More Animals and More Art

I had my darling little Jill painted as a gift for my mother's 89th birthday, and, again, I am so pleased with the result that I'd like to share it with you.

The painter is Bettina Balczulat, another very talented lady, and again it is my pleasure to introduce some more of her work here:

Those two are her own dogs, a German Shorthaired Pointer and a Dachshund.

This is her website with more of her oeuvre. You'll enjoy it, I promise.

Animals and Art

More animal portraits by Sonja Hermann:

A Comeback

I had my darling Jack portrayed. (Those among you who are familiar with this Blog from way back know that he's a Parson Russel Terrier.) I am very pleased with the result and like to share it with you.

The painter is the very talented Sonja Herrmann and it is my pleasure to introduce some more of her work here:

I am a stickler for correct anatomy in animal portrays and Sonja is terrific at that.

Should you be interested in her work, send me an Email and I'll let you know how to  contact her. I will put up more of her oeuvre within the next couple of days.

It's Creeping in Everywhere

Mad Hattery, a blog I find hugely entertaining, commented on the Sultan of Brunei's birthday banquet:

One of the annual foreign royal guests at the Sultan of Brunei’s big birthday bash is Princess Basma of Jordan, the younger sister of the late King Hussein and the aunt of the current king, Abdullah II. She’s the woman all the way on the left of this photo.

Basma’s tiara is a really interesting diamond piece — from a distance, it almost looks like a floral tiara, but up close, it’s more of an intricate abstract pattern of circles and swirls, with a top element that almost looks like the Prince of Wales feather emblem. It’s stunning! (And Basma has grown her hair out a bit in recent years, which sets of the tiara really well. Love it!)

Maybe I shouldn't have, and I hope the Mad Hattery Blogger won't find it undue criticism of her writings, but here is my comment:

I enjoy your blog very much, so please take this as constructive criticism. I don't know whether you're a monarchist or rather not, but it doesn't really matter. For a monarchist, the monarch derives his authority from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Ten Commandments. That is not the God to which Muslims pray. They say they do (they WOULD say that, wouldn't they?), but they don't. Therefore they all have as much royal authority as "Emperor" Bokassa, even if some of them (as this member of the Hashemite family does) may emulate Western ways. But even if that doesn't mean anything to you and you see all that glitter as part of a huge society bash (which it is becoming more and more anyway), I still object to that kind of commentatorship because you are, I am sure unintentionally, helping to make us in the West comfortable with Islamic sharia law. While I am writing this, in Iran another woman is about to be stoned to death under sharia law. Maybe they don't stone people to death in Brunei, it is even one of the rare Muslim countries that allows other religions to exist as Dhimmies, but that may change at the turn of the Sultan's hand. If we start oh-ing and ah-ing over the deeply misogynist sharia-conform dresses of those women, even though they are bedecked with priceless baubles, and fail to see them as what they are, namely symbols of a cruel death cult out to rule the world, we have made another step in the direction of our self-disposal.

I have commented on it here: Seeping-in Sharia.

Keep up the good work! Your blog is a real treat in any other respect.

Frankly, I don't enjoy the publicly displayed bare thighs of royal princesses either, but sharia modesty, which is based on fear and hatred of women, is rather not modesty at all, but inverted obscenity.

No Party-Politics in Redneckia

What does one call the wedding of a thrice-divorced man in his late fifties to the oldest looking 33years old since mankind left the cages?

For heaven's sake, THAT a "trophy wife"? In his debauched, bloated way Limbaugh has aged well and certainly doesn't look 26 years older than his armpiece.

Of course, the oh-ing and ah-ing over the wedding pictures of that gruesome twosome is disgusting. Of cause that man is a disgrace of grotesque proportions to any "conservative" cause. (Lawrence Auster is, as so often, well worth reading.) So what else is new. But did nobody notice how unlovely and hard-as-nails, albeit handsome, immaculately groomed and made up, that woman looks, with or without fake breasts? Are American men really that emasculated that they think a polished piece of tungsten carbide with some silicone attached to its front is something to boast of or to compliment somebody on? Or are American women really that greedy and attention whorish that they will marry a bloated out, physically repulsive old man with a questionable claim to fame and a execrable personal attitude? Oh well, forget the latter.

