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poisonpill posted:Is he going to be making money on these Disneyland suicide franchises? What is the point of all this? Charge admission! Provide a deluxe suicide experience!
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Jan 17, 2020 22:02
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He's gone from mass murder to artisan murder. He's a performance terrorist!
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Jan 17, 2020 22:34
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Somebody Awful posted:People in the west have fallen for flimsier ruses. I remember reading about some vicious pranksters who would call up stores and persuade the staff to go outside and strip because of a supposed chemical attack or some such thing. There was that Prussian guy who cobbled together a second-hand military uniform, comandeered a platoon of soldiers, ordered an inkeeper to give them all beer and lunch for free, then ordered a bank manager to empty the vault before ordering the soldiers to load it into his car (or onto a train). No explanation was proffered at any stage, just authoritative teutonic commands.
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Jan 17, 2020 22:43
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Somebody Awful posted:People in the west have fallen for flimsier ruses. I remember reading about some vicious pranksters who would call up stores and persuade the staff to go outside and strip because of a supposed chemical attack or some such thing. It didn't even take that much. They just claimed to be cops, or in one case a regional manager for the company. It's a very weird story. Ichabod Sexbeast posted:There was that Prussian guy who cobbled together a second-hand military uniform, comandeered a platoon of soldiers, ordered an inkeeper to give them all beer and lunch for free, then ordered a bank manager to empty the vault before ordering the soldiers to load it into his car (or onto a train). No explanation was proffered at any stage, just authoritative teutonic commands. That's "Captain of Köpenick", Wilhelm Voigt!
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Jan 17, 2020 23:01
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poisonpill posted:Is he going to be making money on these Disneyland suicide franchises? What is the point of all this? I think he implied that he will go up to the governments and extort money out of them for people killing themselves on his property. chitoryu12 posted:It protects him from the plants and snakes. There's probably also some "We must take advantage of the traditional Japanese reverence of the samurai warrior and exploit their banzai superstitions" hidden in there. Maybe he is a japanophile. He is dressed in the full kimono as well.
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Jan 18, 2020 01:07
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Yond Cassius posted:That's "Captain of Köpenick", Wilhelm Voigt! THAT'S the guy! Couldn't think of his name, thank you! MonsterEnvy posted:Maybe he is a japanophile. He is dressed in the full kimono as well. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, confirmed weeaboo
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Jan 18, 2020 11:47
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“Another disappointing day today. I put on my samurai armor and sword and walked around Akihabara all day, hoping that some Englishmen trained as a ninja would attack me. But nothing happened, except for some very mean comments from the locals. I will keep practicing my Japanese, and wear my armor again tomorrow.”
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Jan 19, 2020 15:27
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Gomenasai, my name is Dr. Shatterhand. I'm a 55 year old Polish yokai (SPECTRE for you gaijins). I make plans on my drawing table, and spend my days perfecting my schemes and plotting superior Japanese crimes (pachinko, mahjong, suicide). I train in my garden every day, this superior weapon can poison Japanese civilians because it has been planted over a thousandfold, and is vastly superior to any other weapon on earth. I earned my deadly species license two years ago, and I have been getting better every day. I speak Japanese fluently, both Kanji and the Swiss dialect, and I write fluently as well. I know everything about Japanese history and their yakuza code, which I follow 100% When I get my Japanese visa, I am moving to Kyushu to buy a prestigious castle to learn more about their magnificent culture. I hope I can become a professional supervillain, or a criminologist! I own several suits of samurai armor, which I wear around town. I want to get used to wearing them before I move to Argentina. I bow to my snakes and speak German as often as I can, but rarely does anyone manage to respond. Wish me luck in Japan!
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Jan 20, 2020 02:01
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Are you also in the market for a fine kawaii bento box?
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Jan 20, 2020 08:41
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sebmojo posted:No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Read - The Literal Worst Spy In The World It’s honestly a misnomer to call Bond a spy at this point. He doesn’t really gather intelligence, develop sources, spread misinformation or any of the other spy things; he can’t maintain a cover to save his life. He’s a thug, pure and simple: a loaded weapon M can point at a target whenever he needs it wrecked.
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Jan 20, 2020 14:09
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Beefeater1980 posted:It’s honestly a misnomer to call Bond a spy at this point. He doesn’t really gather intelligence, develop sources, spread misinformation or any of the other spy things; he can’t maintain a cover to save his life. He’s a thug, pure and simple: a loaded weapon M can point at a target whenever he needs it wrecked. Yep, he's a saboteur and assassin.
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Jan 20, 2020 14:27
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Proteus Jones posted:Yep, he's a saboteur and assassin. One thing I did like about Die Another Day is that it spelled this out. He's specifically identified as an 'MI6 assassin' on the villain's database.
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Jan 20, 2020 14:33
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Chapter 18: Oubliettequote:At six o’clock in the evening, the deep bell tolled briefly from the castle and dusk came like the slow drawing of a violet blind over the day. Crickets began to zing in a loud chorus, and geckos chuckled in the shrubbery. The pink dragonflies disappeared and large horned toads appeared in quantities from their mud holes on the edge of the lake and, so far as Bond could see through his spy-hole, seemed to be catching gnats attracted by the shining pools of their eyes. Then the four guards reappeared, and there came the fragrant smell of a bonfire they had presumably lit to consume the refuse they had collected during the day. They went to the edge of the lake and raked in the tattered scraps of blue clothing and, amidst delighted laughter, emptied long bones out of the fragments into the water. One of them ran off with the rags, presumably to add them to the bonfire, and Bond got under cover as the others pushed their wheelbarrows up the slope and stowed them away in the hut. They stood chattering happily in the dusk until the fourth arrived, and then, without noticing the slashed and disarrayed sacks in the shadows, they filed off in the direction of the castle. And then one of the guards smelled smoke coming from a place with no patrol and found Bond immediately? quote:At nine o’clock, he left the hide-out. Again the moon blazed down, and there was total silence except for the distant burping and bubbling of the fumaroles and the occasional sinister chuckle of a gecko from the shrubbery. He took the same route as the night before, came through the same belt of trees, and stood looking up at the great bat-winged donjon that towered up to the sky. He noticed for the first time that the warning balloon with its advertisement of danger was tethered to a pole on the corner of the balustrade surrounding what appeared to be the main floor—the third, or centre one of the five. Here, from several windows, yellow light shone faintly, and Bond guessed that this would be his target area. He let out a deep sigh and strode quietly off across the gravel and came without incident to the tiny entrance under the wooden bridge. Sneaking around the trap, Bond finds himself in an underground cellar that was presumably used for food storage by the original builders. He creeps under overhanging bats until he finds a stone staircase that leads up to a wide double door with no lock or handles. He feels for a crossbolt on the other side, then uses