I bet you wish I'd stayed with the Star-Trek-clickbait-Titles, don't you? Now, of course, I can switch horses in mid-stream and use Doctor Who instead of James Tiberius Kirk*.
Okay, unless you've been living in a Mars-simulator in the middle of the North Dakotan badlands for the past eleven years, you'll realise that Peter Capaldi is the actor currently playing Doctor Who.
Like this |
So, our title refers to Peter, as The Doctor, giving someone a severe seeing-to.
A dialect. Close enough. |
Following right on from dialect, we come back to Jo's dark murder novel and "Nynorsk", in which Oystein (drunken taxi driver) makes quite an issue of.
"What are you talking about, Conrad?" I can hear you say. "Norwegian is Norwegian."
Ah, but there you are wrong! I didn't quite realise the current conflict within modern Norway about the languages used there**. You have "Bokmal", which is - I had to look this up - a Norwegianised version of Danish. Then you have "Nynorsk", which is a purer form of Norwegian that rejects the Danish roots, not to mention "Hogmal", nothing to do with pigs but everything to do with an artificially refined version of Norwegian, and "Sansmal", which was going to be a merged version of all of the above.
Norwegian. 0.04% of all Minnesotans speak Norwegian |
DANGEROUS Chemicals!
Conrad, as you already know, possesses the maniacal glee of a small child when he comes across exotic chemicals that are really, really, really dangerous. I have described The Chemical From Hell that is Chlorine Triflouride, which is pretty much the benchmark for Awfulness in the chemical kingdom. Ethylene Oxide came a close second, but tonight we have - Dimethyl Cadmium!
I Googled "Dimethyl Cadmium" and this came up. |
Last thing, apparently it reeks to high heaven. Getting poisoned by it means you have No Sense Of Smell, which is a bit of a caution to your humble scribe.
Chemical Bothers. Close enough. |
Whilst journeying into Manchester on the bus, what did Conrad espy but a whacking big dump truck bearing the logo "Hydroblast" upon it. It had another title, which was new to your humble scribe - "Hydrodemolition".
Like this |
Which Leads To Small Coincidence Of The Day
Why yes it's so, Janeane Garofalo. Please bear in mind that Conrad had never seen or encountered "Hydroblast" before Friday morning, and that they were present as a vehicle portraying a logo to do with water.
A good half an hour later your favourite blogger in the OL2 5UT postcode was plodding unenthusiastically down Miller Street, listening to "Wonders of the Deep" by The Chemical Brothers, when what passes him on the right hand lane but -
Greater Manchester Fire And Rescue's Water Incident Unit.
Which I'd also been completely ignorant about until that very morning.
If only Philip K. Dick hadn't been sucked into an alternative universe by the trans-dimensional time police, I could ask him what he thought ...
GMFARS Water Unit. There had been cutbacks ... |
* Which translates as "Heel River Church", if you want to know
** It's okay, it's Norway, "conflict" means "a long dialogue between linguistics professors at the University of Oslo"
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