Doctor Beverley Crusher - Wears Too Much Blusher!

Well She Does!
You never saw Doctor "Bones" McCoy tarted up with the horrendously titled "Male Grooming Products" i.e. perfumes and makeup for men, did you?  No! Because he was a cool, calm professional. Bev looks like she's going clubbing:

Getting ready to bust some moves.

     Clearly the medical sciences of the 25th Century* are sufficiently advanced that they leave doctors with enough time to arrange elaborate coiffures and spend hours on makeup.  She could be a model.
     Well, no, actually she couldn't be a model as she clearly has curves and is not a human ironing board with eyes.  We shall come back to this.

You didn't ask.  You're going to get told anyway.  One of my problems at the moment is one that I'm fortunate to have - too much material for the blog.  If I were to type it all up it would take until nine o'clock and would be three thousand words long.  Patient as the fans of BOOJUM! are, that's asking a little too much of them.

     On with the motlei!

"Magic Words" By Lance Parkin
This is the biography of Alan Moore, one of comic's biggest names, and biggest frames (he's six foot two with a gigantic beard).  You may not be familiar with his comic writings, although you SHOULD be**, but you are probably familiar with the films "Watchmen" and "V For Vendetta".
     I have come to the dates when "Watchmen" has been a worldwide hit, generating vast sales and equally vast profits, and I am minded of a factual book called "Barbarians at the Gates", about a business empire brought down by greed and egotism.  Still more am I minded of "Words For Pictures", an autobiographical tome by Brian Bendis, the chap behind "Powers".  His wife puts in a short but very effective lecture on the importance of contracts to artists, since they usually hate them and either skim through them or ignore them completely.
     As Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the "Watchmen" artist) discovered, if you don't draw up a contract as if your humble entertainment is going to be The Next Big Thing, if or when it does become TNBT, there is going to be a whole lot of septic squabbling about the £££.  Or, more likely, the $$$.
     Like I said, Greed and Egotism.  Probably Hom. Saps defining characteristics.

"Leg end"
Another bus poster-inspired film review, BOOJUM! style.
     One for the fetishists, I believe, as it's all about - feet.  It surely is!  because what do you find at the end of a leg?  A foot!  And there's two Tom Hardy's, so it's about foots plural, or feet.  One might even say the game's afoot***!

These were a legend in their own lifetime

The Metro
Ah me, but tomorrow's bin fodder is pretty desperate for news.
     "Girls just want to have bun" was the title in the still-libellously described "Four Pages" of guilty pleasures.  Apparently Kate Moss coming out of a party with her hair down was deemed worthy of both words and pictures.
     I have two things to say about this:
     1) THIS IS NOT NEWS!
     2)  THIS IS NOT NEWS!
     I realise this is the same point twice, but with intellectual ineffectuals like the editorial staff at The Metro, you have to EMPHASISE.  "Subtle" is an undiscovered country to them.

Great Moss.  Close enough.

THIS IS A VERY VERY BAD IDEA INDEED!
It there were time and space I'd add a couple of hundred exclamation marks after that.
     Why is the news below so horrifying?  Well, this will involve a bit of trumpet-blowing by Conrad, yet because it's in the public interest, it's justified.

"Siberia: scientists to reanimate 30,000 year old virus found in Russian province's permafrost

     Earlier this year I finished the first draft of my manuscript "Revelations" (can't call it a novel until it gets published).  There are some pointers and hints in the text about who caused the outbreak of the virus that turns people into what are effectively zombies, but it's not spelled out.
     Let me spell it out.  The Argentinian Antarctic Mission discovered a meteorite that had been blasted from the surface of Mars, millions of years ago.  Good enough.  When analysed, the meteorite proved to have dormant micro-organisms present in it.  Life from Mars, back when it could support life.  These micro-organisms prove to be utterly deadly to the upper primates, with a 100% fatality rate experienced in all laboratory experiments.
     Far too dangerous to ever have a practical application, the Martian microbes are put aside.  Enter, years later, an extreme right-wing political faction who want the Malvinas back, and what better way than to have the UK collapse into disease-induced anarchy?  Because then a "humanitarian mission/invasion force" can be sent to painlessly re-occupy the islands. So these right-wing idiots set up a stalking horse by bankrolling some equally idiot British Muslims, telling them that the Martian Microbe Mix is actually anthrax.
     What nobody counted on was infected drinks and cartons getting into the supply chain for Gatwick Airport ...

Sixteen Platoon, B Company the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment
Patrolling above Saddleworth on anti-rev ops.

Do Get It Right!
You may be aware of the quite dreadful accident in Rochdale yesterday, with the roof being torn off a bus and a lot of people being injured.  Now, Conrad has just enough conscience not to treat this lightly or make fun of the incident - he's frequently travelled under that very same bridge - but some of the media haven't quite got the hang of this "accuracy" thing.  I give you -

A bus, yes.  A double-decker bus, even, I grant you.

