The Travails Of Travel

Pity Me!  Pity Me!
No, this is not about the never-ending and ceaseless (for the two are not the same) battle of wits and nerves between Conrad and First Bus, which is a bit of a one-sided conflict, as there's no great opposition when your enemy has the IQ of a bag of potatoes.
     "What," I can hear you say, "Is he ranting about now?"
     O I thought you'd never ask!
     First Bus's passengers, rather than the execrable organisation itself.  Art?

And these

     Conrad prefers a stony silence when travelling on the bus, as otherwise he is distracted from doing his cryptic crossword or reading about the battle of Alam Halfa.  Last night we had the unabashed pleasure of some bloke who got on at Dean Lane and went babbling and on and on, until Oldham Bus Station twenty minutes later.  Then he got off, as did I, and - he boarded the 409.  And began babbling again.

Like this!

     He was there on the 409 this morning, along with some schoolgirl who had no sooner sat down than she went babbling on to a "friend" whom Your Humble Scribe suspects did not exist except as an excuse to babble witlessly.
     YOU SEE WHAT YOU DID, ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL!  DO YOU?  DO YOU!

    

The rascal in question

     This rather pales with my sufferings on Christmas Eve; there was a dad with a squealing, squalling baby in the queue to get on the 182, so I cunningly went upstairs to escape the little reptile.  Alas no!  Up comes dad with the lizard, only to plonk himself behind me, and there the imp proceeds to writhe, kick and squeal for the next 20 minutes.  My Patent British Reserve wore thin then, I can tell you.  Fortunately the whole family ensemble with their crocodile got off at Dean Lane.


Under the swaddling?

     What price silence!
     Motley, put your headphones on - I do not wish to listen to Perry Como!

A Man Of Taste And Distinction
I refer, of course, to Professor Gary Sheffield, doyen of military history and one of the staff in the War Studies faculty of Wolverhampton University.  'Twas his "Forgotten Victory" that got me interested in the First Unpleasantness way back in 2001 and I've got lots of his other works.  Art?

The apple-cheeked prof himself

      He's often present as a talking head when you get serious discussions of military history, and is not at all tolerant of those who treat the subject sloppily - Dan Snow take note!
     I hope I have impressed you with the gravitas of the man.
     Thus, it was with some amusement that I read his Twitter feed, where he stated that the best thing on television over Christmas was Mackenzie Crook's "Worzel Gummidge".
     He's not wrong.  Art?

QED

Further To The Loonwaffle Brigade -
It's my fault, I did invoke them yesteryon.  Be guided in that there is no conspiracy theory so crackpot in it's sheer barminess that these puling ninnies will not believe it.  Yesteryon it was the Martian rover Curiosity.  Today, I offer you the LEM ascent for Apollo 12 onwards.  Art?
     This is a shot of the Lunar Excursion Module's ascent stage taking off from the Lunar surface.  The camera then pans upwards as the ascent stage climbs into the heavens - at which point the swivel-eyed bumbletucks have a myocardial infarction.

Not great but the best I could do at short notice

 

     "They had a third, hidden, unseen astronaut in there whom they left behind to take this film!  Abandoned to die on the Moon, NASA are murderers!  All for a few seconds of film and the tilting of a camera!"  and so on and so forth until they either run out of breath or their meds kick in.
     The reality is that the camera was on a remote swivel and with no more than the press of a button, upwards it panned.  No need to imagine a fourth Apollo astronaut*!

Sic

This Will All Make Sense On Facebook, Honestly
Also hopefully Twitter as well.  Art?

Zips

     Yes, you are seeing a bunch of zips.  I shall use this to be clever later on.  O so clever.

Further Of Fallout
For Lo! are we not back to "The Stand" by Stephen Archibald King**, and the South Canadian cultural references therein, which Your Humble Scribe has been explicating as he feels honour bound to do so.
     And next we come across "Tom Swift".  Art?

Art, you bafoon!  NO!

     <sounds of Tazer being charged up, followed by screams>
     O stop being a baby.  Put some Sudofed on the burn marks when they stop smoking.
     As I was saying, Tom Swift.  This is a name that has crossed my consciousness on occasion, yet I've never sat down to find anything about him.  Or, rather, "It", as Tom is a fictional character in a series of <ahem> Young Adult novels that go back over a century and fittingly number over a hundred themselves.  They are typically light sci-fi stuff, with titles like "Tom Swift and His <add invention here>".  Like "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle".  Art?

Because every young person needs a lethal weapon to hand.

     I think they're hunting Snarks.  Perhaps elephants, too.  Better be sure you don't track down any Boojums, fellers; the end result is bad for your health***.

Jonathan Swift with an awe-inspiring wig.  A bigwig?

Oh So That's What It Means
Conrad, in an attempt to keep the gibbering hordes from spoiling his cryptic crossword experience, was listening to his I-pod on the bus, and pulled up that hot platter "Oczy Mlody" by The Flaming Lips.
     "Is that Polish?" I wondered.  It looked like it.  Fortunately I have a Polish colleague whom I can pester on subject matter like this: Marta.
     "Yes, it's Polish," she confirmed.  "It means "Young Eyes", but - it doesn't make sense."
     Well yes.  It's a song by The Flaming Lips.  I bet it was never supposed to make sense, in Polish or any other language.  Art?
                        
                                                     A spoonful weighs a ton

     And with that we are done!

*  This will not stop the loonwaffles.  Reality rarely does.
**  I made his middle name up.  Just for amusement.
***  I.e. death