A Grey Day

At Least Here In Manchester
     It's uncommon for Conrad to wax poetic; his icy fusion-powered cardiac unit doesn't accomodate the finer feelings.  The less pleasant ones - step right up!
     As today, staring out of the giant tinted windows at work.  The sky was grey,what is known as Uniform Grey Layer*.  The million windows of city-centre Manchester reflected back a panorama of grey.  The asphalt streets were dark grey.  The cars were grey, even those pretending to be "Steel Grey" or "Burnished Silver".  Grey.  The people looked grey. 
     All quite soothing to Conrad's eye, actually, without all the usual nasty contrasty blues and yellows and whites.  You might say, Hooray! for Grey.

"I feel right at home"

Lord Of The Rings:  The Condensed-By-Logic Version
     Gandalf:  I say, Gwaihir**, old chap, could you give me a lift to Mount Doom in Mordor?
     Gwaihir:  Certainly.  I'll bring along a few of the chaps, to fly escort.
     [Several hours later]
     Gandalf:  Okay, I'll just drop this weighted envelope into the volcano.  There it goes.
     [Several seconds later]
     Gandalf: Ah, there you go.  Barad-Dur has collapsed.  Sauron's had it.
     [They fly home]

From The Kites Of San Quentin
     I mentioned this band yesterday and today I bought their "7.83 Hz Earth Chorus" EP.  Excellent stuff!  Now, bear in mind that they are rather avant-garde and don't really do the 3 minutes pop song or 4/4 time rock tracks - okay, have we assimilated that?  Then go on over to Youtube and search for them. No link today as we have photos instead:

Closed and Opened.  Very clever.  It even impressed Manisha.  Not sure what she'd think of the music, however ...

That's What I Want!
     During my drive to work - traffic-jam free again, hooray for forgetful Hermes*** - Conrad espied a billboard with the following (ouch, sorry, couldn't resist!):

Actually it's all much madness and horror the soul of the plot.  No blogs.

'Hey!' I expostulated [no it's not rude go look it up you traducers!].  'That's just what Conrad needs for his blog!  A following who will never let go!' for he was still concerned about traffic at BOOJUM!  I wonder why Blogging Bacon doesn't look happier?

Cold War Cars
     Hard to think that the Cold War ended over twenty years ago.  You whippersnappers don't know you're born!  When I was your age we lived in fear of immolation by Russian nuclear missiles.  This, however, was when we didn't realise just how appallingly bad Russian engineering, industry, organisation and efficiency was.  If World War Three had kicked off, I doubt their missiles would have managed to find Europe, let alone the UK.
     Let me introduce the Moskvitch.  This was a Russian car built along Russian design lines - i.e. make it like a tank - and with Russian attitudes to safety - i.e. road safety?  what's that? - and with Russian production techniques - i.e. the assembly-line workers would hammer screws in to get the car built quicker.  It was built on industrial plant that had been seized from the Germans in 1945 and worked like the dickens ever since, so the actual production line was pretty-done itself to begin with.

Scrape that blue paint and you'll find BOLSHEVIK RED!

Top Gear pundits Clarkson and May think it ties with the Lada Riva for the worst car ever made.
     There is also the Trabant, but - we shall leave that for another blog!

So  -Tanks?
     Go on.  In line with our theme of scoffing at Soviet Russia, let me introduce you to the T-55:

Grey again!

Produced in the tens of thousands, the T55 was simple, small and robust.  All good points!  There were many other points, points that we shall call, for want of a better word, "bad".  The small size meant the crew had to be midgets; no word of a lie, Russian tank crews had to be very small.  The interior was extremely cramped, uncomfortable and difficult to work in, so crew performance rapidly fell off.  The main gun would not depress below 5 degrees, so the T-55 could not hide behind cover.  The side armour was too thin.  The armour quality was poor; Warriors and Bradleys engaging T-55s in the Gulf War were able to knock them out because their cannon rounds - which could not actually punch holes in the armour - hit with such force that they caused explosive spalling - essentially kinetic energy from hits on the outside caused giant slabs of metal to fly off the inside - with results that can be imagined ...

A T-55 in it's natural state - destroyed.

Okay! Enough Of Death And Misery!
     

Yes yes yes, I know  "Awww!" and the puppy is cute too

As Conrad has christened her, Edna the Domesticated Wold arrived yesterday, being all cute and shizzle.
   Dear reader, she was considerably less cute at 3 am, whining loudly for all the world to hear ..


