More Of The Meg

No!  Not The Film -
 - featuring The Stath, which I have seen, and I have to say we realllllly do NOT need another film that vilifies the Noble Shark, because - as I have repeatedly stated - Sharks Are Our Friends.*  
     No, nothing to do with Mega-sharks, I am instead referring to the Big Meg, a.k.a. Mega-City One, which we have visited frequently of late, since we here at BOOJUM! take our didactic function seriously,** and if you read all these posts you will not feel astray when the television series arrives next year <Conrad, almost drooling with anticipation, pinches himself to see if he is awake and is pretty sure he is widely so>.

Entirely true

     Previously I mentioned the Apocalypse War, that rather large spat between Mega-City One and East-Meg One, which removed half of the Big Meg from the map, and offed 400 million citizens.  Okay, okay, "Very large spat" - happy now?  It transpires that this was A Cunning Wheeze by 2000AD's writers and editor, who felt that the Big Meg had gotten too big, and they wanted to literally cut it down to size.
     Sorry, 400 million citizens.
     "What is all this about?" I hear you chunter.  "And be quick in explaining, for "Columbo" is on in ten minutes."
     Pausing only to salute the redoubtable Peter Falk and your taste in crime dramas, I shall explicate, but THERE ARE SPOILERS.  Okay?  Art - pictures!

Note the fasces

     At the commencement of this series, the Big Meg's population stands at 400 million, which is not bad considering the multiple disasters that have befallen it.  Conrad supposes that the birth rate must be staggeringly high in an urban environment with 97% unemployment - which thought we will not pursue any longer in the interests of good taste.
     By the end of the series, the Big Meg is more of a Tiddly Meg, since 350 million citizens have been hastened off this mortal coil and large swathes of the city lie in ruins.  Given the extent of the clean-up and reconstruction work, your humble scribe predicts a 97% employment rate, and it may take a while to breed back up to pre-Chaos levels.

"Disaster" the most frequent word

People Are Strange***
I say that because you we humans are, indeed, strange and unpredictable creatures.  Why else would one of my most popular threads be entitled "Pressure-Cooking People"?  Unless there's a large, unrecognised anthropophagous community out there, which is a verrrry worrying possibility.

Further proof, were it needed

     This predilection of the perusers got me pondering - always a bad thing - and I dreamed up an ICBM weapon straight out of PK Dick - that is, the Inter Continental Canniballistic Missile, carrying a payload of tailored toxic viruses that turn the infected into dainty ballet dancers FLESH-EATING ZOMBIES!
     Hmmm.  Perhaps more Stephen King that Philip Kendred Dick?

"Haberdasher"
The first person who mentions "Are You Being Served?" will be SHOT, but only after being poisoned, broken on the wheel and force-fed capsacin through their nostrils.  Conrad not a fan. Before you begin whining, it's NOT a "classic", it's merely old.
     <long pause whilst blood pressure settles down again>
     This word came up in conversation yesterday, and, Conrad being Conrad, he naturally wondered where it came from.  It refers, obviously, to all the little things to do with sewing: needles, buttons, bows, phased plasma rifles in the forty-watt range, that sort of stuff.  Art?

Haberdashery

     The origins of the word itself are unclear, though the most likely explanation is that it derives from the Anglo-Saxon "Hapertas", meaning "small things", as the original haberdashers were peripatetic sellers of all the small things.

No, Art, no.

I am going to have to cut this particular blog a little short, since it's now 15:18 and I need to get to the Co-Op in Lesser Sinful by 15:50, and it takes a good 20 minutes to shuffle my aged frame there on foot.  Plus, you're only missing out on 15 words, so it's not all that bad.

*  Unless or until they bite you.
**  Well - sometimes.
***  I know, I know, Jim Morrison beat me to it.