Martin J Roberts
@lordfroggy.bsky.social
130 followers 180 following 420 posts
Former Jack of all trades, Master of none. Past victories include a handful of short stories punished and a runner up BBC award nominee (short film) @ the 17th Birmingham International Film and Television Festival. 78 rpm slowed to 33.3 by Fibromyalgia.
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Reposted by Martin J Roberts
timlebbon.bsky.social
By the way, I have a new novel out!
(photo by Tim Love)
lordfroggy.bsky.social
I know that stance, we would joke about it being called lift and sniff.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
frank212.bsky.social
RIP, Diane Keaton.

Here she is in a super underrated performance, 1977's LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR.
lordfroggy.bsky.social
I watched the First Omen on a plane this time last year, and was surprised. It wasn’t as bad as the trailer suggested. I also recall seeing parts of
number 2 by spying on a mates older brother through the window on the side of his house. We were kids and had been booted out of the house!
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
imprintfilms.bsky.social
Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann star as two millionaires (read: substance-abusing, unemployed actors) in WITHNAIL AND I! 🍷

Voted as one of the greatest British films of all time by the BFI, this 1987 cult comedy joins the Imprint collection with a load of Special Features. 📀 1500 copies only.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
sarapartridge.bsky.social
There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
georgetakei.bsky.social
Guess that Qatari jet wasn’t a “gift” to Trump after all.
Screenshot of tweets. Mike Madrid writes: “Joe Biden was criticized for a Chinese balloon flying over our airspace. They’re giving Qatar an entire f’ing air base.”
Below, Aaron Rupar’s tweet quotes Pete Hegseth saying on Fox News: “I’m also proud that today we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emeri air force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho.”
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
zackpolanski.bsky.social
Glad to see Nigel Farage has finally remembered Nathan Gill, former leader of Reform in Wales - found guilty of taking bribes from Russia.

Maybe he'll now remember how much he took from Putin's propaganda broadcaster Russia Today for all his TV appearances when he was a MEP?
Nigel Farage on Russia Today.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
ifycomedy.com
I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). 

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. 
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. 
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
oregonian.com
Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
johntheengmajor.bsky.social
Do I have Bumper Crop, High Cotton, and By Bizarre Hands already? Yeah. Did I need to grab this collection by @joerlansdale.bsky.social too? Don't be dumb. Never enough mojo. Thanks @whiteoakbooks.bsky.social.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
4nikkolas.bsky.social
after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US.
𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕.
𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
filmnoiruk.bsky.social
As part of our strand celebrating Ida Lupino we will be screening:
The Ghost Camera (1933)
High Sierra (1941)
Road House (1948)
Woman in Hiding (1950)
On Dangerous Ground (1951)
Beware My Lovely (1952)
While the City Sleeps (1956)

Passes available here: ti.to/film-noir-uk...
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
ninaantonia13.bsky.social
'Regret of Other Days': Belgium born Symbolist artist Ferdinand Khnopff (1852-1921) produced some haunting work that are more like visions than paintings. The world he presents us with has already passed into the silent realm of shadows & the half-glimpsed.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
beverleylee.bsky.social
Thanks, Gabino ❤️
My coming-of-age folk horror, The Haunting of Wounded Birds, is out in one month. If dark English forests, black birds, old rituals, and haunted boys make your autumn heart beat faster, preorder today!
mybook.to/woundedbirds
Book cover. A young jackdaw on a dark misty background with red fly agaric mushrooms to the foreground. The Haunting of Wounded Birds by Beverley Lee.
Reposted by Martin J Roberts
stephellis.bsky.social
Thanks, Gabino. My quiet folk horror, Harrowfield came out recently. #FridayReads

The pagan v the occult compete for newcomer to Harrowfield, Derwenna Parry, in the isolated borderline between Wales and England.

mybook.to/Harrowfield
Full cover for Harrow field novel. Lower half a dark green, almost black, field, with a slushy green sky above. Front cover has a solitary tree sheltering two standing stones. Back cover shows a standing stones and two ravens flying above.
lordfroggy.bsky.social
This came out when I worked in a record store, it was my first full time job!
albumism.com
Bruce Springsteen released ‘Tunnel of Love’ 38 years ago on October 9, 1987 | Discover where it ranks in our readers' poll here: album.ink/SprngstnPoll