#Bullets and Explosives

[testormblog]

Bullets and Explosives

I loved denotating explosions: their clouds of dirt, their noise and obliterating an earthen mound I had constructed.  Each one had to be bigger than my last.

With the war not long finished, warfare to capture young boys’ imaginations, mine included.  I learnt about the major battles at school.  Hollywood portrayed Ally service men as heroes.  The Cold War split the world into east and west.  The Korean War was happening.  Nobody knew if another global conflict would erupt.  Hence, I like most boys of my generation believed we should be combat ready and engaged in play activities to be so.

The bush provided perfect cover for my mock battles.  I dug trenches and fortified them with pretend guns.  Dad didn’t own a gun.  Sometimes, we borrowed his brother’s ex Army 303 rifle to go fishing in the river at low tide when the mullet were visible amongst the reeds.  He’d fire the 303 into the water to stun the fish.  Then we’d grab them as they floated to the surface.  Dad wouldn’t let me shoot however.  Still, he didn’t mind me collecting his spent shell cases for my pretend armoury.  Neither did he care when the live bullets in his shed disappeared.  Pop always had plenty more to share.  Perhaps, Pop acquired these during his days working near the US Army Base at Camp Cable.

I itched to use that ammunition.  I just needed an opportunity and a willing participant.  I reasoned an explosion in an open paddock would be safer than in the scrub.  My school mate, Ron, was enthusiastic.  He exclaimed, ‘Brilliant!  I know where and nobody will see what we’re up to.’

So, Ron invited me for an ‘innocent’ play date.  After morning tea, he announced he’d show me around his family’s farm.  We grabbed a shovel from the shed supposedly to wield against snakes.  We snuck off to a small ravine at the back of the farm.  It was the perfect spot to build our mock military installation for subsequent destruction.  We ensured no cattle were grazing nearby and dug a safety trench away from the denotation site.  We loosely packed a pile of bullets in the ravine’s bank.  I lit a fire under them.  We then ran to our trench for cover and waited for the fire’s flames to reach them.

‘Pop and whiz!’  Those bullets exploded loudly in every direction.  Very scary!  Disappointingly, the bank didn’t blow up.  After a discussion, we decided not to repeat this exploit.

t t t

The highlight of my year was Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November.  At school, I was taught that Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators almost blew up the English Parliament in 1605.  The Parliament subsequently decreed English citizens should annually celebrate King James’ escape from assassination with a bonfire and burn a Guy Fawkes’ effigy placed at its apex.  Australians inherited this custom and my community wholeheartedly supported it.  I thought lighting a bonfire to celebrate an explosion that didn’t happen seemed absurd.

Nevertheless, Reggie and I agreed this opportunity was too good to ignore.  For each of the next few years, we spent the prior three months collecting fire fuel from the neighbouring farms.  I liked swinging an axe and a bush hook.  Whilst we never asked the farmers for permission, none gave us any grief.  We lugged the tinder to my parents’ property where we’d build the bonfire.  We made a Guy Fawkes effigy from a hessian bag stuffed with chaff and dressed it in old clothes.  Being the smaller of us, I climbed a ladder to place it at the top of our eight metre high precarious stack of firewood.  On the night, everybody around joined our families to enjoy the spectacle.

Each year, we planned a more spectacular bonfire than the previous.  Thus, we needed to pillage firewood from further afield although we didn’t like lugging it far.  So, Reggie struck a covert deal with the Station Master.  We’d strip the Railway Reserve of timber and borrow Bethania Station’s flat top to transport this to the fire site beside the railway track.  We didn’t realise the Station Master had conned us.

Reggie and I added fireworks to our repertoire and scoured the countryside for bottles to fund these.  We bought every type of firework the local general store sold: Catherine whirly wheels, sparklers, roman candles, penny bungers and rockets.  We determined where to put them and the order we’d ignite them to achieve the most dramatic effect and noise.  We lit roman candles to shoot stars.  We hurdled penny bungers concealed in handfuls of mud at the ground to create noisy explosions.  We launched rockets from beer bottles set up on fence posts.  I liked the rockets the most; they exploded in the air.  In a time when people feared darkness, these mesmerising light displays conquered their fears and gave them a sense of wonderment.

