Your Daily Dose Of Danger!

Please Note I Am Not Using Upper-Case Here
We are only talking minor danger, nothing especially earth-shattering, certainly more minor earth tremor in Wigan than a tsunami off The Nore.

Illumination

     "O what now!" I hear you chide.  "Do be quick, "Pointless" is on in a minute."
     Pausing only to salute your taste in quiz shows that manifest a treacherously addictive quality, I shall explicate.  Art?

     I found these at the back of the cupboards.  They must have been hidden and well hidden at that, to still be there after over five years.  As the packaging says, "Ready to eat" and don't they just look it - the lord alone knows what hideous preservatives have been sprinkled over them that they aren't a mass of mushy mould by now.  Probably irradiated by nuclear waste to kill off all the nasty bacteria.
     Of course, adding these to lunch tomorrow requires that Wonder Wifey be kept out of the loop.  Well, she's off to bed now and won't get up in time tomorrow to prevent Conrad from dining on them.
     As we said - danger!

More Gloasting
Since I am working from home, and dare not venture forth from The Mansion, there is a bit of a deficiency in my life.  No crosswords!  No The Metro, nor the M.E.N. either.  I do have that Collins Crossword book, but instead of recourse to that I've been giving the Reader's Digest Puzzle Compendium a blast and am now up to Page 70.  Art?

     These were pretty easy, to be honest.  They gave you two letters in the top one, and one letter in the bottom, and to someone used to a Cryptic or a Codeword, well - a bit meh, frankly.  Hopefully some of the later ones will be more of a challenge.
     We shall see.

Apropos Of Nothing
I'm currently listening to Hawkwind's "Space Ritual" on Spotify, which, if you know not, is a double live album they recorded way back in 1972.  Art?

Sic

     This is when they were performing with Dik Mik and Del Dettmar playing synthesisers, audio generators and various electronics, usually via oscilloscopes rather than keyboards, which means an incredible array of buzzing, bleeping, chirping, whistling, whining, bleeping (yes I know that's twice but they bleep a lot), rustling, shrieking and sizzling.  Very outre at the time.  The thing is, all the tracks have Nick Turner hooting away on saxophone or flute, one of the most traditional sounding instruments you could imagine, and the juxtaposition (probably the only time you'll read that word today) is somewhat incongruous.

Somewhere, a barber is weeping.

     Well, that's something I never intended to write.  I hope you'll forgive me - that Muse Terpsichore has a lot to answer for, eh?

In Search Of Space The Truth
Sorry, too much of Hawkwind.  No, rather than acid space-rock sci-fi musos, I want to go back to "How To Cook That", the Youtube channel that Prof. Ann Reardon operates.  She regularly picks on the execrable 5 Minute Crafts, who publish endless videos of lies masquerading as "life hacks" on Youtube, and who are edging genuine content creators out of the market*.  Art?

     These are 'rolls' made from roasted sweet potatoes that have been skinned and mashed, then mixed with flour and baked.  As Ann points out, NO RAISING AGENTS have been added.  Note that point.  Next!

     And this is that same baked roll, supposedly.  As Ann points out, without anything like yeast or at least bicarb of soda, there is absolutely no way these rolls would rise like that.  So, she copied the recipe and baked the resulting stodge.  End result?

     It has the texture of mashed potato.  O Noes!  5 Minute Crafts publish a video that isn't true!  What is the world coming to!

Back To Big Birds
We've had the Roc and the Simurgh, now let us meet the Arabian "Anqa", another in the series of Middle Eastern Monsters of the air, or, dare we say <ahem> Monsters of Roc.  Art?

NO!  Art -

That's more like it

     In common with the Simurgh, the Anqa was immensely long-lived, getting on for 1,700 years before kicking the bucket.  Despite the depiction above, it supposedly had four sets of wings and a human face, and could only be found where the sun sets.  In terms of dietary requirements and nutrition, once again we have some very dodgy observations, as it only ever ate elephants and whales, which is probably great in terms of proteins and fats, but what about your vitamins, hmmm?  And carbohydrates, too: what does it do for short-term energy?  And - no, don't tell me, the reason there are no elephants in the Middle East is that the Roc, the Simurgh and the Anqa have eaten them all.

The dinner table

Great Engineering Disasters
As you may have noticed by now, BOOJUM! has an unhealthy fascination with major engineering works that go wrong, and we have focussed on dam failures in the past, as these are possibly the most extreme example of sudden cataclysms.  I did stumble across another web site that listed 53 engineering disasters, most of which we are already familiar with.  One was an exception, however: the Boston Molasses Disaster.
     I know, it sounds like a comedy, right?
     It was not.  Art?

The carnage that ensued

     For those unfamiliar with South Canadian argot, "Molasses" is an obscure term for that universally-known description "Treacle".  In case you were thinking of a treacle tank approximately this sized - Art?

Sorry, no

     It was more akin to one of those industrial gasholders, with a capacity of <waitforitwaitforit> 8,700,000 litres or eight and a half thousand tons of molasses.  Art?

Tank with puny humans for scale

     The tank had been loaded to capacity with new warmed treacle, which went on top of old cold treacle, at which the shoddily-constructed tank blew apart as if it had been dynamited.  Less funny is the aftermath, as 21 people were killed by a tidal wave of treacle twenty-five feet high.
     There's bound to be a plethora of bad jokes in there, but we here at BOOJUM! are too respectful and tasteful to indulge in any of them.

     And with that we are thoroughly done!


*  The utter dastards!