Tanner Hauser

 Stay Your Hand -

Lest I cut it off at the wrist.  You were, no doubt, thinking that Conrad had mis-typed an article about the works of Richard Wagner.  WRONG!  WRONG WRONG WRONG!

     Nor do I refer to 'Blade Runner', with it's wonderfully lyrical and elegaic scenes where Roy Batty (really! which sadists were his parents?) mourns the loss of memories about the 'Tannhauser Gate".

Perhaps quite possibly what they meant.  Or not.

     No. I refer, of course - obviously! - to a character from that comic 2000AD, whom I note have not bothered to update people on their 'Judge Dredd' series as of September 2020 - having a little trouble with pre-production, are we?

     Anyway - Tanner.  Picture the scene - we are talking a generation after the Third Unpleasantness, where civilisation has broken down, and independent domed city states dot the globe.  Always lurking in the background are 'designer viruses', intended to transform your average human being into a pile of rotting protoplasm.  Art?

Mister Tanner had a very twitchy laser finger

     Here is Mister Tanner, ex-army now driving a taxi in Night City.  And that robotic right arm contains a laser gun in his index finger.

     At the crux of our story, Tanner locates a pocket nuke atop the dome he dwells within, which you might call a "Haus" if you had slipshod morals and no qualms about punnery.  It all ends swimmingly, with Tanner encountering (and surviving!) a sentry tiger en route.  

     One has to ask - is this resident of This Sceptred Isle any relation to the Hell Tanner who is the protagonist of "Damnation Alley"?  Probably not.

     Anyway, Mister Tanner just popped into my head for no apparent reason, as words and people frequently do, and I thought I'd share with you.

     Motley!  We need to travel to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Call me a cab, will you?

NOT his, thanks.

Inspiration From A Foreign Nation

Every so often Your Humble Scribe comes across a list on Facebook of worthy films or books or comics (see our ongoing "Bendis Recommends for the latter) and, being the nerdy anorak that he is, takes notes.  Today it is the turn of The Flop House, where one Jack Davenport asked fellow Floppers what was the best non-fiction book they'd read?

     Conrad has only just come across the list, which is up to 70 replies already, so the only thing I've checked out is the one above, which is about a bunch of crooks lying through their teeth in order to scam billions out of people (sadly not a rare event).  I shall be writing down the others, do not doubt it!

The UNCLE From Man

To coin a phrase.  Conrad yesteryon stumbled across a website he'd consulted in the past, which dealt with the Royal Artillery of the Second Unpleasantness.  Whilst people tend to concentrate on the cool kit and units, the RA, unglamourous as it was, happened to win battles.  To be under a barrage or bombardment (two entirely different things, it seems) from the RA was to venture into the jaws of Hades, for they could deliver immense numbers of shells very quickly and accurately.

     One expert crew was timed as firing 17 shells per minute, which is faster than an infantryman firing a bolt-action rifle.

     Anyway, Conrad was vaguely aware of the different codewords used for emergency situations.  One of them was "William", when all the guns of all the artillery regiments in range would fire on a target.  Poor unfortunate target!  An example was given during the battle for Aquino, in Italy.  Art?

     The call went out: "William target, william target, william target - Aquino." Upon which 30 regiments of artillery - a total of 632 guns - destroyed the target with 74 tons of shells within a few minutes.

     An "Uncle" call would only (!) be the 24 guns of a single artillery regiment, firing perhaps 10 shells each.  Or, to put it another way, nearly 3 tons of HE on target within 2 minutes.  It is little wonder the average Teuton loathed Perfidious Albion's gunners.

Gunners Milligan and Secombe

Bendis Recommends ...

Ah, there we go, being all self-referential.  Ol' BMB has some rather mainstream recommendations, including one for "Akira", which I expect you all to have seen if not read, and yes it took me a good four or five viewings before I could make sense of it.

     Anyway, the next on his list is "Meanwhile", so - Art?

They've restricted how much you can enlarge or shrink a picture.  Bah!

     This does look cartoony, yet bear with me.  It's an interactive comic book where you make choices that affect how the story ends.  If you're unable to read the blurb above, then it warns - or entices - that there are 3,856 possible stories resulting from the choices you make.  A brief blurb on TV Tropes mentions that nearly all these endings are BAD and the only happy ending you can achieve is only reached by cheating.  

     You know, this sounds fascinating!  Also very, very time-consuming.  However, since my time is not being eaten up by solving jigsaw puzzles ...

Dangerously interesting!

     I've put a set of Official Histories on top of my wallet, so it cannot squeak in fear any longer.  Next!

By Jove!

An interesting aside over on Facebook's Reddit page, where someone (presumably an astronomer of some description) took issue with people's fond imagining that Jupiter somehow protects us inner planets by hoovering up rubbish that whizzes through the solar system.  Yes it does, he confirmed, and it can also radically affect the trajectory of whizzing objects it doesn't capture.

     This can be a very bad thing indeed.  Take Lexell's Comet, which our astronomy-minded friend mentioned.  Art?

Lexell's Comet; an artist's impression

     This particular puppy went whizzing past Jupiter, which perturbed it's orbit and sling-shot it in the direction of Earth circa 1770.  It is the closest an astronomical body has approached Earth in history, being only 6 times as distant as the Moon.  In astronomical terms, that's a very close shave.  And since it was at least two and a half miles across, and possibly fifteen, if it had collided then nobody would be around to celebrate 1771.

     So - Bad Jupiter!  Naughty Jupiter!  No biscuit for Jupiter!

     And with that, we are so very aptly done done done.  Chin chin!