You Want To See My Crib?

As We Have Already Established

Conrad, Your Humble Scribe (me! do keep up!) is not a fan of South Canadianisms that ooze their way eastwards o'er the Atlantic and end up on these shores, because 1) we have our own vernacular, thank you very much, and 2) Codewords are difficult enough already without adding in their slang, which the compilers would do in a heartbeat as they have low morals*.

     So, doubtless you are beginning to read this, warily, since "Crib" appears to be Trans-Atlantic for "Domicile", and are probably wondering what Conrad is up to.

     SURPRISE!

Tanks with planks

     These lumbering behemoths are Mark V tanks, carrying - cribs.  The 'crib fascine' was an improvement on the original tank fascines, which had merely been an enormous bundle of twigs.  Art!  Less coal more goal!

     The idea of a fascine, of whatever composition, is that tanks would drop them into battlefield obstacles such as trenches or anti-tank ditches.  A crib would give consistent results as against the bundle-of-twigs version.

     Here an aside.  If you have been reading the spirited and also amusing commentary that Roel has been doing about warfare in the ancient world, then you know he always, always criticises Hollywood for not including ditches as a defensive design.  To overcome said ditches in the real world required, yes you guessed it, fascines.

     Back to the First Unpleasantness.  Art!

"Ten bob says 'e cuts that phone cable in the next ten seconds.**"

     What brings this up is mention of British tanks using cribs to allow crossing of the Selle River on 17th October 1918 during the Battle of the Selle, at a relatively shallow and narrow part of the river.  Narrow and shallow it may have been, it still prevented the tanks from crossing; however, a matter of ten minutes dropping cribs in it was incontestably quicker than waiting for the Royal Engineers throwing up a bridge heavy enough to sustain the weight of tanks.  The Teuton defenders probably considered this to be thoroughly unsporting and un-cricketlike and that violin in the background is playing for them.

     I am inspired to post this because Your Humble Scribe is now about half-way through Peter Hodgkinson's "The Battle Of The Selle", which I bought about two years ago and have only just gotten round to, so vast are the unread slopes of the Book Mountain.

Cribless South Canadians at the Selle

     Okay, that's enough of the Selle.  We're done with the Selle.  We are Selle out.

Bernie Cribs

We've Been Here Before

Conrad discharged his civic duty late this afternoon, walking up to post his postal votes for the forthcoming local elections, which is as far as we get on that topic.  Whilst walking back to The Mansion, he diverted himself by looking at the fanciful house names going back to the late Victorian era on gateposts.  "Thorn Hill", "Moss Bank" and - "Hilbre".  'Hilbre'?  What is this?

     Well, a set of tidal islands in the Mersey estuary, actually.  When the tide is out you can walk to them.  This sounded familiar, and Conrad recalled that a couple of years back he had an on-going series about tidal islands in This Sceptred Isle.

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/03/today-we-insult-internationally.html

     Okay okay, four years ago.  Art!

The Special Escort Group

This one has been on the back burner for at least a week, because another entry has always pipped it to the post.  'Postally pipped' in the words of Guy Garvey.

     ANYWAY I decided to get it in here.  You may never have heard of the SEG, who operate in Hades In Concrete ('London' if we're being formal), escorting (the clue is in the title) very very naughty prisoners, very very important people, the Royal Family (STAND TO RESPECTFUL ATTENTION!) and Government ministers (loud raspberry) into, out of and around the capital.  Art!

You are strongly advised to give way

     All SEG members are armed, openly, so arguing with them about traffic control is a non-starter.  They use whistles instead of sirens, as the sheer novelty of this makes it especially effective.  They also STAY WITHIN THE SPEED LIMIT, on average.  For those of you familiar with the hideously choked nature of Hades In Concrete's roads, this sounds impossible.  Well, it's not.  Art!

