On Course!

Excuse Me A Minute Whilst My Blood Cools -
Google Chrome has been acting like a senile slavering silicon screwball.  "Google Chrome has stopped working" YES I HAD NOTICED SOMETHING LIKE THAT ALREADY!  After a restart it seems to have realised the error of it's ways - Internet Explorer is always there as a fall-back, Chromey - and my blood pressure and temperature have once again neared Room Temperature.
     I have just now posted over on Twitter about three things that could, with profit, be hurled into a cement mixer and churned to destruction:  First Bus*, Google Chrome and (possibly controversially) Alexander Graham Bell.
     "Ah, the infamous inventor of what are now Portable Devil Boxes," I hear you realise.  "We quite approve, Conrad, damn the rascal to perdition."
     Leaving aside my gaping amazement at your agreement that the mobile phone is the instrument of Satan and all his imps, I shall develop my Death-By-Concrete-Mixer theme a little more.

"In you go, Alex."

     First, First Bus.  You may recall that Conrad, who is a notorious poser, likes to use the word "Schadenfreude" occasionally.  It's German and means "Malicious enjoyment of other people's misery".  Ah, those Teutons, they can certainly string a concept together!  Normally your humble scribe is pointing and laughing at other unfortunates, but tonight you can experience a touch of the schads over his travel plight last night.  Snigger, if you wish, into your mint julep/flagon of mead/bucket of blood.
     Last night - I mentioned this already but want to firmly establish the scene in your mind's eye - at the bus scrum (a rugby term yet peculiarly apt) the buses - were not arriving.
     Conrad, hiding his Inner Seethe especially well, politely enquired why this was so of a First Bus inspector.
     "Ah, yes," he replied.  "Well, Conrad-" which alarmed me as I'd not told him my name - " - it appears that a minor tsunami along Beaufort's Dyke has severely impacted the pork belly market in Canada and as a result swarms of flying monkeys have blocked Broadway.  Also, it's raining."

Beaufort's Dyke:  a real thing

    There you have it.  Every word true**.
     "I say, old chap, you really have it in for those scamps at First!  Now, explain why that wretch AGB deserves to die horribly," I hear you call.
     Because he invented the telephone!  Half of my job consists of dealing with phone calls.  At least half.  More probably two-thirds.

"Alexander Graham Bell,

I hope you burn in hottest Hell.

You see what you've gone and done?

With your evil awful telephone!

Because of it people now presume

They are the Entitled, and whom

Can carpingly call Conrad non-stop.

I'd like to make all their calls Drop."

     And Google Chrome we already know about.
      Now, on with the motley!

Oscar And Steve
These chaps - my subconscious and memory respectively - occasionally have an input to BOOJUM! so I can't chide them too much.  Although at times I have to wonder.
     "MIRROR LOG AND RIRROR" I wrote down last night, it's right there on the page.  What does it mean?
     I have no explanation!  None!
     "I have no idea how your mind works," quoth Alison, and apparently neither do I.

It Jolly Well Is Cricket
Ah, from the Beeb website, an article about cricket being played - in Germany!  Normally - I am told - any sporting activity in Germany is Football, or Fussbol, so it is a tonic to see the noble game making it's presence known.  Art?

How is that?

    CRICKET!  The game that made the Empire great!  (blustered Conrad, who has only the very vaguest idea of how the game is played.  A bat features somewhere).

"Soi-Disant"
Apologies for another contribution from the previously-mentioned Oscar, and the usual disclaimer about not knowing why this term popped up in my mind.
     Conrad has heard it used in literature, never bothered to look up what it meant and has generally never found that his life was any the poorer for it.
     Well, now I can tell you that it's French for "Self Speaking" and translates as "Self Proclaimed" or "So-called".  In other words a thing pretending to be what it's not.
     Like Conrad, the soi-disant Human Being.  "Hello Hom. Sap. I'm one of you!"

Utterly convincing

     Er - in pursuit of which I ought to have said "Body Temperature" and not "Room Temperature" above, as that would mean I was either dead or - um - not from round here.



*  You probably guessed this already
** This is a lie.