The Autumn Bluestocking - mist, mellow fruitfulness and hot chocolate!

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

Welcome one and all - as the nights draw in, pull up a chair to the fire, and the gerbils will be along soon with hot chocolate and Tunnock’s teacakes.

Boiled beetle made me into a yellow hedgehog and rather than saying anything you proposed to marry me?

And yes it's ridiculous I'm trying to explain this.

Please see the previous post/ screenshots where banned actually offered to marry me rather than saying anything.

I don't mind that she has changed her mind, I do mind that she's complained about me and a number of other posters have joined in.

It's actually quite upsetting, and I can't even complain to Mumsnet about these direct attacks as they are in hog speak!

Sorry I took so long, I hit the image limit.

That is an amazing image however, the moose has a most peculiar tail!

Doh, didn't even notice!
In the flight pictures, one version was a double headed dragon with a male moose in one pair of claws and a female in the other pair.
Another version merged the dragon head into the moose head.

2nd image here had to say make the moose female, and it did feminise, then said remove antlers.

What @ErrolTheDragonsays makes sense here.

This place is utterly surreal, and quite captivating as well. I think what's happened is a sad misunderstanding, and people also have real feelings about the weird place we inhabit when we're on these threads.

I would like both Banned and Lemon to stay. I'm sorry the two hedgehog personas being here at the same time created a rift. I didn't see that coming ... I love hedgehogs too, although they are known for being prickly

I would like to move on now, gonna leave it at that

I dunno, all very sad. I know Boily produced an excellent image of me as an actual elderberry but I'm relived in a way to be human, although it makes me a minority in the Bluestocking. I have lots of fun with gerbils, quokkas, capybaras, the seagull (what's his name?) Spartypus, Colin and darling Giant Wombat rip.

Me with Bossy and Tiddles - I've been filtered for age and fatness, Tiddles is pretty much as is, Bossy's slightly misrepresented - 6kg tabby cat.

Actual Bossy and Tiddles (names changed to protect the hungry)

I love cats.

Surely as a Dean you should have some sort of fancy attire - clerical or academical?

Bossy spent his early life (at least a year) as a feral cat, living under the garden shed with the resident hedgehogs. When I eventually lured him into the house (because he had an injury that needed treatment) one of his hedgehog friends came looking for him.

I have to be very careful to keep regular worming!

Wow. That's quite some hissy fit for a grown woman to throw over an AI image on a social media platform. First the ill-disguised sulk, then the skunk persona spraying virtual stink everywhere and finally the tantrum. Which many regulars validate, chiming in to say how peeved they too would be if someone else chose to manifest as the same or a similar creature. Boiledbeetle has baggsied the entire order of Coleoptera, FFS. Are other machine intelligences permitted? What about an American magpie?

Why not send a PM rather than throw a public hissy fit? Especially when you’ve not checked how the yellow hedgehog came about.

As a newcomer I'm apparently supposed to avoid treading on any toes and Banned has decreed that it's time to move on, so that's what I'll be doing. Whoever does the spiel for the next thread might want to re-think the ‘Welcome one and all’ intro. You’ve made it fairly clear that not everyone is welcome to join your clique and I won't be back.

Good luck to @MarieDeGournay for the Grand Opening.

I have my volecape. I'm wearing it. See the one of the voles, sitting on Bossy's head (it wouldn't risk that without the cloak's protection).

My formal and far from dead name and title, Dean Volecape is both a name and a statement of intent.

don't let the door hit your arse on the way out

I have a book about cats, by Doris Lessing, it was a shorty about her own menagerie.

The end made me cry lol

I would like to apologise to one and all for my hissy fit.

I have never read this book, but will track it down some day, for its backstory is amazing.

Back in the 1950s there was a buzz around a memoir by an exiled Tibetan lama called Lobsang Rampa. Pretty quickly the press unearthed the fact that Lobsang Rampa wasn't a lama or indeed Tibetan, but was a plumber from Devon called Cyril Hoskin.

This didn't deter Rampa, who insisted that, whatever identity he was born with, he had the soul of a Tibetan lama, and he was a prolific writer for the rest of his life.

One of his book was, according to him, dictated by his Siamese cat Mrs Fifi Greywhiskers. I have never seen this book but am fascinated by its existence.

It seems that a biography of Rampa has recently been published. It's on my TBR list.

