Perhaps 'Invented' Is A Little Strong
'Inspired' is a tad insipid, though. Now, I don't expect you to be up-to-speed on the novels and short stories of Ol' Franny, who occupies prime place when it comes to arch-miserablist allegorical fiction of a century ago. Conrad has read several of his novels and short stories - "The Castle" springs to mind, and wasn't there a black and white film starring Anthony Perkins? Yes, there was, "The Trial". Art!
Director Orson Welles felt it was his best film
Don't go watching this and expect rainbows and fluffy bunnies, it's about as bleak and sinister as you can get. If you do watch it, then you will understand the term 'Kafkaesque'.
Ol' Franny's reputation was established posthumously, because he jitterbugged off this mortal coil one hundred years ago at age 40. He was <deep breath> a Jewish Czech from Prague, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time, who wrote in German when he could spare time from his full time legal work. He destroyed most of his work and what has been published is only around because his mate Max, the executor, refused to destroy the remaining 10% and had it published. Art!
"Franz's impression of Stan Laurel went down well at parties"
What bearing does this have on Harry Potter, wizards, Hogwarts, Muggles and the whole panjandrum that J K Rowling dreamt up? O I thought you'd never ask! Art!
Hogwarts, which has to be the worst-named educational institution ever, except for the Pigscrofula academy in far distant Orcistan. You can argue, quite convincingly, that it's a castle, which is a tad superficial, because it's not a definite article castle.
Right, let us dive into one of Ol' Franny's better-known short stories, "In The Penal Colony". Art!
This tale is narrated by the Traveller, who visits the penal colony of the title, which is where miscreants are charged, found guilty and punished, in that order, no snivelling nonsense about rights and legal defences here*.
The punishment is exacted by the machine you can see above, which uses needles and probes to etch the criminal's crime into their flesh, gradually getting deeper and deeper over a period of 24 hours, until they die. Bummer. Art!
Well now, what do we have here? None other than the sadistic bottomhole Professor Dolores Umbridge, who took an immediate and violent loathing to Ol' - actually Young - Harry.
What you see here is the 'Black Quill', which the victim has to write with, and they write out their offence, which in Harry's case was "I must not lie". The quill, which is wickedly sharp, inscribes the said offence on the victim's body, using their own blood as a substitute for ink, the wounds healing up almost totally afterwards. Where O where could Ol' Jay Kay have gotten this idea from, one wonders?
Umbridge uses the Black Quill to torment her victims, because you can't have young tweenagers being killed in a film if you want to avoid an 'R' rating, rather than killing them. Conrad, ever curious, wonders if a person might pass out from blood loss if they keep getting Quilled over time? What if they're a big fat coward like Conrad and faint at the first incision? What if they take the Black Quill and snap it into sixteen pieces before throwing it into the fire? So many questions! Art!
Here she is, getting her comeuppance, having been sent to Azkaban Prison in perpetuity after The Trial.
But hist! for there is yet more! Art?
No! Nothing to do with The Beatles. Perhaps if we got the book title in there to clarify matters. Art!
This story is about Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to discover that he's been transformed into a giant beetle or cockroach; the original German describes him as 'Monstrous vermin', which is a little vague and probably how Lyndon Baines Johnson felt about the Fab Four.
ANYWAY there you go, Gregor transformed. Of course - obviously! - an insect the size of a man is an impossibility, they'd suffocate in short order, but Ol' Franny was going for the banality of body horror, not biology.
Let us now jump tracks and bring in one of Harry Potter's less salubrious characters. Art!
The muck-raking 'journalist' with fewer morals and scruples than Tucker Carlson, who always gets the most salacious and tawdry gossip imaginable.
How does she do it?
SOILER ALERT!
She uses her 'Animagus' alter-ego, which is a beetle, to eavesdrop on other people's conversations undetected. The difference between her and Gregor is that she can choose to make the metamorphosis to and from beetle shape.
Just imagine, if her beetle animagus was crushed underfoot, or sprayed with poison, would that be construed as either manslaughter or murder? What if Hedwig gobbles her up for a snack? What if she attracted the amorous intentions of a male beetle? Enquiring minds want to know!
This beetle wants to be a paperback writer
Of course, I could be overthinking this .....
Getting Cranky
You may recall the Ruffian tanker 'Koala', which sank at the dockside in Ust-Luga a couple of days ago, much to their embarrassment. In fact, so much to their embarrassment that no photographs are being released of this event. It has been reported that there were several explosions in the engine room when it was due to debark, which are highly unlikely to be sabotage. Art!
On the other hand .....
Sal, of "What Is Going On With Shipping", whom is considerably better versed in these things than am I, said it may have been a crank-case explosion.
"What's one of those?" pondered Conrad. Art!
You see, a crankcase is one of the more vulnerable areas in an engine, thanks to the three requisites for a fire being present: heat, oxygen and fuel. Under normal circumstances, the cranking takes place as per normal and nothing catches fire. On the other hand, if the engine is poorly maintained, or Ruffian, there is a significant chance that a 'hot spot' will develop within the crankcase, usually where two metal surfaces come into contact where they ought not to. Art!
This hot spot will act upon the fuel particles and catabolyse them into much smaller particles, which will continue to accumulate as a fine mist inside the crankcase. These particles can then be ignited by the hot spot, which is still hot. What happens then is a violent explosion inside a confined space, causing potentially lethal spalling and fires. There is rather more to this which I'll omit for the sake of brevity, but you now see what may have happened in the enormous crankcases that marine engines possess.
Life At The Bottom
Yes, time for Round Five of Ol' Jezza's worst 10 films of 2024, and thank him for enduring this lot so we don't have to. Art!
"Folie A Deux"
His comments on this one are interesting, because Conrad hasn't seen the first one, which was a huge commercial success. Naturally this inspired the studio suits to do a sequel, instead of leaving the original as a solo effort. Jezza describes this one as a weird tap-dancing musical love story, which died at the box office, as well it might. Makes difference from a zero-budget generic slasher movie in these entries, though.
"The War Illustrated Edition 203 March 29th 1945"
If you're not up on your history of the Second Unpleasantness, just be advised that by this date it was obviously the end for the Third Reich, even as Herr Schickelgruber moved imaginary armies around on maps deep in his refuge bunker. Art!
This is the Teuton city of Cologne, which as you can plainly see has been devastated by relentless air attack, followed by ground fighting. There is a touch of gloasting in the narrative, implicitly recalling the cities of Warsaw, Den Haag, Belgrade, Coventry and the entire island of Malta, all subject to Teuton bombing. These two pictures, of the Cathedral and main railway station, show that reaping the hurricane tends to be a hideously destructive denouement.
Here's One I Made Earlier
Having got my hands on a couple of aubergines, it was time to look at the diabetic cookbook I've been working from of late, and see what there is that's now possible. Art!
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| Aubergine and red pepper salsa |
Very colourful. Also rather pungent. Knowing what I know now, I'd use only half a teaspoon of mam nuoc (fish sauce) as it has quite the - ah - 'bouquet'.
Finally -
Enjoying the first season of "Invinvible" and delighted to see that there are now three of them. Only problem is that each episode is a good 50 minutes long, so as I said previously, Your Humble Scribe is taking it in the way he does homework.
* This is a very bad thing! A very bad thing indeed! I do not condone it at all, not at all. Or at least not very much. Maybe a bit.
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