Machine Head

This Oak Springs From An Acorn
 - and other strained metaphors.  Also, you will have to make do with a single post, for today (it being Saturday) I am working and shall not be back at The Mansion until early evening.  No!  I am not going to spend all evening frantically cranking out words of wonder, I need to eat and sleep at times.
     "What is this philosophical seed that you mention?" I hear you quibble.  "Also, is it edible upon roasting?"
    Stay your hunger pangs!  A line from that sci-fi classic "The Centauri Device" just so happened to pop into my head today.  How does it go?  "The Environmental Prison, that nodal, seeping myth of the hinterlands, administered by Fungus Men with cattle prods for arms and ECT machines for heads."

I think this is a Chris Foss artwork

     Any excuse to trot out TCD!  Anyway, you will have to imagine the ghastly Fungus Men, as they seem to be entirely absent from the internet.

No, Art.  Just no.

     Naturally, Conrad having a mind like a flea on a griddle, this naturally led me to wonder what other creatures with machines for heads exist out there.  Not that many that have only a machine for a head, it has to be said.  There is the lead character from Algis Budrys' "Who?" and here Art will provide an accurate illustration.  Art?  <Conrad makes like a Fungus Man and cattle-prods the coal-eating sloven into life>

I might be reaching a bit here.  Work with me.

     Ah!  From one sublime novel to another, and now to evoke the spirit of bathos and bring forth the execrable nonsense that is - "Robot Monster".  Art?

This time it's the film makers who are reaching.

     You can't deny that's a machine head.  On a gorilla body.  Technically that makes it a cyborg, although such a definition is probably wasted on schlock like this.  Maybe you had to be there in 1953 to really appreciate it?
     What's that?  You expected this post to deal with an album by the seminal heavy metal band Deep Purple, also entitled - these coincidences are really stacking up of late - "Machine Head"?  Pshaw!  I doubt any such thing ever existed in the first place.  After all, if one Googles for "machine head" you only get images of things like a Triple Head Welding Machine, and I have proof.  Art?

Proof!

     Okay, now it's time to send the motley down the stairs backwards on it's belly!*

Humble Homeworking Hack
Yes, I have been diligently watching "The Deadly Mantis" in order to report back to you on this entry into the Bugger Genre.  No!  We are not swearing - I refer to that trope of films that dealt with creepy-crawlies rendered gigantic by radiation/pollution/watching too much daytime television.
     Hmmmm.  A lot of scenes are padded out with stock footage edited in, rather indiscriminately.  We shall come back to this - hang on, is Donald Fagen still alive?  I feel compelled to ask - Phew!  yes he is, it was just too much carrot juice and not jaundice - later on.  Probably in another post.
     Okay, you know how insects and animals, when they are being sprayed with Flaming Napalm Death, will instinctively move to attack the source of said FND?

     No?  You don't?  Me neither.  Yet this is what the Giant Mantis does.  Frankly, it can't get enough of Flaming Napalm Death - a consequence, one feels, of being frozen in the Arctic ice for millions of years - and that still above confirms it.  Nobody, by the way, comes up with an explanation of how a prehistoric insect from the tropics managed to get frozen in the far North.  Problematic GPS, I bet.
     I think that's quite enough bugs for the moment.  Let us move on.

From 'City of the Dead' To 'City of the Red'
As you may be aware, Conrad is gainfully employed in the sprawling urban metropolis of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell ("Manchester" to the less poetic amongst you), which cityscape of late has seemed like something akin to a horror film set - all rolling, roiling mists and fog, from whence may emerge zombies/werewolves/ballfoot fans**, to wreak bloody havoc.  Or at least lengthen the queues at tram stops.
     But stay!  For there is hope for the future.  Art?

A beautiful sunset.  No!  A beautiful sunset NOT a laser battle.

     I am minded of that paragraph in "Lord Of The Rings", where Sam and Frodo, adrift in Ithilien, come across a despoiled statue whereupon the orcs and imps of Sauron have been busy grafitti-ing.  A spray of flowers bloomed across the toppled stone head, inspiring Frodo to defy the Dark Lord's evil - 
   - ooops!  I came across all prosy and virtuous - must be ill.  Anyway - Manchester, in another light, as you might say.

Finally - 
Another machine head!



*  I did this as a youth and look how I turned out.
**  Delete where applicable