The Mood Of Doom -

Is In The Room

Your Humble Scribe was sitting and pondering yesteryon, which is a cause for concern amongst all right-thinking people, and happened to reflect upon an obscure character from "2000AD", who went by the name of "Brigand Doom", and if I can prod Art into semi-consciousness with this handy set of coal tongs -

No, Art.  No.

       <sounds of despairing sighs and Tazer charging>

     Perhaps a little definition might be in order first.  Consulting my Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, I note that DOOM is defined as of Old English origin, meaning 'Judgement' or 'Law'.  So there.  Art!

Brigand Doom to port, Investigator Nine to starboard

     Yes, Ol' Briggy dressed like Dick Turpin, and just like Dick Turpin he carried around a brace of flintlock pistols.  On top of that he seemed to be kind of not-living, as in undead, and also far stronger than any Hom. Sap. had a right to be.  He carried out his own brand of justice in 'The City', which un-named polity was a fascist dystopia and then some.  Investigator Nine was tasked with tracking him down.  The series never enlightened readers about who or what Ol' Briggy was, and since it's not been seen for nearly thirty years I doubt we shall ever find out.  Art!

     This rather forbidding bloke is actually one of the good guys.  Ol' Cursey is a powerful mystic with a wealth of knowledge about the occult, who deals with supernatural threats to Hom. Sap.  Kalak, by the way, is irredeemably evil - sorry, eeeeevil - so don't feel any sympathy for him.  Ol' Cursey has a raven, Scarab, as a companion and McCreggan as muscle and driver.  Quite who owns the copyright is a tangled tale that I can't be bothered to go into.  Art!

          To continue with our collection of comics characters, this Intro wouldn't be complete without reference to "The Doom Patrol".  Art!

     Fans of the series like to point out that it was the first such superhero team effort in print, and it lead to the development of a bonkersly entertaining television series.  Art!

No, I can't be bothered to go into detail about who's who and does what.  Go watch it yourself.  Conrad managed to miss the third series but I'll get there in time.  Art!

     Conrad remembers reading this many decades ago, and the name stuck in my mind.  The novel falls under the heading of <shudders> 'Young Adult' and concerns a youthful secret agent who is sent into the field well ahead of his training course ending.  If I remember correctly, it was quite realistic, with none of the James Bondisms you might expect.  Except I cannot remember anything about it, bar that there was a poisonous substance at the centre of the mystery?

     I think my memory will have to serve.  Don't squeak, wallet!

     Then there's this.  It's a computer game, apparently, which came out after Your Modest Artisan swore off computer games as being thieves of time like nothing else, so I've no practical experience of playing it.  The description is that it's a First Person Shooter game.  Colour Conrad uninterested; Real Time Strategy is more my thing.  Art!

     This was a program of and about it's time, which was the early Seventies, and it was immensely popular.  The 'Doomwatch' title is a nickname given to the 'Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work', which was set up by The Government as a sop to green votes, but which turned out to have actual teeth, eyes and a conscience.  Conrad never saw the original series when broadcast as parents did not like - Art!

Mum and Dad say hello

     I did have a couple of VHS releases, one of which was the memorable "The Plastic Eaters", about the accidental release into the environment of a plastic-digesting bacteria.

     Unfortunately for posterity, "Doomwatch" had 14 of it's 38 episodes wiped by the British Blundering Cackhanders, who had the intellect and far-sightedness of a myopic mole.  If only Cursitor Doom had been around to advise them .....

     I think we'll go out with the most famous volcano in fiction, Mount Doom.  Art!

CAUTION! Lava can be hot

     One has to question the wisdom of building your Dark Tower anywhere near an active volcano.  For one thing, it would severely impact the re-sell property price.

Speaking Of Megastructures -

Yes yes yes, there is a Lego set for Barad Dur, which, if I can reach Art with this handy poker -

      - which is but a trifling inconsequential nothing compared to the Lego megastructures as compiled by SpitBrix on Youtube.  Art!

Note puny human at top for scale

     This is the largest Lego flag ever made, with almost a quarter of a million bricks present.  Built for Canada Day, it's an unusually bold assertion from the Canuckistanians, who as a rule are modest and unforthcoming.  It's over nine feet high and about twenty feet long (can't be bothered to accurately change metric to PROUD IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS).

"City In The Sky"

Taking flight aboard an untested and neglected spacecraft is no doddle, as Ace is finding out.  Her games-playing skills, on the other hand, are about to come into their own.

     All this passed Ace by.  She was busy with the extensor arms.  First she hauled the joysticks back towards her, which brought the arms up horizontally, then experimented with moving the joysticks to one side, then the other.  Rotating them caused the extensor’s clamps to twist in a circular motion around their own axis; pressing the green stud atop each joystick caused the clamps to close, releasing caused them to stay locked in that position, and pressing the red stud released them back to rest.  Pushing down on the joystick telescoped the arms into their own length, reversed by pulling the joysticks upwards.  She did all this slowly and carefully, mindful of Barclay’s warning.  Knowing from eavesdropping on the Doctor that lubrication in a space-craft like this would be with a granular microsphere compound instead of a liquid, she looked at each arm’s monitor screen to try and detect any traces of compressed or clotted material.

     ‘You’re pretty handy with those,’ complimented Kurt.  ‘I always bang one into the other.’

     ‘Years of practice,’ smarmed Ace, referring to her years of playing computer games with a joystick and definitely not manning spacecraft.  But what Kurt didn’t know didn’t harm him.

     Not yet, anyway.

Spinning A Yarn

You may remember BOOJUM! covering Spinlaunch in the past.  Briefly put, they constructed a proof-of-concept launcher that lofts a 'package' at terrific velocity into the atmosphere, to cut out the necessity of a massive rocket booster to do the same job.  Art!

With puny humans for scale

     Well, after ten successful test launches, the accelerator is now open for business and customers can purchase the ability to get their whatnot up to 25,000 IMPERIAL feet, which, if you want a different scale, is nearly 5 miles high.  Art!

     One supposes that local airports will need to be notified if a launch is taking place, as even a near miss from this big beastie will probably inflict dangerous turbulence in the wake of a package.

     It's an elegant solution to a physics problem.  Let's hope Elong Tusk doesn't set his acquisitive beadies on it.

Found It!

More in hope than certainty, Conrad had a look at "The Daily Beast"'s webpage and found out what yesteryon's mystery MacGuffin is.  Art!

     Okay, now we know what they are.  The how is another question entirely.  A magnetic fork to use on turf repair?  

Finally -

As regular readers already know, Conrad takes a constitutional stroll into Lesser Sodom of a Sunday afternoon.  Up until yesteryon I was concerned about walking on snow-trodden-into-ice, which is what happens at this time of year.  The sun never rises high enough to melt the snow, and countless pedestrians compact it into a treacherously slippery layer.

     Well, not a problem any more.  Thanks to the endless rains of yesteryon and today, the snow is a distant memory.  Swings and roundabouts, one feels.