Spock, I'm Calling You A Lyre!

Well, It's True!
Actually I might be jumping the gun a bit here, as the item in issue might be a peculiar Vulcan combination of lyre-and-zither, except it's quite hard to base puns around "zither", and near impossible for "lyre-and-zither".
     I can almost see your frowns of puzzlement, especially if you've compassionately read the blog out to your aged parent lying on their sickbed after drinking too much Jeyes Household Cleaning Fluid*.  Let me explain:

Do you wind it up or blow into it?

     In other late breaking news, I think the "Star Trek" inspired blog titles will finish by the end of this week, as it's getting harder to come up with them, and I've sucked pretty much all the creative marrow out of them that it's possible to get.

"Star Trek: First Contact"
Finished watching this again last night for the first time in ages, and still enjoyed it.  It rates a whopping 7.6 over at IMDB, and for the suits amongst you, it made $150 million worldwide, so no financial slouch either.
     However - and you knew this was coming, didn't you? - there did rather seem to be a weeny little plot hole that Conrad's hair-splitting gene detected pretty much straight away.
     "What is it, mighty Conrad?" I can hear you s - "Mighty"?  That's new.  Not unwelcome, mind  -  "Tell us!  Tell us!"
     Well, the Borg - one of the Biggest Baddest of the Big Bads in the Star Trek universe, who make the Klingons and Romulans look like kindly elderly boy scouts - are able to adapt to phaser fire, meaning you get between ten to twelve shots.  You can then remodulate your phaser, but you only then get another one or two shots.
     We see Picard annihilate a couple of Borg with a Thompson M1928 100-round drum magazine sub-machine gun, whilst Worf lops another Borg into bits with a handy Klingon bladed weapon.

Oh, apparently with a Cutts Compensator, too

     Let me recapitulate that - a tommy-gun and a knife.  Neither of which is bothered about force-field modulation or high-energy harmonics, so why aren't the Enterprise crew busy creating both with the replicators?  Or pikes, or crossbows, or bows and arrows, or - well, no, probably not a claymore, a bit big for swinging around in corridors and crawlways -

No, he's not a small man, it's an extremely large sword

     HMMM?!
     Of course, I may be overthinking this a bit ...

What's In A Name
Another hilarious name as seen on the television guide, under the "Create and Craft" channel - "Heartfelt Creations One Day Wonder".  Definitely not a Chemical Brothers track, nor yet Simian Mobile Disco.  More likely to be <thinks hard about maintaining the Star Trek theme> - Spock's Beard!

NO!  Art, you carbonaceous-consuming cretin -

     There will now be a short pause as I get the Industrial Current Tazer and 

 ah, that's better!

"The Walk" - A BOOJUM! Film Review
As seen on a bus poster.  With the intricate and detailed BOOJUM! film review guidelines before us (i.e. 1) take everything literally 2) don't bother researching anything), let us kick off.
     Possibly the most boring film ever made.  A Walk?  Walking is - what, entertaining?  Diverting?  Something people gasp in wonder at?  What's next?  "The Hobble" - an Asylum mockbuster rip off of "The Hobbit"?  "The Limp", "The Stroll", "The Energetic Sprint"?
     Pah!  Away with you and your feet!

A wok.  Close enough

BOOJUM! - Big In Sweden
Yes indeedy Ally Sheedy.  I have no idea why, as the blog rarely mentions Sweden.  In fact I don't know if we've ever mentioned Sweden.  Swedes, yes, but the root vegetable rather than residents of Stockholm.
     Now I know you're all hard-bitten realists who don't believe anything unless there's proof, so -

Sweden - 34 hits in this week

     I can only ponder on what good taste the Swedes have, unless the viewers are judicial members collecting evidence for a prosecution against the Code of Good Taste.

O!  I'm So Happy!
I wasn't to begin with this morning, especially not after I'd posted on Facebook about how it wasn't raining, only to step out beyond the Mansion's mobile minefields**and for a nasty thin drizzle to come slouching out of the skies***.
     Then, too, Conrad is that most pathetic of things, a man with a minor illness.  If I had Galloping Fascist Necronmiconry^, or Exploding Brain Fever, or Gut-shredder Bile Boils, why then I'd breeze about as if 'twere naught but a common cold.
     However, since I do have the common cold I am suffering as only a man with a minor illness can.  This is my pick-me-up of choice:

     Green ginger wine, hot water, honey and chunks of lemon.  It's actually rather nice, if your taste runs to cloyingly sweet things, which mine does.
     The thing that amused me today at work was finding the link to "5 MOST DANGEROUS CHEMICALS IN THE WORLD!" again, because, as you surely know by now, Conrad has a strong streak of the anarchist in him, as well as - a dangerous combination - a small boy's glee in Things Exploding.
     Tom, sitting opposite your humble scribe, politely pretended not to notice the excited giggling coming from yours truly as he read on.  We only have time to look at one compound, so let it be - 

     Azidoazide azide!

     This stuff explodes if you shine light on it.  It exploded so frequently with no provocation at all whilst being measured in the lab that the measurements ended up with a fair bit of guesswork thrown in.   Rather than have me blather about it, allow me to link you to the hilarious website "Things I Won't Work With" about this compound -

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/01/09/things_i_wont_work_with_azidoazide_azides_more_or_less

You don't need to know a thing about chemistry to be highly entertained by Derek's blog.

The aftermath of an azide explosion

     That chilling picture is from a University laboratory, where they know what they're doing.  And still got it wrong.
     It does make Conrad wonder about the people who invented/discovered this stuff.  What did they do, sit around complaining that there weren't enough really really dangerous chemicals out there, and decide By Golly", we'll go ahead and make some ourselves?

Ooops.  Over 1,000 words.  Time to publish.

* A real phenomenon, I'm afraid to say  
** Quite tricky to negotiate
*** Grey skies.
^ Yes, yes, well spotted, the shade of HP Lovecraft salutes you.