Technically, It's "Coulrophobia"
That is, a morbid fear of clowns, which is perfectly understandable when you stop to think about it, because there's little spookier than a clown out of context. This Intro is courtesy of yesteryon's blog, where we harped on about 'Pennywise The Dancing Clown' from "It", in his various guises. Art!
How amusing is this?
The classic case of evil clowns is, of course - obviously! - "Killer Klowns From Outer Space", which is gloriously silly fun, best watched after a few gin shandies. Art!
Excellent theme song by The Dickies
They're actually aliens with a taste for blood, who snack their way through the residents of Crescent Cove, until of course Our Heroes foil them. It was popular enough to spawn a computer game, which I'm not going to show here.
Then there's that ghastly little clown puppet from "Poltergeist", which makes Conrad's flesh creep just thinking about it (although I am a self-confessed huge coward). Art!
Nope. Not going to embiggen.
On a much less supernatural theme, we have Bill Murray's character in "Quick Change", which, if Art will put down his plate of anthracite -
"What kind of clown are you!"
"The crying on the inside kind, I guess"
Going back to the horror theme again, there's a brief scene in "Diary Of The Dead" where a zombie clown intrudes on a children's party, only being revealed as one of the living dead when angry Dad pulls it's nose off, and it comes off full of blood. Art!
"Watch out - he's mighty bitey!"
Then we have "Bones" and Agent Booth who has an unconfessed fear of clowns, resulting in him taking out what looks to the rest of us like an utterly innocent and perfectly harmless clown head - Art!
What we see What Booth sees
You may also recall a fad here in This Sceptred Isle a good few years ago when miscellaneous meatheads thought it would be an hilarious hoot to dress up as a clown with a knife in order to scare small children. There were thousands of sightings, including some which police determined would be criminal offences, and they understandably took a dim view of same. Art!
Smoking and consuming alcohol. Clearly not a role model for children. Nor most adults, either.
Okay, time to finish this theme with Evil Clown from "Big Top Bedlam", an episode of "Scooby-Do, Where Are You*". Art!
What unfeasibly big lips you have!
Would You Like Some Aircraft With Your Aerials?
Conrad was perusing a thread on Youtube about the aerial intelligence 'assets' - as they like to euphemise in South Canada - that are cruising around just outside Ruffian and Ukrainian borders. The poster, who seemed to know what they were talking about, mentioned "Rivet Joint", which I'd heard of - Art!
Note aerials
- and Global Hawk, which I'd also heard of - Art!
GH with puny humans for scale
Then he mentioned 'Guardrail', which was new to me. You know Conrad, ever curious, so I looked it up. Art!
Wowsers
As you probably guessed given Guardrail, these are all SIGINT platforms, that is "Signals Intelligence", which stooge around snooping on the Ruffians and gleefully informing the Ukrainians what's going on where and with whom. And now you know why this item has that title.
"The Sea Of Sand"
When last we left him, the Doctor had just emerged from his concealing sand dune and was about to get busy with the sabotage.
'Interesting. Geothermal, of course. Must be a luminous lithic substrate beneath the vitreous overlay,' he chattered quietly to himself. Having definitely established he was alone, the Doctor climbed out of his sandy lair, crawling alongside the walls of the building until he reached it's doorway.
Inside lay dark, echoing faintly and empty of aliens.
'Perfect!' grinned the Time Lord, turning to look behind him at the rest of the site. Nobody near. No, they were all mounting patrols or watching the route into the complex, or repairing the trans-mat. How fortunate for him that one-third of the aliens did not revive from hibernation.
'Door? Door? Door?' he muttered, looking for a control that closed the gaping space in the wall. A circular panel high on one side of the inner doorway proved to be the "handle"- one press and the door silently slid from a recess and merged seamlessly with the walls.
Much to the Doctor's delight, the building he chose to investigate proved to be an information repository and archive combined. Once more a piece of the puzzle fell into place for him.
"Local Time Elapsed = Five thousand, one hundred and twenty seven years," he read from the most prominent display, a big fluorescent banner nine feet above the ground.
It may be a bit deus ex machina, admittedly; I needed to get the Doctor up to speed on his bio-vore opponents.
For Your Information
The Zombie juice was fairly palatable, the spiced rum concealing the smell and taste of pineapple. Not so palatable that I'm ever going to buy it again. Art!
Just so we're clear
More Astronomy!
Not from that BBC competition page, instead we've picked up on a couple of splendid pictures taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which is definitely earning it's keep. Art!
This, gentle reader, is Neptune in infra-red, which brings out details normally invisible, like the rings and cloud structure. The bright dots are Neptune's moons. Art!
This is the deep-field camera view, and most of those sparkly objects are galaxies, the nearest of which will be millions of light-years away. Gives you a sense of proportion, hmmm?
More Stringbags
Or, slightly more formally, more unusual aircraft from the First Unpleasantness, because I think they look cool and because I have a word count to hit. Art!
Here you go, the Salmson-Moineau SM1. As you can see, they dealt with the problem of having to fire through a propeller by having them off to the sides, driven by a single central engine through rods and gearing. This can't have been very efficient; you want the least amount of bits and pieces between the engine and a propeller. They weren't very popular, as the pilot's field of view was poor and many were written-off in bad landings. Nor was it easy or convenient to service, thanks again to the drive-train to the props. Art!
This one has the nose wheel propped up for some reason - possibly to lower the rear sufficiently that the gunner can get in, as his ladder seems to be missing.
Finally -
What a contrast to yesterday! It was windy and overcast in the morning when I took Edders for a trot, then it chucked it down in the afternoon and into the night. Today, cloudless blue skies and quite balmy. I think it incumbent upon myself to have a stroll into Lesser Sodom (Royton if we're being formal) and buy a few carrots. Maybe also some jam. And ready-salted crispoids (those pikers at Morrisons were practically out of all crispoids on Weds)
And with that we are done. Done, Vulnavia!
* Hiding under the bed, right next to Conrad
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