Thunder, Plunder And Laws Rent Asunder

 Hello!

Allow me to get the pleasantries out of the way and then we can get down to the usual curmudgeonly nastiness.  I take it that's what you're here for?  If you were expecting nineteenth-century nonsense verse or happy rabbits gambolling in the meadows THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

     

I like this chap.  He looks positively sinister.

     Here an aside.  What exactly is a 'Mock Turtle'?  Enquiring minds need to know*!

     Right, back to despoiling icons and shattering reputations, as we review Legal Eagle's "Laws Broken" analysis of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

    Some background information for you.  'Legal Eagle' is a Youtube channel from Devin Stone, a South Canadian attorney, who addresses all sorts of legal issues raised in film and television, looking at them from a qualified legal perspective.  In 'Laws Broken' he goes through a film and tots up the total number of years the hero would spend in jail and how much they'd have to cough up in fines.  Art?

That scamp Devon

     I warn you, nobody ever comes out of these things smelling of roses.  

     SERIOUSLY!  If you value your childhood memories read no further.

     Okay, the first charges levelled against Indy are those of robbery, theft, looting and Plunder. His modus operandi seems to be arriving in a country, finding valuable artefacts and stealing 'museuming' them back to South Canada and a display case, including his own house.  

He doesn't bother to obtain permission from the local or state government or archaeological authorities, to check provenance, get a licence to extort - sorry Freudian typo - 'export' them or any variety of legal standing that would allow these things to be removed.  Nope, he just swoops in and museums them.  Devon points out that there are scads of laws in existence brought about to prevent exactly what Dr. Jones is doing, both in South Canada and elsewhere.

Yeah, you may well look sheepish, mate.

    Mind you, that all-out cad and bounder Belloq, having stolen the golden idol from Indy, cannot enjoy the fruits of his intervention.  O no.  

The idol is stolen, and it's status remains as stolen, wherever Belloq takes it and whomever he sells it to, and if the vaguely-identified as South American authorities were to track it down, that callow purchaser would have it snatched from their hot sweaty hands without a shred of compensation.  Art?

White hat, black heart

     Conrad feels that we ought to pause there for today, as you need time to recover from this traumatic expose.

     Motley!  I am going to duck-tape you to that chair, and then use some lazy-tongs to open this mysteriously-carved wooden chest right in front of you.

More Of Plunder

"Operation Plunder", that is, which of course - obviously! - can only refer to the assault crossing of the River Rhine in March 1945.  But we knew that already.

     No, what I'd like to do is present you with some of the digitised files that I've been studying on the Canadiana Heritage website.  Art?

     The first photograph above shows the different artillery regiments assigned in support of Operation Plunder, along with a load of alphabetical codes that I don't understand, so you've got no chance.  The second one shows the detailed fireplan for the 7th Medium Regiment (Royal Canadian Artillery), what times they have to fire, how many guns will be firing and at what rate, and (I think) the four-figure reference is the target they'll be firing on.  These fireplans had a number of different interations, named "Droop", "Dial" and "Drum".  Art?

     This is one of the kind of artillery pieces the 7th Med. Rgt. RCA would be using, a 5.5" gun, and as their fireplan was for "Counter-battery" they would be attempting to 'neutralise' enemy guns and gunners.  Not necessarily destroying weapons and killing gunners (though that would be a bonus), rather possibly damaging them and definitely keeping the gunners grovelling in the bottom of a slit trench, rather than firing back.

Bring the thunder

     That above is the lunar landscape of Wesel, which was hit by 250 of the RAF's Giant Flying Mallets (a.k.a. the Lancaster bomber), before being pounded by some of the 5,480 artillery pieces supporting the Rhine crossing.  If it sounded like thunder from the Allied lines, the gunfire on the Teuton side felt like thunderbolts.

