O Frabjous Day!

Callooh!  Callay!

Which you ought to recognise as being from "Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll's epic nonsense poem, which is relevant here because BOOJUM! takes it's name from another of his epic nonsense poems, "The Hunting Of The Snark".

     Which has nothing to do with Indian tea plantations, although it will serve as an expostulation of wonderment.  You recall that Conrad bought all the packets of loose-leaf Darjeeling in Sainsbury's on Saturday?  At least you ought to BECAUSE ONLY THIS WAY WILL YOUR DESCENDANTS SURVIVE when my starship invasion fleet gets here.  Art!

No, Art.  No.

     What I wanted you to post was a picture of that implement essential in the brewing of tea: a teapot.  For Lo! Wonder Wifey and Degsy came back from the car boot sales with a Suribachi double-walled metal teapot, which has been swapped for the enormously heavy brown china one.  Art!

Teapot and tub of Bigos for scale

     It's very obviously been used plentifully, as the interior has what Conrad describes as 'patina' and which other less artistic people might call 'grot'.  Which persisted after a good deal of wire-wool scrubbing.  So tomorrow morning we shall be taking this new pot for a test drive.  How appealing will it make the Darjeeling?

     Okay, Motley, you and Art are going to be playing Chicken With Alligators, and Art can wear the lead boots first.

What Do We Make Of This?

Yesteryon Conrad posted a sci-fi book cover, in order to force Facebook to pick it up as the default icon when posted on that forum.  I recognised the style, yet did not know the artist.

     You may rest easy for Your Humble Scribe has managed to identify the painter in question: Bob Fowke.  Art!

Best not let little Timmy see this, let alone read it

     His cover artwork used to be all over the place in the Seventies, from what I recall, and he seems to also have had a gig as the house artist for Coronet paperback's science-fiction output.

     There are other covers, which are rather unsettling, so I shall leave this as is, and you can go Google them yourself.  Don't blame me for nightmares and awakening at 01:37 because the floorboards upstairs creaked (and you live in a bungalow).

About That Jigsaw

It comes with a handy picture sheet for reference, which would have been even handier if it had been small enough to fit in the box properly.  Art!

     The artist is Nicholas Trudgian, who is apparently hot stuff in the field of aviation art, whoopee for him.  Conrad can tell you that the central aircraft is a Hurricane, and the Teuton aircraft shortly to do an impression of a brick is a Stuka Junkers 87, and that's where his knowledge of aircraft runs out.

     HOWEVER.  Nicholas has been unerringly accurate in his depiction of the BEF ground vehicles; no generic 'TANK' or 'TRUCK' here.  O no.  That tank at the front of the column is an A13 Cruiser, you can tell by the centrally-positioned headlight.  To it's port is a Vickers Light Tank Mark VI, kind of an armoured car with tracks.  Behind them you can see a Bren Carrier, that unique British 2 ton Jeep-on-tracks, and next to it is a Bedford truck, with another Bedford behind it.  Off to the port of the picture is a Morris 30 CWT (which is curious Imperial for one and half tons) looking in need of maintenance.  Art!

Dalek Great-grandad?

     There's a thousand pieces to this jigsaw, so if I set up a sheet of fibreboard to begin, there will be quite a time taken to complete.  Don't worry, you will get progress reports.     

Steaming!

Conrad has never realised this before, and you have permission to laugh mockingly at him*, but steam trains - as they chuff along, emitting clouds of steam - use up lots and lots of water, because it's all being vented as steam.  The clue is in the "Steam" of "Steam engine".  According to to Peter Hodgkinson, in his quite excellently detailed "The Battle Of The Selle" (about an obscure battle in October 1918 during the First Unpleasantness), your average steam locomotive consumes between a ton and a ton-and-a-half of water every thirty miles at the most efficient.  Art!

     Your Humble Scribe was well aware that the Royal Engineers of the First Unpleasantness were responsible for providing drinking water for the soldiery, and plain water for horses, who were much less fussy about potability, yet had no idea that locomotives were just as thirsty as Dobbin.

