I Say Ron, It's A Dimetrodon!

Yesterday We Began With A Look Back
290 million years, to be precise, which is quite a look.  We were looking at a creature I assumed you knew wot of, which is a dangerous thing to do, for my interests may very well be different from yours.
     So, allow me to re-introduce the Dimetrodon.  Art?

Colour is speculative

     Despite looking the part, it isn't a dinosaur, but a member of the genus Sphenacontidae, who turned their toes up a good 40 million years before dinosaurs arrived.  The bigger species came in at 15 feet length, and probably weighed in at a ton.  They were predators, which means if you were smaller than a Dimetrodon and it spotted you, then you were on the menu.
     Ah, yes: that sail.  Nobody really knows what it was for, and - bummer - there aren't any live Dimetrodons to observe in the wild.  Art

THIS IS NOT REAL!

     Was it for heat regulation?  A mating aid?  An actual sail for use when lying, lurking, in the water?  Camouflage amongst Permian reed beds?  Take your pick. 
     Oh, you may have seen the rhinoceros iguana made up to look like a dimetrodon (as above) in "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", back in the Fifties when you could get away with casual animal cruelty.  You can see an especially bad mock-dimetrodon in "The Lost World" 1960 iteration, where they made up a baby alligator.  Art?

This not real, either, and in a bad way

     As far as I know, there is no evidence in the fossil record for dimetrodons having horns.*
     Right, time to put the motley in a centrifuge and spin it up to 10G!


A Very Bad Idea INDEED!
Yesterday we floated the idea of hurling the ever-unfortunate motley into a pool of fluorine, which would be an exceedingly callous thing to do, for a couple of reasons.
     Reason the First: Temperature.  Fluorine is a gas at normal temperatures.  In order to have a pool of it, you'd need to get the temperature down verrrrrry low.

Thus

     Down to about -2000C, in fact, which means you'd need to put a bit of goose-grease on your tender skin.  Apart from -
     Reason the Second: Reactivity.  Flourine is horribly reactive with everything.  It is extremely dangerous stuff, and it took 76 years from it being correctly identified as an element to being produced experimentally.  Er - successfully and non-fatally experimentally.  A jet of fluorine gas will cause materials like steel wool, asbestos and glass to ignite.  If you take a swim in it, you are likely to have your skin explode from your body as you are dissolved from the inside out.

He speaketh the truth

      There is a potential third reason; if your swimming pool was cleaned with chlorine, then there is a faint possibility that any traces will react with the fluorine, creating The Chemical From Hell, Chlorine Trifluoride.  We have talked about this before.  Go search.

Travel Travails
I am now able to type without hitting the keyboard so hard it shatters, or the keys deform, and colleagues need no longer keep sharp objects out of my way.
     "For why?" I hear you question.  "What is the old bore on - oh, wait a minute, this is about First Bus, isn't it?"
     Well - yes.

Know your enemy

     A couple of weeks ago I decided to simply catch the first bus that arrived at my stop.  If it was the 24, then Splendid! for it would carry me all the way into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell (Manchester if we're being formal).  If it was the 409, then I would ride it into Babylon-lite (Oldham if we're being formal) and catch a bus out from there.
     Of course, First threw this arrangement out because the 24 started turning up early.  Now it is turning up late, or not at all - as today.  And the 409 was late, revisting which has stoked my tem

      -per.  Sorry, I broke the keyboard.

"Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse"
No!  It's a film, not a pamphlet issued by the Scouts Association.*  A horror-comedy at that, and unusual in that the heroes are a trio of scouts - teenagers, so we won't use the word "boy" here - who are spectacularly uncool.  Art?

"Scouts" plural thus no need for an apostrophe

     Your humble scribe quite enjoyed it, although it does have a rather high Tut Factor, so probably best not watched in front of Mum and Dad, and certainly not the visiting Minister from the local Anglican Church.  It does try to avoid the usual clichés, apart from the Idiot At The Beginning Who Unleashes It All.  And - the authorities here are actually quite competent, evacuating people and preparing to bomb the zombies into inedible ground mince.

Probably also the only time you will see a singing dancing revenant.*

     And there we are at count.

 Don't forget to look in the cistern and under the bed for those treacherous KILLER EELS!


*  Although if you know different, I stand to be corrected