Band Of Bothers

Be Careful

Be very careful, lest you invoke my ire and end up as a cloud of radioactive vapour, for the Remote Nuclear Detonator has not been used today.  Yet.

     Because NO, that title is not a reference to the epic television series "Band Of Brothers", which Your Humble Scribe has on DVD and still re-watches occasionally, but only occasionally as it's plenty long.  Art!

"These tourists are kinda hostile, y'know?"

     Of course - obviously! - the wehraboos hate hate hate it, because the Teutons get roundly beaten, which, amazingly enough, is what happened in real life.

     ANYWAY that's not what we're talking about in this Intro.  Leaping onto a completely different narrative track, you may remember Conrad mentioning his Fitbit at times.  This was a digital device which tracked how many steps you'd done per day, plus other guff about relaxing or exercise, or - most important of all - a stopwatch function.  Art!

     

     This is what mine looked like, as it refused to charge and eventually died the death of defunct digital devices, meaning it got chucked in the bin.  No sentimentality, that's me.  Having gotten used to the device, I ordered a new model, 'Band 4', which is where we get today's title from, as it will unfailingly pester you about exercise and your blood oxygen levels and whether you put clean underwear on that morning.  Art!

Bandbox?

     This one has a snazzy colour display and updates your step count in real time, and has so far been consistent in coming alive when Conrad moves his wrist, whereas the old Fitbit was very temperamental about displaying.  It not only has a Stopwatch function, the stopwatch counts tenths of seconds.  Art!

Gosh, what hairy hands Conrad has!

     Obviously not the Stopwatch function, and a little fuzzy thanks to how awkward it is to take a photograph of your starboard wrist with your port hand.  The strap has lots of holes in, unlike the old model, so I may be able to avoid getting a sweat rash again.

     Eagle-eyed viewers that you are, the name "Huawei" will have immediately jumped out at you from the box packaging, so yes, this device is a product of The Populous Dictatorship.  Doubtless full of sinister monitoring chips that will report back on what Your Humble Scribe is up to, or what he's typing.

A real band box

      Motley!  Dig out a record for me.  "Music From Big Pink", I feel like wallowing in a bit of Sixties retrospective.

This One Rambles A Tad

So what's new?  Remember that Cryptic solution I brought up about "ASPHALT"?  There was more to that crossword than bitumen and minerals, as evinced by the picture below.  Art!

     The clue went along the lines of "Source of liquorice (3,5)" and the solution was a kind of inspired guess, as I'd no clue what "OLD SARUM" meant, whether it was a township, an edible dish of stewed turnip and mangel-wurzel or an ancient author similar to the Venerable Bede.

     That first guess is the closest, and if Art will put down his coke sandwich -

     This is what's left of Old Sarum, it being a defended locality from the Iron Age onwards.  You can see the outer ditch, which had a curtain wall around it when OS was a going concern, as well as the motte that Normans constructed.  There was a castle atop the mound, and you can also see where the cathedral once stood.  If we can dig up a picture of it during it's heyday - Art!

     From the beginning of the thirteenth century it was supplanted by New Sarum, further out on the plain, which became better known as Salisbury.  When I say 'supplanted' I mean 'dismantled to build New Sarum'.

     Ah, you want to know about the liquorice, don't you?  Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts hail from Sheffield, and the only online trace to OS I could find was as below.  Art!

     Conrad thinks this is wilfully obscure if the Cryptic compilers expect people to solve the clue on the strength of this.  I had no trouble, because I'm a Cryptic expert, I'm just thinking of all the poor stupid people out there everyone else.

Beautiful Beautiful Schadenfreude

You remember schadenfreude, don't you?  One of the rare occasions when the Teuton language is compact and concise: 'malicious enjoyment of other people's misery' and in Conrad's world that usually means the ballfoot game, so let Art illuminate us.  Art?

2559 Comments

     Conrad has perused a sample of these Comments, and most of them seem to be gloating that Manuted were beaten by Migglesbouroug, with invective being ladled over the Manuted in creative fashion, as the BBC will remove comments with obvious swearing present.  O - Comments now up to 3,595.

