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When Reading Archaic, Why Not Speak Archaic?
As you are no doubt still FASCINATED to know, I am still continuing on with TWTIK, and have come across language that may have been prevalent when it was written (1938), yet is no longer in use.  The word "snell", with no internet explication, is one such: Conrad suspects it may be Scottish idiom of the time.  Another word that came up today was "whilom".  By context I suspected it meant "former" ("whilom professional golfer") and Thus!  The internet proves me correct.

Conrad.  Putting the "Win" in "Swindle" for 490 posts

     And talking* of archaic languages, one can't get more archaic than an entirely dead language.  And no, Latin is not dead, merely turned zombie.  I'm talking about languages mentioned in my other book of the moment, "I Claudius", these being Oscan and Faliscan.  These are now extinct languages of central and southern pre-Roman Italy.  Despite being quite widely read, Conrad had never heard of them before and confidently predicts that neither had you until today.
     BOOJUM! - better living by educating.

"The Big Ship Sails ..."
Ah, you know how it goes - "On the Alley Alley oh".
     Why is a children's nursery rhyme appearing on the electronic pages of BOOJUM!???
     Look at the date.  "On the last day in September."  What date is it today**?
     By consensus the body of water described as the "Alley alley oh" is the Manchester Ship Canal.  This was a major engineering project of the late nineteenth century and is still formidably wet today.

Ship.  Sailing.  30th September.
I can only post this once a year, so I need to get quite a bit of mileage out of it

Matters Of Food
Today my dinner table was graced by young Dan, and by the only-slightly-older Hazel.  Dan was chortling chirpily about getting free tokens or vouchers for keep-fit classes and stated that you can't knock getting anything for free.
     'I can,' I complained, and proceeded to bore about The Metro***.  I then scoffed the rest of my meal, which drew comment.
     "Bread and yoghurt?" wondered Hazel, and then Dan in his turn had to express surprise.       'Yes.  It's not unusual,' I stated, fearing another salted-tomato or men's moisturiser moment.
     Neither were persuaded that downing your baguette slathered in Greek yoghurt is perfectly normal.
    'Downing your baguette slathered in Greek yoghurt is perfectly normal,' reassured Anna. who grew up in Greece and who therefore knows about this stuff.
     (Conrad snaps fingers at Dan and Hazel)

     May I also introduce you to a slightly updated smoothie?

Tea! The cup that cheers and not inebriates

     This one has malt extract in place of honey, as malt extract in coffee was only a partial success.  Strawberry and nectarine and malt and banana smoothie, however - works!  It went down in thirty seconds.

Travel Broadens The Mind
Allegedly.  It rather depends on where and how you're travelling, doesn't it?  Chris from work is on his way to China on holiday, excellent for him.  Conrad today was stuck on a slow bus into work and no bus after work, and cannot in all honesty say that his mind was broadened by either event.  I suspect that Hermes, god of transportation, was feeling a little testy today and excercised his prerogative along the lines of "Ha Har^!  Let's make Conrad's drive into work an intolerable drudge!"
     Gentle reader, kindly do not disabuse him of his misconception.
     I also removed a page from my Premier Foods notebook.  At the time it was quite amusing - not very, just quite - but I felt that it might be - ah - misconstrued if left in, where fellow-passengers might see it and worry.

Imagine sitting next to a man with this on his lap.  You'd try to avoid eye contact, wouldn't you?

What shall I post about next?  Undersea volcano or cute animal?

A cute fluffy bunny.  No, hang on -

* Metaphorically, I know I'm actually typing, thank you pedantic reader
** The last day in September.  Not being too oblique, am I?
*** The free newspaper not the Parisian underground.  Do keep up!
^ Hermes' is known for his annoying laughter.

Tanks For The Memory

Damn.  Missed The Date
I have not posted a photo of a tank for lo! these many months, but rest assured Conrad is still as interested as ever in these large, expensive, dangerous machines.  He is also rather taken with a trailer for "Fury", which appears to feature the M4A3E8 Sherman*.  Anyway, September 15th was the 98th anniversary of the tank going into action at Flers-Courcellette, during the Somme campaign in 1916.  Expect a LOT of guff in the media in 2016, especially September.  Remember, gentle reader, that you can always refer to BOOJUM! for a cooler and more analytical review of what happened one hundred years ago.

But no current affairs

TWTIK**
More interesting throw-away words and quips from this volume today.  "Snell", which may be aged Scottish idiom because I have no idea what it means, nor does the internet.  "Douce" apparently means sober and sedate.  "Daughters of Rahab", in Doctor Dunn's allusional way, are ladies of easy virtue***.  "Taal" is also mentioned alongside Flemish, leading Conrad to suspect it a dialect of same, but it isn't really clear and once again Mister Internet is no help.  Bad internet!  Naughty internet!  No biscuit!

