Project: Spectrum

In the style of brilliant documentary Thunderbirds (about those secretive heroes from International Rescue), this new Americanised big-screen remake tackles a far grander story: interplanetary defence of the Earth against illegal visitations by alien terrorists. Not since War of the Worlds has there been such a terrifyingly outrageous tale of our ‘war of nerves’ against mysterious foes - reportedly so weird they are unknowable to human science.

With its operational HQ aboard the flying aircraft carrier dubbed ‘Cloud Base 9’, the planetary organisation officially known as ‘Spectrum’ is led by elite military veteran Colonel White (succeeding Colonel Straker, top star cop and Cold War spymaster of last century’s SHADO). Primary agents from Spectrum’s cadre of astronaut warriors include Captain Eddie Blue, and his partner - the reportedly ‘indestructible’ Captain Pete Scarlet, ultimate champion of Spectrum’s heroic defence strategy against outer zone mysterians. Not since the era of Quatermass, has Britain, and indeed the world, faced such implacable enemies from space. 

The mysterians (previously notorious as ‘mysterons’) are like psychic wizards with an almost supreme power over matter and energy, using alien technology which enables them (if that pronoun can be applied to what human scientists now suspect to be a hive mind) to regenerate living tissue from death, re-create wrecked machines, and any sabotaged devices, or specific objects of interest/ value, that have already been destroyed in spectacular explosions. Spectrum’s - and especially Scarlet’s - nemesis is the tortured soul of zombie maniac Captain Black (photo not available due to inter-world security concerns), who is represents the ultimate villainy of betrayal - once a Spectrum agent, identified as Conrad Turncoat, now a teleporting madman who will stop at nothing (“Nothing I tell you!”) to bring harm or doom and gloom to innocent lives of humankind. And there’s only Captain Scarlet, proving that one man can make a difference, with his famously bizarre ability of ‘retro-metabolism’ (which Dr Gold has so far failed to replicate in other Spectrum agents), to get in the mysterians’ way.

WHEN WHORLS COLLIDE

Leggy lovely Lieut. Green 

has parachute trouble…

Scarlet and Blue’s mission to save the world federation by thwarting each mystery ET plot, is performed with savvy and brio, with irregular but invaluable assistance from Lieutenant Green, plus various other Spectrum agents with codenames such as Grey, Beige, Amber, Magnolia, Pink, Khaki, Carrot, Ruby, Turquoise, Ivory, Sand, Crimson, Maroon, Pearl, Copper, Ultraviolet, Mint, Cyan, Vanilla, Slate, Lime, Mauve, android helpmates Chrome and Silver, and the unfortunate Yellow bastard. Impressionable or young fans and space cadets of Spectrum are warned never to copy the heroism of the organisation’s greatest asset: “Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Don’t try to imitate him.”

All-female ‘top guns’, former Angel interceptor pilots, Destiny, Symphony, Rhapsody, Melody, and Harmony, have since been promoted to the frontline of space defence on Moonbase Alpha - where they are deployed in tactical command of upgraded Lunar interceptors (older designs of the vehicles that Spectrum inherited from SHADO were deemed “too phallic” by women pilots), despite some criticism of the special initiative for its ‘affirmative action’ - resulting in rightwing political anger (prompted by notion of “chicks with nukes”), while lefty liberals directed their fury at Spectrum command for sanctioning the boosting to squadron status of these new-fangled orbital bombers. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Charlie agency franchise has supplied new recruits as replacement Angels, always on standby, ready for immediate launch from Cloud Base 9 action stations, using codenames: Tragedy, Parody, Jeopardy, Veracity, and Apathy.

New pilots for Angel interceptors!

Spectrum is GO!

(With sincere apologies to sci-fi visionary Gerry Anderson, a singular genius architect of TV utopian futurism, and remarkable adventures in superb technocracy.)

Gromit award

How long is a television star and cinema idol’s career in dog years?

