Over The Moon

Yes!  Conrad Likes To Be Ambiguous

Also, he likes to court contumely.  Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves "Ah!  This is colloquial British for being 'extremely happy', which is a bit peculiar, since Conrad is a miserable old sod at the best of times."

     You are entirely correct.  Conrad is not exactly chirpy at present; you could say he's two doors over and three streets down from chirpy, thanks to getting to page 800 in "Jonathan Strange And Mister Norrell", with another five comic trade paperbacks to get through as well.  Art!

Come on, you can't say you're not intrigued.  I was.

     What might have elevated the slightly-chirpy to almost-enthused is the above, "For All Mankind", which is an alternate history where the Space Race not only continued unabated, it hotted up until it was positively incandescent.  The Sinister Union and South Canada take the Cold War into space - over the Moon.  Things don't play out in this history as they do in our timeline.  Art!

     What you see here is the almost-disastrous landing of Apollo 11; the skid marks are clearly visible and the Lunar Module is visibly and irretrievably tilted from the horizontal.  They had run out of fuel trying to find a landing site free from boulders.

     Is this far-fetched?  Not at all.  In real life the Apollo 11 LM "Eagle" made it onto the lunar regolith on fumes, with 15 seconds of fuel left.  Meanwhile Mike Collins, in the Columbia, the Command/Service Module, was left to traverse the far side of the Moon solo, in what has to be one of the loneliest jobs ever.  Art!

     In FAM he informs the Cape that he's not going to abandon the mission and head for home when it's thought the Eagle had crash-landed.  In real life his job was considerably less stressful, and all he had to do was fly <ahem> over the Moon.  Don't judge me.

     This is all apropos a Tweet I commented on a few days ago, where an old video was posted showing a fracas between an elderly gentleman and a considerably larger, younger man.  People were intrigued, because there was no context given, nor even an explanation.  Let me see if I can dig up a little footage.  Art!

     Let me clarify a little.  The big bloke in dark jacket is one Bart Sibrel.  He got sacked from his television broadcasting job for trespassing on an astronaut's property, which left him with a massive chip on his shoulder and a grudge against all astronauts.  In order to make money, he asserted that the Moon landings were faked, and he'd been chasing, obstructing and harassing the elderly gent, getting in his face and telling him he had to swear on a conveniently-carried Bible that the Moon landings weren't faked.  I know what you're asking - who  is this old guy?

     Only 72-year old Buzz Aldrin.

     Yeah, that Buzz Aldrin.  Second Apollo astronaut to walk on the Moon.  Art!

     Buzz had been lured there under false pretences and tried to walk away when he found out he'd been ambushed.  Sibrel wasn't having any of it.  Buzz, eventually getting fed up and worried about his stepdaughter, gave Sibrel a right hook.  Art!

     Of course we here at BOOJUM! never condone violence, but Damn! that was a punch and a half, from a man half the size and thrice the age of Sibrel.  It really knocked him off his perch.

     Sibrel, who makes loathsome scum look wholesome and comestible, sued in court, which may well be what he intended all along.  Ho ho, the courts immediately threw the case out.  You could say <ahem> that they weren't liberal with Mister Sibrel.

     And all over the Moon.

Asymptotic Progression

Or, "Give Indy 5 A Good Kicking Because Doing So Is Maliciously Entertaining".

Conrad yesteryon described the blog as a 'farrago of foof', and indeed it resembles Indy 5 in this respect, except about 350 million times less expensive.  Let me append a screenshot from Box Office Mojo.  Art!

     As you can see, this film is never going to make even $400 million.  The number of theatres it's being shown in has gone down from 4,600, to 3,865, to 2,885 and now 1,190, so the box office take is going to keep diminishing as the number of screens also diminishes.  Consider that they spent $100 million in promotion and advertising on top of a budget of at least $330 million and it looks as if it's not even going to recoup half the budget.  Contrast this with the Pointy Bird herself claiming that this film was going to be better than the original trilogy all put together, blah blah etcetera.  She seems to have gone quiet the past month.  I wonder why?

     O for the interested: an asymptotic progression is a mathematics term, where a value increases incrementally yet never manages to reach 1.0, which remains infinitely unreachable.  Art!

You want entertainment?  THIS is how you make entertainment!

Conrad Is ANGRY!
I know what you're thinking: water = wet; sky = blue; curmudgeonly old white-haired bloke = angry.  It's just that I've not been expressing my incandescent ire of late, because of long, long posts that take up lots of room.  Don't worry, I'm still horrid to the core.  And yes, this is about Codewords.

JOCOSE: Sounds pretty Biblical, doesn't it?  'Jocose, son of Hermose, son of Lachrymose of the Tribe Of Gum' or somesuch.

     Except no.  It means 'light-hearted, good-humoured or whimsical', (a variant of 'Over the moon'?) and thus the polar opposite of both the blog and myself, so it's not really fair expecting me to get it.  Not only that, it's been obsolete since 1820.  Art!

They use it in these tales.  Which are over a century old.

.MATINS: You may be a little lost here.  Not so Conrad, as he is widely read and has a skip for a memory.  This, lest ye be unaware, is one of the times when clerics worshipped.  According to the Collins Concise: "The first of the seven canonical hours of prayer."  WHAT, ARE WE ALL QUALIFIED THEOLOGICAL ECCLESIASTICALS NOW?  I think it crops up in "Sir Nigel" by Conan Doyle, in association with a monastery.  Art!

In satins at Matins

DILUVIAL:  Say what?  From context Conrad suspects that this is to do with soil mechanics, but that is a guess.  Let us banish all doubt and consult the Collins Concise: "Of or connected with a deluge, especially the great flood described in Genesis".

     Well, that told me.  You might point out that soil mechanics are affected by floods but that is, frankly, reaching.  However, talking of Genesis - Art!

     Ex-lead singer of Genesis.  I bet you're over the Moon at how clever I am.

"City In The Sky!

Ace is being shown how people aboard Arcology One live, with a lifestyle that reflects their proscribed orbital environment.

‘Er – a bit sparse,’ commented the young woman, cautiously, in case the Warden took offence.

     The older woman shrugged. 

     ‘I’m not big on possessions.  And I spend a lot of time in our Common Room.’   She turned on the computer and waved her hand over a pad in front of the device.  The screen came to life and ran an application that showed local space, with nine objects labelled and numbered.  Nat pointed at one labelled “BranMan01”.

     ‘That’s us.  Arcology One.’  She pointed out two more distant spheres, both smaller than Arcology One.  ‘Those are the American ones, California and Washington.  Smaller than us, about nine thousand people in each.  Unlike us they took a whole lot of politicians along, but we still get along for all that.  Regular shuttle exchanges once a quarter.’

     Naturally nosey, Ace pointed to the biggest sphere.

     ‘Who owns that?’

     ‘That’s the Chinese one.  Nobody knows anything about it, or how many people are aboard.  The Americans sent over a robot camera and – well, it got blown up.  No signals in or out.  We don’t even know if their population is still alive.’

     Both digested this information silently.  Nat pointed out the most distant sphere.

     ‘That’s the joint Russian-Japanese-Taiwanese sphere.  Structure built by the Russians, so it’ll withstand an atomic blast, and the interior fitted out by the Japs, so it makes us look stone-age.’

    Apparently there is still a Russia in this future.  Don't you feel a warm glow of satisfaction at that?

Finally -

Because I've been excessively verbose, all I need to finish with is a picture, and I choose this one, which you cannot deny is an odd-looking ship.  Art!

     I have no idea what this thing is or what it does, and since I'm frantically typing during my break, Conrad doesn't have time to pursue this topic.  Perhaps tomorrow.