The Dallas Library, Main Entrance, 1972.  Taken with my Voightlander, developed and printed by me as the kid.  I thought I was the next Robert Capa.  Marshall M. Fredricks, sculptor.      Selfie with tripod mounted view camera, remote press button cable release.  Why did my parents let me buy those glassses?  I am currently listening to Mary Had A Little Lamb, Stevie Ray.  1971, it says on the back in my ink pen scratching that was used for marking laundry but I felt like Edgar Allan Poe using it.      Above, tourist trap at Port Aransas.  I think it is still there.  Below,  Lake Dallas, annual Collins Radio engineer bash.  Both c. 1970.  That's all, folks!

     I am Mittens, representative of the Allied cat clans, and the rabbit does not know I am here.  For nine years Billy kept my brother,Thomas Jonathon Jackson, alive, happy and fed.  Stonewall was to be King of the Cats, until his murder.  As Heir Presumptive, that role is now mine.      The Lapin clan is our prey and enemy, but one rabbit made a difference to the cats.  He welcomed all cats and bunnies on his land, and a balance was established.  He was our friend and benefactor, and is soon to be gone.  Warfare will resume.      The murderers will be punished.  I have no love for bunnies, but I respect at least one.  And yes, this is a blunderbuss.  We are not as technical as some.  It is only for show.  We are born with our weapons and there is no greater hunter on land than the common housecat.      Common indeed!

     So, I'm getting ready to go back to Rockport, right?    I had played Farkle with Ed and Stork and took them off for fifty bucks, fuck yeah.  Man, did we get slammered!  Beer, wine, and margaritas that Stork brought little umbrellas for.      I got up and man oh manishevitz, sleeping on bare wood floors while drunk ain't what it never was.  I drive over to my brother's cause I got to get two of my sister's cats.  No problemo, natch!      Two hours and one caged cat later, I call my sister to get her permission to bring back a less agile cat.  I was bleeding pretty bad.      Long story less long, both cats shit as soon as we started out for the coast.  200 miles of air-conditioned catbox and yowling from the depths of Hell all the way home. Believe you me, anything is better than what has been! This goes out to a former kid!

Kiss my grits.      Today I have to whip up to Austin, gamble with my friends, sleep in the shed and haul home a bunch of books and cats.  Ain't I the lucky one!      It looks like this time the sale of the land went through.  How nice.  I have reason to believe the lady buying it will turn it into a trailer park. How very, very nice.      After nine years of living in Garfield, of trying to be the best neighbor I could, none of the people around me speak to me or even say hello.  I have done nothing to them except wave and help out when needed.  Because I did not marry the first obese woman that came along and have a bunch of be-earringed rap listening dickhead kids, as so many did and do, then that makes me fallon.  That and my loud music and bad attitude.  And I have cats!  What kinda man would have cats?  What kinda man don't have guns and a truck?  And that son of a bitch don't even listen to mainstream country.      Here I come to spoil the day! T

     Kupka.  The Black Idol.      Now here is a picture.  This was drawn c.1903.  I have always felt that this is on some cold planet and that the lake is liquid ammonia or something all scientific.   Richard Dadd.  The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke. Dog.  Francis Bacon. Virgil Finlay.  Reaper. Hannes Bok.  I forget the title but the story he was paid next to nothing for illustrating is long forgotten. Jack Kirby.  Ragnorok. Mary Kelley.  Long lost other in situ pic. Wilhelm Von Ellenbogen. Tulip Staircase. Marc Adamus.  The Tree God. Someone really tried here.  Good show! Fini.

     The mind blowing Comic of the seventies.  I had enough trouble in high school identifying with Jack London and the Silver Surfer.  But this, unequaled, Jim Starlin production was extremely well thought out, unbelievably well drawn, and I had just discovered Zap Comics. This put the tap dance on the young boy's brain cells, both of them.      Jim Starlin was the best comic artist like, ever.  And then he went south, real fucking bad.  Boy did he suck.  And there was no excuse for it. None.  Of course he could not equal this but goddamn, read "Dreadstar" and tell me how great he is.      This kept getting weirder and better.  I really thought that this was super fucking heavy. But hey, I thought " On The Road" was advice to live by!      Jack Kirby and Burt Reynolds made their Walk-ons!      The In-Betweener, not a villain or hero.  Just a very good plot device.  Real fucking good.                                

