PINEAPPLE TIN!

Ahem.  Let Me Explain
If you recall, a few days ago I was demonstrating how to batter a recalcitrant plastic bottle into the bottle-carrier part of "Sheridan the Screaming Skull", more familiarly known as my lunch bag.  This is one of Conrad's stock responses to any inanimate object that doesn't do as it ought to - I will quite happily kick my large ruckbag up and down the aisle until it agrees, under duress, to remain upright.  If the clothes box won't close properly, why, a good stomping underfoot will make it comply.  If the pen fails to work, then thrashing it against the desktop will teach it a lesson!

     I've posted about this before, so let me merely copy in part of the blog post entitled "Jerome K. Jerome And Why The Machines Are Out To Get Us":

Three Men In A Boat

    Before all you dirty-minded illiterates start a-snickering, this is a splendid novel by JKJ, only partly eclipsed by "Three Men on the Bummel" - stop snickering at the back there!

     Anyway, it includes a wonderful account of what I would like to dub "The Insolence of the Inanimate".  The three heroes have brought along a tin of pineapple chunks on their boat trip, but have forgotten a tin-opener, and try other improvised means to open it.  Some of these are so dangerous they are lucky to remain un-maimed.  Eventually they resort to battering the tin with a rock, until they batter it into a shape that frightens them so much, they pitch it into the river.

     That shape, dear reader "horribly resembled a grin".

     Originally I couldn't find an illustration, but thanks to my much wider Google-fu, here you go:

Chuckles.

     There you go.  Pineapple Tin explicated.

Breakfast
After a whole lot of text, a picture would come as a bit of a break, non?

Poached eggs, clotted cream and raspberry ice cream and TEA!

     This is the mysterious tin of tea discovered at the back of the cupboards weeks ago, which pretty definitely isn't English Breakfast.  Perhaps Assam?  Indian Breakfast Tea, then, which is as good as the other.

You What?
Ah, some things in this life remain constants - the charge of an electron, water remaining wet and - the Twits posting drivel as "Suggested Post".  The latest example:

     There's two things you should never do, straight away.  1)  Do NOT under any circumstances undo your top shirt button, as this immediately makes you look scruffy and untidy, also it tends to displace your tie and that also lends an air of seedy disreputability to your.  Oh, and 2) Taping up your mouth with red sellotape is also a no-no.

"Poirot - The Affair at the Victory Ball"
Well, Conrad immediately knew once he saw that person in the Harlequin costume, that Lord Cronshaw had actually been murdered a considerable time previously, and the guilty party in the costume had set it up so that they had an apparent cast-iron alibi - appearing to be elsewhere when the murder is discovered.
     I was right, of course.  Now, I don't know if this is Conrad being perspicacious, or he's seen so many episodes of Poirot that he now knows the formula and Agatha had hammered this one out whilst going at the sherry a bit much.  I hope the latter.  If I work it out straight away where's the challenge?  This is like "Jonathan Creek", where <Cont. Page 94>

Seen as today.  No set dressing required!

     On the issue of location and sets, it tickled me a delicate shade of taupe to see the BBC building being used for the story, especially as it was produced by ITV.  For those not blessed enough to reside in the UK and understand this instanter, it's as if Mosfilm set up and did their location shooting for "The Omsk Avenger" in the White House.

Some Russian super-heroes.
I just knew there was going to be a bear in there.

The Television Guide And Instrumental Dance Titles
 As ever when I trawl the television channels and titles, I keep an eye open for potential winners as a song title for if when I establish that sinister electronic band previously threatened.
     We had two winners today:  "Timberpro Garden Multitool", which might be played with distinction by M83, as they're French and could get away with it without being sued.
     The other one sounds a bit risque, at least to those of you out there with your mind in the gutters: "Vibrapower Disc 2: Pick of the Day".  Obviously these are electronic versions of classic vibraphone tunes, part of a music sub-culture that doesn't often see the light of day, if at all.

The very vonderful vibraphone

And we've hit the word limit already.  Good lord, I have enough for 4 more blog posts!