No More NEO

Thank Heavens, Say The Readers
We shall touch on astronomy later, but it will be a kindler, gentler astronomy that does not involve mighty mountains made of marble masses falling upon your tender heads.  There will be Latin also, which might contra-balance the holy heavenly hosts.
     I suppose I could go with the Near Earth Object in fiction, as there is a vast literature in science-fiction about Big Things Hitting Earth, except that would, once again, be rather grim.  Given that the weather is a combination of Vile and Bile, we have quite enough misery in our lives at the moment, so "Lucifer's Hammer" shall have to wait for another day.

Close enough

     Anyway, you now know enough to realise that the Big Bad in "Armageddon" is actually a big pile of poop.  An asteroid "as big as Texas"?  Where has that been hiding all the life of the Solar System?  An object that large would be easily spotted and plotted, giving years if not decades of lead time to mount an interception -

NASA Shuttle Flight Simulator
(There were budget cuts)

     - okay, okay, I'm probably over-thinking that one.  You can't expect razor-sharp logic and scientific realism from a script written to encourage the mass consumption of popcorn.
     Right, I declare the Intro over.  Let the phaeton of phantasy begin!

How To Scare Cats The Mark Kermode Way!
Yes, Mark can, for the measly sum of £5 per session, show YOU how to scare cats in a humane, non-violent and RSPCA-approved manner*!  Never suffer the pain of feline caterwauling in the small hours, your herb allotment being dug up, or the budgie chased ANY LONGER! 

The non-proprietary part of his Method

     Meanwhile, in his day job, Mark's (frightfully worthy) Top 10 Films of 2016 continue to provide endless amusement and content for BOOJUM!  Hopefully we will stay under his radar and avoid an injunction.
     Number 7: "Julieta".  Chick film.  Next!
     Number 6: "Room".  Not to be confused with "The Room".  Frankly "Room" tells me nothing of the subject matter, although it does remind me of a film review in the Sunday Times Magazine from the early Seventies, where the film critic** completely mis-interpreted the ending of "2001: A Space Odyssey" by stating that the astronaut was trapped in a room on Jupiter, which is more akin to the ending of Tarkovsky's "Solaris", if you ask me 
     - we seem to have gotten off-topic.

Well, the beginning and end credits better be good, that's all I'm saying

     Number 5: "13th".  Wait, what?  How can this be next in a linear ordinal number series?  You might as well call it "Fourth".
     Number 4:  "Son Of Saul": Nothing to do with Son of Sam, but equally grim and unpleasant.  Watching is like dropping an anvil on your foot; unforgettable and an experience not to be repeated.

An anvil

Barefeet

If You Sit Enough Monkeys At Enough Typewriters For Long Enough -
 - then they will eventually, by pure random chance, hammer out the works of Shakespeare.  I don't know why you'd want another collection of the Barm of Avon's wretched scribblings, there are quite enough in existence already***.
     In the same way, Facebook will eventually get it right with their Suggested Posts.  Out of a wish to avoid being samey I no longer list the reprehensible rubbish they suggest, and instead offer a rare example of Getting It Right.  Art?

Ah, the later version

     You can tell that drummer and singer Robert Wyatt isn't there as the chap's been in a wheelchair since his accident.  I think that mordant-looking bloke on the right is the keyboard player, Mike Ratledge, as he always had a saturnine air about him.
     Oh, and one of their albums that I have is called -

"Fourth"

     Proof positive that everything links into everything else.

About Those Monkeys ...
Conrad, curious as a concatenation of cats, wondered what the odds were of those monkeys managing to type out the Barb of Avon's works.  There are 835,997 words in all his plays, which we would guess have an average length of 5 letters, to which you add another 2 for the space in front of and after the word, which works out at 5,581,979 characters, and there are 62 possible characters - the whole alphabet in upper and lower case and all the punctuation marks, too, which comes to - 362,822,398.  So those monkeys would have one chance in well over a third of a billion to produce the repellent catalogue of cant.  Hugely unlikely.
     Phew!

Monkeys and Shakespeare are dull.  Have Supercar instead.

     



*  The ASPCA?  You're on your own there.
**  Pay attention here, Mark.
***  If you were unaware, Conrad loathes Shakespeare.