Conrad - Sober For October

Not In Any Organised Way, Mind
As I am far too disorganised, anarchistic and secretive to actually sign up with any particular entity promoting this as a cause.  Now, we all know that Conrad likes his beer, especially at the weekend, so this will be interesting, to say the least.  Tea and lemonade consumption will increase hugely, I can predict that much with near-certainty at least.  What a shame, though, that October has 31 days and not 30.  Or even 29.  I bet there's folding money awaiting the person who can dream up a phrase meaning "sober" and have it meld or rhyme with "February".

Conrad, horrendously drunk

Conrad, incredibly sober

     I'm glad we got that difference cleared up then.  Just so you know.

The Killer In The Kitchen
If you read the blog last night - and reading BOOJUM! is the only way to be spared either mental enslavement or being sent to the Organ Repository when my invasion fleet gets here - then you will recall the arachnid apparition that had turned up in the bathroom, before pulling a Jedi invisibility trick and vanishing.
     Well, it - or a close relative - turned up in the kitchen last night as I was assembling my lunch for today, blatantly out in the open on the wall above the sink.
     Wearily, I contemplated it.  I didn't have my camera and I wasn't (this is at 10:30 p.m.) going to trawl all the way back upstairs for it to provide proof to you lot.  Instead I pointed it out to Jenny.
     'There it is, Jenny!  It's moving!  Go get it!"
     I believe this is what South Canadians call "siccing", except in Jenny's case it was more akin to "sitting".  Thanks for that, Jenny.

This is recycling, not - er - cheating

More Of Sheridan The Screaming Skull
If you have a long memory then you recall that Conrad got this as a present from Darling Daughter, aptly enough as the old Radio Tin lunchbox was on the way out thanks to rust and dints.

Classy, eh?

     Sheridan also serves as a handy portable and reusable cat toilet, at least according to Jenny, as I left the box open last week whilst Bake Off was on.  Returning to the kitchen an hour later, Sheridan appeared to be full of liquid, which meant emptying it out and a hot wash followed by drying - and airing - on the clothesline overnight.  Thanks for that, Jenny.

Bus Posters
Really, Conrad cannot be endlessly creative, he does require SOME external input from time to time, and - honestly?  Those bus posters of late have been dismal, falling down on the job.  "Select", "UEFA", "Lucozade", The Walk", "Barclays -" and there my brain glazed over and refused to continue with the rest of whatever it was.
     MUST TRY HARDER!

Two bores for the price of one

Television Channels
When dogsitting Conrad does tend to have television on, even if only to check out the occasionally bizarre channels present.  My exhaustive analysis proves that the Horror Channel has 0% horror content, at least during daytime.  The CBS "Entertainment Channel" is lying as all they show is "Little House On The Prairie".  There's an awful lot of channels devoted to jewellery - 0% interest from this quarter.  Likewise the craft stuff, although these do generate the odd interesting title that the blog can mock.

Horror, in it's own special way

"Engines Of War" By Christian Wolmar
All you need to do to render a wargamer or military historian comatose is mention "logistics".  This is the movement of people, supplies and equipment in wartime, and indeed one of the dullest, driest and most sleep-inducing chapters in the history of the written word is in the British Official History of the Second World War in the Mediterranean, Volume IV I think.  I literally fell asleep reading about the Eighth Army's supply arrangements to get it across North Africa in pursuit of the routed Rommel.

The lush agricultural pastures of - ah, who am I kidding.  The  desert.

     Thankfully Christian's work is more readable.  His book is about the effect of railways on warfare, from direct tactical influence to strategic planning and movement.  I'm up to the chapter dealing with the British building a railway to help them re-conquer the Sudan, after the locals had the temerity to rise up in rebellion.
     I also had an epiphany.  If logistics and railways are the sinews of war, all we need to ensure World Peace In Weeks is to have First Bus take over all strategic military movement.  Swords into gearsticks in nothing flat!

The Grail way.  Close enough

"SPECTRE"
Yes, Conrad refers to the James Bond spectacular due out shortly, which is a bit of a wonder, as you'd imagine a franchise like this would come out during the summer blockbuster season.
     Then again, perhaps this release date is a canny attempt to avoid competition with other summer blockbusters.
     Anyway, have a gander at this:

You What?

     Despite the picture being Daniel Craig, the blurb is all about an obscure Seventies horror film also called "Spectre", starring Robert Culp and Gig Young.  It's not bad for what it is, yet it does not merit NINE showings on the Tuesday!
     Someone has blundered.

