for years, garry trudeau's doonesbury cartoon strip has provided a flowing narrative of character development that verges on plausability as his views of modern american culture and politics develop ... this week we've seen a new character and today's strip made me laugh out loud

http://www.doonesbury.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Trudeau

turned out nice again ...

i haven't seen my brother greg since his last birthday, about a year ago ...

but oh !, these cards of richard bawden's lino prints are far too pretty to part with ...



... so he'll have to make do with michael sowa's leaping pig ... when i can re-discover his current address

... i guess i must have bought a dozen of these over the years, so he'll be joining a sub-group of distinguished recipients, all of whom are held in deepest affection

the lads seem to be having trouble with a simple analogy for wegener's theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener

stop press: insomniac gets over-excited by snow, but not so excited he'd want to go out in it ...

they were arguing about where to go for breakfast

self-surveillance

do you think it might be as cold up there ?

a church mouse in easby

alfie, the yorkshire cat, is disappointed by grapes .... what's it all about, alfie ?

yorkshire ? what has yorkshire ever done for us ?

the ghosts of christmas ... present, past, and fuchsia ... the pantomime in the village hall at hunton-in-bedale

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78468515@N00/sets/72157629147374797/show/

sculpture by jaume plensa at the nicest "service area" on the M1, only one mile from junction 38 and only a mile from the poxy woolley edge service area where we refused to pay £3.29 for a small coffee

http://www.ysp.co.uk/

we are away to yorkshire for a few days ... perhaps we should take sandwiches

were he to have been re-incarnated, titian might possibly have enjoyed this little spectacle ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9RGnujlkI

do you think the internet is harming my eyesight ?

... once, in a hotel room in barcelona, we were channel hopping and found the addams family, mind-bogglingly dubbed in to italian but sub-titled in spanish ... subsequently the loved one found me a DVD set ... from here on gomez will be my role-model

an insomniac contemplating his lectern

de mort, en passant ...

as i shuffle wearily from the workplace towards the bus stop, i walk along a rough and narrow pavement beside a very busy arterial road to the crossroad and am slowly overtaken by three highly polished stretch-limos, daimler limousines, each stuffed with well-groomed people, all of them expensively dressed in black ... it must have been a very smart funeral ... the convoy halts at the lights, one, two, three ... and there beside me, in the back seat of the very last car, a young man and woman, immaculately dressed for mourning, are snogging passionately


i googled "death and the maiden" after writing this and discovered this  lovely image, which i have reproduced here without permission:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Christensen

do you want it good or do you want it tuesday ? ... this is VERY good

http://www.benpentreath.com/shop/books/do-you-want-it-good-or-do-you-want-it-tuesday-by-ruth-artmonsky/prod_1608.html

nothing in the kitchen is nearly so stainless as my reputation, maybe