     I say, that was a bit grim, what?  Let us lighten the tone with - LITHIUM WAFER BAT - on second thoughts perhaps not.  Ah!  I know -

Bendis Recommends

I hope you misanthropes are taking advantage of Conrad's selfless publicising of this list as compiled by the mighty Brian M. Bendis.  You are, aren't you?  Because if not I WILL FIND OUT AND I WILL NOT BE HAPPY.  The last time I was unhappy a small earthquake occurred, a government was overthrown and lions were seen lying down with lambs.

     So, Bri, what do you have for us today?  Aha, a self-published - O hang on, sorry, my eyes deceived me, the lions ate the lambs.  There.  Glad we got that cleared up. Anyway, back to - "Copra".  Art?

     This is an oddity - a self-published comic that sells out at the shops, and which critics love, according to BMB, although reader's opinions on "Goodreads" were quite polarised, either love it or loathe it.
     It seems to be the creator's love-letter to "Suicide Squad", crossed with "Doom Patrol", so expect a strain of weirdness throughout.  Nominally the plot concerns a bunch of superpowered or -skilled agents having to track down a traitor.

     If it was an attempt by the creator, Michel Fiffe, to raise his profile, then it certainly succeeded, because, after all - here we are.

Finally - 

Make mine Mechlin.  Mechlin, not to be confused with Michelin, because the latter makes tyres (I think, not great on car-related stuffs) and are something to do with restaurants - Art?

Good lord, no thanks!  I wouldn't want a horror like that coming at me like an express train!

     - and the former is a type of lace, popular according to Wiki until the early years of the last century, which fits in with Bertie Wooster going on about the stuff in "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves".  He disparagingly describes how the hero of magazine romances was always flicking the ruffs of Mechlin lace at his wrists, in a gesture of defiance (which probably came across as having palsy).  Art!

                  

     It looks fearfully involved to Your Humble Scribe, doubtless very expensive and if one were to spend money on it, then you'd have less cash for books, wouldn't you?

    And with that, we are done, done, done.  Very definitely done!

*  Also, how do you cook one?

Oom Beroofen

 Ha!  I Bet That Baffled You

Frankly, it baffled me when I read it.  It was an expression said in "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves", when Aunt Agatha thinks Bertie (her nephew) was sneezing, when in fact he was trying to say "Jeeves" through a mouthful of steak and kidney pie.  Try it yourself and see how you mangle the English language.

Mangelwurzels.  Close enough.

     Of course, being an anorak of the first water, Your Humble Scribe wrote it down and diligently searched the internet for an explanation.

     Which you'll have to wait for.  I do like to effect an air of suspense.  Art?

     Here we go right back to Atompunk, and do you see what I did with that crack about "air" and hav - O you do.  This craft is what the Royal Aeronautical Society thought an aircraft of the future might look like from the perspective of 1966 (so a little out of the definitive atompunk era, if you'll forgive me).  Futurologist Gerry Anderson would have loved this, especially as the "Fireflash" nuclear-powered plane that featured in "Thunderbirds" was only safe for passengers for ninety minutes.  With radiation concerns like that, 'From Europe To Australia In Ninety Minutes!' has the shine taken off it, especially if there's a headwind.

Fireflash: sleek; fast; also good for microwaving food

     Anyway, back to our monster atomic plane.  To judge from the puny humans for scale, this beast looks like it has the wingspan of two B52s, and it must mass in excess of 200 tons, given how much protective shielding that reactor needs.  I bet it needs a runway as long as Glenn Field to take off from (two miles I believe).  Not only that, it needs a new reactor when it lands?  Look at the size of the 'crew craft'; it's tiny, so they don't have a lot of supplies in there and therefore they can't be aloft all that long, which means by deduction that they must be pushing this thing to the limits of engineering performance in terms of speeds reached - a Mach 32 nuclear accident waiting to happen, anyone? Art!

     These models are from 1957, so are a truer representation of atompunk, especially that flying boat version at lower port.  The print is too small to read, so all I will say is that they proposed to solve any reactor problems by ejecting it at sea.  Yes, and what would Flipper do then?  
     O very well I'll put you out of your misery.  "Oom beroofen" is the phonetic spelling of "Um Berufen", which is Teuton for "Touch wood" and what you might say to someone erupting with a sneeze.

