Board Of It

Stick With Me On This -
It takes a bit of getting to, hopefully it'll be worth it, and if not then it hasn't cost you anything, has it?  Conrad, unlike commercial institutions, is not charging you for this.

For which J P Morgan silently weeps

     There your humble scribe was, watching "Lucy", which is entertaining for the eyes if a little puzzling for the mind (Conrad is not altogether sold on Jean Luc Besson's selling of cells).  

Crossing her fingers a bit of a task, one guesses

Whilst looking at the trailers one such featured "Dracula Untold" - and having watched the trailer it can remain "Dracula Unseen", since you don't need to see the film after seeing the trailer, which is a tremendous saving in time and money.  Thank you Mister Trailer Maker!  Also, one cannot with a good conscience recommend a film that uses that hoary old "A Hero Will -" trope again.  "A Hero Will:  unblock the toilet, renew the car's MOT, bake a chicken and embrace vampirism" and similar guff.

So poor he can only afford half a spectacle

     Then up came some By The Numbers horror film called "Oiija", based around the planchette that requires 3 people to fake spirit chit-chat*, and your modest artisan's skeptical glands went into action.
     "It has been around for centuries" said the on-screen blurb, and this immediately jibbed.  With a touch of jaundice (of the metaphorical type).  'I strongly suspect it appeared as a parlour game in Victorian times - and will check on this' I wrote on the bus into work, and what do you know, it came out as a parlour game in 1890.  So much for "centuries", eh?

I rest my case

     Here an aside.  The Oiija board, in the era of steam trains and telegraphy, required a big physical apparatus to invoke the spirits.  Here we are in the 21st Century, with a million hands per second laid upon the execrable mobile phone, so how come there aren't armies of spooks interrupting people's texts to let them know of life on The Other Side?  Digital displays being far easier to work with than a planchette, and mobile phones being the very work of the Devil anyway.

Your typical teen, separated from their phone for at least 13 minutes

     Back to the film.  Conrad, mildly puzzled, recalls seeing a recent bus poster advertising "Ouija", except that the trailer I'd seen was from 2014.  What is going on?  Distribution troubles that took 2 years to resolve?  Or <shudder> a remake, already?  I would not put it past the Hollywood Suits.  I wonder, could it be a sequel?  Well, in response, I have to state:  !)  Who knows and - even more to the point - 2) Who cares.

Who cares?  Certainly not Conrad!

Church Organ World
Yes, I am still milking this event, 17 days afterwards.  Discussing it with Safra provoked a stare of stark horror, until I explained that the "organs" in question were the musical variety, not people's cherished interiors being harvested by the unscrupulous**.  
     I never mentioned anything as crass as prices for the various organs on display in the CoW showroom, though a deposit of £500 might hint that these things require quite a few weeks-worth of pocket money, which is further confirmed by looking at some of the pre-owned bits of kit - a Makin "Sapphire" will set you back £17,000.  Yes, this is a tidy bit of change yet if you bought it for your home - or the Mansion if a fit of wild generosity took hold of your senses - you could don a mask and cape and pretend to be the Phantom of the Opera, which is pretty cool.  Start practicing your cackle now.

3 Manuals,  45 Stops and 36 Pedals. Mask and cape cost extra.

The Metro - 60 Seconds:  Stephen Mangan
Okay, they can OCCASIONALLY get it right, as a stopped clock can be correct once per day (24 hour version, ta, do keep up).  Conrad likes Mr Mangan.  He's amusing.  Also he was good playing against belief in "Houdini and Doyle".
     Also note that he is a Cambridge graduate -
      - Rah! bleats Conrad the snob of intellect -
      - who studied law -
      - Booh! snorts Conrad, who, along with everyone (including some members of the profession itself) detests the lawyer -
      - but who has forgotten it all -
      - Rah! welcome back to the fold bleats Conrad, a man*** with all the moral stability of a coracle in a tsunami.

A coracle

A tsunami

The Roof: A Work In Progress
Hopefully!  By the time I get home from a late shift it will be too dark to see anything, so one can but cross the digits and wish.  Yesterday's progress was apparently interspersed with equal parts falling slates and bad language from the roofers, since the building supplies had been pitched too close to the ladder and scaffolding.  This meant their tile-conveying endless loop was too steep for comfort and shed slates frequently enough that Edna was forbidden from going out into the back yard.

The situation at 7:40 a.m. this morning

Finally -
This will make sense once it posts on Facebook and Twitter.

Billy Corgan

He's a musician, FYI.

*  Only rated 4.4 on  IMDB so don't seek it out without taking this into account.
** Although that does give me an - no, honestly, officer, I was only joking -
*** Or close approximation of same