Killer Bees

This May Not Work
Because idiot mobile phone cannot be relied upon to function properly.  Last week it took 40 minutes to access photographs that had been taken already, switching between different leads and different sockets and different combinations of crossed fingers.  Yet another reason to consign all mobile phones to the bin and resort to a tin can connected with a length of string.  Art?

Requires neither electrical power, moving parts nor 18 month subscriptions

     You know that cod news question, "Could you live without your phone for a month?" - well, my answer is a very loud YES!! and for several years, at least, thanks.
     Right, digits intertwined because the Devil's Digital Device appears to be working as it should.  Okay, time to look askance at Conrad as he prepares to wow you with an incredibly offensive wartime film, namely "The Fighting Seabees", which is where the killer bees come from, as these are navvies with guns, and it's definitely a 'B' movie to boot.

They look to be doing more kissing than killing.

     Firstly, let me abruptly change subjects and instead go on about cigarettes, the 'baby cigar' made out of shredded nicotine plants and mind-control drugs chemical enhancers bad stuff.  Art?

THESE ARE NO BETTER!
(Although PK Dick would have loved them)

     The fuming coffin-nail didn't get removed from the screen until the Seventies, and consequently films in the Forties and Fifties were populated by hordes of hardened smokers, whose lungs probably resembled jute sacking dipped in tar, because Smoking Was Manly.*  Drinking was manly, too.  Remember that.
     Now that I've set the scene, allow me to introduce another.  Art?

I shall describe what you're seeing

     This is one of 'Wedge' Donovan's skilled technicians - their words, not mine! - opening a packet of cellophane-wrapped lung-picklers BY SLICING IT OPEN WITH A CIRCULAR SAW.
     I don't know if it's even a dummy saw blade; I suspect not, because Cheating Death Or Risking Traumatic Amputation Is Also Manly.  The kicker here is that the skilled technician is also staggeringly drunk, literally - he can barely stay upright or speak coherently.  And nobody minds one iota.
     Ah, the Forties - where you could get away with practically murder!
     I think that's enough of that for today, but rest assured we're coming back this way again.  Oh yes.
     Now, time to contort the motley into a washing machine and put it on full rinse for an hour and a half!

Yes, because "The welding, drilling, bricklaying and carpentering Seabees" would be dull.

Can You Say "Shrieking Hysterical Over-reaction"?
Sometimes the Beeb proves that it is indeed a touchstone of responsible, mature, balanced, researched and nuanced reporting by avoiding having anything to do with those qualities.  Just so here.  Art?

     What they mean, of course, is that a lot of foodstuffs get their red colouration from cochineal, a food colouring derived from boiling up cochineal beetles.

A red Beatle.  Close enough.

     Your humble scribe knew what the article was going to be about before reading it.  My comment would be 'Duh'; this is why vegans have to check food labels for ingredients, and why Conrad, if he's baking anything that needs to be coloured red, uses Doctor Oetker's non-beetley food dye.

Strange Ships - One That Flips
Ha!  Those ocean-going wags!  I see what they did there.  We are talking about the Floating Instrument Package, a vessel of peculiar aspect and function.  Art?

FLIP being towed into position

     You have to admit, FLIP looks odd.  It was designed to research ocean conditions, and functions by flooding the long hull, causing the research end of the vessel to stand proud of the sea by some 40 feet.  Art?

Going under

     Things aboard have to be designed to work in a horizontal and vertical plane; during the last two minutes of the flooding process, the crew stand outside, because there's a risk of injury indoors if things haven't been secured properly.  It's an outstandingly popular gig for oceanographers, and no wonder, because Flipping Is Manly.  Art?

Flipping manly, alright

     Today's BOOJUM! has come to you later than usual, because I didn't get a PC of my own in the office until mid-afternoon, and even then had to do work, instead of being able to compose glorious drivel.  Ah well.  These things are sent to try us ...


*  Women smokers were tolerated, rather than accepted.  The trouble started, in my opinion, when they got the vote.  It was all downhill <Mister Hand redacts a screed that would have been acceptable in 1898)