Which leads me to another American wedding, Chelsea Clinton's.

And no, I neither like the Clintons, nor is this an endorsement of their politics. I am just observing that Chelsea, who is whopping 3 years younger than the fourth Mrs. Limbaugh, looks as if the age gap between them were somewhere near 25 years. Why that is, I have no idea. Maybe, but that is pure speculation, because Chelsea does not, different from Kathryn Rogers, "like her men well-seasoned". (And no, the latter was NOT a disparaging remark, quite the contrary. How disgusting can American hacks get?) "I grew up so differently, traveling around the world, that I'm sometimes not able to relate to the average person my age," Rogers simpered nausea-inducingly in 2008. And: "Rush has such amazing experience." You bet he has.

And while I'm at it, just a couple of remarks about the fashion aspect of the Clinton wedding:

I take back with the expression of utmost contrition my wish that Hillary Clinton would sometimes wear a skirt. Her MoB outfit by Oscar de la Renta is so incredibly ugly on so incredibly many levels that even I am speechless. Chelsea's miles of ruched lavatory paper by Vera Wang are nothing much to write home about either, but at least it's not butt ugly. Wang is the most singularly uninspired wedding dress designer, at least among the top echelons of that trade. Her dresses are either boring or irritating or, as in Chelsea's case, both. I can only assume that the Clintons are trying to emulate, or to top, the Obamas in their sucking up to third-world-chic. Everything not to appear too European, classy and, dare I say it, "white". But at least de la Renta and Wang do not cater for the drag queen market.

By the way, the dress of grandmother Rodham is, as far as one can tell, very nice, formal, goodlooking and dignified, perfect for a woman of that age. She looks nice, too, and not a day more than 35 years older than the current Mrs. Limbaugh.

What amazed me were the many media reports that spoke of a black tie affair. Dear Americans, yes, the men we saw in the official pictures, the FoB and the groom, wore black ties. But that doesn't make it a black tie wedding. Believe me. I wonder whether so many American hacks simply don't know about what they are writing, or whether the Clintons, only one generation away from redneckia, really announced it as that.

And we even still don't know what one calls the wedding of a thrice-divorced man in his late fifties to the oldest looking 33years old since mankind left the cages.

So many questions, so few answers.

"A House for Every Worker" ...

... is one thing.

But now it's: "A Castle for Every Piece of White Trash."


Well, we sadly all know who the couple in the first picture is, but who is the other one?

Believe it or not, it's our new head of state with his current wife. Angela Merkel's candidate Christian Wulff won in the third round of voting the election to become Germany's next president. The high office is largely ceremonial, however, Germans like to be able to identify with the office holder and his wife. Wulff was governor of the state of Lower Saxony since 2003 and will be at 51 the youngest president in Germany's history.

Wulff, who is a lawyer by profession, is one of those typical empty-faced, profile- and characterless career politicians whom we exactly do NOT want in that office. But then, maybe we do.

Yes, it gets worse. In March 2008, after the divorce from his much-respected first wife of almost 20 years, the lawyer Christa, he married wife #2, with whom he had already fathered a child while still married to his first wife. Wife #2, 14 years his junior, has another child, as it is so preciously put, "from a previous relationship".

It gets still worse. This is our brand new "first lady":

Foto: Reuters.

The conservative *giggle* FAZ, who informs us that people with tattoos are keen on making new experiences (which fits the second Mrs. Wulff to a "T") and more ready to go off the beaten track than others, qualities, which ought to be seen as a good omen for German politics, asked:

What is that supposed to be? A keyhole with licking tongues of flame surrounding it ...?

Well, to play Old Dr. Freud: Not really a KEYhole.

However, bad as all this may be, the good thing is that we will be rid of Wulff and the Missus (whoever she may be then) in 5 or 10 years, the latter if the worst-case scenario happens. This comes, mind you, from a supporter of the monarchist thought who was badly burnt by the recent -- sortof -- royal wedding where the future Queen of Sweden married a gigolo form the fish'n chips shop her "fitnesstrainer".

I think I'll have to seriously re-consider my monarchist stance.

