Tuesday, 1 April 2025

A Radical Innocence




A Radical Innocence

'LET'S try fantasy!' said the editor, scratching his head for a subject.

But that is a word I do not like. It has come, through misuse, to mean something contrived, far from the truth, untrustworthy.'
Well, what about this? How can we, in our technological age, foster imagination in children?'

'That's large — and, for me, too pompous. I would just say feed and warm them and let the imagination be - though wonder, I think, is a better word. Or, perhaps — pace William Wordsworth
- intimations of reality. Does it need fostering, anyway? And is technology your only villain? What about education? We learn very quickly from books and teachers not to respect our childhood wisdom. Wasn't it Aldous Huxley who said -

Ram it in, ram it in,
Children's heads are hollow,
Ram it in, ram it in
Still there's more to follow.

Can it be for this that we stretch our wings, to fly from what is a real treasure to the dubious world of facts? Hasn't it ever surprised you that the cinema will happily rush us from seed to blossom, from beginning to end in the space of a second, but never attempts the more interesting adventure — the following of the lily, say, back to its basic bud? Yet it's all there, the bud is the clue, you have to go back to that. No: back is, perhaps, the wrong word. You need to be there as well as here - simultaneous experience - to recapture what was. And to know that it is.

As to preserving this experience; I can only speak for myself, of course, but I have always been grateful that nobody, as you put it, fostered my imagination. It was not deplored, neither was it given room. It was taken as a matter of course - another fact, like whooping cough, another fact, like daylight. Every child has it as a natural inheritance, and all the grown-ups can do is to leave him alone with the legacy. It is the child's own incommunicable experience - perhaps the only thing that is truly his own — and should not be spied on or disturbed.

This, I think, was what AE, the Irish poet, had in mind in 'Germinal’ when he imagined a child playing in the dusk - that magical moment between day and night — and the grown-ups calling him in from his dream.

Call not thy wanderer home as yet

Though it be late.

Now is his first assailing of The invisible gate.

Be still through that light knocking, The hour is thronged with fate.

Let thy young wanderer dream on:

Call him not home.
A door opens, a breath, a voice From the ancient room,
Speaks to him now.
Be it dark or bright
He is knit with his doom.
He knew that it is in the crack between opposites - dark and light, yes and no, here and there - that the real thing happens.

My childhood was full of such moments — wasn't yours? - and all that I am now somehow relates to them. Of course (and this is inevitable) I was called home from them to supper and bed and the life of the lighted house. But a clever child, a quick, cunning, foxy child, learns to smuggle them in with him and keep them alive in some inner secret cupboard.

'Children, it's late!' my mother would cry, in a voice full of clocks and water-heaters. (Not 'What are you doing — let me share it!") And my father would come striding, giving his impersonation of Zeus in a rage that we never could quite believe in. And then the dusk would catch him and he would fall silent, searching the sky for the first star till he, too, had to be called.

In this question of imagination, of the kind of fate that throngs the hour, so much depends on the quality of the grown-ups. I am grateful now, though I wasn't then (gratitude is a late growth) that I grew up in an atmosphere in which tradition was still part of life, laws few, fixed and simple, and children taken for granted; not 'understood' in our modern sense, not looked upon as a special race but as growing shoots of one whole process - being born, living and dying. My parents never played down to children, nor, on the other hand, did they treat them as equals; we were all just lumps in the family porridge. My parents had, I see now, what W B Yeats called 'a sort of radical innocence, as though by some thin spider thread they were linked with their own youth. When they joined a game it was not at all for our sakes but for their own enjoyment.

Altruism - that impure emotion - had no part in their natures.

If he lost the throw in a game of chance, my father would stalk off in a huff, saying some one had cheated. And beating my mother at Old Maid was like slapping a goddess in the eye; a most discourteous act. In our family life it was their moods that were to be respected, not ours. It was clear that they had their own existence — busy, contained, important. And this, as I now see, left us free for ours. There is no greater burden for a child than parents who want to live his life; contrariwise, when they are content to be simply landscape and leave the child to make his own map, there is no greater blessing. His mind can turn in upon itself (and I don't at all mean introspection) wondering, pondering, absorbing the world, re-enacting in himself all the myths there are. And for this he needs nothing — nothing, no person, unless, perhaps, another child.

