The Blood Beast Terror!

Yes, I Thought That Would Get Your Attention -

 - you low-life, gutter-press, crimson-craving gorehounds.  I know what you were expecting to see - Peter Cushing battling giant vampire were-moths - but Ha!  For you have been suckered into viewing nothing of the sort.

"Peter's attempt at Kung-Fu was, frankly, rather weak."

     Only the old and bold - or the well-informed - amongst you will, at this point, have any idea about what your humble scribe is going on about.

     "Terrible!" the rest of you will be saying, or more probably muttering, lest you run the risk of being comminuted.  "Terrible!  Only back on the sauce for a day and already he's lost it.  Tragic.  Should have seen -

     YES THANK YOU! for your vote of confidence in Conrad's critical ability and liver-capacity.

     Where was I?  O yes.  "The Blood Beast Terror" is a film, I'll have you know.  A Hammer-knock off about a scientist who creates a killer giant blood-drinking lepidoptera that also doubles as an attractive young lady*.  Peter?

Strictly for the birds -

     None of this has any bearing on what I actually intended.

     Let me illustrate my point:

     I think you'll agree this object is resplendent in it's redness.  Very scarlet.  Positively crimson.  There, that's the metaphorical "blood" explained away.

     Secondly, unlike your average foam-rubber tomato, this one has eyes.  Eyes!  Which by default means it's an animal not a vegetable, and therefore a beast.

     The third part concerns Conrad's workplace, which I apologise for introducing on a Sunday evening when that kind of venue is the last thing you want to hear about.  More specifically our phone application, which regularly and consistently, nay let us say predictably, freezes in operation.  As you know already, Conrad exists in a normal frame of mind just short of Volcanic Rage at the best of times, so his attitude and behaviour when the phone freezes, hangs, locks and otherwise conducts a mini work-to-rule can best be guessed.

Conrad: the poster child for "Explosive anger"

     Hitherto Conrad has resorted to crude verbal insults at the phone app, as well as hitting his mouse buttons so violently that people on the floor above fear we have been stricken by earthquake.

     Now, with the Stresscue Foam Rubber Tomato, all that will be a thing of the past.  Now, fellow colleagues will be able to witness a middle-aged man, puce in the face with Volcanic Rage, squeezing a red object so hard it threatens to burst**.  Now, rather than the muted click of a mouse button, fellow colleagues will be able to see just how Krakatoa one of Conrad's explosions of rage can be.

     Doesn't that sound terrifying?

Of Television

Whilst the rest of the household was off doing domestic chores, Conrad was able to sit in the lounge and watch television.  Not a thing he does every day, so whilst it might not be news to you, to your gifted author this was a little window onto a world not often encountered.  Kind of like "Flight Training News" except with moving pictures.

The Advertisments: There do seem to be certain common themes amongst the adverts.  Ambulance-chasing law firms out to squeeze money from the nearest available rock were notably present.  

The Blood Beast Terror: a lawyer prepares to pounce

They imply that you, whose second cousin in Bermuda suffered a hangnail from opening a letter from the council 27 years ago, can effortlessly claim millions via their services. Money for nothing, if you like.  Which is also the theme of several adverts about various lotteries.  Stop press:  lotteries exist because nearly all who enter them LOSE.  Another point I'd like to make:  Stop press:  lotteries exist because nearly all who enter them LOSE.  Yes, this is the same point made twice, except I used blood for the second one.  Oh, and here's a couple more about loans, where borrowing £1 on 1-1-2016 can spiral to £1 x 10345 by 31-12-2016.  How come I've not seen any of those ghastly old marionettes to do with Wonga recently?  

     I shall move onto a separate paragraph for the next advert.  This is one about how effective printed promotions are.  Printed promotions being pimped on television.  Oh the irony.  All about A6 flyers.

NO!  Art, you coal-chewing buffoon -

High Court Enforcement Team:  these chaps hail from "Can't Pay?  We'll Take It Away!" a programme your modest artisan has never seen before.  They serve High Court orders on people, evictions, repossessions, seizure of property, all that sort of thing.  My note here observes:  "Dressed like the po-po, in case of any aggro, and digicams ever on the go-go."

     Which is fair enough.  If you turn up to turf someone out of their house, or seize thousands of pounds-worth of property against a debt, you can expect a bit of stress on the job.  Conrad, as we all know, is an utter coward and shameless human pudding, and could never do this job.

Debt enforcement is depressing.
Here's a happy kangaroo instead.

* Please note Conrad's lack of terribly un-PC comments here.

