The Thing Is -

Possibly John Carpenter's Greatest Directorial Moment
And he's had a few.  I know, I know, I'm stretching when I say "moment" for a film of feature length; cut me some slack here, I'm being poetic.

J. R. "Hot Stuff" McReady
(Does alien invasions and barbecues at reasonable rates)

     Anyway, Your Humble Scribe has observed that a fan group have booked the Odeon cinema of Great Northern in the city of Gommorah-in-the-Irwell for the night of 06/09/2019, and they are screening "The Thing" as an event.  This information has been forwarded by Darling Daughter, who noticed my sardonic comment on their Facebook page, and added "You can come see it again if you want".

Accept no imitations ...

     I'm afraid I had been boasting about having already seen it at the cinema first time round, which shows you how utterly ancient I am.     I am tempted, though.  Tempted!


An Heck Of An Haul
'Twas but yesteryon when Wonder Wifey motioned over Your Humble Scribe and asked "D'You want to order anything from 'Cut Price Barry's'?" whilst pointing at a screen full of various teas and spiced sauces.
     Well yes I did, to be short and sweet about it.  And today?

     Four different kinds of tea and four horribly hot sauces.  A veritable voyage of viand <thinks> verification awaits*!
     Motley, would you care to sit in on my tasting of these spicy sauces?  I guarantee that none of them are explosive, radioactive or acidic.  Yes, you can have a bowl of sour cream to take the burn away! (boy that motley, what a wimp, eh?)

Convair "Sky Scorcher"
No!  Not a brand of silly-hot sauce.  Get that photo above out of your head!
     I'd not heard of this particular banana until yesterday, when it was mentioned in passing on Brian Dunning's podcast, so  - me being me - I simply had to look it up.
     Okay, Convair were a branch of General Dynamics, who built jet fighters and missiles and Go Fast Deadly Stuff like that.  Art?

Their F106 Delta Dart

     This was the mid-Fifties, when the biggest concern when it came to Nooklar War (impeccable South Canadian accent there) was the enemy's fleets of bombers, hundreds and hundreds of them.  So!  Convair decided the way to <ahem> disrupt these fleets was to hit them with a missile, and not just a missile, but one armed with a fusion warhead.  We've seen this concept carried through to conclusion with the Bomarc - Art?

A Bomarc park

     However, and I'll bet you saw this coming, the Bomarc only carried a 10 kiloton big bang bomb, whereas Convair's Sky Scorcher would carry a 2 megaton whopper.  And there would be 80 F106s carrying these monsters, who would intercept and "initiate" (the coy euphemism used for DETONATE A FUSION WARHEAD in case you missed it) fourteen 14 Sky Scorchers, which, it was anticipated, would "disrupt" the enemy bomber formations.
     I'll say.       The South Canadian Air Force were not wild about the idea of setting off numerous extremely large fusion warheads over the Continental United States - as part of their remit was to prevent anything like this happening.
     Nor, at the time, was the phenomenon of Transient Electro-Magnetic Pulse known or understood. 

Ooops.

     Briefly put, the gigantic pulse of energy generated by a nuclear warhead detonation at height will fry the electronics of everything in a huge sphere around the ground zero point.  Those enemy bombers would have fallen out of the sky like bricks, and the F106s would probably have followed them, in addition to an enormous area on the ground reverting to 1856.
     Saner counsel than the designers at Convair prevailed, and the aptly-named Sky Scorcher never got made.  Phew.  A narrow escape!

How Very British
OR
See?  See What You Could Have Had?
Conrad came across something earlier this week on the Beeb's website that has, now that I need it, inevitably absented itself.      This isn't enough to stop me, as I have now exploited Google to track down the relevant image.  Art?  ART!  WAKE UP FROM YOUR SLOTHFUL COAL-INDUCED STUPOR!

This is a bit small

Captures the pant-wetting terror of formation-flying in jets!

     Sorry about that, half a scuttle and he's torpid for hours.
     Anyway, the Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force's premier aerobatics display team, which automatically makes them the premier aerobatics team in the world**.  They are off on a flag-flying (take this expression literally) tour of South Canada, probably feeling glad that they need not fear some twitchy USAF pilot loosing off volleys of Sky Scorchers.
     That picture above shows them flag-flying (I did warn you) over the city of New York, where the flabbergasted denizens were able to brood on how the Union Jack was suddenly back and superior to them***.

     That picture above shows how tightly these crates fly together.  Consider this for the lead ship; not only does the pilot have to fly his jet-propelled steed at speed, he has to ensure that his wingmen and those behind are formatting on him and make sure he doesn't stray into the wingtip of anyone else, not forgetting to let loose volumes of coloured gas. 

Mind-controlling chemtrails!  IN THREE DIFFERENT FLAVOURS!!

     Even now those conspiranoid loonwaffles dwelling in the basements of New York will be busily screeching online about how the "English are coming back" and how they're "spraying mind-control gas" over the city (sorry, just couldn't resist adding this bit in).


 Enough Of Aircraft
Time for TANK!
     Today we learn, Vulnavia, that bigger is not always better, especially when it comes to TANK, namely that "mobile metal fort" the Jadgtiger, which we touched on briefly yesteryon.  Art?

With puny humans for scale

     It was intended to be an ambush predator, firing at enemy vehicles from a very great distance, whilst being practically untouchable itself.  On the few occasions this actually happened, they were pretty devastating, as that whacking great 128 mm gun really did the business.
     However ...  You knew that was coming, didn't you?  Like all the Teuton mega-panzers, it was grossly under-powered, carrying an engine meant for a tank of 45 tons, not 70.  This meant the poor, overstrained engine broke down in despair regularly.  When that happened the crew usually set fire to it and ran away, since retrieving one of these beasts required a Bergepanther recovery vehicle and two half-tracks as well; which trio were rarely to be found at hand.
              

     Time to tackle a sandwich.  Chin chin!

     Oh, apart from the faithful and impatient readers, you may only get to read this late at night.  Or not.  We shall see.

*  I know it's not very suspenseful but "Verification" is right on the money here.
**  THERE WILL BE NO DEBATE.  NONE.
***  Yes, I am milking this a bit.  It's not often you get an opportunity like this.