     World after world, galaxy after galaxy, has succumbed to his mad scheme of universal good taste.  And while I am on the subject, I always thought the Silver Surfer was a whiney punk.  The best job in the universe and it was always bitch, bitch, bitch.  Oh I am destroying worlds. Deal with it.  Jesus, I hate the Farcical Four and everything about them except Jack Kirby.  The Thing was pretty cool, though. And those movies sucked real bad.  Super bad and super gay.  Stan Lee is the anti-Christ, without a doubt.  And fuck Superman et al... so much horse shit.  Kiss mine.

     ...is a disaster in armored combat.  Let us take the case of the British Battlecruisers.      During the race up to the First World Nightmare, the British diverted production for a rakish, fast big gun vessel called a Battlecruiser.  These were lightly armored ships with Battleship ordnance.  The idea was to use them for commerce raiding and picking off smaller enemy (German) warships.      But the British navy was deceived!      For the temptation to use the ships in line of battle combat was overwhelming.  Forgetting about the light armor, they lost 3 of these expensive capital ships at Jutland when German shells ignited their main magazines due to to minor but distressing flaws in the design of the Ammunition Hoists, causing flashover.  Oh dear.  The Germans lost one battle cruiser.  The German gunnery during the battle achieved hits of two percent as compared to the British tally of one percent.  The British lost twice the tonnage and men, but still won, because the

We're all mad here!  So all day I have been hearing a cat cry in distress.  The noise was coming from the house across the way, and I went over there three times today and searched for the cat.  Tonight I was sitting outside thinking about  my dead cats and the obvious distress of the cat over there was bothering me a great deal.  I go back over and looked around, when, finally, I cast my eyes heavenward and, sure enough, there is a cat with a collar in a hav-a-heart trap on the roof.  It had been there all day in our horrible wet heat and in the sun.  I called the cops and they said they would have someone right out.  After twenty minutes, they called me back and said they could not legally do anything.  I said if they did not I would, jail or no jail.  The dispatcher said if I was comfortable with that go ahead.   I hung up and got a ladder and got the cat down.  It was a young tabby that looked just like my cat Stonewall Jackson.  He was purring away and I took the

     Meet Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, his two sons, and two grandsons.  Born in Pisa, he was an admiral and Podesta of Pisa.  I assume that means "Boss".  After an interesting life, he and his boys were thrown into a tower and starved to death.  Legend has it that he ate the children, something a modern autopsy does not support, thank God.  Dante put him in hell gnawing on his captor's skull, a certain Archbishop Ruggieri. Above is Jean Baptiste Carpeaux's superb marble family snapshot. Below is William Blake's take-      And now, Henry Fuseli's version_      Finally, Auguste Rodin weighs in with a charming interpretation from La porte de Enfer-     That's all, Folks!

Rick Griffin. Rick died on August 18, 1991, in Petaluma, California.  He was 47.  Wear your helmet when on your bike!   Extremely prolific. Such skill. Zap # 13. The Artist, 1961. The essence of California.  Farewell, Sir.  We miss you a lot.

     Jean Martin as Col. Matheiu (Marcel Bigeard).  This is from Pontecorvo's outstanding movie "The Battle of Algiers".   The reader may recall that I have mentioned Bigeard, who I have corresponded with, several times in this blog.  Jean Martin also played a Legionaire in that other excellent movie about French Algeria,                          The Day of the Jackal      Jean Sorel as Lt. Col. Jean Marie Bastien Thiry.  He is almost as handsome as the man he is portraying! Patrice Chereau as the Marquis de Montcalm.  (I don't have enough room here for his full name).  Last of the Mohicans, 1992. Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, that lovable man, enjoy a moment together.  This still from Napoleon by Abel Gance, which I saw in 1982, sums up the revolution for me.  These are the very faces of the fire and ice that change a society from one of sickness to one of death.  Antonin Artaud, Alexandre Koubitsky, and Edmund van Dae