** I don't know if foam rubber can burst but it's certainly going to get tested from tomorrow onwards.

Coldfinger

 Ha!  Gotcha
Maybe.  If I was after a punny title I'd have possibly gone for "Golfinger", after reporting yesterday on Nick Hughes' analysis of almost-said film.  I have been watching it*, and found that observing Auric Goldfinger whilst he plays Our James at golf was most illuminating.  Goldfinger and Oddjob make a particularly corrupt pair of scoundrels, having obviously practiced deceit and skullduggery enough in the past to need no more than a nod and wink to cheat at golf.

Oh!  A real thing.

     Yes.  Goldfinger is a cad.  There, said it.  This, in polite British company, is about as hateful and critical a term as it's possible to use**.  He deserves it for cheating, and it's only because Our James is a bigger, better cheat that old Goldie does not prosper.  
     He's a very bad loser, too, which is jolly un-British as well - don't forget "It's not whether you won or lost, it's how you played the game", as a handy moral compass.  All told, I suspect that old Goldie is going to come to a sticky end.  Cheats and prospering and all that.  Yes, James does cheat but that's in the service of HM Government, which makes it okay.
     "Yes, Conrad, your barely-comprehensible ravings over James Bond films aside, what has any of this to do with the title?" I can hear you say.
     It's cold in the Upstairs Lair, and despite hammering away on the keyboard, your humble scribe's fingers are cold.  Makes them a bit stiff and liable to commit typos, don't you know.

In fact, to limber the digits up a tad, I am now going to go make a pot of tea.  Back in five minutes.

You What? Indeed
I have a selection of screenshots to post now, and yes I can tell what you're thinking already - "Oh I say Conrad, filling the blog up with pictures, really, it's just not done."  May I point out that this isn't Instagram and that the pictures here come complete with hilarious caption and attached text?
     Thank you so much.  Now, the pictures - if that's okay with you? It is?  Gosh I'm so pathetically grateful for your acquiesence***!

"Let's play the Nutella game!"

     Actually let's NOT.  Conrad hates Nutella with a passion and one of the signs that the Apocalypse is soon to arrive were the Parisian crepe vendors selling crepes and assuming that your ardent traveller wanted Nutella on them.  NO!
     Okay, that's my Nutella-phobic credentials established.  Where on earth, or elsewhere in the solar system for that matter, have I ever expressed an interest in playing stupid games based on a disgusting brown spreadable paste?  I like ginger jam - do you see any plaintive wails from me on the lack of Ginger Jam Games?
     BAH!

The Foobs Get It Right -
Don't look too surprised, a First Bus timetable will get published one day that accurately reflects reality, too.  By then, of course, protective headgear will be essential due to all the flying pigs; although you could console yourself with the best-selling Collected Werks of Shakespeer by An Orang.
     The meat of the matter -

A fox advertising beer named after a chicken.  Obviously!

    I have now started on my keg of Old Speckled Hen, which means I have today and tomorrow to finish it - according to the health warning on the side.  Well, you know Conrad - food safety is an exciting challenge, not a warning!

 - Twice In A Row
By golly, this is a thing of wonder -

Tankfest!

     You should all know by now that Conrad is a big fan of tanks armoured fighting vehicles, and has been to Bovvie^ twice to see the static installations.  Tankfest brings out the "runners", those vehicles that have been restored and repaired to the extent that they are able to move under their own power.  Seeing a 50 ton Chieftan doing 50 m.p.h. round the venue is likely to induce an air of "Oh My!" in observers, particularly those who hail from what used to be the other side of the Iron Curtain.

 - And Then They Fluff It
Back to usual, then.  Here we have an advert for study at Leeds University, doing an Art course.  

I wonder - would our Art benefit?

     Conrad is a bit long in the tooth to do a degree at university again, and why would he venture across the Pennines into what is practically enemy territory, when there is Manchester Metropolitan squarely here in Lancashire?

"Comminuted"
Ah yes my besetting sin - looking at the ingredients list on the back of foodstuffs.  Here's one on the back of a pop bottle banging on about "Comminuted lemons".
     What does it mean?  Apparently, "broken down into very small particles".  From Latin, of course, "Com" and "Minuere" meaning "Together" and "Lessen".
     It does have other uses.  For example, if you don't continue to keep reading the blog, Conrad will undertake to comminute you and use the result on our allotment.

