And I Haven't Begun
First of all, let's have a shout out to The Naughty Boys - you know who you are - and their flattering comments about BOOJUM! at work. It's a calculated risk, posting a link to your blog on Team Chat, but bear in mind that I'm getting made redundant in three weeks and the Disciplinary To Dismissal process takes four weeks and you get an idea of where I'm coming from. Art!
HOWEVER whilst working in the above building Your Humble Scribe knew of two fellow staff members who were dismissed from the Coop for posting libellous or slanderous comments on social media. Yes, gentle reader, those large employers have staff whose job it is to comb social media for disparaging remarks. So think carefully before denigrating Sue, Grabbit & Runne your legal employer.
Having thoroughly depressed you with Reality, let us now go for a jaunt in the fields of romantic nonsense, namely that Romanian gypsy folk tale "The Vampire".
At night the vampire came again and asked her, 'Tell me, Nita, what you saw.'
'I didn't see anything.'
'Tell me, or I will kill the lord whom you have wedded.'
Then Nita arose and said, 'It shall not happen that you kill my lord. God send you burst.' 1
The vampire heard what Nita said, and burst. Ay, he died, and burst for very rage. In the morning Nita arose and saw the floor swimming two hand's-breadth deep in blood. Then Nita bade her father-in-law take out the vampire's heart with all speed. Her father-in-law, the king, hearkened, and opened him and took out his heart, and gave it into Nita's hand. And she went to the grave of her boy and dug the boy up, applied the heart, and the boy arose. And Nita went to her father and to her mother, and anointed them with the blood, and they arose. Then, looking on them, Nita told all the troubles she had borne, and what she had suffered at the hands of the vampire.
Blimey, that Mister Sparky is one persistent and self-obsessed bumbletuck, isn't he? He's killed four people so far, including Nita The Narrator - go back and read the previous, it's too long to explain here - and is still asking the same question. And then - "God send you burst". Wait, what! It was that simple? Say that and he explodes? Nita is obviously made of stern stuff as she simply goes to bed. Only seven and a half hours* later does she bother about the floor being EIGHT INCHES DEEP IN BLOOD. If we assume that her bedroom is nine square yards, and that a pint of blood will cover a square foot to a depth of one inch, Sparky just blew out 72 pints of blood. No wonder he burst!
And they all lived happily ever after. Or so one presumes. Conrad rather anticipates the revived family having permanent PTSD thanks to being killed and then brought back to life, and - hmmmmm wonder what they thirst for?
Don't forget, if it tries to crawl away from a hot needle BURN IT ALL.
Another Short Item
Because not everything need be "Reclaiming History" at 1,515 pages. Art!
As seen from the 83 bus en route into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell. A tad obscure, so allow me to enlarge a little. Art!
Your Tuesday morning may not have been a small slice of wonderful, but spare a thought for this chap. Here he is, at 08:15, with his head stuck down a damp, dirty, smelly manhole in order to troubleshoot Mixed Wiring. He doesn't have a choice, the MI5 building behind him that's serviced by said MW needs their internet back pronto!
"In The Dark"
No, we are not talking about the James Webb Space Telescope. Although now you've mentioned it I have to add in a photograph. Art!
The super scope
No, this is about the BBC's themed photography exhibition, whose photo today will be as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Art!
I'm not making this up, honest
Courtesy Daniel Castelli. He informs us that this is in Portland, Connecticut, and yes, that's a replica TARDIS. Rather than travelling in space and time, it's one of the world's smallest libraries. Conrad salutes the good citizens of Portland CT, because if this was in Manchester it would have been wrecked on the first night in situ and then been chucked in the Irwell the next.
Igniting Friction With Fan-Fiction
Yus, back to "The Sea Of Sand" because 1) nobody's objected to it yet and 2) it ups the word count considerably. As you should so surely recall, Mersah Martuba was playing reluctant host to a bunch of desert privateers.
‘He’s busy,’ growled the
sergeant. ‘Go see Lieutenant Llewellyn.’
Which the Doctor did.
The young officer with the perpetually awry hair was overseeing delivery
of petrol tins to the J Force vehicles, dozens of petrol tins, and several tins
of engine oil. Another young officer,
wearing a keffiyeh, a uniform blouse and worn cord trousers, looked on in
approval.
‘Can I have a word?’ asked the Doctor, edging up to
Roger.
‘How about several?
“Taking Army property without permission” for a start,’ replied Roger
shortly, ticking off boxes on his noteboard.
He called over the kheffiyeh-wearing officer. ‘You need to sign for the boxes of ammo. Two hundred rounds of Vickers fifty-calibre
armour-piercing; one thousand rounds of three-oh-three.’
‘It’s about the disappearances,’ added the Doctor. The officer stopped to stare back at him,
then returned to his work.
‘Any chance of some Boyes rounds?’ asked the other
officer. ‘Captain Jolyon goes through
them like nobody’s business.’
‘I’ll see,’ replied Roger, then walked away after taking
the Doctor’s elbow in what he hoped was a painfully hard grip and dragging him
along. ‘What are you blathering on
about, you b***** looney! You steal a
truck and go haring off – why should I believe you?’
‘I know what’s been causing the disappearances,’ stated the
Doctor simply, his elbow somehow stealing free, and gaining Roger’s unwavering
attention.
LRDG Chevrolet, as used by J Force
Conrad Is ANGRY!
Yes yes yes, it's my default emotional state. I mean even ANGRIER than usual, thanks to those Codeword compiling bafunes. I mean, I go easy and don't disintegrate any for a couple of weeks and how do they repay my merciful tolerance? With the following!
"CASTRATI": A word that will make every male reader wince with sympathetic pain. For your information, castrati were male singers deprived of their gonads before puberty, in order to maintain a particular singing voice. The whole process was legally forbidden from the mid-nineteenth century and there hasn't been one alive for a century so of course - obviously! - the Codeword compilers decided it was a much-used contemporary word. Just you wait. When I take over <sinister muttering continues>.
Dead relevant
"LANGUID": A poetical way of saying 'bone-idle'. Only ever used by pseuds or Thomas Pynchon.
"QUANGO": YOU WHAT! O, so now acronyms are proper words, are they? This, gentle reader, stands for "Quasi-Autonomous National GOvernment Agency" and is typically the sort of sinecure disgraced ex-politicians are appointed to, in order to keep them in lobster and champagne and prevent the Ruffians from poaching them. Art!
Tiny tiny hands
The South Canadians appear to lack these, which is just one troubling consequence of throwing away their loyalty to The Crown. The fools!**
Finally -
We need to get this blog sorted and put to bed, I've not yet taken Edna for her walkies and the weather looks changeable - it may clear up and be sunny later or it may turn into a typhoon, the odds are even as always in This Sceptred Isle. I use the walk as Thinking Time, pondering dark secrets, resolving world troubles and plotting what to say on BOOJUM! that won't offend people too much, except for the Tin Of Puh, he can be as offended as he likes and we won't care one bit. I suppose I could always stretch to coming up with more nicknames for the Bloaty Gas Tout. Putinpot Dictator? Aha! How about an acronym of PUTIN? Yesssss I think that's the way to go. Mind you, it still has to be SFW. We do have standards here at BOOJUM! just not many of them. Art!
 |
| "Why does Conrad hate me so?" |
* They slept shorter then.
** But at least they're not meddling fools. Ape brains and the secrets of the Krell & all that
No comments:
Post a Comment