A Car, A Fish, A Submarine

 Go On, Guess It I Dare You

In case anyone is wondering about yesterday's crossword-clue post on Facebook, the answer is "REAL" .  Not sure how many of you managed that solution.  "Actually" meaning "Real" and sounding like a stagger? REEL.

     ANYWAY here we are on today's Intro, and Conrad would like to introduce you to - Art!

     This is the 'Mindflayer' from "Stranger Things" before they actually graced it with a physical body, and Conrad would like to point out the five-point symmetry of this beast.

     How many creatures have a radial five-point limb arrangement?  Art!

With mighty human for scale

     Yes yes yes, the Brittle Star does.  Not exactly up there with planet-threatening maxi-monsters, is it?  In fact it would survive about thirty seconds once out of water.

     Where were we?

     O yes - Art!

     This is one of those cars that guzzle petrol as if 'twere water, have horrendously high insurance rates, possess a tiny boot and can only hold two people.  But they are cop-off monsters.  As is said, they have a very high R.P.M*.

     Let us continue.  Art!

     Who knew that fish suffered from acne?  Also, it looks as if it's been stepped upon and squashed flatter than a platter.

     Still continuing.  Art!

Troy Tempest (at centre) based on James Garner

     Finally!  You are probably now cursing Conrad for stringing you along to an end destination that has nothing to do with the Duffer Brothers.  Calm down, have a cup of tea and a digestive before we carry on.

     Okay, 'Stingray' is the premier submarine unit of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol, based and launched from the west coast of South Canada.  Art!

     Conrad is going to ask about the elephant in the room - this is the PREMIER submarine WASP asset and it's in Pen 3.  What do they have in Pen 2 and Pen 1?

Art!

     This is one of those scenes where Stingray and a Terror-fish go literally ballistic and I CANNOT WORK OUT HOW IT WAS DONE <steadies heartbeat and vision>.

     Then we have Marineville, which is a garrison town built up around the WASP base.  Evidentially WASP anticipates being the subject of retaliatory nuclear strikes, because HOLY HECK THEY GO UNDERGROUND.  Art!

     I dunno, either they're excessively paranoid or well prepared.

     To those of you who question what, exactly, WASP might do across the oceans, I think recent events in the Black Sea and the straits of Taiwan may have a bearing, not to mention piracy in the Indian Ocean and drug trafficking in the Caribbean, and checking on how well-defended the Nork oil-rigs in the North Sea are, as well as keeping a weather eye on the English Channel, which is always a source of mischief.  They ought to pay a consultant to come up with a new acronym, though.

Production Design And Camels

No!  Not the Sopwith Camel, that aerial steed so beloved of Biggles.  The real thing, that farts, spits and lies down when it feels like it, whatever Hom. Sap. may think.

     Your Humble Scribe has been re-watching "Lawrence Of Arabia" and found it very impressive as a feat of logistics and set design.  Art!

 
     Those are real aircraft, real tents, real horses, real camels and real people.  Conrad is delaying his viewing of the "How To" disk as he intends to get to the end of the film first.  Art!

     This is a fly's-eye view of the Nefud, a legendarily awful desert that Lawrence and his team have to cross.  I mean, just look at it; bare volcanic rock in all directions.  Omar Sharif's cynical yet accurate character judges Lawrence as another "of those Englishmen who love the desert".

     Maybe so. Go ask Brian Herbert.

     ANYWAY Art?

     That's Peter O'Toole (and Omar Sharif) riding a camel, which is filmed regularly and at close range, meaning both actors really got to ride camels in real life.   No rear-screen projection and of course - obviously! - no CGI.  Ah what they had to do for verisimilitude in days gone by.

     
Talking Of War In The Desert

Let us move quickly on to "The Sea Of Sand" because I can hear the sinister murmurings of steam engines, those pikers always ready to break in upon a blog and 

     ANYWAY as you surely recall, The Doctor was tip-toeing verrrry carefully at the archaeological dig at Makin Al-Jinni.

Still no movement, he realised.  No movement, no sounds of work, no signs of recent activity.  Those monstrous black glass vehicles might very well have killed all three of the workers here.

     Dragging a small telescope from one of the capacious pockets of his coat, The Doctor scanned the whole site, quartering it twice over just to make sure.

      'But screw your courage to the sticking place, Doctor,' he told himself severely, standing up and striding along the well-trodden sand path, down into the basin and the excavation.  Fortunately for him, the path came in from the north-west, and the bulk of the Dias and the Temple shielded him from any curious eyes.

     Now, being closer to the buildings, he could hear a subdued, almost inaudible humming.

     "Hmmm.  Non-nuclear to judge by the timbre and frequency.  Oh!"

     A dusty hand, trembling and infirm, reached out to tug his trouser cuff from beneath the sands.  As he looked on in startled alarm, the sand rose, revealing a canvas fabric beneath, it's top the upper lip of the canvas tent used by the diggers to shelter from the worst of the sun.

     "Get in!" hissed a frantic Albert.  "Quickly!"  He raised the canvas higher, allowing The Doctor to slip beneath it.  The second he was under, Albert dropped the canvas roof, creating a small pocket of dark, sweaty, smelly claustrophobic safety and concealment.

    Only one star on the Cook's rating I think, don't you?

Unexplained Mysteries

I did come across another posting on the Youtube Reddit that was mostly nonsense.  They cited half a dozen cases, none of which are "Unsolved Mysteries".  For example, there is the "Tamam Shud" case from Ockerland.  Art!

     There was a lot of print at the time about who he was or wasn't and how he was definitely a Ruffian spy because high winds over Novi Pazar had interfered with the pistachio harvest -

     He turns out to be Charles Webb, a bit of a weirdo hovering around his ex's place, fond of betting on horses and making up his own poetry.  As established earlier this year.  "Tamam Shud" is a bit of Persian poetry, identified in a volume of same he had owned.  Sorry that this wasn't the Sinister spy epic you expected.

     There was some other guff we may go into later.

Finally -

There was a great deal of kicking-off in Royton this afternoon as Your Humble Scribe plodded downhill to obtain a few remaindered scraps - pie, sausage and burgers if you care to know - at the Co-op.  A fire-engine, several police vans, an ambulance and an unmarked police car.  This latter item was an extremely snazzy piece of kit that petrolheads would undoubtedly identify, but not Conrad: it was low-slung, sleek and could probably to 0-60 in 2.3 seconds.  One presumes they get to draw straws at the police station as to whom gets to drive it.  Art!

In the spirit of this thing

*  "Remove P****** Muchly"