The Innervation Of This Zeugma!

I Can Tell What You're Thinking
No, it's not word salad.  It is to do with words, specifically the M.E.N.'s "Codeword".  As mentioned on many an occasion, I like to do this on the bus as it means I can thus avoid having to make small talk with other passengers, which is good, as I don't have any.  Small talk, not passengers.  I have plenty of those.

                                           Oh Art, you wag
                                                  <charges up Tazer>
     It's an interesting contrast, actually, since nearly everybody else on the bus seems to be busy tapping away on their digital devil-box devices; Conrad is proud to maintain the tradition of scribbling away with a pen on paper.  I suppose it diminishes the need to make small talk.

Hmm, Art is brave tonight.

          
Anyway, back to Codeword.  The version wherein you are only given two letters as a key is difficult enough to work out, and the unwritten rule has been that the compiler won't add in words that are too exotic or obscure.

CAUTION!  Do not engage in idle banter, chit-chat or conversation, as a look of freezing disdain can offend

     That convention seems to have gone out the window.  Here's a bunch of recent ones:
"ALB", "INNERVATE", "AGATES", "ZEUGMA" and "MYRRH".  I got them all, of course <basks briefly in wordy glory>, but - really, chaps!  A 5 letter word with no vowels? (myrrh, lest you be unclear).

        Alb                                Agates                                                      Myrrh

     "Innervate" means to supply nerves to.  Go on, admit it, you've never heard of "Zeugma" before, have you?  I confused it with an extinct species of prehistoric whale -

The Zeuglodon

      But no.  It's a literary term, meaning a turn of phrase where one word is used to adapt two others, but is only really applicable to one.  Still not clear?  No, nor me.  My Chambers does give an example,* "Mister Pickwick took his hat and his leave".
     Hence today's title, which might be read as "The Nerve of this thing!"
     Okay, motley, I have a swimming pool full of molten tantalum carbide all ready for you if you don't make haste.**

Perhaps a motley.  Or perhaps not.

We've Not Done A Swimming-Pool Comparison For A While
And I feel nostalgic.  In case you are new to BOOJUM! allow me to explain that, whenever I come up with an exotic material, one that is preferably dangerous, I always calculate the cost of filling up that large back garden swimming pool with Substance X.
     Er - I must also confess that "Tantalum Carbide" just kind of popped into my head this afternoon at work, whilst I was pondering on how to say "No" politely yet EXTREMELY LOUDLY.  Art?

TaC

     This is the stuff.  Filling a swimming pool with it and rendering it molten is going to run up a big electricity bill, since the stuff is notoriously resistant to melting.  It only turns liquid at 38800C.
     The other issue is cost.  Tantalum, being surpassing rare, TaC comes in at £300 the pound, meaning that to fill in your 50,000 gallon capacity swimming pool, you'll need to pony up £120 million pounds.
     Maybe just fill it with boiling water?

Wait - What Was That?
Conrad can now combine two things he likes: poking fun at conspiranoid loonwaffling bumbletucks, and military history.
     Okay, this one requires a little background.  In 1941 Rudolf Hess made an unauthorised solo flight to Scotland, which considerably unsettled Herr Hitler, and surprised the denizens of Perfidious Albion, since Hess was Deputy Leader of the Nazi Party, and thus an enemy.  Art?

<coughcoughtrimeyebrowscoughcough>

     Of course Her Schickelgruber was upset as he was about to invade his best friend The Little Sod With The Moustache's domain, the Sinister Union, and he worried Rudi might give the game away.  Well, Ol' Rudi blathered on a lot, without giving away Operation Barbarossa.  After the war he was imprisoned in Spandau Prison, Berlin, where he topped himself in 1987.

The forbidding mien of Spandau.  No ballets here.

     The Laughing At The Loons bit comes because there was a conspiracy theory adrift in the ether about Ol' Rudi, namely that the chap in Spandau wasn't actually the Real Rudi, but instead an imposter.  Yeah.  Right.  An imposter who quietly sits in prison for 42 years without so much as a squeak of protest about it?
     NO!  And to prove it, a DNA comparison with one of Rudi's distant relatives confirmed that the dead guy was, indeed, Ol' Rudi.
     Hah!
     Of course, the BBC's website naively states that this has put the conspiranoid fantasies to bed.  Foolish BBC!  Silly BBC!  These swivel-eyed loons are true believers and nothing - absolutely NOTHING - will persuade them away from their beliefs.

The Beeb, sitting there being silly.

     Typically, this is not what I wanted to talk about.  O no.  No, because there on the Beeb's webpage was the last Governor of Spandau Prison -
     Tony Le Tissier!
     I mean, how startling is that!  Tony Le T., whom I knew only as an author of very late-war military histories of Nazi Germany, turns out to have had a proper job after all:  being a Colonel in the army of Perfidious Albion and Prison Governor to boot.  Whilst not a vengeful man, he did feel it was fitting that Ol' Rudi popped his clogs in prison.

An example.

    
Your Humble Scribe - Still Here!
Which may be a good thing, or an exceedingly bad one, depending on your point of view and whether or not you want Planet Earth to be invaded by my sinister alien hordes.***
     Anyway, remember yesterday, when I tackled that Food Bar with a 2017 Best-By date? <snaps fingers at Best-By dates>.  Art - the evidence!

     There you go, it's gone but I'm not.  Life is constructed on such small victories as these.

Finally -
I see that the Fyre Festival is back in the news thanks to a couple of documentary films about it, and lots of people taking their sense of schedenfreude for a walk (a.k.a. "sneering at the millenials").
     However, for genuine anarchic, drug-fuelled chaotic sodden misery, malcontent and mendaciousness, you need look no further than the "Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival" of 1971.
     This has become a byword for festival awfulness.  Art?

The aftermath.

     I've covered this before, so I shan't go into too much depth.  Briefly, the big trouble was that the promoters were expecting 55,000 people, and got possibly over 300,000 - the real total will never be known thanks to the utter disorganisation.  There were 3 policemen, 6 toilets and a few standtaps.  Art?


     The food rapidly ran out, the vendors on-site were attacked and looted, a food truck arriving was attacked and looted, there was a thunderstorm that remedied the lack of water and then some, and many of the big names slated to play didn't bother, thanks to (genuine and warranted) concerns over security.
     Finally, amidst an ocean of litter, the audience dregs stormed the stage and burned it down.

A hard road indeed!

*  Phew!
**  If it does then it'll be Art who goes in.
***  Who are being rather dawdly on their journey from Alpha Centauri, if I'm honest.