A Bold Experiment

That Is, If By "Bold" -
     We mean getting out of bed a bit early.
     Since there will be no blog tonight, Conrad thought to spend a few fruitful seconds this morning in creating today's dose of non sequiteurs, rants and idiosyncratic reviews.
     Now, stand back and let drivel commence!

Cranes
     As any long time reader, and most mid time readers, and a few newcomers, will know, Conrad has long kept an eye on construction site at Victoria Station.  At first it was all removal work, cutting the old bits of the station up and hefting them away.  This year it's all about putting up new work, with the help of an enormous static crane, thus:

No!  Those cranes are clearly mobile!

     Excuse me - 

     Now, how colourful is that?  Not exactly a rainbow but getting there.
     Remember when they open this new tram station - you saw it here first.

Statistics
     One establishment that Conrad passes on his desperate dash for the bus each day is the Black Dog Ballroom, which features a sign on the pavement outside.
     "50% off all day Monday" declares the sign (not literally, it doesn't speak, although I bet DARPA is even now inventing one that will nag you as you walk past it).
     Conrad can see why they advertise in this fashion, as the other option is to declare "Tuesday to Sunday - all meals 200%".
     Although you really cannot predict human behaviour accurately; there is every possibility this would increase their traffic.

Black Bog.  Close enough

An Antidote To The Metro
     By now Conrad has developed a strong dislike for this free "newspaper" that is found stacked on buses, rather than in the bins it so truly deserves*.  Think of it as the celebrity pages from any tabloid, puffed up a bit and with tons of adverts.

A Metro with considerably more appeal

     So, then - what is the antidote?  Simply put yourself in the position of any article they report about.  "Cameron Diaz pulls a face" "Nikki Cox has botox" or "Justin Bieber behaves like a prat.  Again."  Is there any news value in this transition - there is?  Congratulations!  You just found a nugget of truth in a mountain of inane tat.
     Farewell skateboarding duck.

Tonight
     As I may have bored you with details already, I shan't go into detail about this.



     No, on second thoughts I will do.  Don't like it?  Whose blog is it!
     There is a free concert being held at Kosmonaut in the Northern Quarter, starting at 8:00 p.m., and Conrad intends to be there.  Probably the oldest person present, but that will be my own personal badge of honour.  Also present will be From The Kites Of San Quentin, Cogi and Sphelm.  Pronunciation of those last two - I'll get back to you on that.
And afterwards Conrad will be staying in an hotel, to avoid a long trip home and so he is bright and chirpy for work the next day.
     Ta-ta!

Hapless musicians trapped in a plastic box and forced to perform.
The music biz can be cruel, sometimes  ....

Hello And Cheerio

No Sooner Has Conrad Arrived -
     Than he has to take his leave.  Only temporary, I've got to go check on the Banana Bread Muffins - 
     - good thing I did, too.  The recipe is actually for a cake done in a tin, not for muffins, and it said "bake for an hour".  Had I done so, instead of this

Banana Bread Brandy  Maple  muffins

     you would be looking at twelve little lumps of coal.  Canny Conrad, knowing a thing or two about baking muffins, decided 20 minutes would be enough.

Why You Must Absolutely Hoard Everything, All The Time
     Did I bore you last week with needing to buy earphones?  The reason was that my previous ones came apart in my rucksack, probably because they were buried under five or six pounds of hardback books*.
     Well, it is not beyond Conrad to glue small objects together, he has after all constructed 1/300 scale Minenwerfer from paper and pencil leads.  But!  A vital piece went missing, so I admitted defeat and bought a couple of earphone sets.
     What do I espy last night?

Slightly left of centre

     It's that self-same missing bit.  Not having that meant the earphone couldn't be put together.
     I was certain I'd dropped it to the floor.  Two questions - how did it get onto the upper desk - and who put it there?

Tunnock The Terrific
     Conrad has long known the delights of the biscuits made by Tunnocks, viz. the evidence in his lunchbox:

Upper right corner.  Also, marvel at the rigid symmetry of Conrad's lunchbox.  Unlike his mind.

     Now, thanks to the Glasgow Games, those of the Commonwealth variety, the whole world knows about Tunnocks.  Oh, further illustration:

Which means everyone in Scotland eats these

     Some - those bitter Tunnock traditionalists who refuse to move into the 21st Century and who probably think an i-pod is slang for glasses - might decry the Dark Chocolate version of the Tunnock Caramel Wafer, but the future will prove the rest of us right!
    Where was I?  Oh, yes, the Games.  There were dancing teacakes there, you know.

The Apple Falls 187 Miles From The Tree
     Conrad will drink pretty much anything, even that ghastly sherry milkshake that he made once as an experiment, hoping Grandma wouldn't notice the level in the bottle had decreased a bit - that's a bit off-topic, ignore it.  So, he got offered a concoction described on the tin as "Blueberry Cider", to wit:

Nothing coloured like that can be good for you, can it?

     Hmmm.  It is blue, that much is correct.  Cider?  I shall get back to you on that.

