I Have No Youth And I Mushed Cream

I'm Not Being Too Clever, Am I?
There are only a few Harlan Ellison stories I know by name: "Repent, Harlequin, Said The Tick Tock Man", "A Boy And His Dog" and "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream".
     There you go, typical Conrad, sponging blog traffic off the work of others and betters.  IHNMAIMS is a real bummer of a read, however, which will certainly leave a little black cloud over your head after you finish it:  BOOJUM! on the other hand, consists (as usual) of sugar, atom bombs, the weather and fire, all guaranteed to give you a warm cosy feeling.
     "Positively shameful!" I hear you critique.  "Ol' Harl worked hard to get where he is, and you swan in and park your size tens on his butt."
     Only in metaphor, I assure you, because -
     "Nope, not having that.  Look at that cross-pattern tread worn away on the left-hand side, clearly evidence of your shoe on his ass."
     How can an analogy kick Harlan Ellison on the bottom!  Don't be stu-
     "Deny it if you will, Conrad - hey - what -

<there are gunshots>

     Thank you for your patience.  Now, I wish to post a picture that illustrates part of the blog title.  Is that okay with you?  Splendid!  Art?

Mushed cream

     I mushed it up with a bit of Grenadine.  Wonder Wifey, off for a stroll with Edna, found a bottle of this mixer in a skip, unopened.  Art?

     We think the reason it got binned was because of the "Consume By" date.  Art?

     As you can clearly see, only three years past it.  Given that Grenadine is mostly sugar, it'll be fine.

Today's Travel Tale
First Bus simply cannot bear the thought of ticking all three boxes, can they?  Today the 24 had copies of The Metro - one box ticked - and it was a double-decker - another box ticked - but it came well early, a good 5 minutes sooner than normal.  Don't worry, your humble scribe arrives early, too, just in case things like this happen.
     
Weather Treachery
Here I am on the bus home, thinking dark thoughts, which makes me look extra-specially stern and forbidding - oh alright, scary, are you happy now? - and prevents people from sitting next to me.
     I understand that there's no audience now left to ask questions*, but if there were I imagine they'd politely enquire why your modest artisan is so cross.
     Weather treachery! is the answer.  The day started with sunshine and blue skies (I should point out that blue is an acceptable and normal colour for skies), then reverted to sinister gun-metal grey overcast, before clearing to fleecy white clouds and blue (still normal) skies again.  This was fortunate as there was another fire evacuation.  Tom had an alibi; Conrad, however, was said to look too nonchalant as he whistled innocently and waved his paper. 
     No, I don't have a photo.  My camera  was in my bag which was in my locker.  Use your imagination.

We Now Need To Read -
 - of atom bombs, or the Intro will be proven wrong, which will cause reality to have a pylocrastic collapse into stochastic infundibulum**.
     Ah, Facebook!  Actually it does seem to be peddling less drivelling nonsense as "Suggested Posts".  Yesterday it popped up a post about Herman Kahn's "On Thermonuclear War", which I bought a year ago.
     I really wanted to study it and see if the march of time had made a difference to the systems, tactics, techniques and technology that Ol' Herm had compiled.  If so, how?  After all, "yes" doesn't illuminate very much.
     Well, InterContinental Ballistic Missiles for one thing.  Strategic Air Command and their Ruffian counterparts, the Strategic Rocket Forces, are now far more reliant on ICBM's than back in the day, when there were enormous fleets of manned bombers all ready to cause mayhem at a minute's notice.  This is a tad sad, because although you can rely on an ICBM to flatten your enemy's cities into gravel, they can never have cool nose art like "Betty Sue The Third" or "Valiant Hammer of the Fascists".

A B-52.  Not beautiful.
Not something to get on the wrong side of, either

     Another thing that has improved immensely since Ol' Herm hit the typewriter is missile accuracy, generally measured in "Circular Error Probable" or how many of your warheads are going to hit near the target.  The smaller the CEP, the more accurate your missile, and you can reduce the warhead yield accordingly, as a square root function if I remember correctly.  The Minuteman III, for example, has a warhead yield of as low as 300 kilotons.

CEP

     Obviously, being hit by 300 kt is nothing to sneeze at, but it pales in comparison to the yields of the missiles in service when HK wrote - the Thor mustered a 1.44 megaton warhead, nearly five times bigger.  The frankly frightening Titan carried a 9 megaton warhead, say thirty times larger.  So, things now tend to make less of a bang, yet more in the right place.
     A comforting thought to leave you with.

A Titan launching.
Someone, somewhere, is going to have a really, really bad day

Pip pip!









*  Don't worry, I'll get some live ones in for tomorrow.
**  Or something pretty close to it.