Colophon And On And On

If You Think That A Colophon -
  - is part of your small intestine, then YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE!  For you obviously did not peruse yesterday's entertaining and illuminating blog, which informed you that a Colophon is a publisher's emblem, printed in books that they publish.  Art?

Examples of same

     Now we are all up to speed, I have to say that I've no idea why this word just popped up in my mind, but I am grateful that it generated a bit of useful grist for the creative mill-wheels.  Bear in mind that I don't recall ever reading about it, and it certainly isn't a name that comes up when discussing beer and skittles down the pub.  Nor even champagne and golf up at the club.

Ha!  Do you see what I did - O you do.

     Anyway, remember my mentioning yesterday about a comic strip from the French comic "Pilote"?  Once again I spent most of my lunchtime chasing down leads, and I am delighted to say that I got somewhere.  Art?

My scrawl.  That's all.

     This rather cryptic set of scribbles is Your Humble Scribe's calculations about the range of possible issues of Pilote that I might need to buy in order to track down the Beautiful Green Hallucination (perhaps I ought to Google for that/her in French?).  I then found a resource called the "Grand Comics Database" which listed details of many of these issues, together with covers that had been scanned in.  Art?

Read once, never forgotten

     I still remember that one: about a child who obsesses about a stuffed toy they have, which goes on to become the model for which everyone gets plastic surgery, until the whole nation looks like the above.  Hilarious and grotesque at the same time.  Okay, so I can start collecting from issue #58.
     That's not all.  Oh no.  The Coincidence Hydra has been pining for a bite of my behind, it seems, because during the search for Pilote in the GCD, I came across this - Art?

LOOK AT THE TOP LINE!

     "Colophon Publisher" in case your myopic glazzies missed it.  
     Dog Buns!  What are the chances of that happening?
     Pausing only to hurl the motley into a hay-baling machine alongside one million pieces of glass tubing, let us proceed apace to the rest of the blog, before Fate, causality and the universe conspire to drop some even more unlikely coincidence into our laps -

A "Battlestar Galactica" Moment
The remake, of course, not the hideously cheesy original that desperately tried to cash in on the success of "Star Wars" on 1/100th of the budget and 1/1000th of the imagination.
     I think the episode might be "33", wherein the fleeing human fleet cannot escape the pursuing Cylons for more than 33 minutes, before the robotic bad guys show up again.  Colonel Tigh - Art?

Only one eye, admittedly.  But it's sharp enough for two.

     Colonel Tigh spots a piece of eavesdropping technology that's been hidden on the bridge in plain sight, and Oh Boy! He is not happy, not happy at all.
     What I wanted to get across was the "Hide in plain sight" concept, because that's just what happened in Oldham Bus Station this morning.  Art?

To port of the lamp-post

     Two bus company staff in yellow jackets came along and planted that device with the square base over the fencing, fiddling about with it's underside, making sure it was aimed in the right direction and then taking off before anyone could intercept them and ask why they were planting alien surveillance devices/laser death wands/attack wasp boxes?
     Any suggestions can be left in the Comments section.

Hammer Down
As one thing inevitably leads to another here on BOOJUM! so we now focus on the topic of Steam Hammers.  Not as inherently interesting as KILLER EELS! but with a darn sight more vim than LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN, I'll have you know.
     Okay, a steam hammer was and is a giant industrial device that raised an enormously weighty hammer by steam pressure; once at height, metal components would be moved underneath the hammer and the steam cut.  Down came the hammer with a BANG that shook building foundations.  Art?

At work in the Thirties, I would guess.

     You might think that the steam hammer was defunct nowadays; Oh no.  Not so, they are still used, and someone posted on Youtube about one in the Indian state of West Bengal, at Howrah.  Art?

