Because It's Massive
And I made notes about it earlier, so you are going to get the benefit, like (philia) it or not (phobia).
I would like to lead with another set of still from the 'Megalophobia' Shorts on Youtube, because they're creative and weird and there's every possibility you haven't seen them yet. Art!
Yes, it's good old Sirenhead again, that towering titan of - I'm not sure what, exactly, apart from the towering bit. This seems to be a trope that crops up on teh Interwebz as a kind of urban legend in pictures. One has to ask how it can see to get around, and it cannot eat victims thanks to a lack of mouth, so perhaps it's only function is to scare people? and squash those unable to get out of the way. Art!
Yes, the traditional giant gorilla, old King Kong. This shot is a blatant cheat, because the original was not three times taller than the Empire State Building. Still big enough to carry a puny human in one hand, though. Art!
Note Chrysler Building in background
A more realistic scale, if that's the right phrase. Ol' KK proved to be a trope with legs as he's reappeared numerous times in film since the Thirties, so it seems this megalophobia is salted with a fair degree of megalophilia. Art!
As we have proven in the past at BOOJUM! there is a sub-genre of cheap and nasty films, usually straight-to-DVD ones, that exploit sharks for thrills and chills. "The Meg" is not one of those as the budget was supposedly well north of $100 million and it made a tidy profit, which resulted in the much cheaper "The Meg 2", made on a far smaller budget that generated a lot more prof
ANYWAY there is no redeeming factor for the Megalodon in this film, it is simply a gigantic shark or killingand-eating-machine and the -phobia part of megalophobia is well to the fore here. Conrad blames "Jaws" because sharks are our friends. Art!
This is a scene from "Attack On Titan", which Your Humble Scribe hasn't seen and doesn't intend to, as it sounds very silly. "Giants eating puny humans" as a plot has all the potential to be a ten-minute animé at best. The manga artist and author, whom I cannot be bothered to name, has made a mountain - more megalophobia - out of a mere barrow. Art!
This is more like it! Meet 'Fleshlumpeater' from "The BFG", with puny human houses for scale. Never mind Titans, say hello to a real child-eating monster, whom you can tell is evillll thanks to the paucity of his clothing. The BFG wears proper clothes, you see, the origins of which are glossed over. Which you'd expect, really, in a children's animation because who wants to hear about stitching together a waistcoat big as a football pitch with a needle adapted from a sword bayonet? Exactly. Seven people. Not worth the traditional cel anima
ANYWAY AGAIN let's finish with another mega-, this time a megastructure that pretty much dwarfs all you've seen so far. Art!
The way to Starry Death
Yes, I nicked that from the Barf Of Avon's " - the way to dusty death" because stardust.
ANYWAY AGAIN AGAIN if you look at the supposedly 'incomplete' DS above, bear in mind that it's actually fully functional, which means whoever won the tender padded it out with an enormous amount of cosmetic work. I smell corruption on a positively Ruffian scale here. They might get sued about the name, too, because in no way is it a 'star', neither in scale nor being made out of a fusion process. I say 'might' because if their construction yard legal reps turn up with Darth Vader as a character witness, one imagines the case will die on the spot. Art!
No complaints about the 'Death' bit, though.
I cannot guarantee that we won't return to this theme again, I like it.
Reflections In A Golden Sky
There was a film that went by the name of "Reflections In A Golden Eye" which Conrad knows nothing about, save that the title lends itself well to mockery.
For Lo! we are back on the subject of the British army in Italy of the First Unpleasantness. Whilst getting back into this matter, allow me to put up an advert that serendipitously appeared on my feed. Art!
This, in 1915, was the border between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire, which is now the border between Italy and Slovenia. Whether this photograph is from the Italian or Slovenians side is immaterial; it's there to give you a sense of how the land lies and lay.
The British "Official History Military Operations Italy 1915 - 1919" tartly mentions "Neither the Italians nor Austrians were equipped with the up-to-date material used on the Western Front" and were lacking not only in super-heavy artillery but, for the Romans, medium artillery, too. FYI, 'super-heavy' seems to be calibres of over 200 m.m. and 'medium' of 6" or more. Art!
Here's a British 9.2" howitzer as used in France and Flanders, with the 'earth-box' affixed to the front to prevent it jumping off the ground when fired. There was precious little earth to manage this with in the mountains. Art!
This is a 9.2" dismantled for transport, without the team of horses/steam traction engine to draw it, and without a limber carrying the enormous shells. You can imagine the difficulty of moving this thing along a normal road, let alone a hairpin-heavy mountainside.
Another absence was that of the tank; utterly impracticable in the mountains and even if present on the Venetian plains, they would have been severely hampered by the innumerable rivers.
Gas was a thankful omission, apart from the use of it by the Teutons at Caporetto, and it would need a deep dive to see how truly efficacious it was, since the temperatures were so low*. Art!
Two methods of counter-battery work that were well-matured by this time on the Western Front in both British and French armies were sound-ranging and flash-spotting. Both completely unknown to the Romans and Austrians. This is a bit unfair, since the British poured in an immense amount of resources and time into developing the originally ineffective French sound-ranging and still took a couple of years to perfect it.
Hubris Says Hello!
Conrad has already gloasted about the repellent bottomhole Alex Jones getting his 'Infowars' website and studio bought by the satirical news website "The Onion". Another former acquaintance of the Orange Land Whale - he has no friends - is Rudy Giuliani, the disgraced former Mayor of New York. As a consequence of shilling for Pumpkinhead, he has now lost both his bar licences and will probably have to make ends meet by becoming a public speaker. Art!
Rudy has been stalling about turning over his physical assets, whining that he cannot afford to eat - the Litigation Diet, one feels - yet eventually handing over his collection of tacky watches, baseball memorabilia and an old Mercedes. He is now trying to hold onto one of his apartments, either the one in New York or the one in Florida.
Why did his lawyers fire him? Because he's trying to wriggle out of his legal obligations by fraud, is the easiest explanation, and, having both morals and a bar licence to retain, they have gotten rid of him as a client. He has now retained a FOURTH law firm, who seem to be in it for the publicity not their payment, which they will probably never see. Art!
Tee hee!Not his any longer
Talking Of Transport -
Rather than luxury Teuton cars, people on Twitter have been making claims that the Ruffians are so short of armoured vehicles, which they have been burning through at a rate of knots - about 537 - that they are using Ural trucks instead. Art!
Of course - obviously! - Conrad could not resist sticking his extra-long heavyweight cast iron oar in. Art!
Watch this space, people were claiming earlier this year that they'd seen GAZ trucks like this in service. Probably just misidentified poor-quality photographs. Probably. Almost certainly.
Finally -
I not only have a lamb joint to roast, there's two small pumpkins to bake as well!
* Simon Jones has done the deep-diving already, so we may revisit this.
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