Conrad - Hates All Musicals!

Yes, gentle reader, Blogger Conrad is magnificently PC when it comes to race, religion, politics, gender, sexuality and left-handedness.  He is, however, a horrid intolerant bigot when it comes to music.  In Conrad's narrow musical worldview, anything he likes is Automatically Awesome; anything he dislikes is Sonic Sewage.  With this in mind, let the lecture (also known as a bad-tempered rant) begin.

There are only 2 good musicals!
     Sad but true, and one of those you will not have heard of.

     The one you will have heard of:  The Blues Brothers.

Blues Brothers awesomeness renders captions un-necessary

  A slight diversion here.  Many many years ago, when the Hacienda was young, a younger version of Conrad was there, too.  He watched an incredibly bizarre film being played on the video screens, unable to hear the dialogue because the Hacienda - you may not be aware of this, young reader - was a music club that played very loud music.  Later on I learned that this strange, beguiling film was "The Blues Brothers".  This was made back in the day when John Landis was on top of his game.  It's a gem.  Plus it has probably the highest number of car crashes in any film until the "Fast and Furious" franchise.

(There will now be a short pause as I go to put together my Spinach and Bacon Salad.  BOOJUM! thanks you for your patience)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHV0zs0kVGg

Your patience rewarded.
  
The one you won't have heard of: The Return of Captain Invincible

Alan Arkin.  Still a great actor.  Back then he had hair, as well.

Captain Invincible manages to be poignant, satirical and amusing all at once.  Christopher Lee makes a great villain, prone to opera, pandering and Associating With Evil Historical Figures.  Mostly set in Australia, because otherwise the joke about kangaroos wouldn't make sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8W2fkhfFPc

"If you won't name your poison -
I'll have to call the boys in!"

How can you not love it!

Late Breaking News
     It's just possible that a friend from work might be reading this - in which case Hello Anna!  because my traffic figures were up yesterday after posting a link on Facebook.  I shall endeavour to do more of this electronic pimping after signing off at BOOJUM!

So - Tanks?
     No.  Not if Anna is reading.  Instead we have -

A Lovely Fluffy Bunny.

 Er - yes it does seem to be a lovely fluffy Zombie bunny but I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation for that ...

After The Rain*

To quote The Comsat Angels, my favouritest band ever, "The Sun will shine again" and indeed it has done this evening.  The rest of today has been as soggy a September as you might ever wish for.  Conrad can tell if it's especially damp because Oldham Edge vanishes into a grey murk, viewed from our kitchen window.

Coincidence?  I think not!
     Yesterday I posted about the Vickers 6 Ton Tank. Today I pick up my "Justice League of America" trade paperback and what does Conrad see?  A Vickers 6 ton getting roasted.


Thermal eye beams.  Not your most common anti-tank weapon.

Hello Great Britain!
     For the first time ever I have some UK readers.  Welcome to BOOJUM!  No, come back, I promise to be interesting!  Look - here's my funny face - hang on, here's some Lemony Olive Oil Banana Cake -

The glaze was a bit gritty; next time I use Demerara sugar

Mister Hand also says hello.

Handsome devil, isn't he?

Don't worry, he rarely gets featured here.  Can't have him getting above himself.

Star Trek
     I like to go back and watch episodes fondly remembered from my childhood - for Conrad is awesomely ancient - and see how they measure up.  Just watched "Arena", just about to watch "The Doomsday Machine", both the remastered versions and have to say I like them- yah boo sucks to the purists.

But now I must make haste, for the Badger Parade is in but half an hour!  Also I have some beefburgers and chorizo chowder to scoff.

Adieu!

* Yes, a song title, by the very excellent Comsat Angels, from their "Fiction" album.

Success! Failure! The Human Condition!

Success!
     No thousand parents for this success, only Conrad.  Yesterday I made up some burgers from scratch, only for one of them to fall apart whilst being removed from the grill.  Birdsweat, quoth I (for Conrad avoids vulgarity), not enough binding.  Today I shredded some bread and toasted the resulting crumbs, mixed them into the burger mix - and produced 4 very tasty burgers which did not disintegrate and which were devoured by the assembled family.

Like mine.  Drooling audience needs to be imagined.

Failure
     Today I got an e-mail from Noble Knight Games, an American company that specialises in out-of-print hex and counter wargames.  A game I ordered back in June had been returned to them as "Not Called For", and I now have to pay $58 to have it redelivered.  Not Called For?  Apparently this is my fault as my telepathy ought to have informed me that it was ready for collection, since Royal Mail certainly didn't.
     What was the game?  O I'm so glad you asked!  "Operation Crusader", about the 8th Army's winter offensive of 1941 - 1942.  Thousands of counters, huge maps, a big thick rulebook and - the real kicker - simultaneous movement.  Yes, I thought that would impress you!


