The Seven-Year Hitch

NO!

Conrad is pretty certain that you have wilfully misinterpreted this title in one of two ways, both well wide of the mark.  Perhaps even three ways.

     Okay, first of all - let me go put a dose of tonic water into my glass of diced lime and lemon to let it steep a while - first of all this is not a typo or reference to that famous film "The Seven Year Itch".  Art!

     That shot of Mazza with her skirts all a-flutter above the grating is a bit too well-known, so we'll go with this one.  She ought to be careful, too.  That's a heavy champagne bottle and it's only being held with one hand, she might drop it.

     ANYWAY the title is not a reference to the assertion that married couples tend to get dis-satisfied, flighty, look outside their marriage and variously cavort, seven years after getting hitched.  NO!  That's not the 'Hitch" of the title.  The other way you might have misinterpreted my musings is as a reference to Alfred Hitchcock, universally known as 'Hitch' in the film business.  Art!

     Yes, I thought that would catch your attention, you pervy letches.  It's actually very sedate by modern standards, being from 1964.  I used this as an example because "Marnie" is close to Marilyn, who was in the running for the female lead.  I say 'in the running' when she would actually have been last in a field of 100, because Hitch didn't tolerate slackness on set, and Mazza was Slackness Personified.

     Also, it seems that Hitch sabotaged Tippi Hedren's career by holding her to a seven-year contract when she wanted to do other films.  I just found this out.  Isn't serendipity wonderful?  Art!

     I dimly recalled this title.  No idea what it's about, it has the scent of a rom-com, so no danger of us ever reviewing it here on BOOJUM!

     Of course - obviously! - none of this is anything to do with what I really intended to discuss, which is "The Aeneid".  This is an epic poem by the Roman poet Virgil - more formally Publius Vergilius Maro - which David West has very considerately translated as prose, since Conrad avoids poetry if at all possible.  Art!

     Since you are doubtless unfamiliar with the tale, Aeneas is one of the leaders of those Trojans who survived the fall of Troy, who set sail for foreign shores with a small fleet of ships.

    The epic works on two levels: firstly that of the mortal Aeneas, his son Acanius and all his followers in the flotilla of survivors; secondly, the gods, who are all carrying on various plots and stratagems, fighting by proxy between each other and via their human subjects.  Art!

     As an example and to show how the divines drive the plot, this is Juno.  She was vividly aware of a prophecy that her very favouritest city, Carthage, would one day be overthrown by 'the blood of Troy', which would flourish and found an empire 'proud in war.'  Thus, she had it in for Aeneas and his mates from the get-go, and an angry, vengeful Juno on your bottom was truly an entity to fear.  She seems capable of bearing a grudge for millennia and have it be as fresh at the end as the start.  Art!

     This is Aeolus, the God Of Winds And Storms, who kept them chained up like guard dogs in a vast underground cavern, lest they cause unmitigated havoc on the mortal world.  Juno, showing she knew how to be politic, bribed him - there's no other word for it - with Deipoea, the very fairest of fourteen nymphs, if he would whip up  a quick hurricane in the Med.  Art!

     

     That's as much of Dez as I dare show.  Those water nymphs have trouble keeping their clothes on, I can tell you.

     ANYWAY to cut 28 pages short, Aeneas and his shipmates are stranded in Libya, where they are very kindly received by Dido, the Queen of Carthage.

     This is where the 'Seven year hitch' comes in, because she states "- this is the seventh summer that has carried you as a wanderer over every land and sea".

      Cue noise of stylus skating scratchily over the LP grooves.  Say what?  Seven years?  Art!

     That's Troy dead centre.  Art!

     That's Carthage dead centre.  Art!

     Ignore the arrows indicating travel away from Carthage.  It took SEVEN YEARS to get from Troy to Libya?  What did they do on the way?  Did they go backwards?  No wind or oars?  Egad!

     There are another 300 pages to go so we may find out further and if we do don't doubt that the explanation will feature here, because you deserve to know.

     Wowsers, that went on longer than I expected.

It's All Kicking Off In Ruffia

The South Canadians have been tightening sanctions until the pips squeak this week, and there is now panic and confusion in Modern-Day Mordor, because trading in Euros and Dollars has been suspended.  There have been long queues in Barad-Dur and Minas Morgul as the hapless inhabitants try to get money out of exchanges.  Art!

    The banks have simply shut down their websites to stop people electronically transferring funds, to try avoiding a run.  It will be interesting to see how the hordes react, because nothing provokes a populace more than having all it's money stolen.

     The Moscow Stock Exchange was hit spectacularly hard.  Art!

     Conrad is no economist but that doesn't look good.

     Bring on the buckets of popcorn!

Bathos Takes A Bath

More cocking a snook at Ruffia, I'm afraid.  By now you may have heard the hysterical nonsense being spouted by the wilfully ignorant on social media about the 'Ruffian warships' and the 'Ruffian navy' and the 'Ruffian naval group' either loitering in the Atlantic or docked in Havana.

     Thanks to 'Paul's House' on Twitter for posting a clarification picture of one of the Ruffian 'warships' that people are soiling their underwear about.  Art!

     Yes, it's a tug.  Not even an armed tug, just an unnglamourous everyday marine shunting-engine.  This is what people are scared of <shakes head>.

"City In The Sky"

There is treachery and bloodshed afoot, more treachery than the Lithoi realise.

     An incredibly short series of high-pitched zaps! came as stray laser bolts zipped around the Commissary, including a brief and frightening tug at the Doctor’s back.  The sounds ended in a resounding explosion, followed by faint pattering.  After that came a quiet, broken only by muted sizzling.  From his position the Doctor could only guess what had happened – Tec’s frantic attack had caused the guards to fire before they had reached a safe firing point, and in desperate self-preservation rather than cool calculation.  So high-energy laser bolts had gone darting around the Commissary.

     Art felt like a dead weight on his back, so the Timelord rolled to one side, feeling and hearing the alien slump off him. 

     With an hideous irony, the cooking smells in the Commissary level now included roasted Lithoi.  Art had been hit lower-torso by a partially-defocussed laser bolt that had almost burnt him in two.  If the Doctor had not fallen forward, he would have been literally cut off at the knees.  Across the echoing chamber, at least a dozen aliens were dead or mutilated by the errant laser barrage.  Disgusting smokes and stinks chased each other across the floor, interspersed with a strange, pleasant and familiar one: baked bread.

     Not sure why the evillll alien lizards are cooking bread.  Perhaps all alien cultures have the equivalent of a nutty bloomer?

Starship "Firefly"

No!  Not that 'Firefly', this 'Firefly'.  Art!

     Gallery illustrations courtesy the "Interstellar Research Centre".  No explanatory blurb so Your Humble Scribe is unsure what's going on here.  Design One looks like a straightforward fusion/fission-engined spaceship, whilst Design Two looks like a cross between the Icarus 'Endeavour' and a ramscoop.  Let me dig a little further.

     I found confirmation that Design One is the right 'Firefly'.  This probe uses a 'Z-pinch fusion engine', whatever that is, to accelerate the 22,500 ton probe up to 4.7% c, with a travel time of 100 years.  Destination Alpha Centauri.  This probe would be able to decelerate to 0 and maintain it's position in the Centauri system for as long as needed, sending information back to Earth.

     No idea about Design Two; I think it's there by accident.  Art!

Corroboration!

Finally -

This blog is for Saturday and I've completed it as of Thursday evening.  Go me.