"OUCH THAT'S BLOODY HURTFUL!"

Calm Yourself, Quivering Reader!
For we here at BOOJUM! are not forsaking our cherished SFW status, O no, because we don't want to scare away impressionable young people, nor disapproving parents, as our traffic figures are low enough anyway -
       
                                                     Low riders.  Close enough.
     Although, since I incorporated what looked like a swear word in yesteryon's post title (F******* HELL YEAH! actually de-censors as "FLIPPING HELL YEAH!"), the visitors today are five times what they were yesterday.  Funny, that.
     The reason I was so excited was over a semi-animated Youtube reconstruction of a TV21 comic strip, which if Art doesn't want to experience the electric toasting-fork -

Get over to Youtube NOW!!

     A more perceptive poster on Youtube pointed out that the artwork was so crisp and clear that it must have been copied from the original art boards; if you've been reading over the past month then you know what a marathon task just locating this stuff is, as it's been scattered to the four winds.  They also pointed out that there are no speech balloons obscuring artwork, since there is a narration and a ghosted-out text equivalent at the bottom.
     I know, I know, I'm getting round to today's NOT swearing title.  I have to warn you, if you're not keen on Gerry Anderson or comics, today's blog will be a slog.
     "Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons".  There you go.  Er - why yes, I have just registered with the Gerry Anderson website, how did you guess?

Whoops, dead.

     I was taking notes whilst they were playing the CSATM primer (anorak or saddoe, either is fine with me) and - 
     Okay, Captain Scarlet is indestructible.  Let us have a look at what the end title sequence sadists had him suffer - 



     What an assemblage of awful.  Yes, the good Captain will come back to life after all these untimely ends, BUT HE STILL HAS TO ENDURE THEM.  I don't imagine drowning is either quick or pleasant, nor is being smashed to a pulp falling from fifty storeys up - O in that last one if he gets hold of his cap he'd then have enough reach to use it to pull the dynamite towards him and nip out the fuse - which is where today's title comes from.  Can you imagine the state of mind of someone who has died, and experienced the pain that goes with same, numerous times?

Glasses to hide the teary eyes

     No wonder they keep a doctor close to hand on Cloudbase!  Probably carrying an elephant gun loaded with whale-tranquilizers.  After all, if Captain Scarlet went potty, how could you stop him*?

"Oopsies, dead again."

     Hmmm, an interesting idea.  We may come back to this, I made a lot of notes <faint chorus of weeping in the background>.
     Motley!  Yes, time for you to be the target in the tetrodotoxin dart-gun rally.

It's March
YES YES YES!  I know it's July - named after Julius Caesar, actually - and I'm not talking about the calendar, I'm talking about war-gaming conventions.  NO!  "conventions" with a small "c", as in commonly-agreed rules, not collections of 97% male nerds with backpacks and poor social skills**.  ART!  This electric toasting-fork is a-crackling -

     Despite what you may think, the units involved have moved.  The Royalist cavalry have not Moved, but they have changed Formation: into Line from March Column.
     "Spare us!  Spare us!" I hear you call.  Also the whisper "Drag Race is on in five minutes, is the senile old duffer going to be finished anytime soon?"
     Pausing only to point out that I've never seen an Efzone on DR, I shall explicate.
     In real life, as on the wargaming table, you have to move your troops from A to B.  If you conducted this movement tactically, which is to say spread out, with flanking guards, skirmishers, a well-distanced logistics train, cavalry scouts out in all directions - you'd never get anywhere.  What you would do is close everyone up as tight as possible, and then move forward as fast as possible.

"PAY US - NOW!"

     The thing is, if you're moving like this then yes, you whiz about the battlefield like lightning but at the risk of being very, very vulnerable if the opposition catch you in your March deployment.  This applies then and now, gentle reader, especially since the introduction of air power.

A stinging real world example

     Of course with hindsight it is obvious what you should do and when; in the real world choosing the right time is a very, very fraught issue.

Wow that ended up rather grim.  Let us have something light and frothy next.  I know  -LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DES - on second thoughts, maybe not.  Ah!

Captain Black
No!  Nothing to do with Spectrum or the Mysterons.  Perhaps "Captain" is elevating the man a tad.
     I refer to - obviously! - Don Black, whose entire real name is Donald Blackstone, and he is a wordsmith completely beyond the humble levels that Conrad operates at.  He is - Art? Picture!

The man himself

     You may not have heard the name - Conrad didn't - but you almost certainly have heard him, as he's written the lyrics for over 2,000 songs.  He won an Oscar for the song "Born Free", in fact.  Plus the lyrics to a slew of James Bond films.  Somewhat unusually he's worked in both stage and screen: his first big success in theatre was with "Billy", which is a musical, so it and I are never going to cross paths.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53332613

    That above a link to the revelatory BBC website article on the Captain - sorry, Mister Black.

Thank You, Brain - I Think
Ah, yes, another merry gambol through Conrad's mind, which baffles him just as much as yourselves, gentle readers.  This concerns a dream.
     It will probably come as no surprise to you that Your Humble Scribe's dreams frequently have him in bookshops or at book stalls, perusing books, usually gloating about laying his hands on huge original tomes for a pittance - patently, this is the wish-fulfillment part of the dreams.
     Last night, however, Conrad moved out of the bookshop and there, at a book stall outside, was a large cardboard box with "Wargames" scrawled on it.  These were several boxes of hex-and-counter boardgames, topmost of which was "NATO Division Commander". Art?

I had this myself, once

     Dream-Conrad noted with disdain that the asking price was £20.00, which was pretty excessive considering, and the box had been sellotaped shut, so you couldn't even see if all the pieces were there.  Not sure what the dream was trying to tell me, except perhaps don't eat dip and poppodums last thing at night.
     However, there was another boxed boardgame there, retailing at a much more reasonable price of £10.00, called "Smash The Kharkov Invasion", with some Soviet Realistic cover art.  It looked to be either Sinister in origin, or perhaps produced by People's Wargames, that radical left-wing boardgames company from the Seventies***.

Like this, except in colour

     I'm sure this says something telling about me.  No idea what, though.

Finally -
I think that's enough scrivel for one day.  All I want to say is that the traffic yesterday was mental, about six times normal, which surely can't be down to a title with lots of asterisks in it?


* There is the Captain Jack Harkness Option, which is a bit extreme for children's television programming.
**  But with surprisingly good body hygiene.
***  A real company, and I have two of their boardgames.