"There Is No "I" In Team?"

Conrad Would Beg To Differ!
Of course, it depends on how many are in your team, but let us assume we're talking about a team of ten four, not too large so the individuals become infinitesmal cogs in a mammoth machine, not too small so that the spotlight focusses with actinic intensity upon Every Single Person.

A team of ten four

     As you can see, we are using a scene from the British equivalent of John Carpenter's American documentaries - "Shaun of the Dead".  Here we see the beady-eyed team that Shaun has to put up with motivate watch like a hawk.
     Now, call me an unmathematical dunce*, but I count eight eyes there, ten if you include Shaun.
     So.  No "I" in "Team"?  No, but there is in "Meat Pie".
     So - don't go telling porkies!

"From The Earth To The Moon"
Whilst this mini-series was being broadcast, Conrad caught exactly 1 second of it, during a scene of the Apollo astronauts on the Moon.
     Now, however, he's watching the whole series with a sense of wonder and excitement (except Episode 11 which focusses on the wives of the Apollo astronauts).  Great stuff, even if you know how it ends.  It's the journey that matters in this instance, and there's lots of stuff described that I didn't know happened.

The first to mention "hoax" gets fried alive by Uncle Arnie's hex-vision

     Now, this wouldn't be BOOJUM! if I left it there.  Oh no.  No, what I'm wondering is pretty much what I've described during episodes of "Poirot".  With FTETTM the period is from the Sixties to the Seventies, and the cars, clothing, hairstyles, magazines, tins, bottles, toys and haircuts need to be authentic.  You have to exclude what's present in the Nineties, and the Moon has to look realistic.
     And they nail it!

Oh.  I Say Coincidence, Is This Seat Taken?
Let me instruct and illuminate you about the first Hawkwind album that I bought, a very long time ago indeed: "Warrior on the Edge of Time".  Art?

The album unfolded

     I used to hang this on my bedroom wall out of sheer awe at how big and bold it was.  Anyway, the opening lyrics are:

"Lives of great men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints in the sands of time"

     Profound stuff, eh?
     Well, this afternoon I was finishing off "Beyond Band of Brothers", written by Dick Winters, whom you probably recognise from the TV series "Band of Brothers".  You cannot imagine a greater difference between noble upstanding Dick Winters, and Dave Brock, the drugs-hoover guitarist, vocalist and songwriter behind Hawkwind.  Yet Winters quotes:

"Lives of great men all remind us

We may make our lives sublime

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints in the sands of time"

     Which is apparently from Longfellow's poem "Psalm of Life"
     There you go.  We are all better-informed.

TV 21
I have blathered on about this seminal Sixties publication, which very probably got a boost in readership thanks to the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes.  Not so much Gagarin.  
     Anyway, if I may post a screenshot of a 1967 edition, rather than a poor Google capture -

THINGS EXPLODING!

     This is the artwork of Mike Noble, detailed and painstakingly accurate penmanship.  Although, since this was the British comics industry, he never got a credit.
     No reference to Gagarin?  No, but there's no knee-jerk anti-Russian sentiment here either - the bad guys are "Bereznik", a carefully vague Eastern-ish name.
     Which is getting a bit too much Current Affairs, so -

Conrad Makes Recovery From Potentially Fatal Error
Yes by heck, Bob Peck.  I got a big bag of crushed M&M's a couple of weeks ago, and then looked up a recipe for "Confetti Cookies", and finally got around to making them this afternoon.
     Except - I just emptied the flour and sugar and sodium bicarbonate and M&Ms and salt into one big heap, before reading "Cream butter and sugar together".
     Ooops.
     So, I melted the butter, let it cool and added to the dry ingredients before adding in the egg and vanilla flavouring.  Which worked, surprisingly.

Kind of.

     The original recipe promised 18 large biscuits, but as I only had enough Gluten-Free flour for half that, it should have made 6 in the tray above.  "18 large biscuits" - or 1 giant one.
     Actually they don't taste bad.

A Memento From This Morning
Today was a morning sunnier and hotter than many of the supposed summer.  "Summer", if you happen to live here in the UK, is a theoretical season that consists of long daylight hours and lots of sunshine.  Not seen for many years now, it may reappear with Global Warming, which is one reason you see many UK residents out on the doorstep spraying aerosols into the evening air.

Solar Harmonic Convergence, in a way

* Because this is completely accurate

WAR PIGS!

Today We Have A Theme (Hooray!  Drum Roll!  Balloons!  Rockets!)
Since the furore about You Know Who doing You Know What has diminished to a background noise of comedians making worn jokes, I am delighted to announce that BOOJUM!, for the first time in an age, has a theme.  Which is - "War Pigs".  Not sure what the word count will be on this, so let's fire up the word processor, release Art from his durance in the septic sump* and get creative!

