What The Heck, Jane Kaczmarek!

If We Don't Have A Theme Today

Then it won't be for lack of trying.  Your Humble Scribe had a sudden vague notion that his minor opus "The Sea Of Sand" had - er - borrowed it's title from a film.  And what do you know, it had done.  Art!

     It turned out to be a very well-received film, shot in real Libyan locations with plenty of authentic kit.  Who knew!  Well, I did, sort of.  Now, since I am typing this up at work, my cunning plan was to use the photographs I'd loaded onto my phone of "The War Illustrated" except it's not being recognised <sad bad face> so that will have to wait until tonight when I skulk back into my Sekrit Layr.  Instead we shall have to make to with LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DE -hmmm perhaps not, perhaps not.

     Well, I suppose we need to move on from today's very short Intro.

     Motley, would you care for a little ice-cream?  Turnip and sausage-flavoured.

BOOJUM! Reviews Films

Perhaps Your Humble Scribe ought to warn you that if you want a sensible, serious review, go away.  NOW!  Mark Kermode (a big fan of The Comsat Angels) has a neat line in Proper Film Reviews, go look him up.

Film critic and expert cat-strangler

     Once again, we here at the blog generalise madly, make giant leaps of logic and assume enormously.  Except when we don't.  Will it drum up more traffic?  Then we'll do it.  So, enough pontificating.  Begin the battering!

"Venom: Let There Be Carnage": Conrad is very angry that enough of you saw the original to make a sequel inevitable.  WHY O WHY! I make that plea because I saw a trailer for the original film at the cinema, and once you'd seen that there was no need to see the film.  There, I saved you ninety minutes and five pounds, and THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME?  <finger hovers dangerously close to the Remote Nuclear Detonator>.  Or have I got this all wrong and it's a documentary about snakes and anti-venins? 

Apparently I am not wrong.

"Addams Family 2": What?  There was a previous one?  That I somehow missed in my ceaseless observation of bus posters as they whiz by The Mansion?  I doubt that a whole very lot indeed!  It must have gone slinking out during lockdown, the dirty cur.  For anything to do with the titular family, that bus poster was far too bright as regards it's colour palette, full of bright colours when it ought to be sombre and downbeat.  I bet the whole hideous farrago attempts to be a comedy.  Plus, nobody living or dead can better John Astin as Gomez, because he just oozed craziness.  So there.

Cannot be bettered*.

"Dune": How splendid!  A well deserved biography of the talented and versatile Doon McKichan.  If only they could have spelled her name correctly - what, did you think a spelling Nazi like Conrad would overlook that blunder?

NEVER!

Meanwhile Back In 1942 ...

Allow me to show you one of "The War Illustrated"'s rather jingoistic double-page spreads about the Desert War, which was one of the major fronts Perfidious Albion was waging war upon (the other being the Battle of the Atlantic and t'other being the Bomber Offensive**).  I can do this since I am now back at The Mansion, despite the first efforts of Worst Bus.  No - hang on - no - actually that can stay as is.  Art!

     That's the overall montage, repeated here so you can feel a sense of what an audience of the time would have known.  Let us examine these photos in a little more detail.  Art!

     The caption claims that this is a US tank commander.  Poppycock! Not with the black beret of a British armoured formation he's not.  Perhaps they meant that he is in command of a South Canadian tank, which is a lot more credible, especially since the machine-gun behind him is a .30 calibre Browning, a South Canadian weapon.  Given the indistinct bulk of his fellow tanks in the background, Conrad suspects this to be a Grant tank, rather than the more diminutive Stuart - known to the British as the 'Honey'.  The Grant came as a most unpleasant shock to the desert Axis, since it mounted a whacking big 75 m.m. gun that fired equally whacking armour-piercing shells that would render their desert armour unto bits and pieces.  It could also fire a whacking big high-explosive round that would render anti-tank guns into scrap metal.  Art!

A.k.a. "Egypt's Last Hope"

     What TWI didn't dare say was that, being South Canadian, the Grant was reliable, a quality essential in desert warfare and frequently found wanting in British tanks.  Also, like the Honey, you could throw it around like a sports car and the tracks wouldn't come off.

