Shedules

Yes, I know I've Mis-spelt It!
 - because, wooden't you know it, there were troubles with schedules this morning, bringing consequent <ahem> shedloads of trouble.
     Firstly, I overslept by a good fifteen minutes, meaning no time for a shower, only a shave.  Fortunately it is not summer and I hadn't been broiling in my own sweat overnight.
     Secondly, my normal morning routine is to bang a reminder about the blog on Facebook, just in case anyone has forgotten what nonsense looks like. Not this morning - no access to the website and no time to spare either.

"That, Conrad, is when one of these comes in useful."

     Thirdly, one of the earlier buses failed to turn up on our route so there were extra-specially large numbers of people boarding and alighting, delaying the service and consequently I had to forgo my morning Double Espresso in the works cafe.
     Fourthly, I arrived at the bus stop this evening to see the 24 driving off - exactly on schedule - and the 182 also, a good ten minutes early.  Remember what I said about George Orwell and Spanish trains*?  I think that's First Bus's operating model.
     Fifthly, once we hit Broadway we encountered a traffic clot, where the flow just congeals into a slightly-mobile car-park.
     On the plus side, I did arrive home to a very tasty (and hasty) curry thrown together by Wonder Wifey.  So it was almost worth being late**.

Smashing The Metro With A Statistical Stick
Yes, punters, Conrad's undeclared war against tomorrow's bin-fodder rumbles on.  I had the idea yesterday but it requires a bit of maths and measurement and time on Monday was at a premium.
     So!  The lying rag claims to have 4 pages of celebrity gossip?  Let's just measure page 16 with a ruler.
     There's the first deceit - 25% of the page is taken up by an advert.
     Next I totalled the number of words. 562, across 604 square centimetres
     Then I took a proper newspaper*** and measured out 604 square centimetres, ignored the partial column on the right and calculated that this contained at least 1,000 words.  But they didn't puff up the page with BIG LETTERS and VAPID PHOTOGRAPHS.

The Manchester Guardian

     Conrad - slaying deceit with numbers!

Ampersand
No, it's not a town in Sweden, principal exports bulk timber and elk milk.  You've seen it a thousand times, and if you type then you've used it equally as often.
     What is it?
     &
     No more or less than the symbol that means "And".  Where does it come from?
     As usual with a lot of lettering, Latin, and the word "Et", which means "And".  Over time it got corrupted from those two letters into the gracefully curved ampersand, also lending itself to willful punnery such as Engl&, S&wich and The B&.

SSE - Why?
Another advert from SSE that features an orang-utang.
    Why?  Why, SSE, why?  Think of the children!
     Rather than picture an orang-utang, here's an atomic bazooka:

Red = Danger.
Magnificently ironic, hmmm?

     Which makes just as much sense.

"Kingsman"
Just thought I'd get a slightly closer photograph today, and here it is:

At least ten metres closer.  You can see the girl with prosthetic legs now, can't you?

Conrad - World's Laziest Wargamer
On Sunday I was Googling for pork joint recipes for our Schlemmertopf, and what popped up but a ten month-old blog post by your humble scribe, mentioning the Schlem.  More to the point was a photograph of a load of wargaming kit set out on the tabletop:

All neat and tidy.  March 2014

     I confess I've not done a thing with the stuff and it's still there ten months later:

     <hangs head in shame>

     I notice that I also boast how easy it is to cook things in the Schlem, whilst pretending to everyone else that it's tricky and fiddly and complicated and so much trouble ...

Rejected Doctor Who Episode Titles
Aloha, let us proceed to deploy medium-yield wit, flavoured with a touch of irony and all very sardonic.

"The Yeast Below" (The Beast Below)

"The Time Of Angles" ("The Time of Angels)

"The Vampires of Nice" ("The Vampires of Venice")

"The Hungary Earth" ("The Hungry Earth")

"Clod Blood" ("Cold Blood")

"The Bodger" ("The Lodger")

"The Big Bag" ("The Big Bang"

"Day of the Goon" ("Day of the Moon")

"The Curse of the Black Spit" ("The Curse of the Black Spot")

     These do make me laugh!
     You - your mileage might vary.

" - and now for something completely different -"

* Broadly speaking, they were usually late but occasionally early, and just frequently early enough to mean you couldn't chance them being late.
** Almost.
*** The Guardian, of course.