Your Humble Scribe Has Noticed Whilst Travelling By Bus Again
No! Not First Bus's inability to stick to the timetables they create - Conrad used to maintain they were the biggest works of fiction since "Lord Of The Rings" and now wants to add in "Gormenghast" as well. Because it's another lengthy tome, before you ask. Art!
No, what I refer to, of course - obviously! - is that people are now boarding buses with no idea where they are going to, where the terminus or indeed terminii* are, and most especially what tickets to get and how much they cost. Art!
Passengers about to board the Number 83
This leads to long, involved debates between passengers and the drivers, which appear to involve thorough discussions on epistemology, free will versus determinism, the HS2 construction project, potential winners of "Bake Off" and This Sceptred Isle's economy.
Whilst these debates are going on Conrad is screaming - internally only because we're British don't you know - WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE! WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE! as yet another party of passengers dawdle onto the bus and -
ARE THEY DISCUSSING THE POETRY OF KEATS? I'LL GIVEN THEM 'A TERRIBLE BEAUTY'!
This is quite besides any roadworks or accidents en route, as councils insist on digging up bits of road in order to inconvenience drivers and make them choose to travel by bus. In answer to which - see above.
Conrad, if he's travelling by bus, gets to the TFGM website and checks out the route and times. He has the First Bus app on his phone, so he can pre-book e-tickets. He is, in fact, A Man Prepared. Well, technically An Alien Prepared but we shall overlook that in the interests of brevity.
BE MORE LIKE CONRAD OR THE REMOTE NUCLEAR DETONATOR WILL BE WORKING OVERTIME!
I have spoken. Let it be so.
All Squid-ed Out
Hmmmm since this Stork thriller-cum-horror series seems to be increasing in popularity I had better get my spoiler-laden review into the blogging domain lest I become redundant. We have seen the number of contestants whittled down through being shot dead when they fail a game or time-limit, and when the fat bullying gangster murders someone in the dormitory, he isn't punished in any way.
Ooops. You just know this isn't going to end well.
Note the guards have an heirarchy; those with a circle are the grunts, forbidden to speak unless given permission; those with a triangle are the sergeants, able to bully the grunts, and the squares are lordly officers, who
ANYWAY there is overnight carnage as the fat bullying gangster's gang go all out and murder 27 people - or so they claim. It's not clear from the deliberately under-lit scenes who's doing what to whom.
When the next day dawns there are 80 contestants left, who are sorted into 8 teams of 10. Their- ahem - game? A tug of war. Art!
As you can see, the platforms are so high that losing means falling to instant death - for the whole team of 10, because player are manacled to the rope.
The team with Gi-Hun, Sang-Woo, Abdul, Il-nam and Sae-Byeok survive and are now amongst the 40 survivors, thanks to Il-nam's recollection of how he won tug-of-war games in his youth. Tactics triumphs over muscles. Ah yes, just wait until the next 'game'!
If You Have A Spare £150 And 150 Hours
Then a recent advert I came across on Youtube will be right up your street. As you should surely know by now, we occasionally feature Lego sculptures or big builds or mechanisms because there is nothing more satisfying than seeing other people work hard. Art!
What's that? "O it doesn't look too assuming or difficult". Bite your tongue - it has 2,205 pieces and will take between six to eight hours to assemble, IF you are an Expert Level - er - Legoist? I put down 150 because if a sausage-fingered bafoon like Conrad picked it up, 150 hours to completion is on the generous side.
DON'T even begin to start me on the Lego Concert Grand Piano!
To Be Frank
Frank Tinsley, that is. You remember, that artist chappie from the pages of "Mechanix Illustrated" amongst others. You cannot accuse Frank of thinking little, as this spread from 1948 makes clear. Art!
There's a quote up there from rocketry pioneer Willy Ley:"The first nation to establish a lunar military outpost will rule the Earth." And here you see Frank positively exulting in having an 'Invasion Base' established in a lunar crater. He has handily added the legend "Earth" to planet Earth in case any of you were confused.
All jest aside, this concept is one that both obsessed and terrified all parties involved in the Cold War; that one of them would steal a march on the others and create an unassailable missile launching site on the Moon. There are a couple of Bonestells with a similar theme** and a John Wyndham short story whose name I forget is also up there. O and "Quatermass And The Pit" too has them in the background. Art!
Sorry, no pictures of missiles, but here's one of Barbara Shelley being scared.
Then I came across this by accident. It's actually an inversion of the concept here, and I've no idea what it involves but it looks exciting! Art!
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe is holding the fort, to coin a phrase, at The Mansion, with Edna keeping a sharp eye on me and any rustling packets of snacks that might happen to be opened. At which point, like the shopkeeper in "Mister Benn" she will appear from nowhere.
Because everyone else has gone swanning off to Mi And Pho, to scoff quantities of Vietnamese food, because there was only room for four, and I would have made five.
* I've wanted to get this word in for an age.
** Nope, you'll have to scour BOOJUM! to find them
*** WE HOPE
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