Stoicism And Epicureanism
These both crop up in "I, Claudius", of which more anon.  They are schools of Classical Hellenistic philosophy, taken up in the Roman Republic and Empire, which Conrad felt he could describe as "self-denial" and "self-indulgence".  This simplistic analysis proved rather enormously inadequate when goggling at the sheer amount of detail Wikipedia provided.  Rather than skit I shall skate, in the sense of "Right! Enough of that, NEXT - "

Snake Plissken.  World's baddest Epicure.

"I, Claudius"
Conrad picked up a splendidly-bound edition of this novel, only because the author had served in 2nd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers - who are the subject matter of TWTIK - and I also have his autobiography of that time^.
     At present he is describing Germanicus's campaigns against the Germans in, obviously - obviously! - Germany.  The German tribes are obviously the enemies of Imperial Rome, but Graves doesn't over-exaggerate their negative traits.  He also makes the point that they drank beer in enormous quantities, then feels (in character as Claudius) he needs to explain exactly what "beer" is.  Conrad does remember that the Greeks, and hence the Romans (who liked to copy the Greeks as they were so sophisticated), drank wine rather than beer, and they took it well-watered.

Beer.  No, Bear.  No, Bear beer.  Oh I'm confused!

     All this is even more interesting when you consider Graves full name:  Robert Von Ranke Graves.  Yes, German heritage there, though he dropped the Von Ranke bit when in the British Army.  He was an officer, you see, and being called a Ranker would rankle a bit^^.

"Maquillage"
Again, Conrad has to apologise for Oscar his subconscious.  This word popped up in the forefront of my mind whilst walking past the Call Statistics Monitor.  I can only think that it's because Anna was sat nearby, and she has a business thus:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/KA-make-up/565261433544465
    
     - otherwise I got nothing.
     Oh, the word!  Sorry.  It is French, as you might have guessed, and it means "Cosmetic" or "Makeup".


Confusing English:  Sweetmeat versus sweetbread
If ever you come across someone who tells you that English is easy to learn, poke them in the solar plexus^^^ with a bamboo skewer.  I give you the above two words.  
     Firstly, "Sweetmeat".  This contains no meat.
     The word refers to confectionery or sweets. Got that?  Okay.
     "Sweetbread" has nothing to do with sweets, baked, yeasted or wheat products.
     They are a species of offal - the thymus, testicles or pancreas of the calf and lamb.
     There you go.  English.  In some parts of the Galaxy speaking it is a shooting offence.

Sweet

Bread.
Like I said, frightful.

Finally
Conrad was a bit distraught at the vanishing of his specially-commissioned locker artwork last week.  However, fate took a hand, as did Anna~, and the dancing doggie duo will shortly be back on the locker but CEMENTED ON.

BOOJUM! - ever ready to exploit small cute animals

     (Anna found this on the floor and saved it)




* Possibly with the Horizontal Volute Spring Suspension system, it was dark and I couldn't see properly
** Oh, come on, you should know this by now!  "The War The Infantry Knew" by Captain J.C. Dunn
*** Er, that is, prostitutes.
^  See?  It's all circular and frightfully clever.
^^ I repeat, frightfully clever.
^^^ Then tell me where exactly this obscure anatomical region is.
~ Nope, no Executive Producer credit for you here.

The Doctor Brushes Up

Literally

One of Conrad's foibles, eccentricities or outright oddities is his tendency to watch Doctor Who again the day after it was shown.  Just to cement exactly what happened, and because his memory can be slightly erratic*, and because he frequently misses the pre-credits sequence as he's in the Upstair Lair creating wildly entertaining nonsense** for posting here.

     So.  We have the in-joke of the episode being set in Coal Hill School, which you may remember was the roosting place for Susan, Ian and Barbara in the very first episode.  I also wonder about the deserted building the policeman gets a bit of a toasting in; it seems familiar as in "Remembrance of the Daleks" - one of the best stories ever, in my completely accurate opinion.

The very ace Ace.  Not a girl to argue with.

     Then we have the "grey-haired stick insect" with his barbed wit and casual insulting of Clara, very good, keep it up, no undercurrent of romance here between these two.

<excuse me, got to go refill teacup>

     Ah back with a mug of Russian Caravan tea.  Noble stuff.  Where were we?  Ah, yes, Clara and Mr Pink and the Doctor being argumentative after dealing with the Scovox Blitzer first time around.  Danny Pink has a hard time getting his head around Time Lords and TARDIS's and time travel - probably not the sort of things that tend to make a date go well.  But he does save the world.

