Under The Whip Again

Only In Metaphor!
     On a late shift at work, then did the shopping, then unloaded and put the shopping away (with minor combined help/hindrance from Wonder Wifey and Darling Daughter), downed some left-over Thai chilli*, sat in the lounge and allowed Edna to use me as a bed - the evening has been a mad hectic whirl.

Bristley and dozy.  And so is Edna ...

The Ides Of March
     Recall Caesar's wife warning him about these Ides?   I thought they might make a blog article.  Except they were on the 15th of this month.  BOOJUM! has missed the boat.  Let's move on -

The Chi Kappa Theta Toga Party suddenly went bad -

A Little Musical Criticism
     If you remember yesterday - you DO remember yesterday, don't you?  You are a human being reading this, not a goldfish? - I posted about how it's difficult to do a critique of the lyrics of Sigur Ros.  Now, by wild coincidence -

I'm not sure how many coincidences need occur before you

start living in Philip K Dick-land, but I happened to be watching

television tonight - a vanishingly rare event in itself - and on came

an advert for perfume.  Featuring "Brennistein", the first track from 

the Sig's "Kveikur" album.  What are the chances of that happening, eh?

"Could you coin a phrase less obscene-sounding?  "Dickalia" has a nicer ring to it.  Ta."

- I ran into my old friend Roald, who speaks fluent Icelandic, and he translated the lyrics that I posted yesterday.  Here they are again:

"Hlustar a

Hjartad sla

Innanfra

Briostkassin

Ut-og inn"

     
     Roald went off with a piece of paper and came back with a rough translation.  For some reason he asked me not to post it until he'd flown back to Rejkjavik.  Well, here are the lyrics, translated:

"Woke up with a bit of a dilemma.

I'm such an awfully hairy fella.

All of my razor's blades were blunt.

So I went back to bed, thinking "You -**"

     All I can say is that Icelandic is an impressively compact language.  Imagine squeezing all that meaning into so few words!

Guess - go on, guess! - which one had the blunt razors.

Batrachian
     I realise why these words pop into my head - it's the special surgically-implanted antennae in there that are picking up random radio broadcasts.
     I know what you're thinking about that word.  "I say!" you're gasping.  "That sounds ever so much like a species of herbivorous dinosaur,  the ones that loitered around in swamps, eating tons of reeds and ferns, giving off unbelievable amounts of methane."
     If I were to add "Batrachotoxin" your eyes would widen as you amended "Herbivorous" to "Carnivorous", believing that the feral hunting dinosaurs injected this poison into their hapless prey, pre-digesting it in -
     STOP RIGHT THERE!  
     Let me show you a source of "batrachotoxin":

NO football team jokes, please.

     Yes, a frog.  Now, the one above is a deadly little devil, since the poison in his skin will kill you stone dead in seconds - the South American tribes who use blow-darts get their killer punch from these cyan chaps.  I've actually seen them in the Manchester Museum vivarium.

A Bactrian.  Close enough.

 So - Tanks?
     Yus.  I don't know if I've featured the Whippet before, in which case apologies for - actually no I'm not apologising, you're lucky to get this so be grateful.  The Whippet:

Rear view.  Note the profligate presence of machine guns

     This little chap could manoeuvre at a dizzy 8 m.p.h., twice the speed of the much heavier Mk IV, since it only weighed 14 tons.  It bristled with machine guns - you can see three in the photo above - one on each side.  Lest you think it a comedy pantechnicon, they wrought considerable execution upon hapless Germans caught in the open.  Google "Musical Box" for a Whippet that fought a one-tank war for a whole day.

*  In return I have to Schlemmertopf a beef brisket tomorrow
**  "Runt".  What did you expect?  This is BOOJUM! - no swearing!

Excuse, Muse - Less Abuse

Much Ado About Quite A Bit
     - with thanks to Bill S.
     Hard as it may be to believe, on occasions Conrad is stuck for blog material.  At such times he implores the Muse Melpomene, the muse of Comedy, to come to his aid.
    Not tonight.  I have material to blog about, just not time to blog it.  After working overtime and getting home at 7:00, I then have to get some food into the howling wilderness of my stomach, before making lunch for tomorrow's imploding tornado of a digestive system, whilst making muffins for the ganterpies at work, and washing up the dishes I'd used, and allowing a small furry fireball to madly lick my hand for long enough to make it soggy, and all before 9:00 when it's off to - Pub Quiz!

Who baked all the pies muffins?  Conrad!  Here he is, looking a bit jowly (probably ate all the muffins, too!)

Tergiversation
     As part of BOOJUM!'s charter to educate yourselves - you being the huddles masses, if 14 visitors can be described as a "mass" - I recalled this word early today in the walk to work, accompanied by Darling Daughter.
     "It's not a proper word!" she scoffed.  "You made it up!"
     So let me see - "Tergiversation" -  a manner of speech like one of the characters in 19th Century Russian literature, apropos Turgenev or Gogol or Dostoyevsky - e.g. that engineer chap in "The Possessed" whose avowed aim in life is to commit suicide.
     What's that?
     It's not?
     It merely means "very changeable"?
     Well I can't really complain at that, since having Dostoyevsky as your definition is a monstrous metric of misery.

