Although That's Not Always The Case
For what it's worth, your humble scribe cordially detests opera. I can not stand that ghastly screeching that calls itself "leider", either, and most chamber music can go get stuffed, with the exception of anything including a harpsichord - Conrad has a lot of time for the harpsichord. Symphonies are where it's at, baby.| Tympani at a symphony* |
Where was I?
Oh yes. Space opera. That's what I meant by being without music, since the genre really took off in the pulp magazines of the Thirties, before falling out of favour a couple of decades later. By then it had made the transition to the silver screen in the shape of entries like "Flash Gordon". Art?
| Ambitious chap! |
So, not always without music. The big names in the genre were E.E."Doc" Smith, Edmund Hamilton and John W. Campbell, who routinely blew up entire planets, if not solar systems, and I'm betting a few galaxies are in there, too.
The genre got a big shot in the arm with the arrival of "Star Wars" in 1977, a film that needs no introduction. Except because I'm perverse, I shall introduce it. Art?
 |
| Cocky in the cockpit |
The elements are all there: a vast, tyrannical galaxy-spanning Empire, a plucky hero, a wiseass, giant space battles and planets getting a right shoeing.
They say that copying is the sincerest form of flattery; the enormous success of SW ensured a whole lot of cheapass knock-offs would infest the ether, and - they did. I have just started watching one such cheesy entry "Starcrash" - you have to get the word "Star" in the title - which was made for pennies in Italy, by a director and special effects crew who appear to have been under the influence of LSD. And I'm only 10 minutes in.
Right, I think that's enough on one topic for the afternoon, time to go get some of that food stuff and eat it in front of Edna, taunting her with what she cannot have!
A Worrying Coincidence
Yesterday I mentioned that I'd been reading a zombie comic entitled "Dead Eyes Open", although it carefully calls them "returners", rather than using the z-word. No explanation for why the dead are reanimating is ever given, they just are. It seems that about one in six dead people return, frequently when in the morgue, which must be a bit of an upsetting experience. Art? |
| Take note! |
"Sub Rosa"
Conrad has come across this phrase a few times and never really quite understood what it meant. Literally translated from Latin, it means "Under the rose" and refers to something that is, or is to be kept, secret. Art? |
| A rose. Just so we're clear |
The rose, I was informed by Brewer's, has long been associated with secrecy, going all the way back to Greek mythology, when Cupid bribed Hopocrates (the god of silence and a new one to me as well) with - a rose. Cheap date. It was also carved into confessionals, and into the ceiling of dining halls, to remind folks that what might be said in drink at the table was not to be repeated outside.
All entirely new to me. Almost as if it had been kept - Nah. Not possible.
Finally -
As George Orwell observed in "Down And Out In Paris And London", a human being in the throes of hunger is little more than a stomach with a consciousness attached to it.
I say this because your humble scribe, even at his most sated, is still little more than a stomach with a consciousness attached to it. As proof I shall use this pitchfork on Art and encourage him -
I can confirm the stuffed vine leaves are jolly nice, and there's lots of them, which always goes down well with me. Later!
* Clever, eh?
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