A Hum-Drum Friday Morning

Can You Bear The Excitement?
Probably, as there wasn't much of it going around either at work or the Mansion.
     Fresh from cranking myself up with a double-espresso at the ground floor cafe in The Electric Goldfish Bowl, as is my wont when the 24 bus actually runs on time and allows me to do so - which is not very often of late with all the wretched passengers getting on it - I trotted over to catch a lift to the seventh floor*.
     Kristian also got in the lift, resplendent in a newly-acquired beard, to also head for the seventh floor.  I complimented him on his beard with a comparison to Popeye when I think I actually meant Bluto, and we moved on from there.

Pluto.  Close enough

     KRIS: Doing anything this weekend?
     CONRAD: Oh, dogsitting Saturday morning, maybe going to the local church fete, drink tea -

Damn it I knew there was something missing!  Excuse me whilst I go brew a pot -

      - are you up to anything?
     KRIS: I fly to Chicago tomorrow.
     CONRAD: Oh.
     Collapse of stout party in a touch of jealousy.  Imagine all the comic shops there are in Chicago, and book shops, and shops that sell both.  There might even be exotic hostelries that retail unusual liquors, and of course, Twinkies.

Whit Bissell
American character actor, notable for his white hair.  Usually seen in authority roles, as a General, Chief Executive Officer or Head Alien Warlord.

Whit in "The Time Tunnel"
Apparently literally in it.

"The Longest War " By Dilip Hiro
As you can see, I have moved on from P G Wodehouse.  I first read this very interesting book many years ago and re-acquired it from Abebooks some months earlier this year, and it has sat in the cupboard ever since.  It is about the Iran-Iraq War that ran from 1980 to 1988, with horrendous human casualties and utter economic disaster befalling both parties.
     Dilip lists a short glossary of Arabic words at the start, and a few are worth picking out: "Bint" - "Daughter"  I've seen this used by British folk, especially the characters in "The Sands of Valour", and recognised by context it meant something womanly.  Now I know precisely.  Then there's "Haram" - religiously forbidden, and, confusingly, "Harram" - which means "Holy".
     Conrad, being incipient World Dictator, did notice that Saddam Hussein's war-planning had big gaps in it.  The large Iranian navy was completely ignored, for one thing.  So too was the Iranian Air Force.  Both these Important Plot Points came back to bite Saddam on the nethers.  I suspect he was in the injurious position of dictators the world over - they get told what they want to hear, rather than what is actually happening.

Don't you dare lie to ME!

Hypervelocity Missile
As you surely know by now, Conrad has an entirely unhealthy fascination with things that go BANG and, generally, the bigger the bang the greater the interest.
     Hence I'm not sure I entirely approve of the HVM.  It did the damage by kinetic energy alone, hitting the target at 3,5000 m.p.h. meaning it might well go SCRUNG but there was little likelihood of any great BANG.

The somewhat cheating HVM

Serendipty
No!  Not sitting cross-legged blissed-out listening to birds chirruping**.That's "Serenity".
I refer, obviously - obviously! - to "An accidental discovery".

    In this case, a teaspoon, which had been hidden in the depths of the tea caddy.  A further scraping of the tea leaves failed to reveal any more hidden treasures.

That's Weird.  I Like It!
If you ever walk past the assembled ranks of cosmetics, toiletries, conditioners, make up and all that miscellania in supermarkets, then you are probably familiar with the name "Aloe Vera"***.  Conrad has seen it as a balm for sunburn, tonsillitis, mange, scabies, trembling leg and Einsten-Roentgen Bridge Burns.  Never has he seen it as a food product, which is why this caught his eye last night:

Aloe Aloe Aloe.  

     I did check the label to make sure it's meant to be on your inside not your outside and was rewarded with the information that it's Korean.  
     I liked it immediately.  It has a melon-crossed-with-bubblegum taste, and is full of AV pulp.  A bit pricey but who knows - it may go on Conrad's List of Likes alongside the Twinky and Persimmon.

"Badlands"
Yes, a bit of an aside.  A non sequiteur^, even, if you want to be a pseud about it.
     I refer to the Terence Malick film, not the Bruce Springsteen song, although Bruce does hit pretty close to the gold.

Conrad not sure how they lit this shot

     Bear in mind that it's about a young couple on a murder spree in the American South, but motiveless killing has never been more wonderfully shot - er - to coin a phrase.

Gristle
There's none in here - Sweet Potato Hash.  That's because I happened to pick up some prime ground beef going cheap, meaning it wasn't full of fat and stringy bits.

A hearty dish indeed

     The problem is - as you can see by the cooker filled to the brim! - I made an awful lot of it.  We've all had two meals each out of it and there's still some left.
     Forcing yourself to eat Sweet Potato Hash.  A dirty job indeed.  Next week - the horror of having to scarf hummus.


* I work there.  I didn't just select it at random.
** What have they to be so cheerful about at crack of dawn, anyway?
*** Notice no terrible puns here.
^ French.  It means "From out of nowhere for no reason" a.k.a. a bit of an aside.