Conrad: Still Officially A Terrible Person

I Have To Work At It, Mind
Anyway, I am looking forward to reading the Comments section on the BBC's website, which concern a ballfoot game between The Manchester United and Trainmere Rogers (I think - I wasn't paying that much attention to minor technical details like that).  Not because I have any interest in the ballfoot game, because I don't.  No, rather I have an interest in all the invective and venom that the posters display; if I had any popcorn then I'd be sitting with a bucket of it, reading and laughing.

An object of worship for some

     That's a pleasure I shall save for later.  Meanwhile, I have discovered a sub-set of posts on Youtube that appear to be derived from Reddit, whatever that is.  Someone will post a film that appeals to a certain type of person - lawyer, soldier, film production staff as examples - and ask a question of them.  Everything comes across as gradually-revealed texts, with a brief blurry colour slide in between different responses.
     Let us examine that post which asks "People that work on movie sets, who are the most entitled actors?"

Only kidding!

     Keanu is apparently a super-nice guy with absolutely no vices, everybody loves him, the end, which is kind of the opposite of what they were asking.  Conrad has long considered that Keanu's long, long career is definitely the end product of being such a thoroughly nice bloke; people are happy to work with him.
     Jake Gyllenhaal comes across badly, thanks to being such a method actor, who does not like people interrupting or bothering him when he's focussing.  Conrad would call that  a bit tetchy, really, and not terrible.

Hairy and scary
(Is that fair-y?)

     Chris O'Donnell, according to an industry insider, is a bottomhole of epic proportions, who is widely hated, and all the production staff laugh at him behind his back.  If he ever gets to read this, he'll probably break down and cry, throw something at the wall, fire his P.A. and then hire lawyers to sue BOOJUM! for every penny we have*.

The far more likeable and funnier Chris Prat, because "Parks and Rec".
(Go Google the other plonker if you like)

     All fascinating stuff, and we shall definitely come back to this topic, as hearing about how terrible and awful celebrities can be is hilarious.
     Several posters noted that actors who hail from Perfidious Albion are all universally lovely and wonderful and down to earth; it's the South Canadians who are faecal fundaments.
     Motley!  This grape has not been peeled!  Go strap yourself to the Upper Dungeon's Middling Torture Table for twenty minutes.

"Panzer Ace" By Richard Von Rosen
Yes we are back to this.  As mentioned before, RVR's Tiger company was sent to Normandy in the aftermath of D-Day.  He recounts one engagement in July where his company knock out eleven Sherman tanks, after practicing text-book perfect overwatch and firing.  Wehraboos take note: eleven Shermans, not one hundred and eleven.
     RVR's Abteiling also had the hideous distinction of being hit by the endless conveyor belt of RAF bombers preparing the ground for Operation Goodwood, where anyone not inside their Tiger tank was never seen again; not even fragments remained.  

This is a 56 ton vehicle

     Another indication that the Luftwaffe was pretty much a broken reed by this point in the war.  As was the occasion when RVR's Abteilung, now using King Tigers, were bounced whilst travelling by rail.  A flock of South Canadian Thunderbolts spotted them on the move and shot up the entire train.  King Tigers are not really vulnerable to anything but a direct hit from a 250 pound bomb, yes; but the carriages full of ammunition and petrol were extremely vulnerable, and predictably blew up into itty-bitty pieces.  End of train.  RVR tried to get his tank off the low-loading trailer his KT was on, only to humiliatingly topple off it and end upside down.  This was actually a good thing for him and his crew; their fuel tanks had been shot open and emptied out due to being upside down.  Had they stayed on the trailer, their tank would have caught fire and roasted them like chickens.

I think this is that very tank

     Okay, enough of death and horror!  Let us now turn to LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DES -on second thoughts, let's not.

Back To The Future
For Lo! we are back to that list of the 51 Greatest Sci-fi novels of all time, so Bring It On!  

Yup, read it.

     And of course I have the film on DVD and regularly watch it, awed and amazed at how well it stands up.  It's fifty years old, for heaven's sake!
     Anyway, the novel.  This was a kind of snapshot of the film, since Arthur and Stanley were always bouncing ideas off each other about what next?  It is worth reading even if you've seen the film.  The whole idea comes from a short story that Arthur wrote, called "The Sentinel", of which perhaps more later.
     From here we begin to enter uncharted waters as far as Your Humble Scribe is concerned.  Art?

Thus

     Nope, not read it.  As for Octavia Butler, not read any of her stuff, either.  As a black woman writing sci-fi she rather stands out from the crowd; Your Humble Scribe was vaguely aware of her even so.  She wrote this and a sequel and then died before a third novel was written that would have finished things off in a neat and tidy manner.  The novel is set in 2025, a horrible future marked by resource-depletion, wars, global warming, political and religious extremism and people not passing the port to the right.
    Conrad is intrigued by the synopses he's read.  I may buy this one.

Finally -
Just to let you know that I'm on our late shift next week, thus not finishing until 18:00 and not getting home until 19:20 at the earliest, so BOOJUM! may not get posted onto Facebook and Twitter until perhaps 20:00.  That won't stop the especially keen fans who acquire early insight thanks to logging onto Blogger.  To those fans, thank you!

     Time to ride the rocket-rails into the night ...



*  That's not very much, Chris.  So you'll be out £15,000 in lawyers fees.