HOLY HECK!

Any Nuclear Ordnance Engineering Artificers (Grade 3C Or Over) Amongst Us?
I did have that as the title, until I realised that MI5 are probably doing nothing at the moment but read e-mails, look through spy cameras and follow dubious blogs, and they might very well take umbrage at BOOJUM!'s chirpy insouciance as regards atomic weapons.  Art?

The SADM.  Pay attention, this will be important later on.

     The reason I have atom bombs back on the blog is that this is one of our unhealthy obsessions/guilty secrets/worrying specialisms, and also because we were mocking The Jam's Seventies single " 'A' Bomb In Wardour Street" earlier this week, and because I intend to carry on mocking*.  Before we do allow me to extend this rather short Intro a little longer.  Art?

Yes well -

    "1)  Do not be around when they go off" - this is adapted from an old British Army saying about the best protection against nuclear weapons.
     "2) Make sure what you target is really, really important and worth blowing up."  Or, in Cold War terms, forget Uralmash tank factories, make sure you blow up a distillery and plunge the Sinisters into irrecoverable gloom.
     "3)  Never return to an undetonated ADM."  Because everyone knows a pocket nuke is exactly as dangerous as a firework.  A really BIG firework.
     "4)  Keep one toe in contact with the carrying container at all times when in transit."  Especially around chavvy neighbourhoods when you're travelling by bus.  Turning a run-down housing estate into plasma is not Best Practice for urban redesigning.

Not even here.  Which I used to gaze at when travelling to South Gormorrah on the Irwell.

     Well, having covered myself with enough good taste for today, I think we'd better progress to A Little Musical Critique.

A Little Musical Critique
Ah me, are we up and ready to smell the flowers and napalm?  O good.  Sharpen your pencils, children, and we shall begin.  O - Paul?  Do come out from under the table, there's a good chap.  It's only words.

No, Paul, don't jump!

"I don't know what I'm doing here"

Me neither, as your surroundings are so unremittingly GRIM.  Blood, hate, destruction, lack of fifty pence pieces and a blight upon your roses.  Really, what are you doing here?

" 'Cause it's not my scene at all"

I notice a certain slackness in your spelling here, Paul.  Even amidst the collapse of Western civilisation we must keep up appearances, we simply must.

"There's an 'A' bomb in Wardour Street"

Wardour Street - er - and this is before the viris crisis

Conrad supposes it falls to him to explain HOW it got there?  Obviously some careless South Canadian SOFG feller dropped it.  Them being the ones who carry SADMs**.

"They've called in the Army, they've called in the police to -"

Well, here we see why I was squawking for someone with the relevant technical knowledge on how to dismantle on of these things.  I don't know what the police are doing, brewing tea and having a biscuit?  If they had any sense they'd be driving the public before them in a tidal wave of terror, to get out of the blast zone.

Keep Calm And Ignore The Rads

     And I think that's enough loaded near-political commentary for today.  More tomorrow!  I bet Paul can hardly wait.

     Here an aside.  I am currently listening to The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" for only the second time, and the first since John Peel's "Festive Fifty" way back in 1976 - I think - and you know what?  I like it.  This is a bad thing, as it means potentially buying all The Grateful Dead albums there are, and there are a lot.  Mind you, I have been doing overtime this week and last.  Art?

The Dead

Your Daily Dose Of DANGER!
As if living dead men weren't tricky enough.  Today we jump the alphabet, whilst also walking under the shadow of atom bombs again - sorry! - and we come to Lithium Hydride. I realise this sounds a bit wimpy, especially as it's a prescribed anti-psychotic medication, but just wait, it does get better.  Art?

A lovely metal hydride fire to toast marshmallows by run from

     Okay, first of all a great big lump of LiH will spark and fume madly in the presence of water.  If you are rash enough to have powdered or ground LiH lying about, then BEWARE! for it will spontaneously ignite in the presence of water, giving off toxic, corrosive fumes; it can spontaneously ignite even if kept in the most desiccated of lab environments, thanks to static electricity.  You can't keep it in steel containers as it will corrode them, until it gets out into the lovely damp air and BLAMMO! once again.
     Merely having one kind of LiH is fraught enough, you might think.  Think again.  Art?

More marshmallowy fun in the Marshalls -

     This is Castle Bravo, where they stuffed it full of 7LiH and 6LiH, since 7 was cheaper and wouldn't explode - they thought.
     They thought wrong.  WRONGITTY WRONG WRONG!  because 7LiH did undergo fusion, creating the biggest bang South Canada has ever engineered, even if by accident.
     So, yeah - Lithium Hydride - a whole can of whoopass*** in a thimble.

"Minx"
I can't remember if this came up as a crossword solution or not.  It is defined in my Collins Concise as a woman who is basically on the verge of being a strumpet, if not quite, and is definitely headstrong and determined (I thought that was all females?) whilst looking to get ahead.

Well, this is one iteration.

    They don't know where the word comes from, though.  A resounding "?" in the nineteenth century is the best they can do.  My Brewers has nothing between "Minutemen" (sorry!  sorry, more nuclear missiles) and "Miocene".
     I hesitate to take this step but - ah - yes - even teh interwebz cannot come up with a definition.
     How about this one?

Yeah!

     Sharp of tooth and ready with claw - I think we're onto a winner here, assorted dictionaries of the world!


*  Conrad: evil that way
**  Told you it would come into play later on.  Have you not heard of Chekov's Gun?
***  Do forgive the South Canadian argot.  I have to make some compromises to art in order to gull potential customers