The LoliTaming Of The Shrew

There's A Convoluted Title For You

It is, of course - obviously! - a portmanteau version and blending of "Lolita" and "The Taming Of The Shrew", because last night I was pondering, and also wondering, about how Ol' Bill (Shakespeare, don't you know) didn't stick with one particular geographical setting or time period.  Instead he hopped around in terms of subject matter and historical dates and where in the world his tales were set.  Eclectic is probably the word I'm looking for.  Art!

     So, too, was Ol' Stan (Kubrick, doncha know), because he didn't half bounce around in terms of subject matter as well.  Art!

I had no idea it existed

     But I'll take it where I can get it.  I remember seeing a potted version with illustrations, so I can attest that it's the hilarious story of a vile young woman getting her comeuppance at the hands of a crafty suitor.  If Ol' Billy wrote it today he'd probably be doing a 10-stretch for all sorts of horribly un-PC crimes.

     Let's take a look at a play of The Barf Of Avon's that I know well: "MacBeth", thank you very much English 'O' Level.  It's set in Scotland, back when it was still an independent kingdom, waaaay back in the eleventh century, so a good five hundred years before Ol' Bill's time.  Art!

     There's a line in there that constitutes an anachronism: "As cannons o'ercharged with double cracks" because the kind of cannon we're talking about was a good brace of centuries away from being invented.  In the Italian wars o

     ANYWAY The Scottish Play involves murder and skullduggery and politics and war, all the favourite activities of the Scots when they weren't waging war against the English.

     Now, take "Hamlet" THE PLAY NOT THE CIGAR and where is this set?  Why, in mainland Europe, namely Denmark, which would be quite an exotic locale back in the late sixteenth century.  Art!

     Yes yes yes, we do jump around a bit here.  This is Ol' Stan's first proper film, a noir about a robbery that goes horribly wrong with double-cross upon treachery and heaps of dead bodies.  Remember that as a baseline.  For Your Information, it was filmed on location in Los Angeles.  

     Ol' Stan's next film was, again, in black and white.  That's about the only connection it has with it's predecessor, as it was set in the First Unpleasantness and featured the French army making an unsuccessful attack, with fearsome  following consequences.  Art!

     Incidentally, the nation of France did NOT like this film, not one little bit.  It got banned for years.  Also, don't be fooled by trailers that feature extensive battle scenes, most of the film is the aftermath, not the math.  If that's what it's called?  Art!
     

Here we have his next film, which is both in colour and many millennia removed from Los Angeles.  Set during a slaves revolt against the Roman empire, there's not a gat to be seen.  There are some pretty cool flaming logs, mind.  Art?

CAUTION! Do not try at home

     Ol' Shakeyshaft was rather proscribed by what you could perform on a theatrical stage, which certainly never extended to work like the above.  He did dabble in the era of Roman imperialism, witness both "Julius Caesar" and "Anthony and Cleopatra".  No, I can't be bothered to go into their plots, that's boring, have a picture instead.  Art!

     I bet the Barb Of Avon never saw a play that cast a whole Roman army on stage; the budget probably stretched to three soldiers and a centurion.

No, Art, no.  Just no.

     You can't say Shakey didn't explore the roots of Western civilisation, because O! here's "Timon of Athens" and "Pericles, Prince of Tyre".  Tyre, you ought to recall, is that Phoenician city-state on an island just off the coast of modern Lebanon.  Nothing to do with wheels.  Shakey nicked the name 'Pericles' from the Athenian statesman who governed that polis during the start of the Peloponnesian War.   Art!

     One of the touchstones of serious science fiction.  Still looks good sixty years later.

     "Ah, but!" I hear you quibble.  "The Bard of Avon never tackled sci-fi, did he?  Gotcha there!"

     Well no you don't, actually, because "The Tempest" is the closest that the sixteenth century would ever get to sci-fi, being all about magic, don't you know.  Besides which, it also forms the backbone for "Forbidden Planet" WHICH YOU OUGHT TO KNOW BY NOW.

