It's A Matter Of Time

In Two Senses
First, I don't have a lot to spare for BOOJUM! tonight, having been on a late shift and only getting in at 7:20 p.m. and with the Pub Quiz looming at 9:00 p.m.  Not only that, PC has been running with all the speed of a sedated silicon slug.  Typical!
     In the second sense - hang on my stomach's giving me a warning, I'd better go put something in it - that's better. Well, the second sense needs a bit of preamble.
    The recent "Star Trek" retrospective in Empire laid a claim to it being the longest-running sci-fi series on television, an honour that Conrad is happy to concede, as, although Doctor Who began in 1963 (that is, two years before "Star Trek"), it is a re-eneactment, not a fiction.  Your humble scribe is not quite sure how they know what's going to happen in the future but he has faith in that TARDIS technology.
     Which is only tangential to the matter at hand*:  Jim'll Paint It and his Doctor Who tee shirt.  How many characters can you identify?  I'll gloast a bit over at least the first four Doctors -

     First Doctor, Susan, Dalek, 2nd Doctor, Jamie, Cyberman, Ice Warrior, Third Doctor, Jo Grant, The Brigadier
     Auton, The Master, Sea Devil, Giant Maggot,Time Warrior, Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, K9, Davros, Zygon
     Giant Robot, The Manky Master, Jaggaroth, Fifth Doctor, Adric, Tegan, Cyberman, Sheraz Jek, Sixth Doctor, Peri -
     - and I'll leave some for you to complete.

There Are Some Constants In Life
Such as the charge of an electron, the half-life of Strontium 90, and North Korea shouting loudly whilst shaking a very small stick.  So, too, First Bus will deliver an execrable service.  Today we had a single-decker, with no Metro (so NO CROSSWORD!) that came 5 minutes early.  Your modest artisan, however, expects this kind of - we can't really call it "service" can we? so we'll call it "slackness" instead - and was early himself.  Call it honours even.

"Thankssss!" said a First Bus spokesdemon

A Little Musical Critique
Normally this is a cue for Simon to run screaming to the storm cellar and for Garfunkel to neck a whole bottle of Wild Irish Rose.  Not today, chaps!  Instead we focus on the "Tra La La Song", the theme tune to that terrifying childhood trauma-fest "The Banana Splits Show".  Take it away Drooper!

"One banana, two banana, three banana, four."

Clearly delineating the mutability of language, note how the lyricists skillfully avoid pluralising the varied multiplicity of bananas on display, indeed going so far as to refer to them in the abstract.

"Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more."

Bordering on controversial, since this excludes the possibility of three bananas being a bunch, if not a hand.  This is still under consideration by the US Supreme Court.

"Over hill and highway the banana buggies go,"

Subtly hinting at the sheer grit and determination of the cast and production team and my! those banana buggies are kinda cool.

"Coming on to bring you the Banana Splits Show."

The banana:  our favourite fruit yet also a symbol of serendipitous disaster and a fitting emblem for a show featuring an anthropomorphic mammoth**.

That's Snork, right there.

A Look Back In Anger
In order to boost the word count with as little effort as possible, I am posting here what I posted three years ago - about the Poles marching into battle.  Tonight they do the same except on the football pitch, against Portugal and Conrad, ever controversial, is rooting for the Poles.  Now, that post -

Bitwa Warszawska 1920!
Or - "Battle of Warsaw 1920" for those who don't speak Polish.  Finished watching this last night, with the TV screen having to sit two feet away - the subtitles are tiny.   An interesting film, showing how the Polish army in the immediate aftermath of World War One was composed of those who had served in the German, Austrian and Russian armies.  The hero is a bit underwritten - I liked the Polish Commissar, who was crude, ruthless but also amusing.  Natasza Urbanska is also quite easy on the eyes.  One curious scene comes near the beginning: the interior of Leon Trotsky's train carriage, where everything is in primary colours.  Odd and rather jarring given the realistic cinematography otherwise.
     The CD cover art is an inaccurate mish-mash, though - all the background stuff is from WW2 <goes into military pedant mode and the world switches off>

     I notice that this was posted absent photograph, a dereliction I would now like to correct:

The Polish Commissar

*  Typical Conrad. It's why people love me so.
** Do I have this right?  Snork was a mammoth, wasn't he?

