Who Believes In "House Of Leaves"?

Well, I Do, For One
It has already begun to generate causality-affecting tremors in the time-space continuum*, because which Thomas Pynchon novel was I gloating over acquiring earlier this week?
     

     And what crops up on page 50 or so?  Why, a character who hails from -
     Vineland.
     Also, remember Paul from the Great British Bake Off?  An ex-Coldstream Guards chap.
     What's this security review document that I'm dealing with this afternoon?  From an applicant who was in - the Coldstream Guards.
     What are the chanc -WHAT'S THAT NOISE!

"House Of Leaves" By Mark Danielewski
Don't panic, I'm already up to Page 100, and am minded of two other written works.  The first is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, entitled "The Rats In The Walls", where the narrator moves into an old house and discovers subterranean tunnels leading to all sorts of unpleasantness.  And the second is "The Andromedra Strain", by Michael Crichton**. At the end of the novel he includes a bibliography of likely-sounding research papers, journals, articles and books.
     Which are all fake.  Made up from whole cloth to lend the novel an air of verisimilitude***.
     That, however, is very, very small beer compared to the sheer number of annotations and references put into HoL.  You know what's coming next, don't you?
     Yes, Conrad the hair-splitting pedant is going to have to look up some of these references.

Avoid like the plague!

     Now, if I had written HoL, I'd have had robotic explorers in there immediately, not bothering with fragile humans at all, very much after the nature of Evil in "Time Bandits" when he states he'd have had "Lasers, seven-thirty, Day One."

The Great British Bake Off
This has rather taken off now, hasn't it?  It seems so quintessentially British - they ought to have a team playing cricket outside whilst the band of the Grenadier Guards march up and down playing "The Liberty Bell" (which is American I grant you but is famously the Monty Python theme tune) and have a blue police box over there.
     Anyway, let me list the participants, because if I took time to write it down, you are damn well going to read it: Alvin; Mat; Ian; Marie; Sandy; Paul; Ugne; Dorret; Flora; Nadiya; Tamal.  Where's Stu?  Back at home.  He got kicked out last week.
     The Signature Bake: this had to be 24 Biscotti, all identical in shape, with 2 hours to do them.  Biscotti are twice-baked biscuits.
     The Technical Bake: the task here was to bake 8 "Arlettes" - guessing at the spelling here - which nobody had ever heard of.  They weren't easy to do and of course as the Technical you get the very barest of instructions.  So Mr Hollywood's criticism rang a bit hollow - if you want them done well, don't expect it done as a Technical bake!

Arrrrr, Jim lad!  Arlettes.

     The Showstopper Bake: 36 identical biscuits, all in a baked box container.  Some of these designs were very elaborate and we're only in the second week!  Also, that clumsy cow Sue Perkins managed to destroy part of Nadiya's biscuit box, which led Wonder Wifey to predict that the judges wouldn't dare send her home - the damage had been done by a presenter, not the baker.  And she was right!




SPOILERS AHEAD!












NO, REALLY, SPOILERS!










Okay, star baker was Ian, who triumphed with his home-grown rosemary, and The Loser Going Home was Marie.  Surprisingly Wonder Wifey identified her before mid-way because of the editing featuring her, which may be a coincidence.  If WW can pull it off next week Conrad will be very impressed!

VINDICATED!
Conrad confesses to not really being up on the more intricate technical details of Twitter, but he can tell a Notification from a Nuclear Warhead.  So what was this curious notification about "The Humor Daily"?  Although with a mis-spelling like that it has to be South Canadian in origin.
     Allow me to illuminate: 

Front and Centre

     This dates from Monday 10th August and hasn't resulted in any surge in traffic figures, which would have been nice, but what the heck - somebody not native to these shores has recognised BOOJUM! is a funny blog.
     As I said, VINDICATED!

Oh Boy At Last
Finally my copy of "On Thermonuclear War" arrived in the post today, o happy day!

     It is a sizeable tome, 668 pages long - one suspects the editor padded just a tad to avoid coming in at 666 pages - and not exactly light reading.  It is credited with managing to have both sides of the Iron Curtain look at their nuclear war-fighting plans with a certain cool detachment, thus ensuring that the Cold War remained cold, rather than hot, as the "hot" in this case would equate with "thermo-", most probably coupled with " - nuclear".  War prevention rather than promotion.

And the word limit comes in and kicks me on the shins.  I've got loads of leftover that may not get posted tomorrow, as I am out for a swift half after work.  Young Dan, you see, is leaving.  Which also means I have to create a poem for him.
     Damn.  A writer's work is never done!

* Pseud-blather for "coincidences" - translation courtesy Mister Hand
** Yes, that Michael Crichton
*** Misha and Grisha, you'd better be taking notes, this is all part of increasing your English vocabulary.