I didn’t mind the bungers either.  They were good for pranks.  The smallest bunger, a Tom Thumb, was two and half centimetres in size.  Once, I lost a couple.  Odd for me because I closely guarded them.  Strangely, my toddler brother’s breathing deteriorated.  Eventually, Mother took him to the doctor.  I watched the doctor extract my red and green Tom Thumbs from his nostrils.  Like me, Gary had light fingers.

By thirteen, I wished to blow something big up.  After much debate with Reggie, I proposed we lay a line of denotators along the railway track about thirty metres away from the year’s planned fire.  We knew denotators were easy to pilfer.  My dad, a fettler, kept a supply on his railway trike.  The Station Master also had a supply.  Track gangs laid three denotators at intervals along railway tracks to warn engine drivers of track closures for work or obstacles like fallen trees and wash outs.  Trains were to stop before they reached the third denotator.

We planned for the huge PB15 steam engine, which hauled the daily goods train, to ignite the denotators.  This would set off a sequence of miniature explosions.  Yes, our plan was highly illegal!  However, Reggie squared it with the train’s regular engine driver.  The driver was very willing to participate.  In fact, most of the community knew the plan.  That year’s Guy Fawkes Night, everybody, living in Station Street, gathered outside to watch the steam engine ‘explode’ before their eyes.  Of course, it didn’t.  The detonator explosions were too small to cause any damage just hellish noise.  Against the night’s darkness, they framed the giant black engine in incandescent white light.  The community loved the spectacle as well as Reggie and I.  In a roguish way, it saw us as heroes and we escaped reprimand.  That was our best Guy Fawkes celebration ever.  The next year, Reggie started work with the Railway and I replaced explosives with cricket balls.

Sadly but wisely, Guy Fawkes Night is a tradition now lost to young boys.

[panda-hammer]

A wise woman from a far away land once said, and I quote, #dignity means nothing in the face of Warhamma [sic]

Those words struck a chord deep inside of me, my inspiration went into overdrive, the ideas spilled out on the canvas and out came this glorious piece of high art:

@reclusiarch-orm this is your brainchild, so start paying alimony (i need to pay my therapist somehow) 🐼

P.S. of course it's still WIP. Don't judge me pls.

[astoundingbeyondbelief]

Trailer for Bullet Train Explosion, Shinji Higuchi's latest. It's a remake of the 1975 Toei film The Bullet Train, itself the inspiration for Speed. Very visually evocative of Shin Godzilla, which the trailer naturally mentions.

[redsamuraiii]

I love how Bullet Train Explosion make the train crews (driver, conductor, planners, engineers) the heroes that save the passengers. The occupations that people overlook in everyday life because they're used to the trains running like clockwork.

[funakounasoul]

Yamamoto, but in my original comic's typical art style.

You know I was gonna draw her 😗

[illusorybread]

I participated in Touhou ~ Fanworks 'n Chill's "Moriya Cleaning Game Jam" as the main sprite artist for Magical Library Cleanup Crew. It's based on Blue Revolver's Scrap Attack minigame. The jam's theme was 'original characters' and I designed two characters for it. You can download the game from the link above.

[mean---gimmy]

˚₊‧꒰ა ERIS ✦ STIMBOARD ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━⋆⁺₊⋆

✶⋆.˚-Oh I'm not worried about that! This is the way I am down to my very core. And if you don't like it, and brought me in here hoping a nice hot bath was all it'd take for me to change, well then... I hate to disappoint.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━⋆⁺₊⋆

🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛|🐦‍⬛---🐦‍⬛|🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

[violetnaps]

nothing worse than watching a movie and not finding tumblr gifsets to reblog about it 😔

[lokigodofaces]

May I submit that we now include Bob alongside Loki and Coulson as death-proof people in the MCU?

[sinclairstarz]

Action-comedy buddy detective AU byler, anyone?

loosely based on the movie ‘The Nice Guys’ because I’m obsessed with, in love with, etc, that movie. The plot is ultimately different but just know it’s based on that. More info under the cut :3

So it’s the late 70s in Hawkins, which is a big city in this AU.

