The Lwow Down

Finally!
I finished "Against the Day" this afternoon, whoopee for me, 1084 pages done and an endless source of quoteable stuff for the blog, alas now gone.  What is it about?  Mostly the eventful lives of the Traverse family, Webb, Kit and Reef principally, but also with dozens of other characters both major and minor.  It covers (one might almost say "traverses") Europe and America, Mexico and Shamballa, from 1895 to an undefined date in the mid-Twenties.  And it finishes as it started, with the skyship Inconvenience and her gallant crew, the Chums of Chance.
     If I were to give a precis it would take up the whole blog.  I have to say that it is leavened with humour and you can just take the abstract maths as given.  However, you need to read it consistently or you'll lose the plot.

Phew.  A brick of a book

The Lwow Down
My Pynchon proves that he not only knows his onions, he is quite adept at managing other members of this vegetable family too.  For example -
      Take the town that we know now as Lvov.  This town used to be known as Lemberg when it was part of the Hapsburg Empire.  It has also be known as Lwow and Lviv, and Mr Pynchon mentioned another name - Leopol.

Town titles are boring.  Here's a scary deep-sea fish

The Radetzky March
I don't know why this popped into my head, but it did and before I wrote up the "Lwow" item

Number 7 FYI

      Why is that significant?  Well, the Radetzky March was composed by one Johann Strauss, who lived in Vienna as a subject of - the Hapsburg Empire.

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

     I guarantee you'll have heard it before as it's stirring stuff and also out of copyright.

     Next!

More Of Song
As you know, Conrad likes to pervert, parody and otherwise play around with songs - which are not pomes** set to music as he cannot stand pomes** - and there is this verse that has been idling under a dust-sheet off in a corner of his rubbish-filled mind:

I love to go a-wandering

Along the mountain track

     To which Conrad simply has to add -

I like to push others off it -

I love it when they go "Splat!"

   
     Conrad.  Not the best person to go mountaineering with ...


Doctor Who Calendar
Well, today's monster is - an Ice Warrior.  Okay, I've got one already, but only one, unlike the massed ranks of the Daleks.

Cat causing shadow in upper right

     As I have mentioned before, nobody calls the Ice Warriors "Martians", which is a potential source of dangerous misinterpretation:
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number One:  Great Scott!*  An Ice Warrior!
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number Two:  Really?  Will he have cake and balloons!
     <dashes out of cover to be instantly annihilated>
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number One: <sighs heavily> They come from Mars.
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number Three:  Mars?  The confectionery makers!
    <dashes out of cover to be instantly annihilated>
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number One: They're killer alien saurian lifeforms!
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number Four: Ah.  "Ice Warrior" not "Nice Warrior"?
     Hapless UNIT Dogsbody Number One:<curses> Oh for CSM Benton ...

More Of Cheese
This is most unfair.  Take a look, please:

The Brie breaks free -

     That's some Brie that was going cheap yesterday, which has been banished from the fridge despite being wrapped in a plastic bag that was wrapped inside another bag and then sealed in an airtight tub.
     "It stinks!" condemned Wonder Wifey.***
     Of course, Conrad could always sneak it back into the kitchen and hide it ...

     There will now be a short pause as I go to refill my cup with Darjeeling

Back again!

Not Sure About This Packaging
Darling Daughter, as a student, knows and loves that student standby - cheap noodles. So today she purchased this:

Oops!  Nothing to scale it.  Quite large.

     Well, if they're minute then they'll certainly cook quickly, but frankly these look to be huge, not minute.
     I wonder, could I be missing something here?

Eeyore - A Sage For The Ages
Yes indeed.  This is so profoundly self-evident that I need say no more, except to ask our donkey savant if he has any advice for us today.  Eeyore?

"Things - can only get wetter!"

     As philosophical a response that we are ever likely to get.  Thank you, Eeyore.  Working in Manchester means that these words are not to be taken lightly.

No, that's not a canal.  It's a sump for all the rainwater.

* UNIT troopers are trained only to use SFW family-friendly exclamations.
** Yes, it is deliberately mis-spelt.
*** It has a barely-discernible odour to it.