The Doctor.  Skilled in hypnotism, Venusian Aikido and Broom-Fu

     Will we be seeing more of the Invisibility Watch?  As the Psychic Paper isn't being touted these days, is it?  And The Afterlife as a big white room - tut, Mister Moffat, tut!  Everyone knows it's barleycorn.

From The High-Flown To The Slightly More Prosaic

There is still a half-pint of strawberry coulis going, plus plenty of Greek yoghurt, so Conrad threw them into a blender with a week-old nectarine.

Et voila!

     Surprise!  It was delicious.  Strawberry coulis and nectarine smoothie definitely works.

More Of Matters Edible

Wonder Wifey acquired a pound-and-a-half of beef brisket for pennies and requested a variant of Sherba (a kind of Moroccan soup-stew) with kidney beans rather than chick peas. And the beef, obviously - obviously! - the beef, or I wouldn't have mentioned it in the first place, would I? - instead of lamb.

As the cooking begins

     It's currently cooking, with the lid off to reduce a bit.  Probably ready by five o'clock.

Against The Day

Now up to page 720.  Typically Tom has moved the focus, from England and cricket to Vienna and pastries, with mention of place-names in Hungarian.  This I can confirm because the only words of Hungarian that Conrad knows (and you can't count "goulash" or "Paprika") are "Fo Utca", which means "High Street".  And hey there you are, "Vasi Ut", a street in Vienna.

Vasi Utca***

Rapscallion

I take it you know what one of these is.  Defined as "a mischievous person", that's exactly what they are.  The word is English (Hooray!  No Latin!) and derives in turn from "rascal", which itself derives from the French "rascaille" (Hooray!  Still no Latin!) It's not used overmuch these days, but you might encounter it here at BOOJUM!, for as you know we do not swear here, as there might be small children reading.  And if you hear Conrad, in an understated hiss pronounced through a murderer's smile behind stoney black eyes, say "rapscallion", there's really no need for swearing.

It's late, it's dark, and this face from two inches away calls you a "rapscallion"
Not a pleasant thought, is it?

Spelling Nazi On The Loose

Conrad may have already mentioned earning the undying hatred of the work's cafe staff by correcting their spelling of "blackcurrent", and he ought to know by now to keep his pie-hole shut intead of annoying the work's shop staff by pointing out "tommorrow" was incorrect on their slate & chalk sign.  He has also annoyed one of the managers by pointing out that we request "stationery" rather than requesting being stood still, and only last week corrected Darling Daughter's misuse of the apostrophe.

Spelling Nazi's are dull.  Here's a T34 tank instead.

Out Of Nowhere -

Dan Dare.  Why?  Because I CAN!

This man has the most fantastic eyebrows of any comics character ever.

Cyborg Sentry Cat Sleeping On The Job

Really!  Thanks to the Edna Wunderhund Extremely Loud Early Warning System, Jenny thinks she can abandon her duties entirely and use the Upstair Lair as her personal dormitory.

"Cat nap" made concrete

     I can see we shall have to tinker with her programming a bit, the rapscallion.

* Okay, very erratic.

** Or complete drivel depending on your point of view.

*** This does sound like a medical term in Latin, I grant you:  "The vasiutca is found next to the Sino-Atricular Node"

Books, Bins And Blogging

"But Screw Your Courage To The Sticking-Place"
As you area aware, Conrad has a sense of priorities that do not necessarily sit well with others.  For example, he hoovers the Upstair Lair when he feels like it.  Generally this means the carpet has to crunch underfoot before he hauls the Dyson upstairs, and so it was today.  First of all, however, he had to organise the piles of books lying all over the floor into a somewhat less random arrangement.
     I'm sure you see the problem inherent in this objective; the danger of "Oh!  I'll just have a quick look at that ..." and a job that ought to take ten minutes still hasn't been finished an hour later.
     Well, we got there in the end. 

The definitive "Before" shot

      In the process I actually THREW OUT 3 books.  One was Jose Latour's very disappointing "Comrades In Miami", which is very dull compared to his other stuff that I've read.  The second was the old Argos catalogue - hey it's still a book! - and the last was as seen below:

Beer, cream cakes, book and dehumidifier.  A life in four items

     I admit to a pang or two at binning the erstwhile Prof. Asimov's book, so allow me to explain:  it was published in a paperback edition in 1979, ergo probably written in 1978.  Well, it's been totally outdated by the discovery of extra-solar planets from the 90's onward, and it also takes a disconcertingly long time to move past basics in defining a civilisation, or extraterrestrials.  Probably got paid by the word.

Neatness exemplified

Small Irksome Things
Just as a minor pleasantness may brighten up your day, other annoyances provoke a sense of picquant dyspepsia at the world and your place in it.  Conrad seems to be forever cursed with earphone problems: Jenny the cat will chew them apart if given ten seconds alone with them; one set fell apart; another shed the moulded plastic earpiece; and the latest pair also only muster one earpiece rather than two, viz:

Bare metal makes it more an earpiercer.