     Who knew!

     I also see that Peter has footnotes referring to the most boring book ever written, Henniker's "Transportation On The Western Front", which I have also slogged through, and I feel his pain.

Return To "Forbidden Planet"

Ha!  No, nothing to do with <hack spit> musicals.  I refer, of course - obviously! - to one of my favourite sci-fi films evah.  I took a series of frankly rubbish photographs this afternoon, where there were intrusive reflections everywhere.  The idea was to show how matte work was used in classic colour sci-fi films of the Fifties and Sixties (we may extend this arbitrary timeframe).  I have now found enough pristine images online that we may commence with the article.  Art!

     Working with still is always a challenge when talking about a film.  Here the United Planets Cruiser C57D is the only moving object, with a fantastic matte background.  Sorry, don't know the artist**.

     Ah.  Henry Hillnick, apparently.

     Okay, then we have the dust plume that indicates Robby the Robot Road-Rage Driver approaching, once again with the matte as backdrop.  Art!

     Once again, using a painting on glass is a lot cheaper than having to construct an entire set in miniature, especially if you can re-use it.  Art!

     This one simply does not work as a still, and even less so because it's a fraction of the size a full-screen image would have been.  In this shot the pool at very dead centre is animated and moving, as if a shoal of piranhas were going at a herd of swimming cattle.  Next!

     Gold dust!  The image in monochrome shows what actually existed on set, and the full colour image shows what has been added in via matte.  You can clearly see that the entire upper hull of the spaceship is merely a daub of oil, which again means the studio don't need to construct a huge and expensive prop which only gets seen for a few seconds.

     Oops. We are well over the Compositional Ton.  Guess the rest of this will have to wait for another day.  Chin chin! 

*  For a maximum of FIVE SECONDS ONLY.  You will be timed.

**  Go on, go on, I shall attempt to find out.

Our Sunday Retrospective

I Am Typing This Whilst A Giant Pot Of Bigos Is Cooking

Firstly, we need an appropriate click-baity picture, because the default first one wasn't that inspiring, merely being an album cover, and a rather bland one at that.  Art!

     I confess I don't know who the cover artist is (I shall find out), although Conrad recognises their style, and having seen this cover illustration, it rather stuck with me.

     Perhaps I should say "Bigos-Inspired Stew", since I'm using up a tin of frankfurters found whilst cleaning out the cupboard yesterday, and some indeterminate Korean stock mix, as well as a few sliced mushrooms that needed to be used, and a remant of the cauliflower before it goes spotty and black, not to mention that the cabbage is a red one, which transforms the whole thing into -

I kid you not

     Whilst it cooks, let us review the tsunami of silly over the past seven years.

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-wobble-in-lens.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/04/eagles-dragons-and-choppers.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/04/a-plutonium-encomium.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/04/did-you-miss-me.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/04/what-do-you-call-persian-superhero.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/04/is-it-mallard-no-its-jg-ballard.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/04/robots-and-empire.html

I Could Kill, Dear

Don't Worry, This Is Not A Threat

And it will become clearer later in this afternoon's ranting and tanting.  First, I need to go back upstairs because I need to get some stills for exposition, as we are going to be delving into matte film work in colour sci-fi films of the Fifties and Sixties again.  Having done that, they're not so very high-quality - there's a fat biffer's reflection in a lot.  I shall have to see how we make out.

     Okay, first of all I spent an hour and a pot of tea having a quick flick through one of the tomes I bought yesterday, "The American Heritage New History Of The Civil War".  Art!

     You can tell that the South Canadians are Johnny-come-lately's on the international stage, since their Civil Unpleasantness was mid-nineteenth century, whereas we in Perfidious Albion had the common sense to get ours over and done with in the seventeenth century.

     The work is long and detailed, with plenty of photographs, since photography had begun to be used widescale at pretty much the same time the Civil Unpleasantness broke out.  There are maps of the major battlefields, and plenty of sketches, too, quite a few of which have a very contemporary feel to them.  Art!

