Rocket To Rush Yer

Ha!  Geddit?
I refer, of course, to that rather confrontational platter by The Ramones, "Rocket to Russia!, which you might also interpret in a rather more friendly yet patronising way, in that Boy!  Are we going to deliver rock and roll to the sullen Soviet Slavic masses (for this was in 1977 when the Sinisters were still a going concern).

Just what it says on the tin

     I saw them live, you know, at the Apollo in Manchester.  No!  The Ramones, not the Sinisters.  They were loud.
     Unusually, this Intro does have a connection with what comes later, which is unusual.  Two connections, in fact.  We shall get to this shortly.  In the meantime, let's wire the motley up to the mains and stick a light-bulb in it's mouth!*

Just A Minute, Man
I'm transcribing notes I made on the bus, where a train of thought was triggered as I put Tomorrow's Papier Mache** back in my bag.  I would explain to anyone who caught me with it that "I only get it for the crossword, honest".  Which is normally true, except that it is the only media source I've read that included details of those fearful pikers the Norks, and their Ding-Dong missiles' range and Circular Error Probable, neither of which were anything to write home about, especially the CEP.  7 kilometres is a huge margin of error.

Missed!

     Contrarily, I recently came across a Youtube video of a Minuteman III warhead test, back in the day.  I may be able to find the clip when I get home.  At any rate, these warheads impacted on the Pacific atoll of Kwajalein, specifically the island of Illegini, directly on target with an error of about 30 yards, after a trip of nearly 5,000 miles.  In other words, their CEP is 1/200th of the Nork ones.  The video also shows the frightening impact that an inert warhead can inflict due to kinetic energy alone.  Also, don't forget that this clip is from 1983, over 30 years ago, and the technology has only gotten better.  Current Minuteman III CEP is going to be a closely guarded secret, but it might be down to a matter of centimetres ...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a28873/nuclear-warheads-minuteman-iii-test-fire/

     NO clip but a link to the article.
     There you go, more missiles than rocket, but a direct connection with today's title.

Smiling Sharklike - Sinisterly
Excuse me for stretching a metaphor.  Even if I'm promoting them for all I'm worth, our finny friend's rictus-with-fangs cannot be mis-identified as "friendly" or "inviting".  Art?

Ho ho ho.

     You see what I'm getting at here?  Anyway, let us cast our minds back to the Seventies, when RTR came out, and peer over the Berlin Wall with a pair of binoculars.  Ah, yes, the grey and humourless wastelands of the Sinister Union, where all the men were built like bulldozers and all the women were exotic spies, and both would die happy if only they could tear out a capitalist throat with their bare teeth -
     - except what's this?  A collection of short stories entitled "Gusliar Wonders" by Kir Bulychev, which your humble scribe picked up at the library one day back in the early Eighties.  It's a collection of pretty amusing science-fiction short stories, half of them set in the fictional Ruffian town of Gusliar, which is peculiarly prone to things like alien invasion, or crashed flying saucers. 

     Go on, admit it, you're curious, aren't you?
     Okay, a second connection with today's title.  There's something seriously amiss here ...

Irresistible Force Meets Immovable Object
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Superman and the Incredible Hulk deliberately threw themselves at each other, with intent to commit harm?***  I rather imagine it would breach the space-time continuum and probably destroy the universe.
     Which does kind of relate to the following picture.  Art?

     This is the comic "Invincible", which I have been collecting for lo!  These many years now.  Travelling Man stopped stocking it after Issue 22, because it didn't sell very well - except they had a copy each of Issue 23 & 24 when I went in last week, SO I BOUGHT THEM!  Only to find that  Issue 25 will be the last in the series and IT'S NOT OUT UNTIL NEXT YEAR!!
     Bum.
     In fact this is not a bad thing - yes, really.  Always go out on a high, if you can, leave them wanting more, retain the quality, instead of dragging stuff out so you get stories of Invincible in his jet-propelled wheelchair -
     What I liked about "Invincible" was the super-hero soap opera aspect of it, and that it started off very light and frothy, which is surprising, given that it's creator also invented "The Walking Dead" which is buzzkill in comic form.
     If you come around to The Mansion and ask nicely, you can borrow my collection, as long as there's no greasy fingerprints on it when I get them back.^




*  Stan Laurel made this work, so I wonder, can we do so as well?
**  A.K.A. "The Metro"
***  Ah.  Just me, then.
^  Or I predict there will be a sudden death in the near future.