Things Exploding!

As You Should Surely Know By Now -

 - your humble scribe is either excessively interested or worryingly obsessed with things that go BANG! and the bigger the bang, the greater the interest.  Step aside mere conventional explosives and say hello to my much larger friend the thermonuclear explosion, which is rendered miniscule by some of the astronomical events out there.  

     Firstly, however, please rest your glazzies on this.  Art?

Middle two, bottom row, ta

      I thought it amusingly ironic that you had a blurb about television folks not being able to get on - Art?

Okay, okay, so neither lady is young any more

      Here we see a pair of plastic prima donnas who apparently hated, hated, HATED each other, and since Conrad can't stand either of them, he can openly point and laugh, referring to the other headline, "Violent end as young stars collide".
     Well, it made me laugh.

Now, About That Astronomical Event
Far more interesting.  You disagree? Then the exit door IS THAT WAY!
     What the article is about concerns the collision of two relatively young stars, causing an explosion that released the equivalent of our own Sun's output across 10 million years.  Art?

Bang, and then some

     The difference here is that we normally associate this kind of energetic outburst with stars at the end of their lives, as they go supernova.  
     Don't worry about this blast requiring Factor 1 Million sunscreen if you venture outdoors, since it took place 1,500 light years away in the constellation of Orion.

Talking Of Supernovae -
A talking point for you out there who may not be familiar with any of the classics mentioned thereupon - in which case the exit door IS THAT WAY!

Total Recall,  Westworld, Reign Of Fire, The Thing, Event Horizon, Lifeforce

     I've seen them all, of course, half of them at the cinema actually if you want to hear my gloasting about it, and even if you don't.  This particular event takes place later in April, at the Printworks in Little-Ur-On-The-Irwell.  Doubtless Conrad would fit right in with the kind of person who goes to see these films.
     Not sure quite what the artwork is intended to portray.  Kinky Japanese tentacle stuff, I strongly suspect ...
     ... which, being most definitely NSFW, means we shall hurriedly move on.

"Aspidistra"
George Orwell, or Eric Arthur Blair if you prefer, wrote "Keep The Aspidistra Flying", about a man trying to escape the bland suburban life of his fellow wage-slaves and making a complete hash of it before joyfully plunging back into the bland suburban life.

Aspidistras.  Or is it aspidistrae?

     None of which has anything to do with what follows.  Instead, let me inform you that Gracie Fields had a comic song in her repertoire entitled "The Biggest Aspidistra In The World".  We shall come back to this.
     O Noes! Said RCA.  They were forbidden by a recently-enacted law from using their newly-constructed and enormously powerful radio transmitter.  
     Hello, said the British Secret Intelligence Service.  Here's £165,00.  We'll take your transmitter off your hands.  Perfidious Albion had plans for that transmitter ...
     It was for a while the most powerful radio transmitter in the world.  Bribing a local British American engineering unit with beer, in order to keep the paper trail as short as possible, an enormous underground bunker was excavated for the transmitter.

Aspidistra firmly bedded-in

     Now comes the interesting bit, what Ol' Aspy was used for.  This being wartime, traditional British fair play went out the window and instead some extremely dirty tricks were played with the transmitter.
     One:  it was used to broadcast contradictory instructions to the Teuton night fighters abroad over Germany, seeking to intercept the Allied bomber fleets.  Every countermeasure the Teutons came up with was immediately countered in turn by Perfidious Albion.

German night fighters.  No - hang on -

     Two:  It was used to broadcast black propaganda to German listeners under various guises, one of the major ones being "Soldatensender Calais".  This pretended to be a genuine German radio station, using German-speaking broadcasters, with subtle negative propaganda woven into the genuine news and light entertainment.  There was also another broadcast, the name of which escapes me, which pretended to be from a patriotic German senior officer who roundly criticised the clique around the Fuhrer.  Wise in wiles, Pefidious Albion realised that you couldn't directly criticise Hitler so they used that old standby from medieval times - if you can't criticise the king, you criticise his court.

We made it into a gaming magazine.  It's official.

     Three:  German radio stations would go off the air when Allied bombers ventured over the Reich, in order to avoid becoming location aids for navigation.  This silence was instantly exploited by Ol' Aspy, which would begin transmitting on the same frequencies as the German radio stations, putting out fake news and propaganda whilst they remained silent.  This extremely sneaky tactic was said to have sent Josef Goebbels, the Reich Propaganda Minister, into paroxyms of rage, and required sending out official denials of what had sounded like official news, which was fearfully confusing.

"Those British are at it again!  My nerves - my bowels - my word -"

     Perfidious Albion.  Telling great big fibs since the Sixteenth Century.