Sandy Shore

No!  Nothing To Do With "Puppet On A String"
You're thinking of Sandie Shaw.  Which rather dates you, since that was 1967.  What you might call right tent, wrong desert.*
     Okay, you ought to know by now that Conrad is an obsessive about military history, the Second Unpleasantness and the conflict as it occurred in North Africa.  War in the desert, which Art can illustrate.  Art?

Desert epitomy

     Obviously, there is a coastline, bereft of vegetation, for which you can blame the Romans and drought.  Let us prod Art with a bamboo skewer.  Art?

Sandy Shore - see?

     The reason I mention all this is because of an item on the Beeb's news website, concerning the discovery of a new species of dinosaur in - the North African desert.  This is a rare occurrence, apparently.  Mansourasaurus Shaninae is named after the University of Mansour, and the Beeb kindly loaded an evocative picture that Art will display.  Art?

There you go.  80 million years ago; an artist's impression

     What struck me is that this illustration depicts the lush shoreline of the very same desert you can see in the two previous pictures, which just goes to show that the neighbourhood can go into a decline over time.
     Time to strap the motley into an ejector seat and pull the big red lever!**

Our Friend The Shark
Oooh, your humble scribe is excited!  So excited I nearly used TWO exclamation marks there.
     "What is it now?" I can hear you quibble.  "Sugar-free ice cream?  The Mars Volta re-formed?  You acquired a copy of the bestselling "Lithium-Wafer Battery Design For Fun And Profit?"
     None of the above - Darling Daughter Sal has confirmed by text that she will be finishing off the shark pendant, that I commissioned her to do late last year.

Shark is happy, too.

     In fact, it might even have been completed as I type these very words.

A Step In The Right Direction
OR
The Shark Is Still Our Friend
Why would it not be?  Yeah, yeah, short attention span and all that - the same argument would apply to today's youth, then, obsessed with their mobile phones and all.
     Anyway, Conrad has just read about a killer whale that can mimic human speech.  Art?

A killer whale called Wikie.

     Only a few words so far, which is still quite an accomplishment.  Conrad ponders and wonders if this creature will eventually be able to grasp the concepts behind words, in which case expect it to hire a lawyer over the hideous libel of being dubbed a "Killer Whale".
     Now, that's one step towards rendering the killer whale*** more personable, cuddly and cute, which can only have a beneficial effect on Our Friend The Shark's image.  We probably have quite a long way to go before they can be taught to ask politely if you're a seal or a surfer before taking a chunk out of you.  Baby steps.

Shark is still happy, but not quite as much as before.

Did James Blish Inspire "Brains"?
I doubt if any of you young whippersnappers reading this have even heard of JB, who was a big noise in science fiction back in the Fifties and Sixties.  Well, that illustration of a spaceship encountering a space-faring city is from his novel "Earthman, Come Home", which is too long and complex to go into here.  Go and buy a copy.

Thus

     At a meeting with the repellent Hruntan regime on the planet of Gort, NYNY resident and deputy city-manager Carrel gives a lecture to an assembly of Hruntan technicians and a scientist, Doctor Schloss.  Once this lecture, on the nature of anti-gravity, has finished, Schloss launches into an "ardent stammering dispute over Carrel's math.  He seemed to consider Carrel an equal as a matter of course, and Carrel was beginning to look uncomfortable -"
     Now let me think - where else have we met a scientific genius who gets so into his work that his brain outstrips his linguistic abilities?

Mr Hiram Hackenbacker, say hello.

     Brains, of course.  I don't know if the futurologist Gerry Anderson - a moment's silence for the prophet - was familiar with Ol' Jim's work, but you can't deny a resemblance.
     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...


*  You'll see what I mean in a bit.
**  Not sure what it actually does, but - we'll find out, won't we?
***  Sorry, Wikie.

