Theme Scheme!

This, Gentle Reader, Is Why Taking Edna For A Trot Is Fruitful

For I have little to cogitate upon, apart from the house at number 40-whatever being gutted and rebuilt, except what to contort my thoughts upon the page into to produce another Intro.

     Thus we have The Critical Drinker, whom we have mentioned in these hollowed pages previously.  Art!

     

Drinker's Chasers - Concord Loses $100 Million, Where Was The Modern Audience?

     You know Conrad, always interested in hearing about a big-budget Hollywood disaster - but when I put "Concord" into "Box Office Mojo" nothing came up, forcing me to go back and listen to the vlog, where it all became clear.

     'Concord' isn't a film, it's a computer game, from Sony.  Enlightenment dawned.

     According to the vlog, it was in development for 8 years and involved potentially thousands of people in it's creation.  It was - yes past tense- a First Person Shooter game, meant to be played online, and it was -

     For less than two weeks.  Art!

     That's one of the characters, whose game specs seem to be able to eat a five course meal five times over.  One of the statistics TCD came out with was 'Peak Player Number 697' and since I know nothing of game stats I checked another game they mentioned, 'Overwatch', where 'Peak Player Number was just shy of 59.

     59 THOUSAND.

     If I've accidentally whetted your appetite for 'Concord' then you are all out of luck, because Sony have pulled it completely and it's now officially dead.  Predictably, TCD and his coterie blame the game's 'wokeness' being the reason nobody wanted to play it, and do you know what?  Unlike 'The Acolyte' there's no social media campaign to bring 'Concord' back, because it seems it was made for an audience that doesn't exist.  Imagine being one of the developers at Sony, working on this resource-hog for 8 years, being blithely unaware of how bad your end product is going to be.  Or, what's worse, being blithely aware.

     Expect a few seniors at Sony deciding that they want to 'spend more time with their family' by the end of this quarter.

Concord, Massachusets

I must now swallow my bile and reluctantly admit that the American Revolution <hack spit> ever happened, because one of the opening battles of the Treacherous Backstab happened to be fought at Concord.  Which might have been better-named as 'Discord'.  Art!

 
     The British, in the interests of brotherly love and harmony, had intended to impound or destroy military kit that the Surly Insurrectionists had stockpiled at Concord, but were forestalled by the assembled militia.  If you ever hear the name 'Paul Revere' bandied about, 'twas he who provided warning that the redcoats were on their way.  Forewarned, locals who considered Massachusetts as their own private territory, attacked a British party at Concord.  Said party, outnumbered 400 to 100, wisely withdrew, which has ever after been lauded about by the Americans as an epic engagement to rival Stalingrad or 73 Easting.

Concorde

Yes, that extra 'e' makes all the difference, because here we're talking about the supersonic passenger jet whose passing was in fire and tragedy.

     Not forgetting that, I would like to put up a celebratory picture of the delta dagger, as a two-fingered salute to both the Sinisters and any Treacherous Backstabbers now reading.  Art!

Huge and loud

     One of the more innovative things about Connie was her nose, which was variable-geometry, being adjusted for different speeds.  Art!

     Allow me to add in a couple of stills from one of the best endings to an advert ever made.  Art!

Connie hauling her bottom

     There she is, going like a shot off a shiny shovel.  

Starring "Collins Concise Dictionary"

Because we all know Conrad cannot leave a word alone until he knows where it came from and how and when, and all the better if it proves to be from Indonesia or Persia instead of the usual Hellenic or Latin culprits.

     Thus 'Concord': "1)  Agreement or harmony; 2) A treaty establishing peaceful relations between nations; 3) Another word for 'Agreement'."

     Ultimately derived, via Old French, from Latin <hack spit>.  Well, you can't have everything.  I think we're all in concord about that, aren't we?

Conrad Is Irked!

It's about time to let off stream about those Dog Buns! Codeword compilers because they keep stoking my Frothing Nitric Ire.  Yes, 'stream', because there's a river of rancour running rampant here.

CRUCIATE: No, I'll bet you've never heard of it, either.  Conrad is pretty sure is means 'Shaped like a cross' and has a Latin root.  Allow me to check my CCD - hmmm no entry.  Art!

     Close.  Apparently it's the name for a pair of ligaments that control your knee's movement WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE DOCTORS NOW?

YAHOO: Aha!  There is an entry for this: "A crude, brutish or obscenely coarse person", taken from "Gulliver's Travels" where the ambulatory bags of vice are known as 'Yahoos'.

     Yes yes yes, it may have been wildly popular in the 18th Century, but what century are we in NOW?  Art!

     Yahoos performing their most complex task, that is, being beasts of burden, towing a Houyhnhnhm.

SIERRA: From the Spanish for 'saw', that being how a range of mountains with jagged peaks are described.

     NOT IN THIS SCEPTRED ISLE!

     Bah.  Art!

     I'm too annoyed to come up with a witty caption.  In fact I'll just sit here and mash the Remote Nuclear Detonator a couple of hundred times to make me feel better.

Our Journey With Bernie

How far had we gotten to date?  I cannot remember if we left on Card 9 or 10 of his 1993 'Masters Of The Macabre' set.  Better check the list.

     Ah, so we left on #9 "Late Caller".  Art

     I think matey there might be feeling that his pointy stick is a little inadequate.  He's also turned up too early, because the time to bate a vampire is after the sun has risen, since the ultra-violet radiation is flesh-meltingly deadly to them.  Don't tell me, no Plan B?  A silver-bladed knife?  Revolver loaded with silver bullets?  Lifebuoy manpack flame-thrower?  Hopefully the slavering undead leech now has a cruciate piece of silver residing in it's coffin?

A Congruence Of Sorts

One of the Ukrainians I follow on Twitter <flips the bird at Elong Tusk> is Natalka, whom has just posted a translation of statistical data from Modern-day Mordor, from Rosstat, who publish statistical data.  Or, they publish what Putinpot the Bloaty Gas Tout will allow.  Anything that makes him look bad will get redacted.

     In outline only, because I will be coming back to this, the birth rate in Ruffia has fallen in 2024 to it's lowest in 30 years.

     Ooopsie.  This demographic disaster is said to keep the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler awake at nights, alongside fears that his serfs might want to test what kind of stretch factor his neck has.  Art!

     This here is Heinrich Himmler, who was not a big fan of his chin.  Imagine that, one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich and unable to take it on the

     ANYWAY why is he here?  Well, Ol' Heinie was also interested in demographics, and he wanted his SS troops to procreate and bring numerous Aryan children into the world, all the better to settle the conquered lands.  I leave it to your imagination what happened to the Conquered.

     So, SS men had to have HH's permission to marry, and if HH said you were in the SS, you were in the SS, no two ways about it.  Thanks to his wanting to have swarms of Aryan children knocking about underfoot, he would immediately refuse permission to marry if the wife-to-be was too old to bear children.  In other cases, he would insist on the lady wife-to-be prove her fecundity by getting pregnant before he gave marriage permission.

     You may thus understand that he was pretty much persona non grata with the church in Germany.

     I wonder if Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks has a suicide pill hidden in a tooth, as HH did?