Conrad Twirled His Moustache ...

Hopefully This Makes Me Look Wicked

Not simple-minded. What I'm going for is Victorian vaudeville villain, not a simpering bafune but lightly endowed with intellect.  In fact if I can prod Art into consciousness (surfeit of coal coma) with this handy red-hot toasting fork -

Just look at him.  Evil oozing from every pore

     There you go.  Hairy, scary and should make you feel wary, that's how I roll 'cos I'm so contrary.

     'What is the antediluvian plonker on about now?' I hear you quibble.  Pausing only to say that, given the current weather, we are in as much of a flood as The Flood, I shall explicate.

     You see, Conrad has long been aware that Hollywood loves loves loves having British thespians in their films, busy being  baddies.  If you want a coldly professional criminal, you hire a Brit; if you want carpet-chewing mania, you hire Nick Cage.  Only recently the Beeb had a video up that confirmed all this speculation, going so far as to trace it back to the Universal classic B&W horror films of the Thirties.  Art!

     Here we have Boris Karloff as the Monster NOT FRANKENSTEIN DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN I'VE ALREADY VAPOURISED SEVEN PEOPLE in "Frankenstein", where the titular sanity-light scientist Viktor was played by British thespian Colin Clive.  Art!

Some folks collect stamps or play chess.  This bloke ...

     
     I think it was South Canadian awe at British acting that meant they cast us in their villain roles, that and a long-suppressed hatred born against the people who burned down the White House*.  So you have suave, impeccably well-spoken chaps like James Mason or Sir Alec Guiness or Peter Cushing broadcasting an air of menace without having to raise their voices.  Art!

     This trend has continued unabated, perhaps also because the South Canadian acting community wants to be loved, and you don't get that when you're busy burning down the orphanage by catapulting puppies-on-fire at it, after having cut off their water supply.  One of the more memorable celluloid nasties was Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence Of The Lambs", as Hannibal.  A man of considerable intellect, as well as clever, just a shame that he was also completely round the twist.  Art!

     Conrad never had fava beans as a consequence of this scene.  The film's director, Jonathan Demme, didn't believe a South Canadian could carry it off, so in came Ol' Tone.   Annnnnnnnd who plays the thoroughly eeeeevil Doctor Octopus in Spiderman?  Why one Alfred Molina - a Brit.  Art!

     You can bet your last hyrvnia that Hollywood is going to make films about the 'Special' Military Operation in Ukraine once the dust settles, and Conrad can guarantee with iron-clad certainty that Tsar Poutine will be played by a Brit.  Probs Gary Oldman.

     Your Honour, I rest my case.  No, not you, motley, you don't get to rest, we have to go throw chlorine trifluoride at the duckpond.  Put your helmet and body armour on.

     

What A Disgustrous Day

It's almost as bad as winter, or the height of British summer; wet, cold, windy and utterly miserable.  This must be the transition stage of March, where it finishes off being a lion and becomes mutton.

     ANWAY I have decided that we need another winter photo from the BBC's page about Weather Watchers In Winter.  Art!

CAUTION!  Picturesque but deadly

     Courtesy Stuart666.  Yes yes yes, it looks very pretty and wintery.  This is at Lochain Uvie, in the Scottish Highlands, in the very middle of nowhere.  The nearest town is Kingussie, and if Art -

Boxed in red

     That picture doesn't come with thermometer attached, so let me enlighten you.  Were you to be outside overnight during winter in the more southerly climes of This Sceptred Isle, you'd end up with a bit of a sniffle.  If you do that in the Highlands the police will be delivering the sad news to your relatives.  REMEMBER THAT! when you ooh and ahhh about how pretty Stuart's picture is.

Bring On The Dancing Hearses

For Lo! We are going to look at Conrad's Anti-Zodiac once more, as we trot out a number of creatures that have either dubious looks, dubious reputations or both.  At first I thought I'd been extra creative and there were thirteen creatures, until the realisation that one was Roko's Basilisk struck home.  Since I've raised the subject, let me just say that it's supposed to be a sentient AI of the far future, which will resurrect all the dead people so it can torture them for not helping create it.  Not sure how credible that it in the case of oooooh say William Caxton, you know, the fifteenth century printing press chap.  Art!

JACKAL: Those people unfortunate to be born in the year of the Jackal will be bitterly misanthropic solo scroungers and scavengers, reviled by the rest of polite society, likely to indulge in a life of opportunistic theft.  The jackal itself in real life is exactly the same, rather like a poorly-trained dog.  Art!

Told you so.  Brit villain

VAMPIRE BAT:  Yes, I am being very specific here.  Those unlucky enough to be Bat-year born will, of course - obviously! - be shameless moochers and leeches in (roughly) human form, playing computer games all night and thus sleeping all day, living in their parent's basement because NO JOB, and suffering Vitamin D deficiency.  Allow me to introduce the creature itself.  Art!

     What price your sordid "Twilight" fantasises now, hmmmm gentle readers?  Go on, close your eyes and pucker up, pretending it's Robert Pattison.

     I would have carried on here but we're nearing the Compositional Ton so it's time to move on -

"Tormentor" Strikes Back

I'm not sure that it does, really.  Makes a good title, however, which is what we want here - intrigue the passing punters and lure them in.  Yesteryon Luma was contemplating acquiring a set of silver balls, for purposes unexplained just yet.

When he put the phone down, Louis couldn’t help feeling a touch of synchronicity.  He needed three hundred and fify pounds to pay for the silver ammunition, and promptly got five hundred.  Was that a coincidence?

               Coincidence or not, it was welcome.  Those psychics on television and in the printed media didn’t appear to need money, it simply fell into their laps out of the air, like manna. 

               Not until he got back home did Louis wonder about visiting one of the sites so beloved of the psychic community.  The idea came from a by-line in the free paper available to all on the bus: “Psychics to test Haunted Hall”, and a fifty word article about the north-west chapter of the BPIS , all set to take their instruments to vet Chingley Hall, “the most haunted house in the North West”.

               Firstly he checked out different sites on the internet that dealt with the paranormal, parapsychology, ghosts, spirits, hauntings, visitations, poltergeists, vampires and werewolves.  The latter two had a healthy representation, mostly devoted to people who wanted to be vampires and werewolves –

               - ask Prof about vamps and w-wolves, wrote Louis in his spiral-bound notebook.  Personally he didn’t see the appeal in being a mobile corpse living on blood, residing in a coffin and unable to witness daylight.  Nor in destroying your clothes when you transformed into an enormous furry brute.

               Much to his delight, the shipment from Germany had arrived whilst he was out.  Teddy Taylor, the next door neighbour normally not given to acknowledgement of Louis, had taken delivery of the parcel whilst Louis was out at college.

     I can't remember what the shipment from Germany is.  Won't it be exciting when we all find out!

*  Conrad is still unwilling to admit the American Revolution ever existed, let alone succeeded.