A Game Of Throngs

Say What You Like -
- but your humble scribe (which is me, for the confused) is ever one to delight in what the Teutons called "Schadenfreude", which can be translated as "A malicious enjoyment in the experienced misfortune of others".  This is a rare example of the German language being succinct.  Usually a Teuton anagram is longer than the original phrase in English, because Irony.

Yeah!  Irony - no, wait, hang on -

     Anyway!  I have been trawling amongst the Beeb's sports pages, and specifically those that deal with sport, and even more specifically those that deal with the ballfoot sport.*  There has been a concatenation of dialectic neologisms - okay, a draw of ballfoot teams against one another, which has created a flurry of conspiracy claims.  Art?

Tinfoil hat and tinfoil cat.

     This is fascinating stuff - the frothing conspiracy theorist in the raw, as it were.  Most of all, they maintain that the draw - excuse me - The Draw Is Fixed.  

Fixed drawer.

     No evidence of same - obviously! - but that doesn't stop them from pontificating about it.  As with all conspiracy theories, all you need to duplicate an Illuminati Skull-Crushing Global Dictatorship is a whiff of whimsy and a bus ticket.**  And there are 21 pages of comments there - truly a game followed by hordes - nay, throngs! - of people.  
      What's that?  You thought this was going to be about some ridiculously obscure television program about dragons and poisons?  Get out of here, you're making it up!
     Let us now put the strait-jacketed motley into the belly of a stunt jet and send it into a tropical storm!

The Continent: Part One In an unusual display of both common sense and pacificity, the nations of France and Spain decided to come to an accommodation about an island that lies in the river constituting their mutual border.  This is, as I say, unusual, since both nations have for centuries gone to war with one another whenever they were bored, or their monarchs felt a bit frisky and needed to work off some energy.  Art?

     Pheasant Island sits in the middle of the river Bidasoa, as depicted above.  By treaty as arranged in 1650, for six months of the year it is French, and for the next six months it is Spanish.  It's uninhabited, and tidal,*** so that you can walk across to it at certain times, which means the police occasionally need to chase illegal campers off it.  Not only is it uninhabited, there's considerably less of it than there used to be, as erosion has worn away half of it.  So by 2350 this particular eyot may be no more.

The Continent: Part Two
This is an altogether less charming story, unless you're an icicle.  Indy Neidell, he of The Great War Youtube channel, goes out in the field sometimes.  And he paid a trip to North East Italy, where the gallant Italians (because they were on our side) waged frigid war against the beastly Austro-Hungarians (the bally enemy, don't you know).  If Art will stop mooning about Mara Corday for a minute -

     Yes, there was an Italian Front in the First Unpleasantness, and as visible from the above, a jolly unpleasant place it was, too.  Not only did you have hostile chaps in different uniforms taking pot-shots at you, with wind-chill factored in the temperature could get down to -45C.  Indy, well bundled up against the cold, was still visibly frozen, and he made the point that this was in September, when it was considerably warmer than January or February.

And you thought your commute to work was hard ...

     You couldn't dig a trench in a mountain made of rock with a humble spade, so power tools and explosives were used with gay abandon to dig holes and tunnels and caverns, and to hollow out accommodation inside a glacier for 300 men.  Said accommodation wasn't exactly comfortable, but it beat standing out on a mountainside being transformed into a human icicle. Art?

If you can't go over it, you gotta go under it

   And there, gentle reader, we shall leave it for today.  Tomorrow - tomorrow we shall deal with that existential threat to humanity, the Blue-crested Quaking Vomit Newt!^^



*  This description always slays me.  You?  Who cares.
**  In a pinch, do without bus ticket
***  We did a series of articles on these last year.  BOOJUM! - educational and entertaining.^
^  Yes we are.
^^  Don't laugh, they are armed with strangle-gas bombs

Black Sabbath

No!
Not the Italian horror film, you bozos.  No, instead I refer to that - er - classic, "The Black Scorpion", a horror film that features the titular creature, except that it's of gigantic size.  Big as a house.
     Now, I realise that this is impossible, because there's a reason insects don't grow to that size, apart from the sheer terror that would be inflicted upon you humans.  For one, their respiratory system won't work if they get bigger than a badger, and their exoskeleton would collapse under the sheer weight.  Art?

