A Man With A Mop And A Bucket Of Glop

Being A Superhero Isn't Always Glamourous

Unless you're Bruce Wayne, and then you can play the part of the carefree international playboy, which must help balance out being a brooding, dark-clad and sinister bat-by-night.  I wonder how hard it is to stay in character?

     Anyway, yes, I am continuing to read "Invincible" and have now gotten to Volume 11, where there was a throwaway comment from Cecil that got Conrad thinking (always a dangerous thing).  Art?

"Don't worry about that.  My people will clean it up."

     O really?  By "people" I'll bet you don't mean first-line superheroes like Invincible or Atom Eve or Rex Robot, do you? because they're a little too powerful to be slumming it with a mop, bucket and snow-shovel.  When's the last time you saw the Justice League putting what's left of an invading army of cyber-slugs into bin bags, hmmm?  

     And yet, the need is there.  Cyber-slugs decay very quickly into unspeakable slimy crud, which attracts flies and reduces property values, especially in warm climates.  Then, too, you have the bodies of certain <ahem> aliens where their blood is a monstrously powerful acid capable of dissolving concrete as if it were biscuit.  O, Batman and Superman have left a dismembered army of same on the streets of Gotham?

Worryingly, there are hits for the search term "Cyberslug" on Google.

     So, there you are, Cecil Dedman, head of the Global Defence Agency, and you need assistants who are able and willing (if only just) to clean up after a fist-fight with Festering Man.  That's just an example, the requirements might call for nothing more than a dustpan and brush, or you may need lazy-tong forceps and a hazmat suit.

     Conrad there must be an agency that hires workers for "unspecified hazardous duties involving chemical waste, radioactive isotopes and mangled body parts" where the interview questions clarify if you get star-struck in the presence of superheroes or mortally terrified in the presence of super-villains.  Do you have a high tolerance for gore?  Poor sense of smell?  An understanding of the Official Secrets Act?  Then you're in!  These will be the people Cecil contracts to come clean up the streets of New York.  Literally and only cleaning; crime-fighting is left to the superheroes.

They ain't got no mop but that's a bucket of glop

     "Yes yes yes, Conrad, you put a compelling case here.  Yet why would people ever voluntarily do this unpleasant and often dangerous job?" I hear you ask.  

     Good point.  For some it might be as part of a punishment detail, where they get seconded out from the South Canadian police or armed forces for poor performance or bad behaviour; nobody wants to end up on the "Putrid Patrol" or to shovel up the "Grey Goo Zoo".  For actual agency workers, the answer is simple: money and an excellent healthcare and insurance package.  Plus the ever-present possibility of accidentally contaminating yourself with alien DNA, thus transforming into -

A Loathsome Furry

     Hmmmmm.  Not quite as terrifying as the transformation in "Quatermass" but up there with it.

     Motley!  That drink was poisoned - and one of these twenty-four doughnuts contains the antidote.  

Stretching It A Bit

Your Humble Scribe is now 17% through "La Mort D'Arthur" and has come to Book Five, which is a part I'm not familiar with.  In it the Roman Emperor Lucius demands fealty and tribute from Britain (actually named "Little Britain" in the text which is either prescient or problematic), which provokes Arthur to get together an army to carry out a campaign on the Continent.  Art!

Down as "Burgoyne" in the text

     In the chivalric equivalent of an aside here at BOOJUM!, King Arthur is roving through the countryside when he comes across dolorous people bewailing that a giant has been oppressing them these seven years, taking their children and eating them, whilst also taking prisoner and robbing various knights and 'damosels' (ladies).  Indeed, Kingy catches the giant in the process of roasting a couple dozen children alive, and immediately intercedes in a gory fashion, slicing the giant across the stomach so badly that his insides appear on the outside, and his "Genitours" were excised.  They then get into a grapple, and whilst both are rolling around Kingy and his two knights in attendance use their daggers on the giant, who expires.

Kingy versus the giant of Mont-Michel

      I know this is three to one, but he was a big bloke.

    Conrad's point is that the giant in this case had been rampaging and robbing for SEVEN YEARS, and in all that time nobody had taken a sword to him?  Or a crossbow?  Or Batarangs an axe? 

Or one of these bad boys

     Methinks Thomas Malory was reaching a bit here.  Seven months or seven weeks, that's acceptable.  Not 2,555 days.

Hitting The Buffers

Nearly!  Your Humble Scribe is up to page 495 of "Transportation On The Western Front 1914 - 1918" and golly, what a long dull trip it's been.  I am now considerably more informed about how to run a railway as of one hundred years ago, which is - er - well, not really applicable in any way to contemporary reality.  Art!

     That above shows a double-line standard-gauge railway being laid, which was slow work given all the work involved.  A double-line was the preferred layout, because then you could run trains up and down the different lines with ease, whereas with a single-line you needed to carefully co-ordinate what went up and down at any time.

     One problem that hadn't existed for railways in wartime before was bombing attacks from aircraft, which could occur far behind the front lines, most of all on nights with bright moonlight, aerial navigation being in it's infancy at the time.  This was a problem for Perfidious Albion until the end of summer 1918, when the Teutons were running away and abandoning their airfields, thus not being in range of the dense Allied railway network.  Art!

     These raids proved to be more disruptive in the way everything and everyone ducked for cover when planes came over and the sirens sounded, over an area of several miles.  Quite beside the trouble caused when they did manage to hit a railway line, or, occasionally, a bridge.

Finally -

We've hit the Compositional Ton, so it only remains to say that yesterday's Beer Advent Calendar was "Light Speed" because it's a low-calorie beer - can you imagine, Brewdog pay someone to sit and think these up*? - and today's less-than-appetising name is "Dead Pony Club", at which point we need to contact Cecil and ask if any of those agency workers are available for a clean-up?

                          Is it dead because it was clubbed?  One likes to know these things.

     Like the pony, we are - done.

*   Conrad can do it for modest compensation.