It's A Chronic Palindromic

You May Call This Cheating And Unfair -
 - but, like the bogeyman, your humble scribe doesn't care.  After all, it's my blog, and most of you have short attention spans.
     "But Conrad!" I hear you plaintively call as if desaturated hydrogenated solid-at-room-temperature fat wouldn't melt in your mouth - which is good acting, keep it up - "What are you referring to in a characteristically tangential manner?"
     I give you extra points for using "tangential", which is not a kind of citrus fruit.  It means digressing, one of my minor skillsets.

A Tangerial.  Perhaps.

     Okay, back to the title.  This morning I promoted yesterday's dose of hilarity with a palindrome, which is not a kind of camel.  No.  It is a word that spells the same back to front as front to back.  You know, "Bob", "Bib", "Bub", which are pretty primary-school, and then you have "Wash my sins not only my face", except that only works in Greek, and then again "Rotor", "Tenet" and "Anna"*.  Enough stalling:

AMANAPLANACANALPANAMA

     - which, by complete coincidence, happens to invoke the name of that country previously only known for canals, hats and cigars.  Who knew!

Ferdinand de Lesseps.
I ain't explaining.  Go Google

     Now, don't go away, because I haven't finished yet.  In fact I am building up a creative head of steam that bids fair for 1000 words tonight.  Where did I encounter that palindrome?  Why in the collected works of Doctor Who Monthly, the Marvel comic that kept the faith going in the fell years before Christopher Eccleston burst upon the world once again.  You know, the story with the tiny alien Qhudite, the dead Luftwaffe pilot and the evil teenaged boy**.     

Sound The Trumpet!  Beat The Drum!  For BOOJUM!'s Film Review Has Come!
I know I'm making a fuss about this but I can't rely on you barely-animated puddings to raise more than an eyebrow.  Go on, the closest you lot would ever get to a chorus line is watching the film.

NO! Art, I said a "Chorus line", not a load of cheer - oh, never mind.

     Let us recap the rules about reviewing a film here at BOOJUM!:
     1)  Take it literally
     2)  Generalise wildly
     3)  Never research
     So!
     "Midnight Special": which has the tagline "He's not like us."  EXCUSE ME!  Here a correction from Conrad - He's not like you.  Accuracy in all things.

Close enough

     "Kill Your Friends": Certainly not!  This is for two reasons:  1) I don't have any and 2) It would be shockingly bad manners.  Besides, once you start, how do you know your friends aren't going to settle your hash?  Dangerous precedents, mate, dangerous precedents.

Grill your friends.  Easily confused

     "Hardcore Henry":  Tagline "First they made him dangerous.  Then they made him mad." Two of Conrad's favourite character traits.  I confess I've seen the short film that was used to raise funding for the feature film, and it is absolutely bonkers crazy non-stop action.  It also has a very rude title and background song, which I can only hint at here.  Think "Bad Melon Farmer."  There.  I've said too much.

Henry.  Hardcore.

Person Of Interest, Season Four
The plot thickens.  We have comic interludes in "Pretenders" with Walter, an insurance investigator, who expresses near hero-worship when taken under John Reese's protection.
     Walter:  You're like some kind of superhero!
     Reese:  No I'm not.
<Enter Det. Fusco in shades and a muscle car, and Shaw in a slinky dress and sporty model>
     Walter:  YES YOU ARE!
     Also, Walter amusingly questions what Conrad has noted, Reese's speaking voice.
     Walter: How do you do that thing with your voice?
     Reese:  What thing?
     Walter: Ohnevermind.
     As I have mentioned before, Reese speaks in a loud whisper, which he manages to make both sinister and intimidating.  One gets the impression that if he has to raise the vocal volume, people are going to suffer.  A whole lot of people.

Reese, Walter, Shaw and Fusco.
Also a humungous gun.

     More seriously, we are also getting into competition between The Machine (Artificial Intelligence with morals) and Samaritan (Artificial Intelligence) - and boy, is that name ever ironic.  At one point the chief (human) baddie, Greer, is informed that Sam is interested in a particular person.  "Why?" asks a minion.  "No idea," replied Greer.

EMERGENCY ALARM WAKE-UP CALL***!!!

     Run for the hills while you still can!  While they're still there!  Have these people not seen every cheesy Fifties sci-fi fillum about rogue computers?!?!

"Did someone call?"

The Coincidence Hydra Strikes Again
As I'm sure I've bored you with the details already, I'm re-reading Tom Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" again, taking care to make notes about the American idiom or pop culture references that are probably well-known parts of the media landscape across the Atlantic, but which rather baffle your humble scribe.  

Not just a Coincidence Hydra -
a ZOMBIE Coincidence Hydra

Take the "Gleichschaltung Model 33 Automatic Bazooka", which I strongly suspected was made up.  TP describes it as a crew-served weapon, one man aiming the launch tube itslelf, the other driving the modified golf-buggy that carried a hundred rounds of ammunition.
     I took the opportunity of lunchtime to Google for this, and - surprise!  What's this but a post from BOOJUM!, from April 2015:

Aha!  I think I've caught Tom out in a bit of fictional chicanery.  As mentioned oftentimes before, he has the knack of inserting things that sound as if they're true when in fact they're not - witness yesterday and the fake band "Meatball Flag".  Today it's the "Gleichschaltung M33 Automatic Bazooka".  Now, you can't have an "automatic" bazooka - that being a rocket-projectile firing weapon which will keep on firing as long as the firing button/trigger is held down - because it is loaded manually, one rocket at a time.
     Let's just Google this weapon, shall we?
     Yup, the only links are back to Pynchon websites like this one:

http://inherent-vice.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_12

     Some people have far too much time on their hands!
     Er - 

     So there you have it, your humble scribe is at the same point in this novel in 2016 that he was at in 2015.

Stop Press:
Of course, Thomas might have been inspired by the Vespa 150 TAP, a recoilless rifle mounted on a scooter, intended to give Italian paratroops a lightweight, portable piece of artillery.  Art?

Low mileage, easy to park and defeats most Main Battle Tank armours

There you go, well over 1,000 words.  I did warn you.


*  No!  You don't get a separate credit!
** Some would say all teenaged boys are evil, and only be exaggerating slightly.
*** Danger, Will Robinson, raised to the ninth power.