Eyeless In Plaza

Sorry - Just Couldn't Resist
I shall now spoil the joke by having to explain it, as I'm not sure whether I'm being too clever by half.  There is a novel from the Thirties by Aldous Huxley called "Eyeless In Gaza", which sounds like tedious lather, and the title refers to Samson, blinded and harshly used in serfdom in Gaza.  How a novel about a bunch of upper-class wasters equates to a baldie in chains escapes me.  Art?  Do the honours, mate.

A thrilling laff-riot*!

     Now, this is going to take some working out and a bit of a diagonal approach, so bear with me, and don't complain, it's a valuable mental exercise.  Art?

Pay attention at the back - there will be a quiz later

     Now, dead centre of the picture you can see "PLAZA".  Take note of "INVEIGLE", 7 Down.  Conrad thinks this is pushing the bounds of what is acceptable in a Codeword, but what the heck.  Of course I got it.
     Here an aside.  Once again, Your Modest Artisan is FURIOUSLY ANGRY!  I got today's The Metro, and didn't bother with the cryptic inside as I had Monday's MEN to tide me over.  I get home and go through the wretched rag from front to back and - you may be ahead of me here - NO CROSSWORDS!  What is the world coming to when a man cannot depend on his morning crossword?  <Mister Hand redacts 500 words that are mostly swears> with a torch and a bloodhound.
     Ahem.  Yes.  Quite.
     "INVEIGLE" meaning to trick someone into an act, usually used as "inveigle into".

"I was inveigled, officer - inveigled! into drinking this lot.  Inveigled, I tell you.**"

     You know Conrad: the question immediately on his mind is where does this word come from?  You guessed it, Latin.  My Chambers Concise says the origin is "Ab Oculis" which is Latin for "Without Eyes", which then became Old French "Avogler" meaning to "blind or deceive" and thence to "Inveigle."
     There we go, got there in the end.  And now we all know more than we did five minutes ago.
     I say, motley, shall we play "Pin The Dynamite On The Donkey"?

Wrong pin!

Five Seasons In A Morning
Before setting off for the long, dark journey into work, I rashly posted this morning that "At least it's not snowing!"
     Shyeah right.
     Cue a morning of incredibly unsettled weather, torrential rain, sleet and snow, brooding clouds, brilliant sunshine usually within seconds of each other, and an eternal hellish banshee wind that made the Dark Tower shudder. Occasionally it would cause the air conditioning to flip out and make an unpleasant flapping sound, as if someone were slapping an elephant's behind with a flipper.

NO!  Art, you bafoon.

     The aftermath of that storm.  Conrad would periodically peer across the office to the hills of Rochdale, worried that the nasty white stuff might settle and cause traffic problems.  It didn't happen, for which Phew!  Art?

Five minutes later we'd have the blind down thanks to blazing sunshine.

Back To Those Books Of Bottled Brilliance
By 51 sci-fi authors, as we have been rambling on about.  Here are the next two -

Is that a symbolic apple or is it about to fall on his head***?

     Another nope.  Conrad has never heard of the title or the author, and rather doubts she was the "Forerunner of this genre", unless she wrote it in 1927  <Googles> nah, 1993.  Late to the party, then, instead of opening it.  Written for "young adults", too - I don't thing this novel and I will be crossing paths anytime soon.  Or just anytime.  It's about a paradiasical society that isn't really, the cracks begin to show, then the invasion by cyborg wallaby warrior women it ends.

And not forgetting -

Conrad is pretty sure he's read this -

     Except it was at least forty-five years ago, possibly longer, and it didn't strike me especially at the time.  I think there was a weird alien "Mother" who smelled, either exceedingly good or exceedingly bad.  And a vanished scientist father?  I believe there was a rather ordinary film made of it last year. The end.

A Secant To A Tangent
If you remember yesteryon's Intro, I began by detailing the life of the Lesser Banded Gopnik, and ended up swerving wildly onto "The Expanse" - any commission you feel like directing my way is fine, fellers - and the "Rocinante", which, as any fule no, is the re-named MCRN gunship "Tachi", and the steed that our crew of heroes ride across the heavens.  Art?

As was

     I didn't realise that there are Lego versions of the Roci (as we fans call her) out there, and didn't feel like going off on a secant to what was already a tangent, all the more so since I could reserve the content for next day.  Anyway, here we go: Art?

Not sure they have the dimensions correct

     This is a fairly straightforward model - I say "model" because these are all bespoke kits and you can't buy them in a box - with only 600 pieces.  They have the general look down pat, if a little grey.  There are other variants on this, so - Art?


This one is from an instruction booklet -

     - which tells you now to make it.  Not sure how many pieces there are here, only that there are always tons more than you expect.  Also, Art?

Probably a still from a video

     I may look this one up on Youtube, as it seems to be a version built and recorded via timelapse, so you may see even more Lego Rocinante tomorrow!

Finally -
TERRIFYING NEWS THIS MORNING! as Darrel showed me an official e-mail stating that the Dark Tower (my workplace) has NO HOT WATER.
     Think about it.  No hot water = no pot of tea.  Your Humble Scribe was sat literally gibbering with horror at this ghastly news.
     <short pause to recover and wipe sweat from brow>
     Fortunately, the V-tap in our kitchen is still working, so I did get my pot of tea after all.
     But it was a close-run thing.

A V-Tap.
(Not to be confused with a -)

TAPV
(Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle)

     And with that, we are done!


*  Only teasing.  Probably terribly worthy and all that.
**  Without eyes?  You mean blind drunk, matey!
***  Remember Newton