And Other Sounds Of Gloasting
You know Conrad, never one for false modesty or avoiding credit where it's due, and even where it's not due.
So. As we are all aware, my mind works in a curious way, in that it works, which is as much as I'd like to claim. What it does is make connections between images and concepts, and as evidence allow me to append a picture. Art!
That, in case you are unaware, is the Hallé Tower (I think) with it's Deflector Barrage Array standing proudly aloft*. And also erected is a NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK! is a variety of crane or derrick, which is normally laid to rest horizontally. If you look closely you can see an item dangling from the end. Most probably a hapless minion who lost the draw about who goes into the bucket to service the Deflector Barrage Array.
ANYWAY of course - obviously! - that immediately led me to recall an image from "The Time Machine" in it's 1960 iteration. Could I find the static image on Google that I wanted? I could not!
Fortunately Youtube came to the rescue, as otherwise I'd be hauling box after box of DVDs out of the cupboard to get a probably dodgy photograph. Instead - Art!
This is the stop-motion building construction scene, where the crane hops about the girders to lift more girders into position. Because the Time Traveller was whizzing forward at a rate of knuts**, we see many days work telescoped into a few seconds. Art!
George Pal, the director, cut his cinematic teeth on stop-motion filming so he must have enjoyed this little divertissiment. Now, because I wish to sustain a train of thought, let's see the finished tower. Art!
A towering sky-scraper is revealed. Of course, as I pictured earlier in the week, the sky in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell is so low that a two-story house counts as a sky-scraper.
ANYWAY for your information Conrad is currently watching "The Towering Inferno" because he's seen bits and pieces of it yet never the whole film. It's not available on Youtube because it won Oscars and you don't permit your gong-gaining glamour to be viewed for free by the hoi-polloi. Art!
It towers! And infernos!
You cannot say that you went to see this film and were unaware of what it was about. 'O I thought it was going to be a French comedy set in a seaside hotel' does not wash. You will undoubtedly get to hear more of this film as I'm only an hour through and the inferno has got well under way. Conrad, typical ghoul that he is, wonders which of the cast will survive.
Whilst still on the subject of towers, I have been make slow yet steady progress in my assault on the Empire Building. The 3D puzzle, I hasten to add, not the real thing***. Art!
These are the largest of the sub-assemblies and, as you can see, there are bits missing. They are possibly still in the piles of remaining pieces yet we must be ready to accept that they really are missing. Hopefully insufficient to threaten the structural integrity of the whole, especially since there is cardboard bracing to add. If Conrad were diligent (which I'm not at the moment) I'd count all the pieces successfully assembled to date; you'll just have to be satisfied with 'a lot'.
Motley! Conrad successfully reasoned the murder methodology in the Father Brown story "The Hammer of God" which also involved a tower. Also a hammer, as one might expect.
Art picks entirely the wrong illustration AGAIN
Blimey, Your Humble Scribe is full of egg toasties and Darjeeling.
The Horror! The Horror!
Conrad is once again blathering on about Codewords, but instead of going over the excruciating minutiae of definitions, I shall merely post a picture that might be the poster child for Where I Went Wrong. Art!
It was "SOU" that threw me. You see, I considered that it could only be EMU as GNU didn't fit. Of course - obviously! - I should have realised that an obsolete French coin was also a possibility because Codeword compilers are casual lexicographical sadists. Who will get their O so very richly-deserved rewards when I take over.
Chopper Chick Analyses A Flick
Back with the redoubtable and personable Vernice Armour, who set her sights on the big-screen version of "The A Team", which, to be fair, one would not expect to hold to high standards of verisimilitude. Basic physics, however, ought to be respected. Art!
Here we see the team's helichopter being pursued by heat-seeking missiles. Ooo-er, Matron! In response, at the top of that climb, the engine is turned off. This fools the stupid missiles, which zoom past the helichopter and blow each other up. Ha! Take that, missiles!
They then flip around in mid-air, restart the engines and get the blades moving mere feet above the ground. Art!
Vernice is laughing at you, not with you
Except no. NO! As Ol' Vez points out, even if you shut your engine off IT WILL STILL BE HOT! and the missiles will still hit you. Also, the rotor blades never stop turning; merely moving forward in the air will cause them to turn. Nor would she ever, under any circumstance, turn the engine off. Nor would a helichopter glide downwards like an aircraft if it wasn't under power; it would fall out of the sky like an airborne brick. And even if the blades did get rotating again, they were far too low to avoid a fatal crash.
Then there is the helicopter-versus-helicopter air battle. Helicopters are neither designed nor intended to fight other helicopters. As Ol' Vez put it, if your helicopter is fighting another helicopter " - something has gone horribly wrong!"
Scored for realism: 2/10.
Finally -
Okay I did have a theme lined up, honest, but the 'Tower' thing kind of got in the way, without me planning it. The thrills and spills of spontaneous creativity, I suppose.
What's that? O it was going to be about 'Wire' for no other reason than that I'd written a few notes about it. So, you can't have it this afternoon, so it will be the Wire next time.
"Hey!"
* I've no idea what it really is so a Deflector Barrage Array it will be.
** The unit that forward motion through time is measured in.
*** I have been up to the Observation Deck on the real thing
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