Look Out - It's A Pooka, With A Bazooka!

Of Course You All Know What A "Pooka" Is -
 - or you better had, as it has been detailed in the recent blog posts about "Harvey".  The titular character is a pooka, FYI.
     Actually I don't think my shouted headline warning would be much use.  Not only is Harvey invisible - to most people, anyway - but so are his clothes, and by extension anything he touches.  Don't forget he managed to make Aunt Veta's coin-purse apparently vanish.
    So, the odds are that the first you knew of an angry spirit entity toting an anti-tank weapon, would be when your AFV* was attacked.
     You aren't driving an AFV?  Why then is Harvey carry - OH MY GOD NO!

     RUN!  Save yourselves, it's Tony The Ten-Ton Terror Toad!  Oh no, what's that behind him:  

RUN EVEN FASTER!  It's Clarissa  the Cannibal Combat Chicken!  And who's that behind her?

     Oh, that's just Willy the Weasel Shark, he's pretty "meh".

"Svadiiy Sumochka - Novii Sumochka"
Yes that's right, Poppy Z Brite.  Shall Conrad take mercy and translate for you?  Only in the footnotes.**
     Yesterday I got rid of the Old Bag - hurled unceremoniously into the wheelybin - as Wonder Wifey, in her travels, had obtained an almost brand-new one:

Only you can decide which is which!

     Not before time.  I could never quite escape the worry that the old bag smelled, even after dusting it with carpet-frensher.  Also one zip was broken; I'd fixed it, kind of, and then it broke again, and the second zip looked a bit dodgy recently.

Ah! Coincidence - Funny You Being Here ...
If you recall yesterday's first blog, I promoted it by lying.***The actual post referred to the "Stokes Gun", which I tooted about on FB as being about Stoke, which is a football team.  What turns up on Facebook as a news item a couple of hours later?
     Yes, you guessed it, an item about Stoke the football team.

 

For the less eagle-eyed:"Watch Stoke City's Charlie Adam score from 65 yards out"

"American Vampire"
Just finished reading the third volume of this series and am enjoying it tremendously.

"Erican Vampir" - the Reader's Digest edition

    There are two artists working on this volume, Rafael Albuquerque, artwork below:

Apologies for camera glare

     And Sean Murphy, again below:

     Both totally different but both excellent, and the Pedantic Nerd in Conrad is very impressed with Murphy's getting the technical details of weapons and equipment correct.

The Edible
I got several cans of John Smith's going very cheap as they were a bit bashed-about, and had been leaked upon to boot.

     You can't really see the damage to the lower can but it looked ready to blow up in my face.
     Since your humble scribe is writing these lines, rest assured it didn't.

Wonder Wifey, find a hitherto-undiscovered talent for cooking things, made a very nice Fish Pie last night, with hake and haddock and cod and king prawns:

     But I chopped the onions and peeled and diced the potatoes, so I get some credit, yes?

Molasses: which is better known across those parts of the world that aren't South Canada as "treacle".  Viz:

NO!  Not tar - treacle

     It might taste sweet but it's horrible stuff to work with, akin more to tar than syrup.  Anyway, I needed a tin for the Indian Pudding, and didn't have any.
     So I went and got some.

That's all about food.

"Fetch, Edna, Fetch!"
Proof that Edna either hasn't quite mastered the concept of "Fetch", or she has but chooses to ignore Conrad as he's not really that important.

Another "Yes, puny human?" moment

     She did play verrrrry close attention whilst I was sat eating my Polish smoked sausage, however.  Isn't that strange?

Facebook:  Suggested Posts
Once again a bizarre suggestion from Facebook about what I might like to look at:

Golfing.

     You know Conrad as entirely being uninvolved with sport, sporting events, sportsmen & sportswomen, sports cars, sport "grooming products"^ and Sports Direct.  That's the general view.  More specifically I have 0% interest in golf, golfers, golf courses, golf balls or the Volkswagen Golf, and here is the only type of club I like:

     So, on what criteria did Facebook think your quill-wielding blogger would be interested in golf?  I can see the FB admin staff debating:
     "He wasn't interested in portable sawmills, was he?"
     "Damn it!  Everyone's interested in them!  What about the log-counting software?"
     "Nope, he spurned that as well."
     "Good lord, the man must be a freak!"
     "What about a sport?"
     "Excellent!  He's shown no interest in sport whatsoever - that must be it.  Which one?"
     "Hmmm.  What's the most boring one around?"
     "Darts - no, wait - Golf! 99% footage of sky and people walking.  Got it!"
     

Close enough, Art, close enough.

Aha.  Look Who's Back

NO! Not N'sync.  Thunderbirds.

Haven't seen it yet, but it gets 7.2 at IMDB.
I'll let you know.

