Your Humble Scribe On A Diatribe

NO!
It is not a brand of motorbike, still less a skateboard - having seen the unholy bulk of the ungainly Conrad*, do you really think he could balance on one, let alone use it? - please check your Greek lessons, it means - well, a rant, really.
     "Oh aye," I hear you saying.  "Jog Fatty's elbow and he rants about something.  What makes today different?"
     Leaving aside your ignorance of my recently-diminished waistline, let us proceed.
     THE YOUTH OF TODAY.  That's who's squarely in my sights, Vulnavia.  At work the question came up "How far is it from the Electric Goldfish Bowl to Deansgate Railway Station?" and the consensus was about a mile, since it would take twenty minutes to walk it.

Goldfish Bowl in all it's glory

     "One thousand and sixty yards," exclaimed your humble scribe dinosaur, as the assembled youth of the office looked on in mystified bafflement - or baffled mystification, you can choose.
     "What's a yard?"  "We have one in the back" "Have the Wildlings got bagpipes yet?" "Does it disappear when you stand up?" and so on.
     BOOJUM! of course refuses to use the hideous Metric system and sticks firmly to Imperial, so do these young people not know of measurements such as rods?  chains?  perches?  poods?
     Okay that last one was Tsarist Russian, just testing.
     Ranting and tanting over, the motley may now begin!

100 Years Of War Films
This popped up on the Beeb website and Conrad, as ever with the curiosity of a small child and the same small child's fondness for Things Exploding, checked it out.  Here we see the fruits of my labours.

"Jarhead"

     Not seen it, and although it scores highly on IMDB, apparently very little happens, so I'll not bother catching up with it.  Next!

"Atonement"

     I cheated and only watched the Dunkirk bit, which was quite eventful.  The rest of the film will, sadly, remain unseen thanks to a dearth of Things Exploding.  Art?
     

"Captain Correlli's Mandolin"

     Seen it, and it was okay - History Pedant Mode came into operation watching the battle between artillery pieces and tanks, neither being of the correct date.  Loved the book, though.  Go!

"Where Eagles Dare"

     Clint's fake German uniform.  Seen it, done a critique of the IMDB "Goofs" page about it.  Found about 1/3 of supposed Goofs were wrong, 1/3 correct and 1/3 could be explained away with a bit of hand-waving.
     "Broadsword calling Danny Boy, Broadsword calling Danny Boy ..."

A bit dull by comparison

     I include this one as a typographical comma, allowing you to collect yourself.  Art?

"Apocalypse Now"

     Never was opera better combined with helicopter airborne assault.  I still think that a split-second shot shows Nicholas Cage in an uncredited role.  Art?

Renactment.  Like "Doctor Who"

     Staged, pretty obviously.  Film cameras of the time were enormous bulky objects and, if seen out in the open by the Germans, would have been immediately targeted for destruction, just in case.  You can generally tell if a film is staged or not by judging how high the camera has been positioned in order to film; anything above a crouch would have been suicidal in real life.  Art?

A cine camera of the period

     And here one is.  Camera crews being targetted is still an issue; when Ross Kemp went to Afghanistan the Taliban took care to fire on him and the camera team first, possibly suspecting them of being Hideous Western Death-ray Technology.

Going Dry For July
You may not care to know about your modest artisan's social life - more correctly anti-social** life - which is unfortunate as you're still going to get to hear of it.  Yesterday was July 1st, which is 2 months post-April, so we here at BOOJUM! are going sober until 6 p.m. Saturday 30th July.  Committed in black and white!

Do not tempt me!

    More of Conrad's innards.  Being sober means his liver gets time off.  We had Mister Liver as a guest editor last year, although he was so shockingly rude about your talented typist that there's no prospect of him coming back for a return gig.  Livers, eh?  No loyalty, no loyalty at all.

Annnnnd For Today's Coincidence
Dog Buns!  That damned Hydra is back again.  This week Conrad has been playing two of the stand-out tracks from Pink Floyd's "Meddle" repeatedly - "Echoes" being one of them.  Then he spotted this in Facebook:

I say!

     Of course the other track is "One Of These Days".  Universe, I rest my case.

Now, I am off to brew my second teapot of the day.  Loose leaf Darjeeling, don't you know***.





* That's me, Mister Third Person Man
** Breaker of bus stops, that's me
*** Look how sophisticate what I am.