An Adumbration Of An Amalgamation

Ha!  I Bet That Got You Wondering

To clarify, to "Adumbrate" is to limn, hint or otherwise sketchily indicate something and probably has roots in the Latin "Umbra" - hang on let me check my Collins Concise - yes, from"Adumbrare", meaning "To obscure something" and yes it derives from "Umbra", or "Shadow".

What?  What does he know!  How to buff tripe?  Where Judge Crater is?  Next week's Lottery numbers?  TELL US!

     Anyway, what I wanted to discuss in today's Intro was a kind of fan fiction tangent to "The Boys", which you can only watch if you are over 18 and can take a diet of swearing, sex, gore and drugs.

"Hey!"

     O be quiet, Al.  Go preserve an iceberg or something - 

     As I was saying - okay, so Vought have invented and refined Compound V, that miracle drug which appears to act as both mutagenic and super-steroid, from which they have created superheroes by doping up infants in the womb.  You can tell from this paragraph that ethics, morals and scruples are three words only ever found in the Vought executive's desk dictionary.  Art?

They're going to christen him "Ray"

     If we assume that Homelander is about 30, then that means he's been around since 1990, again assuming that their timeline in "The Boys" runs parallel to our own.

     So.  What do we think, people; that all the foes and friends of South Canada will sit back, shrug ruefully and say "Nah it'll be fine" and take things on trust?

     ABSOLUTELY NOT!  

Dimya bites his nails.

     Even the South Canadian government must have wondered, as a Worst Case Scenario, what their options were if Homelander decided to take over the world, or even just South Canada.  How much more fretful would the Ruffians and the Populous Dictatorship be, and even a whole bunch of allied and neutral powers? especially since after decades of espionage and research and attempted theft, nobody else has come up with their own version of Compound V?
     This is where the outlining and adumbration comes in.  Conrad suggests that all the G8 nations, and NATO, and important third parties like India and Brazil and Nigeria and South Africa and Saudi Arabia (say about 24 countries in total) get together to carry out their own anti-Compound V research.

     Ladies and Gentlemen and Those Unsure, I give you - <drum roll>

     NEGATROL!  Art?

     Conrad is uncertain exactly what this stuff is, except that it's an unholy combination of chemical and nano-technology - hence an amalgamation of a rather shady nature - and when administered to a supe, it permanently and irreversibly destroys their superpower.  Our clutch of 24 nations have tested it by kidnapping and experimenting upon some South Canadian supes who wouldn't be missed and who are being held incommunicado, for the time being.

When asked for a comment, Homelander responded with "Oh"

     Yes, Homie, because nobody at Vought knows how it works; it may be ingested or inhaled or injected.  It may only require a single dose to immediately 'Norm' a supe within seconds; on the other hand, it may require repeated sub-effective doses before it acts.  Or, again, it may cause a gradual diminution in supes, trending towards zero over a lengthy period.  Finally, and most worryingly, all of the Seven may have already been exposed to a fully-effective dose and all it needs is a broadcast signal for the nanobots to do their work, and POW! Homelander and Stormfront fall messily to their end the next time they leap off a building ...

"The end of their storey."

      Of course, I may be overthinking this a little ...

Unbearable

Conrad, as we already know, is a terrible person, who has to get a daily fix of schadenfreude or he's unhappy for the rest of the day.  Today I found a film clip that was made by a Class 1 Idiot, verging on a Class 1 Corpse.  He's Romanian, and was beetling about in their backwoods in search of "Picior Mare" or some such shizzle, when he came across a black bear.  Art?

BEAR: I am myndin mi own bzness
MAN:  Hey, a bear!  Let's hassle it for shizzle and giggle!

BEAR: See hows I not bothr anione and walk - OW!
MAN:  HEY BEAR PAY ATTENTION TO ME! <kicks bear>

BEAR: RRRRROOWWWRRRRR!
MAN: Ahhhh Mama Sfanta!Ataca!

     The bear bit his hand, only, as you can see, after he stalked and kicked it, and even then it paused for a good five seconds before charging.  Youtube commenters universally applauded the bear.

O Marketa!

I'm trying to stay on her good side, hence another request from our favourite angry young Czech, and this time I'm asking her whilst she's on the tram home and dare not make a public scene*.

     So, Marketa, docela mlada vec, what do you have for us today, hmmm?

"Strašpytel":  A person who is scared of everything.

     Is that so?  What we in the UK refer to as a "Scaredy cat", I believe.  Art?

Also applies to some boundary-pushing canines

     I think I'll get off two stops before her, just in case she still has that meat mallet in her handbag.

Now For An Aside -

This will all make sense on Facebook, honest.  Art?

Rudyard Shipling

No!  That is not a typo.  You'll see.  You'll see how clever I am.

     For Lo! we are back on the saga of the Eddystone Lighthouse, and if you were keeping track, then you know the first one, made out of wood, had been utterly destroyed by the Great Storm of 1703.

     However, both mariners and Trinity House had gotten used to the idea of a lighthouse on the Eddystone Rocks, and it was a given that they'd want another one erecting there, sooner rather than later.  Enter Captain Lovett, who got the lease of the windblown rocks and appointed architect John Rudyard to build him a house of light.  Art?

     This lighthouse appeared superficially similar to the first, being apparently made of wood.  Ha!  Caught you out - the interior was built from stone and concrete, with the wood as an exterior cladding.  This second lighthouse was lit in 1708; not bad considering how difficult it was to actually build on the wretched rocks in the first place.

     Rudyard's lighthouse entitled Lovett to levy a tax on passing ships at the rate of a penny per ton and  until 1755, when it caught fire and burned down, incidentally providing ships with the biggest light any lighthouse ever provided, if not exactly within design parameters.

    The saga will continue anon ...

Finally - 

Nootropic.  That's all I'm saying for the moment.

*  Fingers crossed!