A Bit Of A Thal

Following On From Yesterday's Anglo-Saxon
     Conrad is slightly intrigued by the ending of a set of German surnames.  They end in "-thal", e.g. "Morgenthal" "Rosenthal" "Blumenthal".  Now, that semi-word "thal" on it's own doesn't have any meaning in the online translators I've used.  I wondered if it might mean "tail" as there is a Norwegian horror film called "Thal" that means "tail", but no, "Tail" in German is "schwanz".
     <goes off and Googles>
     Ah!  I see it all so clearly now!
     Thals - residents of the planet Skaro and sworn enemies of the Daleks!

Their struggle leaves no room for fashion sense, apparently.  And thereby hangs a schwanz.

Big Sur
     No, this is not a cartoon strip about a teacher in a rough Scottish school!

Also available in Plaid or Taupe

     It's part of the Californian coastline.  Very picturesque.  Plus, they have a film festival there.
     Why tell you this?  Because America is not all big city or Monument Valley.  Hmmm. Monument Valley.  We may come back to revisit there ...

Idyllic, n'est pas?

Condensed Films
      As ever, let Conrad take the hits so you can decide if they're worth it or not.  No, don't thank me, only doing my job.    

     Film                                                 Five Words

     Mama Mia                                         Loads of bloody ABBA songs
     Oliver!                                             Never seen the horrid thing
     Flashdance                                        Dancing, interspersed with vile songs
     Fame                                                More damned dancing and songs!*
     Hard-Boiled                                       Bullet ballet, big bangs, blood
     Eraserhead                                        Beyond weird.  Beyond anything, really

Vaguely Related To Films
     Young and tragically Scouse, Mike was in the kitchen alongside Conrad today, holding forth about telephone calls (we work in an office environment with hundreds of incoming phone calls every day).  He skitted about the problems of finishing a phone call, mutually overlapping "goodbyes" obscuring each other and drawing out the process, occasionally to silly lengths.
     "I don't like saying goodbyes," finished Mike.
     "Aha!" beamed Conrad, in an imbecilic pose resembling a man struck by lightning in the nethers.  "That sounds like a film quote - straight out of "Brief Encounter!".
     A huge bluff on my part.  I've never seen the film and don't intend to*.
     Thus the cultural score is even at 30-30.  But Mike is still tragically Scouse.

Kitchen counter.  Close enough.

More Of Music
     As a regular reader - you are a regular reader, aren't you? - would know, Conrad likes music - look, I don't want to labour the point but you ARE a regular reader, aren't you? - and has a broad swathe of genres that he likes, bar hip-hop and country & western, and he's not keen at all - OKAY PROVE YOU'RE A REGULAR READER! - on that hideous classicist catterwauling called leider, nor any band where their looks are more important than the music - yes, Beatles, I'm looking at you!

Look at them.  George, Ringo, Paul and John.  Er - and Yoko Ono.

     Anyway, I have been taking note of bands that Ian (workmate and musician) has been recommending on FB.  Hay Pesto, what happens but that Alison (workmate and upbeat all the time) and I got to talking about bands and she had a list of recommendations.  As follows:
     King Capisce - from Sheffield, where good music has a history.  Incredibly talented 
     musicians with a bit of jazz in them.
     Minus The Bear - no description offered yet the name alone is interesting
     Neurosis - Alison took the time to come back and mention them
     IamamiwhoamI - Alison had to spell this one.  Swedish and mental, in a good way
     Bosnian Rainbows - aha!  these I know and have the CD already.
     
     I was able to recommend the Apparat Organ Quartet, Icelandic keyboard rapscallions spar** excellence, except I couldn't remember their recent CD's name - hang on let me Grooveshark - "Polyfonia", with a lot of diacritical marks.

Karl Marx.  Close enough

More Of Cranes
     Really, I only make use of what nature provides, if you define nature as "a giant conglomeration of construction companies building major transport infrastructure".  Anyway, a shot of cranes at rest.  Despite being awesomely large, they don't do anything!

O Noes!
     No shots of Edna being cute today.
     Damn!
     <thinks in a wicked way, twirling moustache ends>
     Aha!

Heh!  That's at least another 5 hits for the stats ...

Hmm, Can't Be Too Touchy-Feely
     Here's a photo of crayons being shot in slow-motion:

The Mob practice an assassination.  Soon, someone will get waxed ...

* Okay, perhaps Conrad is not the best camouflaged alien spy in the world to judge musicals ...
** Get it?  From "Icelandic Spar".  Quartz from Iceland?  Bah, Phillistines!

Whoop Whoop! 4 Thousand hits.

It's Official, Blogger Says So!
     Yep, sometime last night BOOJUM's 4000th visitor clocked in.

     I'd like to thank - well, myself, actually, for being the literary spirit of Creative Wonderfulness, with thanks to my subconscious, Dee - take a bow, Dee - and the guard hog and hard hog for keeping unwelcome intruders to a minimum.  Oh, and the Messenger Mice for ripping an invading horde of Piranha furries to bits.
     It feels a bit odd to have a screenshot of the blog on the blog.  Self-referential is what it is.