L

Reply posted by Lets Agree To Disagree, at 23:09 4 FebLets Agree To Disagree

23:09 4 Feb

to balloon_knot

Lets Agree To Disagree replied:

Sorry Man Utd, sometimes it is just not your day. You can't be 'David' every time. At least you put up a brave fight.

     That, lest you be unaware, is irony laid on with a JCB ("Backhoe" for our South Canadian friends).

Let's Have More "Torment"

Whilst we're on that particular theme.  If you recall, Eric Miller was being tormented (that title reference again!) by the spirit of the girl he'd murdered, and it's not looking good for him.  Don't forget, this stuff is pretty dark, and it's going to get darker still.

The thing made a slobbering rasp.  Any person speaking like that could only have a major speech impairment or a seriously damaged jaw –

               - then the covers were slowly dragged off him, despite his desperate clinging to them.  When his face was free of the covers the sitting-thing leaned forward, to judge by the change in weight he felt. 

               Eric kept his eyes shut.

               ‘Boo!’ said a cheery teenaged voice. 

               Eric opened his eyes.  A vivacious teenaged girl looked down at him, grinning the grin of a cat with a mouse.  In less than a second her face contorted into a wrecked, rotting, collapsed parody of a person, eyes fallen in, wildly flapping tongue threatening to hit him in the face.

               For the second time Eric screamed so loudly his throat hurt.

 

               ‘Are you decent?’ asked Jen from outside Louis’s bedroom door.

               ‘Would it stop you if I wasn’t?’ he countered.

               ‘Eww!  That’s gross!’ she replied.  ‘Yes it would.  I don’t fancy you.’

               Louis dived into bed, making the bedsprings creak in protest.

               ‘Okay, you can come in.’

               Her ability to walk through solid objects never ceased to be a source of wonderment to Louis.  Now she sat on the end of the bed, checking his reading material.

               ‘Ghormenghast?  For amusement?  Louis, that’s sick!’ 

               They bantered a little about literature, then Louis went for the meat of the matter.

               ‘How is our least favourite human being?’

               ‘Frightened.  I scared him by pulling the sheets off his bed.’

               Louis recalled how terrified he’d been when she pulled the same trick on him.  Involuntary gooseflesh came up on his arms.

     Brrrr!  

Finally -

Conrad's practically non-existent sense of smell is picking up scents from the kitchen, meaning they're cooking up tea, and incidentally making me hungry.  Or nudging my greed, one of the two.  I did finish off the sandwich from last night while composing the Intro so I can manage for a little longer.  Aren't there Onion Ring crisps lying around the Sekrit Layr?

All Hail Armoured Underwear!

For It Protects Your Buttocks Bare

NO! you snivelling perverts - and you know who you are - you are not going to get a parade of naked nethers.  Mind you, if Art can put down his bowl of coal and get us an illustration that remains SFW - Art!

     Made out of Sprong™, that miracle material sufficient unto all you domestic and light engineering requirements, light, robust and most definitely proof against the teeth of the Coincidence Hydra*.  For Lo! it has appeared again, snapping fruitlessly at Your Humble Scribe's posterior.  Conrad suspects he's probably going to be rather stringy and tasteless, to be honest, yet let's not take chances, hmmmm?

Heh.

     Fortunately for me, hydrae are not big on dentists, for obvious reasons - if you have over two hundred teeth, a visit to an orthodontist is going to be verrry expensive - so getting them diamond-tipped is out of the question.

     ANYWAY the other night I was visited by said hydra, as I was perusing the Sork zombie horror drama "All Of Us Are Dead", Episode 8, and I paused it so I could work on my Cryptic crossword backlog**, as, alas, I cannot do both simultaneously.  This is due to having the original dialogue instead of dubbing it into English <hack spit>.

     Oooer Matron!  What happens but this - Art!

     8 Down: "An infatuation for a fruity drink (5)" - CRUSH.  Now read the subtitles on the screen.  What are the chances of that happening?  Also note that Conrad has the English subtitles on whilst the cast speak Korean, so I'm picking up how to swear in Korean.  Art!

     Check out these potential survivors.

     Motley!  Put out the nets, I'm sure that was a trout swimming past the front window.

