It's not a game to him, though it was to Cook.

We listen to a recording of an interview Weiss did some years back for LBC. He had persuaded Cook to phone in and lend support to Crup. When Cook comes on air he is E.L. Wisty, and he had deadpan fun claiming that the What party and Crup have taken control of the media. He makes Weiss look quite mad. 'I was gutted when he did that,' says Weiss, prowling the room with his cigarette. 'I wanted him to be serious for once. He could have helped me and he didn't. Peter never really helped me when it wouldn't have cost him much.' I ask if he's resentful. 'Resentful? Me? No! I'm Rainbow George. I believe totally in fate. What's meant to be is meant to be.'

He says he's found a substitute for Cook, 'someone who fills the space he left behind'. His latest 'acquaintance and not quite friend' is Ian Dury. 'I see him three or four times a week. He doesn't help me either, though he could; a word in the right place.'

He picks up his oversized phone and rings Dury. He wants to tell him that when he's at the Brit Awards, and if he gets to present Robbie Williams with a prize, he should mention Weiss's idea of hiring Wembley Stadium for Crup in 2000. But Dury has already left. 'That's OK; he would have just told me to get lost anyway,' says Weiss cheerily.

He plays another tape. This time Dury is singing a song, words by George, in his lovely voice: 'A door is opening that nobody on earth can shut. That door leads to Rainbow Land É ' Weiss says casually that everyone is listening to what Dury has to say at the moment, because they think he's dying. He is dying, I say. 'Everyone's dying.' Lisa Lovebucket is standing for London mayor; she's a Rainbow supporter who believes in the 'iridescent' power of football. The Rainbow party is fielding lots of candidates in the Euro elections (they want to abolish the EC and create the Emerald Isles). 'Peter never really got what I was trying to do.' Some might think he got it off to a T.

Then another tape, in which I get to hear Bronco, the Hampstead vagrant. This is really like being stuck in a nightmare. Weiss has a newly installed kitchen but has never cooked anything in it. He has no food. Bronco is starving. Cook is trying to get Weiss to cook. He's going to fetch food from his own place, so that Weiss can cook something for Bronco. It's funny, but I'm starting to feel desperate, sitting in this hot, dusty room inside a man's fantasy, listening to tapes which could go on until tomorrow, forever.

'Peter's still around,' says Weiss, 'just like John Lennon is.' There's the laugh again. 'He had a big heart', says Weiss. 'Nothing wrong with that man's heart.'

He seems disappointed when I leave. I think he enjoys sitting on the sofa, drinking tea, listening to him and Peter being funny, laughing at himself laughing at himself. 'Things aren't the same nowadays,' he says without self-pity.

He follows me to the door. There are a few things he hasn't told me, connections he has failed to make. He gives me a CD which, when I get home, turns out to be an empty case.

Later, he phones me, a benevolent megalomaniac wanting to help me to tell the whole story. The whole story never stops, and I can't work out if it's a horror story or a happy one. I find I feel glad he's around. There's no one else like him. And I'm rather glad about that, too...end credits; ...every thing here is stolen..thank U _

the dead are killing the living

                             No RooM to bury your own!

   
       ??..will wishes come true..??                                                                        

speak up will ya _

heads I win, tails you lose

                      either a gift from hell or a sign from heaven !                  

at the hangman's knot ~

Dick Tracy meets Gruesome..an RKO radio picture preduction..1947

All eyes are on the villains in this film (an unusually cool Boris Karloff as Gruesome, and craggy faced  Skelton Knaggs as X-Ray) who are far more captivating than the heroes Dick Tracy, Tess Truehart et al. This is a little different from some B-movies, in which everyone is dull as dishwater.  Ralph Byrd played Dick Tracy for much of his career but frankly, I just didn't think he had the jaw OR the nose for the part!  Playing a blandly assuaging type, he parades around with a smirk for many scenes, poking fun at the Irishness of Pat Pattin, Plainclothesman (who swears he hasn't had a single beer since he started the job).  Anyway, Gruesome stumbles across nerve gas which he and dive-bar pianist Melody use to rob a bank, killing a guard while making their hasty exit.  All the scenes with the veteran character actors move swiftly, but the story sags when it gets to Tracy.  In one spot, he alternately whines and threatens a woman who is an unwitting accomplice in the crime.  Nice tactics, Dick!  Well, at least this one didn't have a lot of rubber prosthetics flapping off of Al Pacino's mug!

btw; all's well, that ends well...ain't that so Al.??

str8 outta chokey..get it inta ya m8!

the books have nothing to say..??
start off burning books, end up burning people _


                     

Germany Calling, Germany Calling ~

'he speaks English of the haw-haw, damn-it-get-out-of-my-way variety and his strong suit is gentlemanly indignation' ..so said the man from The Daily Express...

