Time Is Tight

- By Booker T & The MG's
In Conrad's entirely accurate and one-hundred per cent* right opinion, a far better track than the better known "Green Onions".
     Also an accurate statement of the frantic scurry to prepare the blog tonight; tomorrow I'll be going for a drink or two after work to honour the departure of Lowri, which means I can't do the shopping, so I've done that tonight and thus have less than an hour to create and post a minor work of literary genius.
     The blog! you bafoons, the blog, that's what - O I give up.  
     There may not be a blog tomorrow, either, depending on whether I feel like it or not.  What's that you say?  I have a schedule to keep to?
     Whose blog is it?
     Exactly!

"Quintessential"
This struck me as I trudged my way up the stairs to the cafe at work today.
     "Quintessential," I mused to myself - fear not, dear reader, there was nobody else there, I could talk aloud without fear of worried stares - "why do we have this word when there's already "essential?"
     Thereby hangs a tale.  Quintessential means a perfect example of something - Sherlock Holmes is the quintessential of a consulting detective, for example - and it derives from the Latin "quinta essentia", meaning the Fifth Element**: ether.  Conrad was familiar with the four elements - earth, air, fire and water, as you also no doubt know, but had never known there was a fifth one.  So if you add the fifth element to the other four, you get perfection.  Hmm.  Not sure about that, it seems you'd more likely get frothingly aerated mud.

FILM SUB-SECTION

This morning Conrad was hit by Thalia at the big traffic intersection on Miller Street.  Not literally, you understand, she's one of the Muses who deals with comedy.  She whispered in my ear - again, not literally, Conrad not bonkers - and drew attention to three sets of film posters, so here we go.

Lucy
This was on a huge billboard.  There is only one kind of billboard - a huge one.  A small billboard would cause traffic accidents, I suppose, as drivers stopped to try and make out the tiny script at the bottom of the poster -
     I digress. There was the poster, featuring a photograph of Scarlett Johannsen, with her name and that of Morgan Freeman above the title.  The only text was "The No. 1 US Hit".  So.

Lucy is made of milk, apparently

     Conrad mused (mentally, nothing to do with Thalia; do keep up!) about this.  No tagline, no precis of what the film's about, no, nothing but a photo and the names.  Clearly we are meant to be impressed by the two leading actors, impressed enough to go and spend £11 on a film we know nothing about.
     Well, Conrad does like Scarlet and respects Morgan but he wants a bit more info than a single female name before he ducks into the Printworks.



Deliver Us From Evil
Seen on a bus poster passing by, with a quote about it as a horror film that barely registered.  No picture, no tagline, nothing else.  
     Conrad did check IMDB briefly for this film and found it claims to be based on a book that claims to be based on real life, a conflabulation of serial killer and evil spirits.  Lead actor Eric Bana, who is pretty good.
     - but not good enough.  Nope.  Conrad will wait until it appears on television, upon which he will promptly ignore it, as he doesn't watch television.

A little light on exposition, wouldn't you agree?

     Ah, don't cry - the only two kinds of film that are guaranteed to make their money back are horror and porn films, so Conrad's lack of enthusiasm won't harm it any.  We con't go into pornography since there might be small children reading this and the image of a thousand naked bouncing bottoms would scar them for life.  Although Queen got away with it somehow ...



The Nut Job
From one extreme to another.  All picture no content, a poster of small furry animals busy being cute and funny.  Allegedly.  Conrad found them so hilarious he's like to take them home and put them in a pie***.  So what is it about?  Who knows, but with a ghastly punning title like that, one can only fear the worst.  Maybe squirrels stealing acorns?  Conrad is not going to waste the time to go to IMDB to find out, he has other concerns -

I've decided not to make them into a pie.
They're too small to make a proper-sized pie.

That's it, my ranting and tanting about films is over, you can uncover your eyes.

The Weather
I was glad of my heavy hooded fleece this morning, as it was cold enough to see one's breath^, and damp and windy.  This evening Conrad cowered beneath a bus-stop as the A57 turned from a road into a canal.  Any worse and you'd expect to see Venetian gondolas plying for trade.  
     Also, the morning bus had the heater on and Conrad did not dissolve in a puddle of sweaty sogginess, which is an objective measurement of how cold it was.

Expect a gondola any moment now ...

Swings And Roundabouts
Today at lunch Mo declared that she wasn't going to rubbish Conrad, for which he is grateful as she can be a scarey woman, but only because she'd read about the Yorkshire Brack and was slavering in anticipation of getting a slice.
     This compassionate attitude didn't last long, since she informed us that her husband didn't want Conrad nominated for the bucket-of-ice-water challenge, "because he's a frail old pensioner".
     Thank you Mo.  There may be some additional extras in your slice of cake...

Yorkshire Polonium-dusted Brack

* At least 100 % right!
** That barmy but entertaining film clearly had it wrong.
*** Anna, I'm only kidding!  Please don't hate me ...
^  Or the radioactive fumes generated by Conrad's fusion-powered pumping unit.