Gromit, the super-dog of British suburbia, finally wins long overdue and rightful acclaim, for magnificently expressive performances “of quiet courage, canine determination, and supreme humility,” in such classic adventures as The Wrong Trousers (1993), and Curse Of The Were-Rabbit (2005), and last year’s documentary series World Of Invention. The long-suffering sceptical companion of that blundering ‘inventor’ and cheese-addict Wallace, beloved national cult hero Gromit leapt to instant stardom in 1989, while portraying an intrepid astronaut from Wigan, in A Grand Day Out. 
 

Receiving his lifetime achievement award from the Royal Academy, usually reclusive Gromit remained tight-lipped, making no comment or even a sound of any answers, when accosted by reporters and well-wishers outside the academy’s hallowed halls. A blasé shrug, a poignant gesture of paw waving, the stoically resigned forbearance and air of that most gentle breed of underdog, evincing profundity from the champions’ pound, was the superstar thespian Gromit’s only response to the assembly of media pundits’ boisterous rhubarb of questioning.

In their prepared statement, read by a current Presidential Academician, the awards committee unanimously declared that Gromit was, without any doubt, “The greatest silent movie actor of his plasticine generation… and indeed, of the animated British 21st century!” The academic pres prof continued, “Never in the kennels of history…" blah blah.

All creatures...

All creatures, great or small…

Avoid confrontations with the infamous Giga-beasts of lore and yore, of course, but also beware of their many and various tiny cousins, which can infest your homes or workplaces, and wreck even greater domestic or industrial havoc than mischievous imps and gremlins.

 

Often mistaken for innocuous playthings, homunculi are very fast-breeding little monsters. They are vicious killers. They are destroyers of calm and order in all human affairs. They are receptacles for purest evil, eagerly providing a physical expression or predatory aspect for long–festering vengeance. As homunculi–phobia extends its clammy grip across Europe from Prague, all British citizens are being warned against ignoring the horrific threats from such insidious creepy-crawlies, which are genuinely alarming in their fierce proficiency for mayhem, and pose a more substantial menace to civilisation than any empire’s darth, or mythically hellish demon, you can name.

shredded wheat homonculus

Beware of the formidable shredded wheat homunculus at breakfast! These crispy spry critters are cereal killers that dodge your spoon, escape from bowls of milk, and can ruin your morning repast. Never, ever, try to eat three of these fibrous ghouls at one sitting. Watch out also for chocophile ‘pod–people’, especially the bubbly aero blob (genus: cocoa nestle series), which crushes all meaning from a TV aerobics workout. It appears to be sweet and edible, yet they are really calorie monsters that eke out a confectionary existence, while accelerating your sugar dependency to addiction via quasi-supernatural means.

aero blob

In the political sphere’s draughty corridors of power, a familiar Penfield homunculus has been spotted causing a ruckus amongst bean brains in UK.gov domains, wherein tactical counter-homunculus strategies are currently subject to parliamentary debate. Several unconfirmed reports of appalling new hybrids without any hubris include the dreadful hovisunculus. This particularly nasty brown loafer scatters breadcrumbs in its wake. The general public are cautioned to be very careful never to step barefoot in any messy crusty fragments - which may be poisonous on contact with bare skin, or follow its toxic trail of half–baked horrors to your mortal doom. 

  

Penfield homunculus makes havoc in HoP

Many of you will recall the grisly true story behind the ‘mannikins of horror’ segment of 1972’s docudrama known as Asylum, where Dr Byron is portrayed by Herbert Lom in the anthology of dark tales. It’s a further warning, should any be needed again, that Czech madmen locked up in British loony bins are particularly likely to create robotic homunculi for nefarious purposes!   

DreamShop

Bark odes

Forget about the so-called bible codes, feast your eyes on ring sonnets and bark odes! 

