Imagine That In A Kenneth Williams Voice
- from a 'Carry On' film. Conrad ruefully reflects that you probably wouldn't be able to make these films in today's social climate, because double entendres are against the Geneva Convention or similar, and Mary Whitehouse would object, from the grave, even. Art!
This is probably the closest any of you out there will have come to the infamy that was Mary Whitehouse, so a little background is needed. She used to be a rat wrangler on film sets until a meteor hit her on the head and she found Redemption, by taking offence at everything. Word has it that shortly before her end she was planning on banning the letter "Q", because it was 'entirely too risque'. If you can see her point THEN THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!
Wouldn't you know it, BOOJUM! has covered this ground before -
BOOJUM!: In Mortal Dredd (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)
You won't get a picture of that harridan MW, but one could tell she had arrived in terms of fame as '2000 AD' did an unsubtle spoof of her as 'Marjorie Blackshack" -Art!
Before
Wisely (or not) the Chief Judge allocated her ride-along partner as Judge Dredd himself, which is rather overkill, as he is the Big Dog's Big Dog. Art!
Then he arrested her.
That's 2000 AD for you, ever pushing the boundaries of good taste, social realism and political satire. Terrific Ron Smith artwork as well.
ANYWAY of course - obviously! - none of that has anything to do with today's title, which is a statement we occasionally use here as an examplar of our startlement.
And startled we are. Art?
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<twitches nervously> blimey that's gone up! Who would have thought that a humble blogger who froths over Codewords was seen as a variety of internet samizdat.
O go on. A 'Samizdat' was an illegal underground pamphlet or book that was copied and circulated in the Sinister Union during Cold War Years. It could be about absolutely anything, since the SU liked to ban everything (probably had a warm fuzzy regard for Mary Whitehouse); Western literature, thoughts on Sinister politics, the war in Afghanistan, replenishment at sea, satire directed at the Communist Party - actually perhaps not RAS, that's a bit too abstruse. Art!
Not to be confused with what practicing authors called their 'Back of the drawer' works, which they had created, yet which were too controversial to ever, ever be published as the Sinister censors had zero tolerance for anything that didn't toe the party line to the nanometre. The Strugatsky Brothers 'The Doomed City' is a case in point; it could only be published after the Sinisters rolled over and died. Dimya's probably working on having it banned retrospectively, the tiny toxic toad. Art!
ANYWAY a warm welcome to all the new readers, wherever you may be. At this rate the Ruffian readership might well outstrip the South Canadian numbers, which might trigger a BOOJUM!-viewing escalation and spiral into - hmmmmmm - success? Not sure how healthy that would be if the CIA AND FSB both took an interest in Conrad, although even both combined would be less troublesome than those pikers from UNIT or Spectrum.
When Titans Stalked The Earth Part The Second
Back we skip to 1963, after the Titan II missile complexes had been constructed, all 54 of them. The program only began in 1961; those South Canadians can certainly get a shift on when they want to. One wonders what the thousands of construction workers were told about their building efforts. "LGM25C"? O that's just the registration number plate for our speedy food delivery system, honestly. Art!
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Here we see the four combat crew required to man one of those complexes 24 hours a day, seven days a week and yes fifty-two weeks a year, not even Christmas Day off. Art!
The view from above. Rather like the Krell Great Machine, there's not a lot to see at ground level, which is entirely deliberate. Inside, they were full of all that cool Sixties electro-mechanical technology. Art!
So many buttons!
Let's see the beast in it's lair. Art!
To protect this monster, from stray civilians falling into the silo, or from Sinister nuclear warheads, there was an immensely heavy silo door on tracks, that needed to be slid out of the way so Pookie The Foofoodilly could launch. Art!
Opening one of these would be the prelude to a lot of very loud noises.
The Titan II should only have lasted in service for seven years yet remained in the South Canadian nuclear arsenal for 25 years, because they loved it's massive city-buster warhead and it made the Sinisters cry.
Now For More Torment
Nope, sorry, you can't skip this, "Tormentor" is compulsory reading and yes I WILL know if you try to jump ahead without reading every single word.
Rowell
held up an elaborately embellished piece of paper, about the size of a cheque.
‘A cheque,’ he began.
Ah, so that explained the
cheque-shapedness.
‘For two hundred and fifty
thousand pounds. Made payable to the
college. Not the LEA.’
Evelyn snickered an accountant’s
laugh.
‘Those ******* on the Local
Education Authority nearly had heart attacks!
Quarter of a million and none of it for them!’
Louis looked at the faces before
him. Yes they were real. No they were not spirits.
‘Your DTO class is the most
successful in England, Mister McMahon,’ explained the Principal. ‘An achievement that the Education Secretary
has recognised with a landmark grant.’
The muscles in Louis’s jaw
refused to bring it back into alignment.
‘B – b - ’ he began.
‘Bingo is the only one who went
back to prison,’ agreed Rowell. ‘The
others have remained out of detention.
Three have got jobs. Even the one
who got sent back to Risley came out and went on New Deal for Jobs. All the ones on your course are headed for at
least NVQ Level One.’
“Got sent back to Risley”?
Principal Greene shared an aside
with Evelyn.
‘Hello? I’m still here. And still Louis,’ he reminded them. Rowell looked alarmed and cleared his throat.
‘Oh – Evelyn just joked that your
dark powers kept them in line!’ laughed the Principal.
Louis laughed feebly alongside
them. It didn’t feel very
convincing. However, the others were
more concerned with the quarter of a million pounds, and the new Remedial DTO
Course that Louis would be running in the next academic year in brand new
classrooms.
Hum, not sure if Luma really wants the job, even if he's good at it. O well, into each life a little rain must fall.
Back To The Blue
Yes, Take Two from the BBC's photography exhibition on the theme of "Into The Blue", and note that they do bother to give individual credit where it's due. Take note Sony. Art!
Courtesy Sandra Gibson
How beautiful! How abstract! How poetic! I can hear you exclaim. Yes, well, just appreciate that this is described by the photographer as rain on the surface of a 'new dog poo bin'. Quite.
Finally -
Here we focus our scathing wit on Dimya, the Tiny Terror Toad from Tomsk*. How is your aircraft carrier, Dimya? You know, the Admiral Kuznetsov, the one that's been stuck in port since 2017? The one that keeps catching fire, whose aircraft fall off the launch deck, whose propellors were removed, which needed to be accompanied by an ocean-going tug when at sea because it lost power so often, the one that uses a fuel so crude you can see it's smoke from over the horizon? It was supposed to get repaired in a dry dock, which promptly sank. One of the dry dock's cranes collapsed onto the flight deck and put a huge hole in it. It caught fire again. Art!
There were mutterings about enlarging Ruffian ports to allow the Bad Luck Vessel to be repaired in them, which was long before the Special Economic Operations were launched against Dimya. Expect it to finally return to service sometime in 2050. When it will doubtless sink.
I think we've turned enough of Dimya's thinning hairs even greyer today, so time to knock it off and empty the fridge. Pip pip!
* Sorry, Tomsk.
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