No, Not The Band
Are they still around? Never mind, it's not important. Nor am I talking about the Batman graphic novel - let me incentivize Art with this bear spray -
Is it any good, I wonder?
I can tell you that the artist is Brian Bolland and the writer is Alan Moore, which is pretty good pedigree. Also I cheated and looked details up; it's an origins story of how The Joker came to be so Joker-y.
No, I am talking about an episode of "Military History Not Visualised" over on Youtube, which is created and presented by an Austrian chap, Bernhard Kast, who speaks excellent English with a cool Mittel-European accent. I've covered the odd video of his here and there, and yesteryon I was watching one he did on German humour and jokes under the Nazis. Art! O stop whining and wash them out with some water.
First he sets the scene by going through various laws brought into existence by the Nazis, who proved themselves to be utterly humourless twods. If you were accused to spreading defeatism, that was a death penalty right there. There were a whole raft of laws enacted - and enforced! - to make sure people were at the very least too scared to crack a bit of sardonic wit. Conrad wouldn't have survived more than three days, given his penchant for punnery, sarcasm and irony. Art!
More humourless twodism
What about the jokes? Okay, okay, here goes. Hitler, Mussolini and Marshal Mannerheim (Finnish leader) were all having a meeting, and the subject of how brave their soldiery were came up. Art!
Herr Schickelgruber and Marshal Mannerheim
(You'll just have to imagine Musso)
So, Musso orders one of his soldiers to ascend a tall adjacent building and leap from the top. The soldier quails a bit but does as he's told. Hitler does the same to one of his soldiers, who doesn't hesitate or flinch before leaping to his death. Mannerheim calls over a Finnish soldier and tells him to jump, too.
"Jump yourself!" retorts the Finn. Mannerheim wins.
You want another? Go on, go on. A guest is sitting at a table in a Berlin restaurant, trying to order from the menu. Every time he makes a request, the waiter explains they don't have it. The guest, getting angrier and angrier with each apology, finally explodes with rage. "This is all because of that man!" he expostulates. Sitting at the next table are two Gestapo agents, who identify themselves and promptly arrest him. Back at HQ they ask who he was talking about. "Churchill, of course," he immediately replies, before looking curiously at them. "Who did you think I was talking about?"
 |
| I shall give you three guesses ... |
Goering: I've started collecting jokes people are making about me
Hitler: I've started collecting the people who make jokes about me.
<drum roll cymbal clash>
As the title implies, you could get into very serious hot water in the Third Reich if you dared to cock a snook at the state or it's officials.
Motley! You can be the stand-up comic and I'll try to hit you with this harpoon gun. Don't worry, I'll put a cork on the pointy bit.
Having A Blast
Conrad mentioned the incredibly dangerous criminal practice of blowing up cashpoints (ATMs to our South Canadian cousins) using flammable gas in order to get to the goodies inside. Too little gas and you'll only set off every alarm in a mile radius; too much and they'll be burying what's left of you in a matchbox.
While chasing up the story of the Dutch criminals who killed and critically injured themselves doing just the above, Conrad came across a story of British criminals who had been doing the same thing. Art! O put goggles on then.
Michael Cash!
Blimey, one wonders that the camera lens didn't crack. Five beauties they are not. They stole £429,000 in 15 attacks on cashpoints, and don't have to worry about food, rent or a bed for the next 45 years, as that's how long they were sentenced to. This works out at £85,000 each, which would take me 4 years to earn. And they've got an average sentence of 9 years each. Do the maths.
Back To Abandonment
Yes, once again Conrad resorts to the crutch of other people's creativity, because he has no scruples beyond giving them a name credit, which is only to ensure nobody sues him. Art!
Courtesy Keely Pleger
Derelict indeed. One presumes this is in the wide open spaces of South Canada, or possibly British America, as in This Sceptred Isle the council would be on your back in minutes if you tried to just leave your dead car where it died. Unless you said it was an installation by Banksy, in which case they'd put up barriers and make people pay to sit in it*.
Conrad Groaned In Apprehension
The Almost Top Person in Recruitment, for which I work at present, is coming up to visit The Dark Tower tomorrow, all the way from the City Of Sin**, so an edict has gone out to all us minions in order to fill the office up and make it look both busy and untidy. The thing is, a bunch of people in the office make it INCREDIBLY NOISY because they relish human contact. This can make it difficult to hear what's being said on the phones. Not only that, I don't finish until 18:00 and the more senior managers probably won't leave until long after then, so I can't slink away into the night <sighs heavily>. Probably worth tramming it into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell to shorten the journey by 30 minutes <sighs even more heavily>. Art!
There I am, third floor down, corner window, waving. It's a great position to sit in, nobody can see what you're doing.
Finally -
We've hit the Compositional Ton, so not sure what to add in here. O, perhaps only to say that I'm 90 pages into "Reclaiming History" which makes it about 6% of the total. A bit daunting to know there's 94% left to go, and the President's car, a four-ton specially-adapted monster, has only just made it to Parkland Hospital.
Today's version
(Laser cannon optional)
* You see? You see! This is why I wouldn't survive long under Nazi rule.
** London, if we're being formal
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