From Burpee To Vultee

This may take a while to make sense (as is frequently the case here), so let me explain.  Anna - no consulting editor credits for you, sorry - posted that she had done 150 Burpees in 16 minutes, which sounds vaguely vulgar to the uninitiated (like myself) but which turned out to be a form of exercise.  Art!

Sorry, but Four Legs Bad

     Conrad came to a complete stop at this point, because in his corrupted memory-banks there was that entry about an aircraft, a "Consolidated Burpee", which didn't come up on any Google search, although I did find a Canuckistanian  Flight Lieutenant James Burpee, crew member of 617 Squadron in "Operation Gomorrah", you know, the Dambusters Raid, which

     ANYWAY I did track down an aircraft manufacturing company that called itself 'Consolidated -' yes yes yes, good start 'Vultee'.  AHA!  Art?

Their mighty Catalina flying-boat

     Soooo this company resulted from the conglomeration of Consolidated and Vultee, who later found that title too much of a mouthful, so they shortened it to 'Convair'.

     How 'Vultee' became 'Burpee' is ultimately un-knowable, and I say that as the person said memories belong to.

BOOJUM! Reviews Films

Yes it has been a long time since we flippantly excoriated Hollywood's attempts to please everyone including The Populous Dictatorship, partly thanks to a lack of travel by bus, as we here on the blog use them to generate content.  The contemptuous desert of generalised venom is over!

"UNCHARTED":  Talk about doing yourself down!  This has to be a British film, only we would be so self-deprecating as to claim we're going to do dismally at the box-office.  Or - perhaps it's a tax dodge, and the studio want to lose money? because they're a front for drug dealers, shady hedge funds and the gangster pals of Tsar Putin?

The legend cartographers used when territory was -

"CASANOVA": Always pleasant to see a documentary about astronomy.  Conrad is unfamiliar with this term.  I am aware that there's 'Nova', 'Supernova' and 'Hypernova', and since "Casa" is presumably Latin <hack spit> for "Home", I am judging that this concerns our own Sun turning nova, with the consequences that would follow.  Hint: there wouldn't be anything left inside the orbit of Neptune.  File under edifying yet grim.  Art!

A Big Bang, yes; just not THE Big Bang

"MOONFALL": Ho hum.  Let me guess, they blew up the Moon and the bits are going to land on Earth and kill everyone and everything?  Been there done that, a.k.a. "The Umbrella Academy". OR let me guess, they blew up the Moon and the bits are going to land on Earth and kill nearly everyone and everything?  Been there as well, got the autographed ticket and everything, a.k.a. "The Time Machine" (2002 iteration).  Let me guess, the Moon is about to crash into the Earth and only a desperate attempt by a lone wolf and his lovely assistant can save the planet, because NASA and ESA et al are completely incompetent?  Art!

Close enough, and probably a lot better

     I think that's enough of making Hollywood suits squirm like hagfish.

Let's Throw Shades

As in 'shades' meaning 'ghosts', even if what we're talking about here are spirits, and not ones that come in one litre bottles.  For Lo! it's back to "Tormentor"

Eric Miller cowered under the covers in his solitary cell.  He’d seen the ghost twice in the prison already, once on the landing while he was being escorted there by wardens, a pretty ginger-haired girl walking along the opposite landing, walking right through a warden, turning to smile with a horrible, bright, knowing grin.

The surprise caused him to trip and fall, after which he refused to open his eyes.  The wardens called him all the names they could think of for such stupid behaviour.  Eric didn’t care - he got to the cell without seeing any more ghosts.

Inside the damp and smelly cell his housewarming consisted of a rotting corpse sitting up on the bunk, turning it’s decomposing face to him and making sounds that might, a long time ago, have been words.  The wardens needed to physically force him to remain in the cell after that.

The ghost remained invisible after that.  In fact Eric revised his opinion of the ghost; it pulled the sheets off his bunk, pawed at his face and took delight in moving the pathetically few possessions he’d brought with him.  Ghosts couldn’t do that – this was a poltergeist.  Or a demon.

               Invisible, but not silent.  Oh no!  The thing that haunted him kept coming back after random times, whispering in his ear or talking conversationally about how they were doomed to be together for all time.  No matter how quickly he whirled around or waved his arms, the persistent and penetrating voice continued.

