One Thing Inevitably Leads To Another
Especially with Your Humble Scribe, when he is poking around odd corners of teh Interwebz. Earlier in the week I was looking for a visual example of 'sway' and found it in the Luna Park Astro Tower, based at Coney Island, over the pond in South Canada. Art!
Back in the hey-day
This was one of those Terrifying Experience rides where people would get hiked up to the top of a tall vertical structure, then dropped. Conrad cannot see why you would want to lose your dinner and pay for it, but your view may vary. And amongst all those masochists who rode on it for decades, there must have been at least two Raymonds, hence today's title, which is also an hilarious parody of a certain Beatles song we all know and love. Art!
In perspective
The Astro Tower closed down in 2007, and although the amusement park management removed the fragile top assembly, they only capped it off with a cover. Because whatever could go wrong with an enormous vertical structure standing there for forty-five years, exposed to corroding salt air? Art!
Quite a lot, it seems. Being in the path of Hurricane Sandy didn't help at all, either, nor did being smack dab in the middle of the whole theme park. As a consequence, Ol' Astro being swaying noticeably from the vertical in 2013. It had been prone to a little sway of a few inches, but it was filmed moving so much that it was clearly visible from the ground a long way off. Art!
Hopefully that works, I've not loaded a video for years. If it does work, note that I've sped it up otherwise the swaying is too slow to be easily seen.
ANYWAY New York's municipal agencies took a dim view of the collapsing tower potentially killing tourists and/or voters, so! they went to work overnight with demolition specialists who must have killed it in terms of special emergency rates. Art!
These chaps cut away thousands of pounds of metal to lessen the mass available to sway, and dismantling continued the next day, using impressively large cranes. Art!
Quite impressive, nicht wahr? and the concession sellers will have done a roaring trade thanks to all the tourists and/or voters who came to gawp, either out of sheer nosiness or because a bit (well, a lot, but you get my drift) of their childhood was being demolished. The removal wasn't complete and a truncated base remains for people to wonder at, as in "Ozymandias". Art!
This, presumably - I Am Not An Architect - is because a tower that high would have enormous foundations, and removing them would be a major undertaking for no good purpose, now that all the tourists and/or voters are safe.
Motley! I've put that batch of piranhas in the pool, now it's time to play Naked Cattleprod Tag*. Make sure to cover all open wounds.
Conrad Detects David
You recall that long, involved and (for the construction company part-owned by Noisy Gobshute) very expensive tale about renovations overseen by Historic England? Well, Your Humble Scribe logged onto their website and noseyed about a tad. One thing I noticed in their cautions about botching renovations is that the fines imposed are UNLIMITED and can also come with prison time for offenders. I also generated a list of prosecutions they had brought against such offenders. There's a long list of them and I have to peruse carefully to see if they're what I wanted to bring up, and if Noisy Gobshute is one of them. I will, most assuredly, get back to you on this one. O yes indeed!
This splendid Victorian building was -
A fire-station
That's the Fire-Station in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell, an architectural wonder under the aegis (not a word you expected to see today) of Historic England. HE is an offshoot of government, with a budget of £90 million per annum, and a very serious attitude about renovation and restoration. Annoy at your peril.
Incidentally -
Conrad missed his chance to do an aside earlier, so have it here instead. I mentioned "Coney Island" above, so of course we have to have a discourse about the source of "Coney". It is an alternate version of "cony"
Excuse me whilst I Taze Art ...
- meaning "Rabbit", and derives from Old French, 'Conis", which itself is derived from the Latin "Cuniculus". B****y Latin, it's like sand, it gets everywhere.
No, we can't have a boring, normal rabbit.
Hmmm. I am looking out of the window wondering what the weather is going to do. I anticipate finishing BOOJUM! soon and aim to earn a couple thousand brownie points by taking Edna for a walk, unless The Rains return. I wonder if the River Irk is running in spate today?
Blood And Thunder
For Lo! we are back on "Doctor Hope's Sick Notes" and his review of the early and epic battle between Omni-Man and the combined superheroes of the Guardians Of The Globe, from the animated "Invincible". Be warned, this is EXTREMELY gory. Art!
 |
| No kidding |
Here we see the first of Omni-Man's victims, Red Rush, who in the upper picture is ineffectually pummeling his attacker's chest. OM returns the favour by crushing RR's head in his fists, leading to Doctor Hope's hopelessly redundant classification of "Catastrophic Non-Survivable Brain Trauma". Yeah, having your head spread across the landscape will do that. Next!
Top picture shows OM being briefly discomfited by being wrapped in - bandages? - by Darkwing, shortly before he faceplants Battle Babe (or whatever her name is) most severely into the floor. Memo; bandages not suitable for superhero restraints. Try anchor chains next time.
Right, I think that's enough gore for one post.
Finally -
I did have a note in my scrivel index about "Codewords", yet have to confess I don't have any solutions to carp about. I know, remarkable, yes? Hmmmm not so much. I've been working on the codewords in my "Puzzler" edition from December 2020 rather than the Manchester Evening News or Oldham Times versions, of which I have a backlog. Do not doubt that there will be more carping than a large lakes-worth in the very near future!
Either a very big fish or a very small man.
And with that we are done for the daylight hours. Tot siens!
* It'll never be an Olympic sport, I admit. We love it, though.
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