Gravity 1: Giant Insect 0

     Okay, if we put cold hard science on the back burner, the climax of this - ahem - epic takes place between the Black Scorpion - no lack of imagination there, eh? - and the combined forces of the Mexican Army and Police force, plus a fire engine.  Good lord is that scorpion noisy!  It roars non-stop as it does battle with the tanks -

This is an M26

     - except that the only tank we see in real life is a feeble M5 Stuart, armed with a 37 mm popgun that would barely go through a sheet of tissue-paper, unlike the mighty M26.
     Now, the giant scorpion is killed by being electrocuted after being hit in it's only weak spot, the throat, with a harpoon wired into the national grid, which seems overly elaborate to this humble scribe.  Here's an idea - why not just shoot the weak spot?  If a harpoon will penetrate, an armour-piercing shell most certainly will.
     Now, today's title has a 16.6% chance of being correct, because the battle above has once chance in 7 of taking place on a Sunday, which is a Sabbath. 
     What's that?  You thought this was going to be about a heavy metal band that go by this name?  Pshaw!  You're making this up, and probably confusing and conflating it with Deep Purple, too.

                         Midget M5 versus mighty meaty metal monster M26
             
     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
As we are wont to do.  In case you were expecting a detailed and factual analysis THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY! <points to exit door> because we here at the blog believe in little except ridicule, mockery and insult when it comes to films.*  Essentially, we make it up as we go along.  If you don't like that THE EXIT DOOR IS THAT WAY! <doesn't bother pointing as that would be redundant>.  Let's roil.**

A professional film critic is unamused

"12 Strong":  12 strong what?  Men?  Women?  Blue-crested quaking vomit newts?  Or do they mean that the characters as portrayed on the poster are strong?  Well of course they are, that's what the army (whichever one it is) trains them to be!  Bafoons.
"Den of Thieves": I actually checked out the plot for this one, and it seems to be another variation of Cops and Robbers, with the script aiming to be cool and edgy by calling the thieves a "crew".  Gerald Butler plays a detective who seems straight out of the Big Book Of Scriptwriting Cliches, and in real life I'd expect him to be gracing a prison cell, because his behaviour is, frankly, not the best.  Ali Baba, you have so much to answer for.

Rum Baba.  Close enough.

"Finding Your Feet": Aaaand thank you, Coincidence Hydra. For whom did I happen to mention in yesterday's BOOJUM!?  Why none other than Timothy Spall.  No sooner do I look for - well, let Art tell a thousand words.  Art?

Where do I start?

     That's him, the piker, second from left.  After prising the Hydra's teeth from my nethers, I would like to point out that finding your feet is one of the easiest things extant: get hold of your knees and then head south and Hay Pesto!  Feet. So I can't see this having much of a plot, and I bet they drag it out to inordinate length, too.  Then there's that ridiculous "The Feel-good film of the year".
     THE YEAR HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN!  We are at about 8% through the year.  This is a ridiculous claim to make, and besides, does it have big explosions in it?  Because that's what makes this humble scribe feel good.

Pickled cauliflower works, too

Finally -
Something has gone wrong with the weather - the mists have rolled away and Gomorrah on the Irwell (or Manchester, if you insist on being formal) no longer resembles a rather seedy Silent Hill.  There is sunshine!
     Which is bad.  Sunshine ages the skin.  We need to get that wonderful moisturising mist and rain back, quick smart.
     BOOJUM! - thoroughly perverse.

And yes, I am aware that the motley got off today without a little healthy torture.  I like to keep it guessing.  Just wait until tomorrow!

*  None of these come naturally and require practice.  LOTS of practice.
**  Like rolling, except more intense.