THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD on holiday?

This is a painful one isn't it. Snorkelling in the Lybian sea! Strolling through Rome at dusk! What about that dream of climbing breathless up to Machu Pichu?! Bugger!

HOT ENOUGH FOR YA?

I told you all we had to do was wait!

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

I'm posting this a tad prematurely - (it needs checking by those in the greater know and then shrinking down to a more manageable size) -to make myself feel useful after a (no more than usually) dissappointing day at one of Her Majesty's madhouses. (I am currently gainfully underemployed deep in the compacted bowels of forensic psychiatry.) It will eventually carry some lively and informative footnotes, and I shall amend it as they arrive.
My apologies to Aubrey Meyer for the TERRIBLE likeness on page 8. I should have paid more attention at art school.

Good manners...

I suppose I should have better control of myself by now, but I still get innappropriately and rudely furious about the willful obtuseness of the rather too comfortable. I get angry very quickly sometimes. I can be offensive and overbearing. I know, it's not big and it's not clever and I wish it were otherwise. But anyway...The "why don't you just f*ck off a live in Russia/Tehran/Havana/Glastonbury" brigade are still alive and well and performing well paid proffessional and responsible duties somewhere near you. Somebody who- politics aside - it has been my habit to like and respect actually said to me today that the invasion of Iraq and threatened assault on Iran were/are "all about Freedom". You could have knocked me down with a cursory overview of modern Middle Eastern history. Arguement is futile. The pat dismissal of all (that's ALL) views outside the left/right fudgings of sound-bite infotainment is indulged without a trace of contextual reflection. Views arrived at through the triangulation of a range of information sources are derided as mono-cultured brainwash by those who only access mass, commercial media. "The telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps) tells me that you're mad/bad/mediaevel to question the telly (proudly sponsored by Omnicorps)." It is uncomfortable to question the basis of one's own privilege
OK. People will believe what they want to believe and history will teach us nothing whilst we never open the books.The comfortable will continue to claim all the justification they can for the continuation of their comfort, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is bought with shame and pain and sudden blood repeated over generations and enshrined in unspoken prejudice. Who can blame them? The poor? The oppressed? The doomed? F*ck 'em!
However. Good manners, as they say...

ICEBERG? WHAT ICEBERG?

Everything's perfectly alright. Honest. Don't worry. Those nice people in the Government and at all those big companies have got it aaaaall under control.They've got all sorts of awfully complicated plans and whatnot. They're really very clever people - scientists and businessmen and lawyers and the like. So we should all just do what they think is best - go to work, pop down the shops, you know - and not make a fuss. OK? That's settled then. Get a DVD in. Maybe a pizza . Have a few beers.




















Or to put it another way...

THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD at the shops.

I post from a small disorientated northern town with two shops :- an unfashionable soft-furnishings warehouse and a Gargantumart! Nothing else. All erstwhile businesses have passed into history along with milk floats and lard. OK. I tell a lie. There are small local emporia for haircuts, tans, bets, booze and pizza (and recently an infestation of no-win, no-fee-ery) but everything else is trucked in from Mozambique or Uranus. Thank the Gods for squirrels and injured cats, else there'd be nowt local to eat at all.

over developed thumbs

I have zero console skills. I can't navigate my way around even the most basic virtual environment. I have trouble with the real one too. My main gripe (don't worry, I have others) with video games is the effect they have on children's expectations. The impression grows in the impressionable mind that many of life's more intractable problems can be resolved by the pressing of buttons. Cornered by a baying mob? Right thumb down and leap through that mystic portal! Lacking in that special ability? Left index finger tweak and pick up that magic wand. What a marvellous and misleading world. And then of course there's guns!

De-Congestion

A cartoon for an FoE newsletter.

As a confirmed, life-long pedestrian this car fetishism thing has always left me cold. Of course they're useful, but so are jiffy bags and toilet brushes - and you wouldn't build a civilisation around them would you? (Come along now people - You've had your fun. Now put your toys away and do your homework!) Strange how a million signatures to save an Englishman's right to congest are treated so differently from a million marching for an Iraqi's right to breathe. Cars? Oil? Is there a pattern forming here? Democracy eh? Broomm broomm!

Throbgoblins International

Throbgoblins International are currently recruiting sleepers, infiltrators and other agents of unutterable wickedness to assist them with their evil global ambitions. We're not fussy. Anyone with a reasonable commitment to wresting control of the planet back from the middle-managers, ladder-scramblers and other assorted Bobbits is welcome. Applicants must have aposable thumbs and use of their own brain. Some light conspiring may be required.

















Ceci n'est pas ton coude, Monsieur Littlejohn - c'est ton cul!

