Hurrah! The Meat Was Rotten!

Yes, I Shall Explain
Quickly, for the Pub Quiz is in but 45 minutes!
     I am venturing forth tomorrow evening after work to raise the very devil in the Northern Quarter, so watch out for a large, white-moustachioed man behaving disgracefully.

Like this but with beer

     That means the shopping has to be done tonight, and it only got put away 15 minutes ago, leaving but an hour to - create a slow-cooker beef stew and then do the blog.
      Conrad, ever the faithful domestic, sighed deeply, resigned himself to copying a blog post from last year and went into the kitchen -
     - to discover that Wonder Wifey had binned the beef joint, as the meat looked grey and it sat in a pool of sinister black liquid that looked like zombie blood.*
     Now, Conrad is no stranger to food that most people would consign to the bin without a first thought, let alone a second, but - Wonder Wifey is the opposite, with a stomach composed of spun sugar and tissue paper.  
     Result!
     I think we've fooled the hamsters enough for tonight.  On with the motley!

No I wouldn't eat this.
Until I'd scraped and cooked it

LastFM
Conrad will give this web service a conditional thumbs-up, although the irony bites a bit - it uses the Spotify web Player to play music tracks - after the insults I was slinging at Scrotify last night!
     One of the reasons for the single thumb of approval is that I rediscovered a track I remember from years ago - so long ago that Spotify was good -** "Painkiller" by Turin Brakes.  I played it half a dozen times, feeling ridiculously pleased with myself.

Lost.  Close enough.

Oh No!  Coincidence!  Who Invited You In?
So there I was, strolling down Miller Street on the way into work, humming the "Painkiller" tune - don't worry, there was nobody else in earshot - and - what's this?  A catering truck parked outside that hotel - 

One of these, I kid you not.

     I bet it I examined the food, there'd be food from Turin.
     Sometimes - not always, just occasionally - Conrad wonders if the universe is trying to tell him something ...

First Bus
No day is complete without Conrad battling the evil multi-national "First Bus"*** which is surely the contemporary equivalent of Skynet^.
      Yesterday I determined to go into Royton for honey and cotton buds, two staples that no household should ever run out of.  Thus I waited until a 409 had gone past, knowing that there ought to be another in "10 minutes or better!" as their lying, deceitful, misleading advert states.^^  I popped out shortly before it was due, and waited.
     And waited.
     And waited.

"Travel in style on First Bus!"

     Whilst waiting, four other 409s went up into Rochdale on the other side of the road.
     Then the 409 turned up and wouldn't you know, two came at once.
     To paraphrase a phrase from "Tiger! Tiger!" by that immortal^^^ science fiction writer Albert Bester, "First Bus, I kill you deadly!"

A Little Musical Critique
Back to the sinister and probably demonic Dionne Warwick, and "Do You Know The Way To San Jose?".
     Third verse:

"Do you know the way to San Jose?"

No! No I do not, nor do most people in the world - STOP ASKING!

"They've got a lot of space"

Oh no they haven't - have you seen urban San Jose?

"There'll be a place I can stay"

An Hotel.

"I was born and raised in San Jose"

Yet you don't know where it is?  Who are you trying to kid!

"I'm going to find some peace of mind in San Jose"

No, you're not - you can't even get there!

The space-free urban sprawl of SJ

* Nobody mentioned the zombie blood, I just thought a little embellishment wouldn't hurt.
** Don't worry, last mention of Scrotify tonight
*** Which is an anagram of "Bust Firs".  Significant, eh!
^ You know, Terminators, the Resistance, time-travel, all that.
^^ I think my bitterness shows through here really well.
^^ Not literally, the poor chap's been dead for years.