a small crowbar through the gap to wrench it off the door. A hallway slopes upward to a more modern door. quote:Bond walked noiselessly up the incline and then held his breath and put his ear to the keyhole. Dead silence. He grasped the handle and inched the door open and then, satisfied, went through and closed the door behind him, leaving it on the latch. He was in the main hall of the castle. The big entrance door was on his left, and a well-used strip of red carpet stretched away from it and across the fifty feet of hall into the shadows that were not reached by the single large oil lamp over the entrance. The hall was not embellished in any way, save for the strip of carpet, and its roof was a maze of longitudinal and cross beams interspersed with latticed bamboo over the same rough plaster-work as covered the walls. There was still the same castle-smell of cold stone. Bond hears footsteps and leaps for cover. One of the guards opens the door, fiddles with something on the other side that looks like a switch, and then heads out. After waiting long enough that nobody else seems to be coming, Bond sneaks out from behind the curtain and heads to the door. quote:Bond kept his weapons in his hands and crept back to the door. This time no sound came from behind it. But the guard had bowed. Oh well! Probably out of respect for the aura of the Master. Bond quietly but firmly thrust the door open and leaped through, ready for the attacking sprint. Now, if you saw a guard come out of a door and clearly be setting some mechanism on the opposite side, you would assume that this is probably some form of security measure. You wouldn't just rush out without even probing, right? Bond is not a clever man. quote:When it came, there was absolutely no warning. One step across the exact halfway point of the flooring and, like a seesaw, the whole twenty feet of boards swivelled noiselessly on some central axis. Bond, arms and legs flailing and hands scrabbling desperately for a grip, found himself hurtling down into a black void. The guard! The fiddling about behind the door! He had been adjusting the lever that set the trap, the traditional oubliette of ancient castles. And Bond had forgotten! As his body plunged off the end of the inclined platform into space, an alarm bell, triggered by the mechanism of the trap, brayed hysterically. Bond had a fractional impression of the platform, relieved of his weight, swinging back into position above him, then he crashed shatteringly into unconsciousness. As he returns to consciousness and remembers where he is, Bond remembers his cover as the deaf-mute miner and quickly stands up and bows to Kono, who begins shouting at him in Japanese. Bond realizes that he's been completely stripped except for his ninja underwear. Kono marches Bond at gunpoint to another room. quote:And then Bond was standing in the middle of a small pleasant library-type room and the second guard was laying out on the floor Bond’s ninja suit and the appallingly incriminating contents of his pockets. Blofeld, dressed in a magnificent black silk kimono across which a golden dragon sprawled, stood leaning against the mantelpiece beneath which a Japanese brazier smouldered. It was him all right. The bland high forehead, the pursed purple wound of a mouth, now shadowed by a heavy grey-black moustache that drooped at the corners, on its way, perhaps, to achieving mandarin proportions, the mane of white hair he had grown for the part of Monsieur le Comte de Bleuville, the black bullet-holes of the eyes. And beside him, completing the picture of a homely couple at ease after dinner, sat Irma Bunt, in the full regalia of a high-class Japanese lady, the petit point of a single chrysanthemum lying in her lap waiting for those pudgy hands to take it up when the cause of this unseemly disturbance had been ascertained. The puffy square face, the tight bun of mousy hair, the thin wardress mouth, the light-brown, almost yellow eyes. By God, thought Bond dully, here they are! Within easy reach! They would both be dead by now but for his single criminal error. Might there still be some way of turning the tables? If only the pain in his head would stop throbbing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ay2sO6tWbE In the film, Bond infiltrates Blofeld's volcano base and attempts to board his capsule-capturing spacecraft to sabotage the operation. He keeps up with one aspect of the literary Bond here: he doesn't know that you're not supposed to carry your suit's air conditioning equipment into the rocket with you and is immediately recognized as an impostor. quote:Blofeld’s tall sword stood against the wall. He picked it up and strode out into the room. He stood over the pile of Bond’s possessions and picked them over with the tip of the sword. He hooked up the black suit. He said in German, “And what is this, Kono?” Finally, Fleming admits that she's a woman and not some toadlike monstrosity of flesh! quote:Irma Bunt rose and came and stood beside him. She looked piercingly at Bond and then walked slowly round him, keeping her distance. When she came to the left profile, she said softly, with awe, “Du lieber Gott!” She went back to Blofeld. She said in a hoarse whisper, still staring, almost with horror, at Bond, “It cannot be! But it is! The scar down the right cheek! The profile! And the eyebrows have been shaved to give that upward tilt!” She turned to Blofeld. She said decisively, “This is the English agent. This is the man Bond, James Bond, the man whose wife you killed. The man who went under the name of Sir Hilary Bray.” She added fiercely, “I swear it! You have got to believe me, lieber Ernst!” Bond's Japanese disguise clearly worked about as well as we all thought it would. quote:Blofeld’s eyes had narrowed. “I see a certain resemblance. But how has he come here? How has he found me? Who sent him?”
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Jan 20, 2020 16:34
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Bond gets caught by one of Grimtooth's Traps.
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Jan 20, 2020 17:07
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chitoryu12 posted:Bond is not a clever man.
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Jan 20, 2020 22:32
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Chapter 19: The Question Roomquote:There were now ten guards in the room. They stood lined up against the wall behind Kono. They were all armed with their long staves. Kono fired an order at one of them. The man left his stave in an angle of the wall and came forward. He was a great box-like man with a totally bald, shining head like a ripe fruit and hands like hams. He took up his position in front of Bond, his legs straddled for balance and his lips drawn back in a snarling smile of broken black teeth. Then he swung his right hand sideways at Bond’s head and slapped him with tremendous force exactly on the bruise of Bond’s fall. Bond’s head exploded with fire. Then the left hand came at him, and Bond rocked sideways. Through a mist of blood he could see Blofeld and his woman. Blofeld was merely interested, as a scientist, but the woman’s lips were parted and wet. This is why you tie the guy's limbs down before you start interrogating him. quote:“Halt!” It was the Hitlerian scream Bond had heard before. The men stood stock still and lowered their staves. “Kono. Remove those men.” Blofeld pointed down at the two casualties. “And punish Kazama for his incompetence. Get new teeth for the other one. And enough of this. The man will not speak with ordinary methods. If he can hear, he will not withstand the pressure of the Question Room. Take him there. The rest of the guards can wait in the audience chamber. Also! Marsch!” Bond has experience with chairs with holes in them!  The film's volcano base was 148 feet tall, constructed at Pinewood Studios for $1 million with a helipad and operating monorail. Production designer Ken Adam was responsible for not only the volcano, but also Dr. No's island lair on Crab Key, the replica Fort Knox set for Goldfinger, and the Liparus supertanker and Atlantis underwater base in The Spy Who Loved Me. He was involved in seven Bond films in total, his famous works outside Bond include the war room in Dr. Strangelove, the gothic sets of The Addams Family Values, and the underground grotto in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He earned his fame by eschewing realism for an "enhanced realism" style, creating larger-than-life sets that were still technically plausible.  