The Nymphomaniac and Winston Churchill

One nymphomaniac, talking to another, muses about having sex with the senior command of the Starship Enterprise:

I'd do Spock. And Chekov ... But really, for me, it's all about banging Kirk.
I'll stick with Chekov. I've already done Kirk.

Which brings me to that scene in Atonement (fully recommended-bring hankie) where the male lead finds his way back to his unit, and what becomes quickly apparent is that his unit, along with a good chunk of the rest of what's left of the British Army, is strewn along the beach at Dunkirk.

Get it? Dunkirk?

Anyway, it is a spectacle. Kind of like Saving Private Ryan in reverse. It surprises me, having seen this, that nobody's made a recent major motion picture about the battle of Dunkirk. Maybe I'll do one. If Clint doesn't.

Further to the point I'm attempting to make: Sir Winston Churchill, himself an amateur painter, is quoted in the February 12, 1950 New York Times as saying, "Painting a picture is like fighting a battle."

Which goes to show that Uncle Winnie didn't have a clue about matters related to applying pigment to a flat surface in the hopes of generating something other than complete shit if he thought that painting a picture was like a battle. It's not a battle, man ... it's a war!

A FUCKING WAR!

How do I know this? Well ... vast personal experience jumps to mind as a reason enough. Have I told you about my year and a half in the Cambodian Highlands? Plus I've painted a lot of paintings and they don't always go smoothly.

The good news is?

The good news is that what comes hand in hand with this experience is also, thankfully, a kind of cock-eyed optimism that makes me feel that even the most disasterous early products can be turned around. We lose some battles, dear reader, on the way to winning the war.

Of course sometimes this is merely denial and the reality, the grim reality, is that some particular paintings are just destined to be disasters.

Which brings me to "Big Lloyd II (Now more than ever)":



Oh shit!

This might be, in the history of the obscured box technique, the single worst newly-unwrapped painting I've ever seen. I mean, it's like we've gotten to Dunkirk and whoa!--there aren't any boats.

What's that noise?
German tanks. Sounds like hundreds of them.
Oh, great

Exactly. Something like that. Kind of a queasy feeling in the pit of the old stomach, yes? Nausea? Self-loathing? Stuff like that? Good--now you're getting a taste of what my life is like.

I mean, did you look at that mouth?

Which is odd, really, because during what is sometimes called The Seventh Inning Stretch (that moment slightly more than half way through when we look and see how we are doing), this looked pretty damned good, if I do say so myself. Witness:



I mean, things are looking good!

Funny how the world can turn on you. Nonetheless, we remain sanguine, whatever that means. Think positive thoughts.