Admittedly from 1918, so not exactly contemporary.
Ah, busted. Yes I have been referring to DoFaP for inspiration. Could you tell?
I can't hang around here discussing the finer points of early 20th century music hall - got to go check on that banana bread that's baking in the oven -
- ah, had to tent it with a bit of foil or it would have burnt. Can't have that - Wonder Wifey is camped out in front of the oven with a plate and knife.
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| Don't worry, it's only red food colouring. Dr Oetkers - so it's veggie-safe! |
"Against The Day"
As I expected, Mr Pynchon, after detailing the adventures of the "Chums of Chance" for dozens of pages, suddenly switches to the character Lew. We may return to the Chums later in the novel, or - not. At 50 pages I've only read 5% of the book, so who knows what the remaining 978 pages will bring? Probably more coincidences.
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| My dust-jacket is missing. Apparently I'm not missing much. |
Vituperative
Yes, yet another attempt by BOOJUM! to educate you, the reading masses, in new and interesting words.
Now, this is obviously - obviously! - a pottery process, probably created or discovered in the mid 19th Century and coming out of Stafford, where the pottery industry was a major force at the time. It would be a combination of glaze and white colouring that not only sealed the chinaware, but also gave artists a tabula rasa* to work upon.
What's that?
It' not?
It merely means to rant a lot?
Bum! - see, that's me being vituperative.
| NO! It's the wrong #*$¬>#ing photo! (See - that's me being vituperative) |
Well Well Well!
Many wells make a river, according to the old Russian proverb. Moving swiftly from Artesian to Artistic, I picked up another book for only £1 at my chap's bookstall - you know, the one opposite the Co-Op shop and the Arndale entrance.
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| The title's a bit blunt. I have an NVQ3, you know. |
This is of interest for Conrad as he has long wanted to create a screenplay for the John Wyndham novel "The Kraken Wakes". I have read it dozens of times, and even went to the bother of annotating the Penguin version, getting each page refined as a single line of writing. Not only that, I persuaded Moyra to bring back postcards of Falmouth. And I dreamt up an opening scene.
None of this exactly cuts the mustard with film studios, damn their necrotic eyes**! Given that the book is over 300 pages long, it might take a while to peruse and put lessons to practical use, but Conrad is hopeful.
Sloth, Meet Idle
As you know, BOOJUM! Mansion is protected by minefields, barbed wire, razor wire, trip wire and the band Wire, whilst for close-in defence we have a pair of cyborg sentry cats that possess laser-eyeballs and a bad attitude.
Or at least we did until this character arrived:
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| Edna, sulking because Wonder Wifey is not around |
This is our second line of defence, "defence" being a comparative term. Edna loves everybody and any intruder who got beyond the first line of defence -
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| Razor(light) Wire |
- would be met by a pup with it's tail going at 150 W.P.M.***, bouncing around trying to lick their face, licking any bare flesh within reach and generally making a fuss.
After being lulled into a false sense of "Oh how cute" the intruder would then be vapourised by our deadly sentry cats with their lethal laser-eyes -
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| Ahem! "BY OUR DEADLY SENTRY CATS - SENTRY CATS - DEADLY - LASERS -" |
Damn. I think someone turned their Mode switch to "Lazing Around"
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| Er - deadly sentries having a bit of down time. |
Bum! - see, that's me being vituperative - at least we have Edna. Edna? Edna! EDNA!
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| "I are sulking. Also skulking. Humans - Bah! See - that's Edna being vituperative." |
So - Tanks?
Yes indeed. As any fule kno, Nazi Germany loved to have short production runs of exotic Panzers that required unique jigs and machinery and tools, creating perhaps as many as 100 of the "Hapfenstengahl Sonderkraftzeug Mark VIII Mobile Mass Dough-Mixing Machine", for example. Here we see the "Neubaufahrzeug", which was pimped to the world as an example of how awesomely awful the titan terror technology of the Third Reich was.
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| Arriving in Oslo |
This was a heavy tank (for the time) mounting multiple turrets with a variety of guns and machine guns. See the photo above? That's 60% of all these tanks every made in one place. Being less obtuse, only 5 were built. They were used exactly one, in the invasion of Norway, and then disappeared from history.
* A "blank slate" ooh look at Conrad mix his metaphors!
** I stole this line from 200 AD's excellent "Bad Company"
*** "W.P.M." - obviously! - Wags Per Minute
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