               Most frightening of all was his interrupted sleep.  When the lights went out he was under the covers, not wanting to see that rotting horror facing him in the dark.  Despite paying nervous attention to every single noise in the cell, he managed to drop off – only to be woken up hours later by the feeling of drowning or asphyxiation.

               After a brief moment of disorientation he realised that a large object now sat on his chest.  He could hear it breathing.

               Eric shut his eyes and pretended he was still asleep.

     It didn't work for Luma, Eric, and it's not going to work for you.  O no!

Finally -

It's been raining for the past five hours and I don't want to walk swim Edna in this, so here's hoping it stops before dark.

*  We've not mentioned Sprong in an age, so here we are revisiting it.  O nostalgia.

**  It may sound like a first-world problem to you, it's a near-crisis to me.

Enough With The Silly Statements!

Conrad Is ANGRY!

As per usual.  I usually wake up angry, go to work angry, come home angry and retire for the night still frothing with righteous indignation.  This parade of pique is only interrupted during the day at lunchtime, when Your Humble Scribe chows down on whatever morsels he's made previously.

     BUT NOT TODAY!  Art?

NO.

     Tell me, do these bafoons get paid to come up with copy like this?  If so then there's a case to be made for dropping their wage below the National Minimum, or sending them up chimneys to earn a crust of bread and a pot of gruel.  As you should surely know, "Conrad" is the antithesis of "Exercise", and if you ever see those two words paired together then a sub-editor has created a typo out of "Exorcise".  WHY does the wretched and deleterious BBC insist on this editorial style?  I have had to take up the critical cudgels over this matter already, so tread lightly, Auntie Beeb, for I have both a long reach and a longer memory.  Art!

     

I forbear from comment

     Can one become addicted to exercise?  Conrad believes it to be entirely possible, since people have become addicted to Jeyes Household Cleaning Fluid of all things, which they sip by the spoonful, the depraved junkies*!  Yes the possibility of Your Humble Scribe becoming addicted to exercise is on par with <thinks> the sun turning into Stilton cheese.  Don't forget, once you build up all those muscles YOU HAVE NO CHOICE and must keep on exercising, exercising, exercising, or you'll turn into a mound of blubber.  Art!

Risk this!

Tarry, Tarry Night

Beware!  For my fingers are poised over the Remote Nuclear Detonator.  NO that is not a typo concerning that song by Don Mack Lane (sp?), which you couldn't get away from at the time, although Conrad was pleased to see recognition of astronomers hit Number One on Top Of The Pops.  <sigh> you'll need a picture to make any sense of this, won't you?  Art!

     Okay, that's what we're NOT talking about.  You see, Conrad was tackling The Metro Cryptic this morning, which he hasn't done for months and months, and was consequently out of touch with the compiler's way of thinking.  The clue I got stuck on was "Material that would stop a snake in it's tracks (7)".  Initially I thought it might be an anagram of "snake in" and was trying to think of various fabrics and textiles.  No luck.  Came back to it at lunchtime and realised what the solution immediately.  Art!

     <groan> "Asp" for 'snake' and "Halt" for 'stop'.  These people are sick!  Sick I tell you!  If you're not familiar with ashphalt, pronounced "Ashfelt" because of course - obviously! - why make the English language any easier? - it's made up of bitumen and minerals and is used in construction.  Art!

You're chancing it with all that white fabric, mate

     Hence this item's title.  What, you thought it was all completely random?  THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY!

Caravel?

Sorry, yes, another random word that popped into my head this morning for no good reason.  Conrad wasn't even aware if the word was real, as my imagination is fecund and fervid enough to create convincing-looking gibberish.  Look no further than 'Yesteryon', which still trips Blogger's spell-checker.

     ANYWAY I had to Google it - being in the office means no access to the Collins Concise - and what do you know - a Caravel was very much a real thing.  Art!

     A ship, in other words, usually mounting three masts, with a sloping bow and a single castle at the stern - stop me if I get too technical - which was big news in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, being used by the Spaniards and Porks to travel across the Atlantic and fall off the edge of the world discover the New World, in addition to trips to the Far East.  Yer man Christopher Columbus went a-roving in caravels, as did Vasco Da Gama.  The name is Portuguese, coming from the diminutive for 'ship', 'Caravo'.

