Make The Most -

- Of This Post

Because it's the only one you're getting today.  Yes, it is my day off as I am working Saturday, but I have been fearfully involved with creating a "Personal Development Plan" for the office, all of two hours spent to eventually end up with a few paragraphs full of, hopefully, topical buzz words that will impress.  Then, I've just been to Semi-Sodom (Royton if we're being formal) and wouldn't you know it, had to wait ages for a bus back to The Mansion.  "O look there's one - ah, no, it's "Not In Service"," and do you know, they actually had the cheek to put - "O here's another one - ah, no, it's "Not In Service" as well," - the cheek to put "Sorry" at the top of the illuminated sign.

Just you wait, First Bus, just you wait.

     When I take over <sinister mutterings redacted> -d hot poker.  That'll make their eyes water.

     Then, as of ten minutes to go, I'm acting as chauffeur gopher in order to collect curtains in Oronsay, in the Outer Hebrides, which is where a flying car would come in handy and no mistake.

     So, if you want the TLDR version: you're only getting this one post today.

     Motley?  If that's the Jetsons, tell them it's in the garage getting a service.

Apparently not the Jetsons.

More Plum Translatum

Yes, Your Humble Scribe has finished "The Inimitable Jeeves", which was dashed off by Plum in 1923, and yet which, strangely, requires less interpretive argot analysis ("slang") that "Jeeves In The Offing", which hit the shelves in 1960.  For instance, Bertie refers to "Colney Hatch", which required a bit of digging to explain.  Art?

Elegant.  Classical.  Stuffed full of loonies

     It was an immense lunatic asylum back in the day, which gives some weight to Bertie's assertion about the party of the third part potentially being restrained there.  He also mentions "Cushat doves", as if we the readers are boned up on ornithology.  Well, we're not, and so I had to look them up.  Art?

    Better known as the Common Wood Pigeon.  This one seems to be made out of flesh and feathers to me, but what do I know?
      Whilst on the subject of the animal kingdom, Bertie and Jeeves both quote from some author bod, about "the fretful porpentine", which Bertie mistakenly believes to be a porpoise.  Not a bit of it!  It's an archaic term for a porcupine.  Why the porcupine is fretful is a matter best left to the imagination of poets and scholars.  Of all the beasts that creep and crawl, the porcupine is the least likely to be bothered by any other beast at all.  Perhaps it nurses a secret romantic sorrow?  Art!

This one doesn't look fretful

     They make affectionate and charming pets, would you believe it, and the sounds of utter delight a porcupine makes when eating a pumpkin as a treat will long live with you.  Go search on Youtube and you'll find some positively un-fretful porcupine videos.

Top 50 Television Sci-Fi Shows: Number 10

I know I had the BBC's premier dramamentary "Doctor Who" down as Number 10, which was a mistake, it should be Number 4, so we'll get back to it in due course.  In the meantime, have a gander at Number 10: "Firefly".  Art?

The Magnificent Nine

     Conrad has seen a few of the episodes and thought they were okay, which is Hideous Sacrilegious Disrespect to the show's ultra-devout fans, and one reason I'm not going to tell you exactly where I live.  Let me nick a bit of the introductory blurb about the series to give you an insight: 

"After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new Earths were terraformed and colonized. The central planets formed the Alliance, and decided all the planets had to join under their rule. There was some disagreement on that point. After the war, many of the Independents who had fought and lost drifted to the edges of the system, far from Alliance control. Out here, people struggle to get by with the most basic technologies. A ship would bring you work. A gun would help you keep it. A captain’s goal was simple: Find a crew. Find a job. Keep flying"

The frankly ghastly-looking 'Serenity'

     So, this is the adventures of a rag-tag crew of misfits who do anything, legal or not, to make a buck.  Where have I heard this before?  O that's right, everywhere.  There was a film, too, except that to make sense of it you had to have seen the series, which I hadn't, so it was confusingly oblique.

     O, and fans?  It died the death 20 years ago, it's never coming back. Just to make it clear.

O Marketa!

We've been looking at strange words in English so much we've forgotten our favourite angry young Czech, which will hopefully have given her enough time to cool off.  Marketa?  Do you  - hey! <dodges thrown saucepan> - do you have any <ducks beneath swung sabre> - unusual Czech words you want to pass on? <puts 'From Bohemia's Woods And Fields' on the CD player>.  Ah.  That worked.

"Je to straka": Apparently one of these words is a bird, but the phrase means a person who likes stealing things, so the bird may be a magpie.  Shall we dig a little further?

Meet the 'straka'

     Aaaaand I was right.  "Straka" in indeed Czech for "Magpie", so we can see that "Je to straka" is a person who has light-fingered tendencies* and an inability to understand the difference between "mine" and "yours".

Finally -

Once again only a short item needed to hit the Compositional Ton.  What shall it be?  Conrad's hopes were stirred a while back whilst travelling on the thrice-accursed First Bus - THAT'S TWO 409S GONE PAST THE WINDOW AT ONCE!! - when he saw a bus stop poster featuring the show.  However, having had a quick search, there's no official release date for Season 5.  Had the Covid not hit, we might have expected a December release; this is now looking rather unlikely, as all the post-production work will have been delayed.  The poster might have been for Season 4, mayhap.

Conrad quivers excitedly!

     Time will tell.  It usually does.  Chin chin!

*  Just FYI, "Sroka" is the Polish for Magpie, and you're welcome.