The exterior shots were filmed at Mount Shinmoedake, a volcano in Kagoshima Prefecture that erupted in 2011 and 2018. quote:Blofeld spoke from the other end of the room. He spoke in English. He said, in a loud voice that boomed round the naked walls, “Commander Bond, or number 007 in the British Secret Service if you prefer it, this is the Question Room, a device of my invention that has the almost inevitable effect of making silent people talk. As you know, this property is highly volcanic. You are now sitting directly above a geyser that throws mud, at a heat of around one thousand degrees Centigrade, a distance of approximately one hundred feet into the air. Your body is now at an elevation of approximately fifty feet directly above its source. I had the whimsical notion to canalize this geyser up a stone funnel above which you now sit. This is what is known as a periodic geyser. This particular example is regulated to erupt volcanically at exactly the fifteenth minute in every hour.” Blofeld looked behind him and turned back. “You will therefore observe that you have exactly eleven minutes before the next eruption. If you cannot hear me, or the translation that will follow, if you are a deaf-and-dumb Japanese as you maintain, you will not move from that chair and, at the fifteenth minute past eleven, you will suffer a most dreadful death by the incineration of your lower body. If, on the other hand, you leave the seat before the death moment, you will have demonstrated that you can hear and understand and you will then be put to further tortures which will inevitably make you answer my questions. These questions will seek to confirm your identity, how you come to be here, who sent you and with what purpose, and how many people are involved in the conspiracy. You understand? You would not prefer to give up this play-acting? Very well. On the off-chance that your papers are perhaps partially correct, my chief guard will now briefly explain the purpose of this room in the Japanese language.” He turned to the guard. “Kono, sag’ ihm auf japanisch den Zweck dieses Zimmers.” Turns out that visit to the Hells of Beppu and the talk about the explosive power contained by the regulator valve wasn't just for show! As Kono yells at Bond in Japanese, he spots a wooden box in the corner near the throne that he guesses hides the wheel. But at this time he has no plan to use it, so after 9 minutes of thinking he slowly gets up and walks to the other side of the room. Shortly afterward, a massive geyser of hot gray mud and water shoots through the hole in the throne and out the ceiling. quote:Bond turned and faced the couple under the clock. He said cheerfully, “Well, Blofeld, you mad bastard. I’ll admit that your effects man down below knows his stuff. Now bring on the twelve she-devils, and if they’re all as beautiful as Fräulein Bunt, we’ll get Noël Coward to put it to music and have it on Broadway by Christmas. How about it?” After the release of Dr. No, Fleming had begun consciously inserting elements of Sean Connery's portrayal into Bond at the end. quote:Blofeld turned to Irma Bunt. “My dear girl, you were right! It is indeed the same Britisher. Remind me to buy you another string of the excellent Mr. Mikimoto’s grey pearls. And now let us be finished with this man once and for all. It is beyond our bedtime.” Bond is led back to the library, where Blofeld takes up a spot by the mantle with his hand on his katana. His disguise now gone, Bond casually takes up a seat at a writing desk and lights a smoke from the cigarettes left there. quote:Blofeld pointed to the pile of Bond’s possessions on the floor. “Kono, take those away. I will examine them later. And you can wait with the guards in the outer hall. Prepare the blowlamp and the electrical machine for further examination in case it should be necessary.” He turned to Bond. “And now—talk and you will receive an honourable and quick death by the sword. Have no misgivings. I am expert with it and it is razor-sharp. If you do not talk, you will die slowly and horribly and you will talk just the same. You know from your profession that this is so. There is a degree of prolonged suffering that no human can withstand. Well?” As usual, Bond's bluff fails. Blofeld has had tails on Tanaka for a long time and already had a foreigner's appearance with him reported. He knows about Tanaka's desire to get rid of him (especially as he's already lost one agent to the investigation) and quickly realized that this foreigner he took to the Ama island was an assassin brought in to kill him. The only thing that's surprised Blofeld at all is that it's James Bond who blundered into it. quote:Bond took another cigarette and lit it. He said composedly, “I stick to the truth, Blofeld. If anything happens to me, you, and probably the woman as an accessory, will be dead by Christmas.” This is, as usual, a sensationalized exaggeration of the real thing. Kiri-sute gomen had rules that made it a sort of extension of self-defense. You had to strike immediately upon the offense being committed, rather than coming back to kill someone for a past grievance, you were only allowed to make one strike and couldn't kill someone if they were only wounded, and the person being attacked had the right to defend themselves if they were also a samurai. The samurai would also need to immediately report the action to the nearest official so his story could be corroborated. Certain professions like doctors were also excluded during their work or on their way to and from work. While obviously you can't honor kill someone today legally, it was still possible for an unjustified killing to lead to execution as a murderer. This led to Edo Period businesses like bath houses and theatres providing sword stations for depositing weapons, to try and discourage someone from suddenly trying to slash another customer in the middle of a crowded room. quote:The square wardress face looked up from its petit point. “But of course, lieber Ernst. What you decide is always correct. But be careful. This animal is dangerous.”
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Jan 21, 2020 17:58
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Chapter 20: Blood and Thunderquote:Bond dropped his lighted cigarette and left it to smoulder on the carpet. His whole body tensed. He said, “I suppose you know you’re both mad as hatters.” The katana is only vaguely comparable to a scimitar. Fleming wasn't much of a sword guy either. quote:He said, “Now, Mister Bond, take Operation Thunderball, as your government dubbed it. This project involved the holding to ransom of the Western World by the acquisition by me of two atomic weapons. Where lies the crime in this, except in the Erewhon of international politics? Rich boys are playing with rich toys. A poor boy comes along and takes them and offers them back for money. If the poor boy had been successful, what a valuable by-product might have resulted for the whole world! These were dangerous toys which, in the poor boy’s hands, or let us say, to discard the allegory, in the hands of a Castro, could lead to the wanton extinction of mankind. By my action, I gave a dramatic example for all to see. If I had been successful and the money had been handed over, might not the threat of a recurrence of my attempt have led to serious disarmament talks, to an abandonment of these dangerous toys that might so easily get into the wrong hands? You follow my reasoning? Then this recent matter of the bacteriological warfare attack on England. My dear Mister Bond, England is a sick nation by any standards. By hastening the sickness to the brink of death, might not Britain have been forced out of her lethargy into the kind of community effort we witnessed during the war? Cruel to be kind, Mister Bond. Where lies the great crime there? And now this matter of my so-called ‘Castle of Death.’ ” Blofeld paused, and his eyes took on an inward look. He said, “I will make a confession to you, Mister Bond. I have come to suffer from a certain lassitude of mind which I am determined to combat. This comes in part from being a unique genius who is alone in the world, without honour—worse, misunderstood. No doubt much of the root cause of this accidie is physical—liver, kidneys, heart, the usual weak points of the middle-aged. But there has developed in me a certain mental lameness, a disinterest in humanity and its future, an utter boredom with the affairs of mankind. So, not unlike the gourmet, with his jaded palate, I now seek only the highly spiced, the sharp impact on the taste buds, mental as well as physical, the tickle that is truly exquisite. And so, Mister Bond, I came to devise this useful and essentially humane project—the offer of free death to those who seek release from the burden of being alive. By doing so, I have not only provided the common man with a solution to the problem of whether to be or not to be, I have also provided the Japanese government, though for the present they appear to be blind to my magnanimity, with a tidy, out-of-the-way charnel-house which relieves them of a constant flow of messy occurrences involving the trains, the trams, the volcanoes, and other unattractively public means of killing yourself. You must admit that, far from being a crime, this is a public service unique in the history of the world.” Blofeld, as with any crazy murderer, cannot be talked to. He steps forward, raising his sword, as Bond takes note that the guard he injured previously had left his staff