Bizarre Species

As Fresh as Dragon Breath

23 January - Year of the Dragon

Dum dum de dum and here the Dragon comes!

A tempest blowing up the gentle slopes of your life during the Rabbit. Whipping up your stagnant plans and deeds, so your only recourse is to climb higher into the mountains.

And in their deep fearful caves lies your destiny. Meander not this year. Feet forward and eyes on the horizon, rise. For as long as you stride with purpose the dragon will carry you on its back. To each of your steps she adds a dozen wingflaps. Head in the wrong direction and by years end you will be in a far worse place.

Now that last sounds wretched indeed but fear not for it only takes a beat of intention and integrity in line with your heart to give the dragon true direction and with it dreams far beyond the conventional ...

As each of us owes god a Death so too each of us owes a Life. Welcome the fresh air in to rejoice from the windswept majesty of the peak you're about to scale.

Much love

Previous years from Doctor Lobster


Hoppity-Hop
RRR-MiaowOxen-HO!
Rat-a-tat
Wallowing in it
Woof Hey
Cock-a-doodle-do
Monkey-man

and thanks to Pashet for the fetching blueness

Hot Cross Double Toad*

Few of you may know this but I am a deeply spiritual man, given to an annual retreat to the ritual of the Hot Cross Bun (previous HCB here and here). Today I had the blessed opportunity to (thoroughly) enjoy some of these delights of Christian tradition in the comfort of my own home. Or, care of unseasonally good weather, my garden.

So here are some snaps of me at worship with the fruits of his almighty sacrifice…






However I need to turn to darker matters now… You may recall the terrifying tale of The Headless Duck of my De Beauvoir garden. Well strange as that was, the truth may be even stranger. Back then I guessed it was a fox or some-such but new evidence raises a more horrific possibility!!!!!

Over a slightly indefinite period of at least a year but possibly two I have sighted a pair of toads. I saw them first while on a late night snail hunt. I was surprised that there were toads in my garden. But as I had caught them in flagranto delicto, I expect they were even more surprised but they chose to just stay still, two throats a-bloating. Toads fucking, fucking hell I thought! So that’s how they do it! Good on you toads – make more toadlets and eat more snails please. A nice find for a damp spring night. On I moved, stalking the stalky-eyed munchers of my beloved potatoes. I took at least 50 ‘shells’ that evening.

Some time later, weeks perhaps, while doing a routine weed of another snail-zone I encountered the toads again. Once more ‘at it’. It’s a wonder that rabbits have the reputation toads should have. Or maybe snails are a toadal aphrodisiac. Then my garden is the veritable rhino horn of amphibia! These 2 did however hop off together – one still upon the other.

Many months later, deep into autumn, in the company of the nubile, Miss Sparrow - whose often been subjected to the effects of my garden – I reencountered these frogs – at it yet again. I mention her as an independent verifier of this strange tale (and because I love her and am proud to sneak her into my life). Again the frogs made off into the undergrowth in their tandem fashion.

However, I felt the coincidence of always finding these frogs at it quite suspicious. Perhaps it’s a mother child dependent thing in which the child is lazily clinging on a little longer than it should.

Having stopped biology when I was 14 I’d not had the opportunity to dissect a frog nor learn much more than the egg, tadpole, toad cycle… and given that thought – at what point would a tadpole climb onto a parental-frogs’s back to score a free ride? And these toads have been the same fully-grown size since the first encounter. Peculiar…

So this Spring, but a few days ago… I did my first de-weeding of the ‘bog-out-back’. And low – who turns up? But the two toads… just the same size and one on top of another… I’m fond of these buggers, and used to them of course, so I leave them be and get on with bagging up the soon-to-wake slimy marauders I find.

Yet when I turn to the hosepipe I find the toads pottering around in a puddle right out in the open, at least a yard from cover. Having seen them now so often like this, suddenly I wanted to see them separate. But they don’t, and they don’t do it on camera. So what I have in my garden are Siamese Twin-Toads! How about THAT!!!!!

Could they have been the beast that beheaded the duck? Or did that headless fiend do this to them or is my garden the experimental playground for some Frankenstenian fiend?!?!?



And here is the promised video! Much higher quality available!


* I accept that due to my limited schooling the star(s) of this message may in fact be frogs not hot cross buns or toads.



And on another note – I will be off out of London and the UK in a few weeks until July 2012! Working on a top secret movie which one day you will hopefully all see…For the rest of this year I’ll be in Philadelphia, Phillippines and the Yukon while January to June next year sees me in New York.

Super much love…

Hoppity Hop

3 Feb - Year of the Rabbit

A year of indulgence in dream and delight, for what else is there to do between the rock of the Tiger and the hard place of the Dragon?

