Hello Tbilisi!

The Capital Of Georgia
Lest you confuse one with the other, we are not talking about that state in the south of South Canada, because their capital certainly isn't Tbilisi (it's Atlanta).  Rather, I mean the Caucasian nation state which threw off the Sinister mantle in 1991.  Originally, they had been forced to join the Sinister Union at the point of a gun, being physically conquered by the Red Army in 1921.  Art?

Tbilisi

     Interestingly enough, Josef Stalin was from Georgia, as was his loathsome crony and slavish minion Beria.  Once matey popped his clogs in 1953, the rest of the Politburo got around to reversing his policies and - O what a coincidence! - the Korean War also ended.
     Of course after 1991 all the statues of Stalin vanished, as nobody had ever liked "The Little Sod With The Moustache"; feared, yes; liked, no.  Some of them went a bit earlier, as for example that one in Hungary, destroyed in the 1956 uprising.

Not so little, yet still soddy and moustachey

     Which has very little to do with what Your Humble Scribe really wanted to talk about, which was the title of a book that popped into my head: "The Storm's Howling Through Tiflis".  Art?

Thus

     It's not a well-known fact that "Tiflis" is the old, pre-1936 name for "Tbilisi", which of course Conrad knew, and is why he remembered the title of this novel.  
     No, I've got no idea what it's about and the publishers don't seem to have known, either, or there'd be some blurb on the front about "In the tradition of 'Lord of the Rings'" or "Written in the style of Tolkein" or "An epic high fantasy akin to the Ring" or even (being a touch desperate here) "By the author who lived two streets over from the niece of Tolkein's babysitter".
     I just did a bit of quick Google-fu on this and the reviews are not good.  Not good at all.  Allow me to quote part of one: "The start of the book takes far too long to get going and at no point are you rewarded with any conceptual unity or anything resembling a coherent plot."
    So there you are: Tiflis-cum-Tbilisi.

Georgian architecture

Copyright And Wrong
Yesterday I mentioned some of the problems that face publishers who might want to reprint classic comic strips from British comics, in that their audience is getting rather long in the tooth.  Conrad himself is one of these potential purchasers and will be hitting 59 this year.  Art!

Our earlier example, published in 1971

     The next problem is getting permission from whoever owns the rights to the strips, and this is where things get messy.  The original publication's owners are now very unlikely to exist, instead having been acquired or bought out over the decades by other entities and agencies.  "Down The Tubes", the seminal blog about comics, used "Countdown" as an example because the original publishers, Polystyle, disappeared decades ago, their strips now being owned by The Mirror Group.  Except the Daily Express possibly also owns copyright as well, since they have the original artworks, acquired via a different set of acquisitions. Then - Art?

This puzzled me considerably as a youth

     - as you can clearly see, they used lots of images from "2001", which confused me as a reader (aged 10) since I was aware of the film and didn't know why they'd copied wholesale.  So, in addition to getting permission from possibly two other sources, you might need to get permission from the estate of Stanley Kubrick and whomever acquired the MGM Films group (Spyglass Entertainment, if memory serves).  This is already getting expensive and not a single copy sold yet!

If You Want To Miss This One -
Conrad will generously permit, as he is digesting breakfast, and did you realise how filling porridge is?
     Because we are once again back with "Forgotten Weapons", and Ian McCollom, whom others have christened "Gun Jesus" because of his somewhat - er - hippyish appearance.  Art!

Ian and friend

     This really is one of a forgotten weapon variety (the title's a bit of a misnomer).  You can see the description at upper port, and you may have been fooled by the gun if you'd not read the legend.
     It's not the infamous Sten Gun of the Second Unpleasantness, notorious for being shoddy and cheap, which allowed it to be produced by the millions.  It is, rather, a Teuton copy of said gun, except they simplified it a bit, which is hard to credit as the Sten was deliberately made about as simple as you can get.  The design and production began in late 1944, when the writing was clearly on the wall for the Nazi regime, and they decided to produce copies of Allied weapons to - ah - to - er - confuse them?  The logic, if any, escapes me.  Art!

Note magazine

     The one thing that instantly differentiates this version from the real thing is the magazine, or that boxy thing which holds all the bullets for the non-technically inclined.  Rather than being side-mounted, it is firmly and irrevocably vertical, meaning the major thing Teuton soldiers liked about the Sten if they got their hot sweaty paws upon it, that it could be fire effectively from a prone position, was no longer possible.
     Ironically, as one poster put it in the forum for this item, for a weapon designed to be as cheap as possible, it sold for £8,000 at auction.
     Next!

Back To That "Rolling Stone" List -
Aaand we're not going to bother with number 21, "Astroboy" because it sounds rubbish; a super-powered robot boy in a Japanese cartoon show with dubious animation from the Sixties?  Nope.
     Let us instead indulge Conrad's mania for checking out what he likes, not what you want or like to read or see.  And at Number 20 we have - 

Yay!

     You can bet your boots (also socks, underwear and PPE) that Conrad backs this one.  It's a hard-sci fi space opera where humanity has colonised the Solar System, and taken all it's vices and virtues along for the ride.  Amazon Prime picked it up when SyFy dropped it, thank you Mister Bezos, and they're currently filming Season Five.  Your Humble Scribe has read all the books, which only gives one an outline of what may happen next on screen, since the canny scriptwriters don't simply copy and paste.

     If you have no idea what I'm talking about THEN THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!
Finally -
I know, I know, we've still not gotten around to that Polish website that connects the dots between Keanu Reeves and UFOs, but I haven't forgotten it and we will cover it, eventually.  In the meantime, please have a look at this and tell me what you think -

Hmmmmmmmmmmm