     The bikes leapfrog each other at road junctions, getting to the next one ahead and stopping cross-traffic, as the next bike in the motorcade accelerates ahead to the next junction and repeats the process.  They decide what route to take on the move, so you can't predict their movements in advance.  Plus, those marked and unmarked cars?  Bulging with armed SEG officers itching to put their expensively-acquired skills into action.

     Oddly enough, I cannot find any occasion when they have been challenged.  Strange, that.

Returning The Favour

You should by now be aware that NASA has managed to get the Martian helicopter Ingenuity to fly successfully three times.  Each time in action it has been filmed or photographed by the Perseverance rover, which has been acting as a kind of base station for the diminutive chopper.  Well, Ingenuity returned the favour on it's latest flight.  Art!

     Conrad suspects they have cropped the image to remove the Martian Rock Snakes, and if it were in infra-red you'd probably pick up a camouflaged Ice Warrior or two.  But - Hay Pesto! - Perseverance!

It's That Matte Again!

NZ Pete has very kindly agreed to let me post stuff from his blog, as long as it's correctly attributed and any kind of link on social media is also appreciated, which is no problem.  Pete's blog is a very, very detailed record of matte film work up to the Nineties, which is when CGI began to replace painted images.  It is kind of ironic that one of the twentieth century's most innovative and influential art forms fell back on one of humanity's oldest, i.e. painting.

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

     That's a link to Pete's blog itself.  Highly recommended, but IT WILL CONSUME ALL YOUR SPARE TIME!

     I want to put up a couple of shots from "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", which is kind of borderline what I was posting about other colour sci-fi classics.  Art!

     This is a scene showing the slave encampment, as you the audience witnessed it upon cinema screens.  Guess how much of that is actually the filmed insert?

     That bit at central port is what.  You can see the section of screen that had been blanked off to only allow the insert section to be filmed in the upper starboard shot.  This is how you have an exotic location and a giant paddle steamer ship, with minimal outlay in special effects.

     I'm sure we shall re-Pete this subject matter.  Given the weekend I may be trawling charity shops for suitable films.

And with that, we are done!

*  If any.

**  This was a real and serious issue.  I kid you not.

Kissy Kissy Bangy Bangy

This Is Going To Take Some Explaining

Hopefully you didn't have anything else planned for the immediate future?  O good.  We shall then proceed.

     First of all, we shall be taking a rest from ceaseless yarking on about matte effects, although in the context of what I write, Matt - Matt Helm, that is - might also be an option.  You young whippersnippers out there won't have any idea what I'm talking about but I'm on a schedule here with a deadline so we shall just have to come back to it later.  Art!

Kissy Suzuki and James Bond

     In reality the James Bond nickname "Mister Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" is Italian in origin, which we will instead ignore completely, because it's my blog and I say so.  

     What I wanted to inculcate (another of those words you never expected to see today) was a sense of Japan being a friend of the Western powers, which we can also extend to Australia.  You know, the Ockers, a tribe of European extraction for the most part, who have settled in the country that tries to kill you on a regular basis.  For Lo! we are back to the Official History of the Gallipoli campaign, and Anzac Cove.  By June the conflict between the Ockers, the Polite Australians and the Turks had resulted in trench warfare every bit as unpleasant as that taking place in Europe.  With armies of flies.  And a shortage of water.  Art!

"Lieutenant Cuthbertson doffed his fly-screen to light a cigarette, the flame keeping flies at bay."

     One advantage the Turks had was in their plentiful supply of hand-grenades, known colloquially to the British and Dominion troops as 'bombs'.  Your Humble Scribe doesn't have time to do proper research on this, yet suspects that these would have been supplied by the Teutons and would thus have been of the "Steilgranate" or "Potato-masher" variety.  The British and Anzacs had to make do with 'jam-tin' bombs, literally made out of an empty jam-tin, with a bit of gun-cotton and scrap iron as the lethal part, and a short fuse.  Needless to say these improvisations were as dangerous to the user as the enemy, and only came in small amounts.  Art!

