It Is Better To Travel Hopefully

It Is Also Better -
     Not have to sit behind some reeky, festering rascal on a crowded bus, having them remain on and on and on, never getting off, until you flee into the beautiful fresh traffic-scented outside air.  If your travel is like that, arriving is definitely the high point!
     Fortunately Conrad can escape (mostly) into the pages of a good book.  Which is to say, another Divisional history of the Great War.  This time it's the Guards Division, and we have yet to encounter any strange synchronicities marching alongside Thos. Pynchon.  There's time yet, however.

     Enough wibble!  On with the motley!

Crap Henchmen
     Thank you, Lowri, of Conrad's workplace, for coming up with this comment.  I already have an angle on it from a different approach ("So You Want To Be A Supervillain?") but this offers me another chance to explore the sub-culture that is Evil Unleashed!  (Conrad twirls the ends of his moustache, Victorian vaudeville-villian style).
     Adopting a learned air, Conrad points out that you could perhaps date the Crap Henchman to the 13th Century, where you would have armoured knights on horseback able to cruise amongst the ranks of the miserable peasantry and merrily chop them into diced bacon, whilst suffering exactly no injuries themselves (until the terrifying figure of the English bowman appears.  Bye bye Knight)

    Star Wars' Woeful Warmongers
     Lowri pointed out how rubbish the Imperial Stormtroopers were in all three good Star Wars films, unable to hit our band of heroes, especially Chewbacca, who stands at least eight feet tall and must weigh in excess of five metric tonnes.
     Actually, Lowri, it's a little more complex than that.  Remember the hapless starship crew engaged in the opening scenes?  They got despatched pretty efficiently.  The Rebel defences on Hoth got over-run pretty quickly. Those horrid little blobby bundles of fur the Ewoks were getting pretty efficiently despatched at first.
     What happens is that when our heroes - excuse me!  Our Heroes - appear, their invisible aura of The Force unconsciously affects the rather dim Stormtroopers, causing them to suffer shivering, dizziness, nausea, blurred vision - pretty similar to a hangover, in fact.  Recall your last hangover.  Do you think you could have effectively wielded a water-pistol, let along a plasma rifle in 40 watt range?

Jar-Jar and Han fend off the stormtrooper hordes - er - I think

     Where Eagles Dare's Dismal Do-Badders
     I refer principally to the Giant Machine-Gun Battle On The Stairs, where Clint's character kills about sixty Germans without suffering a single scratch.  Really, nor do ricochets or sheer bloody noise or grenades injure him or his hearing.
     Then there's the mighty Bus Ride Of Doom.  Doom for the Germans, that is.  Scores of them are shot, blasted, blown and consigned to oblivion, and - Richard Burton gets a scratch on the back of his hand.
     I would put this down to - hmmm.  Let me think.
     It's down to the scriptwriter.  There.  Also, it enshrines a couple of decades of films where the Germans are dim, robotic cannon-fodder - like zombies in greatcoats and coalscuttle helmets.

Get ready for Clint to wipe you - hang on, that's not right -

Don't get me started on the sub-sub-genre of Nazi zombie films! Yes it's a real phenomenon, there's "Dead Snow" <Mister Hand intervenes in the interests of brevity and sanity>

     Flash Gordon
     I mean that colossally kitsch camp classic from 1982, not the film series from the 1930's.  Take Ming's scarlet-clad hog-snouted goons.  They seem to be barely able to focus beyond three feet and Dale Arden - a girl - is able to out-gun and outsmart them; and this a female whose biggest talent is falling helplessly into the clutches of the eeevil (but rather nice-looking) Ornella Muti.
     Where was I?  Oh, yes, crap minions.  Recall, if you will, the aerial battle between War Rocket Ajax and the Butterball Battlegroup of King Chicken McNugget (something like that; I can't remember the details).  

War Rocket Ajax

These flying men have no armour, and are composed of 90% flammable feathers (no Health & Safety restrictions about flying on Mongo!), and their idea of tactics is to hang about in the stratosphere - and rush War Rocket Ajax in a giant mass of fluff.

One of the casualties of the battle.  Delicious with new potatoes!

     And they win!  Despite all this they scrag the entire crew of the Ajax, whom Ming clearly hired because they were cheap, not effective.  False economy, Ming, false economy!  You just lost a mighty weapon of war - well, a weapon - okay, it was about as deadly as the Skylark.

Powerful.  Deadly.  And cheaper than a War Rocket

Godzilla and Wake Island (1942)
     O Noes! I hear you, dear reader, gasp.  Conrad is about to - to - to say something political and satirical by linking a jingoistic Hollywood drum-beater with a giant lizard that destroys cities!
     Rest your qualms, gentle reader.  No, Conrad was going to repeat his description of the explosive finale of "Wake Island", where the American compound and huts and tents and gun positions are all gleefully blown to very little bits.  How must the construction team who built all that stuff feel?  They do their best and it's reduced to smithereenettes*
.     Well, how do you think the studio crews at Toho Studios fel?  They spend days and days constructing miniature replicas of Tokyo in painstaking detail.  Then, what doesn't get blown up or set ablaze, is flattened by a big gimp in a rubber suit.  Heartbreaking!

I say!  That's no way to treat a national landmark!
What's that?
It's full of MP's?
Go right ahead!***

Borax
     Seen in an replica advert on the wall of our works canteen, with no hint as to what it was, although it sounds like a species of wasp -
     Actually it's a salt of Boron (Chemical Number 5), very widely used in detergents and bleaches.
     Oh.  Bit of an anti-climax.

Borax is dull.  Have a robot banana instead!

That's Quite Enough Of That!
     The "that" in question being a concoction that Sophie** was eating at lunchtime, "Mozarella and Semi-Dried Tomatoes".
     NO!  Conrad's sense of logic is offended!
     These tomatoes, in future, are to be either "Dried" or "Not-Dried" (you can call them "Wet" is the urge so takes you).
     THERE WILL BE NO MORE "SEMI-DRIED" NONSENSE!  Conrad has spoken!

The last time these will ever be seen

Anna's Run
     By now I expect you cringing malingering whinging curs to have donated generously to this lady and her sister.  What's that?  No change?  Ah - you can donate on-line at:

http://www.justgiving.com/edinburghmarathon2014

     And with my sinister alien snooping technology I know exactly how much you've given.
     Yes - you, right there.  Stop trying to hide behind the chair!
     £1?  
     Bah!  Not only are Anna and Georgina going to suffer a 26 mile run, they are going to do it in hilarious fancy-dress.  So - £1?  Do you really think that's enough?

*  "Smithereenettes" - the younger, smaller cousins of smithereens
**  Sophie can bake - and decorate!  Fear her.
*** I got political.  Sue me.  It's my blog.