Do You Get What You Pay For?

It's A Fair Enough Question
After all, if it comes free, just exactly what kind of quality can you expect from it?  Look no further than The Metro, that Tabloid-Tat Tree-killer; every other page covered in adverts, lots of BIG FONTS, photographs to fill the gaps and lead stories about single-name celebritutes splitting a nail.  I only get it for the Cryptic Crossword, and even that's not original - checking up on clues I discovered that The Scotsman* had the same crossword - back in 2004.

You have to pay for this, but it's worth it

     Then there was a - I think we shall have to call it a "magazine" for want of a better word as "weekly advertorial tat pretending to be a publication" is a little long - magazine** called "S-list" - for reasons to become obvious I have no idea what it's actually called.  Art?

Free!  And worth every penny you paid

     Again, it follows the Metro model - every other page an advert.  Utterly indistinguishable from that copy of the "NME" I read earlier this year.  Er - for "read" interpret this as "moved my bored eyes across the pages in a rhythmical pattern."
     Then we have free beer.
     Yes, I thought that would make your ears prick up.  Given away at my Still Annoyingly Unidentified Employer.  However - Art?

Left = free  Right = Conrad jolly well paid for that one.

     The other bottle and teaspoon provided for scale.  Free, yes, and it makes merely a miserly mouthful.  
     "Ah, but!" I can hear your squeaky protesting whine. "What -'
      Yes yes yes, Conrad is well aware that BOOJUM! comes free.  He frankly doubts whether traffic would get beyond single figures per week if you were forced to pay to view these words of wonder.  Which is why today's blog title is couched as a question, rather than a statement, since "You Get What You Pay For" would imply your humble scribe's best efforts were barely above the Plimsoll Line of Quality.

     Alright, we appear to have gotten this far without mishap.  Time to wheel out the phaeton of phantasy, since it survived yesterday without mishap.  Wagons Ho!

<sigh>  Art off his game again

Cannon
If you lack Conrad's morbid fascination with things that go BANG then feel free to move onto the next title, but don't think I won't discover this and take merciless retribution yeah unto the seventh generation -
     If I were to mention armed conflict to you, and then "cannon" in the same sentence, doubtless you would conjure up an image of Mons Meg 

Mons Meg

and Robert Newton cackling "Arrrrr! Jim, lad!" which makes more sense than Jim Ladd cackling "Arrrr!  Robert Newton!"

Awesome pirate-pulling power - never without a bird

     But I digress.  In today's parlance a "cannon" is not a cast-iron barrel mounted on a wooden carriage, stuffed with black powder and round shot.  No.  It is, rather, a large-calibre automatic weapon (generally 20mm and upwards) that fires rounds big enough to be specially adapted for maximum unpleasantness - armour-piercing, incendiary or high-explosive, or (if the gods frown upon you) all three at once.  A cannon fires at a lower rate than a machine gun, which is the only good news for those on the receiving end, since cannon rounds go a lot farther, hit much harder and do a lot more damage than bullets do.
     Pierre Closterman (French pilot in the RAF) observed that you could pepper an enemy aircraft from end to end with bullets and not down it; hit it with two or three cannon rounds and you would turn that same enemy aircraft into airborne confetti.  

About to make life miserable for some hapless Teuton

     More recently, the 30mm Rarden cannon mounted on the British Army's Warrior vehicle is another case in point.  According to statistics, it lacked the ability to penetrate the armour of that ubiquitous Ruffian export, the T55 tank.  However, in Gulf Unpleasantness One and Two the Warrior was able to KO these tanks due to a phenomenon known as "explosive spalling".  The sheer kinetic energy of the 30mm rounds, combined with poor-quality Sinister armour, meant great big slabs of metal were blasted off the interior, with results I leave to your imagination.

A Warrior: most important bit of kit - the Boiling Vessel (for making brews)

     Of course the South Canadians have to go one better.  Their Bushmaster cannon is only (!) 25mm calibre, which is not tremendously large.  Thanks to computer-controlled gun laying, though, it can put one round into the hole that the previous one made, which implies a high degree of suckitude for anyone at the target.
     If you think that's scary, I leave you with the Vulcan Gun.  Aptly named.  Having one of these open up on you is indeed akin to swimming laps in a lake of lava; very very bad for your health.  It's a 30mm weapon with 6 barrels which rotate, so no individual barrel overheats.  Each round is the size of a milk-bottle.  Now, count to 3: you have just been hit by 100 rounds from a Vulcan Gun.  The cemetery is that way!

Gun and ammo drum, and a Beetle, for scale

DAMN YOUR EYES MARK KERMODE!
As you should already know by now, Mark gets an automatic Keep This Human Alive card when my invasion force arrives, due to his promotion of The Comsat Angels***.  He is also a film critic of some renown (and a muso on the side), and thus Conrad eagerly read his critique of the bottom 5 worst films of the year over on Twitter.  They are:

10)  Batman Versus Superman - disappointing, except for Jesse Eisenberg, who was very very annoying.
9)  Prince of Cups - A Malick misfire, wonderfully well-shot - to no end.
8)  Mothers Day - the most hideous of experiences, an unfunny comedy
7)  Rock the Kasbah - Just. A. Mess.
6)  The Green Inferno - a boring slasher film, if you can credit it.