Not long ago I came upon two little girls sitting motionless on the floor, gazing in silence at a cardboard box. Gradually it dawned on me that they were watching television. What they were seeing I could not tell - more things in heaven and earth, I would guess, than are dreamt of in the philosophy of Top Cat and Wagon Train.

And I remembered how, for a long period in childhood, I was absorbed in the experience of being a bird. Absorbed, not lost, knowing, had I been faced with it, that I was also a child. Brooding, busy, purposeful, I wove the nests and prepared for eggs as though the life of all nature depended on the effort. 'She can't come, she's laying, the others would say, arriving for a meal without me. And my mother, deep in her role of distracted housewife, would come and unwind my plaited limbs and drag me from the nest: 'If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, no laying at lunchtime!'

Not, 'You are mad. I fear for your future. We must find a psychiatrist: Simply, not at lunchtime! Could she, too, once have been a bird, I sometimes wonder now? Not that one ever could have asked her, she would have thought it fanciful. But her homes were always a bit like nests, warm and well-fitted to her shape, the sard though rel room becomes a nest for main are int perching in the tork of a branch, or hanging from a leat by a thread like the mansion of the golden-crested wren.

She had, too, flashes of inspiration, when the streak of poetry in her Scottish blood broke up the daily pattern. Picnic breakfasts miles from home; or a table-cloth spread out on the carpet and supper on the floor. The sudden lively moments! She would have called them merely moods, but they seem to me now a kind of wisdom, as though she knew instinctively that nothing brings so much energy as the breaks in a regular routine. Full of the saws and customs that are handed down from the generations, innocent, honest, predictable - it was from her we learned, far more than from our less dependable father, to be ready for the unexpected, even to the point of knowing that truth can be juggled with.
"Is this Mrs MacKenzie?' asked my father, pointing with the carving knife at a chicken on the dish. (The fowls fattened for the table were all called after friends and relations.) 'If it is, I'm not hungry. I was fond of her.'
'No,' said my mother, 'it's Nancy Clibborn.' And fixed us with a hypnotic glance as though we were serpents and she a snake-charmer.
'Good!' he exclaimed, slicing a wing. 'I never could abide that woman — far too thin and scraggy?
And we, who that very morning had assisted Mrs MacKenzie to the chopping block, were left to sit in silent judgment. The facts, indeed, had been distorted. But we knew somehow that this was a matter less of morals than of expediency. Men - it was simple — have to be fed, otherwise everyone suffers. So we sat there like the three wise monkeys, seeing, hearing and speaking no evil.
It is fortunate for grown-ups that children understand them so well.
But there is always one law for the rich and another for the poor.
And we, in similar circumstances, did not get off so lightly.
"You told me a lie!' my father accused me when I denied leaving Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, two rag dolls - christened by him - out in the rain all night. It was his air of righteousness that had made me lie, and now his righteousness frightened and shamed me. 'I am disappointed; he said sincerely, as though he were Adam upbraiding Cain.
Then he flung what he hoped was the last straw — 'And letting them catch their death of cold!' But miraculously it saved me. Great and little, there they were, and standing in the crack between them I was whole again and free of guilt. All that mattered to me now was to rush Lord Nelson to the fire and dry his kapok body.
Il I speak of my parents it is because parents are a child's first gods and responsible, whether they know it or not, for many seeds of tate. Later they dwindle to human stature and later still, when the process of nature reverses itself, the child becomes the parent's parent. I never had the opportunity to become, in this sense, my father's mother, for he died while still very young. But for me his death was a germinal moment, strongly fixing my memories. And gradually, as hearsay was added, I came to believe that I saw him plain, in feeling if not in fact. I remember his melancholy, which and inheritable When he had taken a glass, he would escatehie? the sack of Drogheda in 1649 till everyone around him felt personally guilty. We, not Oliver Cromwell, were responsible for the blood and slaughter. He was Irish, too, in argument, determined to have the last word, even — or perhaps specially - with children.
*Get that damned dog off my chair, or I'll send him to live in the stables!'
'Father, such language!' we protested, protecting a precious mongrel pet.
Criticism he did not like. And from his own flesh and blood - really, it was too much.
'Mealy-mouthed piety! If a man can't say "damned" in the bosom of his own family, where can he say damned, I'd like to know!'
"It wasn't "damned", it was "dog", we said. We never use that word to Tippu. He thinks he's a little boy.' Then he'll have to learn better, Father retorted. And proceeded, in a voice that would have melted marble, to teach the necessary lesson. And that, for us, was the end of Tippu. He left us, for less than a handful of silver, and slavishly followed at Father's heel.
He became, in fact, a dog.
Arguments, yes. But no explanations. I cannot remember that he, or anybody else, ever explained anything. It was clear from their general attitude that our parents had no very high opinion shamed me. 'I am disappointed, he said sincerely, as though he were Adam upbraiding Cain.