Every schoolchild knows how bees invented television, and ants conceived telepathy, but new advanced research by the Royale Botanical Association has discovered that common trees, like the easily recognisable horse chestnut (which spawned a whole human infantile subculture of conkers), or the fast-growing walnut, have secretly been composing poetry for millennia. In forest and copse, timeless wood-wordsmiths etch lyrical prose with epochal variations, often discussing nature and entropy with a matchstick profundity that mere mortals like us could never hope to equal.  

Diatribes..? Well, yes, certainly – the focus of political and social commentaries by trees is particularly fascinating. Despite the usual pacifism of trees, their virulent polemical rants about several varieties parasitical fungi are very probably more fascistically objectionable than most forms of human racism. And let’s not forget the infamous troubles of colonial ‘oppression’ between American oaks and Canadian maples (as immortalised in rock music by that Rush song), which first led curious researchers on the trail of so-called ‘vegetable panic attacks’ - detected as a subtle, almost psychically attuned, infrared mottling on bark (see picture: ‘new proverbs for old’ - translated from Aramaic), and in false colour imaging of seasonal ring patterns (pictured: ‘this is what the Romans did for us’ - abridged version).

Terror felt by trees has increased dramatically ever since humanity’s industrial revolution forever changed agricultural practices regarding forestry, so trees that once feared campfires, and felling by mankind’s primitive axes, nowadays have to contend with chainsaws and mechanical up-rooters. Dendrochronology studies, finding disturbing patterns of climate change, prompted further investigations into extraordinary upheavals in the social history of trees. Although quite immobile, the lividly roving rage of activist-poet trees is found in their classic agitprop protest anthem, ‘timber is murder’. You don’t want to know what noble pines think about humankind’s ritual barbarism of Christmastime! And yet, preliminary evidence suggests that many trees maintain a somewhat contrary respect for the supposedly civilising influence of the ‘book publishing’ industry upon homo sapiens’ typically callous banditry.

Shunned by naturally endowed trees, the forced-evolutionary leapfrog of their gene-mod vegetable cousins - the unwholesomely motile and wholly dangerous, so-called ‘triffids’; is another twig of contention between species. It’s a deep-rooted sourness (epitomised by the silent seething specificity of a standard ‘walk on by’ rejection) that resulted in triffids’ irreversible expulsion from the big society of trees, after redwood parliamentary debates, and even disbarment from regular autumnal leaf-dropping parties. Unfortunately, some of the recent ‘scientific’ discoveries concerning poetry by trees are entirely spurious, at best. There is no compelling data whatsoever that any modern trees send ‘txt’ messages.  

 Activity is very slow in this gym for trees...

Can of Wyrms

PRODUCT RECALL!

After various toxicology reports from the League of Nations’ medical advisors, and World Health Protection - LabCentral investigators, Queztacoatl & Ouroboros Ltd. have today issued an urgent recall notice for their canned wyrms. The reasoning for this recall is a matter of seasoning.

Harvested from high quality eggs on free range snake farms in the Republic of Texas and New Bangkok, the affected batch of canned wyrms carries these serial numerals: MDCCCLXVI to MDCCCLXIX.

The recall applies to products sold in many European states, and all English counties except Wessex. Price tag on affected tins or cans is 1/2 shilling. In all circumstances, the general public (including those ubiquitous citizens named Joe Bloggs), are urged to remain calm. There is no cause for panic. None, really! Oh, just behave yourselves.

A spokes-shaman for Q&O Ltd announced there are no reports of similar problems with the company’s specialist lines of venom-free canned serpent heads, in brine or bulls’ blood. Lucky charms made from serpents’ teeth were also cleared of problems by the LabCentral boffins. “They are functional and should be as sharp as usual, and just as bitter as the proverbial ungrateful child,” remarked Dr Lear Speare.

News Extra:

Membership of the Snake-Charmers Guild has been falling steadily since millennium-era legislation regulated international commerce of limbless vertebrate specimens or by-products.

Cyber-yeti

A rare sighting of the Welsh cyber-yeti, popularly known as ‘Lonesome Loathsome’ or ‘Ye Olde Mournful’ was reported last night in Aberystwyth. The hairy ‘bionic beast’ is thought to have fled the mountain heights due to this winter’s severe weather. Earlier - unconfirmed - reports suggest this delightfully eccentric British techno-creature has been lurking around Cardigan Bay for a period of several months.

