Hark Hark The Shark!

 "Leaves A Bitemark -"

 - is how Conrad expects all you Galeophobics out there would finish off the line.

     NO!  WRONG!  BAD READERS! NAUGHTY READERS!  

     For Lo! we are returning to the - O and I see we're back to double line-spacing again, are we - or what the heck, are we? - to the Subject Matter Expert Apryl Boyle, marine scientist and conservationist.  Art!

Not as conventional as you may expect

     She (& Conrad) has long campaigned for better treatment for our finny friends, and whilst Your Humble Scribe has irony, vocabulary and wit on his side, she has proper scientific qualifications, so we're a formidable pair, or would be if she knew I existed.  Don't worry, once I take over we'll get along famously.

     ANYWAY she takes a look at a whole lot of shark films and gives her considered analysis, so let's look at the great-grandaddy of all shark films - "Jaws"*.  Art!

Good job that's a dead one, matey

     Well, Apryl casts scornful venom upon this trio of misanthropes, who have no idea what kind of shark it is, wondering if it's a 'macaw'.  Obviously not, because it doesn't have feathers and a squawk.  She points out it's 'mako' and ladles more vituperation upon the script because they're supposed to be 'watermen'.

     I hate to quibble, Apryl, but NO!  These are just some of the waterborne scum who turn up in Amity because of the whacking big reward offered for killing the killer shark.  They doubtless call a boat's bow "the front end" and laugh themselves silly when hearing how 'rowlocks' is pronounced.
      Next up is Matt Hooper's use of the term "bite radius", which she concedes has a basis in fact, since when sharky takes a chunk out of a surfboard, seal, or surfer, they leave a bite imprint which can be measured and used to scale up to determine how large the shark is.

"Yeah, yeah, you could get about five bowls of Shark Fin Soup outta it."

     Then there's the Mayor, who justifiably rejects the possibility of doing an 'autopsy on a fish', having fears that what's left of it's victim might end up in bits on the quayside.  Not good for re-election chances.

Ha!  It's not a fish, either!

     Apryl takes him to task, too: doing a medical examination on a dead animal is a 'necropsy', so there.
     Motley, fancy a swim?

Hi Ho Silver Spaceship

This might take a bit of explaining, so bear with me.  One of Perfidious Albion's most important sci-fi writers is M. John Harrison, whom has been around for simply ages and ages.  His early novel "The Centauri Device" has been added to the list of '100 Science Fiction Masterworks', and is one of his best-known works, and Conrad is going to add the cover picture from the Panther edition that caught his eye.  Art!

Corks!

     Let us abruptly jump medium and instead focus on music, specifically that of Jeff Beck, guitar maestro <a moment's silent respect for Jeff>, whose best known song is "Hi Ho Silver Lining", which became a surprise pop hit, much to his undisguised horror.  For decades he distanced himself from it, refusing to play it live, because it was a musical millstone not representative of his oeuvre.

     The thing is, that's entirely how MJH feels about TCD, considering it to be the "crappiest thing I ever wrote".  Nah!  One thing it established was naming spaceships after works of art, such as Captain John Truck's very own ship, "My Ella Speed".  This seems to be a play on an old, old blues song about Ella Speed, who was a <ahem>lady of easy virtue.

     Hmmmm.  All my notes for this item consist of three words.  "My Ella Speed".  So we've ended up with over 70 times that total.  Raw creative genius at work!

By My Halidom!

Conrad unsure if that's nineteenth-century English imprecation or not, though it has the requisite ring to it, hmmmm?

     Yesterday I possibly broke the internet by revealing the existence of a series of Soviet-era television films about - Sherlock Holmes.  Yes, the consulting detective himself.  I put the question of where on earth they could have filmed to portray Victorian London?  There is an answer: Jauniela Street, in the Baltic port city of Riga.  Art?

Pshaw! "London" - ridiculous.  It's not raining.

     Conrad has yet to see the series - this will come, don't you worry! - yet it was remarkably faithful to the stories, an adherence not always noticeable in Western productions of same.  In an incredible irony, Margaret Thatcher, no friend of the Sinisters in this universe nor any others, was quite the fan.  Also, Vasily Livanov, who played Sherlock, was honoured with an OBE** for his performance.  Art!

     Conrad very strongly suspects that someone at the very top of the Kremlin was a secret Sherlock fan, and gave a sly nod that the series be created***.

Playing It Cool, Fool

Yes, another Darwin Award as yet another Hom. Sap. seeks to remove themselves from the gene pool, unsuccessfully in this case.  Perhaps he was only practicing.

     Okay, our protagonist is a Chinese gentleman living in the south of West Taiwan, who had hurt his knee, whilst drinking.  He had attempted to ease his distress with ice-packs on the painful patella, to no avail.

     Then arrived a container of ice-cream, kept frozen thanks to a large packet of dry-ice.  Art!

     You can tell exactly where this is going, can't you?  Matey immediately placed the dry-ice pack on his knee.

     He then experienced a shatteringly unpleasant sensation: burning.  This perception happens when human flesh is exposed to extreme cold (minus 500C).  He tried to remove the pack.  It was stuck to his skin.  By the time the ice had evapourated (without asphyxiating him, due to sheer luck), he had severe frostbite.  In the middle of summer.

CAUTION! use only water-ice

Finally -

I have just been listening to a couple of The Doors tracks, "LA Woman" and "Riders On The Storm" (the extended version), and am minded of another of their lyrics, "The cars hiss by my window, like the waves upon the beach" and do you know what?  Thanks to my new double-glazed windows, Your Humble Scribe can hardly hear the cars, and buses, and tractors at all, only as a dulled murmur in most cases and certainly not as definite as they were.  A gain for my peace and quiet, a loss for rock 'n' roll lyrics.

     When a farm tractor tows a large, empty trailer past The Mansion, it used to be as if they were driving right through my Sekrit Layr.  Not any more!

     Sorry, Jim.

     You know what, Vulnavia?  We're done.

*  Not a sequel to "Jaw" in case you were wondering.

**  "Order of the British Empire" <gags in disbelief>

***  That, or aliens.