When Paddington Bear Kalmly Kountenanced Killing

I Apologise For The Strained Spelling
 - but using conventional lexicography would have meant finishing with a "K" whereas the preceding words had been spelled with a "C", which might be logical and scan properly to boot, yet it just isn't funny.

Truly, humour is in the eye of the beholder.  Like me here.

     Hmmm, actually that's more of a pun than I realised, as the gloppy liquid jelly inside the Mark One Human Eyeball is known as "Aqueous Humour".
     But I digress.  Let us hasten on, before some flipping great 6-4-2 steam loco barges it's way in.

Lobo, Loco - close enough.

     Paddington Bear!  Most noble ursine, and a brave banner of providence to the Little Englanders who prate and bray about unexpected or unwanted arrivals in this sceptred isle.  He first came to your humble scribe's attention 50 years ago, and is now more popular than ever before, an achievement probably only matched on television by "Doctor Who", which is a dramatic reconstruction, and "The Sky At Night", which teaches how to spot alien invaders Venus with the right declension.

CAUTION!  Peruvian immigrants may cause a fluttering of petticoats amongst the uncool .

     Or was it azimuth?  Regardless, 'Paddington' was narrated by Sir Michael Hordern, an actor of enormous gravitas, who had long considered his voice his main attribute.  So much so that he felt his appearance came a far distant second, thus he blew up the world protested the same.  
     There you have it: Patagonian pampas peripatetic Paddington, whose life story comes from a metaphysical encapsulation of 'enigma'.*

Sir M. ready for bed.

       Okay, we've established the mise en scene sufficiently as regards Paddington, let us now turn to -
     - Barry Lyndon!  Yes, the Stanley Kubrick opus that probably baffled a lot of people who'd only ever seen "2001: A Space Odyssey".  I happened to catch a short vlog by Mark Kermode - a.k.a. that chap who likes The Comsat Angels - about going to see this very film being shown on the big screen.  It's full of pistol and sword duels and eighteenth century battles and houses on fire, mayhem and carnage, cats and dogs living together, bare knuckle boxing, ferocious Prussian military discipline -
     And the whole affair is calmly narrated by (Sir) Michael Hordern, as blandly as if he were reading a recipe book.


Ryan O'Neal and Andre Morrell
(He was in "Quatermass", you know)

     The effect on a viewer who has also seen "Paddington" is incongruous, not to say a bit jarring.  One expects Mister Curry to appear on the battlefield, enquiring if that particular horse, whose rider has just been shot to death by a blast of leaden shot, is going cheap now?      And with that, our Intro is over, our title is explained and the motley, clad in a bacon-suit we borrowed from Lady Gaga, is trying to escape that pack of starving weasels.
Do You See How Thorough Some People Are?

It's the Binns!

In this case, the Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside Organ Appreciation Society.  You remember that organ recital I went to at Rochdale Town Hall last week?**
     I must also apologise for misleading you about the date Mr. J. J. Binns installed the organ, which was 1913 and most certainly not 1936.  We pride ourselves on our truthfulness here at BOOJUM!***
     Okay, pausing only to down our nitromethane milkshake, let us look at the back of the
ORTAO pamphlet.  Here they list details for the organ pedals, and also each manual (or keyboard to you) - the Great, Choir, Swell and Solo respectively, with associated stops.  This displays a Teutonic level of thoroughness that Conrad can only salute.

Truly, the King of Instruments!
(And no silly PC nonsense about Queens)

More Of Thomas Pynchon, Author
Until we get another novel from Ol' Tom I shall just have to keep banging on about his previously-published oeuvre, and here we touch on one of his novels that was eminently filmable, namely "Inherent Vice".  Art?



               Film                                Novel
     I have seen it, and must remind myself to go buy the DVD at some point, as there is doubtless a tale to be told about the making of it.  It is quite straightforward in terms of plot (both film and novel), certainly as compared to his other stuff.  Josh Brolin, who plays the role of "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, a hard-as-nails detective with a weakness for frozen chocolate-coated bananas (only in South Canada!), hinted that Ol' Tom had a small cameo in the film itself, which - obviously! - meant every Pynchon fan out there simply had to watch it in slow-motion reduced by a factor of 4, just to see if it's true.
     Paul Thomas Anderson, the director and screenwriter, had earlier wanted to film "Mason and Dixon".  No.  Just no!  You'd need subtitles, simply so that people could understand what a couple of 18th century land surveyors were saying.  It's also very, very long.
     Perhaps a television series?

I found this when Googling "Mason and Dixon".
Quite what "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension" have to do with Ol' Tom is a question indeed!

     Apologies for the big gap there, it's because I'm posting at work and Blogger picks up a ton of background formatting that I can't excise.
The Ultimate Handgun?
This one needs a bit of development, so bear with me.  If you recall, one of your humble scribe's very most favouritest sci-fi novels is the collected "Cities in Flight", by James Blish.  The novels concern cities that have gone "Okie" and migrated from Earth in pursuit of work and trade amongst the galaxy, propelled and protected by the "Spindizzy", or "Dillon-Wagner Graviton Polarity Generator".  Art?

Art!  You oaf!

     Try again, Art, before I fully charge up this industrial elephant-tazer -

Better

     The spindizzy is capable of lifting anything, and the bigger it is, the more efficiently it is lifted. 
     Enter the "spindilly".  This is encountered in "A Clash of Cymbals" and is, get this, a hand-held spindizzy.  I've never seen any pictures of it but the text gives the impression it's quite bulky, and the wielder of same keeps it on at a very low level, thus making it easy to carry.  Since a single spindilly can apparently destroy a whole city block in less than a second when fired, leaving it permanenty on is bound to end in tears one day ...

Along these lines.
(For the weapon)

"My bad - I sneezed!"

* Going for the Big Words Bonus, indisputably and incorrigibly.*




**  Rest assured you will hear a LOT more about it.  So you will remember, like it or not.
***  This is a lie!  <the awful truth courtesy Mister Hand>