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Friday 31 July 2020

I Am Leaving, On A Jet Plane

And I Know Exactly When I'll Be Back Again
 - because I have a return ticket and have taken the time to read it.
     Fear not, ye estate of John "Axeman" Denver, for we are not here to carry out one of our dreaded "Little Musical Critiques" on the song - no, no, I don't mean he ran around slaying people with a hatchet - on the song that I allude to because it's part of - his guitar!  It's what all guitarists called their instrument back in the Seventies! sheesh everyone's a critic - where was I?  
     O yes.  More here about "Zero X", the spaceship initially featured in "Thunderbirds".  Art?
Thunderbirds Zero X cutaway – Never Was
The blurb says it's due to fly in 2020.  I'm so excited!
     The thing about Zero X is that it continued a very long run in comics with it's own strip, created by two brilliant artists: Mike Noble who inked with pen, and Jim Watson, who used brushes and painted.  As Conrad has remarked before, Mike's art was
     On a couple of Gerry Anderson-themed forums, there were comments about memorable Zero X strips, which I tried Googling for, to little avail.  
     But not quite

     So, the - er - "leaving" bit was in fact a witty pun.
     Your Humble Scribe cannot tell you any more than what he deduces from the caption.  Obviously this is from Zero X's later interstellar exploration missions, part of their 5 year mission to explore - hang on, that sounds a bit familiar.
     Anyway, Conrad suspects that these Eyeleaves are 1) Evil and 2) Badly-designed.  Clearly they want to take over the galaxy, yet they can't even walk.  Heck, the galaxy faces a bigger threat from landmobile sharks with prehensile fins* than these hapless chumps, who'd keel over dead at the first squirt of Roundup.  Now, there
BOOJUM!: April 2016
And I'm not budging on that
     Motley!  Put on the kettle, for I intend to inflict awful torment on some poor innocent leaves by steeping them in boiling water.

Meanwhile, Back In Reality -
As you ought to have read already, Zero X was due to blast off from Glenn Field Spaceport this year.  That only leaves (sorry) four months to build an interplanetary spaceship, which is pushing it, frankly, chaps.
     However, as of today, another Mars mission has successfully blasted off for the Red Planet: the Perseverance rover lofted into orbit from Cape Canaveral.  Art?
Blast off! Perseverance, newest Mars rover, launched as planned ...
Mars here we come!
     I explained yesterday that the mission is to land the rover Perseverance safely on the Martian surface, where it will trundle around and drill for samples of rock and mud - one cannot call it earth! - which will then be sealed in metal canisters and deposited along it's march route.  Allow me to nick one of the BBC's terrific artworks to demonstrate.  Art!  Picture steal!
The Perseverance rover collects and stores samples of Martian soil and rocks in metal canisters, which it leaves behind on the surface
     Then comes Part 2.  Another rover is going to be despatched to Mars later this decade, whose job will be to trundle around and collect all those
Airbus wins next study contract for Martian Sample Fetch Rover ...
Again, not small.
     Conrad really does wonder about the logic behind sending two rovers, which not only means enormous additional expense, but doubling the complexity of the operation and increasing the number of things that can go wrong.  Surely what you're looking for here is simplicity and elegance of operation?
     If it all goes pear-shaped, don't say I didn't warn you.
     Plus, watch out for the Martian Rock Snakes.  

"ACME"
Another egregious Codeword solution that is pushing the limits of acceptability, chaps, it really is.  So too is "KAZOO" which I thought was "TABOO" as it definitely wasn't "IGLOO".
     Well, you know your Modest Artisan, never able to leave (sorry) a word alone, and this one is no exception.  You ought to be familiar with it as the supplier of everything an aspiring murderer might want in the "Roadrunner" cartoons.  Art?
Acme Catalog: Amazon.co.uk: Carney, Charles: 9780811851152: Books
Existential classicism in cartoon form
     "Where does it come from?" I pondered.  The Greek, as it happens, my Collins Concise informed me.  From "Akme" which means something like the very bestest shizzle evah.

"Hunting Hitler"'s  Background Baggage
As you may recall, we here at BOOJUM! have joined in the general criticism of the History Channel's above program.  Somehow, it managed to crank out 3 seasons on the unviable premise that Herr Schickelgruber managed to escape from the flaming ruins of the Third Reich and escape to - Somewhere.  Whilst Jim Holland was involved, he was apparently verrrrrry careful never to say on camera that he believed in the escape theory.  
     According to the critical review from Kingston College, the television program seems to have it's roots in a book, and if I can quote: 

"The inspiration for the series goes back to a very poorly reviewed book published a few years ago, ."

     This, in a moment of candour, is what Ol' Jim Holland admitted.  It seems the History Channel has wheelbarrows of ready cash it can parade in order to tempt pundits.
Grey Wolf
The fetid drivel in question

  Ah - a new feature of this new Blogger - you can see line breaks to the left, which helps know what alignments are going to be like.  I can't manage to amend font colour, which is why the quote above is merely highlighted.

     We are technically over the Compositional Ton, if only because I used a long quote above.  It was so wonderfully acid in tone that I didn't want to leave any out.  Anyway -

Thank You, Brain
The brain is indeed a most curious organ, in both senses.  Last night I had a dream wherein a female  educator in some venue or other, where yours truly was in the audience, quoted a long list of people whom, she implied, were going to solve all the scientific problems we had.  
     Conrad presumes that this list of people were important and prominent scientists themselves, which is a presumption as I didn't recognise a single name, except I recall one of them was called "Xander".  I even looked around the corner to where they were all queuing up and - Nope, still didn't recognise any.  You'd have thought Brain would have conjured up at least Albert or Richard.  Art?
The best, most thought-provoking Albert Einstein quotes - Business ...
Al, sad he wasn't included

     And with that we are done!

*  Sorry for the nightmare fuel.

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