William Joyce aka Lord Haw-Haw, was a notorious broadcaster of Nazi propaganda to the UK during World War II. His announcement 'Germany calling, Germany calling' was a familiar sound across the airwaves, introducing threats and misinformation that he broadcast from his Hamburg base.

In 1945, Joyce, an Irish American was captured and returned to Britain, where he was later hanged for 'omniscience' ie. G-d created knowledge, dressed up as treason, while the yesterday man, Oswald Mosley, the real villian of this piece..got off scott free ..

it not that money talks, it's a question of class & social position swears ~

                     

Diana Mitford..hell-bound_

less than zero

the sewers of Paris are large enough to accomadate the scum of the world _

.. Oswald Mosley's first wife conveniently died in May 1933 and grief-stricken Oswald promptly embarked on an affair with his youngest sister-in-law, whereupon Diana went to Germany, taking Unity with her. While there, they attended the first Nürnberg party rally and returned again for the second rally the next year. Unity introduced Diana to Hitler in March 1935. They were his guests at the 1935 rally and, in 1936, Hitler provided a Mercedes-Benz to chauffeur Diana to the Berlin Olympic Games.

She continued to be Mosley's public mistress despite his endless affairs with other women.

1935, Diana was divorced from Bryan Guinness, who had pleaded guilty and provided "evidence" of his "adultery", as a man of his class was bound to do. In 1936, Mosley and Diana were married in a clandestine civil ceremony in Berlin, with Hitler and Goebbels attending. They made the marriage publicly known only after their first child was born in 1938.
During WWII, she and Mosley were interned at London's Holloway Prison under, thanks to Winston Churchill, relatively comfortable circumstances, their two small children went to live with Diana's sister Pamela Jackson. 1943, after two years, they were both released on grounds of Sir Oswald's health and placed under house arrest until the end of the war. Diana remained married to Mosley - and a dedicated Nazi - until the end.

She wrote two books of memoirs, A Life of Contrasts (1977), and Loved Ones (1985), as well as a biography of the Duchess of Windsor, whom she had befriended when they were neighbours in post-war Paris where she and Mosley went to live.

Diana Mitford (The Honourable Lady Mosley) died at the age of 93 as one of the many elderly victims of the heat wave that struck Europe in summer 2003 and with which the French had been unable to cope..oh dear, don't send flowers ~

lifted from 'The Evil Style Queen'..with thanx 

Rainbowland - Ian Dury.

from the ghost of Christmas Past...
for e'ery woman & e'ery man..a must have read ~
the CD alone won't make ya the sharpest person in the  room..but it helps..hahaHa ~

                   

the Oliver Twist Irregulars ~

Hallo Sausages

Barney Bubbles & Uncle Ian...and things that go bump in the night..out & 'bout.. everything cut price..everything two bob.. the stinky black-shirt givin' away those soft white lies..u are better than him, you're born with a white skin..all kinds of every thing,.hiding behind the sell by date.. broken biscuits, broken hearts.. damaged goods..it's plain to see the lunatics have taken over the nut-house
pie & mash & liquor on cracked large plates..blood & bone on the butchers saw-dust floors, dog shit on the soles of your shoe..rats in the gulley..wrong 'em boyo's doing deals in the alley..always time to stare with ya one glass eye..Ronnie the Midget sold used specacles opposite the sarsaparilla stand..on a good day would charm the knickers off your old dear..turn the water into wine..polish a turd.. bring a smile to the dead, by hook or by crook..all things are possible.. don't ask.. is the shine on your shoes worth two cents..??
that Playmates was  Saturday afternoon  on Waithamstow High Street for a while ..arm in arm with Miss Right-Now.. two grams of pink champagne in the sky-rock..the promise of a quickie before dinner, set ya up nicely for a nite on the razz.. got ya outta the house & off your arse in 1975 or there abouts _