Touchstones
     No, not the museum and library in Rochdale!  Conrad refers to an item that you can rely on, an essential foundation for life's daily round.  You know, the charge of an electron, water being wet, the sun rising.
     Take a look at this hoarding:

A constant companion

     That young lady has been up there in her modest dress all these months since Christmas, maybe even before then.  Either the agency took out a 9 month lease on the hoarding or they've forgotten where it is.
     I shall miss Miss Axparis when she goes.  As, inevitably, I fear she will.

FILMIC INTERLUDE

Don't fret, this bit will soon be over.  Okay, first - Condensed Films.  Conrad accepts your challenge to define a film in five words, that you may base a decision to see it on his words of wisdom semi-wisdom almost sense utter drivel*

FILM                                              FIVE WORDS

2012                                              Earthquakes hunt John Cusack.  Floods!
Alien                                             Terrifying Haunted House In Space
Aliens                                            Thrilling Haunted House.  With guns!
Alien3                                            Meh.  Meh.  Meh.  Meh.  Meh.
Alien4                                            Quite meh.  But with WINONA!
The Wild Bunch                               Killed traditional Westerns stone dead
Akira                                              Mutants, midgets, monsters, mayhem, motorbikes

When Worlds Collide
     Ah, they don't make 'em like this any more!  Which, depending on how you look at your cinema, is either a terrible or a terrific thing.
     The plot - for the plot, read the title.  A runaway star with a planet in attendance is going to wallop squarely into Planet Earth, destroying all of you*.  The only hope is for a relative handful of people to get away in rocketships, landing on the rogue star's habitable planet.

This illustrates exactly what happens.  Verisimilitude!

     The novel, for Conrad has read it also, is from the Thirties and occasional gems come through in the prose - Fascist Italy's rocketship, for example, crashes and burns, killing all aboard.
     The film is of course updated to the Fifties, yet we don't get any reference to the Commies.  How good neighbourly!
     Now, for any budding film producer, screenwriter or casual reader, the author (Edwin Balmer and I seem to recall Philip Wylie in there, too) wrote a sequel - "After Worlds Collide", wherein the American rocketship lands on the planet and discovers the pristine remains of a long-dead alien civilisation ... I think it's available in the public domain so you can read it for free.
     Also, using the foreign language subtitles in WWC, Conrad learnt that "Likke Tyl!" is Norwegian for "Good Luck!"

Liquor till.   Close enough

The Hobbit - The Desolation Of Smaug
     Just a question about the pronunciation of "Smaug".  Tolkein probably meant it to be pronounced with a Scandinavian twist.  I always called the poisonous old worm "Smorg".  It's hard to hear other folks call him "Smowg".
     Any Norwegians in the audience who can help?

NORMAL SERVICE - RESUMED 

I Sprect Anglo-Saxon
     Over on Twitter, Matthew Ward and a chum of his were conversing in a strange, Germanic language that I didn't recognise.
     It was Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken here in England before those Norman tourists turned up, and one of them posted a link to an Anglo-Saxon - or Old English, if you like - translator.  So (not sure if this is correct) "I sagu aeldu efenglica, gebiawian forewyrd!"**

Angle-iron Stacks on.  Close enough

Broaden Your Horizons With A Balot
     This is a bit of a protracted one, but, like a drunken reveler on a night out, it does eventually get to where it ought to be.
     Conrad was in the works kitchen, preparing to - put garlic cheese on crackers, that was it.  A kiwi fruit languished on the countertop, deemed a bit too hard to eat just yet.
     "Do you eat them with the skin on?" enquired young Mike Collins, our roguish-yet-lovable Scouser.
     Conrad winced at the idea.
     "Good Lord no!  It'd be like eating an egg wearing a fur coat!"
     "Aha," replied the raffish Mike.  "Balots"
     These are a type of Phillipino delicacy: fertilised eggs, ranging from one day's fertilisation to the point where there are bones in the egg, bones with the delicious chewy consistency of Haribos.  Chicken-flavoured Haribos, one imagines.
     Boonies and balots.  What else will the Phillipines gift us?

Pictures of balots are horrid.  Here's a fluffy porcupine instead.

A Giant Erector
     Conrad doesn't have a fetish for cranes, it's just that great big enormous ones keep turning up at Victoria Station.  Why are they so big?  Why don't we see them lifting things?  How do they get put together?
     I could answer all these questions.  To do so, however, I'd have to hang around the other side of the office floor all day long, not doing any work, annoying people by taking photos with them in view and getting in the way of the cleaners.
     So the mystery of crane erection will probably have to remain untold.  And no sniggering at the back there!

That one in the background?  The one I posted about being assembled.

Finally
     If there were time I'd pick on another Celtic supernatural underperformer.  There isn't, so instead have another picture of Edna.  The FB caption calls her "Shredna", which is quite apt, really.

"ARGGGHHH!  KILL! KILL!  KILL!  Oh hello mummy.  Just playing."

*  We got there in the end!
** "I say old chap, well done!"