A Honey doing easily seventy miles per hour.
(Okay, okay, perhaps only sixty.  There.  Happy now?)

     O that chap with the tins of film stock?  Those are actually anti-tank mines.  Once buried a fuse will be CAREFULLY screwed into them and then - tanks beware.  They needed far too much pressure to be detonated by a humble human, lest you be wondering.  Usually.

     I think that's enough desert war for one day.  We will most assuredly be coming back to this montage!

Finally -

O Noes, it appears Facebook has gone toes-up since lunchtime, when I last checked it and indeed posted a link to my latest maunderings on there.  This means if you are reading it I am dead and UNIT have found proof if you are reading it then you are either on Twitter or FB has reanimated, like a hideous cyborg zombie musician (yes Keith Richards we are looking at you).

     As long as I keep getting decent traffic figures <snaps fingers> to Facebook!

Your Honour, I rest my case

*  Any arguments and the Remote Nuclear Detonator will settle the issue.

**  Fought notably help-free from the Sinisters, as I like to point out to the Sinisters, which always annoys them***.

***  Tee hee!

If I Were To Say "Desert War"

Then Undoubtedly Some Of You - Those Who Like Living Dangerously -

Will respond with a reply along the lines of "O yes that was when MacDonald's and Burger King were having an argument about Fluffernutters and Milkquakes and -" and then you will cease speaking as my Remote Nuclear Detonator turns you into super-heated vapour.  DESERT is not the same as DESSERT.  

     Ahem.  "Desert: a place that is devoid or almost devoid of vegetation, especially because of low rainfall." Art!

     From the Latin <hack spit> 'Deserere' meaning 'To abandon'.

     Dessert: "The sweet, usually the last course of a meal."  From the French <loud hoorahs> 'Desservir' meaning 'To clear a table'.

Taunt me with what I cannot have, why don't you.
O YOU HAVE DONE!
<reaches for Remote Nuclear Detonator>

     Another, larger, contingent would suck their teeth and say 'Ah yes, Gulf War One, I was there with U.N.I.T's Special Overseas Taskforce, you know.  Personal acquaintance of Brigadier Bambera.' Conrad turns a keen and beady eye upon such respondents - but doesn't use the RND as - well, as an undercover alien one dislikes the attention of U.N.I.T.

Not a lady to cross lightly.  Or at all, really.

     Okay, having typically gone on about what we're not going on about, a vanishingly small number of respondents - probably members of S.O.T.C.W. - would realise Your Humble Scribe is in fact talking about North Africa in the years 1940 to 1943.  

     Because Your Humble Scribe wishes to illustrate the events of seventy-odd years ago via the wartime lens of "The War Illustrated", if you don't mind.  And even if you do.  The magazine was a fortnightly publication that had a (kind of) coloured front cover illustration and tended to have a significant lag between the real world events it covered and the publication date.  This was to ensure that nothing of tactical value was revealed to the Axis.  Art!

     Royal Marines training to go and say hello to people who don't want anyone to come saying hello to them.  The print is too small to see the title, so I shall reveal that it's October 2nd 1942.  Let's peer inside the front cover.  Art!

     Here you have their overview of how the war is going on various fronts, and please notice how much space is devoted to the Sinisters, who were always bleating about how they were ignored and unloved.  Plainly they are not being ignored here, and if you want to remain loved, don't co-invade Poland with the Teutons!  Art?

     By this time there were scads of South Canadian squadrons roosting in This Sceptred Isle, and they had begun to visit Occupied Europe to say hello, even when Occupied Europe didn't like or want anyone from the skies saying hello.

     Now on to the meat of the matter.  Art!

     Finally on topic!  That chap at upper left is Field Marshal Alexander, GOC Middle East by this date, and as an ex-guardsman, always impeccably turned out.  The picture to his left shows a gaggle of generals, Monty being the bare-headed one pointing.  Behind his arm is the jovial and popular 'Jorrocks', identified by his aquiline profile.  And at bottom is a Bofors gun, ready to spit molten death (it says here) at any Axis aircraft that dares venture near the Nile delta.  Again, by this time, there was such a severe fuel shortage amongst the Axis that they did very little venturing.