Then he flung what he hoped was the last straw - 'And letting them catch their death of cold!' But miraculously it saved me. Great and little, there they were, and standing in the crack between them I was whole again and free of guilt. All that mattered to me now was to rush Lord Nelson to the fire and dry his kapok body.
If I speak of my parents it is because parents are a child's first gods and responsible, whether they know it or not, for many seeds of fate. Later they dwindle to human stature and later still, when the process of nature reverses itself, the child becomes the parent's parent. I never had the opportunity to become, in this sense, my father's mother, for he died while still very young. But for me his death was a germinal moment, strongly fixing my memories. And gradually, as hearsay was added, I came to believe that I saw him plain, in feeling if not in fact. I remember his melancholy, which was the other side of his Irish gaiety, and know that it was catching and inheritable. When he had taken a glass, he would grieve over the sack of Drogheda in 1649 till everyone around him felt personally guilty. We, not Oliver Cromwell, were responsible for the blood and slaughter. He was Irish, too, in argument, determined to have the last word, even - or perhaps specially - with children.

'Get that damned dog off my chair, or I'll send him to live in the stables!'
'Father, such language!' we protested, protecting a precious mongrel pet.
Criticism he did not like. And from his own flesh and blood - really, it was too much.
'Mealy-mouthed piety! If a man can't say "damned" in the bosom of his own family, where can he say damned, I'd like to know!'
"It wasn't "damned", it was "dog", we said. 'We never use that word to Tippu. He thinks he's a little boy?
Then he'll have to learn better, Father retorted. And proceeded, in a voice that would have melted marble, to teach the necessary lesson. And that, for us, was the end of Tippu. He left us, for less than a handful of silver, and slavishly followed at Father's heel.
He became, in fact, a dog.
Arguments, yes. But no explanations. I cannot remember that he, or anybody else, ever explained anything. It was clear from their general attitude that our parents had no very high opinion of our intelligence, but at the same time, apparently, they expected us to know everything. We were left, each on our desert (but by no means unfruitful) island, to work out things for ourselves.
"Father, we said to the back of the newspaper. Doesn't God have a wife?'
"No.'
'Then who does the cooking?'
'Nobody:
Extraordinary! One son, no wife and cooks for himself.
'Father, what is God's other name?'
'Other name? He hasn't got one.'
'Not the duke of? Or even mister?'
'No, I tell you, just plain God.'
'Then why do you call him Harry?'
Down came the newspaper with a crash. His eye gathered its battle fervour.
T've never done such a thing in my life! Tell me the time, place and circumstance when you've heard me call God Harry!' Hewas probably seeing himself as we saw him every Sunday, in his tussore suit with the crimson cummerbund, gravely singing the last hymn as he handed the offertory plate to the vicar. A pillar of Christendom, the ideal church-warden. Would such a man have spoken so? Never in this world!
'But you do, Father, every day. By the Lord Harry this, by the Lord Harry that — you're always saying it.'
'Jumping Jehosephat!' he cried, rolling his eye at Heaven for help.
'Haven't you heard of figures of speech?" And he threw the newspaper at our heads and went calling, as usual, for my mother.
Well? Figures of speech were Greek to us, and we were left with the suspicion, already familiar, that we still had a lot to learn. But this, in itself, was a kind of education. Had he explained, we would have been furnished with an indigestible piece of knowledge but very little the wiser. As it was, another question was laid down in us to grow and breed and seek its meaning.
It cannot have been long afterward - though time is different at different ages and this can play the memory false — that for me, at least, the answer came.