"War Pigs" The Film
This is what triggered my search for a theme, because I'd never heard of it until seeing an advert for the Blue Ray release in the Fly-Swatter.

Alternate version; in another Mickey Rourke is stage front.

     It doesn't score very highly at IMDB - 4.1 - but it doesn't have any great pretentions about being classic cinema either, and one commenter makes the apt criticism that you should disengage brain, acquire a bucket of popcorn and enjoy it for what it is.  Apparently Dolph Lundgren's French accent makes the whole thing worthwhile, and - I have to admit, I'm curious how a Swede manages a French accent**.  The plot, for what it's worth, is about a mission to destroy the V3, a supergun that might tip the balanace -
     Actually the V3 was a giant white elephant that had utterly no effect on the war in Europe, so the War Pigs might as well have stayed home.

"War Pigs" The Song
Ah now, the Black Sabbath song.  From the 1970 album "Paranoid", Art?

Don't ask me, I have no idea what the cover's about

    The song came out of jam sessions performed by the band in the late Sixties and is an anti-war song, which is eminently understandable as it beats you over the head with it's symbolism.
     I'm not going to post all the lyrics, as that would be a cheap way of boosting the word count, but here's the first half:

Generals gathered in their masses,

Just like witches at black masses.

Evil minds that plot destruction,

Sorcerer of death's construction.

In the fields the bodies burning,

As the war machine keeps turning.

Death and hatred to mankind,

Poisoning their brainwashed minds.

Oh lord yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away,

They only started the war.

Why should they go out to fight,

They leave that all to the poor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VL-kIgmuBk

     And there's a link to the vinyl version over on Facebook, in case you feel there's not enough Doom 'n' Gloom Metal in your life.

I Didn't Know That -
That there's a Hungarian rock band called "Warpigs", who took their name from the Black Sabbath song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warpigs_(band)

The link, should you feel, once again, that there's not enough (Hungarian) Doom 'n' Gloom Metal in your life

The 1859 American-British Pig War
Before I started checking up on "War Pigs" I'd not heard of this particular war.  Calling it a "war" is rather presumptuous, as the only casualty was the pig in question, which got shot for trespassing and eating potatoes that belonged to a Brit.  The pig belonged to an American, and the whole thing snowballed from there, until there were warships and cannon and soldiers all present; however both sides had been ordered under no circumstances to fire the first shot.  So they didn't.

"You see!  You see what you did!"

     After tempers cooled, a long and hospitable joint occupation of the San Juan islands took place (this is where the pig was shot, do keep up!), with both sides getting on famously until 1874, when Kaiser Wilhelm judged in favour of the Americans.
     They still put up and take down the British flag on San Juan, so we did get something out of it.

The Austro-Serbian Pig War Of 1906
Ah, now, this one I do remember, from my A Level History.  Again, calling it "war" is to make it sound far too exciting, as there was no warfare.  The Serbs, you see, who did not like the Austrians AT ALL, attempted to build economic and political links with France and Bulgaria, meaning that trade with those countries badly affected Austrian trade.
     In retaliation the Austrians stopped importing Serbia's prime export, pork.  Not to be outdone, the Serbs built up trade links with other countries and didn't suffer from the blockade at all.  So much so that the Austrians gave up in 1908.

"Cevapi" - fine Serbian dining

"Hogs Of War" The Computer Game
Conrad was vaguely aware of this game, and a little light Googling revealed it's existence.  It's a turn-based tactical game where the gamer controls a single hog at a time, from one of six nationalities: Tommy's Trotters, Garlic Grunts, Sow-a-Krauts, Uncle Ham's Hogs, Piggystroika and the Sushi Swine.  I leave it to you to decide which nationalities these are poking fun at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogs_of_War

     It's a shame I've never played it, as it seems to function as a pun-heavy entertainment quite as much as a computer wargame.

No stereotyping here, no sirree.
Well, actually, yes.  Big time.

"Street Hogs" From "Oink"
Oink, if you really don't know, was a rather anarchic and iconoclastic*** kids comic from the early Eighties.  It parodied various real world people and comic tropes, and one band of bad beefy porky bikers were the "Street Hogs", anthropomorphic biker pigs who waged war on crime.  Art?

The aptly-named Dirty Harry

     War on crime?  Not stretching, am I?  Well, so what, may I gently remind you whose blog it is?

Crikey!  Just over 1,000 words, so much for worrying about how much material this would generate.  I would have included "The Bay of Pigs" if there was more time or fewer words, but what's gone already will have to stand.


* He's been in there so often for so long I'm beginning to suspect he likes it in there.
** He's big but he's no dummy.  Remember, this chap has a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering.  Wonder what he thinks of Chlorine Triflouride?
*** Like "anarchic" but as regards demolishing holy cows.