Bite The Brucie Bullet

Bruce Pennington, That Is

A few very old, very confused readers might be confabulating today's title with a phenomenon from the Seventies, "The Generation Game", a British gameshow that featured the MC Bruce Forsyth, whose effusive personality drove the whole thing.  Art!

     The Youtuber 'Suchomimus', whose channel used to be all about dinosaurs, posted from his expatriate home in Taiwan with his giant pet rabbit, occasionally mentions a 'Brucie Bonus', a phrase taken directly from the show, so one assumes he grew up with it, too.

     ANYWAY less of what's not and more of what's what.  First, of course - obviously! - we have to explain the origin of 'Bite the bullet'.  Art!

     Hmmm.  Looks more like that one of Peter Gabriel downing Jagermeister shots.   It is not a tricky stage show event performed with a NATO 7.62 rimless round, as your teeth - indeed your entire head - are likely to fly apart practicing such a stunt.  No!  No gory pictures.  What it really refers to is the old, pre-anaesthetic practice of military surgeons giving a patient a bullet, i.e. a spherical lead shot, to bite down upon as their leg got sawn off.  This lessened their screaming, which might lead to hearing loss for the surgeon in a small operating-theatre tent.  O and distract his sawing.  Can't have that!  Thus the phrase has come to mean 'Bearing up well under strain or pain.'  Art!

Suspiciously pristine 18th century teeth*

     ANYWAY I was looking at the 'Sci-Fi Art' portfolio of screenshots of Bruce Pennington's artworks, that I have been posting singly on BOOJUM! realising that the whole slideshow is just over 7 minutes long, and I've only managed 2 minutes of single screenshots so far.  So! I'm going to post a whole lot all at once.  Live with it if you don't like it.  Also, rather than repeat ad nauseum during this Intro, bear in mind that Brucie's artwork as depicted frequently has a large blank space at the top, so that a publisher can fit in the title and author without sacrificing the painting that he spent hours producing: the 'Title Gap'.  Art!

     Another trope of Bruce's: a line of aerial objects receding into the background.  In this case, we've got a whole lot of hostile flying saucers, inaccurately blasting away at fleeing Hom. Sap.  Come on little green (or grey) men, surely your craft capable of crossing interstellar space can target a few scuttling hominids better than a First Upleasantness biplane?

     Annoyingly, there is no follow-up illo about the book or magazine cover this was used on, if any, nor did a Google search reveal anything.  So, this may be a speculative painting that Brucie did, which was never purchased.  Art!

     Conrad unsure if you can call .his a UFO and it barely resembles a flying saucer, more like a flying saucer that ate all the pies, in addition to looking well-worn and grubby.  One expects invading aliens to observe a little cleanliness.

     ANYWAY Conrad definitely recalls this as being a cover illustration, perhaps for a Poul Anderson novel?  Art!

     Welllll I got it nowhere near right.  There's no connection between Vogt and Anderson in anything but being South Canadian.  Nice field of corn and flowers, mind.  Plus a rather sinister air over the whole thing, because which children would happily go gambolling towards a fat flying saucer?  Art!

     Blimey, flying saucers receding into the background deluxe, not to mention giant hovering phallic sentinels, one of which seems to be on the fritz and needs an electrical engineer pronto.  Looking a bit closer, the cityscape below and behind the angel looks pretty wiped out, perhaps resulting in a lowering of property values.  There's no Title Gap so unsure if this was for a publication or just Brucie having fun with paints and pigments.  Art!

     A search of Google revealed no publications.  So this is just Brucie having fun, which is a telling insight.  Art!

     There's a lot going on here, isn't there?  One has to wonder at the mindset of the three chaps headed towards a nuclear detonation, possibly they're the parents of those children approaching the floating fatty.  This is definitely a cover illustration, possibly Chris Priest?  Art!

      Hmmm, I am unsure how happy Ol' Brucie will be with this cover, as it uses the middle portion of the artwork to display the title.  Also, 50 brownie points to me for remembering the author - purely on the strength of the cover illustration, I've no idea what 'Indoctrinaire' is about <brief dig> hmmm sounds very Seventies and doomy and gloomy, not interested.  Art!

     Another great illo.  I know this one is a book cover because I've read the book: 'Out Of Their Minds' by Clifford Simak.  Note that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza appear to lower port, and that the 'wall' is really made up of teeth.  Art!

     I was so so right, you can't quibble about the 'D'.  There cannot be that many Clifford Simaks in the world.  Art!

 - and of course - obviously! - if it's a really good illo, others will nick it.  From the late lamented SFM.  Never heard of 'Peter Borski' or 'Robert Web' or whomever.

     Okay, enough art for an Intro.  Let the defamation deluge begin!

More Of Those 20 'Classics' You Need To Read Before You Expire

This one looks especially dull, so we're going to whiz through it at speed.  Art!

    This is a satirical look at French society through the eyes of a couple of fictional Persians - SOMEONE SLAP ME AWAKE! - I would suggest jazzing them up with a few daubs by Brucie.  Next!

      This novel was hot stuff in 1774 when first published.  Conrad is familiar with the author's name, being revered as one of the pillars of Teuton literature, but I've not read what is described as the perfect work about unrequited love - MORE SLAPPING NEEDED PEOPLE! - perhaps it could be jazzed up by being published by Mills and Boon?

Missing A Sensation

It has just occurred to me that there is a bit of an omission on the Youtube channel 'Flavour Trip'.  You're familiar with the bopping twosome, who play dance mixes whilst they cook.  Art!

     I didn't keep track of what they were cooking - yellow and liquid, based on beaten eggs?  - and don't intend to rewatch over 2 hours of them moving between deck and kitchen to find out.  

     ANYWAY AGAIN my point is that none of us watching have any idea what their cooking tastes like - the missing sensation of this item's title.  Good?  Bad?  Indifferent?  They may be pretending that it's wonderful when in reality when the cameras are off them it goes into the bin.  We can see them, we can hear them, but we have no taste and we must cream.  To coin a phrase.  

Harlan was not amused at Conrad

Ooooh I Am Going To Bookmark This One

I know, I know, I was supposed to be cutting down the number of Favourites and Bookmarks that are cluttering up my browser.  Sue me.  Art!

     For your information, that's Seventies-era Pink Floyd, and Nick Mason their drummer, second from starboard, wrote a memoir that might still be knocking around my Sekrit Layr.  I shall report back on this one, you bet.

SIT BACK DOWN!

I briefly mentioned Bookmarking this lecture whilst getting rid of other Bookmarks, for I am nothing if not capricious.  It's a rather long set of time-stamped comments on a lecture given by a Finnish ex-intelligence officer, and jolly interesting it is too.  Art!

How Russians think, and why they do what they do

     The lecture is from 2018, so is not up on contemporary events, but since it's looking back over 1,000 years, that isn't too impactful.  Well worth tracking down.

     I now have to work out how to shoehorn it into BOOJUM! because rest assured I'm going to.

*  Ignore that it's a photograph