     The top sketch is a caricature of Abe Lincoln, sneaking through town as there had been a rumoured plot to ambush him, and really, you wouldn't know it hadn't been printed yesterday in "Time" or the "Sacramento Bee".  It also serves to point out that South Canadians can be absolutely excoriating to and about their politicians, and that's not a recent development.  It is, however, tilting towards Politics, so that ends that*.  Picture the second looks to be done in the style of Edward Ardizzone**, except about eighty years earlier.  The third could be from a contemporary comic, and the last, explicitly dated "Decatur July 22nd 1864" could be from the First Unpleasantness, given the troop density.

     We shall probably come back to this work, as there's a lot to it and Conrad will take some time to get to it, sitting as it does at the foot of the Book Mountain.

Captain Bierce in his Civil Unpleasantness uniform

     Motley!  Time for a few overs of Cactus Cricket!

"The War Illustrated"

This, you ought to remember, is that faded and foxed work I got yesteryon, which, if Art can put down his plate of coal -

      There we are.  It's title is "The War Illustrated" and at first Your Humble Scribe thought it was a variation on the First Unpleasantness, which confused me as I already have all six of those volumes and they are a lot smaller.

     But no! it is actually a piecework published during the Second Unpleasantness by Amalgamated Press, this volume containing about twenty individual magazines bound together.  As an example - Art!

     In case your optics are poor, that date is "January 22 1943", so by that time the war was definitely turning in the Allies favour, with the Battle of El Alamein a recent victory, whilst the Sinisters slowly squeezed the Teuton garrison at Stalingrad to a powder.  What will be interesting is seeing events that we now know the background to in detail, not to mention also having information from the other side of the hill.  I may share some of this with you in the future as I peruse it, depending on how much your brain glazes over.

Conrad Is STILL Angry!

O yes indeed.  The Manchester Evening News continues to employ hair-splitting pedants to compile their Codewords, filling them with solutions that are wilfully obscure, require ridiculously detailed scientific knowledge, or are foreign, and one day they'll manage to combine all three <long pause to allow blood pressure to fall>.  Continue.

"CHIPOLATA":  For those of you unfamiliar with British cuisine, this is a small sausage, mid-way between a standard-sized sausage and a cocktail sausage.  The name is from the French by way of Italian, derived from "Cipolla", the Italian for "Onion".  WHY COULDN'T THEY JUST HAVE "SAUSAGE"?  WHY!  WHY?

With fork for scale

     "FAZE": Described as "Informal" for "To disconcert or disturb someone".  It also sound FAR TOO SOUTH CANADIAN for Your Humble Scribe, so, in a fir of dudgeon, I shall NOT put up an illustrative picture.

     "KILLDEER":  YOU WHAT?  <takes deep breath to get rid of the red mist> I had to go over all the letters in this solution to check I'd got it right, and I had.  Hence today's title for BOOJUM! So, what on Earth is a 'Killdeer'?  Art?

One of these

     My Collins Concise defines it as:"A large brown and white North American plover, with two black breast bands."  WHAT ARE WE SOUTH CANADIAN ORNITHLOGY EXPERTS NOW?

     Conrad is beginning to get suspicious about just whom is compiling these Codewords.  Are they being bought in from across the Atlantic? because that would explain a lot.  My Remote Nuclear Detonator stands ready.

"This Island Earth"

 - no, only kidding, I think we've analysed this film as much as mortal man or alien can.  Although - why didn't Exeter and Brak just steal refined uranium or even uranium ore from wherever on Earth?  That would have been a lot easier than their fantastically convoluted methodology.

Though it would have been ore-ful***

Finally -

Hmmm we have enough wordage here and are sufficiently close to the Compositional Ton that we don't need the frankly hokey pictures I took of "Forbidden Planet". I may try to re-take them later tonight when it's dark and reflections won't show up so badly.