* Armoured Fighting Vehicle.  Not Acquatinted Forehead Visor.
** Russian for "Old Bag - New Bag"
*** Business as usual for the blog, then.
^ Which are really perfumes for men.  Just to be clear.
UA-61206227-1  :

Northern Humour

Not, Like, North-of-England Humour
No, Conrad, he refers to the Scandinavian countries.  Norway and Finland specifically.
     You don't really picture happy jolly laughter when thinking of the mountain-ridden, snow-sodden, gin-marinated Northern latitudes of Europe, do you?  
     Ingmar Bergman I blame you!  Feted film-maker out of Sweden, he has pro-actively crafted how the rest of the world sees the Scands - black and white, arty, worthy and utterly, utterly miserable.
     Not tonight!  Tonight your humble scribe will attempt to overturn that stereotype.



Aki Kaurismaki
Aki is Finnish, and once described his camera style to Jonathan Ross as the result of usually having a hangover: "You don't push the camera around so much".  

Aki: typical pose No. 1

He is the auteur behind such comedy classics as "Ariel", "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" and "Take Care Of Your Scarf, Tatiana". He often works with his brother, Mika, and has an impressively long list of films to his credit, none of which have ever hit the mainstream, so you can seem impressive to your poseur friends by boldly stating ""Leningrad Cowboys Go America" is the funniest Scandinavian film ever made.*"

Aki: Typical Pose No. 2

     It's one of Conrad's favourite films and he can only agree with that.

Spare A Thought For The Swedes
Without going over to IMDB and putting into the Search box: "Swedish comedy", Conrad cannot think of any funny Swedish films.
     They might be out there, it's just I don't know of any.  Any Swedish visitors or readers that care to inform Conrad of such entities, please make yourself known to Reception and check in at "Hospitality: Non-dangerous" at the Mansion.
     Meanwhile, I have read a couple of detective novels by Sjowall and Wahloo - "The Missing Fire Engine" and "Locked Room".  They are Swedish authors, not merely mentioned at random.

Humour, Swedish style!

     Yes, they are police procedurals, and yes, they do deal with murder.  You might be forgiven for thinking this is pretty poor material to discover humour in, but you'd be wrong.  The characters, for one, are amusingly depicted: lazy, pompous, ineffectual or stupid, all those comedy tropes are here.  Then there are the farcical scenes - the police breaking into an unlocked apartment where the police dog attacks one of the search team and one member falls out of the window - not quite Laurel and Hardy, but getting there, getting there

Two distinctly grim-visaged policemen

Dead Snow/Dead Snow 2
The first of these films is more a straight-forward zombie movie.
      - if, that is, you regard Nazi zombies infesting the northern wastes of Norway as pretty much run-of-the-mill.

Also contains a "Making of"of interest to low-budget film-makers

     The second film, with a far bigger budget and cast, goes on to thoroughly explore and expand the boundaries of good taste - no, sorry, that should be bad taste - and features quite the sickest parade of bad taste scenes that your humble scribe has seen in a long time.  Funny, yes, except in a very macabre way.

One of the least-bloody scenes I can find to show you

     Only for those with a strong stomach and a very high "Tut Factor" toleration.

"Leningrad Cowboys Go America"
You might describe this as the Finnish equivalent of "The Blues Brothers" - a fictional band go on a road journey to - er - discover themselves make their fortune.  They supposedly set out from Leningrad - as you can tell from the name, made well before the failure and fall of Communism - to travel to the United States, where they are told the people will listen to any old rubbish.

 - almost anything

     They take with them their dead bass player, in whose coffin reside many hundreds of cans of beer**, trailed by their single fan, and end up in Mexico, where they end up having a hit record.

How can you not love them?

     And en route they discover a former Cowboy, the bass player comes back to life, and they meet Jim Jarmusch.

Sunbathing (obviously!)

"Trollhunter"
I know this film plays out as a thriller/horror genre entry, but you can't deny that the central conceit, that trolls are real, that the Norwegian government knows this and actively controls their behaviour and besides that, has a special class of civil servant who troll-culls - well, it is amusing.***

"Rare Exports"
I'm going to cheat here and simply copy-in the article from March, tee-hee!
"Rare Exports"
Conrad has been watching this Finnish horror-comedy* again, after having seen it when it first came out.  Hilarious! - well, the parts that aren't chillingly scary, that is.
      It is set in the wilds of Northern Finland, up against the Russian border, and the hero is Pietari, a small boy who can't be more than 10 yet who is trusted by his dad with a rifle**.  They live on an isolated farm, and anticipate the annual reindeer cull that provides them with meat and income for the rest of the year.

That's Pietari.  Teddy bear and rifle.

 Except this year a mysterious and feral somethings has slaughtered all the reindeer, somethings that came over the border from Russia, in the direction of the mysterious gigantic excavation atop the hill just over the border ...
     Pietari reads up on the frightening pagan background of Santa Claus - a primal, vengeful creature that tears naughty children to pieces.  On Christmas Eve, his friends have all vanished.  So have the village radiators - and a hairdryer.
     It does have a happy ending, but I shan't spill any more details.  Oh, except to say that the Finnish-Russian border is demarcated by a rather flimsy chain fence.  Given that every Finn in the film carries at least one rifle, the Russians were well-advised to keep away.

Pretty much our Code of Conduct here at BOOJUM!
(Except for the "No Drinking" bit)

* It's also true.** Them Finns like a drink or ten.
*** It IS amusing!  So there!