Notice We Use The Indefinite Article
Because, as usual, we are going to skirt around the actual subject matter and sneak up on it, before pouncing. Art!
This was Pete's debut after leaving Genesis, and it's one of the most deeply miserable albums ever made, so sad that Morrisey was envious. Why is it an illo here? O I thought you'd never ask! Art?
Back in the hair on top days
Not a happy, chirpy crooning ballad by any means. Still, it introduces the concept of 'Flood'. Which, to up the Word Count a little, is defined as 'The inundation of land that is normally dry" and we're not going to go any further down the rabbit warren by defining 'inundation'.
ANYWAY if you know Conrad at all by now then you'll know one of his favourite sci-fi novels is 'The Kraken Wakes' by John Wyndham, which involves a very peculiar alien invasion. Art!
While the invasion succeeds, the resulting attack on Hom. Sap. is beaten off, so the aliens, being inventive little beggars, retaliate by melting the polar ice caps and raising the sea levels globally - a Flood. Brian .Aldiss, noted sci-fi author and critic, scoffed at John's work for being archetypically 'cosy catastrophes' that merely involved the middles classes being a bit inconvenienced. Hmmm. Not sure how killing off four billion people is at all cosy, because the Flood doesn't go away at the end and bad weather, lack of food, disease and predatory Sea Tanks all take their toll. Art!
A more famous iteration of a Flood, where the studio logo cunningly morphs into the oceans rising and covering the land. All the land. Everywhere. Spoilsports and killjoys - two of my favourite kinds of people! - criticised the lack of devastating world-wide super-hurricanes that would destroy all traces of civilisation in such a hydrological state.
Now that we've wet our feet, so to speak, let us continue on to the main matter, which is another of the chapters in "The Seventy Greatest Mysteries Of The Ancient World", hereafter abbreviated to '70' because Word Count or no, that's a pain to type out repeatedly. Art!
No, Art, wrong Ark
<sounds of an industrial Tazer being used>
More like it
The Biblical Flood is recounted in Genesis, the book not the band, where God decides to wipe the slate clean by getting rid of Hom. Sap. with the biggest tsunami evah. All, that is, except Noah and his family, whom were required to construct the Ark, in which a pair of every animal extant were housed. Hmmm.
After 40 days the flood waters recede and the Ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat, and everyone lived happily after (except for the drowned people).
The Bible doesn't have a lock on Flood mythology, either. The Greeks had their own pre-Biblical version of a flood myth, featuring Deucalion and his Wonder Wifey. You might expect the Greeks to create stories about flooding, given their island-heavy geography. Art!
The English summer arrived
In this case the wicked and immoral Greeks had mortally offended Zeus, who decided that it was time to start over with Hom. Sap. #2, which meant wiping out Hom. Sap. #1 via a deluge. What set the Thunderer off was King Lycaon serving up one of his sons for dinner, in what might be called - er - filial pie-ty. Deucalion and Pyrrha, his significant other, built a large ship and filled it with provisions, which allowed for their survival. They were helped by not taking an enormous zoo of animals along with them, heaven knows how two people could build a boat big enough to hold all the animals on earth, times two.
We've already mentioned Sumer in the Intro about the Garden of Eden, and - surprise! here it is again. Yes, they had their own flood mythology, starring Ut-Napishtim. Art!
Hardly surprising, as life in Mesopotamia was highly dependent on the rivers, which would go into spate and flood if there was excessive meltwater in Turkey or Syria.
There is a whole other Intro to be written about the logistics and management of the Ark, not to mention the construction of it, and things like navigation and fodder, because unless everyone loved loved loved kelp seaweed, food would be critically short. A tail for another day.
Eye-Catching Stuff
Conrad came across a sidebar item on the BBC News website that had an immediate visual impact, and no wonder. Art!
This, lest ye be unaware thanks to living on the Moon or at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, is part of the cover art for Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' album, where they simultaneously mourned the mental collapse of founding member Syd Barrett, and the commercialism of the music business. Art!
Perhaps influenced by reading "The Towers Of Toron" at the time, Conrad saw this an engine made from glass, rather than an echo of the flaming handshake. There was more in the article. Art!
That's the mark of a careful and considered stunt performer, and he probably passed away in bed from pneumonia, rather than by being blown up, shot or drowned.
On The Principle Of 'More Is Better'
Except where it isn't. I noticed a Facebook post by that wag David Lister, stating:
We here at BOOJUM! have touched on this design peculiarity before, which reached either the zenith or nadir in the late Thirties. Listy provided a couple of photographs as evidence, which I shall attach. Art!
That one on top will need at least 9 crew; commander, loader, 5 loaders, driver and a mess orderly to take drinks around on a tray. Conrad believes that ventilation was always a problem with these ungainly beasts and that gunners in their little sub-turrets were liable to get poisoned by cordite fumes, poor dears.
Uno Reverso Card Played
Just read a rather pithy Reddit Youtube tale about revenge on bad bosses. Karmic Narrator Into Technology, hereafter KNIT, worked at a start-up, where one of the bosses was what is known in the trade as a 'DoucheCanoe'. DC had it in for KNIT and wanted to fire him, presumably so one of his mates could warm the seat instead. Problem One was that KNIT had not done anything that merited from being fired, Problem Two was that KNIT was the IT office champion. Art!
It's a metaphorical symbolic allegory. Or something.
Problem three was that KNIT had a backbone made of vanadium steel, and warned DC off in very undiplomatic terms. DC, being a coward as well as a scumbag, kept their distance.
After 9 months, the company decided to fire DC, because he was a waste of space, DNA, company resources and hair gel. KNIT, from his remote station after DC was rashly told by the business owners about his firing, watched DC copy client information onto a USB, then delete it from the company mainframe.
Surprise! DC was taken to lunch by the owners before his date with destiny, a.k.a. being sacked. KNIT took this opportunity to blank the USB and restore all the deleted files. Art!
Salford Quays in summer
KNIT also used their admin privileges to trawl DC's work e-mail accounts, and many messages to an affair partner about dumping the wife and kids and doing her out of the house, with holiday snapshots in swimwear thrown in for good measure, mysteriously made their way to DC's wife.
We don't get told any more than that, so it would be fruitless to speculate that unemployed DC was shortly afterwards unwed DC, and also unwed DC became penniless DC and had to move back in with his parents.
Tee hee!
Must Be Something In The Water -
I've been there many a time, and what seems to be a 'beach' is normally under water. United Utilities , who own the body of water, have appealed to people to be CAREFUL, given that this is not a public thoroughfare. Art!
Howlingly ironic that we began this blog with an Intro about a deluge that drowned the land, and end it with the land being dried out like a desiccated sponge.
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