Pinky's Question

I Refer, Of Course -
 - to that classic cartoon "Pinky and the Brain".  They were two laboratory mice, you see, whose genes had been spliced, which resulted in one being a genius and the other an idiot (Pinky, if I have to draw you a picture).

No, Art, that's not what - O never mind.

     And each night, when the foolish and unsuspecting humans - although how many laboratory mice do you know who are sentient and capable of speech? - had left the lab, Pinky would inevitably turn to The Brain and ask
     "Gee, Brain, what are we going to do tonight?" in an annoying falsetto.  The Brain would reply:
     "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"
     I am not a mouse, nor do I have a mousey partner, and it is still daylight in the Allotment of Eden but I can give you the same answer.  Hopefully I shall be more successful than Brain - he never quite got there, did he? and when I do Graham Norton, Russell Brand and Hatie Kopkins are going to be first into the organ banks, O yes indeed.

IF YOU DO NOT BEHAVE ...

     Well now, that's my calendar sorted out for the next fifteen years, so bang goes my social life.  It's a hard job, being an Apprentice World Dictator.
     Enough self-pitying wibble!  Let the rabid Komodo dragons loose and hurl the motley into their pit!

Well Excuse ME!
If you ever hear a denizen of Perfidious Albion mouth those words, what they actually mean is "Damn and blast you to perdition in a hundred horrible ways!!" but they're too well-bred to be so coarse.*
     Something similar sprang to my lips when I espied the following in the film magazine 'Empire'.  Art?

"Untold"?  Bah!

     As the print is too small to read, allow me to inform you that this is a fillum about the exploits of 303 Squadron RAF, during the dark summer days of 1940, when the Second Unpleasantness had really got into the swing of it.
     Maybe the film's producer had never heard of 303 Squadron, but we here at the blog have mentioned them several times.  They were known as "Tadeusz Kosciuszko" squadron, which is a bit of a mouthful for non-Poles, so 303 will do instead.

Browning .303

     The Hurricanes they flew mounted the .303 machine gun, that being the calibre of the weapon in inches, and their average attack used up 303 rounds.
     No, that last was a lie, I was waxing poetic.
     SO!  Mister Hotshot Producer, you may not have known anything about this subject matter, but BOOJUM!s readers jolly well did.

I shall now go get some lunch.  Working from home does have it's advantages.

I Have To Tell - Of Hafnium
Yes, Hafnium, or Hf72 as we in the know like to call it.  It doesn't sound particularly terrifying, although it does get more interesting as you look into it.
     For one thing, that clever Ruffian Mendelev predicted it would exist, about 50 years before it was actually found.  Another thing about hafnium is that it is very, very similar to zirconium, to the point that it's difficult to differentiate between the two.  Art?

A heft heap of Hafnium

     The name itself is interesting, because it comes from "Hafnia", the Latin for Copenhagen, where it was discovered in 1923.
     Hafnium itself livens up when finely divided - imagine working on a piece and filing off a snag - because it will spontaneously ignite, giving off toxic fumes - oops, you forgot a gas mask, you're dead.

What the well-dressed Hafnium worker ought to be wearing

     I think that's enough Hafnium for one day.  But we'll be back here, revisiting in the near future.  O yes indeed ...

Damn You!  Stop Being Entertaining - STOP IT I SAY!
Once again I have had to switch Radio Six off, because those rascals Radcliffe and Maconie are on and their banter between records is far too interesting.  Not merely about the music and the bands, but all sorts of tangential subjects, too.  Art?

Radcliffe on left, Maconie on right

     For instance, one listener made a comment about "Billy's Boots", which I remember from childhood; I don't know if it has a modern iteration, but Maconie proceeded to inform about which comics it was in, and that it was about young Billy discovering a pair of Charlie "Deadshot" Keen's old boots -
     "STOP BEING SO ENTERTAINING!" bellowed your humble scribe - this working from home has it's disadvantages, you know - and turned it off.



*  I use TWO exclamation marks to show how annoyed they are.  I know, I know, it's a bit much - still, it gets the point across.