Green Day

I May Have Mentioned This Before
This came up in conversation with Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom at the Pleasant on Thursday (there was no Pub Quiz so we just drank), and you can fill in the background of elderly blokes chatting, Christmas deccos still up and the embers of a fire glowing ruddily.
     There you go, that's as much scene-setting as BOOJUM! is going to give you.
     We had gotten onto the subject of tanks, which as you should surely know by now, are dearly beloved subjects for Conrad, close to the fusion-powered pump he has for a heart.
     "Here's one I bet you haven't heard of before!" I crowed.  "The Transphibian Tactical Tree-Crusher".
     "Is that because you've just made it up?" queried Darling Daughter.  This denotes a lack of trust on her behalf, I feel.
   Not at all.  Art?


     Here is the beast in action,crushing trees.  In case there are some touchy-feely readers perusing this* who will instantly leap to the defence of trees, the South Canadian army was trying to get rid of forest that sheltered their sworn enemy, British Redcoats the Viet Cong.  The shot above doesn't really give a sense of scale, so here's another one:

     Although, once again, the scale isn't clear, the crew sat in that cab atop the vehicle which helps to size it properly; it is five storeys high, 75 feet long and clocked in at 60 tons.  The giant 'wheels' were filled with foam, meaning it was also amphibious.  A Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF6cskF9aJ4

     There you go.  Once one of these things had trawled over your nice green jungle, there's be a whole lot less green to go around - from green day to green-gone-away.
     What's that?  You thought that this was going to be an adulatory article about a South Canadian pop band, who by an amazing and unlikely coincidence, also share that name?
     Pshaw!  I don't believe any such thing exists!
     Right, time to give the motley a cream tea with a punnet of sugar-sprinkled strawberries!**

A pun net of strawberries 

Yet More Of "The Giant Claw"
Perhaps it is a little unsporting of Conrad to pick on this film, which never claimed to be high art, or even low art, or any kind of art at all; however, your humble hack cannot resist a bit of malicious enjoyment at other's discomfort.
     Art!

     This is a shot of supposed South Canadian jets scrambling to intercept a UFO "as big as a battleship".  Sorry - no.  Those are Meteor jets of the RAF - witness the roundel in the jet nearer the camera.  The RAF, lest you be unaware, o foreign reader, are the air force who patrol the skies above Perfidious Albion.***  Not South Canada.
     Okay!  Not only that, but a hasty perusal of the plot on Wikipedia reveals that the titular claw-beast - Art?

Titanic Terror Turkey!

     - is composed of anti-matter.
     No.
     Simply put, NO!
     "But Conrad!" I hear you quibble.  "Couldn-"
     WHICH PART OF 'NO' WAS UNCLEAR!?  <sighs dramatically)
     Okay, we take the estimate that the Titanic Terror Turkey is indeed as big as a battleship, but is considerably less dense.  Since a battleship can mass 25,000 tons easily, we will err on the side of caution and convenience and assume our TTT has a mass of 1,000 tons.  This is 1,000,000 kilograms (I know, I know, metric measurements - horrid, but also convenient) of anti-matter.
     The thing about anti-matter, you see, is that if it comes into contact with matter there will be a very big bang as matter and anti-matter annihilate each other completely.  Bear in mind the efficiency in a fission warhead is about 6% and you begin to see what  problems arise when a Titanic Terror Turkey flies the skies and dies.

Cracked like an egg!  Do you see wh - O you do.

     Doing some hasty mathematics, Conrad calculated that when the TTT impacts or even lands on planet Earth, an explosion of 43 gigatons takes place, or if you want the long-hand version, 43,000,000,000 tons equivalent.  I've scaled this down to 1% of the original 4,300 gigatons because not all of the TTT will touch Earth at once.  
     Of course, I may be over-thinking this -

Ooops!  We seem to be at count already, after only covering two topics today.  Well, that's okay, as Madam is sulking in the back room, doubtless castigating the whole human race for their wicked neglectful attitude.  Hopefully this will change once I put on my shoes, get my coat and announce that "Walkies" are imminent ...


*  Why!
**  No, I'm not going soft.  I just like to unsettle the motley every so often.
*** They don't like to be reminded, but they were established on April Fool's Day.

