Hey, Chris Foss - I Am Very Cross!

Not, I Hasten To Add, About Anything Chris Has Done
Or not done.  Chris gets an automatic Pass Go With £400 thanks to his work in the field of sci-fi illustration - we shall gloss over his artworks for "The Joy Of Sex" as they are very very NSFW.
     Anyway, shall we batten the hatches and strike some matches?  <clear evidence that Your Humble Scribe is making this up as he goes along>.  Art?

An example

     This is artwork to go with Isaac Asimov's little tale of parochialism, that is "The Foundation" and all that comes afterwards, you know, covering galactic empires' rise and fall and electrical plug safety standards, shizzle like that.
     Conrad, as a younger version of himself, used to gawp at Mister Foss's artwork as it defined a whole slew of sci-fi illustrations on countless book covers.  I think we can come up with a few examples.  Art!


     I am not going to tell you which is what, you can just go and Google yourselves to your own edification.  I do note that, wwwway back in the Seventies, Chris was lauded for his hardware looking used and abused, as if it had been in daily use for decades, rather than the usual pristine picture perfect presentation.  

Hmmmm.

     Of course, it's ridiculous to imagine that anyone else could have been influenced by this artwork ...

What Am I Cross About?
Take a ticket and a seat at the back!  Of course "Angry" is my default state, so this means I am extra-specially angry. Today is Monday, and of late Channel 4 has been showing "Nazi War Machines - Secrets Uncovered" on Monday evening, which your humble scribe has been watching, as this series features James Holland.  This is entirely appropriate as he wrote the thing himself, and do you know how long it takes to create a single second of dialogue on-screen?  Jim also presents the program.

Jim looking rambunctious

     Big pockets, Jim, big pockets.  Anyway, when Conrad tried to watch the latest episode about the shortcomings of Teuton weapons, which should have been broadcast tonight, he mistakenly manages to log in at about 40 minutes of the whole program, as it was still being broadcast.  Hurriedly backing out, Your Humble Scribe finds that there is no other way in.
     Oooops. Okay, roll on Tuesday night ...

"Cerulean"
<heaves heavy sigh> Yes, another of those Words That Pop Up In My Brains from time to time.  I think I may have read this one in a story at the weekend, which is a far better explanation than things appearing at 02:37 en route to the bathroom to answer a call of nature.
     Anyway, what is it?  I think it's a colour, so let's Google and find out, shall we?
     Yes!  Art?

Blue

     Of course the derivation is from Latin, namely "Caeruleus", meaning "Dark blue".

Hmmm.  I shall get back to you about this one, Art.

     There!  I'm ever so glad we cleared that one up.  Of course it leaves a bad taste in the mouth thanks to Latin - the zombie language.

An Interesting Aside
My work colleague Ben hails from South Canada and provides an interesting perspective of the world beyond the boundaries of the Allotment of Eden*.  I have heard him explaining  a few minutes ago to Shahzad just how long it takes to get around by car over there, because - you may be unaware of this - South Canada is REALLY BIG.  Art?

An example

     Mr. B. was waxing forth last week on college football, of which he is not a particularly large fan, baseball being his game.  Or was it basketball?  One of the two.  Perhaps even an unholy combination of the two.
     Anyway, he was saying that you simply do not get crowd trouble at basebasketball games (covering all my bases there), nor indeed at the professional level in "football" (the South Canadian euphemism for the imported British game of "Murderball" a.k.a. "Rugby").  The latter is to do with No Little Fellers, as all "football" players have to be freaking enormous.  Or was it No Limey Football? as they very definitely play with a rugby ball.

This, children, is why we call it "Murderball"

     Anyway again, at college "football" you most certainly do get crowd trouble, to the extent that fans are kept apart in the stadia, and escorted out from different exits, and are watched pretty intently for any mischievous intent.  Your Humble Scribe did a quick search for "College football rivalries" and discovered that there's one above all else, namely the Army-Navy match.  You can understand this kind of antagonism, and Conrad wonders idly how many of the Navy men are actually Marines.  Who are not the kind of people you want to annoy even when they are not clutching bang-bang shooty-shooty things.
 
     Like these chaps.  Go on, mock them, I dare you!
     It seems that the Air Force are not invited to these vulgar brawls, possibly because they hadn't been invented when these things began.
     I think we'll come back to this subject, it has legs.

Speaking Of Eldritch Horror -
I know we weren't but surely huge blokes repeatedly smashing into each other is closely bordering it?
     Here an aside.  The works of HP Lovecraft are the only places I have ever seen the word "Eldritch" used**.  It means "Weird and sinister - " according to teh interwebz, and if there weren't also " - and ghostly" added on there it would be quite close to a description of Conrad.  Who is altogether too large and fat to ever be considered ghostly or only faintly there.
     Anyway!  Back to "Struwwelpeter", that book of horror stories for children, created by a Teuton sadist in the mid-nineteenth century.  Art?

CAUTION!  Small children are highly flammable and prone to exploding!

      Quite what the lesson is here I cannot fathom.  Don't play with matches?  Avoid standing in the fire?  Petrol is not your friend?  Keep clear of strangers carrying -

"Can I smell burning?"

     NO!  No, Mac, we're good here, no flamethrowers needed.  A fire extinguisher would be better, frankly.
     A little digging yields this instructive page:

So yes: mayhem with matches

     <sigh> couldn't they just have put them on a higher shelf?

     And with that, we are done!


*  Those poor benighted people.
**  Although there was that Andrew Eldtritch from The Sisters Of Mercy.