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?