     I think we'd better move on or this whole post will be about the background to "The Sands Of Valour" <Mister Hand moves in to move things swiftly along>

"Reclaiming History" By Vincent Bugliosi

Your Humble Scribe is now onto page 17 of this epic tome, which is more impressive than you might think because the Introduction alone has over 50 pages.  The footnotes are on a separate CD enclosed in the rear of the volume, and constitute another small volume in themselves.  Ol' Vince states that the single-volume status is only possible because the font size has been reduced and there are thus more words per page than usual, as otherwise it would have taken thirteen standard-sized hardbacks to accommodate his 1.5 million words. Art1

     This is a chap with 1) a sharp mind and 2) an ability to research a case.  We shall see where this leads us*.

Squid Pro Quo

I could probably work out some incredibly convoluted rationale about how that title corresponds to Game Five in "Squid Game" and the probability and possibility of - But no.  It makes a bad pun and that's as far a we're going.  

SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!

     Okay, for this 'Game' (and those quotes are quite appropriate) the 16 surviving contestants have to don a tabard with the numbers 1 - 16 upon them.  Gi-Hun dithers so long that he's got no choice at all and has to pick number 16.  Which, it transpires, is no bad thing, because - Art?

     The players have to cross a glass bridge of paired glass panels, where one glass panel is made of tempered glass that will sustain their weight and indeed that of another player, whereas the other panel is normal glass that will shatter, pitching them onto the floor a lethal depth below.  And, again, there is a time limit; if you're not off the bridge by 00:00 then you will be shot dead.

     

Unlucky Number 13

     By the end only Sang-Woo, Gi-Hun and Sae-Byeok survive.  Erk!  3 people from the original 456.  That's only one person from every 152, if you're into statistics.  Why carry on?  Because the prize money amounts to nearly ₩45,000,000,000, that's why.  

     Hmmmmm.  No.  

Still Jowly, And Scowly, Yet Less Hairy

Because I cannot think of any word to do with hair or hairdressing or being hirsute that rhymes.  So.  Conrad has had his unruly thatch trimmed and looks quite different, if not quite human yet.  I'm working on that.  Art!

     See what I mean about the scowling?  That, gentle readers, is a face that is NOT designed for smiling.  Thanks go to Wonder Wifey for doing the best she could with an unforgiving canvas.

Finally -

Like a flea on a griddle - an aphorism I have used many times without witnessing, rather to my discontent as I hate the horrid little bloodsuckers - I have to haste away because I've got laundry to see to and those samosas won't last forever and there's still the 3D Empire State Building to see to -

     Yeah yeah yeah first world problems are still problems.

And with that, Vulnavia, we are ever so done!

*  Not down any rabbit holes.

Back Looking Back

I Apologise If That's Not Very Creative

You can only come up with so many variations on a theme of retrospection.  Or, I could just make shizzle up and have the Intro be a short article on nothing very sensible or relevant.  Although, come to think of it, that is mostly how BOOJUM! operates normally.

     What the heck.  Okay, we need a click-baity picture that will entice and ensnare, yet without showing too much skin.  Art!

One half of the PROPER Avengers

     You are allowed to have your tongue hang out for all of 0.143 seconds, after which Mrs. Peel will <redactedredactedredactedredacted> pliers.  So - on with it.

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/10/a-grave-watery.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/10/how-very-pervi.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/10/its-nearly-end-of-world.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-ming.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/10/i-live-in-your-skin.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/10/day-three-of-sobriety.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/10/lets-get-move-on.html

2013

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2013/10/boojum-powered-by-marmite-and-stale.html

J. G. Ballads

I Feel Rather Clever About This One

You'll see.  Conrad has never been one for false modesty.  Okay, you recall that over the past few days we have been dealing with that arch-miserablist J G Ballard - and before we go any further NO THAT TITLE IS NOT A SPELLING ERROR! be careful because my Remote Nuclear Detonator needs testing after it's recent servicing - who cast an enormous (grey) shadow over British sci-fi and even further afield.  Apparently one edition was withdrawn by it's South Canadian publishers and destroyed for fear of libel charges*.  Makes one proud to be a British sci-fi fan!  Art!

