A Backlog Of Bilious Belabouring

Don't Worry!

All bilious content is purely metaphor and analogy, with no footprints or consequence in the real world.  No, what I mean is that it's been a while since BOOJUM! did a film review, so much so that there's quite a few waiting to be intellectually filleted.  Shall we venture forth and do a bit of bumptious buffeting?*

 

"Horrible Histories: The Romans": Ah me O my yes.  No doubt this will be full of hilarious Anglo-Saxons putting one over on the Romans, with utterly astounding jokes about woad.  Conrad would be more impressed if they mentioned the disastrous ambush of three legions (or about one tenth of the Empire's soldiers) in Germany, from which none escaped, under the hapless Varus.  This result, for an awful lot of Romans, was horrible.  Frankly, I have a hard time being nasty to people who introduced indoor plumbed toilets to the world.

State of the art 2,000 years ago

"The Fast And The Furious: Calvin And Hobbes": At least that's what I think it said, both the bus and I were travelling at high speed on mutually opposing trajectories, I may have missed one or two characters in upper case.

     I have brayed forth in a loud and obnoxious voice about this franchise before, to the effect that - that - you know what?  I simply cannot be bothered.  Cars, guns, explosions, a one-liner, a romantic clinch The End <Calvin indulges in bedroom games with Hobbes The End?>

Romantic Grinch.  Close enough.

"The Return Of Annabelle": O Rly?  I didn't know she'd been gone.  <sighs heavily and melodramatically> Another film about a creepy-looking possessed doll with demonic powers.  Peronally, I blame Speilberg for this whole phenomenon, because it all stems from that clown doll in "Poltergeist", and I shall be merciful and not add a photo, because you'd have trouble sleeping tonight.

Ah, but the remake is another matter altogether ...

     You have to wonder at the mind-set of parents who'd buy their little darlings a "toy" like that, or Annabelle.  I wonder, Art, could you earn your plate of coke and provide us with -

Hmmmm.

     Aaaand once again, potential charges of child cruelty are in the offing.  The only person who would consider buying this for a small child is creepy Uncle Jim, whom you caught in the kid's bedroom one time with a camera and a bag of glue.  Were I the unfortunate recipient of this toy (unlikely as boys and dolls do not make a good fit) it would be instantly consigned to the back of the cupboard, with a couple of bowling balls atop to make sure it stays there.
"Blinded By The Light": Oh my once again.  Which brace of Hollywood suits gave the go ahead for this horror film?  Let me guess, a solar flare blinds half the population of Planet Earth in one fell swoop, and the unaffected half on the night side have to cope with blah blah blah, things fall apart, descent into barbarism, NO SCENTED HAND-WIPES! and so on.  It was done ages ago on a far smaller budget as "Inconstant Moon" in the rebooted "Twilight Zone" I'll have you know.
     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

Proof.

More Of Military Pamphlet

I confesss I haven't actually read this yet, as I already know what it's about and could probably write a pamphlet of my own that would be five times longer and include insights that aforementioned publication cannot reveal.  Enigma, for one, as this remained secret under the Thirty Year Rule.  Axis supply problems for another, as <Mister Hand intervenes to prevent seventeen pages of A4 about "Logistics In The Desert War" being spouted>.

Matilda.  Even scarier than Annabelle.

     "The First Offensive" refers to the first offensive carried out by the newly named 8th Army, which would be Operation Crusader.  This was a horribly confused battle that went on for weeks and weeks, and resulted in the lifting of the siege of Tobruk and the "pre-planned elastic strategic withdrawal" of the Axis forces, known to the rest of us as "running away".  It also meant that the Desert Air Force re-occupied the airfields in Cyrenaica, so it could cover supply convoys into Malta -
     Ooops.  Starting to waffle, which might turn into wibble, and then where would we be?
     Anyway, about that photograph above.  It is the aftermath of an engagement, as you can see expended 2 pounder shell cases on the ground next to the tank.  The turret, if not the whole tank, had been traversed to starboard as the rounds are normally chucked out from the turret rear.  You can see other tanks of this one's squadron/company scattered in the background; the dust raised at upper right might be from vehicles on the move or a "brewed-up" vehicle.  Art?

Bovvie's working Matilda

     The tank is a Matilda, or officially Infantry Tank Mk. II, and both Italians and Teutons positively loathed it, because it was clad in three-inch thick armour that shrugged off anything bar an 88, which were in short supply.  On the other hand, it's 2 pounder gun would, in 1941 at least, turn any Axis tank into something resembling a colander.  Quite a few were sent to the Sinisters, where they did sterling service in the snows outside Moscow, helping to stop the Teuton hordes.**
     Enough wibble!  Next, I plan to sit down and read the pamphlet.  A bold move, I know,  yet one worth taking.

    

O Irony, Thou Name Ist 

This just struck me as amusingly ironic, and diverted my attention from the CEASELESS EVER-POUNDING RAINS for a minute.

     If you squint a bit and ignore the CEASELESS EVER-POUNDING RAINS then you can see that Kirkhams, the estate agents, is up for sale.  Where do estate agents advertise their properties for sale I wonder?  Are they allowed to do so in their own branches, or is that  a conflict of interest?  Can they trust a rival business to be fair and impartial in retailing a competitor's property?  Do they have a professional body that arbitrates the selling of estate agents?  Am I, typically, over-thinking this?

"Probably"

     Well, we have hit the Composition Ton, so it's time to answer the Ratphone, leap to the Ratpoles, roar off in the Ratmobile and wonder if paying a cheap publicist was a good idea ...