"Summer Sunshine"

 - Warbled The Songstress On The Radio
"How very ironic," mused your humble scribe, as he stood in line to pay for his Sweet Chilli Flavoured Crisps in the Co-Op on Church Street.  "How very sodden ironic," to coin a vulgarism, as the rain dripped off him, for he had been caught in a cloudburst en route to the bus stop.  Actually more a cloudsustaineddeluge as it went on and on.  It died down, until Conrad stood at the bus stop, where eighty-seven people crammed themselves under the awning of the stop itself, leaving no room for elderly men in a bad mood.  The 24 bus, in these circumstances, inevitably turned up late, and the cloudsustaineddeluge came back to unload another payload of liquid misery upon your humble scribe.

A refreshing summer's day in Manchester

     I had to change when I got home, of course, and the only things that weren't wet were my socks, which is kind of curious seeing as how they were closer to the water than my tee-shirt.
     Mockingly, the sun did indeed put in an appearance on the way home.
     Bah!
     Now, I order the motley to commence!

More Midsomer Murders (The Green Man)
I find myself a little embarrassed.  I know the tale behind the surplus corpse in the canal chamber.  However, the two contemporary ones - no.  Missed their resolution and can't find a copy on Youtube as it's 13 years old.  Now, I have a theory about the first:  the young man in question was off to an illicit rendezvous with his lover - a married woman.  Her husband had found out about this affair so the text come-one was sent by him.  He then lies in wait with bear-trap and rifle ...  The second one I'm not at all sure about.  A copycat?  The MO is the same, and we see the possible femme fatale peering out of a window as Victim 2 departs.

Midsomer property going cheap.  Dead cheap.

     It is most irksome!  Conrad is annoyed.
     Further to the above, this bloody - literally, we are after all talking murder here - series has been going for 18 years.  At (a guess) 10 episodes per series, that's at least 180 murders in Midsomer.
     Midsomer: a great place to buy property going cheap, with the proviso that you may not get to enjoy it for long ...

English Sport
Conrad, as you ought to know by now, is not at all sporty, and had to check with Phil at work to see who was favoured to win in the clash of titans between England and Iceland.  "England" he promptly asserted.  He did qualify his judgement by saying that the Iceland team were "very settled".
     In the aftermath of SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT! SPO - oh you get the idea - England's defeat, the sporting pundits were calling Rejkjavik's Rangers "minnows".  A reference to scale, perhaps?  Or were they confusing them with the Finns?  They're singing a different tuna now, eh?  Cod save the Queen!
     Apparently the Beeb thinks if they ignore it then nobody will notice.

     Not if BOOJUM! can help it!
     Further to the above.  When I bumped into Phil in the kitchen next day, I hastily apologised for jinxing the English football team.  Neither he, nor Tony who was also present, were having any of this apology as they roundly tore into the English athlotes*.

The Coincidence Hydra Is Back
Yes by jove Michael Gove.  I say, hydra, can you take your teeth out of my gluteus maximus?  We meat again, you might even say.  The other night it was Keweenaw, tonight it's the Gorn.  Art?

     I Tweeted this because I could.  Perhaps Art could oblige with an image of this hideous creature, after the hideous pun?

Laugh now - it was terrifying then.

You know me, always bubbling with ingenious if not always sensible ideas**.  A few minutes after posting it, Wonder Wifey dropped off the latest copy of Empire.  And what do we find within?

          By now Conrad has learned to shrug off coincidences like this, except it didn't end there.  Art?

     There he is again, the photobomber.

And Finally -
Perhaps the most terrifying song lyric ever recorded -

*  A portmanteau of "athletes" and "scrotes"
** Okay, the one about filling a kettle with petrol and seeing what happens when you turn it on is a bit worrying.

