My Favourite Martian

No!  Not That "My Favourite Martian"
 - the television show.  I am referring, as I'm sure you've guesssed by now, to "The Martian" and Mark Watney, who is actually a barrel of fun*.  
     "But Conrad," I can hear you carping, perhaps also piking and certainly floundering, "You've already banged on about this.  A lot!"
     Whose blog is it?
     Precisely.  If I wish to rant and tant and <thinks> pant a bit more about my cinema visit, I shall.  I made notes and everything.  First! The trailers.
     "Hateful Eight": I'm not going to bother with the tricky font.  Eight travellers stranded in a snow-bound inn, featuring Kurt Russell with surely an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Feature for his beard, and Sam Jackson.  Tarantino's latest, and it looks interesting, especially as he works in the line "Someone here isn't who they claim to be", which just HAS to be inspired by "The Thing."

See what I mean about that title?

     "Bridge of Spies": Really, how overblown and turgid can a spy exchange be? There's two spies, right, on a bridge, right, and they get exchanged.  Five minutes tops.  This pompous bloatbag seems to protract it to three hours.  Straining for an Oscar nom.

Bridge.  Close enough

     "Spectre": Ah yes, I was expecting this.  No, really I was! as it's on release pretty soon.   Ticks all the boxes.  In fact it leaves a tick where there isn't a box.

Personally, I wouldn't call him a cocktail-swilling gambling Lothario.
You may.  If you like to live dangerously

     "The Hunger Games - Whatever This Bit Is Called": Hunger?  They all look pretty well-fed to me.  Another Colossal Spectacular Bore, and very noisy to boot.  Note to studio: plot and dialogue cannot be substituted with mere decibels.

Hungary Games.  Close enough

     "Star Wars":  Hmmm.  Judgement reserved.

     And there was far too much of Sony pimping themselves at the expense of films.  Before these trailers I really didn't have any considered opinion about Sony, but now I hate them. With a passion.  To coin a phrase, "Sony Bloody Sony".

Right, Intro over, let's peel off the skin and have at the banana!

You Wouldn't Believe It - 
I can run an item every day for the next fortnight based on the chemical ingredients in this tiny bottle -

Balmy

     I haven't heard of most of these no doubt hideous chemical concoctions.  For instance, first up after "Aqua" is "Cyclomethicone".
     What?  "Meth"?  "Cone"? "Cyclo"?  It sounds like a circus qualification for those who've undergone and endured the unicycle slalom whilst blindfold.
     Of course real life is a lot duller.  Cyclomethicones are liquid silicones that have a cleansing quality but which also evapourate, thanks to being very volatile.  So they get used in - balms.  Not blowing things up <sad face>


Holy Potato!  There's No Metro!
On the bus, I mean.  Not that the entire French underground system has mysteriously vanished, because that would probably make headline news, in between Beyonce And Her Chicken and the Power Of Iceland**.

It's okay, he has a licence for it

     So, I shall refer back to yesterday's Metro, which did indeed feature the personage known as Beyonce, clutching a chicken.  It's a well-known fact that holding a chicken makes you look better.  Isn't it?  It isn't?  Well, now I know what Bey - no, that's gone, too.
     Shortage of Metro matters little to me as I have at least two books, plus two notebooks and a diary to scribble in, not to mention my i-pod and - drum roll and trumpets segueing into sinister oboe solo - my imagination.

Conrad, thinking dark thoughts.
Business as usual, then.

A Bit Of Padding
Not much, just to say that I've witnessed the errant and absent light bulb on the fifth floor of the Electric Goldfish Bowl being replaced overnight:

The light of other days

"Operation Sealion" By Leo McKinstry
More revelations about life in Britain during the summer of 1940.  One particularly interesting item that has little if nothing to do with the Second Unpleasantness is the name of a very, very specialised trades union: the "Amalgamated Society of Journeymen Felt Hatters".  Now, given that this is Britain, I don't doubt that there will be a descendant of this organisation still around today, probably with only a few dozen members, all concentrated in London and making bespoke hats for the landed gentry and such members of foreign haute couture as can 1) afford them and 2) get onto the order books.  Felt hatter being such snobs.
     Also of interest is a pipe.  A Canadian one, mine all mine.  

"No, this is mine and you can't have it."

     Too much punnishment?  What I refer to was also called the "McNaughton Tube", consisting of a long series of underground pipes laid down up to 8 feet beneath the surface of the earth.  They were then filled with explosives, and in time of trouble detonated.  This instantly created a huge anti-tank ditch that no tank of the time could cross, and because it was underground, there were no clues as to it's existence.  It was put into place beneath runways in England, so that if the Bally Hun came attempting to land troop-carrying aircraft on them, the pipes would pop and poop the paratroop drop.

"BOOM!"
(Canadian for "BANG!")

     Interestingly enough - if you aren't interested in things that go "BANG!" you may skip this bit - in that seminal Eighties work "Not Over By Christmas", about prospective battle between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in what would be the Third Unpleasantness, the author suggests such explosive-laden pipes be dug into the West German border, as a form of instant anti-tank ditch.  No mention of Candadians or Pipes, though.

A Pome For Lisa
Since this post is already at 900 words, I don't really need to pad it out with more verbiage.  But I'm going to anyway, because I can.  I put this together on the bus into work yesterday, read it and weep:

 We gaze upon Lisa now turned fifty,

Embarassed by Dom’s decorations nifty.

You can’t hide your age by being shifty

Hopefully Lisa’s not feeling too miffed-y.

We know that she likes to travel,

Escaping a team that makes her frazzle,

And wish she had a ten-ton gavel

For Tom and Steve, ever on the razzle.

She shortly flies away to Portugal

For a Team-free holiday interval

This time of year the weather’s abysmal

But she thus avoids the daily horror Huddle.

Another aim, before she kicks the bucket,

Is to see Thailand, and the resort of Phuket.

The only reason she might want to duck it,

Is that Stephen’s going too, making her say -

*Obscure British beer-related joke.

** Exploding volcanoes and banks