Into Badness

Yeah, We Are Back Into Cinematic Darwin Award Winners Again

Look, I have a list of 23 horror films to get through, and though we might not get through all 23, you are MOST CERTAINLY going to get most of them.  Firstly, because it saves Conrad from trawling the fetid depths of teh Interwebz, and secondly, because wanton stupidity in screenplays deserves to be punished.  Art!

Er - possibly not quite so severely

     Talking of screenplays, I think this is an opportunity to diverge wildly from whatever it is we were talking about, and instead skip lightly back to yesteryon's post about Leigh Brackett.  You may recall BECAUSE ONLY THAT WAY WILL YOUR DESCENDANTS AVOID THE URANIUM MINES that we were banging on about her work in the science fiction and fantasy field - yes, 'her' because despite being named "Leigh Douglass Brackett" she was in fact a fully-fledged female - 

Leigh being carefree

     Leigh also served in Hollywood, where she worked on screenplays such as "Rio Lobo", "Hatari!" and <small fanfare> "The Big Sleep".  Take note here, Hollywood actually head-hunted her.  The last thing she worked on before an unexpectedly early death was a little something you may have heard of "The Empire Strikes Back".  Not only that, her earlier excursion into science fiction which we also borrowed - Art!

" - but darling, metal lingerie is so uncomfortable!"

     - was gifted a Retro Hugo last year, as "Nemesis From Terra".  A Hugo Award is one of the two biggest awards in the science fiction panoply (not a word you expected to hear today!) alongside the Nebula.  Let's raise a snifter of gin and nitromethane to Leigh!

     ANYWAY back to the gory and the gross.  Today we are looking at "The Descent" a horror film from <shudders in genuine horror> 2005 which Your Humble Artisan has seen way back when it came out, which surely cannot be all those many years ago?  Art!

     If you're not familiar with this film, then be aware that six female <ahem> 'adrenaline junkies' go poking around a cave system.

     Okay, problem number one: cave systems are inherently creepy and dangerous, and Your Humble Scribe would never be found exploring any of them as he is 1) Large and 2) Cowardly and 3) Fond of natural daylight.  We can overlook any such forebodings on behalf of the film, because It's In The Script.

     Problem Number Two (idiosyncratic capitalisation) is that the organiser of this expedition has deliberately lied about where they are going.  If anything goes wrong - and O My! does it go wrong - then nobody knows where they are.

Up a creek full of excrement absent paddles

    And Problem number 3 (idiosyncratic numeralisation) is that these caves have never been explored before, so whether there's an exit or not is completely unknown and our heroines will need to scurry non-stop to find the way out.  Unless, of course - obviously! - there are other beings down in the dark with them.  So, rather than a descent (which comes from the Latin "De" meaning "opposite" and "Scandere" meaning "to climb") into madness we have instead a descent into badness. Hence today's title.  Ching ching.

Yes Thanks But No

You should know by now that Conrad has some niche interests: examples of the Caunter camouflage as used in the deserts of North Africa in 1941; thermonuclear weapon design; gluten and egg-free baking; and collecting Official Histories of the First Unpleasantness.  This latter can be pricey if you don't know what you're collecting, so believe me when I tell you that Conrad knows what to pay and what to avoid.  Art!

     This is from that splendid website "Turner And Donovan" which is a rare and collectible books vendor.  The volume above is a placeholder for two text volumes and a set of appendices and maps that are for the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 that I've been braying about at  length on BOOJUM!  These are the original 1929 editions, and were the property of a Major Archibald Becke - who was responsible for creating the maps in these volumes and other Official tomes about the First Unpleasantness.  Here he also added in dozens of photographs that were either first reproductions or the originals, annotated in his hand.  Plus there's an attached letter from the author.  You could tell the dinner gong was going to ring for an appallingly high number of pounds, from the extremely long description posted.  

     £5,000.

     The personal connections here hike up the price by about 1,000%.  Ah me, if only I had won the Lottery!  One has to point out that these volume's worth will only increase across the years if they are looked after -

<heavy sigh>

     Nope, still can't persuade self to purchase <wallet sighs in relief>

     Maybe next month <wallet squeaks in terror>

What The Hell, Let's Have Some Bonestell!

I apologise, if only briefly, that we invoke the depths of Hades to bring up imagery from the heavenly brush of Chesley Bonestell, astronomical artist par extraordinaire, and I must have got that correct as the spellchecker didn't kick in.  Art!

"Moon through porthole 10 miles away"

     This is over a decade before Sputnik orbits the Earth, and 24 years before Apollo 11 puts it's sterile steel feet on the lunar regolith.  When it did, we found that those knife-sharp ridges as seen above had in fact been ground down to a powder <is that a Mars Volta lyric?> thanks to countless centuries of erosion: countless cosmic ray bombardment and micrometeorites.  I think, in order to evaluate properly, we need to get in touch with Ludek Pesek.

Finally -

We only need a short item to get us up to the Compositional Count, so bring on the LITHIUM BATTERY DESI - O no wait a minute we don't need that.  How about the shortest interocean bridge that we know of?  Would that do instead?

     Conrad has actually walked across the Atlantic Ocean if you believe the background to this architectural entity.  Well yes.  We can all believe Conrad, can't we?