Time For Terror!

Or at least a little directed maliciousness.  For Lo! we have more more more of "Tormentor".

Jennifer appeared in the staffroom, content to flit around and make the occasional tutor suffer a shiver without knowing why.

‘Oh, Eric’s not having a fun time in prison,’ she informed Louis, in a light and bantering tone.  ‘He’s in solitary confinement for his own protection.’

‘Which doesn’t protect him from you,’ muttered Louis, trying to be distinct and yet inaudible.

‘No!’ she crowed, that dangerous-looking aura appearing again.

‘See me at home,’ he warned.  ‘I can’t talk here.’

 

He tried to put on his Senior Lecturing Dad head on in preparation for the anticipated chat with Jen.  She agreed to not interfere when he made a ready meal, a promise spoilt by her tutting at his unhealthy eating habits.

‘Father Geoghan warned me to warn the both of us that Eric Miller is not to be harmed.  In fact the old chap worried that even haunting is treading the borders of sin.’

‘Pooh!’ snapped Jen.  ‘Whatever happened to an  eye for an eye?’

Louis leaned back on the settee and patted the space next to him.

‘ “Physiology reflects psychology”.  I made that one up myself.  Good, eh?  Any misdeeds you commit will alter your spirit.’

Jen still scowled at him.  Vengeance still burned bright in her heart.  

Louis switched to the second plan, going over to the music centre and playing a CD.  Travis again, and “Follow the Light”.  Jen abruptly calmed down and sat on the settee.

‘That’s lovely,’ she sighed.  ‘I have trouble with electrical and electronics.  Can’t play it myself.’

‘Listen to what it says,’ said Louis, pleading evident in his voice.  ‘Leave Miller to rot in prison.’

Shall We?  O Go On Then

Yesssss! More of lighthouses.  I know there is a finite supply of them, so you'll only have to endure until Conrad runs out of subject matter, which might still take a year or two.  By that time you will have forgotten all about the first ones, so I'll just start from the beginning again.

     ANYWAY here's a lighthouse I've never heard of before, the Royal Sovereign lighthouse, which has a very Gerry Anderson look about it.  Art!

Shades of Baba Yaga

     This is a very modern structure for a lighthouse, being put to work in 1970, which is why it has a large, square helipad as an inherent part of the design, instead of having one perching precariously atop like a hat, as on the Victorian designs.  When constructed, it was floated out to the Royal Sovereign shoals and sunk into position in two operations.  Art!

Before

     Decommissioned already, it will be demolished gradually over three years, the first deconstruction due to take place later this year.  Exciting stuff!

Finally -

Conrad will be working from home tomorrow, since the execrable First Bus driving collective are on strike again and it's a very long walk into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Working in the office this week has once again cemented a realisation that working from home is SO much better, in that it saves at least two and a half to three hours transit time.  The pikers of strikers are due to be out again for another nine days, meaning their March salary is going to be very thin indeed.  Perhaps they could earn extra by writing scrivel for the BBC?  Which is almost bordering on Politics, so - time to go.

     Are we done?  By Jove so we are!

*  Absolutely true.  It's the smell, the enticing smell.

What A Load Of Bollards

Yes, This May Be Skating Close To The Edge

For anyone residing in This Sceptred Isle will immediately leap to the wrong conclusion, nodding sagely to themselves as to what Conrad really means.

     WRONG!  Your Humble Scribe really is talking about a set of supposedly traffic-calming or alleviating traffic bollards, based in Watford.  He came across a video montage compiled by the BBC, illustrating just how Dog Buns dangerous these 'safety measures' are.  Art!

NOT A STUNT DRIVER

     The fixed camera isn't the best illustrator of what keeps happening here, as it merely records yet another hapless motorist coming a cropper, their cars seeming to fly into the air and shatter apart, shedding windscreens and mirrors and entire wheels.  Art!

Still not a stunt driver

     The county council, who installed these bollards ten years ago, seem to be hand-in-hand with local vehicle repair businesses, for they aren't going to remove the bollards until the residents vote to get rid of them.  Originally they were put in place to prevent larger vehicles using the road, and they certainly did, as well as preventing normal-sized vehicles from using it, too.

