Pet, Pen And Pot, We've Got The Lot

Especially Of Pen
     Yes, gentle reader, Conrad always considers himself to be under-dressed if he's carrying anything less than half-a-dozen pens, preferably 10, with a reserve carried separately in the pencil case.

 

Basic Mission-loading Pen Quota

     Now, with the relaxation of dress code at work, it is now possible and permissible to go in wearing a tee-shirt.
     Horrors!  It's not possible to carry more than a couple of pens stuck down the neck of a tee-shirt!  
     I know, I know - be brave, don't hyperventilate.  Conrad merely takes along a pot cup that he normally restores the day's pens to upon returning home, but he leaves all the pens in it.
     Simples!

A lot of pen in pot, wot not?

A Pooch On The Mooch
     Damn.  Edna Wunderhund normally whines at the inner kitchen door if she needs to go do her business in the back yard.  Normally, but not always, oh no.  No, if she fancies a mooch around the kitchen to see if anything has fallen to the floor - correction - anything edible has fallen to the floor, she does the whiney bit as well, and obviously - obviously! - we cannot risk taking the chance that she's only trawling for tat.

Hot pursuit of magpie.  No chance, Edna.  A meat pie, maybe; a magpie, never

     Now she's started to do it at the outer kitchen doors (the Mansion's impressive French windows, actually), feeling the need to go mooching around the yard to see if the cats have left any small dead rodents as Gifts For Humans, or if she can catch a magpie, or just for a bit of a trot.  And again, one cannot risk that she's only manipulating her human owners ...

Fun With The Elements!
     Today let us look at Boron, Atomic Number 5.
     Boron is used in borax.  And, um, Pyrex.  And to soak up neutrons in -
     Frankly, Boron is a let-down and I won't descend to the obvious pun.
     What can we look at that's MUCH more dangerous?  Highly toxic, even?  Aha!

A bit of Monet, just because I can.  

     Thallium!  Atomic number 81.  Thallium is a soft grey metal, with similar properties to potassium.  It's prevalent use is in the electronics industry, mostly in optics.
     But, the interesting stuff.  Thallium is highly toxic, and is easily absorbed via the skin.  Since solutions of thallium are odourless, tasteless and colourless, poisoners wielded it with gay abandon before an antidote was found.  The Australian poisoners had a dance with it in the 1950's, and it's been used to get rid of political malcontents across the world, and that whelp of wickedness Graham Frederick Young absolutely swore by it.  Probably the biggest bunch of victims were a group of Russian soldiers who "found" a tin of thallium powder, in an off-limits military dumping-ground.  Ignorance of exactly what the powder was didn't stop them using it as talcum powder - or making cigarettes with it.

This is considered pretty mainstream in Russia.  In fact, it's almost boron**.

The Kraken Wakes - BOOJUM! Readers Fall Asleep
     No!  Come back!  This is interesting!
     I shall try to avoid spoilers, I don't want to upset you when the $250 million summer blockbuster comes out and - you know what happens.
     The "Bathies" (that is, the sinister deep-sea enemy*) are using currents of warm water and our narrator enquires of a scientist how this might be done.  " - by tapping the Earth's central heat", explains the oceanographer, before dismissing it as a possibility.
     This is contradicted, of course, by the existence of hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where water heated by volcanic activity creates oases of abundant life.  Mind you, these were only discovered 40 years after Mr Wyndham wrote his book.
     Another interesting little wrinkle added to the prospective screenplay, eh?  Conrad is so going to deserve that $5 million fee ...

A Hydrothermal Vent, also known as a "Black Smoker"

Vituperative, Vindictive Victorian Villainy
     One can never really know one's fellows and colleagues.  Last night I had an amicable enquiry from ****, whose name I shall obscure for reasons that will become clear.
     "Was it the 18th or 19th Century when villains tied people to railway tracks?" she sweetly enquired.
     Unsure if it was ever actually an event, Conrad replied that it would be the 19th Century, as this is when the steam locomotive and railways were developed.  No such facility for staging an elaborate death in the 18th century, oh no not at all!
     Consider the facts, gentle reader (at least, I shall assume you are a gentle reader).  In the 18th century a villain - who couldn't be Victorian, mind you - could tie their hapless victim across a road as often as they liked, because horsed vehicles would come to a sudden stop on encountering such an obstacle, whilst single horses would merely jump over it.
     Not options available to a train.  It can't jump over an obstacle on the tracks, and trains, thanks to their extreme mass, take an awful long time to stop.  I pointed this out to A - er, to ****, who came back with the cheerful rejoinder that an 18th century villain could always tie the hapless victim between two horses and then gallop them away in opposite directions ...
     Human = 0; Horses = 1

A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain - and so can trains, by the look of it ...

That Charity Event Mentioned Again
     I'm not going to be subtle any more.  Georgina and **** are going to be running the Edinburgh Marathon this weekend.
     GIVE THEM SOME BLOODY MONEY YOU CHISELLING WEASELS!

http://www.justgiving.com/edinburghmarathon2014

     Thank you.  Conrad has spoken.

* No!  Not "anemone", ENEMY!
**  Yes, ouch.  
***** Sorry, doesn't apply tonight.