Mirthless Laughter

Bohumil Konečný (1918-1990)

IF YOU'RE UNEMPLOYED IT'S NOT BECAUSE THERE ISNT ANY WORK JUST LOOK AROUND: A HOUSING SHORTAGE, CRIME, POLLUTION; WE NEED BETTER SCHOOLS AND PARKS. WHATEVER OUR NEEDS, THEY ALL REQUIRE WORK. AND AS LONG AS WE HAVE UNSATISFIED NEEDS, THERE'S WORK TO BE DONE. SO ASK YOURSELE, WHAT KIND OF WORLD HAS WORK BUT NO JOBS. IT'S A WORLD WHERE WORK IS NOT RELATED TO SATISFYING OUR NEEDS, WORLD WHERE WORK IS ONLY RELATED TO SATISFYING THE PROFIT NEEDS OF BUSINESS. THIS COUNTRY WAS NOT BUILT BY THE HUGE CORPORATIONS OR GOVERNMENT BUREAUCRACIES. IT WAS BUILT BY PEOPLE WHO WORK. AND, IT IS WORKING PEOPLE WHO SHOULD CONTROL THE WORK TO BE DONE. YET, AS LONG AS EMPLOYMENT IS TIED TO SOMEBODY ELSE'S PROFITS, THE WORK WONT GET DONE.

the Black Panthers were right

Roses are red
Violets are blue
The means of production
Can be seized by you

What's so amazing about Jim Henson as a puppeteer is that he could literally be explaining that Kermit is made out of felt and ping pong balls and yet Kermit still feels alive the whole time he's doing it

a poorly drawn square cat

an orange and white cat tightly curled inside a small cardboard box, filling it perfectly into a square shape!

square

Excerpt from a vocal.media article on Donald Trump’s friendship with Liberace: “In 1985 at Trump Tower, Jackson took the second bedroom in Liberace's suite for a few weeks. The fact that Liberace and Michael Jackson were actually roommates, albeit for a short time, in Trump Tower is certainly stranger than even fiction would have it.”

This approaches the weirdness of Samuel Beckett driving André the Giant to school in his truck

YouTube video by diktafunk Lily Chao Tea plucking and Catching Butterflies

Post a banger not in English

youtu.be/VdGc91PDNcw?...

An old friend of mine touched on the subject in a review he wrote for the TLS years ago. I can’t remember the context, but as he put it, “it has become quite common practice to verb a noun”. The editor cut it out. (3/3)

I have mixed feelings about this practice. I always quite liked the use of “Pride” as a verb, as in “to attend Gay Pride”, not least because of the way it conjugates: “we didn’t Pride this year, but we Prode last year”. I think it’s fallen into desuetude, though. (2/3)

I just had a heart attack and died (got better) when I accidentally saw some Winter Olympics coverage and heard a BBC announcer use the word “podium” as a verb: “… but the question is, can she podium?” I looked it up, and apparently it’s something we’ve been doing since the 90s. (1/3)

it really sucks that “enjoying stuff is weird and gay and means you’re a GIRL” infiltrated food culture and now a bunch of alleged manly men have undiagnosed eating disorders they’re too prideful to get help for.

For every annoying vegan I've seen on the net, I've seen 50 people complaining about the existence of vegans

Book extract showing excerpt from a letter: “I am still just as frightened of bombs, & guns going off, as I was at the beginning. I turn bright red and my heart hammers, in fact I’m a beastly coward but I do believe that a lot of people are, so I don’t mind! Well darling I must stop, and I do feel sure that all your present work is useful, and if you can put in a little refresher in nursing – well all the better. Tinkety tonk old fruit, & down with the Nazis always your loving Peter

That splendid sign-off of the Queen Mother’s – “Tinkety tonk old fruit, & down with the Nazis” – celebrates its 85th anniversary today

Screenshot from the BBC News showing Nick Symonds MP speaking in Parliament with the caption “Fallout continues continues from release of Epstein files”

Of course Fallout continues. It’s Wednesday.

Words fail me

Pages from a long story that ran in DC’s “Sinister House of Secret Love” Written by Frank Robbins. pencils by Alex Toth. inks by Frank Giacoia.

Pages from a long story that ran in DC’s “Sinister House of Secret Love” Written by Frank Robbins. pencils by Alex Toth. inks by Frank Giacoia.

Pages from a long story that ran in DC’s “Sinister House of Secret Love” Written by Frank Robbins. pencils by Alex Toth. inks by Frank Giacoia.

Pages from a long story that ran in DC’s “Sinister House of Secret Love” Written by Frank Robbins. pencils by Alex Toth. inks by Frank Giacoia.

Love to see Alex Toth swinging for the fences.

In 1946, cartoonist & illustrator Noel Sickles was sent by Life magazine to sketch the Nuremberg trials. Here is his sketch of the execution of Joachim Von Ribbentrop, who claimed at trial that his boss had made all of the important decisions, & that he was only following orders.

One thing that’s particularly common (and rarely mentioned) is heightism, as seen recently with Greg Bovino, for instance. There’s a cruel insinuation there that men who fall short of an arbitrary ideal height must suffer from some kind of Napoleon complex.

A pair of Hugo Pratt original pencil layouts for Scorpions of the Desert. Always interesting to see the decision process, and the changes along the way.

YES! This is such an underrated book, and for some reason, I was unable to find the last few issues here in the UK when it first came out - curiously enough, at exactly the same point the digital versions now stop.

Personally, I think Mime should be a Marcel Comics character

The only other video I can find on the BBC website is from 2024 and shows him honouring a dead veteran at the hospital where he worked

'Manchesterism' is building a better politics and a strong economy. The whole country should be inspired | Andy Burnham We are the fastest-growing city-region economy in the UK, proof that it is possible to use public funds effectively while reducing crisis spending, says Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester

“who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Captain Dan’s laundry bunker is back in operation today. Longtime followers know what that means.

Singing the words “Hasta la vista, baby” to the tune of “Shave and a haircut, two bits”

“The future adults who were running the brothels”?

I went to a coffee shop and asked for a Machado and they gave me somebody else’s order

Tbf, it’s not intended for children - it’s from Mots D’Heure: Gousses, Rames (which said out loud sounds like Mother Goose Rhymes in a French accent); in the foreword, the narrator claims he’s discovered a medieval manuscript without realising it’s nursery rhymes transposed to sound like French.

Not even close! It’s just phonetic!

The words to “Humpty Dumpty” transposed into cod French: “Un petit d’un petit/S’étonne aux Halles…” from the collection Mots D’Heures: Gousses, Rames [Mother Goose Rhymes]