A Little More Down To Earth Today

I Will Try To Keep Exploding Solar Systems To A Minimum
It's just that they're so much fun, dammit!  Plus, they have no calorific value nor do they contain saturated fatty-acids.

Bye bye Solar System

     Having recovered from my momentary mordancy yesteryon, where we had children innocently dancing in the street, unaware that they were living on borrowed time, let us now revisit that shocking example of parental neglect "Boys And Girls Come Out To Play".  Yes, really.

"Come with a whoop, come with a call,"

Now really, this is taking the biscuit!  Not only are these children abroad at night when they ought to be sleeping - all that racket they're making is going to keep other people awake as well, and of course their slack-mannered parents completely ignore what's going on.

"Come with a good will or not at all."

NOT AT ALL, THANKS!  Or at least if the sullen, unwilling and moody ones were out, they'd be sitting silently sulking.

"Up the ladder and down the wall"

What!  Where are these children venturing off to?  Not only are ladders potentially dangerous, they'll be out of sight of their - admittedly negligent - parents if they're behind a wall.

"A halfpenny roll will serve us all."

Oh no it won't!  The half-penny has not been legal tender for decades.  Besides that, a single roll won't go far between hordes of children with appetites enhanced by dancing and singing, will it?  Nor will you find anywhere local open at this time of night.  Sorry, children, you're going to go hungry.

     That rhyme is a concatenation of abuse and neglect, all it needs is for some kids to be shoved up a chimney.  Disgraceful!

Will also fit most major sewers

     Time to strap the motely to the front of the speed-boat and circumnavigate the Isle of Wight!

Hi-Tec And Lo-Tec At The Same Time
Yes, gentle reader, for have I not been watching Season 4 of "The Rockford Files"?*  The last episode, "The House on Willis Avenue" was a 2-parter, introducing P.I. Richie Brockleman, and lots of computer equipment, which was White Heat Of Technology stuff at the time, and which Art will now illustrate.  Art?

     Ah, spinning tape reels and dot-matrix printers, how very nostalgic.  This was 1977, so the hardware looks a little clunky to 21st Century eyes: I probably have more processing power in the laptop I'm typing this up on than that whole room of machinery.
     The ending also comes with a rather prescient and poingnant message from the production team, which Art will reproduce -

     What would they have thought if they could see today's Interwebz and the data contained therein?  True, we do have the Data Protection Act, which is great if people pay attention to it.  If only those television staff of 1977 knew what happy innocent times they were living in ...

Conrad A Tad Ambivalent
No, no, you misunderstand - it's still SFW.  It means to be unsure which way to jump about a particular situation.  In the case of your humble scribe, we are talking about sharks, and I continue to plough a lonely furrow insisting that Sharks Are Our Friends, so I was intrigued when a song called "Baby Shark" came along.  
     "It can only be a good thing," I mused, "And will surely offset, at least partially, all those horrid exploitative films with poor CGI that feature robo-sharks or mega-sharks or three-headed sharks or sharks that swim in snow or orbit."**  Art?

Hmmmmmmm.

     I did play it on Youtube, once, which was quite enough, what with all the 'doo doo doo's there present.  No, I am not going to link to it, go find it yourself if you must.
     As I said: Conrad = ambivalent.

A Touch Of Dread
No!  Nothing to do with 2000AD and Mega-City One's top lawman, although that does give me an excuse to add in a picture, if Art will put his plate of coal down long enough -

Ol' Stony Face himself.

     Rather, your humble scribe is now beginning to realise that he's managed to pack and sort most of his books away, Hooray!  There is a pile of stuff waiting to be read, and some too large to fit in any bookcase, and another stack - but I digress.  "Packed away" does not equal "Arranged" or "Organised" - Art?

     This lot need arranging in at least alphabetical order of author, because I have no idea what's in there.  And there's hundreds of them!  And how can I arrange them in order to read their titles? 

"You're under arrest, creep."

          Yeah, you'd love that, wouldn't you, Mister Chin?

Later!


*  It was a rhetorical question, the answer is "Of course I have"
**  Every an one accurate and true description.