against the wall near him. Irma Bunt makes a move to push a button to sound the alarm, and Bond leaps for the staff. quote:The stave thudded into the side of her head, and she sprawled grotesquely forward off her chair and lay still. Blofeld’s sword whistled down, inches from his shoulder. Bond twisted and lunged to his full extent, thrusting his stave forward in the groove of his left hand almost as if it had been a billiard cue. The tip caught Blofeld hard on the breastbone and flung him against the wall, but he hurtled back and came inexorably forward, swishing his sword like a scythe. Bond aimed at his right arm, missed, and had to retreat. He was concentrating on keeping his weapon as well as his body away from the whirling steel, or his stave would be cut like a matchstick, and its extra length was his only hope of victory. Blofeld suddenly lunged, expertly, his right knee bent forward. Bond feinted to the left, but he was inches too slow and the tip of the sword flicked his left ribs, drawing blood. But before Blofeld could withdraw, Bond had slashed two-handed, sideways, at his legs. His stave met bone. Blofeld cursed and made an ineffectual stab at Bond’s weapon. Then he advanced again, and Bond could only dodge and feint in the middle of the room and make quick short lunges to keep the enemy at bay. But he was losing ground in front of the whirling steel, and now Blofeld, scenting victory, took lightning steps and thrust forward like a snake. Bond leaped sideways, saw his chance, and gave a mighty sweep of his stave. It caught Blofeld on his right shoulder and drew a curse from him. His main sword arm! Bond pressed forward, lancing again and again with his weapon and scoring several hits to the body, but one of Blofeld’s parries caught the stave and cut off that one vital foot of extra length as if it had been a candle-end. Blofeld saw his advantage and began attacking, making furious forward jabs that Bond could only parry by hitting at the flat of the sword to deflect it. But now the stave was slippery in the sweat of his hands and for the first time he felt the cold breath of defeat at his neck. Blofeld seemed to smell it, for he suddenly executed one of his fast running lunges to get under Bond’s guard. Bond guessed the distance of the wall behind him and leaped backwards against it. Even so, he felt the sword-point fan across his stomach. But hurled back by his impact with the wall, he counter-lunged, swept the sword aside with his stave, and, dropping his weapon, made a dive for Blofeld’s neck and got both hands to it. For a moment, the two sweating faces were almost up against each other. The boss of Blofeld’s sword battered into Bond’s side. Bond hardly felt the crashing blows. He pressed with his thumbs, and pressed and pressed and heard the sword clang to the floor and felt Blofeld’s fingers and nails tearing at his face, trying to reach his eyes. Bond whispered through his gritted teeth, “Die, Blofeld! Die!” And suddenly the tongue was out and the eyes rolled upwards and the body slipped down to the ground. But Bond followed it and knelt, his hands cramped round the powerful neck, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, in the grip of terrible blood lust.  The film replaces this fight with a suitable finale for a major action film, as Tanaka's men raid Blofeld's volcano base. This was the biggest action scene yet in the Bond canon, with dozens of stuntmen on both sides and enough pyrotechnics to start World War III (though the quality still pales in comparison to the Piz Gloria raid in my opinion). The Gyrojet guns actually fire on screen, which seems to be simulated through a pyrotechnic charge on the two side vents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JpV5dU8BxA quote:Bond slowly came to himself. The golden dragon’s head on the black silk kimono spat flame at him. He unclasped his aching hands from round the neck and, not looking again at the purple face, got to his feet. He staggered. God, how his head hurt! What remained to be done? He tried to cast his mind back. He had had a clever idea. What was it? Oh yes, of course! He picked up Blofeld’s sword and sleep-walked down the stone passage to the torture room. He glanced up at the clock. Five minutes to midnight. And there was the wooden box, mud-spattered, down beside the throne on which he had sat, days, years before. He went to it and hacked it open with one stroke of the sword. Yes, there was the big wheel he had expected! He knelt down and twisted and twisted until it was finally closed. What would happen now? The end of the world? Bond ran back up the passage. Now he must get out, get away from this place! But his line of retreat was closed by the guards! He tore aside a curtain and smashed the window open with his sword. Outside there was a balustraded terrace that seemed to run round this storey of the castle. Bond looked around for something to cover his nakedness. There was only Blofeld’s sumptuous kimono. Coldly, Bond tore it off the corpse, put it on, and tied the sash. The interior of the kimono was cold, like a snake’s skin. He looked down at Irma Bunt. She was breathing heavily with a drunken snore. Bond went to the window and climbed out, minding his bare feet among the glass splinters. With that hasty judgement in mind, Bond grabs onto the balloon's mooring line. He hears what sounds like Bunt coming after him, so he slashes the balloon free with Blofeld's sword. quote:It worked! There was a light night breeze, and he felt himself wafted gently away over the moonlit park, over the glittering, steaming lake, towards the sea. But he was rising, not falling! The helium sphere was not in the least worried by his weight! Then blue-and-yellow fire fluttered from the upper storey of the castle, and an occasional angry wasp zipped past him. Bond’s hands and feet were beginning to ache with the strain of holding on. Something hit him on the side of the head, the same side that was already sending out its throbbing message of pain. And that finished him. He knew it had! For now the whole black silhouette of the castle swayed in the moonlight and seemed to jig upwards and sideways and then slowly dissolve like an ice-cream cone in sunshine. The top storey crumbled first, then the next, and the next, and then, after a moment, a huge jet of orange fire shot up from hell towards the moon. A buffet of hot wind, followed by an echoing crack of thunder, hit Bond and made his balloon sway violently.
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Jan 22, 2020 17:58
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Why on Earth did he leave Bunt alive?! 
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Jan 22, 2020 18:25
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The_White_Crane posted:Why on Earth did he leave Bunt alive?! Remind me, has Bond ever deliberately and personally killed a woman?
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Jan 22, 2020 18:55
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The_White_Crane posted:Why on Earth did he leave Bunt alive?! Probably makes no difference when the geyser goes off... ...OR DOES IT?!?!?!?!?!
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Jan 22, 2020 19:12
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Bond probably does not feel right killing someone unconscious. Also wait I think I missed it how did the castle explode. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jan 22, 2020 |
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Jan 22, 2020 19:39
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Darth Walrus posted:Remind me, has Bond ever deliberately and personally killed a woman? No, and I don't think he's ever unintentionally killed a woman either. They all committed suicide or were killed by someone else, like Rosa Klebb being executed after her interrogation. MonsterEnvy posted:Bond probably does not feel right killing someone unconscious. This is something he established with the Hells of Beppu, when Tanaka pointed out the regulatory valve that kept the geysers as tourist attractions instead of blowing the resort off the mountain. Bond went down and turned off the valve for the castle's execution geyser before running for the balloon.
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Jan 22, 2020 19:50
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Mountain Destruction Valve: DO NOT TOUCH
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Jan 22, 2020 20:03
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sebmojo posted:Mountain Destruction Valve: DO NOT TOUCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKAdkbQWAJ8
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Jan 22, 2020 20:15
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chitoryu12 posted:The katana is only vaguely comparable to a scimitar. Fleming wasn't much of a sword guy either. Let's be honest, neither are most katana owners. I like how Blofeld, even in this deteriorated state, is able to call out Bond on being what he is.