Seeds sown in previous years will sprout to become more permanent in your life. Don’t expect huge or obvious growth though, that comes with next year’s Dragon. This time is characterized by the small many, yet the sum is always greater than the parts. These innumerable events won’t be domino’s falling one after another but like a myriad of beautiful flowers springing up all across the meadow of your life.

It’s the best year possible to enjoy the verdant valley of existence. So roam free of fences, sniff inquisitively at any rose you pass, roll over, spin around, burrow just for fun and above all be sure to nourish all aspects of self!

Enjoy each precious moment here because next year you scale the mountain.

Til then though, more than beware, be aware.

Much love

Previous years from Doctor Lobster:

RRR-Miaow
Oxen-HO!
Rat-a-tat
Wallowing in it
Woof Hey
Cock-a-doodle-do
Monkey-man

Winter Flying Troubles - And a Law of Power

What a shame all this seasonal bad weather causing such travel chaos and hardship for so many in Europe,

Its been real ‘luck-of-the-draw’ stuff. Some people get stuck for days and days often having to abandon all travel plans. Others expect that and then get to leave on time no bother at all…

This has just been the perfect sieve to separate the lucky from the unlucky!

Many years ago I read a book called the 48 Laws of Power. It contained all manner of things one should do in order to have/gain/retain “Power”. Haha. Yet just about the only thing I remember from it was the directive to:

“Avoid unlucky people”

This bothered me … how does one tell if someone is lucky or unlucky… well we’ve just been provided with one such filter… so now we can know.

On the other hand there are so many occasions on which it is very useful to have an unlucky person around. For example its really unusual for 2 people to stand in dog shit on the same walk. Or be hit by a falling piano… the unlucky of the world are welcome to have a place next to me! No really, I mean it. I always thought it would be a really mean thing to do to deliberately avoid the unlucky.

Thus far I have been lucky. 1 of 3 necessarily delicately-timed flights have just happened. So I was lucky. Tomorrow will be the 2^nd and 3^rd of these flights. I’m interested to see if I now fall into the category of the very lucky or the badly disillusioned ! I feel really lucky… living this particularly interesting life and if you want further evidence that I am at one of the luckiest kids on the block… its cos I know YOU!

So have a Merry Xmas and a super magical wonder-new-year!

Feng Shui and Headless Ducks in the Vegetable Patch

A lot of people put the lid down on their toilets. Many of them do this is to prevent their wealth going down the drain which is what Feng Shui suggests. Others do it so that rats do not come up through the sewers and attack you in your sleep.

Both seem pretty good reasons to not risk it. One less likely than the other but in either case one would feel pretty stupid to suffer that fate when all it takes is a little extra effort.

So… what I want to know is… is this draining a constant nefarious thing? Is it best to slam that lid back down as fast as possible to save a second’s worth of wealth upon completion of the paperwork? Is the horrific draining power at its peak at a particularly time eg just as you’re flushing… is that when it’s most imperative to have the lid down? Is that in fact the only time its important? Does it matter how many times one uses the loo in a day? How angry should one be with visitor’s who have no respect for one’s hard-earned loot and leave that lid up after abluting?

And is this all applicable only in one’s own house… what about out and about, should one put that lid down before one flushes or does a toilet’s power to leech your wealth apply whenever one is near one? And on a national scale could this explain why all those 3^rd world countries with their open-air long-drop latrines are so poverty-stricken?

If anyone has any clarification on these matters most important please enlighten me…

I know a rudimentary search on some wiki internetti spaghetti page would answer at least the half serious ones but I’m enjoying letting information come to me randomly via the folks that I know… its also an around-a-bout laziness!

On another matter, yesterday morning I went to the veggie patch in my back garden to rescue the last courgette of the season (of 2 – but they’re alarmingly huge) from predator snails and early frosts. Aside from this magnificent tuber I found a small headless duck. One wing separated off to one side. Over the years I’ve found many a dead pigeon splashed in feathers, the victim’s of various cats. This duck carcass was especially gruesome as I’d not seen its kind. Black, soggy from overnight rain, intact but for its head having been ripped off. Its legs had an appearance of rubberyness to them. As if they’d feel like jelly to the touch. It made me feel squeamish, so much so that I just left it there and went to work.

I was thinking about how to deal with it. My first instinct was to give it a decent burial, this being what my Mum and I would do in years past. Or should I abandon sentiment and throw it in the bin? Why was I questioning this… The natural order seems that it’d be sensible to bury it. That way it could give its bits to the worms and plants in a decent fertilising way. So should I bury it in my vegetable patch in preparation for next year’s crops? That way too, perhaps I’d have the practical experience of discovering just how long bones last in the ground. But we don’t bury the body parts from the animals we eat. We don’t add our meaty bits to the compost heap… is it dangerous for some reason? Or is it because meat in the compost heap also attracts rats and then these godless sewer beasts may do anything to feed that newfound taste!