                                       'the caff''..for a bit on the side, best bib & tucker required ~

 Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is all my brain and body need
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Are very good indeed

Keep your silly ways or throw them out the window
The wisdom of your ways, I've been there and I know
Lots of other ways, what a jolly bad show
If all you ever do is business you don't like

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is very good indeed

Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, gray is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going to fit

Here's a little piece of advice
You're quite welcome, it is free
Don't do nothing that is cut price
You know what that'll make you be

They will try their tricky device
Trap you with the ordinary
Get your teeth into a small slice
The cake of liberty

Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll....

                             

freak power..we mean it maaaaaaaaaaan _

BE THERE, OR BE SQUARE!

   be sure to catch Captain Trips & his Merry Pranksters at this year's Darby & Joan Xmas bash

      be a public disgrace, in bed by the witchin' hour..hahaHa

      chill-out room available..when not talkin' revolution, compare house prices & skool fees
      happy hour for the over 65's before nine..must be accompanied by both parents
      buy one, get one free..please have your teeth in when eating..no exceptions

dress to please, tits out for the boys,  leather pants optional ..prize draw ...
don't ask for credit as a punch in the mouth often offends..it only rock'n'roll..
  NO DRUNKS..NO SPITTING.. NO DRUGS..NO SKINS..NO DOGS..NO FUN _

Old Darby, with Joan by his side

You've often regarded with wonder.

He's dropsical, she is sore-eyed

Yet they're ever uneasy asunder...

and there's more to come playmates

We'll sit and look at the same old view,

Just we two.

Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill,

The folks who like to be called,

What they have always been called,

"The folks who live on the hill".

btw; did ya no harm, JoHnny

lookin' for trouble..suited & booted too _

Bernard Langsky, the Memphis clothier, who first put Elvis in pegged pants & a pink shirt has died aged 85 ..
now here's the toon to go with those new threads _

                        

the new necropolis ~

hide me among the graves ;
just-in, just read ...the history is a little 'iffy' in places playmates..
with that aside, it's spot on, never let truth get in the way of a good tale, 
prestilence & the threatre of the dead awaits ya _

Winter, 1862. A malevolent spirit roams the cold and gloomy streets of Victorian London, the vampiric ghost of John Polidori, the onetime physician of the mad, bad and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Polidori is also the supernatural muse to his niece and nephew, poet Christina Rossetti and her artist brother Dante Gabriel.

But Polidori’s taste for debauchery has grown excessive. He is determined to possess the life and soul of an innocent young girl, the daughter of a veterinarian and a reformed prostitute he once haunted. And he has resurrected Dante’s dead wife, transforming her into a horrifying vampire. The Rossettis know the time has come – Polidori must be stopped. Joining forces with the girl’s unlikely parents, they are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence they never suspected.

These wildly mismatched allies – a strait-laced animal doctor, and ex-prostitute, a poet, a painter, and even the Artful Dodger-like young daughter – must ultimately choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers. Sweeping from high society to grimy slums, elegant West End salons to pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul’s cathedral, Hide Me Among The Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride.

I paid each man his due ~

the lady with the vampire mouth & a monkey on her back _                                                                                                                                                                                            .                                                 blood red roses and a laudanum `script'
                                                  you mean the baby's dead, my lady said..
                                                   too much junkie business killed the still-born infant, my lady.
                                                  

Lizzie Siddal was a nineteenth-century phenomenon: a working-class girl who rose from obscurity to become one of the most recognisable faces in Queen Victoria’s Britain. A poet, artist, artist’s model and muse, Lizzie was a pivotal figure of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The artists she inspired include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Walter Deverell; her patron was John Ruskin who described her as genius comparing her to J.M.W. Turner and G.F. Watts. Lizzie was also the lover and then wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and sister-in-law of the poet, Christina Rossetti.
btw; I'll leave the best part for another time. the story of Charles Augustus Howell, a well known man about town,part time dope dealer & grave-thief.. here's the weird bit, he was also her hubby's agent, employed by him to open her Highgate tomb in the dead of night so as to avoid public curiosity & attention..so to retrieve the lost poem...Without Her..some say she was more beautiful dead then alive, but our lady had the last laugh, the poem had lost it's magick, thanks to the nibble work of worms..revenge is a dish best served cold, Rossetti was haunted by the exhumation thru' the rest of his grubby life..hahaHa ~

                         

pop muzak time

one of the best toons ever, worth a few minutes of your time _ enjoy _

french table manners ~

             ...try not to lose your head this time  Mme _

 a classless society...

