You'll Need To Bear With Me A Bit For This
Mind you, that's nothing new, so it shouldn't be a hardship. Today, whilst driving to do the weekly shop and stopped at traffic lights, my mind dwelt on the long-dead comic actor Sid James, whom modern audiences are probably unfamiliar with. Unless, that is, you watched those old "Carry On" films where he was a fixture; there may well be a subculture of these fans who exist unknown to the rest of us, playing real cellulose film run through projectors onto standing screens -
Or there may not. Art!
Sid being as serious as he could
Sid was born in South Africa, did a stint in the Army during the Second Unpleasantness and trained as a hairdresser when hostilities ceased; hence today's incredibly witty title. Having gotten romantically involved with a young lady of impeccable background, whose parents disapproved, Sid made the transition to This Sceptred Isle. Most of his work was comic in nature, with some notable exceptions, and the exception I was thinking of was in "Quatermass 2". Art!
Despite their age the Quatermass programs are some of the scariest television ever created, and the whole UK would be sitting down to watch them, from behind their fingers or the sofa. Here we are talking about the film version of the series, with a considerably bigger budget and some star players. In Q2 Sid played a journalist, a very down-to-earth and matter of fact chap. Art!
Sid in a pub, his natural environment
(Like a lion on the African savannah ...)
He plays the initially skeptical Jimmy Hall, who is present when the bad guys turn up to crash the party. They wear black helmets, so we know they're incipient evil. Art!
"Ay up - the Party Police are here."
SPOILER ALERT!
I WARNED YOU -
The bad guys then immediately KILL HIM DEAD! No warning, just BANG (well, several bangs, really). Art!
At this point the audiences were no doubt going O MY GOD THEY MURDERED SID JAMES NOBODY IS SAFE! which would be exactly what the film-makers wanted. Horror! Terror! Cats and dogs living together! And there you have today's title. I did say it would take a while.
Motley, here's a dozen glue-sticks - we're going to re-enact "Quatermass And The Pritt"
Altogether now - "It's behind you!"
More From Jonathan
Ware, that is, as in " O, 'ware the specious fictional drivel passing itself off as eyewitness history". Conrad mentioned yesterday that Jonathan had dug down into the history of a fraudulent author or authors, who had conspired to publish 'memoirs' of SS Panzer crews or "D Day Through German Eyes" and was highly suspicious of their motives, suspecting either/and making an unscrupulous fast buck or promoting neo-Nazi nonsense. Art!
As large as it's getting
All the suspect publications come out, as noted by Jonathan above, within the space of a month. This is ridiculously rapid, and the only people that spring to mind as a comparison are that plagiarising couple who merely copy whole chunks of other people's better books and do it badly*. This is simply not how historical work of a military nature gets published. It IS how unprincipled hacks out to make money at any cost operate.
In stark contrast we have this.
Is Conrad Still Angry?
O yes! O yes indeed! Never mind Covid or Brexit, WHAT ABOUT THE CODEWORDS! <calms down by hurling haggis at the motley>. I have railed against these in the past and now words of ridiculously obscure or <hack spit> foreign origin are getting in there. Do you want to know which ones? Do you? You're going to want to or not SIT BACK DOWN!
"LUX": "The derived unit of SI illumination equal to a luminous flux of 1 lumen per square metre." There. Did that make sense to you? And this word is doubtless derived from the Latin for "Light", which is "Lux" and you ought to be familiar with it thanks to the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey" where they play "Lux Eternae". So there.
Putting this here has cheered me a tad
"ERSATZ": ARE YOU <horridly intense swears redacted> KIDDING ME! THIS IS GERMAN! GERMAN! Keep it to English, you pikers! In fact "Keep it to English, you pikers!!" There. Two exclamation marks. That should indicate how seething with plutonium-powered rage I am. It means a substitute, usually of inferior quality, as when the Teutons had to use roast hazelnuts to make a pretend coffee, because the Royal Navy prevented any getting through.
and here's the one that had Conrad frothing like an espresso-maker.
<Shakes fist at diabetes>
"OBLOQUIES": Are you SERIOUS? This means to make slanderous and untrue statements, particularly when directed at a particular person. For example, were Conrad to say that Alan Carr is witty and amusing - that would be an obloquy of the worst kind. Now, the only time I can remember ever hearing this word used is in one The Mars Volta's songs, which is definitely the exception proving the rule.
I shall now think happy thoughts of AC being pursued by a pack of rabid weasels.
Yes, can I order some?
Enough loathsomeness about language, let us move gaily on to -
Dan The Man Freeman
That British photographer, you know, the one who takes pictures of small American towns at night, when there's nobody about, and it's dark, and he's all alone in the night - no, sorry, that was "Babylon 5", wasn't it? - and that he's still alive and un-robbed is a minor miracle. Do we have any more screen fodder of his left, Art? Check.
Yes, Dan, most evocative. As already mentioned, also dark and lonely so unless you are a 6' 5" gorilla massing 250 pounds of muscle with a selection of ordnance hanging from your belt, and a snarling Doberman at your beck and call, not reeeeeally an occupation I'd encourage.
Finally -
I know you've been waiting patiently and it now seems that Ingenuity, the Perseverance rover's now-detached helicopter, is going to make a test flight on Sunday 11th April. This will be the real acid test, since it may have been tested in a hypobaric chamber - if such things exist - here on Earth under lab conditions, but Mars is the real world, where anything might intervene to help or hinder.
That's Ingenuity parked on the surface of Mars with rover tracks off to the starboard. It's always exciting news when you realise that you really do live in the future.
Later**!
* Can't remember their names and am not going to try.
** Just to be perverse. Heh.
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