Hark Ye! That Tuneful Noise -

 - Is Conrad Gloating And Trumpeting
A feat that most people would find difficult.  Let me rephrase that - most humans would find difficult.
     "Yes yes yes," I hear you reply.  "We know all about you being an alien-spy-in-human-disguise, that's old hat by now, what is this about trumpets and goating?"
     "GLoating", please!  We need include no more animals on the roster, BOOJUM! has quite enough already, although Clarissa the Cannibal Combat Chicken did eat Frank the Ferociusly Farting Frog last week.  
     Where was I?  Oh, yes, gloating.  Hopefully by the end of today we will have hit the 14,000 hits mark, viz:

Just 3 hits away!

      I think the site is up to about a thousand hits per month, which is not bad comparing the beginning when three hits a day was good going.
     Of course, success in any major way would bring all sorts of trouble down on Conrad's head.  Currently he can libel anyone he feels like, and get away with it: you can bet First Bus and The Metro would have their lickspittle lawyers queuing up on the Mansion doorstep to hit me with unjunctions if they were aware that BOOJUM! existed ...

My Fountain Pen
There is no excuse for not knowing what one of these is, I've mentioned them often enough.  Anyway, when I came to refill my Daily Utility pen, it wouldn't acquire any ink.  
     My first thought was that I'd let it dry out for too long and the ink had clogged.  So, an overnight soak for DU:

The morning after

     When eventually dried off, it still wouldn't acquire more than a fraction of the normal amount - so I suppose there is an air gap and I'll need a new barrel.
     The fountain pen - worth fussing about.

The Fatal Feline Fountain-pen* Fascination
Jenny, the cow, decided that she simply had to play with my disassembled DU pen.  She wouldn't leave it alone, thus:

Cat versus pen barrel: a new Olympic sport beckons

"Found it!"

"Why is The Owner not impressed with my pen-fu?"

      Moving it out of sight wasn't good enough, she simply tracked it down to fiddle with it again, so eventually I had to put a book on top of it.  This is quite beside her sitting on the book I was reading and - crime of crimes - licking my bowl of ice cream!
     Yes, Jenny, you are outside for a reason and you're not coming back inside until you admit your guilt.

It's That Smoothie Again
The mint, lime, apple and cucumber one.  This time I blended it into submission - last time there were some chunks of cucumber in there - 

Not today (those are ice cubes)

      The spearmint really gives it flavour and it isn't too sweet.  I wonder - should I try making a Polo smoothie again, but including fresh spearmint?

 N.C.I.S.
"Popcorn for the eyes" is how I described this series, which has been going for years and years, so some of you out there are watching it, too.  Today it departed from the mould a little - Jethro Briggs, Mark Harmon's character, normally displays the raw emotions of a bowl of cold porridge, but today he got to emote and swore.  And the bad guy won and blew up - well I won't spoil it for you.

Told you.  Stanislavsky Method.  Eats only cold porridge.

     The screenwriters did, however, manage to have one Giant Exposition Scene where all sorts of logical leaps are made with rapid dialogue and inferences made by characters in swift succession - that your humble scribe simply couldn't follow.  Who?  What? In the study with the candlestick?


"San Andreas"
Unusually Conrad was watching television today, which he hardly ever does, and what came on but a short trailer for "San Andreas", referring to the San Andreas earthquake fault line.

"It's nobody's fault but mine!"

     For those amongst our audience who don't know what an earthquake is, it's an opportunity for studio CGI whizkids to show how good they are.  This film promises to be along the middle third of "2012".
     I think the term I'm looking for is "Disasterporn".

INSERT BIG EMPTY SPECTACLE HERE

More Of Pens, And NASA
Stop me if you've heard this one before: during the Apollo space programme of the Sixties, NASA spent tens of thousands of dollars developing a pen that would work in weightlessness (or what we now call micro-gravity) for use by the astronauts.
     The Russians used a pencil.
     Ha ha  How stupid of NASA!  How wise the Russians!
     URBAN LEGEND!
     The pen was created by a private company and had 0% to do with NASA.
     Using a pencil in a space-capsule, where to be effective you need to sharpen it, would lead to the possible loss of graphite and wood splinters, all very conducive to creating electrical short-circuits and fires.

Russian K2 Proton Lander
(Just to be different**)

Right!  We have hit the 60 minute mark and I still haven't mentioned or reviewed "Avengers: Age of Ultron" so I may be forced - FORCED! - to blog again later.

Chin chin!

* Yes, I KNOW it shouldn't be hyphenated, but this way it fits the "F" initial letter format.
** Obviously a computer GIF, but you can see one in the film "Apollo 18"