Killer Kalories

     Please bear in mind that in the First Unpleasantness the Japanese were actually allies of the Allies, carrying out some minor military operations against distant Teuton settlements in the Far East (which was the Very Very Near East to the Japanese) and lending their considerable naval strength to overseas operations.  More pertinently, they also supplied four trench mortars to the Anzacs in May of 1915.  Art!

You oughter mortar

    Mortar normally cements constructions together; these did the opposite, lobbing a 30 pound bomb into the Turkish trenches, to the utter discomfiture (yes yes yes another word you never expected to see today) of those on the receiving end.  The merry hell that the Turks experienced was only brought to a halt when the mortar ammunition ran out.  Art!

You might want to cock that up a bit, chaps ...

     So there you have it, when East and West were in harmonious communication about explosive demarcation, in the summation of hyperbolic detonation.

     Motley!  We've dealt with the Spitting Devil's Cabbage, do we have anything on file about Blade Runner Beans?

Meanwhile, In Angryland -

Your Humble Scribe aspires to get a copy of either the Manchester Evening News or the Oldham Times daily, because that way he gets to tackle a Cryptic Crossword and a Codeword, which helps to keep his wits sharp.  I have absolutely no interest in the news content, let it be hastily added.  And O My! they are a source of material for the blog, and then some.  Were I to cease solving the Codewords I'm sure my blood pressure would recover, but it would also mean a positive desert of source material.  For example -

"HOYDEN": Conrad knew this one because he's read a lot of historical literature which mentions same.  "A wild boisterous girl" defines the Collins Concise.  Well, yes, except it went out of use when Charles Dickens died.  "Tomboy" is the contemporary equivalent.  Art!

Still technically SFW

"VETCH": No!  Not the Latin derivation from the Greek "Vex".  This is a species of climbing plant, apparently.  Art!

Fetch Vetch

     It is edible, if barely, and Hom. Sap. only resorted to eating the vetch when there was nothing else, for the vetch doth make retch*.

"BLAZONED":  Excuse me?  Okay, this means describing a coat of arms or similar in formal heraldic terms, you know, "Fess argules with lion rampant" kind of stuff.  In fact the chap mentioned in the Intro has a line that's relevant here ...

James Bond : Now, when we authorize a coat of arms, it can include all sorts of funny things: crescent moons, portcullis, beasts, cochons, rampants, bars, bezants.

Nancy : Please, what is bezants?

James Bond : Gold balls. I brought a book on the subject with me. There's a picture of my own coat of arms, actually - which includes four of them. If you'd care to see them.

     We shall draw a cloak of NSFW o'er the rest of this repartee.

A bevy of birds and Bond

     Enough of what makes my blood pressure rise!  

Euphemisms For 'Stupid'

This was the title on a Youtube Reddit channel that I've not yet had the chance to read, though I doubt my examples feature there.  My first one is used of Edward VII, whom I remember from my History degree course as being an utter numpty who would have made an excellent monk, were he not King of Perfidious Albion.  He was described as being " - that useful political vegetable" because whoever wanted to usurp power in the land only had to whisper in his ear and he would loudly bray their message.  Art!

"I'm a potato."
(Yes, you have a peel)

     Then there was another comment, which I cannot remember applied to whom, nor from where it came, except it described a particular European monarchy as being " - but lightly endowed with intellect", which I thought was hilarious.  And very probably true.  We may come back to this, for Conrad loves a creative insult or two**.

Finally -

The jigsaw proceeds apace.  There seems to be a total of five edge pieces missing, which might well prove to be that Conrad ham-fistedly missed them whilst sorting through the 1,000 pieces.  Or they might really be missing, this being a risk of charity-shop bought jigsaws.  Art!

     Only another 880 pieces to go.  You will, inevitably and unapologetically, get progress reports on this as it gets completed.  I bet you can hardly wait***.

*  It probably doesn't, but are you going to eat some to challenge me?

**  Or twenty

***  This, South Canadian readers, is irony.  So now you know.

I Say, Jack, It's An ANZAC Attack!