*  Okay, I made this up.  But it feels correct.
**  An eagle the size of a Tornado jet
***  The god of travel.  We have been having a spat just recently

No Problems With Traffic

At Least En Route To Work ...
     But there must have been something important on television - only 3 visitors yesterday.  I fear I need to beard the dragon in it's lair and go shout about on Twitter.  Then you'll be sorry!
     But no tailbacks en route to work today.  Wednesday - massive queues everywhere.  Today - hardly anything.  Insulting Hermes* seems a rather hit-and-miss process.  Maybe he's got to go congeal traffic on the M25 and forgot about Conrad.

Angry Conrad - venting his spleen!**

Gelibolu
     That's the Turkish name.  You might know this better as "Gallipolli", a stalemated battle on the peninsula of that name in Turkey.  I am currently reading the snappily-titled "History of the 29th Division", a British army unit of the First World War that saw it's baptism of fire on the beaches at Gallipoli.  I began reading "The Crying Of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon this lunchtime, in which - yes, you guessed it, the British at Gallipolli are mentioned in detail, including the River Clyde, one of the landing ships.
     Pynchon knows what he's writing about - a literary equivalent of the late Stanley Kubrik - but how coincidental is this?
     Philip K. Dick would have had an explanation ...

"Aliens are subverting your reality, Conrad.  It's the only reason that makes sense."

Danger! Will Robinson!***
     And indeed to all terrestrial life forms.  Last week Conrad bought a remaindered pizza - 

Burn this image into your brain, dear reader!

- and last night Darling Daughter and myself sat down to eat it.
     We managed some of it - I scoffed about half - but even that was a travail and a torment, since the topping consisted of radioactive lava dissolved in capsaicin.  I can take a pretty hot chilli but found myself guzzling a whole tub of youghurt to try and fight off the numbness in my tongue.
     I have a theory about the three-chilli rating (seen after the "Stonebaked Pizza") - three chillies my hairy white behind!  They are orders of magnitude.  The second chilli multiplies the first to the tenth power, the third multiplies the second to the tenth power.  So it's actually a one-hundred chilli pizza.

Asda's "Piri Piri Chicken Pizza" production line

More Of Music
     I have known that Alison, a fellow-worker at my Still Annoyingly Anonymous Employer, was in a band.  Fearing that they might be a fearful modern-day equivalent of Peter, Paul and Mary, or - even worse - Mary, Mungo and Midge, I did not enquire further.  Or not until Alison sent me a Youtube link of them playing live.
     I am impressed!  I like a lot!  And I asked Alison to get me a CD of their songs.  Here a link to the song "Diamones".  And if you don't like it - we are no longer friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISM659UZjVQ

A balloon.  Close enough.

Ameliorate
     Again, BOOJUM! ventures forth into hitherto unexplained words in English.  This word, patently, means to hold forth at length in forensic oratory, that most difficult of all formal spoken tropes, doubtless practiced by <thinks hard> Cicero, or Julius Caesar.  Maybe Juvenal, at a pinch, although he was more the written word-wielder.
     What's that?
     It's not?
     It merely means "to make better"?  Bah!  <snaps fingers at reality>

Okay, reality - try ameliorating this lot!

As A Finis
     Here's two kinds of cuddly animal - the first a drawing I commissioned from Darling Daughter to put on my locker at work -

Pugnacious!

Edna (the dog, that is)

Edna, a Border Retriever.  Don't let those puppy features fool you, she's still a species of domesticated wolf who may grow to over 100 kilos and eat small children.

*  Greek god of travel.  From last week?  Do keep up!
** So much so he forgot his disguise.  Sloppy work, Conrad.
*** It's what the robot in "Lost In Space" used to crow every episode.

Did I Say Terpsichore? I Meant Thalia

Thalia Being The Muse Of Comedy
     And this blog hopefully providing a few wry smiles, with the odd snicker to boot.  Terpsichore is the muse of dance, an occupation that is a stranger to Conrad as he would be grateful to only have two left feet.  

Sob!

Let us begin today's proceedings with the chuntering that occurs between Conrad and Darling Daughter Super Sally on the drive to work.
     'Dog buns*!' swore Conrad.  'I forgot to look at how the Bolton Atlantic Challenge boys were doing.'
     'Yeah, Dad!' snarked Sally.  'They might be abducted by Arctic seals.'
     She got the greasy eyeball for that, oh yes.
     'The Talisker Whisky ATLANTIC Challenge goes nowhere near the Arctic, Sally.'
     Shrug.
     'Atlantic seals, then.'
     'The rowers would beat them off with their oars.'
     'Ha, no!  Everyone knows being in the sea makes you immune to oars.'
     At this point the argument ceased.  You can't argue with the demented.