     Note the contrast between the photo at top and these Indian artisans of a few short years ago - those Indians are wearing less Personal Protective Equipment than the artisan of eighty years ago!  In fact their only PPE seems to be some linen gloves.  The whole scene is redolent with danger, because, yes, that is yellow-hot steel they are working with, and no, there are no safety barriers, or hats, or gloves, or goggles, or boots, or aprons.  That steam hammer also comes down in an enormously unforgiving fashion, and it's directed solely by a chap sitting behind the machine - with very poor forward visibility.   BANGBANGBANG - no infra-red safety sensors here, folks!  Slip, trip or fall over in the wrong direction and you're either roasted to death or smashed into a smear.
     Steam hammers - gotta love 'em.

Original title "Open Die Casting".  How very appropriate.

     Time for a breakfast break; a cheap Co-Op version of Lem-sip (absent sugar) and some wholemeal toast.  You may consider this to be toooo much information; I consider it keeping people informed.
"The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same"
I cannot be bothered to give you this in the original French, and France has had quite enough promotion over the past couple of days (you know, via "Pilote" and all that).  I am currently reading "Nicholas Nickleby", as I believe I have mentioned on a couple of occasions, and am now about a quarter-inch into it's inch-and-a-half thickness.  Art?

Poor Nicholas - literally.  Not a Nickel to his name, and also knickerless.*

     This is not the non sequiteur it seems at first glance, because we are up to the point where rascally uncle Ralph Nickleby is behind the promotion of the <deep breath> "United Metropolitan Hot Muffin And Crumpet Baking And Punctual Delivery Company", which is nothing but a sham and a swindle.  The intent is to raise five million by share issue, of which Ralph will dump his portion shortly after flotation, once those same shares hit a high and before the scam unravels and they become worthless.

Old Nick, to coin  a phrase.

     And then we come to London Capital Finance, another complete swindle run by crooks who lied and fleeced investors to the tune of £236 million, before going bankrupt last year.  They paid £60 million to an advertising company to run paid lies about the services they offered - said PR company now insisting they did nothing wrong and won't return a penny - meaning that they would have had to achieve a 44% return on investments to hit their advertised targets.  Which is impossible.
     SO, as you can see, not a lot has changed between 1838 and 2018.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47454328

     That there the link to the BBC article in question.

Finally -

DANCING WEASELS!

      - to cheer us up.




*  This only works when spoken aloud.

Goodbye, Red Brick Road

No!  This Is Not About An Elton John Tribute Band
I mean, that would be disrespectful, wouldn't it?  Sir Elton is still alive and kicking (exceptionally well in "Kingsman", too) and probably still cranking out songs.  The man doesn't know how to switch off and enjoy merely spending his money.
     Although, given our subject matter in this Intro, come to think of it - Art?

Rock it, man!*

     No, what I meant to talk about here is the bankruptcy and administrative death of a somewhat bizarre venture that began a good few years ago in 2011: Mars One.  They were going to send some Hom. Sap. to Mars, and have them stay there.  For ever.  Or, until they died, which might be a whole lot quicker than "Forever", and the whole thing would be bankrolled by selling broadcast rights to the media.
     Right.  I remember the original blurb coming out, and then the whole thing disappeared for a couple of years.  Their target date for putting Hom. Sap. on the Red Planet kept slipping into the future, eventually ending up at 2031.  

How it ought to be done.

     NASA and other scientific institutions were scornfully analytical, demonstrating how Mars One's alleged budget of £5 billion fell short of the total needed by - ooooh, about £85 billion.  Nor did hundreds of thousands send in video applications - actually less than 3,000 did, and they only got through the laughably-titled "Astronaut Selection" by paying Mars One for the privilege.
     Then the television company who were going to pay for broadcast rights pulled out, and some of the more citric scientific critics calculated that the 'colonists' wouldn't last more than 68 days before dying as their oxygen levels fell to zero.
     Bummer.

The truth can hurt, sometimes.

