The Quiet Americano

Somewhere, Windbag Willie Shakespeare Sighs With Relief
I think our little stretch of insulting him with tea-based blog titles has gone as far as it can without straining the punnery to breaking point.  Not that I've decided to stop insulting him per se - that will most definitely continue!
    I did toy with the idea of using "Americano Pie" as the title, except I believe it's a little low-brow, and we here at BOOJUM! do like to maintain a pretence of owning the intellectual high ground*.  

Mister Hand points out that anyone who likes this has NO RIGHT to claim anything to do with "Intellect"

     Okay. An unusually short Intro tonight, because we like to keep you, the reader, guessing and off-guard.  We are now going to catapult the motley over the castle walls, and see how many pieces it breaks into when it hits the ground.

Keeping The Genie In The Bottle
Or, banning the bomb.  We touched on this theme earlier today, so let us assume that all the foofoodillies across the world are no more.  Great!  A more peaceful world beckons, eh?

How very - pacific

     Don't you believe it!  

     How do you stop nations re-acquiring nuclear and thermonuclear weapons?  Trust them because they swore, Scouts honour, that they wouldn't?  Sorry, not good enough.
     First of all, you'd need a database of all the weapon designers, artificers, technicians, missile crews, researchers, and indeed anyone who might have significant information or experience in how to design or create or operate foofoodillies.  It's not the done thing to then wipe them all out, so you have to bankroll them extremely well, to the point that they don't need money and so can't be tempted to recommence their old occupation.  More than that, you'd need to give them completely new identities so they can't be blackmailed into co-operation.  You'd need to keep a weather eye on them, just in case they do get blackmailed or bought, human nature being what it is.

Not sure what candles have to do with it ...

     Yes, yes, it would be simpler and cheaper to just wipe them all out - not permitted!
     Then we get to the issue of designs themselves.  Pretty obviously blueprints or specs for building a three-stage Teller-Ulam fission-fusion-fission weapon are not available on the internet, for obvious reasons.  The dark web is another matter, and you would have to seed and spoof this with gimmicked design plans that, if followed, would fatally irradiate or poison or blow up anyone following them.  The internet would have to be permanently monitored to exclude the possibility of some raving twonk posting valid design specs there, because then they'd never be out of circulation.
     There's a lot more of this, which we will continue at a later stage.  Count on it.

Shakespoke
Or, Somewhere, Windbag Willie Moans In Despair.  You didn't think I'd let you off that easily, did you Bill?
     Okay, let us roll out one from "Henry IV", which I hope I haven't already spoofed**.

"A man can die but once."

Well of course you steaming nonce!

If he could indeed expire repeatedly

He'd not be a man, he'd be a zombie.

     Either that, or Captain Scarlet.  Or Tiger Ninestein.  Either way, not a human being in the accepted sense of the word.  Shall we have another one, from 'Hamlet'?

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

I have to say, Bill, your logic stinks.

If she didn't protest you'd criticise that -

You oleaginous misogynistic prat.

   
     Ha!  Take that.  I can get away with the 'misogynist' crack because of 'The Taming of the Shrew', and FYI "Oleaginous" means "Oily", meaning a personality like that of Noel Edmonds.

If Noel Edmonds were rendered down ...

Speaking Of D.J.s -
Last night Conrad, in a fit of whimsy, went a-looking on the internet for an article about John Peel, the Disk Jockey.  He found lots!  I first started listening to him on a transistor radio in 1976, when I first got into music properly.  Art?

John, also in 1976

     This was at a point when the music John played was dominated by what we now call "progressive rock", exemplified by bands such as Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, The Incredible String Band, The Grateful Dead and so on.  I remember listening to his newly inaugurated Festive Fifty, where he had compiled a list of listener favourites sent in.  He totted up the votes for each listener's top three and created the list, which makes interesting reading as a snapshot of the current preferences in rock music.
     However, since we are at count, this will have to wait for another day.  Sorry!


*  Plus, Conrad is a snob <the hideous truth courtesy Mister Hand>
**  I am confident you are all to lazy to bother checking on this