We Here At BOOJUM! Only Infrequently Toot Our Own Horn
One reason being that our stock-in-trades are items such as nuclear warheads, rigourous parsing of the Zombie Apocalypse and obscure military campaigns, and the mainstream media is unlikely to cross paths with these. If they did, you can be sure Conrad would be looking at their contributions with a jaundiced eye, to make sure they got it right.
As with today's themed news item on the BBC's News Website. Art!
 |
| Halloween-appropriate |
The Food Of The Dogs
No! Not a typo or spelling mistake. For yes, we are back on the odious un-commodious catering in the era of Toxic Tasties, where the health of you, the consumer, was considerably less important than the retailers and manufacturers making a profit. Ah for the Victorian era! Next up we have: Ferric Ferrocyanide in Chinese tea. Art!
 |
| Guaranteed to make you lose weight! |
Conrad cannot find precisely why this poison was added to tea, but would pretty much expect that it was for colouration purposes or to (possibly) add a smoky tang to Lapsang Souchong, meaning you could avoid the time-consuming smoking process and just poison people instead.
One tangential item I've come across is the "Bradford lozenge scandal", where hokey health-lozenges were due to be adulterated with plaster of Paris, which is not great for your intestinal regimen, but isn't incredibly toxic. What the pills were adulterated with was instead arsenic: yes, that INCREDIBLY TOXIC POISONOUS substance. 21 people died, and the culprits got off scot-free.
We've used this picture before with no context. Well, now you know.
Nowadays, thanks to our noble and conscientious politicians who strive to do right by us every second of their waking day, there is oodles of legislation in place that means you cannot vend about poisons as if they were cordials, nor block arsenic as if it were cheese. Go on, eat that Halloween boiled sweet with confidence. What? O now you're worried that they might be concealing used hypodermic needles filled with Aids and Satanism? Allow me to point you in the direction of Snopes.
How Marvell-ous!
You probably don't recognise that crack about poisons and cordials, which comes from a quotation by Jonathan Swift, arch-satirist of the seventeenth century. If you want to be as amused and horrified as your introduction to Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, go read his "A Modest Proposal".
ANYWAY I was earlier this morn reminded of another seventeenth century gentleman of letters, to wit: Andrew Marvell. Art!
Ol' Andy was an accomplished bloke, being variously a wit, poet, novelist, satirist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, for Hull. Which meant he had to travel from home to Westminster when Parliament was in session, and vice versa, thus going to Hull and back.
He was also what one might call a canny chap, a political survivor, or someone who knew where the bodies were buried, as he managed to survive the transition from monarchy to republic and back to monarchy again, serving Cromwell and not being fired, imprisoned or executed when Charles II took the throne. Art!
He has a College named after him, which is still an honour even if only a small one. Interesting chap, we could write a whole blog about him, except that would be far too conventional and boring. Instead we will -
How Marvels-ous!
Or not. Conrad, because he is a terrible person, has been consuming buckets of popcorn whilst reading about the trials and tribulations of some upcoming films to be released by Disney Studios. One of a beleaguered brace is "The Marvels", which had a tortuous inception. Where does one start? Art!
The first "Captain Marvel", starring the deeply unlikeable Brie Larson,coat-tailed it's way to a profit thanks to the Avengers films it sat between. There was thus going to be a Captain Marvel 2, except for the small problem that nobody who worked with Cheesy in front of or behind the camera on the first film wanted anything to do with her ever again until the heat death of the Universe.
Ooops.
Plus, her character was widely disliked. Actually, widely loathed. In some quarters, hated so much they tormented voodoo dolls of her. In fact there was so much negativity associated with her that "Captain Marvel 2" morphed into an ensemble film so she wouldn't have to carry the whole thing. Art!
Thus she's pairing up with Ms. Marvel, whom nobody's heard of and whom nobody watched, and Monicker Rambo, the stepsister of Dack, or something, who was a supporting character in a spin-off from the Avengers, and whom
WAKE UP!
The film has been budgeted at $300 million, which is a colossal sum, and the suits seem to be having second feet and cold thoughts. The length has been trimmed to 88 minutes, although this might not include a 10 minute end credit crawl. Test audiences were happier with the less of it they saw. Art!
Yes, this is a legit poster for the film. How to say "This film is squarely aimed a spinster cat-ladies" whilst not saying "This film is squarely aimed a spinster cat-ladies". How much did a 'focus group' of 'subject matter experts' charge to come up with this? Trailers for the film begin with Avengers footage from "Endgame", and continue with footage from "Endgame" and only half-way through does the Marvellous world of Cheesy blossom forth. Conrad unsure how many cats are present in the trailer.
Then there are the box office predictions. Hollywood pays serious attention to how many tickets are being sold in advance, and for "The Marvels" the figures are depressingly low, projected to bring in $45 million on the opening weekend. At first. Then they were lowered. Conrad counsels caution here, as predictive figures like this are notoriously fickle and they may wildly exceed - nah, who am i kidding, they're going to be dismal. Don't forget, for a $300 million budget the global and domestic box office needs to clear circa $700 million TO BREAK EVEN. Art!
In yet another nod to those cold thoughts and second feet, a couple of weeks ago another extra scene was shot, including that blue-tinted chap above from X-Men, which will be added post-credits so that scads of extra cinema-goers will happily sit through - nah, who am I kidding, nobody's going to endure that.
Finally - this Item is so long I could have made it an Intro, couldn't I? - Disney have refused any advance screenings of TM until the night before release. This reminds me of defendants taking the Fifth Amendment in a South Canadian civil trial; the jury can and will assume they've been wicked. Like so, a studio refusing to allow previews implies that it's a gigantic cinematic dog-dropping and they fear advance publicity will kill any future audience prospects.
Roll on November 10th! <tweaks moustache>
"City In The Sky"
In this chapter, more like 'Town on the Groun'.
Mike pushed his dirty hat back and scratched his tanned forehead.
‘The horizon and the sea? Just
part of the landscape, mate.’
Alex shook his head in fervent denial.
‘Not to me! My landscape has been
the inner surface of a sphere with a completely controlled environment. No rain, no clouds, no wind, no weather.’
Mike grinned.
‘Sounds ace, mate! Just wait till
we get a thunderstorm, then you’ll change your mind.’
He led them back up the beach, in the footsteps of the departing
fishermen.
‘Where do you wanna go first? Don
said show you around. Lenny volunteered
but he’s in charge of the highway team and had to ride out to ‘em.’
Alex shrugged.
‘Begin with the nearest building and look at every single one after
that?’
His eager inquisitiveness was boundless and his questions incessant, and
it took a good hour before Mike noticed that Doctor Smith had quietly vanished
at some point of their township tour.
He shrugged; Don had only sent him to make sure these strangers didn’t
get up to mischief and he couldn’t be in two places at once.
Ah, Mike, you don't know what a trouble-magnet the Doctor is.
More Mystery Machinery
I need to finish with a short pithy item after that rather long one about Marvellous Miss Cheesy, so here's another MacGuffin from "The Daily Beast". Art!
Nothing to give a sense of scale, so I'm going to jump in with both feet and assert that it's a twenty-foot long explosive fence-post pile-driver. And NO! I cannot simply look up what it is with a click - that would be cheating.
Finally -
Edna is whining again, because her belly is telling her that tea-time arrived half an hour ago. I shall try and ignore her for the next ten minutes when it will be 16:00 by the clock and 17:00 by her stomach.
No comments:
Post a Comment