<short pause as I go to collect my Double-Dog-In-The-Manger-Noodles>

Someone is going to be in trouble for this ...

     If all you witnessed were shots from this camera then you'd be pretty baffled as to how various cars and vans leapt into the air before even reaching these diabolic devices.  Ah, yes, well - Art!

      What you might call a bollard-launching ramp and a third set of impact-initiators, with two back-up pairs in case the first pair fail to cause mayhem .  I bet Extinction Rebellion camp out there with sacks of popcorn.

     Motley!  Take a note - when I take over, we shall offer the traffic and highways department of Hertfordshire County Council the chance to rule the roads.  Since Conrad will be using helicopters to travel, it will be a delicious dose of schadenfreude as they destroy Perfidious Albion's road and motorway network.  Tee hee!

Conrad Is SEETHING!

Mainly with himself, but also with those two joint emissaries of evil, First Bus and the MEN Codeword.  Back in the office today, you see, for the first time in months, and - what's this?  Why, I have missed the 409, as it goes on down the hill.  Never mind, Conrad, there's another one due in 10 minutes.

     Except not, as it goes flying past with the mocking legend "NOT SORRY NOT IN SERVICE" displayed on the front.  It it's not in service, why did it pull into the bus stop before mine? because I saw it do so.  If it's not in service, why is it even on the road?  Have First Bus finally dropped the mask of pretence and is now admitting that they not only don't like passengers, they won't carry them?

     <short pause for blood pressure to settle>

     Of course - obviously! - the next bus was late and rammed, thanks to all the extra passengers who were spurned by the NOT SORRY NOT IN SERVICE.  Art!

Bus lobotomy

      The Codeword?  Conrad managed to turn it into a right dog's dinner, convinced that BASIS couldn't possibly be the solution and it had to be LYSIS, and I was also watching "All Of Us Are Dead" which distracted me.  No matter how I plotted and prevaricated - I may also have pontificated - I could not solve anything with LYSIS, so I jumped in and - Art?

     All told, it took an hour to crack this one, three times longer than normal.  As proof that there's life in the old dog yet, I cracked today's Codeword in fifteen minutes.

Talking Of Which

Hmmm.  Conrad checked the Daily Beast today at lunchtime, since I like to keep up with the bonkers daily life of South Canada, and what do you know, they had an article extracted from a book about death by meteorite, which we're not going to talk about today.  Don't sulk, it's my blog and you'll just have to endure the torment.

     No, what furrowed my brow was an article about "All Of Us Are Dead".  Art!

     They think they're so clever in analysing how it's both a zombie horror film and a depiction of how horrid high school is, which is EXACTLY what Conrad said after seeing the first episode.  I suspect hacks at the DB are perusing BOOJUM! and gaining inspiration.  Just you wait until my starship invasion force arrives, just you wait ...

"The Kraken Wakes" And Fission Chips

You have to say it aloud to get the pun.  As I pointed out yesteryon, Ol' John Wyndham hadn't so much as an inkling that the South Canadians were experimenting with the forces of atomic fusion, an new nuclear frontier quantum levels beyond the humble fission bombs he used in the novel.  Nobody mentions a yield for the atomic depth charges used in TKW, so we can assume a modest twenty kilotons, or 20K.  Art!

     If the South Canadians had used a fusion warhead in those depth charges, the yield could well have been ten megatons, or FIVE HUNDRED times the puny atom bomb's yield.  The depth charging in TKW is ineffective, but what if Hom. Sap. had recourse to the really BIG nukes?  And here's a question for you, how would the shock wave from a submarine explosion of megaton size propagate?

     I have no idea either, it's just an interesting question - that we may come back to.  Art!

CAUTION!  Do not jolt, jostle, bump or knock

Ha!  No Escape For YOU!

I bet you were quietly patting yourself on the back, thinking you'd got away with it for today.  WRONG!  Here's the latest extract from our supernatural horror story "Tormentor".

‘Whether you call it an evil spirit or demon, the end result is the same, young man.  And in converse, the requirements for being able to control a spirit will blacken your soul.’