     ANYWAY I wanted to mention a minor martial matter from the podcast "We Have Ways", where Al and Jim had as a guest the Teuton museum curator Jens Wernher, who knows his stuff about the war on the Eastern Front, and other stuff too.  For instance, you may be familiar with the Teuton SS, who jackbooted about in sinister black uniforms.  Art!

     In reality they bitterly resented this colour and wanted to wear the same field-grey that conventional Wehrmacht troops wore, because 'Feld-Grau' had a lot more social cachet attached to it, going all the way back to the First Unpleasantness.  Imagine that, weepy snowflake SS troops, O dear how sad never mind.

Right, that'll do, time for lunch and a bit of prep for next week's Bigos, whoopee.  I shall try very hard not to slice the ends of any fingers off.

*  Except for our usual exhortation (not a word you expected to see today) about voting for President Bierce!

** An interesting chap in his own right, whom we may come back to.

***  Sorry.

Volcano And Cake

This Will Make Sense Later

As much sense as anything ever does around here.  Remember!  A vote for Bierce is a vote for cynical sanity!

     Okay, let's get on with Conrad's incisive analysis of the Gaping Plot Holes in "This Island Earth" which I know you've been thirsting for almost as much as my 5,000 word monograph on "Forbidden Planet", which is to say, not at all.  Tough!  Art!

They exaggerate somewhat

     Let me fill the background in for you, and believe me THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.  BIG, FAT, IN-YOUR-FACE SPOILERS.  Now that we've got that out of the way, we shall establish the mise-en-scene.  The Zagons have been waging a war of annihilation against Metaluna, duration unknown but of considerable length.  Desperate to acquire the technology that will enable them to create gigantic quantities of uranium as a power source, a Metalunan expedition has been sent to Earth in order to carry out the recruitment of human scientists to that end.  The uranium will be used to drive the Metalunan 'Ionisation layer', a species of force-field.  It is already beginning to fail at the point our heroes enter the scene.

     Let the carping begin!  Art!

     Exeter and Brak, the two Metalunan front men, presumably know how desperate the situation is on their home planet.  Yet they resort to an incredibly slow, lengthy indirect recruitment process to get Cal Meacham onboard.  Have these people no experience with deadlines?  In total they seem to have recruited ten human scientists, whom work a leisurely ten-hour day.  IDIOTS!  They should have recruited forty who can then work twenty-four hour days and still have time off.  Remind me again, how clever are these Metalunans?

     Then we have Metaluna itself.  Exeter, in conversation with Cal and Ruth as they travel beneath the planet's surface, reveals that Metalunan civilisation used to all be on the surface of the planet.  Art!

     A vista like that wasn't constructed overnight.  How long have they been down there?  On top of that, how long did they put up with their civilisation being bombarded on the surface?  Because nothing is terms of structures, bridges, ports, cities or dams is apparent on the surface.  Art?

     As barren, brown and blasted as a battlefield of the First Unpleasantness.  Let us now look more closely at the Ionisation Layer.  Art!

     In terms of cinematography, this is pretty well done.  You see the IL at top, in a neutral state; picture two shows a Zagon missile being destroyed as it impacts the IL; and in the last picture, a Zagon missile has gotten through the IL to hit the surface.

     So - the Metalunans have been sitting there, taking this colossal pounding, for decades at least, if not centuries?  Remind me, again, how clever are these Metalunans?  

     Here an aside.  At one point we hear The Monitor, an especially humourless bottomwipe of a Metalunan, gloating that they are going to 'relocate' to Earth, whether Hom. Sap. likes it or not.  Art?

NO!  Not a Metalunan toilet facility.  Wash out your dirty minds.

     Relocate with what?  We've only seen a single spaceship.  You're going to take over Earth and a population of billions with a single spaceship that can, at most accommodate a couple of hundred Metalunans?  Remind me, again again, how clever are these Metalunans?

     That the Metalunans actually have weapons and the capacity to use them is proven on Exeter's approach to his homeworld; two Zagon scoutships attempt to attack with meteorites.  Art!