They made a film of "The Atrocity Exhibition" (!)

     Enough people with an artistic bent have read Ol' Jaygee to have had an unfluence (which is like an influence except worse) on modern music (hence today's frightfully clever title!) , which of course can be read in one of two ways.  Personally Conrad falls into the It's A Good Thing, because one of the bands actually named after his stuff is my favouritest band ever:  The Comsat Angels.  Art!

The Comsats, atypically smiley and jokey

     Then you have the incredibly influential and glum Joy Division, who recorded a 'track' (stop me if I get too technical) actually titled "Atrocity Exhibition", which fits in perfectly with their arch-miserablist soundscape.  Music to look out upon a grey urban concrete landscape in the rain**.

     We then come to The Klaxons and their debut album "Myths of the Near Future", which, if Art will get off his waffle-patterned posterior -

Either a mess or a collage.  Take your pick.

     Let's have proof that their homage is to a real and genuine item.  Art!

Proof they are not raving (much)

     Going back 40 years, we have those masters of pop The Buggles owing an inspiration to Ol'Jaygee, because their seminal electro-pop single "Video Killed The Radio Star" is directly derived from the story "The Sound Sweep", incredible as it may sound.  You can't get further apart than the poppiest of pop songs and Ol' Arch-Miserablist, yet it happened, and I bet you're all humming the chorus now, for which I apologise.

     The music marches on - next exhibit, Your Honour, is the Hawkwind ditty "High Rise" - Art!

CAUTION! do not wire your plugs using album covers as a guide.  Or you will die.

     There you go, track two on Side B.  I should point out that this is a CD re-issue as the original only had 8 tracks.  Let us sample some of Bob Calvert's lyrics, shall we?

Childhood

Of concrete cube shaped

A flypaper stuck with human life

Caged up rage

Swarming all the time

     Well, what did you expect?  Happy gambolling lambs and rainbows?  Ol' Jaygee didn't like music but I like to think he'd have approved of these lyrics.

     I think we'll tie this theme up now, or the whole of this post will be about music and the man.  Let's end with a cover picture that is ever-so JG.  Art?

A very low-flying aircraft.

     Not sure about that title, as Ol' Jaygees stories are more likely to give you nightmares than eight hours restful sleep.

Let The (Fuming Nitric) Acid Rain Begin!

For Lo! we are back on a subject close to my fusion-powered pumping unit, that of Codewords, and I have quite the backlog to expostulate about today.  SIT BACK DOWN!

"HYDROFOIL": Having a word where there is no vowel after an "H" is an especially dirty trick, quite apart from having two rarely-used letters in there as well ("Y" and "F") AND quite besides the issue of what a hydrofoil is and how often one encounters them.  Not at all, in the case of Switzerland or Hungary, because they are (resorts to Collins Concise): A fast light vessel, the hull of which is raised out of the water on pairs of fixed vanes.  Art!

     They can go like stink because most of the hull is out of the water, meaning less drag.  BUT THEY ARE NOT COMMON!

"ONYX":  YOU WHAT!  And indeed what the Kreplach! is onyx?  Hang on - " A variety of chalcedony with alternating black-and-white bands, used as a gemstone." Thank you, Collins Concise.  No wonder this solution eluded me; Conrad has nothing to do with gemstones or jewellery.  Bah!

"XENON": Grrrrr!  Only thanks to my extensive knowledge of the periodic table did I get this one.  Heaven only knows what the scientifically illiterate would have done.  Cry and admit defeat, I suppose.  I bet there aren't any decent pictures to illustrate what a xenon is, either.  Art!

Hmmm, I was wrong, this is brilliant***!

     That's enough fulminating for one day, Your Humble Scribe needs time for his blood pressure to lower.

Frank's Wild Seers

(With apologies to Tom Waits).  For Yes! we are back with the unfettered imagination and artwork of Frank Tinsley, he of "Mechanix Illustrated" and sundry other pulp publications.  Let us examine forensically one of his wilder - er - flights of fancy.  Art!

Yes, why don't we have ramming jet fighters?

