Category: [Important images]

Lyndwulf

John Coulthart features an interesting edition of Beowulf at his blog today, this being a 1939 edition illustrated by Lynd Ward…

I admittedly haven’t seen much of Ward’s stuff, and what I have seen has only been his b/w woodcuts; I think this is the first time I’ve seen him in colour. I should note I haven’t just nicked this from John’s blog post, cos he rarely if ever posts large versions of stuff; instead I nicked it directly from the Internet Archive scan of the book that he links to, whence I got larger versions of the colour illustrations. John also notes:

It’s also possible to read the poem itself, although I wouldn’t advise it with this translation by William Ellery Leonard, not when it begins so risibly with the words “What ho!” Beowulf famously opens with a declaration in Old English—”Hwæt!”—that bards would have shouted to gain the attention of their audience. The word doesn’t translate easily to contemporary English but it’s usually given as “Hear!” or “Listen!” Leonard’s “What ho!” is a phrase that belongs with Bertie Wooster.

Woof. The only W.E. Leonard work I’m otherwise familiar with is his translation of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, which I did not particularly like and I don’t think that was entirely Lucretius’ fault (even though I do find the whole concept of didactic verse of that sort frankly bizarre), I recall Leonard’s translation doing some contortions to the English language that were just… off-putting. Don’t think I’m into what I read of his Beowulf while getting these illustrations, either; keeping the appearance of the Anglo-Saxon verse with the caesura in the middle, but not the alliteration structure or the four-beat pattern (turning it into hexameters which I’ve never liked in English verse), and then making the line ends rhyme which English alliterative verse generally just didn’t do, all strikes me as a bit of a bastardisation. Still, the illustrations are pretty cracking, and I give you some of my favourites (click to enlarge, obviously):

BOB!

I don’t know if this is an authentic Australian poster for this film or not (it actually only got an M rating for cinema release, and the R rating didn’t come until it went to video, so I suspect “not”), but either way godDAMN that’s a nasty tagline… as well as picking up on the famously spurious end-quote of the film, it also picks up on the film’s equally famous child character, Bob… played by Giovanni Frezza, who was subjected to an infamous dubbing job that has always been considered bad even by early 80s Italo-horror standards. Implying that Bob, or whoever dubbed him, is the real monster of that film is harsh… and yet not wholly unfair either. That said, I have it now on blu-ray with the Italian soundtrack, and I have sampled some of the scenes with Bob in Italian (going to do a full rewatch of the “Gates of Hell” films at some point soon), and I’m not sure he’s much better in that form…

No kings, no things

A handcuffed inflatable penis being worn by a woman, no less! This was part of the America-wide “No Kings” protest-fest, apparently this scene took place in Alabama, where it took three big burly men to subdue one middle-aged woman in a penis costume… incidentally, I initially wrote that as “seduce” befoe realising that was completely the wrong word… But what a defining image of the Mushroom Cock regime this should be.

RIP Space Ace

Ace Frehley’s comet has gone back to the stars. Really, it’s kind of surprising in some respects that he lasted this long, given his propensity for substance abuse when he was in Kiss, but all credit to him for finally getting off the shit and managing fine without those other two guys. People are sorry to see Ace go. I don’t think they’ll miss Paul or Gene the same way (especially not the latter).

Obviously

Normally I would just link to a story like this, but this time I felt the screenshot was needed:

You understand why, of course.

Arizona resident Jacob Chansley, better known to America as the QAnon shaman who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a striking horned warrior outfit, is suing a host of entities — including the federal government and President Donald Trump — for $40 trillion. In the process, the Phoenix resident is claiming that he is the rightful leader of the United States.
In a rambling, 26-page complaint that consists of a single paragraph and reads like a manifesto, Chansley alleges that his First, Fourth and Second Amendment rights have been violated by a host of parties that are loosely related at best. Named as defendants are Trump, the Federal Reserve, the National Security Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, the state of Israel, Elon Musk’s X Corp., T-Mobile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Warner Bros. Studios. […]
The claims in Chansley’s suit include:

