That Gaia painting is a
trip.
I've also never seen a more perfect visual representation of the kind of "Satan's cock" that Thom Yorke once talked about sucking.
The Hatton Garden heist is also a trip. The police were alerted to a burglar alarm, and then...did nothing?
2 April: 21:23 "Mr Ginger" descended to the vault, followed by three men pulling wheelie bins[13]
3 April: 00:21 Metropolitan Police were informed that the burglar alarm had been triggered
3 April: 08:05 gang members talked before going to their van and driving away
4 April: 21:17 "Mr Ginger" went down into vault, and was later joined by two other men
I wonder if the burglars' families are either living exceedingly well or suffering mysterious demises.
The idea that the real heist involved pedophilia blackmail gave me the idea to peruse Radiohead's work for references to children. As you can imagine, the references are not pleasant.
There's this refrain from "Wolf at the Door":
I keep the wolf from the door
But he calls me up
Calls me on the phone
Tells me all the ways that he's gonna mess me up
Steal all my children if I don't pay the ransom
And I'll never see them again if I squeal to the cops
Then there's the video for "Like Spinning Plates", where two disturbingly-fused, crying twin babies are locked in a centrifuge and spun until their bellies bubble up and burst Alien-style and their rib cages are pulled out. Not gonna link that. Look it up yourself if you want that nightmare fuel. (Good fucking christ is Radiohead way more warped than I remember.)
This fan page has a lot of info on the song, including a Yorke poem apparently posted on radiohead.com that contains a reference to cloud cuckoo land that would find its way into the song.
https://citizeninsane.eu/music/amnesiac ... lates.htmlamateur poetry for yu
cloud fucking cuckoo land.
for christmas i got yu
a still born prepacked newborn slave
to serve your every need
no blood no mess just reheat
ready to make your cushy numbered
mash potatoe comfort dayglo roadsafe trainers
so yor feet can take a rest from the struggle of the behest
responsibilities of power the terrible terrible strain
it must make on yor every waking hour on your playstation trigger finger on yodisco dancing into
cloud fucking cuckoo land
into the wee small hours because we know how to have a good time in 1999
and lose some of that fat kidswatch the world collapse like a discontinued component in a newoutdatedappliance which
yu will soon throw on the scrap heap with the corpses and the fridges with the
cfcs+killerbees.
let s carry on marching into the light for we are gods chosen people 20 12 98.
Yorke says he worked at a mental hospital, hence the creepy-as-fuck lyrics to "Climbing Up the Walls", but I'm beginning to suspect he wasn't just "working" there.
Some lines from that poem made it into a book of Donwood/Yorke art called, wait for it,
Dead Slow Children Playing.
Here are some pages.

(Ho-hum, just another allusion to cannibalism.)

(What's in the box? Why are those witnesses blinded? Why does that evil bear creature now make me think of a pedobear?)

"Collapsing", again. Obviously there was a lot of foreboding end-of-the-world energy leading up to 2000, I was there, too, I remember. Still, "collapsing" is an interesting way to envision banks failing.
That line comes from another Yorke poem.
https://citizeninsane.eu/music/amnesiac/orgy.htmllets see all the blue collared boot boys sweat+whine
police on hoorsback broken bones
we sit in the back while no-one drives
two headed monsters
three headed brides
nobody is free to do what they want
waited on hand and foot
the worlds best selling drug
comrades with mobile phones
the illegitimate bastard sons
crawling out from under stones
daddy daddy ive come home
a woman flutters her eyelashes in washington
and bombs rain down in sudan
women and children first
carry on smiling
and the world will smile with you
ill laugh my nuts off the day the banks collapse
im alright jack
the day the banks collapse
in bloody palestine
made in china
the amazing sound of the killing hordes
human time bomb
we want to see them beg for life
chop off the fingers in the pie
i want to see you smile again
the day the banks collapse
the puce synthetic voice that says were fine
limitless scenarios
limitless channels
on which to watch
who was right
and who was wrong.
who was right
and who was wrong.
who was right
and who was wrong.
There was a hidden booklet in the jewel case for Kid A when it was released. Here are some pages.

(Yorke is quite the edgelord poet. I wonder if he meant the "COME ON KIDS" line in both the pied piper
and the sick and twisted sense.)

(Is that supposed to be a crying "minotaur", too?)

(I'm very much in favor of demonizing Tony Blair, if that's him, but "TO REFLECT THE BLAST WHEN IT COMES" is still interesting.)
Finally, I just noticed this from the "Airbag" single:

"This mini-album is aimed at the USA."
And there goes the airplane, nosing its way into view.