     "If atomic attack comes, our best defence may be rammer planes that give the pilot a chance to survive" alleges the author, Martin Caidin.  Yes, that Martin Caidin, who wrote the novel "Cyborg" which became the television series "The Six Million Dollar Man".  He was an ex-pilot himself so I presume he only came up with this copy after a long and sustained battle with a bottle of whisky.

     Why don't we have rammer planes?  Because it's an excellent way to lose a plane and pilot simultaneously.  Imagine the closing speed of an interceptor and bomber; when combined you're talking speeds in excess of Mach One.  The impact would turn both into a confetti-spangled fireball, quite possibly 'cooking-off' whatever nuclear ordnance was being carried.  Or - perhaps the whole thing is a hoax and the date of publication was April 1st?  Or it was a subtle piece of propaganda, intended to strike fear into the hearts of Sinister pilots?

     This, gentle reader, is why anti-aircraft missiles were developed.

Finally -

We have hit the Compositional Ton and I've not yarked on about "Squid Game" yet.  Shall I?  O go on.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

 The fourth game has players partnered in pairs and unlike the previous team games, they play against each other.  Each player is given 10 marbles and has to win their partner's 10 marbles, without resorting to violence.  Of course, they only find out that one of them is going to be eliminated (for which read "shot dead") when the game begins.

     Sang-Woo proves himself to be an utter douchecanoe by deceiving Ali, substituting his marbles for pebbles and weaselling his way to survival.  Gi-Hun, to his utter despair (because he is a decent chap at heart), wins against Il-un and walks outside the playing area to the sound of a gunshot.

     And thus we are down to 16 players of the original 456.  Erk!

     Apologies for the pause in the above, Your Humble Scribe was having his wild white thatch trimmed a little, and he now looks a lot smarter.

*  Ol'Jaygee has a short story with a title I cannot even allude to here, except that it involves Ronald Regan.

**  Hello Manchester!

***  Do you see what I - O you do.

Here's A Phenomenon

Your Humble Scribe Has Noticed Whilst Travelling By Bus Again

No! Not First Bus's inability to stick to the timetables they create - Conrad used to maintain they were the biggest works of fiction since "Lord Of The Rings" and now wants to add in "Gormenghast" as well.  Because it's another lengthy tome, before you ask.  Art!

     No, what I refer to, of course - obviously! - is that people are now boarding buses with no idea where they are going to, where the terminus or indeed terminii* are, and most especially what tickets to get and how much they cost.  Art!

Passengers about to board the Number 83

  This leads to long, involved debates between passengers and the drivers, which appear to involve thorough discussions on epistemology, free will versus determinism, the HS2 construction project, potential winners of "Bake Off" and This Sceptred Isle's economy.

     Whilst these debates are going on Conrad is screaming - internally only because we're British don't you know - WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE!  WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE! as yet another party of passengers dawdle onto the bus and -

     ARE THEY DISCUSSING THE POETRY OF KEATS?  I'LL GIVEN THEM 'A TERRIBLE BEAUTY'!

     This is quite besides any roadworks or accidents en route, as councils insist on digging up bits of road in order to inconvenience drivers and make them choose to travel by bus.  In answer to which - see above.

     Conrad, if he's travelling by bus, gets to the TFGM website and checks out the route and times.  He has the First Bus app on his phone, so he can pre-book e-tickets.  He is, in fact, A Man Prepared.  Well, technically An Alien Prepared but we shall overlook that in the interests of brevity.

     BE MORE LIKE CONRAD OR THE REMOTE NUCLEAR DETONATOR WILL BE WORKING OVERTIME!

     I have spoken.  Let it be so.

All Squid-ed Out

Hmmmm since this Stork thriller-cum-horror series seems to be increasing in popularity I had better get my spoiler-laden review into the blogging domain lest I become redundant.  We have seen the number of contestants whittled down through being shot dead when they fail a game or time-limit, and when the fat bullying gangster murders someone in the dormitory, he isn't punished in any way.

     Ooops.  You just know this isn't going to end well.

