Green Day

I May Have Mentioned This Before
This came up in conversation with Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom at the Pleasant on Thursday (there was no Pub Quiz so we just drank), and you can fill in the background of elderly blokes chatting, Christmas deccos still up and the embers of a fire glowing ruddily.
     There you go, that's as much scene-setting as BOOJUM! is going to give you.
     We had gotten onto the subject of tanks, which as you should surely know by now, are dearly beloved subjects for Conrad, close to the fusion-powered pump he has for a heart.
     "Here's one I bet you haven't heard of before!" I crowed.  "The Transphibian Tactical Tree-Crusher".
     "Is that because you've just made it up?" queried Darling Daughter.  This denotes a lack of trust on her behalf, I feel.
   Not at all.  Art?


     Here is the beast in action,crushing trees.  In case there are some touchy-feely readers perusing this* who will instantly leap to the defence of trees, the South Canadian army was trying to get rid of forest that sheltered their sworn enemy, British Redcoats the Viet Cong.  The shot above doesn't really give a sense of scale, so here's another one:

     Although, once again, the scale isn't clear, the crew sat in that cab atop the vehicle which helps to size it properly; it is five storeys high, 75 feet long and clocked in at 60 tons.  The giant 'wheels' were filled with foam, meaning it was also amphibious.  A Youtube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF6cskF9aJ4

     There you go.  Once one of these things had trawled over your nice green jungle, there's be a whole lot less green to go around - from green day to green-gone-away.
     What's that?  You thought that this was going to be an adulatory article about a South Canadian pop band, who by an amazing and unlikely coincidence, also share that name?
     Pshaw!  I don't believe any such thing exists!
     Right, time to give the motley a cream tea with a punnet of sugar-sprinkled strawberries!**

A pun net of strawberries 

Yet More Of "The Giant Claw"
Perhaps it is a little unsporting of Conrad to pick on this film, which never claimed to be high art, or even low art, or any kind of art at all; however, your humble hack cannot resist a bit of malicious enjoyment at other's discomfort.
     Art!

     This is a shot of supposed South Canadian jets scrambling to intercept a UFO "as big as a battleship".  Sorry - no.  Those are Meteor jets of the RAF - witness the roundel in the jet nearer the camera.  The RAF, lest you be unaware, o foreign reader, are the air force who patrol the skies above Perfidious Albion.***  Not South Canada.
     Okay!  Not only that, but a hasty perusal of the plot on Wikipedia reveals that the titular claw-beast - Art?

Titanic Terror Turkey!

     - is composed of anti-matter.
     No.
     Simply put, NO!
     "But Conrad!" I hear you quibble.  "Couldn-"
     WHICH PART OF 'NO' WAS UNCLEAR!?  <sighs dramatically)
     Okay, we take the estimate that the Titanic Terror Turkey is indeed as big as a battleship, but is considerably less dense.  Since a battleship can mass 25,000 tons easily, we will err on the side of caution and convenience and assume our TTT has a mass of 1,000 tons.  This is 1,000,000 kilograms (I know, I know, metric measurements - horrid, but also convenient) of anti-matter.
     The thing about anti-matter, you see, is that if it comes into contact with matter there will be a very big bang as matter and anti-matter annihilate each other completely.  Bear in mind the efficiency in a fission warhead is about 6% and you begin to see what  problems arise when a Titanic Terror Turkey flies the skies and dies.

Cracked like an egg!  Do you see wh - O you do.

     Doing some hasty mathematics, Conrad calculated that when the TTT impacts or even lands on planet Earth, an explosion of 43 gigatons takes place, or if you want the long-hand version, 43,000,000,000 tons equivalent.  I've scaled this down to 1% of the original 4,300 gigatons because not all of the TTT will touch Earth at once.  
     Of course, I may be over-thinking this -

Ooops!  We seem to be at count already, after only covering two topics today.  Well, that's okay, as Madam is sulking in the back room, doubtless castigating the whole human race for their wicked neglectful attitude.  Hopefully this will change once I put on my shoes, get my coat and announce that "Walkies" are imminent ...


*  Why!
**  No, I'm not going soft.  I just like to unsettle the motley every so often.
*** They don't like to be reminded, but they were established on April Fool's Day.