I Miss The MCC - Again!

No!  Nothing To Do With Cricket
 - nor Hell's Angels Motorcycle Chapters, either.  No, gentle reader, I refer to the Manchester Comic Con, which was I bothered about sufficiently to make a note in my diary, and then promptly ignored.
     I missed it last year, and the year before that, when I think Darling Daughter bothered to attend, although her critical commentary amounted to how long the queues were.  Pah!
     There is a silver lining to this towering Cumulo-Nimbus Of Doom, which amounts to your humble scribe's amount - in the bank.  Payday is not until Thursday and any excursion to an event like this would inevitably and obviously - obviously! - involve spending lots of £££.  I'm not sure on what, exactly - trade paperback comic collections, probably, if not on other memorabilia - but there would be expenses, o yes indeed.  The downside is that there are enough people present with self-confidence, swagger, darning skills and a desperate need to be loved to wear costumes by the hundred - which would have kept BOOJUM! going for weeks.  Weeks, I tell you!  I shall instead allow the internet to act as photographer for yours truly.  Art?

Hercules, Stormtrooper and - er - Killer Pirate Rabbit?

     The event suffers somewhat by comparison with the recent San Diego Comic Con, which is a typically South Canadian exercise in being bigger and better, which they pulled off, to be honest.  Warwick Davis versus Bruce Campbell?  Close call but Ash gets the BOOJUM! vote, baybeh!

Small Mercies:  Be Thankful For Them
As I'm sure I've bored you with previously, I am re-reading Herman Kahn's "On Thermonuclear War" and am making notes on it, instead of merely moving my eyes back and forth across the pages.  We have - I know it's only me, but if I'm going to inflict my most boring pastime ever on you all then a little inclusivity is needed - we have reached the dispassionate description of a Doomsday Machine.
     I know what you're thinking.  Art?

Doomsday Machine, planet-scoffing variant

     Nothing so abstruse.  No, Herman invokes the spectre of a massive thermonuclear arsenal buried deep underground, so that nobody can interfere with it; if it receives input about a certain number of nuclear detonations taking place on home territory, then off it goes bang.  No human input involved.  
     "Hang on!" I hear you squawk.  "The 'small mercies' bit - where does that come in?"
     Well, in a footnote Ol' Hermie puts that he doesn't think it necessary for this Doomsday Machine to actually, physically, destroy the planet's integrity and turn it into ten trillion tons of gravel.  No.  All it needs to do is generate sufficient long-lived radioactive fall-out products to extinguish all life.
     Phew!  For a minute there he had me worried -

"Let's build a totally autonomic artificially intelligent missile defence system!
What can possibly go wrong!"

Free Beer
I believe this used to be the code phrase to return SAS troopers to their barracks in the event of something like Colossus deciding that Hom. Sap. were a little too fond of the "free will" thing.  And, again allegedly, it got changed because mothers or spouses stood aghast at what their sons or husbands would end up like if they had the chance of getting Free Beer.
     Relax!  This is nothing about the Ruffian's Western Strategic Military District getting mobilisation orders.  Art?

Free beer -
"ADVANCE TO CONTACT!"

     This is the free beer that Conrad came home with on Friday, and it's not bad stuff, actually.  4.1% we were told when issued.  Conrad, thinking with his brains, realised that the folks handing out the bottles were probably on a strict issue criteria - warn about the strength and NO MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE PER PERSON!!! because folks need to drink responsibly.  And handing out more than one bottle per person would be the height of irresponsibility; even though there's nothing to stop Conrad stealing bottles from everyone across the floor and going home with a bag weighing 7 stone that clinks alarmingly.

"Barry Lyndon"
This film is getting some fresh press of late, seeing as how it was made 40 years ago to the day, something like that.
     So what? responds your talented typist.  I've had it on DVD for years and it's great, much like an Old Master come to life in front of your eyes.  Never looking less than fantastic, it covers all bases, although it might be a little intellectually chilly for the MTV generation.  There are things exploding, though.  Art?

Prussians.  Not to be confused with Russians.

     Tut!  Not very explodey.  Try again -

Better.
Prussians and French, going at it somewhat.

     Are we at count yet?  O we are.


     Good night!