Not Sure How This Will Go -

At Present, I Am Listening -
 - to a Radio 4 broadcast "The Ultimate Trip", about that notable fillum "2001: A Space Odyssey".  It's nearly an hour long, so I don't think I'll get to hear the whole thing tonight - it being nearly midnight on Sunday as I type the beginning of tomorrow's blog.  And, as you may guess from reading this, I am also typing up tomorrow's BOOJUM! as well.
      Multi-tasking, take that!  Art?

There you go

     It has slowed me down significantly, and at the same time I've got an episode of 'N.C.I.S.' on the go; time, methinks, to put the radio on hold and get back to the DVD, which will probably also slow me down, just not as much (they write and run these things to a formula, you know).
      There.  A nice short Intro minus any wildly divergent sidetracks onto completely unrelated matters.  I shall even present the motley with a plate of hot buttered muffins that contain entirely no poisons.*

100 Tons Of Cyanide Are Not Good For You
Well of course not!  Cyanide is bad news for pretty much all living things that want to remain living, although I bet some smart alek biologist reading this will promptly lecture all and sundry on the bacteria that can metabolise it -
     Here an aside.  Tombstone companies used a cyanide solution, and are thus required by safety standards to also stock an antidote, which they keep refrigerated and renew on a weekly basis.  According to one manager, the antidote " - is a waste of time.  If you got poisoned by cyanide, you'd be dead before you reached the fridge."
 

"Here be lied -
One done in by cyanide"
(And the letterer is in the next plot)

     Thanks for your candour.  Now, you remember that yesterday I was harping on about Tailing Dams, those unlovely chemical sumps used to contain the waste products of mining operations?  Well, here's a fact: gold is soluble in a solution of cyanide, so to get gold out of ore-bearing rock, you go at the rock with thousands of gallons of cyanide solution.  Yes, that cyanide.  Then you pump all the vile tailing residue into a pond.
     Enter the Baia Mare tailings dam collapse of 2000, described as the worst ecological disaster to hit Europe since Chernobyl.  100,000 tons of cyanide-infused liquid waste were released, killing everything the Somes and Tisza rivers, before hitting the Danube.

Don't drink that water!

     The mining company wriggled like worms to avoid admitting responsibility: it was the snow; it was dynamite; it was other folk's industrial waste; the dead fish had got poorly because it was cold; high winds over Norway had affected the mango crop; there was no cyanide; look! a flying saucer! -
     So, the next time you put on your gold bracelet, THINK OF THE FISH!

Wow, that was grim.  I think we need to rebound with more light and frothy matters, such as THERMONUCLEAR WARHEAD DESI - ah - perhaps not, perhaps not.  Aha!  I know - Film Reviews; the topic that makes Hollywood cringe in fear.  Let the roasting begin!

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
In our own idiosyncratic style.  If you want a proper, balanced, objective review from someone who's actually seen any of these films, go look up Mark Kermode, because we make it up as we go along.  Next!
"The Predator": Let me guess - it predates?  Rather an abstract concept for a film, I would have thought.  Very Alain Robbe Grillet.  A film about our far distant ancestors, who pre-date us by many thousands of years, and possibly a musing upon whether we today are any happier than they were, all those millenia ago.**

This, for example, pre-dates Jenga

"The House With A Clock In It's Walls": Colour Conrad confused.  Wall's Ice Cream?  Wall's Sausages? Wall's Steak Pies?  If we are referring to "House" as a domestic domicile, then how can it be "Walls" plural and only a single clock, thanks to that "a"?  Has it been smashed up into very small pieces and mixed in with the mortar, and if so - why?  Did the builders suffer from Horologiophobia?*** Or - it's not a feature film about that doctor on television, is it?  In which case this might be a case of someone's intestinal wall being perforated by an explosively-propelled clock set to go off at 13:57 exactly, which vibration would shake their insides apart, so House has to operate, and it's already 13:37 when the patient arrives in the hospital - 

Or this.  Which is quite dull, frankly

"Venom": Ah, now, I saw the trailer for this at the cinema, and therefore I have no need to actually go see the film, since it blew all the surprises and secrets and revelations in the space of 90 seconds.  Way to go Hollywood!  You blew £65 million on a minute and a half of film.
     Nor does the bad guy seem very - how can I put it?  "Venomous".  As in toxic or poisonous, as if he'd spent a week steeping in a toxic tailings pond.  No, he seems principally to have a gobful of very long sharp teeth, which also makes one wonder how often he bites off his own tongue.

Now, that's venomous.

     There you go, the requisite light and fluffy nonsense!  
     What's that?  Okay, okay, it may not be happy lambs gambolling in the meadows, or cuddly puppies being chased by the dogcatcher rolling in toilet tissues, but you can't deny it's nonsense.  The very finest nonsense!

And now - lunch.


*  This time.
**  Well, of course we are!  I mean - flushing toilets and central heating.  Though we do have to put up with Russell Brand and Alan Carr.  Hmmm.  Maybe it's more finely balanced than I thought.
***  "A fear of timepieces" - I made this up all by myself.  Clever, eh?