Napoo!

No, It Isn't, Cleanse Your Dirty Minds!

I'm putting this in to fool the hamsters
(It's a long story)

This, gentle reader, is actually a slang phrase from the First Unpleasantness, adapted by that master linguist* Tommy Atkins from the French phrase "Il n'y en a plus" - "There is no more".  Anything that was rubbish was, in Mr Atkin's jaundiced eye, "Napoo".  Kitchen fatigues?  Napoo.  Carrying party?  Napoo.  Being shelled with mustard gas?  Napoo Napoo, indeedly-do.

Also -

     It was also the title of Shambeko Say Wah! Heat - they used to change names a lot - 's first album, which I've just remembered.

Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting -
From the chorus of "The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling", a popular ditty as sung by Tommy Atkins in the First Unpleasantness.  Why is this appropriate?  Well, there I am reading "MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service" and Gordon* is going on about the CIA sending thousands of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahedeen, the better to render life miserable for Russian aircrew in the Eighties.
     Cut to this morning on the bus, reading "Bleeding Edge" and lo!  What important scenario comes across but a sinister party on the Deseret Hotel roof, toting a Stinger; and then Tom*** goes on to mention about the CIA sending thousands of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahedeen, the better to render life miserable for Russian aircrew in the Eighties ...
     Personally I blame Tom, his fiction has a way of DON'T CREEP UP ON ME LIKE THAT!

A Stinger

     NO!  Get it right, Art, or I'll put you in the sewage sump.

Er -

<desperate shriek cut short by a sinister splash>

Garlic Scallions
I bet these are new to you and your stomach, hmmm?  You'll only get them if you have a full garlic plant including the stem.
     Why, I wonder who has such items?

Garlic bulb and stem behind the fake daisies

     The Mansion!  Unfortunately I can't really illustrate from real life as I've eaten the real thing, and it would be rather a waste cutting up a stem just to show you what's what.
     Hang on, let me haul Art out of the underground cistern and put him to use -

Voila

     The real thing has a definite garlic taste, yet nowhere near as strong as the bulb, making it quite palatable on a burger, which I cannot show you either, since I ate it^.

"Freebooters"
Again I apologise for having this word come take station in my mind for no very obvious reason.  I did post a UNIT UK story on fanfiction years ago with the title "Looters, Freebooters and Dinosaur Shooters", which is the only reason I might have -
     Anyway, what does it mean?  The mighty Wiki describes a freebooter as "A pirate or adventurer", and where do you think it comes from?  Not the usual suspects, Latin or Greek, no, this is from the Dutch.
     "Vrij" = "Free" and "Buit" = "Booty".  Meaning "I'm going to rob you blind and if you give me any trouble I'll gut your gizzard with me cutlass."  Possibly adding "Matey" to soften it a bit, the Dutch being noted for politeness.

"They're not up to much, but they were -"

     okay, talk amongst yourselves, I've got to go check on the cake -

On This Day -
Two years ago, I was banging on about extra-solar planets, and the discovery of three super-earths in the Gliese system 22 light years away:

- there could be another Rob, albeit one who massed at least 250 kilograms and who was 16 feet tall, typing out a blog entry about a puny midget living on a planet 22 light years away 

What I mean is  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23032467

Summarised (if you fear the link will instead send you to a phishing porn'n'meds-flogging-spamsite) three new super-earths have been discovered in orbit around Gliese 667C, 22 light years away  

Now, the youth of today - yes, that means you - are all very blasé about extra-solar planets.  What they don't realise is that before 1995 we - all humanity yes including the delusional "I was kidnapped by space aliens" clan - did not know if our own Solar System was unique.  Well it ain't!  There are bloody hundreds of extra-solar planets out there: great big gas giants that are easy to detect, and planets only a few times larger than Earth, which are far harder to detect.  In my lifetime I predict we will have orbiting telescopes a quantum level beyond Hubble that can image the atmospheres of these super-earths.  And some of these planet's atmospheres will contain water.  And be in the "Goldilocks Zone".  And may thus harbour life -

And, being human, we will probably decide to go and conquer them (see my earlier blog about sunshine and conquest)

Then again, maybe not.  By that time we will of course have a One World Government run by the sole world superpower, India, who will adhere to Ghandi-esque principles of non-intervention.  And they'll be too busy running the OWG colony on Mars, anyway

Now, this is a bit of a coincidence with the recent discovery of three "Hot Mars" planets, that is, planets much smaller than the ones above, an indication of how far the technology and detection routines have come in the space of two years.
     Not sure about the One World Government run by India, but hey!  If it means hugely-subsidised curries for all, who's to complain!

Looking at the length of that older post, I don't know how long I can keep digging up past posts.  Eventually Conrad will get a bit verbose, and it won't be feasible to add them in, which is a shame as it's an effortless way to 1) pad the blog and 2) show that I've always been peculiar and deviant odd and disturbing hilarious and witty.

And at 1,000 words I shall take my bow for tonight.


* Only in his dreams
** Corera, the author, not someone I dreamed up at random.
*** Pynchon, the author, not someone I dreamed up at random.
^ I'm not sorry, not one bit.