Exile On The Main Street

Or, Genius Loci
If you have been following this blog with any degree of attention, or not,* then  you ought to be aware that your humble scribe (that's me, for the easily confused) works in the city centre of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.  Which other folks are pleased to call 'Manchester'.  My name is more descriptive and accurate, however.
     A consequences of having to get to work for early in the ante meridian is that one has a vision of The Night Before, when  all the gay revellers were out, revelling.  Seen in the cold harsh light of dawn, their revenant puddles of chips/vomit/kebabs are considerably less appealing than they would have seemed six hours earlier.
     "Wow, the old fart is on a downer today, isn't he?" I hear you disrespectfully comment.  Pausing only to note your ISP so that they can be fed a virus later, allow me to post a photograph.  Art?

     This is the somewhat grim prospect facing Conrad on his amble/skate/swim to work today; cold, dark, wet and - the only positive thing - no longer icy.  In a few hours time this street will be home to hundreds of scurrying feet, whereas now your humble scribe is the only sign of life, which is where today's title comes in: I do feel like an exile.
     Oh - just to be clear - all those scurrying feet will come attached to their parent bodies; I wouldn't like you to go away with an impression of Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell as being over-run by zombie myths, which are the same as zombie leg ends.
     What's that?  Today's blog title is suspiciously similar to that of an album title by those Zombies Of Rock, the Rolling Stones?  Pshaw!  If this is true - which I doubt - then it is merely an amazing coincidence, another in that long line of them of late.
     Now, let us heat up a pan of lard and pour it all over the motley!**

"Spirit of Place"
I do beg your pardon - I've gone and committed a sin that I find inexcusable in others - quoting in a foreign language without also posting a translation.  "Genius Loci" is Latin for "Spirit of place" and refers to a concept held by the Romans, that there was a particular spirit that inhabited your home and hearth.  I think we can prod Art awake with a pitchfork and provide an illustration -

Hmmm.  That would explain a lot ...

     - of The Mansion's particular genius loci.
     BOOJUM! - educating and entertaining you simultaneously.

Attack Of The Killer Turkey...
Yes!  We are back to "The Giant Claw", which is perhaps a little unsporting of Conrad, given that it is such an easy target.  For one thing, it's as big as a battleship -
     Anyway, kindly gaze in awe upon the - er - villain of the piece.  Art?

This turkey not voting for Christmas ...

     Quite.  Anyway, what brought this cinematic ordure up was a film that Darling Daughter mentioned last night, "Thankskiller", which features - and you're probably waaay ahead of me here - a killer turkey.  Which kills people over in South Canada at Thanksgiving.  It is, according to DD, who is not an overly-fussy viewer, "dreadful".  Not only are the effects at the level of a hand in a sock pretending to be the turkey, talking, but the dialogue is dire, too.  Let me poke Art with a vegetable peeler -

Stan Kubrick eat your heart out!

     Now, given that I am typing this at work, where they rather jib at their minions perusing IMDB in company time, I dare not look up many stats for this <ahem> turkey.  However, Wiki does state that the first one cost only $3,500.  AND THEY ARE UP TO THE SECOND SEQUEL!
     If this is true, then there is something wrong with the world.

There Is Something Wrong With The World
Yes, but we knew that already.  Okay, cast your mind back to Halloween of this year, and that faintly amusing South Canadian comedy show, 'Saturday Night Live'.  They had a sketch of awesome weirdness about "David S. Pumpkins", featuring that very same character as played by Thomas Hanks.  Art?  Less coal more goal!

World, you are one sick puppy

     Any questions?  Well, apart from what the heck is going on here?*** 
     DSP was a brief internet sensation.  Or so I thought, because he has returned in an animation iteration, for children of the nation.  Art?

A SICK, sick puppy

     FOR KIDS?  What madness is this?

     Later.


*  Caution!  "Not" is bad for your health!
**  What's the melting-point of lard?  Ah - enough to cause second-degree burns.  Sorry, motley!
***  South Canadian comedy.  I feel they miss the Empire's sense of humour.

Styx And Pieces Of Eight

Greek Mythology Ahoy!
As you know, Conrad is a tad ambivalent about classical Greek civilisation and it's legacy.  For one, the Greek language tormented hundreds of thousands of public school pupils, and we still regularly use a whole clutch of words derived from Greek instead of perfectly good ANGLO-SAXON ONES.  On the plus side, they did gift the world history, arts and sciences, plus their own contemporary superhero stories about the gods and demigods.  Also, Greek warfare was raised to a combination of an art and a science.  Art?

The siege of Tyre.  Fascinating! - as long as you weren't Tyrian.

     "Get on with it, Conrad," I hear you quaver.  "The kettle's boiling."
     Go and pour your pot, then, for this will take a while.