Close enough.

     Motley! I heard you sneezing and sniffling earlier today, so I'm going to Oom Beroofen you with this cricket bat -

From Potential Disaster To An Actual One
Dear readers, if you hail from the blessed shores of This Sceptred Isle, then you ought to be familiar with the tenterhook tale of Toddbrook Reservoir and dam, where the dam's retaining wall had been extensively undermined and things looked grim for the town below the reservoir, Whaley Bridge.  Art?

     At one point the whole thing was within thirty minutes of being flooded, a fate only avoided by volunteers laying sandbag retaining walls on the top, and they'd only have had twenty seconds or so to get clear if the whole thing went.

     Inevitably, there were numpties in Whaley Bridge who refused to leave the town, because it was all a hoax caused by swamp gas over Venusian ball lightning.  Or something.  Conrad has called them out before, because if the dam had gone, they'd have seconds, not minutes or hours, to get gone.

     This brings us to the real meat of the matter, a terrifying dam collapse in Brazil at Brumadinho.  We have some pictures of the disaster in progress.  Art?

     This is the moment when the dam collapsed, and it goes in the space of seconds.  You can see the timer at lower port, and this includes at least a dozen seconds before anything happens.  270 people died because the warning alarm didn't function and the whole mass of spoil came on at 75 m.p.h. so even if you had warning and a car the chances of escape were slim.

     This is an open-cast mine, being flooded by the toxic slurry, still moving fast over a minute later.  At upper starboard there is someone driving a truck towards the flood, unaware of exactly what's happening.

      The empty dam, with another intact one right next to it.  

    So, residents of WB who refused to move, still think you can outrun a dam breach?  The only positive thing here is that Toddbrook only (!) holds 1, 250,000 tons of water, whereas at Brumadinho they were hit by 2,000,000 tons. 
     Large bodies of water - not to be messed with!

     Ooooh, that was grim, let's have some light relief.

Ye Battel Of Lyverysh Kiddnie Continues

Yes it's true, mettle guru.  We are into Turn 12, and things are a rather mixed bag at this point, which we can illustrate if Art will put down that nuclear fuel rod -

The eagle's-eye view

     This move it was Parliament who spent the most Tempo points and outbid the Royalists, meaning they got to move first, which is a real tactical advantate, except after their bidding they only had 3 points left and thus couldn't do anything.  For the first time in 3 games I did get to fire an artillery piece, which I dubbed a "saker" as that's one of their various types; the rules have them as only effective at very short range, because that's what they were like in real life.

     Another first.  That pair of cavalry units in the centre of the screen are Royalist cavalry recoiling, and because their Officer base, representing Lord Wilmot, was directly behind them to give them an added boost in combat, he got caught up, too - and removed from play.  Erk!  This hasn't happened before, and it royally (do you see what - O you do) messes up what's left of the King's cavalry on this wing, as they now have no-one to give them orders.  According to Polemos' rules, the overall Royalist General, the Earl Of Lindsay, can issue them orders, but has to be in line-of-sight, which he's not.  And if he moves away from his current position to remedy this then his 'added boost in combat' won't apply to his infantry.  Because I am not cruel*, I shall permit Lord Wilmot to come back; however, it has to be from the North edge of the table.

     I'm sorry, I only meant this to be a quick recap and now you're as well acquainted with the Polemos rules as I am.  Ooops!

"Lord Wilmot bravely advanced in the wrong direction."

Finally -

Here's a little number-crunching for you.  As you should already know, Your Humble Scribe is carefully and slowly making a longhand index of the enormous collection of Canadian war diaries he found online at Canadiana Heritage.  There are 1,353 files, none of which have a title, nor is there an index.  Art?

"SITREP - all quiet, nothing to report"

    I only put these here as an example of what the files contain.  On average there's about 1,500 pages per file, and I've covered 57 of them, containing 85,000 pages.  That's out of a total of over 2,000,000 pages.