Duster Vs Kia.  Close enough.

A Little Musical Criticism
     Some of you, I bet, are thirsting for vengeance at Conrad's irreverent analysis of Simon & Garfunkel's song lyrics, especially "The Only Living Boy In New York" revealed as being about zombies.
     "How about picking on some of your favourites, Conrad?" I hear the mob baying as they march on the Mansion with blazing torches and pitchforks.  "Satirise some of that Icelandic Indie you like so much!"
     Okay, I will.  Put those torches out, though.  Yes, even you at the back who's only got a packet of Bryant and May.  And drop the shrimp fork, too.
     Okay. Sigur Ros.

Seconds later, they ate the photographer.  No, wait, hang on, that's the wolves -

     Let's look at the lyrics from my favourite track, "Rastraumur", from last year's "Kveikur" album.

                                                       "Hlustar á
                                                        Hjartað slá
                                                        Innanfrá
                                                        Brjóstkassinn
                                                        Út og inn"

     I think you can see this presents a problem in terms of musicology.  Firstly, Jonnsi might not be singing in Icelandic at all, instead in a made-up language known as "Hopelandic" -

     - I think "inn" might mean "in" but that's as far as I go.  Tomorrow - tomorrow we weigh into "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright"!

And Finally
     It's already 11:30 and Conrad needs to plug himself into the mains supply and recharge his batteries (the ones that sit where a human being would have a heart).  This being so, he would like to leave you with an image to remember:

Yes, he is the world's smallest diver

Coincidence! Really, You Go Too Far!

Not So Much Tempting Fate  - 
     - as hitting it with a diving tackle and wrestling it to the ground.
     I have alluded, in the recent past, about how coincidence seems to strike whilst reading Thomas Pynchon.  Putting this slightly creepy occurrence behind us for a second, what was I looking at earlier tonight?  Why the Manchester Evening New website, that was mostly devoted to numerous analyses of the football match between Manchester United and Manchester City that occurred last night.  This, Conrad understands, is called a "Derby" even if it doesn't take place in Derby and has nothing to do with hats.  Football - a confusing sport.  

This book holds Conrad's entire knowledge of football, cars and jewellery

     I do not read the MEN football website out of any sporting interest.  No, I read it because I like to see human beings expressing themselves freely and with gusto, ranting, tanting, venting and renting, hating, baiting and oscillating.  Since I don't support either team, any result is win-win for Conrad.
     Okay.  Back to the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.  I crack it open on page 348 and what do my electronically-enhanced peepers see?  
     "Wizard of the Dribble".
     Before your mind's eye conjures up seedy and dissipated images, Conrad hastens to explain that this is a footballing term, describing footballers able to "dribble" the football, that is to say, they coax the plastic sphere forward with treats and promises of cake, rather than crudely booting it along the pitch.
     Yes, I can see you shrugging.  There is more in a bit ...

Dibble.  Close enough

Back To Thomas
     Allow me a bit of a digression here.  After the pub quiz at the Halfway House has finished, a game of cards is played in which contestants have to guess if the next card is going to be higher or lower.  Whenever the nine of diamonds turned up, Harry (the quizmaster) would proclaim "The curse of Scotland!".

The REAL curse of Scotland!

     Nobody can explain why nine diamonds would be a curse to a country so poor that the people ate horse-fodder and deemed it good.
     Curse of Scotland.  Got that?  I have never seen this phrase in print anywhere, not in <ahumph> years on this planet.  Nobody else has ever used it in my presence, either.
     So, after five minutes of reading Pynchon's "Against The Day", up crops the phrase in a character's conversation: the curse of Scotland.
     Now, there is coincidence, and there is aliens subverting reality.  Phil?  Can you confirm any of this?  Phil?  Hello, Mister Dick?

"Phil's a little - ah, preoccupied - right now, Conrad. Can I help at all?"

Eek!  Next!

That's Quite Enough Of That!
     The "That" in question being bus posters - posters generically, indeed - for some loathsome film that Conrad hates hates HATES before seeing a single frame <pause until pulse-rate decreases>.  What is this celluloid monstrosity?  "Divergent".

Shut your eyes and walk forward, both of you ...

     About wonderfully made-up young people with impossibly slim, trim physiques, who just so happen to have incredible abilities blah blah blah - where are all the ugly fat mutants?  Vampires too, for that matter.  Does vampirism come with an automatic gene-cleaning facility or do all the overweight, sweaty, pock-marked vampires with thinning hair and varicose veins all conspire to stay sight unseen?

     Here an aside.  In "The Goon", that masterpiece of comedic cartoon mayhem, Eric Powell does indeed allow The Goon to go medieval on a trio of ghastly, velveteen vampires, including uses for a candelabra that even the Spanish Inquisition would have blanched at.  Sadly I can't find any available pictures so here's one of those glamourous vampires about to get a beating -

Add caption

     Oho!  Another pun hails into view.  "Divergent", eh?

Jacques Cousteau.  A diver gent.

Et Finis
     I only spotted this photo after I'd posted yesterday's blog or it would have been out there on billboards, yes indeed matey.

Edna asleep.