Lobsang Rampa - Wikipedia

I have his original book, which I bought partly for the cover's striking 1950s limited-palette graphics. I thought the backstory sounded suss so googled, and sure enough.

The were so many blokes in the 20th c who wrote books claiming bogus ethnicities that gave them special insights.

A book dictated by the creatures I have lived with would be interesting. ALL of them would open with a claim to their right to be considered my sole owner and manager, and a complaint about my tendency to favour that/ose other animal/s.

When I started being online nearly a quarter of century ago I chose the Dean Volecape name as a protection from the sometimes baffling, sometimes not, interpersonal disputes that arose from time to time. So many potential causes, but I have come to be wary of virtual marriages, and of constructing elaborate scenarios that include avatars of other posters (again, more than 20 years of experience and the scars to show for it).

There are plenty of elaborate scenarios to be constructed with gerbils, quokkas and capybaras.

Now, with my peppered tarmac cocoa powders mixed and ready I'm off to craft club.

brews for anyone that wants them.
mostly tea and coffee, there’s a cocoa with turmeric and pepper in it for Dean to wash out what I hope was accidental tarmac.

Well in Ireland we had our own pillar of the arts who was a bogus Irishman, but I can forgive him a lot for his art.

Micheál Mac Liammóir - Wikipedia

Though it's been a long time since I played any Buffy Sainte-Marie records. I think with her the fakery is too close to the art.

The world of mysticism and spiritual writers is full of the type. I'm not an expert in Wiccan history by any means, but I remember something in Doreen Valiente's letters when she's writing to Alex Sanders and says something like "Dear Alex, thank you for the very interesting ritual you sent me. Unfortunately I am unable to accept your view that you were taught this ritual as a boy by your witch grandmother, because I distinctly remember writing it myself in the 1950s."

That’s very funny, @SionnachRuadh😂

meanwhile the SP tribunal is just getting started again - tbh I’ve lost track of what they’re doing and need to go and do some work (im procrastinating in the face of deadlines) so the pub may go quiet

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5387893-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-50?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Ah Micheál Mac Liammóir - a good example of 'identifying' as something you most definitely are not - he was Alfred Lee Willmore from Willesden and didn't have a drop of Irish blood in him.

But he did it so well - the mellifluous Munster accent, the early childhood in his native Cork, learning Irish from his native-speaking grandparents - that he 'passed'.

Incredibly, he learnt the very complex Irish language so well in adulthood that he wrote books and plays in it, which most anglophone Irish people couldn't manage in a trillion years.
On that basis, even those who knew that he was from Willesden not Munster, just said 'Fair play to ya!' and he became a National Treasure.

He was also gay and lived openly with his partner. Everybody knew that too. But sure, aren't they like that in the theatre world? He was even suggested as a possible Presidential candidate at one stage, and the idea of the Presidential Spouse being a man didn't seem to bother people much.

I remember seeing him once or twice floating down Grafton Street, wearing his usual stage makeup and an unconvincing black wig. Oddly, when he decided to embrace Being an Ancient One, he stopped wearing the wig - and revealed that he had had a full head of hair all along!

He was wonderful

And I'm sorry if there has been any unpleasantness - I'm sure it was unintentional and we prize the silly and the lighthearted here.

If you need your spirits lifting, here's a couple of sand cats being silly.

They are giving final submissions. In Scotland this must be done orally in person, however detailed legal submissions have been submitted ahead of time.

This is where SP's lawyer will say, sexual harassment, Supreme Court ruling, Forstater ruling, SP might have made racist comments but she still has rights etc and Dr Upton and Fife's lawyers will say, FWS ruling only about women's seats on Boards, Upton is a lady and TWAW and no-one did anything wrong except SP who is a big fat racist bigot.

Then we wait for the ruling which will be months rather than weeks.

thanks for that summary in advance!

I agree Sionnach - what happens in the Bluestocking is so often delightfully silly, but it can also be serious when real life strikes, and we support each other as best as we can - but still in our chosen 'skins' - we have given our love and support to dear Swash as she is here - a pirate with a galleon, so the love and support was real although the characters aren't.

Sometimes we've had little mock interspecies tiffs, but they've always been part of the fun and games. They've been carried on on the basis that both sides were just playing a game, but if one side isn't feeling it as a game, it becomes unintentionally serious.

Bar-gerbils - drinks all round, and let's toast delightful silliness!💙

The sand cats are lovely