My Life As A Dot

No!  I Have Not Mis-Spelled "Dog"
Although perhaps I should have added a few periods.
     I refer, obviously, to the acronym "Drinks Only Tea", hence D.o.t.
     "What is the aged duffer referring to now?" I can hear you asking.  "We know he subsists largely on pickled eggs and beer."
     Yes, your humble scribe if very fond of his beer.  Not spirits, and my palate is so appallingly bad that wine of any description is wasted on me; you could substitute paint-stripper coloured with red ink and I'd not be able to tell it from the finest Veuve Cliquot.

Liquid plastic or red wine?
Only you can tell!

     However, as with many amongst you, Conrad intends to give up alcohol in the New Year, in fact from midnight tonight.  Up until 6 p.m. on Saturday 30th January, just to see if I can do it.  It ought to work, I knocked off booze for October and the month went swimmingly.  
     Yes, I have played hard and fast with accuracy here: I shall also be drinking lemonade by the horse-trough, and water by the pond, but you can't make an hilarious pun out of either fact.
     So.  There it is.  I have put it down in black and white and published to an international audience of dozens a dozen one or two an international audience.
     Bottoms up!

Rob's Remainders Reminder
As you surely know by now, Conrad is both greedy and miserly, and those are two of his best qualities.  So he takes a particular cackling delight in purchasing remaindered food, the greater the discount the greater his cackling, regardless of how old or unfit the food is.  My attitude to food safety is - Can you eat it?  Then do so.

I have et the top two.  The rest remains

     Of course for you humans this is very unwise and I strongly recommend that you ignore Conrad's behaviour as regards Best By Date, certainly if you wish to remain alive and healthy.  Or, get your stomach replaced by a fusion-powered Inert Lead Isomer matter-converter.

Still More Of Birds
Horrid weather this morning dark, damp and windy too.  We tend to catch the wind at our end of the runway since there's no shelter on it as the zephyrs rush in from Siberia, Finland and the Arctic.  It's diminished the frenetic birdsong of earlier in the week, yet not stilled it completely.  Infuriating little rascals.   Chirp chirp chirp.  What they heck have they to be so happy about?

BLACKBIRD:  Good MORNING!
THRUSH:  GOOD Morning!
BB: Stiff breeze this morning, what?
T: Yes indeed.  Ruffles the feathers a tad.
BB:  Speaking of which -
T: Yes, Fatty really does need a haircut.
BB: Quite amusing, seeing it dance on his head.
T: More rhythm that the rest of him!
BB: He ought to get it cut.
T: Lord yes.  Wonder why he doesn't?
BB: Probably thinks it looks dashing, windswept and romantic
T: Ha!  It looks as if styled by electrocution!
BB: It's - wait for it, wait for it - shocking.
T: I say - very witty!
STARLING: Shocking?  You want shocking!  I was at his upstairs window -

     - and then the bus came.

How Conrad fondly imagines the blackbird to look in the near future

Conrad's Musical
"Of course you are!" I can hear you saying, as you edge towards the emergency exit.
     GET BACK HERE!  I meant that I have constructed a set of songs for a musical, not that I have or possess any musical ability.  Conrad would probably break the triangle if he tried playing it.  Clumsy, you see, and big*.

Conrad:  big and clumsy.
With bags of flour for scale

     This idea came to me in a fit of pique as a bus poster bearing "The Sound of Music" went swanning by this morning.  Really!  Can't a man get a bit of Dog Buns! peace around here?  No sooner does that warbling tart Mary Poopins vanish from the landscape than a tribe of yodelling brats replaces her.
      Anyway, here is the soundtrack of Conrad's musical:

     1)  "One of These Days" - Pink Floyd

     2)  "Zed and Two Naughts" - The Mars Volta

     3)  "Wonders of the Deep" - The Chemical Brothers

     4)  "Asleep at the Wheel" - Working For A Nuclear Free City

     5)  "The Private Cybernetic Reel" - The Chemical Brothers

     6)  "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" - Pink Floyd

     7)  "We Were" - The Comsat Angels

     8)  "Rags to Rags" - Eels

     9)  "O.D'd On Life Itself" - Blue Oyster Cult

     10)  "Dust of Time" - Hawkwind

     11)  "A Celebration" - U2

     13)  "Soft Space" - Soft Machine

     I have no idea what storyline could possibly link all these tracks.  Let me get back to you on that.

