I Know What You're Thinking -
And NO it's not because I'm still 'borrowing' DARPA's Telepathy Helmet, that got sent back to them ages ago and if it's not arrived then blame Royal Mail, NOT Conrad. My conscience is clear*.
No, I mean you lot are so eminently predictable. "Oooh oooh, a new blog title, this must tie into a James Bond film somehow."
Careful, we don't want to annoy him. Hospitals are unpleasant.
Well HA! <snaps fingers, dislocates knuckle, cries> to you. I refer, OF COURSE - self-evidently! - to that comic masterpiece by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens". Which I am currently reading, and a sharp contrast to Charles Dickens it is, too. Art?
You see, the twin protagonists in GO are Crowley, a demon of darkest black, and Azriphale, an angel of brightest light, except that in knocking around amongst Hom. Sap. for six thousand years, they've - well - kind of gone native. That is, they enjoy this mortal world far too much to want Armageddon to succeed, which means some very fancy footwork is needed to prevent Below or Above suspecting anything amiss. Their determination is, thus, not to die today or tomorrow or indeed any time at all soon, "another day" being well into the distant future. Say roughly 8,392 A.D.
"What the Dickens?" expostulated Ol' Chas
There was a television series. There's probably a comic, too**.
There. You cannot possibly have any connection with supernatural entities conspiring to prevent the Apocalypse and James Bond, can you? No, I thought not! In that same vein - what? You've just been Googling and - NO!
It couldn't possibly be one giant typo, could it, and this is really a film about <thinks quickly> er, killer chefs out to - to combat world obesity by any means necessary? "Diet Another Day"? Or - or - gamblers! It's about gamblers, and they're - ah - throwing a single six-sided aid to gambling, and - and - and
HOW CAN THIS BE!
I need another cup of tea. Motley! And be quick about it, don't forget I've got the remote controls and those electrodes are superglued on.
It Suddenly Occurred To Me -
Whilst brewing a pot of tea, which I am going to go down and collect, as every time I leave this Acer on it's own, it dies the death. "The Sword Of Damocles"; I take it you are all familiar with the legend? Art!
Ol' Dam was, to be blunt, a bottom-licker of the first water, and eventually his monarch tired of endless kissing-of-the-butt and invited him to sit in his throne for a day. Dammy leapt at the chance, only to discover that, suspended by a single horsehair, a whacking great sword pointed at his person.
"To teach him a lesson," said the sophists. "Uneasy lies the head that fears the crown," wrote Francis Bacon, which Billy Shakeshaft promptly stole and amended, because he was like that, changing it from a warning about the Divine Right Of Kings to "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown", making out the king to be the victim. Clearly taking a lesson in kissing-of-the-butt from Dammy.
Which is all quite tangential to what I really wanted to say, which is - why didn't Ol' Dam simply shift his couch? A stoop, a bit of a heft and Hay Pesto! no longer need he risk becoming a human kebab. "Ah but the king would have moved the sword, too," I hear you counter. Simple, Ol' Dam just shifts the couch back again. Your Modest Artisan is pretty certain Kingy would get tired of going for the ladders, climbing up, releasing the sword, climbing down, moving the ladders, climbing up, re-tying the sword (which is a very tricky operation in it's own right), climbing down, putting the ladders away again ... you get the idea.
Evill Bill
Then there's always one of these. Art!
"Paging Phil Coulson. Paging Phil Coulson."
Akim Tamiroff
No, sorry, Conrad has no idea why this chap's name popped up in my head last night. You won't know of or about him since he was an actor during the Thirties onwards, and he pirouetted off this mortal coil almost fifty years ago. Art!
Akim was Armenian, originally Hovakim Tamiryants, and you have to give him kudos for choosing "Akim Tamiroff" as a name for pictures, instead of something along the lines of "Johnny Guitar" or "Surly McPunchnutts". Interestingly enough, he was a Soviet citizen when he came to South Canada, yet he managed to fool the Sinisters until he remained there on his third trip.
"Akim could hear the feral locomotives circling, hissing in an evil fashion -"
It would take up all the rest of this blog and the next three to list all the films he appeared in, so I shan't bother. He is proof that you don't need to be a chiselled young blond thing with razor-cheekbones and Received English pronunciation to be able to act. Conrad wonders if he ever fell foul of the odious McCarthy and minions?
Looking villainous in "For Whom The Bell Tolls"
You've Got Some Neck
For Lo! we are back on the subject of isthmi, which is the plural of isthmus, which is a narrow strip of land connecting two much larger landmasses, as we pontificated yesteryon, and derives from the Greek for "neck".
I can see you yawning at the back there. Isthmi are actually of strategic importance, or were in the days before the invention of aircraft, since they constrict the potential movement of any large force that might want to use them, such as, O I don't know, say an invading army? Art!
Anybody trying to invade into or out of the Peloponnese had to cross at the Isthmus, or arrange a troublesome and time-consuming amphibious operation, which was always risky in Classical times thanks to storms. Plus if the winds weren't in the right direction or present at all, you had to row, which took ages.
The isthmus of Corinth
Of course Hom. Sap. cannot leave well alone, can you we? Thus we get the Corinth Canal, a water feature dug across the whole isthmus to allow marine transport. Art!
Technically this made the Peloponnese an island, just don't tell the locals, they might worry about the poll tax being increased. We shall probably come back to this, as isthmi are interesting***!
Finally -
Apparently, and wouldn't you know it, the train kept a-rolling. One would jolly well hope so, as this is what trains are designed to do. A train that stopped abruptly, intermittently, unpredictably and injudiciously (sorry, trying to ramp up the Reading Level over on Wordcounter) wouldn't be much good as a train (and one suspects would be run by First Group). O - it also kept a-rolling all night long, so it was either a sleeper or a heavy goods train. It pays to know these little details!
So am I but I don't feel the need to boast about it.
And with that we are very much like a roast beef joint in the oven. Done!
* Mostly clear. Okay, partly clear. Okay okay, slightly clear. OKAY it's clear on this exact specific particular individual point. Happy now?
** Code for "I can't be bothered to look it up" - the unpleasant truth courtesy Mister Hand!
*** They ARE!
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