The Time, Tunnel

No!  We Are Not Banging On About That Television Show

Conrad enjoyed it as a youngster, though it has not aged well, and if Project Tick-Tock counts 800 floors and 12,000 people, how come we only ever see a single room with only five people in it?

From the pilot episode.  This seems somehow familiar ...

     There were only ever a few shots of the secret gigantic underground base that we the viewers ever saw, the control room above being one such, and also another where you see security guards bimbling about like angry ants - Art?

Again, this is hauntingly familiar ...

     Anyway, enough of what this isn't about, which is one of the tangents we frequently diverge on here at BOOJUM! - do keep up! - because that comma in the title is functional.  The tunnel we are talking about here is, of course - obviously! - the Thames Tunnel, which we left bricked up and incomplete in 1828.

     Once Marc and Isembard had gathered together enough money, they began boring again.  Very slowly, it has to be said, since it took over five years for them to complete the tunnel, and they were interrupted four times by serious flooding.  Each flooding event slowed things down as the leak had to be stopped and the tunnel pumped dry again.

     Typically Londoners made up satirical songs about the slowness of progress, which is where we get today's title from.  

     I haven't mentioned the working conditions yet, which is an oversight, as they were pretty awful.  Illumination was by candle-light at the tunnel face, ventilation was poor and there were frequent irruptions of methane, caused by the nature of the River Thames at the time (basically an open sewer).  If you weren't poisoned by the methane, you might yet be blown up by it when it reached an ignition source: those work-candles.
     When finally completed, after sixteen years! the tunnel could only accommodate pedestrians, because there wasn't enough money to build spiral ramps for horse-drawn vehicles.  It became a major tourist attraction, of all things, with half the population of London strolling beneath the Thames dryshod.  Art?

As it is now

     Well, they got a railway in there eventually, and the Thames Tunnel is now part of the London Overground rail network, Hurrah!
     Okay, Motley, here's a vibranium shield for you and I've borrowed Colin's Thermite Cannon ...

Colourblind Or Clods?

Conrad was idly rewatching "Forbidden Planet" again, with Polish subtitles on for amusement value, and he suddenly realised - hang on, let me prod Art into consciousness -

What's wrong with this picture?

     Your Humble Scribe isn't sure if he's taken this point up before, so humour me if your memory is better than mine.

     "What's wrong with this picture?" and no, the answer is not "O how disgracefully misogynistic!" because it was made before Sputnik went up, thank you very much.

     The uniforms!  None of the cast wear green or red uniforms, they all have a tastefully restrained Battleship Grey uniform*.  Art!

Steel grey?

     Whilst on the subject of FP (or "Planeta Zakana") I took a shot of Doctor Morbius' house, which if Art can put down fork and coal-scuttle -

     It's a nice matte shot, rather wasted on the small screen, as the bubbling swimming pool shrinks to almost un-noticeable proportions.  Anyway, take a look at the house's port side, because this is where the entrance to the Krell's Great Machine is hidden, which is why Morbius chose to build it there; not a good choice given the enormous gaping chasm only yards from his front door!

     O! Now I recall why those shots from TTT seemed familiar.  Art?

     Stealing an idea is not an "homage", Mister Allen.

     Now, can I interest you in my 5,000 word monograph on "For - no?  Absolutely not?  Not in any way, shape or form, as long as there's breath left in your body?  I'll let you think it over.


"The Boys" And Their Toys

For Lo! we are back to Doctor Hope's Sick Notes again, this time looking at the joy juice that kicked the whole thing off, Compound V.  Art?

Blue goo that's bad for you

   As the Doctor states, Compound V appears to have two different effects: firstly, it affects the foetus as it develops, which is where the superpowers originate; secondly, it seems to function as a steroid alternative when consumed by adults.  Both these functions are inherently feasible since they mimic what contemporary drugs do; managing both effects simultaneously is a lot trickier.

No doubt Billy swears at this point
(He does this a lot)

     What they don't seem to offer any explanation for, is why these babies develop different superpowers, rather than all having the same skillset, which you'd expect if they were all being dosed with the same drug.  Or, were the batches of Compound V administered after some chemical tweaking, one sort giving super strength, another the ability to generate lightning bolts**?
      Of course, the good Doctor and I could be overthinking this ...

Something's Gone Horribly Right

If you read the blog with any frequency AND YOU SHOULD FOR YOUR GRAND-CHILDREN'S SAKE then you know Conrad gets uneasy if we have too many visitors, for then things like copyright and libel and slander may come to the fore, with First Bus and Tsar Putin at the head of the queue (Dimya only once he's stopped sobbing uncontrollably at our latest cruel jibe) fronting a pack of frothing solicitors.  Art?

     Erk.  210 visitors?  What drew them in, I wonder?  Jim Carrey?  The Thames Tunnel?  Clickbait titles?  Probably not the latter, that tends to irk people and they don't come back.  Still, sobering stuff.

Finally -

Let us see what unusual Czech words Marketa has for us today.  O Marketa!  Regale us with another word from your frankly-difficult-to-master language, o my sweet -

"Zlobidlo": A very cheeky child.  So they have those in Czechia too, hmmm?  Conrad guesses that human nature observes no borders.  Well, I can't really do much with that, Marketa, except to observe that it may be pronounced "Slob-" at the beginning.  Which would belie the "cheeky" bit of the description as Conrad feels such a child would be inherently active and boisterous.

An archetypal zlobidlo

     And on that note, we are done done done!

*  It might have been Ocean Grey

**  Or being able to speak to fish.