The Walking Dead

Ha!  Fooled You!
Well, only partly.  In fact Conrad had better redeem himself or risk the reader's wrath.
     Okay.  You, I take it, are familiar with the television series called "The Walking Dead"?  This was a comic series long before it ever graced the electromagnetic medium, and Conrad used to collect it as a Trade Paper Back.

More sprinting than walking, one feels

     "Used to" being the operative word here, as it was unremittingly bleak and negative.  Everybody got killed all the time.  No hope.  No future.  No prospects.  No humour - which Conrad finds leavens "Z Nation" quite well.  
     Who was responsible for this tissue of torment?  Robert Kirkman, that's who.
     Uncannily enough, he is also responsible for creating"Invincible", which I have earlier defined as a kind of Superhero Soap Opera, without that being a negative connotation.  Indeed, the first six issues were almost a light and frothy comedy, before it got darker*.  Even though it's in full colour.

Proof I speak troof

     The series is still ongoing, and has in fact reached TPB #22.  I recently bought this and #21, and then decided to stack together all my issues that haven't been specifically put away in storage - which began at #13 and ended - logically enough - with #22.
     Yet there was no sign of #20.
     O noes!  Where is it?  This is no idle question, given the amount of books lying around the Upstair Lair.  Books here, and here, down there, over there, over there, there, here, plus a whole lot up there.
     A good ten minute's searching eventually revealed it, cunningly hiding out of plain sight.  Art?

A telling indication of your humble scribe's reading 

     If I hadn't found it then it would have meant dragging out boxes and boxes of stored comics to seek out that single mis-filed copy.  With the proviso that this would also involve the terrifying risk of accidentally reading some or all of these stored books, and thus only getting to bed at 3:27 a.m. for a 6 a.m. alarm call, rendering your modest artisan rather like one of the -

Thank You, Lindybeige
For those of you not familiar, Lindybeige is a chap with a Youtube account, which he fills with things military, from antiquity to the modern age.  Here is a link:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pgQfOXRsp4UKrI8q0zjXQ

     When I say "modern" I mean he gets as far as the Second Unpleasantness, none of that new-fangled nonsense like jet aircraft and atom bombs**.  Now, Lindy, although he would probably decry it, is something of a toff, with an impeccable Received English accent.  If you listen to his Youtube clips, then that is the kind of voice BOOJUM! should be imagined in.  He also knows his history.  Art?

Can you spot the Dalek?

     Here he was making a very good point, that the majority of warfare in classical times was not conducted in the dramatic blood-and-thunder pitched battle that Hollywood likes to portray, and instead was far more likely to be siege warfare.  Art?

A fantastic Ron Embleton picture of Alexander Meglos besieging Rhodes

     This is because a battle was a risky business; history is replete with one-sided encounters that suddenly became two-sided and the other side won.  A siege, on the other hand, was a planned and mathematical operation where logic played equally as big a part as firepower, which is why Conrad finds them fascinating.
     At one point Lindy mentions the book propped up against the monitor, which is barely legible thanks to contrast.  You swine, contrast!

Small-sized picture to reduce the impact of male nudity

     Conrad is ineffably grateful to Lindy for pronouncing the author's name, which is a task your talented typist dared not attempt previously.
     "Th-you-sid-ee-dees" is the pronunciation, which is what I'd guessed, yet it's always nice to get your guess confirmed by a chap who apparently had a classical education.
     He also has a small Dalek hanging on his wall, so he Gets Out Of Alien Enslavement when my starship invasion fleet arrives.
     
"Drug Destruction Kits"
As seen on the back of a van on the way into work this morning.  Not on it's own, I hasten to add, as it was part of a much longer list that included disposal of human bits and pieces, although they did phrase it a little more tastefully.
     Conrad, as you surely know by now, is much like a cat in that he can sneak up silently on people, and he is also incorrigibly curious.  
     'What on earth is a "Drug Destruction Kit"'? he wondered, and checked up on the matter.

Et voila

     It seems that any Controlled Drugs returned unused to a chemist have to be disposed of as quickly as possible; you stick 'em in a DDK and - bang! - the drugs are encapsulated in a gel matrix.
     Which is not the end of the story ...

Finally
A shout out to Katie from work, because she had root canal surgery yesterday and I didn't get the chance today to ask how it went.

Katie's Snickers

     Here she is with the root cause - ha!  do you see - o you do - of her problem.


*  Much darker.
**  Booh!