A Bounty Of Books

You Know You're Reading BOOJUM! When -
 - ah, where do I begin?  There's a load of bad puns; Conrad bangs on about nuclear bo - foofoodillies; or tanks; how Edna is behaving/misbehaving; the latest depredations of the Coincidence Hydra; why Thomas Pynchon not only aids and abets the Coincidence Hydra but also pets it and gives it treats; and books.

This, lest you are confused, is Edna.
NO!  Sorry, a tank, not Edna.  A tank.

     Conrad, whilst being a walking sweet-tooth, is also a bibliophile*.  His current stock total for Military History Books stands at 658.  Yes, I can hear your comment -
     "Wow, Conrad, what an impressively large total!  Surely you must be the - what's that?  A sad shake of the head?"
     Before Project Apocalypse and the binning of several hundred books, I rashly boasted in front of Andy about how many Military History books I had. This was at a wargames convention and is about as close as we wargamers ever get to an arm-wrestling contest.  He (gave a silent inner smirk) then replied that he had three and a half thousand MH books, whilst cradling another one he was about to buy.
     Anyway, allow me to illustrate a few of the books lying loose around my Upstair Lair, which the more modern of you might call a Mancave**.  Art!  Put down that coal!

To you, a mess.  To me, er - ah - "idiosyncratically ordered"

     This shows the unit histories that I dug out of the big overhead cupboard - they are the ones nearest the camera - and a bunch of stuff dug out of the back room where they'd been hidden/stored/forgotten about.  It does indeed look like a mess, except I know where everything is.
     That's not all the books lying around waiting to be arranged.  Art?  Art!  Will you put that coal down!

Er - yes.  It - um - okay, it is a mess

     This might be called the "Ready-Use" pile and consists of recently-bought books waiting to be added to the database, or ones currently being read, or that are being referred to for the educational remit of BOOJUM!
     I can anticipate what you are thinking.  "But - but - Conrad! - if you are an alien who does not suffer from human illnesses - why the Dettol?"
     Excellent solvent for acrylic paints, I'm told.  If Conrad wants to change the paint scheme on his 1/300 scale Western Desert Force A13 Cruiser tanks, he needs to remove the original colour scheme with Dettol.
     Can we proceed now?  We can?  Thank you so much***!
     Then there are the books taken out of the big overhead cupboard and left lying around because they're out of sight and hence out of mind.  Art?  Stop drooling nutty slack!

Thank heavens street cred preserved - none of the Mills & Boone are visible ...

     To get these here meant many a trip up and down the ladder, and the big overhead cupboard is - overhead.  However, inspired - or scared, the point is moot - by Catherine at the office, Conrad made an especial effort earlier this week and hefted all these back into the cupboard.  Art?  Provide us some proof.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Conrad

     If you don't like books quite as much as your humble scribe does, then I apologise for the distraction.  Nex - Art, that's anthracite, not coal.  It'll give you wind.

Montauk And It's Project
Perhaps more comprehensibly known as "The Montauk Project", I came across this in Thomas Pynchon's latest, "Bleeding Edge", because I am making notes on it as I read.  You cannot take anything TP mentions as real or accurate, as he is - damn the man! - a convincing purveyor of fiction-as-fact.  So - what is this mysterious project?
     Your humble scribe Googled about this and happened to find a weblink to "The Iron Skeptic", who is a Proper Real Scientific-y Guy.  South Canadian, don't you know, so we call him "guy" rather than "chap".  

http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/montauk/montauk.htm

     The good Skeptic is as allergic to woo as is your humble scribe, except with a more convincing scientific background.  Montauk itself was home to a SAGE radar base in the Sixties; does TIS find any evidence of an alleged Montauk Project secret underground base with thousands of staff?  
     No.  No, he does not.  Of course, to the paranoid loonwaffle wibblewits out there, this total lack of evidence it completely convincing evidence of STUFF, and that the world is ruled by invisible miniature unicorns that live in your plug sockets.

Gaze upon the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment radar at Montauk.

     Now, I would like to point out that this site is right up there with "Doctor Strangelove" in terms of technology. And if I hadn't already written a ton about the good doctor today, I'd be wittering on at length here^.

"We surrender!  We surrender - just, please NO MORE Doctor Strangelove stuff!"

And on that merciful note ...



*  Don't worry, SFW.
**  I can't really use the term "man", not being one.
*** Yes this is sarcasm laid on with a shovel
^  Small mercies, eh?