     All done?  Properly brewed?  O good!  Now, let us move on to a member of the Greek underworld, namely Charon.  No!  I don't mean he was a Hellenic gangster - he lived and worked in Hades, the Greek version of Hell, which seemed to have a considerably lower ambient temperature than the latter.  Art?

Charon and his water-chariot

     Charon had a pretty sweet gig; he rowed the souls of the dead across the River Styx, which separated Hades from the world of the living, in the same way that the English Channel separates those unseemly, over-emotional Continentals from us.  To ensure that he did his job, relatives of the departed would leave a coin under their tongue or over their eyelids, as payment.  Yes - Charon - nascent capitalist!

One for each eye ...

     As proof that he really was in it for the money, you could also get out of Hades - if the price was right - as Hercules proved.  Mind you, it would take a pretty resolute character to refuse Ol' Herc a return trip anywhere.
     Oh, before you ask, that above was a birthday present for Darling Daughter from Jayne, who has an eye for the unusual.*  Art?

Your carin' sharin' Charon

     This is about as SFW as I can find for an illustration, as far too many have bare flesh on view, which will not do.


Ha!

     What's that?  You thought that this entire blog was going to be about the Eighties proto-prog band Styx and their platinum-selling album "Pieces of Eight"?  Pshaw!  Get out of here!  I don't believe any such record ever existed and even if it did - er - it would simply be a huge coincidence.**

Propagating Plutonian Planetesimals




More of Charon - because this is one of the 5 satellites of Pluto, a fact that will come up in any Google search you do, and also because that damned default Facebook definition keeps coming up with blurb about 'Astronomy', so this is a case of two birds with one anti-aircraft missile.***  Art?
     The striking thing about Charon, as a moon, is that it is whopping compared to Pluto, so big in fact that the two moons do not rotate about Pluto but at a point (a "barycentre") between the two.  It has half the diameter of Pluto and one-eighth the mass.
     Oh yes - "Planetesimals" are very small planets.  As I recall The Bad Astronomer saying, there really is no simple definition of how big a celestial body has to be before it gets dubbed a 'planet'.

 More Of Homework
It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.
     "What?  What!" I hear you chorus.  "What selfless trial of self-abnegation are you putting yourself through this time, Conrad?"
     Watching "The Giant Claw", that's what.  Another Giant Critter entry in the Fifty's array of prehistoric monsters that threatened the earth and the fate of humanity and the Universe, or at least whether your cakes might bake overlong in the oven.  That sort of thing.  Don't underestimate how tasteless and dry an over-baked cake can be, believe me, I've - hang on, we've gotten off-track here, haven't we?

Notice how they keep the beastie's head out of shot ...

     Screeching and swerving back on track, this is a film of two parts.  The first part is that involving the actors, who give it their all, and Mara Corday is certainly a sleek and slinky leading lady, whom I'd never heard of before.

The lady in question

     Rather rocking the Gina Gershon look, nicht war? 
     I suppose I should take umbrage with the title - after all am I not a hair-splitting pedant of the first water?^ - because the titular monster has a pair of claws.  Two.  A brace.  More than singular  A number between one and three.  Do you see what I'm getting at? 
IT OUGHT TO BE "THE DEADLY CLAWS"  CLAWS PLURAL!  PLURAL!!
     I apologise for the almost Continental level of hysteria there, yet you can see my grammatically-correct point, can't you?

     <ahem - short pause as Conrad's blood pressure dwindles back to normal>

     Then  there is the second part of the film, where the producer farmed out  the special effects to a cut-price Mexican effects house, who squeezed every dime out of their $23.57 budget.  Art?

Shriek in terror at the giant flying - er - Turkey?

     I could go on about this - and will do, believe me! - but that's enough words of wonder about the execrable for today.

Finally -
The sheer nihilism that exists throughout every cell in your humble hack's body delights - obviously! - in explosions, and the bigger the explosion, the better I like it.  Even better is something of significant size is being blown into very small pieces with a very big bang.
     Enter the Grain Power Station chimney.  Art?


     There's no nearby structure to give a sense of scale, so allow me to inform you that this beast of a building was 801 feet tall (none of that metric nonsense here) and came in at 40,000 tons deadweight.  And it went BANG! most spectacularly.
*  The only way to explain why we are friends.
**  Yes, another one.
***  Okay, okay, in the season's spirit - a touchy-feely pair of Nerf AA missiles. There.  Happy?
^  A resounding "Yes!" was heard across the land