NO! Read That Title PROPERLY
Is it an acronym? Does it have full stops between the letters? No! So, then, it is merely the word 'Shield' in upper-case, not what you fondly imagined it was. Don't forget, this is BOOJUM! where we contort language into interesting shapes on a daily basis.
So, I know this is what you were expecting. Art!
Conrad watched a couple of seasons and then gave up on it as it just seemed to be making it up as it went along. Clearly my input was not needed as it lasted for seven seasons, up until 2020. It might have had a rotating cast, or it might not. One of the more ludicrous villains was a chap with a bionic leg. Not two bionic legs, or bionic arms, just a single leg. Perhaps they didn't have the budget to provide two? Art!
His prosthetic allows him to leap tall buildings with a single bound, and - that seems to be it. He can't run at super-speed because that would destroy his real leg; imagine hitting the ground at 45 m.p.h. with a non-bionic limb and wondering why all your leg bones had broken.
ANYWAY that has, as per usual, little or nothing to do with "The Aeneid". If you don't recall correctly, this is the Roman poet Virgil's epic poem about Aeneas, and his fleet of Trojan survivors. Written about literally the year 0AD, the events described are emphatically mythical, abounding as they do with figures from Roman (and Greek) legend, such as Venus. Who, plot twist, is Aeneas' mother. Art!
Thank heavens for strategically-placed wisps of chiffon
We come to a part of the narrative where Aeneas and his fleet of refugees have finally made it to Italy, which at this point in history was a patchwork of competing states and cities. They fall in with Evander, aged king of Arcadia, who goes a bit overboard in praising Aeneas and his (probably by now somewhat ragged) flock. When it begins to look as if Aeneas is going to be involved in armed conflict alongside the Arcadians, Venus goes to her hubby Vulcan and asks him to supply Ol' Aeny with a full panoply of war. Frankly, this sounds like cheating to Conrad.
ANYWAY Virgil goes into detail about what this suite of military kit amounts to, which is an useful guide to personal equipment and arms in classical times. Art!
He lists: a 'fire-spurting helmet' which I think refers to fiery plumage rather than it being a flame-thrower; a sword; a 'huge unyielding breastplate' described in very flowery language (well he is a poet after all);a pair of greaves made of electrum (an alloy of gold and silver); a spear; and, above all, a shield. O what a shield!
I suspect Virgil was being paid by the word, and also looking to foment a little patronage, because he adds in a ton of references to contemporary Rome that were centuries ahead of time. Art!
This is the first design element he mentions; Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf.
Then you had the rape of the Sabine women, some unfortunate called Mettus being torn apart by four chariots, a dude called Porsenna blathering on about another dude named Tarquin (where do they get these names from!).
This geological feature is the Tarpeian Rock, which is right there on the shield. Then there's a long description of Gauls trying to storm the city of Rome. There was something about geese, too, that I didn't quite follow.
Then it was time for Tartarus, which, from the descriptions of the legions of the dead ambling around, scores Zero Stars in the Michelin Guide. Art!
From the sound of it, this is a slightly-scaled down representation of the battle of Actium, waged 31 BC and thus a good 650 years after Aeneas was around. This battle gets over a page of descriptive prose, and O! here's Caesar - presumably Julius - now riding into Rome in a triple triumph, now taking the humble protestations of those nations and people he has magisterially vanquished. This is the note Virgil ends on, a bit of flattery always being well-advised when dealing with Roman generals.
Do you see what I mean? This 'shield' would need to be ten feet square to accommodate all the scenes portrayed, especially Actium as it covers the whole eastern Mediterranean.
Poets. Good with language, not reality.
Art!
Roy's Toys
Our regular look at Mister Cross's dynamic box art, which you can purchase as fine art prints should the fancy so take you. Conrad hasn't looked at the prices, but is tempted thanks to the sheer animation present in some of these panels. Art!
The uncropped original. Note how Roy consistently uses angled views to portray motion and velocity, rather than a square-on aspect. Here you see the planes really shifting in the plane.
These, lest you be unaware, are Roman Savoia-Marchetti S70 bombers, as used by the Italian Regio Aeronatica. The ones you see here reflect real bombers from 252 Squadron, 104 Gruppo Autonomo Aero Silurante. These ones are attacking a British convoy in the Med, either with bombs or torpedoes. Art!
Boxed to be bought
The SM-79 was a good aircraft that had been outstanding pre-Second Unpleasantness thanks to being developed from a high-speed passenger liner. The crews nicknamed it "Gobbo Maledotto", which is shockingly un-PC for "Damned Hunchback" thanks to the distinct dorsal 'hump'.
A Weak Is A Long Time In Politics
Beware, we are very very mean to Trump in this blog, because he's an easy target who provides new content on a daily basis.
Go on, Conrad cannot resist poking malicious fun at the Farting Felon, because SUDDENLY things aren't looking too rosy for him. The Ear Factor has vanished (just like the injury) and instead he's being mocked for his age and infirmity. Art!
This is from the New York trial, and is the final result of several hour's worth of makeup, hairstyling and posing in front of a mirror to try and look tough.
More recently, Pumpkinhead seems to have let himself go a bit. Art!
No makeup and he wears a cap so he doesn't have to have five people preening over his bald patch for ninety minutes. Surprise! he won't debate Kamala Harris, because he'd need ninety days prep to manage a debate with a person who used to be an attorney general. Oddly enough, Elong Tusk has abruptly backed off sponsoring Pimpkinhead to the value of $225 million, perhaps because he fears an elderly, morbidly obese geriatric with dementia - well, it's not a fruitful investment, is it? Art!
It was all going to well when Donald Judas Trump was wearing a tea-bag as fashion accessory, and before salacious rumours about Mister Ewok began to circulate, which are far too disgusting to repeat here. Jake Broe, Youtuber extraordinaire, has been claiming that DJ Tango being in the race for Prez is eldster abuse, because he's - you may be ahead of me here - old, old, old.
The race for Prez - what a popcorn scoffing spectacle it's turning out to be!
Verisimilitude, Dude
Dog Buns! I came across a splendidly anachronistic picture this morning, of the 'Millenium Falcon' sitting on a runway, flanked by a couple of passenger jets. Unclear if it was done via models or Photoshop, but it was a pretty cool picture.
Of course - obviously! - when I come to look for it again, it is undetectable. I wanted to post it as an example of what "Starry Warz" (sp?) got right with it's production design, in that it looked grungy, hard-worked and realistic, utterly unlike the polished pristine primping preen-ness of other films. Art!
Battered and believable, nicht wahr?
We may come back to this, it seems to have legs.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS!
I was floating around the internet, looking for a potential short pictorial to tie things up here, and what did I see?
NO! not the 'Millenium Falcon'. An hideously unflattering picture of Pumpkinhead. Art!
Wow, he's got jowls like a bulldog! and not in a good way. I bet his arteries look like a tubular fatberg.
Which is very probably not a phrase you ever expected to hear today.
Chin chin!
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