Still Tinkering In The Infernal Regions

One Hopes The Mordor Tourist Board Are Paying Attention
They do have a bit of a hard sell on their hands and Conrad feels a tad sorry for them, though not enough to actually buy a ticket.  Their copywriters are not the best since they can't afford to pay enough to get in experts with experience and ability.  I mean - Art?

"FREE GIANT FIREWORKS DISPLAY!"

     I rest my case.
     Okay, enough tangential trifles, let us set fair for the main course.  You recall that yesteryon we described the underground coal seam/mine fires that had rendered the Pennsylvania town of Centralia a ghost town?  And that they'd been burning for over 60 years?  Impressive and frightening in equal amounts, and an example of how impossible it is to extinguish a coal seam fire once it catches.  You might think such a long-duration burn was remarkable -

 - and you'd be WRONG!

     For what you are looking at is a burning coal seam in the land of the Teutons, which they call the "Brennender Berg", or "The Hot Rock" "The Burning Mountain".  It's quite low-key nowadays, since it glows rather than blazes, and nobody seems to have taken an photographs at night the selfish rascals, did they not know we bloggers would be looking for material?  Art!

Old picture

     This particular fire kicked off in 1668, probably thanks to spontaneous combustion, peaking by the end of the seventeenth century and declining to the level that it was a safe tourist attraction, attended by that famous Teuton Goethe.  Did they issue bread and toasting forks for peckish tourists?  It's still smouldering away, should you ever be in the Saarland near Sulzbach.
     Conrad can hear your startled wibble from here:"Wow, burning since 1668 - damn, that yields no twenty-four hour clock puns.  Surely this is has to be the oldest and longest-burning coal-seam fire in history?"

Johann, don't look so worried!

     You might think that, yes.  And you would be WRONG!
     Motley, the weather's gone cold again and the electric blanket won't work any longer, so I'm going to fill a chafing pan with hot embers from the fire and put that in the bed, to heat it up.

What could possibly go wrong?

Why Conrad Likes Poland
In geo-political terms, This Sceptred Isle has always felt bounden to support the gallant underdog, and as underdogs go, Poland is up there in lights, sandwiched as it has been for centuries between what they sometimes indelicately refer to as "The Western Bully" and "The Eastern Bully".
      Which is where Keanu Reeves comes in.  Oh, and UFOs.  Conrad came across a Polish article that makes all the wilful generalisations, leaps of logic, dubious connections and  outright silliness that you see all the time in BOOJUM! so how could I not like it?
     First of all, Keanu popped up in adverts promoting a region of north-east Poland, the Kuyavian and Pomeranian Voivodeship, which is attractive yet also obscure.  Art?

Apparently K. really hit the correct pronunciation

     Keanu isn't Polish, isn't married to a Polish spouse and doesn't spend time there as a tax exile, so the question in the article was - why is he doing this?  Not that Dagmara, the article's author, was bothered, as K. was a long-time crush of hers.
     Then we next have to jump tracks and look at one of Poland's biggest games companies, CD Projeckt Red.  Art?

Shock-headed beaker!

     I think we'll leave it there or the whole blog will be about this topic.  Don't go very far away, though.  We have lots more wibble to come!

WIBBLE, ART, WIBBLE!

Here's One I Can Get Behind
For Lo! In the big scheme of "Rolling Stone"'s 50 Top Sci-Fi Shows" we have now rolled around to Number 29 (or in that horrid South Canadian shorthand, "#29"), which is - "Babylon 5".  Art?

Some of the cast

     Conrad remembers being in a crowded hotel room at a sci-fi convention in Bradford, crowded because the pilot episode of the above was being shown, well before it was due to appear on television.  Not sure how they got hold of it, or if it was entirrrrely legal ...
     Anyway, Conrad loved loved loved B5, because it was a projection into the future of Hom. Sap. now, meaning that it dealt with politics both human and alien, poverty, war, discrimination, unemployment, and all with what were cutting-edge computer graphics for the time.  Plus Ambassador Kosh's utterly mystifying statements -

Sic

     What was under that so-called 'enviromnent suit'?  Did Kosh even need it? If he spoke in riddles when being direct, if he tried speaking in riddles, would he be comprehensible*?
     There are half a dozen threads you could sustain here without thinking, except we're not the Babylon 5 Fanfiction thread (though there is one) and we shall move on.
     It could be pretty downbeat, and it was a sterling corrective to the Fluffy Bunnies And Rainbows future that a certain "Starry Trek" posited.

Plus big battles in space!
(without sound)

Finally -
One peculiar artefact that came up in a Reddit discussion on one of their Youtube channels was "Marvin's Magic Drawing Board", which appeared to be a kid's toy from the Seventies, promoted by television adverts that showed how glowingly wonderful it was in action.  Art?

Box cover with "Artist's impression"

     This was a board with a coloured underlay, over which was a gel layer and a plastic cover, the general idea being that you could make pretty coloured pictures by putting pressure on the plastic cover.
     That, at least, was the television advert version.  The Reddit commenters were less kind, remarking that it was incredibly shoddy and quickly fell apart, and that you couldn't manage pictures anything like the television ones, and just don't waste your money, be it $$$ or £££.  The review page on Amazon has 26 negative reviews versus 9 positive, and the whole thing is a warning about taking television adverts at face value.

Conrad is shocked - SHOCKED! - than an advert was less than truthful**.

     And remember - Banana-toffee popcorn - the acme of civilisation.

Heaven-in-a-bag/TAUNT ME WITH WHAT I CANNOT HAVE!

     Chin chin and cheerio!

*  The "he" is a convention.  
**  Ironically, Conrad is being less than truthful.