Sin And Horror The Soul Of The Plot

 I May Have Pontificated On This Theme Before -
<which is code for "I can't be bothered to check and see if I have" - the horrid truth courtesy Mister Hand>
     In case you don't recognise those words, they are from an Edgar Allen Poe quote, from his writings: "And much of madness and more of sin and horror the soul of the plot," though you can take that as a sideways comment by him on his entire oeuvre.*  Art?

Edders!

     The sentiment was echoed by J.R.R. Tolkein, who mentions in "The Hobbit" that pleasant events are soon described and rapidly turn dull, whereas the hideously unpleasant ones are usually a right rollicking read and real page-turners.
     Here an aside.  The Kindle generation might have to be instructed on quite what a "Book" is, let alone the differences between "hardback" and "softback", and the eternal debate about whether you use a bookmark or <shudder> turn down the corner of the page itself.  A debate for a later date, methinks.
     So!  Let us turn to that horribly entertaining series "Chernobyl", which is pretty much the definition of trainwreck-television: terrifying yet fascinating.  Art?

Let me guess: those observers are not happy bunnies?

     Filming actually in Pripyat or the Chernobyl plant itself isn't possible, thanks to - you know, radiation and the sarcophagus.  Plus the Ukranian government is probably both puzzled and annoyed at people wanting to ghoulishly enjoy themselves there.
                 
                       Clunky Sinister sarcophagus                         Sleek Western designed sarcophagus
     So - where was it filmed?  Lithuania, actually, on the shores of the Baltic, and the other side of Europe.  In an hilarious irony, they had to go there to find housing that looked appropriately Sinister, as the real thing's mostly been condemned and demolished, either that or it fell down of it's own accord.** Art?

Fabijoniskes
(The place-name, not an inherent quality)

     Lithuania is also the site of the Ingalina Nuclear Power Plant, which bears a striking resemblance to the one at Chernobyl.  Art?

Sic

     In more than one way.  My colleague Karolina, who hails from Lithuania herself, said it was an open secret that the plant was dangerously run and polluted the locality, but if you mentioned this aloud the KGB would make you disappear.
     So, a silver lining for Lithuania, then; all that money from the film production simply pouring in!  And doubtless there will be Ghoul Tourists in future who want to see where things were shot.
     Now, motley, that pack of ravening zombies is pounding up the stairwell, heading for you on the roof, and the only way off is  that tightrope cable running for, oooh, half a mile to the next skyscraper.  Go!

A Brief Interlude Of Calm Amidst The Chaos
Don't worry, we'll get back to All Things Horrid in a minute.  In the meantime, I have to announce that the madness has started again, in a rather muted way.  Art?

Getting <ahem> jiggy with it

     This is a slightly less ambitious project than the one from last year, as there are only 1,000 pieces in this one, and the design doesn't have large swathes of barely-visible zero-contrast designs all around the borders.  That there is what I have dug out of the contents, being the edge pieces.  We'll see how they match up tomorrow.
     Now back to the sin and horror!



"4 Years On The Western Front" By Aubrey Smith
You want horror, here it is.  Oh by Jove yes.  Ol' Aubs, as you should surely know by now, was a transport driver, who was thus spared being sent to the front lines after mid-1915, where he'd taken part in the Second Battle of Ypres.
     Here an aside.  Hey, look how long I waited!  Ol' Aubs described the continual and shattering effect of Teuton artillery fire on the British trenches at 2ndY, where shells could come in from three directions simultaneously thanks to being stuck in a salient.  Art?

2ndY.  Early war - you can tell by the intact trees

     He didn't enjoy the experience one little bit.  After the battles of the Somme, he (and pals from the transport section) visited the old Teuton front-line defences, which they could see for themselves were formidable indeed.  As Aubs states, they'd had nearly 2 years to fix those defences up. 

An example

     By the time he's visiting the crater-fields of the battle after the New Year, when the lines had moved further east, you can practically hear the malicious glee in his tone, when he describes the Teuton defences by the end of the Somme as being exactly like those of the British at 2ndY.

Sic.  This might have been a trenchline, once.

     You might think a driver's lot was a happy one - by comparison with the PBI in front-line trenches, yes, though it was no doddle when you had to trundle your supplies up a road under shellfire, sitting on a horse making you a great big target unable to take cover.  I think we shall come back to this.




A Bit Of Sin -
The sin of Pride!
     Your Humble Scribe blathered somewhat on Facebook before leaving home, about if he had to get up at this unpleasantly early hour, there'd better be a Cryptic Crossword on the bus as compensation.
     And there was!
     And I smashed it in less than 20 minutes!

Conrad, beaming with pride.  Beaming, honest!

     It may be "Small Earthquake In Chile" to you, but I take credit where I can get it.
     20 minutes!


More Sin!  More Horror!
Conrad beset by the sin of Pride again, with a healthy dose of horror to boot: I have been re-reading a Fanfiction work composed many years ago, based on the BBC's flagship Dramatic Reconstruction series, "Doctor Who".  It takes a while to get moving, being a bit parenthetical in the start - what's that?  Seventh Doctor iteration.  FYI -

The Doctor

     - and in this particular work he is whizzing about with Ace.  Art?

Ace.  Ace.

     This one concerns a sneaky and covert invasion, based in Australia, by aliens with incredibly sluggish metabolisms, who fear water, and who are acting as a third party - which is implied to be the Daleks, prefatory to their Invasion of 2065 ...
     We may come back to this!








*  "Collected stuff"
**  Poor quality control.  There's an earthquake joke in there from the Sinister era ...

