Pigs, Poison And Pusan

Yes, Yes, I Know
The contemporary transliteration from Korean is "Busan", not "Pusan", except that wouldn't make it a neat triple alliterative, would it?  And we at the blog like alliteration so.
     You may have guessed what Conrad is pontificating about: "Train to Busan", the hot South Korean zombie thriller on a very limited release here in the UK.  To be extra authentic, try watching whilst eating a Kim Chi Noodle Soup.  Be careful, though, some of those soups are rather spicy.

First Bus take note

     All in all, a very worthwhile watch, except at the very end when some of the survivors get stricken with Idiocy Syndrome.  You know the thing; they've been making all the right moves for the past hour and a half, then, suddenly - they're idiots, and behave accordingly.  James Blish once classed this as an "Idiot Plot" although TTB only suffers intermittently at the end.  Thank you, James.  Conrad would further note that taking off your jacket to reveal your splendid male physique may wow the ladies, but it does make you appallingly vulnerable to getting bitten.

Right, that's the Intro out of the way, now - Hands!  Keyboard - Play!

Poisons:  Cyanide
Ah yes the old reliable standyby CN.  Unlike the previous toxic substances related on BOOJUM! this wasn't around in antiquity, at least not in amounts sufficient to finish anyone off.  It's present naturally in apple seeds and almonds, in vanishingly small amounts.  Nothing to worry about, seriously, unless you intend to dine on apple seeds alone by the ton for a year or so.

This guy - he's at risk.

     The thing about cyanide is that it's tremendously deadly and quick.  One of the groups at risk are a bunch of people you'd never expect: ornamental stonemasons.  This is because gold is soluble in a solution of cyanide, allowing it to be painted onto surfaces, like tombstones.
     Here an aside.  Gold mining utilises cyanide in solution to leach out the gold, meaning industrial gold-mining leaves a landscape looking like the surface of Mars on a bad day.
     Back to stones.  My old manager once visited a stonemasons, who had a fridge in the corner of the office with a fresh batch of cyanide antidote delivered weekly, as per Health & Safety regs.

Someone is going to get a rocket for this ...

     "Waste of time," stated the business's manager, briefly and matter-of-factly.  "If you got poisoned by cyanide you'd be dead before you got near that fridge."
     So probably not the best thing to off Mister King with as he'd be greeting Saint Peter before you'd got the stopper back in your phial of Slaughterhouse Live.
     This is playing with history a little, as cyanide's poisonous qualities weren't discovered until the early 18th Century, when it was separated from the colouring agent Prussian Blue.
     One of the characteristics of cyanide is that it smells of almonds, although that Christmas stollen you bought is very probably alright for consumption.  Any doubts, donate it to your humble scribe and I'll let you know how it goes.

Prussian Blue

Pigs.  Allegedly
You know Conrad, all the sense of a bag of cheesy potato raisins.  This post derives from the earlier one this afternoon, so we really are confirming Albert Einstein's assertion that each step is the inevitable consequence of the preceding one.
     So.  Peppa Pig.  Art?

The whole hideous caboodle

     Conrad is unsure exactly what these things are.  Pigs they are not.  When was the last time you saw a pig exhibiting a sense of modesty that compelled it to wear clothes?  Or mascara?  Or - heaven forfend! - spectacles?
     No.  These are obviously Porcus Mutatus, the horribly deformed descendants of today's pigs, or at least those that survived the Great Atom War of late 2017.  I mean, look at them!  They have Mutually Opposable Digits, always a worrying sign of sentience.  Not only that, their snout grows out of the side of their head, a clear mutation if ever I saw one.
     Or - good lord aloft! - are we seeing only one side of their malformed cranium and they have a second set of eyes on the other side?
     Plus, they can speak.  Not only that, they appear to have the intellect of a small child.
     Conrad is worried*.

O delicious irony.

So What!
The Metro had a slobbering adoring headline last week about Swift Taylor and how she had collected money to the value of $147 million, principally by getting people to fill stadia to watch her, and by collecting enormous gratuities to prostitute herself by promoting crap.

A Swift Tailor.  Close enough

     Conrad's question is, what exactly does this have to do with music?  I do not know who this Swift person is, I have not (knowingly) listened to any of her flaccid committee-composed dronings and I wouldn't know her if I accidentally <legal reasons compel us to excise a long list of detailed ways in which Swift Taylor goes to her doom, frequently painfully and usually slowly**>.
     The Comsat Angels were one of the finest rock bands this country has ever produced and they never had two pennies to their name.
     Swift Taylor.  Bah!

The Comsats on tour in Iceland.  Their hotel is in the background.

* Of course, I might be overthinking this ...
** So, no cyanide, then.