Nature abhors a vacuum, especially if it is an over-priced POS from Dyson

I have no idea why the lady is vacuuming the footpath, though it perhaps it is a scene from an episode of Der Tatortreiniger, which would explain a lot. Nor do I know why the homeless dude is importuning her to buy a lily. Together they fight crime! There are all the ingredients here for a great Country-&-Western song.

In the country of the two-eyed, the Cyclops is proud of the superior vision resulting from his freedom from binocular distraction

Gaw-lee, Hugh Kenner: you use your mouth purdier than a $20 whore!

...when words have lost meaning you may be very fluent with them, as fluent as the narrator of the "Eumaeus" section of Ulysses, who tells us how Parnell "notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantel of adultery." [...]
Such were the scribblers for Irish provincial newspapers who provided one model for the style of "Eumaeus," and "Eumaeus" in turn, where from end to end of every shapeless sentence the tropes wriggle in place like maggots, was one armature for the style of Finnegans Wake. ... You find, in short, a language that has died, but that like an unembalmed corpse is full of local life.

Kenner is describing the clown-car verbal pile-ups that result from entrusting a keyboard to someone whose thought process is a buzzing hive of cliches, all trying to escape at the same time and tangling themselves together in the process. Of course the style is not confined to Irish newspapers, and here (via bspenser) is Rev. Dr Hugh MacKenzie turning some fine phrases -- only to abandon his lathe and finish with some kind of hand-drill:

The cracks were already widening into the iron maw of total industrialized warfare
I mused that never in my life had I seen so much anarchy descending so fast. The center truly is not holding. Every day one looks for yet another shoe to drop on the world scene.
Didn't anyone ever tell you that so many times the only realist in the room is the person of catholic faith? We are the gimlet-eyed people.

Emphasis mine that of a dead
but unembalmed language

"I knew someone at university who could open beer-bottles with his eye-socket," Another Kiwi vouchsafed.

Below: tragic outcome of
excessive phrase-turning

By 'gimlet-eyed', MacKenzie seems to intend 'realistic' or 'unswayed by sentiment', although to me the epithet suggests "squinty" or "single-minded scrutiny for the main chance".* Perhaps it is a garbled form of 'cold-eyed' (perhaps he meant "vision affected by too many cocktails"; perhaps he had overdone the Habit of Tourneur).

The Great Gazoogle informs us that "cold-eyed", as a self-description of clear-eyed objectivity, is an increasingly popular macro in the collective right-wing word-processor.

Alas, the epithet has secondary connotations of angry ill-will, or the cold eyes of a sheep-killing dog Vladimir Putin. Thus the writers often quote Yeats and specify that the cold eye is being cast, in the manner of a fishing lure or a bronze figurine, to make it clear that the optic gelidity is of the objective kind. G.W. Bush's staff neglected that advice that back in 2000 when he gave the phrase his imprimatur.

I will be a cold-eyed realist when it comes to the world. I see the world the way it is, not the way folks hope it is.

J. K. Galbraith remarked somewhere that when the rightwingers of his acquaintance wanted to prove that their economic and military doctrines were simply fact-facing unsentimental realism, without resorting to evidence, "hard-headed" was their preferred self-description... in contrast to the soft-headed optimistic delusions of their opponents. He could never extract an explanation of how cranial impenetrability was linked with objectivity.

The N-Gram reveals that 'hard-headed' peaked during the Great Depression and the Isolationist period, with a minor revival during the Vietnam War, but was in decline over most of Galbraith's career. However, "cold-eyed" has a long way to go before supplanting it.

Cyclopes

"No good can come of using an eyeball for a woodworking tool," said AK.

"It does not auger well," I agreed.

-------------------------

* Mrs Spat is gimlet-eyed when she suspects that there is food somewhere in the kitchen, but this is not coupled with a realistic expectation of being fed.

Selfie with Lion

H/t to BSpencer and Snarki son of Loki.
As any fule kno, tiger selfies require a Shriekback soundtrack for full effect.