Incredibles As It May Seem -

Once Again -
If you so much as whisper the merest zephyr of a hint that Conrad has mis-spelled a word, or gotten the grammar wrong, then you will find out just how a raw potato feels when placed amidst the coals of a fire.
     I am referring to that exemplar of animated excellence, "The Incredibles", and my long-term look at it in order to determine what year it is set in.
     Don't laugh.  A man's got to have a hobby.

     Kindly note the firearms being wielded by the uniforms here: automatic weapons with a distinct look of the M16 Armalite rifle about them.  Which boom-stick was not introduced until 1964.  That's not all in terms of military hardware.  Cast yer glazzies over this kit:

     More of the M16s, and that tank does bear more than a passing resemblance to the M41 Walker Bulldog, if with a welded rather than a cast turret.  The muzzle-brake is a definite South Canadian foible of the Fifties and Sixties, also.  If Art will put down his plate of coal and Mara Corday swimsuit calendar -

The M41

     Now, IMDB puts the time-range of "The Incredibles" as between 1947 and 1962, which Your Humble Scribe would jib at.  I would say 1951 to 1964. 
     Phew.  All that background, summed-up in 6 words.  It's also notable as to what we don't see or hear in TI.  There is no mention of the Second Unpleasantness in the first part of the film, an event only a few years in the past.  Come to that, no mention of the Korean Unpleasantness either.  Given the timeframe, we can't expect Vietnam to be a topic of conversation, so that's realistic.  However - no mention of nuclear weapons or Communism?  These years are when the Cold War ran hot, after all, and every red-blooded South Canadian feared either Reds Under The Bed, or being turned into radioactive vapour.
     So.  There you have it.  "The Incredibles" is set in a time period that stretches from 1951 to 1964, and My! How long has it taken to reach that conclusion?
    Of course, I may be over-thinking this ...

Ah.  Yes.  Does this need a timeframe research project?

     Okay, motley - this Ultra-Low Velocity Encephalotropic Missile is tuned in to your brain patterns, and the only way to escape is by diving into that pool of liquid cement!*

"Scran"
Raja, bless his little Southron heart, mentioned this last week, in a puzzled manner.  Lest you be unaware, it is Northern dialect slang for "food".  Because Your Humble Scribe is an anorak of the first order, I determined to look said word up in my Chambers Dictionary of Phrase And Fable.
     Not there.
     Neither was it present in my Collins Concise Encyclopedia.
     Egad!  Recourse to teh interwebz.
     Apparently it is of 17th Century origin and refers to the bill one was presented with when dining in a wayside inn.  From this it has spread in definition and now means food in general.

They say.

     Conrad remains highly suspicious.**  After all, it was found on the internet, and you know how trustworthy that is.
"Hard To Be A God" By The Brothers Strugatsky Yes, we are back to this novel.  Don't whinge so, it doesn't become you.  Not unless you've trodden barefoot on a piece of Lego; then you're allowed.

A warcrime waiting to happen

     I did mention previously that the description of Don Reba skated perilously close to how that Grey Non-entity Stalin slowly closed his paws around the levers of power.  Then, once he'd got them, how he killed off everyone who might have challenged him, and their families, and their friends, and their neighbours, and the man six streets over who once crossed the road behind them in another city thirteen years previously, and then a whole load of random strangers, just to keep in murder practice.

(The other hand is holding a knife)

     Perhaps in an attempt to decoy the censors, TBS include a couple of lines about how Hitler had been backed by rich and powerful industrialists.

Come on, you didn't think you'd get a picture of Herr Schickelgruber, did you?

     Interestingly, they also mention Ernst Rohm, as an intimation that the revolutionary process is going to finish off Don Reba.  I suppose this needs a bit of explication.


     But first!  let me check and see that The 1975 are still alive and breathing -


     - phew, they are, it was just a noisy shoot-em-up they were playing

There we go, hale and hearty and the life of the party

     ER was the head of the Nazi's paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung, and was one of Herr Schickelgruber's best mates.  He was one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich, and a homosexual to boot, which is no big thing nowadays but back in the Thirties - Oooh no.  Not at all.  He also cherished the notion that the SA (about a million strong) would merge with the army, which horrified the army which horrified Herr Schickelgruber.  The army didn't fancy the prospect of all these drunken thugs strutting up and down in uniform.  The rich industrialists didn't fancy the prospect of the "Socialist" part of "National Socialist" being put into effect, either, which is another thing Alter Ernie thirsted for.

Not an oil-painting.  In fact, a bit of a porker.

     Net result: Alter Ernie gets arrested and shot dead.  As I mentioned, this allusion by TBS may have been intended to divert the censors, who would 110% have noticed this byline.
     Of course, I may be overthinking this ...
Finally -
We only need a short article here to hit the ton.  Muse!  Right here, on me head.  Come on, come on, I've only got 3 minutes until lunch finishes.
    Aha!  Take a gander at this - Art?

CAUTIONI!  This man has absolutely NO qualms about murdering small children.

     This is the character that happily tries to kill Violet and Dash.  How are those family values coming along, Mister Bird?
     I did worry that I was being extra-specially nerdy in picking up this image, except that it's from the Internet Movie Firearms Database, and they worry about gun's bolt not being present -
     What I wanted to point out is that this thing must be using micro-calibre ammunition; matey blasts wildly away across the jungle several times, before standing there and blamming Violet's force-field for no less than twelve seconds (I timed 'em), at which point he still hasn't 1) Run out of ammo or 2) reloaded.  He goes through about 150 rounds, or 5 magazines-worth of normal ammunition, leading Your Humble Scribe to calculate the rounds must be 1.8 mm calibre -
     Of course, I could be overthinking this .....






*  Okay, it's not the only way.  But motleys are pretty gullible.
**  I know, I know, "Suspicious" runs through my core.  Make it "Extra suspicious"