House and cabin.

 We have a few up coming announcements, someone did one of those best house tracks of all time and of course they are ignorant Americans so. I'm going to be doing my own, 50 of the best with a (Carl) bias towards the classics and such. Probably starting next week 10 per entry with a round up for each. 

Also Twatter has given us a daily dose of Hardy boys this time its the Sting of the Scorpion which I learned that it was (unverified) meant to be called the Stomp of the Elephant. Don't know how true this is but someone also posted that Brazil got a translation and gave us a link to his blog post. 

If you can read Portuguese you can read it here, or just let your browser auto translate. 

How to dismantle an atomic bomb

 With apologies to U2, this is of course Trapped at Sea, the seventy third book in the series. It may also be called keep on trucking as well, as the boys get jobs driving big lorries around in order to smoke out some truck hijackers.  Oh and be aware that yes they do get to dismantle an atomic bomb in this as their dealings leads them to Pirates Cove, an island somewhere in the Caribbean, where the freighter they are trapped on docks (well Atlantic island), and they find that the Uranium the trucks held! is being used to make bombs for a rogue nation.

Sorry for the big wall of text there, you did read that right, they get to dismantle an atomic bomb with the help of an evil professor.  There is, for once one difference between the two texts as the final sentence altered to omit the next book in the UK version. 

The text credits a Doctor William W. Ennis for help with the atomic research and radioactive side of things. A search brings up a William P Ennis, a war hero and a name Beavis and Butthead would chuckle over, but nothing for the former. I wonder if he was a friend of the author or someone he knew?

You can read them here and here. 

99-1

 Recently got done watching a video of this 1994 crime drama, and boy, they really don't make 'em like this now. 99-1 was a cop show on ITV shown it seems just after the new year from the Ad breaks in this. 

Its a no brainer really. Put Leslie Grantham as a Chain smoking, hard drinking corrupt bastard of a cop, offer him the chance to take down some of the biggest crims in organized crime, after being jailed for corruption. Then see where it takes him.

The premise is that someone from government wants him to go undercover (as mentioned) after copping to fitting up a criminal back in the 80's. I only have the pilot episode and it sets up how he came to be there. He has an estranged wife (Gwynneth Strong / Cassandra from Fools n Horses) and son which he sees rarely. There is a great bit where she has to go to an Xmas party and he has to babysit with some of Capcom's finest. Micky Mouse Magical Quest and the original SFII for SNES.  May just clip this bit of him "playing" SFII, as its clearly the attract screen of Ryu VS Dhalsim. 

There's also him sitting down to an Xmas meal on his own. A kind of *Jonathan King Meals for one sans Aromat,  bottle of stolen whisky in hand and Its a Wonderful Life on TV. He gets a visit from a protégé (Robert Carlyle) and his bird, who takes a shine to him, who try and talk him round, but in the end, gets shot by a nutter following a lead that Grantham himself gave him. 

If you ever find this on sale, (there is a DVD box set out there) catch it. YT has a few episodes up too but they won't be around forever.

*Disgraced music mogul Jonathan King used to post up on Twitter / X a selection of grim dinners that he had. Along with a glass of wine there was the ever present bottle? of Aromat with every meal. 

Bush on Fruits

 Boot sale today wasn't bad. Not a mega haul by anyone's standards but still good.   A few new VHS tapes for VHS mess including what I'm hoping is 99-1 a crime drama that starred Leslie Grantham and something by Peter Sellers. 

We didn't get the book above, but just had to include a photo as its a great piece of nominative determinism. 

Barrymore

Happy Easter everyone. To take my mind off of sinister work, have some boot sale madness. Oh and to the ugly bitch on the middle floor, the reason why I haven't done your chute is because repairs are being cunts and not answering a job booked at least 3 times already. So put your claws away. 

With this broached, we can at least have some fun .Our haul this week includes a PS1 game (Xi AKA Devil Dice here.) Along with some odd home made CDs and stuff (mixes?), and finally, our crap tune of the week is of course Kenny the Kangaroo from Michael Barrymore, and after hearing his Family Ness cover on YT I'm shuddering to think how bad it is.

Reformed from Jackson's Lighthouse

One of the things you don't know about me is that I love the Elite games. Though I can't get on with the 8 bit original, its follow up Frontier and Elite Dangerous are some of my favourite games of all time.So much so, I dedicated 13 in game years in the original Frontier (had an Imperial Courier) and made it to near the edge of civilization. 

So, you'd be wondering where the title comes from. Well this week I made it to my first neutron star in Elite: Dangerous. For some reason its not ticked off my accomplishment on XBONIO 1 (my codex entry for neutron stars remains unredeemed) but, boy did I get a shock when I dropped from hyperspace. 

Most starts are pretty sedate with the occasional stellar flare to break up monotony, they do not pulse like some kind of spatial graphic equalizer. Oh and my previous destination for just gazing at things in wonder was a white dwarf near the start I dubbed planet splittercore. Its really dubbed BPM 890. but its worth a detour at the start as its staggeringly beautiful. There's also another one near Earth for those in the vicinity.

May return as the first time there I got killed, stupidly, and the second was just to scan a place.

Swamp Monsters

 We are slowly running out of dual releases, I've 5 books to transcribe up for you and after that comes the hard part of making a proper book out of this. The Swamp Monster is a mix of environmental and old Civil war mystery. 

The boys are tasked with looking into death threats directed to Professor Martin Pierce, who lives in the Big Thicket area of Texas. Reports of a monster gator terrorizing the community and a local corporation run by Norman Zeigler is threatening to buy up most of the stock land. 

They arrive just in time to take part in a Civil War re-enactment where they are on the union side vs the draft dodging Jayhawkers. 

It's not a bad story and gives a good insight into the natural history of the region, where from a non American's perspective it shows a side to Texas that isn't a semi arid dustbowl.

Anyway there are no changes between the two stories so you can read both the UK and US versions here and here.

A final coincidence on this, as I was watching Youtube while putting the final touches to this, the video (totally unrelated to the Hardys) mentioned the words Swamp Monster. Needless to say I was shocked.