I Stand Vindicated!

Actually Sitting, But The Point Is Made
If you recall yesterdays blog, as I hope you do*, you will remember a doggerel rhyme about First Bus and that Conrad confidently expected them to be late.  After all, the process of having a vehicle move from Point A to Point B is incredibly complex and far harder to manage than, say, putting men on the Moon or running the nuclear power industry; not only that, nobody really knows what this thing "Traffic" is.  "Traffic" can turn up at any time of day or night, in any amount, completely unpredictably, rendering the arrival at Point B an utterly random process.

Flow chart: Planning A Bus Route

     So, I was rather upset this morning when the 24 bus came early enough to leave me goggling a little, still en route to the bus stop.
     "Damn!" I uttered, and also "Birdsweat!**This is going to ruin my predictions of yesterday!"
     Once in Royton, disaster!  The 181 and 182 simply failed to appear at all, which is pretty sneaky of First, as they weren't technically late, merely - virtual.
     Things got worse when the next 24 turned up on time.
     "Dog Buns!" I expostulated.  "My predictions!"
     Fortunately for my predictions the homeward bound 24 was late, and slow, and didn't go to Rochdale.  I'm so happy my predictions were vindicated!
     Buzz Aldrin is 84.

George Orwell Said It First
I rather respect George, as he had the conviction to go out and take part in a war, which is an act Andrei Harmsworth*** - despite the surname - would never do.
     Conrad will point out that George fought for the Republicans, and so lived in the Republican-controlled part of Spain, where he noticed a phenomenon about public transport.  Trains instead of buses, yet the connection is there.

 - not entirely convinced about that tash, George, old polyp

     George noticed that the trains were late 90% of the time.  You could not rely on this in planning your journey, as George also noticed that the trains ran early 10% of the time.  In other words, just often enough to cause travellers to shout "Enough!" and go to catch a Permiera bus.

As well he might, because NO WAY ON EARTH is Conrad going to be watching "Big Brother"

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  Law Without The Order"
Another bus poster, this one referring to a television programme.  
     Let me pause to imbibe a refreshing draught of cobra venom -
     Right.  I take it that the title implies a Police Precinct in New York?  And that the cast of "trendy young people looking gorgeous and cool and sexy and so on oh and they're actually " police?

Close enough.

     Which set of suits are responsible for this ridiculous farrago of nonsense?  I have a good mind to take my baseball bat of True Detective and belabour them about the head until they scream for mercy.
     Oh, I feel so much better after that^!


O2.  "Be more dog"
That's what the byline on their advert says.
     "Be more dog".  
     Excuse me?  The dog is a canine companion or worker of considerable merit but I don't actually want to BE one!
     For one thing, they don't have mutually opposable digits and thus cannot type, write or bake a cake.
     As a byline it's also rather discriminatory.  What about female dogs?
     "Be more bitch"
     Hmmm.  Maybe not.

Not possible to get more dog than this, methinks

Today's Metro-Mashing
Egad!  The fly-swatter has actual news in it!
     Which I will completely ignore.
     I want to show you the moral bankruptcy of Guilty Pleasures:

Gasp! in outrage^^!

     They don't boast of "four pages" and it's not hard to see why, when most of these two are a giant advert about something to do with Cribs.  Andrei Harmsworth (see it all makes sense now, eh?), who shuffles this stuff together, you are exposed for what you are!

Honey, I'm Home!
(Previously seen under "So - Tanks?"
I am currently reading Mark Urban's "The Tank War", which focusses on the 5th Royal Tank Regiment; we had a brief description of the war in France in 1940, before moving to North Africa, where the regiment (actually a battalion - British army nomenclature is very confusing at times) drives A13s, then Crusaders, then Matildas and we are currently on the American M3 "Stuart".

No!  Art Department, get it right!

     When the crews drove these tanks, they discovered that they were streets - in fact whole towns - ahead of British tanks for reliability.  They simply didn't break down.  Not only that, a driver could throw them into a turn at full speed and the tracks would stay on.  You could drive them like sports cars, in fact, at 40 m.p.h. on the flat.  That might not sound much compared to your Ford Focus doing 90 m.p.h., but does your Ford Focus have a 37 mm gun and bristle with machine-guns?
     Anyway, whoever dubbed them "Honeys" is disputed, but also perceptive.

NO!  Get it - what?  "Winston Churchill"?
Oh never mind.

Okay, I was wrong

Okay, okay, I can't leave without posting a picture of a Honey:

There!  Happy now?

* Otherwise you have serious short-term memory problems, old fruit.
** This is going a bit far but Conrad was pretty much rather cross
*** Just be patient.  All will be revealed.
^ It's the cobra venom.  Works every time.
^^ Or not.  It's your choice.