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Jan 23, 2020 01:35
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Somebody Awful posted:Let's be honest, neither are most katana owners. Yeah the first part of that monologue was pretty spot on.
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Jan 23, 2020 01:41
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I find it interesting that there wasn't any grand, world-threatening evil plan here. Blofeld just decided to enjoy a lucrative, gruesome, and politically embarrassing semi-retirement, but he'd made too many enemies and his past caught up with him.
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Jan 23, 2020 01:43
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Darth Walrus posted:I find it interesting that there wasn't any grand, world-threatening evil plan here. Blofeld just decided to enjoy a lucrative, gruesome, and politically embarrassing semi-retirement, but he'd made too many enemies and his past caught up with him. just like bond at the end of ohmss...
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Jan 23, 2020 03:50
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Chapter 21: Obitquote:M. writes:
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Jan 23, 2020 15:39
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lol, of course Bond was raised in Assgrab, Kent.
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Jan 23, 2020 15:49
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quote:It must be admitted that his career at Eton was brief and undistinguished, and after only two halves, as a result, it pains me to record, of some alleged trouble with one of the boys’ maids, his aunt was requested to remove him. Bond has always been bad at hiding poo poo.
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Jan 23, 2020 17:28
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Nelson Touch in moments of the highest emergency. I like that.
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Jan 23, 2020 19:08
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quote:...the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. It is a measure of the disdain in which these fictions are held at the ministry that action has not yet—I emphasize the qualification—been taken against the author and publisher of these high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant. lol Also imagine if "Skyfall" was "Pett Bottom" instead.
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Jan 23, 2020 19:40
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 Ian Fleming was actually a fan of the Duck Inn and a regular sight when he was in England, which is why he wrote it into the book. They now have a plaque on the wall outside bragging about it. Pett Bottom is a very tiny village 5 miles from Canterbury. If you look up the Duck Inn on Google Maps, it's all narrow one-lane streets weaving around the countryside with isolated cottages. Quintessentially British, though the menu has since updated to please a modern palate: duck spring rolls, oysters, and dry-aged ribeye accompany elevated classics like bubble & squeak risotto, fish & chips, and a Sunday roast.
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Jan 23, 2020 21:34
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Chapter 22: Sparrows' Tearsquote:When Kissy saw the figure, black-winged in its kimono, crash down into the sea, she sensed that it was her man, and she covered the two hundred yards from the base of the wall as fast as she had ever swum in her life. The tremendous impact with the water had at first knocked all the wind out of Bond, but the will to live, so nearly extinguished by the searing pain in his head, was revived by the new but recognizable enemy of the sea, and when Kissy got to him, he was struggling to free himself from the kimono. Bond is in a daze, ignoring Kissy and swimming in circles. She grabs him and hauls him half a mile back to shore. quote:She was awoken by a groan from Bond. He had been quietly sick and now sat with his head in his hands, looking blankly out to sea with the glazed eyes of a sleep-walker. When Kissy put an arm round his shoulders, he turned vaguely towards her. “Who are you? How did I get here? What is this place?” He examined her more carefully. “You’re very pretty.” Oh whoops. quote:“My name is Kissy Suzuki and you are my lover. Your name is Taro Todoroki. We live on this island and go fishing together. It is a very good life. But can you walk a little? I must take you to where you live and get you some food and a doctor to see you. You have a terrible wound on the side of your head, and there is a cut on your ribs. You must have fallen while you were climbing the cliffs after seagulls’ eggs.” She stood up and held out her hands. Man, she saw an opportunity and took it! Not even a lick of hesitation! quote:Bond did as he was told and was instantly asleep, the pain-free side of his head cradled on his arm. I wish getting a lover was always this easy. quote:It was almost dawn, and her parents were awake. She whispered to them excitedly as she went about warming some milk and putting together a bundle of futon, her father’s best kimono, and a selection of Bond’s washing things—nothing to remind him of his past. Her parents were used to her whims and her independence. Her father merely commented mildly that it would be all right if the kannushi-san gave his blessing. Then, having washed the salt off herself and dressed in her own simple brown kimono, she scampered off up the hill to the cave. Bond is getting to live the weeb dream! Kidnapped by a beautiful Japanese movie star! quote:The doctor knelt beside Bond in the cave and spread out on the ground a large map of the human head with the sections marked with figures and ideograms. His gentle fingers probed Bond’s wound for signs of fracture, while Kissy knelt beside him and held one of Bond’s sweating hands in both of hers. The doctor bent forward and, lifting the eyelids one by one, gazed deeply into the glazed eyes through a large reading-glass. On his instructions, Kissy ran for boiling water, and the doctor proceeded to clean the cut made by the bullet across the terrible swelling of the first wound caused by Bond’s crash into the oubliette. Then he tapped sulpha dust into the wound and bound up the head neatly and expertly, put surgical plaster over the cut across the ribs, and stood up and took Kissy outside the cave. “He will live,” he said, “but it may be months, even years before he regains his memory. It is particularly the temporal lobe of his brain, where the memory is stored, that has been damaged. For this, much education will be necessary. You will endeavour all the time to remind him about past things and places. Then isolated facts that he will recognize will turn into chains of association. He should undoubtedly be taken to Fukuoka for an X-ray, but I think there is no fracture and in any case the kannushi-san has ordained that he is to remain under your care and his presence on the island to be kept secret. I shall of course observe the instructions of the honourable kannushi-san and only visit him by different routes and at night. But there is much you will have to attend to, for he must not be moved in any way for at least a week. Now listen carefully,” said the doctor, and he gave her minute instructions which covered every aspect of feeding and nursing and left her to carry them out. Tanaka and Dikko appear over the coming weeks, but Kissy manages to shake them off. Kissy spends her time healing Bond, taking him for walks and swims as his body mends itself. He makes himself useful doing carpentry and odd jobs; he has occasional dreams of places and times before, but Kissy convinces him to remain. As far as he's concerned, he is Taro Todoroki and this little island is his whole world. quote:The doctor was surprised by Bond’s lack of progress and resigned himself to the conclusion that Bond’s amnesia was total, but soon there was no cause for further visits because Bond’s physical health and his apparently complete satisfaction with his lot showed that in every other respect he was totally recovered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7RmhU4m2no quote:The toad began to shiver slightly, and the crosses in its dark red eyes blazed angrily at Kissy as if it knew it was all her fault. The sex merchant, his head bent over the little cage, watched anxiously and then rubbed his hands with satisfaction as heavy beads of sweat broke out all over the toad’s warty skin. He reached for an iron teaspoon and a small phial, gently raised the wire cage, and very carefully scraped the sweat-beads off the toad’s body and dripped the result into the phial. When he had finished, the phial contained about half a teaspoon of clear liquid. He corked it up and handed it to Kissy, who held it with reverence and great care as if it had been a fabulous jewel. Then the sex merchant disconnected the wires and put the toad, which seemed none the worse for its experience, back in its hutch and closed the top. Kissy is that guy who learns everything about sex from porn and then utterly ruins his first time by violently slapping genitals. quote:Out in the shop, the wicked-faced old man handed her the parcel and, bowing deeply, unlocked the door. Kissy gave a perfunctory bob in return and darted out of the shop and down the street as if she had just made a pact with the devil. But by the time she went to catch the mail-boat back to Kuro, she was hugging herself with excitement and pleasure and making up a story to explain away her acquisition of the book. "David brought it to me. I think he has a problem." quote:Bond was waiting for her on the jetty. It was the first day she had been away from him and he had missed her painfully. They talked happily as they walked hand-in-hand along the foreshore among the nets and boats, and the people smiled to see them, but looked through them instead of greeting them, for had not the priest decreed that their gaijin hero did not officially exist? And the priest’s edict was final. Bond devours the entire bowl and his tea