Brillig - And Back

What Do You Mean "Were We Gone?"
Yes, BOOJUM! has been off-line since Wednesday evening.  No, not due to the SAS Pagoda Five CREW team assaulting the Mansion and escorting staff out at gunpoint (although I bet some of you would be rubbing your hands and laughing at this*).
     No!  Not due to massive technical problems like the Link getting knocked ajar and the internet connection thus being lost.
     We - the collective household minus cat - were on holiday.  Off we went to the North Yorkshire coast, near Whitby, and Robin Hood's Bay in particular, for a long weekend.  You will hear more of this later, perhaps more than you feel comfortable with.  Well TOUGH! I've made the notes, you get the benefits.

Raw scrivel in it's undiluted form.  Barely legible by humans.

     Here is the new notepad itself, in fact, the test-driving of which is always a fraught experience.  Will it blot?  Does it bleed?  Will the spine crack?  Is the paper too transparent?  And, frankly, this one is rather too large to be very convenient.  But one must make do.

THE JOURNEY THERE (TRAVELLING HOPEFULLY)
Edna, bless her grumpy-little-old-man-face, does not enjoy travelling in the car.  She whimpers a bit to begin with, then settles down until the time comes to get out, whereupon she makes a peculiar noise like a seagull.

The scamp, out of car

     This is the half-way point, where we debouched to stretch legs and settle business with nature.  It would have been an utterly unremarkable stop had all the IT in Burgerking not abruptly died immediately I'd placed my order.  Life and IT, eh?
     Travelling further into Yorkshire, we see this unroll before us:

The Road.  Not as bleak as the novel or film

     But still pretty despondent, under dull grey skies.  Every river we passed over had burst it's banks in the recent past, leaving floodwaters the colour of curdled Yorkshire tea behind.  If this happens again expect local demand for gills and webbed feet in infant DNA to peak.
     The high point, in literal fact, were the North Yorkshire Moors, as seen below:

      This is the traditional colour schema, I believe - Grey-Green-Grey.  Would we be spending our holiday next to the sea, or in it?

Fantastic Four: The Critical Vitriol Continues
O dearie me.  This film, according to those in the know and closely associated with it, has lost possibly as much as $80 million.  What did The Metro say of it?  "Mixed reviews".  No, sir, you are wrong.  WRONG! (Oooh I love this, two birds with one stone).  Calling reviews "mixed" is akin to saying the Gobi Desert is wetter than the Western Atlantic.  The critical reception was like that of a rotting Gorgonzola at a perfumiers convention - all bad.  

"The Saga of Rotting Cheese" - scores 4.5 at IMDB

     I see the rating has recovered over at IMDB, to 4.3 from the low of 3.9, and since this is a mature figure, it will probably remain at that level.  The suspicion that shills from Fox registered at IMDB and snuck in high ratings to boost the overall total is probably mere paranoid speculation; but it can't be entirely dismissed!
     That rating of 4.3 is the kind you'd expect from an Asylum mockbuster, not one that cost $200 million to create and promote.  Director Josh Trank had done well with "Chronicle", a low-budget sleeper, which is perhaps not really a sound career with depth and experience that befits him for a blockbuster like this.
     The sequel?  Cancelled, too.  Sorry if you were one of those who posted 7.7 as a rating.

Conrad looking sorry for people.
Sorry, this is as expressive as he gets.

     In addition, Conrad picked up a copy of the DVD whilst at the supermarket.  There were NO quotes from ANY media on the cover, which is damning evidence indeed, since these people will publish a favourable quote from the bi-monthly one-man "Musketoon Intelligencer"** if they have to.
     Also saw the brief television advert, which is very brief, so brief, in fact, it's as if embarrassed to be promoting such a film.  And again - NO media quotes.

"I'm - I'm sorry.  It's - it's just - look, they offered us shedloads of money to promote it, okay?"

Doctor Who And Stun Lasers
Just one of those things that pop up in your gifted author's head.  Maurice Colbourne's Dalek-serving character is peeved by the waste of life when other Dalek-servants disguised as policemen gun down a lot of fleeing slaves.  Not out of any moral compass, gentle reader, no; he's just disgruntled at having to go out and enslave more peasants.  So he issues a command that in future "Stun Lasers" will be issued.  

Maurice's Man-Management Style

     I fear that someone here is confusing the humble laser with PKD's*** "Hopps Tube", a device so versatile it can make you tea in bed, or destroy a continent.  Concentrated energy, you see, is more likely to render it's victim unto ashes and vapours than it is to stun them.  Physics, don't you know.  Harsh mistress.
     Conrad supposes that you could take your 2 metre long, 25 kilo laser and bash your fleeing slave over the head with it.  That would stun them.  

Stun them?  It would reduce them to a pile of broken bloodied bones!

     This issue also came up, by coincidence, whilst re-watching that obscure cult favourite, "Star Wars", where Princess Leia gets hit by a blue circular stun bolt and collapses.  This is a good thing for both her and the stormtrooper who shot her; Darth Vader can be a bit prickly if you kill folks he wants to have a kindly little chat with - viz. "The Empire Strikes Back" when he want the Millenium Falcon's crew done with stun.

" I am NOT impressed!" a sinister voice intoned ...

 - and there the word limit kicks in.  Actually we're well over the limit and closer to 1,000 words, as I'm working from notes that I ceaselessly produced on the holiday.  Don't worry, there's a LOT more to come.  Which is both threat and promise.



*  Don't worry I know who they are and they'll get theirs.  O Yes.
** I made this up.  If there really is a "Musketoon Intelligencer", I apologise.
*** Philip K Dick.  Whom some are not entirely convinced is really, definitively dead.