Yes, I Know, Late Tonight

I Do Have A Good Reason
That being that it's Degsy's birthday today and the old beggar hits this side of 50 for the last time.  So, the family were all off to "Dough", one of Manchester's trendy eateries, hip and pretty cool whilst also not being pretentious or unfriendly.  Also, a Gluten Free menu for those amongst us poisoned by wonderful wheat.

The embarassed chap himself

     I had the "Piccante", which is probably Italian for "hot" because it was gaily decorated with red chile slices, not bits of sun-dried tomato, and those were green chiles, not bits of diced pepper.

Piccante peppers, indeed

     Very savoury and delicious.  I didn't have a pudding, had to leave room for dining on handfuls of Twinkies once we got back home.

Coincidence?  Only You Can Judge!
This is a bit worrying, normally these sinister real-world coincidences only crop up when reading Thomas Pynchon and I've finished all his novels.  First of all, I was reading my posts from this date in 2013 and 2014, and there I was, banging on about "Mars", just a day after I'd been banging on about Mars here in 2015.  Here's the old post:

Mars

     Hilariously ambiguous, eh?  The planet?  The confectioners?  Your mother's house?

     No.  The Mars Volta.  Pretty potty prog metal mathcore musicians.  I took the trouble to check out lyrics on their track "A Zed And Two Naughts", especially the chorus.

     "Saint Christopher, Don't go wandering, There's no-one left to save, Because there's no-one at the wheel, Saint Christopher". 

     Musically, it sounds great but makes absolutely no sense.  I suspect this may be true of other musicians I like who do not sing in English. 

     I have to post this to prove my point, not to merely jack up the word count quickly.  Anyway, walking away from my desk at lunchtime immediately after reading the above, what do I espy?

It's enough to make you sniver ...

     I'm pretttty sure the Universe is trying to tell me something.  Why can't it just e-mail like everyone else?

This Won't Jack Up The Word Count - 
Quite the opposite, but it's not often the dawn looks wonderful enough to inspire me to take a photo of it:

Morning has melded.  Not broken, that's much too harsh.

Terror In The Toilet OR The Monster In The Bathroom
As you surely know by now, Conrad makes no bones about an utter craven custard-coloured chicken-livered coward with a backbone made of stewed spaghetti soaked in slime.
     Not brave.  However, my shrieking girlish fear of spiders has actually diminished to the point that I let this thing live last night -

No wall feature to give scale, so I got the door jamb in

 - instead of pounding it into the wall under my size 11 shoe.
      A bit rash, perhaps, as I heard a faint noise whilst washing my hands and when I turned back the octopus-wearing-a-fur-coat had vanished.  This is a cause for concern as it is easily capable of carrying off small animals and babies.
     I'll get back to you on this ...

"Waspider!"
Following on from the arachnid theme, I vaguely remember that one of the characters from "Spaced" has a fear that wasps and spiders will interbreed and produce this deadly hybrid, and also that there's an airborne epidemic of them in an episode of "Sliders", but can I find a picture of them?

No, but this is close enough

Next!

Fanfiction
This is a website that features - fiction written by fans.  "Fans of what, Conrad, fans of what?" you ask repeatedly*.  Any and every film, television programme and comic book character imaginable.  There are hundreds of different titles, from "ALF" to "Zero X" and all stations in-between.
     The relevance to your humble scribe is that he posted a tranche of stories there himself, years back.  A connected series about the UK branch of UNIT, and several novel-length stories about the Doctor.  I've just had a very kind review published of the story that people seem to like the most, "The Sea of Sand".
     Now, I took my writing very seriously, although hopefully not pompously so.  There was to be NO HINT OF ROMANCE between Doctor and female assistants.  The story had to be serious.  It couldn't feature contemporary villains in the 2005 series.  It had to be long, at least 50,000 words.  No sex, and no swearing.
     TSOS is set in early 1941, during the war in North Africa when it was only between the British and the Italians.  Fourth Doctor and Sarah, and alien intruders from the distant past who are resurrected in the here-and-now...

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2824071/1/The-Sea-of-Sand

The link, gentle reader, should you feel the urge to have a look.
     Oh, a word of warning.  BOOJUM! is light, frothy, irrelevant nonsense.  "The Sea of Sand" isn't.


* And yes, it does jack up the word count a little

It's Doctor Who, And Davros, Two

NO! I Have Not Mis-spelled It
In Saturday's second part of the new season, we see Davros as a small child, and as the raddled old one-eyed cyborg he ends up as.  Therefore, "Two" is perfectly appropriate.  Don't forget, Conrad is as ardent a grammar and spelling tyrant as Davros ever was in terms of power and politics.
     Incidentally, "Davros" is quite a common male forename in Armenia.
     BOOJUM! - educating you one bite-sized piece at a time.