     If Conrad is sat, scowling at his book and making occasional notes, on the bus then this isn't really a problem.  When he starts to walk the lack of moulding means the earpiece gets jogged out of the ear, requiring a steadying finger.
     It won't ever appear on a list of criminal charges at the ICC*, but it is undeniably irksome!

"The Maze-Runner"
By coincidence, Conrad saw a review of this film in "Empire", and he glossed over the brief description.  Yes, it was inspired by the success of "The Hunger Games", and yes, it is aimed at young adults, and yes, it is about young adults trying to get out of a maze.
     Wonder Wifey always insisted that a version of "The Crystal Maze" for kids would be a sure-fire winner.  Someone is gambling $34 million on this still being correct.
     Richard O'Brien, where are you?

Richard on the set of The Crystal Maze.  No, hang on -

Finally!
No, not the kind of "Finally!" where Conrad exploits small cute animals to increase blog traffic.  No, the name "Griswald"popped up into his mind earlier today whilst driving.
     "Tell us, Conrad!" I hear you beseeching.  "Who or what is Griswald?"
     Well, mes enfants, regard that classic television cartoon series "Top Cat".  You remember Officer Dibble**?  He was occasionally accompanied by a police dog called - Griswald.
     The in-joke about Griswald was that he was utterly useless.  Savage and inclined to bite first, bite last and bite at everything in between, he usually ended up firmly attached to Officer Dibble's arse, much to the annoyance (and, one guesses, the considerable pain) of Officer Dibble.
     However, can Conrad find such an image of the iconic duo?  No, he can not.  The best I can do is this:

Put the dog down, Officer!

     This is Dibble's sergeant having his buttocks badly bitten, or you can pretend it's years in the future and Sergeant Dibble's hair has gone white***.

Koincidence
Yes, I do intend to spell it that way.  Wait and you'll see how - OW^!  Okay, okay.  Conrad butted into a conversation at work that Katie and Rebecca were having, about scary clowns, and how scary Pennywise the Clown is in "Stephen King's "IT".  You have to admit they have a point there.  Reference also the clown doll in "Poltergeist", which always makes people's skin creep.  Yes, scary clowns, but for downright terrifying clowns you have to go to "Killer Klowns From Outer Space".  Yes it is a real film, and Conrad knows because he's seen it, and he told Katie so.  

Altogether now:"It's behind you!"

Oh, you might also care to add the zombie clown in a montage sequence in "Day of the Dead", I think.
     Where does the coincidence come from?  Why that very same edition of Empire, which advertises "Werewolf Rising" and a slasher about cheerleaders, and below that is an advert for Killer Klowns.  
     Scared yet?  You should be!

Proof that Conrad is neither hallucinating nor exaggerrating 

Hmmm.  A Worrying Development
As you may be aware, gentle reader, "Conrad" is a nom de plume I use for the blog - actually what is French for "keyboard" because I type, I don't write this stuff - 

<hang on, back shortly>

 - aha!  The French word is "clavier", so it would be nom de clavier but Conrad suspects this may be referring to a keyboard instrument as he did wonder if that would come up, being familiar already bekuz he so kulturd with "The Well-Tempered Clavier", which definitely does refer to a keyboard instrument, and "temper" in this sense - maybe tomorrow for that,we're drifting a little off-course.
     So.  Conrad is not the name I use in the real world, nor does anyone else, even though it is my real first name - we'll gloss over that, it gets complicated.  The only place it is used is in BOOJUM!
     Imagine my surprise about a dream that featured me easily solving a big 3D wall-mounted logic puzzle.  "Well done Conrad!" chorused the onlookers.
     Say what?  Excuse me!  Time, one feels, for a word with Oscar^^.

A visual representation of Conrad's subconscious.
(On a good day)

Finally Finally
One of Edna's favourite things to do with her humans is to play tug-of-war with an object, usually a soft toy originally intended for a small child.  This is quite easy to do, as one can tug with one hand and read a book with the other, as long as the duration does not exceed ten minutes.
     This, as any dog owner will tell you, is because by then the object is disgustingly soggy with dog slobber.  So, a custom-made tugging-bone that doesn't soak up saliva is a welcome innovation.  Here it is in action:

Edna.  Dignified as always

* The International Criminal Court in the Hague.  Do keep up!
**  Top Cat has been taken to heart so much by the youth of today that "Dibble" is slang for "policeman", in certain parts of darkest Salford
***  Like a certain blog author ...
^ <Mister Hand puts down the boast-busting bamboo skewer> - and the blog moves along
^^ My subconsicious.  Peculiar, and a little (ahem) Wild.