O Yes Indeed!
Okay, that didn't really warrant an exclamation mark. Call me dramatic. I have a giant pot of Bigos (Polish 'Hunter's Stew') on the go, with my trademark red cabbage instead of the more normal <hack spit> white one, which creates a freaky-looking purple stew that nonetheless tastes great, especially if one adds in a few jalapenos and lava-strength hot sauce. I suppose we need to see what the normal <shudder spasm> version looks like. Art!
Art! That's a 'crew' not a 'brew'
Okay okay okay, that's the chaps from GROM, the Polish special forces unit that has some hokey acronymic explanation, when in fact the name is "Thunder" in Polish. I have to ensure the Bigos is properly cooked or there might be some Grom from my intestines.
Way to lower the tone Conrad! Art?
Mind you, I did add half a bag of spinach to mine, so the unholy combination of purple and green has yet to be seen. Better go down and stir it to prevent a colour clash.
In other culinary news, I have decided against throwing out my disgusting yet delicious Beef Spew Stew, as there's quite a lot left. I did hit it with a barrage of vinegar to see if that rendered it less like Snot Of The Gods.
And with that, this Intro is done! Motley, help me chain Art into the Punishment Armchair Of Electricity, there's a good chap.
An Encomium To The Harmonium
Hang on, let me check that to make sure I got it right - Conrad would be hideously embarrassed to get a definition wrong - "A formal expression of praise" - okay that'll do, thanks Collins Concise. As you should surely remember, Your Humble Scribe was holding forth about Pakistani singer Nusret Ali Fateh Khan, and a backing instrument that sounded peculiarly like an accordion. It turns out to have been an harmonium - Art!
Conrad did speculate that, given it's similarity in sound to an accordion, it might well be another type of bellows-pumped musical instrument, which is exactly what it turned out to be. The bellows is at the back, which is worked by the player, who uses his other hand on the keyboard. I believe there are versions worked by pedal power.
Like Nico, whom I saw at the Academy in the Eighties. Don't remember a thing about it, apart from mentioning to one of the bar staff that I'd rather see The Chieftains. There was also Ivor Cutler - whom is worthy of an entire blog post on his own. We shall come back to this eventually, but in the meantime Conrad is glad to have satisfied his musical curiosity. Next!
- hang on, have I left the laundry downstairs? O dear, I need that in order to have a t-shirt to defend my modesty tomorrow, not to mention socks and underwear (less essential as they can't be seen on a Teams Chat due to being below the camera's angle). Bear with me for a minute, please -
Back To "Tormentor"
You must be loving this rank contrast with the inconsequential drivel that otherwise constitutes BOOJUM! except where it's deathless prose (rare but it happens), or otherwise you'd have told me, right*?
More
questions naturally followed. What,
exactly, was a spirit? Could he see more
than one? How long did they live – if
“live” was the correct term? How many
were there? Could any other people see
spirits? What kind of physical
limitations did they have?
He diligently wrote these down,
then sat back to try and think how he could pass on information about the
killer to the police investigation without coming under suspicion as a suspect
himself. If Oswald had been telling the
truth then the killer’s semen must have been sampled, compared with Louis’s DNA
sample, found wanting and the official exoneration announced. Going to the police with stories about a
killer would inevitably lead to questions about how, precisely, Louis McMahon
knew such details.
An anonymous letter, decided
Louis. Written – no, word-processed at
college, where there were dozens of staff and over a thousand students to muddy
the trail. Post it to the Incident Room,
wait to see if any sparks were ignited.
As they surely ought to be.
Feeling nearly normal, he put on
Beethhoven’s Fifth and got lost in the music for half an hour, reaching a state
most people would have recognised as approaching happiness.
A very loud rapping from the
front door spoiled the musically-enhanced nirvana. He pondered whether to ignore it, until the
sound was repeated, even more loudly.
‘Don’t chisel through it,’ he
called, getting up and opening the door slightly. With great force, the door was thrust
inwards, hitting his chest and knocking
him off-balance.
‘Hasta la vista!’ shouted the
crop-headed man in denims and a white tee-shirt, wielding a baseball bat. The bat came round in a blur, hitting Louis
on the left scapula, creating an agonising pain that dropped him to his knees.
Real world problems, hmmmm? Don't worry, Luma gets out of this quite well, all things considered. Not sure if I worked in a hospital visit or not.
Let's Work In A Little Men's Adventure-
No! Not a clickbaity image from 'The armpit slicks' as men's adventure magazines were known from the Forties to the Seventies - I think partially since their editions were published on slick paper as opposed to pulp, which meant they had better image quality, important if you are dependant on under-dressed young ladies on your cover to attract readers.
No, I refer to, of course - obviously! - Charles Marion Russell, South Canadian artist extraordinaire, who put up an enormous corpus of work that Conrad is quite happy to take advantage of. Art!
Not sure what the caption on this one was, yet it might well be "The Hazing" or "The Rookie". Hazing, as I shall explicate, is a ritual carried out in South Canada where the most recent recruit gets to undergo an horrible experience, which everyone else gets belly-laughs from. Afterwards they are deemed part of the team, and get along splendidly - although there is definitely scope here for a Hollywood thriller where the hazing victim nods, laughs, and then tracks down those responsible and murders them
Er - which is a bit far from mister Charles Marion Russell and his celebration of the Old West.
"M.A.S.H."
For reasons still unclear, Conrad was checking out the Wikipedia and IMDB entries for both this film and the television series, which is where he wondered about a potential plot hole. Art!
So this is what Oddball went on to do? If you rec
ANYWAY the acronym M.A.S.H. stands for "Mobile Army Surgical Hospital", and one can certainly understand the transient nature of the 4077th when viewing the television series, which is set around an encampment that consists mostly of tents. Tents, you see, are temporary; not secured with foundations; MOBILE. Yet they remain in situ for the whole series. Conrad unsure how beloved it would have been if it had been re-named "Static Army Surgical Hospital" because he's pretty sure that MASH means curtains for SASH.
And on that dreadful punnery we shall depart.
* This assumes I would either take heed or even notice
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