Large Fierce Mammal

Hop o’ My Thumb fools the Ogre into killing his own daughters. — Gustave Dore, Les Contes de Perrault, 1862

Hard times bring some to self-justify the most heinous of acts. A few even pre-position themselves for it as I have chronicled in the matter of a young technician I was once called upon to mentor:

“… in the midst of the long hot summer of 1981 the Halifax Police Department went on strike and night time in that city was a war zone. Anyone involved in any sort of security service was working round the clock, and in the course of the mayhem, a conversation occurred between my young friend and me about how thin a veneer civilization actually is. It was as we spoke on the subject that day that he revealed something of himself to me – that faced with not just a police strike, but a complete breakdown in all systems of government, law, order, and economy; removed of his access to work that might earn him an income as Canadians have come to know it, he would stalk and prey upon other people. He would take what they had as his own, eat their food, and if they had none then their pets, and if they had none of those, then he would eat them. It was clear to me that he had given much thought to this agenda, and revealed it to me with complete sincerity, clarity, and sobriety.

“I applauded his candour, and silently added him to my list of those who are to be killed on sight should the shit hit the fan as he described. Friendship, after all, can only be carried so far.” ~ Dark Sentiments 2014 – Day 20: An Aside About Cannibalism

Lore and legend abounds with tales of parents abandoning their children in forests as an alternative to watching them starve, and the apparently exceptional probability of the waifs encountering cannibal witches and man-eating ogres along the way. The work of grisly art that tops this very piece is one of the eleven Gustave Doré illustrations for Charles Perrault’s Le petit Poucet (Hop o’ My Thumb) as they appeared in the 1862 edition of Les Contes de Perrault (see HERE for more samples and a synopsis). (more…)

Truth Be Sewn

By LFM

Should need arise to air your mind,
Speak from the front and not behind.
Be silent ’til to break your stillness
Reflects the cure and not the illness.
Don’t be as those whose mouths will close
Only in their sweet repose.

Let this stand as introduction to this item from the never disappointing Caitlin Doughty on this seemingly insurmountable topic. (more…)

Uglification

By LFM

When the ideal state of any nation’s
Not shared across its population,
And any voiced opposed opinions
Call to arms the frenzied minions,
With history and fiction melding,
Mark you now your freedom’s gelding.

When princes vie for favour’s sway
Each pre-proclaimed he’s won the day,
Disciples bleed upon the grass,
Unknowing that this too shall pass.
A nation’s business must be done,
No matter what’s been lost or won.

The tide will rise and fall to draining,
Unchanged whatever king is reigning,
Amidst the tumult, he may thrive
Who strives for more than just alive.
Go forth and do your duty in it,
The day is yours, so go begin it.

Source: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/1726060.htm

Grist for the Mill

By LFM

Tim lives in the city in a tiny wee flat,
He says he hates “fascists” and wears a black hat.
He has lots of friends and they go on the town
To fix what is broken by burning it down.

Dontrell finds his fire in historical crimes,
Committed by people in earlier times,
What keeps him aflame is just yesterday’s shooting
Of a neighbourhood Brother that started the looting.

It’s easy to lie to such children as these,
To aim them at those you would force to their knees,
Resistance is futile’s the cry of the day,
Who calls to “defund” really means “do away”.

Yet history shows that those sent to the front
Will fight all the sharper when grasp of it’s blunt,
Their reason for dying they’ll miss to their graves —
Someone has something that someone else craves.

They’ll tell you the enemy’s stayed on the gun,
Ordered to impotence, ready to run,
None asks, “When we win, how will all of this go?”
“When we turn on the taps, will the water still flow?”

No question is offered for wrongs must be righted,
Red busy hands of the Truth are benighted —
Those ones who would lead you, whatever their game,
They’ll buy and sell you, and all stays the same.