before heading to bed. Normally he spends the evening mending nets and fishing lines, but after cleaning up she finds him reading the book instead. quote:He looked up from the pillow-book and laughed. “Kissy, where in God’s name did you get this?” Well. That's part of his memory restored, at least. quote:Winter slid into spring, and fishing began again, but now Kissy dived naked like the other girls and Bond and the bird dived with her and there were good days and bad days. But the sun shone steadily and the sea was blue and wild irises covered the mountain side and everyone made a great fuss as the sprinkling of cherry trees burst into bloom. Kissy wondered what moment to choose to tell Bond that she was going to have a baby and whether he would then propose marriage to her. Oh poo poo. quote:But one day, on the way down to the cove, Bond looked preoccupied, and when he asked her to wait before they put the boat out as he had something serious to talk to her about, her heart leaped and she sat down beside him on a flat rock and put her arms round him and waited. The mail boat from Fukuoka is arriving the next day. Kissy, against all desires, promises to put him on a train to Hokkaido where he can catch a boat to Sakhalin, a Russian island just across the bay. quote:“Surely they would do no harm to a fisherman from Kuro?” We have finished possibly the oddest, most foreign Bond book ever written. As with From Russia With Love, Fleming was unsure about continuing the series, especially as his health declined, and wrote it to end on a cliffhanger. The release of the film adaptation of From Russia With Love in October 1963 had helped turn James Bond and Ian Fleming into household names around the world, but he had come to realize that he had little time left on this Earth to enjoy his growing wealth. Matters were only made worse by Kevin McClory's success in court over the rights to Thunderball. Living in daily pain, taking nitroglycerin pills for his heart, Fleming set out one final time to Jamaica in January 1964 to write what even he believed would be the final book. But before we get to that, we have another set of writings to get to. The short stories seen in For Your Eyes Only were not the only ones he wrote, and several more were published in magazines and newspapers. After Fleming's death, they were compiled in 1966 into another collection, Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Our next visit will be to these four stories, two of which have never had their title adapted to a film, and then we shall move on to Ian Fleming's end.
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Jan 24, 2020 16:14
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chitoryu12 posted:We have finished possibly the oddest, most foreign Bond book ever written. As with From Russia With Love, Fleming was unsure about continuing the series, especially as his health declined, and wrote it to end on a cliffhanger. I still think The Spy Who Loved Me is the oddest, but this is certainly the most... culturally fetishistic? Weeb-before-its-time? Exoticising? Also Kissy gonna let him head to Vladivostok presumably in the hope that he doesn't get recognised and can come back? Surely a smart girl can come up with a reason for not going there that doesn't involve "you're an amnesiac English spy I kept around because I'm not into the local guys"?
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Jan 24, 2020 19:59
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Runcible Cat posted:I still think The Spy Who Loved Me is the oddest, but this is certainly the most... culturally fetishistic? Weeb-before-its-time? Exoticising? Maybe she's realized that it's completely in character for Bond to do the most stupidly dangerous action possible.
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Jan 24, 2020 20:09
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chitoryu12 posted:Man, she saw an opportunity and took it! Not even a lick of hesitation! There was a Jonathon Creek episode where a girl did the exact same thing. It ended poorly.
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Jan 24, 2020 23:05
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 During his time between novels, Fleming wrote a large number of James Bond short stories for a variety of publications. Several of these had previously been collected into the For Your Eyes Only collection that we already covered. After Fleming's death, control of his estate transferred to his widow Ann, who was given the task (with the aid of his brother Peter) of unraveling the complicated series of contracts and agreements to figure out who owned the rights to what. Kingsley Amis was brought in to finish The Man with the Golden Gun to be published 8 months after his friend's demise, but the collection of relatives and businesspeople had to debate whether or not to continue with the character beyond just a continued film series. While the choice would eventually be to give Amis the first shot at a continuation novel, they stepped in quickly to take the rest of Fleming's short stories and create another collection. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md8uNCYX_Nc The first story in the book, "Octopussy", was the only one never to be published before Fleming's death. It was written in 1962 in Jamaica while he was writing On Her Majesty's Secret Service and features a framing device that returns the plot to the Alps. It was first posthumously serialized in the Daily Express newspaper in October 1965 before being put in the collection. In 1963 while writing You Only Live Twice, Fleming had also written "The Property of a Lady" for publication in Sotheby's annual journal, The Ivory Hammer. Fleming was so unhappy with the final result that he actually refused payment. For 1983's Bond release, the two stories were loosely combined into the film Octopussy; only the title and a character background from the first story and a scene from the second were used. Roger Moore had been tiring of the role and every contract after The Spy who Loved Me was for a single film to ensure that he had a way out. After the darker and more grounded For Your Eyes Only, with Moore disliking some of the more book-like character of Bond in that one, the next film promptly returned to the extremes of campiness that Moore's films were known for. Maud Adams, who had previously died as Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun, returned as international criminal Octopussy for Bond to woo. As the series had not yet gone to India, the action was put there for most of the film before heading to Germany. The opening theme, "All Time High", was written by John Barry (who had been missing from the previous film, as he had left the country to save on taxes in the 1970s) and lyricist Tim Rice; the unusual and slightly dirty title of the film precluded putting the name in the lyrics. It was sung by Rita Coolidge, whom Barbara Broccoli was a fan of, and achieved mild success outside the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4B3vplooro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9p0FJnk2vM The second story in the book, "The Living Daylights", was originally titled "Trigger Finger" and was first published in The Sunday Times in February 1962 and Argosy magazine in June under the title "Berlin Escape." It was partially inspired by Major Pat Reid's escape from Colditz Castle in 1942, using the cover of an orchestra (conducted by Douglas Bader, the famed legless RAF fighter pilot) to cut through the kitchen's barred window and escape. In 1985, A View to a Kill had a disappointing run at the box office and Roger Moore had officially aged out of the role. Several actors were auditioned, including Sam Neill, and they settled on Pierce Brosnan now that Remington Steele had been canceled...who promptly had NBC exercise a clause in their contract to uncancel Remington Steele and force him into another season to capitalize on the announcement that he had been selected as Bond. Broccoli promptly rescinded the offer, ensuring that the new season would be a failure, and the role was given to runner-up Timothy Dalton. Dalton was unsure about taking it, but he acquiesced and decided to bring the role as close to its roots as he would be allowed. The new film, The Living Daylights, expanded on the short story by using it as the opening scene. Dalton wanted to emulate the conflicted, darker literary Bond and often read the books on set to make suggestions to director John Glen. The redesigned Bond was a great success and I personally consider it one of the best films of this era. While John Barry would return one final time to do the score, they took a cue from the previous film by having a current pop band make the song. Originally the Pet Shop Boys provided a demo, which would have been a frankly terrible Bond theme. Ah-ha (who you probably know from "Take On Me") performed the song, written entirely by guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, though John Barry added his characteristic string arrangement to make it sound more like a Bond song. A-ha had a fight with Barry during production similar to the one Duran Duran had while writing "A View to a Kill" and released a version without his additions on their next studio album, though they did like how it sounded for the film intro. The song has remained one of the more popular Bond themes and a live staple for the band. There's one other story in the mix, which has never been given a film for obvious reasons: it's barely even a short story. "007 in New York" (originally "Reflections in a Carey Cadillac") came from a commission by The Sunday Times in 1959 for Fleming to write a series of articles on world cities, which he would turn into the Thrilling Cities non-fiction book. The article from Bond's perspective was first published in October 1963 in The New York Herald Tribune and was included in the 1964 American release of Thrilling Cities two months before Fleming's death. It's not a particularly special story, being a travelogue, but it does include one important section of text: the recipe for James Bond's scrambled eggs.