The Artistic Process
     Yes, it's true.  Banging on about Titian and Giorgione has caused Conrad to think of himself as an artist.
     No!  Not a pen and ink or brush and pot kind of artist - Conrad has trouble drawing a straight line with the help of a bright light and a ruler - but the one who paints pictures with words**.
     Is Mister Hand up to something here?  I didn't add those asterisks <looks over shoulder suddenly, hurts neck, whimpers and looks back at screen>
     Yes, the artistic process.  I thought it might interest viewers if this got explained, with some pictures to pad out the post take up space illuminate the point.

     Step One:  The Idea
     This can evolve from a previous concept or spring, small but perfectly-formed, into 
     Conrad's mind.

Behind those cold, cruel eyes.

     Step Two: The Merry-go-Round
     That original idea then goes round and round and round Conrad's mind.  If you've ever
     seen a candy-floss machine at work, then that's how the original idea gets encrusted 
     with ever more detail and description.

It was this or a candy-floss machine, and this photo was ready to go

     Step Three: The Long-hand Notes
     There comes a point where Conrad has to get the ideas down on paper, otherwise 
     they would complete take over his mind and send him potty***.  Here we see notes
     from the Intermediate Notebook - far left - fleshed out with more detail in those 
     pages from the Large Notebook:

About eight hundred words of wisdom.  If wisdom is spelt "weird and drivel"

     Step Four:  Typing Stuff Up
     A typical chapter in The Great Zombie Novel might be five thousand words long, so
     the plot notes are more a framework to be improvised against.  Thus we end up with
     a lot of typed stuff:

Too small to see?  Trust me, it's great stuff.

That's Enough For Tonight
     I would like to point out that there will be no blog tomorrow.
     Why not? I can hear you thinking^
     Because Conrad shall be dragging his elderly carcass to a gig in Manchester tomorrow evening, at Kosmonaut, and he won't be going home afterwards, either, since his glamourous understudy Anna^^ has gotten him a discounted hotel room.  So, whereas normally I'd be baking - done tonight - or at the Pub Quiz - beating the coach-parties with Google on their phones - instead I will be <ahem> "rocking out" to From The Kites Of San Quentin", "Cogi" and "Sphelm".

Alcatraz.  Easily confused with San Quentin.

*  What can I say, I like a bit of choice
**  Mister Hand apologises for the nauseatingly pretentious drivel Conrad has put here.  Too much of the baking brandy!
*** It's a moot point how many people would notice.
^ Yes, telepathy is being developed by DARPA even as I type.
^^ Today looking good in a dress! - which comment will probably embarass her terribly.  Heh!

Art, Craft And Science

But In An Entertaining Way!
     By way of an introduction, today I was introduced to a graphic artist as "Rob^^ - Rob Zombie!" which either means I've arrived amongst my peers as an author, or I have shockingly bad skin.
     Pay attention, there may be a quiz later -

"Three Against Rommel"
     Again, there are passages in this book that eerily mirror Alan Moorehead's "Desert Trilogy", which is not surprising since both correspondents were writing about experiencing the same thing at the same time.  I must dig out "Desert Trilogy" and see how often it mentions Alexander Clifford, as he drags Alan into the narrative quite often.

     "Cyrenaica"
     This is one of the regions that made up the historical Libya, viz:

Cyrene just visible vertically above the "s" in "just"

     The capital city in classical times was Cyrene - hence the name of the province.  What relevance does this have to the Desert War?  Alex and Alan spent a day exploring the city ruins, as this was one of the biggest cities in antiquity, with a wealth based on -

     Silphium
     This was a herb, which is now extinct, and has been for over a millenia and a half.  It
     was apparently very highly regarded in the ancient world as a cooking, marital and 
     medical aid.  Conrad, despite having read extensively of the Mediterranean cultures 
     dating back to 500 BC, had never heard of it until today.  As with Greek Fire, nobody
     now knows exactly what Silphium was - a hogweed variant, or possibly a variety of
     asafoetida.  It may have been over-farmed to extinction, which recalls the problems
     of that fictional herb "lichenin" as Conrad bored you about in "Trouble With Lichen".

A Dodo.
Yes, I know it's not "silphium" but they're both extinct and we know what a dodo looked like***.

     
     Giorgione
     Again, another reference Conrad had never heard of, in an artistic context.  This chap,
     along with Titian, whom Conrad did know about*, established the "Venetian" school of
     art in the early 16th century.  Alex describes one of the desert landscapes as being 
     redolent** of Giorgione.

The only work-safe Giorgione; all the other feature nudes.  Artistic nudes, yes - but still nudes!

     
Now back to 2014 and - SCIENCE!

But Not In A Good Way
     Conrad's addictions are to Jaffa Cakes and buying entirely too many books, so he gazed with curiosity mixed with bafflement (curiment? bafflosity? blank stare?) upon a bus poster this morning that proclaimed "Smoking is so last season":

Yes, obviously it's not a bus.  But it is static and so easier to hunt down on the internet

     Ah. So, this promotes a smoke-flute that delivers only the addictive component of tobacco with none of the nasty tarry fumes from burning vegetable matter and very thin papyrus.
     If Conrad didn't know better, he'd think Philip K. Dick was doing a bit of reality-scriptwriting.  This is just the kind of thing he wrote about, probably whilst tootling away on fistfuls of cigarettes to boot^.