     Just to continue with Ol' Bill's eclectic approach, let me prod Art awake.

     What and where is this?  Verona, Italy.  It's in the province of Veneto in the north of the peninsula, and guess what, Ol' Shakey wrote the play "Two Gentlemen Of Verona" which was set there (probably, I can't be bothered to read it).  Which is pretty far afield from Stratford.

     Okay, I think that's enough of eclecticism.  Shakey Bill did have an edge over Ol' Stan in that he was able to churn out reams of plays, because Stan The Man was a perfectionist.  "Good enough" wasn't good enough for him.

When Blogger Behaved Itself

Mostly.  Your Humble Scribe does sometimes fulminate about how the traffic tracking algorithm on Blogger goes berzerk and randomly adds in thousands of visitors who don't really exist.  Flattering and frustrating at the same time.  Art!

     Last month's figures would have raised both my eyebrows at this time last year.  In July 2024 I think that 5,719 total is realistic, thanks to me posting on Twitter far more often daily than I ever used to.  Art!

     Done as a Snip not a copy-and-paste because that mucks up page formatting.  You can see that Conrad's Tweets may be boosting his Profile and thus Blogger visits.

     Or, it could all be in my head.

More Starships

A few of the models put forward by the "Interstellar Research Centre" have been for crewed vessels, not the unmanned robotic probes as originally dreamt of by Project Daedalus fifty years ago.  This one is a bit of an oddity.  Art!

     The lower picture shows the 'Pilgrim Observer' with everything stowed, whereas the upper picture shows everything deployed.  It's described elsewhere as a spacestation/spaceship, combining both roles in a single vehicle.  Art!

     

     You may be wondering what 'NERVA' stands for.  "Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application", it being a hypothetical nuclear engine as proposed by NASA.  I don't think any other of these spaceships have been inspired by a scale model.  Art!

     One presumes the 'shroud' is kept in place during transit to provide protection and shielding against the interstellar medium, and then removed when the PO arrives at destination and goes into a geostationary orbit.  There are no details on mass for this puppy, only a mention that it's 30 metres long when under way, and 45 metres across when the arms are deployed.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor and Orskan, the renegade Lithoi, are squirrelling themselves away in remote corners of the alien's baseship, seeking to discomfit them.  A lot.

He and Orskan had played a tricky game of hide-and-seek amongst the laboratories, workshops, storerooms and other arcana of the Physics level.  What the Doctor wanted was a laser or cutting tool that he could use to expose the baseship’s inner workings, getting into the belly of the beast in a very literal sense and causing major systems failure.

     So far – nothing.  There had been a couple of promising candidates, but both the Pulsed Electron Laser and the Gamma Precision Cutting Beam had been in busy laboratories with too many aliens to risk a theft.  Then, too, they’d had to dodge search teams of normal Lithoi, not difficult in itself but again prejudicial to finding dangerous things that went “zap”.

     Sealed within the Physics level, neither Orskan nor the Doctor saw or felt the gentle settling of half a thousand tonnes of water over the base-ship, but those frantic aliens manning screens on the Bridge did.  They panicked until an absence of alarms told them that the ship, able after all to retain it’s integrity during interstellar travel, had shrugged off the water like an umbrella – a device they would only have been aware of thanks to human fashion and the Doctor.

     Beware brolly-wielding bonhomiec alien humanoids, is what I say.

Today I Learned

Your Humble Scribe was pimping BOOJUM! and I included the term 'Red Herring', without knowing exactly where the term comes from and why.

     Obviously this had to be remedied!  Art?

     Enter my "Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable".  They informed that one way to throw foxhounds off a scent was to drag a smoked herring (which was roseate in hue) across the trail, which would immediately put the hounds off the scent.  Hence it has become an aphorism for misdirection and deceitfulness on the part of authors.  Especially Dorothy L. Sayers.

Finally -

Planning to try and make Avocado Coconut Ice Cream this evening, wish me luck.  I need to substitute Canderel for 50% of the sugar, and add a couple of teaspons of vodka to prevent it becoming a single giant un-scoopable block akin to granite.