It was dark, midnight or early morning, and the room was cobwebby with sleep. The cloudy grown-ups were pulling us trom the cocooning blankets - even the baby trom the cradle - and urging us to the window. There in the sky, over the mountain, as long, it seemed, as the mountain itself, was a huge bright tail of stars. It pulsed and glowed and wavered and I had the feeling, though heard nothing, that it made a humming sound. We were told, in whispers, to look and remember for we would not see this sight again for another 70 years, the time the great tail would take to circle the universe. Then they said it was Harry's Comet.
'Halley, not Harry, my mother insisted, later correcting what she called my mistake. But I merely assumed she was bad at spelling, unable to tell an R from an L. For by this time, the Lord Harry and his comet had become part of my own private mythology, a voice from the ancient room. Seventy years! I would have to be old as my great-aunts, who themselves seemed as old as the Grey Women of Perseus, one eye and one tooth between them. Even so, if he was coming back, I would wait for him.
Waiting for Harry! That is one of the things I have been doing all my life - imagining him out there on his appointed course, trailing his tail among the galaxies, while children crowd at the windows to see him and babies are plucked from the cradles. he came to mean, in spite of his apparent beach-combing of the universe, something stable and purposeful, a wanderer only in the sense that his wandering was according to law. The stars, for me, were his witnesses. Somewhere among them Harry was moving, faithfully pursuing his mysterious treadmill to the end of the world and back.
Where is he now? In Andromeda? Or wrapping his tail round Orion's head, a transient fillet of gold? It doesn't matter. He can't help turning and returning — some time, I suppose, in the eighties.
They've begun already to mention his name — always (will newspapers never learn?) always spelling it Halley. And do you know what they plan to do, in your technological age? Shoot a rocket right through his tail to see what it is made of! And then they will say it is only stardust. This troubles me. What will the children think, I wonder? Who will reassure them?
'Don't look at me!' said the editor.
"Why not? You're the very man! If I'm not here when Harry comes back — think of the slips between cup and lip! — you must tell the children. Say. that nothing is only this or the other; that stardust alone can't explain a comet; that there are laws and eternal patterns and Harry is part of them!
He gave me a look that seemed like a promise.
'O.K' he said. 'I will.’

First published in 'The New York Times, 1965.

Saturday, 29 March 2025

NOBODY will EVER Publish This...








A comic book, Bill?

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
Well, it's perfect.
I'm going to inject my ideas right
into the thumping heart of America.
I mean, I'll get a real artist
to draw it properly.

She's an Amazon Princess that lives 
on an island of all women.

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
Paradise Island.

And  A Man crash-lands 
on The Island?

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
Yeah, Steve Trevor, The Spy.

And she wears 
a burlesque outfit.

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
Well, it's athletic.

And silver bracelets.

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
They deflect bullets.

And all her friends are sorority girls 
who have spanking parties,
and everybody fights Nazis 
and rides in an invisible plane?

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
Yes.

Ahem. Heh.

Prof. William Moulton Marston:
What?

Bill. We Love You 
Truly, so much.
But NOBODY... 
I say this with all the Compassion 
and Truth in My Heart :
NOBODY will EVER 
publish this.

Friday, 28 March 2025

Bee Movie



The "Insect Politics" speech 

was something that David Cronenberg 

came up with from his days as an entomologist. 

He was fascinated by insect societies, 

the division of labor, and the caste structure 

therein, yet they are 

VERY MUCH not-Human.


