Coincidence! Really, You Go Too Far!

Not So Much Tempting Fate  - 
     - as hitting it with a diving tackle and wrestling it to the ground.
     I have alluded, in the recent past, about how coincidence seems to strike whilst reading Thomas Pynchon.  Putting this slightly creepy occurrence behind us for a second, what was I looking at earlier tonight?  Why the Manchester Evening New website, that was mostly devoted to numerous analyses of the football match between Manchester United and Manchester City that occurred last night.  This, Conrad understands, is called a "Derby" even if it doesn't take place in Derby and has nothing to do with hats.  Football - a confusing sport.  

This book holds Conrad's entire knowledge of football, cars and jewellery

     I do not read the MEN football website out of any sporting interest.  No, I read it because I like to see human beings expressing themselves freely and with gusto, ranting, tanting, venting and renting, hating, baiting and oscillating.  Since I don't support either team, any result is win-win for Conrad.
     Okay.  Back to the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.  I crack it open on page 348 and what do my electronically-enhanced peepers see?  
     "Wizard of the Dribble".
     Before your mind's eye conjures up seedy and dissipated images, Conrad hastens to explain that this is a footballing term, describing footballers able to "dribble" the football, that is to say, they coax the plastic sphere forward with treats and promises of cake, rather than crudely booting it along the pitch.
     Yes, I can see you shrugging.  There is more in a bit ...

Dibble.  Close enough

Back To Thomas
     Allow me a bit of a digression here.  After the pub quiz at the Halfway House has finished, a game of cards is played in which contestants have to guess if the next card is going to be higher or lower.  Whenever the nine of diamonds turned up, Harry (the quizmaster) would proclaim "The curse of Scotland!".

The REAL curse of Scotland!

     Nobody can explain why nine diamonds would be a curse to a country so poor that the people ate horse-fodder and deemed it good.
     Curse of Scotland.  Got that?  I have never seen this phrase in print anywhere, not in <ahumph> years on this planet.  Nobody else has ever used it in my presence, either.
     So, after five minutes of reading Pynchon's "Against The Day", up crops the phrase in a character's conversation: the curse of Scotland.
     Now, there is coincidence, and there is aliens subverting reality.  Phil?  Can you confirm any of this?  Phil?  Hello, Mister Dick?

"Phil's a little - ah, preoccupied - right now, Conrad. Can I help at all?"

Eek!  Next!

That's Quite Enough Of That!
     The "That" in question being bus posters - posters generically, indeed - for some loathsome film that Conrad hates hates HATES before seeing a single frame <pause until pulse-rate decreases>.  What is this celluloid monstrosity?  "Divergent".

Shut your eyes and walk forward, both of you ...

     About wonderfully made-up young people with impossibly slim, trim physiques, who just so happen to have incredible abilities blah blah blah - where are all the ugly fat mutants?  Vampires too, for that matter.  Does vampirism come with an automatic gene-cleaning facility or do all the overweight, sweaty, pock-marked vampires with thinning hair and varicose veins all conspire to stay sight unseen?

     Here an aside.  In "The Goon", that masterpiece of comedic cartoon mayhem, Eric Powell does indeed allow The Goon to go medieval on a trio of ghastly, velveteen vampires, including uses for a candelabra that even the Spanish Inquisition would have blanched at.  Sadly I can't find any available pictures so here's one of those glamourous vampires about to get a beating -

Add caption

     Oho!  Another pun hails into view.  "Divergent", eh?

Jacques Cousteau.  A diver gent.

Et Finis
     I only spotted this photo after I'd posted yesterday's blog or it would have been out there on billboards, yes indeed matey.

Edna asleep.