     The DAMN YOUR EYES! bit comes because now your modest artisan wants to see them and see if they really are as bad as MK has then down as.  Yes, that's perverse, but then again so am I.

No, Mark!  Not the kind of "axe" a musician wields!

Finally -

A Phaeton!  See, Art, you can do it when you're not busy scoffing coal

A Counterpoint To "How To Speak Cat"

     "I'm your loyal affectionate attentive happy hound always up for a lark with - what's that?  No treats or biscuits?  
     Bye."



*  A real newspaper.
** To be pronounced with a distinct sneer.  Ta.
*** One of the top 5 bands the UK has ever produced.  This is not a statement, it is FACT!

It All Becomes Clear

No!  Not The Wretched Weather -
 - although, true to type, it has become sunny and warm, just in time for Conrad to end up cooking in his coat en route to the bus stop.
     I was actually referring to "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" - no, no, Peter, no need to hide in the cupboard.  Not today.  This double concept album is rich pickings indeed for the cynical, the scrofulous and the seedy*, and I have previously dismissed it as arrant nonsense created by gluing back together the shredded carcasses of 100 issues of "Bunty".  However, I did get hit with a thought about the whole concept behind the lyrics and have figured it out, definitively.  Well, for today at least.

She won't get far running like that.

     One aside, if I may, before nailing TLLDOB to the wall:  Genesis were a quintessentially English rock group, and it is somewhat surreal to see them singing about South Canadian pop culture (Marshal MacLuhan and Caryl Chessman anyone?) in a New York street setting.  I wonder how it would have gone down set in Moscow?

     Conrad's impeccable analysis states:  It Was All A Dream.  That's the SFW version, anyway.  Recall the line "Rael Imperial Aerosol kid, Exits in the daylight, his spray-gun hid" and also "He's forgotten what he did."
     The sub-text here is obvious, gentle reader!  Rael's been a naughty lad, down in the NY subways spraying graffiti on the walls and trains, in enclosed spaces with no ventilation; bear in mind this is the early Seventies, where Health and Safety as regards solvents was a fascinating concept of the far future.

Well I dunno about that - South Canada being a Republic and all ...

     Conclusion:  Rael is off his box on paint fumes.  It Was All An Hallucination.
     Okay, Intro over, let us ever so gingerly push out the frail fretworked phantasy and hope it doesn't melt in the rain.

     Incidentally, TLLDOB would simply not have worked in a Sinister setting.  The Sinisters loved their Moscow Underground with an unholy religious fervour; anyone daring to try scrawling "IVUN WUZ ERE" on the tiling or carriages would be shot dead on the spot, then taken outside and shot by a firing squad just to make sure, and then shot a bit further just to make the point.

I dare you to even think of a spray can!

     Right!  Having slandered the Sinisters, let us move on to things not being clear**.

Misty Mountain Hop
Continuing with the Seventies British rock theme, I stole this title from a Led Zeppelin song, and I don't even care, so Ha!
     The title approximates what I was doing this morning as the bus was 10 minutes behind schedule for no good reason.  Perhaps an army of cyborg War Wallabies were wreaking woe in Wochdale?  Whatever.  Your humble scribe stood at the kerbside, bouncing from one foot to another in anger and frustration, which is the closest you'll ever get him to hopping.  Got my dignity to preserve, you know.  Art?

     Observe the mist in the distance, and the fact that we're on a hill - which is really a mountain being modest - and you can see why the title.  
     It puzzles your humble scribe how a bus can be 10 minutes late when the journey to this bus stop takes 10 minutes anyway.  Years of practice, I suppose.

Conrad:  All The Pens, All The Time
Let me be clear on this.  Art?

Humourless pedant with pens: a still life

     That's me with 32 pens, and I intend to get more this weekend.  Because NO!  you can never have too many pens.
     Conrad:  ALL THE PENS!  ALL THE TIME!

"Oi!  Conrad!  No more nicking our song titles!"

     Oops.  Moving swiftly along -

An Occasional Lesson: How To Speak Cat
When learning Cat, dear Human, remember that as a member of Homo Sapiens, you are i)  Inferior and ii) Wrong.  Bear these two guiding principles in mind and all else will follow.  Also remember that much Cat is conveyed via non-verbal communication, as below. Art?

Bedded-in, you might say

     This pose means "Yes, foolish human?"  and may be underlined by a slow and mocking blink of the eyes.  Note the assured air of innate coolness, and the failure to move.  Especially the failure to move.

"Oi!  Conrad!  Don't even think about it!"

*  All my better qualities.
** Like this post.