Conrad's Screenplay

EXTERIOR MID DAY: A huge zombie horde staggers towards the camera, being fired upon by a squadron of Challenger tanks using canister rounds.  Suddenly, an atom bomb blows up all the zeds.  We pull back to reveal the scene is being shot inside a dome on the Moon.

     We could easily pad this out to 90 minutes by making it a musical and using the tracks above.  What do you think?
     I realise in that one paragraph I've broken all the rules of the Charm Offensive, but dammit! a man's got to follow his dreams!

Dreams, nightmares, easily confused

*  Conrad, not the triangle.  Obviously!

Are The Poles Still Reading This?

They Are?
Then Dzjen Dobrie!  Which is Polish for "Hello there, invite your friends.  Some of your friends," as the fantastic increase in traffic over Christmas was, to be frank, rather un-nerving.
     Anyway, I can reinforce how wonderful Poland is, because part of my shopping tonight was Polish,  to wit:

That's the cat - polishing off it's food.
Hilarious, eh?

     You have "Warka" beer, which is mighty stuff and only £1.60 a tin, pickled gherkins, Tyskie lager, more Warka and, balanced on the pickles, Boczek, which seems to be a massive cake of smoked bacon.  Note the "smoked" as this will keep Wonder Wifey's gripping hands off it.  She can't stand smoked stuff, which is tragic, because Conrad loves loves loves smoked stuff.

Polish Film Posters
Conrad can't recollect where he first read about the Polish film poster genre - IMDB?  Empire? Premiere? - but they are all designed with one or two criteria in mind:  a)  They have to be weird or b) They have to be scary. Occasionally frequently both at once.
     I'll prove my point by merely Googling "Polish film posters" and illustrating the results:

What the hell?
Actually if you check out the cast list, this is "Alien"

Next!

Shelley Duvall, horror icon.
Not four words you'd ever normally put together

And -

The Terminator, of course.
Made even more sinister by Pink.

Plus -

I have no idea. None

Then -

Ouch!

     Go ahead, entertain yourselves on Google, but don't say you weren't warned.
     Poland, crossroads between East and West, Slav and Teuton, Orthodox and extremely un-orthodox.

More Of Birds
The high winds this morning have suppressed most of our relentlessly cheerful avian compatriots, which in Conrad's eyes is a good thing, as having mocking birdcall echo in your ears at the start of a grim grey day smacks too much of calculated insult.  What they heck have they got to be so cheerful about?

Blackbird:  GOOD Morning!
Thrush:  Good MORNING!
BB: A touch windy today.
T: Yes, it makes Fatty's hair fly around amusingly at the bus stop.
BB: Please, don't mention Fatty and wind together.
T: Suffers from flatus, does he?
BB: O Lord aloft, does he ever! Yesterday he sounded like a saxophone.
T: Ah yes, human digestion*. What had he been eating?
BB: From the stench, nuclear fuel rods.
T:  I say!
BB: Used ones, of course, used ones!
STARLING:  Cor him again!  I was at an upstairs window and -

 - then the bus came.

Still No Metro
A mixed blessing.  The critic's equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel, although why you would spend hundreds of pounds and have to be grilled by the Chief Constable when you could simply pull out the bung is beyond me.
     So, no headlines about obscure single-name celebrities whom your gifted author has never heard of, has no interest in and would like never to be bothered by.  Ta.

Eyes Bigger Than Resolve
Conrad bought this keg of rather nice beer an hour ago, before pausing as he loaded it into the boot of the Murdermobile.

With a can for scale

     "Hang on," I muttered to myself, which has to be done in a low voice or you frighten people.  "I'm going sober for January.  I cannot possibly drink all this tonight and tomorrow night, not when there's also WARKA!** and the Tiskie and a few cans of Old Clever Hen.  Plus some of Sal and Tom's Goblin brew is left."
     Now, having put it down in print that I'm going sober until 6 p.m. Saturday the 30th of January, believe me Conrad is going to stick to it, so this keg will have to be a rather heavy paperweight for some weeks to come.

The Mars Volta
No apologies for banging on about this lot again.  How can you not love a band who use the word "Obloquy" in a lyric***?

Cedric the wordsmith at right

     Or "Under the aegis of cognition"?  A trifle more sophisticated than One Direction whom Conrad boldly asserts are still at the "See Jane.  See Dick.  See Jane and Dick" stage and who have to put a finger under each word as they speak.
     Cedric, however, loves to muck around with language and words, which - recall this is BOOJUM! home to every terrible pun under the sun - means both thumbs up.