     Exeter's ship destroys both in less than a second.  So why aren't they patrolling in orbit around their homeworld, destroying Zagon ships before they can launch their missiles?  If spaceships are too complex and expensive to build in numbers, how about armed satellites*?  For heaven's sake, why didn't they at least bring some South Canadian anti-aircraft missiles along with them, or a few batteries of anti-aircraft guns?  Remind me, again again again, how clever are these Metalunans?

Well, they can over-engineer bathtubs

     In fact Exeter's mission was doomed before he set off.  The Zagons have inflicted such damage across the whole of Metaluna that, by the time he returns, they have mere hours left.  Also The Monitor is an even bigger bottomwipe, because he (being so mighty and powerful and intelligent) ought to have seen this and begun the 'relocation'.

     Of course, I may be overthinking this ...

The Very Ironically Named Iceland

Ah me, a country awash in geysers and volcanoes.  Well, when life deals you lemons, you can always make limoncello (not for me, it has too much sugar), and when it deals you volcanoes, you can always use it for a video or wedding backdrop.  Art?

     That's the frontman of Icelandic band Kaleo, who said his back (which was to the volcano) was roasting, whilst his hands were cold, and they had to duck out before their planned finish thanks to a new pool of lava puddling nearby.  Since they weren't permitted to use any transportation, all their kit had to be carried on their backs, for eight hours.  Suffering for your art.

     The wedding party had all the trimmings - suits (donned in a pop-up changing room), cake (not the cake of this title), champagne and flowers, and they, too, had to walk there, if only for three hours.  The wedding planner explained that they had to take gas sensors with them, to monitor toxic volcanic output during the ceremony.  Fortunately the wind held any vile vapours at bay and all went well.

Spectacular and free!
(Also dangerous)

"How To Cook That" Is Ten

Anyone who reads BOOJUM! with regularity knows that Conrad has a bit of a pash for Professor Ann Reardon, an Aussie food scientist and expert baker, who valiantly tries to debunk fake viral videos as well as baking wonderful cakes.  Her husband (Conrad sighs with envy) Dave is the brave soul who tries her attempts to recreate viral vomit in baked form.  Props to Dave.  Her channel is now ten years old, and as a bit of a change, it was Dave who would be baking, guided only by a video of Ann - who went off to do a bit of artwork.  Art!

Dave gets his challenge

Dave realises he's not separated the egg whites

     Dave is absolutely made up when Ann tells him his macarons aren't bad, certainly for a first effort.  Which is where the second part of today's title comes from and I DON'T CARE if they're not technically cakes.

     And with that we are done, because I need some tea.  Of the solid variety, not Darjeeling.

*  I will allow that this film was made two years before Sputnik.

Alexandros Meglos

No!  That Is Not The Plural Of Meglo

<sigh> don't you know your ancient Greek?  Let me translate for you: "Alexander the Great".  There.  NOW do you get it?

Alex putting himself in harm's way at the siege of Tyre

     Here an aside.  The Iranians don't think of him as "Great", rather the "Devil" because he did, after all, destroy the Persian Empire, which is more than an accidental "Ooops!" moment.

     ANYWAY as you may have guessed by now, we are back on the subject of "Warfare In The Ancient World As Portrayed By Hollywood" with the resplendent Roel and his boyishly exuberant reviews.  This time we are on the subject of "Alexander".  Art!

     I think that's Alex galloping about in the middle distance.

     Well, for once Roel has good things to say about this film.  The historical advisor was a professor of Ancient History, and the film crew paid attention to what he said (which is unusual in itself) and thus all the kit is authentic.  Art!

    Greek hoplites in a phalanx, if you care to know.  These guys would form a formation that resembled a porcupine and then march at the opposition, who would get out of the way if they knew what was good for them.  Next!

     Thus.  You can't imagine anyone rushing at this formation; as Roel points out, people don't deliberately run themselves onto sharp pointy things, and any formation facing this phalanx would, as above, back off.  Next!

