Conrad - Still ANGRY!

And Musical-Hating, Too, In Case You Were Wondering
Here an aside, and yes, it is a bit early in the post to be having an aside, but once again - whose blog is it?  Anyway, I wanted to vent about what seems to be a glut of <insert long swear here> reality dancing shows.  Yes, Auntie Beeb, I'm looking at you.

Grrrr.

     Who gives a rancid stoat-fart about who is the greatest dancer?  Certainly not I!  "T.G.D."?  "Television Got Dumber".  I promise you, when I take over the people responsible for this are going to suffer, O yes indeed, I swear by the Congolese uranium mines <pauses to let the red mist diminish> -
     Sorry, where were we?
     O yes, my Digital Devil Device is still playing up.  I have managed to render it visible to my laptop, O Frabjous Day, though no photographs taken after 17/01/2020 are showing, so I am having to improvise, baby, improvise.  In the meantime I shall sit and marinade in my Frothing Nitric Ire*.
     Do I have anything else to be angry about?  <thinks>  Yes!  The weather.  It is <another long set of swears> disgustrous, being cold and damp and misty.  Looking out of the window, one can easily imagine that the zombies are a-swarming below, it's so bleak and dismal.

Manchester at street level

     Motley, shall we toddle on out with automatic weapons and practice our street-survival drills again?

Meanwhile, Back In Nottingham -
If you have any functional memory at all, then you will remember that yesteryon I was banging on about an art exhibition at the Harley Gallery, the inspiration for which was Lego.  Okay, prepare your eyes.  Art?

Behold the build

     The blurb for this one says that it's by a Canadian, Ekow Nikow, who spent 280 hours assembling it, and that it's inspired by "The Golden Compass".  Okay, Ekow, assuming you work an 8 hour day, that's a solid 35 days spent constructing this puppy, which is a considerable investment and commitment.  That's just the build; it doesn't say how long Ekow took to plan out how to construct it and what bricks they would need, which must take ages as well.  One presumes that it has some variety of protection from the public, as one recalls the Lego sculpture in Japan demolished by a small, badly-behaved lizard child.

The horror!  The horror!

     There you go.  Normally I'd probably take a photograph THANK YOU MOBILE PHONE, so I seem to have managed a work-around quite adequately today.  Next!
    
Much Of Matania
Back to the boy himself.  Ol' Mat was renowned for being a fast yet accurate artist, whatever medium he was working in.  Art?


     You're going to ask what kind of an aircraft that is, aren't you?  Conrad unsure but thinks it's something like an RE8 (nicknamed "Harry Tate") as there are no visible guns on top of the engine cowling, nor a wing-mounted Lewis, and there seem to have been two crewmen; one you can see talking to the Brown Jobs (RAF slang for Army) and the other is still clambering out of the rear cockpit.  If I'm correct here then it's definitely not a "Scout", which is what they called fighter aircraft back then.  Presumably that blather at the bottom explains what kind of kite it was.  I can also tell you that this most definitely isn't the "crater zone", because if it was the Teutons would be shelling it like billy-o, and all concerned would be taking cover verrrrry quickly.
     If I feel like it after work, I may have a nosey at my books on Perfidious Albion's aircraft of the First Unpleasantness and identify it for you; that's provisional, so don't go clapping your hands with glee.  Or even without glee.

Probably not one of these, either.
(It's a DH9)

Aha!  A Workaround That Works
Back to that BBC list of 10 things that science-fiction predicted waaaaaay ahead of said things actually arriving on the scene, which I have been taking photographs of THANK YOU MOBILE PHONE as, that way, I can include the text of the article as well.  Anyway, Art!

Ear-thingies

     These are all the rage nowadays, though Your Humble Scribe would worry about them falling out, unless they have incredibly long inserts, in which case your eardrums are at risk of rupture not to mention brain damage if you fell over and hit your head -
     Where was I?  O yes.  Well, apparently Ray Bradbury is credited with folks in his futures as having "thimble radios", which are small, seashell-shaped personal radios that mimic our wireless headsets of today, except Ray was writing half a century ago.  Prescient chap**.

Ray, back in the day.

Remember - Sharks Are Our Friends!
Seriously.  The Hoovers of the seas clean up lots of floating offal that would otherwise pollute our oceans, and how do we repay them?  By demonising them in films and killing them wholesale for Shark Fin Soup - Populous Dictatorship, I'm looking at you***.  Art?

A smiley shark: proof of my assertion

     Mind you, with the advent of global warming, our finny fangy friends are going to be able to live in waters hitherto forbidden to them, such as offshore This Sceptred Isle, which will be interesting, especially for surfers.

This says, to sharks, "Please come and eat me."

Finally -
As you may have been made aware, Conrad has become aware of the Lego subculture that is both vast and various; it genuinely has a global reach and is proof that the Danes are going to take over the world it appeals universally.
     Now, abruptly changing tack, let us look at the Ruffian Sukhoi Su-37 fighter jet.  Art?

What China wanted

     The tale goes that China, the Populous Dictatorship, wanted to buy just two of these aircraft from the Ruffians.  The Ruffians said "No!" and would only sell at least a whole squadron of them, sixteen at least, because they knew what would happen if they sold only two: the Populous Dictatorship would reverse-engineer both of them and then crank out copies at a far lower price tag.  Bad Chinese!  Naughty Chinese!
     Thus we come to the Populous Dictatorship and Lego.  Seeing an opportunity to make a fast buck, the Chins have studiously reverse engineered every Lego set out there and retailed it as "Lepin".  Art

Lego on the left, Lepin on the right

     At first these two look identical, except the Lepin one costs a third of the genuine article.  The Youtuber Gilly Bricks, who posted this, then pointed out the differences.
     1)  The Lepin cockpit will not close as it is the wrong dimensions:
     2)  There is a piece missing from the Lepin kit.
     3)  The underbarrel launcher on the Lepin does not work
     4)  The rear venture on the Lepin are loose and wobbly.
     5)  The Lepin pilot's visor is completely opaque.
     You get what you pay for, I suppose.




*  Frothing Nitric Ire - contains no calories, gluten or dairy products!
**  Especially as his stories rarely concentrate on technology.
***  That'll teach them, eh?