Man Cites Dog

No, I Didn't Mis-type
There is a space between "B" and "C" on the keyboard, you know.  What I meant to imply is an unexpected event, except more so than usual.  If "usual" really applies to the unexpected, which borders on epistemology and semiotics, which are too heavy-duty for this time on a Friday evening*.
     What I mean to say, is that Conrad was sat on the bus looking idly out of the window as we cruised - okay, okay, crawled - crawled into Manchester, and what did he espy?
     A whacking big hoarding displaying an giant advert about "The Man In The High Castle".
     WHAT! Was my unspoken thought.  I shall explain.

Proof of my delirium

     If a television executive had approached Conrad and said "Pick an award-winning novel by a modern American writer, and we'll make a television series of it", at no point in the proceedings would your humble scribe have EVER imagined TMITHC to be that novel.
     Briefly put, it's an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, set in the Sixties in a world where Germany and Japan won the Second Unpleasantness.  America is divided into three zones and there is trouble afoot in the world.  If drama is conflict, then it's certainly here.  
     PKD, the only author I've consistently read since being 14.  Conrad was disappointed back in the Eighties when "V" didn't turn out to be the Thomas Pynchon novel, so this - if 30 years late - will make up for it a bit.

Where Eagles Dare - The Goofs
Oh dear, people can be so quick to rush to judgement, can't they?  Especially on the IMDB "Goofs" page, when - but let me illustrate my point.

When the captured German Alpine Post Bus races throughout the airfield, Schaffer and Mary shoot several small jeeps which flip over. As they do, the rope that flipped them can be seen being pulled off screen.

When Major Smith shoots the car that is approaching the bus and airplane near the end of the film, it catches fire and the entire inside of the vehicle goes up in flames. It is clear that the two German soldiers inside the car are merely dummies.

     Oh, where to begin**, where to begin!  For a start, they're called "Kubelwagens" rather than jeeps, although they did perform a similar role.  There was a modern version of one in the last episode of "Z Nation".

Observe both rope and rather dead Germans

     The pedant above is quite correct about the rope, if you slow the film down to quarter-speed you can see it.  However, consider the static Germans.  What the posting pedant above doesn't include is that these people had been SHOT VERY DEAD INDEED! by Major Smith.  So at no point in their future are they going to get up and boogie across the airfield.  Nor should they have been carrying a metric tonne of napalm in the back of their car, either.

Pub Quiz
There's always one tough historical question that Steve delivers, even if he claims this is the "Easy" version.  Try it yourselves:
Q)  Who directed the 1939 film "The Four Feathers" and the 1942 film "The Jungle Book"?
     My partners and I wrinkled our brows, cracked our knuckles and scratched our scalps.
     Then, having given the impression of being infested with lice, we gave up and tried "John Ford".
     Wrong!
A) Zoltan Korda.

More building than jungle, declares pedantic hairsplitting blogger

     Of course, now you're kicking yourselves, aren't you!  One of the Korda brothers, Jewish emigrants from Hungary I believe, whose descendants are still involved in the British film industry.

"Fine Words Butter No Parsnips"
This phrase, meaning fine fancy words get one nowhere***, appears to be unknown to the modern generation as a curious Conrad has been trying it out on work colleagues.
     Good!  Why parsnips, anyway?  Conrad hates them, ever since be was bitten by one as a young boy^.  You can take all the parsnips in the world and dump them at the bottom of the Challenger Deep and I won't protest, especially if you follow them with all the pineapples in the world.
     Incidentally it may interest, if not worry you outright, to know that the sap of the parsnip is pretty toxic stuff, meaning that the stem and leaves can give you a chemical burn that lasts for up to two years.
     Parsnips!  The devil's food!

Solid proof

Wooh!  Wordy!  Quick, Art, get a picture -

It's All About Context -
Indeed it is.  If you were to see the following label on a person - 

     - you'd probably be disgusted, unless you were a cannibal, in which case you might worry about lactose intolerance and have to scrape the crust off anyway.
     On the other hand, were you to see it on a pizza, you'd probably think "What an awesome way to make one of the principal food groups even better^^!"



* Actually it might be neither, they just sounded impressive.
** - slobbers Conrad, the pedantic hairsplitting boor.
*** Much like BOOJUM! to be honest
^ Actually he bit it, but it tasted so ghastly it felt like the other way round
^^ Better tasting.  Your arteries might protest, though ...