Dog Gone

Nearly
Tonight the other denizens of The Mansion arrive back home from their sojourn in the Western Mediterranean, where they have been gorging themselves silly, seeing the sights and indulging in swimming pools - the poor dastards!*
     So my lonely vigil as walker, feeder, human-shaped cushion and thrower of balls for Edna Wunderhund is nearly at an end.  This will go down well with Edna, since she has only been getting one-third of her normal attention, which is at least a tenth of what she expects to get.  No doubt she will go potty with joy upon seeing Wonder Wifey again - she waggles her bum so much it's in danger of falling off.**

Edna plus ball (which she later burst)

     And as I speak the Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake is baking in the oven; another gluteny concoction which I can get away with in the absence of WW.
     Righto! Time to fire up the brain, kick the Muse awake and create another collection of things that offend me.

Pineapples
Pineapples offend your humble scribe, horribly so.  The taste, texture and smell of the Devil's Hand-grenade all inflict instant nausea on Conrad and he doesn't enjoy the sight of them, either.  Own up and admit it, the world wouldn't be any worse off if the pineapple never existed, would it?

The Hideous Truth, Revealed

Mobile Phones
Another hideous modern invention that appears to have been dreamed up by a consortium from Hades, with the brief: "Let's invent something that allows people who want to be LEFT ALONE instead to be endlessly tormented by folk they want nothing to do with - oh, and which allows expounding idiots to inflict their entire life story on hapless bystanders."
     Did we need mobile phones to build an Empire?  NO!
     When I take over there will be a need for enormous excavation sites to be created, because ALL THE MOBILE PHONES ARE GETTING SCRAPPED.

I call this a good start

     I feel better for getting that off my chest.  What next?

Actually we'd better move on or this post will rapidly hit 1,000 words, all about what I hate.***

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
We've been doing this for a while, so you ought to know the rules of a Conrad critique: I make them up as I go along, and we generally go off the title alone, to hilarious comic effect.  Okay, let's see what cinematic dross has been inflicted on the world of late -
"Rampage":  Conrad is not sure what to make of this.  It features a giant gorilla in the posters, so is it treading in the footsteps of King Kong?  'Big meets bigger' and apparently Chicago gets trashed, which makes a pleasant change for New York and Los Angeles.  Things Exploding Genre, I suppose, or Engage Eyes and De-clutch Brain.

Ram Pages?

"Hurricane Heist":  Really, I can't see this one having much appeal to audiences of today.  If you'd brought it out eight years ago, to coincide with the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain, then you'd have a chance, but to choose 2018 at random?  One has to ask, what are the crooks going to do once they have laid their scrofulitic appendages on a Hurricane?  Blackmail film studios into paying top dollar for an authentic period warplane?  I think you'll find they can use CGI or radio-controlled models instead, matey.

"You'll believe a man can fly."
(Yes, because he's what is known as "a pilot")

"Ghost Stories": How apt!  I've just finished reading a collection of same that I borrowed from the ER Direct team's library at work.  This film looks to be a rather higher-class version of those old multiple-story films that - Amicus? - put out back in the Seventies, that usually had an unconvincing twist in the tail - "It was a Killer Eel disguised as a human being all along!" kind of thing.  Oh, going off on a tangent, "A Chinese Ghost Story" and "A Chinese Ghost Story 2" are both well worth watching, especially since Chinese ghosts behave rather differently from our homely European ones.

      One stars Martin Freeman, the other doesn't 
     
     By all accounts, GS is pretty strong fare, which uses fright rather than gore to achieve it's effects, and you ought to sleep with the lights on afterwards.
     Oh, the kicker is that it's adapted from a play, written by a comedian.


*  Hang on - do I have that right?
**  Edna.  Not WW.  Just to be clear.
***  But remember - Sharks Are Our Friends!