NO! Nothing To Do With That Falsetto Disco-Dirge
I ought to level you and your neighbourhood for assuming that, you utter pikers*.
No, today we are going to touch on the subjects of population geography, rolled tobacco products, serial graphic art - which you may deign to call 'comics' - the pig as a source of scoff and finally the works of the Barb Of Avon. Quite an eclectic mix, you ought to agree. Art!
Note the artist. There will be a quiz later.
This isn't remotely what you think or expect, i.e. a jingoistic banner-waving paean to South Canadian exceptionalism. Conrad has a few copies of it in the Comic Mountain, which would take too long to recover to prove. It will do as a scene-setter and traffic-driver for the moment.
Now, if I were to say to you "hamlet" you'd probably wrinkle your brows and begin to yark on about the Barf Of Avon and h
STOP RIGHT THERE! Do you see a capitalised "h"? No, you do not. Art!
This, gentle reader, is a 'hamlet', which has a somewhat elastic description as being smaller than a village, without it's own church. The word is of fourteenth-century origin, being derived from Old French 'Hamelet', itself a diminutive of 'Hamel', which has it's roots in the Teuton language.
Let that be a lesson to you about jumping to conclusions.
Now, if I were to say "Hamlet", you would, once again, jump in squarely with both feet, eager to show how much (or how little) you know about the Barm Of Avon and his st
STOP RIGHT THERE! You jump to conclusions faster than a flea with St. Vitus Dance. No, this is not about the Barn Of Avon. Art!
Yes, they are a form of cigar. I did mention rolled tobacco product. I shall have to resort to teh Interwebz as Your Humble Scribe may consume alcohol as if 'twere water (is that Shakesperean enough for you?), but tobacco products are a foreign country to him. They are made from tobacco leaves originating in Brazil, Cuba and Java, and were marketed as being especially mild. Art!
Their adverts featured a man getting into a pickle, as Gregor Fisher above, and finally resorting to a Hamlet for nicontinic solace, with Bach's "Air On A G String" playing out at the end. Gregor's advert is probably one of the funniest ever made and should you doubt me, check it out on Youtube.
Now, here is where Howard Chaykin comes in. Art!
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| "Shakespeare for Americans" courtesy "Heavy Metal" |
Conrad remembers reading a few of these when he was collecting HM back in the Eighties. They are a sly satirical dig at the short attention-spans of Howie's fellow South Canadians, condensing "Hamlet" down into 6 fames on a single A4 page, and in a trope they are familiar with. Which is quite enough for me.
Now - finally, I can hear you saying to yourself - we get to the Lard Of Avon and his play, which is formally known as "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince Of Denmark". Conrad has never read it, thank the Lord aloft it never came up in either 'O' Level or 'A' Level English literature, and never intends to, because it sounds like a right buzzkill downer. Art!
Mulder and Skully?
There is much ado about royal succession, not to mention plenty of murders, and political intrigue, and the Norwegians also play a part. SPOILER ALERT!
It seems all the main cast end up dead, which is a good thing, because the Bird Of Avon liked to come back with sequels: "Henry VI" has two of them, which is definitely taking the pitcher to the well far too often. Conrad is also highly suspicious about the cast's names: Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes, Fortinbras - none of these sound remotely Danish. Are there any Haralds or Agnethes or Dagmars in there? No. They do have Yorick (see above picture) which is similar to 'Jorvik' and as close as I suspect Shakey Bill ever got to a genuine Danish name. Art!
There were films made, which I can't be bothered to go into as my patience for the Danish Royal Family only goes so far. Art!
Which Part Of "STATIC" Did You Misunderstand?
One thing that all missile and rockets intended for space exploration have to undergo is a 'Static Test Firing', where the engine is firmly mounted on a stationary test bed, which allows it to ignite and sustain a burn. This allows precise measurement of engine dynamics, fuel consumption, pump operation, exhaust products and so on. Art!
Tests are normally done with the engine horizontal, at least in the initial stages, which may progress to a vertical orientation. Art!
The Populous Dictatorship suffered a horrendous accident at a vertical static test firing recently, where their Tianlong-3 suddenly became - well, non-static. Art!
All is well Suddenly all is not well Tianlong makes a break for it Unsuccessfully
It did seem to come down beyond the firing point, so any staff still on site and not sprinting so fast as to make Usain Bolt look like an elderly and infirm tortoise may have survived.
Others, including Conrad, noted that there was no remote destruction of the rocket once it took off. Crossing one's fingers and praying is not really any substitute for a Range Safety Officer.
Um - What?
This caught my eye as an obvious oxymoron. You know Conrad, hair-splitting pedant par excellence! Art?
Surely, if you are paralysed during sleep, YOU CANNOT DO ANYTHING!
Besides which, if you're asleep, how do you know you're paralysed? Or are they referring to a speculative third party, enjoining them not to dump a bucket of cold water all over you? And, as a third party observer, how do you know that the sleeping person is suffering from sleep paralysis?
This raises far more questions than it answers.
"City In The Sky"
Arcology One is now in it's final descent onto the Nullarbor Plain. Unless something goes hideously wrong .....
Slowly, slowly - imperceptibly at first,
the Lithoi base-ship grew larger. From a
brown dot it became a brown circle. A
tiny discolouration on the land beside it grew into a minute crater – the site
of Dart Three’s death-dive, understood Davy.
Fifteen minutes to landing.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Twelve.
Eleven.
‘Okay, Infrastructure – blow the water
tanks,’ said Davy into his Tab.
A waiting technician in the Infrastructure
control room clicked open a protective panel, turned the button through ninety
degrees and pressed it. A ripple of dull
vibrations quivered everyone’s feet and Davy saw a massive drizzle of white
obscure the view below completely, before the water gradually fell lower in a
scudding curtain.
Six hundred seconds to landing! and his
heart beat even faster. So close they
couldn’t fail!
For the Lithoi who fled the Bridge, loss of face was compounded by loss of function. The cloud of steam that sent them scattering in panic had condensed on half a dozen computer terminals and shorted them out completely, besides blowing out most of the lighting in the Bridge’s centre. Their method of removal was slow, necessarily so because no threats that Arkan made or hinted at could force his lessers to confront dihydrogen monoxide in liquid form. The Bridge was sealed off, it’s temperature raised to the maximum of sixty degrees Centigrade (comfortably hot for the Lithoi) and the air-conditioning and dehumidifiers were turned full on.
It's only water. Well, to you and I. To the Lithoi it's liquid death.
Conrad Unsure Of Technical Reason For This
This was to have been another example of a robot starship capable of exploring out nearest star systems, namely the 'Pegasus Mk II'. For no good reason I can discern, the pictures aren't loading properly. Let's see if I can load any of them. Art!
I believe this shows the bow of Pegasus, with a fusion engine pointed along the axis of flight in order to manage deceleration when they approach the target star. At a guess I would say the big red 'sails' are for radiating off excess heat. Not sure where the mission payload sits. Art!
This looks like a comparison between the second stage of Daedalus (at top) and Pegasus, which is a real monster if those dimensions are the same for each ship. Perhaps those glowing 'fins' are the radiators? Though that begs the question what the red sails are for. Art!
Close-up of the Pegasus engines, which don't appear to be working, the better to avoid actinic blindness I guess. Sadly no blurb to explain any of this, pilgrims.
Finally -
Better end this blog for tomorrow being created today and get to work on the Sunday retrospective. Chin chin!
* Conrad not absolutely sure what a 'piker' is, bar it not being a compliment
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