Shake Some Action, Vulnavia!

Cast Your Mind Back All Of 24 Hours

Your Humble Scribe was wittering on about the Flamin' Groovies, in pursuit of something or other (memory hazy thanks to a bucket or two of gin), and of course - inevitably! - he had to go poke around obscure corners of teh interwebz to find out a bit more.

There were spiders

     Well, I found out, alright.  The Groovies had released only a few singles between 1972 and 1976, before recording an album "Shake Some Action", the title track of which became an anthem of sorts.  It's a corking track that I was listening to last night, several times over.  Art!

     
     Here's an odd aside.  Your Humble Scribe remembers reading a copy of the "N.M.E." back in the later Seventies, where some cavilling reviewer was busy both being scornful and polishing their ego by being snide about an album by the Groovies.  I can't remember what date this was, but probably 1978 and the record was probably "Flamin' Groovies Now"; erstwhile reviewer, name lost to history and not missed, was mocking the group for having Dave Edmunds as producer in pursuit of his particular style.  Well, the NME nowadays is a worthless commercial rag I wouldn't line the cat's litter-tray with and which probably gives off toxic fumes when burnt, and "Shake Some Action" is still a classic, so who's laughing now?

Not Elvis.  Sombre chap.

     Oh.  I've done it again, haven't I?  Gone off at a tangent to a tangent.  Hopefully you enjoyed this glimpse of a world long vanished.
     Motley!  Check the Anti-Locomotive Moat, for I fear the lava is cooling off again.  We must needs go prod the volcano into life again, soon.  Or, rather, you will.

Fun With Words

SIT BACK DOWN!  This won't take long.  Or, perhaps it will <rubs hands and cackles>.  Let us kick off with a word that you may see on the Description or Ingredients list on the side of sweet packets imported from Europe into This Sceptred Isle: "DRAGEE".  Art?

Possibly chocolatey

      My Collins Concise defines these as "A sweet coated with a hard sugar icing".  I hope you appreciate the inner torment this aging diabetic undergoes when writing about ANYTHING that contains sugar.  Okay, from that to -

"DRAGOON":  You may be more familiar with this as a term for coercing a person into unwanted action.  The original is an infantryman mounted on a horse, which you must not mistake for cavalry, as dragoon's horses were usually spavined old hacks who were barely ahead of the glue factory and the dog-food plant.  Cheap mobility for soldiers, if you will.  Art?

At some point there will have been dragoons in Rangoon

    We will skip "DRAGON" as that's boring and everyone's heard of them.  Not so much "DAGON" WHICH IS NOT A TYPO, as you will learn if you but read on.

     One of Ol' Lovie's monsters from the deep, with a distinctly piscine appearance to him.  I hope you see that to get here we had to go via the land-bound scaly flying lizard.  Next is -

    "AGO": Because I'll bet you were expecting something along the lines of "DAGO", weren't you?  Bear "AGO" in mind when solving a Codeword and you have a blank between "A_O" because that missing letter will be either "D" or "G" and so, without further "ADO" that's today's 'Fun With Letters" done with.

O man up, you miserable wimp!  Just because you didn't get a definition.

Jason Shiga And "Meanwhile"

Ol' Jase is a bit of a polymath, in both senses of the word, as he not only creates puzzles, mazes and comic books, but is also the holder of a degree in Pure Mathematics, which would be enough to make one immensely suspicious of him, were it not for the counterbalancing of the other stuffs.  Art?

This man is obviously plotting something.  Should we be worried?

     Conrad recently laid his twitching talons on a combination comic-and-choose-your-own-adventure book written, designed and drawn by Ol' Jase that goes by the name of "Meanwhile".  You follow the adventures of Jimmy as he goes back and forth over the pages, making choices for him along the way.  One review I read said that there were something like 3,582 different paths to take, with only one leading to true happiness.  Yeah, except that depends on how you define 'happiness', doesn't it?

     Anyway, Your Humble Scribe decided to keep track of the choices he made tonight - we anoraks are like that - in order to be able to go back and choose at which point Jimmy's choices bifurcate.  Art?

     This may give you some idea of how confusing things can get, as there was no way to put down all 12 photographs I've taken so far to remain clued-up as to where to begin from anew when Jimmy blows up the world, as he inevitably does.  This one will run, be assured.

More Fun With Words
I shan't go on too long with this one, and anytime you think I'm going on at length, just remember that my 5,000 word monograph on "The Cultural Impact Of 'Forbidden Planet' on Twentieth Century Popular Culture" is waiting in the wings.

     Okay, you aging whippersnappers out there, as well as some younger ones, may be familiar with that Sixties sci-fi epic "Dune", which Conrad re-reads every few years (in between "The Lord of the Rings"), and which features a ground vine whose root can be processed to create a metallic extrusion of incredible tensile strength, easily able to slice a person in two with little effort, horizontally or vertically.  Art?

CAUTION!  Not to be used as a necklace

     No indeed - that's a garrotte, and if you were to don it as jewellery around your neck, and happened to absently tug one of the ends -

    The name of this terrifying material, I hear you ask?

     "Shigawire".  I think some information is being kept from us here ...

Finally -

The weekend beckons!  As do the last two episodes of "The Boys", which Conrad has not seen yet, and which means he is having to be very wary and chary of teh interwebz, as you can guarantee some thoughtless plonker will post in block capitals six inches tall on screen, in dayglo yellow on a flashing electric green background "O WERENT IT SAD THAT HUGHY AND STARFIRE AND BILLY AND THAT OTHER GIRL ALL GOT KILLED!!! OMGH CARNT BELEIF IT"
     Yes - YOU! - you know I'm talking about you, don't you?  If you even think about posting a spoiler, watch out for a thermostellar warhead coming your way.

I have several

     And on that sinister and final note, we are so very very done!