Damn It, Rose!

No!  I Am Not Talking About The Doctor's Companion
Although that does bring up a topic I want to discuss with you, namely that there is to be no more 'Doctor Who' during 2019 bar the episode broadcast on New Year's Day.  Due to "Production matters" said a BBC spokesperson.
     As if!

Conrad is suspicious

     I can tell you what the real cause is - it's either the Dog Buns Daleks or the Autons, the latter masquerading as human beings at the highest levels of the BBC.  Go on, admit it, you'd be hard put to tell the difference between a bland, lifeless mannequin sitting behind a desk pronouncing banalities - or an Auton, wouldn't you?

Come back Kraftwerk, all is forgiven!

     On the other hand, perhaps all the evil entities in the universe are having a year off.  It must get a bit dispiriting, attempting to invade Planet Earth, only to get beaten by an elderly gent/youthful gent/youthful lady (confusing, isn't it?) plus a bunch of kids.*
     Well, I suppose we'll just have to put up with a lack of dramatic reconstructions, won't we?  Fortunately that documentary series "Coronation Street" is still running, phew!
     No, what I wanted to mention was Conrad's peculiar - ah - mind, which has for some reason decided that it wants to listen to "The Yellow Rose of Texas" a lot.

Conrad: still suspicious, but now a bit puzzled.

     Why?  I wish I knew.  Last week it was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", alongside Thomas Morgan Dolby Robertson's "One of Our Submarines".  Truly, who can fathom the mysteries of the human mind?  Well, if I was human, anyway.
     Okay, time to hurl the motley into that barbed-wire pen full of cannibal mutant vampire turnips!**

"Drinking Heavy Water From A Stone"
As you ought to know by now, Conrad's mind is a bit of a puzzle.  You can never tell what's going to pop up in there next:  chemicals that turn things purple; the Latin roots of "perturbation"; how to build a pocket nuclear bomb using <<<<<<<<< REDACTED BY ORDER M.O.D.>>>>>>>>>>>>; how many pens he has; handy baking hints - rather random.

TMDR

     Thus we have that line from OOOS.  Tom got it a bit wrong, since his grandfather's submarine would have been diesel powered, not nuclear.  
     Anyway - what I wanted to say was that drinking heavy water is not especially good for you.  It's not radioactive, so you could drink gallons of it should you choose, but when the Deuterium Molecules in it begin to replace the normal hydrogen atoms in your body - then you have problems.  If you consumed a couple of pints, in fact, you would, not to put too fine a point upon it and to avoid beating around the bush - die.  However, to consume this much heavy water you'd need to drink 3 tons of normal water.  All at once  Or, pay £700 pounds for pure deuterium-laced heavy water.

The choice is yours.

     
Just Who Is Matt Howarth?
A South Canadian comic artist, actually.  He was introduced to the world via the pages of "Heavy Metal", being somewhat unflatteringly described as "a crazed acid-head in a blood-spattered lab coat".  Well, I'd be offended at that: it implies you don't do your laundry very often.  Art!


     He is very much a one-man band.  If you pick up a Marvel or Rebellion trade paperback and look inside the inner cover, there's a whole list of people doing this and that beside the artist, inker, colourist and letterer: things like "Chief Executive Officer", "Director of Communications", "Pencil Sharpening Monitor", "Paperclip Polisher" and so on.  None of that for Matt - he does everything.

Holy heck, it's time for assaulting a sandwich with lethal intent!***

"The Last Ship"
Conrad is now well into the second season of this post-apocalyptic series.  As I have mentioned before, it's a bit "Rah Rah 'Muricah" but then the South Canadians did make it, so they can be a tad back-slappy if they want.
     We can be pretty certain that the first season's villains, the Ruffians, are all dead, since that disease-carrying Nork Niels escaped from his medical containment aboard their ship and made his way ashore.

Naughty Niels in Norway
(Land of the Norks)

     "And who are the villains of this season, O snowy-haired scribe?" I hear you query.
     Pausing only to pat down my errant locks, I shall explicate.
     The British, actually.  Go us!   Perfidious Albion being extra-specially perfidious.
     Now, I know what you're thinking:  Dog Buns, those South Canadians do so bear a grudge for having to fight a Revolution, typecasting us Brits as the Go-To Actors For Playing Villains.
     Hmmm, quite.  Except these villains are not your James Mason Received English Upper Middle Class types; no, they are all VERY SHOUTY COCKNEYS.  Art?

Shhhhhhhh!

     Nor am I entirely convinced that the captain of a naval vessel would be such a dab hand with small arms, because Mister Chandler handles guns as if born to them.  South Canadians and guns, mayhap.  Plus, he puts himself in harm's way rather too much.  There's a reason why you have minions subordinates, Captain ...

Oh dear.  I don't think he liked that last crack.

Finally -
I see Voyager 2 has finally left the Solar System.  You begin to get a sense of astronomical scale when you realise it was launched in 1977.  So it's now left the neighbourhood, eh?  At a speed of 34,000 miles per hour, which sounds fast, but all the same it will still take it tens of thousands of years to reach Proxima Centauri.

Proudly powered by Plutonium

*  Not sure if the robot dog counts or not.
**  A concept I have shamelessly nicked from Matt Howarth.
***  Known to ordinary mortals as "lunch".