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Jan 27, 2020 16:11
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Octopussyquote:‘You know what?’ said Major Dexter Smythe to the octopus. ‘You’re going to have a real treat today if I can manage it.’ Again with the dangerous octopus thing! They're less inclined to kill you and more inclined to steal your poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK1YophTAnM quote:Major Dexter Smythe, O.B.E., Royal Marines (Retd), was the remains of a once brave and resourceful officer and of a handsome man who had made easy sexual conquests all his military life and particularly among the Wrens and Wracs and A.T.S. who manned the communications and secretariat of the very special task force to which he had been attached at the end of his service career. Now he was fifty-four, slightly bald and his belly sagged in the Jantzen trunks. And he had had two coronary thromboses. His doctor, Jimmy Greaves (who had been one of their high poker game at Queen’s Club when Dexter Smythe had first come to Jamaica), had half-jocularly described the later one, only a month before, as ‘the second warning’. But, in his well-chosen clothes, his varicose veins out of sight and his stomach flattened by a discreet support belt behind an immaculate cummerbund, he was still a fine figure of a man at a cocktail party or dinner on the North Shore, and it was a mystery to his friends and neighbours why, in defiance of the two ounces of whisky and ten cigarettes a day to which his doctor had rationed him, he persisted in smoking like a chimney and going to bed drunk, if amiably drunk, every night. No shock here that this sounds suspiciously similar to Fleming. His health had started to go when he wrote this story in 1962, including slightly restricting his cigarette intake and switching to whiskey instead of gin. Obviously, he was too far gone by that point and his insistence on continuing his habits only sped his demise.  The Jantzen trunks Smythe is wearing would be worn by Sean Connery a few years later in Thunderball. The tight blue La Perla trunks that Daniel Craig wore in Casino Royale were an intentional reference to them. quote:The truth of the matter was that Dexter Smythe had arrived at the frontier of the death-wish. The origins of this state of mind were many and not all that complex. He was irretrievably tied to Jamaica, and tropical sloth had gradually riddled him so that while outwardly he appeared a piece of fairly solid hardwood, under the varnished surface the termites of sloth, self-indulgence, guilt over an ancient sin and general disgust with himself had eroded his once hard core into dust. Since the death of Mary two years before, he had loved no one. He wasn’t even sure that he had really loved her, but he knew that, every hour of the day, he missed her love of him and her gay, untidy, chiding and often irritating presence, and though he ate their canapés and drank their martinis, he had nothing but contempt for the international riff-raff with whom he consorted on the North Shore. He could perhaps have made friends with the soldier elements, the gentleman-farmers inland, or the plantation owners on the coast, the professional men and the politicians, but that would mean regaining some serious purpose in life which his sloth, his spiritual accidie, prevented, and cutting down on the bottle, which he was definitely unwilling to do. So Major Smythe was bored, bored to death, and, but for one factor in his life, he would long ago have swallowed the bottle of barbiturates he had easily acquired from a local doctor. The lifeline that kept him clinging to the edge of the cliff was a tenuous one. Heavy drinkers veer towards an exaggeration of their basic temperaments, the classic four – Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric and Melancholic. The Sanguine drunk goes gay to the point of hysteria and idiocy. The Phlegmatic sinks into a morass of sullen gloom. The Choleric is the fighting drunk of the cartoonists who spends much of his life in prison for smashing people and things, and the Melancholic succumbs to self-pity, mawkishness and tears. Major Smythe was a Melancholic who had slid into a drooling fantasy woven around the birds and insects and fish that inhabited the five acres of Wavelets (the name he had given his small villa is symptomatic), its beach and the coral reef beyond. The fish were his particular favourites. He referred to them as ‘people’ and, since reef fish stick to their territories as closely as do most small birds, after two years he knew them all intimately, ‘loved’ them and believed that they loved him in return. Fleming was a cross between Phlegmatic and Choleric. The realization of his impending death caused him to alternate between morose and angry, often fighting with Ann in his final days. Knowing how few years he had left, the description of Dexter Smythe's ails is disturbingly biographic and fatalistic. quote:They certainly knew him, as the denizens of zoos know their keepers, because he was a daily and a regular provider, scraping off algae and stirring up the sand and rocks for the bottom-feeders, breaking up sea eggs and urchins for the small carnivores and bringing out scraps of offal for the larger ones, and now, as he swam slowly and heavily up and down the reef and through the channels that led out to deep water, his ‘people’ swarmed around him fearlessly and expectantly, darting at the tip of the three-pronged spear they knew only as a prodigal spoon, flirting right up to the glass of the Pirelli and even, in the case of the fearless, pugnacious demoiselles, nipping softly at his feet and legs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NK_tFRFZg4 quote:Scorpion fish inhabit most of the southern waters of the world, and the ‘rascasse’ that is the foundation of bouillabaisse belongs to the family. The West Indian variety runs up to only about twelve inches long and perhaps a pound in weight. It is by far the ugliest fish in the sea, as if nature were giving warning. It is a mottled brownish grey with a heavy, wedge-shaped shaggy head. It has fleshy pendulous ‘eyebrows’ that droop over angry red eyes and a coloration and broken silhouette that are perfect camouflage on the reef. Though a small fish, its heavily toothed mouth is so wide that it can swallow whole most of the smaller reef fishes, but its supreme weapon lies in its erectile dorsal fins, the first few of which, acting on contact like hypodermic needles, are fed by poison glands containing enough tetrodotoxin to kill a man if they merely graze him in a vulnerable spot – in an artery, for instance, or over the heart or in the groin. They constitute the only real danger to the reef swimmer, far more dangerous than barracuda or shark, because, supremely confident in their camouflage and armoury, they flee before nothing except the very close approach of a foot or actual contact. Then they flit only a few yards on wide and bizarrely striped pectorals and settle again watchfully either on the sand, where they look like a lump of overgrown coral, or amongst the rocks and seaweed, where they virtually disappear. And Major Smythe was determined to find one, spear it and give it to his octopus to see if it would take or spurn it, see if one of the ocean’s great predators would recognize the deadliness of another, know of its poison. Would the octopus consume the belly and leave the spines? Would it eat the lot and, if so, would it suffer from the poison? These were the questions Bengry at the Institute wanted answered and today, since it was going to be the beginning of the end of Major Smythe’s life at Wavelets and though it might mean the end of his darling Octopussy, Major Smythe had decided to find out the answers and leave one tiny memorial to his now futile life in some dusty corner of the Institute’s marine biological