On The High Seas With Eminence Grise

This Is Yet Another Intro That Needs Patience, Gentle Reader
You should be used to having to exert a little intellectual rigour in reading the blog, and in having to accommodate our whimsical shiftings of perspective.  All splendid mental exercise for the 21st Century.  You'll thank me later.  Shall we have one of those frightening trench-cutting machines that resemble a giant chain-saw on wheels, just for pure malicious fun?

With puny humans for scale

     But! Before that, allow me to ponder on my Not Going To Name Them Employer and the questions that were asked at our staff event, including the one on coping with being in lockdown.
     Funny you should ask.  Art?

     This is how I've been coping.  With no copies of The Metro, which is a mixed blessing given what a scummy yellow rag it is, and no copies of the MEN either, I am now up to Crossword 173 out of 300 in the Collins Crossword Book I got for my birthday last year.  Before working from home about 5 weeks ago I'd only reached number 71.  It suddenly came to me yesterday as an epiphany ("A sudden and miraculous revelation (8)") that there must have been different compilers working on the crosswords, given that some I can manage in ten minutes and others take twenty-five.  As an example -

"EPITAXY"

     "The growth of crystals (7)".  I had to look up the solution*.  Honestly, who but an expert in the field of Organic Crystallography would know that?

Okay, Art, I'll give you that one**.

     Where were we?  O yes.  "Eminence Grise".  You see how all this mental acrobatics keeps your mind fit and active, instead of it's usual flabby self, vegetating away on reality television and soap operas?
     I flatter myself by comparing Conrad to an EG, because an EG is French for "Grey Eminence" which we in This Sceptred Isle would call "The Power Behind The Throne", and I'm not quite that important and influential***.  And my hair's white, not grey.  And looking a bit shaggy and unkempt at present, too.

The archetypal EG.  If you're going to be a sinister Machiavellian manipulator and intriguer, you could do worse for a model

     Anyway, this is all incidental, because what I wanted to concentrate on was the "Grise" bit, which is French for "Grey".  Do we have that down correctly?  Excellent!
     You see, I was pondering on my friend Richard's creation of the fictional Woebetide Islands, off in the Indian Ocean north-east of Madagascar and due west from Zanzibar, and wondered about fleshing out their background a little, as this is what Richard requested.  What about, Your Humble Scribe pondered, there being lots of shoreline deposits of that stuff they make perfume from.  What's it called again - verdegris?

Alas, no.

     You can't be too harsh on Conrad here as he does not, nor has he ever, use perfumes.  No, "Verdegris" is the patina you get on copper as it ages and oxidises.  In fact it has nothing to do with grey <sniggers quietly at creating confusion amongst all> because the word is derived from the French "Vert de Grice" or "Green of Greece", presumably thanks to all the Hellenic statuary made from copper.

Sic

     Silly old Conrad.
     Motley, would you like a nice Canuckistanian snack?

Poutine.  Close enough.

     Right, that's enough Intro for tonight.  I'm off to read a bit more of Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction".

"The Wages Of Destruction" By Adam Tooze
Ol' Ad (I can call him that as I've bought the book) has an interesting idea about a "long" Second Unpleasantness, which he has starting in 1936, rather than the traditional 1939.  He uses this date as an average because you have the proto-Second Unpleasantness of the Spanish Civil Unpleasantness, which began in 1936, where Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy supplied arms and units to the Nationalists.  Art?

A very un-civil affair, frankly

     There was also the Japanese assault upon mainland China which began in 1937, and the Italian invasion of Abyssinia that took place in 1935.  So 1936 works as an average of all three events, and it is an interesting thesis, although Spain wasn't at war after 1939, and Abyssinia had been liberated by Perfidious Albion by 1942.
     No doubt Your Humble Scribe has shoehorned a whole library section into a single paragraph here, for which you're welcome.
     TWOD is a fascinating read for what went on beneath the propaganda veneer of Nazi Germany, though Conrad has to say it's no lightweight romp you can polish off in a weekend or whilst sitting in an airport departure lounge.  Up to Page 283, and the shooting war in Europe is yet to start.

Armoured behemoths of the Italians advance

Finally -
You may, or may not, be interested in that list of "10 Sci-Fi Films That Nobody Understands" that Your Modest Artisan mentioned earlier this week, and regardless of your position here you are going to - SIT BACK DOWN! - because this IS interesting, it is.  Of course, if you prefer, Conrad could always wheel out his 5,000 word monograph on the influence of "Forbidden Planet" on the - ah, you're nodding now.  Yes, thought that would persuade you.
     These are the films that I'd already seen, and comprehensively understood.  "Enjoyed" is going a bit far for some of them, however.  Art?

"The Naked Lunch"

     No doubt a big disappointment to all the pervoes who went to see it.  Conrad thinks the Peter Weller character is a bit of a Mary Sue, frankly, when compared to the real William Burroughs.  It's essentially the story of a bloke off his head on drugs all the time, and off his head even when not on drugs, and weird shizzle happens to him.  The novel and David Cronenberg were made for each other.  Not to be watched in front of Mum and Dad.  Art?

Beyond Lies The Wub

     Ah yes, back when John Boorman was given a green light and a blank cheque by the studio, and he gave them - this.  A giant stone head vomits guns, Sean Connery has a ponytail, and it all has to do with "The Wizard Of Oz", some bored immortals seek vicarious fun, the end.  Art?

The Big Giant Head's later manifestation

     Not so much a film where you don't know what's going on, you just don't really care.  Or was that just me?
      I think we'll leave the other three for a later date, you can only take so much cinematic silliness at a time.




*   Not quite  but almost ashamed to admit this.
**  The Zygon masquerading at the Duke Of Forgill, on seeing the Doctor's apparent corpse after mucking about with Zygon technology, quoth: "He underestimated the powers of organic crystallography ..."
***  Though I can still make Tsar Putin cry.