Know Your Acronyms

Our distant Dominion cousins down under will know what that word means, because they grew up with Anzac biscuits.  These, according to Oz colleague Renee, are made without egg so that they don't spoil on long voyages overseas to supply the Antipodean warriors with food.  Also, it was Anzac Day on 25th April, which may have made people recall the word.

     "Australian and New Zealand Army Corps" and yes, this is another relic of the First Unpleasantness.  The ANZACs landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915 and proved to be doughty, if inexperienced, troops.  Art!

"Flee!  The Ockers are here!"

     There was neither the room nor the opportunity for the Australians to exhibit their terrible behaviour out of the front line, which they made up for when they got to France.  The British army's Redcaps (Military Police) in France dreaded having anything to do with the Ockers, who took particular delight in picking on them for the slightest of reasons, or indeed no reasons at all.

     ANYWAY we are focussing back on Gallipoli, and "Anzac Cove", where their corps had landed and where they were pretty boxed-in.  The Turks held the high ground and had a solid trench network with a nice wide No Man's Land to shoot down any attackers upon.  O Noes.  Art!

An assemblage of keep binocular-collectors meets to compare models.

     The Anzacs had a number of Tunnelling Companies, whose job was to carry out mining work underground, in order to place explosive charges under the Turk's frontline trenches, a favour the Turks sought to return in kind.  Art!

A trench.  Just so we're clear.

     The Ockers, picking up despicable skills from their brothers-in-arms of Perfidious Albion, decided that they wanted a trench much closer to the Turkish front lines at 400 Plateau and Russell's Top.  It was impossible to do this openly by either day or night, for the Turkish machine guns and snipers were deadly effective.  So, they dug out mine galleries perpendicular to their own lines, getting to within a thirty yards of the Turkish lines.  They then extended a gallery parallel with the Turkish front lines, which was very shallow indeed - having a 'roof' of only three feet in thickness.  Come night-time, they removed the top cover from this gallery very quietly and - Hay Pesto! - instant front-line trench.  The Turk was not amused next morning to find that they were now staring down Anzac gun barrels at much closer range than yesteryon.  Art!

The binocular-deficient gathered, jealously.

     If you feel hard done by in your employment, just imagine those Australian diggers (hah!) working away underground, in June, in (literally 'in') Turkey at the height of summer, and trying to be really quiet about it.

     Motley!  We're going to play Pick And Micks; you can have the Micks and I'll begin with the pick - don't worry, I put a rubber bung on the point.

Roel Roasts The Know Of The Snow

Not snow the substance itself, rather Jon Snow, that chap that all the ladies drooled over back in the day of "Game Of Thrones".  For today Roel casts a critical military historical eye over - Art!

     Roel cannily points out that, instead of standing around muttering 'watermelonwatermelon', these people ought to be out digging a ditch, and after that one's done, dig another one.  He's not wrong; having to ascend a ditch after descending into it would severely discomfit an 'ice zombie' as he hilariously insults the army of wights.  Art!

     Not easy to make out, so I shall explicate; this scene is all the non-combatants hiding in the cellars, shivering with cold and fear.  In straitened circumstances like this, as indeed Roel carps, everyone would be carrying out a task; supplying food and water, bringing ammunition, retrieving the wounded, bringing tinder, horse fodder, whetstones, you name it.  Art!

Spot the deliberate mistake

 
     Conrad could point this one out himself.  All that torsion-powered artillery, visible in lines to starboard, is in the wrong place. You do not put artillery in the front lines, in this or any other century.  Artillery's strength is it's range, so you put it in rear, and preferably at height on the castle walls, which will give improved visibility and range.  As you might guess, artillery is also heavy and cumbersome - look at the tiny wheels on that one nearest the camera - and takes time plus teams of draught animals to move around.  Time you will not have when the 'ice zombies' attack.  Art!

     Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Robinson, and don't stick your cavalry in the front line where they have no room to manoeuvre or work up shock power.  The tidied-up diagram above is what Roel would recommend when faced with an army of 'ice zombies': lots of ditches, artillery on the city walls, and cavalry on the flanks.