Hic hic hiccups

What people find shocking or surprising shocks and surprises me, you will be shocked and surprised to learn. Corruption? Never! Incompetence? No! Viciousness and brutality in high places? I've never heard the like! I can't muster the required gasps of dismay when faced with the ABSOLUTELY BLEEDIN" OBVIOUS anymore. I know it isn't just me. Hmm - are the majority of the population sleepwalking, or are they merely BULLSHITTING? One doesn't like to be too judgemental, (such poor form) but let's ask ourselves the honest question-How many people are really, honestly that stupid? They're taking the piss, aren't they? Surely? Then again, maybe it is me. Maybe celebrity gossip and the privates of great men do actually form the greatest wisdom available to the collective human soul. Yes, that must be it. I'm just bitter, - that's all. Ignore me.

THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD takes the bus!

Saving the planet one whim at a time.

Bloody Valentine!

If you look up 'romance' in the dictionary, one of the definitions you will find is; "an extravagant, absurd or fantastic account!" How very true. On this day when a hundred thousand trees and a million barrells of oil are sacrificed to the gods of pop-up cards and plastic novelties, I would just like to make a small plea for reason and to cry out whatever the seasonal variant of "HUMBUG" is. Valentine's day :- "show her/him you're an arrested adolescent narcissist with an obsessive fear of abandonment and an inability to see beyond your next shag."
If you REALLY loved me you'd...(pulp that forest, hire that limo', skin those mink, jet me off to Acapulco...!)
Getting old, me!

Remember Blind Date? That's how old this cartoon is.

"radical cartoons for reasonable people."

We at THROBGOBLINS International all went to see Jake and Dinos Chapman's "Bad Art for Bad People" at Tate Liverpool yesterday. Cruelty and contempt; Objectivity and brutal humour; Skilled and largely responsible piss-taking. Fantastic! (apart from the completely rubbish half.) Oh how we laughed!

Here are some "mediocre cartoons for reasonable people."

THE CHOCOLATE FIREGUARD

By way of introduction. CF will be half-arsing around in an ever so slightly inconvenienced and innappropriately exasperated manner in future blogs. (Damn these minor inconveniences, DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL !!!) If anyone's actually reading any of this, I would welcome any ideas you might have for CF to engage with. He's already down for some trips to the supermarket and some fun with public transport. The idea is to make him a dreadful example of laziness and contemptible self interest, and to point out that there are NO excuses left for inaction. And to provide useful information.
Specific targets re- Ethical consumption, energy conservation, sustainable living would be appreciated. Unless, of course, no one is out there...hello...hello...maybe I should switch the telly back on...hello...

Branson: biting the magic bullet!

Any move away from the jet-setting and self absorbtion
of the "yapping terriers of ignorance" (to borrow
Richard Dawkins' phrase) is to be welcomed.
So another big gesture from
Richard Branson is good news. But Captain Carbon's
call/bribe/plea for a magic techno wand to suck all of
our collective carelessness out of the atmosphere is
emblematic of our cultural refusal to face the actual
facts.- that it is our joint and individual attitudes
and ambitions that must fundamentally shift.
We still seek to hide in some christian-hangover
messianic fantasy that it will all be ok, because
we're all ok, aren't we. It's not us, it's them! How
sweet. How deluded.
Waiting for professor Zarkov or Flash Gordon to rush
in at the last minute with a miracle cure is
irresponsible in the most alarming and infantile way.
We need to examine and restrain ourselves- not chase
science fiction dreams whilst sat in our short-haul
Virgin cocoon. It's time to bite the bullet,
not ask for a magic one.

Here's an unconnected cartoon.

Dalek LabRats

The Labrats website is on course for an April launch. I am confident about this in the way that only the technically clueless can really be. Many thanks to Simon at UHC and Mark H at Climate Camp for mastering all the hard stuff. Below is the dalek Labrats series in wonderful living colour.
Making an unnecessary journey? Don't take the car. Leave it at home. Leave it in the showroom. Leave it distributed about the planet as ore.

NEVER MIND THE BULLOCKS ( C and C)

Here's the full NMTB strip for general use. The Frank and Ernest strips , and Easter Bunny Island along with some climate change Labrats are further in.

ART, innit?

Going off on a bit of a tangent here. This is ART, mate! None of yer comic cobblers. (Just by way of mentioning that we make the odd painting/drawing now and then.) If you listen carefully you will hear the sound of a crumpled trumpet blowing , (a small thing, but mine own) ever so slightly off key...

it goes away eventually

the motherf***ng revolution will not be televised?

Tricky territory here - unstable ground so to speak. I gave this a lot of thought and examined myself for ugly psychic crannies. I found some old navel fluff, five raisins and a piece of cheese, but in the end I reckon these are fair comment on the wigga and gangsta phenomenon/delusion/coral. We're talking INAUTHENTIC here. We're talking good old fashioned standard issue human convenience BOLLOCKS. Gil Scott Heron would probably have agreed.