In Mortal Dredd

If You Abjure Me For A Spelling Mistake -
 - then you deserve a slap.  Two slaps, in fact: one for imagining that your humble scribe could or would ever make a spelling mistake; the second for having already forgotten about the forthcoming Judge Dredd television series.*
     This actually came about because I was pondering on the subject of swearing, and how that most splendid of comics 2000AD got around the matter.  Art?

"Even in the future, there would be bad blood between East and West."

     They did it by inventing swear-words.  "Grud", for example, often expanded into "Grud on a greenie!".  Or the officially-sanctioned "Drokk", which is the only legal expletive a Judge is allowed to express.  There is a Brit-Cit equivalent, "Jovus Drokk", which sounds even more impressively sweary.  None of which could possibly be objected to by Mary Whitehouse, she being a woman whom had set herself up as a moral censor.

Marjory Blackshack.  Purely coincidentally named, surely?

     You could tell if you'd arrived as a celebrity if you got a citi-block named after you in "Judge Dredd", or - the acme of achievement! - a skit or parody version of yourself, usually done by the wonderful Ron Smith (as above).
     We've gotten rather off the subject of swearing, so I may as well continue in my headlong and wilful way.  Let us now jump backwards in time to 1975 and the Watergate scandal, where the motto of the investigating committe was "Qui custos ipsos custodiet",**
or translated from the Latin, "Who watches the watchmen?"
     With dizzying speed, let us now jump forward to the 22nd century and Mega-City One, where they have addressed that very same problem and established the Special Judicial Service:  Judges who investigate the Judges.  Art?

As you can see, a variation on the standard Judge uniform

     The SJS are not well-liked, since they are somewhat - er - extreme - in how they carry out their investigations.  Like kind of torturing people.  Plus they backed that megalomaniac nutjob Cal when he took over the city, and failed to uncover the - but that would be telling.
     At this point I think we'll give the motley a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, then sit and watch it nervously wait for the other shoe to drop ...

I Dog Buns Well Told You!
How often do I have to say it and type it?  Sharks Are Our Friends!
     Of course my lonely furrow is made ever more difficult to plough by the non-stop stream of cheapo-CGI horror films that immediately turn to Shark As Villain, because horror film studios are both lazy and stingy.
     Anyway, the shark has been around in practically it's present-day form for over 15 million years, meaning that it's DNA has consequently had time to evolve well beyond what Hom. Sap.'s has managed in a much, much shorter timeline.  This means that yer average Carcharidon Carcharis (or Great White) is a medical marvel: they are highly resistant to cancer, for one thing.

Sharky at play

     They can also heal from serious wounds extremely quickly, which means scientists are interested in how their blood clots, plus the how and why of not falling apart when badly injured.
     Conrad sees this research as a potential double-edged sword.  It may lead to sharks being granted protection from the shark-fin soup market - a genuine and current threat, honestly - but they may also start to get 'harvested' in order to grind them up into a paste.  Or however you cure cancers.

"I am your friend!  See how I smile at you?"

What Were They Thinking?
Or, from an animal that there aren't enough of, to one where there are entirely too many.  The history of introduced animals in New Zealand is not a happy one.  The Polite Australians only realised that importing foreign animals onto their isolated islands was not a good thing when the evil consequences came home to roost (no pun intended).
     And so to the possum.  This was imported from Australia back in the mid-nineteenth century, for fur.  They have now spread over almost the whole of New Zealand, numbering in the tens of millions.

                                            Like this, except more so
     Why is this?  BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO NATURAL COMPETITION!  You know, as they had back in Australia, where their population is kept in check.  They are opportunity omnivores who have destroyed forests, devastated bird populations directly and indirectly, and spread TB amongst cattle.  The Polite Australians hate them with a passion and miss no opportunity to Kill A Possum.
     Let them be lumped together with rats, stoats and red deer as an example of how not to introduce a non-native species to the environment.

Sign of the times?

     Wow, that was rather serious.  Quick, let's bring on something light and frothy.  I'm currently watching Season Two of "The Punisher", which - er, which is the polar opposite of "light and frothy", so let's no go there.

"The Volstead Act"
This curious phrase popped into my head earlier this week, as curious phrases tend to - hey, don't look at me, I've no idea how my mind works - so I looked it up.  
     It was the legislative means by which alcohol was effectively banned in South Canada from 1920 onwards, and if you know your history, then you know how effective Prohibition was -
     Not very.

The delicious and delectable - er - I mean -The Enemy

     South Canadians, who can have rather a rebellious streak in them at times, widely ignored the ban and got their booze any which way.  It did make organised criminal gangs enormously wealthy off the back of illegal alcohol sales, so there was a silver lining for some <ahem> enterprise capitalists.
                       
                High Altitude Auroral Research Project                              Harp Lager.  No, hang on a minute -


*  <clutches self in unholy glee>
**  Also quoted in "Watchmen", written by ex-2000AD writer Alan Moore, and drawn by ex-2000AD artist Dave Gibbons