Buckle Up, This Is Seat-Of-The-Pants Stuff
Or at least the preamble will be. Hopefully you recognise the famous scene we here at BOOJUM! are spoofing, after the slave's revolt is crushed and the Romans are looking for the person who caused them all the trouble and bother (to understate wildly). Art!
 |
| "I'm Spartacus!" |
| "I'm Spartacus!" |
| "I'm Spartacus!" |
However - that word already! - what I wanted to focus on was not the epic pronunciation scene (that being the opposite of a denunciation, I hope) but a much lower-key and more intimate one, restored from the rather prim 1960 version, where Crassus is making an analogy to his slave, Antoninus. Art!
YES YES YES we'll get to the title in good time, be patient, it's a virtue.
Where were we?
O yes, the bathing scene, where Crassus makes an analogy about whether one prefers to eat snails or oysters -
Here an aside. Yes, already! When Conrad worked on the Castlefield dig, there was a layer of oyster shells across the whole site six inches deep, left there from Victorian times. Why so? Because oysters were the staple food of the working class and poor. Art!
Yes, the people with little money. They scoffed through at least 100 million oysters per year, which is why so deep a shell strata.
ANYWAY I thought that bathing scene would serve as an analogy, because today's Intro is going to scratch the surface of that concept known as 'Alternate Reality'. So, what if Spartacus had not been defeated in that final battle? Well, normally the second-order counterfactuals would come swarming in like a flock of crows, ensuring that even if the slaves won that battle, they'd lose the next one, or the one after that.
Today, though, we're going to use our patented crow-repellent, because if those pesky SOCs don't take effect, why then we get a new time-track and an alternate reality is generated. Art!
I throw this television series in here because it was all about travel between alternate realities, with a bit of hokey MacGuffinism to explain why they couldn't stay there for more than four days. Dunno why they didn't just use the Law Of Unreturned Library Books, that transcends all of time and space. Conrad, to his surprise, discovered that it ran for five seasons, so somebody out there liked it. One imagines the studio did, too, because you can have subtle (for which read 'cheap') variations on their normal sets and Hay Pesto! an alternate reality. Art!
This is probably one of the most common tropes in AR: where Nazi Germany won the Second Unpleasantness, for whatever reason, and believe me there are an infinite number of very minor points and changes that people exploit in their narratives to have Herr Schickelgruber victorious. That film above is a shoestring affair that took years and years to make, but is well worth watching to see how a micro-budget can be used effectively. Conrad cannot help chiding the DVD production company because the film is set in 1944 and the Teutons had given up using the 'Fraktur' script because it had too much Jewishness about it. Just so we're clear.
Here's one I prepared earlier. Art!
This is about a perilous laboratory experiment that creates a 'doorway' within the mind of test subjects, which is so utterly alien that it is fatal in all but one case. And the survivor of that case is then able to travel at will between two different realities, which - but that would be telling. Conrad remembers reading it as a much smaller version of himself and is now feeling intrigued enough to wonder if it might be purchased via Abebooks at a reasonable price, bec
ANYWAY back to AR. Just out of interest, I had a quick peek in my 'The Visual Encyclopaedia Of Science Fiction' and yes, they have a long and scholarly entry on it, including this: "If It Had Happened Otherwise". Art!
From all the way back in 1931. So this kind of speculative fiction goes back a long way and rubs shoulders with illustrious company. Yes, Vulnavia, we shall most certainly be coming back to this subject as it had legs, lots of legs, and long ones at that.
Perhaps Not
Or, perhaps not yet. What am I chuntering about? O I thought you'd never ask! Art?
Well, my curiosity has been assuaged, and can now go back into the cupboard until we discover a reasonably-priced alternative.
The Grumpy German Gripes Again
Our anonymous Teuton NCO is relating more details of his unit's markedly un-martial progress from Holland.
3 and 4 September 1944
Receive my bazookas in very bad condition at the harbour of Schiedam.
Conrad's Commentary: GGG had been appointed to lead the company's anti-tank section, which meant they were either equipped with Panzerfausts or Panzerschrecks, and you can't tell which thanks to the translator. If they were in 'very bad condition' this implies that they had been allowed to rust thanks to no care or maintenance and no protective oil coating being applied. Art!
These things were very short ranged, 50 yards at best, so having to get that close to tanks with a weapon that might misfire .....
What an honour for GGG! Lucky chap!
Placeholder Pending
Your Humble Scribe is scrivelling this in the mid afternoon of Thursday, which means the full impact of today's trading on the South Canadian NASDAQ has yet to feed through, given that it's about 5 hours behind This Sceptred Isle. Rather than put up interim data, I'll put this up instead. Art!
This is what came up when I Googled 'Sad Elong Tusk'. Sad? He looks as if his brain has gone on holiday with a bucket and spade. Remember children, Drugs R Bad M'Kay.
O and I just found this sidebar image over on the BBC News website, that font of all that's fit to be writ. Art!
Looks as if Elong might have to give up snorting bath salts.
Tee hee!
Book Mountain Decreases By One!
Yes, gentle readers, Your Humble Scribe got down and wrestled - or, given the argot, 'wrassled' - with "Sunset And Sawdust" by Joe R. Lonsdale, whom we only came across on the blog in passing many years ago. Art!
Both elements in this composition are relevant.
From what I can see, Ol' Joe never published any sequels to this novel, using any of the characters again, which is very abstemious as authors tend to do this in order to reduce the creative heavy lifting. Pretty sure this holds as true today as it did 21 years ago when this work first came out.
Oho
The venerable Beeb is getting in on the critic's reviews of 'Snow White', and they seem to be split along The Pond lines: South Canadians laud it - well, they don't pan it relentlessly which, given it's lacklustre pedigree, is almost the same - and Brit crits loathe it. Whilst South Canadian critics pander and grade it at three stars, which is surely evidence of someone getting a great big bribe, the British film pundits grace it with one star, probably because you can't award negative stars. Art!
Make the most of these occasional items, because there is no way on God's green earth that Conrad is everrrrr going to watch this undead turkey, and if I ever say anything positive about it KILL THE ALIEN SHAPESHIFTER.
There's a whole tranche of Youtube film reviewers waiting with butcher's steels and carving knives for tomorrow, when it's released to cinemas.
No comments:
Post a Comment