     Conrad may be working on this for quite some time ...

*  This is a lie <the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>

Do You Feel Lucky, Atompunk?

Ha!  I Take It You See What I Did There

You know, that quote from "Dirty Harry" combined with a rose-tinted view of the future from the perspective of the late Forties and Fifties?  

Both atomy and punky

     There is a little cross-over if you're willing to work with me here. Don't forget that Ol' Clint (O he'd shoot me if he heard me calling him that!) got his breaks in black and white sci-fi horror films, "Revenge of the Creature" (given how the Creature got treated, it was quite entitled to a bit of revenge) and of course "Tatantula", where he's the jet pilot who zooms in to blast the repellent giant arachnid into a charcoal roast.  Art?

Trust me, that's Clint

     You couldn't do that nowadays.  O no.  You'd have environmental groups and ecologists and entomologists all bleating that "We need to understand it -" and of course some campaigners with placards loudly stating that it was all a hoax (until they got eaten, ho ho!) and day trippers trying to get selfies without getting webbed and gobbled up -

     Where were we?  O yes.  Art?

All we need now are some marshmallows, silver foil and a few potatoes!

     Incidentally, this is the film where Clint formed a life-long friendship with the sultry Mara Corday - you know, the woman Art has a major crush on.  Go on, Art.

Art is jealous

     By the time "Tarantula" came out some of the shine had come off Atompunk, since we had fission reactors, if no fusion ones yet, though we did have fusion bombs, and one of these puppies - stop mooning, Art, and give us some pictures -

     - given that it had a yield of 3.8 megatons, would make anything it hit, and several square miles around it, promptly go away.  This was a bit of a downer on the bright, cheery, boundlessly optimistic future that had been imagined, full of atom-powered family cars, atomic trains and energy so cheap the electricity company would pay you to use it*.
     Let's have another positive atompunk picture, to go out on a positive note.  Art?

Nuclear-powered trains - what's not to like!

     Didn't we do a rather excoriating item on an extremely daft South Canadian television series about a gigantic nuclear-powered train?


I Do Apologise

Conrad cordially detests authors who try the poseur and don't translate foreign speech they insert into their latest bleak, chilly navel-gazing novel about the love life of an angle-bracket.  It's not on!  You can understand military histories from 1920 having the odd quote in Latin or <shudders> Greek, as they were written by authors who had both these languages beaten into them at their bleak, chilly boarding schools, and they probably felt if they'd had to suffer them, then Why! you the reader can, too.  Art!

The Spode

     I didn't explain why Roderick Spode collapsed like a pudding when Bertie Wooster remembered to say "Eulalie" to his face, bowing and scraping away into the distance.

     The reason is - you're going to love this - that the Spode is actually a very talented designer and manufacturer of ladies lingerie (in Jeeves opinion and Conrad will bow to his superior judgement here).  Art?

     Naturally a big, brawling bruiser like the Spode wishes to keep his business as discreet as possible; trying to be the next Moseley whilst pondering about deniers and what kind of Mechlin lace to trim a garter belt with is a no-no in Fascist circles.  You never saw Herr Schickelgruber designing ladies underwear**!
     So there you have it.

Conrad Finds A Fellow Curmudgeon And Is Happy

The two do go together, you know.  I have recently come across a Youtube channel from The Critical Drinker, which I am NOT going to link to, as it has far too much swearing present.  TCD comes across as a loud, abrasive, drunken and curmudgeonly Glaswegian; this may be a persona, or it may be what he's really like, the jury is still out on that one.  Art?

"It was 06:47 and The Critical Drinker began consuming his breakfast."

     TCD does not approve of a lot of Hollywood films, and is not shy about letting the world know about it.  One he lambasted that I didn't realise existed was "Charlie's Angels" except I have a dim memory of seeing a trailer for it at the cinema last year, intermixed with a perfume advert IIRC.  Or it might have been for a completely different film,it made that little impact.  Art?

