Yes I Am An Old Dog
Thank you for asking. This latest revelation hasn't taken as long to dawn as that one for Pink Floyd's "One Of These Days", where the musical insert is a weirdly distorted version of the "Doctor Who" theme tune. Art!
Any excuse to feature the BBC's premier dramamentary!
Right. For a few days now Your Humble Scribe has experienced a tune floating around in his head, namely Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", with no idea why. I don't have any of their albums, am not particularly keen on them and have never met them (although I am pretty certain that they are not a combination of rotting zombie and cyborg, unlike a certain geriatric band)*.
"Why so?" I quoth earlier today, aloud as I'm at home and thus not likely to scare anyone except Edna, and she's used to me conversing either with her or myself.
Then it hit me. I rubbed my head, looked around to see who threw - no, actually realisation dawned. What Sork zombie horror drama series have I been watching of late? Why none other than "All Of Us Are Dead". Which has a bouncy, beaty theme song that, on closer inspection, appears to be an instrumental version of "Personal Jesus". The credits are all in Korean, mind, so whether it is or not is open to question. Art!
The webtoon that inspired it all
Here an aside. Conrad is no linguist and cannot distinguish spoken Korean from other Asian languages, yet I recognise their alphabet, which has a long and complicated history, only reaching it's modern form after the Second Unpleasantness and freedom from Japanese occupation. Art!
Study well. THERE WILL BE A TEST!
Conrad wonders if Norks have a different dialect to Sorks, given that the whole country has been sundered in twain for Lo! these many years. An item for a different day, methinks.
A hasty Google search does not illuminate the theme tune issue, so if anyone from the Mode ever reads this, I think you have a good chance of a successful lawsuit.
Motley! If you learned medicine (a very long shot I know) and a foreign language then you could have a Chorea career in Korea.
달의 퍼즐Tee and indeed hee! You pronounce this "Dal-ui peojuel" and before you spend hopeless** hours fretting with translation engines, it means "Lunar Jigsaw". Art!
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| 250 tricky parts |
The trick is to do the rim, then work from the centre outwards, because the innermost pieces have a marked curvature. This lessens as you work outwards, so you have to rely on what colour the pieces are, and then sort by shape. Sadly the accompanying picture is completely useless, thanks to the contrastless and blurred picture quality of the lunar surface. Bring on Mars!
A Belittled Bang
Ahem. Not going to apologise for bringing up "The Kraken Wakes" again SIT BACK DOWN! this will only take a minute. Ol' John mentions 'atom bombs' quite often in the narrative, as a means of hitting back at the invading alien 'Bathies' (short for 'Xenobathetic' i.e. 'strangers in the depths'). Since the Bathies domicile themselves upon the ocean floor in the very deepest of the abyssal depths, they are hard to get at. Art!
Atomic depth charge
Conrad kept wondering when the real heavies would be rolled into action, and the Bathies would be on the receiving end of a few fusion depth charges of multiple megatons, instead of a poxy few feeble kiloton-yield weapons.
Dates, Conrad, dates. Not the delicious Medjoul version, but calendar ones. TKW was published in July 1953, hence written in 1952, and when was the first fusion warhead detonation? November 1952, which will have been long after Ol' John's MSS had been put to bed. Nor were the general public informed until 1954.
You know, this subject has legs. John Wyndham and nuclear weapons - what's not to like! Art!
Bombing the Bathies!
I had intended this as a quick throwaway piece, yet here were are nearly three-quarters of the way towards the Compositional Ton.
"Goelobhineun salam"Which, of course, if Korean for "Tormentor", as we include another instalment of this disturbing tale. No, there's no sex or swearing - remember, SFW - except steer clear if of a nervous nature.
‘Then I have another question. Er – How to put
it? Jennifer has begun to haunt the man
who killed her, Eric Miller. She’s been
making noises about bringing him to harm, which I warned her against but I
don’t really have the expertise to get across how serious such a step would
be.’
Those impressive eyebrows went shooting up.
‘Indeed?’ commented the priest. ‘Is she here now?’
‘No. Either off
communing with another spirit called Marjory, or tormenting Miller.’
‘I would not advise that, at all,’ said the priest,
not looking happy. ‘Justice in matters
spiritual is not the provenance of man, nor spirits either. As for killing the man, that would imperil
her immortal soul. She must not do
that!’ he barked, emphasising the words.
‘Okay, okay. I
can’t command her, Father. I only see
spirits, I can’t control them.’
The pipe stem got pointed at him like a pistol.
‘And don’t try!’
To Louis there were hidden implications behind that
warning.
‘Do you mean it’s possible to control a spirit?’
‘Yes. Just as
it’s possible for a spirit to control a living person.’ The priest, annoyingly, didn’t enlarge on
that, so Louis had to ask more.
‘Control a person?
How do they do that!’
More stern pipe wagging ensued.
‘Only those who were irredeemably evil in life would
ever consider such a thing. They try to
dominate the body of a living person, at the expense of that person’s
consciousness.’
Louis stared.
‘Demonic possession?’ he blurted. ‘I thought – surely not!’
Father Geoghan sucked the stem of his pipe
reflectively.
‘I have been involved in two exorcisms, Louis, both of
which were harrowing, protracted and spiritually blighting.’ His air of self-assurance dared the lecturer
to question him.
‘Life can’t get any weirder,’ muttered Louis. ‘Though I shouldn’t tempt fate.’
Nothing To Do With Anything, Really
Nevertheless, whilst Googling for suitable pictures, Your Humble Scribe did come across an excellent graphic illustration on the cover of the "Radio Times", a publication that, somewhat confusingly, is advertising a television show. Art!
Illustration by the late great Frank Bellamy, who was a staple artist within the pages of "TV Century 21". There you go, apropos of nothing more than an appreciation of a great artist at work <moment's silence>.
Finally -
Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, meaning it is either one month late or eleven months early***, take your pick, and it is the month of the Tiger. One of our higher-ups dwelling in The Palace Of Crystal in the Sordid City Of Sin London sent out a comms today, detailing which years applied to which animals of the Chinese zodiac. Conrad, for your information, is an Ox NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK THERE! since the Chinese attributes of their zodiacal (not a word you expected to see today) animals are totally different from Western qualities.
This has given me a quite horrid idea, inspired by pure maliciousness. O yes indeed.
STILL NO SNIGGERING!
Are we done now? <checks> why yes we are!
* Go on, go on: The Rolling Stones.
** I mis-typed 'hopless' here, which would be wrong as you'd be hopping mad at my Korean joke. Also, "Red Dwarf".
*** GREGORIAN FOR THE WIN!
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