Full Precious Metal Jacket

No! This Is  Not About Stanley Kubrick
Although I could write you a 500 word essay on the contrast between the assault on Burpelson AFB and the - is that a no?

Got a picture reference in,, at least

     Well, at least acknowledge that Stan, South Canadian though he was, had the common sense to settle in the Allotment of Eden*.  Will you give me that?  Thank you, I can hear those nods from here.
     What this Intro concerns are two things close to the fusion-powered pumping unit that substitutes for a heart in your humble scribe: books and money.  As with pens, you can never have too much of either.

A good start

     So, last night I was checking out Abebooks, the fabulous bookselling website that I haven't been on for simply ages, looking to check on a few books I was interested in.  "Night of the Triffids" came cheaply enough, as did "Wool", "The Zone Book 1" and "The Sins of the Fathers".
     I suppose a bit of clarity is needed here.  NOTT is an official sequel to John Wyndham's classic "Day of the Triffids" and I remember it as a pleasing, if not exactly ground-breaking, read.  In the same Post Apocalyptic vein is "Wool" which has nothing to do with sheep and everything to do with living in an underground silo, forever.  TSOTF is by Lawrence Blocker, and is about the alcoholic private eye Matt Skudder; you ought to have seen the very good "A Walk Amongst The Tombstones" by now, an excellent film adaptation of LW's eponymous novel.

A triffid, not Matt Skudder.  Just so we're clear

     "The Zone Book 1" was the first in a series of 10 novels by James Rouch, all set in the near future, and this is whilst the Apocalypse is still going on.  It is WW3 and NATO are slugging it out in Europe against the Warsaw Pact, both stalemated across The Zone, a contaminated, blasted, poisonous No Man's Land.  I thought these were great reads as a bloodthirsty young man; we shall see if my tastes have changed**.

Meet the Iron Cow

     "Yes, except what -"
     PATIENCE!  I was getting to that.  What I also wanted to check out was "Killing Star", a sci-fi novel that could also be considered Post Apocalyptic.  It's 20 years old and the cheapest edition would cost £13, so it can wait until a cheaper one turns up.  If it does. Just out of a spirit of mischief I checked to see the most expensive copy of same, which came in at £142.  Yeah, right. Then there was "Out of the Deeps", which is the South Canadian edition of "The Kraken Wakes" with some slight edits and a lot more background about a certain MacGuffin that I wouldn't mind having.  Well, the problem is that it's a South Canadian version and only available there, meaning I'd have to pay three times the price of the paperback in shipping.  Maybe later.
     Then there was "The Short Timers" by Gustav Hasford, which is what "Full Metal Jacket" was based on, and I would like to see whether or how the two correspond.  I shan't be doing that anytime soon - a tatty old paperback version is £22, plus shipping, that being the cheapest available.
     Hence today's title.

This one would cost £1874.32

Wow.  After an Intro that consitutes most of today's content, I'd better get cracking on something else.

Donald Duck
My incisive and critical clerihew of yesteryon described this feathered fandango as "horrid", and I stick by my judgement of the nasty little perv.  Not only was he not funny, he - well, let Art illustrate my point?  Art?  

"Look!  no pants!"

     Which is exactly the point I wanted to make.  Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, for example, do not wear clothes at all, which is quite acceptable in their continuum***.  However, please note that DD is quite happy to wear a jacket, and a hat, and even a mocking bow tie, yet he has no trousers.  

Er -

     And here we see - now I'm confused.  What about TEH CHILDREN!  

Potato, Tomato, Selenium
I could also add Oregano and Tetrodotoxin to the list above.  What do they have in common?  They are all words mispronounced by South Canadians, which irks me, I can tell you.
     The most egregious example is Selenium, abused by that film "Evolution" - Art?

That's right, look guilty

     It is pronounced with a long second 'e', thus - "seleeneeum" NOT with a short 'e', which happens FAR TOO OFTEN!


*  It's 'Allotment' not 'Pond' today as it's not raining.
**  Or if it's not bloodthirsty enough.
***  I could have put "universe" yet "continuum" doesn't get enough love.