If I Were To Say "Top 10" -

Would You Wonder Just HOW MUCH I Can Squeeze From A Single TPB?
That's "Trade Paper Back" and a measure of how little I care for word counts and totals and hitting the ton, otherwise I wouldn't bother with the abbreviation, would I?
     Although <flight of whimsy begins> I suppose you could argue for the infinite recursive loop that results, where my scorning of word counts in facts leads to an ever-increasing spiralling word count that eventually devours all server space on Planet Earth and explodes ever piece of human technology, leaving us to have breakfast in the ruins.

A very British apocalypse, eh?

     Calm down, I am not referring to the "Top 10" comic book serial graphic art of recent purchase, rather to a Youtube video clip set that boldly announced it was going to list the Top 10 Sci-Fi films of all time.  See?  You can sit back down again.  NOW!
     I thought it would be rather interesting to look at said list of films, to see if Your Humble Scribe and Occasional Film Critic was aware of them, had seen them and perhaps possessed an opinion about them.*

     There will be spoilers.  You have been warned.

     At Number 10:  "Snowpiercer".  Which I have seen.  In this, the future has gone horribly wrong, and Hom. Sap. has ushered in a new ice age.  The only survivors are those aboard a train that circumnavigates the globe, it's population consisting of grotty plebs, nasty guards and effete snobs.  Towards the end we get hints that the ice age may be coming to an end, with life outside the train becoming a possibility.

And a driver?

     It got lots of plaudits at the time but Conrad feels it's a triumph of looks and plot over common-sense.  At the end the train crashes and everyone except two small children are killed; as they leave the wreckage they see a polar bear in the distance, which the critics took as evidence of life returning to the Earth.  I'm afraid Your Humble Scribe saw things both differently and from the bear's perspective, in which he sees the two small children and thinks "Dinner!"


Number 9:"Children of Men":  Another one I've seen.  This is another dystopic vision of the future, where Britain alone is still surviving and the rest of the world has sunk into chaos, and even we're not exactly thriving.  The whole planet is experiencing a global sterility problem, with no young people having been born for nearly twenty years, and things are falling apart both literally and metaphorically.

     It's very well done.  Art?

     Clive Owen excels as a weary everyman, whose hangdog exterior belies an ability to punch above his weight when it counts.  The urban combat is grittily convincing, and Chetiwel Ejiofor plays a dogmatic swine who thinks he's one of the good guys.  In our travels accompanying the hero, you get a thorough grounding in just how society is slowly falling to bits.

     Despite the gloomy tone, it ends on a hopeful note, if only just.  No hungry bears roaming the neighbourhood, instead a boatful of doctors appears.

Act 1 Scene 2: Clive drops his coffee

     Hmmm, I do go on, don't I?  I only meant to lightly spritz over the surface of all 10 films, and I'll be into the five figures for a word count if I carry on.  
     Time, methinks, to change subjects!


How Do You Like Your Eggs?
Normally a question like this fall under one of two headings, to wit: 1) Poached, scrambled or hard-boiled? because as you already know, one of Your Humble Scribe's besetting sins is that of greed.  Wonder Wifey maintains it would be ridiculously easy to entrap Conrad - just put some food out on top of the trapdoor and we're done.
     - or 2)  Hideously manipulated human DNA, which has been run through a blender and is about to give embryonic form to an appalling-looking monster, which also farts in public and eats with it's mouth open.

This is VICTOR Frankenstein.  Not the Monster.  A frequent error.

     Of course the answer is neither of these, because we here at BOOJUM! like to mess with your heads.  Art?

Meet Mister Egg

     Meet the "CryoEgg", an instrument package intended to be sent to the sub-glacial meltwater that runs beneath those mighty rivers of ice called - glaciers**.  The exterior of said egg is enormously strong plastic, which is also radio-transparent, since it is intended to send back instrument readings by - radio.**   The idea of Cryoegg is that the data sent back will enable scientists to model the behaviour of the glacier's base, which has been at a premium.  Understanding this will allow better modelling of glacier behaviour, including how they melt, thanks to - science.**

Surface meltwater suddenly becoming subglacial meltwater

     Conrad also thinks he spotted an error in the BBC article's text.  Art?

"Pressure says something about the way water at the bed is organised, whether it's spread evenly under the ice or moving in discrete channels. The former would represent a high-pressure environment; the latter would be a low-pressure setting. "

     I think not!  If the water is spread evenly over a large area, that would imply LOW pressure, Auntie Beeb.

Auntie, you've got egg on your chin.

You Know I Cannot Resist This Sort Of Thing -

Good job it wasn't run by First Group.  They'd have died before moving.

The magical moment when a raging gun battle stops because a baby is crying

Your Modest Artisan is lucky he didn't discover the below shortly before Pub Quiz, or he'd never have gotten out of the door.  Art?

That's it

     It cropped up in a sidebar on Twitter, and, just exactly as with the "Change a song into a food" Tweet challenges of last year, my imagination went into second gear.  Of course other people interpreted the challenge widely - "Everyone can see your chat history" is one such, as is "The author stops writing the series".
     I did "The cupboard opens.  It comes out."  and if I can Google the image I attached -

Close enough

*  Perhaps?  Perhaps!  You've got to be kidding - you merely have to nudge Fatty and he blathers at length.  Why I remember <Conrad intervenes to traduce treacherous Mister Hand's wicked screed>

**  I telegraphed that a bit, didn't I?

Good job it wasn't run by First Group.  They'd have died before moving.