Conrad Quivers Cravenly

No!  I Have Not Been Scared By A Spider
Although the ones that venture into The Mansion at this time of year are so huge that they resemble an octopus wearing a fur coat <looks around nervously>.
     No, the reason Your Humble Scribe is feeling a little worried <translation: a lot worried> is to do with modern Politics, which I'm not going to apologise for.
     You see, John Bolton is due to publish his book "The Room Where It Happened" next week, John being the National Security Adviser to the Trump administration from 2018 to 2019.  Art?

How to scare cats the John Bolton way!

     It is fair to say that John and the Horned One parted office on bad terms, John claiming that he jumped before he was pushed and the Horned One claiming he was jolly well pushed, and really really hard, too.  The work promises to be a positive vinegar-fest of sniping and allegations - O whoopee!  Let me add a couple of quotes from the BBC's article on this book:  ""He second-guessed people's motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government," Mr Bolton added.  He includes details of a number of private conversations. Among other things, Mr Trump is alleged to have been unaware that the UK was a nuclear power or that Finland was a country."

Suomi exists, really.

     Don't tell me that the Horned One buys into the peculiar "Finland is a conspiracy between Russia and Japan" conspiracy theory!  One day I will take a trip to Helsinki in order to shake hands with Aki Kaurismaki and prove that the country exists.
     As for Perfidious Albion being a nuclear power - well, yes, caught scrumping apples on that one*.  We are.  Nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines are so easy to overlook, aren't they?

CAUTION!  Trident submarine at your feet; do not trip.

     The reason Your Humble Scribe gets worried whenever Mister Bolton hogs the headlines is that there is a distinct resemblance between the two of us, as you may recall from seeing me in a suit yesterday.  Art?

Not suited but booted.

     It is fortunate that we are currently in lockdown and Your Modest Artisan does not have to travel on public transport, for it is a certainty that some seething political activist with poor eyesight will accuse me of being Bolton On The Bus.  Which would inevitably lead to fisticuffs and a prison sentence, if not exile abroad.

Pretty As A Picher
OR
Your Head Is Lead
Ah, I'm pleased to see that you've learned your lesson and are not pointing fingers and stammering about spelling mistakes.  Have the Tazer welts healed yet?
     When I say "Picher" I refer, of course, to the township in Oklahoma that, for a couple of decades, was one of the worst possible places to live in the whole of South Canada.  South Canada being an especially big place full of lots and lots of places and people.
     Because - Art!

Russian Maxim, French Hotchkiss, South Canadian Browning, British Vickers

     Modern automatic weapons, you see, fire hundreds of bullets per minute, and they have been deployed by the million across the twentieth century, meaning that they need to be supplied with billions of bullets.
     Bullets made of lead.
     What was in the ground below Picher?
     Lead!
     This led to an enormous number of lead mines being sunk around the town and it's environs, to the total of 14,000 mine shafts.  Art?

Picher in the boom days

     Everything was peachy, or at least leady, until the mining stopped and the questions started, because in Picher, "having a nice chat" did not mean sitting down and gabbing with your neighbour.  O noes -
     And having set the scene, we shall flee like a thief in the night.  Except we'll be back tomorrow on this topic, so as a thief that would be a very poor modus operandi.  Unless they returned in disguise?  But the family dog might still recognise them.  Like a thief in the night who comes back in disguise after having had a shower and drenching self in pungent aftershave?

Don't wave your rod at me!

A Little Musical Critique
Quick, a hankie for Bruce!  For Lo! we are set to surgically implant him a new one with the second verse from "Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter".  Conrad has had to wait ages to get around to this -
     What's that film with Roy from "Jaws" in where he''s convinced someone it out to murder him covertly and he narrowly avoids being pushed from a railway platform at the very beginning**?
     - because these big and oh-so-tough tough metalhead rockers were reduced to snivelling namby-pambies last time I did this.  You can't be "metal" and "sensitive", apparently, bad for the image.

Honey it's getting close to daybreak

Tell me this: are you just about to get out of bed or get into it?  Wastrel!

Probably not this kind.

The sun is creeping in the sky

Painfully ambiguous.  Creeping up or down?  How much time has elapsed since line One?

No patent remedies for heartache

Speak for yourself.  I find gin to be wonderfully effective.

Just empty words and humble pie

Is that a gluten-free low-calorie non-saturated fat humble pie?

So get down on your knees honey

Careful.  That's twice now for "Honey".  Some snowflake will come along defending bees.

Uh-oh.  We've also gotten someone else's attention

Assume an attitude

No no no no no!  An "Attitude" is incorporeal.  You mean "Posture".

You just pray that I'll be waiting

Now you're assuming, you entitled bumbletuck

'Cause you know, you know I'm coming soon

Expect the door to be locked and the lights out, then.  Bafoon

I mean, would you open the door to this?

     Motley, another crate of Andrex for Bruce!

     "Last Embrace" - that was the one.  A very Hitchcockian thriller from Jonathan Demme, with - as I recall - quite a twist at the end.

Finally -
Conrad, ever given to pondering the answers to questions nobody ever asked, wonders if the characters in horror films have ever seen a horror film, or if horror films even exist in that meta-universe***?  Because if the answer is "Yes" then they simply deserve to die out of sheer stupidity - "Thinning out the herd" as old Chas Darwin would have put it.  If the answer is "No" then they still deserve to die, since they are incapable of stopping for a second - literally that long - and asking themselves the question "Is this wise?"

Ahum

     You also have to question the mindset of all those evil stalking killers who arm themselves with only a knife, given that 95% of all horror films take place in South Canada, where there are something like 6 guns for every person.  One can picture all those abandoned realistic screenplays ...

THE LONE HEROINE: O noes!  Trapped in the basement by the evil - excuse me - Evil Stalking Killer wielding his butcher's cleaver!
EVIL STALKING KILLER: Hahahaha <coughs> damn, where's my inhaler? Okay, you <insert long list of misogynistic insults> prepare to die!
THE LONE HEROINE <pulls out concealed longslide .45 automatic>: Not today
EVIL STALKING KILLER: Wait - what - hey that's not f-
BANG BANG BANG BANG
THE LONE HEROINE <maintaining a safe distance>: And a few in the head, just to make sure.
BANG BANG BANG BANG
She skips outside into the dawn, whistling a merry tune.

     Realistic, but the film is only 20 minutes long.  Sorry.  And anyone wielding a butcher's cleaver in a basement would have a hard time getting a big enough swing, which would render them vulnerable to a kick in the crotch or a punch to the throat.
     Don't you just love pedantic hair-splitting film reviewers!

John Bolton approves

*  "Hand in the cookie jar" for our trans-Atlantic cousins.
**  An example of how my mind works
***  I think "Scream" addresses this issue but it's a film that thinks itself considerably cleverer than it really is.