Conrad: A Man Given To Over-Thinking

Yes, We Are Back To Verdana Again

I found Helvetica to be a little too cramped after the expansiveness of Ol' Verr.  Just so we're clear.

     I am also putting myself forward as a temporary honourable Hom. Sap. for the purposes of this item's title, as telling the truth would be confusing.   

     ANYWAY I did see a curious thing today as I looked out onto the rolling radioactive swamplands of Lesser Sodom of the window: to wit, a First Bus Driving Instruction Bus, full of bus drivers wearing fluorescent tabards, being driven around to learn the lay of the land when it comes to Pubic Service Vehicles*?  It was there and gone in a second, so no chance to take an evidentiary photograph.  Art!

     Say hello to that AI art program, using the "Cyberpunk" skin (or whatever it's called) to generate another image on the text prompt "Matilda tank".  A lot more appealing than the following.  Art!

     ANYWAY there I was and I realised that there is a problem about the novel "Night Chills" by Dean Koontz and how it ends.  Conrad has not read it in decades but my skip-like mind retains the essential details.  Art!

     It is certainly not one for the faint-hearted, as it fairly hotches with sex and violence.  At core is the conspiracy of three antagonists: a general, a rich evangelical and a mad scientist.  Well, 'Quite Perverted Scientist' more accurately hits the mark.  With the scientist's genius, the reverend's money and the general's access to equipment, they concoct a mind-control drug that renders the victim completely suggestible, and they test it out on a small South Canadian town.  The victims are primed with subliminal messages and the whole thing works swimmingly -

     Until our protagonists turn up.  SPOILER ALERT!  They win the day, the evil trio are vanquished and our heroes ride off into the sunset - Art!

SKKKRRRRCCCHHHH

     Just a minute.  These people are aware that the mind-control serum existed, and they just shrug their shoulders and go back about their lives?

     THIS IS DISASTROUS!  You think that all four of them can live the rest of their lives without ever letting slip to anyone anywhere ever about what they experienced and what they now know?  Or that the truth about what happened might be reached serendipitously by other parties?

     THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE!  If any government, or government agency, or wanna-be dictator, or actual dictator, or political movement got the merest whiff of what happened, then they would know that mind control is achieveable and possible.  Never mind - sorry, wrong phrase - no, they wouldn't have 'Quite Perverted Scientist''s intellect and experience to help them.  Still, the world is full of clever biochemists.  Art!

     Of course - obviously! - coming up with the MC serum itself if fraught with dangers, because what's to prevent a clever minion anticipating the end result, and the world is enslaved by Larry The Smart Janitor?  To be honest, Conrad has pondered this as a possible plot line, with a collection of paranoid criminals trying to get the MC serum all to themselves first.

     To the more tender-minded of you out there, who wouldn't like to see all nine billion members of Hom. Sap. as utterly obedient drones <tweaks moustache ends> enslaved by Larry The Smart Janitor, then your solace lies in the fact that nobody has, in fact, taken over the world this way.  Phew!

     Mind you, if Larry The Smart Janitor had really been outwitted by a sinister alien spy in human camouflage, then the evidence of you us all being mind-controlled might lie in the fact that we all completely poo-poo the very idea of it happening.  "Ho ho ho! the very idea of us being controlled so subtly that we don't realise it - how absurd!"

     Which is an infinitely recursive thought loop I'll leave you with, and you're welcome.

     Of course, I might be overthinking this ...

Dig it!

If your goldfish-like memories are capable of such a sustained feat as recalling yesteryon, you will recall that Conrad went all-out on describing how "Popular Mechanics" vision of land warfare in 1915 was - well, let us politely call it 'erroneous'.

     No great harm done in the real world, am I right?  Nobody had to endure the straits and strictures associated with a piece of bampot tat unfit for purpose.

     On the other hand, we have the - Art!

Macadam Shield Shovel

     It was a Canuckistanian invention, also known as the "Hughes Shovel", and was intended to combine the functionality of a shovel, an implement always much in demand with infantry, with the protective value of a shield.  Art!

     This was the supposed idea.  Note from the assembage of legs in the background that this is definitely not in the front lines.

     There were a couple of problems with the Hughes Shovel.  Number one - which trumps anything following - was that it didn't work, in not being bulletproof.  As mentioned previously, a shovel thick enough to stop bullets would be made of steel an inch thick and be totally impractical.

     Nor did it work as a shovel, being too heavy and unwieldy, and with a great big hole in it.

     One of those things that look good on paper, until it encounters Cold Hard Reality.

     

I Did Mention Over-Thinking

Conrad only retains information if it's written down.  Yes, I'm a dinosaur like that.  So, I rashly decided a few months back to annotate Professor John Buckley's "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign", which is a modest 218 pages long.  Art!

     I finally finished!  To prove this I was going to add in a short video clip of me turning the written pages, except - Art!

     The file is too large and it won't play.  So, instead - Art!

     Conrad believes he should have been more lightly annotating and ought to have had only a couple of scribbled lines per printed page.  We shall see, just not in anything of a hurry.

Establishing A Milieu

Or is it a 'Mise en scene'?  Film lingo, anyway, because Lo! we are back with "Daybreakers" again, to complete my Intro on how the directors set up their world with as little exposition as possible, because this is film, not radio.  Art!

     This was a tricky shot to get, as it lasts less than a second, and is quite subtly done - note all the glowing vampire eyes in the shadows cast by a passing train.  This, and prosthetic fangs, were all the directors decided to go with, because they considered less was more.  Art!

     "CAPTURE HUMANS  Join the vampire army Make a difference today" sorry for the poor contrast here.  This sign is in the background, not shoved in your face, so you need to be paying attention to appreciate that, yes, humans are now an endangered species.  Art!

     This is one of the niftier production designs.  How do you travel by car if you're a vampire and sunlight will fry you alive?  Why, you use polarised glass.  Then you mount a video camera atop your drive, and pipe the feed inside onto monitors, which also gets around the inability of a vampire to create a reflection.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor, armed with no more than his wits, umbrella and some kangaroo steaks, is bearding the dragon - more accurately, the dingo - in it's lair.

     Don’t smile, he reminded himself.  Don’t smile and especially don’t grin.  Both were human facial expressions likely to be interpreted as a threat by a canine.

     ‘Good afternoon.  I am the Doctor,’ he announced, standing up and bowing.  ‘With a present.’

     A kangaroo steak got tossed to the dingoes, who scuffled and argued about who got to tear at the meat: from which behaviour (and that immediately following) their unearthly observer differentiated at least two hundred different sounds.  Such a level of communication implied intelligence at least equal to that of human beings of age two years old, and an intelligence definitely far beyond the old pre-Crash fauna of the Australian outback. 

     From observing the pack in action, working out which of them was the immediate leader became easier.

     ‘As I said: the Doctor.  Allow me to introduce myself properly.’

     Moving slowly forward, he approached a big male, one with a white splash of fur underneath his chin.  The wild dog bared it’s teeth until it caught a whiff of the Timelord’s scent and the animal’s  reaction was comical; both ears perked up, the dog jerked it’s head back and pranced backwards before slowly and cautiously slinking forward, head down, to sniff at the Doctor’s trouser cuffs.

     ‘Gallifreyan.  Not human,’ explained the Doctor.  He threw them another steak and then sat down.  ‘Let me tell you a story ...’

Finally -

The clock is ticking!

*  It's First Bus.  Of course it's not "Public".