Mel Brooks didn't want people to know he was 

a producer for the film, because he thought people 

wouldn't take it seriously 

if they knew he was involved. 


When people DID find out, 

he decided to make the most of it 

by handing out deely boppers 

at the premiere.



Mark Kermode - Bee Movie


"....Several problems with it 
and they goes something like this :
Firstly, it has no proper sense of its anthropomorphism --

The way in which you do movies 
about animals talking to each other is, 
The Animals talk to each other, okay, 
you don't then cross over 
the species boundary, and have 
The Animals then talking to The Humans 
and The Gag is, 'The Animals talk --'

Right -- when we're in The Hive 
with all The Animals talking 
to each other, it's fine 
We're in Animal World
We're in Fantasy World
but there's a plot Point here, 
which is that He meets A Woman 
then He starts talking to her 
and she goes "Blimey! A Talking Bee!

So The Gag isn't that 
‘Bees live their life in relation to --

The Gag is that 
‘All bees actually talk —’
which means that none
of the rest of movie 
makes any sense because
Bees don't wear hats, 
Bees don't fly Planes,
Bees don't -- don't -- 
Bees don't -- y'know -- drive cars...
None of these things happen 
so you've trodden over The Line
you've broken The Unwritten Rule 
of 'You can do this, you can't do that --'

It's like 'No, you can't --' 
It's like -- 


"....It's made up.
It's not True 
Work it out."


...No, There are Rules, that you --

That doesn't work if you do that
in the same way as it doesn't work 
in Ocean's Thirteen, when 
Julia Roberts manages to get into a club 
because she looks like Julia Roberts
but nobody says 'Yeah, but, 
he looks like Brad Pit and 
he looks like George Clooney 
and that other guy looks like Casey Affleck 
and anyway there's a whole 
movie carrying on around it -- '

“It doesn't. You — 

No, sorry there's ways 
of doing anthropomorphism 
and that ain't one of them, 
Number one --

Number two
It's A Comedy about Lawyers
It's A Comedy in which
A Bee sues The Human race, right? 

Very funny for the...
you know, the grown ups 
and all the rest of it -- Kids :
"What.....? 'Sue', what does 'Sue', mean?
I don't know -- 

Isn't Sue you know, A Boy Called Sue …?

“…because they'll go straight away with 
that Johnny Cash reference weren't they?”

Well they're more likely to do that 
than say “Oh yes, I understand 
it's a legal term, so —

I don't think so 

Point number two —

“They're more likely 
to get the legal term
than they are the 
Johnny Cash reference --

Point number three : the whole thing about 
'I don't want to be A Drone --' 
is ripped off of ANTZ, which in itself 
was kind of ripped off of A Bug's Life 
and that, you know that's all been done before 

Point number four : The Jokes aren't 
as funny as they ought to be; that's not to say that I didn't laugh a few times but when I did laugh, I laughed as an adult laughing at adult humor -- not adult in the...  in the you know in the Jimmy Carr sense, but as in the --

So it's almost like you gone through the Looking Glass, the cartoon is no longer being made for the kids audience it's being made as a sort of you know I want to make gags that will make sense to the older audience and I've kind of completely bypassed the kids oh bother you know what I've got to do something for the kids let's do it as a cartoon --

And this all kind of came into Focus for me when I saw that trailer and the trailer was the gag is he Jerry sign but dressed up as a Bee he can't do the dressing up as a Bee so Steven Spielberg says and incidentally not very convincing Steven Spielberg may be a director but boy he can't act his way out a paper bag says why don't you just do it as a cartoon and you know what there's a terrible sense of that there's a terrible sense of that's what they've done they've just gone why not do it as a cartoon --

It's not terrible but it ain't a Kids film --
It's not a proper Kids film, 
because if it is a proper Kids film, 
it doesn't do --
the anthropomorphism thing 
doesn't workthe animation 
should be funny, the story 
should be better and the jokes
should be better and that --
none of those are True.

Thursday, 27 March 2025

Wednesday, 26 March 2025

It's better.







