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Saturday, 27 August 2022

It's A Mystery Tour

NO!  Not The Single By Toyah

Although you have to be pretty long in the tooth to remember this one.  Nor is it anything to do with The Beatles and their Magical Mystery nonsense.  However, mentioning them allows me to bring up a click-baity picture to entice the passersby in.  Art!


     Ah, that's better - just had a couple of rather dire tracks by The Chemical Brothers and Unkle but we have now moved on to Vivaldi and "The Four Seasons".

     Where were we?  O yes, mysteries.  Conrad has - because he is a very sad individual - been reading a couple of Youtube Reddit compilations, where they asked the question "What Is The Strangest Unsolved Mystery?" so we can look at a few of these, which is where today's title comes from.

     Overtoun Bridge.  Art!

The bridge, in Scotland

     The 'legend' has it that hundreds of dogs - between three hundred and six hundred depending on which yellow rag you choose - have thrown themselves to their death from this bridge and that even those that survived went back up to jump off again.

     Nope.  The real total is six.  Obviously this wasn't impressive enough so clearly the blaggers added a couple of zeros.

     Here's a real mystery.  A 24-year old South Canadian college student, Tim Molnar, who was very close to his family, chose not to go to college in Florida one day, withdrew all the money from his bank account and drove off.  That was the last his family ever saw of him.  Twelve years later a television program featured him and was contacted by a man who ran an ice block lot in Wisconsin, who recognised the clothes.  They had been on a body he discovered frozen inside an ice block, and DNA sampling confirmed that the body was that of Tim Molnar.  He'd abandoned his car in Georgia, so the question is how on earth he ended up dead in an ice block 1,300 miles from home?  Art!

Neosho, Wisconsin

     We're not going to ever get a resolution on that one.

     One more, and this concerns astronomy, notably a star called Przybylski's Star, after the Polish astronomer who discovered it.  The Reddit poster had got things garbled, stating that it was full of plutonium.  Actually it's full of every element ending in "-ium" of which plutonium is merely one of a positive chemical cocktail - take a bow praseodymium, ytterbium, einsteinium and berkellium - and yes those are real elements.  Nobody has come up with a convincing explanation that resolves this star's odd qualities, so of course the blaggers immediately jump to "ALIENS!  ALIENS!  IT CAN ONLY BE ALIENS!" as a solution.  Art!

"Hey, you're blocking my sunlight!"

     Motley, time to practice Nitro-Glycerine And Chainsaw juggling.  You first.

     Ah! - Death Cab For Cutie.  Excellent.


Philip Madoc

Welsh actor chappie, no longer with us, whom popped into my mind yesteryon for no good reason - thank you Steve and Oscar - whom you will recognise if you ever watched old "Doctor Who".  Art!


     He did tend to be a bit typecast as a villain, which was great, as he had a fantastic speaking voice and so could really ham it up.  There was an exception in "The Power Of Kroll" where he plays a corporate security minion - Art?


     A bit morally ambiguous, and he admits he's not fond of the local 'Swampies', with enough of a conscience to call out another corporate wonk.

     He was a very skilled linguist, initially acting as a translator for various politicians, which and whom he got to loathe, so he switched to acting.  Skilled in seven languages, including German, which is relevant because -

"Vot iss your name?"
"Don't tell him, Pike!"

     He played the captured U-boat captain in "Dad's Army: The Deadly Attachment" with the classic scene above.

     That will be all, thanks.


Death And Destruction

Because calm and serene lacks dramatic tension.  Yes, back to the last of those Post-Apocalyptic TV series, this one titled "Sweet Tooth" which Wonder Wifey has seen and liked, but which brings back unwelcome memories for Your DIABETIC Scribe.  Art!


     Hmmmm so a disease called the Sick ravages civilisation and causing the Great Crumble, whilst hybrid half-human half-animal babies start to be born, possibly being the cause of the virus pandemic, possibly not.  That lad above is Gus, who is kept completely isolated from the outside world by his father, until the latter dies of the Sick, leading Gus to begin a trek to Colorado.  The big man behind him is Big Man, a former pro-footballer (South Canadian rugby that is) who reluctantly helps Gus.

      People must have liked it, they renewed it for a second season.  Conrad may indulge.


More Death And Destruction

Because if I wrote "The Sea Of Sand" then you are most certainly going to get to read it.  DON'T ARGUE!

Nothing seemed obviously different.  No movement anywhere, only the thin sound made by the hot desert breeze as it rushed around the pillars, the dust it carried tickling the nose and eyes.  The whole place might have been undisturbed for centuries, such was the air of dereliction.

     A slight disturbance in the sands to their north caught the eye of Albert, who tugged at The Doctor's coat and pointed.  All three moved behind the cover of pillars, just in case.  

     A dimple appeared in the un-excavated sands north of the Temple, growing larger by the second, until a big funnel-shaped depression thirty feet across existed.  With little noise, a big black glassy machine drove up out of the sand funnel, pushing a small wall of sand ahead of it in front of a glassy dozer blade.

     Albert and Templeman froze in fear, getting ready to flee.  The Doctor stood still, carefully noting the difference between this machine and the ones he's seen at the Depot.

     "Stay still.!" he hissed at the other two men.  "That one's not dangerous."

     Instead of the flailing, energy-draining arms, this machine only mounted a big dozer blade on the front, and there were no circular aerial ringing the central 'drum'.  The machine began to scrape tons of sand away from area near the funnel, shoving it into the area between the Temple and where it had emerged.

     Obviously only a mechanical minion.  What will it uncover?  Nothing good!


Yet More Death And Destruction

Another set of photographs from "The War Illustrated" which by definition can only be more of this item's title.  Art!


     This is Air Marshall Sir Arthur Coningham, commander of the North West African Tactical Air Force, explaining how his aircraft have been pounding the living daylights out of the Axis air forces.  The claim is made that 1,691 Axis aircraft had been lost over or on Sicilian airfields, which frankly sounds rather high to Conrad seeing that the Italians only had 1,400 planes there in the first place.


"John Barleycorn"

Another random selection from my Brewer's.  This is a nickname for malt liquor and has been around for centuries, becoming popular after the publication of Rabbie Burn's "Tam O' Shanter" with the lines:

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn,

What dangers thou canst make us scorn!


Finally -

By the time I've finished typing this coda, we will have hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton, meaning time to quit and go sort out my tea, because man cannot live by beer alone.  Though I tried quite hard the other week.




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