     Note the guards have an heirarchy; those with a circle are the grunts, forbidden to speak unless given permission; those with a triangle are the sergeants, able to bully the grunts, and the squares are lordly officers, who

     ANYWAY there is overnight carnage as the fat bullying gangster's gang go all out and murder 27 people - or so they claim.  It's not clear from the deliberately under-lit scenes who's doing what to whom.

     When the next day dawns there are 80 contestants left, who are sorted into 8 teams of 10.  Their- ahem - game?  A tug of war.  Art!

     As you can see, the platforms are so high that losing means falling to instant death - for the whole team of 10, because player are manacled to the rope.

     The team with Gi-Hun, Sang-Woo, Abdul, Il-nam and Sae-Byeok survive and are now amongst the 40 survivors, thanks to Il-nam's recollection of how he won tug-of-war games in his youth.  Tactics triumphs over muscles.  Ah yes, just wait until the next 'game'!

If You Have A Spare £150 And 150 Hours

Then a recent advert I came across on Youtube will be right up your street.  As you should surely know by now, we occasionally feature Lego sculptures or big builds or mechanisms because there is nothing more satisfying than seeing other people work hard.  Art!

      What's that?  "O it doesn't look too assuming or difficult".  Bite your tongue - it has 2,205 pieces and will take between six to eight hours to assemble, IF you are an Expert Level - er - Legoist?  I put down 150 because if a sausage-fingered bafoon like Conrad picked it up, 150 hours to completion is on the generous side.

     DON'T even begin to start me on the Lego Concert Grand Piano!

To Be Frank

Frank Tinsley, that is.  You remember, that artist chappie from the pages of "Mechanix Illustrated" amongst others.  You cannot accuse Frank of thinking little, as this spread from 1948 makes clear.  Art!

     There's a quote up there from rocketry pioneer Willy Ley:"The first nation to establish a lunar military outpost will rule the Earth." And here you see Frank positively exulting in having an 'Invasion Base' established in a lunar crater.  He has handily added the legend "Earth" to planet Earth in case any of you were confused.

     All jest aside, this concept is one that both obsessed and terrified all parties involved in the Cold War; that one of them would steal a march on the others and create an unassailable missile launching site on the Moon.  There are a couple of Bonestells with a similar theme** and a John Wyndham short story whose name I forget is also up there.  O and "Quatermass And The Pit" too has them in the background.  Art!

Sorry, no pictures of missiles, but here's one of Barbara Shelley being scared.

     Then I came across this by accident.  It's actually an inversion of the concept here, and I've no idea what it involves but it looks exciting!  Art!

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is holding the fort, to coin a phrase, at The Mansion, with Edna keeping a sharp eye on me and any rustling packets of snacks that might happen to be opened.  At which point, like the shopkeeper in "Mister Benn" she will appear from nowhere.

     Because everyone else has gone swanning off to Mi And Pho, to scoff quantities of Vietnamese food, because there was only room for four, and I would have made five.

     The thing about Mi And Pho is that the portions are large.  So large, in fact, that there may be doggy bags involved***.

*  I've wanted to get this word in for an age.

**  Nope, you'll have to scour BOOJUM! to find them

***  WE HOPE

The Hilarious Comedies Of J.G. Ballard!

I Lied.  There Aren't Any.

Tee hee!  Your Humble Scribe was footling around on teh Interwebz last night, after mentioning Ol' Jaygee in another post, just out of curiosity.  I've read a few of his short story collections, and a few novels, and to say they are bleak and depressing is like saying the Atlantic is rather wet.  Let us have a click-baity picture to entice the masses - Art!

     A log of his novels are apcalyptic ones, such as the above, and then you have "The Wind", "The Drought" and "The Drowned World" (what an artistic inversion there!).  His short stories also feature a lot of misery and misanthropy, all the while contemplating people's inner selves, with a smattering of sex (unusual in Sixties sci-fi), until they die, or are killed, or fall into a permanent coma, or eat so much ice cream they freeze to death from the inside.  Art!

     And yet he could pass for normal.  If you met him in a quiet corner of the pub you might think he was a university professor or a retired mathematician, not someone who habitually destroyed the world.  Metaphorically, I hasten to add.   You frequently find his work being described as 'speculative fiction' which is what science fiction calls itself when feeling pretentious.   I wonder what kind of guest he made at parties?

