The Consolation Of Dog And Pasta

NO!
Not together in a bowl; Jeez Louise, the very thought would have Wonder Wifey reaching for a kitchen knife and Anna trawling the dark web for assassins.
     Okay, let me backtrack a little.  The 24 bus didn't turn up again - one can only wonder at the childish hopefulness that pervades your humble scribe's heart as regards First Bus turning up - so I got home a good 24 minutes late*.  The first thing to greet me, whimpering madly, was Edna, tail wagging so hard her bum threatened to unscrew.  This always puts your modest artisan in a better mood: given his flinty-hearted character it's a bit of a stretch for him to understand that somebody pines for him.

Art, you baffoon!  That's an oak - O I give up

     There you go.  The "Dog" part of consolation explained.
     The pasta dish was one made by Wonder Wifey earlier, enough being left over for your talented typist to have a heaping bowlful of it, and jolly tasty it was too.  Salmon, onion and mushroom.  As I gratefully scoffed it, I gave honest thanks and that's the pasta part of the consolation explained.
     Now that the Intro is out of the way, let the motley begin!

"The Trollenberg Terror"
Ta, Oscar.  Once again, NO idea why this popped up in my head.  But it did.  So here we are.  It's a black and white horror film from 1958, itself an adaptation of a television series from 1957, and because of the age of this article no episodes are known to survive.  Probably very few viewers, either!
     IMDB calls it "The Crawling Eye" but then they only rate it at 4.8 so what do they know.  Seriously, it rates at least a 6.0.

This is exaggerating, to be honest

     It concerns an alien invasion (of sorts) that is foiled by telepathic sisters, an American leading man, and jet bombers.  Gotta respect that heavy metal.

Tentacular terror tackled by Tucker!
(Forrest Tucker, that American leading man I mentioned)

     It is also one of the first films that your humble scribe recorded from television onto a Video Cassette Recorder, which was rather a dark art at the time, and I missed the ending off.  So for all I knew the aliens won.

Proof they didn't

"Vircator"
Or, Virtual Cathode Oscillator.  An Electro Magnetic Pulse bomb, in other words.  As described by Thomas Pynchon in "Bleeding Edge".  Conrad is still not convinced it's a real thing, despite there being a ton of pictures on teh interwebz, which might derive from TP himself, for the chap is a cunning creator of convincing fiction, or perhaps he only picked up on the conspiranoids, as he also likes a conspiracy theory.
     Plus, why on Earth is it called "Virtual" when it's so clearly PHYSICAL?

Hmmm.  It looks convincing ...

Wordblind
Funny how the brain's wired, eh?  For some reason Conrad always reads "LGBT" as the acronym for the Boilermakers union (the GMBU); there's doubtless a bad-taste joke hiding there but I leave it for you to discover.  
     As with vans whose livery announces that they are "shopfitters" - your humble scribe always reads this first glance as "shoplifters".  Which is possibly a comment on his honesty**.
     After writing this out on the bus, which particular union did I come across this afternoon, asking for dues to no longer be paid?  Yes, the LGT - the GMBU.  This can stand for today's coincidence.

Jim'll Paint It
Proof, lest it be doubted, that there are some very peculiar people out there, and then some.  "Jim'll Paint It" is a website run by Jim, who will - you probably got here ahead of me, didn't you? - paint a picture of anything you request.  Anything.

This is "Modzilla Versus Gothra"

     People see "anything" as an excuse to be extremely silly and/or bizarre.  I shan't condemn Jim for having entirely too much time on his hands, as this is only a side-project and he sells art to keep body and soul together.  I shan't post a link as this way I can pad the blog out with pictures for weeks and weeks, har har***!
     Now, ID all the "Twin Peaks" characters on this tee-shirt -

And no Googling!

And we're now at count or close enough, because it's late and the old man is tired.
Me!  I'm the old man - oh time for bed.


*  Actually 25 but I'm being ironic and poetic here, so.
**  Or lack of it.  You choose.
** Maybe only a week.  It depends on my attent