Er - actually it won't be tomorrow, my plans for world domination have taken a bit of a back seat recently - but don't worry! I'll get around to enslaving the lot of you in good time; after all, that invasion fleet inbound from Alpha Centauri won't get here for another 243 years. So there's time to plan yet.
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| Cyborg sentry cat getting in zeds before World Conquest Day arrives |
All drama is conflict. Yes indeed. Let us look at some evidence of this, courtesy of Greek culture. If you ever read critical reviews of any form of drama - cinema, literature, theatre, television - you will encounter the "protagonist" and perhaps also the "antagonist". These are, respectively, the main character and their nemesis; as you can see they share a common root, "agonistes", which comes from the Greek "Agonizesthia", which means "to contend". So there it is. All drama is conflict (but not all conflict is drama*)
| Geek drama. Close enough. |
"All The News That's Fit To Print"
This is the motto of the New York Times, and a very fine motto it is.
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| Sorry, if you don't have a magnifying glass you'll just have to trust Conrad. |
Excuse me, what part of that is news? Never mind, it definitely wasn't worth printing. This newspaper is free? They should pay me to read it!
Metro, Conrad dubs thee "Driveliterature".
| This. Says. It. All. |
If you ever watched "Lost In Space" then you will recall the nannying robot forever warning Will Robinson as he juggled live hand-grenades, drank battery acid, danced in a pool of lava or tried to open a tin of sardines with a knife***.
Shades of that today in the atrium at work^. Conrad arrived an hour early so sat down to finish off "The Army of Doctor Moreau" with an espresso.
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| This is about life-size |
Why, if we are stating the overwhelmingly obvious, does the cup not warn "Caution Contents Liquid"? Or, given how people like to know what's what and what's not, "Caution Contents Contain Caffeine"? Perhaps we could add in a few other cautions: "Caution Contents Hot, Liquid, Caffeinated and will obey the laws of physics".
Okay, rant over. I probably drank too much coffee.
The Apposite Use Of A Small Metal Man
Thankfully Anna survived Ant & Dec at the weekend (they can be vicious, you know), to see how one of her birthday presents was utilised by Conrad:
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| There you go! |
Ah, Edgar Rice Borroughs. Yes, you do know him, if at a distance - he created Tarzan, who is still with us in cinematic form. He also created the world of "Barsoom", and the hero John Carter, titular hero of the film that Conrad quite enjoyed, set on Mars.
Well, the Mars of 1912. Today we have a technically stunning photographic mosaic of the Martian surface - Mister Hand a drum-roll please:
As one ESA scientist put it, the surface of Mars has no water and no vegetation, nor (cue shaking of heads) scantly-clad native princesses and men with big sharp weapons - again Mister Hand -
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| That's Deja Thoris in the background. She didn't wear a lot, so the illustrators of 1912 had a bit of a problem ... |
Now, about Venus ...
* Football, for example. Twenty-two men and a pig's bladder.
** "Atomic boobs sank the Bismark" and similar stuff. There's probably an app that generates Sunday Sport headlines.
*** Conrad has done this himself and it is quite hideously risky.
^ Tee-hee. You still don't know my Enormous Anonymous Employer's name, do you?
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