A Snailish Serpent

I am such a David Rowe junkie. I have been collecting political cartoons since the 1980s. In those days I had to rely on cutting them out of papers that my parents bought. If I could remember where I put them, I would probably find that they are all yellow and crumbling to pieces by now. The Internet makes it so much easier to get lots of pictures in excellent condition looking just as crisp as on the first day they were published.
Most of the pictures are now on the Tweet Stone because I noticed quite a while ago that nothing is more likely to make the Big Mac crash than to try resurrect an image that I have downloaded. (The above image is hot linked)

But it took me a good 10 minutes just to load a picture in a tab that was already open. So not a good omen for any attempt at squiggling.


I finally manage to slink upstairs after at least a week procrastinating, only to find the spinning beachball of Doom and assorted other obstacles.

It was already a nightmare waiting for a stupid online course to load but Dreamwidth is just as bad. I guess the Big Mac is over 12 years old now so the self destruct button is long overdue to go off any day now.

So I am still pretty much in Read Only mode.  Looking at my DW friends pages but rarely ever commenting much lately.
I just cannot get  back into the habit of squiggling. It is strange to think that I used to post and comment a lot more when I didn't even have a computer or Tweet Stone. I used to go down to a local netcafe mainly devoted to pimple faced teens playing World of Warcraft.
Netcafes have pretty much gone the way of the video and record store.

I have also been busy reading the newspapers keeping up with all the election gossip as well as a certain "Special Military Operation".
Who would have ever imagined that the Ukrainians would be still holding out some 8 weeks on? I am sure that Putin certainly didn't.
The Ukraine post office even found time to release a set of stamps commemorating Snake Island. Soon they will need a new set featuring the latest instalment - the Russian warship that fucked itself.

I wonder if the Moskva will become the new Kursk. I have just got to that chapter in the Anna Politkovskaya book from 2005 "Putin's Russia"

There are also a lot of really good podcasts on BBC Radio 4. One series about Putin, another about Covid Conspiracies, the War on Truth and the current one that I am addicted to - The Coming Storm - about the back story of Q Anon. One early episode was a very informative 4Chan 101.  I had heard so many horror stories about that hell hole but never quite knew what it was about. I definitely get the vibe of an army of incels lurking in their parents' basement feeling resentful that the world is not devoted to making them happy.
I had no idea that 4Chan and friends were the source of Anonymous, Q Anon and Pizzagate.

You know you are getting old when events that you remember as if they were yesterday have somehow become ancient history.