Now For Craft
     If you remember, Conrad made lemonade at the weekend, a slightly-bitter but still refreshing concoction made with lemons, sugar and water.  There was trouble when it transpired he'd emptied a bottle of Don Simon to obtain a container for his lemonade, but there was only a smidge left in it!
     Tonight Conrad set out to make Blue Lemonade.
     You have heard of Pink Lemonade?  The pink comes from raspberries.  Conrad didn't have raspberries but he did have blueberries.

The raw ingredients

     Well, colour^^^ me surprised.  After a process of chopping, blending and sieving, what is the end result?  Just this:

Pink, purple, permanganate, take your choice

     Having used only two lemons, not three, and seven ounces of sugar, not four, the resulting brew does taste quite nice.  Not properly cool yet, but the fridge is working on that.
     I may frighten people at work tomorrow by taking it in to drink.  Heh!

Well, that's an hour's work done, so I'm packing up to go work on the zombie novel.  
After all, I am Rob Zombie.


*  Yes I did!  I do know some art!
**  <Mister Hand would like to point out that describing art has caused Conrad to pretentiously use some.  "Redolent of" = "like"
*** Hey it's MY blog, if you disagree the exit door is over there -
^  We shall skate with never a look down over the other drugs that PKD had an interest in 
^^ My Sunday-best name
^^^ Go on.  How could I resist that?






     

Practicing - To Take Over The World!

Bwah-hah-hah!
     I've been rather lax of late in practicing to take over the world.  You know how it is when you have a hundred-and-one things to do - eavesdrop on NATO, sneak around in the Kremlin, obtain fissile material for the nuclear howitzer warheads - a world-dictator in the making has a lot to do, and you can only trust minions so far -

Minions: The Awful Truth
     Yes, unfortunately if they are trustworthy and loyal then they are inevitably dim.  "Dim" as in a dirt-encrusted-5-Watt-at-the-end-of-it's-life-bulb dim.  They have to be hand-held and micro-managed, which is time-consuming and counter-productive, although having a hundred minions is a status-symbol in the evil heriarchy.  If they are intelligent and clever (not the same thing) then they are inevitably scheming behind your back about how to stab it at an opportune moment.  They have to be watched at all times, and their hands held to ensure that there's no knife, which again is rather draining, although being able to say "Yes, Igor here electronically emptied the bank accounts of everyone in Dibden Parma into my Swiss account."

Proof, were it needed, of the "loyal but stupid" theory

 - enough of minions!  Pay attention to Conrad, not his lackeys and lickspittles*!

The Long-Delayed Wargame
     Conrad hasn't actually started playing it yet - steady on!  Only a couple of months have gone by, we don't want to rush it! - but he did set up the table and indicate where the Italian forces get placed, and where their artillery registers.

Getting ready.  Almost there.  Nearly begun ...

Layout done

           He might even get to placing a unit or two on the board tonight, in which case there will of course be pictures.

The Deed Is Done
     Yup, all the bodies have been buried.  

Or is it just one big body?

     Or, perhaps, it is indeed the burial site for a mighty giant - that dig is about a hundred yards long and ten yards wide, big enough for a Transformer or a Pacific Rim Jaeger**.

Licence To Loon
     As you must certainly know by now, gentle reader, the one piece of modern technology that Conrad regards with hatred and suspicion is the mobile phone.  He would much rather have two tin cans tied to a string than a mobile phone, especially since you could use them as an improvised bolas to tackle criminals whilst out -
     - yes, well, Conrad - no like mobile phones.  Another thing struck him today as he sternly watched a young lady walk by, smiling broadly and chattering away to thin air.
     Now, back in the day, one knew to give raving loonwaffles a wide berth, and they were easy to spot - they had a vacant grin across their face as they gabbled wildly into thin air.  Today, with Blackberry, you really don't know where you stand.
     Conrad is bothered.

Conrad deep in conversation with Mister Hand, yes.  But in private.

The Swiss Air Force
     I bet you never pause in your daily life to wonder how the Swiss Air Force operates, do you?  Don't be so parochial.
     First of all, they have to know how to fight in four languages, "Swiss Air Force" is "Schweizer Luftwaffe Aeriennes Suisse Forze Aeree Svizerre Aviatika militara Svizra", so they must use very small print or very large aircraft to fit that lot on.
     And where does the Swiss Air Force live?
     That's right!  In caves!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcgHgKID2f8

     shows you more than you need to know.
     What Conrad wanted to find is the video showing aircraft being hauled out of a sub-surface bunker through an aircraft-shaped gap in the floor, before being rolled out of the cavern doors.

A Swiss Air Force jet emerges from it's cavern.  No, hang on a minute ...

*  What a ghastly term!  Any minion of mine had better keep a respectable distance between themselves and my spittle.  Besides, it's dangerously toxic.
**  Why not just shoot the giant alien lizard monsters? With great big guns?