     What a splendid collection of LONDON buses.  You ought to have -

The genuine article.

    Mind you, what can you expect from the Foobs?

Wow, we have hit the 60 minute mark, although some of those have been taken up with popping down to turn the cake around, and also <checks> the 1,000 word mark.  Garrulous old me!


* 22nd, 23rd, who's counting?
** You have 48 hours to buy "Watchmen" and the clock starts now -
*** Sorry

The Borg, The Borg, They Live In A Morgue

Well They Do!
Now, starship interiors are carefully designed, by the writers and the directors and the set creators, to look the business.  A long time ago, when Star Trek was simply an obscure Sixties cult show, the Enterprise bridge was a thing of wonder.  All those buttons!  All those screens?  Sulu's cool battle computer sight that turned up in later seasons!  And what the heck was Spock looking at with his "What The Butler Saw" machine?
     The Next Generation Enterprise was very much a child of it's time - more like Star Fleet out of Ikea than an engineering manual.  Yes, it's ergonomic design meant that crew could work comfortably for long periods of time.
     I don't have time to go looking for pictures, the PC's running like a sedated slug, so - use your Photography Of The Imagination.
     Contrast both of those designs with the Borg:

Soulless, drab and miserable.  Probably designed by First Bus

     Actually I take back that crack about a morgue.  Compared to the above, a morgue is a positively partying laugh-out-loud parlour.

Poirot - The Disappearance of Mister Davenheim
Conrad felt this particular episode paid rather too much homage to a Sherlock Holmes story, about the city gent who actually made his earnings by begging with a quick wit.  I recognised Kenneth Colley playing dual roles as well, so the end revelation was no great surprise, either.  And Agatha - or the scriptwriter - resorted to the old Rabbit Out Of A Hat Plot Resolution, again.  Mister Davenheim has been embezzling from his bank, we are told. 
     Eh what?  Where did that revelation come from?  Never a hint of it until Poirot declares it so.  How are we the audience supposed to have seen that coming?
     Less carpingly, I must commend the director and the technical services for putting on a truly excellent display of vintage racing cars.  I don't have time to do a screenshot so here's a web picture:

A monster in it's day

     These things are raced around the track, driven onto and off the pits and give an instant sense of Thirties genius locii.  The television also blends in vintage footing.  Jolly good stuff, even down to the Pathe film camera on top of a car.
     Not really anything to do with the plot, but very well done!
     There were also some nicely underplayed moments when Poirot was teaching himself various conjuring tricks, implying that David Suchet is able to do these himself, displaying skills of -

"Legerdemain"
Sorry, couldn't resist seguing from one to another.  The word is French, aptly enough, and literally translated means "lightness of hand", in other words an ability to perform apparently magical acts through skill and proficiency in creating illusions.

For example, this

     Poirot takes a phone call and knocks the whole thing down.  Then he simply picks it up erect again, as the cards are all taped together.


"The Infinite Monkey Cage"
 - is a touring BBC science show.  It's on in Manchester in October and I've applied for it*!

Conrad has registered!

     This is only the registration side of the process, and there's no guarantee that I'll get a ticket, or even two, but still - Professor Brian Cox**!

The Metro And "60 Seconds"
What a coincidence.  No, nothing about the Coincidence Hydra biting Conrad on the bum yet again, this is yesterday's feature of some gonk who used to be in Westlife***, whose name I cannot recall and who I care so little about that I'm not going to look it up.  That would require three things: 1) Effort, 2) Caring and 3) Effort. I realise that Effort is in there twice, but I'm trying to make a point here.
     Okay, Mister Whoosit just so happens to have a single coming out.  Who could have expected such an amazing coincidence to happen!  A single coming out and a spot in the Metro's paid-for-puff section!  Imagine that!  How incredibly contemporaneous!  What more can we expect?  Lions lying down with lambs?  Water running uphill?  Westlife re-forming?^

Here's a giant excavator instead of - whoever he was

On Thermonuclear War And The Train-Mobile Minuteman
Lest you be not aware, gentle reader, the "Minuteman" here is not one of Paul Revere's fellow American militiamen, but a whacking big Inter Continental Ballistic Missile weighing hundreds of tons, armed with a multi-megaton^^ warhead and with a range of 11,000 kilometres.
     Herman mentioned them in his text, yet they never went into service, and Conrad wondered why.  He suspected cost, and he was right.  An experimental train was constructed to carry missiles and crew and security, which proved to be hugely expensive, costing far more than building a silo for the missile.  Plans for six Train-Mobile Minutemen were abandoned, Congress's Oversight Committee saying that they were worried, as timetabling had been outsourced to First Bus ...

