Yes! We Are Back With Heavy Metal!
<does the fingers-thing, hurts self, cries briefly> Before we start with the main event, allow me to divert into an Aside almost straight away.
The first time I heard any reference to HM was before I got into music at all, and was mentioned in an After Action Report in the book "Battle" by Charles Grant. Art!
Wargaming: a valuable tool for all apprentice world dictators
Charles had been playing a small Eastern Front battle, of mid-Second Unpleasantness dateline (which is important for the treadheads), where the Teuton panzers had been very badly handled by the Sinisters. Plainly, the Panzer Mk. IV was completely outclassed by T34s mounting the 85 mm gun; Chas declared that the Teuton player's best option was falling back and allowing "heavier metal" to take on the Sinisters.
Much, much heavier than this.
Okay, back to music so loud it makes your ears bleed. There is a particular play on words that was embodied in an album a good forty years ago, which, if Art can stop putting salve on his electrocution burns -
Of course - obviously! - this is a play on 'Kilowatts' which, to the casual listener, sounds very similar. If you can read the list of band titles on the cover, you can see heavy metal bands that were big at the time. Some not so much nowadays. Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush? You may be forgiven for never having heard of them. British American, don't you know, didn't like to be too pushy about promoting themselves, probably.
Not to be confused with Overend Watts, the bass player from Mott The Hoople. Who were the definition of Glam Rock, thus moving us along from music so loud it gives you concussion.
Conrad Is, Of Course, FEROCIOUSLY ANGRY
Even angrier than the usual, going far beyond Frothing Nitric Ire and into Fluoroantimonic Raging Apoplexy*. This is where we almost touch base with the Intro, because - yes yes yes, this is all about Codewords - O let's just get on with it, hmmmm?
"KILOVOLTS": 'KILLER VOLTS"? If I get my hands on those compilers there will be a whole lot of gory slaughter and no mistake - hang on - "SANGUINE" slaughter and no mistake. See? Two can play at being obscure.
"SPRYLY": This one threw me for ages, because "Y" was 14, which came directly beneath the letter "R" and I tried to make it fit as a vowel, which simply did not work. After all, who expects a six-letter word that has NO vowels? Not I, for one. Conrad was, in fact, the very opposite of spry.
If it was on it's side it would be Spry lie, which is close enough
"DYSTROPHY": YOU FREAKIN' WHAT! How many 9-letter words do you know with only one vowel? Well, now you know one more. This term means a disease or disorder of the body that results in the atrophy or wasting of tissues. WHAT ARE WE SUDDENLY DOCTORS NOW?!
I have more but will abstain from any further vocabulary venting since all this cannot be good for my blood pressure.
"Heart-Shaped Box" By Joe Hill
Your Humble Scribe began reading this horror novel earlier today and it's a right rollicking read, I'm up to page 200 now. The central protagonist is Jude Coyne, an aging heavy-metal rocker suddenly stalked by a vengeful spirit, and at half-way through it's not certain whether or not he'll survive. Creepy stuff. Art!
Joe is actually Joseph Hillstrom King, yes, the offspring of Stephen and Tabitha King, who put his work about with this alias to see if he was good enough to get the gig on his own merit, rather than basking in the shadow of his quite famous dad. Surprise surprise, it turns out that HSB is actually a track by Nirvana, and we even have a picture Art tracked down before his pain meds kicked in and the hallucinations started.
Probably less supernatural in nature, too
Conrad knows well enough to not post spoilers here. But we'll be coming back to this topic. O yes indeed!
Whilst we are on nothing whatsoever to do with tomorrow, be advised that 1) I'm working Saturday and 2) Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom are visiting tomorrow, so this post is all you're going to get. If you feel cheated, go look at our extensive back-catalogue, composed of only the finest nonsense!
Manx
Not to be confused with "Mancs" who are people from Manchester. No, I refer, of course - obviously! - to the Manx language as spoken on the Isle of Man, and I only bring this up because Al introduced "We Have Ways" by shouting "Achtung! Achtung!" in Manx. Your Humble Scribe cannot remember what it was and am unsure if it will come up on Google Translate. Let's have a go -
Aha! "Cur aggle er!" apparently, which chimes with what I remember. Art!
Isle of Man. Though they tolerate Woman, too.
The Manx language practically died out by the late Seventies, being a species of Gaelic that had developed from Irish Gaelic, with a high degree of compatibility with Scottish Gaelic. It has undergone a modest revival since the Nineties and there are about 50 people who use it as their first language, with a couple of thousand who use it with less fluency.
There you go, we are all better informed than we were five minutes ago. And you're welcome.
Finally -
I keep getting to this stage of the blog and then only need a short article of a hundred words, so I am reluctant to start anything that requires a large word-count to explore thoroughly because 1,200 words is as much as is fair to inflict upon the world. At a single sitting. Art! Inspire us -
Pushing the boundaries!
Conrad is not sure exactly what's going on here, except that there's a naked lady on the cover, whose modesty is only assured by that - er - creature's appendages. Did her clothes all fall off? Were they stolen? Does her culture scorn the primitive concept of 'underwear'? Is she unconscious, drugged, a heavy sleeper or the consumer of a keg of Special Brew?
Also note that green-skinned women are an automatic aphrodisiac for male Hom. Sap. We may come back to this, it has legs.
* Nope. Not explaining. Go look it up.
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