"Quiver in fear, miscreants!"
 - thought no miscreant ever.

     It was quite the flop and lost about £20 million, so you might call them <ahem> fallen angels.  The director fizzed and fumed about said lack of success, but she never seemed to have ever asked the question "Does the world want another Charlie's  Angels film?" because the answer was a resounding "No".  Just think, £30 million wasted on this when "The Goon" is simply begging to be made.

    Conrad noted a couple of Awards that the film garnered, which boggled him rather, until he read more closely.  Art?

     Very catty, ladies.  But true.

More Questionable Judgement

A couple of posts ago I mentioned an explosion of children's cartoon series in the Eighties, that took advantage of loosened advertising laws in order to flog cheap merchandised tat to children.  We looked at the bizarre "Toxic Avengers" spin-off cartoon, and now we have - "Robocop"!

     Yes, that's right, "Robocop", where you remember Alex Murphy being blasted apart by shotguns, and a rapist having his dangly bits shot off, and a guy gets poisoned by toxic waste (no, it doesn't make him super-strong, it disintegrates him) and Robocop kills the bad guy by knifing him in the neck with a data-probe - yeah,all that child- and family-friendly stuff!

Leon liquifies before your eyes

    Because you can't have any of that in modern children's cartoons, the cartoon Robocop was a kind of neutered titanium wimp, whose sole purpose in life was to chase the Evil Polluters, because everyone can get behind that as an ethos, right?

"Come quietly or there will be ... trouble."

     Quite how an incredibly violent and acid satire came to be bowdlerised as a kids cartoon - in fact it does have a parallel, which I shan't go into here.  Wait for tomorrow!

Finally -

Well, that's goodbye to my slipcase of P G Wodehouse, amongst the 24 books MY BEAUTIFUL BOOKS <sobs quietly> which are bagged-up and ready for the slaughterhouse - er - the charity shops in Royton.  That makes about 50 in the past fortnight or so.  You see?  You see?  I can be strong when I need to be -

     And with that we are done done done!

*  I exaggerate but slightly.

**  Though he may have worn some.

Watch, Men

That Comma Is Important!

Way back in the mists of time - O go on then, the Eighties - Your Humble Scribe bought both "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" as trade paperbacks, and mightily pleased he was with both of them.  Art?

All you need.

     They made a brave attempt to film it, which was probably the wrong format, as it's exceedingly hard to cram in the whole graphic novel into a film that can't muster more than two hours.  A television series  OF THE GRAPHIC NOVEL would have been a better bet, say eight one-hour episodes that would give narrative room and scope.  Art?

No, Art - do keep up!

     For Lo! we are back to that long list from "Rolling Stone", the 50 best sci-fi shows evah, and at Number 9 we have - "Watchmen".  Art? <taps fingers impatiently>.

     This series is supposedly set 30 years after the events as detailed in the original comic book.  I don't know why they bothered; Alan Moore never saw a need to write any more about the Watchmen, I bet he disowned the film and probably set up a Satanic shrine to curse the television series and everyone associated with it.  Conrad cannot be bothered to watch it, and although the critics slavered over it, there's not going to be a Season 2, so there's that at least, Alan.  And why are the police all made out of yellow plastic?
     Motley!  Get out the tropical kit and mosquito repellent, for we are going to hunt the wild mangosteen!

It's not difficult, they can't run very fast

Conrad, On The Other Hand, Can Get Behind This Series

Yes I say, Hastings Ismay.  For Lo! we are back with the good Doctor Hope And His Sick Notes, which are pretty cool in reality and not at all sick as in illness, and our last look at his look at Season One of "The Boys".

     This time our resident medical savant was looking with a jaundiced and disapproving eye at A-Train.