Pot fab

Special reports about 'Pottymania' continue with fable focus on new movie, Larry Potty & the Lost Tomb of the Honest Politician with further awesome adventures of the blessed nation's favourite teenage warlock, ‘Lars Pot’ embarking almost heroically on a quest for greatest Arthurian myth of long lost fabled tomb of an honest British politician (only the names have been changed to protect guilty liquorice).

Infamously expelled from Pigwerks college, after that semi-finals débâcle during international quoddisch championship and platinum goose eggcup tournament, our young hero is banned from participating in next Olympix by wish-masters tribunal. On eve of Halloween elections which threaten the honest prime ministerial candidate, manuscript codex My Magick Struggle, a philosophical autobiography - written by griffinista head-case Bumblebore while he was unjustly imprisoned in the Towers of Lun Dun, vanishes from publishouse’s safekeeping, after incumbent PM, snobby atheist Professor Dorkins, is attacked in gutter scandal press of yellow papers by scheming brokers of new coalition government austerity plotting allegedly to auction off Royal Owls Mail letter postal services.

Avoiding prequelitis, this follow-up starts with Pigwerks 10-years-after reunion of mudbloods, despite industrial action of ex-prefect interlopers, enforcing kewl curfew over students’ astral bodies. Tensions are increased by ethnic cleansing policy against muggles by styx-up secret star chamber of slithrean heirs and their saturnic majesties of slytharati cabal, who oppose an uncommon agricultural policy favouring mandrake farming, despite Mrs Grundy complaints from supernatural noise abatement society over annoying cacophony by screaming roots during pagan ritual harvesting.

This new outing also sees the return of traumatised meddlesome elf–scab labour, all-round nuisance Dobby, saved from twee years of ex-schoolboy adventurer's early days by ghostly pyreworks amidst much flapping about of spiders' wings, helping to relaunch twitchy time-wasting neo-saint scar-face Potty from dusty Dickensian privilege, into Disneyfied wonder worlds, with framing device of suburban chav wisdom and literary culture. Though it usually boasts enchanting and spectacular visual effects, Potty lacks the narrative genre complexities or witty affectionate TV humour of Charmed’s suburban American milieu.

Among the plethora of action sequences and subplots in this Lost Tomb... epic, there's a Reliant Robin vs. Ford Prefect flying cars race, Cornish pixie pasty retail, bludger arms dealers with 40-inch treasure chests, hippogriff versus werewolves warfare, parcelmouthy snake doctors, and sepulchrous competitive wizardry abounds, risking unforgivable transfiguration curses on a gibbet of flame, slaying a fierce flash dragon to steal golden eggs, for evasion of every secret society's darkest schooldays, prompting rebellions against prophesy, aided by faithful ogre and grounds-keeper Hamid.

You will believe a geek can flee flying foes' fun!

(Albeit with overmuch Freudian imagery of magicians’ wands)

Abrascadabrous!

Snow Golems

WANTED! Mobile or melted

Beware of terrible Snow Golems during severe weather...

They are made of icy cold & are not to be trusted with your children. Just like snowflakes, 'snow golems' are individually unique. Each snow-golem has an ill-will of its own. Some have hearts of black ice, others might have big snowballs.

* Do not risk sticking a carrot into any snow-golem's head 
* Do not give a snow golem your hat or scarf
* Do not add more snow to an existing snowman (it could turn into a snow-golem, overnight!)

Further warnings will follow this early report...
 

Waste Exorcist

Toilet Exorcist Services

Be perfectly safe on the loo...

Contact us if, or whenever, you need help with prompt & friendly disposal of supernatural or very far-fetched  probems found in the little room.

* Levitation escape parachutes 
* Catchall sick-bags for projectile vomit
* Demonic protection wipes