I can point to the entry in Brewer's today, there at the bottom of page 239 - "Cat", and likewise remind you what photograph I posted yesterday:
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| A Cat |
Stretching it a bit but there will be a little more coincidence later on. Oh yes!
Superheroes With Their Pants Down
Another in our series of satirical sketches about how superheroes would cope in the real world**. Today we feature Green Lantern!
Who has a lantern. And is green.
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| I rest my point |
This may seem a bit obvious but I don't want to go too fast for you. After all, why is he green? Not Red, White and Blue? Or gold? Or silver? Or a fetching steel-grey?
And this verdant colour scheme brings us to the first of his problems:
1) Endless pestering for political endorsements. Sinn Fein, Greenpeace, the Green Party, they'd all be desperate to get a superhero espousing their cause. I don't know if Greeny has a social secretary but if he does I imagine most of her waking hours are spent fending off "Could Green Lantern just ..."
2) No watching horror films, especially ones with jumpy scare scenes. GL's power resides in his ring - kind of the anti-ring to Sauron's - which can create any construct GL can imagine. So, imagine he's watching "Jaws" and that head suddenly falls out of the boat - what on Earth is he likely to conjure up?
3) No daydreaming, ever. Although Conrad spends most of his waking, and certainly all of his working, hours daydreaming, he isn't in possession of an artefact-generating ring. Imagine the consequences.
"Hello, is that the police? There's an army of green zombies destroying our office and eating people ..."
4) Only bland fiction. Agatha Christie is as racy and raucous as he can read, because, once again, the ring. Imagine he's reading E.E. "Doc" Smith's space opera, and really gets into a scene where the Boskonians destroy an entire planet ...
5) Phobias. One hopes that membership of the JLA*** comes with regular psychiatric assessments, because what happens if GL has a fear and loathing of spiders? Or wasps? Or Twinkie Bars? The consequences are almost too terrible to contemplate.
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| Green Lantern: An awful warning (He could have just used Raid) |
"Gravity's Rainbow" By Thomas Pynchon
Conrad is really enjoying this. I think exposure to Tom's style for over a year has allowed me to look past the style and get into the content, and take his switching from one character to another in my stride. For example, one minute Roger Mexico is blending and baking a puree of Amanita Muscaria, being watched by Katje, in the kitchen of their hotel in London, and the next we're off into Katje's history in occupied Holland.
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| Brightly! Red-ly! Deadly! |
Then there's Brigadier Pudding, who is a doddering old warhorse appointed head of PISCES, and whom had fought at the Third Battle of Ypres, better known as Passchendaele. Tom knows his stuff: he mentions the notorious (to us Brits) Polygon Wood, and "coal boxes" - jargon to 99.9% of his readers, but which Conrad knows refers to a type of German shell.
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| The Ocker in protective plumage (Respirator, Box, Small) |
It does swing wildly in tone, from the detailed to the comic to the quite horrid, and is occasionally laugh out loud funny^.
Here's coincidence #2. I reposted a post from 2 years ago last night, and what was the last comment? That my Passchendaele wargame wasn't going to develop itself.
I keep telling you, read Thomas Pynchon, generate violations of the space-time continuum ...
A Cake I Bake
I apologised to Russell for not baking the cake he requested but he seemed content with the one I made, Coffee and Chocolate Loaf. Gluten-free, too. It's a reliable fall-back option if time is short, as it was last night:
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| Minutes later it was gone |
I didn't have the pub quiz to attend, but I was on a late shift and so didn't get home until 7:20. Then I had to make lunch for today, get some tea - actually already provided by Wonder Wifey in the shape of a delicious sausage puttanesca - and create that wonder of the modern world, BOOJUM!
The Paper Paper Trail
Conrad, being ridiculously early for work yesterday, happened to get both the Metro and the Manchester Evening News thrust into his sweaty paws as he traipsed from one non-functioning cashpoint to another.
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| Green Lantern, where are you when we need you? |
HOW MANY TREES HAD TO DIE!
12:00 Silence
If you live in the UK you are probably aware of the one minute's silence at 12:00 this afternoon. Conrad, being of good taste, and also avoiding the current affairs that go with this event, merely reports that his entire building went silent at mid-day. 13 floors and two basement levels, since you ask. 3,499 people out of 3,500, since you ask further.
Very eerie! Normally there is a considerable background noise from all the chatterers. Today, an almost complete silence, except for one person chatting away on the phone, who is probably going to have a nice little chat with the management ...
And To Pad Things Out A Bit -
Here is my post of 3rd July 2013. As you can see, I had now mastered the art of adding a picture to the post, which is a bit like fish adapting to walk on land. Notice that a late finish two years ago meant I got home at 7:00, as I was driving at that time.
I don't know if anyone out there actually waits for these rambunctious ramblings, but I apologise for being late with this one.
Yes, I have tried to post one per day.
Yes, I have managed this goal so far.
No, I cannot guarantee to post much before midnight*.
Reason One
I worked on the late shift tonight, which means not getting home until 7 o'clock. Having arrived home I then have to get changed before making tomorrow's lunch, and - Surprise! - I don't have to also wash a mountain of dirty dishes today.
I do have to study the carcass of a dead bee, because a host of these characters seem to have taken up residence under our eaves, and you can't simply get rid of them due to their endangered status. Luckily for the Connolly's these are mason bees, a polite and deferential species embodying all our Anglo-Saxon behaviours, rather than the African Killer Bee ...
Reason Two
More Bakery Boredom for those who want to know what the kill-radius is for a 106 Fused 6" Howitzer shell at 5,000 yards. I've been baking a Carrot Cake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, whose recipes tend to be a bit more fiddly and involved than others, but which are very distinctive - that is, people scoff them up pronto. I've just baked 4 sponges and will have to wait until tomorrow to frost them; total time taken was 2 hours.
Vodka!
My ice-cream made with 2 tablespoons of rum worked out splendidly - frozen but friable, in that you can scoop it without needing to use a chisel. Rum gives the end result a flavour, whereas vodka (none present) does not. Conrad will lay in supplies of vodka as a result!
Damn! I haven't ironed a shirt for tomorrow - need to be quick with the rest of this. Vodka = Russia
Russia = the Strugatsky Brothers.
The Strugaskys = "Roadside Picnic", "Prisoners of Power", "Hard To Be A God".
Tomorrow's theme = Russia.
* Midnight here, in balmy Britain.
The Lesser-Striped Rumming-Bird in full flow.
I remember baking that carrot cake, it was a massive four-layer one that needed bracing with bamboo skewers and cost £1.00 per slice, not the usual 50p. Going back to the first line, apparently there is an audience for the ramblings of an alien spy wearing human disguise, which is always gratifying to know.
* Querulous or in a milquetoast fashion
** Hint: not too well.
*** Justice League of America. Russia, get your own JL!
^ To Conrad. Your mileage may vary.
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