A-Train, taking some strain

   A-Train, you see, has been filling his veins with Compound V as if it were water - which it emphatically is NOT - and has been suffering subsequent heart problems.  Not only that, our naughty lad has also been snorting cocaine, which Doctor Hope says has a four-way whammy on the human heart.  First of all, you get tachycardia, which is an increased heart rate, putting extra strain on your blood pump; high blood pressure, with all the joys that brings; increased contraction force, making your heart work harder as well as faster; narrowing of your blood vessels -

    This tale of woe leads to what you see above; A-Train having a myocardial infarction, at which Hughie and Annie, both witnesses, have a hard time caring or even intervening.  Hughie eventually weakens and applies CPR, highly effectively too, according to the good Doctor.

"Annie wondered if she should just kebab him."

     SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  PROCEED WITH CAUTION!     

The upshot of all this is that in Season Two, A-Train is kicked to the curb and out of The Seven, because Homelander has made the decision; he knows all about those ticker troubles and doesn't want the embarassment of a team member dropping dead on the job.  Tee hee*!  


What's Cooking?  You are.

It's a hokey line from "Tom And Jerry", if you must know, as Tom sits on a tabletop stove and roasts his rump.

     An aside.  You may not be aware of 'Old Faithful', which is a South Canadian geyser in Yellowstone National Park, known by this name as it is highly predictable.  It is also highly dangerous, as the water ejected is at 1000C or higher, and comes out by the ton, at least fifteen of them.  Art?

Notice the distance being kept.

     Enter our contestant in Darwin Award stakes.  She got into the park illegally, and then tried to take selfies of herself, backing up to get the perfect shot - 

     Until she fell into one of the geysers.

CAUTION!  Not for bathing use

     She survived, partially-cooked, and was able to drive off before being air-lifted to hospital.  Her eventual fate is unknown, as I've not been able to find out anything after 13/05/2020.  She could be looking at jail time, as others who have committed "Thermal Trespass" have done time in the clink.
     People, hmmmm?  Conrad has long suspected that the Devil's Digital Devices are going to thin the herd out, judging by the number of idiots crossing the road whilst texting.

Eulalie!

This word will only make sense to those who are fans and readers of both Wodehouse and Jeeves.  Lest you belong to neither group - what madness can this be?! - I shall explicate.

     Roderick Spode is proof that Plum had an eye for both contemporary politics and satire, being the leader of British Fascists who were late to the party; thus, after all the "-shirts" had been taken, he had to settle for leading the Blackshorts.  Art?

     He takes an instant dislike to Bertie, of course - obviously! - and the feeling is mutual.  However, as he is eight feet tall and built like a mountain gorilla, he does have the edge over Bertie in any physical encounter -

     At which point enter Jeeves.  He advises Bertie, that were fisticuffs to be on the menu with Spode, he need only say "Eulalie" and the raging beast would be transformed into a milquetoast.  Bertie, of course - inevitably! - being the utter chump he is, immediately forgets what the word is and only recalls it when about to be thumped into a quivering jelly by the Spode - at which point Spode positively recoils into an apologetic, cringing wreck.

    Thus Your Humble Scribe was positively enthused when he came across a website dubbing itself "Madame Eulalie's", which is a huge pile of works done by some dedicated amateurs on the works of Plum.  In fact they have all his work done before 1925 available for free, as these are now out of copyright in South Canada.  I endorse any visit you may make, and here's a link:

https://www.madameulalie.org/

    Conrad was slightly astonished to learn that, of all things, there is a Ruffian Wodehouse Society!  Quite what they make of that sprig Bertie and the valet to end them all Jeeves is a case in point, as both species of individual would have been rendered extinct by the Bolshevik Revolution.

Comrade Lenin's trigger-finger is itching ...

Finally -

One of the derivatives that has not so much evolved as been defined by Cyberpunk is "Atompunk", which is not a word I bet you expected to see anytime soon.  You can define it as a bright, optimistic view of the future, and how atomic power (fission and fusion both) would set us free, FREE, FREE!  There was a distinct artistic style that went with it, too.  Art?

Neither seat-belt nor helmet!
(Ha, take that, nanny-state!)

     I think we shall come back to this as Conrad loves that kind of artwork.

     But not today - because we are done!

*  Robyn's belated revenge, matey.