No! Not Steve McQueen In "Bullitt"
Although he is pretty Dog Buns cool in that film, even if all you've ever seen of it is The Car Chase. For years afterwards the stunt team who did that were told by directors that "I want it just like you did in "Bullitt"! And your stunt budget is as much as three hundred dollars!"
Pshaw. Yeah, right. O go on - Art!
CAUTION! hazardous to vehicle suspension
No, I am returning to the subject of cooling towers, which you ought to recall we explained yesteryon. These things are immense structures, frequently 100 yards high, and mass thousands of tons, all reinforced concrete. In fact they are so striking visually that film auteurs have occasionally decided to reference this fact. Art!
"Brazil"
In the horrid retro-tec dystopia dreamed up by Terry Gilliam, we see 'Shangri-La Towers' as portrayed by a set of cooling towers, hideously bedaubed in pink and blue to prettify them. Of course, being Mr. Gilliam, he can't leave it at that. Art!
Yes, it's a model
(Not a spoiler)
At the film's climax we come back to Sam's interrogation - in a cooling tower. Pretty obviously a non-functional one, as filming inside a waterfall would be a tricky technical accomplishment. Art!
Pretty grim and forbidding, isn't it? One wonders if the audience are expected to realise this is being filmed inside an abandoned cooling tower, or just gawk at the miserable grey concrete confinement. There is another hint at what type of location we're in when Tuttle and his abseiling rebels storm the location in order to rescue Sam. Art!
Of course, once you know what it is, that distinct funnel shape gives the game away. And there we have today's title for you.
Don't complain, motley. I couldn't find any abandoned ones, so this working one will have to do. Besides, your wetsuit will protect you; just don't slip, it's a long fall.
"Have His Carcase" By Dorothy Sayers
Conventionally, Dorothy L. Sayers. One wonders if there was an abundance of Dorothy Sayers back in the Twenties - the Nineteen Twenties - that necessitated this one insisting on the "L". Arthur C. Clarke could probably advise on
ANYWAY I got this in the post yesteryon and surprise surprise, there's no foreword or post-script, probably because it's an edition from the Eighties released to tie-in with the BBC's broadcast of it's own version. Art!
Conrad went and read the precis about this novel over on Wiki a couple of years ago, and has thus had to wait until the details had faded before daring to buy it. Initially I was only going to glace at the foreword, or the post-script, and yet here I am, 129 pages in. Ol' Dot has some satirical fun at her own expense, as the dual hero(ine) of the novel is a female author of detective novels - her creation, Robert Templeton, is an ugly chap with the build of an orang-utang, in stark contrast to Lord Peter.
Pete and Harry
We are only 1/3 of the way through the mystery, so there have been many red herrings with few solid leads.
Conrad Is Seething!
Well, I do have to stay in practice, you know, Frothing Nitric Ire or Righteous Apoplectic Rancour need maintenance if they are to be kept at tip-top condition. So, on with my latest diatribe against evil Codeword compilers.
"DICTUM": NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK! Yes, yet more Latin <hack spit> the zombie language*, this one meaning 'an authoritative statement' as in 'Codeword compilers ought to leave foreign words out of good Anglo-Saxon Codewords'. One is minded of 'Obiter Dicta', the poem by Hillaire Belloc, which is itself a reference to 'Obiter Dictum', a legal term meaning a reference by the judge to a matter not of immediate concern to the case to hand. Said in passing, in other words, which is a description of 90% of this blog. Art!
I Googled and - this.
"KARMA": O boy, is this going to come back and bite you on your hairy white hindquarters, compilers. Just you wait. O, it's from Sanskrit, 'karoti', meaning 'an action or effect', in case you were wondering.
"TEMPO": You see? In this case it has a root in Italian, which OF COURSE means it has a root in Glagolitic - ha! no, only testing - a root in Latin, that being 'tempus' for 'time'. It refers to the speed at which a piece of music is played. You can bet it threw me, a five-letter word ending in "O" with all letters different, yes of course because - LATIN!
WHAT ARE WE ALL OF A SUDDEN CLASSICALLY-TRAINED MUSICIANS NOW?
Go on, be the exception that proves my rule**.
You Couldn't Make This Up
Some of you are still human because if - Ooops! No, sorry, start again.
Some of you are no doubt aware of a sci-fi series called "Firefly", which ran for a single season only, much to the nova-powered hatred of it's fans, who were rewarded with a film, "Serenity", which Your Humble Scribe has seen and couldn't make much sense of - I think it was a given that you had watched the television series at least seven times over.
Okay, so 'Mal', the leader of Firefly's rag-tag bunch of renegades and misfits, was played by Nathan Fillion. Art!
Bear this in mind, because the fans of "Firefly" are nothing if not 1) Persistent and 2) Active. So, since he is a Canuckistanian, there is a petition going round for a particular city park in Edmonton to be renamed the <ahem> 'Nathan Fillion Civilian Pavilion', which Conrad would vote for on sheer euphoniouness alone. Art!
Temporary whilst "Suicide Squad" was playing
Will it happen? Or will the curmudgeons who vetoed "Boaty McBoatface" in favour of a bland respectable entirely forgettable (because I've no idea what the name they came up with was, which proves whatever my point was) get their oar in? Watch this space!
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe is typing this and looking askance out the window at the roiling grey heavens as they - well - roil by. This is because I usually take a constitutional stroll into Royton on a Sunday afternoon, to get my Fitbit count up and stretch the aging legs and joints, especially since I was stuck in the house all day yesterday, first by having to work <mutters darkly> and secondly by torrential rain. It looks as if we may have a Dog Buns downpour any second now; then again it may threaten all day long and do nothing. This wonderful weather of The Pond Of Eden!
* Yes, 'Contra Mortui Viventes' makes this an oxymoron. Sue me.
** Not putting a name as I've not asked permission for the picture.
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