files. If you love something, let it eat poison? quote:For, only a couple of hours earlier, Major Dexter Smythe’s already dismal life had changed very much for the worse. So much for the worse that he would be lucky if, in a few weeks’ time – time for the sending of cables from Government House to the Colonial Office, to be relayed to the Secret Service and thence to Scotland Yard and the Public Prosecutor, and for Major Smythe’s transportation to London with a police escort – he got away with a sentence of imprisonment for life. James Bond ruins yet another man's day! quote:The day had started normally. Major Smythe had awoken from his Seconal sleep, swallowed a couple of Panadols (his heart condition forbade him aspirin), showered and skimped his breakfast under the umbrella-shaped sea-almonds and spent an hour feeding the remains of his breakfast to the birds. He then took his prescribed doses of anti-coagulant and blood-pressure pills and killed time with the Daily Gleaner until he could have his elevenses which, for some months now, he had advanced to ten thirty. He had just poured himself the first of two stiff brandies and ginger ales, ‘the drunkard’s drink’, when he heard the car coming up the drive. Funny, I would have called scotch on the rocks the drunkard's drink... quote:Luna, his coloured housekeeper, came out into the garden and announced, ‘Gemmun to see you, Major.’  I wonder what his inspiration in fashion was? quote:As soon as he had walked through into the living-room and seen the tall man in the dark-blue tropical suit standing at the picture window looking out to sea, Major Smythe had somehow sensed bad news. Then, when the man had turned slowly to look at him with watchful, serious blue-grey eyes, he had known that this was officialdom, and when his cheery smile was not returned, inimical officialdom. A chill had run down Major Smythe’s spine. ‘They’ had somehow found out. James Bond just refused a drink. This can't be good. quote:Major Smythe sat down and threw a jaunty leg over the low arm of one of the comfortable planters’ chairs he had had copied from an original by the local cabinet-maker. He pulled out the drink coaster from the other arm, took a deep pull at his glass and slid it, with a consciously steady hand, down into the hole in the wood. ‘Well,’ he said cheerily, looking the other man straight in the eyes, ‘what can I do for you? Somebody been up to some dirty work on the North Shore and you need a spare hand? Be glad to get into harness again. It’s been a long time since those days, but I can still remember some of the old routines.’ This is only the second real time we've been introduced to Bond from an outsider's perspective, and he's never made a good first impression. For all we see from the film character, the man always had an air of being a guy you didn't want showing up at your party. quote:‘Of course, my dear fellow.’ He made a move to get up, his lighter ready. The real Oberaurach is a municipality in Bavaria, almost 250 miles north of Fleming's old skiing days. The intended location appears to be Aurach bei Kitzbühel, which is 5 kilometers southeast of Kitzbühel and home to a famous Austrian wildlife park. quote:One of the names he had been living with for all these years forced another harsh laugh out of Major Smythe. ‘That was a piece of cake! You’ve never seen such a shambles. All those Gestapo toughs with their doxies. All of ’em hog-drunk. They’d kept their files all tickety-boo. Handed them over without a murmur. Hoped that’d earn ’em easy treatment, I suppose. We gave the stuff a first going-over and shipped all the bods off to the Munich camp. Last I heard of them. Most of them hanged for war crimes, I expect. We handed the bumph over to H.Q. at Salzburg. Then we went on up the Mittersill valley after another hideout.’ Major Smythe took a good pull at his drink and lit a cigarette. He looked up. ‘That’s the long and the short of it.’ About half of that is understandable by the average person without a glossary. quote:‘You were Number 2 at the time, I think. The CO was an American, a Colonel King from Patton’s army.’ This is not too far off from Fleming's real operations during the war, just reversed. While Smythe had to clean up pockets of resistance and hidden Nazis, Fleming's No. 30 Commando unit was sent in ahead of an advance to seize intel before it could be destroyed. They did see more action than the Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau, though as far as anyone currently knows Fleming remained a desk jockey. quote:James Bond said casually, ‘Does the name of Hannes Oberhauser ring a bell?’ It should! That's the alias the new Blofeld played by Christopher Waltz in Spectre used before the climactic reveal. quote:‘Let me refresh your memory. On the same day as those documents were given to you to look over, you made inquiries at the Tiefenbrunner hotel, where you were billeted, for the best mountain guide in Kitzbühel. You were referred to Oberhauser. The next day you asked your C.O. for a day’s leave which was granted. Early next morning you went to Oberhauser’s chalet, put him under close arrest and drove him away in your jeep. Does that ring a bell?’  Not actually as standard as it seems! The top-break Webley revolver in .455 Webley was in service in some form in the Commonwealth nations from 1887 until 1963. It saw use in numerous colonial conflicts and World War I, but the British decided that a smaller caliber with higher velocity would be easier to shoot and switched to the .38/200 cartridge (their own loading of .38 S&W) and the similar Enfield No. 2 revolver. Webley rechambered the older Mk. IV revolver for .38/200, but they were never the standard revolver in World War II. The Webley Mk. IV in .38/200 and the Webley Mk. VI in .455 were both issued as substitute standard revolvers during the war due to a major shortage of weapons, and the Mk. VI was removed from service in 1947. The Enfield and Mk. IV limped along until 1963 in good condition with practically no ammo until they were both retired in favor of the Browning Hi-Power automatic. quote:‘It was certainly a Webley. Damned clumsy weapon. Hope they’ve got something more like the Luger or the heavy Beretta these days. But I can’t say I ever took a note of the number.’  The most comparable (and heavy) Beretta compared to a Luger at this time was the M1951, which was similarly a single-stack 9mm pistol. The most common version entered serial production in 1955 and was the standard Italian service pistol at the time this book was written. Its reliability also led to it being produced under license as the "Helwan" in Egypt and "Tariq" in Iraq, and it was common in many other African and Middle Eastern countries. This would serve as the basis for a new double-stack model, the Beretta 92, in 1975. quote:‘The number’s right enough,’ said James Bond. ‘I’ve got the date of its issue to you by H.Q. and the date when you turned it in. You signed the book both times.’ And then while Bond spent 10 minutes puttering about in the yard, Smythe jumped in his car and escaped? quote:Major Smythe got briskly to his feet, went to the loaded sideboard and poured himself out another brandy and ginger ale, almost fifty-fifty. He might as well live it up while there was still time! The future wouldn’t hold many more of these for him. He went back to his chair and lit his twentieth cigarette of the day. He looked at his watch. It said eleven thirty. If he could be rid of the chap in an hour, he’d have plenty of time with his ‘people’. He sat and drank and marshalled his thoughts. He could make the story long or short, put in the weather and the way the flowers and pines had smelled on the mountain, or he could cut it short. He would cut it short.
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Jan 28, 2020 17:42
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