Thank You Ray Bradbury

I Refer, Of Course, To "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
Which I only know of by reputation and a bit of Wiki, since I haven't seen the film nor read the novel, which was originally a screenplay before being adapted as a novel.  We'll get to why it's a relevant turn of phrase in a minute.  Or two.  Patience, the biggest virtue.
     The film, incidentally, was a huge commercial flop when it came out, making back less than half it's £13 million budget, which was a lot in 1983 pounds.  It does conform to the Hollywood trope of English Bad Guy - Art?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - Mister Dark

     British actor Jonathan Pryce, looking rather suave and Machiavellian.  
     The title is taken from "Macbeth" by the Barf Of Avon, Shakespeare: "By the pricking of my thumbs,
     Something wicked this way comes."
     With what I am about to relate, you could substitute "Ticking", or "Ticked", because - clockwork.
     Okay, this is an anecdote from Hesketh-Pritchard's "Sniping In France".  He refers to a "Mechanical Stop", which appears to have been a clockwork device that, when fully wound, would tick for many hours.  The idea was that you placed this at a specific location for hunters stalking game, instead of a person, and it indicated where and when the hunting boundary ceased.  Presumably to ensure that Tiddles, or indeed Tiddles' owner, are not perforated by .375 high-velocity rounds.  Art?

The best I can do, I''m afraid.

     It's impossible to locate a picture of same, as you get pictures of Stanley Kubrick or people posing with dead animals, so use your imagination.
     This mechanical stop (hereafter "MS") was in the possession of the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, who decided to have some malicious amusement with it.  In the dead of night one of them crept to within 60 yards of the Teuton trenches, MS in hand, wound it up and left it there.  The Teuton sentries, as they were intended, heard the very loud and regular TICK-TICK-TICK of the MS and immediately leapt to the not-unreasonable conclusion that some infernal engine had been conjured up by Perfidious Albion which would, once the ticking ended, blow them all into oblivion.  Flares were fired, bombs were thrown, shots were fired and the Teuton line within earshot of the MS spent a long and unpleasant vigil, until - nothing happened.  The Seaforths, meanwhile, were laughing themselves sick.

You can see one of them grinning, right there!

      Here an aside.  One of the images that came up whilst searching was that one from "A Clockwork Orange" where Alex is undergoing the Ludovico Treatment, and it's one that Your Humble Scribe cannot look at without wincing, as he HATES anyone going near his eyes with anything.  Art!

<Conrad has an attack of the purple wim-wams>

     No special effects trickery here, that ghastly device is indeed keeping Malcolm McDowell's eyes open involuntarily.  The chap putting the eyedrops in was an optometrist, not an actor, and he had trouble remembering his lines, which caused Malky considerable anxiety.  He risked permanent eye damage if the eyedrops weren't put in every few seconds, and the optometrist was concentrating on his lines, not the eyedrops.
     I think I'd rather endure the MS.
     Motley!  Come here, I want to test that saying about matchsticks -

"Carthago Delenda Est"
Which is Latin <hack spit at the zombie language> and means "Carthage must be destroyed".
     "Blimey!" I hear you retort.  "What did Carthage do to offend Rome?"
     Well, they waged the First and Second Punic Wars, is what.  Rome won both of these eventually, but not quickly nor cheaply, and that left a bad taste in the mouth of some Romans, particularly one Cato The Censor.  Art?

Our man Catty

     His rationale for Carthage-busting was how incredibly wealthy the city-state was, which made it a threat to Rome.  Which, if it seems a little weak, is because it was.  The Romans had been suspicious of and hostile towards Carthage from the get-go, and their legal pretexts for going to war were quite specious.  Catty would finish every speech he made in the Senate with that phrase about Carthage, regardless of what the actual matter of debate was.  Balance of trade defecit?  "Carthage must be destroyed".  Trouble on the provinces bordering the Rhine?  "Carthage must be destroyed".  Diplomatic mission needed to the Parthians?  "Carthage must be destroyed".  Draining the Pontine Marshes?  "Tom Baker was the best Doctor" - just testing to see if you were paying attention no really "Carthage must be destroyed".
     Eventually, Carthage was indeed destroyed and her inhabitants sold into slavery.

Carthage in the good old days

     Of course this was rather hard cheese if you were a Carthaginian, it's simply how they did business in classical times, none of this second-guessing and moral paradoxes - simply "CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED".

Poor Dave
I refer, of course, to Dave Reardon, husband of the epic mythbuster Professor Ann Reardon who is the force behind "How To Cook That" on Youtube.  Ann's focus in days gone by might indeed have been informing people how to cook things - her qualification is in foody-related stuff - but she has kind of transitioned into a moral crusader against the innumerable Youtube channels promoting 'life hacks' that don't work and simply waste your money.  Yay Ann!

Ann and Dave.  I don't have to point out who's who, do I?
<sighs> okay, "Ann" is the one with - O you were joking.

     I used to think that Dave was one of her technical staff, but no, he's her hubby, and is thus obliged to sample whatever she cooks up when following a recipe.  Sorry, "Recipe".  In the case of the Slow Cooker Cheesecake this is no great hardship.
     However ...

     This is "5 Minute Crafts" way of making noodles.  Allegedly.  You can see from the on-screen commentary that they're pouring noodle batter into a pan of boiling water.  Note that they DO NOT show the stuff cooking.  Instead they cut to -

     Noodles.  Noodles, hmmm?  Ann copies their methodology, and you then understand why 5MC never showed their batter actually hitting the water, because this is what Ann ends up with - Art?

Glop

     Surprise!  You get a load of congealed eggy glop that resembles noodles the way a Cro-Magnon cave painting resembles 3D television.
     This is where sympathy for Dave comes in.  Art?

     Not loving it at all.  Quite unpleasant, in fact.  If you'd actually followed these instructions you'd simply have wasted 5 eggs and poisoned your husband.

"O Noes!" Cried Conrad's Wallet
Your Humble Scribe was paying close attention to one of the more recent "We Have Ways" podcasts, because it featured an interview with historian David Edgerton, author of the iconoclastic "Britain's War Machine", which is an excellent work that Conrad got cheaply as it was in The Works.  "Phew!" said Conrad's Wallet; "We dodged a bullet there, hmmm?"
     Not so fast, Wallet.  Jim and Al (the purveyors of said podcast) mentioned "England and the Aeroplane", which appears to be another essential work by Dave.  Art?

Everyone loves a clever cover

     Not only that, they also floated the name of one Hermione Giffard - gasp! a gel writing about military history!  It'll be the vote next and skirts ending above the knee - who has written a book on the varying approaches to the jet engine of Britain, Germany and South Canada - O alright "America" - during the Second Unpleasantness.  Jim did mention how British jet engines were enormously superior to the Teuton ones, which might surprise folks.  Not if you know that the lifetime of a Jumo 004 jet engine, which powered the Luftwaffe jets, could be as short as 10 hours -
     A topic for another day, one feels.

"Wallet quietly sobbed in a corner"

     And with that, people, we are done.  Done!