A splendid crop of non-readers

* Goldfinger, that is.
** Possibly why polite British chemists blush when talking about Cadmium.
*** Sarcasm laid on with a JCB bucket
^ Bovington Tank Museum to the rest of you

JANE AUSTENGUN

I Do Apologise For Using Upper-Case -
 - but the pun won't work otherwise.
     In fact it might not work at all, given that it requires a knowledge of English Literature of the nineteenth century, and infantry small arms of the twentieth.
     "The old duffer's lost it again," I can hear you saying.  "Back on the beer again and completely at sea after no more than two hours."
     Well THANK YOU! for your vote of confidence.  Let me elaborate.
     First of all, Jane Austen.  She was an author, of the nineteenth century, whom Conrad had to suffer at A Level English Literature as regards "Mansfield Park".  This was a supposed comedy of manners set in England during the Napoleonic wars, and desperately dull stuff it was indeed.  At one point someone interrupts a narrative by calling for soup, which is as much as your humble scribe cares to recall. The "Mansfield Park" of the title was an estate that someone owned or inherited or stole or was given to them by aliens, again my recollections are hazy.  

Mansfield Park, as it is today.  Deservedly.

     Jane is rather more famous for boring generations of A level students with another tome entitled "Pride and Prejudice", which is about - actually I've no idea and don't care to look it up via Wiki.  "Big Skirts Chick Flick" is how I'd sum it up if it were a film, as indeed it may have been - once again can't be bothered.
     The Sten Gun, if you care to look at the complete title and see how cleverly I've hidden that reference in there, was a sub-machine gun of the British armed forces during the Second Unpleasantness.  It was notable, if not infamous, for being dirt cheap to make, and to be roughly-made at that.  Allegedly one could cock a Sten gun and throw it into an enemy-held room or earthwork; on dropping to earth the shock would normally set it off, whereupon it would empty the whole thirty-round clip into walls, floors, ceilings and any slow-moving opposition.

Brummagen ware

     "Wow!" I can hear you saying.  "Such didactic discourse of diamantine dynamism!*"  and also "Yes but what?  What what what?"
     Because, dear reader, I am confronted with the Charm Offensive rules drawn up by myself several weeks ago.  They stipulate - NO Tanks; NO atom bombs: NO atom-bombing the Moon: NO Zombies and there was another one I forget.
     All this comes into sharp relief when I witnessed the bus poster "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies".  What's a man to do!  Breach the rules of the Charm Offensive, which means the now-three-white-vans of intelligence agencies carry out a Pagoda Five CREW** assault on the Mansion?  Having Able, Baker and Cannibal Teams rappel, grenade and firefight their way into the Upstairs Lair is likely to cause a pause in broadcasting the blog, which Conrad cannot endure.

"Okay Conrad!  Drop the teapot!"

     Should I risk it?
     Go on!  An overdose of Twinkies has rendered your humble scribe delusional and he's hallucinating that he's actually the "Tallahassee" character in "Zombieland" because we're both driven by a morbid desire for Hostess cakes.  I don't have a chainsaw - but see below 

Large Bore + Gum - as close to a shotgun" as we at BOOJUM! are likely to get

Film Review

I'm not going to apologise for reviewing more films BOOJUM!-style, since if the studios insist on putting them out at a rate of knots, what more can your gifted author do than break them on the wheel of whimsy?
Youth:  Ah, yes, youth.  The time to be irresponsible before acquiring a spouse, a house, job nous and a pet mouse.  This is either a grim documentary on early-teen criminals or - no, it's a grim documentary on early-teen criminals.
Room:  Excuciatingly dull. A film ab owq45c vlk111 ~~~~~~~~~~~~### 

     Oh!  Sorry, fell asleep.  A film about a - room?
     I know why this film got the green light - cheapness!  Not for plot.

A room.  With a view

Zoolander 2:  I haven't seen the original Zoolander.  What on earth could this bizarrely-named film be about?
     Coal-oil extraction technology!
     Glue from fish-scales the terrible truth?
     How Jerry Pournelle plans to blow up the world - real soon!

     Ah!  It's an Asylum mockbuster rip-off of "We Bought A Zoo"!

Damn Your Views, Nicholas Hughes!
Nick, if I may call him that, gives a closely-argued, thoughtful and compelling analysis of "Goldfinger"*** and in particular how our James <ahem> "interacts" with Pussy Galore in a crucial scene.  I shan't spoil it by discussing anything Nick points out, just to say that this criticism of a single scene means your humble scribe needs to go back and watch the whole thing again, including going back and forward over several scenes by the slowed-down second.
     Ta very much, Nick, that's 5 hours I'll not get back again.
     (Though I am looking forward to his take on "You Only Live Twice")

http://rhubba.com/blogfinger/

     and that's the link to his Goldfinger essay.  Hint:  if you do not like James Bond, this is probably not your cup of Marmite-flavoured cashews.


Oh, here's that zoo that they bought:





* Watch it with the sarcasm.
** Special Air Service Counter-REvolutionary Warfare.  Guys with guns.  Lots of guns.  As many guns as Conrad has pens, that's how many.
*** If you have to ask "what?" or "Who?" then the exit is THAT WAY!