Whoop Whoop! 4 Thousand hits.

It's Official, Blogger Says So!
     Yep, sometime last night BOOJUM's 4000th visitor clocked in.

     I'd like to thank - well, myself, actually, for being the literary spirit of Creative Wonderfulness, with thanks to my subconscious, Dee - take a bow, Dee - and the guard hog and hard hog for keeping unwelcome intruders to a minimum.  Oh, and the Messenger Mice for ripping an invading horde of Piranha furries to bits.
     It feels a bit odd to have a screenshot of the blog on the blog.  Self-referential is what it is.

Touchstones
     No, not the museum and library in Rochdale!  Conrad refers to an item that you can rely on, an essential foundation for life's daily round.  You know, the charge of an electron, water being wet, the sun rising.
     Take a look at this hoarding:

A constant companion

     That young lady has been up there in her modest dress all these months since Christmas, maybe even before then.  Either the agency took out a 9 month lease on the hoarding or they've forgotten where it is.
     I shall miss Miss Axparis when she goes.  As, inevitably, I fear she will.

FILMIC INTERLUDE

Don't fret, this bit will soon be over.  Okay, first - Condensed Films.  Conrad accepts your challenge to define a film in five words, that you may base a decision to see it on his words of wisdom semi-wisdom almost sense utter drivel*

FILM                                              FIVE WORDS

2012                                              Earthquakes hunt John Cusack.  Floods!
Alien                                             Terrifying Haunted House In Space
Aliens                                            Thrilling Haunted House.  With guns!
Alien3                                            Meh.  Meh.  Meh.  Meh.  Meh.
Alien4                                            Quite meh.  But with WINONA!
The Wild Bunch                               Killed traditional Westerns stone dead
Akira                                              Mutants, midgets, monsters, mayhem, motorbikes

When Worlds Collide
     Ah, they don't make 'em like this any more!  Which, depending on how you look at your cinema, is either a terrible or a terrific thing.
     The plot - for the plot, read the title.  A runaway star with a planet in attendance is going to wallop squarely into Planet Earth, destroying all of you*.  The only hope is for a relative handful of people to get away in rocketships, landing on the rogue star's habitable planet.

This illustrates exactly what happens.  Verisimilitude!

     The novel, for Conrad has read it also, is from the Thirties and occasional gems come through in the prose - Fascist Italy's rocketship, for example, crashes and burns, killing all aboard.
     The film is of course updated to the Fifties, yet we don't get any reference to the Commies.  How good neighbourly!
     Now, for any budding film producer, screenwriter or casual reader, the author (Edwin Balmer and I seem to recall Philip Wylie in there, too) wrote a sequel - "After Worlds Collide", wherein the American rocketship lands on the planet and discovers the pristine remains of a long-dead alien civilisation ... I think it's available in the public domain so you can read it for free.
     Also, using the foreign language subtitles in WWC, Conrad learnt that "Likke Tyl!" is Norwegian for "Good Luck!"

Liquor till.   Close enough

The Hobbit - The Desolation Of Smaug
     Just a question about the pronunciation of "Smaug".  Tolkein probably meant it to be pronounced with a Scandinavian twist.  I always called the poisonous old worm "Smorg".  It's hard to hear other folks call him "Smowg".
     Any Norwegians in the audience who can help?

NORMAL SERVICE - RESUMED 

I Sprect Anglo-Saxon
     Over on Twitter, Matthew Ward and a chum of his were conversing in a strange, Germanic language that I didn't recognise.
     It was Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken here in England before those Norman tourists turned up, and one of them posted a link to an Anglo-Saxon - or Old English, if you like - translator.  So (not sure if this is correct) "I sagu aeldu efenglica, gebiawian forewyrd!"**

Angle-iron Stacks on.  Close enough

Broaden Your Horizons With A Balot
     This is a bit of a protracted one, but, like a drunken reveler on a night out, it does eventually get to where it ought to be.
     Conrad was in the works kitchen, preparing to - put garlic cheese on crackers, that was it.  A kiwi fruit languished on the countertop, deemed a bit too hard to eat just yet.
     "Do you eat them with the skin on?" enquired young Mike Collins, our roguish-yet-lovable Scouser.
     Conrad winced at the idea.
     "Good Lord no!  It'd be like eating an egg wearing a fur coat!"
     "Aha," replied the raffish Mike.  "Balots"
     These are a type of Phillipino delicacy: fertilised eggs, ranging from one day's fertilisation to the point where there are bones in the egg, bones with the delicious chewy consistency of Haribos.  Chicken-flavoured Haribos, one imagines.
     Boonies and balots.  What else will the Phillipines gift us?

Pictures of balots are horrid.  Here's a fluffy porcupine instead.

A Giant Erector
     Conrad doesn't have a fetish for cranes, it's just that great big enormous ones keep turning up at Victoria Station.  Why are they so big?  Why don't we see them lifting things?  How do they get put together?
     I could answer all these questions.  To do so, however, I'd have to hang around the other side of the office floor all day long, not doing any work, annoying people by taking photos with them in view and getting in the way of the cleaners.
     So the mystery of crane erection will probably have to remain untold.  And no sniggering at the back there!

That one in the background?  The one I posted about being assembled.

Finally
     If there were time I'd pick on another Celtic supernatural underperformer.  There isn't, so instead have another picture of Edna.  The FB caption calls her "Shredna", which is quite apt, really.

"ARGGGHHH!  KILL! KILL!  KILL!  Oh hello mummy.  Just playing."

*  We got there in the end!
** "I say old chap, well done!"