Colophon And On And On

If You Think That A Colophon -
  - is part of your small intestine, then YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE!  For you obviously did not peruse yesterday's entertaining and illuminating blog, which informed you that a Colophon is a publisher's emblem, printed in books that they publish.  Art?

Examples of same

     Now we are all up to speed, I have to say that I've no idea why this word just popped up in my mind, but I am grateful that it generated a bit of useful grist for the creative mill-wheels.  Bear in mind that I don't recall ever reading about it, and it certainly isn't a name that comes up when discussing beer and skittles down the pub.  Nor even champagne and golf up at the club.

Ha!  Do you see what I did - O you do.

     Anyway, remember my mentioning yesterday about a comic strip from the French comic "Pilote"?  Once again I spent most of my lunchtime chasing down leads, and I am delighted to say that I got somewhere.  Art?

My scrawl.  That's all.

     This rather cryptic set of scribbles is Your Humble Scribe's calculations about the range of possible issues of Pilote that I might need to buy in order to track down the Beautiful Green Hallucination (perhaps I ought to Google for that/her in French?).  I then found a resource called the "Grand Comics Database" which listed details of many of these issues, together with covers that had been scanned in.  Art?

Read once, never forgotten

     I still remember that one: about a child who obsesses about a stuffed toy they have, which goes on to become the model for which everyone gets plastic surgery, until the whole nation looks like the above.  Hilarious and grotesque at the same time.  Okay, so I can start collecting from issue #58.
     That's not all.  Oh no.  The Coincidence Hydra has been pining for a bite of my behind, it seems, because during the search for Pilote in the GCD, I came across this - Art?

LOOK AT THE TOP LINE!

     "Colophon Publisher" in case your myopic glazzies missed it.  
     Dog Buns!  What are the chances of that happening?
     Pausing only to hurl the motley into a hay-baling machine alongside one million pieces of glass tubing, let us proceed apace to the rest of the blog, before Fate, causality and the universe conspire to drop some even more unlikely coincidence into our laps -

A "Battlestar Galactica" Moment
The remake, of course, not the hideously cheesy original that desperately tried to cash in on the success of "Star Wars" on 1/100th of the budget and 1/1000th of the imagination.
     I think the episode might be "33", wherein the fleeing human fleet cannot escape the pursuing Cylons for more than 33 minutes, before the robotic bad guys show up again.  Colonel Tigh - Art?

Only one eye, admittedly.  But it's sharp enough for two.

     Colonel Tigh spots a piece of eavesdropping technology that's been hidden on the bridge in plain sight, and Oh Boy! He is not happy, not happy at all.
     What I wanted to get across was the "Hide in plain sight" concept, because that's just what happened in Oldham Bus Station this morning.  Art?

To port of the lamp-post

     Two bus company staff in yellow jackets came along and planted that device with the square base over the fencing, fiddling about with it's underside, making sure it was aimed in the right direction and then taking off before anyone could intercept them and ask why they were planting alien surveillance devices/laser death wands/attack wasp boxes?
     Any suggestions can be left in the Comments section.

Hammer Down
As one thing inevitably leads to another here on BOOJUM! so we now focus on the topic of Steam Hammers.  Not as inherently interesting as KILLER EELS! but with a darn sight more vim than LITHIUM WAFER BATTERY DESIGN, I'll have you know.
     Okay, a steam hammer was and is a giant industrial device that raised an enormously weighty hammer by steam pressure; once at height, metal components would be moved underneath the hammer and the steam cut.  Down came the hammer with a BANG that shook building foundations.  Art?

At work in the Thirties, I would guess.

     You might think that the steam hammer was defunct nowadays; Oh no.  Not so, they are still used, and someone posted on Youtube about one in the Indian state of West Bengal, at Howrah.  Art?

     Note the contrast between the photo at top and these Indian artisans of a few short years ago - those Indians are wearing less Personal Protective Equipment than the artisan of eighty years ago!  In fact their only PPE seems to be some linen gloves.  The whole scene is redolent with danger, because, yes, that is yellow-hot steel they are working with, and no, there are no safety barriers, or hats, or gloves, or goggles, or boots, or aprons.  That steam hammer also comes down in an enormously unforgiving fashion, and it's directed solely by a chap sitting behind the machine - with very poor forward visibility.   BANGBANGBANG - no infra-red safety sensors here, folks!  Slip, trip or fall over in the wrong direction and you're either roasted to death or smashed into a smear.
     Steam hammers - gotta love 'em.

Original title "Open Die Casting".  How very appropriate.

     Time for a breakfast break; a cheap Co-Op version of Lem-sip (absent sugar) and some wholemeal toast.  You may consider this to be toooo much information; I consider it keeping people informed.
"The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same"
I cannot be bothered to give you this in the original French, and France has had quite enough promotion over the past couple of days (you know, via "Pilote" and all that).  I am currently reading "Nicholas Nickleby", as I believe I have mentioned on a couple of occasions, and am now about a quarter-inch into it's inch-and-a-half thickness.  Art?

Poor Nicholas - literally.  Not a Nickel to his name, and also knickerless.*

     This is not the non sequiteur it seems at first glance, because we are up to the point where rascally uncle Ralph Nickleby is behind the promotion of the <deep breath> "United Metropolitan Hot Muffin And Crumpet Baking And Punctual Delivery Company", which is nothing but a sham and a swindle.  The intent is to raise five million by share issue, of which Ralph will dump his portion shortly after flotation, once those same shares hit a high and before the scam unravels and they become worthless.

Old Nick, to coin  a phrase.

     And then we come to London Capital Finance, another complete swindle run by crooks who lied and fleeced investors to the tune of £236 million, before going bankrupt last year.  They paid £60 million to an advertising company to run paid lies about the services they offered - said PR company now insisting they did nothing wrong and won't return a penny - meaning that they would have had to achieve a 44% return on investments to hit their advertised targets.  Which is impossible.
     SO, as you can see, not a lot has changed between 1838 and 2018.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47454328

     That there the link to the BBC article in question.

Finally -

DANCING WEASELS!

      - to cheer us up.




*  This only works when spoken aloud.