“An acquired taste is an appreciation for something unlikely to be enjoyed by a person who has not had substantial exposure to it.” ~ Wikipedia

Of this very subject, I once wrote:

“I like fruitcake. I also like marinated herring, Danish blue cheese, scotch whisky, anchovies, the smell of a good cigar being smoked – even though I don’t smoke myself — and Peter Thompson. That they are all acquired tastes does not diminish the fact that my sensibilities are in some way gladdened by each of them, in spite of my propensity to swear at Thompson as often as by him, and in truth, my liking for a thing that is best when soaked at length in fine spirits, and is dense enough stop a bullet, has some interesting parallels to our friendship.” ~ A Long Winter’s Night – Holiday Density

Most of you already understood all that, but I offer it in recognition of that portion of my Goode Readers for whom language their first English may not be. (more…)

No Beethovens were harmed during the making of this Dark Sentiment.

“We all know what rotting meat smells like, and hence the term, “What died?” has entered the popular lexicon. Just words though, Goode Reader, for there is a quantum leap in the experience that lies between pulling the lid off something found forgotten at the back of the fridge, and the full flower of meaning inherent in those singular smells that truly cannot ever be unsmelled.” ~ Dark Sentiments 2015 – Day 10: What Died?

There’s an old joke about some grave robbers who decide to exhume none other than Ludwig van Beethoven shortly after his death in 1827.  Needless to say they are shocked to find him busily erasing sheets of music instead of lying in sweet repose. Asked what he is doing, he replies, “Decomposing.” (more…)

The Death of the Gravedigger, Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926)

Hard on the heels of last night’s The Grave Digger’s Song Book is tonight’s LFM original. Join me now on a romp through the thoughts of a Man on the subject of holes, what goes in them, and his place in the void.

The Grave Digger’s Song

By LFM

He’s a miserable thing who won’t dig a hole,
Whatever the size and no matter the goal.
Setting a fence post or raising a pole,
Digging a cat hole or planting a soul.

In the chill of the night or the heat of the day,
Bugger the rocks, and the roots, and the clay,
When a hole must be dug there’s no time to delay,
Don’t scrimp on the depth if you’d stifle decay.

For revenge dig two graves, I think that’s how it goes,
Some people believe it, I’m not one of those.
I’ll leave food for the Flies and what crawls up my nose,
Bones for Coyotes and flesh for the Crows.

Source: The Upsizers (https://theupsizers.wordpress.com/2017/08/31/entry-684-the-dead-and-dying/open-grave1/), from “The Dead and Dying” collection.

If you’ve never dug a grave you should try it some time. No cheating with power equipment mind. Pick and shovel or it didn’t happen, no matter how much you cried in the process.

Whether or not you’re a member of that singular group, tonight’s Dark Sentiment will present musical selections from a genre you may not have known existed — songs about filling graves, and the craft of them what digs ’em.

Something strong from the middle shelf tonight — from the Rye, Bourbon, or Irish selections I think. (more…)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Witch

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is sung from the perspective of a previously unheard of Coven of Witches — The Witches of Wakeup — hidden for centuries but only now self-disclosing as the sheer unmitigated shitness of the 21st century has driven them beyond their bounds of tolerance.

Short form: They’ve fucking had it. (more…)

“The matter, then, is not that we are different from one another. It springs from zealotry, and that, dear reader, is born of the idea of chosenness – that you and yours hold exclusivity of right as the beloved and preferred of your deity, or even political doctrine. Chosenness in spiritual terms goes far beyond the smug feeling that you have it all figured out, and all those other poor buggers got it wrong. At its worst, it creates the belief that holds with the obvious assessment that where there are chosen, there will of necessity also be rejects, and from that position is a very short step to making the comparison of superiority over them. To having the right to force your beliefs upon them, or to subjugate them in punishment.” ~ A Long Winter’s Night 2013 – Day 2: Of Pagans, Heathens, and the Noble Savage

I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of expressions of Chosenness around these days. Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is an exceptional treatment of the subject from, yet again, the students of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH who previously brought us the sagas of Harald and Urs on Day 3 of this very season. (more…)