Okay, I Hope To Entwine Art And Life Here
'Art' the general concept, not our resident Neanderthal, whom we employ since he works for coal and the occasional nuclear fuel rod.
Right, I shall be working in references to "Heinrich Himmler" by Peter Longenrich, which I have been treating as a piece of homework, to be consumed 20 pages per day. I shall also be working in references to "Raiders Of The Lost Ark", and guess which is going to feature in this Intro's first picture? Art!
Not much competition there. Sorry, Heinie.
On a side note, Conrad would like to put forward how he would have tackled the thorny problem of getting that gold statuette out of the cavern. Art!
The first step would be to have a verrrrry long rope, which would have been FIRMLY tied around the auric idol. This would have been taken all the way outside, then run around a tree for extra leverage, and then pulled with all the force all three of the initial exploring trio can manage. Logical, safe and rather dull stuff on screen. Art!
In the film the wintry mountain scenes are supposedly set in Nepal, which as you can see is next door to Tibet. Why is this significant? Because Ol' Heinie was fascinated with the idea of an ancient civilisation of highly-advanced status living there, possessing Arcane Knowledge That Modern Man Ought Not To Have. You know, stuff like jet aircraft, the internet and Apollo. In his interpretation this ancient Tibetan culture was, of course - obviously! - from Atlantis, and had then spread across the globe from Tibet, meaning that Nepal would have been their first port of call. Art!
Spot the matte lines
HH also had a bee in his bonnet about the Japanese samurai, whom he considered to be almost worthy, and that his own SS ought to emulate them, because they embodied ancient Teuton mores and beliefs.
Let us now mock famous men, because we're going into a few of Heinie's other and more - ah - 'eccentric' beliefs. When looking at these topics, don't forget that HH was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, and not someone you could either ignore or slight without putting yourself in mortal peril, because he was also Head Of Police, and slinging a person into the Dachau concentration camp was the work of seconds for him. Art!
Wotan
One of HH's organisations was the 'Ahnenerbe' or 'Ancestral Heritage', which had many branches, and which he could command without bothering whether they thought his ideas were lunacy let out of the bottle, or cold hard common sense (HINT: the former). Thus he ordered the head of the Ahnenerbe to compile lists where a god carried or threw a thunderbolt, appeared in a flash of lightning or threw a hammer across the skies. Art!
Why so? Well, because HH believed - a dangerous concept - that these myths and legends referred to an actual weapon, utilising electricity, that had been wielded by Germanic races long gone, and whose secrets had been lost for millennia.
No, this is not how science, technology nor history work, but are you going to argue your way into Dachau? Art!
Yes, he ensured that the Ahnenerbe had a 'Department for Dowsing', because you will always find water if you drill deeply enough. 825 miles is a good rule of thumb. Plus, if an utter bafune is willing to pay you silly money for silly service, it would be rude not to take it.
Back to ROTLA, because the Ahnenerbe were also greedy acquisitive little goblins on an industrial scale, making Jones look like a lightweight. He might poach the Cross Of Coronado - Art!
Small potatoes
- whilst they looted whole libraries. Twice. Longerich dignifies this with the title 'robust acquisitions policy', which the rest of us would call 'stealing'.
The bit in ROTLA that I would jib at is that Herr Schickelgruber wanted the Ark of the Coventant to make the Wehrmacht invincible, because he was definitely not into the occult or supernatural. Himmler had to be verrrrry wary of his occult activities, because if Der Fuhrer got wind of them, they'd have been explicitly banned.
There is also the bit where Indy gets hold of a 1947 anti-tank weapon in 1936, whic
ANYWAY I think that's enough for this Intro. You're welcome.
I think it's an RPG-5
Kyle's Isles
Once again we re-set with the charmingly bucolic selection of South Canadian islands from Kyle "Geography King". No strife or conflict involved. Art!
This eyot is in the Mississippi River, and the 'IL' stands for 'Illinois', not how Kyle felt in the morning after his binge. For your information, it is pronounced 'Show-tow'. Art!
Chouteau Island is on the dividing line between Missouri and Illinois, and was originally a much smaller island. Construction work creating a canal to avoid low tide-level rocks meant the spoil and new currents enlarged the original island to it's now seven square miles. There is no habitation there thanks to the risk of flooding. Art!
Murray Leinster
Not a name any of you snappers of whip will be familiar with, firstly because he's long dead, and secondly because his glory days were waaaaay back in the decades up to the Sixties. Art!
ML was a pen-name for William Jenkins, who was Work Ethic made flesh. He wrote genre novels in romance, Western, horror and sci-fi, and short stories to the number of about 1,500. He made his first story sale in 1916 and continued for another fifty years, with a few stories being influential rather than hitting a word count to pay the rent. The two words he needed to look up in a dictionary were 'Writer's' and 'Block'. Art!
Mister Jenkins was also an inventor, and he invented the 'Front Projection Process' in 1955, which is apparently seen in "Silent Running" as pictured above.
Conrad instantly noticed the typo 'forrest' as there's no gump involved.
Which reminds me, I've not watched "Silent Running" since it was on the BBC decades ago, might have to look it up again.
Allow Me
As you should surely know by now, Conrad cordially detests all sports ESPECIALLY the ballfoot game, which is going to slink into the headlines soon.
There are exceptions. The Paralympics is one event I can get behind, because it showcases human spirit rising above petty physical problems. Art!
More power to their elbows. All the more for being a positive and uplifting headline on a weekend that has seen some of the most atrocious, barbarous and outright horrible news imaginable. No, not going into details. Google at your own risk.
Conrad Incorrect
It happens.
You may be aware that I've been playing Athlete's "Tourist" a lot lately, both in the car en route to Darling Daughter's swanky new pad, via Youtube and my standalone DVD player. Art!
They never officially broke up, having been 'on hiatus' for the past 25 years, with no ongoing reunions or new releases mentioned.
HOWEVER they did reform for a reunion tour, back in 2013, which I had overlooked, so it's possible that they didn't split apart in a shower of rancour and bile.
Looking at their album sales, it's also possible that they saw a declining future and decided to get out whilst things were still good, which is sound artistic sense - 'Always leave them wanting more'.
I would still have liked another epic like "Yesterday Threw Everything At Me", though.
Better go check on the laundry. My rock-n-roll lifestyle, hmmmm?
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