Very Jiggy And Quite Sawwy As Well

As you should surely know by now, Conrad is a one for jigsaws, as their assembly and completion is a perfect fit for his plodding pedantic pie-eyed* perspicacious purposefulness.  Last night I began "The Road To Dunkirk", and have amassed (hopefully) all the edge pieces.  Art!

Early days yet

Jocose And Morose

In another of those etymological (not a word you expected to see today) pairings that just happen to intrigue Your Humble Scribe, I went to see where both these words originate.  "Jocose", for your edification, means "Humourous" and is derived (inevitably) from Latin and "Jocus", which means "Joke".  Damn.  Even our comedy is tainted with Latin <sighs heavily>.  Art?

As jocose as Conrad gets

     "Morose", which means "Ill-tempered or peevish" comes from the Latin (I KNEW IT!) "Morosus" which means "Gloomy".  Art!

Morose: Conrad's default state

    So now we know, and are better-informed than we were five minutes ago.

Finally -

I seem to have exhausted the possibilities of blathering on about matte work in "Forbidden Planet", so I would just like to mention, briefly, another film that Degsy brought up: "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea".  I can't post a lot of shots for this because it's not available for free on Youtube and we don't have a copy in The Mansion, so I shall have to go  trawling the DVD shelves in charity shops anon.  ANYWAY have this pairing - Art!

     An intersting juxtaposition (another word you never expected to see today!) don't you think?

     I think we're done with that for now.  In the meantime I have to go and acid-wash our hazmat gear, as the motley got disgustingly dirty in the Sanjak last night.  Vomit Volcanoes and Garbage Geysers make for a vile combination**.

*  I suspect the work of Mister Hand here

**  No, we couldn't refuse.  The pistachio harvest, before you ask.

More Matte Than That

For Lo! We Are Back On "Forbidden Planet" Again

If you don't approve or like, then THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

     I would like to re-use the last, absolutely on-point picture that I posted last night, because it proves an interesting point.  Art!

     As I explained yesteryon, the black-and-white image shows what the filmed insert contained, and the colour one shows how much of the shot is actually a matte painting.  Note that the third staircase is really a painting, and in all the live action shots of people going up and down staircases, you never see more than two at a time; the conceit is that the third 'leg' is hidden from view when it doesn't physically exist.  Thus saving money.  Art!

     This wonderfully evocative shot, shown when Morbius makes his speech to Commander Adams about how, eighteen years ago, 'I dug their graves with my own hands', is only seen for a few seconds and isn't repeated.  Again, cheaper to paint on glass than have a whole crew build a huge miniature set (I know, I know, an oxymoron) that's only in use for a single scene.  One guesses that the larger cross is Morbius's wife's grave.  Art!

     A travelling matte shot; there are two separate scenes being filmed here, one with Anne Francis, whom you will notice never actually touches the tiger, and another entirely separate one with the tiger all on it's ownsome.  It wouldn't do for your Hollywood starlet to become a Hollywood cutlet.  I shall leave you to try and spot the seam where both are merged*.  Art!

     This scene was also stolen - er, shall we say 'homaged' perhaps - in "The Time Tunnel" a good ten years later.  The filmed portion is the walkway here, and those little black dots are Morbius, Adams and Ostrow.  With the outstanding and enigmatic background here, you really get a sense of overwhelming scale.  Art!

     Possibly the most famous matte shot from the whole film, with Morbius, Adams and Ostrow walking through the innards of the Krell machine.  To have constructed a set for this would have bankrupted the studio, quite besides taking forever to build.  What you see is mostly matte, with our three human protagonists being filmed in a relatively small insert.  Art!

     That picture in upper starboard shows how little of the scene is live action.  I found these pictures on a blog I'd not come across before, the link below

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/

     Which goes into matte work in the cinema with a lot more detail than does Your Humble Scribe.  Conrad not sure if it's still being updated or not.  Worth a check out, and I shall be back there later.  I just checked and yes, it's still a going concern.  I shall drop Pete a line later tonight.  Not sure what the time difference is with New Zealand.