Roger MacGowan artwork for a Frank Chadwick game.  Those are Infantry Tank Mk II Matildas, FYI

 The Human Condition
     Er, not sure what to post here, it seemed like a good Blog title.  I'll get back to you on this.

Obloquy
    Language again, chaps.  "Obloquy" is so transparently a Russian anarchist author of the 1870's that it would be foolish to deny.  And yet ...  It actually means being disgraced.  Disgraced?  A fantastic combination of letters reduced to such bathos.  Pah!  I prefer to remember his work on peasants in one of the Minsk oblasts and how they aspired to primitive socialism <cont. Page 94>

So - Tanks?

A Finnish Vickers 6 Ton Tank, which is also a recognised tongue-twister

 Gentlemen - and ladies - meet the Vickers Model E or 6 ton tank.  Never used by the British army, it served in numerous armies abroad.  Finland, as mentioned above.  Also the Soviet Union, who filed the serial numbers off and called it the T26. They built thousands of them.

Dilemma
     I really want to nail that Pecan and Pistachio ice-cream recipe.  Do I wait until tomorrow or bash away at it tonight?   

<imagine a long pause here>

Tonight.  Then I can put the ice-cream maker bowl back in the freezer and use it tomorrow.

Ta Ta!

A Taste of Armageddon

     Yes, aficionado, I went back and watched the above episode of "Star Trek" last night.  Star Trek, for your information, is a cult TV series that had a brief burst of popularity back in the Sixties and which is almost unknown today.
     Well, no, not really.  Just seeing if you were awake and aware .....

The Towers of Toron
     I was going to type that an omnibus compilation of Samuel Delaney's had a setting that replicated the Star Trek plot, except the novel was "City of A Thousand Suns".  I first read this in 1975 whilst listening to my recently-purchased "Wish You Were Here" cassette, and a fine combination they made indeed.
    I may have to Abebook these novels.  It would be interesting to see the spin a 52 year old puts on a book last read as a teenager.

I remember the feller with a see-through face.  The Invisible Woman - not so much

   Scheduling
     This process does have it's merits: it makes me formally plot what I'm going to do across the weekend and thus act more efficiently.  On the other hand, it does feel I have to commit to what I've written down. Normally it consists of: blog; novel; reading comics; reading library books; reading Nook; baking; cooking; wargaming writing or research.  I now have to add "Painting" to this list as there are litres of paint waiting to be applied to the walls of my lair.  If progress occurs I may post photographs.  Not a very rock 'n' roll lifestyle, is it!

O Thou Muse Calliope*!
     I have created a rod for my own back here.  Although I haven't posted any evidence, I can create rhymes with a fair amount of wit and humour, first demonstrated during our celebrations over The Queen/Betty Windsor's whatnot anniversary, at my Still Un-Named Employer.  I came out with a bit of doggerel to the tune of "God Save The Queen" - the Sex Pistols version.  Surprise!  I won the prize, a big bottle of Pimms No.1.
     Since then I have chipped in with a rhyme when someone moves on or leaves and this has now become expected.  I feel people will be offended if Conrad doesn't come up with a whole set of stanzas and an epic metre.

"Nurse! Quickly!  A poultice for Conrad's writing wrist! He still has 853,734 rhymes to write!"

*Calliope, Muse of Poetry, and with bosoms apparently composed of anti-matter and quarks.
 

A Little Goes A Long Way

Voyager 2, of course
     There is an amusing and illustrative infographic on the BBC website, thus:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21937524

It allows you to input your daily commute data and works out how long it would take to reach the gas giant planets of the Solar System.  I would take over one and a half thousand years to reach Jupiter, and thirty seven thousand years to reach Voyager's current location.
     Bit long for a daily drive to work.

My car.  Not insured beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Verisimilitude
     I beg your indulgence, dear reader, this is another little rant about language.
     "Verisimilitude" - meaning that something possesses the quality of truthfulness or reality.  Really? It sounds like a variety of multi-legged creature!  "Sir, there's a verisimilitude on your shoulder" works for me (the original was "Sir, there's a multi-legged creature on your shoulder"*).  B & Q probably stock bottles of "Verisimilitude Vapouriser - one nibble and they're kibble!" and starving students in attics lay traps to catch legions of verisimilitudes.  Which they mash and put in a pie.

A multi-legged creature?  It looks like his shoulder's grown another head!

Velvet Whoopee Pies
     Do I detect a theme here?  Hmmm. Maybe not. Okay, I've baked the pie part of these.  I've also made the filling, which is chilling in the fridge at present.  Tomorrow I shall have to get up early enough to warm the filling before spreading it on the pies, making sure that it divides up into 11, as I have 22 pies to match.  The tricky bit will be matching the pies, which are all slightly different in shape and size.

Right.  I now have to go iron a shirt for work tomorrow.  O! the rock and roll lifestyle what Conrad doth lead.