I have don’t fear rats in my garden though – something far more dreadful. You see, this evening when I returned and went out to deal with said dead duck. It was gone but not its wing. In the dark… imagine the chills to that crawled my spine, knowing that with only one wing, that headless duck with its soggy claws could not have got far… I only hope it’s the snails that suffer its vengeance.

Not much of the above would make for suitable photographic support so instead here is a picture of the courgette I rescued. And a photo taken at Burning Man that shows a planet of courgette type entities.

By the skies above I so truly hope life finds you all well!

Much love

Forget the THC’s pass me the HCB’s

I used to indulge in the Weed. Starting about 20 years ago. Not incessantly or daily, perhaps weekly at most and almost never alone. Getting stoned was always a social thing for me, something to enjoy in the company of others. I gave up in 2003 barring the odd spectacular collapse every now and then. Though I often find myself in one of those situations in which it is either appropriate to indulge or inappropriate not to. And every few months I dip my toe back in the water. Yet for the last several years, as much as I may enjoy such moments I generally dislike the overall impact. Social paranoia.

I can’t tell if my behaviour is acceptable or not. Am I being uncool, aggressive, impassive, insensitive, talking too much, talking too little, do my friends like me, why don’t I have this duck with me and heaven alone knows what else. It’s far from mellow and relaxed as the advertising promises. I wondered about this and concluded that its effect is to make me unconfident.

I first assumed I was simply ‘growing’ out of it, later that my reaction to it was changing but as I looked back I remembered this social paranoia always being something of a feature in the experiences, yet there was many a time of overall enjoyment in the far past.

Feeling unconfident is just horrid. “God” built into all of us enough of a ridiculous propensity towards insecurity so why would I want to inflict this on myself further. Why was I once so willing to do this?

The answer is: back in the day I was unconfident! So smoking weed never made any difference. I lost no confidence because I had none. It’s only now that I have some that I notice this debilitating effect. This may seem an inconsequential or obvious observation. Once anything is explained and fully understood it appears obvious. I wish to share these thought through thoughts of times past as they’re an internal observation made about myself, which bears all the hallmarks of a psychonautic operation.

Psychonauts do to Inner Space what Astronauts do to Outer Space – Dedicated missions of discovery with specific goals in mind. One achieved. This was also always something of the purpose of this sort of posting.

So much for the THC’s not so the HCB’s!

You see while losing one habit I’ve acquired another. Its time-based and lightly rooted in a religion packed with mystery.

I have become addicted to having a Hot Cross Bun on Good Friday!

I know it was cheap to make up a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for effect but hopefully it made you smile.

I spent this last Easter weekend in Piratey Cornwall with Miss Sparrow. Our journey there began in London on Good Friday at horrid o’clock with a certain-to-be-filled-with-traffic day of driving ahead. I’d failed to arrange the necessary goods in advance so faced the prospect of not having an HCB at all. I knew I’d find no foraging partner in Fraulein Spatz, she of the pathological raisin hatred. HCB’s contain these in abundance. But at a motion lotion station stop I found some – photographed here in all their glory!

Smugly I delayed gratification knowing they’d best be toasted with butter.

However we were distracted by the truly remarkable Eden Project (10/10) which was like travelling to all over the globe and by the time we arrived at Cottage Corsair in the evening my buns had become rocks. I still went for my Good Friday HCB experience. While Mademoiselle Moineau discovered all the Landlord’s booby-trapped appliances in a frenetic 5 minutes, I burned my precious buns in a rubbish toaster. The only thing these two burnt buns were better than was an accidental proverbial in the oven.

See the dismal affair they turned out to be… looks like the work of someone stoned:

I blame sleep deprivation – far more entertaining and debilitating than any drugs!

And what was worse was the little Buccaneer Bungalow in the Back of Beyond had no phone reception so I was unable to call my distant Mom and share my day, which to me is equally part of the HCB experience! Just as travel is better with a purpose so is calling a loved one. Not just dutifully checking-in, nor when needing a favour but best when armed with a silly experience or point of interest to share.

Many will jump in to say one does not need a REASON to call one’s MOM but how nice is it to chat to someone you love when you don’t want something but you have a nice reason to call and share. The HCB thing is definitely rooted in my childhood with her providing them back then. So calling my Mom to share my HCB notes of the day adds pleasure to an already pleasant proceeding. Perhaps this sounds a little like I’m manufacturing my life and working meaning into my Mom and my relationship. That’d be ok by me. After all 99% of my hardships are of my own making. So why not some of the good stuff too?

Talking of which here’s what saved Good Friday’s HCB debacle from completely harshing my mellow… a landlord supplied Cornish Cream Tea welcome gift…. Lashings of clotted cream and raspberry jam. Super double Yum! The picture represents a quarter of what I devoured.

Could sink an armada on them.

Next up, grass of an entirely different kind...