     Then, in late February, the company filed for bankruptcy, though they didn't trumpet this with the kind of fanfare reserved for previous significant occasions; it was only a diligent and sharp-eyed member of the public who noticed.
     So, sadly, all those doughy, basement-dwelling couch-potatoes who paid out thousands and thousands to become Martian colonists have their dreams dashed.**  Awww.
     Now, motley, we are going to roll you up in this carpet like Cleopatra -
     Then we are going to put it through this industrial steam hammer!

Heh!

"Colophon"
I know, I know, these odd words keep popping up in my brain for no reason.  Don't complain, because otherwise you'd be reading about more art in Barcelona, and if you're not careful you may still do so.
     Okay, there I was, trudging to work along Church Street in Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell - a street notable for not having a church anywhere near it - and carefully watching where the 163 bus was driving, for there were puddles near the kerb, and that word above popped into my head.  

     "Could it be Esperanto for "Mobile Phone"? I mused, silently, for there were other pedestrians abroad on the pavement who did not deserve to be worried.
     No such thing.  It comes from the Greek "Kolophon" which means "A finishing stroke", and was initially a plate at the end of a book with information about the publisher, the date, typeface used, which edition and so on.  Over time it has come to mean a publisher's emblem.  Art?

Gaze upon -
A colophon.***

     So now we all know.  The puzzle is, of course, why vision of the 163 triggered this memory.

Talking Of Memory -
This one will take a bit of developing, so you may go brew a pot of tea (only ever loose-leaf, of course), toast a slice of wholemeal and set an egg to boil.
     Okay, "Pilote", which Art will illustrate for us.  Art - less coal more goal!

Pilote - the early years

     Pilote was a notable and influential French comic that featured lots of famous Continental artists and writers, and which introduced "Asterix and Obelix" to the world, as well as "Valerian and Laureline", and other stuff.  In fact, so much stuff that we may have to revisit this past parade.
     Anyway, my college used to stock Pilote in the original untranslated French, which meant Your Humble Scribe enjoyed the artwork but only had a very vague understanding of the finer plot points.       Which brings me around to memory.  There was one strip, which was definitely in the later years, probably 1978 or 1979 (maybe 1977),

A later edition that has a SFW cover, hoorah!

which featured (I think) something called Eric, or Elvis, or Elric, who was either a miniature dragon or a species of intelligent mushroom - 
     Don't look at me that way.
     What I do remember is another character, whose name I translated as the "Beautiful Green Hallucination", and who was your typical green-skinned curvaceous comic wench, apart from having a green gas-mask for a face.

This variety of lungy-life preserver

     Yes yes yes, I know this all sounds pervy or drugged or both, but Dog Buns!  I've got the bit between my teeth now and I want to know 1) What the strip was and 2) Who the artist was.  Can I discover anything about it?  No I cannot!  I spent yesterday lunchtime at work trying to track down even a smidgeon of information about it - being rather cautious, as it is not certain that all Pilote artwork is SFW - to no avail.
     I know what the resolution might end up being - buying three year's worth of Pilote back copies from end 1976 to start 1980 and reading every single one.
     Don't laugh.  It may come to that.

There are worse things to be stuck doing ...

"Colophon" - Not To Be Confused With Colluphid, Oolon
A common mistake!  Well, amongst the overlapping subsets of those who know what Colophons are and those who have read and remembered "The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy".  For Oolon - also not to be confused with "Oolong", a type of loose-leaf tea, although given the out-there quality of THHGTTG it's not impossible Oolon is a variety of sentient plant - is the author of several somewhat blasphemous works that - it'll just be easier to give their titles: 

Thus

     You can tell The Man Upstairs is beneficent and merciful, or perhaps just has a sense of humour, for Oolon survived writing his first volume, didn't he?

There you go, you lucky people.  Over a thousand words and no mention of a city in Catalonia with a harbour frontage.  Tomorrow, though - tomorrow is another day.^


*  Sorry.
**  Yeah, but - would they have fitted through the airlocks anyway?
***  All my own work.
^  Obviously.  If it wasn't then I'd be living in "Groundhog Day", wouldn't I?