Conrad And His FROTHING NITRIC IRE!

The Red Mist Is Starting To Recede
A little.  You had better keep a safe distance until the veins in my forehead stop throbbing.
     "Er - what, precisely, has sent the oafish old clod off again?" I can hear you query.
     I thought you'd never ask!
     Firstly, I've left my entry pass and fob at home, which makes getting into and out of the office awkward.  Just awkward enough to be annoying, not sufficient to feel justifiably martyred.

A pass
(Of the more exciting kind)

     Secondly, my waffles had a 33% failure rate and I had to take one of the three out of the toaster in bits.  No, I couldn't leave it until it cooled and went rigid again, because the primary reason for me being 1)  Much later than I'd like and 2) Hot and sweaty: traffic.  Art?

    
     That above is Rochdale Road, in the beating heart of Manchester's mighty metropolis, and it's been closed due to an unsafe building THANK YOU STORM DENNIS which meant my bus was stuck in a traffic jam going nowhere at 08:10, when I ought to have been disembarking at my normal stop.
     But O noes.  No, I had to get off three stops earlier and walk in from there.  It took ten minutes to reach the stop I normally get off at, and my bus was still nowhere in sight at that point. 
     On the plus side, I have already done 3,500 steps toward my nominal total of 10,000.  Kind of a brass lining to the cloud.
     Motley, fancy a swift walk to Rochdale and back?

A Little Musical Critique
Let us now cast our mind back to the Eighties, when Nik Kershaw was still relevant (in his own mind, at least) and monkeys chewed tobacco.  Something like that.  You couldn't get away with it nowadays, Health and Safety would be down on you like a ton of bricks.  And then the Health and Safety's Health and Safety would come down on them for dangerous working practices.

Back in the when

     Anyway, Nik Kershaw and his ditty "I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me", which is kind of a petulant whinge about old people*.  O my does Nik have something to say about the sun going down, and how he won't let it.  As evidence:

I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down
I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down

I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down

I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down
I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down
I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down
I won't let the sun go down on me
I won't let the sun go down

     These genuinely are the lyrics, not me trying to surreptitiously up the word count**.
     Now, we all know what a lovable scamp hair-splitting pedant Conrad is, and he couldn't help thinking that Nij is going to have his work cut out in order to avoid the sun setting on him.  What are the options?
     1)  His own private space station, fixed in orbit.  PRO: Thus no danger of ever losing sunlight. CON: Appallingly expensive, and you'd need to rely on NASA sending your supplies up.
     2)  Drive his mobile studio forever westwards, so that night never catches up with him.  PRO: Relatively cheap and achievable.  CON: Oceans and seas.  Unless it's an amphibious mobile studio.
     3)  Stop the Earth revolving so that one hemisphere is permanently in sunlight.  PRO:  Nice and sunny all the time.  CON: The destruction of all human civilisation.


A minor problem

     I don't think Mik thought this through very well, did he?  Next!

You What?
"Szamboti"; there's a name to conjure with, hmmm?  And yes, it's another of those mysterious words or phrases that continue to pop up in Your Humble Scribe's mind.  Thank  you, mind!  Always generating content.  If only we knew how.
     Anyway, of course I Googled for it, and because I was looking for "Images", guess what came up?
     No, not a dilophodon on rollerskates being ridden by Lord Lucan***!
     Snooker cues.  Art?

Don't be impatient.  Get in the -

     Why the name popped up is open to question, but the answer is definitely nothing to do with snooker or pol or bulliards, because Conrad has absolutely nil hand-eye co-ordination and I doubt I've played since uni days.
     Blimey, just checked out the value of one of these things and it appears to be in the £10,000 range.  A very expensive stick.

Your Favourite Hair-Splitting Pedant Is Back!
Not that I was ever gone, I just wanted a dramatic headline. 
     Whilst sitting and reading and doing the Codeword on Saturday morning, with television playing in the background, I noticed a trailer for "For Whom The Bell Tolls", and pondered on it a tad.  I've never seen it, and was rather surprised to see that it is in colour, rather than black and white.  Of course I also noticed the ANACHRONISTIC TANKS they were using.  I don't know if I can get a picture - Art?

ANACHRONISTIC AND AMERICAN

     That in the lead is IIRC an M1 Combat Car, and the tank behind is an M2 Stuart, neither of which were ever used in the Spanish Civil War, but one supposes they look clunky enough.

This is more credible

     As it's an FT17 or variant thereof.
     In fact the tanks present would have been Teuton Panzer Mk. I and Mk. IIs, as well as Italian CV33s.  Art?

The rather rubbish CV33.

     Given that FWTBT was filmed in 1943, when South Canada was at war with both the Teutons and Italians, you can perhaps understand their resorting to some home-made kit, as 99% of the audience wouldn't have the faintest idea that anything was wrong.
     Conrad is one of the 1%.  And is not going to apologise for it.

     And with that, we are done!


*  A second reason for disliking the tobacco-chewing chav.
**  Though it can't hurt
***  That would be silly.  Humans and dinosaurs never co-existed.