Karl Marx gives this description of the lumpenproletariat...that's u & me, playmates _

Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.^[

Sonny Burns - Waltzing With Sin

'ello Playmates, sorry about that, I lied 
I offer nothing but SIN, without the horror of redress, I hasten to add!

I'm no MeeK ~

with a heavy heart..I offer nothing..not even sin _

The Book of Job..'cause all life is a riddle ~

how can you trust yourself, when you don't know who u are..??
I met Rosa Mundi at the edge of heaven, with the

lords and ladies of our time, fiddlers & news-paper boys, citizen-mutineers and rope-dancers, jack-puddings and lawyers, mistresses & maids.my ex-wives and lovers,with kith and kin at the rear  _                                                                                   
...all the temptations to destruction..the living and the dead
felt the fire of hell with a cold kiss.. saw the glory of a christian paradise in her deep-blue eyes

with these few short lines, I guessed the rose of the world ment to do me harm, 
“The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was described with some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced any art. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, its pretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for the first time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people must be who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in this respect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as a deception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not "artists," the whole was nevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face -- that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman with the wild, white beard and the wild, white hat -- that venerable humbug was not really a philosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentleman with the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs of science that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but what biological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thus only, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into its social atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.” 
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

egg & spoon race..is a sweat mag not a wank mag..??

from the murky skool of H.J.Ward's 'spicy' hand arose  Norm Eastman..when it came to the dodgy subject matter of .. the tortured female.. who  always seem to retain her under-clothing, no matter wot..Eastman proved to be a 'boss' pencil squeezer, his covers sold by the bucket load..back in the mid-6t's to the early 7t's the Amerikan sex industry was still dirty & the sex clean..now the industry is clean & the sex used to sell anything that moves from chicken diners to tomorrow's political leaders...that's enough of my petitie-bourgeousie moral dis-taste..here's the pixs, playmates!

Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre

death is blank verse with an over-reaching protagonist, Mme ~

a journey to the feast..the first book I loved ~

.. if ya out walking thru' space & time, be sure to read all the signs _

The Herman Hesse Legacy, 50 Years Later

Enlarge imageCover of Der Spiegel from August 6, 2012.(© Der Spiegel)The cover of the Aug. 6, 2012 issue of Spiegel magazine features an illustration of Hermann Hesse, winner of the 1946 Nobel Prize in literature, glaring almost menacingly at the reader and giving the middle finger. “Der Störenfried” (“the troublemaker”) is written in bold letters, under which appear the labels “Sinnsucher, Dichter, Anarchist”—“seeker of meaning, poet, and anarchist.”

Spiegel covers are well-known for being provocative, but does this one go too far? Does it make sense to depict the peace-loving author, painter, and nature-lover who wrote about the search for self-discovery and deeper meaning, in such an aggressive pose? The editors clearly hope this challenging image will spark a debate about the role of the famous German-Swiss author, one of the best-selling German writers ever, 50 years after his death on August 9, 1962.

The title of the article, “Ich mach mein Ding,” “I just do my thing,” probably points more accurately at the true nature of the man. Born in 1877 in Calw, halfway between Stuttgart and Baden-Baden, Hesse lived through the great upheavals of the early twentieth century. Rather than going with the mass of society that clamored for war in the summer of 1914, Hesse published an essay, “O Freunde, nicht diese Töne” (“Oh friends, not these tones”), which appealed to brotherly love and Europe’s common heritage as reasons for not going to war. For this he was vociferously and publicly lambasted. This personal crisis partly explains why Hesse shied away from the public eye later in life.