     And with that we are done with "Forbidden Planet", or done until I can think up another excuse to promote it again**.

     Motley!  Don your hazmat suit, since the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar are pleading for help with their Vomit Volcano and we owe them a favour.  I'll co-ordinate from The Mansion and you get in the helicopter.

Conrad - One Of The Angry Old Men

There's a lot of us about.  Whilst others may rant and tant about the ballfoot game, corrupt politicians, pistachio import quotas or when pubs will re-open, Your Humble Scribe has other fish to fry.  CODEWORD SOLUTIONS!

     Really, there is no excuse.  Art!

     Here you go.  Note the absence of any words in Serbo-Croat, any obscure scientific expressions dealing with Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and absolutely nothing to do with the Latin taxonomy of sub-Saharan succulents.  However.  We must now travel the mean streets of codeword solutions, so you'd better neck some sanity-meds before we proceed.

"ERGO": Obviously Latin, which you may be familiar with from that phrase "Cogito ergo sum", which means "The clockwork power ratio".  Or not, I wasn't paying attention, because Latin.  Hang on, my Collins Concise says that it means "Therefore".  Well well.  Art!

Erg.  Travelling dunes.  So you could say that the Erg go.

"HAWSE": No!  Not South Canadian dialect for a 'house'.  Nor a horse.  No, this one will impress you.  It means that area of the bows of a ship where the hawseholes are STOP SNIGGERING AT THE BACK THERE! because anything hawse is to do with bows and arrows anchors.  Art!

A hawsehole.  NO SNIGGERING!

"OYER": This one - THIS ONE - brought me perilously close to a myocardial infarction.  It is part of the phrase "Oyer and terminer", referring to a branch of the judiciary in This Sceptred Isle, which dealt with cases at 'assizes', which were abolished fifty years ago when county courts came in.  WHAT ARE WE EXPERTS IN OBSOLETE LEGAL HISTORY NOW?!

Seemed appropriate somehow

Good Show Sir

I know what you're thinking - no, no, I returned the Prototype Telepathy Helmet to DARPA months ago - and no, this is not Your Humble Scribe holding forth in his typical RAF-inspired banter from the Second Unpleasantness.  No, it is in fact a website, one that Conrad encountered when attempting to track down artwork by Bob Fowke.  They claim to only feature bad sci-fi cover artwork, and one example caught my citric eye.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe is curious here.  "Nokar The Librarian" is not exactly a name redolent with deeds of derring-go, wielding a sword and shield whilst facing down the bad guys.  And - "Seven-Fingered Fat Girl"?  Her parents were sadists!  Does she only have seven fingers in total? Or seven on both hands? Or seven on only one hand?  How many toes does she have?

Okay, okay, I'm being much too literal.  Thanks for your cautioning look.

Finally -

We only need a short post to hit the Compositional Ton, so I'm not going to do an item on either the Special Escort Group nor Roel castigating the technical staff on "Game Of Thrones", though rest assured both will arrive in the fulness of time.  No, I think we can end here with a brief observation that the helicopter Ingenuity has made it's third aerial trip on Mars, whizzing about up and down Jezero Crater.  Art!

Ingenuity dead centre

    There's going to be more footage later in the month, because all available bandwidth at present is occupied by technical engineering data, which NASA desires with all the intensity of a vampire after virgin's blood.  

     The big result, above all else, is that HELICOPTERS ARE VIABLE ON MARS.  Nobody knew before this week if this was going to be a thing or not, given the technical challenges involved in a rotary-wing vehicle on a planet with lesser gravity and also lesser atmosphere than Earth.  Now we know.

     The next models that get sent out will, of course - obviously! - have to carry air-to-surface missiles.

Because these.

*  Code for "I'm not sure myself"

**  Be warned.  It will happen.