Keeping an eye on the number of hits, it now totals 4993, as at 19:37.
So, it's possible that one of you tonight will be visitor number 5,000!
When I started this blog almost a year ago <Mister Hand intervenes to stop a long boastful account of Conrad's wonderfulness in his own eyes>
Regretfully Conrad can offer nothing more than sincere congratulations and the promise of more blogs in the future, which is something of a mixed blessing for the world.
The Swan As Dinner
Lo and behold, what did Conrad hear yesterday, but that People From Eastern Europe* - which is usually lazy journalistic shorthand for "Polish" - had been eating swans. Yes, those big white birds that look like up-market geese and which toil in factories making matches**.
Conrad, familiar with urban legends, hadn't heard this one. He consequently did a bit of digging around and found that there's little to no evidence of a sustained Polish attack on our resident wildlife, especially since the media reporting it happened to be "The Sun" - long a stranger to fact, truth and evidence - and the "Daily Mail", which hates foreigners as a default stance, but which is confused by People From Eastern Europe because they're white.
So - still no answer to that question: what do they taste like***?
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| Bloody awful, at a guess |
NOT AGAIN! thought Conrad in the shower this morning as this word popped into his head. Mind, can you keep it - what is "tourmaline", anyway?
Now is not the time to dictate to you, gentle reader, what Conrad thinks it might be. No, we shall conduct rigorous and painstaking research into the matter, carrying out a - okay, a bit of Google and Wiki, you got me.
Tourmaline, it appears, is a type of semi-precious gemstone, available in a wide variety of colours, with the really expensive stuff coming from Brazil.
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| Extreme tourmaline |
Film Magazines
Long ago, when the internet was still two people with a tin can on a string, Conrad used to occasionally buy film magazines that were not "Empire". I know! Shocking!
They were "Total Film" and "Premiere". Total was a British publication and used to have free posters including one for "The Thing" which Conrad had to take down as it scared Darling Daughter (admittedly she was only 8 and it is the world's most scarey documentary). Premiere was American and, even if you were sitting in a greasy spoon cafe reading it, you felt as if you were on Fifth Avenue.
And do you know what? Both are still going concerns, which pleases Conrad, mostly. Why only "mostly"? because they survive without his custom, dammit!
| Total Recall. Close enough |
Maximum Parallel Graphic
Were Conrad malicious <Mister Hand would like to add "very" before the "malicious"> he would ask you, dear audience, to guess where that phrase came from and what it meant.
You wouldn't get it. Ever!
Why?
Oh, I thought you'd never ask! Because it's a phrase from the Austro-Hungarian Army's lexicon of Rollbahn terminology as regards the Hapsburg Empire's railways. It refers to the ability of railways to accommodate the maximum possible amount of traffic along a particular length of track. It comes from Norman Stone's epic and indispensible "The Eastern Front 1914 - 1917", one of the very very few English-language books to deal with the Russian Front of the First World War.
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| "Maximum Parallel Graphic" - as painted by Roger Dea |
Further to the above, Conrad would like to help you understand how and why phrases and words pop up in his mind as they do.
Imagine a rubbish dump. It is three hundred years old. Every item has been vacuum-sealed and irradiated to prevent rot or decay or mould. Imagine that someone puts a large explosive charge at the bottom of this dump, beneath dozens of yards of rubbish, and sets it off. The charge is carefully calculated to not burst the protective packing.
Now, a blindfolded JCB driver dangles the rear bucket over the edge of the dump and plunges the metal scoop into the mess, returning with perhaps only one item, perhaps several.
- and that's how things pop up in Conrad's mind. Thank you for listening.
| "Look! Behind the Basic Principles of Accountancy, next to Gerry Anderson films - it's quotations from Lewis Carroll!" |
I know, I know, you've read the above and then wonder why Conrad doesn't resort to the tinfoil beanie to prevent those thoughts of his getting jiggled around by microwave ovens and mobile phones.
Because they don't work! Excuse me, as a camouflaged alien spy I am totally familiar with what kind of protection one needs from mind-control rays, and tinfoil hats are just so ineffectual.
You need leadfoil hats.
| Tinfoil cat. Close enough |
Mentioned in passing in "The Seventy-Seven Clocks", this is a plant with - excuse me! How rude of me! We've not been properly introduced to "Colchium Autumnale". As I was saying, this is a plant with a punch, a toxic one thanks to the presence of Colchine, a poison that acts like arsenic and <Mister Hand plays a sinister minor chord on an oboe> there is no antidote.
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| Quiver in fear, puny human! |
I remember - "Brazil" - the Terry Gilliam film!
* Do people from Eastern Europe feel that they're actually the centre of Europe and regard everyone else as further to the left?
** I may be a bit astray of the truth here
*** No Anna don't hit me! Only joking!
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