*  Rhetorical.  The answer was always going to to be "Yes".
**  The Sinisters would never acknowledge this, they'd rather drink poison.

Rat Shot Roberts

Just Thought I'd Condense A Couple Of South Canadian-isms
Here I am, 258 years old 58 years old* and never having heard the term "Rat shot" before, until it turns up twice this afternoon and evening.  If you are reading this in South Canada and are thinking "Who is this rube?", or again are perusing on the enormous open plains of Ruffia and thinking "Yab vi mat!", then I had better explain.

Ruffian wheat field

Ukranian flag

     Oh - er - bad Art!  Naughty Art!  Bringing political satire into the blog and like shizzle - er - O look a flying saucer -
     Actually farmers would be familiar with rat shot, as would other people who deal with vermin, such as newspaper editors exterminators and hitchhikers.  The term refers to a small arms round that is hollow and loaded with very light shot, which thus has a very short effective range.  This is fine for dealing with snakes or rats up close and personal, but you can't snipe Batavian infantry moving out of cover at a quarter of a mile away**.

Yes, I know what it looks like

     The same 'rat shot' term has turned up in Jim Crumley's "The Last Good Kiss" and Joe R Lansdale's "Mucho Mojo", so you can clearly see I had no choice but to chase the definition.  'Mucho Mojo' being, on occasion, laugh out loud funny, which will make tomorrow's reading it on the bus interesting.

As deadly as rat shot, if a little slower

     Also, do you know where those roses Oh-so-fittingly sitting  in that vase upon your hailway table hail from?  Well, DO YOU?  Read Mister Lehane for the awful truth.

Then Again -
I did mention Fireball Roberts yesterday, him being the bulldog from "The Last Good Kiss", and then I went and did a bit of Google-fu on teh interwebz, which revealed that there really was a Fireball Roberts, which is either extremely bad taste in post-mortem nicknames or prescience of the highest order.  Art?

Okay, prescient

     He was a South Canadian stock car racer, up there in the pantheon of Top 50 NASCAR drivers despite coming to an untimely end.  His car crashed as he sought to avoid other crashed cars, he suffered extensive serious burns and died in hospital a couple of weeks later, which circumstances contrived to impel South Canadian car-racing authorities to introduce fire-retardant clothing and fuel-tank safety measures.

Thus

     By Coincidence Amazing, what else did I discover but that John Hiatt, respected South Canadian indie balladeer, has done a song title "Fireball Roberts".  You could have an entire blog entry on Ol' John, as he's been around that long, except not today, I've a plan and an agenda and time's a wasting.

     Hmmm.  I'm writing this at work, and that means I can't load up photographs from my phone, which means "Estate Agent's For Sale" and "Wartime Pamphlet" will have to wait until I get home.

"The Boys"
Conrad is slightly boggled that this television series 1) Ever got made and 2) That it was ever shown, since the comics it is based on are very very Mature Readers Only, given the levels of sex, violence and superhero satire involved.  I think Marvel and DC will be more "unpleasantly surprised in a bad way" than boggled.  Art?

The Boys

     Yes yes yes, I know one of them's a girl, and there's Fireball Roberts again - you see how a theme runs through everything? - and sadly Wee Hughie has been transformed into a South Canadian played by some anonymous dork, instead of SIMON PEGG AS CLEARLY DRAWN IN THE COMICS.  Yes yes yes, I know he turns up as Hughie's dad, which is not good enough.  Art?

PROOF!  Proof, I tell you! <fades off into frothing gibberish>

     I am only 22 minutes into the first episode, so you are going to hear more about this as Conrad Sits In Judgement.  O Yes Indeed.  Hopefully Billy Butcher is still British and not from New Zealand or Norstrilia.
     Oh, and apparently that anonymous dork is Jack Quaid, son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan so not that anonymous after all ...

By The Way
Of late, I have been playing "The Invitation" and "A Strange Encounter" by those lovable Cornish scamps Thirteen Senses, TI being their debut and ASE the subsequent follow-up.  Or so I thought.  Now, Your Humble Scribe may not know anything about cricket or what's happening on "Love Island" but I do know my music, and I observed that ASE had moved on, markedly, from TI.  Art?

Sorry, no bulldogs

     There is a reason for this.  TI came out in 2004, and ASE was their fourth studio album, released in 2014.  This explains the difference, and also points up the sheer laziness of modern musicians who take years and years to release a new album.  It's already been five years since ASE, so what's the delay?

Come ON, guys, this is five years old.  Enough resting on laurels.

     And, whilst we're on about failing to produce a new masterwork, where's the next opus from Thomas Pynchon, eh?  Come on, Tom, you're already pretty ancient and we need at least another work before you amble off this mortal coil.

It's the Enquirer, so take with a massive column of sodium chloride

     Where were we?  Oh yes -

Rechlin
Another of those words that pop up into the brain when I wake up.  I had the faint notion that there was something Teutonic about it, and I was right.  According to Wiki, it is a small town in North East Germany, close to the Baltic, and if Art can put down his plate of coal -

Thus

     There you are.  Now, here is where the possible link comes in.  It was the go-to place for the Luftwaffe when it was testing or developing new aircraft, kind of like Area 51 With A Swastika, during the Nazi years.  I'm sure that I've read about it somewhere, probably in connection with Me 163 pilots getting dissolved in crashes.***
And with that- we are done!



* AND NOT AN ALIEN CYBORG SPY AT ALL
**  Batavia was totally a thing, Google it and see.
***  A very real hazard of flying this aircraft.