I Say Chewbacca - It's Sir Paul Macca!

That Is, Sir Paul McCartney
Chewbacca I ought not need any introduction thereto.  Sir Paul's nickname is "Macca", for those of you who have been living in a barrel at the top of a pillar way over in Kirghizstan since 1959.  And that's the last of The Beatles that I can use to pimp the blog, although perhaps Brian Epstein and George Martin might sneak in there as Beatles Number Five and Six.  Oh, and Pete Best, too.  Number Seven, then.  
     Right, bait-clicking Intro over, let us proceed to finalise today's second blog.
     What's that?  You want a picture?  Really!  You lot are like children, if there's no photo it never happened.

Paul McCartney wearing Chewbacca

"Gravity's Rainbow" By Thomas Pynchon
Now up to page 640, which means 84% done, almost seven-eighths.  This will be terrific news to those of you who wonder why such weird novels exist, and who on earth would read them*, and who amongst such a fraternity would bother to describe reading a weird book by a weird author in a weird way on a weird website.
     Anyway, back to pigs. 
     Sorry, did I lose you there?  Tyrone Slothrop, our quintessential anti-hero, is traversing post-Second Unpleasantness Europe wearing a pig costume, and has been befriended by a pig.  Technically a sow.  

Sew.  Close enough

TP goes on to mention "Barrow" and "Gilt" pigs in a little hymn to how wonderful pigs are, so obviously - obviously! - Conrad had to look these up.  They are varieties of castrated pig, which echoes later in the novel when Major Marvy gets - I suppose it would be The Unkindest Cuts Of All.
     I now have to impose a couple of sub-headings, please forgive me -
     Coincidence
     Ah yes, no day or week would be complete without these falling upon your humble scribe's shoulders.  They are broad shoulders but they can only take so much.
     So, on our office intranet the faintly risible notification came up last week "We're making fish more transparent!" that immediately had the jesters responding with quips.  Conrad - you knew this already, didn't you? - was right in there with his single word reply: "Isinglass".

Eyes in glass.  Close enough

     What the advisory meant was about packaging information.  Isinglass, for your information, is processed fish protein, which used to perform the roles that transparent plastic does nowadays - Isinglass is transparent.
     And utterly obscure.  Yet, what word do we encounter today in "Gravity's Rainbow"?  
     "Isinglass" on Page 635.
     Quimporto
     TP describes this bizarre and unlovely drink on page 615.  A combination of quinine, beef-tea, port, coca-cola and a peeled onion.  It doesn't seem to exist any place outside the novel, but what do you know!  Drunkpynchon has taken up the baton and not only created this monster, but drunk it as well.

http://drunkpynchon.com/2015/02/01/quimporto/

     I urge you to go read the hilarious description of how he managed to consume this chemical cocktail.
     Tom also gets brownie points for mentioning in the text the "1922 Committee", whom I think I have mentioned myself.  They are, or were, an extremely influential group of Tory backbenchers** of a distinctly right-wing cast, and one is rather awed that an American had heard of them at all.

Oh Dear It's Been A Year
Yes, Conrad the Idlest Wargamer In The World, has proof of just how lazy and dilettantist he is.

July 2014

     Until reading the blog notes of a year ago, I didn't realise it had been 12 months since I set up this game.
     Let me update you:

July 2015

     You may not believe it, this is after the table had been considerably tidied up.
     
You What?
A friend has just been posting on Facebook about talking to yourself.  Conrad never stops doing this, as usually he's the only person in the room who knows what on earth he's talking about***.  The advice offered was that, as long as what you say to yourself makes sense, you've got nothing to worry about.
     There's no such reassuring information about writing to yourself.  Take this, for example:

     I don't want to strain either your eyes or intellect trying to decipher this.  It apparently came about from "Avengers: Age of Ultron", where Ultron is a mad robot replicating himself.  I have sat down and worked out three different ways that this might be achieved, and then how long it would take -
     - must have been on leave dogsitting Edna and thus had lots of spare time, yeah, that's gotta be it, that way it makes sense ...

"I am Groot"

* Me!
** British politicians
*** But not always.