Project Damnation Day 1,034

Okay, I exaggerate.  Day 1,033.  No!  Actually Project Damnation, which definitely moved me out of my comfort zone, began in March this year with the stripping of aged wallpaper in my Upstairs Lair.  This then revealed acres of perished plaster, much of which had only been held together because of the wallpaper.
     Enter Roy.  I've mentioned Roy before.  He's over 60, half my size and has a work-rate that embarrasses me.  Anyway, we needed Roy to do the plasterwork, and had to wait until August for him to be available.  He did the deed, then recommended that we seal the new plaster.
     So tonight I finished sanding down the rough edges, brushing and finally painting on the sealant.

Look closely and you can see the drips left by sealant.

Next stage is the actual painting, so this ought to be the last time I bore you with my naked walls.

By the way, Project Damnation is not to be confused with Project Apocalypse, which was the refurbishment of our kitchen, requiring all the kitchen equipment to be re-located - mostly to my Upstairs Lair - and tangentially The Great Book Cull*.

The Mars Volta
     Since Saturday I have been listening to these champions of prog-metal's "Nocturniquet" album and there is some corking stuff on it.  Okay, I am now officially Rather Cross that they broke up earlier this year.  I mentioned this to Ian, a work colleague who sings in a band, and he'd been to see their guitarists new band, Bosnian Rainbows**, who are apparently a bit poppier than TVM, very good live, less effective on CD.  I suppose I shall have to Grooveshark and Youtube to decide if I like them or not.



It's a rainbow, and the language is Slavic - it might be Bosnian!

  

The Doctor is in.
     Oh is he ever!
     For decades the higher ranks at the BBC seemed embarrassed of Doctor Who's success.  They tended to keep it at arm's length, with a pointy stick, whilst wearing an expression of mild disgust.
     Not any more.  I suspect, although I cannot prove it, that the reason is the current generation of movers and shakers at Aunty Beeb are those who grew up watching the Doctor.  I add this link as a modicum of evidence:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24038234

Type 87 TARDIS:  sat-nav not supplied

*Don't worry, gentle reader, I've been replacing them since I got a job again.  In fact ehre are four waiting to be added to the Word list over there ...
** Where do they get these names from?
What ho!

Guilty Pleasures

 - or, as a colleague recently wrote, "no pleasure should be guilty!"

LIghts, Police, Action!
     I am a sucker for these shows, all of them, that show recordings of the police in action and the criminals they act against.  I have learnt a few things from these programs:
     1) If the police helicopter is up and trailing you, give in.  It's a lot less stressful, requires less calories and saves on petrol.  Even the highest-spec sports car looks like a snail on sleeping pills compared to a helicopter, before you add in the infra-red.
     2) If your stolen car runs over a "stinger", pull over to the kerb and give in.  The stinger shreds tyres quick-time, which means the car-borne criminals rapidly end up running on their wheel rims, which glow white hot and spit sparks.  Entertaining to watch, mind!
     3)  Alcohol.  As one documentarian asked, what makes grown adults behave like little children?  Alcohol.   A lot of the documented idiocy on these show occurs as a result of Matey drinking far too much.

Punks.  Assisting the Police since 1976.

Stale Cake
     Dipped in white cider.  The sweet, non-workplace equivalent of stale bread dipped in Marmite.  I know, I know, disgusterous*, but somebody's got to do it!

Lightweight Pop
     My normal musical diet consists of rock, prog rock, indie rock, classic rock, electronica, classical, world, jazz, metal and the odd bit of folk.  I don't tell the world that I also like some, ahem, lightweight pop.  Keane, Scouting For Girls, The Feeling, Thirteen Senses - confessions that would irrevocably destroy my street cred (such as it is).

Keane.  Vocals, drums, keyboards - kind of like ELP, right?

Biggles
     I've been a fan of James Bigglesworth III since I was in single figures and am not about to stop now.  Over there <gestures at giant pile of books> is a four-volume collection of Biggles books.  Over there <gestures at giant pile of books hidden in cupboard> are even more Biggles books.

Biggles.  Only as tall as Tom Cruise.  But with the attitude of Dolph Lundgren.

The Great British Bake-Off
     Why should I feel guilty over this?  Why?  Why!
     For any viewers beyond the shores of the UK, allow me to elaborate.
     TGBBO is now into it's fourth season.  The outline is quite simple: 13 bakers will bake and be judged, and the loser in each show will be sent home.  There are three sections to each show:  Signature, Technical and Showstopper.  In the Signature the contestants have to come up with one of their compositions; in Technical they are given (minimal) instructions and have to come up with someone else's recipe; in Showstopper they have to create an awesome product against an outline recipe.
     Sounds dull?  It's not!  I guess that those appearing on the show are the successful applicants from a process that winnows out the lesser talents.  They are working against the clock, under observation.  I also suspect that the amount of time contestants have for baking will be narrowed, meaning they have to work under increasing time pressure.
     We are now down to 8 bakers from the original 13 - the twist in this season is that the judges can send home two people at any one time.

Tot Siens!