Brek's It

Yes Indeed, Vulnavia!
Picture the scene, if you will: it's a cold, dark, wet, grey, miserable morning here in the Pond of Eden, which is living up to (or down to, if you like) it's name.  You dash downstairs to get breakfast before Mum sends you off to school, and she hits you with this:

The Brek is, indeed, Ready

     Porrige!  Porrige, the reason the Scots held off the Sassenachs for one thousand seven hundred and forty five years, perfect for a morning as described above.  That's not all - Art?

Force-field comes as standard

     It also gives you the Jedi-like ability to repel laser fire and mosquitoes.  Brek is, indeed, IT.
     What, you expected some political twaddle?

Conrad - HATES ALL MUSICALS!
One of the touching touchstones about your humble scribe is his blatant, manifest and overt hatred of musicals.  I still recall the combination of boredom and horror as a small child, having to endure "Carousel" on television at Christmas.
     I do make two honourable exceptions to my list, "The Return Of Captain Invincible", because it's a superhero spoof, and "The Blues Brothers", because it's a non-stop gag fest.  However - Art?

Well now -

     I do love the Evil Dead films, and Ash Versus The Evil Dead, so if this ever makes it to the small screen I may have to add another to my list.

Liebig Condenser
I tested this on Tom and he had no idea what it was.  Part of every Mad Scientist's lab, I would have thought, along with alembics and retorts.  Art?

A Liebig Condenser in action

     Allow me to explain the photo.  A LC is a hollow glass tube with an inlet and outlet in the outer jacket, into which you run a coolant, usually water.  You then allow a heated vapour into the LC, which cools it by condensation.  In the above photo the vapours produced in the flask heated by the bunsen burner end up as a liquid in the flask at left.
     You're welcome.

"On Thermonuclear War" By Herman Kahn
A little reluctantly, I have decided to go back and re-read this hefty tome, for a couple of reasons.
     "Blimey!" I can hear you say.  "Choice reading matter!"
     It's a broad and deep examination of the problems that thermonuclear weapons posed the world in 1960 and beyond.  It's long and complex and I stopped reading it for a good couple of months, which was as big a mistake as stopping reading Thomas Pynchon for a couple of months: you lose the plot.  By the time I got to the end I'd quite forgotten what "Type II Deterrence" was.
     So, I'm re-reading it and making notes.  A fun way to spend a Sunday evening ...

"Sloven"
If you have been paying attention over the past three years, then you know our pictures and photographs are provided courtesy of Art.  Who is, to put it politely, an idiot of the first water.  He cannot be trusted to get anything right - "Close enough" appears to be his favourite caption - unless regularly threatened with the BOOJUM! corporate Tazer.  Not only that, he possesses a worrying liking for coal, and is entirely too fond of being stuck in the septic sump as a punishment - hence the Tazer, although of late we cannot tell if his shrieks are of pain or pleasure.
     Art, in other words, is the very definition of a "Sloven" - a dirty or uncouth person*.

Art.  On a good day

     Which, naturally, got your modest artisan wondering where the word comes from.
     Flemish, apparently, that dialect from the Spanish Netherlands.  From "Sloef" meaning "Dirty".  Art?

Art.  As seen by - Art

"Night Train"
I came across mention of this in "Bleeding Edge" - Tom's latest novel - and was curious, as the context appeared to indicate it was a wine.
     Kinda.
     I did a bit of Googling and found an hilarious site called "BumWine", "Bum" here being the South Canadian appellation for a person fallen upon hard times, not the Anglo-Saxon vulgarism for "Bottom".  Herein the link:

http://bumwine.com/nighttrain.html

     I said "kinda" above as this stuff is the Demon Drink in bottled form: cheap and strong.  The description says that the "Night" part is because it sends the drinker to sleep, and Conrad expects the "Train" part is because the day after you feel as if you'd been hit by one.  

Night Train - Express version

*  "Person" is pushing it, frankly