Persian Camel Corps

     Another authentic appearance.  Roel explained that the Persians always used camels, because horses are allergic to them (something like that, anyway) and won't face them.  Bad horses!  Cowardly horses!  And - what about the Persian cavalry?  One supposes they're kept on the opposing wing.  Art!

Effete eyeliner-earing Aryans! <hack spit>

     Roel sucked his teeth at this, because the real Persians were Much More Manly and didn't resemble a boy band with beards.  They were certainly militarily capable, because you don't establish and run a vast empire by being whingy snowflakes who break down in hysterical tears over a broken thumbnail.  Art!

     The clash of arms.  Roel explained that - inevitably - in real life, things would be a lot more organised than this, on both sides.  Also, rather than yelling and shrieking, the Persians came into battle silently, which the Greeks were rather impressed by - it's common practice to stoke yourself up for mutual pig-stickery by yelling loudly.

     Our personable ancient warfare expert rates this film as a 9/10, which is the most he's awarded any of these films, so if you want to see anything particularly authentic, "Alexander"'s your man.

     Motley, let us don our rhino-hide* gloves and indulge in a game of Porcupine Juggling!

The Haul

First, the backstory.  A couple of years ago there was a strike on the Darjeeling plantations in India, the workers refusing to pick the tea until they got triple-ply soft toilet roll on the job and probably a raise, too.  Sadly, by the time this dispute got resolved (thank you foot-dragging management)  , it was TOO LATE TO PICK THE TEA <gibbers madly in  recollection>.  Consequently there was a critical shortage of Darjeeling until the next harvest.

     You know Conrad.  One of the more important things in his life is loose-leaf Darjeeling tea.  So, since I was down to only two packets, a trip to Sainsbury's was in order.  They are the only readily available source of same at a reasonable price.  Thus today's mission.  Art!

Tah-dah!

     That'll keep me happy for a couple of months at least.

Further Haulage

Under the One In, One Out guidelines I have adopted - notice not 'rule' because that allows me a bit of wiggle room here - Your Humble Scribe took three very weighty tomes into a charity shop and walked out with two, so you see a net deficit of one.  Art!

     You can't count a jigsaw towards my total of books, so there.  I picked it because of the subject matter and I don't care if it makes me a saddo.  The rather faded and 'foxed' book at the back cost me all of £2.50, as the young lady on the till couldn't find the price.  When I get home I found a sticker in rear for £5.00.  Go away, conscience!

"Eskers"

Thank you, Steve (he's in charge of memory around here).  This word  surfaced in the sewage sump of my mind for no very good reason this morning.  Of course - obviously! - I looked it up in my Collins Concise and it's a geographical feature.  That was six hours ago and my CC is upstairs, so I've forgotten what it was.  Recourse to internet!

An esker

     So, it's a long, sinuous ridge of sand or gravel, created by glaciers, and usually resembling a railway embankment, found in Europe and South Canada.

     So there we have it, and are better informed.  Sorry, no idea why Steve decided on a fluvioglacial landform.  If you have an answer please add in the Comments section.

Punnery Not Restricted To Conrad

Unless you have been living atop a pole in the Gobi Desert for the past month, then you will be aware that certain ballfoot club owners were trying to form a League Of Super in Europe.  Conrad, knowing about 0.01% about ballfoot, initially believed it was competition for the South Canadian Justice League, as they're all Super.

     Alas no.  It was an attempt to squeeze even more money out of the ballfoot game.  Predictably, fans were so annoyed that their arms were up in arms.  Then, as additional background, you need to understand that a ballfoot player named "Matty Cash" was presented with a red card, which seems like a birthday card except the opposite.  Art!

     You have to admit, it was pretty clever.

Finally -

I know you're probably twitching with fear about the threatened in-depth analysis of "This Island Earth" and are, even now, wiping swear off your brow at escaping.

     DON'T SPEAK TOO SOON!  IT IS COMING!  IT WILL BE HERE!

     That is all.  Have a nice day now.

*  Artificial.  As if we'd use the real thing!  They're prohibitively expensive, for one.