Thus not worth it.  not that he’d really wanted to know how.

‘Well, from what I’d read I thought you could dismiss most cases of possession as being mental illness.’

Father Geoghan tutted loudly.

‘Louis, Louis, you lack the grounding to deal with this ability.  Yes, a great deal of what used to be considered “possession” is the manifestation of mental disorders.  Not all.  A certain number are cases of what I call possession in the classical Catholic sense.’

‘How do you know which are which?’ asked Louis, ever-curious.

‘Ah, that’s quite the question, Louis.  How do you tell? That takes experience and skill.  Except for people like you, who can see beyond.’

Who never wanted the ability and don’t want it even now, mused Louis.

‘Why me?’ he asked.  ‘How come I can “see beyond” and not you?  You deserve it far more than me.’

The priest checked his watch.

‘You skeptics never stop asking questions, do you?  Why you, Louis?  I don’t know.  If you were able to find out the how, you might be able to stop the process developing.’

“Developing”?  Hang on a minute!

‘Develop?  You mean – well, what do you mean?’

Father Geoghan got up, stretching his legs.

‘I’m afraid I have to get going now, Louis.  By develop I mean that your ability will improve over time as you use and refine it.  Like anyone with a skill.’

Louis saw the priest out to the car park, being left with a stern instruction not to harm Eric Miller for fear of spiritual decay.  There were other questions he wanted answers to.  Yes, one way of answering them was to wade through the books on religion from the library.

     And with that we are well and truly done.  O yes indeed!

I Took A While But I Got There

Yes I Am An Old Dog

Thank you for asking.  This latest revelation hasn't taken as long to dawn as that one for Pink Floyd's "One Of These Days", where the musical insert is a weirdly distorted version of the "Doctor Who" theme tune.  Art!

Any excuse to feature the BBC's premier dramamentary!

     Right.  For a few days now Your Humble Scribe has experienced a tune floating around in his head, namely Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", with no idea why.  I don't have any of their albums, am not particularly keen on them and have never met them (although I am pretty certain that they are not a combination of rotting zombie and cyborg, unlike a certain geriatric band)*.

     "Why so?" I quoth earlier today, aloud as I'm at home and thus not likely to scare anyone except Edna, and she's used to me conversing either with her or myself.

     Then it hit me.  I rubbed my head, looked around to see who threw - no, actually realisation dawned.  What Sork zombie horror drama series have I been watching of late?  Why none other than "All Of Us Are Dead".  Which has a bouncy, beaty theme song that, on closer inspection, appears to be an instrumental version of "Personal Jesus".  The credits are all in Korean, mind, so whether it is or not is open to question.  Art!

The webtoon that inspired it all

     Here an aside.  Conrad is no linguist and cannot distinguish spoken Korean from other Asian languages, yet I recognise their alphabet, which has a long and complicated history, only reaching it's modern form after the Second Unpleasantness and freedom from Japanese occupation.  Art!

Study well.  THERE WILL BE A TEST!

     Conrad wonders if Norks have a different dialect to Sorks, given that the whole country has been sundered in twain for Lo! these many years.  An item for a different day, methinks.

     A hasty Google search does not illuminate the theme tune issue, so if anyone from the Mode ever reads this, I think you have a good chance of a successful lawsuit.

     Motley!  If you learned medicine (a very long shot I know) and a foreign language then you could have a Chorea career in Korea.

달의 퍼즐

Tee and indeed hee!  You pronounce this "Dal-ui peojuel" and before you spend hopeless** hours fretting with translation engines, it means "Lunar Jigsaw".  Art!

250 tricky parts

     The trick is to do the rim, then work from the centre outwards, because the innermost pieces have a marked curvature.  This lessens as you work outwards, so you have to rely on what colour the pieces are, and then sort by shape.  Sadly the accompanying picture is completely useless, thanks to the contrastless and blurred picture quality of the lunar surface.  Bring on Mars!

A Belittled Bang

Ahem.  Not going to apologise for bringing up "The Kraken Wakes" again SIT BACK DOWN! this will only take a minute.  Ol' John mentions 'atom bombs' quite often in the narrative, as a means of hitting back at the invading alien 'Bathies' (short for 'Xenobathetic' i.e. 'strangers in the depths').  Since the Bathies domicile themselves upon the ocean floor in the very deepest of the abyssal depths, they are hard to get at.  Art!

