Thank You, Brain

Ah, The Creative Experience!
Creating words of wit, wisdom and wonder - BOOJUM! of course, what did you think I was referring to?  The weekly shopping list?
     Conrad has gotten out of the habit of keeping a bit of notepaper on his bedside cabinet, which is a bit sloppy considering that his brain is always working, even when he isn't.  By which I mean upon waking from eight hours sleep, there is frequently a buzzword or two echoing around my consciousness, and in times gone by I'd snatch up a pen (for there is always one close at hand) and scribble it down.

<O be still my sweaty palms!>

     That'll teach me.  I now have two things written down, so let's look at the first of them: "Carter Burwell".  Of course Your Humble Scribe goes and Googles anything that crops up in his head, in order to see if it's SFW and if said word(s) are real.  And what do you know!  It's a name, and there really is a Carter Burwell.  Art?

Carter, looking very Burwell

     He's a musician and composer, noted for his frequent work with the Coen brothers, whom you could not accuse of being exactly mainstream; it seems his work with them allows him to underwrite his more un-commercial projects.  Hmmmm.  Never thought I'd imagine working with the Coens as being a financial prop for stuff that was even more out-there.
     The real question, of course, is why his name floated to the top of the fetid swamp that is my mind.  It's ages since I watched "The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs" and that's the last thing I recall seeing with his name attached to it.
     The past is another country, and so, it seems, is my brain.

Jakarta, part of another country

Here's One I Prepped Earlier
Ah, how it makes my shrivelled heart beat faster, seeing a musician reduced to snivelling thanks to A Little Musical Critique.  They get so fearfully precious about their wailings and warblings, the little dears.  Take Iron Maiden, for example; they went through a whole box of Andrex each last night.
     Better get another fistful of tissue, chaps, because we continue with our incisive look at "Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter".  Having lambasted the first verse, let us now take aim at the chorus <ahem>

Bring your daughter, bring your daughter to the slaughter

Is there an age limit to this event, or is it open doors?

Let her go, let her go, let her go

Now you're being confusing.  Which grammatical tense is the correct one here?  

Bring your daughter, bring your daughter to the slaughter

How can you bring her if you've already let her go!  Stop being obtuse!

Let her go, let her go, let her go

STOP THIS NONSENSE!

Let her go

Not even a "Please".  Really, your manners!

You need a better brand of sun-tan lotion, matey

Here's One They Prepped Earlier -
O what a source of new material the podcast "We Have Ways" is.  Al related a listener's e-mail, saying that he'd once been in conversation with an Italian, who reminisced about his work on Italian aircraft during the Second Unpleasantness.  They put together an aircraft, which was then wheeled out of the hangar, then round the back, where it was broken down into bits and recycled as spare parts.  He was told not to ask any questions about it.
     Jim had more to say on the subject.  The tale was almost true.  It concerned a plane called the Breda Ba88, which, if Art will put down the coal scuttle and spoon -

It *looked* the business

     - if it was any more of a dog, it would shed.  It looked good, and it was reasonably fast when flight-tested, but once it got military stuff like guns and bombs and crew added, it became incredibly sluggish.  The ones that went to North Africa to wage war against Perfidious Albion had sand filters added, and then found they couldn't fly.  This is, as you may have already guessed, a considerable disadvantage in an aircraft, but nobody dared admit to Il Duce how bad it was, because dictators.  So they ended up as decoys, paraded in all their lonely glory at the end of the runway.

All done with wires

     Thank you Jim and Al.
Another One Conrad Can Get Behind
Only for a congratulatory slap, no knives involved.  For Lo! we have arrived at Number 28 on the list of "50 Best Sci-Fi Television Shows" as compiled by Rolling Stone, every bit as fruitful as WHW.  Art!

The grandaddy of them all

     This is from "The Quatermass Experiment", which dates back to 1953, at the dawn of the television era.  Yes, black and white and with frightfully Received English Pronunciation, and also extremely suspenseful and at times downright frightening.  This was a time when you could have a middle-aged man as hero, instead of some bright young things (there's a plot in there somewhere ...).  Sadly, only the first two episodes of the original six are preserved, though the film is a pretty good reconstruction, if a little lacking in suspense thanks to it's relative brevity.  For real hide-behind-the-cushions stuff, you need to see "Quatermass And The Pit", and definitely the television serial, not the film.  Don't watch it alone or in the dark, or you'll regret it.

Life imitating art
(and maybe a motley)

Finally -
What to wrap up with?  I think the F.M.O. as I've scribbled it down enough in my notebook.  It stands for "Flug Motorenwerk Ostmark", and was a Teuton manufacturer of aircraft engines in the Second Unpleasantness.  I was picqued by Andrew Tooze's description of how it was intended to be a mighty manufacturing hub, churning out 1,000 aero-engines per month, yet it struggled to manage a quarter of that total.  Some weak-ass sauce, one judges.  Reichmarschall Goering was scandalised after paying it a visit, calling it disorganised and rubbish, and sneering at how few engines it had made by then - all of a few dozen after two years.

"Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair ..."

     So much for the much-vaunted Teuton efficiency, hmmmm?


     And with that, we are done! Done, I tell you!