Egadzooks!!

I Know I'm Taking A Liberty -
 - in using TWO exclamation marks*, yet the situation warrants it.  
     "Oooh gosh!" I hear you enthuse.  "What could this situation be?  A rogue Royal Navy captain of a Trident ballistic missile submarine has declared war on the County of Rutland?  Invading armies of cyborg carrots shallots parrots are advancing across the Russian steppes?  Strictly Come Dancing is revealed as a giant hoax staged to fool Conrad?"
     Well, no, nothing quite so exciting. You see -
     "The Moon has been blown out of orbit by explosions from the poorly-stored nuclear wastes on it's surface?  Sentient plants with a lethal sting are emerging from the shadows to threaten humanity?  We've picked up a radio transmission from Proxima Centauri and it says 'Help'?"
     Excuse me!  I am trying to get to the point and you're really not -
     "It's the replicants, isn't it?  They're ready to rebel.  I never did trust those creepy mechanical men.  Or women.  It's the eyes, you -"
     WILL YOU BE QUIET!
     Sorry that my news does not shake the pillars of Heaven.  No glombies, trifoids or Daleklops are involved.  It's just that a lot of people have been viewing the blog today, as much as would normally have pitched in to peek at the peculiarities after I'd posted this.
     Skeptics that you are, I know you demand proof.  So -

Ha!

And Now For - Shipwreck!
Some people are too dangerous to be allowed near a typewriter. 
     This is because the kind of typewriter I have in mind is made of cast iron, and you can seriously injure your foot if you manage to drop the implement.  Art?

Massive

     There is an extremely unrealistic scene in the film "Misery" where the captive author hits Anne, his captor, on the head with one of these.  She - gets up again.  In reality her skull would have caved in like an eggshell, and the film would have finished right there.
     Typically, none of this has anything to do with what follows, as folks nowadays have long given up using typewriters and it's all cheap plastic tat.
     The spirit of which brings me to this:

Pshaw!

     There is nothing "mysterious" about this if you know anything about the sailing vessels of antiquity.  They were extremely vulnerable to storms, and history is replete with examples of entire fleets of warships being wiped out thanks to a bad storm.  Smashed apart, they would rapidly sink to the bottom, close together in time and space.
     There you are.  
     Mystery solved!

Mystery Solved!
Conrad has never claimed to be up-to-the-minute when it comes to pop culture.  For one thing, he does NOT watch the Disney channel and avoids MTV and it's ilk like a combination of plague and ricin (more of ricin later).
     Thus, the mystery of Miley Cyrus and why a flat-chested stripper has a "music" career is not an issue your humble scribe spends any intellectual energy upon.  Waggling one's arse and sticking out that lump of muscle normally kept in the mouth do not, after all, seem to be either in tune or taste.

"Taste?  Do you see what - O you do.

     Thanks to the Flophouse podcast, the clouds of doubt have been rolled back and truth, Honest Truth! prevails.  It seems that this Miley character was in a television programme called Hannah Montana, playing a schoolgirl who was actually a pop star, unknown to anyone except a handful of people who handled her money.
     Conrad is not sure this would work in a world with cameras in phones and apps that match faces, and in which the entire population of Planet Earth are not idiots.

Cyrus.  yeah, King Cyrus.  It still counts

     And that's it for the twerking berk.

Ah, Now!
Conrad was delighted to see an FB suggested post that actually made sense.  Art?

Yes please!

     These chaps are British paras of the Second Unpleasantness, fearsome blokes who are the best Brit troops you can get on the war-gaming table.  FYI, their task on D-Day was to capture from the Germans and hold a bridge that said Germans would have to retake in order to mount a counter-attack against the invasion beaches.  Thrilling stuff!

Right, cutting it short there - I've got to do the weekly shop and cannot risk that the Polish Pickled Mushrooms have run out -


* Which is the proper name for them.  Ta.