Thinking BIG

Maybe.  Maybe Not.
Observing that yesterday's posts about making tzatziki and lemonade were not particularly well received, possibly even considered dull and uninteresting, Conrad - as ever utterly without scruples if it means higher traffic - has decided instead to tackle BLOWING UP THE PLANET!
     You can't get more apocalyptically interesting than that, can you*?
     Now, I'm not sure if I can pull this off under the rules of the Charm Offensive, so if instead of calling them "nuclear weapons" I call them "Foofoodillies" instead, that ought to work, right?

Chocolate?  Foo!  Get it out of here!

     That being so, meet SIOP.  I know it sounds like the offspring of a druid and a vegetable sweetener, in reality it's the acronym for "Single Integrated Operational Plan".  Again, not too threatening, sounding more like a spreadsheet from one of the more boring offshoots of HMRC.  In reality it's the American plan for BLOWING UP THE PLANET!  In a controlled manner.  We like these things to be properly managed, after all.

Conrad, plotting to BLOW UP THE PLANET!
Or what to have for lunch tomorrow

     Okay, the common misconception about the (so far theoretical) Third Unpleasantness is that the President of one side would press a button and Whammo-Blammo we're BUTP.
     Not so.  The Prez has a ton of options under SIOP.
     "Single Integrated Operational Plan" because when you have 7000 nuclear - er foofoodillies, and 50,000 targets, you need to know what to hit and what to hit it with.
     Take Plesetsk, if you will, and imagine yourself (wibbly-wobbly camera effect) back in the bad old days of the Cold War.  Plesetsk was a Soviet rocketry and missile complex for their space programme, so it wasn't actually a threat.  Not directly, anyway, but then again those crafty Bolsheviks might mate up a missile body with a nuc - foofoodilly, and it has all that support technology, not to mention bulging with boffins bursting to bludgeon our bourgeois bodies into a bloody batter with big-bang bombs.

Sinister Soviet scientists handling plutonium with high-level safeguards in place

     So, under SIOP you might want to hit it with a Minuteman foofoodilly.  The site's not hardened, so your foofoodilly doesn't need to be too large.  However, you also need to accommodate the fact that the bus carrying up to 15 other foofoodillies needs to have targets nearby within their ballistic footprint, and you might want to make really really sure that you turn Plesetsk into gravel so you cross-target it with a second warhead, which means a delay of at least thirty minutes so the initial debris settles, plus you also have to factor in that some inbound MIEV's may be intercepted -
     BLOWING UP THE PLANET - not as easy as advertised**.

Well having probably grounded you all in hideous nuclear paranoia, I think we need an article on matters more light and fluffy.

TRIBUTYL TIN IS KILLING THE OCEANS**!

Sorry.  Charm Offensive roots have yet to take properly.  Quick, nurse, the screams!

Sorry.  "Screens".  Charm Offensive - oh let's get on with it.

Film Reviews BOOJUM! Style
I shall refresh your knowledge of how Conrad reviews films.
     1)  Without doing any kind of research and certainly not, God forbid, actually watching them!
     2)  Generalising and speculating wildly based on the title alone.
     The Danish Girl: No doubt this will go down well in Denmark, the Faeroes and Greenland, appealing to 50% of the population.  The rest of the world - Not So Much.

Danish tart.
Art!  Don't be hateful!

Humanoid - okay, close enough

     The Revenant: Since this appears to be about zombies, Charm Offensive rules forbid a review.  Here's a blue lobster instead.

It's a lobster and it's blue.
What ya gonna do?

     Hateful Eight: Going for the anti-hero market and then some.  8 is over-doing it.  2 or 3, fine.  4 to 5, you're pushing it.  6 or 7 is too far.  Don't exagger8!
     Dirty Grandpa:  No.  Just - no.  Who on earth gave the greenlight for this, asked your humble scribe, visions of Father Jack dancing in his head.

"What would I say to a cup of tea?  F-"

Oh Boy Oh Boy!
In fact Oh Boy Oh Girl Oh Man, Woman And All The Beasts Of The Field.  
     Allow me a second or two to lower my heartbeat and mop the dew from my brow.

Conrad, frothing with excitement

     Gollancz, that major British publishing house, are having an open admission policy for science-fiction, fantasy and horror novels in January, from today until the 22nd.  They have to be over 80,000 words long and cannot have been previously rejected.  No agents needed - in fact that would disqualify the entrant.
     If you are unfamiliar with the world of publishing, this kind of allowance is about as rare as the sarsens at Stonehenge getting up and doing the Black Bottom^.

Close enough.
Both a collection of fossils

     Conrad can't really submit "The Albatross".  It's 250k words long and is Captain Scarlet with the index numbers filed off.  If the incredible happened and it got published, expect a lot of lawyers rubbing their hands gleefully.
     "Revelations", the zombie apocalypse MSS, fits the bill but I have to work up a single-page synopsis for it.
     "27", the ESP thriller also fits the bill, but again it needs a synopsis - and I can't open Chapter 3!  I seem to think I've got a hard copy lying around, except where in the chaotic wasteland of the Upstairs Lair can it be?

Conrad, in a mad panic about the MSS's location

     You can tell I take my responsibilities to you, the public, seriously because I've written the blog before getting that synopsis worked up.  The instant I post this, however ...

The Herald's Wand
I mentioned this in my impressions of Thucydides and his history of the Peloponnesian War, speculating that it must have performed a function similar to the modern-day flag of truce.
     Imagine my surprise when I went and Googled, because this came up:

The Caduceus

     Two serpents twined around a staff.  Wow, that must be a sexy staff!
     You obviously - obviously! - recognise the staff as being carried by Hermes, and also as being adopted by the medical profession.
     Doubtless in the time of Thuck, a herald would venture forth, holding the caduceus up high and in front, waving it madly to avoid getting punctured by arrows or javelins.

Blimey, hitting over 1,100 words.  Time to bow out disgracefully -

* Blowing up the Sun would trump it but is, you must admit, a little unlikely.
** Fortunately.
*** Not used any more, but, gosh, is there a lot of it in the food chain or what.
^  A dance