I Am Become -

A Drum
I know, I know, you were expecting that quote of Oppenheimer's from the 'Bhagavad Gita", "For I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds".  My quote isn't quite as doom-laden and portentous, but it does rhyme and consumes rather less ink that Ol' Bob's, so it has that going for it.
     Okay, yesteryon we were partying around in the middle of Europe, namely - what's that?  No, it wasn't because he'd poured sour milk into his tea! - middle Europe, and the town of Tabor, in south-western Bohemia.  Well, by - No! It was after Trinity - where the heck was I?  O yes - Art!

Also a tabor

     This is a kind of medieval drum, which you whale about by banging it with sticks, and you know Conrad, unable to resist a strained pun - 

You could say the drummer -

     - is playing a tabor in Tabor.
     Blimey, it took ages to find a picture that was even vaguely relevant.  Are you impressed?  No, you want to know -
     TRINITY!  TRINITY!  TRINITY!  Where they tested 'Gadget', the world's first atomic bomb and Ol' Bob realised they'd let something out of the bottle that could never be put back.  There, happy now?  You've soiled things with your incessant quibbling, you have.  Go stand in the corner until you learn to behave.

The kind of very loud percussion you only hear once

     Meanwhile, what can be causing that peculiar snivelling noise?  O it' Brian May, notable Sir Isaac Newton impersonator, who played guitar on that song we were traducing yesterday.  Would you like a hanky, Brian?

Oooh!  Another Tabor!

A Little Musical Critique
The good thing about lyrically lambasting "Bohemian Rhapsody" is that nobody's got a clue what it's about, so Your Humble Scribe can be as hair-splittingly pedantic or snarky as he likes, and you just have to sit and endure it.  It's also pretty long, so there's lots of lyrics to lambast.

One of these is Isaac Newton

     Let the basting of lamb begin!

Mama, just killed a man

Stop right there!  Say nothing until the lawyers arrive

Put a gun against his head

No, no - "allegedly", every time it's "allegedly"

Pulled my trigger, now he's dead

How do you know?  Are you a doctor?

Mama, life had just begun

Wait - what?!  How old is the person making this confession!

But now I've gone and thrown it all away

Good, hopefully far enough out to sea that it'll never get found.  "Allegedly" thrown.

One suspects so

Mama, oooh

Quickly, Tarquin, we need an injunction!

Didn't mean to make you cry

You did trap her fingers in the cutlery drawer, you scamp

If I'm not back again this time tomorrow

You'll need bail raising?

Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters

     Well, hopefully no Queen fans out there know where Conrad lives, or he may not see the end of the night*.

Hovertanks
We all know by now that Conrad never got over his teenage obsession with TANK, and that he has the ability to quote chapter and verse on armour quality, horsepower and ergonomic efficiency, but we've never ventured into the field of speculation about what tanks might look like in the future.
     Enter the Facebook group "Space Opera".  Someone there mentioned hovertanks with multiple turrets, which has already generated a fair bit of content here on BOOJUM! 
     Of course, Conrad could not resist a bit of a satirical dig ...

Hi! I'm a hovertank! I blast up a gigantic cloud of mud, dust, stones, leaves, water, twigs, hedgehogs, sand, snow and ice whenever I move! You'll always see me coming! And because I'm so INCREDIBLY NOISY you can track me even in total darkness!

     It's a fair couple of points.  Art?

With puny tank for scale

     This is possibly going to extremes, but you get my drift.  It's Ruffian, by the way, and is typical of them - "Mine Is The Biggest".     There was a book of science-fiction short stories I had decades ago with two really cool hovertanks bashing into each other; however, I can't remember the title and "tanks book cover" is no help on Google.

Meet "The Iron Cow", more an APC than a  tank.

Hijacking Horror Tropes
Because there are so many of them!  Nor are we ever likely to see an end to them in horror films, because horror and porn films are the only two film genres guaranteed to make their money back, the latter because they cost very little to make in the first place, and the former because you can get away with a cobbled-together script that cost £45 from Ed your mate who lives in his parent's basement** and whose idea of fashion is a tin-foil beanie.

Ed, the RSPCA have a few questions ...

     So - 
<There is a gang of late teens gathered in a modest diner>:  

Googled at random

VACUOUS BLONDE: I'm bored.  It's Friday night.  What should we do?
ARCHETYPAL JOCK <leering>: I can think of a few things!
VACUOUS BLONDE'S FRIEND: O shut it, you horndog.
VACUOUS BLONDE: We should do something - something exciting!
KID WITH GLASSES: There's always the old Elm Street Mansion
VACUOUS BLONDE'S FRIEND <muttering>: That's it?  That's my line?  Sheesh.  Wait till I see my agent ...
SOLE BLACK GUY IN GROUP <nervously>: Er - you mean the notoriously haunted Elm Street Mansion?  
VACUOUS BLONDE <claps hands together>: Yeah!  It'll be fun!
ARCHETYPAL JOCK: Yeah, all alone in the dark.
VACUOUS BLONDE'S FRIEND: O shut it, you horndog.  That's all I get?  No wonder I don't have a name.  I'm probably going to die second <looks at black guy meaningly>.
PASSING CREEPY CRUSTY OLD GUY: Stay away from that place!  Stay away.  It's not just haunted, it's <long pause for effect as he sucks his teeth> eeeeeevil.
GROUP IN UNISON: Okay, let's go bowling instead.
PASSING CREEPY CRUSTY OLD GUY: Have a good night, you crazy kids!

Creepy crusty old guy - saving virgin teenagers since 1995!

     It made me laugh.  Though it would be a very short horror film, wouldn't it?

Finally -
Okay, Conrad is annotating Keith Douglas' "Alamein To Zem Zem", wherein the supposed poet proves to have a pretty handy tactical knowledge of desert warfare, and also does the stiff upper lip thing as an act.
     As I've mentioned before, Keith had to use pseudonyms for the other people in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, because his pen portraits could be as cruel as they were incisively accurate.
     However -

Heh

     He never anticipated his superior officer's diaries coming out in an edition a half-century later, nor that a hair-splitting pedant (me!) would cross reference actions in ATZZ to AEAW and work out who's who.
     We shall come back to this, it has legs.

But in the meantime, we are one and done!


*  Yeah, I know some of you are rubbing your hands at the prospect.
**  Without their knowledge.  Oooh, a horror trope right there.