F******G HELL YEAH!

Perhaps I Should Not Have Censored "Flipping"
Traditionally, we here at BOOJUM! maintain an air of icy detachment, until or unless the subject matter turns to guns or The Comsat Angels, at which point we take an interest.
      OR, we might add, the works of futurologist Gerry Anderson <a moment's respectful silence for the great man, thanks> whose creative oeuvre is still influential.  Art?

Gezza

     Okay, this will take a bit of explanation, so stick close to me, kid, and we'll storm the gates of Heaven -
     "Thunderbirds".  You doubtless remember the most famous Gezza series ever, which is still part of the cultural landscape over fifty years later.  Well, one of the subsidiary chapters for TB was about "Zero X", a monstrous interplanetary spaceship that blasted off from Glenn Field.  Art?

Glenn Field: two miles of runway

     You can see the "1" and "2" on the structure there; well, they were 'lifting bodies', a kind of supplemental remote-controlled spaceship that helped Zero X move from horizontal to vertical flight; once it hit V1 in the atmosphere these units would detach and fly home to land and be re-used - say hello Elon Musk!
     What did Your Humble Scribe discover last night but a Youtube channel that records the adventures of Zero X, AS IN THE TV21 COMIC*.
     I have seen this done for 'Watchmen' but was unaware that it also applied to Gezza.
     Excuse my quivering hands - Art?

     This is a video adaptation of the story "Planet Of Bones", with a commentary and animated effects, which all told takes about 15 minutes to work through. Take note of the Mike Noble artwork ALL HAIL MIKE NOBLE which is fantastically detailed and draughtmanslike.  Really, this is incredible artwork -
     The story, I'm afraid, makes very little sense, which is typical of this TV21 oeuvre - silly stories with incredible art.  Your Humble Scribe does not remember reading this particular story; if they at Gerry Anderson branch out into other past stories then I may recall, and I shudder at the recollection of the painted Jim Watson tales, which were NIGHTMARE FUEL for an 8-year old.
     Get you over to Youtube and the Gerry Anderson channel there.  NOW!

Oho in Lego

     I am going back to Youtube to see if they have anything else viewable from a 50 years-old perspective, hopefully not Jim Watson.  Although I do have my cushion to hide behind.

The Tables Turned
Finally!  No, not the "Finally" that comes at the end of BOOJUM!  I have finally made the first move of my next English Civil Unpleasantness wargame using the 'Polemos' rules.  This, you recall, is the one that's been sitting on the games table for ten days, unmoving.  Art?

      Now they're moving.  As you can see, Parliament's cavalry have moved forward to allow their mounted reserves to wheel about, in order to carry out a surprise attack on the Royalists (yes yes yes I can play both sides and surprise myself no problem).  As for the Royalists, since they lost at Tempo Bidding, they can only manage to move part of their army forward.  This is one of the good things about Polemos; you have to make judgements about what's most important.
     To those of you who wonder what I'm babbling about, this inability to move your entire army forward as a single majestic weapon reflects real life; what they call the "Fog of War", where messages go astray, orders are misunderstood, watches are not synchronized, commanders are drunk and soldiers are cowardly or mutinous.  Beware the wargames rule set that allows you to do everything you want to.

"Pay me - NOW!"

I Wonder -
Conrad is willing to bet that you're familiar with that Monty Python ditty "The Galaxy Song", and if not here are the lyrics:

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,

And things seem hard or tough,

And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,

And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at 900 miles an hour.

It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,

The sun that is the source of all our power.

Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,

Are moving at a million miles a day,

In the outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,

Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;

It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;

It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,

But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.

We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,

We go 'round every two hundred million years;

And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions

In this amazing and expanding universe.

Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,

In all of the directions it can whiz;

As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,

Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,

How amazingly unlikely is your birth;

And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,

'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

     What a great way to pad the word count!  Now, I bet all you out there were expecting BOOJUM! to deliver an excoriating (heh, I bet you didn't expect to see that word today) "Little Musical Critique" - however, we're not going to.
     I can hear your disappointed groans from here.
     One reason for not pointing out where they go wrong or peculiar is that the song is surprisingly accurate, actually, bar a little fudging to get the scan right.
     HOWEVER! You know Conrad, a hair-splitting pedant on a good day.  Bear in mind that this song was written in 1983, which is a good 13 years before the first exoplanet was discovered, and we're not only now up to over 4,000 (sadly no Vesponas that we know of) but it's strongly suspected that all solar systems have planets.  Art?

So -

     - given this superfluity of planets, it's a mathematical certainty that intelligent life is out there somewhere.  Not that we're ever likely to come face-to-face, because as the late, great Douglas Adams pointed out, Space Is Really Big.

Finally - 
Yes, this is the proper Finally - just to let you know that I have started Deborah Lipstadt's "Denying The Holocaust", which goes back to 1994 and was the reason that the odious <insert lots of swears here> David Irving sued her for libel.  The HD industry really got a kick in the teeth from that case, and Your Humble Scribe can't help but wonder what a 2020 edition of the book would look like?  And before you ask, no, I am not going to write it.  How could I, when BOOJUM! keeps me so busy?

Slaving away

* This is significant; there are no budget restrictions. material limitations nor unconvincing voiceovers in comics.