Will:

Will Byers is a 25 year old private investigator. If you want help with a custody battle, or to see if your partner is cheating, he might be the person to go to. Business is a little slow because people often don’t trust how young he is. He’s a heavy smoker who’s mother died a year prior, perpetually tired and burnt out but always trying to look on the bright side. He lives with his little sister, El, who’s 19 and deceivingly clever and helps him with his cases a lot. His older brother Jonathon has fallen in with some shady people since he got into drugs at a young age, and he’s hooking up with an unknown actress, Nancy Wheeler. One day, a porno actor Nancy knew, Steve Harrington, is killed in an onstage accident. His friend Robin, who’s also close with Jonathon and Nancy, suspects foul play and seeks out Will to ask him to investigate. After discovering some evidence, Will is lead to believe a drug-dealer named Max Mayfield who has recently gone missing is the killer, and begins to seek her out. El, who knew Max in middle school is ambitious to help Will, but to her annoyance he won’t let her follow him to the parties and bars and dangerous streets, worried for her safety.

Mike:

Mike Wheeler is a private investigator who’s legitimacy is… questionable and who’s well-being and mental health is worse than questionable. He lives alone in a crummy apartment, he grew up wealthy but stopped speaking to his parents after he dropped out of business school. He mostly deals with shadier crimier clients, people who go to him because they can’t go to the police. He’s work multiple cases for Billy Hargrove - an asshole with a dense criminal history, mostly involved in the drugs+sex+party scene - and his guys. Billy’s little sister, Max Mayfield deals for him and is known for getting into trouble. When Max goes missing, Billy comes to Mike to find her.

In their investigations, Mike and Will keep running into each other at the same parties and drive-ins and gunfights and after having to help each other out multiple times, they figure out they’re both looking for the same girl and decide to just join forces. Tension and romance ensues. El is extremely annoyed of Mike being at their house.

Extras:

- Dustin’s a bartender Mike goes to for information because he’s always at the same hangout places as the criminals Mike’s investigating.

- Lucas is Max’s boyfriend. He’s not super pleased with Mike and Will sniffing around trying to find her,

[wishingstarinajar]

deep sigh

--

Please stop answering these obviously fake asks. Please stop promoting them to your followers. Don't accidentally dupe yourself or your followers in sending money to scammers.

[funarisjournal]

Official stills of Emi Nishino's character in Bullet Train Explosion, shared by Emi herself

She plays the manager of the JR East's Shinkansen Transporation Vehicle Department. While not frequently mentioned in the movie, the character's full name is Yukino Yamamoto.

While she plays a secondary character here, the whole movie is a thrill from beginning to end. I enjoyed it to the point of seeing it 3 times now lol

The movie is out on Netflix now~

[405blazeitt]

it'd be really something if bullet train explosion and gobangiri lead to tsuyopon getting international attention as a Serious Actor in Serious Movies. he's already known in japan as "the quiet/nice/polite/boring one" but we... the select few... know the truth

[redsamuraiii]

Later...

Bullet Train Explosion (2025)

The level headed train conductor and driver who uses humor to get through a crisis.

[kc5rings]

I’m still really enjoying Flintlock, but one thing I especially appreciate about it is how hard they lean into black powder as it pertains to the gameplay and worldbuilding

This moment was one of my favorite things to happen in the game so far, and only possible because for both your player character Nor and the enemies the game really leans into the sound and feel of black powder tech

I only dodged that headshot because the sniper enemy uses a rifle that actually clicks when they pull the hammer back, a thing that a sapper like Nor would know to listen for/recognize. So making that a tell really brought me into the game in that moment and felt great

Both you and enemies also take an age to load and ready larger weapons because they are black powder, but Nor can be much faster (if you’re good enough) given her training. It all just really comes together through how much black powder shapes the world of the game and Nor herself

[theworldsgreatestgambler]

[ It would make sense that ambiance could be more than just... ambiance. ] [ quiet and without words, he approached, letting out an airy giggle as he placed a hand on Chances shoulder, Swirling around to the gamblers front so she could wave hello! ] - Coughs then dies [ @subspace-demolition ]

[*He felt a hand on his shoulder, about ready to turn around and WHACK whoever was behind him, only to turn back and find Taph.*]

"Taph?! Whatare ya doin here? Its greatta see ya!"

[*He lowered his arm and smiled.*]