Posting a bit late tonight as I was on the late shift, then got the shaft from First Bus, and as mentioned in passing above had to do the weekly shop two days early. However, thanks to my voluminous notes we have hammered this lot out in a mere 40 minutes.  You may not be able to rush perfection but you can certainly speed up scrivel.

Chin chin!

*  Little do they know ...
** I just feel this should be shouted like a warcry.  "Look out, it's the Polish Winged Hussars and they're shrieking WARKA!"
*** It means to strongly criticise

Primus Inter Pares

Ha!  That Stopped You Dead, Didn't It?
It's Latin, of course, and means "First among equals", which, if you're all equal, is a bit difficult.  Nothing at all to do with camping stoves.
     You can tell where I'm going with this, can't you?
     Yes, it's that giveaway word "First" because we begin today's excursion into Conrad's psyche with another rant about First Bus.  
     First's website helpfully informs readers, passengers and those interested in major works of fiction that bus timetables and schedules have been altered between Christmas Eve and New Year, and that the short notice involved means they haven't bothered to print any amended timetables.  
     Thank you, First.  Thank you for your sterling efforts to inform, educate and -
     - no, actually I mean may you suffer from a plague of suppurating boils inflicted upon the tenderest parts of your anatomy that torment you into the next decade.  
     Conrad is reduced to guessing what time the buses may - or may not, this is First we're talking about - turn up.  Sunday schedule? Saturday schedule? Pomegranateday schedule*?
     Grrrr!  Bah!  I'd hate to see the equals that are on a par with First.

First Bus' role models

Of Course Some Clouds Have A Silver Lining
Although Conrad did have to hang around the bus stop for nearly half an hour, this did give him time to think, which is always a dangerous situation.  For instance, a cloud lined with silver would have considerable mass in it's own right and might well pose a danger to health and safety were it to fall upon a populated area.  Also, you'd get the danger of cloud-lining hunters hanging about on the off chance of collecting a bounty of manna from heaven.
     None of which has anything to do with birds.
     This morning they were at it again, the cheery little swine.  Chirp chirp chirp from all points of the compass.  What the heck have they to be so amused about?

BLACKBIRD:  GOOD morning!
THRUSH:  Good MORNING!
BB: I see our morning's entertainment is back.
T: Yes, indeed, Fatty is back.  Old and white of hair, made up of sin and despair.
BB: What crime against fashion is he wearing today?
T: Nothing special.  A fleece that helps to emphasise his middle-aged paunch.
BB: Ha - a pauncho!
T:  Oh, I say!  Very witty.
BB: It's a gift, it's a gift.  You should have seen him last week.
T: Sandals and socks?
BB: No, red AND green.
T:  Tish.  It's sad when they get old and colourblind, or lose what little sense of fashion they had in the first place.
BB: In Fatty's case, both at once, I fear.
STARLING:  Blimey!  Him again.  I were looking in at this upstairs window and -

 - the bus arrived.

Close enough

Rhonchi
NO!  Wash your gutter-resident mind out with an aseptic solution.  This is nothing whatever to do with "Raunchy" even if it does involve heavy breathing.
     It's a medical term and refers to mucus obstructing the bronchioles, or airways to you and I.  A suffered by Major Max Staniforth in "At War With The 16th Irish Division" thanks to getting lungfuls of gas in May 1918.  This actually saw him invalided back home to Blighty and he missed the rest of the war, meaning his rhonchi quite probably saved his life.

Close enough

Thucydides
 - and the History of the Peloponnesian War.
     Dammit, where's Matt when you need him?  Conrad would never dare to try to pronounce this Greek author's name as there are so many ways of saying it.
     Anyway, this is an impressively titled tome, and tells of the war between Athens and Sparta 2,500 years ago.  Yes, you did read that correctly!  Old Thuke wasn't just writing history, he was making it as nobody had been so forensically correct about reconstructing the past before.

They don't skip and they're pretty heavy, actually

     If you want a contemporary gloss on the work, imagine Europe just before hostilities began in 1914.  For Athens swap Britain, with the world's mightiest navy.  For Sparta, sub Germany with the world's mightiest army.
     Light blue touchpaper and retire .....

Iron Brew
Now, you just know that Conrad is going to check out the ingredients, as this is pretty much hard-wired into how he exists.

Egad!  Also, Gadzooks!

      What on Earth?  "Safflower"?  "Acesulfame K"??  "BLACK CARROT"?!?
      What kind of hellbrew is this?
      Oh yeah the one that costs merely 50p per bottle.




* Just because this doesn't exist doesn't mean First won't use it as an excuse.