INT. SPIKE'S BASEMENT APARTMENT - DAY 

Wesley is grinding something into a paste in a mortar and pestle, mumbling to himself while doing so. Illyria is sitting behind him on the edge of the bed. 

ILLYRIA 
I don't understand. 

WESLEY 
It'll help you heal faster. 
(shakes the paste off the pestle, sets it aside
If you really plan to join us in this fight— 
(grabs a strip of muslin and dredges it in the paste

ILLYRIA 
I will fight. I've been broken and humiliated. I will return in kind every blow, every sting. I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. 

WESLEY 

(pulls the strip out of the paste and walks with it toward Illyria) 

You're a very inspirational person. Have I mentioned that? 

(brushes her hair away from her neck) 

ILLYRIA 

You are what I don't understand. 

WESLEY 

And that would be different because

(presses the strip to Illyria's skin) 

ILLYRIA 

Angel told you to do whatever you wanted. Today... tonight, you may all be dead. 

WESLEY 

Yes. Good point. 

ILLYIRA 

I am not what you want. 

WESLEY 

(stands back, turns away, walks to his preparation area) 

(his voice nearly cracking) 

No. 

ILLYIRA 

(touches her bandage) 

Then why— 

WESLEY 

(prepares another bandage) 

Don't I go off and have one last perfect day? Smell the flowers, or sky-dive, or have a go with Mistress Spanks-A-Lot... or whatever the hell one is supposed to do in this situation. 

(places another bandage on Illyria's neck) 

ILLYRIA 

Mistress who? 

WESLEY 

There is no perfect day for me, Illyria. There is no sunset or painting or finely-aged scotch that's going to sum up my life and make tonight any... There is nothing that I want. 

ILLYRIA 

You want to be with Fred. 

WESLEY 

(finishes bandaging Illyria, wipes his hands on a hand towel) 

Yes. Yes, that's where I'd be if I could. 

ILLYRIA 

I could assume her shape, make her come alive again this once for you. 

(looks down) 

But you would never ask me to. 

WESLEY 

The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie. Is it better? 

ILLYRIA 

(touches her neck) 

It's better.

That’s Sick









I don’t agree with that interpretation of The Facts.

Q. : We were talking about Work Ethic —
Because Everyone in comparison 
to YOUR output, Joss, and your Work Ethic, 
would appear to be slack and lazy —
Because, y’know, people work very hard, 
in Life, and they get their pay —

But YOU seem to be working, like, 
a hundred times harder than •anybody• else —

J.W. : Well, part of that is Smoke and Mirrors, 
I think, but part of it is that I DO Love The Work,
and also, I DO Have A Problem,
A Serious •Mental• Problem :

It’s Workaholism, and it’s •not• fun, 
I Don’t DO Anything Else —

Other People Have Lives,
and, They’re Nice to Their Friends,
and They do all sorts of things that 
I •forget• to do in The Morning

(and that also includes Basic Hygiene, 
but let’s not talk about that....) “

I mean, none of my schoolteachers could’ve told you, that this was going to happen 
(except perhaps my Film Professor) —

It wasn’t until I began studying 
and making Film, and Television, 
that I discovered that 

That was Why I am Here,
and that was really 
The ONLY Reason —

Zoë: 
We got time for gravediggin’?

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: 
Zoë, get something to rope them together, 
five or six of them. I want them laid out 
on the nose of Our Ship.

Dr. Simon Tam: 
Are you INSANE?

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: 
Put Book front and center - 
He was Our Friend, 
We should honour him. 

Kaylee! 
Find that kid who’s takin’ 
a dirt nap with baby Jesus — 
We need a hood ornament.

[yelling] 
Jayne! 
Try not to steal 
too much of their shit!





Tuesday, 25 March 2025

I Am Job




Vietnamese 
Mrs. Doubtfire
(over The Phone)
I-am-Job!

The Karen :
......do YOU Speak English..?

Vietnamese 
Mrs. Doubtfire
(over The Phone)
I - am - JOB!