The concept.  As you can see, that's one big-ass train

* Squeals like an excited schoolgirl
** And that other bloke.
*** Hilariously known to my pub quiz partner Phil as "Pondlife"
^ Some things you just don't joke about
^^ Big.  REALLY big.

What Ho, Data, You're Stood In A Crater!

I Know, I Know -
 - it's more properly an arena or basin rather than a geographical site produced by an item from the heavens striking the earth at high speed.

I concede the point

     Bear with me on this, as this is the closest picture I could find that matched my clever rhyming title.  Most of the other pictures were of the scary "M113 Creature" a.k.a. as the "Salt Vampire" -

It made a sucker out of Jim*

     - because it disguised itself as Nancy Crater.
     There you go.

More Of Star Trek The Original Series
Ah yes, more of James T. Kirk, that rambunctious captain of incredibly high testosterone levels.  I refer to the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", where Kirk gets to snog a remarkably attractive female android - except "andros" here is Greek for "man" so perhaps she ought to be called a "gynoid" after the Greek "Gynos" for "woman, and indeed should she be called "it"?**

The lady robot android gynoid Andrea

     Anyway, when Kirk gets duplicated, the "blank" used is a disgustingly floppy green thing that appears to be made out of silicon foam.

No jokes about which is which

     Which is a bit peculiar, as the androids are all packed with wires and metal and shizzle like that, as we see when Brown Gets Taken Down:

"180% proof vodka - the awful truth"

     I also wonder how long Bill Shatner spent being spun around on the Whirly Girly Creator.  Pretty obviously they speeded it's rotation up, but it can't have been much fun whizzing round and round, especially if they had to do extra takes for the different angles.
      " "Come on!" complained Bill, as the roundabout spun for the eighty-seventh time"

Flyswatter
Given that the weather has been remarkably warm of late, and that we have bowls of dog and cat food in kitchen, there are inevitably one or two flies buzzing around the kitchen of late.
     No problem!  I have a yellow plastic flyswatter and a hatred of flies.  No doubt the passers-by in the street are amused by the sight of a man in his middle age, throwing himself around his kitchen like a sufferer of Saint Vitus Dance trying to rock it to the Chemical Brothers.
     Pausing briefly to wash that hideous image from your minds, allow me to present:

Voila

     As you can see, swatting flies has caused it to progressively shatter apart, until only half the swatter is left.  One surmises that it's actually a "Flytapper", used to - in an oh-so-English way - to gently tap the fly on the shoulder, clear your throat and invite it to depart through the door you have very considerately opened.
     Also -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMTZFBd5eQ&list=RDiwMTZFBd5eQ

     Eels and "Flyswatter"*

Ah, Hello Autum
It has been remarkably bright and sunny today, certainly far nicer than a lot of the supposed summer days of August.  That it is autumn, however, cannot be denied as there is a definite nip in the air of a morning and evening both.

     I append a short video of the world from my bus stop, i) because I can and ii) it proves my point, whatever that was***.

Poirot - The Lost Mine
Jeez, look at what I am become - watching Agatha Christie like a middle aged man.  Better go out in my hoodie later on and vandalise a bus stop.
     Let me illustrate a moment or two that establish the inestimable quest for authenticity that this series goes out of it's way to sustain.

     That's a proper fountain pen being wielded, none of those horrid biros in August of 1935 - which is another valuable plot point, allowing you the viewer to know the date.  Conrad was well wide of the mark when he imagined the year to be 1936.  As if!
     Then we come to the plot, and Oh Dear.  Agatha resorts to the Pull A Rabbit Out Of The Hat resolution, where Poirot informs us the audience that the Unimpeachable Bank Director was a secret gambler and embezzeler.  Out of nowhere.  Who has lots of "shady Chinese friends of low moral value".  Just because.  
     Bad Agatha!  Naughty Agatha!

The Biter Bit
Normally the sequence of events at work is that Conrad bakes a cake and the ganterpies swoop round and devour it.  Not today. 
     This is the cake I got to eat today -

Courtesy Sophie.  That Sophie, not this one

     Sophie, poor gel, has been stricken with tonsillitis, and could barely speak.  She certainly couldn't manage this tidy morsel, so - this is a thoughtful lass - she came over and gave it to Conrad, who polished it off later in seconds flat.
     It was yum!


AAAHH!
OR
Coincidence Strikes Again
I'm doing two things here.  
     1) Promoting the Facebook page for "Murder Inc", which is being run by that living spirit of mischief, Jade.  Take a bow, Jade.
     2) Pointing out that I'm waiting for "Murder Inc" the trade paperback comic book to come out soon.

Compare and contrast

         Conrad - bitten on the bum by the Coincidence Hydra yet again. 



* Sorry
** You don't think I'm over-analysing this, do you?
*** Short attention span don't you