There have been some interesting sidebar items on the BBC's website from Prof. Brian Cox, snippets from the series he's presenting about the Solar System. Last week we had giant waterfalls on Mars - O! hilarious irony - and this week it was a spot about the asteroid that came to visit 66 million years ago.
This kind of neighbour is one you generally want to avoid, since it is pretty weighty and is incapable of dieting. Art?
 |
| The sinister visiter at a disance |
This is what comes of being 6 miles across; even those of you who despair of a beach body can feel happy that you'll never manage to reach these proportions.
When this visitor impacted, it instantly destroyed everything in an area of over one million square miles. What you might very much call a Big Bang. This, incidentally, also saw off 75% of every living thing on Planet Earth, another reason you don't like these visitors to announce they're coming over for tea and biscuits and Armageddon.
Your Humble Scribe did a bit of number-crunching about this event, and the Chicxulub rock appears to have hit with a yield of 67 million gigatons. Which is where the "Goodbye" part comes from; although you we hominids would likely never have got the opportunity to become the dominant species if those big old saurians had still been around.
| I believe Harry Harrison wrote about this. |
You might call this event, bringing the world to the brink of apocalypse, Ragnarok*, if you have a pash for Norse mythology.
Speaking of which ...
"Operation Ragnarok"
This came of Conrad's rubbish-tip skip of a memory, and recollections of a long-ago trailer titled "Zon 261". This was a trailer from a Swedish zombie film - yes, such things exist - that cropped up about 5 years ago and which never seemed to progress beyond the trailer.
 |
| Sic |
The synopsis is that a mysterious - excuse me! - Mysterious Submarine turns up in a Swedish coastal town that's having trouble between locals and migrants. The police who go to investigate the submarine are all zombified and spread the zombification to the town, which is then cordoned off by The Army. Hay Pesto, those pesky immigrants and the locals have to combine efforts to stay alive.
Until yesteryon, Conrad thought that the trailer was all that existed, an unsuccessful attempt at obtaining crowdfunding for the film, and that said trailer was all that would ever exist.
Except not! Art?
 |
| Hay Pesto! |
Meet "Operation Ragnarok", which is present on IMDB with a cast and rating and synopsis and everything. Allow me to present the synopsis -
"In a town in southern Sweden, tensions between the locals and immigrants grow. Meanwhile a submarine carrying a strange plague enters the town. The crew infects police officers out to investigate and a full-blooded outbreak begins. The town is isolated by the Swedish army, but the survivors inside, immigrants and locals alike, must band together against the infected"
Almost word-for-word "Zon 261"'s plot.
| Swedish winters can be harsh on the skin |
It only seems to have been released last year, so perhaps my guess about the crowd-funding was more accurate than I thought and it took that long to acquire the budget needed, or it's just taken a while for it to transition from the Scandinavian Zombie-Film Circuit and into the mainstream.
Proof, I suppose, that your dream may eventually come true after all.
| - in a nightmarish kind of way |
From The Horrid To The Homely
As you should surely know by now, The Mansion is protected by our four-footed alarm system, Edna. Take a bow, Edna.
 |
| Note bin in background |
The trouble with Edna is when none of the grown-ups are in the room with her. If that's the case, she regards any food left around as fair game; Conrad recalls when he went upstairs and left his corned-beef baguette on the table, forgetting all about it, until on returning he found every bit of corned beef sticking out of the baguette had been nibbled off .....
As with that bin above. Once she was alone in the room, Edna would tip it over - she's not daft, she knows she couldn't reach the bottom otherwise - and then grovel in the remnants for whatever food she could find.
No longer! Art?
 |
| Denied! |
No doubt looked at with a certain amount of righteous disgust from the offended party.
Proof Of A Particular Mindset
I don't know why, but when tackling a jigsaw, my first impulse is to describe it as a "Crossword", which it plainly is not. The pieces do slot together in an overall gridded pattern, I suppose, which is the closest to a crossword grid it gets. An insight into my mind.
Anyway, I have now started to tackle another puzzle, of 1,000 pieces, This may sound impressive but is actually only 2/3 of the last monster, and works from an easier picture to boot. Art?
 |
| Step One of some days ago |
I managed to combine watching "Justified" with some heavy jiggy action, thus -
At a guess, I'd say that's about 1/8th done, or @125 pieces. You can count them if you like, or just take it on trust.**
Anti-Hong Kong
Yesterday morning in the office was rather depressing. Not from the perspective of the office itself, nor my fellow workers, who are all delightful people without exception. Rather, it was the view from my windows, which if Art will oblige -
 |
| Sic |
There you see the cloudbase sitting so low the top of the Halle Tower is out of view. A view like this makes you feel as if you're sitting at the bottom of a lake.
Conrad does have a little description for Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell in such a state (you know, from U2 and "City of Blinding Lights" and Hong Kong) - "City of Grinding Blights" which I think is quite clever.
Finally -
I am watching "Doom Patrol" and have to say it is just as barmy as the comic, which I have read, if a while ago. Like The Flaming Lips in television format - Potty But Entertaining.
| Hmmmm. |
* Which is also track by Iceland's second finest, Apparat Organ Quartet, all 5 of 'em.
** I wouldn't trust me, to be honest.
No comments:
Post a Comment