Atomic depth charge

     Conrad kept wondering when the real heavies would be rolled into action, and the Bathies would be on the receiving end of a few fusion depth charges of multiple megatons, instead of a poxy few feeble kiloton-yield weapons.

     Dates, Conrad, dates.  Not the delicious Medjoul version, but calendar ones.  TKW was published in July 1953, hence written in 1952, and when was the first fusion warhead detonation?  November 1952, which will have been long after Ol' John's MSS had been put to bed.  Nor were the general public informed until 1954.

     You know, this subject has legs.  John Wyndham and nuclear weapons - what's not to like!  Art!

Bombing the Bathies!

     I had intended this as a quick throwaway piece, yet here were are nearly three-quarters of the way towards the Compositional Ton.

"Goelobhineun salam"

Which, of course, if Korean for "Tormentor", as we include another instalment of this disturbing tale.  No, there's no sex or swearing - remember, SFW - except steer clear if of a nervous nature.

‘Then I have another question. Er – How to put it?  Jennifer has begun to haunt the man who killed her, Eric Miller.  She’s been making noises about bringing him to harm, which I warned her against but I don’t really have the expertise to get across how serious such a step would be.’

Those impressive eyebrows went shooting up.

‘Indeed?’ commented the priest.  ‘Is she here now?’

‘No.  Either off communing with another spirit called Marjory, or tormenting Miller.’

‘I would not advise that, at all,’ said the priest, not looking happy.  ‘Justice in matters spiritual is not the provenance of man, nor spirits either.  As for killing the man, that would imperil her immortal soul.  She must not do that!’ he barked, emphasising the words.

‘Okay, okay.  I can’t command her, Father.  I only see spirits, I can’t control them.’

The pipe stem got pointed at him like a pistol.

‘And don’t try!’

To Louis there were hidden implications behind that warning.

‘Do you mean it’s possible to control a spirit?’

‘Yes.  Just as it’s possible for a spirit to control a living person.’  The priest, annoyingly, didn’t enlarge on that, so Louis had to ask more.

‘Control a person?  How do they do that!’

More stern pipe wagging ensued.

‘Only those who were irredeemably evil in life would ever consider such a thing.  They try to dominate the body of a living person, at the expense of that person’s consciousness.’

Louis stared.

‘Demonic possession?’ he blurted.  ‘I thought – surely not!’

Father Geoghan sucked the stem of his pipe reflectively.

‘I have been involved in two exorcisms, Louis, both of which were harrowing, protracted and spiritually blighting.’  His air of self-assurance dared the lecturer to question him.

‘Life can’t get any weirder,’ muttered Louis.  ‘Though I shouldn’t tempt fate.’

Nothing To Do With Anything, Really

Nevertheless, whilst Googling for suitable pictures, Your Humble Scribe did come across an excellent graphic illustration on the cover of the "Radio Times", a publication that, somewhat confusingly, is advertising a television show.  Art!

     Illustration by the late great Frank Bellamy, who was a staple artist within the pages of "TV Century 21".  There you go, apropos of nothing more than an appreciation of a great artist at work <moment's silence>.

Finally -

Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year, meaning it is either one month late or eleven months early***, take your pick, and it is the month of the Tiger.  One of our higher-ups dwelling in The Palace Of Crystal in the Sordid City Of Sin London sent out a comms today, detailing which years applied to which animals of the Chinese zodiac.  Conrad, for your information, is an Ox NO SNIGGERING AT THE BACK THERE! since the Chinese attributes of their zodiacal (not a word you expected to see today) animals are totally different from Western qualities.   

     This has given me a quite horrid idea, inspired by pure maliciousness.  O yes indeed.

STILL NO SNIGGERING!

     Are we done now?  <checks> why yes we are!

*  Go on, go on: The Rolling Stones.

**  I mis-typed 'hopless' here, which would be wrong as you'd be hopping mad at my Korean joke.  Also, "Red Dwarf".

***  GREGORIAN FOR THE WIN!