Incredibles Me

Read That Carefully
For no, I am not lauding myself to the heavens as a paragon of <thinks> pulchritude and perceptive prescience.  Rather, I am referring to that animated phenomenon "The Incredibles", and the screen photographs I took of it ages ago, in pursuit of my whimsical wondering about that film (and it's successor), namely: what year is the film set in?

In case you forgot

     In fact, now that I come to think of it, I had a set of notes on A4 paper that went with said photographs, for I am nothing if not thorough.*  Where did they go?

Ah.  Yes.

     On second thoughts, this is going to take quite a bit of cross-checking and lots of additional photographs, as there are time-stamps there without any exemplary photos.  Which means playing the film again and pausing it and taking photos and - quite time-consuming and thus one for later on this evening, I feel.  In fact Your Humble Scribe gets the idea it will be so long an article that it will need to be broken up into bits, or risk boring the audience.  That's you, just in case you were unclear.
     However!  I have just discovered the title of an old "Thunderbirds" strip from the late Sixties, and shall regale you with that instead.  It'll do as a stopgap, hmmm?
     The strip in question is titled "The Antarctic Menace", with sublime artwork by that comics genius Frank Bellamy.  Art?

Things exploding!

     You can't make them out properly, but that's Thunderbird One being attacked by a wave of killer robot guillemots.  I remember the sinister appearance of a flock of killer robot penguins earlier in the strip, which attempted to sabotage a huge fuel convoy en route from the Antarctic to Australia - sorry, haven't found any pictures of that. 

Will zombie penguins do instead?

    I do remember a rather young Conrad being scared witless by the killer robot polar bear - Art?

Conrad not entirely sure why it needs to be able to roar ...

     The action took place on a Bereznik ship disguised as an iceberg, which makes sense if you're looking to carry out sabotage and subversion in the Antarctic.  "Bereznik" was a thinly-disguised Sinister Union, which had somehow either survived or revived in the mid 21st Century, which is again entirely rational and reasonable since this is, indeed, Tsar Putin's fondest imagining.  That's neither Politics nor Current affairs since it's over forty years into the future, so there.
     Hello, motley!  Have a slice of fruit cake and a steaming hot cup of Darjeeling!**

The Ballfoot Game And Stress
It was always a wonder to Conrad, at all the institutions he's ever worked at, that the ballfoot fans employed there would torment themselves for a couple of hours in the afternoon whenever their teams played.  Not only that, there was all the pre-match tension to enjoy/experience/suffer excuciatingly (delete where applicable), too.

Tranquiliser of choice

     I bring this up because the last games of the Prime Ear League (sp?) are being played this afternoon - I think, it could be the evening or at midnight for all I care - and two of the teams concerned are Manchester In The City (obviously fans of The Jam)

Paul Weller and mates live in Manchester

 and Liverankidneypool.  

Close enough

     Two acquaintances of mine will doubtless be chewing their nails to the quick over this, as Richard supports the latter team, and Tom the former.
     My suggestion is that they determine the Kicking-Off Time (after the colloquialism "it all kicked off" meaning a gigantic rucus ensued), wait one hundred and twenty minutes for the matches to finish, and then check the Beeb's website, which will inform them of the end result.
     Really, it's so staggeringly simple I wonder nobody has ever thought of it before!

Ha!

     Whomsoever wins, there are bound to be hundreds, if not thousands,*** of bitter, hating, acerbic comments on the Beeb's Have Your Say pages, which Conrad looks forward to with disgusting glee!

"Trampolinist"
Yes, another blather about the Cryptic Crossword in the M.E.N.  The clue was "Spring jumper on the bed (12)", and I got 5 letters of it without coming close to a solution.  Conrad is unsure if a "bed" is any part of a trampoline, but - no, no, we will let it go.
     As one thing inevitably leads to another, I wondered where the word "trampoline" itself came from.

Said article

     Okay, it derives from Spanish via Italian and then all the way back to some Germanic root, being "trampoli", meaning "Stilts".  There appears to be some metaphor at work here, since a trampoline is not notably stilty; it does enable you to reach the heights of a person on stilts, I suppose.  Both methods of raising oneself above the ground have interesting possibilities by way of seriously injuring yourself, and possibly nearby onlookers, too.
     My, aren't we being sporty today!  I think I need to go lie down and recover.

Incrediballistic
I do note a bit of a plot hole in "The Incredibles", although it's probably only evident to people like nuclear war planners, ICBM crews, radar technicians, and Conrad.
     Okay, to review: Evil Bad Guy plans to yaddah-yaddah-yaddah and thus <insert hopelessly convoluted plan and rationale here> by firing his giant rocket at Metroville.  Art?

Said rocket

     Given the timeframe of this film (which I will go into stultifying detail about later on), and assuming that Metroville is on the west coast of South Canada, Syndrome's plan has one or two weaknesses, namely that IT WILL TRIGGER THERMONUCLEAR WAR AND END LIFE ON EARTH!!^
     You see, a ballistic missile being launched from the mid-Pacific with an impact on the East Coast will be picked up by NORAD and be seen as a first-strike launch from a Sinister submarine.  Especially if it is followed up by another launch from the same location only slightly later -

NORAD

     Then you get the Launch-On-Warning protocols going into action, and BANG; Syndrome is the smartest man on the cinder.
     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...


*  And an anorak.

 **  This will lull it into a false sense of security.  Heh.
***  There are over 2,000 about that match taking place in Baku.
^  I know 2 exclamation marks is pushing it, but the subject matter warrants it.