No! We Are Not Talking About Eggs!
Although your average solid ovum does make a tasty addition to salads, if you can get through the peeling of shell first before slicing them up into protein parcels. Nor are we talking about the film "Hard Boiled", which was honestly described as 'One of the most violent, gun-crazy action flicks ever made'. Art!
That's Tequila, looking a bit formal as he's a plainclothes detective and normally slobs around in civvies. You should check out the warehouse gun battle, which is probably on Youtube, and then consider that John Woo, the director, doesn't storyboard his films. No. Unlike other modern film-makers, his storyboard is all in his head.
ANYWAY, enough of what this Intro's not about. What it is about are the various vernaculars as used by Raymond Chandler in his work, specifically "Farewell, My Lovely", because his detective novels (and short stories) positively embody that phrase 'hard boiled'. As defined by my "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable": 'One who is toughened by experience; a person with no illusions or sentimentalities'. Art!
Marlowe is not what you'd call a 'nice person'; he drinks far too much, is cynically horrid to any lady who takes a shine to him, and understands the baseness and corruption that underpins his Los Angeles. On the other hand, he does have a sense of honour (only slightly soiled), can take a beating and can certainly dish one out.
ANYWAY because Conrad is a dinosaur, when I read certain works I make notes concerning the content, which is why I've got a collection on "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign" that's 38 pages long. Colour me completist. Or compulsive. Perhaps both.
ANYWAY AGAIN I have several notes to try and comprehend. These are mentions that would have made perfect sense to readers at the time (1940) in South Canada when FML was published but can leave a modern reader in Perfidious Albion somewhat puzzled. So!
COIL SPRING: This is part of a bed that Marlowe dismantled, whilst incarcerated, and it has to be pretty hefty as he knocks a man bow-legged with it. Art!
That's a leaf spring to port, and a coil spring to starboard. I wonder if Ol' Ray meant the former instead of the latter?
CAROLE LOMBARD: An actress, as I recall. I think she'd recently gotten married to Clark Gable. Marlowe thinks his bed is fit for her. Okay, Phil, think away. Art!
BOULDER DAM: Interesting! This is what the Hoover Dam was called after construction in 1940, before reverting back to Hoover Dam in 1947. A touch that really places the story in it's timeline. Art!
Hoover Dam from the Lake Mead side
CATALINA ISLAND: I won't go into detail - O go on then if you insist. Marlowe, whilst still incarcerated in that cell, drinks what he thinks is a half-bottle of whisky (I did warn you about this), which turns out to be an emetic. He is violently sick, and informs a later listener that he nearly hit Catalina Island. This, in real life, is Santa Catalina Island. Art!
I'd never heard of it before FML. It now has a population of about four thousand people; I'll bet when Ol' Ray was writing this it had four hundred at best.
THORNDYKE AND HIS MAGNIFYING LENS: Say what? A little digging reveals that this refers to Doctor John Evelyn Thorndyke, a fictional detective along the lines of Sherlock Holmes, if more like the Doctor Watson character. Published between 1907 and 1942, so readers at the time would have been familiar. Now, I fear, completely unknown. Art!
HUSHAPHONE: Don't forget, the novel is set at the time when a phone was a huge instrument big as a breezeblock, with a giant revolving dial set into the front. Art!
"SOME PUNK TOOK IT FOR THE HIGH PILLOW": This utterly baffled me until I Googled it. "High Pillow" is slang for The Boss, or another person in high command. So a minion confessed to a crime in order that their chief gets off scot-free.
Here endeth your second lesson in How To Speak Hard-Boiled.
How Very Timely!
You ought to recall BECAUSE ONLY THAT WILL SAVE YOU FROM THE URANIUM MINES WHEN I TAKE OVER that I recently posted "Big Bother Is Botching You" -
BOOJUM!: Big Bother Is Botching You (comsatangel2002.blogspot.com)
- which was about the pitfalls of stupid AI going badly wrong, especially when paired with the innate incompetence of many Hom. Sap. What happens on the very same day? Art!
If you don't know, then the whole thing was caused by a security update to Crowdstrike's anti-virus program, which protects Microsoft Windows software. Way to go! If the site is down then it certainly can't be hit by hackers or phishers, can it? although this is probably not the way Microsoft imagined they'd be protected.
Conrad ponders and wonders if they did a sandbox version of this update? That being an entirely isolated test environment that does NOT impact the real world. I suspect not, because 1) that would cost money and 2) what could possibly go wrong?
Conrad further ponders if Crowdstrike have an active Disaster Recovery plan? One that anticipates a massive eff-up like this and mitigates the problem thanks to pre-planned backups and staff training. I suspect not, because 1) that would cost money and 2) what could possibly go wrong?
Conrad further predicts that three IT technicians on £18,000 per annum will be sacked as having caused the whole thing and management will move swiftly along. Yes, that's me being hard-boiled.
"City In The Sky"
Last entry for this bit of fan-fiction. You may be pleased at this news, or not, and in any case I'll be leaving any other fan-fic off the daily blog for a while.
A delicate flush embroidered
Ace’s cheek for mere seconds.
‘Not like that!’ she
insisted. ‘Everybody in New Eucla. And on the Arc.’ She noticed the Doctor’s wince. ‘What?
What!’
‘Just don’t call it
that. Don’t ask, just don’t!’ He changed direction and metre. ‘Now, do you want to face a severe challenge
to the whole planet?’
Ace pinched herself.
‘Prof, what did we just
defeat if not a challenge to the whole planet!’
He tapped a finger alongside
his nose, a gesture copied from the Fourth Doctor, who had a splendid nose to
practice this gesture with.
‘Given the timeframe, and
happenings, and chronology, I’ve just realised that we’ve materialised shortly
before an epochal event.’
It had come to him suddenly,
fleeing that deadly microbial infection deep in the bowels of the Lithoi
baseship. The population of Earth
divided into fractious colonies, depopulated overall, suffering an alien
occupation.
Ace looked at him with
genuine ignorance.
‘What do you mean, Prof?’
He turned and looked at her
with a level, cool, analytical gaze.
Once you had joined all the dots it was simple, and obvious.
‘The Dalek Invasion of
Earth.’
Ah, there's a cliff-hanger for you.
There Is A Very Rude Phrase -
Which can be summed up as "Eff Around and Find Out", meaning that actions have consequences, and the more serious the action, the more serious the consequence.
For instance. Did you realise that Hungary receives pipeline oil from Modern-day Mordor, and that said pipeline - you may be ahead of me here - crosses Ukraine? And that the Orban government haven't taken any measures in two and a half years to find a different delivery method? All the while being extremely hostile to Ukraine? And very pally with Ruffia? Art!
Conrad, because he is horrid and gloasts a lot, put up two Tweets in response:
"That high-pitched whining noise you can hear is the world's smallest chamber orchestra playing for you"
More succinctly -
"FAFOIL"
Hmmm looks like somebody didn't have a Disaster Recovery in place either. Notice that Orban's avoiding the spotlight about this issue, probably fearful of being tainted with bad news. Again, it may be why he's been globetrotting trying to bring about peace.
Tee hee!
Finally -
Great. The weather yesterday was boiling hot and sunny, whilst I was stuck working in my Sekrit Layr. That fnorping IT outage didn't affect me one jot. Today, Saturday, it's still hot yet also totally overcast. There is no justice.
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