Why Endogamy Is Important - Addendum

It is, because otherwise you'll get faces like THAT:

However, it shouldn't be forgotten that Princess Beatrice's mother is at least upper class, even though a specifically unpalatable specimen. In the meantime, porn aesthetics have safely arrived in the royal family. Those below are "Kate" (which is not too bad because her real name is Catherine) and -- believe it or not -- "Chelsy". The fact that a grandson of the Queen of England is seen, dead or alive, near somebody called "Chelsy" is bad enough, but he is even "dating" her. For several years now. Didn't the hapless parents of that young woman have any upper class friends who told them: "Chelsy! What a wonderful name for a future professional porn star! If you want your daughter to augment her breasts and [I'm censoring myself here], stick with that name."

And now go, imagine the faces of next generation and weep.

For comparison purposes, I have added a couple of other royal faces:

The real thing! (And haven't we all forgotten how beautiful she used to be?)


To become the ultimate royal: Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon with her father, the 14th Earl of Strathmore & Kinghorne.


The Duke and Duchess of York on their honeymoon. The Royal Family fell for the fatal fallacy that if it worked once with the daughter of a nobleman, it would once again.


The Princess Royal shamelessly prettyfied by Patrick Lichfield. A royal face? Definitely!

Now for the in-laws:

A royal face? Maybe just not, but infinitely better than ...


... that!


Sarah Ferguson? You must be joking. Three epithets describe her best: Vulgar, vulgar and vulgar. The result? See above and in the News of The World.


Sophie Rhys-Jones? Not quite, but good enough, considering.

Some lesser royals:

The Duchess of Kent née Katharine Worsley. Landed gentry as old as the hills and infinitely more respectable.


The Duchess of Gloucester, née Brigitte van Deurs. This Danish middle class girl looks exactly the part. In fact, she could be, with her pleasant, very slightly horsey features, a Princess of Prussia.


Princess Michael of Kent, formerly Mrs. Thomas Troubridge, younger brother of Sir Peter Troubridge, 6th Baronet, née Marie Christine Baroness von Reibnitz. Undoubtedly beautiful, there is nothing wrong with her in this picture as long as one isn't bothered by such a "cute" gesture. However, that and the ultra-demure wedding dress makes me want to quote Goethe: "Intent is noticed and one is annoyed." When I first saw Princess Michael on television, I was stunned. How could a women in such a position and that beautiful be quite THAT vulgar? Her voice, her coquettish demeanour -- it's literally painful to watch her. Her upper class credentials are a bit, well, shady, her conduct does nothing to falsify that. Her royal in-laws call her "Princess Pushy".


It is difficult to pinpoint what bothers me about her. Here we have Princess Michael (right) together with Camilla Duchess of Cornwall (center) and Princess Alexandra (of Kent), The Honourable Lady Ogilvy (left) at the Guards chapel in London on the occasion of the memorial service for Lord Lichfield in 2005. To me, she looks incongrous among the two other royals. Is that because she is not English? I doubt it.

I tried to be honest and did NOT go for unflattering pictures of the women I dislike and vice versa. Can we draw any conclusions from the result? I think so. Beauty has very little to do with it, prettyness even less. What about character? The Queen Mother had a backbone of tungsten carbide, which strongly showed in her handsome face, as has, in a less obvious way, her daughter. Diana was as hard as nails, which is not the same. However, she wasn't, at least not naturally, vulgar, was attractive and had true star qualities, which she decided to use to harm the family that made her. The two middleclass women, Sophie Rhys-Jones and Brigitte van Deurs, whose marriages to royals are, for all we know, still intact, have features that are not beautiful but handsome and which speak of character, spirit and a sense of humour, as does the face of the Duchess of Cornwall. So is there a guideline that might be helpful for those who are in the predicament of having to pick a royal wife? Maybe. Parentage is maybe less important than we assume, attractiveness sometimes even counterproductive. Look for the faces, dear courtier and dear royal out to find brides. Character stands for staying power when the going is rough, spirit for the absence of vulgarity, and a sense of humour for a person who will not place herself above her duty.

Dear royals: Run for the hills from Kate and Chelsy! They don't even HAVE faces.

I asked some time ago What makes a Gentleman? and found that almost as difficult to pinpoint.