For We Are Going On About Volcanoes Again
And why not? You can hardly call them boring, can you? Also they are free, and since they tend to occur away from population centres, you may be able to visit and not get fined £5,000. Tonight we start with a film that came out at the same time as "Dante's Peak", in one of those strange examples of Hollywood synchronicity that happen when one studio overhears what another's making and decides "That's a hot idea!". If you'll pardon the pun. For we are on about -
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| (They exaggerate) |
For one thing, the fact that there is no way a volcano is ever going to form underneath Los Angeles rather disappointed all the vulcanologists who went to watch it. For another, there is Stan Olber. Art!
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| Stan with Guilt Sweat |
Because the main villain of the movie is a geological feature, we need another minor villain in human form, and Stan is it. He doesn't believe The Experts when they warn of a volcano about to sprout rock about, and he probably sneered to boot, and if he had a moustache he'd tweak the ends (painful but dramatic).
Well well it all goes to hell. On the subway a train gets stranded and a penitent Stan helps lead rescuers to deliver the passengers from lava. Except - O noes! the driver is still stuck on the train! And a tidal wave of lava is about to engulf and incinerate both it and him!
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| "Ghost Pepper Chilli con carne plays hell on the stomach!" |
Of course Stan takes it upon himself to carry the unconscious driver and WADE THROUGH THE LAVA in order to hurl him to safety. Stan, you're The Man. Or were. Art!
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| Stan waves an ashy farewell |
Conrad is not convinced you can walk through molten rock when your feet get burned off, though this suspicion is unlikely ever to be tested in it's fulness since most sane people actively avoid swimming in magma. Couldn't he have thrown seat or cushions or doors onto the lava first to make stepping stones?
So, next time Tommy Lee Jones tells you not to do a particular thing, DON'T DO THAT PARTICULAR THING. This has been a public service announcement.
Okay, motley, time for your skin-flensing and ritual rolling in vindaloo.
Whilst Talking Of Subways
We did not have our remote Team talk today, for the Team Leader was absent, so Conrad did not get to put across his Interesting Fact(s) <sad face> yet people petitioned abjectly to get me to put forth this week's snippets. Art!
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| Manhattan Island |
Conrad recited a fact he'd read back in the early Seventies, which held that the island of Manhattan now weighs less than it did before humans arrived, because of all the subways and tunnels and sewers that have been excavated below ground.
Is this true? Or even possible? Well, doing a bit of Google-fu, Your Humble Scribe found a website that did a quick and dirty calculation of how much everything on Manhattan Island weighs. Thus, in thousands of tons:
Animals: 3
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| (Including rats) |
Humans: 283
Vehicles: 2,400
Road: 4,000
Buildings: 120,000
For a total of 126,686,000 tons. Art!
Well, they excavated 1,7000,000 cubic yards of earth when building the subways, and if we guesstimate a cubic yard of earth at one ton -
It's plausible. Fancy that!
Looking On The -
NO! Nothing to do with that Monty Python song, not at all <cross face> now look what you've gone and done! Teh Interwebz are now in an infinite recursive loop as people drag out their favourite MP sketch and butcher it with bad memory and worse timing.
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| Roman choir practice |
Right, I hope you're happy now. No, what I wanted to post was a picture of the beer bottle going cheap at the Co-Op in Babylon-lite, which Your Humble Scribe took as it offered the chance of a cheap pun. Art!
Supposedly titled thus to tie into the music scene in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell, well it merely made Conrad think of The Killers, so there. Get out of here with your Gay Boy Dragon Show*!
Conrad Is Beyond Mere Anger!
No, this time my Frothing Nitric Ire has given way to <thinks> Pentaborane Fuel Explosion! Art, if you will.
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| Toxic, explosive and - green. |
You see, there were other, annoyingly obscure words in the Codeword I tackled after that Crossword with "SINGLETON" as the answer. O yes. You want to know what they were? You don't? That's unfortunate, you're going to get to know, like it or not.
"MACARONI": Reallly? I did suspect this from the fact that it ended in "I", which meant either a flower or Italian cooking, the latter being correct.
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| Makes for a tricky jigsaw |
I shall have to go outside for a minute to cool down. Excuse me. Also, remove all sharp objects from within my reach, and take the trigger mechanism out of the Atomic Howitzer.
"ASPHYXIA": "Hello? Ah, excellent. I finally got through, I've been on hold for a while, business must be good! That is 'Assassins Incorporated', isn't it? Yes, yes, we've done business before. Mister Conrad. Yes, I was most impressed, vanished without trace and no police interest. Now, I have another contract for you ..."
Finally -
As if we needed any more proof that Conrad, if he were a stick of rock, would have the word "Dastard" all the way through**. For Lo! I have been reading and chortling at the BBC's Have Your Say on the ballfoot game, where the technical nuances of people's posts might escape me, yet their motive and spirit do not. Art!
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| "He's the worst manager in the Prime Lager. You could have a bag of sand and it would have better tactics" |
A reference to the "Manager" of TMAU, whom came in for a non-stop barrage of insults, lots of them from supporters of TMAU. "A PE teacher with a cheque-book" was one example. Glorious stuff!
And with that, Vulnavia, we are entirely done. Done done done!
* Apparently how "Monty Python" translates in Japan
** It comes from the Old Norse "Daestr" meaning "To be exhausted" and came to mean "dullard" before it's swinish connotations got attached.
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