Submarine The Theme

Almost.  Perhaps Just The "Sub" Bit
     As you all well know, gentle readers, I have christened my subconscious* "Dee", which is short for "Devious", because he, or it**, is a cunning rascal.  I have formally charged him with being responsible for creating interesting dreams, a task which he cannot properly manage.  Some are dull, to the point of sending you to sleep - yes even though in a dream - and some verge on what I believe the Lakeland Poets dubbed "pant-wettingly terrifying".  Last night, however, the dream involved a symbolic representation of Dee.  Myself and a couple of colleagues were inspecting a property, and one declared "O, this is Dee.  This is where Conrad's ideas come from."
     "Dee" was a tatty old wood and glass lean-to, containing a few battered and rusty filing cabinets and a few seedy jackets hanging from the joists, one of them home to a moth.
     "This is boring!" declared one colleague.  "Let's go look at something interesting!"
     So. Dee, in charge of dreams, sees fit to symbolise himself as a bit of architectural tat.  I dunno.  Is he having a subtle joke or is he completely potty?

Quite appropriate

Presence
     Hmmm.  Conrad not impressed overall.  Oh, I refer to the Led Zeppelin*** album, which has been my "Car CD" this week and over the weekend.  A Car CD is one I think deserves a captive audience.
     As I mentioned before, a very crisp production.  Technically very proficient, too, yet nothing really gells as a solid performance bar the opening track, "Achilles' Last Stand", which hums along at a sprightly pace thanks to John Paul Jones and Mr Bonham.  Yes, you can go  "Oooh!" and "Wow!" at Jimmy Page's guitar pyrotechnics on each track.  That, however, does not make an album.
     I'm sure Robert Plant will be making notes about this critique and will be getting back to Conrad shortly.

Presents.  Close enough

A Bathysphere Sandwich
     Yesterday I gave you an outline of the Bathysphere, a specially constructed sphere that was used to cruise along the deep seabed and take film of the fishy folk living down there.  On an unmanned test dive it filled almost completely with water and thoroughly soaked the sandwiches incautiously left inside.
     Surprisingly they were almost edible once recovered - if you like your ham sandwich to be quite briney - thanks to the very low temperatures involved.  The abyssal depths 
exist only just above freezing point and can act to preserve organic matter that descends there.

A salmon sandwich, entirely at home on a plate or in the ocean

     I mention this because John Carpenter's documentary about the infamous "wrecking town" of Spivey Point, "The Fog", also has mention of human bodies being recovered from the depths, where the cold, pressure and lack of sunlight had preserved them surprisingly well.  This is during the hilarious scene where a pranking student pretends to be a body resurrected into a zombie-like state as the researchers in the foreground try not to corpse!

The Frog.  Close enough

Delta Force, Take Heed
     Again BOOJUM! attempts to - er - "big it up" for the Whippoorwill, that bird associated with death, the migration of souls and all-round bad luck.
     I seem to recall a Malthusian feedback loop about the impact of wildcats upon gophers.  Vague, eh?  Well, the Whippoorwill and the coyote share such an intimate and well-defined  feedback link that Malthus can go fish.  You see, coyote's prey on the whipporwill as a food source, until they kill off too many and the whippoorwill population goes into decline.  Too few whippoorwills - the coyote's die off, too.  Fewer coyote's - the whippoorwill, safer from predation, increase in numbers.

There are 18 whippoorwills in this picture.  Can you spot them all?

     Oh - yes, the "Delta Force" bit.  Well, the Whippoorwill is no beauty, but it is very well camouflaged.  It will sit still in the undergrowth, or on it's nest, whilst you or I or the Quorn Hunt go by, and thus remains undetected.  Like one of those sneaky-peaky special forces soldiers you hear about, and since the bird is North American in origin, naturally Delta Force came to mind.
     Chuck Norris is not impressed.

An awesome  indestructible death machine, plus a motorbike with a lot of gadgets

Spiderman 2:  The Poster
     I saw this on the side of several buses today.  
     What on Earth^?  It looks like Spidey is facing-off against Voldemort in a bad snowstorm.  The bus was too far away to read the tagline, so my best guess is that it wasn't "Harry Potter and Marvel Crossover!"
     I am not tempted to go see it.  You'll never get better than Nicholas Hammond^^!

This is a legendary Hammond, too

Supervillains (Possibly A Series)
     Seeing the Spiderman poster did trigger a cascade of ponderous thought within Conrad's cranium.
     Most criminals are not overburdened with grey matter and intellect to match.  They are, almost by definition, not too bright.  I used to ask for anecdotes from a colleague who worked with youthful criminals, to see if any possessed promise as evil masterminds who would, in the 2000's, hold the city/country/planet to ransom  (I can't have any competition, you see).
     Nope, was her response.  None at all.  Quite the opposite.
     So, imagine if you (or I) were a criminal mastermind who aspired to be a supervillain.  How would we go about it?
     Step One seems to be generating a name for yourself.  This has to be based on whatever superpower you have (note to the interested: being able to mess about with calendars is so not a superpower).  If you can shoot fire out of your bottom, then you are "FLAMING ASS MAN!", not to be confused with "BURNING ASS MAN!" whose superpower is being able to ignite donkeys^^^.  Being able to eat a MacDonalds and run away without paying, faster than the staff can run, is not a superpower either.

At the back of the queue when villainous superpowers were being given out

*  See!  "Sub" is the theme!  Do you see what - o you do.
** Or, even more worryingly, "they"
***  A Zeppelin made of lead would descend rather rapidly. Almost submerge, in fact.
^  Yes, Conrad, evil alien spy, has to use this turn of phrase.  "What on NTRS852-HRo#7 Sana Australis" doesn't quite have the same ring
^^  Star of the 1977 television series, that's who!
^^^ Yes, I know they aren't asses, but come on, poetic licence - work with me here!