Sic Transit Gloria Monday

Only Joking
Ah, you know, sometimes I amuse even myself.  Not right now, admittedly.  But wait!
     Okay, now I'm amused.  You can only post a title like that on a Tuesday.  I've already gotten myself in trouble with Latin today, putting "circa" in a note that utterly baffled Olivia over on Payroll, until I explained it merely meant "about" and could be expressed as "@" if you felt like being terse.

      What I really intended to type was, obviously - obviously! - "Sic transit gloria mundi".  I think this translates as "Thus passes the splendour of the world" in Latin, meaning - take a deep breath and pause to appreciate the profundity - that material things do not last (except for that weedkiller in the Doctor Who dramamentary "Planet of Giants").
     How true is that.  Recall, if you will, that cabin in the woods which featured in the "Evil Dead" films.  Art?

NOT appealing

     Now, admittedly, after assault by shotgun, chainsaw and sentient trees, it wasn't much more than an extreme fixer-upper, yet here is proof that Time can be crueller than Deadites.

All that remains

     A bit like that Pome "Ozymandias" - "And all around the lone and level sands stretched bare."
     Enough of Latin and literature, let us wallow instead in something cheesy and daft.

Chock Full Of Nuts Artificial Ingredients
I did mention yesterday about having 37 sweet teeth*.  Allow me to literally illustrate the point:

     Gaze upon them and weep.  That, for your information, is a Banana Twinky, although the only connection with bananas is - is - is - I'll get back to you on that one.  The drink is the hilariously-titled "Mountain Dew" which couldn't be further from the truth, unless it's a re-brand from "Mountain D'You Know What's In This?"
     Nor is this all.  By the time I took this photo I'd consumed my Key Lime Slime Twinky, so here's one from this evening:

     As you can see it appears to ooze green goo (hilarious, right!) and might reappear around Halloween as a Zombie Twinky.  Conrad also confesses it tastes Green, rather than Lime, although in his book that's actually a plus.

Enforcing Orwell's Law
I don't think I added this to my long list of Things Unique To The Blog, although, since it is one of the enduring things about Eric Arthur Blair that generations to come will remember, along with trifles like "Animal Farm" and "1984", I shall explain.
     George spent time in Spain during the Civil War there (fighting, not being a tourist) and observed this of Spanish trains:  nine times out of ten they were late.  However, you couldn't count on this and turn up late yourself, as the other one time in ten they were early.  
     "Gosh!  Where can Conrad possibly be going with this!" I hear you ask, which gives me pause as I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.  Now, bear in mind that I wrote this yesterday but am only posting it today because That's The Kind Of Wild And Crazy Guy I Am.
     "Today the morning 24 was a double-decker.  Hooray!  And since it had carried copious copies of tomorrow's fish-and-chip wrapper, I got to do the Cryptic Crossword.  Huzzah!  
     It was also well early.  But so was your humble scribe, so things played out to a draw.
        I write this on the 24 bus home - a mobile single-decker sauna which, predictably, left early, once it was scrummed full.
     "Only breaking down can stop me from getting home now!" I gloated.
     Silly Conrad.  Silly, silly Conrad.
     Fate, however, was either a bit dozy (it is pretty warm today) or she was wearing her old spectacles, as she broke down the 182 ahead of us.  So we were slightly delayed as a sad collection of detritus waited at the bus stop, until the passengers got off it and boarded our bus.

You May Commence Worrying Now
You know Conrad.  I speak as I find, I type as I taste and I take care never to sit with my back to the door**.  Moral compass?  Never heard of it.  Self-censorship?  Geddoudahere!  Which makes it all the more remarkable that I didn't Tweet this last night.  Art?

Caricature of John Prescott

     It's a potato - MADE OF GRANITE!  I hilariously thought.  
     Not very edible, mayhap, yet doughty.  Look at the set of that jaw, and the no-nonsense glint in the eye.
     Also, John looks a bit of a tough customer capable of dishing out some pretty hard punches, so my reticence is only sensible.

 *  Alien, you see.  Different from you.
** Special Forces training.