Enlarge imageHermann Hesse (left) clinks glasses on July 2, 1947, in the garden of the castle Bremgarten with his son Martin (second from left ), Max Wassmer (third from left), the arts patron of Berne and Mr. Leuthold (right) on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Hesse had just been awarded the honorary doctor of the university of Berne and the honorary membership of the body of students of the city of Berne in a festive ceremony.(© picture alliance/KEYSTONE)According to the autobiographical sketch on the Nobel Prize website, his wish to be a poet had developed at the age of 12. Although he was a good learner at boarding schools in Württemberg, Hesse “was not a very manageable boy,” as he described himself. “It was only with difficulty that I fitted into the framework of a pietist education that aimed at subduing and breaking the individual personality.” Indeed, at the age of 15, Hesse fled his monastery school and was sent by his parents to a private clinic, where he attempted to take his life. Thereafter came a four-month consignment to a mental institution. The diagnosis: “melancholy.”

With no clear career path for a would-be writer, Hesse became an apprentice mechanic and worked in antique and book stores in Tübingen and Basel. His mother being partially of French Swiss descent, Hesse had lived in Basel as a young child, from 1880-86. After his first literary success, the novel Peter Camenzind, published in 1904, Hesse moved to the country, to Gaienhofen on Lake Constance, on the border with Switzerland. “At that time a rural life, far from the cities and civilization, was my aim.”

Enlarge imageHermann Hesse in front of his residence in Montagnola, undated picture.(© picture alliance / KEYSTONE)He was to live there until 1912; thereafter Hesse lived in Switzerland, in Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Montagnola, a small village in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. In 1911, however, at the age of 34, Hesse embarked on a trip to India, where his parents had worked as missionaries. Though the ship actually sailed to Indonesia, the “India” journey would influence the young man’s thinking. His impressions from the trip, along with his studies of Buddhism and eastern philosophy, found their way into more than one of Hesse’s novels.

In 1923, he resigned his German and acquired Swiss citizenship. In picturesque Montagnola, overlooking Lake Lugano, where he lived for half his life, from 1919 to 1962, Hesse produced his most enduring works: Siddhartha, Der Steppenwolf, and Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game).

All of these novels deal with themes involving the individual search for self-knowledge, spirituality, and the inward turn. Though his novels proved popular during his lifetime, it was only after his death that his popularity skyrocketed, making him one of the most widely-read German authors of the twentieth century. One hundred fifty million copies of his books, published in 60 languages, are thought to be in circulation around the world. Significantly, only a sixth of these are in German. Hesse’s popularity thus far surpassed the cultural sphere of his origin.

But why? An engaging style and compelling narratives can only explain this in part. A fuller explanation of his significance in literary history—and history more broadly—must consider Hesse as emblematic of certain values that resonated—in particular in the late 1960s, in Germany and in America.

Enlarge imageGerman rock star Udo Lindenberg, an acknowledged fan of Hesse, performs as part of the yearlong Hermann Hesse Festival in Calw on July 7, 2012.(© picture alliance / dpa)The surge in Hesse’s popularity coincided with the so-called “68er” generation in Germany, the Woodstock and Vietnam-protest era in America, when rebellions against the established, conformist society became mainstream. Hesse’s writings were rediscovered at the time, the themes coinciding with the ideals of the hippie and counterculture movements. Rebellion against conformity, listening to the self rather than authority—these ideas, also found in the works of Henry David Thoreau, who also drew inspiration from Eastern philosophy, defined Hesse’s appeal. The band Steppenwolf, best-known for “Born to be Wild” and “Magic Carpet Ride,” named itself after Hesse’s novel of the same name. Like with Thoreau in America, Hesse became required reading at schools across Germany. Today, a large number of schools are named after him.

With so many people encountering him at a young age, it’s no surprise interest in Hesse is not fading fifty years after his death. They are encountering him not only though his books, but through music. Since 2008, the foundation of German rock star Udo Lindenberg has organized the Hermann Hesse Festival, celebrating “die Kunst des Eigensinns.” While “Eigensinn” is a difficult-to-translate concept, the festival title means something like “the art of having one’s own will; a vigorous, determined inner voice.”

For Lindenberg, as for millions of other fans around the world, this devotion to “Eigensinn” is the source of fascination with, and inspiration from, Herman Hesse.

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