A Modicum Of Mendacity

Or, "Fibbing A Bit"
Those of you familiar with BOOJUM! already - which should be ALL of you if for no other reason than self-preservation - know that Conrad is fond of words and won't use one when he can use five, preferably ten, including at least one that's either derived from Latin or very obscure.
     Hence the title for today, which ought to also come with an apology since "modicum" is not exactly in common usage.  You get the idea from context - a small amount, a careful measurement of product, being frugal with resources.  Where does it come from?
     That zombie* undead language, Latin, of course.  From "Modus", meaning "to measure", then to "modica" for "measurement" and then Modicum.

They're NOT zombies, as the script takes pains to point out.  It's just their higher brain functions are - er - gone.

     I should also point out that "Mendacity" means "Lying", which is a frequent occurrence here on the blog and I admit it freely.
     There you go, translation service provided gratis.  Conrad has a minor quibble with many of the military history biographies he reads about the First Unpleasantness on the issue of translation.  Since many were written ninety years ago by chaps who'd been to public schools, they often quote Latin, and a few of the most pretentious quote Greek, and O My!  How rarely do they - or the Editor, if he was doing his job - bother to translate.  I've had to go to Anna for translating Greek, which is dangerous, she being a twinkly Twilight vampire and all.

Can't find a picture of Anna so here's some Battenberg cake instead.

Pub Quiz
We won again, and by a convincing margin.  As soon as the quizmaster pronounced "What was the name for the Nazi -" both my partner's eyes swung to bear on me and my name was spoken.  " - plan to invade England in 1940?"
     "Operation Sealion", of course, or "Unternehmen Seelowe" if you want it in German.
     There was another me-appropriate question later on: "In which war was the Gatling Gun first used?"
     American Civil War of course!  Bring 'em on?

Gun de la Gatling

     "What is apiphobia?"
     Er - er - er -  "Fear of bees" explained Rosie, having done Latin at school, back in the days when you needed a Latin qualification to get into University.
     There's a funny story about the Gatling Gun.  No, really! If you've seen it then you'll know it's cranked by hand.  Back in the Fifties some bright spark with all Conrad's fascination for mucking about and Things Exploding decided to see what happened if, rather than laboriously cranking the gun by hand, you used an electric motor instead. The subsequent rate of fire was astronomical.
     Meet Gatling's great-great grandson, the Vulcan gun.  So called because getting hit by it is like being dropped into a live volcano.

Yes it's a very big gun.  The A-10 Warthog is built around it

- And We Have Today's Coincidence!
More accurately, yesterdays, although I didn't get time or space to add it in yesterday.  I know I'm referring to the Pub Quiz again, yet let me remind you of one salient fact - whose blog is it?
     "Which country's major land mass is made up of "Jutland"?
     Denmark, of course.
     What's on the title of my back-up bus book for Friday?

There you go.

Let Me Edutain** You
If you look at that volume above you'll see the word "Tsushima", referring to the first of only two occasions when fleets of battleships took each other on, on May 27th 1905.  Briefly put, Japan and Russia were biffing the spit out of each other on land at the time.  The Russian battle fleet then sailed from the Baltic to the Pacific and the Tsushima Straits, where it got an utter shoeing from the Japanese battle fleet.  The end.
     The battle is also a minor but significant plot point in Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"

Toooo many words!  More pictures needed!

Aloe Vera
Normally this plant is associated with cosmetics, so the idea of a drink that contains lots of aloe vera pulp is slightly odd.

Unconvincing close-up

     Admittedly the bits of AV do get stuck in your teeth, but the wonderfully fake bubblegum flavour makes up for that.

What's This?  Not Sure, Except For "Delicje"
As you know Conrad has three personality traits that set him apart from you humans.
     1) Greed
     2) Curiosity
     3) An incredibly sweet tooth.
     Thus when he encountered this in the Polish food section at Morrisons -

     - he was greedy, curious and convinced they were sweet.
     And they were.  For all of ten minutes.

Polish Jaffa cakes

     They weren't strawberry or raspberry, so perhaps Cherry.

A Glimpse Into The Mind Of H P Lovecraft
There was a chap before his time.  One of the themes his writing has is that humanity goes about it's quotidian chores and tasks, all unaware that far beneath the ocean depths lie hideous monsters, sleeping until the time they return to take over the earth.
     Having taken a look behind his computer desk, Conrad can clearly see the inspiration for this concept of monster rubbish congealing on the floor - 

The horror!  The horror!

     When I retrieved this lot I'd acquired another 13 pens, four notebooks, three packs of chewing gum and an open packet of mints.

     I didn't really need any more pens, no word of a lie***.

Please note there have been no explosions, bangs, detonations, percussions or any other variations on The Last Trump, in accordance with Charm Offensive Rule Number 5:  No gratuitous explosions.

Thank you for reading!



*  Charm offensive Rule number 1 - no zombies.
** Hilarious post-modern ironic use of this awful word
*** Conrad, touchstone of honesty, never lies.