Doodleglop - DynamicViolence

Stay down, or I’ll kill you.  

Image of Saturn taken by Cassini spacecraft in October 28, 2016.

Credit: NASA / JPL / Cassini

DRAGONSTONE Artwork by Allen Douglas

The First Men and then the Andals both settled the rocky isles of Blackwater Bay, making themselves lords and living by piracy and fishing. The largest of these islands, dominated by the volcanic Dragonmont, would come to be known as Dragonstone.

Two hundred years before the Doom, the Freehold of Valyria sent an expedition to seize Dragonstone and make it the westernmost outpost of its vast empire. The citadel that they raised there to guard their new possession was shaped by Valyrian magic into an imposing structure impossible to create by any other means—with towers shaped like dragons, doorways that gaped like the mouths of dragons, and hundreds of gargoyles adorning the wall, forming a menagerie of fanciful beasts that bristled from the stone.

Twelve years prior to the Doom, Aenar Targaryen moved his kin, treasures, and dragons to Dragonstone after his maiden daughter, Daenys the Dreamer, foretold the destruction of Valyria. The Targaryens thus became the only dragonlords to survive both the Doom and the war-torn years called the Century of Blood that followed. Over that century, the Targaryens looked more to the east than to the west, however, busy with the various machinations and wars between the Free Cities in the aftermath of the Doom.

From a comrade:

You know, I’m pretty much 1000% OK with anyone in Houston jacking a flat screen.

I mean, you’re gonna have multinationals rip rare Earth metals out of Africa at gun point and ship ‘em to China to be assembled into a TV in some factory where they got nets on the roof to stop 'em from jumping off. You’re gonna put it on a boat crewed by a bunch of Filipinos who are gonna find out when they get to port that the boat owner defaulted and isn’t paying 'em, and if they complain they’ll get blacklisted. Slap that shipping container onto a truck where the trucker is in debt and working at almost no profit margin, from an owner-operator scheme, and can’t even unionize because he’s “not a worker”. Slap the TV into some big box store where an 80 year old woman whose benefits got cut is working the register because her son can’t support her any more because his factory job got “outsourced” to prison labor and now he works at a burger joint while pundits shout that if burger flippers wanted better wages they should have learned to work in manufacturing. Now, have a hurricane run through town and flood the place, after fossil fuel companies spent decades paying politicians to ignore the warnings while they rip up the mountains and the prairies, poison the water and the air, and hot-box the whole planet, so we’ve got “100 year” and “500 year” storms happening every couple years.

THEN, you take some guy whose farm went belly up because US government-subsidized corn flooded into Mexico, and whose hometown got overrun by cartel fueled by US drug money, so he ran across a border to make a living in Texas, and he and his family decided not to run from the storm because ICE is deporting every undocumented worker they catch back to God knows what future.

- and THAT motherfucker decides, once the whole city is flooded and everything is hell, “Fuck it, at least I can watch Game of Thrones in HD next season!”.

THAT’S where you draw the line?

The Targaryen smile™

Charlie Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator 1940 still rings eerie truth

‘I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help each other. Human beings are like that, we want to live by each other’s happiness not others misery.                                          We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone .The way of life can be free and beautiful but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate goose stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but shut ourselves in, machinery that gives us abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much, and feel too little.          More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost.                                                                                                                The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.        To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish..

Our histories they tell us that Aegon looked across the Blackwater from Dragonstone saw a rich land ripe for the capture. But ambition alone is not what drove him to conquest. It was a dream.

Tell them winter has come.