* That the central banking system and the Federal Reserve are unconstitutional
* That the U.S. government is guilty of treason for prioritizing the interests of foreign financiers at the expense of the American people
* That the NSA surveilled Chansley daily using the Patriot Act as he was writing a “2nd Declaration of Independence”
* That “all radio stations and most of their DJ’s are a part of the intelligence community”
* That a scene in the 2008 Christopher Nolan-directed Batman film “The Dark Knight” and many plot details in 2009’s “Avatar” were cribbed from his writing and are proof that the NSA was spying on him
* That the NSA catfished him on Facebook by contacting him while pretending to be actress Michele Rodriguez, whom Chansley identifies as “my celebrity crush”
* That he was then “offered the opportunity to work with the NASA covertly and help them deal with other-worldly matters” that his “shamanic beliefs” made him “a perfect candidate to handle”
* That he was emailed by Donald Trump on Jan. 8, 2021, from an address of donaldtrump@nsa.gov
* That the government stole more than $100,000 in cryptocurrency from him […]

The shaman demanded $40 trillion in the lawsuit — $38 trillion to pay off the American government’s debt, $1 trillion to rebuild America’s infrastructure and another $1 trillion for Chansley’s “personal, emotional, mental and spiritual torture and years worth of anguish.”

It does kind of beg the question of what this freak would actually be like as president compared to Mushroom Cock. Obviously even more drug-fucked and stupid, but I find his evident determination that the national debt should be paid off weirdly heartening… so, as moronic as the incumbent but maybe less harmful all round? I don’t know. I am also not stupid enough to actually want him to be president, even if it might be more entertaining…

Rapture time again

Someone must’ve known what they were doing with this comic. Surely.

Yeah, it’s end of the fucking world again, apparently, some “prophet” from South Africa reckons Jesus told him the 23rd of September was the big day that Jesus also insisted in that book only God knew the date of, and, well, Christian people around the world have gone nuts for this guy because obviously…

Anyway, as I write, it is now technically the 24th here in Australia and, once again, by the looks of it I haven’t been swept up  to Heaven, unless of course Heaven looks oddly like my house… which, if it does, is unexpected at best, thought there might be more streets of gold… but I’m fairly sure I’m actually still on Earth and destined for Hell after all. That said, it is still the 23rd elsewhere in the world—the day’s barely begun in some places like Alaska, and it’s still morning in America as someone once said—so it could still happen over the next 20-odd hours… cos Joshua never specified a time nor a time zone, maybe he’s expecting it to run to South African Standard Time… in which case he’s got about seven hours left to be proven correct. Personally I can’t wait for the results…

Dalek tripper?

Going through my download folder, I was reminded that I grabbed this off Bluesky a few months ago… two of my favourite 1960s British pop culture icons together? Amazing. But today I suddenly had an attack  of “oh no, what if this is actually a Photoshop job or, worse, AI?”; I couldn’t imagine why someone would do such a thing, but at the same time it also feels like the exact sort of thing someone would do… So, quick research ensued, and lo, this bloody thing is apparently authentic; apparently it was taken at the Cannes Film Festival, the Fabs had just finished making Help! so they had a film to promote… and so did Milton Subotsky, that being Dr. Who and the Daleks, the big screen version of a certain BBC show that I suppose Amicus/Aaru thought they should make a film of while it was still popular and before it faded from TV screens, never to be remembered again… So yeah, evidently a Dalek did have a close encounter with Lennon, at least; both films came out within a few weeks of each other, too. I just wonder now who the guy lurking ominously to the back and left of the photo is…

Meanwhile, in Nepal…

I don’t ever recall seeing Nepal in the news that much, it doesn’t seem to be the sort of place where things happen, or maybe it’s just that media here doesn’t care about things happening there (much more likely, really). However, even western media are having trouble ignoring the strife there in recent days… with the government talking about banning social media, which turned into a protest against the government, which turned into a massacre with 19 dead, which turned into riots, which turned into the overthrow of said government, all in the space of a couple of days. I saw the above picture on Tumblr earlier today, a protestor who took on one of the riot cops and stole his gear from him, and whatever else may be said about the situation there right now, that is a hell of an image.

Holy Mary, holy crap

This… intriguing statue of Mrs God was doing the rounds on Bluesky today, for reasons that I think are obvious. It was Greg’s repost of it, though, that got me thinking… and what it made me think was “Face? But isn’t that oval bit at the top meant to be the face?”… And ONLY THEN did it hit me, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a man in my life, if you know what I mean…