O! Comsat Angels

I Know I Constantly Refer To Them -
My thought this time is about that track "After The Rain", which IS TAKING A LONG TIME COMING! for as I sit in The Mansion's lofty eyrie, all I can hear are the cars hissing by on wet tarmac.  In fact, I think Jim Morrison has a lyric line rather similar: "The cars hiss by my window, like waves upon the beach." Um, yes, Jim, but you see Southern California beach weather is a whole lot more appealing than that which we endure in the Pond of Eden.  Art?

That, laddies and germs, is a beach.

     Okay, time to squelch my way to Pub Quiz - see you later!

     <two and a quarter hours pass>

     I'm back - did you miss me?  I've been hav - what do you mean, "Was I gone?"  <sighs> I'm wasted here, wasted!  Motley, pass me the Meerschaum and a plug of my best Longleaf tobacco.

     Now, to prove that the Pond Of Eden is not merely bad weather 364/365, let us go all pseudy and stuff.

100 Novels That, Like, Totally Rocked The World
As long as they were written in English, and published within the last 300 years, which is a cunning measure to prevent Billy Shakingshaft mucking up the results that the BBC commissioned.
     We have had several categories already, and now we come to subject matter that BOOJUM! tends not to deal with, as it contravenes our moral code*.

Politics, Power & Protest

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

Noughts & Crosses – Malorie Blackman

Strumpet City – James Plunkett

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

V for Vendetta – Alan Moore

Unless – Carol Shields

     I like the rather stark graphology there - it's staying.     Of course Your Humble Scribe has read BNW, yet only once a long time ago.  I can't remember any of it, so it obviously didn't make that great an impression.  Something about genetics?
     I'm not sure if I've read LOTF or not; I certainly remember seeing the film.  But, again, a long time ago.  Given what it is (Briefly: Boys Behaving Badly), I don't think I'd bother reading it again.
     TKAM I have read, and a lot more recently.  Art?

Lead character Scout, dressed as a Virginia ham <insert pig joke here>

     It's where that hot pop combo The Boo Radleys got their name from, as he is a character in the novel.  I also remember the line about " - shoot all the jaybirds that you want, but never a mockingbird.  To kill a mockingbird is a sin."

Snake about to sin?

     I think the Audubon Society would agree with that**!
     Conrad is a little confused by the inclusion of "V For Vendetta" - do they mean the graphic novel?  For yes, I have it up there in my cupboard and have read it not too long ago.  Not for the faint-hearted, I have to say, and an example of Alan Moore writing a dystopian near future where everything has turned to excrement, and even the excrement is having a bad time. Art?

Because "R for Revolting" is a trifle ambiguous

     I know absolutely nothing about the others.  I may add them to my reading list***.
"Ozymandias Syndrome"
Bear with me, this one has just struck me and it'll take a bit of working out.  Okay, the concept of the poem "Ozymandias" (one of those rare poems that Conrad actually likes) is that Ozymandias was an ancient king, who commanded that vast structures and edifices be constructed to glorify his reign.  When the poem's narrator walks this kingdom in contemporary times, there is absolutely nothing left. 

Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

     Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, you might say (if you were fluent in Latin, hack spit).
     Well, there is an analogy that goes with a television series I've only just come across: Nazi Megastructures.  Doubtless they will go into TANK at some point, but the one I was watching dealt with coastal fortifications, especially a gigantic gun turret at Orland in Norway.  Art?

A troll of a different kind

     This thing was one of the gun turrets from the battleship Gneisenau, and had to be transported in pieces, into a gigantic excavation into the hill carried out by slave labour.  There is a schematic that shows this thing with the honeycombed hill beneath it.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

          You can see the enormous effort and resources that went into constructing this thing.  Impressive, surely?
    Well, no.  It was never used and never fired a shot in anger.  Aha! you say, proof that it worked and kept the spineless Allied snivelpots away, in the same way my Elephant Repulsor ensures there are absolutely no elephants in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell.
     Still, no.  It's construction was predicated on entirely spurious grounds that didn't reflect Allied strategic planning at all, and it got built purely because Herr Schicklegruber demanded it.
     So, as I intimated in the title, this thing may still be there, but the Third Reich has long since vanished, leaving the Orland battery as a reminder of human folly.

The interior

 - oh, and how well the Norks keep things maintained as a living museum.

Excuse Me Whilst I Respond To Some Astronomical Science News -

THE FOOLS!  THE MEDDLING FOOLS! 

DON'T THEY UNDERSTAND THERE ARE SOME THINGS MAN (and woman, too, for we do not discriminate here) WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW!
     <ahem>
     There will now be a short pause as my blood-pressure falls and the veins in both temples cease pounding.      I refer to - obviously! - to the return to Earth of the Hayabusa 2 space-probe, from the Asteroid of Evil asteroid Ryugu (which is Japanese for "Evil Dragon Palace"), carrying samples of the asteroid's surface and sub-surface.


Ryugu: The Sinister Truth

     This is the thing that worries me.  Who knows what's been brewing on the surface of this dastardly space-rock?

No!  Art, you buffoon -

     It'll all end in tears, mark my words.

Finally -
It would seem that my Ruffian audience has dropped to zero, which means one of two things: firstly, that all the nanny-networking censor software has finally realised "Tsar Putin" is not a compliment; or, secondly, that the Zombie Apocalypse has finally broken out (did they incautiously acquire some asteroid samples?) and all hands are needed to wield various edged implements.

ZA RODINA!

     They'll be fine; the Ruffians are notoriously tough and it's getting cold over there.  That slows the Zed-heads down and they make easier targets.

     And with that - we are done!
*  Which can be hastily flung out the window if that means more traffic
**  South Canadian in-joke.
***  Or I may not.  I'm horrid that way