Don't Forget The Oubliette

This Comes From All Those Words Earlier In The Week
  - like ""Maquette" and "Catafalque", except for "Oubliette" I already know what I'm thinking about*.
     "Oubliette", you see, comes from the French "Oublier" meaning "To forget" and in these circumstances you can understand why.  Art?

  

No!  Not a dada ice cream cone.  A schematic for the latest chic residence in the Bastille

     An oubliette was a form of dungeon, where there was only one entrance (and exit), that being a hole in the ceiling of the chamber, which would be sufficiently deep to prevent anyone from leaping up to freedom.  If you were a prisoner in one of these salubrious domiciles, then you crossed your fingers and toes that nobody in the land of the living upstairs  forget about you.  Otherwise your bleaching bones would be found there in a decade or two.     So there we have it, an oubliette.  Conrad is not sure why this turned up in his head, except that it did.

Oubliette: a room with a view.  Just not much of one.

     One presumes that these dungeons would be well-sealed and waterproof, too, since they are dug into the very bowels of the earth and thus liable to suffer leakage.  After all, this would either drown your prisoner, which would be no great loss, or float them to the top of the chamber and potential freedom, which would be a calamity.
     Now, motley, shall order a takeaway for delivery - Indian or Chinese? See - this not murdering the motley is getting to be second nature with me. 

Anonymous Performers, Again
Well, the Saban entertainment company haven't sued the pants off BOOJUM! after yesterday's horrid little barb on Facebook, so we shall continue.
     We have already taken a jaundiced look at The Banana Splits, The Residents and the Teletubbies, so now let us peer with our red-rimmed eyes at -
     - Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers!  O but that missing "G" doth bug me.  Art?

NO APOSTROPHE!  THE HORROR, THE HORROR!

     Once again, an entertainment tranche where you cannot see who is performing.  There might be anyone or anything under those helmets, and we'd never know they were evil were-weasel warriors from Wendover until they took over the world South Canada television studio.  Then you'd be sorry!
     As Conrad understands it, some canny or chiselling South Canadian studio suits dreamed up MMPR after becoming aware of the many decades of Nipponese "Super Sentai" television programmes.  Art?

Thus
(Suspiciously familiar, nicht war?)

     Thus the MMPR would run around in and out of - is it a costume?  A uniform?  Sleazy S & M gear? - their whatever, akin to headless chickens, before teaming up to face the foe for that episode.  At which point the studio suits would edit in a fight scene from "Super Sentai" because - cheap!  And since everyone is wearing those helmets, nobody really knows who is fighting what or when.
     I did notice that they don't bother with a Brown Ranger.  Not much of a cachet to being "BROWN RANGER!" for reasons we shall not go into here.  SFW and all that.

Plus, "Pink Ranger" is less than inspiring, one feels.

     Conrad confidently predicts it'll all end in tears.
Pride And Prejudice

Men!  Women! Horses!  Endless rolling landscapes of verdant green thanks to the CEASELESS EVER P . Sorry.

Your Humble Scribe made a start upon this earlier today, and has to say is pleasantly surprised at how agreeably it all hangs together.  My hero is already Mister Bennett, whom is described as being composed of " - quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve and caprice -".  A very role model of a man.  Gets my vote.
     However.  There is, of course, a long Introduction by whomsoever edited this edition, as they simply have to get their MA thesis out in front of you, not to mention a whole lot of Notes, which are frequent enough to break up one's enjoyment of the text, and which they think are indispensable.
     We shall see, madame, we shall see.

Vindicated!
OR
Now I Can Die Happy
Referring once again to matters literary, Your Humble Scribe took advantage of his day off yesteryon to tackle his other recent purchase, that of Dorothy L. Sayers' aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey and the collected short stories thereof.
     Here an aside.  No, hang on, let's cattle-prod Art into action -

Topping casting - Ian Carmichael as our Lord

     Now an aside.  It is a far better bet to purchase this edition of COLLECTED short stories as featured below, rather than those volumes which sneakily declare " - featuring Lord Peter Wimsey -" on the cover, because they only have one or two short stories featuring everyone's favourite collector of incunabula.
      The story I refer to is one where a CRYPTIC CROSSWORD PUZZLE forms a key plot ingredient, and Ol' Dot supplies the clues for it.  Not only that, there's a key and solution at the end of the story, which I avoided studiously, because at some point in the future I'm going to tackle Ol' Dot's cryptic and see how I do.
     Oh, and Bunter?  That last clue you mentioned?  The answer is "QUAGGA"

      We have gone from the depths to the heights, haven't we?  Mind you, I shall carefully avoid indicating which items are either elevated or lowly, because I am sneaking and crafty like that <sniggers whilst his forked tongue slithers in and out>

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra AGAIN
Sorry there's no photograph to go with this, since I am posting from work and cannot upload photographs from my digital devil's device.  You can trust me, I have an honest face <carefully keeps forked tongue out of sight>.
     What did I use as an illustration in the first item of today's post?  None other than an architectural feature of the Bastille, and I actually uploaded it last night.  Art?

La Bastille

      I did muse on how it had recently been Bastille Day, which is some date in July when our excitable trans-Channel cousins celebrate being naughty. 
     Then, what and whom do I see in the pages of The Metro?  Art!

Yeah, this lot

     What are the chances? 

Finally -
Proof that they do things differently in Ruffia, and have done for a long time.  Ladies, Gentlemen and those undecided, may I present the monitor "Novgorod".  Art?


Compact

Yes, a circular ship

     Apart from enshrining the worship of Pi, this was a bizarre idea and an even worse handling vessel, with all the nautical qualities of a dead hippo.**

Right, time for lunch!


*  This is not always the case.
**  And a hippo ten days dead, at that.