It's Kurt From Nirvana - With a Banana!

Well, It Might Be -
 - it depends on what I can scare up on Google.
     I take it you do know who Kurt Cobain was?  Just in case -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sqL8dVIG2k

     - a Youtube link.  Yes it's a live version but the studio ones all come with a stupid advert before them, so they can get stuffed.
     You should also be familiar with the banana, but again, just in case -

Bananas.  Lots of 'em.

     Good grief!  Look at this -

Conrad, for once, is flabbergasted.

     And this!

More gasted than flabber, this time.

     Well, that will teach your elderly and cynical scribe to dream up nonsense and find it true.  What next?  Tom Hanks driving tanks?  Telly Savalas wielding a bolas? Dave Grohl eating coal?*

Everyone Can Take A Little Coincidence -
 - but at times Conrad would like it to back off a bit.
     Coincidence The First
     This one actually dates from yesterday, when Peter sat next to your aging and incompetent buffoonish scribe, gently pointing him in the direction of "barely adequate".
     I had divulged my keen interest/creepy fascination/ghoulish relish in military history and mentioned the longhand index that I'm typing up for the 51st Highland Division in the First Unpleasantness.
     Peter mentioned that his history teacher at Birkenhead College had been Graham Maddocks, a name novel to me, who had claimed to be the Kenny Dalgleish of First Unpleasantness history.
     I checked in Abebooks, and what do you know -

He co-wrote this and I've got it

     However, he wasn't very prolific.  I recognised another title:

Another co-authorship

     Interesting subject, may get it in future.
     Kenny Dalgleish?  No, rather a solid midfield player.
     Coincidence The Second
     Last night I had quite a wait for the 24 bus, so I popped into the Oxfam bookshop and bought "One Bullet Away" by Nathaniel Fick.  A classics graduate of Dartmouth University in America, he volunteered to become a Marine Corps officer.  Typically the bit Conrad enjoyed the most is the cruel, harsh, unrelenting training that candidates like this undergo.
     The narrative is now up to his unit's deployment to Afganistan, and a name he mentioned there caused me to wrinkle an eyebrow**: Rudy Reyes.
     "Isn't he in "Generation Kill"?' I wondered.
     He is indeed.

He played himself in the TV series

And who's this?

      "Generation Kill" is set during the Second Gulf Unpleasantness, so I've not arrived at that point in "One Bullet Away" so it will be interesting to compare the two***.

     Coincidence The Third
     I'm afraid I'll have to wheel in "Gravity's Rainbow" again.  Just before putting it away this morning I read Tom writing about a "Lammergeier", which rather stopped me in my tracks.
     The reason is a rather long one, but bear with me.
     One of the first things that Conrad does on booting up his PC is to log onto BOOJUM!'s Overview function, so he can track blog traffic.  To get to BOOJUM! he first searches for the site via Google, inputting the search terms "BOOJUM!" and "Voles".  Then he scrolls down the blog page thus opened page to the Profile, and what's opposite the Profile picture?  This:

A Lammergeyer

     Kinda makes you think, eh?
     Not only that, beneath the article about the Lammergeyer is another post about another coincidence, but I don't dare post it for fear of imploding the space-time continuum and destroying all matter in the universe.

Shakeshaft
My merciless and endless revenge upon the Barm of Avon continues.  As you know by now, Conrad hates poetry.  He hates Shakespeare.  He can only thank the mercy of Fate that he never had to study Shakespeare's poems, or he would not be here now.
     Today we have a double-barrelled blast at "MacBeth", so take it away!

"By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes."

Come on Bill, this is rather dumb.

Come up with a proper alarum^!

"By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes."

Yes it does, and it is - I!

I shall poke you in the eye.

A bamboo skewer in my hand -

It'll make you cry.  Ain't that grand!^^

     Wait a minute, another verse version just arrived:

"By the pricking of my thumbs

Something wicked this way comes."

"Pricks", Bill, are not safe for work

You euphemistic cringing berk.

Change it to "tingling" instead

Or Conrad'll smite you on the head

Well I think that's all old Bill can take tonight.  Also, we've hit 800 words.


* Actually no, that would be Art, once we let him out of the septic sump again.
** I like to do this now and again, it makes people mistake me for someone thinking.
*** For me!  For some of you this would be breaching the laws of ethics and warfare.
^ This is a proper word.
^^ That's me being wicked, see?