Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance

Always leads to the Land of Nope. It may twist, it may turn, it may bend, but in the end, there you will be. I respect its consistency. Having noped the balloon animal cufflinks, I found myself in more inventive nopelands, behold;

https://inkanddrop.com/collections/queen-city-print-inks-vintage-poster-prints

Are these commonly known in the States? They are a complete revelation to me.

The thing is I actually like them, stylish and cool and off-centre, the animals are great, the spotty pink cow and the green and black unicorn, the pig and tiger, all of them. However, the humans... well, we are talking something else. Forget Chucky or Pennywise, I am seldom scared by try-too-hard horrors. These little figures, however, are exactly the blend of sinister-sweet to give me nightmares. See that red and green man print more than halfway down the page? Terrifying. And see the green-balloon trousered ibex herder on the top line furthest right? I'm not sure about the way he's eyeballing the beastie's tail, and salute the ibex for keeping a wary eye on the little squit.
There is a world in which I buy all these and cover a wall with them, but it's the world where I fall down a lift shaft, survive by landing on my head, then buy a full-of-Nope warehouse in Portland, Oregon, and live in it til I disappear...

Dear friend's cat died yesterday. As ever the words don't work. She is devastated. He was such an excellent boy.

I got myself an ice-cream out of the freezer, and was eating it when the doorbell rang. Some guy was there with a parcel for us, Amazon or something (clearly not Evri or it would have been bunged over the back wall.) We chatted for a moment and he told me it was his mum's birthday. I wished her a happy birthday.

'Oh she's in a better place now,' he said, 'she passed last year. But you know, she was 88 and they say you've learned all your lessons by the age of 82. So she's definitely in a better place. She passed all the tests.'
He carried on talking about her for a while, and I listened, seeing no grief in him except perhaps this sign, the need to talk about her. Eventually I asked him if he would like an ice cream in celebration of her day. He declined but blessed me for offering it, and away he went.

And somehow this old song is in my head remembering him and the death of beautiful Malkin and this gents' memory of his mother, all these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4Y7IxGG9zg&list=RDS4Y7IxGG9zg&start_radio=1

I am actually tempted but the interpretations are wack. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andplay/eternal-garden-tarot). I suspect for this it would be better to draw/photo one's own and scrawl in bits of folklore/herbalism/whatever. I have some ideas, no ability, and questions re time so maybe I'll do this or maybe I won't.

Meanwhile, it seems President Trump is annoyed with our PM for not joining his war quickly enough. Do even his own folk want to join the war? He was the candidate promising no more foreign interventions. We have no input into the decision making, no say in the direction it will take, we can neither shape nor define how it will end. It effectively makes President Trump the Commander-in-Chief of the UK without one UK citizen voting for him, and it might well finish Starmer in the way similar action finished Blair.

Meanwhile President Trump brings down a horrible regime, but with what does he replace it? And in the meantime, if the Straits of Hormuz are closed, the price of oil goes up. Who benefits from that? Good for Russia, I think.

My weight has crept up again. I would love to blame letrozole for this but as I have been stuffing my face with cake and beer and taking no exercise while struggling with a deadline, this really is down to me. Trying to work out whether hypnosis might help. Thoroughly daunted by Ozempic face, going nowhere near it!

The East was peach pink this sunrise, and the sky was full of planes.

I am barely awake, everything seems loud.

There's too much to think of. A cup of coffee might help.