That chap on the right is called Davros*.

"NASA To Make A Major Announcement About Mars"
This teaser appeared on the BBC website yesterday with no indication about what was going to be announced.
     Naturally, Conrad's imagination, a combination of Small Child and Gleeful Anarchist, promptly called to mind what fantastic flights of fantasy might actually be real?

Martian Rock Snakes?

     Please note this is Mike Noble artwork from the pages of "TV21".

Pyramids?  

     Please note this is from the Doctor Who story "Pyramids of Mars".  Ta very much.

Evil Transformers?

     Answer: none of the above.
     No, we got a worthy and noble and scientific (and dull) story about water on Mars.
     Well, DUH!  What the heck do you think all the canals are filled with?

"You've been HAD" - More Of The Doctor
Hmmm.  I seem to see a theme emerging here.  Not planned or anything, I assure you, just a series of coincidental happenings.  So, what happened on Saturday?

We had this cliff-hanger - is he going to shoot Young Davros?

     As pretty much predicted, Missy and Clara are both hale and hearty, having been teleported, not disintegrated.  They are outside the Dalek city, however, whilst the Doctor is still inside, outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1.  So, good odds!
     Davros claims to be dying, and of course the silly sentimental Doctor falls for the act, as he is guaranteed to do so - it's in his genes to be gullible about people on their deathbed deathchair, which he cruelly steals.  He's not heartless, he leaves Davros an ordinary chair, which is quite the rara avis on Skaro, and you'd think Davros would be more appreciative.  Of course he's not, the ingrate, and he sends all his evil Dalek minions to finish off our intrepid travellers -

A face only his mother could love, eh?

     - except Missy has been poking around in the drains, and activates a kind of sentient sewage that attacks the Daleks and drowns them in ordure.  Or old Dalek, they seem to be the same thing.
     What did I say about HADS last week?  Because, just as Missy and Clara are not dead, so the TARDIS is not destroyed.  The old girl is practically alive and takes a remarkably dim view of people trying to destroy her, so the "Hostile Action Displacement System" comes into operation to get her out of harm's way.  Only for her to appear in the nick of time and whisk our heroes off to a hearty supper with lashings of ginger beer.
     What else to say?  The door designs of Dalekdom echoes those seen in 1963, nice reference there Mr Moffat, as is that old Dalek phrase-cum-cliche "MY VISION IS IMPAIRED!" that was uttered several times.
     I also notice that Missy, the female iteration of the Master, is played by Michelle Gomez**, a Spanish surname, as the Master was played by Roger Delgado ...

Missy.  Daft but dangerous

TOO MANY WORDS!  MORE PIC-ATURES!

Okay, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Actually let's not, let's praise rather lower things instead.  Conrad, as you already know, has a fearfully sweet tooth and if he guzzled the way he would like to, he'd be 6'1" and 34 stone.

Happiness in a box and tub

     These are two of his current favourites, as you can never have too much Sodium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate in your life (that's the Twinkies).  Surprisingly enough, "Fluff" has no artificial ingredients, though it looks exactly like the Stuff in "The Stuff"***.

Perfectly harmless, honest!

Nutrition And Diet The BOOJUM! Way
That is to say, use this in the real world AT YOUR PERIL!  Don't forget that Conrad's superpower is being able to eat anything.  Your best bet is to recommend these to a friend and see if they live past the weekend^. Okay, what's on the menu?

THE MENU

Chinchilla: needs considerable preparation, renders but little meat.  Also, too cute to shoot.  You'd need at least a dozen to make a single kebab.
Drusilla: Wife of Caligula.  NO!  Cannibalism is a bad thing. Do not.
Godzilla: Capable of feeding many, indeed, but NO! due to radioactive flesh.  Also liable to be rather hard to take down unless using pocket nukes, in which case NO! NO!
Sarsparilla: Strange South Canadian brew.  Only drink if desperate. Or if mixed with gin.
Polyfilla: NO! For display purposes only.  Unless desperate, in which case wait until set.
Quesadilla: Unequivocal Yes!
Gorilla:  NO! And again NO! Not raw, not whole, not served as a Gorilla Quesadilla.  NO!
Moxilla: Yes, but has very little calorific value.  Good for diets.

Oh dear, well over the word limit already and nowhere near done.  I hope you have as much fun reading this as I had writing it.


* Er - perhaps.
** Scottish, as you can tell by her accent.
*** Don't worry, Conrad's alien constitution renders him immune.
^ Not a close friend, obviously!