Kreplach!

I Know, I Know -
 - I apologise for having strange words pop up in my head, this one came along late this afternoon as I was tidying my desk at work.  What is it?
     That, I'm not sure about, and I've not had a chance to Google about it yet.  Is it a Russian swear word?  A Klingon swear word?  Polish pancakes? Croatian balsa-wood cement?
     Enough witless speculation*!
     "Kreplach": from Jewish cookery, are small dumplings filled with meat, usually served in a soup.  Wiki declares them similar to Polish uszka, so my original guess wasn't so far out, for all that.

Also, a deadly insult in Klingon

     Well, now we know, and the world is a better place now that we are all better educated.

Oh Drinks Of Bygone Days
Like many another day, Conrad pondered deeply at the bus stop.  "Colt 45?" emerged from the torrid depths of his subconscious.  Not the six-shot revolver weapon, I hasten to assure you, but the drink.  "Is it still around?"
     Well, yes, it is.  Not only that, it's one of the top 3 beers in the United States.  Oh well, it still never appeared on Conrad's radar, which is surely far more relevant.

Yeah, none of your pretend or artificial men allowed!

     "Arctic Lite?" came next.  This was a thing back in the Seventies, a drink I hasten to assure, you, not a variety of anti-freeze.  Lager, quite probably, long gone indeed and not missed a bit.  As I recall the adverts featured stuff exploding and I recall a friend mentioning nobody would drink it for fear of death by glass laceration.

Why Arctic?
Why not, everybody else seems to be using polar bears

     Then, as the bus had still not arrived - and given the lack of school traffic and fewer passengers it takes rare skill for the driver to get to Manchester late** - I pondered even more.  What was that drink with the cartoon polar bear?  "Fresca?"  I remembered the tagline: "It's frothy, man!"

Frothy, yes.
Also probably borderline toxic

     Actually it was "Cresta", which survived until 2007.  Not only was it frothy, it was disgustingly frothy, far more than any other soft drink then and since.  Conrad suspects an hideous industrial process of dubious Health and Safety provenance, which is why it's not on the shelves any more.
     Also, why a polar bear?  There isn't any great connection between a big white bear and carbonated swill, is there?  No, I thought not.

SEE!  I told you, they're all at it!

Fantastic Four
Oh my oh my oh my! This film is a trainwreck in action, and my bitter and mordant mind is echoing with gleeful cries of "Schadenfreude! Schadenfreude!***"
     I did mention that, when I looked at IMDB, it's rating was 4.9.  When I went back a couple of days later, it had fallen to 4.4. 
     This is not good.  It's going from "Meh" to "Not Very Good".
     Today, I checked out the IMDB rating and it's now down to 4.0.
     This is even worse - from "Not Very Good" to "Poor".   We are looking at a film that cost $120 million to make, with another $80 million in promotion, marketing and distribution, and it doesn't look like it's going to break even, let alone turn a profit.

"Look! It's the Fantastic Four!
Oh no, wait a minute - "

     It is, in fact, so bad that it makes the rather lacklustre Fantastic Four films of 2005 and 2007 look good by comparison, with IMDB ratings of 5.7 and 5.6 respectively, and box office of $330 million and $289 million.
     I wonder what the rating will be by the weekend?  (That rustling noise is me rubbing my hands).
     "There is a sequel for 2017" advised a footnote on IMDB.  No there isn't, not on these figures!

"Thank you so much for making us look so much better!"

You What?
Oh my lord those Facebook Foobs have been trying my patience.  Look at this:


"Looking to grow your app?"
NO!

     What scurrilous piffle are these pestilential pratwinkles trying to purvey?

     "Use Facebook mobile apps to help drive installs and engage users."  WHAT?

     I've no idea what that means and have NO interest in finding out.

     Begone, Foobs!

 

 



 Supervillains With Their Pants Down
Today, sticking with the pantheon of Batman villains, we look at one of the weaker supervillains, far below the evil criminal mastermind King Tut, but quite a lot better than Calendar Man: The Riddler.

The awesome evil power of GREEN!
And surgical gloves.

     He is, to be frank, a bit rubbish, when you get down to it.  He doesn't even have sharp pointy things like Catwoman's talons or the Penguin's umbrella.  So, what would his daily travail entail?
     a) Encumberment of Stupid.  You can imagine idiot members of the public asking:"Why all those question marks?"  "Are you a fan of Question Mark and the Mysterians?" "If you're the question then who is the answer?" "Are you promoting BBC One's flagship topical political forum "Question Time?"

Subtly underplayed

     It's only a matter of how quickly he'd snap, not when ...
     b)  Comparison.  He is a bit of a Joker-lite, really, which would rapidly begin to pall when pointed out to him by critical members of the public.  Again, not when but how soon ...
     c) The Police.  Any talk of "riddling people" is liable to be dangerously misunderstood, and they might well feel it better to do a bit of pre-emptive riddling themselves except with machine guns not excruciatingly bad puns.

They were real.

* That comes later
** It wouldn't be a BOOJUM! post without a bit of critique about First Bus, would it?
*** German for enjoying other's misfortune