Here Be Dragons

<SHUDDER>
Because, as any self-respecting grammarian or lexicographer ought to know, that ought to be "There Are Dragons Here".  Whether there ever were any dragons here is quite beyond the scope of this blog.  I think The Defenders tackles this issue, if only for New York City.  Otherwise I suggest you get in touch with the Indonesian ambassador.  Art?

                

     Aaaaand once again we are faced with the same old problem: what on earth was Your Humble Scribe on about last night when he wrote the paragraph above, and what's all this about dragons?
    "Here Be Dragons" was traditionally used by cartographers (there's a lot of -ographers in today's blog, aren't there?) of old when they had an embarrassing blank space on the map.  Kind of "We've NO idea what's here, except big scaly things that'll dine on yer liver if you go there, so best stay away".  With the implied subtext of " - although, if you do happen to venture here and emerge hepatic intactus, please inform us of your adventure, then we'll no longer have to Imagine Dragons."

Imagine that!  A band of that very same name!

      What any of the above has to do with anything else is utter guesswork, so we shall have to write it off to Conrad's absent mindedness.  Conrad - you know - Me.
     Okay, motley, you have exactly thirty-three seconds to get out of those chains before the conveyor belt reaches that bandsaw!  Oh - hang on - was it thirty-three or thirteen seconds?  Maybe it was only three -

Definitely measured in seconds, though.

Today -
Holds the promise of being a bit different from the usual travails and traumas of the workday grind, for Lo!  Our entire HR department is having an Event, wherein we arrive at a venue and intermingle, between talks.  Talking to and being talked at.  For a whole day!
     Of course there is a downside to this.  Nobody will be answering phones or replying to  e-mails today, so there will be a mountain of extra work to be done come Thursday.
     Thursday: since I am working this Saturday - Thursday is my day off.
     Conrad.  Jammy rascal.*

Jammy dodgers
(rather akin to Conrad).

     This means I shall not have lunchtime to inveigle myself into Blogger, in order to complete BOOJUM! as I have been doing of late, hence I am now in a practically empty office, frantically typing away to get a fair chunk of this done before I have to go Eventing.  I also got me some breakfast.
"Patrick Answers Questions No One Asked"
A Youtube channel I came across last night.  With a title like that, I am already on-side, Patrick.  I know both how you feel and where you're coming from.  It can be a thankless task, Answering Questions No One Asked: I speak from experience.  You'd be surprised how few people are interested in Classical Poisons From Antiquity, or how hydrogen isotopes boost the neutron flux in a thermonuclear warhead, nor yet about the chronic overheating problems with the Covenanter tank.

Tritium: the other hydrogen isotope.

     Here an aside.  You can see some of these miserable mechanical misfits in "The Way Ahead" when David Niven leads his raw troops on training exercises.  This is about the only time you'll see them, as they were far too unreliable to serve Perfidious Albion in a front-line capacity.  We did send a whole lot to the Sinisters, however, and one can speculate amusingly on what they thought of 'em.

A Covenanter.  Radiator right on the front hull, as you can plainly see.

     Anyway, none of that is to do with PAQNOA (forgive the abbreviation, it's an inconveniently long title).  Ol' Pat went over some long-gone sci-fi and fantasy shows from the 80s and 90s, some of which I'd even heard of.  I shall detail some of them here.
     1) First up was "Space: Above And Beyond", which only managed one season of 23 episodes.  Ol' Pat liked liked liked it, but Conrad watched the pilot and wasn't impressed.  These people are trained as spaceship flight crew and are then sent into front-line combat?  Not very effective in terms of human resource management, frankly.  Art?

Not sure how you can be "Above" space.

     Plus, the series ended on a cliffhanger, a method of the producers both thumbing their nose at the bean-counters, and simultaneously seeking to gain leverage for a second season.  Didn't work.
     I think we'll come back to Ol' Pat's reviews, as they provide an interesting perspective on the entertainment of twenty to thirty years ago.  Besides, if I took the time to watch it, you lot are certainly going to experience the outcome.  O yes indeed!

Good Lord Aloft!  They cloned Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann!

     
I'm having to be rather wary about my text and layout here - I somewhat injudiciously began to much around with one of the photographs loaded at work, which immediately went badly wrong as the cursor did it's much-feared "Picks Up Photograph And Formats Everything with it" malfunction.  So - I may have to bale and run in a hurry.

     So far - so good.

Our Staff Event
Ah, the formatting is starting to unravel a bit now.  I have to be careful not to move the cursor over extant text or pictures or they will implode and destroy the universe as we know it mess things up a bit.
 It was at Dive in the Northern Quarter, which I'd seen whilst waiting for the bus but had never been inside.  Art?

We had more seats

     A different kind of venue from the usual bland office environment.  There were music tracks playing in the background that staff had selected, but I never heard "People Help The People" - which I chose.
     Maybe next year.  If I am still there - Conrad still a temp.

I think that's enough for tonight - time to go down and fill out that shopping list.  O my rock and roll lifestyle -



*  Slang for "unaccountably lucky chap"