Crowning Glory

I Refer, Of Course, To "The Crown"
Which is a television program I have never seen nor intend to see.  Conrad: less a republican than someone with better taste in television. 
     Anyway, on Friday I was traversing the dirty streets of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell on my way to work in the Dark Tower, and there was Hilton Street, absent any of it's usual parked cars and vans, all the spaces taken up by traffic cones.  A handful of people wearing blue tabards were wandering up and down, looking businesslike.
     You can see where this is going, can't you?  Conrad being remarkable for having a large nose that he likes to poke into other people's business, I immediately walked up to one of these custodial types.  He confirmed what I suspected: the street had been cleared for filming, and they were going to be shooting "The Crown" there later on.  Art?
    

Traffic cones plus tramp
(Note sinister and gloomy Manchester ambience)

     Conrad is a tad puzzled, as "The Crown" is a period drama - I'm guessing here - yet Hilton Street is a very contemporary street, complete with arty hoardings and 21st Century shop fronts.  Art!

Thus

     And No, I am not going to watch all three seasons of ten episodes each - guessing, again - in order to catch five seconds of Hilton Street.      Motley, let us attend to the only crown I respect: the Crown and Anchor.

Those 51 Best Evah Sci-Fi Novels Again
And here we have something I loaded last night, because Bookbub is invisible to my PC at work, which is rather an inconvenience.  First up we have -

Thus

     Conrad remembers reading a review of this in the long-gone Science Fiction Monthly, where they were impressed by PKD's version of an alternate reality.      I have seen some of the first season but have generally avoided it for fear of it not living up to the novel.  TMITHC is the book that really put PKD on the map in terms of other authors, and the sci-fi community, taking him seriously, as evinced by his winning the Hugo for it.  No longer a hack!
     Ah yes, the novel itself.  It is set in 1962, in a world where Nazi Germany and Japan won the Second Unpleasantness and have each partly-occupied South Canada.  These Axis powers are uncomfortable bedfellows and are plotting against each other.  Central to the novel is a novel within it, called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy", which is about a Second Unpleasantness where the Allies win.  I remember the SFM reviewer pointing out that PKD was too subtle to have this alternate reality be our own.
     I've not read it for an age.  Perhaps Abebooks is due an order ...
     Not to mention 

A mystery to me

     I've heard of Gene Wolfe, and that's about it.  Never read any of his work (if "Gene" is a man) and never felt the need to <Googles quickly>.  Hmmmm.  Something of an author's author, one feels.  I don't think Conrad is going to double-order this one with TMITHC.  For one thing, there's an awful lot of it, and I've already got half a dozen novels that are two inches thick in my To Be Read pile.
"Sois-Disant"
Yes yes yes brain, thank you for throwing up another random word pairing. 
     I had to look this one up, and it refers to someone claiming to be something they most emphatically are not.  As you may guess, it's from the French and literally translates as "Not comparable".
     If you want an example, then look no further than yesterday's witterings about Schadenfreude, which is an admittedly recursive way of doing things.     
https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/02/o-schadenfreude.html
     Therein the link.  You remember that blowhard bloviator Steve, who'd been embezzling and stealing and fiddling his hours for twenty years before being caught?  Yeah, that Steve.  He assumed the title of "Assistant Manager" even though he was a lazy, incompetent, dishonest bottomhole.
     That's "Sois-Disant" in the flesh.

Alex Jones: Journalist
(Sois-Disant meter explodes)
 

And Once More, To Out-Blade Runner "Blade Runner"
I refer - obviously! - to the Ridley Scott film of "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep", and at this rate the estate of the late great PKD should be paying me a commission.
     Here an aside.  There is actually a sci-fi novel called "The Bladerunner" by Alan Nourse, which deals with medical services provided illegally to an underclass who cannot get free medical treatment.  Nothing to do with anything, really, I just like to keep you informed.
     Anyway, back to those rather stunning images of Tokyo that really do outdo the film.  Art?

Stunning, eh?

     Your Humble Scribe wonders if the original film made an impression upon cyberpunk originator William Gibson, as that above looks like the world of the future, and the film came out before the novel.  You could lift that above and put it down in "Neuromancer" (his debut) and it would fit seamlessly, not the least because it's taken as an assumption that in the future all cities will look like Tokyo.  Conrad unsure how the lighting and wet above romanticise the image, and is pretty certain Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell ain't even slightly romantic when wet.

CAUTION! Singing and dancing in this can result in pneumonia

One For The Ballfoot Fans
As you should surely know by now, Conrad has no interest in the ballfoot game bar the hilariously venom-filled messages that can be perused (bucket of popcorn in hand) over on the BBC website, another example of Schadenfreude at work.
     However, remember when I put up a photograph of the assembled Lego International Space Station?  To the right of it was another model, which I took a not very good photograph of; the end result was too small.  Now the story can be told*!  Art?

Tah-dah!

     As you can see from the box, only for those aged 16+ who like the challenge of a complicated build.  And to give a sense of scale -

There you go

     It's not far short of 4,000 pieces, and the cheapest it comes in at is £250 pounds, which is probably a fraction of the cost of a season ticket - I'm guessing again here.

And with that, we are done!




*  It's a short story.