The Hilarious Comedies Of J.G. Ballard!

I Lied.  There Aren't Any.

Tee hee!  Your Humble Scribe was footling around on teh Interwebz last night, after mentioning Ol' Jaygee in another post, just out of curiosity.  I've read a few of his short story collections, and a few novels, and to say they are bleak and depressing is like saying the Atlantic is rather wet.  Let us have a click-baity picture to entice the masses - Art!

     A log of his novels are apcalyptic ones, such as the above, and then you have "The Wind", "The Drought" and "The Drowned World" (what an artistic inversion there!).  His short stories also feature a lot of misery and misanthropy, all the while contemplating people's inner selves, with a smattering of sex (unusual in Sixties sci-fi), until they die, or are killed, or fall into a permanent coma, or eat so much ice cream they freeze to death from the inside.  Art!

     And yet he could pass for normal.  If you met him in a quiet corner of the pub you might think he was a university professor or a retired mathematician, not someone who habitually destroyed the world.  Metaphorically, I hasten to add.   You frequently find his work being described as 'speculative fiction' which is what science fiction calls itself when feeling pretentious.   I wonder what kind of guest he made at parties?

     So, if at any time you find yourself in an excess of happiness, or approaching transports of joy, or even humming light-heartedly, then go get you to some of Ol' Jaygee and put a dampener on it.  Art!

     Well there you are.  Conrad never meant to write anything about Ol' Jaygee and here we are a couple of hundred words later.  I guess I'm just so so creative.  O and that death from ice cream?  I made that up.   Just so we're clear.

     Motley!  Let's re-stage a scene from one of his films.  "Crash" or "High-Rise"?

Crashed off a high-rise?

More From "The War Illustrated"

If you recall, this is a wartime publication by Hammerton, which had various different types of content; 'Along The Battle Fronts', 'The War In The Air', a report on the Sinisters, that sort of thing.  Art!

     That first picture shows the ghastly end of an ammunition transport in an Arctic convoy to Murmansk, and I guessed as such the instant I saw it.  You can bet nobody on board survived such a catastrophic end, and there wouldn't have been much left of the ship after thousands of tons of ammunition go up.  The caption at the bottom says the detonation was so large it destroyed three of the attacking aircraft.

     Then you have the frigate HMS 'Rother' and an anonymous battleship according to the caption, showing the kind of conditions the Arctic convoys endured.  Let Conrad now venture dangerously close to Politics with a cartoon from Zec.  Art!

"The cost of petrol has been increased by one penny"

     The point being that said petrol was being imported or exported in tankers manned by the Merchant Navy, civilian volunteers with maybe a couple of machine guns or an elderly anti-aircraft gun as defence on their ship.  38,000 of them were killed, lots of them on the Artic run because when you went into the ocean at those latitudes, your life-expectancy was three or four minutes.  Of course these convoys vanished from Sinister history and memory the instant wartime ended, but a thank you would have been nice.

     Hmmmm well my excuse is that was historical.  Let us move on -

A Little Musical Critique

We are going to finish "King's Lead Hat" or die trying!  Perhaps that should have read "A Lottle Musical Critique".  Anyway, on with the roasting -

King's lead hat put the poker in the fire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

Colour Conrad confused.  I thought KLH was a dredger on the Amazon river?

Thus
(anyway it's probably some sleazy seedy sexual reference)

King's lead hat was a mother to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

You mention pokers and mothers in the same breath?  Wash your mouth out!

King's lead hat put the innocence inside her, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

THIS - this is definitely as sleazy seedy sexual reference.

Close enough.  And definitely not seedy

King's lead hat was a hammer to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come.

     Finally finished, and I feel like taking a hammer to it myself.  We've gone from a car full of turkeys to highly questionable sexual symbolism, via ships nearly running ashore - we never got an answer as to which quarter they were presenting to the shore - and I do apologise for this taking so long.  Brian End.

Yes, you may well look contrite, young man

How Very Prosaic

You ought to know by now that Your Humble Scribe wanders the beer and spirit aisles of the supermarket, looking for a label that allows of a pun or two, and here we have one samesuch.  Art!

     I haven't worked out what a 'Double Neipa' is and didn't find any handy explanation on the can.  What's with the hexagonal pattern in the background?  It strongly resembles the layout of a hex-and-counter wargame map as Art will prove -

     If you're going to christen your ale "Tram" then perhaps tram-lines would be more appropriate?  Just a thought.  I bet their Customer Service department is overwhelmed with objections like mine.  Art!

Conrad approves

     What's that?  No, I have no idea what it tastes like.  That's hardly the point, is it!

Finally - 

I haven't left myself with enough room to either fulminate about Codewords - and believe me I have a major backlog of fulminating to get through O yes by Jove! - or the next part of "Squid Game", which seems to be setting viewing figures alight on Netflix, according to The Daily Beast.  They found it very disturbing, which makes Conrad finding it very entertaining potentially disturbing, too.  O well.

     Maybe that's why my last psychiatrist needed a psychiatrist.

     And now, we are off to liberate the Sanjac of Novi Pazar!