Eels.  Close enough

     MUSIC SUBSECTION
     The tone-deaf and the tasteless may want to skip these pearls of poison wit

Eels
     The band, not the fish.  For this week the Eels album "Shootenanny" is my Car CD.  That is, a CD I intend to give a second chance by playing it non-stop for a couple of weeks, to see if my opinion of it changes.
     Well, it's a bit of a curate's egg.  Some filler, some okay stuff and some corking classic songs.  The first three songs are forgettable, then comes "Love of the Loveless" which is quite good, then we dip with "Dirty Girl", back up to quite good with "Agony", and then Mr Everett and clan get their head in the game with "Rock Hard Times", the hilarious stalker song "Restraining Order Blues", the very excellent "Lone Wolf", "Wrong About Bobby" and "Numbered Days", then doing one of Mr. E's trademark gentle-lilting-song-with-horrible-lyrics - "Fashion Awards" and dipping a bit with "Somebody Loves You".
     To coin a metaphor, it's a bit like a racehorse that comes out of the gate late, and slow, but who builds up a head of steam and wins the race.

The Chet and E.  Who's E?  It's a Mr. E!

Pink Floyd
     As I'm sure you know by now, Conrad likes Pink Floyd.  He takes a gander over on Youtube every so often to look at the trailer for "Darkside", an entertainment written by Tom Stoppard, based on Dark Side Of The Moon.  Herein the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvaSzYcDXFw

It's great to watch but makes absolutely no sense whatsoever!

Turbine Head; a disease for our times

Randomly Exploding Jets; not looking for BA sponsorship

Look out!  Auton!

Runway snow clearance gone mad

See what I mean?

A Critic Of The Lyric
     I have been listening to some Simon and Garfunkel on Grooveshark, and one song struck me in particular - "The Only Living Boy In New York".  The title is also the chorus.
     I mean, come on now!  There are 8 million people in the Big Apple, of whom 4 million would be male, and allowing a little interpretive judgement, even if only 10% of that total qualify as "boys", that makes the impressive total of 400,000 boys.  Not 1.  
     Unless  - my God, that's it!  This is a song about zombies!  The only "living" boy in New York.  Why it all makes sense now.  You can just see Paul Simon fighting off the undead hordes by smacking them round the chops with his guitar, garrotting them with his spare strings and using a metronome to decoy them away ...

Yes, I know those lyrics are "The Sound Of Silence" but come on, a picture of S & G as zombies!

MUSIC INTERREGNUM IS OVER YOU MAY COME OUT FROM BEHIND THE SOFA

Mike's Music
     No, come back, this is only peripherally about music!
     Mike, stout fella, checked out BOOJUM! yesterday and declared that he liked it.  He also complained about sitting next to the atrium in our building, since this put him within earshot of the promotions stand at the bottom of the atrium, giving out free biscuits and playing what Mike described as "an hideous parody of some already-hideous current pop song", and playing it in a loop.  He fled to the kitchen and fell in with Conrad, who remained blithely unaware of any such sonic earwormery.
     'It's my age,' I explained.  'Old gets like me can't hear high-pitched noises.' Which means I probably wont hear him screaming when his reason gives way.

Mike liked to hang around in bars ...

Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge
     I believe I've mentioned this a few times in the blog already.  Simply put, the challenge is to row across the mid-Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean.
     I know, I know, bloody lightweights!  Rowing across the shortest bit, only 3,000 nautical miles!
     Several boats have already landed, with the one I was watching (Bolton Atlantic Challenge) due to hit terra firma within the next few days.  Reading the News section of the TWAC website invokes a sense of awe and wonder.  These rowers are either mad, brave or both at once!

http://www.taliskerwhiskyatlanticchallenge.com/fleet-update-day-56/

If your conscience is troubling you about anything, salve it by chucking some money at these madmen.

Just another day of the TWAC

So - Cuddly Tanks?
     No, I'm not raving, it's nine o'clock and I've got other things to do.  Brass-hand polishing, for example.  So, I thought I'd combine the "cute" end article with the "Steel beast of mass destruction" article, and hence we have:

Hmmm.  I don't know.  Pink?  Iron grey would have been better.