Death is part of Nature, and is therefore vacuum-abhorrent

This recently-discovered storyboard shows some of the stages that The Seventh Seal went though in the process of script development.

First, at left, we see Death trying to distract Max von Sydow's Knight during a game of Scrabble. Death is a poor loser and resents the verdict that 'BRAINZZ' is not a valid word -- not even if it crosses a triple-letter and a double-word-score square

I am not sure what is happening around the pinball table in the middle. I hope Death, the Knight and the Squire are not singing 'Pinball Wizard'. A Seventh Seal / Tommy mash-up is just not right.

Over on the right Death tries to beat the Knight's score on Wii Just-Dance. The Squire has cheated by stretching a bead curtain on the floor to make it more difficult. Max von Sydow is reaching for the vacuum cleaner "to clean up the mess" but really to arm himself.

"With a vacuum cleaner?" AK vouchsafed skeptically.

"He's Dyson with Death," I explained.

Giving the readership what they want

It's bronies of course.  4 hooves out of 4.

SMUTDATE:

7. 3/4 horseshoes

14. 4/4 horseshoes

"Horseshoe"??! That is Caput Draconis, the Head of the Dragon, the sign of the Ascending node. Or an Omega.

2.5/4 horseshoes — he thought
it could have been better

That is Cauda Draconis, the Descending node.

Don't kids these days learn anything about elementary necromancy?

Prick up the Ears

These two Panotti have a sad. They have been looking through the Yandy catalog of Sexy Animal Costumes and it appears that long floppy ears are not sexy -- all the Yandy models have perky little pricked up ears; even the Rascally Rabbit's aural appendages are upstanding!

Once again Looksism rears its ugly, large-eared head.

Left: Sexy Honey-Badger costume

Right: Two sexy sea-otter
costumes and a bikini

No surprises, then, that when unscrupulous people set out to market mood-reactive animotronic animal ears -- built into headsets, with scalp electrodes to pick up one's alpha- and beta-waves -- in a transparently heartless attempt to exploit the naivete of Furries, cats were the animals of choice. Also available through re-branding third parties as bear, fox, wolf and pikachu ears. And bunnies.

Here at Riddled Enterprises we condemn the entire phenomenon in the strongest possible terms, meanwhile quietly creating a subsidiary to re-fit the headsets with mobile wings so as to sell them as winged Gaulish helmets to Asterix-and-Obelix cosplayers. No word yet on self-wagging mood-expressive tails, nor on nose augments that extend if one's speech is not wholly sincere.*

One person was excited by the possibilities:

[The purveyor] was really excited to tell me all about them and show off the range of emotion they can convey. For example, they perk up when you see somebody cute, they droop down when you feel relaxed, and they wiggle when you get excited.

They sound suspiciously akin to the Emotion Registers that Brian Aldiss brought onto the market 50 years ago. They have the same problem, that many of us already have body parts that do most if not all of these things, but does SOCIETY allow us to expose them? DOES IT BOGROLL.

* Feature, not a bug.

Cucullus non facit monachum

It is true what they say about a nice officious-looking uniform and the way it will turn the most empathetic person into an instant authoritarian.

1. Without uniform

So the n00bie with the beak is asking his mentor "Wait, what? What are the brooms for? That guy hasn't done anything to us. What for you do this thing?" The answer is of course "TRADITION!!!", but it is hard for his mate to explain. It would save a lot of mentoring in the ways of demonkind if they simply gave him one of the uniforms with the bitey shoulder-cuffs.

2. With uniform
These guys, for instance, abandoned their principles the moment they received the Bunny-ears of Authoriteh and now they're all "Just following orders. Rules are rules -- no bathing caps. Can't make an exception. It's more than my job's worth".

"King Death hath bunny ears", as Thomas Lovett Beddoes said meant to say, but in the last analysis, Auriculas cuniculi quis non habet?


UPDATED with Better Photographs.

Including ACCIDENTAL BUNNY-EAR.
(a temp-agency shop window, at night, lit from behind so the potplant shows through)