     So, if at any time you find yourself in an excess of happiness, or approaching transports of joy, or even humming light-heartedly, then go get you to some of Ol' Jaygee and put a dampener on it.  Art!

     Well there you are.  Conrad never meant to write anything about Ol' Jaygee and here we are a couple of hundred words later.  I guess I'm just so so creative.  O and that death from ice cream?  I made that up.   Just so we're clear.

     Motley!  Let's re-stage a scene from one of his films.  "Crash" or "High-Rise"?

Crashed off a high-rise?

More From "The War Illustrated"

If you recall, this is a wartime publication by Hammerton, which had various different types of content; 'Along The Battle Fronts', 'The War In The Air', a report on the Sinisters, that sort of thing.  Art!

     That first picture shows the ghastly end of an ammunition transport in an Arctic convoy to Murmansk, and I guessed as such the instant I saw it.  You can bet nobody on board survived such a catastrophic end, and there wouldn't have been much left of the ship after thousands of tons of ammunition go up.  The caption at the bottom says the detonation was so large it destroyed three of the attacking aircraft.

     Then you have the frigate HMS 'Rother' and an anonymous battleship according to the caption, showing the kind of conditions the Arctic convoys endured.  Let Conrad now venture dangerously close to Politics with a cartoon from Zec.  Art!

"The cost of petrol has been increased by one penny"

     The point being that said petrol was being imported or exported in tankers manned by the Merchant Navy, civilian volunteers with maybe a couple of machine guns or an elderly anti-aircraft gun as defence on their ship.  38,000 of them were killed, lots of them on the Artic run because when you went into the ocean at those latitudes, your life-expectancy was three or four minutes.  Of course these convoys vanished from Sinister history and memory the instant wartime ended, but a thank you would have been nice.

     Hmmmm well my excuse is that was historical.  Let us move on -

A Little Musical Critique

We are going to finish "King's Lead Hat" or die trying!  Perhaps that should have read "A Lottle Musical Critique".  Anyway, on with the roasting -

King's lead hat put the poker in the fire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

Colour Conrad confused.  I thought KLH was a dredger on the Amazon river?

Thus
(anyway it's probably some sleazy seedy sexual reference)

King's lead hat was a mother to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

You mention pokers and mothers in the same breath?  Wash your mouth out!

King's lead hat put the innocence inside her, it will come, it will come, it will surely come

THIS - this is definitely as sleazy seedy sexual reference.

Close enough.  And definitely not seedy

King's lead hat was a hammer to desire, it will come, it will come, it will surely come.

     Finally finished, and I feel like taking a hammer to it myself.  We've gone from a car full of turkeys to highly questionable sexual symbolism, via ships nearly running ashore - we never got an answer as to which quarter they were presenting to the shore - and I do apologise for this taking so long.  Brian End.

Yes, you may well look contrite, young man

How Very Prosaic

You ought to know by now that Your Humble Scribe wanders the beer and spirit aisles of the supermarket, looking for a label that allows of a pun or two, and here we have one samesuch.  Art!

     I haven't worked out what a 'Double Neipa' is and didn't find any handy explanation on the can.  What's with the hexagonal pattern in the background?  It strongly resembles the layout of a hex-and-counter wargame map as Art will prove -

     If you're going to christen your ale "Tram" then perhaps tram-lines would be more appropriate?  Just a thought.  I bet their Customer Service department is overwhelmed with objections like mine.  Art!

Conrad approves

     What's that?  No, I have no idea what it tastes like.  That's hardly the point, is it!

Finally - 

I haven't left myself with enough room to either fulminate about Codewords - and believe me I have a major backlog of fulminating to get through O yes by Jove! - or the next part of "Squid Game", which seems to be setting viewing figures alight on Netflix, according to The Daily Beast.  They found it very disturbing, which makes Conrad finding it very entertaining potentially disturbing, too.  O well.

     Maybe that's why my last psychiatrist needed a psychiatrist.

     And now, we are off to liberate the Sanjac of Novi Pazar!