The Karen : (runs off screaming into The Night)
(Lying through her Teeth
-- I'm sorry, The Position has been Filled  (hangs up)

RUDE!!


Mrs. Doubtfire I Am Job



Chinese Democracy







[Scene now shows the interior of Astrotrain as the Decepticons aboard escape inside him, adding heavy loads that prevent him — he says — from making it back to Cybertron.  Now it is Decepticons versus Decepticons...The Strong wish to stay onboard whilst The Weak get thrown off to die in outer space]

137 ASTROTRAIN: "Jettison some *weight* or I'll never make it to Cybertron!"
�138 STARSCREAM: (stepping forward, gleeful) Fellow Decepticons, Astrotrain has requested that we *lighten* our *burden!*
�139 BONECRUCHER: "In that case I say it is survival of the fittest."�140 STARSCREAM: "Do I hear a *second* on that?"�141 SOUNDWAVE, DIRGE, RAMJET, THRUST, BLITZWING, : "ayes."
�142 STARSCREAM: "And against?"
�143 THUNDERCRACKER, SKYWARP, INSECTICONS: "Nay."
�144 STARSCREAM: "The ‘Ayes!’ *have* it.�145 SOUNDWAVE, DIRGE, RAMJET, THRUST, BLITZWING: 
Get! Make room for others,

146 THUNDERCRACKER, SKYWARP, INSECTICONS: Brothers don't

[Thundercracker, Skywarp, and Insections all were forced to be thrown off board by the healthy Decepticons.]
STARSCREAM: [Doing it personally] Oh, how it •pains• me to DO this —
�148 MEGATRON: (weakly) Wait, I •still• function.�149 STARSCREAM: Wanna BET…?

[Starscream throws Megatron out into Space]
�150 MEGATRON: STAAAAAAAARRSCREAAAAAM!!!!!"
�151 STARSCREAM: (one hand wiping clean the other)Well — as Megatron has — how shall we say..? — •departed•, I nominate MYSELF as the NEW leader.
[ You DO surprise us….]

"Wait, the Constructicons form Devastator, 
the most powerful robot, WE should rule."

SOUNDWAVE: 
Soundwave superior, 
Constructicons inferior.

BONECRUSHER: "Who are you calling ‘inferior’.

155 HOOK: "Nobody would follow an un-charismatic bore like you."

156 RUMBLE [BLUE]: "No one calls Soundwave  un-charismatic."

157 FRENZY [RED]: "Yeah, let's Kick tailgate."

158 SCRAPPER: "Constructicons unite! [ The Unions come out on Strike ]�159 RUMBLE & FRENZY: "No way!

Sunday, 23 March 2025

The Lamp



Supreme Dalek Reveals its Plan
Resurrection of the Daleks
Doctor Who




HmmOh, Agent Starling....


You think you can dissect me

with this blunt little tool?


You're so ambitious, aren't you?


You know what you look like 

to me with your good bag 

and those cheap shoes?


You look like a rube —

a well-scrubbed, hustling rube

with a little taste.


Good nutrition's given you

some length of bone,

but you're not more 

than one generation

from poor white trash,

are you, Agent Starling?


And that accent you've 

tried so desperately

to shed ? Pure West Virginia.


What does your father do?

Is he a coal miner?

Does he stink of The Lamp?


And, oh, how quickly 

The Boys found you ?

All those tedious, sticky 

fumblings in the back seats 

of cars while you could only 

dream of getting out

getting anywhere,

getting all the way 

to The efF-Bee-Eye.....


You see a lot, Doctor --


But are you strong enough to point

that high-powered perception at yourself?


What about it? Huh? Why don't you ?

Why don't you look at yourself

and write down what you see?


Or maybe you're afraid to.


(The sliding Food-

tray slams closed)


A census-taker once tried to Test me --

I ate his liver with some fava beans,

and a nice Chianti; uhf-uhf-uhf-uhf-fff --


You fly back to school now, little Starling.


Fly, fly, fly --

Fly, fly, fly --

Fly, fly, fly --